decoded_text
stringlengths
4.18k
47.6k
disease, but so did Van Gogh, and Gauguin, too, and let’s not forget Oscar Wilde. When their fans went to the whorehouse, they turned up their noses at the whores that didn’t have syphilis — they wanted to go mad from the disease, just like their idols. From the third generation of the white left, the idea of sickness as a badge gains credibility. Illness shows ideological devotion. Morbidity is the main feature of the second generation of the French white left. As important as their achievements in art and literature, in the ideological arena, they only managed to borrow from and degrade the philosophy of earlier times. To sum up, Germany’s second generation white left provided the theoretical basis for the next generation and the French turned to art and literature. They created a spiritual plague. This is an important term to define: The white left flaunts ideals, which may or may not be false, and turn their sickness into a morbid badge — this is how they get people to notice them and self-satisfaction. That is all you need to know. If you understand what I have just written, you will understand why the women of the contemporary white left sweep into Middle East refugee camps with their messages of love. The second generation of white left is the most important generation in the history of the evolution of this philosophy. They have combined this philosophy with fashion and psychology and created an “infectious ideology” that has spread as fast as syphilis. Another feature of the white left is their ability to infiltrate institutions. When the National Socialists took power in Europe, the white left picked up and fled to America, where they began occupying college campuses. 3. From Horkheimer to Foucault: the third generation of the white left deconstructs themselves The third generation of the white left and the Chinese white left are the closest left, following the same idols and philosophical leaders: Horkheimer and Adorno, Marcuse and Habermas, Derrida and Sartre, Foucault…. These are the fathers of the new white left. The white liberal elite and the lying media that popped up to oppose Trump’s election once slept in the campsites of the anti-Vietnam protesters, passed out from dope smoking. The elite of the third generation of the white left have something in common: they come from the academic and artistic elite. The same can be said for the second generation, the followers of the Frankfurt school and the liberal elite that occupied American and European universities. One thing can be said of both generations: they rarely had to worry about where their next meal was coming from — they were financially protected from the realities of society. This leads me to an important question. How can those with stable incomes and a high standard of living be put in charge of deciding the liberty and welfare of those at the lowest level of society? Even when they confront the realities of the lowest levels of society, they still cannot see the truth. It brings to mind a story that white left philosopher Bertrand Russell related about his trip to China: he went out on a sedan chair on a blazing hot day and was surprised to see his bearers smiling, when it came time to take a break, even though they were nearly dead from heat and exertion. He came to his conclusion: the Chinese are optimistic and decent people. (Then get down from the sedan and take a fucking walk!) Mr. Lu Xun hit the nail on the head, when he commented on Bertrand Russell remarking that some Chinese sedan chair bearers smiled at him at West Lake: “…if chair bearers did not smile, China would long since have stopped being the China she is. The hierarchy handed down since ancient times has estranged men from each other, they cannot feel each other’s pain….” Mr. Lu Xun’s attacks on the white left were prophetic. When Russell went to the Soviet Union and was brought to a collective farm, the fucker damn near pissed himself. When Russell came to the New China in 1959 to meet the Great Helmsman himself, he offered as a gift his work, Wisdom of the West, with a flattering inscription on the flyleaf. The Chairman gave him an arrogant smirk that was meant to say: you can fuck off now. True Marxists, from Stalin to Chairman Mao were able to see through the hypocrisy and cowardice of the white left in an instant. In criticizing the white left now, we must not forget that all generations of the white left have provided searing critiques of feudalism and capitalism. I would like to especially highlight the contributions of the third generation of the white left, including Horkheimer and Adorno. Their critiques were penetrating and profound. They are truly great philosophers, even if they belong to the white left. Nobody should seek to downplay their contributions, even if they went down the wrong road. The white left, it must be remembered, witnessed great hardship, including the world at war twice. When the Nazis came to power, they were forced to run for their very lives. Those that sought refuge in the Soviet Union were often crushed under the iron first of the Soviet dictatorship. This is why so many of the white left have a pessimistic vision. They cannot conceive of any real alternative to capitalism but consciously or unconsciously, they sought to deconstruct Western Civilization. That brings me to another important point: This is a group of people that are part of Western Civilization but completely alienated from Western Civilization. They cannot separate the problems and by-products of Western Civilization from Western Civilization itself. Exploitation, social polarization, sexism, racism, the decimation of the culture industry are all important problems. But they are also products of capitalism and by-products of Western Civilization. Eliminating one or all of those problems is nearly impossible, if you take those problems as simply an aspect of capitalism or Western Civilization that can be patched up. The most representative figure of the third generation of the white left is Michel Foucault. He coasted past the ideas of Horkheimer and threw himself into one political struggle after another. Even Sartre stood up and called him a left wing nut. Starting in 1969, Foucault was very active politically and in 1971, following the murder of an Algerian youth in Paris formed the Djellali Committee. This group later became the Committee on the Protection of Immigration Rights, which has had a major influence on immigration policy in Europe. Foucault took part in many movements that later had a great influence, including agitating for feminist and gay causes, and protests against drug prohibition. He became the model for later thinkers and activists of the white left. Foucault was in contact with French Maoists and was introduced to the French Communist Party by Althusser, a veteran of the white left. But Foucault’s chaotic lifestyle made it difficult for him to commit. He was a drug addict, homosexual, and sado-masochist. He once said that unless gay marriage was legal, civilization was dead. These have become words that homosexuals and the white left live by. He was unable to live by the rules of the Communist Party, preferring his life of promiscuity and freedom. Much like the second generation of the white left and syphilis, Foucault wanted sickness as a badge. He died in 1984 of AIDS, a disease that very few people understood at the time. To the contemporary white left, Foucault is the standard. He is a martyr for the cause. It was his drive to self-extinction that opened a door to the next generation of the white left. 4. Homosexuals and refugees — the self-extinction of the white left The strategy of the second and third generation of the white left was broadly successful. When the latest generation entered the classrooms of the universities, they found that the students that had occupied those halls in the 1960s had never left. The old guard of academia that they booted out were the last true believers in conservatism and classical liberalism. Those ideas were now widely discredited. The professors of the white left led their students out into the street. The last neoliberal professor in the school was left with an empty lecture hall. In the United States and Europe, the number of students in the universities increased in the age of prosperity that followed the Second World War. The professors of the white left had plenty of fresh recruits, especially among arts students. They were led out on demonstrations and protests and signature-gathering. They never received the same grounding in the ideas of conservatism and classical liberalism as earlier generations and scorned Kant and Hegel. Their new idols were Sartre and Foucault. You think you can understand Sartre and Foucault without reading some goddamn Kant and Hegel? You gotta be kidding me. An important feature of the white left is a shallow and fanatical devotion. Shallow due to lack of classical learning and research — and fanatical for the same reason: they do not come across many opinions that differ from their own and react negatively when they do. We can sum up the white left like this: No logic, only personal judgement; no scientific approach, only shouting. Due to the shallowness of white left education, they are unable to debate those on the right, whether conservatives or proponents of classical liberalism. This only exacerbates their fear, anger and isolation. If you don’t believe me, take a look at a comments section. If it’s a liberal site, the comments are closed! Conservative sites don’t give a fuck. The new white left has turned from the trail blazed by earlier generations of the white left. Rather than philosophy, they have turned every aspect of life into a street protest. They are actors rather than thinkers. The refugees and blacks and gays get dragged along as symbols of the movement. They are violent but their targets have been mixed up. It’s like the Chinese left that dresses up as the white left and jumps onto a highway to stop a poor truck driver hauling a load of dogs bound for the slaughterhouse. Intellectual shallowness, isolation, and violence constitute the main features of the modern white left. They created a hive mind in academia, which allowed them to spread through Western society. The riots and protests that followed the election of Trump are the best evidence of this. Trump’s victory is only a small stone flung from humanity’s sling against the giant we face — the spiritual plague. The road to redemption for Western Civilization is still a long one.There are few places better than Alberta to look up into the night sky and see the majesty that is the universe. Bon Accord, a central Alberta town of about 1,500, has taken this to heart with their successful bid to become Canada's first official Dark Sky community. Bon Accord, 40 kilometres north of Edmonton, is just the 11th town in the world to receive this distinction. The International Dark Sky Association, located in Tucson, Arizona, established the Dark Sky Places conservation program in 2001 to combat light pollution. To achieve this starry designation a community must have stringent outdoor lighting standards and innovative programs. In total, there are 47 areas designated a Dark Sky Place. This includes the aforementioned 11 communities, 26 parks, nine reserves and one sanctuary. Randolph Boyd, Bon Accord's mayor, said his community joining this celestial-focused group marks a "new beginning" for the town. 'A full circle loop' On Saturday, the town came together to launch Canada's first international Dark Sky zone during their 5th annual Equinox Festival. To celebrate, they brought in a man who knows the starry sky intimately — Chris Hadfield. "They work with all of their lighting so they truly get to appreciate the beauty of the sky and the northern lights," said Hadfield. "So, they asked me, as someone who has been in the dark sky, to come and help celebrate." Order of Canada recipient and former astronaut Chris Hadfield was the keynote speaker at the Bon Accord's Equinox Festival. Hadfield was the keynote speaker at the launch and gave a speech focusing on what it's like to traverse the Milky Way, the importance of space flights to Canada and conquering the fears. He decided to end with a little music. They asked me, as someone who has been in the dark sky, to come and help celebrate. - Chris Hadfield The order of Canada recipient used to live in Alberta – in Cold Lake when he was a fighter pilot – and one of his children was born in his province. He said returning to his former home for a reason such as this was "lovely." "I was inspired when I was living here by some things that other people were doing. Now to have a chance to maybe be a part of that role is a lovely thing. To me, it's just a full circle loop." 'A quite intensive process' In order to receive the distinction and a visit from Canada's most well-known spaceman, Bon Accord put in a lot of work. "It was a quite intensive process actually," said Vicki Zinyk, Bon Accord's chief administrative officer. "The town underwent a structuring to reconnect with its identity and in doing so we connected with our residents and engaged them in an analysis that helped us determine what we wanted to be." With less light, it keeps you asleep longer with a deeper sleep. It's better for nocturnal animals who need the dark as well. - Vicki Zinyk The town took part in implementing a progressive and comprehensive outdoor lighting program which included developing a bylaw. The bylaw calls for shielded light fixtures and put limits on the amount of light. This includes giving residents eight years to change all their lights to down shielded lights and all commercial signs changing from white light to red light. Three telescopes are set up in Bon Accord as the town celebrates becoming Canada's first Dark Sky community. (CBC) Zinyk said the bylaws also brings about health benefits for all of Bon Accords residents. "With less light, it keeps you asleep longer with a deeper sleep. It's better for nocturnal animals who need the dark as well." IDA executive director J. Scott Feierabend said that he hopes Bon Accord will inspire other Canadian municipalities to dim the lights and gaze upwards to appreciate the beauty of the night sky. "We are pleased to honour the efforts of Bon Accord in setting a laudable example for other cities in the Canadian West," he said. "We hope other municipalities throughout Canada will follow the town's lead."U.S. Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-VT) speaks on his agenda for America during a news conference on Capitol Hill. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) This story has been updated. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) officially launched his bid for the Democratic nomination Thursday, calling in a press conference outside the Capitol for "an economy that works for all of our people, rather than a small number of billionaires." "Ninety-nine percent of all new income generated in this country is going to the top 1 percent. How does it happen that the top 1 percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent?" he told reporters. "My conclusion is, that that type of economics is not only immoral, it is not only wrong, it is unsustainable." The self-described socialist, known for his blunt style, enters the race as a progressive favorite eager to push presumed Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton to the left. Asked what made him a better candidate than Clinton, he first sidestepped the question -- "we don't know what Hillary's stances are on all the issues" -- before highlighting issues where he's taken a progressive leadership role, including opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, the Keystone XL pipeline, and the Iraq War. "I voted against the war in Iraq," he said -- drawing a contrast with Clinton, whose vote in favor of the war helped sink her 2008 presidential campaign. The Post’s Robert Costa and Dan Balz reported on Sanders’ imminent presidential run Tuesday after several key allies made it clear he would seek the Democratic nomination: Sanders presents a notable left-leaning challenge to Hillary Rodham Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, who announced her second campaign for the White House on April 12. … Sanders shares many of the same political stances as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a darling of liberals who has repeatedly said she is not running for president. That means Sanders may end up serving as the most prominent voice for the left wing of the party — particularly voters who are suspicious of Clinton and her ties to Wall Street. … Sanders chose to run in the Democratic primary because of to his interest in participating in the party’s primary debates, according to confidants. If he ran as an independent, he would not be able to engage with the national Democratic infrastructure or act as a direct foil to Clinton in the early primaries and caucuses. Sanders spoke Thursday about several key progressive issues that will frame his campaign, including income inequality and unemployment, campaign finance reform, education reform and climate change. “I believe that in a democracy what elections are about are serious debates over serious issues -- not political gossip, not making campaigns into soap offices. This is not the Red Sox versus the Yankees,” he said. “I would hope -- and I ask the media's help on this -- allow us to discuss the important issues facing the American people." And the long-shot contender denied that he was in the race merely to draw attention to issues he cares about. "We're in this race to win," he insisted. Sanders on Saturday will head to New Hampshire, which host's the nation's first presidential primary, where he will attend a house party with supporters and address an AFL-CIO convention. He is expected to hold a rally in his home state of Vermont next month.Firefox developers are considering making Web plugins like Adobe Flash an opt-in feature. Although there is still a long way to go before it’s ready for Firefox proper, switching to an opt-in, "click-to-play" approach for plugins could help make Firefox faster, more secure, and a bit easier on the laptop battery. A very early version of the "click-to-play" option for plugins is now available in the Firefox nightly channel. Once that’s installed you’ll need to type about:config in your URL bar and then search for and enable the plugins.click_to_play flag. Once that’s done, visit a page with Flash content and it won’t load until you click on it. While HTML5 reduces the need for Flash and other plugins, they’re still a big part of the Web today. Even where HTML5 has had great success—like the video tag—it hasn’t yet solved every publisher’s problems and remains incapable of some of the things Flash can do. That means Flash will likely remain a necessary part of the Web for at least a few more years. At the same time, Flash and other plugins are often responsible for poor performance and security vulnerabilities. So if something is necessary, but can slow down your browser and can be the source of attacks, what do you do? Another popular solution is the click-to-play approach that Mozilla developers are considering. It’s not a new solution, as Chrome already offers the option, but so far no Web browser has yet made it the default behavior. Visit a webpage with embedded Flash content when Flashblock or something similar is installed and you’ll see a static image where the Flash movie would normally be playing. Click the image and then the plugin loads. Whether or not the click-to-play approach that Mozilla is considering will ever become the default behavior for Firefox remains to be seen. This very early release is rough around the edges and nowhere near ready for prime time, but the goal is to have it be part of—disabled, but part of—Firefox 14.State on collision course with Justice Department over bill experts say will damage rights of poor, elderly and minorities North Carolina is set to introduce what experts say is the most "repressive" attack on the rights of African American voters in decades, barely a month after the US supreme court struck down a key section of the Voting Rights Act. The bill, which was passed by the state's Republican-dominated legislature this week, puts North Carolina on collision course with Eric Holder, the attorney general, who has announced plans to protect voter rights in Texas. Civil rights advocates and experts in election law are stunned by the scope of the new law. What began in April as a 14-page bill mainly focused on introducing more stringent ID rules, ostensibly to guard against voter fraud, snowballed over the last week as it passed through the North Carolina senate. By the time it was passed by both houses late on Thursday night, the bill had become a 57-page document containing a raft of measures opposed by voting rights organisations. If the bill is passed by the state's Republican governor, Pat McCrory, voters will be required to present government-issued photo IDs at the polls, and early voting will be shortened from 17 days to 10. Voting rights experts say studies reveal that both measures would disproportionately affect elderly and minority voters, and those likely to vote Democrat. The bill also ends same-day registration. Instead, voters in the state will be required to register, update their address or make any other needed changes at least 25 days ahead of any election. It also abolishes a popular high-school civics program that registers tens of thousands of students to vote each year, in advance of their 18th birthdays. And it ends straight-ticket voting, the practice of voting for every candidate fielded by a party has on an election ballot, a provision that has been in place in the state since 1925. Richard Hasen, a law professor at the University of California and one of the country's foremost experts on electoral law, said: It rolls into a single piece of legislation just about all of the tools we've seen legislatures use in recent years to try to make it harder for people to register and vote. Hasen described the bill as "probably the most suppressive voting measure passed in the United States in decades". 'A sad day' Voting rights activists stand outside the supreme court in Washington. Photograph: MCT /Landov / Barcroft Media The bill has only been made possible because of a controversial supreme court decision, handed down on 25 June, which effectively halted the enforcement provisions of the Voting Rights Act. The law, one of the cornerstones of civil rights era, was designed to prevent racial discrimination against voters in North Carolina, Texas and other (mostly southern) States. On Thursday, in an effort to get round the supreme court ruling, Holder announced his department would be asking a federal court in San Antonio to require the state of Texas to obtain advance approval before putting future certain election decisions in place. Holder also promised to take "aggressive action against any jurisdiction that attempts to hinder free and fair access to the franchise". It now seems likely that North Carolina will be next on his list of targets. William Yeomans, a law professor in Washington and a former chief of staff in the Justice Department, said Texas and North Carolina may just be the start of a series of legal battles over voter rights in states across the country. Voter ID laws in Alabama and Mississippi could be possible future targets. Yeomans said the North Carolina legislation represented "a sad day" for democracy in the US. It is clearly designed to suppress the vote. It is clearly designed to reshape the electorate to suite the needs of the Republican party. One of the ways they are going to do that is by disenfranchising minority voters. He added: "It was sadly predictable that this sort of thing was going to happen once the supreme court gutted the Voting Rights Act." Before last month's supreme court ruling, North Carolina would have been required to seek permission from a federal court or the Justice Department before enacting its rules changes. The requirement, known as "preclearance", was designed to ensure voting changes in certain jurisdictions were not discriminatory. After the supreme court's ruling, state legislators can alter their voting rules without federal interference – although they are still open to challenge in the courts. Unless Governor McCrory objects to the rule changes passed this week, they will come into effect in just over a month's time. Sonia Gill, associate counsel at the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, described the bill as the "most repressive" legislation she had recently come across. "It throws everything that might damage voter rights in one large package of changes that is going to be devastating for voters in North Carolina," she said. In addition to the voting rights changes, the North Carolina bill weakens transparency regulations designed to reveal who is underwriting campaign ads. Political parties will be enabled to rake in unlimited corporate donations. The cap on individual campaign donations in North Carolina will rise from $4,000 to $5,000. 'We understand there will be lawsuits' Protests against decisions made by North Carolina lawmakers can be read on signs made by members of a grassroots movement fighting budget cuts and attacks on democracy. Photograph: Dj Werner/ DJ Werner/Demotix/Corbis Defending the changes, Republicans in the state claimed the changes will restore faith in elections and prevent voter fraud, which they claim is endemic and undetected. However, records show only a handful of documented cases of in-person voter fraud prosecuted in the state over the last decade, out of 30 million ballots cast. "We understand there will be lawsuits," said the state senate leader, Phil Berger. It's our belief the laws we are passing are consistent with constitutional requirements and they will be upheld. Nonpartisan voting rights groups argue that the true goal is suppressing voter turnout among the young, the old, the poor and minorities. They point out that the changes will almost certainly benefit the Republicans legislators who are implementing them. Although the new voting rules are likely to be challenged, the recent supreme court ruling deprives civil rights attorneys of one of the key instruments used to challenge electoral rules that are perceived to be discriminatory. In the Texas case, which relates to redistricting, the Justice Department is filing what is known as a statement of interest, in support of the private groups that have filed suit. The move rests on a case last year in Texas, in which evidence was presented of "intentional" discrimination in the way electoral districts were drawn-up. However the clause that allows the department to intervene in Texas cannot currently be applied in North Carolina. If the department chooses to challenge North Carolina's legislation, it will need to find another section of the Voting Rights Act that survived the supreme court ruling – or another legal statute altogether. Either way, well-placed observers say that Holder's department is likely to find a way to challenge North Carolina. "I think they are likely to get involved in this one," said Richard Hasen, whose latest book examines "voting wars" across the US since 2000. "It is pretty clear that they are going for broke here. They are going to go after these states as aggressively as they can." In his speech this week, Holder sounded defiant. He said he would not be discouraged by the supreme court decision on the Voting Rights Act and promised to "fully utilise the law's remaining sections to ensure that the voting rights of all American citizens are protected". After announcing legal action against Texas, Holder also made a point of criticising an attempted photo ID law in South Carolina. He also said that while the action in Texas was the first step by the department since the supreme court decision, "it will not be our last". Matthew Miller, a Justice Department press spokesman until 2011 who remains close to Holder, said North Carolina's measure would "almost certainly" elicit a legal challenge from the department. "It is very hard to look at this legislation and see it as anything other than an attempt to stop people from voting," he said."They can cloak it in as much of the anti-fraud language they want but it is just a naked power grab. "If you do an analysis of the Texas statute and find it is discriminatory, it is hard to see how you would not reach the same conclusion with this statute in North Carolina."Bowie Mayor Larry Slack Resigns Copyright 2019 Nexstar Broadcasting, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Video According to Bowie City Secretary Sandy Page, Mayor Larry Slack has resigned as of noon today. He provided a letter of resignation, to staff, that included brief comments about his future plans. We will add the letter to this post when it becomes available Scott Davis, Precinct 1 North Ward City Councilor and Mayor Pro Tem, will fill the position (in his role as Mayor Pro Tem) until November when the position for Mayor is up for election. Contents of the resignation letter: May 5, 2017 Mrs. Sandy Page City Secretary City of Bowie 304 Lindsey Street Bowie, TX 76230 Dear Mrs. Page, This letter is to inform you I am resigning as Mayor effective noon, on Monday May 8, 2017. Please notify Nortex Regional Planning Commission of my resignation as well as the Texas Municipal League Region V president. Respectfully, Larry SlackThe countries of Europe and Asia are increasingly integrating together economically, logistically and politically via China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the various other endeavors of the broader New Silk Road, opening the gateway for a paradigm-shifting renaissance of technological innovation across the region. Trans-Eurasian transportation networks are being unified and streamlined, IT infrastructures are being upgraded and fused together, energy capacity is being boosted manyfold, and new types of problems are creating the opportunity for new types of technological solutions. Jonathan Hillman of the Center for Strategic International Studies (CSIS) in Washington D.C. posits that Asia has become a laboratory of new transportation ideas, and this is immediately evident when looking at the technologies that are emerging along its new array of trans-Eurasian trade corridors. “Just as the compass and the domesticated camel facilitated greater mobility in ancient times, all these innovations have the potential to reshape today’s economic landscape,” Hillman proclaimed. Over the past five years, an entire 40+ line network of direct cargo trains between China and Europe has emerged, and while the innovativeness of this system is mainly found in the realms of politics and customs protocols rather than technology, this system has inspired a reimagining of the future of rail transport. Pushing the logistic limit HP is largely recognized as being the driving force behind this new era of trans-Eurasian rail. When they moved a large portion of their production from the coastal city of Shenzhen to the inland city of Chongqing, a new logistical question arose: Are we really going to ship our products overland 1,500 kilometers east just to ship them west again by sea? Is there another way? The task was given to HP’s director of global logistics, Ronald Kleijwegt, to come up with that other way. His solution: rail. Over the next few years, Kleijwegt and his team put together a direct rail line between Chongqing and Duisburg, Germany, and by 2012 established the first regular service. However, organizing the logistics for such a rail operation was merely the first step. As these trains would pass through regions where the weather ranges from as high as 40°C in the summer to as low as -45°C in the winter -- much too extreme to ship the high-value, temperature-sensitive electronics that HP produces -- in order for them to run year round a new technological solution was needed. Kleijwegt mulled over the situation for a while and eventually found the answer when he ran into Jan Koolen at a European rail conference later on in 2012. Koolen is the founder of Unit 45, a company that has made pushing the innovative limits of shipping container technology their business model. Kleijwegt explained what he needed -- a fully automated, temperature-controlled shipping container that could make the entire two-week long, 9,000-kilometer rail journey between China and Europe without requiring maintenance or refueling. Koolen said it could be done and then set to work with his team to make it so. Unit 45 had already invented a climate controlled shipping container that was being loaded onto trucks, carting goods over the highways of Europe. However, their 250-liter diesel tanks would require two or three refueling stops on the journey between China and Europe, and were hence inadequate. “So then I sat together with my technical guy and I said, 'Is there another solution?’” Koolen recollected. “‘Is there a solution where we could have a cooling unit which has the capacity for a 45-foot unit and we are able to have the content of the tank around 800 liters?’ Because then we can move them around 24 days, and that was how we came to the solution that we found.” Koolen and his team made a diesel electric “smart” reefer container that could maintain a set internal temperature via a thermostat, be remotely controlled, is GPS enabled, and has enhanced security mechanisms that could theoretically make the journey from China to Europe and back again without needing to be refueled. Basically, they created the new camels of the New Silk Road. High-speed is the future However, while conventional trans-continental cargo trains are the vanguard of the Belt and Road, they are more than likely not its future. These trains have blazed new trails across continents, encouraged governments to work together, and helped transform a traditionally stubborn, change-adverse, state-owned and often monopolistic industry into a sleek, international, and modern mode of transport, essentially getting all of the preliminaries in place for new generations of trains to render them obsolete. The future of rail on the New Silk Road is high-speed. An array of endeavors to build high-speed rail lines in Russia, India, Southeast Asia and Europe are currently in the works. The long-delayed central route of the Kunming-Singapore high-speed rail line is now kicking off on multiple fronts. When finished sometime in the first half of the 2020s, tens of billions of dollars would have been spent and passengers will be able to travel between Kunming and Singapore in just 10 hours. A more ambitious, although still prospective, high speed-rail project is one that would link Moscow with Beijing, making it possible to cross the 7,769-mile expanse in one and a half days. Other New Silk Road high-speed rail lines are also being built in Indonesia, India, Vietnam and Eastern Europe, let alone thousand of kilometers being added onto China’s domestic HSR system to link in far western Silk Road hubs. Funding and building these high-speed rail lines abroad also puts countries like China and Japan on the inside track to sell their ever-improving high-speed rolling stock, such as China’s new 400 km/h “Fuxing” trains, and other related technologies directly to the host countries. A chance for Hyperloop However, we would be remiss if we viewed HSR trains as the end-all-be-all of overland New Silk Road transport. While it is still a developing technology, the possibility of lining the Belt and Road with Hyperloop systems in the future is very much on the table. The U.S. startup Hyperloop One and Russia’s Caspian Venture Capital have teamed up on a feasibility study to gauge the potential of building a 65-kilometer hyperloop between the Russian port of Zarubino and the Hunchun logistics zone in China. If it happens, we may see the world’s first hyperloop system in action, shooting six cargo-filled pods per minute -- amounting to 1.3 million TEU per year -- at 540 km/h between the two locales, generating earnings in the ballpark of $250 million per year. Other hyperloop projects are being proposed for India, South Korea, Slovakia and Abu Dhabi, and the potential to extend these tubes all the way from China to Europe is readily being discussed. “The spirit of experimentation on the New Silk Road and the ability of some governments in Asia and the Middle East to remove regulatory barriers could lead to the first applications of hyperloop technology being outside of the U.S.,” Hillman explained. “Elon Musk recently tweeted that he got verbal approval for a line between Washington and NYC and many people pointed out all the legal barriers that remained. However, there are countries where approval from the right person could clear the way for something ambitious like hyperloop to be implemented on a trial basis.” While hyperloop startups proudly proclaim that their technology could soon have the ability to ship cargo and people at speeds of over 1,000 km/h, which is faster than the cruising speed of a Boeing 747, the advantage of hyperloop technology for freight isn’t only about speed. As pointed out on Reconnecting Asia: Shippers want availability, or system uptime, which is one of Hyperloop’s advantages over rail or roads. Being an autonomous system enclosed in a tube eliminates a lot of safety hazards such as grade crossings, but also takes weather and operator error out of the equation…Shippers also get flexibility. A Hyperloop can send a container when it is received instead of waiting for a mile-long train to be loaded with hundreds of other containers. Its magnetic non-contact traction allows it to climb grades three times steeper than the 5 percent for traditional freight rail. Hyperloop technology is also highly touted as being greener, safer, more energy efficient, more resilient to weather conditions, and perhaps even cheaper than many of the currently established forms of transportation on the Belt and Road. Supersonic flying trains The speed breakdown for current and potential forms of New Silk Road transportation looks a little something like this: Truck: 90 km/h Conventional cargo train: 100 km/h High-speed cargo train: 250 km/h Hyperloop: 540 km/h Boeing 787: 954 km/h However, there is another potential mode of transport that can go up to four times faster than the fastest vehicles traversing these emerging trade routes today. Dubbed "supersonic flying trains," a label that is in no way a misnomer, China claims to be developing a form of rail transport that can support speeds of up to 4,000 km/h. The China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC), which is basically China’s NASA, recently unveiled that it is planning to develop a train which combines some of the attributes of a supersonic jet with a high-speed train. It’s basically a pod which zips down a vacuum sealed tube via magnetic levitation. As for a timeline for development, CASIC claims that the technology will be rolled out in stages, first running between some of China's regional cities at 1,000 km/h, then between the country's largest cities at 2,000 km/h, and then eventually evolving into the supersonic train that it is meant to be, “flying” at 4,000 km/h across continents along the corridors of China’s Belt and Road.Dozens of demonstrators marched up Lower Broadway on Monday night in protest of the the FOP Convention. As many as 5,000 members of law enforcement could be attending the convention at the Opryland Hotel this week. It's the first time the group has had its convention in Nashville since 1975. Dixon Irene is among those who want to make them feel unwelcome. Irene said she's not against individual police officers but rather the institution of policing. "You know there's no space for killer cops," Irene said. "We don't want that kind of behavior here. We don't want to support a group of folks who reward it." Irene's group SURJ organized Monday's rally to protest how the FOP supports officers involved in police shootings. The group attracted
neon-green accents that Nvidia loves so much. Instead, Shield Tablet buyers can expect a simple, all-black, big-rectangle tablet look, with average bezels around the screen’s edge, and front-facing speaker columns flanking the shorter sides. Black matte plastic wraps around the entire device, actually, with the exception of a single, black aluminum ring around the front of the body that adds a little shine, but, really, this thing is black. It's also a little thick and heavy for its size class; this has been the year of thin tablets, and 9.1 mm seems like a thickness measure from last year's best sets. If you want the Shield Tablet to look good, turn on the 8-inch, 16:10 screen and take a look at the stunning 1920x1200 display—just a smidge over 1080p, with pixel density at around 283 PPI. Color reproduction and black depth looked pretty impressive for the midrange price, and Netflix movies came off as incredibly crisp (particularly the watercolor effects in the animated series Bojack Horseman). We looked at this screen next to a Macbook Pro Retina display and noticed that blues could have been deeper, and reds had a slight orange tint, but that’s normal stuff for an IPS display, and a quick jump into the settings revealed that the Shield Tablet employs a pretty effective RGB color correction preset; turn it off, and the screen turns Smurf blue. The front-facing speakers are joined by a pair of miniature subwoofer “reflex ports” on the tablet’s shorter sides, and the speaker combo held up as expected to our test of Lil’ Jon’s “Turn Down For What”—meaning, they project a distinct bit of volume and bass for things like movie watching, and individual instruments sound distinct enough, but they’re not loud or booming enough to rattle your car’s windows by any stretch. Then there’s the matter of ports, ports, ports: beyond the usual micro-USB and microphone ports, the Shield Tablet also includes a mini-HDMI out, a micro SD slot (supporting up to 128 GB in additional memory), and—if you opt for the more expensive LTE model—a SIM card slot. The flexible plastic cover for each of the latter two felt a little cheap, and we couldn’t actually get the SIM slot covered properly for a few days. The power and volume rockers don’t protrude far enough, so we had to press down pretty hard for both to respond, which was unfortunate. Jot your Shield The Shield Tablet’s edge hides one other interesting bonus: a 4.5-inch stylus slot. Pluck the so-called “DirectStylus” out with a fingernail, and the screen will bring up a custom app launcher with pre-loaded, stylus-first apps like Evernote, JusWrite, and Nvidia Dabbler. They’re all pretty much the same, in terms of giving users a canvas on which to write and draw as they please. The no-battery DirectStylus was sturdy and comfortable enough in our writing hand, and we only needed a few minutes to adjust to its angled tip. Though the device offers some pressure sensitivity, especially in its impressive, effects-loaded Nvidia Dabbler app, users are more often expected to turn the stylus’ tip around to switch between fine and broad strokes. We liked that system, as it assured us that pressing a little too hard wouldn’t create giant blots in our digital pen strokes, but serious tablet artists who prefer a pressure-sensitive pen may not come away as satisfied. However, Nvidia didn’t go so far as to deliver an app suite that we’d bother yanking this stylus out for, as opposed to jotting and doodling with our fingers on a touch screen. None of the pre-loaded apps enabled a never-ending handwriting scroll on which we could jot and write lengthy notes, and unlike Adobe’s free Sketch app, they also didn’t enable larger-scale zooming and pinching; that makes it harder to create full, interconnected comic strips, for example. That being said, the lag for our pen strokes to appear on the screen was quite minimal for a no-battery stylus, and Nvidia did create a handwriting-recognition system that loads when using the stylus in apps like Gmail. We were impressed with how well that worked when composing e-mails; we just had to adjust our chicken-scratch strokes to give the app actual letters (print, not cursive) to comprehend, at which point we could write quickly and with ease. The only exception came because Gmail, unlike other stylus-friendly apps, would sometimes react to our palm resting on the bottom of the screen, which the stylus mode is supposed to disable. We’d love to see Nvidia patch this accidental-tap issue for more apps. This stylus-powered tablet may never become an artist’s primary device, but responsive sketching and decent handwriting recognition make this a pretty easy recommendation for an on-the-go dabbler with a tablet upgrade on his or her mind. The Kepler effect Right, we’ve said quite a bit about an Nvidia device without mentioning games, which may very well drive Nvidia’s fans (and staff) nuts up to this point. Time to break down this device’s performance benchmarks: Quite frankly, single-core performance is the pits compared to other modern tablets. The iPad Airs and Nexus 9 focus on having fewer, faster cores rather than more, slower cores, so single-threaded tasks won't be as fast on the Shield as they are elsewhere. We assume this contributes to the Shield Tablet’s occasional snags and hangups during general Web browsing and app switching, which we also noticed when testing the similar Nexus 9 hardware. Much has been said about performance boosts thanks to the OS’ switch to Android Runtime (ART), but, at least in this high-powered device’s case, we haven’t seen those changes result in across-the-board ultra-snappy performance. That doesn’t mean the Shield Tablet is a general-use slouch, but we’ll get to its worst issues in a bit. Multi-core performance, meanwhile, gets us somewhere far closer to the likes of the Nexus 9, with lower integer results and higher floating point numbers than in HTC’s tablet. The quad-core K1 certainly has muscle to flex, backed by 2GB of memory and a 192-core Kepler GPU, and its floating point results are the good stuff in the gaming world, borne out by a white-hot Manhattan test result in GFXBench 3. If you haven’t seen that visual benchmark test, it is packed with particle and lighting effects up the wazoo, and the Shield Tablet doesn’t flinch at them. We’ve complained in other recent high-powered Android device reviews that the OS still doesn’t have many high-end games to test such powerful devices with. Nvidia’s tablet comes packed with a Shield-only edition of the graphically intense Trine 2, a lovely character-swapping side-scroller that recalls the puzzling glory of The Lost Vikings with physics effects and a ton of visual polish. It also runs quite smoothly, but it’s the exception to an Android gaming marketplace full of PlayStation 2-era graphics, meaning low-poly characters, blurry textures, simple lighting, and other rudimentary effects. Thus, saying that the Shield Tablet is “one of the best” Android gaming devices mostly comes down to wishful thinking about how many higher-powered games will land on Google Play in the near future. In the Shield Tablet’s favor, at least, it plays nicely with Bluetooth controllers, along with the Shield Wireless Controller, a $60 device that works only with the Shield Tablet and Shield Portable because it communicates not by Bluetooth, but by Wi-Fi. The biggest benefit it offers is smooth audio streaming; connect headphones directly to the controller, and you’ll hear all of your Shield Tablet’s audio without any stuttering or crackling. Otherwise, it’s another “just like the Xbox 360 controller” controller, though it’s a significant improvement over the buttons and joysticks built into the Shield Portable. It offers a tiny touchpad surface if you’re too lazy to get up and tap the screen; other than that, get ready for dependable joysticks, a relatively responsive D-pad, and slightly cheap-feeling triggers. Gently down the streams Should you enter the Shield Hub app, you’ll be directed to a number of gaming options, including a list of Shield-optimized games to purchase from the Google Play store and two cloud-streaming options. The first one, PC streaming, works if you own a compatible wireless router and a high-end Windows gaming PC with a compatible Nvidia GeForce video card (which we happened to have handy). Put those all together, and you’ll be able to stream your own computer’s games from any WiFi router—so long as Nvidia’s “GeForce Experience” management software finds and supports them. The app combs any “games” folders that you direct it to, then tells your Shield Tablet that they’re available. Steam as a general app will load this way in Big Picture mode, as well, but just because a game appears in Steam doesn’t mean the Shield Tablet will render it properly. Some games loaded this way will appear as black screens, while others won’t load in proper full-screen mode, even though the games may appear to be playing just fine on your computer monitor down the hall. In our home office, streaming games this way introduced tolerable latency, but nothing as efficient as, say, PlayStation Now streaming services. We also left our home PC on while testing this across town, and while we were able to load games, the latency and dropped frames proved absolutely unbearable. Nvidia’s “Grid” cloud-gaming service is also an option, and currently, it offers 26 games to play for free, streamed from its server farm to your Shield Tablet, with no signs that Nvidia will start charging for them any time soon. The selection doesn’t have much in the way of ultra-new content; rather, it’s the kind of past-two-years fare you’ve seen in Humble Bundle sales, like Saint’s Row The Third and Red Faction Armageddon. Still, they’re not a bad free bonus, and we managed to play the twitchy Ultra Street Fighter IV with tolerable amounts of lag, so we’re not scoffing at what Nvidia has pulled off with Grid at this point. Here’s quite the gimmick: whether you’re playing a native Android game, streaming through a cloud service, or doing normal tablet tasks like doodling in a stylus-powered sketch app or browsing the Web, you can stream your activity to Twitch. That option is one of the key root-level differences between this tablet and vanilla Lollipop, as you can toggle Twitch streaming options at any time from the pull-down notifications menus. The implementation is pretty smooth, as it allows casters to record their face and voice via the Shield Tablet’s front-facing camera and microphones (and use their fingers to drag camera and chat windows around the display, even letting them hold their fingers down to pick those elements’ opacity in the UI). However, this was far from perfect in action. When using simple apps like a Web browser or a sketchpad, Twitch streaming worked just fine, both on our end and for viewers. However, casting a 3D game resulted in a lot of dropped frames and patchy audio, just after we’d run a bandwidth test and found our upload numbers to be quite beefy for such uploading purposes. Worse, if we tried to switch apps while Twitch was streaming, the whole works got gummed up. Apps would pause, freeze, or outright crash regularly in such a situation. Our best results came from staying put within one app and disabling video upload. Wrapping up You don’t get an impressive rear-facing camera in the Shield Tablet; the 5MP cam takes a decent shot in a pinch, but it’s neither particularly quick to shoot nor all that impressive with fast-motion shots. Thankfully, the Shield Tablet upgraded the front-facing camera from the usual 720p throwaway option to another 5MP camera—one whose camera app supports HDR, at that—which we love for video chats and the like. However, its positioning is not ideal for landscape mode, which is the device’s usual position when playing games (let alone casting them), so you’ll have to prop it up to avoid a weird bottom-side angle of your chin. Battery life is a little weak for a small tablet in a non-stop Wi-Fi test, nearly reaching seven hours, but we were more concerned with general device drain when we had the Shield Tablet turned off and taken around on the go; once we saw the issue and set a timer, we found a battery loss of about 25 percent when we left the device untouched for four hours. Optimized or Max? We dug around in the Nvidia Shield Tablet's menus to find a “processor mode” toggle that offered “optimized” and “max performance” options. The device defaults to the lighter “optimized” option. After boosting the power, we received a 0.7 frames-per-second boost to our Manhattan on-screen test in GFXBench and a 0.3 frames-per-second boost to its off-screen results, so it certainly helps, but our Geekbench and Web testing numbers remained largely unchanged, so the "max" mode won't otherwise make the tablet scream during general multitasking. We couldn’t determine the actual cause for this drain, and this has been a complaint among Shield Tablet owners since its summer 2014 launch, so it’s sad to see the upgrade to Lollipop didn’t address this drain issue. Worse, the Lollipop update appears to have removed options in the “Shield Power Control” menu to reduce power use and block background processes from running. Otherwise, this is a solid vanilla Lollipop tablet—no real bloatware or Android forkage to speak of—and our biggest usability complaints came from the stutters and app freezes that occasionally popped up while switching between Web and multimedia apps. Based on similar issues with the K1-powered Nexus 9, we think Nvidia has a little more work to do in terms of Android optimization. In the meantime, the hitches aren't deal breakers, but this isn’t as super-smooth a device as its impressive 3D rendering numbers might lead you to believe. So long as you can stomach the thickness and hold out hope for a patch to resolve its slight performance issues—and hellish battery drain—this is your best 2014 bang-for-the-buck tablet option by a long shot, whether you game or not. The good Stellar gaming specs for the price Stylus option adds surprisingly solid sketch and handwriting options to vanilla Android Bright, sharp screen matched with solid speaker-subwoofer combo Built-in Twitch streaming functionality is first of its kind for a tablet Free cloud-streaming game options work with minimal latency issues The bad Stuttering and pauses between app switches are too common Twitch functions hog system resources, are particularly finicky Unremarkable all-black, mostly plastic design isn't ugly but won't turn any heads Not all apps disable touch sensing during stylus mode Touch-to-press power button makes us miss the Nexus 9's tap-to-power function Your gaming rig and Wi-Fi router must play nicely with Nvidia's recommendations The uglyWhen Dan Henderson heard the UFC was partnering with USADA for a year-round drug-testing program, it struck him as a positive development that was long overdue. It also made him wonder if, had the UFC done this sooner, things might have worked out differently regarding the testosterone-replacement therapy that he began using in 2007, before it was effectively banned last year. “I’ve been asking for that for a few years,” Henderson said of the recently announced anti-doping program. “They just up and got rid of TRT instead, but some people actually need it. It’s unfortunate that that’s the way it went, but I am happy that they’re cracking down now. It’s definitely taken them long enough, but I’m happy with where they’re at.” According to Henderson, the transition off TRT hasn’t been such a difficult one for him. He might have slightly less energy now than he did when he was on TRT, he told MMAjunkie, but he feels the difference is relatively minor. “I wasn’t really taking that much to begin with,” said Henderson, who got one last exemption for TRT for his 2014 fight against Mauricio Rua in Brazil. “I just kind of quit cold turkey.” Still, he said, a part of him can’t help but wonder if he might have been able to continue using TRT if only a program such as the one the UFC has committed to with USADA had been instituted earlier. He suspects that it might have quelled concerns about TRT abuse if a drug-testing system was in place to monitor everybody, whether on or off the drug. “It’s unfortunate that it came down to this,” Henderson said. “They should have just started doing the no-advance-notice drug testing randomly, and that would have cured all the problems. “TRT being legal or not, the no-advance-notice testing would make sure no one’s abusing anything.” For more on UFC Fight Night 68, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.Two days after Israeli warplanes carried out attacks against Syrian air defenses, Israeli tanks have attacked and destroyed a Syrian army post in the nation’s south, citing an errant mortar that landed in Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. It’s not clear who fired the mortar, and it didn’t hit anything. The Israeli Army, however, argued it was a “violation” of Israeli sovereignty in the occupied territory, and that no matter who fired it, they consider the Syrian government to blame. Israel has favored a policy of holding a single faction responsible no matter who fires shells or rockets, as it allows them to use any such incidents as a pretext to carry out major attacks into foreign territory, nominally as “retaliation.” There has yet to be any report of the casualties from the destruction of the Syrian post, while Israel says there were no casualties nor any property damage within Israeli territory as a result of the incident. Last 5 posts by Jason DitzWomen who suffer needless IVF because clinics ignore men's fertility When Mark Griffiths and his girlfriend Jeanette Parker still hadn’t conceived after a year of trying, they went to their GP. He referred them to a gynaecologist and, after a series of scans and tests, it was suggested that Jeanette, 38, might have a blocked fallopian tube. She underwent four minor procedures which cleared the blockage, at least partially. 'A number of doctors have given us very poor advice and failed to pick up on my problem,' said Mark Griffiths, pictured with girlfriend Jeanette Parker Tests on Mark also revealed that while his sperm count was reasonable, the volume of semen was small and the sperm itself ‘acidic’. However, the gynaecologist dismissed this as nothing serious. ‘He made a joke about making sure you hit the pot and nothing more was said about it,’ recalls Mark, 42, from Portsmouth. It was only after Jeanette, a personal assistant, had undergone three unsuccessful IVF cycles — costing £15,000 — plus the removal of one of her two fallopian tubes, which had to be removed after an ectopic pregnancy, that doctors suggested that, in fact, the problem might be with Mark’s sperm. He was referred to a specialist male fertility doctor who diagnosed a blocked ejaculatory duct. This was preventing the normal volume of semen being released. The condition, which causes up to 5 per cent of cases of male infertility, may be triggered by a cyst or scarring due to prostate infections. Jeanette and Mark now believe if his problem of a blocked ejaculatory duct had been spotted earlier, it could have made a real difference Babies can also be born with it. Acidic sperm is another sign of a blockage (it also contributes to infertility by making sperm attack the eggs, rather than fertilise them). Last July — three years after being sent to the gynaecologist — Mark had an operation to clear the blockage. Research shows up to 30 per cent of those with this condition go on to conceive naturally, suggesting the three IVF attempts Mark and Jeanette endured might not have been necessary. IVF conceptions are twice as likely to end in an ectopic pregnancy (a potentially life-threatening condition where the embryo implants outside the womb). By costing her a fallopian tube, IVF has actually made it more difficult for Jeanette to conceive — and even if she does, she is at increased risk of another ectopic pregnancy. ‘It has been a very traumatic and costly few years which may all have been unnecessary,’ says Mark, a fire sprinkler installer. ‘A number of doctors have given us very poor advice and failed to pick up on my problem, which is very disappointing.’ In fact, the couple had previously managed to conceive naturally and have a six-year-old son — they now believe if Mark’s problem had been spotted earlier, it could have made a real difference. ‘If I’d had the procedure at the beginning, Jeanette would have most definitely had a greater chance of a natural conception,’ he says. Mark is just one of thousands of men whose fertility problems are going undiagnosed and untreated, according to some of the country’s leading male health doctors. Jeanette and Mark had previously managed to conceive naturally and have a six-year-old son They blame the fact that IVF clinics tend to focus on women’s fertility issues, with little attention paid to men’s problems. Most clinics don’t even employ a male fertility specialist, they say. As a result, some women are going through expensive, and often gruelling, IVF unnecessarily. As Rowland Rees, a urological surgeon at the Royal Hampshire County Hospital, Winchester, explains: ‘The majority of fertility clinics are gynaecology-led, where the emphasis is on investigating the female partner and carrying out assisted conception. 'The investigation and treatment of male-related fertility problems is often not done thoroughly enough, and sometimes not at all. ‘In half of cases male problems are partly responsible and, in 20 per cent, it is purely a male issue. 'Around 50 per cent of male fertility problems are treatable, but unfortunately this is commonly overlooked. ‘Therefore, couples are undergoing IVF — with all the inherent costs and emotional turmoil it can cause as well as the risks to women from conditions such as ovarian hyperstimulation — when they could have conceived naturally had the man been treated. ‘Treating male infertility may also be cheaper, more successful, and less invasive.’ Fertility problems, defined as a failure to conceive after a year of regular, unprotected intercourse, affect around one in six couples. Male infertility can be caused by various factors. One of the most common is low sperm count. A very low sperm count of less than five million sperm per millilitre may be caused by rare genetic conditions such as Klinefelter’s syndrome, Kallmann’s syndrome or Kartagener’s syndrome. For some men, simply changing their lifestyle is all that is needed to rectify a low sperm count For some men, simply changing their lifestyle — stopping smoking, eating healthily, exercising and cutting down their alcohol and caffeine consumption — is all that is needed to rectify the problem. Antidepressant drugs, certain types of medication such as chemotherapy, injury to the testes and infections such as chlamydia or mumps, can also affect a man’s fertility. In 40 per cent of cases, problems are caused by varicose veins in the testes, a condition known as varicoceles. With many of these conditions, a microscope-assisted procedure, carried out as a day case, can help rectify the problem. For example, a simple procedure to tie off veins containing a faulty valve causing a varicocele may significantly improve pregnancy rates. But too many men are never offered treatment, says David Ralph, a urological surgeon at University College Hospital London. ‘If a couple goes to an IVF unit, they generally get IVF,’ he says. ‘In many fertility clinics, if a man’s sperm sample comes back as low, the solution is often immediately to have a type of in vitro fertilisation treatment called intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI) — where sperm is surgically removed from the man then injected into an egg to fertilise it. But there have been major advances in male fertility treatment since IVF and ICSI were introduced some 20 years ago. ‘These now allow successful treatment of many male fertility problems, allowing the couple to conceive naturally. What’s more, corrective procedures are about half the price of ICSI.’ Furthermore, going straight to sperm injection means couples will encounter the same problems conceiving if they want another baby, because the underlying condition has not been treated. And if the problem is a hereditary condition and has not been diagnosed, the man may unknowingly pass it on to his child. The reason why men are being overlooked is the way fertility care is set up in Britain, say the doctors. Couples with fertility problems tend to be sent by their GP to a gynaecologist for tests or bypass their GP altogether and refer themselves directly to an IVF clinic. But most fertility clinics do not have a urologist who specialises in male infertility — an andrologist — on their team. Furthermore, if sperm does need to be surgically extracted for IVF, the operation is often carried out by a gynaecologist, says Mr Rees. ‘Andrological problems, such as testicular lumps, low testosterone, erectile dysfunction or ejaculatory problems, may not be picked up on or dealt with,’ he says. ‘Many men are going along their partners to a clinic, are being asked to produce semen and, in some cases are having it surgically extracted without looking at the reasons for a low sperm count or treating it. ‘If men do require surgery to find sperm, this is bizarrely done by gynaecologists — women’s health specialists — as opposed to men’s health specialists. 'This is not the case in most other countries, where things have been set up differently.’ Yet fertility clinics are not solely to blame. For years male infertility has been neglected as a medical speciality, with urologists focusing on other areas such as cancer and prostate disease, adds Mr Rees. ‘This is now changing and andrology is expanding as a distinct sub-speciality. 'It’s probably ten years overdue, but if we can treat the cause of male infertility we could prevent many couples having to go through IVF. 'However, fertility is big business and clinics do not want to give up patients.’ As with all medical problems, the best way to ensure you are seen by a male fertility specialist is to go through your GP, who can refer you to a urologist specialising in fertility, adds Mr Rees. ‘Most regions in the UK now have a male fertility specialist,’ he says. ‘The thing to avoid is self-referral to IVF units before you know what the problem is.’ Meanwhile, although Mark Griffiths’s sperm count and volume are now normal, he and Jeanette have not yet conceived and are planning IVF again because they are ‘getting older’. Mark is urging men who think they may have a fertility problem to seek help from a specialist sooner rather than later.After running for president last year, Cruz has many prominent conservative donors behind him and started his re-election bid with more than $5 million in the bank at the end of March. O’Rourke, by contrast, had just $535,000 to his name, a tenth of Cruz’s war chest. The second quarter of 2017 ends later this week and will provide a more current snapshot of where the money divide stands in the race. End Citizens United raised $4 million in the first three months of 2017 and projects it will raise $35 million for the 2018 midterm elections. The group spent $25 million on the 2016 cycle, its first election since forming the year before. Most recently, the group raised $1.4 million to support Democrat Jon Ossoff in a special election for a House seat in Georgia. Ossoff lost the race last week to Republican Karen Handel, but he set congressional fundraising records along the way, raising a total of $23 million. “I’m running to represent people, not corporations or special interests,” O’Rourke said in a written statement. “That’s why I don’t take PAC money, and it’s why I’m grateful to have the support of End Citizens United. Together we’re going to take back Texas, take back the Senate and — most importantly — take back our democracy.” O’Rourke’s longstanding commitment to not take PAC money does limit the help End Citizens United can provide because the group will not be able to contribute to the campaign. He introduced a bill — the No PAC Act — shortly before launching his campaign that would prevent all congressional candidates from accepting money from PACs, though the legislation is not expected to move forward. But Adam Bozzi, a spokesman for the PAC, said it will direct its 157,000 members in Texas and 330,000 donors around the country to contribute to O’Rourke’s campaign. The average contribution from the group's small-dollar donors is $14. The group may also spend independently on O’Rourke next year, as it has done for other candidates, by running TV ads or distributing mailers in Texas — though it will not be able to coordinate the messaging for those ads with O’Rourke’s campaign. The decision to support O’Rourke early in the cycle and before their other endorsements indicates how significant the Texan will be to the group’s plans in 2018, Bozzi told The Dallas Morning News. But organizers are waiting to see how the political landscape looks closer to next year's election before dividing resources. Cruz, along with Texas colleague Sen. John Cornyn, spent this weekend at a summit in Colorado Springs with the network of conservative donors overseen by the Koch brothers. Contrary to O’Rourke’s efforts to place greater restrictions on political fundraising, Cruz has moved in the opposite direction, calling for campaign donation limits to be abolished. The Texas Republican argues that pairing unlimited contributions directly to campaigns with immediate disclosure rules will eliminate the need for super PACs. A spokeswoman for Cruz did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Image caption Home Office figures on football arrests were gathered by the ONS for the first time The number of arrests from football matches involving teams from England and Wales has fallen by nearly a quarter, the Home Office has said. Arrests at international and domestic games in 2011-12 fell by 24% to 2,363 - 726 fewer than the previous year. Policing minister Damian Green said it meant football-related arrests were "at an all time low". Reasons for arrest included racist chanting, missile throwing, ticket touting, violence and public disorder. Alcohol offences, possession of offensive weapons and breaching banning orders were all stated as reasons for arrests last season. Tough banning orders have been used since 2000 to tackle disorder. The number of banning orders issued fell to 2,750 from 3,173 but some 500 new banning orders - which are time-limited - were imposed during last season. Where hooliganism was once described as 'the English disease', we now set an example for others to follow Damian Green, Policing minister An average of 0.72 arrests were made per match, according to the Home Office figures gathered by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) for the first time. There were 1,215 arrests made inside stadiums during the 2011-12 season and 1,148 arrests made outside the grounds from all competitions in England and Wales. Match attendances topped 37 million and the figures - which covered offences at International and European club matches, plus Premier League, Championship, League One, League Two and Blue Square Conference - suggested that there was one arrest for every 15,782 spectators. Some 27 arrests were made among the 100,000-plus contingent of English club football fans who travelled abroad to 47 Champions League and Europa League matches. But there were no football-related arrests among fans at overseas international fixtures, including England fans who attended the 2012 European Championships in Ukraine and Poland. 'Lingering threat' "The downwards trend in football-related arrests is continuing, although there remains a significant risk it will escalate if efforts to prevent and tackle football-related disorder are reduced," stated the report. Malcolm Clarke, chairman of the Football Supporters' Federation, said the "dramatic fall in the number of arrests" underlines the fact that "the overwhelming majority of fans reject football violence of any sort". "There's simply no place for it inside or outside our stadiums," he said. Mr Clarke added: "The overall picture is a very positive one and the FSF wants to make sure this downward trend continues - we believe it can do so and reaffirm our commitment to a multi-agency approach involving fans' groups, the football authorities and the police." Similarly, the policing minister said the low arrest figures were a "testament to our hugely successful model of football policing". "Where hooliganism was once described as 'the English disease', we now set an example for others to follow," said Mr Green. However, he added that, despite this progress, "football disorder has not been eradicated and remains a lingering threat".Attempted to build an EDH deck around my favorite U/W creature, Geist of Saint Traft. Using evasive creatures and enchantments and equipment to add damage/ effects or even more evasion, main goal is to win via creature damage. Main Parts:-Evasive Creatures (To stick around and deal damage) -Counterspells (To make sure the creatures make it onto the battlefield for their evasion to matter) -Equipment (To stick onto already evasive creatures to make them bigger, add effects, or even more evasion) -Equipment tutors (both creatures or spells) (To find the equipment when they just aren't showing up) -Enchantments (Same idea as equipment, with a few field-wide buffs thrown in) Thanks for any advice on things to work on. Wish I had the money for these. Maybe down the road. 1x Sword of Feast and Famine 1x Sword of Fire and Ice 1x Sword of Body and Mind 1x Sword of War and Peace 1x Sword of Light and Shadow 1x Umezawa's JitteVirginia Tech opened Lane Stadium 52 years ago, hosting a 9-7 Hokies victory over William & Mary on Oct. 2, 1965. It marked the beginning of a new era for Virginia Tech football, a brand-new stadium to go along with a departure from the Southern Conference and what was hoped to be merely temporary independence. Virginia Tech had coveted a bid to the Atlantic Coast Conference and the cachet and stability that came with it. But the school applied for membership, didn't get the desired support and withdrew its request in December 1966. Three years later, Virginia Tech thought it had a chance to join the ACC when Duke considered exiting the conference. That never came to fruition. In 1977, Virginia Tech sought to fill the vacancy left by South Carolina's exit in 1971. The Hokies were voted down, and Georgia Tech joined instead. Through all that time, until the arrival of Frank Beamer, the Hokies struggled to garner national respect, finishing ranked in the AP poll just once between 1955 and '92. In all, it would take nearly 40 years of independence and then membership in the Big East for Virginia Tech to finally join the ACC, which had snubbed the Hokies for decades. When the partnership finally happened in 2003, it turned out to be the best football-related conference realignment decision of the 21st century. On Saturday night, the No. 12 Hokies host No. 2 Clemson in a rematch of last year's ACC Championship Game, which was the Hokies' sixth appearance. "College Gameday" will be on campus in Blacksburg for what is a prime-time ABC telecast, the marquee game of college football's Week 5. It's hardly a new experience for the Hokies. Although they hit a brief lull at the end of Beamer's remarkably successful tenure, in which he built Virginia Tech into a program healthy enough to draw an ACC invitation, the Hokies have been the ACC's most consistently successful team since joining the conference. And despite that downturn -- which didn't actually feature a losing record, which hasn't happened since '92 -- they've been right back in the national conversation in Justin Fuente's two years, too. When the ACC launched the first wave of 21st-century expansion with a convoluted process in 2003 -- Virginia Tech went from suing the ACC, Miami and Boston College to being invited to join them -- the expectation was that, on the football field, the Miami-Florida State rivalry would dominate the conversation. Virginia Tech was a legitimate power at that point, but the Hurricanes and Seminoles were put in separate divisions, and given their history and strength at the time (one of them played in each of the first five BCS title games, including FSU's win over the Hokies in 1999), frequent rivalry rematches for the ACC championship were expected. It has literally never happened. Miami collapsed toward mediocrity after joining the ACC and is still searching for its first ACC Coastal title. Florida State experienced a downturn at the end of the Bobby Bowden era, going 11 seasons without a top-10 team after finishing in the top five 14 years in a row. As the Hurricanes and Seminoles dealt with their issues and never crossed paths in December, Virginia Tech carried the ACC for several years, winning 10 or 11 games overall in each of its first eight seasons as a member. From 2004-11, Boston College was the only other ACC team to finish a season ranked in the AP top 10 (10th in 2007). Whatever national respect the ACC had as a football conference last decade after expansion mostly belonged to the Hokies. Since Virginia Tech first began playing in the ACC in 2004, nobody has won more ACC games, nobody in the conference has won more games overall, nobody has had more top-10 teams and nobody has played in or won more ACC title games. It's the type of success that no Power Five team that has switched conferences in the 2000s can claim. Teams like Texas A&M, Louisville, Missouri and TCU have had flashes of success, but Virginia Tech's success has been sustained, and it's been far better than its fellow Big East additions to the ACC. That makes it the best football realignment move since the 1990s, when the Big 12 was formed and Miami joined the Big East, Florida State joined the ACC and Penn State joined the Big Ten. The re-emergence of Florida State and Clemson as national powers this decade cast some doubt on Virginia Tech, as the balance of power in the conference switched from the Hokies in the Coastal to the Atlantic Division. The Seminoles and Tigers both won a national title, and even Louisville produced a Heisman winner in Lamar Jackson. But despite those mediocre 2012-15 seasons in which the Hokies' offense in particular slipped, they are showing now that they
romantic context) is the basis for accusations that every single work of fiction within the fandom, by nature, contains all of these elements at once. The fact is, that a single writer rarely puts all of these elements and others together, and when they do, there’s no indication that writer expects their reader not to recognize the problems in the content itself. A good writer, as I said, can create a beautiful piece of fiction in which two people clearly struggle with the incest taboo (or a similar one), without implying that the writer themselves believes the taboo itself should be normalized. That’s up to the reader’s interpretation. How you view ‘problematic’ media is up to you, because the writer cannot read your mind and they cannot be expected to know what you take from their work. Our one and only intent is to express what’s within us, and to communicate it in a way that you can understand. But that’s not always how it works, because people often take things away from fiction that the writer never intended. But they should never be barred from writing about certain elements or themes. Ever. It’s incredibly restrictive, and imposing rigid rules on fictional writing sets a dangerous precident, because it cripples the writer’s powerful ability to evoke strong emotion - often anger or fear - over the injustices of the world, by showing them to you through context. If you take that away from us, we lose half of our ability to communicate our own emotions. Whenever you begin looking for misogyny, queerphobia, potential ‘apologism,’ imbalances in representation, and overall ‘problematic’ content in the media you consume, you start to see it everywhere. Most media isn’t meant to make a grandiose statement about society in general, it’s simply meant to entertain. You can watch a show harmlessly, even one that contains potentially ‘problematic’ elements, and enjoy it as passive entertainment. You may overlook or ignore minor problems, such as an offhanded comment that could be taken offensively or the number of characters that represent a particular minority population. That doesn’t make you an apologist. It just means you’re more focused on the plot itself, and aren’t thinking about those things. But when these things are pointed out to you and you start to notice them, you really do see them everywhere. The ‘problematic’ elements you think you find in television shows are no different, really, from feminists who note that a women’s razor in one store is 30 cents cheaper than a men’s razor and cries “Patriarchy!” (even when the same razor can be found cheaper online). ‘Problematic’ fiction, fandom, and shipping does not support or condone abuse any more than ‘rape culture’ and 'patriarchy’ are responsible for a minor disparity in pricing on certain gendered products. It infuriates me to no one that people are so bitter, disenfranchised, and frustrated with fandom and shipping that they feel the need to constantly project their misery on others. But when you look for misogyny, when you look for ‘abusive’ elements’ in the fiction you consume - you start to see those things everywhere you look. The fact that they may seem obvious to you is more a reflection on the focus of your own point of view, and less a statement about the content of the media itself. That’s the brilliant thing about media - it’s seen differently by everyone, and the writer’s intent may not necessarily align with the elements you think you see as a consumer.The Coyotes could relocate to Seattle if a lease agreement with Glendale, Ariz. does not come through. (NHLI via Getty Images) The Coyotes could relocate to Seattle if a lease agreement with Glendale, Ariz. does not come through. (NHLI via Getty Images) Seattle could not bring the Sacramento Kings to town, but the Emerald City could soon be adding an NHL team. Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn acknowledged that he has spoken with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman about the Phoenix Coyotes possibly relocating to Seattle, according to NBC affiliate King 5. The mayor told King 5 that he and two city councilmembers met with investors Ray Bartoszek and Anthony Lanza about bringing the team to Key Arena in the fall. The team would play at Key Arena, which can fit 11,000 fans for hockey, for two seasons. From King 5: "I let (Bettman) know of the situation here, and that we were supportive of bringing the NHL to Seattle," McGinn said. "We have Key Arena, so we talked about the potential of them being in Key Arena, while we continue to work on a new arena plan." NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly would not characterize the discussions between McGinn and Bettman, and told KING5 the conversation was "like any number of conversations the Commissioner has all the time with a variety of people." MUIR: Cup Final -- Game 2 report card The NHL has given Glendale, Ariz. until June 25th to work out a lease agreement with the Coyotes. Sources said last week that a "framework" for a lease agreement was in place. Bettman acknowledged that the team could relocate if a deal was not done. From King 5: McGinn said, while the news is encouraging, "I really want to bring down expectations. We are very clearly Plan B for the NHL and this team. I feel compelled to say this after the experience we had with Sacramento than the likelihood of us having a team here in a couple of weeks is low."'Ukip offers a new kind of unionism,' claims Ukip's Farage BelfastTelegraph.co.uk As I visit Belfast for the next stop on my nationwide Say No to EU tour, it is certainly an interesting time in politics for both the United Kingdom as a whole and Northern Ireland in particular. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/news-analysis/ukip-offers-a-new-kind-of-unionism-claims-ukips-farage-31523418.html https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/article31523417.ece/5eb93/AUTOCROP/h342/2015-09-14_new_12816953_I1.JPG Email As I visit Belfast for the next stop on my nationwide Say No to EU tour, it is certainly an interesting time in politics for both the United Kingdom as a whole and Northern Ireland in particular. As someone who believes passionately in the United Kingdom, I thought it important that I visit Northern Ireland and I'm glad to be here. I will also be visiting Scotland and Wales on the tour, as well as holding meetings the length and breadth of England. We currently have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union. A referendum on the UK's membership of the EU has been promised by the end of 2017, though I suspect it may come as early as March of next year. This is a referendum brought about by Ukip's campaigning over decades. We have made the arguments again and again as to why leaving would give our country a brighter future and now we have the chance finally to get out of the EU with this referendum. For too long now we have allowed Brussels to make the majority of our laws, weakening our Parliament and our democracy. The cost of the EU has also spiralled up and up, to the point where we have just found out the Government have handed over an extra £1.7bn recently. Brussels asks for more and our weak Government hands taxpayers' money over and that's on top of the £55m per day we already pay to a European Union which hasn't had its accounts signed off in 19 years. My real fear with the EU as it stands is that not only is open-door immigration flooding the unskilled labour market with cheap labour that pushes down the wages of British workers, but that a very real security threat exists. I have warned for many months now that Islamic State's threat that they will use the current chaos in Calais and elsewhere to infiltrate fighters into mainland Europe is one we should take very seriously indeed. We now have had confirmation that French people are searching for at least one known Isis terrorist who is hiding in Calais and intends to come to the UK. Islamic State are now saying they have already had 4,000 fighters enter Europe, intent on causing mayhem. The point is this: EU open borders, combined with the EU's Common Asylum policy, mean that virtually anyone coming across the Mediterranean can claim asylum and then make their way through Europe. That's what we are seeing now and I think it is a very dangerous state of affairs indeed. That's why we must vote to leave in this referendum and why it is so very important that those of you in Northern Ireland play your part in helping free the UK from the European Union. Outside, we can make our own laws, spend our own money on what our own Parliament decides on anything from fishing to farming without being dictated to and, crucially, control the level of immigration coming into the country as well. Only by using this referendum to get the UK out of the EU can we control our borders again. For the sake of the UK's national security, I sincerely hope that we will vote to leave. I'll be doing all I can to ensure that that is the outcome. Of course, I arrive in Northern Ireland during what is an ever-developing and fragile situation. Whatever emerges from the talks process which is about to begin, one thing is clear. The Assembly - or the next Assembly - needs to be free once and for all from the spectre of terrorists in or near any of the parties of government. The Assembly needs to be set free to deliver for the people of Northern Ireland, to focus on the very real economic and social issues which confront the province. I am convinced people want devolution but they want a devolution that works for people and which is not continually side-tracked by unresolved issues, emanating from the past conflict, which have distracted the Assembly and its Executive from dealing effectively with its very real day to day responsibilities. Properly operated, devolution should bring major benefits to Northern Ireland, but Ukip wants to see a fully functioning, responsive, effective and efficient government in Northern Ireland. As a new kind of party, Ukip listens to voters and reflects their real, deeply-seated concerns, which in Northern Ireland include the impact uncontrolled immigration is having on their children's life chances and job opportunities, on their own access to GPs and the health service. Ukip offers Northern Ireland voters a new kind of unionism, bringing Northern Ireland into the mainstream of modern British life while giving people local solutions to problems. We are here to stay here in Northern Ireland. Belfast TelegraphWe have seen fictious chracters, comic heroes, magicians and aliens flying or hovering around in the movies! Have you ever wished to possess such powers for transportation purpose? You wouldn’t need any vehicle to move around. Just by using your flying power you can go anywhere and better yet, there won’t be any traffic jam to bother you! How cool is that? If this happens in actual life! There would be no need for planes because everybody could fly on their own! No hustle and bustle on roads! No need for mass transit systems. There would be a whole new scenario for transportation. But we can just imagine it because we don’t have such powers! But wait looks like this man in picture given below, found a way to hover around! As the picture shows that the lower half of the man appears to be levitating because his feet are not touching the ground. What is the reality behind the whole scenario? Is he really hovering around? How could this be possible? Could this be the future of transportation? Is he wearing some kind of jetpacks or some hover-shoes? Or he just found a way to bypass Gravitational force of Earth? What is the actual reason behind this? Was this happening as a result of some revolutionary scientific experiment? Or this is just an Illusion! Before we elaborate this, let me tell you about this picture. The picture was posted on Reddit by “Favre4Evre”. The reditter described that when he took this picture, both feet of the man were touching the ground. He just took this picture due to the pants the man in picture was wearing. Then what happened to this picture? Probably some photoshop act! No! not at all. So what is the reason of levitation? We have heard “This world is a mere illusion” a lot of times. The above given picture involves an illusion too. This is where our mind joins the action. This is how an illusion occurs. Optics play with our mind. The function of our eyes is to receive the light and pass it to retina and then retina pass it to our brain which intercepts it and produce the image. In simple terms, an optical illusion is caused by the structure of both the eye and brain and how they work together. Because of the anatomical make up of the eye and the complexity of the way images are transmitted from the eye to the brain, optical illusions are not as rare as one might consider. Or we can say that our mind gets deceived. Our mind displays the image it perceived. In case of illusion, we can say that “Perception is Interception”. Illusions are not some kind of defect of mind. Sometimes it happens due to over-activity of mind. We can see the illusions in a fun way too. And not to mention Magicians are masters of illusions, they play with our minds! Now let’s disclose the reality behind this levitation picture. The thing which appeared as the shadow of the foot is just an oil stain. But this was really a socil media sensation for at least a couple of days with people really going crazy after the post. This picture really drove the whole social media crazy, like pictures of the girl with three legs and girl’s bathroom selfie. As a conclusion, I would say that pictures can really deceive us. So we shouldn’t believe in the pictures with just a glance. IF YOU LIKED THIS HOVERING ILLUSION IN REAL LIFE, YOU’LL DEFINITELY WANT TO CLICK OVER AND CHECK OUT THIS KIDNAPPING OPTICAL ILLUSION!Hello Citizens! Welcome to another episode of INNside the ‘Verse! This week, episode 25! DOWNLOAD NOW! ITUNES! STITCHER! SOUNDCLOUD! This week on INNside the ‘Verse, we had Wolf Larsen, Commander Cruisin Tom, Lego Robot Dude, myself, and Dolvak. We also had a special guest, in the form of Todd, from the Star Citizen Science Podcast. So! Lets see what we discussed this week! 1:35 – Fan Spotlight – Star Citizen Science Podcast. We talk to Todd about his podcast, who he has on, what he talks about, and what his plans are for the future! 10:45 – INN Rewind – This week, we rewind the 22 and 23 million dollar goals! Facial Capture System. We’ve researched a technology that uses a series of cameras to capture real heads and import them into the game. This will let the team more easily create a variety of realistic characters. In addition, the technology is mobile enough to allow us to take it on the road and capture select fans during special events! You can learn more about this technology at Infinite-Realities. . We’ve researched a technology that uses a series of cameras to capture real heads and import them into the game. This will let the team more easily create a variety of realistic characters. In addition, the technology is mobile enough to allow us to take it on the road and capture select fans during special events! You can learn more about this technology at Infinite-Realities. Xi’an Scout Unlocked! The Khartu is the light attack craft of the Xi’An military. Contrary to Human ship design, the Khartu doesn’t have a traditional main thruster, instead featuring an array of maneuvering thrusters on articulated rigs. This design allows for incredible agility, making them the bane of UEE pilots, who bestowed the nickname ‘Quark’ because when all of the thrusters are firing, the ship looks like a spark flying through space. The Xi’an Aopoa corporation also manufactures an export model, the Khartu-al, for sale to human civilians as a dedicated scout/explorer. The export model features the same Xi’an maneuvering rig, but control surfaces modified for human use and a more limited armament. (Designer: Aopoa) 13:00 – News with Nehkara’s replacements – Dolvak, CCT, and Lego! 22:30 – Does the removal of drop-in co-op constitute a broken promise? And that’s it for this week! As always, thanks to everyone who supports us on Patreon, thanks to everyone who listens, thanks to everyone who sends us ideas on what to talk about, thanks to Mr. White for editing this every week, thanks to my cat for being so fluffy, thanks to the planet Earth for existing long enough for Star Citizen to start being made, thanks to CIG for making Star Citizen, thanks to water for being so life-bringing, and thanks to beer, for being so tasty. So long, and see you all next week!It’s came! It finally came! The recipe you’ve all been patiently waiting for (I’m looking at you, Later Levels). Since I had a little more time with this recipe I decided to experiment a bit and go a little different route than your traditional “carrot cake”. Most carrot cake, at least in the U.S. is more of a quick bread than a cake – it’s dense and crumby, though still good. Instead I combined a few different recipes I found and made a much more light, airy crumb texture, that had plenty of height and reminded me much more of an actual cake. But, by doing this, I made it a bit more complicated. So bear with me and let’s dig in! Carrot Cake Start by mixing together the flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, and cinnamon, and most of the sugar. Put it in a bowl, use a whisk, and get it nice and evenly aerated and blended. Oh, and make sure you pull out the eggs. You’ll want them to sit at room temperature for at least 20 minutes before you whip them. Grate the carrot using a fine grater. It’ll take about 4-5 large carrots to get enough for this cake. That seems like a lot, but can you imagine a better way to eat your veggies? I usually don’t peel my carrots. I feel like the skin has the potential for being good for you and is not, at the very least, not bad for you. And it saves you that extra few minutes in time and clean up. Win-win. And, because we aren’t using Endura carrots, anything that shortens the time is worth it. When the carrots are ready slightly squeeze handfulls of them over a sink to get a little of the juice out. This will help keep it from falling to the bottom of the pan and from letting the cake be too wet. Now here comes the different part and the reason this isn’t an “easy” recipe. Add all the eggs to a bowl and whip on high, using a whisk or electric mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, until they start to get bubbly. Stop and add the rest of the sugar and all the oil, and continue whisking until the eggs get light in color, start to get fluffy, and can almost double in volume. This will take at least 5 minutes. If you’re lucky enough to have a stand mixer like a KitchenAid you can do this while grating the carrots and save yourself even more time! Once the eggs are ready slowly fold in the carrots. This mixture will be really thick and you’ll wonder why on earth we spent all that time whipping eggs, but trust me. It’s worth it. Slowly add the flour mixture and stir until just combined. Butter a 10 inch round cake pan, making sure you get all the cracks and crannies. I prefer a springform pan because they are the easiest to get a cake out of. If you don’t use a springform you may have to flour the pan as well as butter it. Just throw in some flour after you grease it, shake it until the butter is covered, and dump out the excess. It’s pretty easy. Add the cake batter and stick it in the oven. The entire bake process is an adventure, like completing a shrine. Depending on the oven, the type of oven, how old your oven is, etc… your baking time will be different from someone else’s. But my oven bake time was about 45 minutes. Yours will be pretty close to this, but just watch starting around 40 minutes. Getting a perfectly domed cake is all about timing. Take the cake out to early (or even check on it too early) and the whole thing will collapse on you. Take the cake out late and it’ll be so dry you’ll regret eating it. So if you open the oven door to check on the cake and the center wobbles a bit close it quick and wait another 5-10 minutes before you even try again. A toothpick inserted into the center will come out clean when it’s ready! While the cake is baking feel free to make some good, old fashioned cream cheese frosting. Make sure the butter and cream cheese is at room temperature and add them to a bowl with the vanilla (again, a stand mixer comes in really handy right about now). Beat them together until they are well combined. If you use a stand mixer make sure you scrape the bowl at this point with a spatula. Add the powdered sugar 2/3 cup at a time until it becomes spreadable. How much powdered sugar you add is really up to your taste preferences. I prefer a more sharp, tangy frosting (if I eat it at all) so I was good at 2 cups. When the cake is done take it out of the oven and allow it to cool completely before frosting. I take the springform sides off after about 5 minutes so it doesn’t keep cooking. If you use a regular round cake pan take it out of the pan after 5-10 minutes and let it cool on a wire rack. This will prevent the bottom from getting soggy. No one wants a soggy bottom. Make sure you wait until the cake has cooled completely before you frost. If you don’t the entire top layer will peel away into the frosting and become a big, giant mess. When cooled, frost and enjoy! Oh, and I don’t recommend garnishing with a raw carrot. But I won’t judge if you do… Link’s Carrot Cake recipe: Any Carrot Tabantha Wheat Cane Sugar Goat ButterOur Mission The purpose of WPFW-FM Pacifica is to provide outlets for the creative skills and energies of the community, to contribute to a lasting understanding between individuals of all nations, races, creeds and colors, and to promote the full distribution of public information. Programming on WPFW will principally be a mix of jazz, Third World music, news and public affairs. The airwaves at 89.3 will be an accessible media outlet for Blacks, Hispanics, cultural groups, women, seniors, youth and other ethnic and non-traditional groups. WPFW programming will make the concept of community radio real by providing the local majority population with important and relevant education, information and entertainment. Through its programming the station will act as a networking agent for the community at large. WPFW's air will be commercial free and in conformance with Pacifica Foundation resolutions prohibiting commercial under- writing of programming. Programming will lend itself to an on-air listener participation, will strive to exemplify journalistic integrity, and will work toward being engaging and intellectually stimulating. Jazz, a major American art form which grows from the African-American experience, will be the major music programming. WPFW will act as archivist, educator, and entertainer on behalf of this under served national cultural resource. WPFW is dedicated to programming which reflects progressive social change and democracy. The station will continue and further a global, humanistic, and futuristic approach to news, public affairs, the creative arts and cultural programming. Internally WPFW will work to upgrade the quality of work at all levels. Our continued use of and high regard for volunteers will provide an opportunity for individual skill development in radio broadcast techniques, and broadcast management. Volunteer opportunities will be available in most areas of program administration.March 18, 2016 - News Post Whine time!!! I'm still sick. 9 days and counting. It's just a stupid sinus thing, but wow, it's persistent. I've accomplished next to nothing for an entire week. It's been so bad, I even sat around watching Ghostbusters 2 without turning it off. Oh hey, thanks to everyone who wrote me this week using my little contact form. I will hopefully get back to each of you before the end of the weekend. I really appreciate the compliments, comments, and insults. Mostly the insults. Anyway, is anyone else following the Game Developers Conference (GDC) news this week? The two things I'm most interested in checking out are the fancy new Portal-themed VR demo from Valve, and a VR courtroom drama called Star Wars: Trials on Tatooine. To all of my friends and readers who are at the conference while I'm stuck working from home, I hate each and every one of you. Oh, and I'm also slightly jealous that you get to go (this may or may not be related to the previous sentence). Okay, back to being sick. See you Tuesday. -JeffThe MathJax CDN hosted at cdn.mathjax.org will be shutting down on April 30, 2017. Current and future releases available on other CDN providers. Last Update: 2017/04/25 Please check for updates marked [Updated 2017/04/10], [Updated 2017/04/18], [Updated 2017/04/25]. Background Our CDN has been an important part of MathJax’s history. When MathJax made its first public release in 2010, hosting a library like MathJax was a complex challenge. The CDN launched a year later and helped resolve this difficulty, enabling MathJax to quickly become the gold standard for rendering mathematics on the web. Over the past 6 years, the CDN has grown steadily each year. From 22 Million monthly users (creating 100 Million request and 1.3TB traffic) in late 2011 to 179 Million monthly users (creating 3.3 Billion requests and 70TB traffic) last month. We switched CDN providers several times to improve performance and reduce costs. In the last three years we could keep up with this growth thanks to support from Google (providing free storage on Google Cloud Storage) which we combined with CloudFlare. Recently, CloudFlare informed us that we need to upgrade our CloudFlare plan at a significantly increased rate. We greatly appreciate how CloudFlare has worked with us to find a suitable solution. Unfortunately, we do not see an affordable way to keep the CDN. This gave us the opportunity to reevaluate our need for hosting our own CDN, especially in the light of existing and well-known CDNs for open source software. The MathJax Consortium and its team have come to the decision that our resources are best spent by focusing them on development and so we will retire our self-hosted CDN services at cdn.mathjax.org and beta.mathjax.org on April 30, 2017. We are proud of what the MathJax CDN has accomplished for mathematics on the web and we are grateful for everyone who has made use of it. We hope we can help everyone migrate to a new setup quickly and efficiently over the coming weeks. We believe there will be no loss to the community thanks to the many good alternatives that exist - we outline several options below. Bug fix release MathJax v2.7.1 [Updated 2017/04/25] The bug fix release MathJax v2.7.1 removes the dependency on cdn.mathjax.org from core MathJax and ensures that copies of MathJax are self-contained again (whether self-hosted or on CDN providers). For this, the release adds copies of mhchem v3 and the MathJax accessibility extension to the core MathJax release. The release also includes a helper script latest.js that provides a convenience loader for fetching the latest version from cdnjs, rawgit, or jsdelivr. Alternative CDN providers The easiest way for most site owners will be to simply switch to another CDN provider. We recommend cdnjs which also uses CloudFlare for delivery (and on the higher “enterprise” level!). We have been in touch with cdnjs’s maintainers and will help push future MathJax releases to cdnjs. For example, if you have been using the latest MathJax version (v2.7.0) change <script type="text/javascript" async src="https://cdn.mathjax.org/mathjax/2.7-latest/MathJax.js?..."> </script> to <script type="text/javascript" async src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/mathjax/2.7.1/MathJax.js?..."> </script> [Updated 2017/04/25] Other free CDN providers include rawgit, e.g., https://cdn.rawgit.com/mathjax/MathJax/2.7.1/MathJax.js. . jsdelivr plans to provide a (functional) copy of MathJax in the future. Note If you have been using https://cdn.mathjax.org/mathjax/latest/, we suggest to switch to a fixed version going forward as this represents best practices to avoid unexpected changes. That is, you will have to change the address manually to a higher number when new versions become available. [Updated 2017/04/25] Note Many CDN providers offer APIs that can query which versions of a library are available. This can be used to dynamically load the latest version of MathJax; MathJax v2.7.1 includes latest.js that can serve as an example for this approach. Note The shutdown includes beta.mathjax.org. Temporary redirect starting May 1, 2017 [Updated 2017/04/10] We will implement a temporary redirect on cdn.mathjax.org to redirect users to cdnjs. [Updated 2017/04/18] The code for the redirect can be found on GitHub. Note This is a temporary stopgap. While most sites should continue to work as usual, this will not work in all edge cases, e.g., custom configurations with hard-coded references to cdn.mathjax.org, sites with security policies that whitelist only cdn.mathjax.org, poorly synchronized code. Additionally, end users with browser extensions that block scripts broadly may have allowed scripts from cdn.mathjax.org and will have to allow scripts from cdnjs.cloudflare.com for the redirect to work. We recommend switching to another CDN provider or your own copy of MathJax as soon as possible. Install a local copy Our documentation page on installing MathJax explains how to install MathJax locally. If you want to share your installation across (sub)domains, keep in mind that MathJax uses webfonts which are subject to same-origin restrictions; see our notes about shared installations for more details. If you are looking into hosting MathJax via a cloud provider, you can also check our developer wiki on how we set up MathJax on Google Cloud Storage. Optimization A common concern with local installations is the size of a complete copy of MathJax, in particular the ~29,000 PNGs in fonts/HTML-CSS/TeX/png/. These so-called “image fonts” are only relevant for the HTML-CSS output and in browsers where webfonts fail. Nowadays, there are extremely few edge cases where the “image fonts” could provide a benefit (e.g., users blocking webfonts) so it is usually safe to remove them. We generally recommend switching to the CommonHTML and SVG outputs since the HTML-CSS output will be dropped from v3.0. Note. Both mathjax on NPM and components/mathjax on Bower do not include the image fonts. In addition, most sites only require a fraction of MathJax’s functionality - usually 1 input + 1 output is sufficient. This allows further trimming of local installations, down to a few megabytes. Reducing the MathJax installation to the relevant parts is easily done either manually (using our old guide) or automated, e.g., using our MathJax-grunt-cleaner. Note. If you remove features that can be accessed via the MathJax Menu (e.g., output options), we recommend disabling the relevant controls in the Menu; see the Menu configuration options for more information. Third party extensions [Updated 2017/04/18] MathJax’s third party extensions will be retired in its current form. We will retire the current repository and we strongly recommend to maintainers to provide separate repositories for their extensions. For more details, check the relevant announcement on GitHub. Some extensions have already been updated to our new suggestions, e.g., mhchem v3 on cdnjs and on rawgit). We are working with other maintainers to get everyone up to date. To ensure a smooth transition, we will keep the copies at cdn.mathjax.org/mathjax/contrib available alongside the redirect (see above). A bug fix release for MathJax will fix the dependency on this URL within MathJax itself. In the mean time, you can easily set up your own copy and follow our documentation for loading third party extensions. Next steps Throughout the next month, we will regularly alert the community through mathjax.org, our mailing lists, and social media. We will also update our documentation with new CDN recommendations. If you can help us spread the word so that as few sites or tools as possible are affected, we would be most grateful! Thanks again for your continued interest in MathJax! The MathJax Team.Michael van der Mark says a minimum of top five finishes will be the goal at Imola as he continues evaluate new settings and changes on the Honda after being unable to complete them at Assen due to the weather. The Dutch rider suffered one of his worst race weekends at Imola last year in his rookie World Superbike campaign when he struggled to ninth in the opening race before retiring from race two. As a result, with the upgrades he and the Ten Kate squad have made to the Fireblade CBR1000RR SP over the past 12 months van der Mark feels he can challenge much higher this weekend but it still taking a pragmatic approach to the Italian round. "I'm really looking forward to Imola, a track that I really enjoy riding," van der Mark said. "With the big improvements made to the Fireblade over the winter and in the first four rounds, I'm pretty sure we will be much more competitive than last year. "Given the many podiums we have collected so far, my goal for the Italian round is to be at least in the top 5. The team and I have some ideas to improve the bike setup and we will try some new things, which we didn't have time to evaluate in Assen." After his mixed results in Assen last time out van der Mark holds a distant fourth in the World Superbike championship standings but is 33 points ahead of team-mate Nicky Hayden in fifth.Late last night, Atlanta rapper Bankroll Fresh was shot and killed outside of a studio in his hometown. It's still unclear at this time who was behind the shooting and what their motives were. What is clear is that the tragedy sent a shockwave through the hip-hop community, with many mourning the loss of the 28-year-old on social media, which speaks to the positive impact Bankroll had inside and outside of the booth. He'll be remembered by his family, friends, and collaborators, including producer Zaytoven, who worked closely with Bankroll throughout the years and knew first-hand how much of a talent and great of a person he was. We spoke with Zaytoven over the phone about his reaction when he heard the news of Bankroll's death, his time spent with the rapper in the studio, and what he wants his legacy to be. How did you found out about him passing? I had just left the Future concert last night for his Purple Reign tour out here in Atlanta. My friend Tracy T called me and asked me, "You heard Fresh got shot?" I didn’t know nothing about it. And he seemed unsure, so I said, "Let me make a few calls." He was trying to call around and see, and I couldn’t get nobody on the phone. He called me back maybe 15 minutes later like, “Yeah man, he got shot and he died.” I was like, what? I called around some more, I finally got Cap 1 on the phone, and Cap 1 told me that was the situation. POST CONTINUES BELOW What was your reaction when it was confirmed? It brought tears to my eyes, man. That broke my heart. He was like a younger brother to me. Is there anything you think that might have fueled what occurred? I really have no idea. When I say these guys are like brothers to me, either him, Tracy T, or guys you see me with, these young and up-and-coming artists, they come around my house all the time. They interact with my family, we do the music, and that’s where I really build my relationship with these guys. Outside of that, who they know in the streets and where they go and what they do, a lot of times I’m unaware of. I don’t know what they really got going on so I have no idea what could have triggered what happened. POST CONTINUES BELOW When did you first meet Bankroll Fresh? It had to be maybe 2006. A friend of mine named Wallo brought him over like, “Man, this young kid, man, he’s fresh. He dope, you need to work with him. He rapped on one of your beats.” The song was called “Yessir.” I don’t know where he got the beat from, but he played it for me, and I was like, “Man this dude dope. I like him a lot.” Fresh been just coming over to the house everyday after that. He’d come over and record, I’d give him beats. I put him on songs with Gucci [Mane] and told Gucci to do songs with him and all the guys around. It’s just how it’s been. Since I met him, it’s like we just rocked ever since then. During those early encounters, what was it about him that made you gravitate toward him? It’s just him being authentic. His sound, his style, and his personality. At first he was kind of quiet, he didn’t say too much. But then I would see him everyday and we started knowing each other and start feeling each other out, start joking. He would record at anytime on any beat. Our relationship just grew greater after that. POST CONTINUES BELOW What was your last memory with Bankroll
2 will be stored in the pores of the rock formation, which is presently saturated with water that is several times saltier than sea water. The safety and effectiveness of the storage will be monitored by the MGSC through an extensive environmental monitoring, verification, and accounting (MVA) program. The Illinois Basin—Decatur Project is the first in the nation large-scale demonstration project to receive an underground injection control permit, start an extensive environmental monitoring program, and begin drilling an injection well. Drilling of the carbon dioxide injection well began on February 14, 2009. This project is more than just a "first" in the USA. Because environmental test results will be available during the first term of the Obama Administration, and because the well is literally on Obama's political home turf in Illinois, eyes of the pundit-ocracy will be on this one. Here's hoping that the results are made public as soon as any needed peer review is complete, and that opponents as well as the "Clean Coal" crew are given equal, timely access to the data. Low risk of "fatal injection." The highly saline nature of Southern IL groundwater means that even an outward dispersion of carbonic acid from the injection zone would not be compromising anyone's drinking water. Good siting choice from that standpoint. If down the road there's a hiccup from the well-head, the fact that the injection well is on a private site, not proximate to dense residential or commercial development, means there is a low suffocation risk Potential industry benefit. For the next year or so, while C02 injection is underway, the project would seem to provide an argument for whatever incentives may be needed to keep the market price for fuel ethanol high enough to warrant continued operation of the ADM fermenters. Do carbon credits from the project prospectively accrue to ADM, enabling the site to avoid paying a Cap penalty, should Cap & Trade be enacted? Just wondering out loud about these two topics. More carbon dioxide sequestration posts. The Carbon Sequestration Cost Everyone Else Forgot Biochar Offers Answer for Healthy Soil and Carbon Sequestration... Important! Why Carbon Sequestration Won't Save Us Wyoming - the New Carbon Sequestration Capital Southern Illinois To Sequester Wisconsin's C02The Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has expressed support for including Poland in the US Visa Waiver Program, claiming that he would deal with this during the first weeks of his presidency. Poland is currently one of only five EU countries not included in the Visa Waiver Program, which allows visa-free travel into the US for up to 90 days. The refusal rate on Polish visa applications has been too high to allow the country to qualify. Trump made the comments about the Visa Waiver Program before a speech to the Polish American Congress, during which he repeatedly praised Poland. Frank Spula, President of the Polish American Congress, said: “I told [Trump] that this visa issue has been around for many years […] Trump told me that if he becomes president, he will deal with this. I replied: 'We will be holding you to your word'.” Meanwhile Piotr Janicki, the Polish consul in Chicago, said: “[Trump] declared that he will deal with this issue in the first weeks of his presidency.” Janicki added, “Donald Trump as a candidate is considered to hold harsh views on immigration, but we heard [today] that this will not affect Polish citizens and that he does not see any threat from Poles, who mostly come to the US for tourism.” Earlier this year the Republican Party adopted a platform at its national convention in Cleveland which included a clause about allowing Poles visa-free travel, though the platform is non-binding. (sl/rg) Source: PAPTwisting a screwdriver, removing a bottle cap, and peeling a banana are just a few simple tasks that are tricky to pull off single-handedly. Now a new wrist-mounted robot can provide a helping hand — or rather, fingers. Researchers at MIT have developed a robot that enhances the grasping motion of the human hand. The device, worn around one’s wrist, works essentially like two extra fingers adjacent to the pinky and thumb. A novel control algorithm enables it to move in sync with the wearer’s fingers to grasp objects of various shapes and sizes. Wearing the robot, a user could use one hand to, for instance, hold the base of a bottle while twisting off its cap. “This is a completely intuitive and natural way to move your robotic fingers,” says Harry Asada, the Ford Professor of Engineering in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. “You do not need to command the robot, but simply move your fingers naturally. Then the robotic fingers react and assist your fingers.” Ultimately, Asada says, with some training people may come to perceive the robotic fingers as part of their body — “like a tool you have been using for a long time, you feel the robot as an extension of your hand.” He hopes that the two-fingered robot may assist people with limited dexterity in performing routine household tasks, such as opening jars and lifting heavy objects. He and graduate student Faye Wu presented a paper on the robot this week at the Robotics: Science and Systems conference in Berkeley, Calif. Biomechanical synergy The robot, which the researchers have dubbed “supernumerary robotic fingers,” consists of actuators linked together to exert forces as strong as those of human fingers during a grasping motion. To develop an algorithm to coordinate the robotic fingers with a human hand, the researchers first looked to the physiology of hand gestures, learning that a hand’s five fingers are highly coordinated. While a hand may reach out and grab an orange in a different way than, say, a mug, just two general patterns of motion are used to grasp objects: bringing the fingers together, and twisting them inwards. A grasp of any object can be explained through a combination of these two patterns. The researchers hypothesized that a similar “biomechanical synergy” may exist not only among the five human fingers, but also among seven. To test the hypothesis, Wu wore a glove outfitted with multiple position-recording sensors, and attached to her wrist via a light brace. She then scavenged the lab for common objects, such as a box of cookies, a soda bottle, and a football. Wu grasped each object with her hand, then manually positioned the robotic fingers to support the object. She recorded both hand and robotic joint angles multiple times with various objects, then analyzed the data, and found that every grasp could be explained by a combination of two or three general patterns among all seven fingers. The researchers used this information to develop a control algorithm to correlate the postures of the two robotic fingers with those of the five human fingers. Asada explains that the algorithm essentially “teaches” the robot to assume a certain posture that the human expects the robot to take. Bringing robots closer to humans For now, the robot mimics the grasping of a hand, closing in and spreading apart in response to a human’s fingers. But Wu would like to take the robot one step further, controlling not just position, but also force. “Right now we’re looking at posture, but it’s not the whole story,” Wu says. “There are other things that make a good, stable grasp. With an object that looks small but is heavy, or is slippery, the posture would be the same, but the force would be different, so how would it adapt to that? That’s the next thing we’ll look at.” Wu also notes that certain gestures — such as grabbing an apple — may differ slightly from person to person, and ultimately, a robotic aid may have to account for personal grasping preferences. To that end, she envisions developing a library of human and robotic gesture correlations. As a user works with the robot, it could learn to adapt to match his or her preferences, discarding others from the library. She likens this machine learning to that of voice-command systems, like Apple’s Siri. “After you’ve been using it for a while, it gets used to your pronunciation so it can tune to your particular accent,” Wu says. “Long-term, our technology can be similar, where the robot can adjust and adapt to you.” “This is breaking new ground on the question of how humans and robots interact,” says Matthew Mason, director of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, who was not involved in the research. “It is a novel vision, and adds to the many ways that robotics can change our perceptions of ourselves." Down the road, Asada says the robot may also be scaled down to a less bulky form. “This is a prototype, but we can shrink it down to one-third its size, and make it foldable,” Asada says. “We could make this into a watch or a bracelet where the fingers pop up, and when the job is done, they come back into the watch. Wearable robots are a way to bring the robot closer to our daily life.”Image copyright IDF Image caption The Israeli military published conversations between the scammers and soldiers Israel's military says it has uncovered a scam by Hamas militants to spy on its soldiers by hacking their mobile phones after posing as women on social media. Members of the Palestinian group found the soldiers online, then tried to strike up a friendship using the fake identities, an officer told reporters. Dozens of soldiers were persuaded to install an application that controlled their phone cameras and microphones. However, the officer said Hamas was not able to uncover any major secrets. Most of the soldiers were low-ranking, he added, and the scammers were interested in information about Israeli army manoeuvres, forces and weaponry around the Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip. The officer, whose name was not given, said the photos used in the scheme belonged to real women, whose pictures and personal details were stolen from their social media profiles. Hamas'seizes Israeli spy dolphin' Hamas says Israel killed drone expert Image copyright IDF Image caption The soldiers were sent a link to download a video chat app that took control of their phone A presentation he gave to reporters on Wednesday included some of the photos and flirtatious messages sent to the soldiers. "Just a second, I'll send you a photo, my dear," wrote a scammer in one exchange. "OK. Ha-ha," the soldier replied, before a photo of a blonde woman appeared. The scammer then suggested they both download "a simple app that lets us have a video chat". In reality, it gave the scammer control of the soldier's smartphone. The Israeli military's information security unit uncovered the scam after getting complaints from soldiers that suspicious women were getting them to download applications and then going silent. "It had potential for great damage," the officer was quoted by the Associated Press as saying. "Until now, the damage was minimal. But we wanted to prevent it from happening." Hamas has so far not commented on the allegations.New Florida Gators head coach Jim McElwain, according to John Middlekauff of 957 The Game, will reportedly make his first hire from his old Colorado State Rams staff with assistant coach Tim Skipper set to join him in Gainesville, Florida. McElwain’s assistant head coach and linebackers coach at Colorado State, Skipper will reportedly join Florida as running backs coach. A versatile veteran coach who will be in the profession for his 15th season in 2015, Skipper has coached defensive backs, running backs (Fresno State, 2006-08) and linebackers; he’s also coordinated defenses at Western New Mexico (2002) and Sacramento State (2004-05). Skipper is best known for coaching Ryan Mathews at Fresno State. As noted by NFL.com’s Bryan Fischer, Skipper’s father (Jim Skipper, Carolina) and brother (Kelly Skipper, Oakland) are both currently running backs coaches in the NFL. Jim Skipper has coached running backs since 1979, coaching in the NFL from 1986-Present (except 2001), while Kelly Skipper has coached running backs since 1997 but has been in the NFL ranks since 2002. Tim Skipper would be the fourth assistant hired by McElwain, following defensive coordinator Geoff Collins, offensive coordinator Doug Nussmeier and still-unannounced linebackers coach Randy Shannon. Hiring Skipper would not necessarily mean that current Gators running backs coach Brian White, the longest-tenured member of Florida’s coaching staff, would be leaving the program. White moved into his current role under Will Muschamp (2011-13) but was initially hired by Urban Meyer in 2009 to coach Florida’s tight ends.SHARE By Wausau — Wausau police have identified a man dressed as Santa who was handing out Beanie Babies to children at an elementary school. Police say the man was a Salvation Army bell ringer who works dressed in a Santa suit. According to police, the bell ringer hands out Beanie Babies to people who make donations. As he was walking home Monday, children on the Franklin School playground saw him in a Santa suit and called him over to the fence. Police say the man handed the children some Beanie Babies. Police say Salvation Army officials have confirmed the man was a bell ringer, Daily Herald Media reports. The Salvation Army's Lt. Jacob Tripp tells WAOW-TV the man rang bells on Monday but would not be welcome back to do it again.A few days ago I was able to make a jaunt over to Bryce Canyon to check out some of the course for the Bryce 100 coming up in eight (gulp) days. My friend and I started at the 50 mile location - Crawford Pass. This little sign welcomed us. I was anxious to see whatlooked like. (Other things that are most difficult: only eating half of a donut, or listening to music by Celine Dion.)Within a few minutes of running, bright red cliffs and hoodoos started showing up.My partner in crime was Jared Thorley, my running companion for the Moab 50 miler and lots of other training runs. It was clear that RD Matt Gunn had spent plenty of time on the course clearing out deadfall.What was so drastically different from the trails I usually run around Zion is that there was SHADE! Having some cover from the trees and doing a mountain run instead of a desert run was awesome.Jared is sporting some pretty impressive face fur. (Admittedly, I'm jealous.) The Bryce 100 is his first 100 miler and he said his wife will be at the finish line waiting for him.......The single track everywhere we ran was pristine. I could tell that not too many people have ever traveled across these trails. I was madly in love with all this amazing scenery surrounding us.There were some pretty good climbs along the way but the trail surface ideal. The Zion 100 has some really technical, really rocky trails with a grand daddy amount of really challenging slick rock. But at least for the miles we ran at Bryce, the trails were soft, compact dirt that were much less technical than Zion.Some of the miles made me feel swallowed up by an expansive forest. Some miles had views of wide valleys in the distance. But my favorite miles led us around the base of just incredible red cliffs. I'm fairly confident that this is what heaven will look like.I had been doing a bunch of driving and had also done a full day seminar for work the day before. This led to a bad combination ofToo much Diet Dr. Pepper andToo little water. That dehydration caught up with me a few hours into the run when, despite an ideal 60ish degrees, I was sweating like Lance Armstrong at a drug test. I could not get enough water in me.I kept thinking how among all the people I've run with, Jared most closely parallels my running style. He seems to want to talk at the times I'd like to. And he seems to have an inner sense of when it's best to shut up, suffer, and get through it. The only difference is that one of us looks like Grizzly Adams in running shorts.The course has lots of low brush and I'm sure we'll all finish with our share of scratches on the legs. I don't own any, but if you have calf sleves this would be a good race to use them. There are also lots of little loose branches on the ground. I learned to not follow too closely behind the person in front of you. Otherwise you might get a case of BTLS (Branch Through Leg Syndrome).To get some perspective of the wide expanses of the trail, here is the Where's Waldo Runners Edition:I think the Bryce 100 is going to be an incredible race. If the miles I spent on the course are an indication of the race in general, we are in for a treat.YouTube/dietcoke It turns out that having a lot of online buzz only impacts short-term sales by 0.01 percent, Coca-Cola senior manager for corporate market strategy and insight Eric Schmidt told an advertising conference Monday. According to Coke's internal measurements, "we didn't see any statistically significant relationship between our buzz and our short-term sales," Schmidt said. That's a pretty big deal coming from a company that has 61 million Facebook fans and 687K-plus Twitter followers, especially since Coke appears to do most of its marketing with online reactions in mind. For example, Coca-Cola's Super Bowl ad campaign— in which users were encouraged to interact with characters racing through the desert to get their hands on the soda on a separate micro-site — had a main goal of inciting online chatter. Schmidt continued that it was often difficult to gauge whether most online buzz about the company was positive or negative, which would complicate the incentive to purchase situation. Ad Age pointed out, however, that the buzz doesn't include "sharing, video views or other aspects of social media." Coca-Cola declined our request to clarify what buzz actually means, adding "Our social strategy is focused on building great relationships with our consumers. We're always looking at ways to make our social programs more effective, and this presentation covered just one of the many factors that we consider." Another finding was that digital display advertising was 90 percent effective as TV ads to deliver sales on a per-impression basis. Search is the least effective whereas print is still higher than television. Brands spend significant sums of money both cultivating and engaging their online following. This internal study by a major company might cause brands to rethink that strategy.Hi everyone! Suwabe (@gsc_suwabe) from the Corporate Planning Division here! Even though I don’t really intend to, I’m often told I have a smug look on my face… But anyway, today I’m going to be taking a look at… ▲ As she has a throne and plushies, I decided to display her on various different chairs and with various other plushies! The 1/8th Scale… Yotsugi Ononoki DX! From the Monogatari Series final season ‘Tsukimonogatari’ comes a 1/8th scale figure of the tsukumogami created from a corpse, Yotsugi Ononoki! The figure is based on the cover illustration of the ‘Tsukimonogatari Volume 1 / Yotsugi Doll (Part 1)’ Blu-ray & DVD. Yotsugi’s cute appearance sitting on a large throne has been faithfully recreated, complete with throne and all! The DX version also includes all the plushie dolls scattered around the bottom of the throne to completely recreate the original illustration! The most intricate of details have all been faithfully converted into figure form for fans to enjoy in their collection! The silent yet sharp-tongued Ononoki-chan as a 1/8th scale figure! Everything that makes her character has been preserved so well in the figure! The strange thingy on her head, the unique color of her bluish-greenish hair, somewhat expressionless face, eyes with such a lovely gradient, bright orange outfit that is sure to catch the eye, striped knee-high socks and even those yellow wellingtons! Every detail from head to toe has been faithfully recreated! Plus as if Ononoki wasn’t cute enough by herself, the huge throne and all the little plushie dolls at her feet just add so much to the figure! The contrast between Ononoki-chan’s rather stiff expression and the cute, fluffy faces on the plushies is such a treat to the eyes! Not to mention the lovely mix of colors between the back of the throne, Ononoki’s outfit and the various plushies! I’m sure there are many fans who already got a nice look at the painted prototype that was on display during WonFes, but now she is almost ready for preorders to start! ( ` ∀` ) I’ve covered most of my highlights on the figure with the rather long text above, so now we’re going to go into photo mode! I hope everyone enjoys! ▼ Let’s first take a look from different angles! ▼ Whether you look from the right… ▼ Or from the left… She always look so adorable!! ( ;∀;) Looking at, taking photos of and talking about amazing figures like this one is always such a pleasure! (*´ω`*) While I was taking the photos I talked to so many people that passed by about how cute she was! (*´ω`*) I still remember when Ononoki-chan first appeared in the anime (I was still in college at the time!), I had a good, uplifting feeling about her that I could never really explain! To think that she would then come out as this lovely figure for me to review… I think my initial feeling about her was a premonition of this figure coming! Just look at how great she looks! Before I took photos I tried to figure out where to focus on to show more of the details of the figure, and this is one of the areas that really stood out for me… ▼ The origami in her right hand! One single folded origami crane lying in the hand of a listless arm. The crane was of course always in the original illustration, but somehow seeing it sculpted into the 3D world really makes it stand out in a special new way! It’s hard to explain exactly why, but it really looks lovely! ▼ Plushie Paradise at her feet! – Crab – ▲ A two-shot of the crab and star is so cute! Also note the intricate paintwork of the shadows on the throne! – Snail – – Monkey – ▲ It looks like he is looking up to the heavens! So cute!! – Snake – – Cat – – Bee – ▲ Even on the back there is such lovely attention to detail! (`・ω・´) Personally I love the amount of detail that has been put into the various plushies, but for those who think she will take up too much space or perhaps be a little too much over budget, we are also going to be selling a simple version without all the plushies! Yotsugi Ononoki From the Monogatari Series final season ‘Tsukimonogatari’ comes a 1/8th scale figure of the tsukumogami created from a corpse, Yotsugi Ononoki! The figure is based on the cover illustration of the ‘Tsukimonogatari Volume 1 / Yotsugi Doll (Part 1)’ Blu-ray & DVD. Yotsugi’s cute appearance sitting on a large throne has been faithfully recreated, complete with throne and all! Ononoki-chan’s cuteness is exactly the same as the DX version! That said, I would still recommend going for the complete DX version for the complete experience!! I recommend it with a posed look!! You won’t regret it! Yotsugi Ononoki DX She will be up for preorder after the Obon vacation from the 18th August 2016! On that note, also note that Good Smile Company Customer Support as well as GOODSMILE ONLINE SHOP support will be closed from tomorrow until Tuesday next week due to the Obon holiday! You can find out more here: http://www.goodsmile.info/en/post/4370/ The blog will also be on break until Wednesday, so I’ll see you all again next week sometime!! Suwabe / twitterID:@gsc_suwabe English Updates: @gsc_kevinPrint media isn’t dead, it’s just moved. It may surprise readers outside of South Asia to learn, but the largest circulation English-language paper is not from the UK or the U.S. Instead it is The Times of India. It turns out that traditional paid-model newspaper subscription readership is alive and well in the sub-continent. Not only that – it is growing. “A recent study from the FICCI [Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry] suggested that the value of the Indian newspaper industry has grown by two-thirds in the past six years,” says consultancy, EY. “In 2005, the total industry was worth $2.64 billion (U.S. dollars). This rose to$4.37 billion in 2010.” Currently more than 82,000 newspapers combine to give India a total circulation of 110 million daily copies. Consultancy, KPMG estimates that growth rates for regional Indian newspapers are expected to hover between 12 and 14% for the next several years. And the actual current value may be even higher, says EY, as actual readership is probably even higher due to copies being generally shared by several people. Growth in the Indian newspaper industry is driven by the country’s rapidly expanding middle class. Internet penetration remains poor – with 80% of the population thought to still be lacking basic access. Alternative methods for information dissemination, such as radio and TV, are growing but lack a number of the advantages newspapers bring. Delivery costs less than the equivalent of $2 a month and can be tailored to match the many languages spoken throughout the country. Due to this local advertising spend is on the up. “Advertisers have discovered the vast diversity of vernacular print media and its ability to reach consumers in thriving medium-sized cities,” EY says. Further advantages from newspapers include classified ads, which have largely traditional matchmakers in finding marriage partners for men and women. The perceived reputation of papers also helps. Newspapers are considered to be an important social tool that is helpful in educating children, EY adds. Meanwhile books have moved to Mexico. In the nineties, literacy rates in the country shot up from around 10% to 90%. This, combined with significantly increased disposable income has led to serious growth in the sector. Firms involved in the business are now looking to expand internationally. Festivals such as the Guadalajara International Book Festival and a prominent role at the 2015 London Book Fair helped catapult the industry to new heights, according to EY. However, distribution remains a problem. “In fact, the lack of options exists at every point of the supply-chain, not just the end point,” the consultancy adds. “The scarcity of specialized book distributors and wholesalers within Mexico cramps the flexibility of business between publishers and booksellers.” Nonetheless opportunities remain for print across the world. Whether its current down-turn in the West lasts remains to be seen. For now startups interested in print media would do well to look elsewhere.You may have noticed that we took down the “Mobile Bundle” tab at the top of our site today. That doesn’t mean mobile bundles are gone! It simply means that we’re updating the way we do mobile bundles. Instead of having a new mobile bundle every two weeks, we will be putting mobile games in more places across the site and will feature special mobile bundles throughout the year. To get your mobile fix on a more regular occasion, you’ll still be able to find mobile games in the Humble Store. We will also include mobile versions of games in other bundles such as the Humble Weekly Bundle when we can (including the current Humble Weekly Bundle: Made in Singapore, which features two Android games). If you’d like to know more about our mobile game offerings, we suggest following @humblemobile on Twitter, which we will use for upcoming mobile announcements about games in the store and in bundles.If you're a Jaguars fan, you may want to consider urging your team to move to London because apparently the Jaguars play very very very well there. Against the Bills in London, the Jaguars scored their first defensive touchdowns of the season. Err, maybe it's not so much the Jags should move to the UK, but that the Bills should pray they never have to play abroad again. QB EJ Manuel managed to commit three turnovers in 2 minutes and 26 seconds. 1) Manuel is sacked for a seven-yard loss. But not only is he sacked, he fumbles the ball, too. Defensive end Chris Clemons runs the ball six yards for a TD. 2) Barely 10 seconds later, Manuel has his pass intercepted by Telvin Smith, who proceeds to run 26 yards for a TD. 3) AND AGAIN. Manuel's throw is picked off by the Jaguars' Paul Posluszny. No TD for the Jags this time, though. Perhaps the Bills should have kept Matt Cassel, whom they traded to the Cowboys. Cassel, by the way, will be Dallas' starter vs. the Giants.…please, try to follow these simple guidelines. 1. Don’t bother to format the cells Where possible, I will not open your spreadsheet in a spreadsheet application. If I do, it will be only to marvel at the horror, then export it as rapidly as possible to a delimited text file. I do not care about the font, the font size or the font weight. I do not care whether there are grid lines around the cells. I especially do not care about cells which you have highlighted using some arbitrary (and unexplained) colour scheme. 2. No multiple tables If you include multiple “tables” on one sheet, separated by blank rows, there is a good chance that I will not notice them. If you include multiple tables on multiple “sheets”, there is an excellent chance that I will not notice them. 3. Be consistent If you must use confusing, abbreviated terms for your row and column names, at least keep them consistent. When you suddenly switch from “Patient ID” to “MCO_ID”, or from “Tissue Bank ID” to “TB ID” but leave everything else the same, I (and my software) assume that you’re talking about something different. 4. Yes/No = 1/0 Would it kill you to think as hard about the type and structure of your data as the data itself? If your variable takes one of two values in a “yes/no” fashion, the best representation is 1 or 0. That goes for “wt/mut” too. If you must use “Y/N”, don’t suddenly switch to “Yes/No” (or case-sensitive variations thereof) just because you feel like it. 5. If it doesn’t exist, it shouldn’t be there Just leave the cell blank. I don’t want to see “n/a”, “NA”, “?”, “-” or anything else. 6. What belongs with what? Have you noticed that certain bits of your data belong with other bits? For example, you can take several samples from a patient and do several experiments using those samples? Perhaps you’ve heard the term “relational data”? Well, that’s what it means. If you could find a way to highlight those relations in your spreadsheet (no, not using coloured cells please), it would really help. On second thoughts: why don’t you come and see me before collecting your data? We’ll design a database together. You might even realise why I hate your stupid spreadsheets so much.Draft code details new 'three strikes' policy for illegal downloaders, to come into effect from March 2014 Illegal downloaders will start receiving warning letters from internet service providers from 1 March 2014, under a draft code for the government's anti-digital piracy regime drawn up by media regulator Ofcom. Under the draft code, published on Tuesday by the regulator, the UK's biggest ISPs – BT, Everything Everywhere, O2, Sky, TalkTalk Group and Virgin Media – will be required to send letters to customers warning them when there is an allegation from a film, TV or music company that there has been illegal downloading from their computer. Web users who get three warning letters in a year will face having anonymous information of their downloading and filesharing history provided to copyright owners, which could then be used to gain a court order to reveal the customer's identity and take legal action against piracy. Internet users will be able to appeal against a report on their alleged infringement, at a cost of £20, which will be refunded if they are successful. Ofcom said that given the logistics involved in establishing an appeals body and other elements necessary to police the draft code, which implements anti-piracy provisions in the Digital Economy Act 2010, UK internet users will not start receiving letters until 1 March 2014. Ofcom's draft code – which, after a consultation period is expected, to pass through parliament at the end of the year – also gives a breakdown of the costs involved to set up and run the new system. As much as 75% of the costs will be met by rights holders. The consultation on the online infringement of copyright code closes on 26 July. A separate consultation on the allocation of costs for policing the code runs until 18 September. The anti-piracy legislation has been the focal point of a two-year battle between rights holders – many of who wanted much tougher action such as slowing or cutting off the internet connections of repeat offenders – and ISPs, which have argued that they should not have to foot the bill for enforcing the crackdown on piracy. In March 2012, BT and TalkTalk lost a final legal challenge to force a judicial review of the Digital Economy Act, when their opposition was thrown out by the court of appeal. While copyright owners can already seek court orders against digital pirates, the new code is designed to enable them to take legal action against the most persistent alleged infringers. Ofcom and the government maintain that the new code has been carefully balanced to help the UK creative industries defend their intellectual property, while protecting the rights of consumers. The music industry in particular has seen revenues dive over the past decade, which it blames on internet piracy. "It is essential that government creates the right conditions for businesses to grow," said creative industries minister Ed Vaizey. "We must ensure our creative industries can protect their investment. They have the right to charge people to access their content if they wish, whether in the physical world or on the internet. "We are putting in place a system to educate people about copyright to ensure they know what legitimate content is and where to find it. The Digital Economy Act is an important part of protecting our creative industries against unlawful activity." However, Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, argued that the draft code was flawed and potentially left libraries, hotels and bars that offer the internet to customers over Wi-Fi open to accusations of piracy. "Digital revenues are going up, the music and film industry are moving in the right direction, yet this cumbersome policy is still lumbering forward," said Killock. "The appeals are a joke. Some people will almost certainly end up in court having done nothing wrong." The DEA also outlined certain other measures that could be considered to reduce piracy levels, including the slowing of internet connections, blocking online access or temporarily suspending accounts. These could be put back on the table by the government if the new code proves to be ineffective after its first full year of operation. An annex to the report shows that if 70,000 copyright infringement reports are sent by rights holders to the biggest ISPs each month – BT, Virgin, TalkTalk and BSkyB — the total cost to rights holders will be £14.4m, with each letter costing £17. The forecast is for it to become more cost effective for the rights holders to foot the bill for significantly more copyright infringement reports to go out to ISPs each month – 175,000 will cost them £15.2m, however the cost-per-letter drops to £7.20. There is a slightly cheaper table of costs that has been set up for O2 and Everything Everywhere as they are significantly smaller ISPs. Ofcom also said that between 2010 and 2015 it expected to have run up bills of £10.5m in relation to setting up and running the DEA's anti-piracy regime, including drafting the code, establishing an independent appeals body, measurement and enforcement. Rights holders would foot the bill for the regime. "These measures are designed to foster investment and innovation in the UK's creative industries, while ensuring internet users are treated fairly and given help to access lawful content," said Claudio Pollack, Ofcom's consumer group director. "Ofcom will oversee a fair appeals process, and also ensure that rights holders' investigations under the code are rigorous and transparent."A 28-year-old businessman is being accused of stealing $1 billion from Moldovan banks over the course of three days. The sum -- which is equivalent to 12% of Moldova's GDP -- mysteriously disappeared in November 2014. The impoverished ex-Soviet nation's central bank was so puzzled by the fraud that it hired a leading financial investigation consultancy called Kroll to help it get to the bottom of the case. Kroll identified 28-year-old Ilan Shor as the mastermind behind the mega fraud, but its findings were not immediately released. Shor is one of the richest people in the country and is married to a Russian pop star. His father accumulated much of the family's wealth by setting up Moldova's first duty-free shops. The speaker of the Moldovan parliament published the confidential report from Kroll after thousands of people protested in the country's capital early this month. Shor issued a statement to local media denying any wrongdoing. Related: Russian bribery got a lot more expensive The report said Shor and his associates worked together in 2012 to buy a controlling stake in three Moldovan banks and then gradually increased the banks' liquidity through a series of complex transactions involving loans being passed between the three banks and foreign entities. The three banks then issued multimillion-dollar loans to companies that Shor either controlled or was connected to, the report said. In the end, over $767 million disappeared from the banks in just three days through complex transactions. The central bank estimates the total loss from the scheme could reach $1 billion. A large portion of this money was transfered to offshore entities connected to Shor, according to the report. Some of the money was then deposited into Latvian bank accounts under the names of various foreigners. Moldova's central bank was subsequently forced to bail out the three banks with $870 million in emergency loans, a move designed to keep the economy afloat. Moldova is one of the poorest countries in Europe and corruption is a widespread problem. The World Bank has even highlighted that this case threatens to destabilize Moldova's economy. Read more: World's most corrupt industries The Kroll report highlights the difficulties of the investigation. Internal reports detailing activities of the three banks were lost. Important electronic data was also deleted. On top of it all, a van that was transporting crucial files was stolen and later found burned. Needless to say, the documents were destroyed. The report said a full forensic investigation is needed to identify other potential beneficiaries and recover the funds
sure didn't come from me," said Hyndman's father. Tony, who was a U.S. youth international himself before a back injury ended his career. "But Emerson is very logical, he doesn't get real emotional about anything, he doesn't go from one side to the other. He thinks things out, he's very cerebral. He takes risk at the right times if you will." That accurately describes the younger Hyndman's youth career. It wasn't unusual for him to play up one or even two age groups. Tony recalled Emerson first attending a camp for the U.S. U-14 national team as an 11-year-old. Not even the usually gut-wrenching decision to leave home and join the youth academy of Fulham FC at age 15 was jarring to Emerson. "I don't think I really grasped how big it was at the time," he said. "I was just very excited, just young overall. I wasn't really fazed by it. It was really tough to hear my parents, what they had to say about it, because they had mixed emotions. They obviously wanted me to succeed, but moving out of the house at 15 years old is a big thing for them." Hyndman has risen steadily up the ranks since then, and surmounted the various obstacles to becoming a pro. The change in attitude from the U.S. to England, where soccer went from becoming a pursuit to a job with incredibly high stakes, was an eye-opener. So was a switch from attacking midfield to more of a No. 8 role, though the fact that it resulted in Hyndman improving his defense and seeing more of the ball has helped him round out his game. The daunting prospect of playing for the notoriously strict Felix Magath, who has since been fired, held no fear for Hyndman. In fact, he credits Magath for accelerating his development. "[Magath] helped me tremendously to adapt to professional life," said Hyndman. "He never treated me like a kid, which you don't get all the time. He helped me become fitter, stronger." So when it came time for Hyndman to move up the first team -- "man soccer," he called it -- he was ready. Mostly. "It was definitely a big change, especially when I played my first game," he said. "You just notice how much quicker people move. But as the games have gone by I think I've adapted to it, and realize what's coming." Now he can expect a few more phone calls from that guy named Jurgen. 2. Rubio Rubin, M/F, FC Utrecht While Hyndman was puzzled, and then ultimately surprised by his first call-up, Rubio Rubin experienced his first national team call-up differently. "I was crying," he recalled. "I called my parents right away, and told them I was called in, but I couldn't talk to them because I just had tears, all this emotion." Rubin experienced plenty of other big moments in 2014. He made his professional debut for Dutch side Utrecht last August against Willem II, suited up for the U.S. senior team against Colombia, and scored his first professional goal for his club on Nov. 29 against NAC Breda. "The best moment was seeing all my teammates, people that I've barely lived with, they were celebrating this goal with me like we won a World Cup," he said. "They were so happy for me, and them jumping on me. Even the goalkeeper, he ran all the way to jump on top of me. That was the moment where I felt, 'These guys really care about me.' You see the joy on their faces." Rubin has been one of the rare European-based U.S. internationals to earn steady playing time this season. He's made 17 appearances in all competitions, tallying twice. He's also lined up in a variety of roles, seeing time at center forward, right wing and attacking midfield. That versatility has helped accelerate his soccer education, though it has been far from easy. "One of the hardest things was getting down the system of play," said Rubin. "The Dutch style of football compared to the American style, they're very different. Just learning from position games to 11-vs.-11 and the way they play, what you can do and what you can't do. In the past six, seven months, I've brought my game to a higher level." Rubio Rubin is one of the few European-based U.S. internationals who's received regular playing time this season. Rubin's future, at least as it relates to the national team, appears to be at forward. Good thing considering the difficulty the U.S. has had in producing those kinds of players. "Sometimes it can take six, seven years before you go from finding one goal scorer to the next," said Ramos. "Rubio finds the goal easily, and that's a quality that's hard to find. His progress has been amazing, but I would have predicted that a year ago, a year and a half ago, because he's a very hard-working player." Rubin's U.S. debut against Colombia saw him link up well with teammates and draw some fouls to take the sting out of Los Cafeteros' attack. And he nearly capped off his first appearance with a goal, but could only nod Alejandro Bedoya's cross wide. "Finishing, reading the game, reading the defenders, how he can beat them, that will be the next step for Rubio," said U.S. assistant and newly named U-23 head coach Andi Herzog. "With more and more experience, he will get better and better." Rubin is eager to get there. "I've met some goals, but now the goals are even higher," he said. "I want to accomplish more in my career. It's just the beginning." 3. Julian Green, M/F, Hamburg SV (on loan from Bayern Munich) Green is quick and dynamic in one-on-one situations. Yet oddly, he finds himself at a crossroads as he tries to move from being a prospect into a player who sees the field regularly. It was less than a year ago that Green was Klinsmann's latest dual-national capture, and his Bayern Munich pedigree generated considerable excitement within the U.S. soccer community. The image of Green scoring against Belgium at the World Cup with his first touch remains indelible. With one strike he appeared to justify Klinsmann's decision to include him on the World Cup roster. When he secured a loan move to Hamburg, he seemed primed to get the first-team experience he needed to propel himself forward. Yet the ensuing months have revealed the potholes that can upend a young player. Green has looked less than convincing in subsequent U.S. appearances, and his loan stint hasn't yielded the playing time that both his club and Klinsmann had hoped. "It's different for Green," acknowledged Herzog. "With Hamburg it's a different style of play, and his teammates don't have the same quality like with Bayern. So he has to rethink the situation and work even harder." Julian Green's loan spell at Hamburg has not yielded the first-team minutes he, Bayern Munich and Jurgen Klinsmann sought. There are also questions about Green's durability, as he's twice suffered contact-induced injuries in the past year. "Everyone was expecting a lot in the one-on-one duels, but because of his injuries he hasn't been in the shape he needs to be," said Herzog. "I think he lost a bit of confidence. He has to fight his way back." But the U.S. staff is keeping the faith in Green and is confident his touch on the ball, ability to run at defenders and finishing will ultimately shine through. In the meantime, Green has been trying to reestablish his game during Hamburg's winter training camp, where Herzog has received some positive reports. "He's still young, and you have to think positive," said Herzog. 4. Gedion Zelalem, M/F, Arsenal With Zelalem now in possession of a U.S. passport, the prospect of him suiting up for the U.S. has become tantalizingly close. It's not often that a U.S. player finds himself at a club like Arsenal, so the sight of a playmaker emerging has fans salivating. Zelalem has been ticking off the boxes in terms of his progression at his club. He's been making the bench for cup games and the occasional league encounter and is receiving steady playing time with the club's U-19 team. Gedion Zelalem, right, has earned senior minutes at Arsenal this season, seeing time in the Champions League and cup competition. "I think the thing that sticks out the most is just how intelligent a player he is, even at 13 years old when I first saw him," said Danny Karbassiyoon, who scouted Zelalem for Arsenal prior to the player's signing. "Intelligence encapsulates his overall awareness, as well as his technical ability. That's what has enabled him to go to London and progress. It's nice to see him in an environment where there are really good players around him, and he still stands out because of those two features." 5. Cameron Carter-Vickers, D, Tottenham Hotspur The son of former NBA player Howard Carter, Carter-Vickers was one of the revelations of the U-20 qualifying tournament. His physicality, willingness to play out of the back and ability on set pieces gave the U.S. the kind of well-rounded defender that was in short supply during the last U-20 cycle, though injuries played a part in that. Incredibly, the Tottenham defender turned 17 less than a month ago. U.S. U-20 coach Tab Ramos says that Cameron Carter-Vickers, left, is the best defender to come through the national team program in recent years. "Carter-Vickers is definitely the center-back with the most upside that I've seen come through the national team program in the last six, seven years," said Ramos. "He's excellent on the ball, he reads the game very well, and he's second to none in the air." 6. Tommy Thompson, M/F, San Jose Earthquakes In terms of pure one-on-one ability, Thompson is as exciting a player as there is in the U-20 pool. He's full of tricks and clever touches, and can make opposition defenders look silly as he snakes by them. Tommy Thompson is expected to earn considerable first-team minutes this season under Dominic Kinnear's stewardship at San Jose. "Thompson is one of the very few players that I've had that can do everything," said Ramos. "He doesn't necessarily always look the part, but he's a player who makes plays." If there's one knock against Thompson, it's his consistency in delivering an end product. But his skill is clear, and the hope is that he'll establish himself with the Quakes this season. 7. Zack Steffen, G, SC Freiburg The University of Maryland product enjoyed a fine U-20 qualifying tournament, and his penalty save in the aforementioned clincher against El Salvador was immense in getting the U.S. over the qualifying finish line. He's also an outstanding shot-stopper and his ability to command his penalty area instilled plenty of confidence. More than once he managed to snare crosses in traffic, taking considerable pressure off of his defenders. Now he'll get the chance to test his skills in the Bundesliga with Freiburg. Zack Steffen has parlayed his impressive play with Maryland into a job with Bundesliga side Freiburg. "Steffen does little things that people don't give him too much credit for," said U.S. U-15 manager John Hackworth, who saw Steffen up close when he was managing the Philadelphia Union and Steffen was part of the club's academy. "His distribution is solid, he's got better feet than people give him credit for, he comes off his line really well, and he's learned to be vocal. Watching him mature has been rewarding." 8. Junior Flores, M, Borussia Dortmund The early matches of the U-20 tournament saw Flores look a bit out of sync with his teammates, but the final two games saw him deliver critical plays that led to U.S. goals. His pass released Paul Arriola in the run-up to Bradford Jamieson IV's winner against Trinidad and Tobago, and his clever move against El Salvador created the kind of mayhem that ultimately led to Arriola's clincher. One knock against Flores is he needs to chip in with more goals, but his technical ability is unquestioned. Junior Flores' ability to create goal-scoring opportunities has been on display with Borussia Dortmund's reserve side. "I like his unpredictability," said Ramos of Flores. "I like having players on the field who are unpredictable and who sometimes just do their own thing. The game isn't just about what the coach says. Sometimes the game is about how you can create, and he's one of those guys I let be free and create his game." 9. Paul Arriola, M, Club Tijuana Arriola has seen his time dwindle with club side Tijuana, and he didn't always look comfortable with U-20s in the center of midfield. But Ramos acknowledged that isn't Arriola's best position, and that he's really suited to a wide midfield role. No surprise then that when Arriola was moved there in a substitute's role against T&T, he showed off his one-on-one skills and passing ability to set up the game-winner. Against El Salvador, he scored the U.S. side's second goal with an opportunistic strike. Arriola's ability to make big plays is why he still remains a top prospect. Paul Arriola, left, has found minutes hard to come by at Tijuana, but that's likely to change as he adjusts to life on the wings. "He thinks fast, the game comes easy to him and he's got deceiving speed," said Ramos. "He can take his guy on and get a cross in, so I believe his strength is out on the wing." 10. Christian Pulisic, M, U.S. U-17 national team Pulisic is the latest attacking talent to pass through the U-17 residency program in Bradenton, Florida, and his skills have caught the eye of Borussia Dortmund, a side he's expected to officially join once he acquires a Croatian passport courtesy of his father's ancestry. Pulisic dazzled onlookers at last month's Nike Friendlies, scoring three goals, including a brace in a 3-1 victory over England. The year prior at the same tournament, he was named MVP. Christian Pulisic is expected to sign for Borussia Dortmund after completing the U.S. U-17 residence program in Bradenton, Florida "He's creative, he's dynamic, he has qualities that allow him to play any one of the front free positions, or be an attacking midfielder," said Hackworth, who saw Pulisic often when the player was suiting up for his youth club, PA Classics. "The part that I like best is that he goes for goal, he looks to penetrate in a variety of ways. He uses his athleticism correctly, but more importantly he uses the ball, and little feints and dips. He's a wonderful player off the dribble." Jeff Carlisle covers MLS and the U.S. national team for ESPN FC. Follow him on Twitter @JeffreyCarlisle.Dear NXT community members, we have analysed the first buy in the IGNIS ICO earlier and we want to report our findings to you. We believe he had a bot which listens to unconfirmed transactions, so when the buyer saw our approval transaction to our phased offer he quickly approved his phased buy either manually or automatically. Since the matching of the offer and the buy occurred in the same block, users using the wallet UI did not even get a chance to see the offer. There is no way we can block accounts from doing this. Buyers can distribute their funds to other accounts, or already have them set up, as well as other users who have already planned this and don't have their accounts known. We understand that this is upsetting to users, and it is one reason why we have multiple rounds; we cannot control this in a decentralized ecosystem. The IGNIS sold this morning represents 1% of all the funds available in the Token Sale. Until August 10th UTC, there will be 11 more opportunities to buy at the price of 0.4 NXT and starting from August 26th, 80 M will be available, though at the price of 0.55 NXT. After these rounds are completed, still less than a third of all IGNIS to be sold will have been sold. I'm here to answer any questions, but please keep on topic and try to stick to the facts.It was a day to celebrate everything that was right with , and maybe that’s why the smile disappeared Wednesday from the face of the guard when his greatest imperfection was broached. The Rookie of the Year trophy rested beside him, the product of a pretty jump shot, great court vision, steely poise, and an uncanny ability to finish at the rim. But his true greatness was revealed once the subject turned to his one weakness - defense. His smile faded, his eyes narrowed and his words became more firm. “When people say stuff about my defense, it bothers me,’’ Lillard said. “And I’m aware of it. It drives me. It lights a fire under me.’’ If that attitude and drive doesn’t convince Trail Blazers fans that the franchise is in good hands, maybe this will: The wheels are already in motion for Lillard to workout and study defense this summer under the tutelage of the greatest defensive point guard ever, Hall of Famer Gary Payton. “He said ‘I want to help you,’ ’’ Lillard said of Payton. “He said it would take time for me to become a defender, but he said I have everything to become one. So this will be the summer where I get in the gym with him and try to learn from him.’’ Payton has taken an interest in Lillard because both hail from East Oakland, which has also produced NBA point guards Jason Kidd and Brian Shaw. Lillard and Payton also share the same agents - Aaron and Eric Goodwin. Lillard said Payton first reached out at the end of his college career at Weber State, but Aaron Goodwin said Payton’s interest intensified in January after watching Lillard score 37 points at Golden State. The next day, Aaron Goodwin got a phone call from Payton. “Gary said ‘This kid has more than I ever had, than Jason (Kidd) ever had, than Brian (Shaw) ever had,’’ Goodwin said. “Now, this is big, because Gary always considered himself the best. And he said ‘I want to help this kid get his defense down. Because if he gets better defensively, he will be the best to ever come out of the California area.’ "Now that’s from Gary; that’s Gary admitting this kid is special. From Gary Payton, that takes a lot.’’ If anyone needed convincing that Lillard is indeed special - he was the fourth unanimous Rookie of the Year - or that he is serious about improving his defense, he drove home the point during his acceptance speech on Wednesday. “I want everyone here to know that I expect more next season from myself,’’ Lillard said. “Winning this award is just letting me know that everything I did up to this point, it paid off.’’ In other words, more hard work is ahead. Payton this week is in China, and later this summer he will be inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame. There is no set-in-stone date for the two to begin their defensive seminar, but sometime between now and September, the two will meet. As one can imagine, Blazers general manager Neil Olshey is thrilled at the notion of the franchise point guard working out with the only point guard to win NBA Defensive Player of the Year. “The more time Dame spends with Gary this offseason, the more I know Dame will respect that he has to give an incredible effort on the defensive end,’’ Olshey said. “Because if Gary is going to invest time in him talking about defense, Damian is the type of kid who will feel like he has to deliver.’’ It’s not that Lillard was horrible on defense as a rookie. But it clearly was the area that suffered during season when the Blazers asked him to do so much: play 40 minutes, be a high-volume scorer, and run the offense. And for much of the season, the Blazers didn’t have a capable backup, which placed added importance to Lillard being on the floor. If he was in foul trouble, the team was doomed, which led to Lillard playing some soft defense once he got an early foul. “It’s my job this summer to get enough talent behind him where he is not forced to make every play and every decision for 40 minutes a night,’’ Olshey said. “And defensively, he was far more aggressive, far more engaged once we got Eric Maynor (in February). So I think he is going to become a good defender - some of which is in our control - getting him down to 35 minutes, creating better defensive schemes, and some of it just Damian learning the league. But he is a quick study, which is huge defensively.’’ Defense is not like a jump shot. You can’t lock yourself in a gym and develop it like a three-pointer. As Lillard sees it, defense takes a three-pronged approach. “One, you have to be in good shape. Two, you have to want to do it. And three you have to learn the way of the league,’’ Lillard said. It’s a lot to ask of Lillard, to remain the dynamic scorer and the catalyst of the Blazers offense, while also becoming a factor defensively. But Lillard has already shown that he should never be counted out. “I don’t see why it’s impossible,’’ Lillard said of being a two-way player. “It will be tough, without a doubt. But I have enough inside of me where I can score the ball, make plays, and still defend. It’s part of the game. ‘‘ And mostly, it’s part of the drive and fire that will fuel him this summer. The great players always add something to their game over the summer. Lillard and Payton are counting on that addition to be defense. “I know I’m a better defender than I showed at times,’’ Lillard said. “Next year I can’t wait to show people that they can’t say ‘He’s good with the ball but on defense he has a hard time.’ Because... they will see.’’ --Jason QuickIntroduction As you may know, newsrdr is a Web application that is designed to stay open in a browser tab in the background for potentially long periods of time. This means that it needs to manage memory usage carefully to ensure the best user experience. Much like most Web sites today, newsrdr uses JavaScript to handle UI and other front-end tasks, which has garbage collection. I personally use newsrdr on both a 2010 MacBook Pro (running Safari) and on Chrome in Windows 7 to follow various tech blogs. Inevitably, Safari would always slow down on the Mac until I either restarted it or it reloaded all of my tabs. One time I had to do this and decided to check Activity Monitor first. I saw something like this: "But I thought JavaScript had garbage collection," I said. Time to break out the tools and find out what was going on. Memory profiling Unfortunately, Safari does not have readily accessible memory profiling functionality. According to a post on Stack Overflow, instrumenting JavaScript involves running Instruments (an application that comes with Xcode). I started a new instance of Safari with just newsrdr open and played around a bit. Instruments was of little help, though, as it did not give me any sort of output. I could have played with it some more, but there was an easier alternative: Google Chrome. See, Google Chrome has a full-featured JavaScript and DOM (Document Object Model) debugger. It also uses WebKit, so it's an almost perfect substitute for Safari. (I say "almost" because there was still a chance that I couldn't duplicate the issue due to minor differences in the code between the two browsers.) Anyway, choosing Tools->Developer Tools from the main Chrome menu brings up this awesome window: Profiles sounds promising. Clicking on that brings up a tab with several options, including "Record Heap Allocations" and "Take Heap Snapshot". I took an initial heap snapshot, played around with the site a bit (basically: add a couple of feeds and go to Home), and took another snapshot. Chrome has an option to compare the current snapshot with any previous snapshot, and here's what I discovered: Of course, there should be no references to any <video> tags anywhere, since the site removes all post HTML from the DOM upon changing pages. Further investigation revealed that the feeds I had added contained embedded YouTube videos. Now I know why there are <video> tags, but why aren't they getting cleaned up? The incredible persistent <iframe> When someone embeds a YouTube video onto a Web page, the page contains an <iframe> tag that loads the video from YouTube's Web site. An <iframe> is a HTML tag that allows a developer to load another Web page inside the existing one. This allows the developer to do cool things. Like, say, loading embedded content based on the user's browser. When an <iframe> gets parsed by the browser, a new entry gets added to the window.frames array. This reference sticks around even after the <iframe> gets removed from the DOM due to it being part of the window and not the document. There's our reference to the video right there. Fortunately, fixing this is simple. While we can't necessarily remove the <iframe> from there, we can remove the code and DOM that YouTube created by navigating to about:blank (which produces a blank HTML page). In CoffeeScript: _leakCleanup: () -> # We need to navigate all iframes inside the article to about:blank first. # Failure to do so results in memory leaks. frameList = this.$('iframe') for i in frameList i.contentWindow.location.href = "about:blank" frameList.remove() After adding this code and running the same test again, I found that the amount of heap used between the two snapshots was pretty much constant. Success! I immediately checked this change into the tree. Conclusion In conclusion, memory leaks are fairly easy to find with the right tools. There's no excuse not to do at least a cursory check before releasing a new project or a change to an existing one. Hopefully this helped some people with their own Web projects. Feel free to leave feedback below, or use the Contact link above if you run into other issues using newsrdr.Get the latest news and videos for this game daily, no spam, no fuss. 2016 is the 20th anniversary of the Pokemon series and one fan celebrated the occasion by recreating famous Pokemon trainer Ash Ketchum's bedroom in Unreal Engine 4. The video below, featuring the famous Pokemon music, comes from Jarlan Perez (via Polygon). Check it out: Perez says in the video description that he'd been working on the project for some time, but was pushed to finish it after seeing the Pokemon Sun/Moon announcement video recently. "Watching the Sun and Moon announcement trailer really inspired me to finish this project," he said. "I owned every single one of the Gameboys that they showed in the trailer and the main reason was to play Pokmon." Perez explains that some items found in his video are not in the original version of Ash's room, but were added to pay homage. "It turned out being almost a blend of multiple points in time in the series. I also went ahead and designed a user interface of what I imagined Pokedex software would look like on a PC," he said. Pokemon Sun/Moon was announced in February. The 3DS games are scheduled to arrive this fall and will support Pokemon Bank, though we don't know much else about the games at this stage. What do you make of this new Pokemon video? Let us know in the comments below!What does a desi feminist look like? According to Sweety and Pappu, creators of the podcast Chuski Pop, she is a little bit like them: “Two desi girls riding the fourth wave of feminism in our salwar kameez and golden heels, while flipping the bird to uncles and aunties.” The description marks all that desi girls on the internet share: independence, fluid identities, diverse interests, a unique and original voice that is feisty and stylish. Desi girl humour has a culturally-specific punch (most recognisable in the art of hatecopy or Pakistani Martha Stewart) and usually refers to shared instances of patriarchy (aunties who tell them to cover up or sleazy uncles who stare too hard). Pop culture, usually Bollywood, also provides a shared context. Finally, desi girls, as opposed to bharatiya naris, or the traditional Indian woman, are not afraid of talking about sex. Scroll Chuski Pop embodies all of this and the idea that no matter where a desi girl lives, she thrives online. Much in the way that early internet blogs and later, YouTube channels, offered creators a way to make media for culturally and racially diverse groups have widened the platform for young women to engage with culture on their own terms. This lets them produce a narrative, instead of merely consuming what the mainstream tells them about themselves. Brown girls rule As young girls of Indian origin, who spent some part of their lives in the Middle East, Sweety and Pappu became accustomed to being identified in the same social or racial club with other young women who were Pakistani, Bangladeshi, or Sri Lankan. It didn’t matter how different they felt from one another, to outsiders, they were all brown. It was through this external identification that they began to consider what desi really was: a shared history, shared experiences, and an opportunity to create a community of brown power. Chuski Pop was born of a political and personal struggle for identity. In the summer of 2014, Sweety, a 33-year-old graphic designer, wanted a creative project that would distract her from the loneliness and draining professional routine of a new job in a new country. After two years and a couple of false starts, she was joined by her best friend, 31-year-old copywriter, Pappu, and finally began Chuski Pop in August 2015. Like every aspect of the podcast, the name of the show was carefully selected—the two considered various other names, like Kiss My Chuddies and Wheatish is the Way to Go, but settled on Chuski Pop instead. “To me, Chuski Pop represents childhood nostalgia,” Pappu said. “But in the hands of a precocious Lolita, it turns into something dangerous and suggestive all because in our primarily patriarchal society any phallic-shaped fruit or food can mean only one thing. I imagine myself and Sweety as precocious Lolitas sucking hard at our kalla-khatta and kachi-keri flavoured golas, giving zero f**ks but plenty of death stares to tharki uncles.” Sweety, who came up with the name, agreed. “Yes, it’s supposed to be sexual and suggestive because I wanted to take the sexual narrative back into the hands of desi women.” Scroll Like several other desi feminists, their outspokenness online is a direct consequence of how much they must censor themselves in real life. Sweety and Pappu never use their real names on the show, or for interviews, because they are afraid that their political opinions might endanger their families—some of whom still live in the Middle East, near violent and conservative neighbours. At present, the podcast is available on apps like iTunes, Stitcher, and SoundCloud. While both Sweety and Pappu enjoy the work of white feminists like Lena Dunham and Amy Schumer, they are more inspired by brown women like Lily Singh aka Superwoman, who created a career on YouTube by owning her desi-ness, or Rupi Kaur, a young woman whose poetry is universal enough to be shared by anyone, yet profound for its specifically south Asian context. Drawing anecdotes from Bollywood, adding phrases in Hindi, the women discuss issues that one would understand only if one grew up in a desi household—family pressure to try out matrimonial websites, bizarre experiences with meeting people on dating apps, beauty parlour ladies who tell you your skin is “too tanned,” the culture shock caused by live-in relationships or dating people of different ethnicities. Pappu and Sweety do not mind being compared to these women, in fact, they congratulate themselves for it. Chuski Pop, like Lily Singh’s comedy or hatecopy’s art, is part of a global effort to create an exclusive desi club, which celebrates the aspects of desi-ness that brown women once felt ashamed of while growing up. They also want to carve a space for conversations and realisations of more intersectional feminism, discussing more cultural specific issues. They seek to create a repository of shared experience and wisdom. Sweety feels strongly about this: “I feel as desis we have a tendency to be inclusive of other cultures that wouldn’t necessarily be inclusive of us.” The episode Pappu is most fond of, titled Kya Baat Hain Kya Cheez Hai Paisa #Money talks about the importance of being financially independent. Rather than “getting a degree so that you can marry a better guy,” as desi women are often advised to do, Chuski Pop tells young women to study and work hard so they can become wealthy and successful themselves, a version of the person their parents wish they would marry. Chuski Pop has also aired one collaborative episode with fellow desi podcasters, Chai Tea Party, but are up for more collaboration in the future. Their wishlist of guests for episodes include a desi burlesque dancer based in South Africa and a young disabled American girl who identifies with being gender fluid and flaunts her desi-ness with sass. Scroll The sisterhood of Sridevi fans The cheeky graphics and illustrations on their website, Facebook page, and Instagram feed have been created by Sweety, who designs children’s animation shows for a living. The images are inspired by Bollywood, projecting the persona of a woman who is vocal and unapologetic about her sexuality, body, and intellect. “The feel of the paintings stems from my own fond childhood experiences of visiting India, when we would hop onto the Deccan Express on our way to Pune from Dadar Station in Bombay,” Sweety said. “Before getting on the train, my mother would buy all the film magazines like Filmfare and CineBlitz, and I would go through them on the train ride, tearing out the sexy pictures of Rekha or Sridevi and folding them up and putting them away in my bag. These women oozed sexuality and confidence and I loved them for it—eso the folded-up paper effects you see on a lot of our Instagram posts are inspired from these childhood moments. I would often pass by artists or painters on the streets who used to paint all the Bollywood posters by hand, I would watch them paint wondering why I couldn’t be an artist for a living too!” Scroll Bollywood provides a strong element of cultural inspiration because it provided a world Sweety and Pappu could escape into while living abroad, where they were in a constant flux about their racial and social identities, living with their conservative families, in societies that treated Indians like second class citizens. Their memories of, and associations with, Indian cinema and dialogues are similar to the way people engage with art or poetry—a layered language of its own, filled with nuance only true connoisseurs can uncover. The nostalgia and specificity of growing up in the 1990s comes up often on the podcast too. In one episode, Pappu vividly describes sitting before her television set as a child, to watch a special programme celebrating the new millennium, with Aamir Khan’s somewhat hysterical performance of the song Dekho 2000 Zamana Aa Gaya. But as fondly as the duo remembers old movies, they are quick to judge how sexism and misogyny were a huge part of storylines, particularly in films from the 1980s and 1990s. Representations normalised sexual harassment, patriarchal gender norms were constantly reinforced and unrealistically idealistic ideas of love and marriage glorified. Scroll One of the most fun segments on Chuski Pop blends Bollywood critique with sound bytes taken from old Hindi movies, which mark the intro and the outro of the podcast. Taken out of the bizarre internal logic of the film, the sound bytes are revealed for their cheesiness, or jarring ridiculousness. These intros are meant to be humorous and bizarre, while the outros capture a pro- or anti-feminist montage. Scroll The greatest draw of Chuski Pop, however, is its honest celebration of female friendship. From school, where they compete for grades, to adolescence, when they compete for attention, young women are constantly taught to hate each other. Desi girls in particular, like Priyanka Chopra and Deepika Padukone, are constantly pitted against the other—as if there can only be one successful brown girl in the world at a time. Sweety and Pappu find this uncool. “Don’t desi girls have insecurity ingrained in us from childhood from our parents?” Sweety asks, in one episode. Although they were raised in different cultures and temperamentally are poles apart, Sweety and Pappu personify how empowering and stimulating a healthy female friendship can be. On the show, they often talk about their personal struggles with love, employment, the anxieties that come with “adulting” or internet-speak for growing up. Each woman is a cheerleader for the other, and a solid shoulder to cry on. Who needs Jai and Veeru anymore? This article first appeared on Scroll.in. We welcome your comments at [email protected] -- Mass bleaching has killed more than a third of the coral in the northern and central parts of Australia's Great Barrier Reef, though corals to the south have escaped with little damage, scientists said on Monday. Researchers who conducted months of aerial and underwater surveys of the 2,300-kilometer (1,400-mile) reef off Australia's east coast found that around 35 percent of the coral in the northern and central sections of the reef are dead or dying, said Terry Hughes, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University in Queensland state. And some parts of the reef had lost more than half of the coral to bleaching. The extent of the damage, which has occurred in just the past couple of months, has serious implications, Hughes said. Though bleached corals that haven't died can recover if the water temperature drops, older corals take longer to bounce back and likely won't have a chance to
false pretense that this is a legitimate British company with a London address. Our Arab clients like dealing with British markets. One of our clients tracked down the number that called him and learned it used to be hired to a virtual office and that the call had been redirected to Israel. He realized he had actually been speaking to someone in a back office in Israel.” Not good for Israel What happens if not just a handful of Arab clients, but thousands, tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, realize they were defrauded by people calling from Israel? “It’s certainly not good for Israel,” said Gadi Wolfsfeld, a professor of political communication and hasbara (public diplomacy) at IDC-Herzliya. However, he added, from a diplomatic point of view, most Jews and Arabs think whatever they think about the (Israeli-Arab) conflict and a single event will not change those views over the long term. While some companies may have believed they were safe from detection because they used fake names and addresses and secure VoIP phone lines, the London law firm has followed the trail of fraud back to Israel and discovered the real names and personal information of alleged executives Nevertheless, Wolfsfeld was optimistic, perhaps naively given the past decade’s inaction, about the government’s motivation to crack down. “If it’s against the law, the Israeli authorities will shut them down. If there are Israeli companies that are breaking the law, I don’t think any government would have any problem going after them.” Another source familiar with international law raised another potentially troubling possibility for those currently involved with fraudulent companies. “In theory, if a country is able to trace multiple cases of fraud to a specific individual in Israel, they could demand their extradition,” he said. For his part, Giambrone said that the fact that so much alleged fraud is being traced to Israeli individuals is “putting a bad light on Israeli industry worldwide.” “Israel used to be known as the startup nation,” he said. “Now its reputation is being tainted by the fact that there are a number of crooks using Israeli IT ability to create very pretty fake websites, using SEO (search engine optimization) and Google to target victims into thinking they are doing legitimate trading.” Giambrone said that aside from salaries, he believes much of the ill-gotten gain of fraudulent forex and binary options companies never enters Israel but is siphoned to offshore companies. “Just for example, we successfully represented a Ukrainian investor who recently got her money back, and the payment was credited to her credit card from a company that was based in Dominica.” In his letter to the Justice Ministry, Giambrone also wrote that the risk of international money laundering operations relating to the fraudulently obtained money is very high, “as most of these companies are associated with offshore holding companies in the Caribbean or the Seychelles, notoriously known as tax havens.” He added, “the recent Panama Papers scandal shows how these offshore entities are more and more frequently used for tax avoidance purposes, so the Israeli tax authorities may also have an interest in finding out how these local operations are run locally if the investors’ funds are channeled overseas.” Giambrone said British courts have the ability to open bank accounts and freeze assets even in tax shelters that are former colonies like the British Virgin Islands. “If we can get the court to do that, it will be a great success, like the Panama Papers II. We will find out exactly where all the money has gone.” Read: The wolves of Tel Aviv: Israel’s vast, amoral binary options scam exposed Read: Times of Israel Editorial. Binary options: An Israeli scam that has to be stopped Read: Why hasn’t Israel shut down binary options scam? A former MK describes how she tried Read: Ex-binary options salesman: Here’s how we fleece the clientsThe huge pile of money Gene Allen Sehrt refused to claim has outlasted him. Sehrt died Sept. 5 after collapsing outside his west side Milwaukee home. He was 77. He is survived by $766,681 held as unclaimed property by the Milwaukee County clerk of circuit court. His name was on it, and all he ever needed to do was come and get it. He never did. For Sehrt, it was always more about the principle of the matter than the principal and interest. Until his last breath, he complained that judges, lawyers and others in the justice system cheated him out of far more money, perhaps millions, by placing his commercial property in receivership way back in 1975 because his family could not find him for three years. "He disputed the amount of money that was left to him. It was his position that if he were to have claimed the money, that he could have been disturbing his right to rectify the wrong that was done to him," said New Berlin attorney James Gatzke, who had done some work for Sehrt the past 15 years and had come to admire him. "The question is was the transfer of those assets done properly? That's been his dispute all along," he said. Gatzke walked into Clerk of Courts John Barrett's office last month and informed him that Sehrt had died and that Sehrt's will would be filed in probate court soon. Gatzke told me the money will finally be claimed, but he would not say who is named as the beneficiary in the will. Sehrt was very well known to Barrett and his staff. Over the years, he had stopped in or called many times, sometimes in disguise or giving a false name, sometimes to request copies of documents, sometimes to complain, and lately to warn an accountant in the office about supposed government plots. In all those trips, he never asked for the money, which far exceeded any other pot of unclaimed cash held by the office. "He really was sure our government was going to kill us all," the accountant, Aimee Funck, said. "He was telling me, 'Do you notice on the freeway that they have those little gates that go down? That's to prevent us from leaving when they're going to kill us.'" As far-fetched as that and his other conspiracy theories sound, Funck found Sehrt to be lucid and interesting. He would call from a phone with a limited number of pre-purchased minutes, which struck Funck as a sign that Sehrt would have greatly benefited from claiming what was his. "I told him so many times to give up and take the money," she said. It was Sehrt's late mother, Lois, who petitioned the court to place her son's property at 22nd and North Ave. in receivership. For the next few decades, court-appointed receiver Aaron Feldman, who had years of experience in real estate, handled the rentals of the property and in 1997 its sale. Feldman invested the money wisely and it grew and grew until, with the court's blessing, he handed it off to Barrett's office in 2003 for safekeeping. By then it was $613,000 and has since grown another $153,000 in a conservative account at Tri City National Bank. At the moment, it's earning just 0.3% interest in a certificate of deposit. In court records, Sehrt is faulted for doing little or nothing to prove to the court that he wasn't really absent and should have the property transferred back to him. He refused to come to court or reveal his whereabouts, continuing the shadowy behavior from years earlier when he protested against freeway expansion in Milwaukee under an assumed name, Jay Franklin. Sehrt was a shabby dresser. Barrett said he would see him riding the bus and assumed he was "living aimlessly about." Sehrt was evicted from an apartment near 27th and Fond du Lac Ave. last year. Most recently he was renting an upper duplex on N. 40th St. in the Pigsville neighborhood south of the Miller Valley. Because he was estranged from his family, Sehrt's death notification was made to Diane Lorbiecki, 52, described in the medical examiner's report as his good friend and caretaker. There's speculation she is named in the will. Reached by phone last week, she refused to answer my questions. The report says he has no family, though a Journal Sentinel article about him in 2005 mentioned sisters and a daughter, Lisa, who lived out of state and would be about 53 now. In 2013, Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. was granted a restraining order against Sehrt and Lorbiecki after they showed up at his house and sent letters there regarding death threats allegedly posed by power companies, the Federal Reserve and Internet providers. Gatzke said Sehrt had a stroke eight months ago, which affected his speech and ability to walk. The medical examiner lists the cause of death as heart disease. He was cremated. By his own wish, there was no funeral or newspaper death notice. Sehrt was a smart guy and a good man who stood up for what he believed, Gatzke said. His trust was hard to gain, and he was probably more stubborn than he needed to be. "He was almost too smart. He had an incredible understanding of what was going on that he couldn't necessarily explain in two sentences or a 15-second sound bite. Most people were not going to take the time or invest the energy to find out what it was he was talking about," Gatzke said. Even three quarters of a million dollars was not enough to make Sehrt cave. You wonder if he heard the money calling out to him. He never stopped amassing records and assembling a case against those he believed had done him wrong. He was always building up to filing suit against the whole lot of them. "But he never did," Funck said. "He never even got close." Call Jim Stingl at (414) 224-2017 or email at [email protected](JTA) — Dozens of young men protesting Israel’s actions in Gaza briefly besieged a Paris synagogue and clashed with security. At least three Jews were taken to the hospital as a result of the clashes that erupted Sunday between the protesters and young Jewish men who guarded the Don Isaac Abravanel Synagogue in Paris, a witness told JTA. “The attackers splintered off an anti-Israel demonstration and advanced toward the synagogue when it was full,” Alain Azria, a French Jewish journalist who covered the event told JTA. Azria said that when the demonstrators arrived at the central Paris synagogue, the five police officers on guard blocked the entrance as the protesters chanted anti-Semitic slogans and hurled objects at the synagogue and the guards. He said nearly 200 congregants were inside. “They were determined to enter and the police did not have enough forces,” he said. Azria said the mob was kept away by men from the SPCJ Jewish security unit, the Jewish Defense League and Beitar, who engaged the attackers in what turned into a street brawl. “Thank God they were there because the protesters had murder on their minds and it took awhile before police reinforcements arrived,” he added. The synagogue attack followed several anti-Semitic incidents that coincided with Israel’s offensive in Gaza, which began on July 8. In one attack in Belleville north of the French capital, a firebomb was hurled at a synagogue, causing minor damage. In another attack, a man pepper-sprayed the face of a 17-year-old girl.L ucia O’Barr is currently a senior at Smith College in Northampton, Mass., where she has been studying music and medical anthropology. She spent her junior year abroad, first in South Africa studying post‐apartheid political identities and how people express this through music. Then she spent time in Denmark, where she attended Quaker meeting. At Smith, she has studied prison reform and helped create a Quaker worship group on the college’s campus. How did you come to Quakerism? Initially I came to Quakerism through my father. He has been very involved throughout his life. Until I was four years old, though, we were going to a Presbyterian church because there was no meeting around us. Then he and a few of his friends who were also interested in practicing, started Philipstown Worship Group in Garrison, N.Y., together. His starting the worship group in my hometown was when Quakerism became a more consistent presence in my life. That’s when I started getting involved in the various Quaker communities. We went to to New York Yearly Meeting (NYYM) every single summer, and I started going to Powell House Retreat Center’s youth programs. More recently, where is Quakerism in your life? I think it is a coming‐back. I had a very consistent relationship with it most of my life. As a younger Quaker, I was very involved with my Quaker friends, and then in seventh grade, I transferred to Oakwood Friends School in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. I think that was one of the most pivotal points Quakerism has had in my life: my time at Oakwood. There was a point where we stopped going to yearly meeting, around the middle of high school for me, and that was isolating. Quakerism for me up until then was the community and wasn’t necessarily the action of practicing Quakerism, which is what it has become in my reintroduction to it. Since finding my way back to it, it has become a more conscious choice. When I was a child it was much more easy to be a passive participant. I didn’t build my own relationship to the history of Quakerism, the implications of Quakerism, and the action of Quakerism until I came back to it. When did you start to come back to Quakerism? I took a gap year before going to Smith. During that year, because I was traveling across the country, meeting wasn’t a part of my life. That set the tone for the distance that I felt with Quakerism. Then when I came to Smith, I tried going to the local meeting here, but I didn’t feel as comfortable. At that time I craved the camaraderie I felt with the younger Friends, and I just didn’t have that. So I stopped practicing for much of my freshman and sophomore years. During that time I was a personal care assistant for a woman at an elder care center. My job was being with her for a few hours every day, reading to her, playing music. The second semester of my sophomore year, she died. I spent a lot of time with her at the hospital. The sense of watching life leave someone and thinking about where it is going brought me back to my spiritual life. She was also deeply religious. She was a really radical Catholic nun who had done radical work. I learned a lot about her life and a lot about her spiritual practice through her family, through the books that were around us. My relationship with her brought me back to Quakerism. It provided the means for me to want to find that spiritual community again. How did your recent year abroad influence your view of Quakerism? A goal for my time abroad became for me to participate in any way I could in this global Quaker community. For that year abroad, I was in South Africa for seven months, and then I was in Copenhagen for five months. When I first arrived in South Africa, I lived in Durban. Durban is so noisy, and the township that I lived in was bustling all the time. We got to Sandanezwe, and we were staying with this family. Sandanezwe is this village tucked into a mountain with this gaping open landscape. We were stunned because it was completely quiet. It was just that striking juxtaposition of having our senses constantly stimulated by our environment, to having that immense space of quiet. It resonated so deeply for me with worshiping. While I was there, I embarked on this research project called “Sound, Silence, and Movement Beating in the Foothills of South Africa.” Essentially, I lived in that village for a month and a half and studied the community’s health, what sustains the health of a community. I did all of that through looking at a community’s musical practices. I tried to understand health as a giving and receiving relationship that is beyond the medical or the psychological. A lot of my research was attending any community event that had music, and I spent a lot of time going to church. At every single church in the village, the services were almost entirely sung. It completely transformed the way that I experienced worship. The songs moved me so much. Then I read and listened to the composer John Cage. He says that there is no such thing as silence, because silence is composed of infinite sounds. I took that understanding of listening and that really transformed the way that I worship. Worshiping became so much about learning to listen, and so much about this musicality of being quiet. I don’t think I’ve ever heard myself so clearly since I began to understand that. When I got to Copenhagen after South Africa, I found the Copenhagen Quaker meeting and started attending meeting there. The main push for that was everything that had happened in South Africa made me really crave that consistent presence of Quakerism. What is the Quaker community at Smith like? So, over the summer, after my year abroad, I emailed the dean of religious life and basically said, “Hi, I want to start a Quaker meeting at Smith, what do I do?” She told me that it was really easy, and gave me a list of all the students that identify as Quaker on campus. I had some meetings with the religious life staff at Smith right when I got back, who are great at organizing. In a lot of ways, starting it was maybe selfish, but it felt like this campus needed a worship group. It really needed the option of people sitting together in quiet. I just started sending out mass emails. I imagined that we would have four Quakers on the entire campus, but it was actually 20‐some students that had either gone to Quaker school, had grown up Quaker, or were somehow involved. We held our first meeting, and I think there were six or seven of us. It was so incredible. There were a lot of us who had been a part of Powell House or NYYM, so we were making all of these connections. We talked about knowing that it was something that would greatly benefit us, especially in an environment like Smith that is so high stress. Everyone was so relieved to have a space where worshiping was possible, and to have a Quaker community which had not existed in recent years. People’s schedules here are so complicated, so it’s almost impossible to find a time that works for people to come on a regular basis. But we have about five of us who are very consistent and more people that are hoping to come in the future. What is your experience of meeting for worship? The silence gives me space. It has made me a good listener, both in the internal sense and the external sense: quieting everything and then seeing what comes up from that place. What I love about my time in meeting for worship is that it gives me space to do the individual processing that I need to do. It gives me the space to do that, but also provides me with a sense of community, safety, and support at the same time. I think that is very unique. I see a great struggle is between individualism and interconnectivity. Whenever I’m in meeting for worship, I feel a really stunning balance between those two: between furthering my individual understanding of myself and feeling deeply connected, and furthering my understanding of interconnectedness. What would you like to see for the future of Quakerism? This is an interesting question. I do wonder what a more diverse Quakerism would look like. Quakers do really great work implementing Quaker values, but Quakerism is a comfortable place for predominantly white people to worship together and pursue action. It doesn’t lean enough into discomfort. In one way, it envisions really radical work—a lot of anti‐racist work, a lot of anti‐classist work—and that is the direct action, the politic that Quakerism pursues. But I would like to see Quakerism challenge itself more, because it’s a really beautiful way of life.I'm going to go straight ahead and repeat what everyone else is saying... the music is absolutely amazing (I'm listening to the upgrade menu music as I write this review!), it also looks good, I particularly like the animation for the crash at the end of each run. Sadly, this game suffers when it comes to gameplay and instructions... instruction issues: there is only one BTW, but its a biggy, and it's about the boosting. You explained us to "click to boost", but you didn't explain that the bear would boost towards the cursor, I realised that the bear boosted towards the cursor near the end of the game, and to be honest I was a bit annoyed, probably because as soon as I found that out, every run I had didn't fall short of the goal and I often found myself over 1000ft in the air. Gameplay issues: 1) I found it strange that in a tossing game, you weren't given the opportunity to choose the angle of the toss (this is a good thing too, as it makes the game's progress move along faster), this doesn't seem like an issue but it gives the player less control over the game, all you have to do is click in the right place at the right time. 2) The upgrades (other than boost) and the power-ups didn't seem to affect much, they were quite underpowered. 3) The rockets, ah, the rockets, as awesome as they look, there are just too many of them (assuming you know the bear boosts towards the cursor, in which case there seems to be a lack of rockets...); you will more often than not have a rocket appear from either above, below, or hit you in the backside pretty much every few seconds, they only become rarer when you pass the goal, and it's a bit too late then... Overall I liked the game, there are just a few adjustments that need to be made and you've got yourself a good ol' tossing game. TL;DR + The music is like ear sex... (but it is!) + The art style is unique + The animations were nice 'n' smooth - Instructions aren't fully explained - Upgrades/power-ups seem powerless - The game is a bit too easy (when you know what you are doing...) Again, this game is good, and that music is absolutely sweet, I look forward to seeing more from you. so... Review: 3.5 stars Rating: 4 picosAmid the debate this week over the FCC's proposed end of existing rules on net neutrality, stories have gone viral warning people that we'll all be in for internet services bundled like cable channels. Verify is a 9NEWS project to make sure what you’ve heard is true, accurate, justified. Want us to verify something for you? Email [email protected] Articles on Quartz and Business Insider claim that you can already see an example of this in Portugal, where net neutrality is already dead. They show an example of a cell phone provider in Portugal seeming to charge people an additional fee to use bundles of online apps, warning that the end of net neutrality will bring something similar to the US. There's one very basic problem with that claim: Portugal does have net neutrality. Portugal is a member of the European Union, where net neutrality is enforced in all member countries by BEREC, the EU's equivalent of the FCC. While there is debate over the details of the EU's net neutrality law, they do have one. BEREC points out that it's illegal for internet providers to to selectively block or slow down content because EU law gives internet users the right to be "free to access and distribute information and content, run applications and use services of their choice." Sign up for the 9NEWSLETTER Thank You Something went wrong. This email will be delivered to your inbox once a day in the morning. Thank You for signing up for the 9NEWSLETTER Please try again later. Submit WHERE CLAIMS OF BUNDLING WEB SERVICES COME FROM The claim about Portugal and bundling comes from a list of options on the phone plans page from MEO, one of Portugal's leading mobile providers. After selecting a plan, users are given the option pay €5 more (about $6) per month to add 10GB of extra data to use on specific categories of apps. There's a social package which includes apps like Facebook, Snapchat, and Twitter. A messaging package offers more data for Skype, iMessage, and WhatsApp. A video package offers more data for YouTube, Netflix, and Periscope. This caught the attention of Silicon Valley area congressman Ro Khanna (D-California) who tweeted a screen grab of these add-ons, claiming "In Portugal, with no net neutrality, internet providers are starting to split the net into packages." In Portugal, with no net neutrality, internet providers are starting to split the net into packages. pic.twitter.com/TlLYGezmv6 — Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) October 27, 2017 In Portugal, with no net neutrality, internet providers are starting to split the net into packages. pic.twitter.com/TlLYGezmv6 — Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) October 27, 2017 That tweet seems to have generated the viral stories we pointed out above. The Quartz piece even took the liberty of making its main image a mock-up of what the end of net neutrality might look like in the US for home internet instead of showing the example from Portugal. WHAT WE FOUND In addition to making the false assertion that Portugal has no net neutrality, Congressman Khanna is pointing to an example that has nothing to do with net neutrality. On the same plans page from Portuguese mobile company MEO, you'll see that the company offers customers several options for internet access ranging from 1GB per month to 30.5GB per month. These base plans do not discriminate between different web services. Users are free to burn through all that data allowance however they want. The add-ons offer customers who use specific kinds of apps the option to add on more data for less money than upgrading to a bigger data plan. For instance, a customer could pay the normal base rate of €70 per month to get the 30.5GB plan. Or if they only need extra data for Snapchat, they can select the 1GB plan for €26 per month and add on the social data package for €5. That option allows the user to use more data on Snapchat (while still keeping the base 1GB to use any way they want) and pay only €31 per month instead of paying €70 for the bigger data package. It's not about unlocking certain apps to be used, it's about offering customers different amounts of extra data at different price points. And here's another news flash: we already have stuff just like this in the United States. For example, if you take a flight on Southwest Airlines you can purchase internet for $8. But if all you want to do is use messaging apps, you can purchase a data connection to use them for $2, a 75 percent discount. Similarly, T-Mobile has a partnership with Netflix that allows the mobile provider to sell plans that enable users to watch as many shows as they want on Netflix without depleting their data allowances. BOTTOM LINE The claim from Rep. Khanna, repeated in the aforementioned stories with headlines like "If you want to see what America would be like if it ditched net neutrality, just look at Portugal" and "Without net neutrality in Portugal, mobile internet is bundled like a cable package" is false. Not only does Portugal actually have net neutrality, the example is apples-and-oranges. Splitting the "net into packages" or selling it "bundled like cable" means that you'd be blacked out from using certain services unless you pay extra. If the FCC goes through with its plan to end the US net neutrality rule, it might be possible for companies to try to do something like that-- depending on what (if any) replacement rules the FCC puts into place. But it's not happening in Portugal. What's happening there is the same kind of thing that's already happening here, regardless of the rules on neutrality. Copyright 2017 KUSAThis is no big surprise: President Obama is increasingly doubtful that there’s a compelling reason to release a photograph of Osama bin Laden’s corpse, ABC News has learned. There don’t seem to be many skeptics of bin Laden’s death in the Muslim world, with bin Laden’s wife having survived the attack to identify bin Laden’s death both to the Navy SEALs and Pakistani authorities. Meanwhile, sources say, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are advising the president about concerns at the Pentagon and State Department that releasing a photograph could prompt a backlash against the US for killing bin Laden where one does not seem to currently exist. via Gates, Clinton Advising President to Not Release OBL Photograph; Obama Increasingly Concerned No Good Would Come from It – Political Punch. It might just be because the Government is lying to the American people! Then there is this: Senior Pakistani security officials said Osama bin Laden’s daughter had confirmed her father was captured alive and shot dead by the US Special Forces during the first few minutes of the operation carried out at the huge compound in Bilal Town, Abbottabad. Besides recovering four bullet-riddled bodies from the compound, Pakistani security agencies also arrested two women and six children, aged between 2 and 12 years, after American forces flew toward Afghanistan. Some reports suggest 16 people, including women and children, were arrested from the house, most of them Arab nationals. A Pakistani security source told Al Arabiya that Bin Laden family members had been transported to Rawalpindi, which is near Islamabad. He added, “They are now under treatment in the military hospital of Rawalpindi, where they have been transported in an helicopter.” A source told Al Arabiya that Bin Laden’s had been injured either in her leg or her shoulder. – alarabiya.net I’d go read the rest of that; but I will give you a word of warning —- that is an Arab propaganda paper and it is reporting some pretty outlandish stuff about the killing of Osama Bin Laden. Again, As I have written on here, since the news of Bin Laden’s supposed death; until the United States Government releases the ACTUAL photo of Osama Bin Laden’s dead corpse — I will not believe that this man is actually dead. I believe this to be a political ruse for the Government to justify ending the war on terror and to give Obama something to brag about so that he can be relected in 2012. The United States Government has a track record of lying to the American people and I simply will not accept the story given to the State-Run Media in this Country. Unlike the Socialist left in this Country, my mistrust of this Government is not partisan based, I did not trust this Government when George W. Bush was President; and I cannot and will not trust this Government, with President Barack Obama as President. This Government is not beyond lying for the sake of Empire and Politics and I will not accept the lies that the media chooses to feed the serfs. Others: New York Magazine, Wall Street Journal, George’s Bottom Line, Weasel Zippers, Big Peace, Riehl World View, JammieWearingFool, Althouse, Pundit Press, Los Angeles Times, Weasel Zippers, Libertarian Republican, Guardian, Runnin’ Scared, The Gateway Pundit, msnbc.com, Don Surber and The Huffington PostThe study is the first to investigate the increase in middle-aged women drinking at problem levels. More than 500,000 middle-aged Australian women are engaging in high-risk drinking and there is insufficient help available, researchers have warned. Dubbed the "sandwich generation", researchers described a cohort of women aged 35 to 59 drowning under the pressures of teenage children, ageing parents, work responsibilities and demanding partners. They were identified in a University of Western Sydney study which was the first to investigate the increase in middle-aged women drinking at problem levels. Lead researcher Dr Janice Withnall said among those sandwich generation women there were those who had limited coping abilities or nowhere else to turn and took solace in alcohol. For 16 per cent of these women, the drinking was high-risk leading to dependence. This equated to 624,000 women aged between 35 and 59 struggling with risky drinking or alcohol problems. Do you know more about this story? Email [email protected]. Dr Withnall said when women in this generation acknowledged they had a problem, they were often condescended to or ignored. She called for the next national alcohol strategy to include more acknowledgment of the challenges of this demographic and support. Her study showed such women could be helped if their anxiety-based triggers were identified early and they were given a multi-faceted treatment program. Breast cancer and drinking Dr Withnall started the Women In Recovery study after witnessing women trying to cope through drinking after friends and relatives had been diagnosed with breast cancer. "We had not realised that 35 to 59-year-old women were high-risk drinking in Australia," she said. "What we saw as anxiety or depression or mental collapse or physical collapse was actually due to consumption of alcohol and it was quite a shock." The worst affected women often had limited coping abilities and past trauma. "They explained how they just didn't have one trauma in life, they had multiple traumas but they kept getting up," Dr Withnall said. "But it just kept getting harder and harder to stay in everyday life with the amount of stress they were under without using alcohol." The seven-year study specifically looked at how women could overcome problem drinking. Dr Withnall spoke with 970 women and found it was a chronic illness that was not helped by short-term hospital stays or detox programs. The main success stories came through abstinence and peer support programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous. People drinking over two drinks [a day] are robbing themselves, they're robbing themselves of their life. They could be doing a lot more than sitting in the kitchen drinking and crying. Dr Janice Withnall She developed a three-point plan that health practitioners could use to help patients recover based on what worked. It included identifying anxiety-based triggers early, peer support programs, finding new ways to relax and new routines. "You need counsellors, you need psychologists, you need social welfare people because alcoholism touches every part of your life," Dr Withnall said. She said it was important to help women because excess drinking put them at risk of alcohol-related disorders as well as other conditions like breast cancer and dementia. "They just think they're getting old - 'I've got so many things in my head' - when it's actually the opposite, there's less and less cognitive function actually happening," she said. "People drinking over two drinks [a day] are robbing themselves, they're robbing themselves of their life. "They could be doing a lot more than sitting in the kitchen drinking and crying." Mother of three reached turning point Glenda Clementson was drinking almost a bottle of vodka a day at the height of her alcoholism. The mother of three even raided her children's pocket money to buy drinks. After three drink-driving charges, two apprehended violence orders and numerous court appearances, she reached a turning point. "I had a moment of deja vu in the police cell," she said. "I had been here before doing the exact same thing, yelling and carrying on. I was just so hopeless. I had no choice." Now sober for more than a decade, she dedicated her life to helping others and works as a counsellor. "I had so much blame, fear, panic despair, shame. The shame was horrendous," she said. "When I had a feeling I just had to have a drink. I didn't know what to do with those feelings." A key part of her recovery was identifying when she was hungry, angry, lonely or tired (HALT) and managing those feelings. Her long-term abstinence was studied as part of the University of Western Sydney research. "I can be there for my kids now," she said. "There's help out there. You just have to ask for it."The New York Times couldn’t be any more clear on where it stands with regard to the deteriorating relationship between New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and the NYPD. They don’t appear to take issue with a single thing de Blasio has said or done during the controversy. The NYPD, on the other hand, can’t seem to do anything right, according to the Times. The New York Post on Tuesday reported, and city officials confirmed, that officers are essentially abandoning enforcement of low-level offenses. According to data The Post cited for the week starting Dec. 22 — two days after two officers were shot and killed on a Brooklyn street — traffic citations had fallen by 94 percent over the same period last year, summonses for offenses like public drinking and urination were down 94 percent, parking violations were down 92 percent, and drug arrests by the Organized Crime Control Bureau were down 84 percent. This may be the first union-driven work slowdown the NYT hasn’t liked. In fact, they go so far as to seem to suggest it has more to do with contract negotiations than the safety of officers and their desire to feel supported by their political overseers. … it is so steep and sudden as to suggest a dangerous, deplorable escalation of the police confrontation with the de Blasio administration. Even considering the heightened tensions surrounding the officers’ deaths and pending labor negotiations — the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association has no contract, and its leader, Patrick Lynch, has been the most strident in attacking Mr. de Blasio, calling him a bloody accomplice to the officers’ murder — this action is repugnant and inexcusable. It amounts to a public act of extortion by the police. They even go over de Blasio’s actions that have helped to contribute to the current unworkable stalemate, concluding nothing could possibly be his fault. Let’s review the actions that Mr. de Blasio’s harshest critics say have driven the police to such extremes. 1. He campaigned on ending the unconstitutional use of “stop-and-frisk” tactics, which victimized hundreds of thousands of innocent young black and Latino men. 2. He called for creating an inspector general for the department and ending racial profiling. 3. After Eric Garner, an unarmed black man, was killed by a swarm of cops on Staten Island, he convened a meeting with the police commissioner, William Bratton, and the Rev. Al Sharpton, giving Mr. Sharpton greater prominence than police defenders thought he should have had because Mr. Sharpton is a firebrand with an unsavory past. 4. He said after the Garner killing that he had told his biracial son, Dante, to “take special care” in encounters with the police. 5. He generally condoned the peaceful protests for police reform — while condemning those who incited or committed violence — and cited a tagline of the movement: “Black lives matter.” The list of grievances adds up to very little, unless you
it is annoying. Painting your frame is easy, though cool colors are locked behind a pay-wall. I love the customization in this game, and these are two really cool factors. Something that may be new is the fact that maxing out a frame gives a new paint color that can be used on other frames (all the basic Accord frames just unlock the Accord color once). I really like the way the Raptor paint looks on my Recluse, for example. There is only one zone at the moment, which can make the game feel small (even though it is a large zone), but there will be more zones soon. They are just focusing testing right now. This is definitely not the case anymore. The game feels pretty large now, with three large leveling zones, several instances that are fairly large as well, and the level 40 OWPvP zone that is also huge! The first zone, Coral Forest, is now just the level 1-24 zone, with the second zone, Sertao, spanning 25-36, and the last zone, Devil’s Tusk, taking 37-40. ARES Missions are quick little random events that everyone can participate in. These, in conjunction with Thumping, are the main ways to earn XP right now. ARES missions were largely replaced with ARES Jobs as the primary XP source. The ARES Jobs are obtained from Job Boards at major hubs, and they are akin to questing in other games, with standard “kill ten Melding-enhanced rats” quests, “escort idiot-soldiers-that-shoot-at-everything-moving” quests, and “deliver this to that lazy guy over there who will shoot at you afterwards” quests. What they lack in originality, they generally make up with fun. Except for the ones where they take away your weapon and abilities. Those suck. There is a substance called Melding, which is like a large energy field that is covering most of the Earth after a time-space continuum calamity. Don’t get in it or it kills you. It can be pushed back with a series of Repulsors to access certain areas that are normally Chosen territory. This was taken and made into a major factor in Devil’s Tusk’s development. Basically, the Melding covered the last zone, and to push it back, everyone had to contribute to the cause by crafting stuff out of a currency that dropped in the zone. The people who helped push it back were memorialized in the plaques that exist at the major hubs. My name is on the last one now, since it took me a bit to get to 40 when I started playing, and I missed the first few. It was an interesting mechanic, one I hope they keep going in future updates. There is a random event where a Melding tornado spawns, and it is an insane sequence of events. I was completely confused when I did it, though that could have been because I had only been playing for about an hour. My group did finish it, though I died, so I got a pretty sweet purple weapon for a different frame that I might try. These are still present, and they are a great source of resources, if you go through the portal at the end. They are also great XP. It is really fun with a tornado spawns on top of a big event that is already going, as the chaos can wipe an unprepared set of players. AdvertisementsThe death of Baroness Thatcher has deprived Britain of a truly formidable political leader. Like her great political idol, Winston Churchill, Lady Thatcher was possessed of spellbinding self-confidence, incredible tenacity and a remarkably consistent political philosophy. She was possessed of a deep conviction that certain things were necessary to enhance the fortunes of the nation and to secure the liberty and prosperity that was the birthright of all. Unlike many of the politicians in our 'celebrity-driven' age, Margaret Thatcher never needed focus groups or opinion polls to dictate her policies or beliefs. She was, to quote Tony Benn, a signpost rather than a weathercock. She sought to lead her countrymen and shape opinion, not follow the prevailing (and often fickle) political mood. And in 1979, she knew what needed to be done to rescue a Britain mired in defeatism, fatalism and negativity. The Britain she inherited had long been on a downward path. Its economy had been battered by the legacy of socialist state planning and crippling taxation, both of which reduced its international competitiveness. Its political class had been in thrall to union power and to the constant threat of paralysing industrial action. The IMF loan under the Callaghan administration had made Britain an international laughing stock. Thatcher sensed that people wanted more freedom, less state interference and a greater share in economic prosperity. Above all, she realised that the west faced the twin threats of Soviet communism and international terrorism and that only decisive and courageous action could properly safeguard our liberty. What she brought about was a truly remarkable revolution in domestic and foreign policy. Mrs. Thatcher's belief in individual freedom and self-reliance led her to end a penal system of taxation. By reducing the highest rate of tax from 83 percent down to 40 percent, and slashing the basic tax rate, she ensured that the state could no longer act as the senior partner in people’s businesses. She also understood what the post-Keynesian generation of politicians did not: that a lower taxed economy could stimulate economic growth and provide extra revenue for the government in the process. The economy was further transformed with the series of privatizations that took place in the 1980s. Suddenly, people had cheaper and more efficient power supplies and businesses could drastically cut costs. Thanks to deregulation, privatisation and much needed reductions in union power, she created the conditions for the booming enterprise economy of the 1980s. People miss the essential point about her philosophy, which was that wealth, instead of being endlessly redistributed, had to be created. But it also reflected her profound belief in individual freedom: that people should be able to keep more of their hard earned money in order to take more control over their lives. This was a philosophy not of greed but of self-reliance and individual responsibility. Self-reliance could not mean anything unless it involved removing the pernicious power of the trade unions. In the 1970s, these unions had repeatedly held previous prime ministers, and the country at large, to ransom. Thanks to the Thatcher revolution, laws were passed which banned secondary pickets and made it illegal to call a strike without a ballot. She saw off the onslaught from Arthur Scargill's NUM and by the end of the decade, dramatically reduced the number of days lost to strikes. Her belief in self-reliance was also powerfully echoed in her decision to allow people to buy their own council homes. This policy allowed over a million people to join the ranks of the property owning classes, transforming council estates at a stroke. But her achievements did not end there. In foreign affairs, she showed a steely resolve on world issues that enhanced British prestige around the globe. She was a fierce opponent of world communism and rightly stood with President Reagan, decrying the evils of the Soviet system. Having survived an IRA assassination attempt, she knew that weakness in the face of terrorism would be suicidal. Thus she remained a determined foe of Colonel Gaddafi and correctly supported the US attack on Libya in 1986. As she told the House of Commons in the aftermath of the raid: "Terrorism has to be defeated; it cannot be tolerated or side-stepped". Her resolve was never more prominently displayed than in 1982 after the Falklands invasion. She might have been forgiven for refusing to send a naval task force to confront Argentina, using the argument that Britain simply lacked the resources for such a confrontation. But she saw off the doubters and helped the Royal Navy win an inspirational victory. It was a genuinely transformative moment in Britain's modern history, a sign that this nation could not and would not be pushed around by its enemies. Despite her initial enthusiasm for the Common Market, she took on the European hierarchy and negotiated an annual rebate for Britain. She saved the country billions of pounds every year as a result. She also defied the Foreign Office by becoming the First British PM to visit Israel and striking up a warm, though not uncritical, relationship with the Jewish state. She recognised that Israel was a democracy in a region beset by autocracy and had entirely legitimate security concerns. Her support for Soviet Jewry throughout the 1980s was certainly inspiring. Baroness Thatcher was indomitable in spirit and unyielding in her most cherished convictions. Despite the failure of some policies, she fundamentally changed the British political landscape and in so many ways transformed her country for the better. Above all, she gave much needed moral leadership to the West during the Cold War, making her a towering symbol of liberty and democracy. For these reasons, the verdict of history is bound to look on her very favourably indeed. Jeremy Havardi is a journalist and the author of two books, Falling to Pieces, and The Greatest BritonGoogle has been going full-tilt on their educational efforts for some time now, from specialized Google apps for class to Chromebooks customized for student use. Despite some criticism and controversy, Google has forged on in creating new services for schools. One such service rolled out in May of 2015, called Expeditions, uses Google's Cardboard platform to give students immersive VR tours of locations they wouldn't otherwise be able to see. With the Expeditions Pioneer Program's introduction in September, schools could ask Google to pay them a visit and receive enough kits to immerse entire classes in the same destination at once, as well as some instruction on how to proctor the tours. Over 100 tours in scenic places like Mars and the Great Wall of China were moved within reach of students worldwide. The Pioneer program is currently in pilot status in the United States, Canada and Swedne. Thus far, the program has been considered a runaway success, with over 500,000 students having participated. Google has announced they are rolling out a dedicated app for Android for the service in order to streamline the experience. Interested educators and administrators can sign up to be authorized to give the new app a spin in beta status. Educators using the app would, from there, use it in class and let Google know how the experience was. Suggestions, bug reports and student input are all welcomed. The beta program is on a limited approval basis, meaning not all schools that apply will receive clearance to download the app or the promise of a visit from a Pioneer Program crew. As the experience is worked on, more and more destinations will be added over time. On that note, Google announced alongside the dedicated Android app that they would be adding two new destinations. A tour of Buckingham Palace, made in collaboration with the UK's Royal Collection Trust, is now available, as well as a tour of Australia's Great Barrier Reef customized by Sir David Attenborough. Of the new destinations, Buckingham Palace is also available for Cardboard users outside of the education sphere through a 360 degree YouTube video.Just in time for his big-screen debut in tomorrow's Wonder Woman, Diana's longtime beau Steve Trevor is getting a one-shot comic book special next week...and DC has provided ComicBook.com with an exclusive preview of the issue. Chris Pine will be taking on the role of Steve Trevor in this year's Wonder Woman solo film, and now the character will be getting a spotlight in the comics as well. The big difference will be that he won't have Wonder Woman to rely on this time. DC has just announced a new one-shot called Wonder Woman: Steve Trevor, where writer Tim Seeley (Nightwing) and artist Christian Duce (Detective Comics) will depict the character on his own against someone much more powerful than him. It will also examine the roots of Steve and Diana's longtime friendship. “Steve and Diana’s longtime friendship, despite their coming from separate worlds, is inspiring. But in this story, we’ll get a chance to see Steve come face to face with a villain from Wonder Woman’s past, who he’ll have to overcome without her help, ” said Seeley when the one-shot was announced. “I’m excited to dive back into the life of Steve Trevor, and give him a new and crazy adventure of his own.” You can view the preview pages in the attached image gallery, and the official solicitation text can be found below. When Wonder Woman saved Steve Trevor from dying on the shores of Themiscyra, his life—and hers—changed forever! In this special issue, learn more about the tumultuous partnership these two have had over the years…and get a hint at where it’s going in the future! Have these two finally admitted they’re meant for each other? Or do the Fates have other ideas?Moazzam Tariq, who was found guilty of sexually assaulting a woman after plying her with alcohol, failed to show up for his sentencing in Toronto on Thursday and is believed to have fled to Vancouver. Moazzam Tariq was caught on video pouring vodka down a woman’s throat, slapping her on the buttocks and grinding against her on a couch at a downtown club in July 2015. Tariq's surety, his father, pulled bail a week ago after he could not reach his son in Vancouver. Judge: Finds he's absconded. @CityNews pic.twitter.com/BYBVD5336w — marianne boucher (@CityCourtsTO) December 1, 2016 The pair then made their way to the Thompson Toronto where hotel security cameras showed Tariq booking a room. The woman told the court she had little memory of what happened that night, saying she only remembered him being on top of her and her saying ‘no’ on a few occasions. Justice Mara Greene ruled that the victim was too inebriated to consent to sex, and found Tariq guilty of sexual assault. But Tariq failed to show up for sentencing on Thursday. Crown has started process to issue a Canada wide warrant for convicted rapist Moazzam Tariq. Woman files victim impact statement. — marianne boucher (@CityCourtsTO) December 1, 2016 Defence lawyer Danielle Robitaille told the judge that repeated efforts to reach her client were unsuccessful. Tariq’s father said his son travelled to Vancouver for business recently, then ceased contact with him. As a result, Tariq’s father removed himself as his surety a week ago. “Mr. Tariq has actively chosen not to come to court to avoid his sentence, he has absconded,” the judge said on Thursday. The hearing continued with the victim impact statement, but the judge set a return sentencing date of December 19 should Tariq return or if he’s arrested and brought back to Toronto. “You made me feel ashamed, you made me feel unsafe, violated in the worst way, like I had done something to deserve this,” the victim said in her statement. “You took so much from me that night…my dignity and my self worth. But you will not break me.” The Crown is seeking a prison sentence of two to four years.(Reuters) - Monster Beverage Corp, defending its Monster Energy drinks from mounting criticism about potential health risks, said on Monday its medical investigators found no evidence that the drinks caused the death of a 14-year-old girl. Two cans of Monster Energy drink are pictured in this photo-illustration shot in Los Angeles October 22,2012. REUTERS/Fred Prouser The family of Maryland teenager Anais Fournier sued the company last year after she died of cardiac arrest that her parents blamed on “caffeine toxicity” after she drank two Monster Energy drinks in a 24-hour period. Monster, the top-selling energy drink, has come under fire from regulators and politicians. On Tuesday, a Chicago committee on health and environmental protection will discuss an official’s proposal to limit the sale of energy drinks. On Monday, Monster’s lawyer and two doctors it hired said in a press conference that their examination of Fournier’s medical records found no evidence that the drinks, or the caffeine in them, contributed to her death, noting that she had been receiving treatment for a heart condition since childhood. “‘Why did she suddenly die’ is the question,” one of the doctors, California emergency room physician Michael Forman, said. “That question can never be answered with any certainty.” Monster said that its team found “no medical, scientific or factual evidence to support the Maryland Medical Examiner’s report of ‘caffeine toxicity’.” Forman said that given Fournier’s health history, she might have suffered cardiac arrest that day, regardless of what she drank. In addition, he noted that no blood test was ever taken to prove caffeine toxicity. Kevin Goldberg, a lawyer for Fournier’s family, told Reuters there were other symptoms of caffeine toxicity, though he declined to elaborate. “We have our experts and they have their experts,” Goldberg said, adding that it was “not appropriate... to litigate the case in the media.” Energy drinks are caffeinated beverages with aggressive-sounding names like Monster, Red Bull, Rockstar, Amp and Full Throttle. They are often associated with active or extreme sports, which makes them popular with young men. In addition to the Fournier lawsuit, the Food and Drug Administration said in October that it received incident reports of five deaths that mentioned Monster’s namesake drink. FDA spokeswoman Shelly Burgess said on Monday that the FDA “continues to look into cases in which energy drinks were suspected as a possible cause of death,” though she notes that the reports do not establish causality between the drinks and death. “If we find additional information that establishes causality, FDA will take appropriate steps to protect the public and remove the harm,” Burgess said. Monster shares closed down 85 cents, or 1.7 percent at $49.81 on the Nasdaq.Better humans, please? The planet is fine. The people are fucked. ~George Carlin Pranav Balasubramanian Blocked Unblock Follow Following Mar 19, 2016 I read a lot. I came across the above quote while scrolling on Goodreads one night. I thought it made sense. It kept playing up somewhere at the back of my brain for long time before I fell asleep. I woke up the next morning and picked up the newspaper. The headlines screamed about how a politician beat up a horse. The animal’s leg was amputated and while writing this, is fighting for it’s life. When I switched on the television I saw a liquor baron who had cheated banks of a hefty sum of money. I turned up my computer and Facebook showed me pictures of swimmers who killed a dolphin while taking selfies. Twitter showed me how a bombing in a neighbouring country had killed innocent children. While driving to work, I saw a few school kids annoying the disabled beggar on the sidewalk. Walking up the stairs in my office building, I heard employees passing judgements on their colleagues. I went down for a break during lunch and watch helplessly as someone threw cigarette butts on the road. That evening, I left for home a little early. Halfway through the drive back, I saw two people trading blows. Road-rage. At night, when out for dinner with my friends at a fancy restaurant, I was appalled at the way a group treated the restaurant staff. Being an introvert, I observe people. I listen. I learn from people, good and bad stuff, what to do and what not to do. Perhaps, sometimes observing too many things is an overkill.The Kremlin clock sits on the Spasskaya tower, center, near St. Basil's cathedral, left, on Red Square in Moscow on July 5, 2017. The Kremlin is "concerned" about the possibility the U.S. might further expand sanctions on Russia, presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. "We don't want to be in a situation where our bilateral relations, which are already in a rather pitiful state, could face even bigger and possibly unbearable risks and dangers," Peskov told conference call Monday. "We have concerns about sanctions, but we don't know what they will be, since it's all still discussions that aren't based on any official information." Since the limits were first imposed in 2014, the Kremlin has sought to play down their impact, rarely admitting worry about new ones. But a new U.S. law that took effect in August calls for the Treasury to compile a list of business tycoons and companies seen as close to the Kremlin as potential targets for more sanctions. The law also calls for a report on the possible impact of imposing restrictions on the purchase of Russian government debt by U.S. investors. The "oligarch list" has raised fears among wealthy Russians, while debt limits could complicate the government's borrowing plans. Last week, as the U.S. added the names of several prominent Russians to its sanctions list, President Vladimir Putin approved a plan to issue special bonds to allow wealthy local investors worried about sanctions to bring money back into the country. "President Putin consistently says that we view these sanctions as illegal and that Russia in principle doesn't plan to discuss lifting them," Peskov said, adding that Russia would retaliate for any new measures the U.S. imposes. His comments came after Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov blamed the deep freeze in relations with the U.S. on "the Russophobic hysteria that has afflicted the Washington political establishment." In an interview with the official RIA Novosti news agency, he said that while Putin and President Donald Trump have spoken several times in recent weeks by phone, there have been no discussions of when the next face-to-face meeting might take place. "I don't think the term 'iron curtain' is applicable to Russian-American relations at present," he said. "More likely, we're talking about another episode of McCarthyism," he added, referring to the 1950s anti-Communist campaigning by then-Sen. Joseph McCarthy.We rarely see such a swift and aggressive reaction to a single video. But the Russian communication outburst to a recent eight-minute movie on YouTube was as immediate as it was foul-mouthed. The trigger was a NATO video about the so-called “Forest Brothers” – irregular units in the three Baltic states who fought against the Soviet occupying forces during and after World War II. NATO has produced a film commemorating these fighters who are “remembered as national heroes” in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. But Russia’s representatives immediately pulled out their favourite Nazi-card. Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin’s tweet said that the video confirms that “when we face NATO we face the heirs to those of Hitler’s collaborators who survived the war”. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova followed the tone on her Facebook page and described the video as “a perversion of history that NATO knowingly spreads in order to undermine the outcome of the Nuremberg trials”. When “media” blindly follow the government line Russian state media immediately understood what was wanted from them and started strengthening, amplifying and even overblowing the narrative. The message that the Forest Brothers were Baltic Nazi collaborators was repeated on all major Russian TV channels: Vesti, Pervyi Kanal, NTV, Rossiya 24 and REN-tv. Russia Today published the same allegation in English. And Dmitry Kiselyov – the Kremlin’s chief propagandist, head of the state international media agency Rossiya Segodnya, and the only journalist on the EU’s sanctions list – went even further, labelling the Baltic partisans as members of the Waffen-SS, responsible for the deaths of “hundreds of thousands of Jews”. “You will not rewrite history” But there was a response. The Lithuanian Foreign Ministry, for example, reminded us of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. And Lithuanian social media users flooded the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Facebook page with commentaries and the hashtag #Kremlinyouwillnotrewriteourhistory. #RU MFA: Partisans in Baltics fought on Nazi side.2 notes: 1)Nazis defeated in 1945,resistance ended in 1953; 2) Soviets fought on Nazi side pic.twitter.com/I5AkttGyaA — LT MFA STRATCOM (@LT_MFA_Stratcom) July 13, 2017 Without entering into historical disputes – readers interested in the Forest Brothers can see the links at the bottom of this article – it is safe to say that this incident bears all the hallmarks of one of the most typical disinformation techniques deployed by pro-Kremlin mouthpieces. Taking the well-known concept of the “4 Ds” of disinformation we can see that the story dismisses the fact that the USSR occupied Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania; distorts the historical image of the Forest Brothers; distracts from the fact that NATO is a defensive alliance, whose increased presence in the Baltic region is a direct consequence of Russian aggression; and dismays by accusing the adversary of being a Nazi. As we have written before, “there are only two possibilities in the unique universe of pro-Kremlin media. Either you live in Russia and support the current Russian regime; or if you do not meet these two requirements, you might find yourself called a Nazi.” Further reading: Encyclopedia about Estonia: Forest Brothers http://www.estonica.org/en/Forest_Brothers/ EUvsDisinfo: Nazi east, Nazi west, Nazi over the cuckoo’s nest: https://euvsdisinfo.eu/nazi-east-nazi-west-nazi-over-the-cuckoos-nest/ Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes against Humanity: http://www.mnemosyne.ee/hc.ee/index_frameset.htm Baltic states in the Encyclopedia Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/place/Baltic-states/Independence-and-the-20th-century#toc37263 Feature image: euvsdisinfoTeachers Union of Ireland calls for Academic Boycott of Israel in unanimous vote; first academic union in Europe to do so At its Annual Congress on Thursday 4th April 2013, the Teachers’ Union of Ireland (TUI) became the first academic union in Europe to endorse the Palestinian call for an academic boycott of Israel. The motion, which refers to Israel as an “apartheid state”, calls for “all members to cease all cultural and academic collaboration with Israel, including the exchange of scientists, students and academic personalities, as well as all cooperation in research programmes” was passed by a unanimous vote during today’s morning session. The motion further calls on the Irish Congress of Trade Unions to “step up its campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against the apartheid state of Israel until it lifts its illegal siege of Gaza and its illegal occupation of the West Bank, and agrees to abide by International law and all UN Resolutions against it”, and on the TUI to conduct an awareness campaign amongst members on the need for BDS. The motion was a composite motion proposed by the TUI Executive Committee and TUI Dublin Colleges Branch. It was presented by Jim Roche, a lecturer in the DIT School of Architecture and member of the TUI Dublin Colleges Union branch, and seconded by Gerry Quinn, Vice President of the TUI. Speaking after the successful passage of the motion, Jim Roche said: “I am very pleased that this motion was passed with such support by TUI members, especially coming the day after Israeli occupation forces shot and killed two Palestinian teenagers in the West Bank yesterday. BDS is a noble non-violent method of resisting Israeli militarism, occupation and apartheid, and there is no question that Israel is implementing apartheid policies against the Palestinians. Indeed, many veterans of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa have said that it’s worse than what was experienced there.” Mr. Roche pointed to the desperate situation of Palestinian education under occupation saying that: “Palestinians are struggling for the right to education under extremely difficult conditions. They are eager for it, as shown by the large numbers of students in third level education inside and outside the occupied Palestinian territories. Education has always been a target of the Israeli occupation, seeing forced closures of universities, disruption under checkpoint, closure and curfew regimes, and arrests, beatings and killing of both students and teachers. Sometimes, such as during the 2008-09 attack on Gaza, educational institutions have been militarily attacked. In fact I have just returned from a solidarity visit to Gaza where I had the opportunity to hear first-hand from Palestinian educators and students about their difficulties. The unanimous passage of this motion that shows that the Palestinian struggle for freedom, of which academic freedom is a key part, resonates with TUI members and sends a strong message of solidarity to their counterparts in Palestine” Mr. Roche concluded: “We proposed this motion as we believe that, as with South Africa, the trade union movement has a vital role to play in helping apply pressure to end Israeli apartheid and occupation. I am proud that the TUI has taken a clear stand, and now support a full academic boycott of Israel in line with the Palestinian call for BDS”. Dr. David Landy, a member of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign and founder member of Academics for Palestine welcomed the motion saying: “This is an historic precedent, being the first such motion in Europe to explicitly call for an academic boycott of Israel. We congratulate the TUI and call on all Irish, British and European academic unions to move similar motions. Undoubtedly apologists for Israeli apartheid will complain that such motions stifle academic freedom, but this is nonsense. The Palestinian call for an academic boycott of Israel is an institutional boycott, not a boycott of individuals. Ironically, those that will jump to complain about this motion will have no words of condemnation for the de facto boycott imposed on Palestinian education by Israel, nor for its continuing attacks on Palestinian education, students and educators”. ENDS Notes The TUI Motion in full reads: 241. Executive Committee/Dublin Colleges(x4) TUI demand that ICTU step up its campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against the apartheid state of Israel until it lifts its illegal siege of Gaza and its illegal occupation of the West Bank, and agrees to abide by International law and all UN Resolutions against it. Congress instructs the Executive Committee to: (a) Conduct an awareness campaign amongst TUI members on the need for BDS (b) Request all members to cease all cultural and academic collaboration with Israel, including the exchange of scientists, students and academic personalities, as well as all cooperation in research programmes. (ENDS) The Palestinian Call for a Cultural and Academic Boycott of Israel can be read here: Jim Roche is a lecturer in DIT School of Architecture and a member of the TUI Dublin Colleges Branch He is also PRO of the Irish Anti-War Movement and a member of both the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Gaza Action Ireland. David Landy is a lecturer in the TCD Department of Sociology, a member of the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign national committee and a founder member of Academics for PalestineThe Amish conjure thoughts of horse-drawn buggies, hand-churned butter and hand-made wooden furniture. Technology certainly doesn't spring to mind. The Amish people are known for their no-thrills approach to life, which includes the rejection of most modern-day conveniences. They use refrigerators, batteries and power generators, but hooking into the electric grid is a no-no because it would connect them to the outside world. But some members of an Amish community in northeastern Indiana hope to get electricity from solar and wind power, The News-Sentinel of Fort Wayne reported last week. Victor Wagler, a 63-year-old Amish man, is seeking permission from Allen County officials to build an 87-foot steel tower he plans to top with a wind turbine. The generator would be capable of producing about 538 kilowatts of electricity per month, according to The News-Sentinel. Along with a solar panel, Wagler plans to power his home and barn. So what makes solar and wind power acceptable? According to an Amish interpretation of the Bible, members of the community should live with limited influences from the outside world. Around 1920, Amish leaders decided the linking of electrical wires into their community would bring temptations from the outside world into their community and destroy church and family life. But Amish leaders stopped short of condemning electricity itself as an evil. The connection to the grid was the problem, they said. The Amish probably aren't the most obvious advocates of distributed renewable energy. But they are boosting business for installer Solar Energy Systems of Nappanee, Ind. The company's owner told The News-Sentinel that the Amish make up 70 percent of his clientele. Meanwhile, the Vatican is getting ready to install solar panels on the roof of the Paul VI building, a receiving hall that seats 12,000 people, according to an article by ZENIT, which covers the Pope and the Vatican. The panels, scheduled to be installed during the next two months, are coming from the German company SolarWorld. The firm gave 2,000 panels to help Pope Benedict XVI celebrate Three Kings Day, which marks the visit of the three wise men to the baby Jesus. The panels are expected to generate about 315.5 megawatts of electricity annually. The Pope has been vocal in his opposition to global warming, and in March included destroying the environment on a list of "new sins" (see Green: The New Religion?). He is not the first religious leader to give solar power his blessing. The Dalai Lama, for one, already has solar power at his private living quarters at the Gaden Jangtse monastery in the southern Indian state of Karnataka, according to the Solar Electric Light Fund, a nonprofit that supports solar power in developing countries.20 SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Whatsapp Pinterest Print Mail Flipboard What’s the Matter with Kansas is the title of a well known political book written by Thomas Frank in 2004, detailing how white working-class Kansans vote against their best interests by choosing to elect Republican politicians. A decade later, in a different context, Republican Governor Sam Brownback might be asking the same question. Voters however seem to have an answer. Governor Brownback is what’s the matter with Kansas. A Public Policy Polling (PPP) survey released February 21st, finds that Brownback’s job approval rating in the state has dipped to 33 percent, while 51 percent disapprove of the Governor’s job performance. Even more shocking, Brownback now trails Democrat Paul Davis by a 42-40 margin in his bid to be re-elected Governor of Kansas. The collapse of Brownback’s popularity can hardly be understated. In 2010, riding the Republican wave of that year, he won the Governor’s race 63-32 over Democrat Tom Holland. In 2012, Mitt Romney carried the state over Barack Obama by a lopsided 60-38 margin. However, after four years of Brownback in charge Kansas appears to be fed up with the Republican Governor. Voters overwhelmingly disapprove of Brownback’s tax plan and his determination to starve the state of necessary funding for education. He is predictably unpopular with Democrats and Independents, but even with Republicans he has fallen out of favor. Nearly one in four Republicans would vote for Democrat Paul Davis, rather then endure another four years of a Brownback administration. Fewer than half of Republicans say they approve of his job performance. Brownback’s dismal poll numbers may serve as a warning to Republican Governors across the country facing re-election. After four years in office, many state executives now have to face the voters again and run on their records. In Kansas, the voters appear unhappy with the Governor’s record, and they appear poised to replace him with a Democrat. With Kansas being one of the reddest states in the country, Brownback’s struggles should worry Republican Governors in more competitive states like Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan. The Republicans are very successful when they run as outsiders bashing the government. However, when they have to run on their own records as government officials, the strategy tends to falter. Brownback’s track record of failure as the Governor of Kansas is now an obstacle to his re-election as voter across the state have decided that Sam Brownback is what’s the matter with Kansas. If you’re ready to read more from the unbossed and unbought Politicus team, sign up for our newsletter here! Email address: Leave this field empty if you're human:US space organisation, NASA, has now released its 2017-2018 software catalogue available for members of the public to freely use, without any copyright fees. Catalogue of open source software The catalogue is available both in print form and online, enabling readers to utilise the tools NASA uses to explore the universe. The extensive pack, which is organised into 15 different categories, includes software for business systems, data processing and systems testing, all free of use. Assorted testing tools Alongside software for technological aircraft and drones, the catalogue includes software testing tools such as a python software tool to assist in mechanical testing; Assert-Based Unit Test Tools; a NASA-developed tool that helps users of Stata statistical software test their own Stata code; Extended Testability Analysis (ETA) Tool V8.0; Payloads and Components Real-Time Automated Test System (PACRATS) and more. First software catalogue compiled by a US federal agency NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate Associate Administrator, Steve Jurczyk said: “The software catalogue is our way of supporting the innovation economy by granting access to tools used by today’s top aerospace professionals to entrepreneurs, small businesses, academia and industry. Access to these software codes has the potential to generate tangible benefits that create American jobs, earn revenue and save lives.” The National Aeronautics and Space administration’s first ever copy of the ‘software handbook’ was back in 2014, marking the first software publically published, which was compiled by a federal government agency. Since 2014, developers have had three copies worth of software catalogues from NASA’s records. NASA’s Technology Transfer Program Executive, Dan Lockney said, “Software has been a critical component of each of NASA’s mission successes and scientific discoveries. In fact, more than 30% of all reported NASA innovations are software. We’re pleased to transfer these tools to other sectors and excited at the prospect of seeing them implemented in new and creative ways.” Edited from sources by Ella DonaldsonPatti LaBelle visited Watch What Happens Live on Tuesday, and during the aftershow, she discussed why her friend singer Luther Vandross never came out. Vandross, who died in 2005, never publicly commented on his sexual orientation. LaBelle explained his decision, saying, “We talked about it. Basically, he did not want his mother to be… although she might have known, but he wasn’t going to come out and say this to the world.” Vandross’s career, with songs like “Power of Love/Love Power,” “Here and Now,” and “Don’t Want to Be a Fool,” was at its peak in the 1980s. LaBelle shared that Vandross struggled with hiding his sexuality, saying, “He had a lot of lady fans, and he told me that he just didn’t want to upset the world. … But it was hard for him.” Watch: Sam Smith’s
experts say, shows that enough jurors believed that Wilson probably acted in self-defense as he faced off with Brown or that Wilson was within his rights as a police officer to use deadly force. “If an officer thinks someone is a deadly threat, they are not allowed to fire warning shots or shoot people in the leg,” said Mark Schamel, a criminal defense lawyer who specializes in representing law enforcement officers in use-of-force cases. “If they have a basis to use deadly force, they are trained to shoot center mass until there is no longer a threat. The grand jurors would have been told that.” 1 of 59 Full Screen Autoplay Close Awaiting the grand jury’s decision Skip Ad × Grand jury announces decision View Photos After weeks of anticipation, grand jury announces decision on whether to indict officer Darren Wilson, whose fatal shooting of Michael Brown caused national uproar. Caption Authorities put out fires across the city in the wake of a decision not to indict Darren Wilson in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown. Nov. 24, 2014 A man stands by a burning St. Louis police car as police in riot gear prepare to clear the streets in Ferguson. Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue. Erwin Chemerinsky, a University of California at Irvine law professor, said it is also the job of a grand jury to keep cases from proceeding to trial in criminal courts if they believe there is no chance for a conviction. The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled in favor of police officers, which could have made it difficult to successfully prosecute Wilson. The court has repeatedly said that use of deadly force is justified if officers think they must act to protect the lives of themselves or others or if they believe it is necessary to stop a crime in progress. “The question for the grand jury is not whether the officer did something wrong,” Chemerinsky said. “The question for the grand jury is a legal one. Could a reasonable jury in this case, after hearing all the evidence, convict the defendant of the crime?” Platte County Prosecuting Attorney Eric Zahnd, past president of the Missouri Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, said a grand jury in Missouri would be asked to look at state law, rather than at U.S. Supreme Court rulings. “At the end of the day, they would be looking at state statutes that apply to citizens and police officers,” Zahnd said. “They would be asked to answer a single question: Was the use of force reasonable given the circumstances? No indictment means they believed use of force was reasonable and that there was not probable cause to believe he committed any crimes because of that.” Civil rights lawyers who specialize in police misconduct cases said the personal biases of jurors also probably played a role. These lawyers said jurors may not have articulated the influence during proceedings or even been conscious of it. The county has not released jurors’ names — it is prevented from doing so by state law — but it has disclosed the gender and racial makeup. The panelists comprised a black man, two black women, six white men and three white women, court officials said. Cynthia Heenan, a lawyer with Detroit-based Constitutional Litigation Associates, said citizens, particularly white citizens, want to believe officers. “Police in America enjoy a special status right now — particularly since 9/11,” Heenan said. “Politicians have decided that the appropriate reaction is to beef up security in every way, from airports to small-town streets. It’s painted this perception that police are the last line between hard-working individuals and criminals. People do not want to believe police can do wrong.” Complicating the case for jurors was that there were dozens of eyewitness accounts — and many of them were conflicting. People familiar with evidence presented to the grand jury have told The Washington Post that some eyewitnesses, describing the initial struggle at the police SUV where the first two shots were fired, thought Wilson was the aggressor, while others thought Brown was. These people said that some eyewitnesses also believed Brown was surrendering at the time Wilson fired the fatal shots, while others said he was not. National experts on eyewitness testimony said it is not surprising that there would be so many conflicting accounts, particularly of a chaotic crime scene. There are problems with cross-contamination — with some people’s memories influenced by what other people say they saw. “Memory doesn’t work like a video system. It records in snippets,” said Gary L. Wells, an expert on eyewitness memory and a professor of psychology at Iowa State University. “People tend to fill in missing information and confuse that with the things they actually saw.” The conflicting accounts probably confused grand jury members, creating doubt — which would work in favor of Wilson, experts said. In the grand jury process, the benefit of the doubt is supposed to given to the defendant, whether the person is a police officer or not, according to Chemerinsky. “The grand jury exists to protect the potential defendant,” he said. “It’s to make sure that before a person is put through the emotional and financial costs of a trial, the prosecutor has shown enough evidence to a group of citizens to warrant this.” In the end, Schamel said, the grand jury’s decision to not indict does not mean the jurors believed Wilson is blameless. “It doesn’t mean he is innocent,” he said. “The grand jury does not explain its findings or comment on the evidence. It just means they did not find probable cause. It doesn’t mean the officer didn’t do anything wrong.”Professor Stephen Hawking speaks about "Why We Should Go into Space" for the NASA Lecture Series, April 21, 2008. Stephen Hawking was regarded as one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists in history. His work on the origins and structure of the universe, from the Big Bang to black holes, revolutionized the field, while his best-selling books have appealed to readers who may not have Hawking's scientific background. Hawking died on March 14, 2018. Stephen Hawking, Famed Physicist Who Defied ALS Odds, Dies at 76 Stephen Hawking Remembered by Neil deGrasse Tyson and More on Twitter Stephen Hawking's Most Intriguing Quotes on the Future of Humanity, Aliens and Women Stephen Hawking's Most Far-Out Ideas About Black Holes In this brief biography, we look at Hawking's education and career — ranging from his discoveries to the popular books he's written — and the disease that robbed him of mobility and speech. A challenging life British cosmologist Stephen William Hawking was born in England on Jan. 8, 1942 — 300 years to the day after the death of the astronomer Galileo Galilei. He attended University College, Oxford, where he studied physics, despite his father's urging to focus on medicine. Hawking went on to Cambridge to research cosmology, the study of the universe as a whole. In early 1963, just shy of his 21st birthday, Hawking was diagnosed with motor neuron disease, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). He was not expected to live more than two years. Completing his doctorate did not appear likely. Yet, Hawking defied the odds, not only attaining his Ph.D. but also forging new roads into the understanding of the universe in the decades since. As the disease spread, Hawking became less mobile and began using a wheelchair. Talking grew more challenging and, in 1985, an emergency tracheotomy caused his total loss of speech. A speech-generating device constructed at Cambridge, combined with a software program, served as his electronic voice, allowing Hawking to select his words by moving the muscles in his cheek. Just before his diagnosis, Hawking met Jane Wilde, and the two were married in 1965. The couple had three children before separating. Hawking remarried in 1995 but divorced in 2006. A brilliant mind Hawking continued at Cambridge after his graduation, serving as a research fellow and later as a professional fellow. In 1974, he was inducted into the Royal Society, a worldwide fellowship of scientists. In 1979, he was appointed Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, the most famous academic chair in the world (the second holder was Sir Isaac Newton, also a member of the Royal Society). Over the course of his career, Hawking studied the basic laws governing the universe. He proposed that, since the universe boasts a beginning — the Big Bang — it likely will have an ending. Working with fellow cosmologist Roger Penrose, he demonstrated that Albert Einstein's Theory of General Relativity suggests that space and time began at the birth of the universe and ends within black holes, which implies that Einstein's theory and quantum theory must be united. Using the two theories together, Hawking also determined that black holes are not totally dark but instead emit radiation. He predicted that, following the Big Bang, black holes as tiny as protons were created, governed by both general relativity and quantum mechanics. [PHOTOS: Black Holes of the Universe] Professor Stephen Hawking experiences the freedom of weightlessness during a zero gravity flight. (Image: © ZERO-G) In 2014, Hawking revised his theory, even writing that " there are no black holes" — at least, in the way that cosmologists traditionally understand them. His theory removed the existence of an "event horizon," the point where nothing can escape. Instead, he proposed that there would be an "apparent horizon" that would alter according to quantum changes within the black hole. But the theory remains controversial. [Portrait of Genius: Stephen Hawking Exhibit Photos] Hawking also proposed that the universe itself has no boundary, much like the Earth. Although the planet is finite, one can travel around it (and through the universe) infinitely, never encountering a wall that would be described as the "end." Hawking's books Hawking was a popular writer. His first book, "A Brief History of Time" (10th anniversary edition: Bantam, 1998) was first published in 1988 and became an international best seller. In it, Hawking aimed to communicate questions about the birth and death of the universe to the layperson. Hawking went on to write other nonfiction books aimed at nonscientists. These include "A Briefer History of Time," "The Universe in a Nutshell," "The Grand Design" and "On the Shoulders of Giants." [Related: 8 Shocking Things We Learned From Stephen Hawking's Book “Grand Design”] He and his daughter, Lucy Hawking, also created a fictional series of books for middle school children on the creation of the universe, including "George and the Big Bang" (Simon & Schuster, 2012). Hawking made several television appearances, including a playing hologram of himself on "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and a cameo on the television show "Big Bang Theory." PBS presented an educational miniseries titled "Stephen Hawking's Universe," which probes the theories of the cosmologist. In 2014, a movie based on Hawking's life was released. Called "The Theory of Everything," the film drew praise from Hawking, who said it made him reflect on his own life. "Although I'm severely disabled, I have been successful in my scientific work," Hawking wrote on Facebook in November 2014. "I travel widely and have been to Antarctica and Easter Island, down in a submarine and up on a zero-gravity flight. One day, I hope to go into space." Stephen Hawking quotes Hawking's quotes range from notable to poetic to controversial. Among them: "Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing? " "All of my life, I have been fascinated by the big questions that face us, and have tried to find scientific answers to them. If, like me, you have looked at the stars, and tried to make sense of what you see, you too have started to wonder what makes the universe exist." "Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in." "The whole history of science has been the gradual realization that events do not happen in an arbitrary manner, but that they reflect a certain underlying order, which may or may not be divinely inspired. " "We should seek the greatest value of our action." "The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." "Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change." "It is not clear that intelligence has any long-term survival value. " "One cannot really argue with a mathematical theorem." "It is a waste of time to be angry about my disability. One has to get on with life and I haven't done badly. People won't have time for you if you are always angry or complaining." "I relish the rare opportunity I've been given to live the life of the mind. But I know I need my body and that it will not last forever." A list of Hawking quotes would be incomplete without mentioning some of his more controversial statements. He frequently said that humans must leave Earth if we wished to survive. "It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million...Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain inward-looking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space." — August 2010 "[W]e must … continue to go into space for the future of humanity…I don't think we will survive another 1,000 years without escaping beyond our fragile planet." — November 2016 "We are running out of space and the only places to go to are other worlds. It is time to explore other solar systems. Spreading out may be the only thing that saves us from ourselves. I am convinced that humans need to leave Earth." — June 2017 He also said time travel should be possible, and that we should explore space for the romance of it. "Time travel used to be thought of as just science fiction, but Einstein's general theory of relativity allows for the possibility that we could warp space-time so much that you could go off in a rocket and return before you set out. I was one of the first to write about the conditions under which this would be possible. I showed it would require matter with negative energy density, which may not be available. Other scientists took courage from my paper and wrote further papers on the subject," he told Parade in 2010. "Science is not only a disciple of reason, but, also, one of romance and passion." The theoretical physicist was also concerned that robots could not only have an impact on the economy but also mean doom for humanity. "The automation of factories has already decimated jobs in traditional manufacturing, and the rise of artificial intelligence is likely to extend this job destruction deep into the middle classes, with only the most caring, creative or supervisory roles remaining," he wrote in a 2016 column in The Guardian. "The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race," he told the BBC in 2014. Hawking added, however, that AI developed to date has been helpful. It's more the self-replication potential that worries him. "It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever-increasing rate. Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete, and would be superseded." "The genie is out of the bottle. I fear that AI may replace humans altogether," Hawking told WIRED in November 2017. An avowed atheist, Hawking also occasionally waded into the topic of religion. "Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going." — The Grand Design, by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow "I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail…There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark." — 2011 interview with The Guardian "Before we understand science, it is natural to believe that God created the universe. But now science offers a more convincing explanation. What I meant by 'we would know the mind of God' is, we would know everything that God would know, if there were a God, which there isn't. I'm an atheist." — 2014 interview in El Mundo Additional reporting by Elizabeth Howell, Space.com Contributor Additional resourcesUPDATE June 1, 6:00pm: We've had some requests to test performance in The Witcher 3 in a number of stress points, including the swamps. We tested Crookback Bog and can confirm that there are still serious issues here, especially on PlayStation 4 - though Xbox One remains affected to a lesser degree. You'll find that video at the end of the article. Original story: CD Projekt Red's latest patch 1.03 is a must if you haven't already downloaded it, with The Witcher 3's frame-rates tweaked for the better on both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One over its day one state. Counting in at 500MB, a 30fps cap is crucially also added to Xbox One with this update, at last evening out its frame-pacing to give smoother results. We've seen miraculous improvements to games like Borderlands: The Handsome Collection thanks to patches late in the day, but is this the one to fix The Witcher 3's rockier stretches of performance? A look at the patch's changelog shows a focus on various bug fixes, plus adjustments to minimise shadow pop-in. However, it's fair to say the core visual setup on console isn't much different. LODs are perceptibly the same as before, still borrowing from PC's medium and high settings for foliage and shadows, while post-process effects are left as-is in quality. Resolutions are unchanged too; PS4 makes the most of a native 1920x1080 frame-buffer, while Xbox One upscales from 1600x900 in most areas. Performance is another matter though. On Xbox One especially, we see the addition of a proper 30fps cap giving us a far more consistent rate of motion in play. Where before it ran unlocked between 30-40fps, causing stutters as frame-rates lurched up and down the graph, patch 1.03 forces all motion to a single rate of refresh. The end result is exactly as you'd expect; battles and fast gallops across The White Orchard benefit hugely by running at a straight 30fps - a smoother ride, only dropping frames as heavy transparencies enter the picture. Xbox One on patch 1.01 compared with the latest update 1.03. Capped 30fps performance makes a huge difference to the flow of play, though dips under the target frame-rate remain. Alternative analysis: The improvement is felt in practice. Though far from perfect, Xbox One's updated performance has most frames arriving at set 33ms intervals while avoiding any sudden spikes above. Single frame drops are an issue in busy areas like Novigrad City, where streaming textures, world geometry and NPCs still cause the console to stutter. However, it's much more refined compared to what we had before - if still let down by serious texture pop-in around this area while on horse-back (a likewise issue on PS4). PS4 performance is improved too, if not to quite the extent we had hoped. Compared to patch 1.01, the latest update lowers the frequency of stutter as we wind through Novigrad's marketplace, with hiccups cut down by a noticeable margin - though they're still an issue (you can see this visualised by the frame-time graph in the video - there are fewer latency spikes above 50ms). An early griffin battle also shows a cutback in frame drops on average, and likewise for chasing through foliage-heavy areas. In other words, it's a step forward in the team's optimisation process for PS4, but it's still hard to ignore its stuttering stretches of play. A new performance comparison between PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, each running on patch 1.03. With a 30fps cap in place, Microsoft's platform has the advantage of delivering a more consistent line, with fewer stutters below this number. In terms of direct platform-to-platform comparisons on patch 1.03, PS4 and Xbox One are both capped to 30fps now, but Microsoft's console does hold a steadier line on balance. In almost every segment of gameplay tested, the performance overhead on Xbox One prior to the patch now translates to a confident 30fps cap - and with far fewer stutters below. It's possible further optimisation on the Sony release could bring it up to speed, but for now Xbox One enjoys a noticeable advantage in terms of overall consistency. It's an advantage also seen in The Witcher 3's in-engine cut-scenes. As before, PS4 automatically locks to the 20fps line at any sign of dropping below 30fps. By comparison Xbox One lurks at the 25fps mid-point, freely updating with frames as and when they become available. The net result is that PS4 typically runs at a slower, more sluggish rate in every scene tested. Where performance goes below 30fps on Xbox One, the read-out is also identical to its results before patch 1.03 - meaning no performance boost is apparently made to these stress-points. The only difference here is that it now hits a 30fps ceiling. On balance, it's an improvement on both sides but Xbox One owners have a bigger reason to celebrate this update. Though it struggles to match the clarity of PS4's native 1920x1080 output, the 30fps cap is better adjusted for Microsoft's platform in practice, with fewer stutters during play giving it a tangible performance advantage. Neither PS4 or Xbox One releases are perfect, and pop-in is still a major issue in built-up areas - plus a jitter (also seen on PC) when changing the speed of camera motion. We hope these are the focus of the next patch, but in the here and now, The Witcher 3 is at least in a better state now than on release.SACRAMENTO (CBS13) – Construction at the site of a historic ice blocks factory is underway in Midtown after a fire destroyed it last year. The historic Crystal Ice and Cold Storage Building was a well-known staple to the R Street corridor. Arson Investigators could never pin point a cause of the fire, but many remain skeptical. “I wouldn’t be surprised if somebody set fire to it because it was just abandon and people were just hanging out there, but I think it’s good to see things happening there instead of walking by and seeing something that’s broken down,” said Chayla Gustin of Sacramento. The revitalization of the industrial corridor included the historic building, but with that out of the way, developers had to reconstruct and change the configuration of the whole block. It’s the area just off of R and 16th streets. “I think for the amount of damage that fire caused, I think they’ve actually moved really quickly on it,” said a woman who lives around the corner. There’s only minimal concrete surrounding the block with rebar, but many already like what they see. “This whole area was kind of a blight on the whole city for the past 50 years, so this is definitely a lot of progress. It’s exciting,” she said. It will now be home to businesses and office space, shops on the ground floor and a 12-foot wide pedestrian plaza. The three-block long design is based on the historic industrial look of the R Street corridor — and will also include housing. “It’s good that they’re revitalizing, especially downtown with the new arena, there’s a lot of new activity coming. So I think it’s good,” said Aaron Gustin of Sacramento. Businesses will each have a unique store front. The developer hopes it will be a lively and varied retail experience.President Trump, who is in Brussels today for meetings with NATO, has released a statement slamming leaks from U.S. intelligence agencies surrounding the suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester. "The alleged leaks coming out of government agencies are deeply troubling. These leaks have been going on for a long time and my Administration will get to the bottom of this. The leaks of sensitive information pose a grave threat to our national security," the President released in a statement Thursday morning. "I am asking the Department of Justice and other relevant agencies to launch a complete review of this matter, and if appropriate, the culprit should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law." "There is no relationship we cherish more than the Special Relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom," he continued. The statement comes after a series of media stories were published Wednesday detailing the bomb used by the terrorist and ties his family has to ISIS and Al Qaeda in Libya. British intelligence services quickly became irritated and alarmed over the leaks of information, arguing their job to find more individuals within a suspected terror cell had been compromised as a result. They have since stopped sharing intelligence about the attack with the U.S. This post has been updated with additional information.In her Opening Statement on Saturday, Judge Jeanine Pirro said Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) must step down from his position as Speaker of the House. Pirro said that after seven years of working on a bill to repeal and replace ObamaCare, the legislation Ryan and his leadership team designed still ultimately failed in a Republican-majority House. She also said President Trump does not deserve the blame for the American Health Care Act's failure. CA Dem: Trump 'Truly an Evil Man' Who Likely Violated His Oath of Office Gohmert: ObamaCare Replacement Bill Was 'Based on a Lie' Trump Recognizes Decorated Vets on 'Medal of Honor Day' "This bill didn't just fail," Pirro said on "Justice." "It failed when the Republicans had the House, the Senate, [and] the White House." She criticized Ryan for presenting a failed bill that required President Trump to expend precious political capital to defend and try to accomplish its passage. "Americans elected the one man they believed could do it," she said. "And, Speaker Ryan, you come in will all your swagger and experience and sell him a bill of goods which ends up a complete and total failure." "You allow our president in his first 100 days to come out of the box like that, based on what? Your legislative experience, your knowledge of the arcane ins-and-outs of the bill-writing process?... Your drinks at the Hay-Adams with your pals?" Pirro asked. Pirro said the onus for the failure was not on the president, as prior to his inauguration he had scant political experience. She also slammed House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, asking rhetorically how he failed to figure out what Republicans needed to do to ensure majority support for the bill. Watch the full opening statement above and click here to find out why House Freedom Caucus member Louie Gohmert believes the failed bill was based on a "lie." Malkin to Ryan: Don't Break Arm Patting Self on Back, 'It's Not Covered By ObamaCare or RINOcare' Hannity on Pulled GOP Health Care Bill: 'This Is Not President Trump's Failure' Spicer: Now Democrats Must Own Collapsing ObamaCareThe JOIDES Resolution looks like a bizarre hybrid of an oil rig and a cargo ship. It is, in fact, a research vessel that ocean scientists use to dig up sediment from the sea floor. In 2003, on a voyage to the southeastern Atlantic, scientists aboard the JOIDES Resolution brought up a particularly striking haul. They had drilled down into sediment that had formed on the sea floor over the course of millions of years. The oldest sediment in the drill was white. It had been formed by the calcium carbonate shells of single-celled organisms — the same kind of material that makes up the White Cliffs of Dover. But when the scientists examined the sediment that had formed 55 million years ago, the color changed in a geological blink of an eye. “In the middle of this white sediment, there’s this big plug of red clay,” says Andy Ridgwell, an earth scientist at the University of Bristol. In other words, the vast clouds of shelled creatures in the deep oceans had virtually disappeared. Many scientists now agree that this change was caused by a drastic drop of the ocean’s pH level. The seawater became so corrosive that it ate away at the shells, along with other species with calcium carbonate in their bodies. It took hundreds of thousands of years for the oceans to recover from this crisis, and for the sea floor to turn from red back to white. The clay that the crew of the JOIDES Resolution dredged up may be an ominous warning of what the future has in store. By spewing carbon dioxide into the air, we are now once again making the oceans more acidic. Storing CO2 in the oceans comes at a steep cost: It changes the chemistry of seawater. Today, Ridgwell and Daniela Schmidt, also of the University of Bristol, are publishing a study in the journal Natural Geoscience, comparing what happened in the oceans 55 million years ago to what the oceans are experiencing today. Their research supports what other researchers have long suspected: The acidification of the ocean today is bigger and faster than anything geologists can find in the fossil record over the past 65 million years. Indeed, its speed and strength — Ridgwell estimate that current ocean acidification is taking place at ten times the rate that preceded the mass extinction 55 million years ago — may spell doom for many marine species, particularly ones that live in the deep ocean. “This is an almost unprecedented geological event,” says Ridgwell. When we humans burn fossil fuels, we pump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, where the gas traps heat. But much of that carbon dioxide does not stay in the air. Instead, it gets sucked into the oceans. If not for the oceans, climate scientists believe that the planet would be much warmer than it is today. Even with the oceans’ massive uptake of CO2, the past decade was still the warmest since modern record-keeping began. But storing carbon dioxide in the oceans may come at a steep cost: It changes the chemistry of seawater. At the ocean’s surface, seawater typically has a pH of about 8 to 8.3 pH units. For comparison, the pH of pure water is 7, and stomach acid is around 2. The pH level of a liquid is determined by how many positively charged hydrogen atoms are floating around in it. The more hydrogen ions, the lower the pH. When carbon dioxide enters the ocean, it lowers the pH by reacting with water. The carbon dioxide we have put into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution has lowered the ocean pH level by.1. That may seem tiny, but it’s not. The pH scale is logarithmic, meaning that there are 10 times more hydrogen ions in a pH 5 liquid than one at pH 6, and 100 times more than pH 7. As a result, a drop of just.1 pH units means that the concentration of hydrogen ions in the ocean has gone up by about 30 percent in the past two centuries. To see how ocean acidification is going to affect life in the ocean, scientists have run laboratory experiments in which they rear organisms at different pH levels. The results have been worrying — particularly for species that build skeletons out of calcium carbonate, such as corals and amoeba-like organisms called foraminifera. The extra hydrogen in low-pH seawater reacts with calcium carbonate, turning it into other compounds that animals can’t use to build their shells. These results are worrisome, not just for the particular species the scientists study, but for the ecosystems in which they live. Some of these vulnerable species are crucial for entire ecosystems in the ocean. Small shell-building organisms are food for invertebrates, such as mollusks and small fish, which in turn are food for larger predators. Coral reefs create an underwater rain forest, cradling a quarter of the ocean’s biodiversity. But on their own, lab experiments lasting for a few days or weeks may not tell scientists how ocean acidification will affect the entire planet. “It’s not obvious what these mean in the real world,” says Ridgwell. One way to get more information is to look at the history of the oceans themselves, which is what Ridgwell and Schmidt have done in their new study. At first glance, that history might suggest we have nothing to worry about. A hundred million years ago, there was over five times more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the ocean was.8 pH units lower. Yet there was plenty of calcium carbonate for foraminifera and other species. It was during this period, in fact, that shell-building marine organisms produced the limestone formations that would eventually become the White Cliffs of Dover. But there’s a crucial difference between the Earth 100 million years ago and today. Back then, carbon dioxide concentrations changed very slowly over millions of years. Those slow changes triggered other slow changes in the Earth’s chemistry. For example, as the planet warmed from more carbon dioxide, the increased rainfall carried more minerals from the mountains into the ocean, where they could alter the chemistry of the sea water. Even at low pH, the ocean contains enough dissolved calcium carbonate for corals and other species to survive. Today, however, we are flooding the atmosphere with carbon dioxide at a rate rarely seen in the history of our planet. The planet’s weathering feedbacks won’t be able to compensate for the sudden drop in pH for hundreds of thousands of years. Scientists have been scouring the fossil record for periods of history that might offer clues to how the planet will respond to the current carbon jolt. They’ve found that 55 million years ago, the Earth went through a similar change. Lee Kump of Penn State and his colleagues have estimated that roughly 6.8 trillion tons of carbon entered the Earth’s atmosphere over about 10,000 years. Nobody can say for sure what unleashed all that carbon, but it appeared to have had a drastic effect on the climate. Temperatures rose between 5 and 9 degrees Celsius (9 to 16 Fahrenheit). Many deep-water species became extinct, possibly as the pH of the deep ocean became too low for them to survive. But this ancient catastrophe (known as the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum, or PETM) was not a perfect prequel to what’s happening on Earth today. The temperature was warmer before the carbon bomb went off, and the pH of the oceans was lower. The arrangement of the continents was also different. The winds blew in different patterns as a result, driving the oceans in different directions. All these factors make a big difference on the effect of ocean acidification. For example, the effect that low pH has on skeleton-building organisms depends on the pressure and temperature of the ocean. Below a certain depth in the ocean, the water becomes so cold and the pressure so high that there’s no calcium carbonate left for shell-building organisms. That threshold is known as the saturation horizon. Our carbon-fueled civilization is affecting life everywhere on Earth — even deep underwater. To make a meaningful comparison between the PETM and today, Ridgwell and Schmidt built large-scale simulations of the ocean at both points of time. They created a virtual version of the Earth 55 million years ago and let the simulation run until it reached a stable state. The pH level of their simulated ocean fell within the range of estimates of the pH of the actual ocean 55 millions years ago. They then built a version of the modern Earth, with today’s arrangements of continents, average temperature, and other variables. They let the modern world reach a stable state and then checked the pH of the ocean. Once again, it matched the real pH found in the oceans today. Ridgwell and Schmidt then jolted both of these simulated oceans with massive injections of carbon dioxide. They added 6.8 trillion tons of carbon over 10,000 years to their PETM world. Using conservative projections of future carbon emissions, they added 2.1 trillion tons of carbon over just a few centuries to their modern world. Ridgwell and Schmidt then used the model to estimate how easily carbonate would dissolve at different depths of the ocean. The results were strikingly different. Ridgwell and Schmidt found that ocean acidification is happening about ten times faster today than it did 55 million years ago. And while the saturation horizon rose to 1,500 meters 55 million years ago, it will lurch up to 550 meters on average by 2150, according to the model. The PETM was powerful enough to trigger widespread extinctions in the deep oceans. Today’s faster, bigger changes to the ocean may well bring a new wave of extinctions. Paleontologists haven’t found signs of major extinctions of corals or other carbonate-based species in surface waters around PETM. But since today’s ocean acidification is so much stronger, it may affect life in shallow water as well. “We can’t say things for sure about impacts on ecosystems, but there is a lot of cause for concern,” says Ridgwell. Ellen Thomas, a paleoceanographer at Yale University, says that the new paper “is highly significant to our ideas on ocean acidification.” But she points out that life in the ocean was buffeted by more than just a falling pH. “I’m not convinced it’s the whole answer,” she says. The ocean’s temperature rose and oxygen levels dropped. Together, all these changes had complex effects on the ocean’s biology 55 million years ago. Scientists now have to determine what sort of combined effect they will have on the ocean in the future. Our carbon-fueled civilization is affecting life everywhere on Earth, according to the work of scientists like Ridgwell — even life that dwells thousands of feet underwater. “The reach of our actions can really be quite global,” says Ridgwell. It’s entirely possible that the ocean sediments that form in the next few centuries will change from the white of calcium carbonate back to red clay, as ocean acidification wipes out deep-sea ecosystems. “It will give people hundreds of millions of years from now something to identify our civilization by,” says Ridgwell.Coming Soon Raise the Bar In this animated series, a high school girl attempts to overcome the odds and become a champion weightlifter in the Olympics. Raising Dion A single mom must hide her young son's superpowers to protect him from exploitation while investigating their origins and her husband's death. Tales of the City Middle-aged Mary Ann returns to San Francisco and the eccentric friends she left behind. Based on Armistead Maupin's books and starring Laura Linney. Baahubali: Before the Beginning Based on Anand Neelakantan’s book, this prequel series to India’s epic fantasy franchise
Simon-Thomas, the centers science director, and GGSC founder Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor at Berkeley. It starts on Sept. 9. As the fall semester gears up, the center is launching a #HappinessinAction campaign, complete with free posters, in association with Rec Sports for Berkeley students at Caltopia this Sunday and Monday. Registration for the course is still open.In honor of the second Promo, Konami’s posted a new recipe, based on Lord Gaia the Fierce Knight. Also, another DP17 card confirmed: [Gaia the Fierce Knight] + [Red-Eyes] Deck 3 Lord Gaia the Fierce Knight 2 Galloping Gaia the Fierce Knight 1 Red-Eyes Darkness Metal Dragon 3 Red-Eyes B. Dragon 1 Red-Eyes Flare Black Dragon 1 Arkbrave Dragon 2 Carboneddon 1 Mathematician 3 Black Metal Dragon 3 The Black Stone of Legend 2 King of the Swamp 3 Polymerization 1 Dragon’s Mirror 2 Scapegoat 2 Fusion Recovery 2 Spiral Spear Strike 2 Dragon Shrine 3 Gospel of Revival 1 Monster Reborn 1 Dark Hole 1 Return of the Red-Eyes 3 Sky Galloping Gaia the Dragon Champion 2 First of the Dragons 3 Beast-Eyes Pendulum Dragon 1 Red-Eyes Flare Metal Dragon 2 Mecha Phantom Beast Dracossack 1 Number 11: Big Eye 1 Number 107: Galaxy-Eyes Tachyon Dragon 1 Galaxy-Eyes Full Armor Photon Dragon 1 Number 95: Galaxy-Eyes Dark Matter Dragon Source Also: Animation of “Lord Gaia the Fierce Knight” And the full artwork of Lord Gaia. Also of note, the Deck List mentions Dragon’s Mirror is in DP17.One Ontario hospital is turning Quebec’s proposed restrictions on religious clothing in the public sector into an opportunity to recruit nurses and doctors. Lakeridge Health in Oshawa, Ont., is putting out an ad on social media and in Montreal’s McGill student newspaper seeking health-care professionals. Want to be part of a leading hospital focused on quality and safety? We want you. Check out our new ad: pic.twitter.com/0Od8NS2OxI — Lakeridge Health (@LakeridgeHealth) September 12, 2013 The poster depicts a woman wearing a hijab with the slogan, “We don’t care what’s on your head, we care what’s in it.” A spokesman for the hospital says it wants to let Quebec’s health professionals know there’s a great hospital in the Greater Toronto Area that wants them. Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne has said the inclusive nature of Canadian society is worth preserving, and she would oppose anything that would attack that inclusion. Quebec’s proposed “values charter” would prohibit hospital workers and other public sector workers from wearing religious clothing like hijabs, kippas and turbans in the workplace. While polls indicate that most respondents in Quebec support the legislation, it’s sparked a contentious debate in Canada.Jes Staley’s bonus to be ‘very significantly cut’ after he apologised for breach of rules in what Barclays admits is a serious offence The chief executive of Barclays is being investigated by financial regulators and faces a significant cut to his pay after admitting trying to unmask a whistleblower who made allegations about a long-term associate he had brought to the bank. Jes Staley twice attempted to use Barclay’s internal security team to track down the authors of two anonymous letters sent to the board and a senior executive at the bank last June. On the second occasion, the security team received assistance from a US law enforcement agency, but still failed to identify the whistleblowers. The letters are understood to have made allegations about the previous conduct of Tim Main, who worked with Staley at US bank JP Morgan and was then recruited to Barclays in a senior role last June. Main declined to comment but, according to Barclays, the letters raised concerns of “a personal nature about the senior employee, Mr Staley’s knowledge of and role in dealing with those issues at a previous employer, and the appropriateness of the recruitment process followed on this occasion by Barclays”. In an internal email to Barclays staff, seen by the Guardian, Staley tried to justify attempting to find the author of the letters, accusing the whistleblowers of harassment and trying to “maliciously smear” Main, who is chair of Barclays’ financial institutions group in New York. Staley wrote: “One of our colleagues was the subject of an unfair personal attack sent via anonymous letters addressed to members of the board and a senior executive at Barclays. The allegations related to personal issues from many years ago, and the intent of the correspondents in airing all of this was, in my view, to maliciously smear this person. “In my desire to protect our colleague, however, I got too personally involved in this matter. My hope was that if we found out who was sending these letters we could try and get them to stop the harassment of a person who did not deserve that treatment. Nevertheless, I realise that I should simply have the compliance function handle this matter, as they were doing. This was a mistake on my part and I apologise for it.” Barclays announced in a stock market statement that Staley and the bank were under investigation by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Bank of England’s Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) for the affair. New York’s Department of Financial Services is also looking into Staley’s behaviour. Barclays boss investigated over attempts to unmask whistleblower - live Read more It is extremely rare for financial regulators to investigate and censure chief executives in the City. The FCA, the main City regulator, has the power to ban individuals from working in financial services if they are not deemed to be fit and proper, as well as issuing public reprimands and fines. Barclays said that its internal investigation led by law firm Simmons & Simmons had concluded that Staley acted “honestly but mistakenly” in trying to track down the authors of the letters. However, Barclays admitted it was a “serious” offence that would lead to its chief executive receiving a formal written reprimand and a “very significant” cut to his bonus. John Mann, the Labour MP and member of the Treasury select committee, called on Staley to resign while the Institute of Directors said it was “clearly disappointing” that Barclays had breached its own rules on protecting whistleblowers. Gary Greenwood, an analyst at stockbroker Shore Capital, said: “Given Barclays’ history of regulatory misdemeanours, most notably the high profile investigation into Libor rigging which led to former CEO Bob Diamond’s departure from the group, this latest revelation represents a very significant embarrassment for the board as it tries to rebuild the group’s reputation.” Staley is a veteran US banker and took the helm at Barclays in December 2015. He pledged to overhaul its culture, which had been in the spotlight due to the bank’s involvement in rigging the Libor interest rate, for which it was ordered to pay a fine of nearly £290m. The whistleblowing saga comes at a crucial time for Barclays. The Serious Fraud Office is close to deciding whether it will prosecute the bank and former executives about its £7.3bn Middle Eastern bailout at the height of the financial crisis in 2008. The SFO’s investigation centres on whether £2bn that Barclays lent to Qatar was then returned to the bank. The board was alerted earlier this year to Staley’s attempts to identify the whistleblower when an employee raised concerns about the bank’s whistleblowing procedures. John McFarlane, the chairman of Barclays, said: “I am personally very disappointed and apologetic that this situation has occurred, particularly as we strive to operate to the highest possible ethical standards. The board takes Barclays’ culture and the integrity of its controls extremely seriously. “The board has concluded that Jes Staley, group chief executive officer, honestly, but mistakenly, believed that it was permissible to identify the author of the letter and has accepted his explanation that he was trying to protect a colleague who had experienced personal difficulties in the past from what he believed to be an unfair attack, and has accepted his apology.” Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jes Staley, pictured when CEO of JP Morgan Chase Investment Bank. Photograph: Yuri Gripas/Reuters Staley said he had apologised to the Barclays board for the saga and will cooperate with the FCA and PRA probes. Staley was paid £4.2m last year including an annual bonus of £1.4m. For this year, he was in line for an annual bonus of up to £1.88m plus another payment under the long-term incentive plan of up to £2.82m, on top of his annual fixed pay of about £2.35m. Jes Staley profile: Barclays appears to chart new course for CEO Read more The bank said it will decide on how much to cut Staley’s pay by when the financial regulators have concluded their investigations. Profile: the US banker who vowed to restore Barclays’ reputation When Jes Staley took over at Barclays, the veteran banker vowed to “strengthen trust” in the group after its reputation had been damaged by successive scandals. The 60-year-old American was named chief executive in late 2015 following the ousting of predecessor Antony Jenkins. In an email to staff when he was appointed, he said: “The trust of our customers and clients [...] is the foundation of our success, the most valuable quality we can nurture and the key to unlocking shareholder value.” Born in Boston, Massachusetts, James Edward Staley, nicknamed “Jes”, studied economics at Bowdoin, a liberal arts and science college in Maine. He spent 30 years at Wall Street institution JP Morgan, enjoying a record of success that saw him promoted to chief executive of its investment banking arm in 2009. His tenure ended in 2013 after he allegedly lost patience waiting to take over from chief executive Jamie Dimon. Staley was credited with improving JP Morgan’s attitude towards LGBT issues. This was informed by the activism of his brother Peter, who was diagnosed HIV-positive in the 1980s. In an interview with the brothers in Fortune, Peter said he initially assumed Jes would be the “most homophobic person in the family” but found him supportive. Staley, who has two daughters with wife, Deby, is a devoted fan of baseball team the Boston Red Sox, a keen sailor and a supporter of the Democratic party.After all the brouhahaha over a bizarre post-game exchange with Kansas State head coach Bill Snyder and a subsequent Tweet, it appears that UCLA head coach Jim Mora's Twitter profiled has been deleted. As of right now the Twitter account of @UCLACoachMora no longer exists. It is GONE. Here was the tweet that OC Reigister reporter Ryan Kartje manually retweeted: In reference to his post game handshake…RT @UCLACoachMora: I will defend the safety of my players...forever. — Ryan Kartje (@Ryan_Kartje) January 3, 2015 Not only that Tweet is gone if you click on @UCLACoachMora you will find that his account no longer exists. This is just bizarre and there hasn't been any explanation from either Mora or UCLA. Mora was getting bombarded by fans from all over college football world and lot of support from UCLA fans after his Tweet. Instead of making this controversy go away, this may just make it a bigger story. Bizarre all the way around. [UPDATE - January 3, 2015 @ 8:15 p.m. by Bellerophon]: It would appear that Jim Mora has re-surfaced on Twitter (H/T Lisa Horne), but in a private Twitter (@hbuclafb) account that is blocked from public view (you can view the content only if the account owner allows you to follow them). As Lisa Horne posted earlier on Twitter: It would appear that numerous UCLA football players have started following this private account, seemingly confirming that Coach Mora has created a new, private Twitter account. First, that's kind of a no-no from a PR perspective - ducking and going into hiding because of some backlash on Twitter? Not a good look. Second, Lisa Horne brings up a great point in this very thread (emphasis added): A new protected account has appeared ( @hcuclafb ) and it is reportedly followed by some high-profile UCLA players. I am hearing his family was the subject of some pretty awful tweets. His mentions were also pretty bad. In any case, I don’t know for sure if this is his account but if it is, my biggest concern is lack of transparency. The NCAA cannot monitor his tweets unless he grants them access. Also, why not have a staffer monitor his original account and when he wants to tweet, have him put "—JM" after the tweet so everyone knows that tweet was actually from him? Many high-profile celebrities do that. Very interesting developments. Stay tuned. GO BRUINSFeline herpesvirus (FHV-1) is a common cause of eye and upper respiratory infection in the cat. This virus is very common in the cat population, but it is not contagious to people and other species of animals such as dogs. Herpesvirus is easily passed from one cat to another through sneezing, coughing, grooming, and/or simply living in the same household with an infected cat. While it is quite contagious, most cats contract this infection from their mothers before they are even weaned. This virus is in the same family as the chicken pox virus. As you may know, some people will develop ‘shingles’ in their adult lives, which is a re-emergence of the chicken pox virus that has been lying dormant in the body since childhood. The same is true for cats with FHV-1. Clinical signs associated with infection can vary greatly between cats. Some cats will never have signs after the initial infection while other cats will have episodes throughout life. Some cats affected with FHV-1 may only have mild conjunctivitis (redness and inflammation of the white part of the eye) of one or both eyes. Other cats have more severe disease and may show ocular and nasal discharge, conjunctivitis, coughing and sneezing. Cats may also develop ulcers of the cornea (the clear “window” in the front part of the eye). Corneal ulcers can be very painful and serious enough to cause noticeable scarring or even perforation of the normally clear cornea. After initial recovery from the herpesvirus infection, an estimated 80% of the cats become a carrier of the disease. In other words, the disease goes into temporary remission but the cat may still be infectious. In these cats, stress and illness can reactivate the virus, causing repeated infections or recurrences of the clinical signs throughout life. Stressors may include moving to a new house, having new pets or houseguests in the household, construction/remodeling, a traveling owner, etc.) Repeated or chronic infections have been associated with diseases such as dry eye, symblepharon (adhesion of the conjunctiva to itself or to the cornea), corneal sequestrum (an abnormal brown plaque formation on the cornea), and possibly eosinophilic keratitis (an immune-mediated condition of the cornea). The definitive diagnosis of feline herpesvirus infection is accomplished by laboratory testing. Many tests are available through a professional diagnostic laboratory. They include virus isolation, fluorescent antibody (FA) testing, serology such as ELISA or serum neutralizing titers, and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing. It is important to realize that these tests may have false negative results. On the other hand, certain cats in the carrier state but without apparent clinical signs can also test positive for some of these diagnostic modalities. Since the disease is extremely common, it is not always necessary to perform diagnostic testing, but your veterinary ophthalmologist will discuss this with you at the examination. Treatment for herpesvirus is aimed at controlling clinical signs and reducing secondary complications. It is important to note that there is no cure for herpesvirus, and once infected, your cat has the virus for life. Some animals will never have clinical disease after the initial infection while others may have frequent recurrences. Cats that have recurrent outbreaks often have a stressful trigger, which if identified can be avoided or minimized. This can reduce the number of outbreaks. Typically, therapy includes topical antiviral drops or ointment for the eye and occasionally an oral antiviral medication. Sometimes starting medications prophylactically (before a known stressor) the severity of the recurrent infection can be reduced. Some anecdotal reports state that L-lysine, an amino acid dietary supplement, can inhibit viral replication. This has been shown in a laboratory setting but not in cats with natural infection. There are no studies proving that Giving L-lysine as a supplement may benefit cats with herpesvirus as many owners feel it reduces outbreaks. In any event, there are no known side effects of L-lysine documented in the cat. Vaccination against herpesvirus infection is included in the typical feline vaccination schedule provided by your primary care veterinarian. The vaccine minimizes the clinical signs of the herpesvirus infection but does not prevent future outbreaks. Additionally, the vaccination does not cure cats already infected with the herpesvirus. If you have any questions or concerns regarding feline herpesvirus, please call us at Eye Care for Animals.National Crime Agency Jamal Owda was one of 23 people arrested Jamal Owda was arrested in a Liverpool refugee shelter on suspicion of being one of 23 people involved in an international migrant smuggling network. The National Crime Agency swooped on the 26-year-old Palestinian national in the hostel in Sephton Park, Liverpool, as part of a series of simultaneous raids across Europe organised by Europol. He is alleged to be the ringleader of a gang responsible for smuggling 100 migrants into western Europe EVERY DAY since 2013. The gang allegedly exploited migrants from war-torn Syria through Turkey and on to western Europe for sky-high fees. Other suspects were detained in police operations in Greece, Austria and Sweden, and included mainly Syrians and Greeks. A police spokesman said: “Several actions took place simultaneously. “As a result, the criminal group was dismantled, and a total of 23 suspects were arrested. “Seven in Austria, 13 in Greece, two in Sweden and one in the United Kingdom. “The identified smugglers were predominantly of Syrian and Greek origin, but also Palestinian. “The organised crime group’s alleged leader was arrested by officers from the UK’s National Crime Agency (NCA) at an address in Liverpool.” Police allege smugglers had been providing migrants with housing, forged documents and travel to help them make the journey from Syria, through Turkey and Greece and across the Balkans into Western Europe. The migrants paid the gang via money-transfer services or with cash. In a bid to stay below the radar of authorities, gang members had been communicating via mobile phone as well as online chatrooms and social media. Police said Owda had been living in the UK for a year and was in the process of claiming asylum in the UK. National Crime Agency Jamal Owda was held on a European Arrest Warrant GETTY Migrants walk through Europe Owda, who has not been charged, was held on a European Arrest Warrant and will appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court today where police will be seeking to have him extradited to Greece to face charges there. Graham Roberts, NCA spokesman, said: "As a result of joint working with the Greek authorities we have located and arrested a Palestinian man believed to be the head of a crime group responsible for smuggling around 100 Syrian migrants a day from Greece into western Europe. NATIONAL CRIME AGENCY Jamal Owda “The NCA-led UK taskforce targeting people smuggling networks was involved in this operation and will continue to work with agencies in the UK and overseas to pursue, disrupt and prosecute anyone that preys on vulnerable people in order to line their own pockets.” The NCA was asked by the Prime Minister earlier this year to lead a UK law enforcement Organised Immigration Crime Taskforce. Investigators from the NCA and Immigration Enforcement, supported by financial experts, are targeting criminal networks behind people smuggling in the Mediterranean. GETTY Migrants dash across a borderGrassley’s amendment was dead on arrival in the Judiciary Committee and it was dead on arrival on the floor of the Senate today. Why? Because it did the one thing Republican border hawks Must Not Do as part of this grand, glorious compromise on immigration: It demanded that the border be effectively secured before any form of legalization, including first-stage probationary legalization, is granted to illegals. That would be a true enforcement “trigger” for amnesty, something that would warrant a second look at the bill. But of course, Democrats will never, ever agree to it; they have no more faith in DHS efficiently securing the border than you do, and thus there’s no way they’re going to make legalization contingent upon it. That’s why even Rubio, since the very beginning of this fiasco, has insisted that probationary legalization come before border security. The bill would be dead if he didn’t make that concession, and he’d rather have a terrible bill that betrays his phony promises of “security first” than have no bill at all. That’s also why he, McCain, Graham, and Flake — the four GOP members of the Gang of Eight — all voted yes on Reid’s motion to table Grassley’s amendment, along with devout RINO Lisa Murkowski. They were the only Republican votes that Reid got, and as it turns out, he didn’t need a single one of them. A motion to table requires only 51 votes to pass and Reid had 52 Democrats on his side. The Republican “Gang” members conceivably could have voted no to try to show conservatives that they were striking a blow for tighter border security, even though they knew their votes would mean nothing and that Grassley’s amendment would fail anyway. They didn’t, because the Gang’s vowed to stick together on tough votes as a show of solidarity in the name of preserving the horrible “compromise” they’ve struck. They’re now past the point, it seems, of even making a pretense of border enforcement for the benefit of angry righties. There’s something to be said for honesty, I guess. Reid’s move infuriated opponents of the bill, who said their right to keep talking while they worked to build a coalition for their proposal had been stripped away without fair warning. “This so-called open and fair process is a farce,” the top Judiciary Committee Republican, Charles E. Grassley, called out just before the roll call. “This is a very provocative act.”… For Reid, the power to call for tabling motions gives him additional leverage to move the debate along at a relatively brisk pace — and with solid odds of keeping the bill to his liking. He can make ideas he views as poison pills go away with 51 votes, while the other side will need 60 votes to add language viewed as killer amendments by the Obama administration, the gang of eight and the coalition of business and labor groups pushing the measure. Rubio will, I’m guessing, defend his vote to table Grassley’s amendment in two ways. One: He’ll try to pander to conservatives by driving a hard bargain on other hot-button stuff to distract them from the fact that he caved on allowing legalization before border security. His last pander was to demand stricter English-language requirements for illegals; today’s pander is to threaten Democrats that he’ll walk away from the bill if Pat Leahy’s amendment granting rights to the spouses of gay illegals passes. The fact that he’s willing to make a lame, boutique issue like that a dealbreaker but not the fact that Democrats refuse to secure the border before granting illegals probationary legalization tells you exactly how seriously he’s taking this bill from a policy standpoint. It’s an insult to serious border hawks, but as DrewM says, it’ll help Rubio with social cons in Iowa in 2016. And that’s what really matters, Rubio’s endless pronouncements that he’s only doing this because it’s the “right thing to do” notwithstanding. Two: He’ll end up either backing Cornyn’s amendment demanding tighter border security before the second stage of legalization (the green-card process) or, if Democrats give him a firm no on that, he’ll cave on that too and then try to put together an even weaker border amendment of his own as a substitute. Sounds like that’s what’s in motion now, with Rubio working on a compromise while our old friend McCain tries to kill Cornyn’s bill before it even gets rolling: Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is beginning to speak out forcefully against the Cornyn language, bombarding the Texas Republican with critical comments from the Senate floor. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is lobbying other Republicans on potential compromises. And Rubio, although he said Wednesday that the Cornyn plan “dramatically improves the bill,” is working on a package that others in the Gang of Eight hope could emerge as an alternative… Rubio, in an interview with POLITICO this week, would not describe his work with Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and others as an “alternative” to the Cornyn plan. “We certainly have ideas, and we’re sharing them with people, but if others want to take the lead on securing the border, that’s good,” Rubio said. “We’re in a game of addition. … The border security elements of the bill will have to be improved. The only issue is what is going to do that.” Cornyn’s bill is better than the status quo but see Mickey Kaus for why it too is basically a fudge on real border security, beginning with the fact that it signs on to the Gang’s “legalization before security” scheme rather than Grassley’s “security first” proposal. And so now we wait: Will Democrats cave, allowing Cornyn’s ineffective but salable-to-conservatives border amendment into the bill? Or will they muscle Rubio into quitting on Cornyn and offering something that’s even more watered down? The fate of … nothing, really, depends on the answer.FILE - In this Jan. 16, 2017 file photo, Hope Hicks, an aide to then- President-elect Donald Trump's campaign, arrives at Trump Tower in New York. A White House official says Hicks will serve temporarily as White House communications director. Hicks, will work with press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to help set White House messaging strategy. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File) President Donald Trump has decided to make Hope Hicks’ appointment as interim communications director permanent, according to CNN. Hicks will be the third person to fill the role full-time since Trump took office in January, following Mike Dubke and Anthony Scaramucci. Campaign spokesman Jason Miller had been slated for the job following the election but he bowed out in December citing family reasons. Former Press Secretary Sean Spicer filled in on communications duties while the slot was open earlier this year. Hicks took over as interim director after Scaramucci’s brief but eventful week-and-a-half tenure in July. The 28-year-old Hicks, who has worked closely with Trump for years, has long been seen as one of the president’s most trusted aides.Russia's ambassador to NATO says Moscow opposes any attempt to alter the geopolitical balance in Europe. "We will do everything to prevent any changes in the balance of power in Europe," Aleksandr Grushko told journalists on October 9. "We do not want this to lead to a new arms race and confrontation schemes of a new cold war." Grushko also claimed that the number of NATO reconnaissance flights along Russia's borders "has increased considerably" and noted the "practically constant military naval presence of NATO" in the Baltic and Black seas. Grushko said that because NATO has no institutional role in Syria, Russia does not intend to engage with the alliance on this topic. Moscow is proceeding in a bilateral fashion with concerned parties, including NATO-member Turkey, he added. On October 8, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg expressed concern about the "troubling escalation" of Russia's military activity in Syria. He said NATO could deploy forces to Turkey if Russian warplanes continue violating Turkey's airspace. Based on reporting by TASS and InterfaxImage caption Demonstrators on both sides of the argument gathered outside Congress The Uruguayan Senate has passed legislation to decriminalise abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. A similar move in 2008 was vetoed by President Tabare Vasquez, but current President Jose Mujica has signalled he will sign the bill into law. The legislation now goes to the lower house, which, like the Senate, is controlled by Mr Mujica's allies. Opinion polls suggest a majority of Uruguayans back easing the restrictions on abortion. Under the current legislation, women who have an abortion and the people who assist them face prison. Abortion is only allowed in the case of rape or when the life of the woman is in danger. 'Moral judgement' Senators debated for some 10 hours on Tuesday before voting 17 to 14 to pass the bill. "We don't have the right to pass moral judgement by saying that the woman who continues her pregnancy and has her baby is in the right whereas the one who doesn't, for whatever reason, is in the wrong," said Sen Monica Xavier, from the governing leftist Broad Front coalition. "How can the law leave the decision to end a pregnancy only with the woman?" said Sen Alfredo Solari from the opposition Colorado Party. "Instead of promoting responsible fatherhood, with this law we're saying the man doesn't matter." The bill now goes to the Chamber of Deputies where it is expected to be debated in March. In 2008, the lower house and the Senate approved decriminalisation of abortion, but the bill was vetoed by President Vasquez. Most Latin American countries allow abortion only in cases of rape, when the woman's life is in danger or if the foetus is severely deformed. But both Cuba and Mexico City, though not the rest of Mexico, allow abortions without restriction in the first 12 weeks.As the government shutdown reaches its ninth day, Americans have been left with news of one meeting after another as it seems the budget deadlock will never end. Although last week's reports of no end in sight were dismal, this week a bipartisan meeting between House Speaker John Boehner and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi may shine a glimmer of hope towards a resolution. This news is hopefully a step in the right direction after a series of failed attempts at negotiation between Boehner and President Obama. But who is being more unreasonable out of the two? Cartoonist Kevin Eason thinks that title belongs to Boehner as the house speaker has repeatedly displayed resistance toward meeting any kind of agreement. And the American people agree. Although most of the country is unhappy with lawmakers in both parties, Republicans have borne the brunt of the blame for the government shutdown, according to a recent poll. What do you think? Is Boehner being unreasonable? Is he and the Republicans responsible for the ongoing budget gridlock? Take a look at the cartoon and share your thoughts in the comments section below.Becky asks: What does the “G” in “G-spot” stand for? The “G” in G-Spot stands for “Gräfenberg”, after famed gynecologist Dr. Ernst Gräfenberg, who, among other things, had the “G-spot” named after him and invented the first known Ring IUD birth control device, the “Gräfenberg ring”. Dr. Ernst Gräfenberg was born in Germany on September 18, 1881 and received his doctorate on March 10, 1905. In 1910, he started working as a gynecologist in Berlin and soon became the chief gynecologist at Berlin University. When Hitler assumed power in Germany and Nazism was rampant, Gräfenberg, who was a Jew, was forced to resign. His friends and family tried to persuade him to leave Germany at the time, but he refused. Gräfenberg thought that because several of his patients were wives of high ranking Nazi officers, he would be safe. This wasn’t the case and in 1937 he was arrested. In 1940, Margaret Sanger paid a ransom for his release and he left Germany to settle down in New York City, where he once again established a successful gynecologist practice. It was at this time that Gräfenberg researched the subject of urethral stimulation and, while it wasn’t the main point of the study he was doing, he stated: “An erotic zone always could be demonstrated on the anterior wall of the vagina along the course of the urethra”. Dutch physician Regnier de Graaf in the 17th century had previously noted this erogenous zone. He also noted that when stimulated properly in this area, the woman would often ejaculate. His theory was that this was some sort of female prostate. Despite de Graaf’s earlier theories on this region, Gräfenberg is usually given credit for its “discovery” and the name “G-spot”, after Gräfenberg, was coined in the 1981 paper “Female Ejaculation: a case study” published in the Journal of Sex Research. It was one year later that the G-Spot name and the region itself gained widespread popularity amongst the general public after the book, The G Spot and Other Recent Discoveries About Human Sexuality by Alice Kahn Ladas and Beverly Whipple came out in 1982. Bonus Fact:This article is about the term used in Judaism. For other uses, see Minyan (disambiguation) In Judaism, a minyan (Hebrew: מניין \ מִנְיָן minyán [minˈjan], lit. (noun) count, number; pl. מניינים \ מִנְיָנִים minyaním [minjaˈnim]) is the quorum of ten Jewish adults required for certain religious obligations. In more traditional streams of Judaism only men may constitute a minyan; in more modern streams women are also counted.[1][2] The most common activity requiring a minyan is public prayer. Accordingly, the term minyan in contemporary Judaism has taken on the secondary meaning of referring to a prayer service. Sources [ edit ] The source for the requirement of minyan is recorded in the Talmud. The word minyan itself comes from the Hebrew root maneh מנה meaning to count or to number. The word is related to the Aramaic word mene, numbered, appearing in the writing on the wall in Daniel 5:25. Babylonian Talmud The Babylonian Talmud (Megillah 23b) derives the requirement of a minyan of ten shomer Shabbat for Kiddush Hashem[3] and Devarim she-Bikdusha, "matters of sanctity", by combining three scriptural verses using the rule of gezerah shavah: The word "midst" in the verse: "And I shall be sanctified in the midst of the children of Israel" (Leviticus 22:32) also appears in the verse: "Separate yourselves from the midst of the congregation" (Numbers 16:21) The term "congregation" is also used in another verse that describes the ten spies who brought back a negative report of the Land of Israel: "How long shall I bear with this evil congregation which murmur against me?" (Numbers 14:27) From this combination, the Talmud concludes that "sanctification" should occur in the "midst" of a "congregation" of ten. Jerusalem Talmud The Jerusalem Talmud (Megillah 4:4) offers two sources for the requirement, also using a gezerah shavah: The word "congregation" in the verse: "Speak to all the congregation of the children of Israel, and say to them: You shall be holy" (Leviticus 19:2) is also used in another verse: "How long shall I bear with this evil congregation which murmur against me?" (Numbers 14:27) Since the term "congregation" in the later verse refers to the ten spies, so too in the former verse: "You shall be holy" refers to a "congregation" of ten. The second source is based on the term "children of Israel" which appears in the following two verses: "And I shall be sanctified in the midst of the children of Israel" (Leviticus 22:32) " And the children of Israel came to buy among those that came" (Genesis 42:5) Just as the "children of Israel" in the later verse refers to the ten sons of Jacob who descended to Egypt to obtain food during the famine, so too the former verse refers to sanctification among the “children of Israel” in the presence of ten. Rituals requiring a minyan [ edit ] Some rituals require a minyan; the presence of a rabbi (a teacher, not a priest) is not essential—it is said that "nine rabbis do not constitute a minyan, but ten cobblers can".[4] The following instances which require a minyan are listed in the Mishnah in Megillah (iv. 3): Public worship, which consists of the additional readings of Kaddish, Barechu, Kedusha and the Repetition of the Amidah. The treatise Soferim, written in Babylonia in the seventh century, contains a passage (10:7) often interpreted as asserting that in Land of Israel at that time seven men were allowed to hold public services. Correctly interpreted it refers to the repeating of "Kaddish" and "Barechu" at the synagogue for the benefit of late comers, and declares that in Israel such a repetition is permitted only when seven (according to others, when six) men are present who have not yet heard these responsive readings. ,, and the Repetition of the Amidah. The treatise Soferim, written in Babylonia in the seventh century, contains a passage (10:7) often interpreted as asserting that in Land of Israel at that time seven men were allowed to hold public services. Correctly interpreted it refers to the repeating of "Kaddish" and "Barechu" at the synagogue for the benefit of late comers, and declares that in Israel such a repetition is permitted only when seven (according to others, when six) men are present who have not yet heard these responsive readings. The priestly blessing. Reading from the Torah and Prophets with the associated benedictions. Seven benedictions recited at a wedding, or at any meal of the bridegroom and bride within a week from the wedding. Using the formulation "Let us bless our God, from whose wealth we have eaten
years ago for a future Jewish community campus. “The JCC is the first recipient of a land grant from the foundation,”said Julie Shaffer, executive director of the Oreg Foundation. “It’s Oreg Foundation’s hope that there will be other community institutions that will come forward and want to be on the campus.” The new JCC capital campaign needs $3 million more to reach its $27 million goal. When it’s complete, the JCC will house a preschool, social hall, meeting rooms, yoga studio, sports fields, playgrounds and summer camp facilities. Two acres will be devoted to the farm, which will include greens, strawberries, raspberries, apples, plums and beehives. There will be handicapped-accessible raised beds, an outdoor kitchen and child-friendly education space. The veggies will be organic and excess food will be donated to the Boulder Food Rescue, which collects donations by bicycle to avoid using fossil fuels. In keeping with the focus on high environmental standards, the JCC building will be LEED-certified. It’s all very Boulder – a university town of some 100,000 with the social consciousness of Park Slope, Brooklyn, the entrepreneurial spirit of Silicon Valley, and the farming and ranching sensibility of the West. Boulder’s Jewish community is relatively young and growing quickly. The most recent Jewish demographic survey, in 2007, found about 13,000 Jews living in 7,600 Jewish households in Boulder County, located about 40 minutes northwest of Denver. “A lot of these people have zero affiliation or interest in Jewish community,” Lev said. “But the possibility of engagement is tremendous because of the large Jewish population.” Half a century ago, there was just one synagogue in town. But the Jewish presence grew considerably as technology companies moved to the city, the university grew and Boulder’s location in the foothills of the Rockies drew outdoors enthusiasts. Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, the father of the Jewish Renewal movement, moved here in 1995. The University of Colorado-Boulder launched a Jewish studies program in 2007 and now has a kosher eatery. Boulder has two Jewish Renewal synagogues, a couple of Chabad centers and one Reform, one Orthodox and one Conservative shul. An online Jewish news site, Boulder Jewish News, was launched in 2009. At the JCC, the budget has more than doubled since Lev came on in 2010, and he said 4,000 people were reached last year through programming. “The JCC provides so many portals into Jewish life,” Oreg’s Shaffer said. “This community offered Jonathan opportunities for professional growth, and he’s paying us back many times over for his vision of what this community can be.”Some people are fans of the San Diego Chargers. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the San Diego Chargers. This 2016 Deadspin NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here. And buy Drew’s new book here. Your team: Los Angele… NO WAIT! San Diego! Yep, still the San Diego Chargers. Pretty awkward. Your 2015 record: 4-12, the highlight of which was a 30-14 blowout of the Dolphins that would have made for a heartwarming final game in San Diego… if it had actually BEEN the final game in San Diego. Now we have to do it all over again, with San Diego forced to choose between tentatively saying goodbye to the Chargers one more time or chipping in over a BILLION dollars for a new stadium. I’m all for loyalty, but if I were a Chargers fan, I’d want to push this organization into a tectonic rift. Lost in all the relocation drama is the fact that the Chargers and their fans were truly dreadful last season. Not only did they let a bunch of fatty Steelers fans take over their home stadium, they also kicked out other fans for wearing turbans (Marmalard approves of this policy) and started a completely unnecessary feud with safety Eric Weddle, booting him from the team plane for the last game (they told him the plane was too small to accommodate him) and fining him for watching his daughter perform at a halftime show. Weddle is a Raven now, which means he’ll intercept 50 passes this season while the Chargers play sub-Pac-12 level defense. Pretty exciting shit! Your coach: Mike McCoy. You’re gonna struggle to remember that Mike McCoy once coached this team. It’ll be a black hole in your sports memory. Five years from now, you’re gonna be like, “Well they had Marty, and then Norv, and then I think after they moved is when they hired Jim Mora Jr. I think that’s how it went. Wait, am I missing someone?” You are! There was that one other guy! He was there for a bit! You know you’re a forgettable coach when even Norv has more moments than you do. McCoy will join the likes of Mike Nolan, Chris Palmer, and Scott Linehan in the hall of totally anonymous head coaches. Watching him coach is like suffering through depression… it’s just a great white fog. Advertisement But it gets even worse! In order to save his ass, McCoy fired six assistants this offseason, including offensive coordinator Frank Reich. That means your new offensive coordinator is Ken Whisenhunt. Oh yes. That’s right, gang. I hope you enjoy the sight of Philip Rivers dropping back 11 steps behind a nonexistent line and getting his chin caved in by oncoming defenders. I know I do. Your quarterback: MARMALARD! Punch your gloves in the name of Jesus!!! Your browser does not support HTML5 video tag.Click here to view original GIF Advertisement You almost lost Philip Rivers, San Diego. Think how empty your local playgrounds would have been had he and his seven thousand children left town. Thankfully, the Chargers extended him and paid $65 million in guarantees for four more years of him suffering an undisclosed injury in Week 3 and then losing any semblance of mobility and/or ball security as a result. In an alternate dimension, Rivers is never traded to San Diego, wins a couple titles in New York, and tithes his Super Bowl bonus to the Ted Cruz campaign. But in THIS life, he’s a Quiverfull doofus with twice as many children as playoff wins. Make that three times as many a year from now. What’s new that sucks: Travis Benjamin! Once again, the Chargers have bolstered their arsenal of wideouts who catch five long balls per year and do literally nothing else. I don’t even disagree with that strategy, by the way. It’s just that it only works if A) You don’t have the world’s worst line, and B) Your star running back isn’t a hilarious bust who failed to score a touchdown ALL last season. Jesus Christ, Melvin Gordon. Even Trent Richardson occasionally managed to hit paydirt in between sandwich orgies. What has always sucked: Frankly, it doesn’t matter where the Chargers go, because Dean Spanos will always be in charge of this shitpile. No NFL owner in history has played himself as badly as this man has. This is the guy who schemed to build a new stadium with the Raiders, hired the top asshole at Disney to make the enterprise sound respectable, assumed that NFL owners would approve of his plan just because they liked him (They’re such nice guys! Really!), and then had his fancy new lackey give a relocation proposal that was only one step removed from a third grader’s country report: On behalf of Carson, Iger went next. He tried to “break the ice,” he says now, with a joke about how in his 42 years at ABC and Disney, he had paid more money to the NFL than anyone else. The quip was met with blank stares. For about 20 minutes, Iger spoke with a slideshow behind him, then ended with another prepared line, a spin-off of the famous commercial of the Super Bowl MVP shouting, “I’m going to Disney World! I hope I’m going to the NFL!” Iger said. Again, silence. Advertisement Idiot. Anyway, you probably know the rest of the story: a bunch of NFL owners with actual influence flushed the Chargers/Raiders bid in the toilet and handed L.A. to Stan Kroenke and the Rams, thus forcing Spanos to choose between being Kroenke’s tenant—the Jets to his Giants, essentially—or stick around San Diego in a last-ditch attempt to swindle the city out of billions of dollars. Spanos chose the latter option and has commenced with the standard, ridiculous “This city needs to step up!” rhetoric that comes with any stadium drive. Step up for who, you spoiled twat? You? Fuck you. Eat shit. Jerry Jones has more influence over this team than the guy who owns it. Think about that. Despite all this, I fully expect a handful of San Diego mouthbreathers to give in and attempt to give Spanos everything he wants, all so they can prove their diehard fan status. This is not a city known for its collective brainpower. These people are easy marks. We’re talking about a city that has all the grace and charm of a Margaritaville chain restaurant on its best day. They took literal paradise and turned it into a paved-over Navy base, filled with aggressive douchebros in pooka shell necklaces grabbing asses outside a bunch of overpriced Gaslamp Quarter fusion restaurants. This place is Colorado Springs on the Pacific. It’s frat finishing school. God dammit, now I’m mad. Think of all the good tacos wasted on these imbeciles. What might not suck: Joey Bosa! You Chargers fans should send flowers to the Rams and Eagles for being so hard-up for shitty quarterbacks. You got the best player in the draft and you didn’t even have to do anything. Maybe you should try signing him. Advertisement Let’s remember some Chargers: Lewis Bush Rod Bernstine Darrien Gordon Mikhael Ricks Ben Leber Hear it from Chargers fans! Gabriel: They suck because they’re still here. Halpern: I was so ready to be done with this fucking team and they couldn’t even fuck over their own fans competently. Of course Spanos doesn’t realize that he doesn’t have the votes to move the team and of course he has to go back to San Diego. It’s like a guy who thought the stripper he always gets a dance from was going to marry him, so he leaves his wife and goes back to the club and the stripper doesn’t even remember his name. The highlight of the Chargers entire year for me was imagining Spanos’s old, withered, Game-of-Thrones-guy-who-fucks-all-of-his-daughters-out-north-of-the-wall looking face when he realized he wasn’t going to get the votes to move to his own stadium in L.A. And if you have any faith that this entitled, sun-dried sack of wispy-haired whale shit is going to work hard to get a stadium deal done so the team can stay in San Diego, you are wrong. If it happens it will happen in spite of him. The team itself has not had an offensive line stay healthy in four years. I’m guessing that has something to do with the fact that they run roughly 700 delayed handoffs every single game which mean the lineman have to pretend they’re pass blocking, then start run blocking, but by that time the line of scrimmage is a goddamn war zone and Von Miller has spun into nineteen different sets of knees. Also, let me just end with this: Fuck Brandon Flowers with a huge Voltron dick made of Philip Rivers’ eight kids. Jason Verrett turned into a fucking lockdown corner by halfway through the season and no one even through to his side, Flowers KNEW the ball was coming his way and he was torched on every play all year long. He runs around in the secondary like he’s being chased by a ghost no one else can see. Advertisement Sean: GOD JUST FUCKIN’ END IT ALREADY. PLEASE KILL THIS TEAM AND LET ME MOVE ON WITH MY LIFE. Jack: The last time I went to see the Chargers play in San Diego was 1999. This was the stacked team of Tomlinson, Gates, Jackson, and Rivers that Craggle Rock inherited from Marty, to say nothing of the defense of Weddle, Merriman, Phillips, etc. It was my first Monday Night Football game and they were hosting the Broncos (who would eventually go 8-8). The Chargers lost (as they have every single fucking time I’ve seen them), having led for a grand total of about ten minutes of the game. The stands were about 50/50 Chargers/Broncos supporters. The Chargers went on to reel off eleven straight wins to finish second in the AFC and host the 9-7 Jets, who made the game by beating the Bengals. I decided to take another shot at getting a win out of them - my opportunity to attend my first Chargers playoff game, and at home! Of course the parking lot and stands and shitters were crammed with Jets fans. The worst part is they weren’t talking smack, they were just calmly assuming the game was theirs. In the end, the Chargers lost to a Sanchez-led, Ryan-coached Jets team. After the game I got to walk through crowds of boisterous Jets fans and see several fights in the parking lot - every one of them between rival bands of Chargers fans. That was the final season we had any hope of translating one of the most talented teams in the decade into a successful playoff team. After that, Tomlinson would bolt for the team that beat us although Turner would fiddle-fuck around for three more years. Advertisement Jeffrey: We don’t have any serious pass rush, running defense, or stud defenders. Rags: > Our top draft pick, Joey Bosa is still unsigned, as I am typing this. > We are still going with the same O-line as last year, since that has worked so well for us for the last few years. > We let our top defensive player, Eric Weddle, leave for the Ravens > We let our promising tight end, Ladarius Green, go to the Steelers, for the corpse of Antonio Gates, who is at this point poaching all the TDs away from our Wide Receivers > We signed Keenan Allen to a long term deal the year after he had a season long injury, because he is the only young guy left on our offense other than; > Melvin Gordon, who will eventually lose his job to some guy off the street. Dave: Somehow, some way, the best city in America is stuck with this shitshow of a franchise. Want to live in a beautiful climate? Move to San Diego. Want to see beautiful women everywhere? Check out San Diego. Want a laid back, casual, recreation-filled lifestyle? San Diego is for you. Want to watch quality professional football? Aaahhahahahaaa fuck you! Philip Rivers has started the last 160 regular season games for the Chargers. For the last TEN YEARS, every week, I’ve had go against my basic instincts and pull for Marmalard. If Rivers were a pro wrestler, he’d be that guy who was a perpetual heel, never once turned babyface because it’s impossible to root for him. Yet heaven forbid that he goes down, or else we have to turn to Kellen Clemens and Zach Mettenberger. I’d rather suffer through Rivers throwing slow-motion deathballs to Keenan Allen (a human porcelain doll) and hanging what’s left of Antonio Gates out for decapitation than suffer through those cast-offs. The last six years, our leading rushers have been Mike Tolbert, Ryan Mathews, Branden Oliver and the spectacularly overrated Melvin Gordon. Yea, The Football Gods verily enact their revenge for all that was glorious about the Tomlinson years. The “Q” is a festering pile of dung, albeit with some of the best parking lot brawls going. Advertisement Connor: The injuries on the o-line were so bad we had a guy who had a torn PCL come back into the last game. Rich: This is a team that spent all of the 2015 season shitting on the city of San Diego and its fan base for not building them a new stadium. Dean Spanos got in bed with the Raiders (THE GODDAMN RAIDERS) to potentially get a stadium deal done in Carson. It didn’t happen because Carson is a tire fire of a city, and now here we are as the losers on the race to LA. Now they’re back pretending none of the vile shit they did to the city last year actually happened while simultaneously pleading to the city and its voters to help them build a stadium. Fuuuuuuuuuck Youuuuuuuuuu. Then there’s the way they ran Eric Weddle out of town. The best defensive player this team has had in the last decade, and the Chargers straight up told him to get bent. Now he’s in Baltimore where I’m sure he’ll rattle off a few more Pro Bowl seasons because Eric Weddle is an outstanding player. Antonio Gates is also outstanding, and he uses his body like a post player in basketball to shield defenders because he played basketball in college. Did you know this? People forget this. They can’t sign our first round pick (Joey Bosa) in a system that literally slots you money for the draft pick because they’re the Chargers and they’ll take just about any opportunity to fuck something up. (They didn’t fuck up Antonio Gates though, who played basketball in college.) They’ve wasted all of Philip Rivers prime. They repeatedly trade up in drafts to take running backs when the track record of the NFL dictates that only goddamn morons do that. Kids build sand castle walls at Mission Beach that have a stronger ability to block than their offensive line. Mike McCoy has about as much enthusiasm and energy as a wet pair of jeans. McCoy’s end of half/game clock management is the football equivalent of just beating yourself over the head with a frying pan for three hours. Antonio Gates played basketball in college. Just move already and grant us sweet release. Gabriel: ...Because they’re so arrogant that they thought building on a toxic waste dump in Carson would excite the oligarchs of the NFL....And they’re still that arrogant in thinking that building on a fault line on a Superfund site in San Diego will entice 2/3rds of San Diego voters to give taxpayer money to them for a “convadium”... which is not a word used until the last six months and there’s not a resident that could tell you what that is except that perhaps it was the name of an old wooden ship used in the Civil War (you know, with Captain America)....Further, we’ve got our hack of a City Attorney who has decided to stake his legal reputation on taking the 2/3rds requirement to the State Supreme Court for the Spanos clan’s temple to themselves....Because in the end, all they want is the LA Market... which they haven’t figured out doesn’t give a fetid shit about them. Advertisement Marc: I live in Virginia. A couple of years ago, I donned by San Diego Chargers jersey and headed out to a local sports bar-which advertised that they broadcast all of the NFL games-for watch my first game of the season. When I arrived, I asked to be seated in order to see the Chargers game. Looking at my jersey, the hostesses apologized and said that it was football season and they were not showing any hockey games on Sunday. They thought I was wearing a Tampa Bay Lightning jersey. Damon: Rivers is a veritable God in San Diego, but everywhere else he’s viewed as a trash-talking hillbilly not-quite-as-good as Eli and Big Ben because he never won a Super Bowl. And here us San Diego fans still weep dejectedly. “But...but...the stats show..” Advertisement Alex: As the rare LA-based Chargers fan, the news of their potential move to my fair city was about as welcome as the news of Fukushima fallout creeping towards the west coast. This is a team that has twice made Chase Daniel look like Tom Brady in crucial late season games, fumbled away a game securing interception in the year that Rex Grossman represented the NFC in the Super Bowl, recently lost to the Cleveland Browns by a score of 7-6, and even fucking choked with following through on its moving to LA threat. Advertisement Ryan: This is a franchise defined by gut-wrenching losses, so it was glorious to see Spanos take the biggest L of all with the entire league watching. Fuck Roger Goodell. Fuck Spanos. And most of all, fuck Boltman. I look forward to another year of a grown ass man dressed as a lightning bolt appearing at city council events to vouch for a new stadium in San Diego. Because his C- in high school Economics gives him the nuance to discuss city finances. Advertisement Sachin: Boltman seems like the kind of guy at the party whose conversation is perpetually in orbit of a racist anecdotes but he never directly lands on it; choosing instead to let his flight path let everyone else around him know exactly what he’s about. “And I’m sure we would all feel REALLY comfortable on a plane next to the guy in a TURBAN…” Tim: LaDainian Tomlinson has the single greatest scoring season in the NFL, and the Chargers manage to lose in the Playoffs to the Patriots because Marlon Mcree wouldn’t take a knee after making what should have been a game-clinching interception against Tom Brady, in a situation that Marty Schottenheimer specifically coached him up for during pregame warm-ups. Mike McCoy is a lamer version of Norv Turner. It’ll frankly be a relief when they move to LA, so I can stop paying attention altogether, rather than trying to keep up with the incredibly intricate scenarios necessary for a 9-7 or 8-8 Chargers team to make the playoffs. If the team stays in San Diego, we’re a body of water catching on actual fire away from being the Browns. Also, Dean Spanos can eat a bag of dicks. Adam: Before Cleveland won the NBA Championship, San Diego was just barely trailing in overall losingness. However, now San Diego has rocketed to the top of the Championship Loser Standings in every category… even stadium construction! The only reason the Chargers are even talking to the City of San Diego about building a stadium in San Diego still is because the Chargers lost out on their bid to relocate to LA. The Chargers ownership SUCKS… and they’re cheap. The Chargers are such losers, they can’t even convince the city to raise the hotel tax rate to match that of Phoenix, where birds fly upside-down because there is nothing worth shitting on. With our luck, the Chargers will leave SD and we’ll build a stadium anyway to host 10 Super Bowls in the next 20 years… none of which the Chargers will play in. Advertisement Steven: It’s great to see them waste yet another Hall of Fame QB’s career! Michael: 1. The owners. They go to great lengths to put a stadium proposal on the ballot only AFTER the other owners gave the Rams the LA market. This is after years of jerking San Diego around, and proposing a joint stadium in LA with their most bitter rivals. There is no chance the Chargers would ever be more than the forgotten second team in LA, yet they still shun their city. Their latest move is to insist that the stadium be built downtown instead of in Mission Valley, which probably will doom the ballot proposal and lead the Chargers to crawl to LA to be the Rams’ bitches. 2. The front office. They let Eric Weddle walk because reasons, and instead of replacing him with Jalen Ramsey, they decided to draft Joey Bosa at the third spot. Which, OK, fine if you think he’s the best player available. However, Bosa is one of only three first rounders still unsigned and the only one among the top 19 picks. And all because the Chargers are balking at paying him all his money in the event they cut him in the first four years. Repeat, the Chargers are trying to save money they would only have to eat if they fucked up the third overall pick so monumentally that they have to cut the guy before his rookie option comes up. 3. The coach. Mike McCoy is an alleged offensive genius, yet almost never passes up an opportunity to punt or kick a short field goal on 4th and 1. His clock management skills make Andy Reid look positively competent. They’ve gone from owning the division under Schottenheimer to winning two of their last 12 against AFC West opponents. 4. The fans. There is rarely a Chargers home game where the fans of the visiting team don’t make up 30% or more of the crowd. This is true even in the years where the Chargers are competitive. The saddest part of all about being a Chargers fan is that they’re not even important or incompetent enough to receive sympathy or taunting from other fan bases the way that Browns and Lions fans do. They are aggressively mediocre, basically irrelevant and the only time they ever make real news is for cities (LA) or players (Eli Manning) saying that they want nothing to do with the Chargers. And they’re completely right to do so. p.s. Fuck Marlon McCree. Brett: Make no mistake about it, the closest thing I’ve ever had to watching San Diego win a Super Bowl was watching Roger Goodell walk Dean Spanos up to the front of a press conference like he had him on a leash and make him stand behind Stan Kroenke on national television in a capacity that only Chris Christie can truly empathize with. I am too fucking emotionally drained on the inside from following Dean’s quest to replace a football stadium that the Native Americans constructed a few years after they crossed over the Beringia land bridge to even be concerned about Rivers… and his 7,000 injured offensive lineman, his wideouts with lacerated kidneys (for fuck’s sake, Keenan Allen...), and his sleepless nights from being the father of a small baby army that he will have to overcome to squeak out more than 3 wins this season. We are one bolo-tie related injury away from everyone realizing that our roster hasn’t actually deserved to win a game since 2009. And given it’s probably our last season in San Diego, I’m sure this will be the year that Marmalard is finally slaughtered, grilled, and eaten by the Broncos defensive line. Oh, I almost forgot. Eat shit, Nate Kaeding. Steve: Junior Seau is still their best linebacker right now. Fuck Manti Te’o. Submissions for the Deadspin NFL previews are now closed. Next up: Dallas Cowboys.This article is by Colin Jacobs, the chair of Electronic Frontiers Australia. It first appeared on the EFA’s site and is licensed under Creative Commons. opinion The Internet freedom business is doing a roaring trade these days. Things started picking up early last year with Hillary Clinton’s landmark speech, “Remarks on Internet Freedom,” which equated an open Internet with human rights and condemned state-sponsored censorship of the net. Then came the revelations by Wikileaks, starting with the “Collateral Murder” video and escalating to the current batch of diplomatic cables. These leaks severely tested the commitment of governments around the world to the principles of free speech, but have provided an unprecedented lesson in the power of the net and journalism to act in the public interest. The people of the world have taken the lesson to heart. The protests sweeping the Middle East have highlighted the importance of an open Internet even more starkly. For better or worse, revolution in the 21st century almost by definition includes Twitter, Facebook and the rest of the Internet’s tools. They have proven more effective than a container-load of AK-47s could ever be, because they allow and promote an undeniable expression of the will of the people that robs the violence of repression of any legitimacy. It’s an exciting time for citizens everywhere. We are witnessing, and often participating in, movements that would have been impossible only a few years ago. Amongst all of this our own government’s response has been tepid, confused and contradictory. The response to Clinton’s speech, as we have noted before, was cringeworthy in its brazen twisting of her words to support a pro-censorship agenda. The reaction to the Wikileaks developments should have been a principled stand on free speech and the rights of an Australian citizen, but turned into a posturing witch-hunt. And today, Senator Conroy was asked about the crisis in Egypt, where a desperate government cut internet access in order to hinder protestors. The minister in response declared his undying love for an Internet free of government control and assured us that such a thing could never happen in Australia. “… Australia’s a vibrant democracy, where the government doesn’t control the Internet …” As blogger Michael Wyres notes here, the Minister has tied himself up in knots before, attempting to identify with online freedom of speech while spending most of his time defending the opposite. Barring a superhuman capacity for doublethink, it’s impossible to reconcile this statement with the Government’s stated policy of Internet censorship. A system that involves a secret, government-controlled blacklist of websites, even well-intentioned, definitely amounts to “government control of the Internet”. If censoring and blocking isn’t regulating or controlling the Internet, what is? No doubt, the Minister has no intention of censoring the web sites of protestors or anti-government activists, but he can’t escape the fact that he is planning to put just such a tool into the hands of the government that succeeds his. The double standard does not suit our leaders well. If the government wishes to place Australia on the wrong side of history by going down the path of Internet censorship, then have the courage to say so. Trying to do so while paying lip service to the ideals of free speech that censorship — by definition – contradicts, well, it’s not fooling anybody. Image credit: Armin Hanisch, royalty freeWhile legalizing assisted death has been celebrated by civil liberties advocates, many religious leaders and groups representing people with disabilities have decried the entire practice as an affront to human dignity. However, the tally is likely much higher as several regions did not provide any current data, and many patients aren't officially tracked. That number, for example, does not include Quebec, which implemented its own law on doctor-assisted death last December before the national law was introduced. A right-to-die group in the province reported in July that 253 patients have requested the procedure since December, and 166 people had died because of it. According to numbers compiled by the CBC, at least 100 Canadians, almost entirely in Ontario and British Columbia, ended their lives with the help of a doctor since a federal law came into effect. Ontario started offering drugs to assist medically-assisted suicide at no cost. And yet right-to-die activists are concerned the federal government isn't adequately tracking the numbers of patients that have chosen a medically-supervised death. The assisted dying law, passed in June, requires the federal government to keep track of the numbers of Canadians who undergo doctor-assisted deaths but it hasn't yet done so. Hundreds of Canadians have chosen to die with medical assistance this summer after a new federal law made it legal for adults with terminal illness to end their lives with the assistance of a doctor or nurse practitioner. Read more Hundreds of Canadians have chosen to die with medical assistance this summer after a new federal law made it legal for adults with terminal illness to end their lives with the assistance of a doctor or nurse practitioner. And yet right-to-die activists are concerned the federal government isn't adequately tracking the numbers of patients that have chosen a medically-supervised death. The assisted dying law, passed in June, requires the federal government to keep track of the numbers of Canadians who undergo doctor-assisted deaths but it hasn't yet done so. According to numbers compiled by the CBC, at least 100 Canadians, almost entirely in Ontario and British Columbia, ended their lives with the help of a doctor since a federal law came into effect. Ontario started offering drugs to assist medically-assisted suicide at no cost. However, the tally is likely much higher as several regions did not provide any current data, and many patients aren't officially tracked. That number, for example, does not include Quebec, which implemented its own law on doctor-assisted death last December before the national law was introduced. A right-to-die group in the province reported in July that 253 patients have requested the procedure since December, and 166 people had died because of it. While legalizing assisted death has been celebrated by civil liberties advocates, many religious leaders and groups representing people with disabilities have decried the entire practice as an affront to human dignity. Related: Assisted Suicide Is Now Legal in Canada — And One Province Is Providing Free Drugs to Do It In February 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the part of the criminal code that banned doctor-assisted suicide, and granted the federal government one year to implement a new law that would allow consenting adults suffering from a "grievous and irremediable" medical ailment to have a doctor help end their life. There were several months in between the court's ruling and the deadline in which Canadians could request doctor-assisted deaths through the courts. Dozens of Canadians across the country received special permission during that time period. Shanaaz Gokool, the CEO of Dying with Dignity Canada, told VICE News that the federal government should start counting assisted deaths in the country "sooner rather than later," and also extend the data they collect to include people who are currently in palliative care, and those who have taken it upon themselves to end their own lives because they have been denied medical assistance to do so. She pointed to a number of examples of people in Quebec ceasing to eat or drink when they didn't qualify to hasten their deaths. "As more people who thought they were going to qualify under the law find out they don't, they will look at other options," said Gokool. "And these are all important pieces of information that the federal government should track." The ruling Liberals implemented their law amid fierce criticism from right-to-die advocates who argue that the law violates the charter—and the court's original ruling—for only allowing medical assisted death for Canadians with terminal illnesses whose death is imminent. They say the law should also extend to people who are suffering physically and mentally, even if it's not terminal and they aren't expected to die in the near future. And for that reason, the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, which led the previous assisted-death battle at the Supreme Court, is suing the federal government all over again, saying the new law should be repealed and broadened. Related: Canada's Assisted Suicide Law Doesn't Go Far Enough, Some Say Leading the case is a 25-year-old BC woman who has spinal muscular atrophy and uses a wheelchair. "I am terrified that I could be trapped in a state of physical and mental suffering that could last for months, years or even decades. Having to think about this future causes me immense physical distress," Julia Lamb told reporters at a press conference earlier this summer. The association's litigation director added that the new law "will have the perverse effect of forcing seriously ill Canadians to resort to violent methods or the 'back alley.'" The federal justice minister has defended her government's law as being in line with the constitution and one that respects the rights of Canadians by being "principled, cautious and deliberate." A spokesperson for the Canadian Medical Association told the CBC that its members were content with the law and that "things seem to be proceeding relatively well with respect to availability of physicians and interpretation of federal legislation." Follow Rachel Browne on Twitter: @rp_browneAn asteroid as large as a 10-story building buzzed the Earth, coming within about 120,000 miles (193,121 kilometers) of the planet, on January 9 and, according to preliminary projections, will again approach the Earth for another swing toward the Sun in December. At present, not much is known about the path of asteroid 2017 AG13, because the space rock was only discovered on January 7. With only two days of data to calculate a projected orbital path, the numbers are still a bit suspect, but with a (NEO) Near-Earth Object this size, astronomers will keep a close watch and adjust the orbital calculations to give us at least a few months warning if the asteroid might just impact the Earth on its next trip Sun-ward. At present, no one is sounding an alarm, so there doesn’t seem to any need to panic. At least, not with asteroid 2017 AG13… As redOrbit reported this week, asteroid 2017 AG13, a NEO measured by astronomers at the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to be between 36 and 111 feet (11 to 34 meters) at its widest, was traveling at 10 miles (16 kilometers) per second — that is equivalent to 36,000 miles per hour — as it passed between the Earth and orbit of the Moon. Astronomers note that the reason the asteroid wasn’t found sooner was due to its velocity (relative to Earth, which, too, is also in motion as it flies around the Sun) and its rather low magnitude, making it very difficult to detect. Scientists at the Slooh Observatory quickly put together a live event broadcast to monitor the passing asteroid. Eric Feldman, an astronomer with Slooh, noted as 2017 AG13 made its fly-by, “This is moving very quickly, very nearby to us. This one has a particularly elliptical orbit. It actually crosses the orbits of two planets, Venus and Earth.” The elliptical orbit Feldman mentioned will take the asteroid to within 0.55 astronomical units (one unit is equal to the distance between the Sun and Earth) of the Sun at perihelion (an orbit’s closest point to the Sun) and out to 1.36 astronomical units at aphelion (an orbit’s farthest point from the Sun), according to calculations made by the University of Arizona-based Catalina Sky Survey, which originally detected 2017 AG13. Slooh’s broadcast pointed out that the buzzing space rock was “roughly the same size as the asteroid that struck Chelyabinsk, Russia in 2013.” But given the dimensions, 2017 AG13 may have been slightly larger. Regardless, this means that if the asteroid had actually impacted Earth, the effects might have been comparable. The Chelyabinsk bolide scorched through the upper atmosphere and detonated with a yield of roughly 500 kilotons of energy (the Hiroshima atomic bomb, by comparison, released about 15 kilotons of energy), shattering windows in cities for tens of miles and injuring about 1,500 people. According to Purdue University’s asteroid-impact simulator “Impact Earth!” (per Business Insider), if asteroid 2017 AG13 had hit the Earth (or swings back around to do so in December) — and allowing that it collided with the Earth’s atmosphere at a 45-degree angle, it
vast amount of options available to them to transfer to their customers the details of how a football match reached its final score line. The traditional article describing mostly background information and illustrating just about who scored at what moment in the game has had its longest time. The information technology era will shake football journalism around the world. AdvertisementsCOLUMN ONE For richer and for poorer Wall Street wives are finding that they must defer dreams and fancy things. Sometimes that means buying scratchy toilet paper. She'd married a man with a career on Wall Street, and at the very least she was going to live in a house, preferably brand new, with a Jacuzzi in her bedroom and a pool in that yard. There'd be a maid -- and no skimping, no worrying that any day Amar, her husband, would lose his job. EDISON, N.J. — Mona Mond had a plan -- and it didn't include Wall Street going haywire and giving up a three-bedroom house with a half-acre yard for a small apartment. The Monds would retire early with $10 million to $12 million in a rock-solid retirement account that would spew off enough interest to keep them going until... well... they actually got old. Because that's how it goes during good times on Wall Street. But now there are no sure bets -- "the Street" is besieged by instability. "I'm so angry," says Mona, who is 32 and about to have a second child. "We are living so tight, and we feel so limited. I wanted a big nice house.... This was planned." With the implosion of Wall Street, Mona's plan has been upended along with so much else in the world financial capital in New York. Families of thousands of Wall Street employees, whether they're high-flying fund managers, traders, computer programmers or secretaries, are being forced to adjust to withered expectations. For those who still have jobs, their income is still substantial but likely this year to be smaller, and families are cutting back on their spending and their dreaming. Over the last year as Lehman Bros., Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch and others were swallowed up by other banks, thousands of jobs vanished and billions of dollars were lost. With experts predicting more layoffs, some are just giving up on Wall Street. Carlos Alvarez has not been able to find a job on Wall Street since he left Credit Suisse last spring with the hope of making more money as a trader. He is taking a position with a company near his home in northern New Jersey. No one is happier than his wife, Fran. "I never liked the whole Gordon Gekko greed image," she says, referring to the Michael Douglas character from the film "Wall Street" whose mantra is "greed is good." "I can see how America can feel like Wall Street is the bad guys. But I never felt we were part of it." -- About 185,000 people work in the securities industry in New York -- the hard-core Wall Street world of investment firms, banks and hedge funds. The average income is about $365,000, although top-flight managers typically make many millions more. (In New York's broader financial community of banks and insurance firms the average is $228,000.) It's hard to have sympathy for people who make that much money when the average New Yorker makes $85,000. But beyond the tales of fat cats having to make it on $250 million when they used to get by on $1 billion, there are stories of families reeling during this downturn. Many insist they are as much a part of Main Street as the denigrated Wall Street. In interviews with several Wall Street wives whose husbands' big earnings are in jeopardy, they describe the pain of walking through malls and boutiques -- how it hurts knowing they can't grab a few things for themselves that might catch their fancy. They tell themselves this will pass. Wall Street shrinks during tough times, but it always comes back. But what if it doesn't this time? Many admit to being in the dark about their husbands' prospects at the bank or for finding new jobs -- if it comes to that. They're keeping up on Wall Street's woes, obsessively watching the news crawls. But the devastation hits home, they say, when they witness their husbands' panic attacks in the middle of the night. For months, Mona has anxiously awaited daily calls from her husband while he is at work. They live in Edison, a comfortable suburb in central New Jersey and a 90-minute commute by train from her husband's office in Manhattan. For the last two years, Amar, 36, has run a technology unit in the capital markets division for Lehman Bros. until it went bankrupt and was bought in part by Barclays. He's still there, adjusting with the change in management. His salary at Lehman's was $400,000, including a bonus and restricted stock options. Amar's base salary, about $200,000, remains the same, but there are no reports yet on what will happen to 2008 bonuses and options. During their daily calls, Mona is usually out with their 3-year-old daughter, Karen -- doing errands or dropping her at the Little Geniuses preschool in a strip mall. "Is everything all right today?" she asks. "Do you have meetings?" At the same time she's thinking to herself, "He called about the meeting because something's going on, maybe layoffs?" Usually, he's distracted while they're talking. "He's always looking at numbers, millions and billions of dollars, going up and down. The amount gives him some kind of reason to go on," she says. "He wants to do right for the company, but he's stressed all the time, and when he comes home he never smiles." On the morning of Black Monday, Sept. 15, Mona, then six months pregnant, was outside an operating room waiting to have a mastectomy because of breast cancer. Her husband knew Lehman would be declaring bankruptcy that morning. "We weren't talking about my surgery," she recalls. "I kept asking him, 'When the company goes bankrupt, do you still have insurance for THAT day?' " For the last few years as Amar watched Wall Street banks unravel and his own investments founder, he had tried to ratchet back his family's lifestyle. "I wish we had invested more conservatively," Mona says, "but when you're on Wall Street that's the game because you know, or at least you think you know, so much you can be a millionaire in 20 years and get out." -- They had tried to get out after Sept. 11, 2001, when Mona spent the day roaming Queens Boulevard where they lived as she waited for her husband to come home. His office was adjacent to the World Trade Center towers that fell. He made it safely to Queens that night, but shortly after, the Monds fled to California near Mona's family for a less pressured life. But after two months they were back in New York, and Amar was on Wall Street. "We realized we had gotten used to the pace of the city," she says. After returning they bought their first house, the three bedroom with the half-acre yard in Colonia, N.J., a leafy bedroom community in Middlesex County. It didn't match their shiny dream house; still, Mona was able to furnish it to their taste. But after a few years, as Amar saw home prices climbing, he was convinced the bubble would burst. The Monds sold their house and moved to a two-bedroom apartment in a modest complex filled with immigrants from India. "Here in Jersey you just have to have a house unless you're just a fresh immigrant," says Mona, who thinks she should be past that stage. Twenty years ago, she moved from the Punjab state in India to Santa Clara, Calif., where she lived with her parents in another two-bedroom apartment. "It's ironic but I feel even poorer now," she adds. "Maybe it's because... we got used to having things. Now we want things more, and it's heartbreaking for us." The couple hadn't owned the Colonia house long enough to make much of a profit, and whatever they made was piled into investments that soured with the credit crisis or stagnated in markets overseas. Last year they sold their fully loaded Nissan Maxima for a small minivan. They stopped going to movies and let the cleaning woman go. But some habits are hard to break. Buying back-to-school clothes for her daughter this fall, Mona knew she should have gone to Walmart, but she ended up charging $500 at Gap. "I felt good," she says. "It's not rational. I can go with bad clothes, but I don't want Karen to.... It's a silly, silly thing I did." A petite woman with large dark eyes and a wedge of shiny black hair, Mona covers her face with her elegant hands. She is the guest for a rare lunch out at a Cheesecake Factory. Karen is singing and dancing in the aisle while her mother talks about avoiding malls and other temptations. "If we make it through the next 18 months, I can put my baby in day care and go find a job," says Mona, who has worked in finance. Later, she describes bitterly the lavish gifts her husband gave when they felt flush. When Mona's sister was marrying, Amar presented her with a $5,000 diamond-and-platinum ring to give her new husband and a week at the Bellagio in Las Vegas. "I wish I had that money now for our daughter's education fund," Mona says. -- Fran Alvarez rarely spent lavishly, as she describes it, during the five years her husband, Carlos, 43, was making $250,000 writing software programs for Credit Suisse. He will be earning half that in his new job away from Wall Street. It was either that or sell the house with its $3,000 monthly mortgage. At 41, Fran is the caretaker of their daughters, Gabriella, 6, and Isabella, 4. In the last five months she has gone back to her daughter-of-a-mechanic mentality. She canceled magazine subscriptions and expensive cable -- and stopped buying soft toilet paper. "Growing up, my mom used to buy the scratchiest toilet paper, and when we complained she would say, "When you get your own job, you buy the expensive type,' " Fran says. "Well, we're back to the scratchy stuff." When Carlos was on Wall Street, they lived without thinking how they spent, she says. They renovated their kitchen, took the kids to Disney World. That was all before. "Before, I would go crazy on clothes for the kids even though they were so young and couldn't care. Before, if I didn't feel like cooking, we'd go out. Before, if we were thinking about a vacation, we bumped up to the better hotel," she says. The other day Carlos picked up Gabriella at piano and Fran yelled at him for stopping at Dunkin' Donuts for coffee. "That's another $3.25 you don't need to spend," she told him. It's hard for Fran to believe that just two years ago Carlos bought her two Fendi bags for her 40th birthday. "He liked the idea of making a lot of money. It meant more to him than it did to me." Carlos hadn't revealed his unemployment to his parents, who didn't approve of how hard he worked but were impressed by his income. Fran had to tell them. "I wanted them to know the well for us had run dry," she says. The Monds aren't there yet -- they aren't prepared to give up on the dream of "the Street." Amar says he's working harder than ever to remain in New York because "it's addicting. There's always 1.5% of Wall Street that doesn't get affected by downturns. I aspire to be at that level." If he has regrets, it's that he scared his wife: "I didn't reassure her that even if Wall Street was broken, I wouldn't be broken." He also regrets selling the house: "I'm going to make it up to her." Mona sold almost everything from the house on EBay, keeping the bare minimum needed to furnish their apartment. But she hung onto the lawn mower. It sits on the tiny balcony outside their apartment, useless as a tool but significant as a reminder of the life Mona hopes she'll one day reclaim. -- [email protected] will change the application process for the “Today” show’s “Modern Day Wedding Contest ” so that same-sex couples are permitted to participate, the network said Thursday. The change was announced after a campaign by GLAAD, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, and a meeting between the organization’s representatives and the “Today” executive producer in New York. The wedding contest is a staple of the “Today” show, the most popular morning show on television. It allows viewers to vote on every detail of a couple’s wedding, which is then broadcast live on the show. GLAAD said last week it was alerted that NBC’s application for the contest only included the options “bride” and “groom.” According to GLAAD, NBC initially argued that same-sex couples could not apply because “For the “Today” show wedding, the couple must be able to be legally married in New York, which is where the wedding will take place.” GLAAD said in a blog post that it “questioned the validity of that argument since New York State legally recognizes same-sex marriages licensed in other states,” adding, “NBC mistakenly equated the marriage license with the wedding celebration.” On Tuesday the group called on its supporters to call and send e-mail messages to NBC. In doing so, it brought the gay marriage debate to the front doorstep of an American institution, the one that used to be called “America’s first family” in commercials. On Wednesday, NBC officials asked GLAAD for a meeting, and subsequent to that meeting, the network announced that its application process would be adjusted. “Our intent was not to be discriminatory or exclusive,” the network said in a statement, noting that “in 2005 when the wedding took place outside of New York, the application process was open to same-sex couples.” “Today” said it had extended the Friday deadline for wedding applicants by three days so that same-sex couples could apply, and “moving forward, we ensure that our future wedding contests will be inclusive of all couples.” Jarrett Barrios, the president of GLAAD, said in a statement, “We’re thrilled that ‘Today’ show’s ‘Modern Wedding Contest’ now recognizes what most fair-minded Americans have already concluded – a wedding celebrates love and commitment, whether the spouses are straight or gay.” Even though same-sex couples will be allowed to apply, it does not guarantee an appearance on the morning show. “Today” producers sort through all the applications and pick four finalists, and then the viewers take it from there, voting for which of the four should actually win the wedding and the all-expense-paid honeymoon. The wedding will take place on “Today” in October.The public hearings on Ontario’s proposed minimum-wage hike, which wrapped up last week, produced predictable clashes. Unions and social-justice advocates pointed out, among other things, that the minimum wage is too low today to keep workers out of poverty, even if they work full-time, while defenders of business, big and small, warned of dire consequences if the legislation is passed: cataclysmic job losses and business closures, an economy in ashes. “There is no question that the proposed changes … will put the success and competitiveness of Ontario’s business community in jeopardy, particularly our small business community,” said Ashley Challinor, director of policy for the Ontario Chamber of Commerce, in a typical caution. Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynn takes part in a discussion at the 4th Annual Canada 2020 Conference in Ottawa June 15, 2017. ( Fred Chartrand / THE CANADIAN PRESS ) The debate over wages has forever pitted employers against workers and those worried primarily about economic health against those worried primarily about economic justice. But in light of what we now know, there’s every reason for all parties to come together and support the package of labour reforms now before Ontarians. The arguments against the $15 minimum wage don’t hold up — and the choice between social and economic ends is a false one. A cross-partisan consensus is emerging among economists that decent wages and decent work are good, not just for workers, but also for the economy. It is not at all clear, for one thing, that the job losses predicted by the business lobby will actually occur. While some studies have shown hikes can have an impact on employment, the effect is not nearly as significant as those with a vested interest in keeping wages low claim. Article Continued Below Last month, 53 economists signed a letter in support of Ontario’s plan, pointing to a number of encouraging relevant examples in the U.S. In states such as New York, California and Washington, which have significantly increased the minimum wage in recent years, we are seeing that such hikes are not the job-killers they’re purported to be. Or, in the language of the economists: “The weight of evidence from the United States points to job loss effects that are statistically indistinguishable from zero.” For as long as there has been a minimum wage there have been business advocates overstating the likely costs of raising it. In 2011, to take one recent example, British Columbia boosted its minimum wage from $8 to $10.25 over the course of a year. The Fraser Institute, a right-leaning think tank, estimated this would lead to as many as 55,000 lost jobs. In the end, however, the reality was about one-sixteenth as bad, and the vast majority of job losses affected teenagers. (Ontario’s plan wisely maintains a slightly lower minimum wage for certain categories, including for those 18 or younger.) While the costs of wage hikes are consistently exaggerated, the body of evidence for their benefits is growing. As the Canadian economists wrote in their letter, a minimum-wage hike may well spur “economic revival.” Domestic consumption is the largest driver of the Canadian economy; household purchases account for 57 per cent of our GDP. Meanwhile, the growing group of minimum-wage earners, who currently comprise about 10 per cent of the workforce, spend a larger portion of their income than any other workers. When they make more, they spend more. As their number grows, so too does the importance of their wages to the overall economy. The hike promises to boost demand significantly and, in turn, economic growth. Moreover, study after study has shown that higher wages improve businesses’ productivity by raising morale, reducing turnover and training costs and improving the quality of job applicants. Employees are thought to be less likely to shirk because they care more about losing their jobs. Studies suggest employers offset something like half the costs of wage hikes through improved productivity alone. Of course, all policies have costs, and this one will no doubt cause some short-term pain for employers and perhaps even lead to some job losses. Clearly these consequences should not be dismissed; Premier Kathleen Wynne is right to continue to consult with small businesses about ways to mitigate them. But the evidence suggests that, in their grimness, the warnings of the business lobby are vastly overblown. Indeed, they are backwards in the sense that, even over the medium term, the hike promises significant economic benefits, not catastrophe. Article Continued Below It is particularly hard to credit some of the corporate giants among the critical chorus, from Loblaw to Magna, which have claimed that the proposed hike and the other labour protections being pursued are unfair to them. For companies such as these, with enormous annual profits and astronomical executive compensation packages, the warnings of doom are a rather tough sell. Policymakers at Queen’s Park have rightly determined that the true cost of the hike, so often overstated, is justified by the overdue protections for workers and by the boon to the economy. They are part of a growing movement across North America and beyond that recognizes decent jobs and decent wages are not simply moral goals; they are also essential to our economic well-being. Read more about:For The Inauguration, Trump's Music Picks Look A Lot Like Richard Nixon's Enlarge this image toggle caption Xinhua News Agency/Getty Images Xinhua News Agency/Getty Images There's been a lot of pop-culture chatter about who is performing at Donald Trump's inauguration Friday — and who has refused, as well as who was or was not ever asked. For critics of the incoming administration, the travails of those trying to book these gigs have been the stuff of comedy and derision; for Trump's team, the stance — at least publicly — has been that the lineup is exactly what they have always envisioned for this event: an inauguration for the people, not for the stars. "This is not Woodstock," the inauguration's director of communications, Boris Epshteyn, told CNN in December. "It's not summer jam. It's not a concert." One of the oddest moments of political spin came from Tom Barrack, the head of Trump's inauguration planning committee. Using a particularly curious turn of phrase, he told a pool of reporters earlier this month: "What we've done instead of trying to surround him with what people consider A-listers is, we are going to surround him with the soft sensuality of the place." Regardless of how Trump got to his list of eventual performers, a glance at the historical record reveals that tomorrow's ceremony for the first president to emerge into public consciousness via tabloids and then reality television looks a whole lot like a throwback to inaugurations of an earlier era. Trump's invitees for the swearing-in ceremony include the U.S. Marine Band, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, teen America's Got Talent runner-up and current classical crossover moppet, Jackie Evancho, and The Rockettes. (The disputes within the Rockettes organization and with James Dolan, the head of their parent company, Madison Square Garden, have become infamous. And the Mormon chorus, which has sung for five other presidents' inauguration festivities, is weathering some heated internal backlash regarding the Trump performance. At least one member of the ensemble has quit.) The so-called "A" list celebrities are all wanting tixs to the inauguration, but look what they did for Hillary, NOTHING. I want the PEOPLE! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 23, 2016 In an interview with CNN's Erin Burnett two days ago, Barrack reasserted that the inauguration planners had a specific vision in mind. When Burnett asked why Kanye West, who has expressed support for Trump and met with him in New York in December, wasn't going to be performing, Barrack responded: "We haven't asked him. He's been great, he considers himself a friend of the president-elect, but it's not the venue. The venue we have for entertainment is filled out, it's perfect. It's going to be typically and traditionally American." By that measure of what's "typically" and "traditionally" American, Trump's team is reifying certain parameters of what is worth memorializing and celebrating in American culture. The resulting lineup evokes nothing so much as the first inauguration of Richard Nixon, at another tumultuous time in American history. Nixon also invited both the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Marine Band to perform at his 1969 inauguration. Like Nixon, Trump has invited mostly white artists to mark his swearing-in — choices that may have seemed culturally appropriate to the 1960s establishment but strike many observers as alienating and even bewildering nearly half a century later. That's not to say that the Nixon-related festivities didn't have at least one moment of outright weirdness: James Brown sang "Say It Loud — I'm Black And I'm Proud" at the All-American Gala two nights before Nixon's inauguration in January 1969. Brown went on to endorse Nixon during his second presidential campaign in 1972, which led to boycotts and protests against his shows. (Over the course of his life, Brown's political alliances wandered from Lyndon Johnson to Strom Thurmond.) If an event for Nixon could feature an anthem of black power sung by one of the biggest stars of the day, what would it mean if West performed "Blood On The Leaves" or "Black Skinhead" at one of the Trump events? The Nixonian-establishment feel to Trump's roster feels especially discordant considering how much of the president-elect's campaign relied on a populist message. Let's look back to the Inauguration Day of another anti-establishment incoming president: Andrew Jackson. The doors of the White House were opened during his inauguration in 1829 to let the public in to celebrate — and as legend goes, a mob scene, possibly fueled by alcohol, broke out. According to accounts of the day, the teeming crowd smashed glasses, broke furniture and ruined rugs. Putting the possibly drunken chaos of Jackson's inauguration aside, there's a longtime tradition of incoming American presidents inviting amateur ensembles to perform at their inaugurations — and the "of the people" symbolism looms large. The start of Harry Truman's second term was celebrated by a singing New York City cop turned professional entertainer named Phil Regan, who emceed the occasion and performed "The Star-Spangled Banner." Many presidents have invited young and amateur performers from their own communities. In 1977, Jimmy Carter invited students from several historically black colleges in Atlanta to sing "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." Four years later, at Ronald Reagan's inauguration, an amateur vocalist named Juanita Booker — the daughter of a sharecropper — performed "The Star-Spangled Banner." For many decades, music at the inauguration ceremony was the purview of military bands; occasionally, and especially following World War II, incoming presidents have also welcomed accomplished opera singers to usher in their terms in high-art terms. That trend began with Dwight Eisenhower, who invited the black soprano Dorothy Maynor and the white tenor Eugene Conley to sing at his first inauguration in 1953. While popular musicians have long performed at the inauguration galas and parades, it's only much more recently that they've appeared on Inauguration Day itself. For example, George W. Bush was serenaded by a cavalcade of video stars like Ricky Martin, Jessica Simpson and 98 Degrees, not to mention Destiny's Child, at his inaugural ball in 2001. Even so, Bush took a more staid road when it came to his swearing-in ceremonies, with performers like the Marine Band, the Naval Academy Glee Club and students from the University of Louisville. Similarly, Bill Clinton went for musical selections and performers that telegraphed American heritage: For both of his inaugurations, Clinton, like Carter, invited choirs from historically black colleges as well as opera singers Marilyn Horne and Jessye Norman. The idea of pulling pop-culture superstars into the inauguration proper came to its fullest expression with our 44th president, whose first inauguration included Aretha Franklin and Yo-Yo Ma among the performers — and then whose second inauguration ceremony included James Taylor, Kelly Clarkson and Beyoncé (who, as previously noted, also performed for George W. Bush as part of Destiny's Child). Historically speaking, it's really President Obama who has been the outlier when it comes to adding splash and spangle to the pomp and circumstance of Inauguration Day. Trump's team has tried to go with bigger pop-culture names for a concert Thursday afternoon called "The Make America Great Again! Welcome Celebration," which will take place on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. It's slated to feature country stars Toby Keith and Lee Greenwood, actor Jon Voight and rock act 3 Doors Down, who scored chart hits in the late 1990s and early 2000s. As of yesterday evening, the artists listed on the official website of the "MAGA!" show included singer Jennifer Holliday (who in fact announced on Jan. 14 that she would not be performing, after receiving negative feedback from the LGBT community). Two days ago, soul legend Sam Moore (of Sam and Dave) signed onto the "MAGA!" bill, telling the Associated Press that he requested to perform in Holliday's place. The "MAGA!" event also includes The Piano Guys — a quartet of YouTube stars. Like other featured performers The Rockettes and Jackie Evancho, who have publicly worked out their feelings about the Trump inauguration invitation, The Piano Guys decided to publish a statement in response to their fans. The Piano Guys are all members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the note refers heavily to their religious beliefs and historical precedent. In the statement (which is unbylined but is written in the first person), a member of The Piano Guys compares the group's decision to that of the legendary black contralto Marian Anderson, who sang the national anthem at both Eisenhower's second inauguration in 1957 and at John F. Kennedy's in 1961. Anderson's inauguration appearances were particularly resonant with meaning after she was denied a 1939 performance at Washington's Constitution Hall. She subsequently delivered "one of the most important musical events of the 20th century," an open-air concert for 75,000 at the Lincoln Memorial that was a watershed in American history. Robert H. Jackson Center YouTube Regardless of the lack of parallels between Anderson's situation and their status as a mostly white (and completely nonblack) group, the unnamed Piano Guy continues: "We look to Marian Anderson — one of history's bravest proponents of civil rights — an African American woman who sang for two inaugurations in a divided, segregated nation, despite being treated by many in that nation with unthinkable prejudice and baseless hatred. She once said, 'As long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you otherwise might.' " Given the heavy scrutiny and criticism surrounding the performers who are performing at the Trump inauguration, it's most interesting to watch these musicians lay out their arguments and calculus for their individual decisions, and grasp at context and meaning for their choices, in such public ways. What's equally compelling is to see that despite Trump's gift for stagecraft, talent for creating his own media cycles and proclivity for upending expectations and norms, his choices wound up being just so traditional.Cheerleaders advocating a campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel have reacted with understandable dismay to the bombshell remarks dropped by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at a press conference in South Africa during the memorial events for Nelson Mandela last week. “No, we do not support the boycott of Israel,” Abbas told reporters. “But we ask everyone to boycott the products of the settlements. Because the settlements are in our territories. It is illegal…But we don’t ask anyone to boycott Israel itself. We have relations with Israel. We have mutual recognition of Israel.” It wasn’t quite a denunciation of the BDS campaign, but the remarks threatened to transform the boycott from its self-image as the principled projection of native Palestinian policy to the bastard foreign child of freelance troublemakers. BDS supporters swung into action, unleashing a torrent of invective from the likes of Ali Abunimah, who excoriated Abbas in his Electronic Intifada blog, ridiculing the Palestinian president and PLO leader as the “de facto leader of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority” and accusing him of “undermining” the Palestinian struggle. Abbas’s comments came days before the BDS movement celebrated its latest victory—a vote by members of the American Studies Association to endorse a boycott. The move follows a similar pro-boycott policy adopted recently by the Association for Asian American Studies and repeated anti-Israel resolutions adopted by the University and College Union in Britain. The BDS campaign is also gathering steam beyond the world of academia. The publication of new EU guidelines this year that limit funding by EU institutions to Israeli partners within the Green Line triggered a spasm of concern in Jerusalem that Israel might be subject to a trade boycott and even excluded from lucrative funding opportunities provided by the Horizon 2020 research program. But a mechanism was devised to avoid excluding Israel from Horizon 2020 and just last week Israel was admitted as the first non-European member of CERN, the nuclear research program, cementing Israel’s position as a key member of the European research pantheon. Despite the BDS pressures, Israel’s trade has been unaffected so far, with exports to the European Union soaring to record levels. But tiny BDS cracks have begun to appear in the relationship with Europe, Israel’s largest trading partner. Most recently, the Dutch water giant Vitens ceased co-operation with Israel’s Mekorot water company, and European countries including Britain—with whom trade has also soared—have issued guidelines warning companies that activity in West Bank settlements could involve “legal and economic risks stemming from the fact that the Israeli settlements, according to international law, are built on occupied land and are not recognized as a legitimate part of Israel’s territory.” One of the motivating factors behind John Kerry’s current push for a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians is the belief of U.S. and European officials sympathetic to Israel that the BDS campaign is beginning to make inroads that will, left unchallenged, begin to nibble away at mainstream support for Israel in the democratic world. From Abbas’s point of view, this surely should be good news and strengthen his hand in the current peace talks, helping to speed up their glacial progress. That is what makes the timing of his comments about the boycott so extraordinary and the vituperative response of BDS supporters so understandable. Israelis hate the boycott for many reasons. It reminds Jews of the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses in the 1930s and so carries echoes of vicious anti-Jewish sentiment. Israelis feel it unfairly singles them out for special treatment when there are other occupiers and other human rights abusers who not only escape international criticism, but actually sit in judgment on Israel at various international forums, chief among them the U.N. Human Rights Council. And by embracing, uniquely, the tactic identified so closely with the struggle against white South Africa, BDS paints Israel as the new Apartheid practitioner and international pariah state—an association that Israel and its supporters reject as unfounded and unfair. However, the BDS campaign prides itself on adopting the boycott tactic not from any special animus towards Israel—certainly not towards Jews, since many BDS supporters are themselves Jewish—but as a legitimate response to a call from Palestinians themselves. The BDS movement draws its legitimacy—and the answer to these criticisms—from a declaration issued in July 2005, signed by more than 100 Palestinian trade unions and organizations, calling on “people of conscience all over the world to impose broad boycotts and implement divestment initiatives against Israel similar to those applied to South Africa in the apartheid era.” To opponents of the boycott, Abbas’s comments will underscore their notion that the BDS campaign, far from being a homegrown Palestinian movement, was an idea born abroad and then transplanted into Palestinian civil society. Indeed, the groups that signed the 2005 boycott call contain some unlikely political actors—including the East Jerusalem YMCA, the Ma’an TV Network in Bethlehem, and the Child Development and Entertainment Center in Tulkarem. But it is more likely to be Abbas, not the BDS movement, who is out of tune with Palestinian popular opinion. Al-Monitor commentator Daoud Kuttab believes Abbas’s statement “reflects the absence of any clear strategy from the Palestinian political leadership except for negotiations.” But the real answer may be more complex. The Palestinian economy is intertwined with Israel, which controls all supply routes to the West Bank and most to Gaza, and is the Palestinians’ largest trading partner by default. The Palestinians are also committed to a series of economic arrangements with Israel under the 1994 Paris Protocol to the Oslo Peace Accords. “Abbas is the head of the Palestinian Authority who is the partner in negotiations with Israel. They cannot call for a boycott of Israel as the same time as they are engaged in negotiations with Israel,” said Samir Awad, professor of international relations at Birzeit University. “But the people are free to call for a total boycott of Israel and I think that’s what we’re doing.” “If we are to draw on the example of South Africa, the only way the apartheid regime there was forced to negotiate with the ANC and then to dissolve itself and allow one man one vote—that was achieved through the boycott of the apartheid regime,” Awad said. “I believe we have an apartheid regime here—not inside Israel but in the West Bank and Gaza, and I think it should be subject to a boycott, totally.”Yuriy Ivanovych Yekhanurov (Ukrainian: Юрій Іванович Єхануров) (born August 23, 1948) is a Ukrainian politician who was Prime Minister of Ukraine from 2005 to 2006 and Minister of Defense from 2007 to 2009. Background and professional career [ edit ] Yekhanurov was born in the village Belkachi in the far-north Yakut ASSR, which is currently the Sakha Republic within the Russian Federation. His father, Ivan Mikhailvich Yekhanurov is an ethnic Buryat, while his mother, Galina Ivanovna is an ethnic Ukrainian. In 1955 - 1963 Yuriy Yekhanurov attended a school in village Buy, Bichursky District, Buryatia.[6] In 1963 he moved to Kiev, Ukraine, where he has spent most of his life and career. He holds a PhD-equivalent degree in Economics, is married, and has one son. Yekhanurov graduated from the Kiev Construction tekhnikum in 1967, and the Kyiv Institute of National Economy in 1973. He was appointed manager of the "Kyivmiskbud-4"'s Plant of reinforced concrete as his first job in 1974. Yekhanurov quickly rose the ranks, already heading the "Stroydetal'" industrial group from 1985 to 1988. In that year, he was appointed deputy chairman of the Kiev construction directorate, the "Golovkyivmiskbud". Statesman and politician [ edit ] Yuriy Yekhanurov inspecting troops of the 95th Airmobile Brigade on Khreshchatyk in Kyiv on the Independence day 2008. When Ukraine gained independence in 1991, Yekhanurov started working for the Kiev municipal government, overseeing economic reforms. He was appointed Deputy Minister of Economy of Ukraine in 1993, and later headed the State Property Fund of Ukraine (which coordinated the privatisation) from 1994 to 1997. Yekhanurov also served for a short time as Minister of Economy in the cabinet of Pavlo Lazarenko in 1997. He was elected member of the Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, in 1998. When Viktor Yushchenko was appointed as Prime Minister of Ukraine in 1999, Yekhanurov joined his cabinet as First Vice Prime Minister. After the ousting of the government in 2001, Yekhanurov joined Yushchenko's People's Union Our Ukraine and was elected again a member of parliament. In June 2002, he was appointed Head of the State Committee for Industrial Policy and Entrepreneurship. After
The statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee stands behind a crowd of hundreds of white nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the 'alt-right' during the 'Unite the Right' rally 12 August 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia. They are protesting the removal of the statue from Emancipation Park in the city. Getty Images 2/9 Militia armed with assault rifles White nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the 'alt-right' with body armor and combat weapons evacuate comrades who were pepper sprayed after the 'Unite the Right' rally was declared a unlawful gathering by Virginia State Police. Militia members marched through the city earlier in the day, armed with assault rifles. Getty Images 3/9 Trump supporters at the protest A white nationalist demonstrator walks into Lee Park in Charlottesville, Va., Saturday, Aug. 12, 2017. Hundreds of people chanted, threw punches, hurled water bottles and unleashed chemical sprays on each other Saturday after violence erupted at a white nationalist rally in Virginia. AP Photo 4/9 Racial tensions sparked the violence White nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the 'alt-right' exchange insults with counter-protesters as they attempt to guard the entrance to Lee Park during the 'Unite the Right' rally Getty 5/9 Protesters clash and several are injured White nationalist demonstrators clash with counter demonstrators at the entrance to Lee Park in Charlottesville, Virginia. A state of emergency is declared. 6/9 A car plows through protesters A vehicle drives into a group of protesters demonstrating against a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The incident resulted in multiple injuries, some life-threatening, and one death. AP Photo 7/9 State police stand ready in riot gear Virginia State Police cordon off an area around the site where a car ran into a group of protesters after a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia AP Photo 8/9 Rescue personnel help injured people after a car ran into a large group of protesters after an white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia AP Photo 9/9 President Donald Trump speaks about the ongoing situation in Charlottesville, Virginia from his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. He spoke about "loyalty" and "healing wounds" left by decades of racism. 1/9 Statue of Confederate General Robert E Lee The statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee stands behind a crowd of hundreds of white nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the 'alt-right' during the 'Unite the Right' rally 12 August 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia. They are protesting the removal of the statue from Emancipation Park in the city. Getty Images 2/9 Militia armed with assault rifles White nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the 'alt-right' with body armor and combat weapons evacuate comrades who were pepper sprayed after the 'Unite the Right' rally was declared a unlawful gathering by Virginia State Police. Militia members marched through the city earlier in the day, armed with assault rifles. Getty Images 3/9 Trump supporters at the protest A white nationalist demonstrator walks into Lee Park in Charlottesville, Va., Saturday, Aug. 12, 2017. Hundreds of people chanted, threw punches, hurled water bottles and unleashed chemical sprays on each other Saturday after violence erupted at a white nationalist rally in Virginia. AP Photo 4/9 Racial tensions sparked the violence White nationalists, neo-Nazis and members of the 'alt-right' exchange insults with counter-protesters as they attempt to guard the entrance to Lee Park during the 'Unite the Right' rally Getty 5/9 Protesters clash and several are injured White nationalist demonstrators clash with counter demonstrators at the entrance to Lee Park in Charlottesville, Virginia. A state of emergency is declared. 6/9 A car plows through protesters A vehicle drives into a group of protesters demonstrating against a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The incident resulted in multiple injuries, some life-threatening, and one death. AP Photo 7/9 State police stand ready in riot gear Virginia State Police cordon off an area around the site where a car ran into a group of protesters after a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia AP Photo 8/9 Rescue personnel help injured people after a car ran into a large group of protesters after an white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia AP Photo 9/9 President Donald Trump speaks about the ongoing situation in Charlottesville, Virginia from his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. He spoke about "loyalty" and "healing wounds" left by decades of racism. Despite widespread backlash, Mr Trump defended his comments at a campaign rally this week, calling them "perfect”. The negative response, the President claimed, was engineered by the “fake news” media. “They only take out anything they can think of, and for the most part, all they do is complain,” he said. “But they don't put on those words. And they don't put on me saying those words." But it appears Mr Trump has larger problems than his battle with the media: A record number of voters now say that prejudice against minority groups is a problem in America. Half of all voters say such prejudice is a “very serious” problem, while 31 per cent say it is somewhat serious. More than half of all Americans also say there is too much prejudice in the US overall. Only 40 per cent say there is too much political correctness – one of Mr Trump’s favourite talking points. This margin is the widest it’s been since Quinnipiac first started asking the question. And while Mr Trump has claimed that the problem of prejudice is not of his creation – nor, charitably, of Barack Obama’s – voters still appear to hold him accountable for it. Sixty-five per cent of voters say the level of hatred and prejudice in the US has increased since his election. Only two per cent say it has gone down. "Elected on his strength as a deal-maker, but now overwhelmingly considered a divider, President Donald Trump has a big negative job approval rating and low scores on handling racial issues," Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, said. We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads. Subscribe nowNicola Sturgeon, photographed for Vogue Benjamin McMahon In the October issue of Vogue, first minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon gives a rare insight into her personal life and the pressures that she faces as one of the most pre-eminent politicians of our time. From her policies to her appearance, Sturgeon is a woman under constant scrutiny - as she shared with features editor Susie Rushton. "I accept that Ed's image and how he looked became a big part of how people perceived him," she said of former Labour leader Ed Miliband, "but I still don't think it's quite the same. Literally every time I'm on camera, as well as there being commentary on what I've said, there'll be commentary on what my hair looked like, what I wear. Often it's written in the most hideous and quite cruel way. And yes men aren't immune to that, but even Ed Miliband I don't think experienced it quite that way. But I'm actually inured to it now." Advertisement I'm quite hypercritical of myself… It's a very Scottish thing, always thinking that you've got to be that bit better than everyone else to be good enough Wardrobe analysis aside, the first female leader of the Scottish National Party also sheds light on being a modern politician in an environment traditionally dominated by men ("I do struggle to identify an occasion when I was held back because I'm a woman… You don't think about it at the time, but looking back on it, of course"), as well as revealing her self-critical side. Read next When Theresa Met Nicola: The Seven Things We Learned When Theresa Met Nicola: The Seven Things We Learned Sienna Miller wears silk gown with crystal collar, £2,790, Saint Laurent by Hedi Slimane. Cubic zirconia stud earrings, £55, Pandora. Other earrings, Sienna’s own. Hair: Sam McKnight. Make-up: Lucia Pica. Fashion editor: Lucinda Chambers. Photographer: Mario Testino. Mario Testino "Almost every day as I replay the day in my head, I think, I should have done that differently," she said. "I'm quite hypercritical of myself… It's a very Scottish thing, always thinking that you've got to be that bit better than everyone else to be good enough." Advertisement Read the full interview in the October issue of British Vogue, on newsstands this Thursday, September 10. Sienna Miller Covers October Vogue Sienna Miller Covers October Vogue Advertisement The National Portrait Gallery Celebrates Vogue The National Portrait Gallery Celebrates VogueA couple months ago I was playing with my Arduino Uno and I was wondering, what is the smallest Arduino that I could find these days? So fast forward, I am holding Femtoduino, smallest Arduino that I was able to find without braking my budget. What is Femtoduino? It is VERY small Arduino compatible board that has same processing capability and pin count as an Arduino Uno. Here are the specs from Femtoduino’s website : Femtoduino is an ultrasmall libre Arduino compatible board. ATMEGA 328p (QFN32 version) Processor exact same computing power of the Arduino Duemilanove or UNO. ultra light (2g) ultrasmall (20.7×15.2 mm) (.81″ x.6″) 0.05″ connectors 0402 components removing everything not strictly necessary Wondering what the PIN layout is? Check out the picture below Femtoduino is easy to program, you can use your existing Arduino to act as the programmer or you can use FTDI board to program it directly from Arduino software. I use the micro FTDI board from Tindie : https://tindie.com/shops/jimparis/microftx-usb-serial-breakout/ Download the drivers for the FTDI board here: http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm And here is the instructions that I followed to connect it to my computer : http://www.femtoduino.com/femtoduino-and-ftdi-ft232rl-usb-to-serial-breakout-board/ To connect the Femtoduino to the FTDI board I used a basic jumper wire that was cleverly inserted into the Femtoduino from both sides to be held securely. This way I can even prototype on the Femtoduino and breadboard without using a shield! What’s the price of a Femtoduino? Femtoduino costs 25$ plus shipping. You can purchase it from the manufacturer : http://www.femtoduino.com/ Or from Tindie.com : https://tindie.com/shops/femtoduino/ Feel free to ask me questions about this, I have 3 of these little boards that I will be using in my projects! Have fun making micro electronics projects!A North Korean diplomat on Wednesday raised the possibility of the hermit regime holding bilateral talks with the United States. "Under certain circumstances, we are willing to talk in terms of the freezing of nuclear testing and missile testing," North Korea Ambassador to India Kye Chun Yong said during an interview on India's TV network WION. According to Kye, North Korea is prepared to hold such negotiations with the U.S. at "anytime" — but without preconditions from Washington. "If our demands is met [sic], we can negotiate in terms of the moratorium of such [programs] as weapons testing," the diplomat said. That said, North Korea first wants to see the U.S. "completely stop" large-scale joint military exercises with South Korea, temporarily or permanently, according to Kye. And he said the North would agree to a temporary stop of exercises too. The U.S. has more than 28,000 troops stationed in South Korea and around 50,000 American military personnel in Japan. The U.S. regularly holds joint military drills with the two Asian allies, including exercises involving land troops, navy and air forces. The U.S. is worried about North Korea's continued development of nuclear weapons as well as its push to have an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the U.S. mainland. North Korea has already demonstrated it has missiles that can reach Japan and South Korea as well as U.S. military bases on Guam, and experts say they probably can reach the state of Hawaii. It was unclear if North Korean leader Kim Jong Un shares the views of his Indian envoy. In the past, Kim has eliminated officials or even family members he considers to be out of line or a threat to the dynastic regime. Meantime, rhetoric coming from North Korean state media Thursday appeared to indicate Pyongyang is pressing forward with its nuclear weapons and missile development. "The army of the DPRK is whetting the sword of retaliation shaper [sic] than before with a firm hold on the nuclear sword of justice to cope with the U.S. imperialists' escalating aggression moves," North's Korean state-run Korean Central News Agency said on its website. Also, KCNA said "the Trump administration, obsessed by megalomania, is going arrogant to mount a preemptive nuclear strike at the DPRK." DPRK is a reference to North Korea's formal name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. A day earlier, KCNA vowed North Koreans would "take revenge upon the U.S. aggressors with the approach of June 25, the day of struggle against U.S. imperialism." One possibility is North Korea maybe hinting that it will mark June 25 to conduct its sixth nuclear test or test-fire another ballistic missile. The date of June 25, 1950 is the anniversary of when North Korea's army attacked South Korea, crossing the so-called 38th parallel and touching off the Korean War. Pyongyang's last nuclear test was in September 9, 2016, and it marked the 68th anniversary of the communist state's creation. At the same time, next week could prove pivotal for the future of the Korean Peninsula as South Korean President Moon Jae-in is scheduled to meet June 29 to 30 with President Donald Trump during a visit in Washington. Moon, who took office last month, is seen as having a more moderate approach to the North that could put him at odds with Trump's vow to act alone if necessary to solve the North Korean threat. Last week, Moon opened the door to direct dialogue with the North Koreans in remarks at a peace center. He also expressed a willingness to hold parallel talks on both denuclearization as well as a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War. "Whatever policy we take has to be in coordination with South Korea," said Dean Cheng, senior research fellow on Chinese military and security issues at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based conservative think-tank. "If South Korea is not willing to use force, that creates an interesting dilemma for the U.S. if we want to use force." In April, Trump met with Chinese President Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and they discussed the North Korea problem. Trump praised the superpowers' relationship and sought to downplay any trade friction that he previously had with Beijing. A tweet from Trump on Tuesday, though, appeared to indicate that the cordial relationship with Xi hasn't moved the needle in terms of convincing North Korea to give up its nuclear and missile programs. "While I greatly appreciate the efforts of President Xi & China to help with North Korea," Trump tweeted, "it has not worked out. At least I know China tried!" Even so, the Trump administration is continuing to reach out to China for help on the North Korean issue. The administration is also considering new sanctions against Pyongyang and wants Beijing to agree to them. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis held talks with their Chinese counterparts in Washington. The two later held a joint press conference. "We reiterated to China that they have diplomatic responsibility to exert much greater economic and diplomatic pressure on the regime if they want to prevent further escalation in the region," Tillerson told reporters. Mattis said the two sides "affirmed North Korea's nuclear and missile programs as a threat to peace and security in the Asia-Pacific region." However, he added that the U.S. "will continue to take necessary measures to defend ourselves and our allies." China is a longtime ally of the isolated state and its largest trading partner. Experts say China wants to keep North Korea as a buffer zone between the communist North and U.S.-backed South Korea. They also say Beijing is worried that a collapse of the North would create a refugee crisis with millions of North Koreans crossing the border into China. "The Chinese are only going so far in terms of pressuring North Korea," said Joel Wit, senior fellow at the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and co-founder of Washington's 38 North think-tank. "We are hitting, or about to hit, a dead end," Wit added.Contrary to popular belief, not everything we buy is made and/or assembled in China. Just almost everything. Then again, it used to be a lot simpler to define where something was made. Back in the day, it was either made here or made somewhere else. Today, that equation is a lot more complicated. Where raw materials are sourced, where parts are created, and ultimately where various parts are actually put together all define the heritage of a product. We talked about this in more detail when DeWalt announced their Built in the USA program last year. This year, we’re getting to report on some of that DeWalt USA action firsthand, with a visit to DeWalt’s facility in North Carolina. In typical Home Fixated style, we provided live coverage of this DeWalt media visit via Twitter. Naturally, being the huge Home Fixated fan you are, you already spend most waking minutes glued to our social media feeds. Just in case you’re new, be sure to follow HomeFixated on Twitter, where you’ll be sure to find scintillating, pithy commentary mixed with photos and video of all the toolicious action! By following us on Twitter, you’ll also become an industry insider with access to tweets about the latest tools, news, deals, and tool/construction info. Lastly, if the mere mention of Twitter makes you break out in a cold sweat or scratch your head in complete bewilderment, fear not! You’ll find our DeWalt coverage detailed below, no specialty social media chops needed. DeWalt Charlotte North Carolina Facility Visit Your batteries are getting smarter. Look for @DEWALTtough Tool Connect to work with your smartphone in Aug #dewaltxp pic.twitter.com/npsWI1HhBZ — HomeFixated.com (@HomeFixated) June 3, 2015 New higher end Bluetooth job site radio from @DEWALTtough to annoy neighbors with #dewaltxp pic.twitter.com/J7gMQedd9j — HomeFixated.com (@HomeFixated) June 3, 2015 Did you know @DEWALTtough does pneumatics too? 11 new tools released in April #dewaltxp pic.twitter.com/1jQEfHyl5W — HomeFixated.com (@HomeFixated) June 3, 2015 Attn remodelers & flooring pros – sweet new @DEWALTtough Cordless Miter Saw coming soon $319/$399 pic.twitter.com/VaLFrrZ0aa — HomeFixated.com (@HomeFixated) June 3, 2015 Goodbye lasers & hello @DEWALTtough XPS Light – casts a perfect cutline no matter the blade thickness #dewaltxp pic.twitter.com/imAQm5KowB — HomeFixated.com (@HomeFixated) June 3, 2015 Why use a forklift in the factory when you can use this @DEWALTtough @NASCAR as express transport? #DEWALTXP pic.twitter.com/IPITs8Jset — HomeFixated.com (@HomeFixated) June 3, 2015 Title Photo coutesy of DeWaltA A GRAYLAND, Wash. -- The two days of storms, high tides, high winds, and high surf have all combined to eat away at the shoreline at Washaway Beach, leaving two homes now as part of the Pacific Ocean and a third that's set to join them soon. The challenge right now: save as much as you can. Ray Miller is in the middle of that challenge, racing against Mother Nature as the ocean surf laps at his front door step. Monday, the water's edge was still 50 feet away. "I knew it was going to happen sooner or later, but I had hoped it wasn't this soon," Miller said. He watched as his two neighbors lost their homes. A blue one fell a few days ago, and a red one just Tuesday. "We were sleeping there with the fire going Monday morning and I was still being optimistic," said Stanley Sabre who lost his home. Stanley and Resha Sabre had just been enjoying the home hours before the ocean marched to their doorstep and consumed their home. They knew they were on borrowed time; that this was inevitable. "It's exciting," said Stanley, "I married into the family 30 years ago and it's a great adventure." For Resha, sadness for having to leave friends behind. "An awesome group of people here," said Resha Sabre, "And like right now they're all together helping our neighbor across the street who is losing their house -- obviously really soon." Jackie Diles heard about the evacuation on Facebook and came running. She doesn't even know the homeowners. "I keep watching the waves out there and watching how close they're getting and getting a little nervous here," she said, Also at a home in danger is the dog known as "Washaway George." The evacuating family can't keep him, so Harbor Rescue is taking him, waiting for someone to adopt him. This destructive force of nature has been going on for decades. Scores of homes have fallen into the water and whole neighborhoods gobbled up. The beachfront used to be miles from here, now it's just inches, and it's not stopping. And with a third storm coming in Thursday, Miller worries his home won't survive, but the neighborhood takes some solace in that no one has been hurt.Majid Saeedi / Getty Images Vasiyeh, 16, shows her scars from burns she inflicted on herself two years ago, in Herat, Afghanistan, on April 6, 2010 Fawzia felt like she had no way out. Married off to her cousin at age 16, she had been beaten routinely by her husband and in-laws in their poor rural home in Paktia province for the first three years of her marriage. She complained bitterly to her parents, but no solution seemed imminent. Marriage had become too much for her to bear. Then, after she saw her brother-in-law strike his wife on the head with a gun, Fawzia finally did what she had threatened to do many times before: she doused herself in cooking fuel and struck a match. Now Fawzia (whose name has been changed because of her age) lies in a hospital bed with third-degree burns covering 35% of her body and ash coating the insides of her lungs. Her physician, Dr. Ahmed Shah Wazir, believes it's unlikely that she will survive. The terrifying thing is that she is far from the only person in Afghanistan to take such drastic action. The Ministry of Women's Affairs has documented a total of 103 women who set themselves on fire between March 2009 and March 2010. No one knows what the real numbers are, given the difficulty of collecting data in the country. "More than 80% [who try to kill themselves in this way] cannot be saved," says Wazir, who runs the burn unit at Kabul's Istiqlal Hospital, one of only two such specialized wards in Afghanistan. (See pictures of Muslim women leading a soft revolution.) Wazir believes that most of his would-be patients never make it to the hospital. In some cases, families are too ashamed or fearful of prosecution to report what happened. "There are many such cases where, because of honor, because of the media, [the families] don't want to disclose it," says Selay Ghaffar, director of the Kabul-based NGO Humanitarian Assistance for the Women and Children of Afghanistan (HAWCA). "I'm sure there are many, many cases that are still invisible." "I have seen a number of instances of women setting themselves on fire in my life," says Fawzia's mother, wiping away tears. She insists that there is nothing unusual about her daughter. "Four months ago, someone else from our village lit herself on fire and died." (See a 2001 TIME story on how women fared under the Taliban.) In recent years, the dramatic suicide method employed by women in this war-torn country has drawn wide attention, amid speculation that the trend might be growing. Some, like Wazir, blame Iranian TV and cinema for romanticizing suicide by fire. (For example, in the 2002 movie Bemani, a girl uses self-immolation to escape a forced marriage.) He points out that many of his patients, including Fawzia, are refugees who have returned from Iran. Other observers argue that the practice has long existed as a method by which Afghan women try to escape their sorrows and that improved monitoring since the fall of the Taliban has only made it more prominent in public awareness. The Afghan government, however, says that in the past five years, the numbers have dropped. Nevertheless, the act remains both common and poorly understood, with relatively few resources devoted to its prevention. "There are seven safe houses in Afghanistan that protect victims of [domestic] violence," says Ghaffar, whose organization runs one such institution, an advice hotline and several legal-aid centers. But she says most of the country — particularly in the volatile south and east — remains woefully devoid of any services. "There is not a single safe house, and no legal-aid center," says Ghaffar of these regions. "There are many cases that need protection." The implication, then, for women like Fawzia — who pleaded with her parents to find a solution on multiple occasions — is that even when outside help is sought, there remains a high probability that none will be found. Part of the problem, women's groups say, is resistance by officials to searching Afghan society for the root of such a horrifying phenomenon. Even Fawzia's doctor finds nothing blameworthy in the Afghan way of life. "It is a very good culture. We support the women," says Wazir, dismissing the notion that family abuse and despondency could be the main factor driving patients to his burn center. Indeed, even when domestic abuse is acknowledged, says Ghaffar, "Afghan society puts the blame on the woman — that she is not a good woman; that she is suffering at home because she is not behaving like a good mother or a good wife. And that's why the husband has the right to beat her." Ghaffar estimates that the majority of Afghan women experience some kind of domestic abuse and rarely report it. "For every one case we have, I'm sure we can multiply it by thousands." See pictures of women unveiled in Kabul.Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Jerome Powell listens during an open board meeting at the Federal Reserve in Washington December 14, 2012. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Federal Reserve board member Jerome Powell said on Tuesday he feared any move for the Fed and the U.S. Treasury to cooperate on debt management and other issues would undermine the central bank’s independence and should be avoided. Powell was responding to research by a team of Harvard economists concluding that the Treasury’s effort to ramp up its sales of longer-term bonds in recent years undercut the Fed’s effort to bring down long-term rates through quantitative easing. The economists, including former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, suggested the two agencies coordinate - particularly in a crisis - to be sure the government’s debt management plans and the Fed’s monetary policy are in synch. That proposal “seems to me to be fraught with risk for the Federal Reserve,” said Powell, noting that when the Fed and Treasury did cooperate in the years after World War Two it cut into the Fed’s independence. “There is considerable evidence that monetary policy independence leads to better macroeconomic outcomes. Any active collaboration between debt management and monetary policy, even in a crisis, would risk calling into question that independence,” Powell said. He downplayed the group’s conclusion that Treasury’s debt management undercut the impact of the Fed’s quantitative easing. He said, for example, that quantitative easing sent a strong signal to markets that the Fed would stand behind the economy, providing a psychological boost to markets.There are some people out there, fools by any other name, who believe that baths are shit. They think taking showers are better because blah blah blah, you’re lying in your own filth, blah blah blah it’s boring, blah blah blah you get hot and flustered. Well these people are wrong and should shut up forever because now actual science says that baths are so good for you, they’re practically the equivalent of jogging. A study from Loughborough University says bathing has similar effects to exercise, including helping to prevent type 2 diabetes. Dr Steve Faulkner, the head researcher on the study, explained that “passive heating” is great for your health. His team tested 14 people each enjoying an hour-long hot bath and an hour-long bike ride. Although biking burned more calories overall, the researchers found that a hot bath used up to as many calories as a brisk half hour walk or jog. Speaking to The Conversation Dr Faulkner said: “The overall blood sugar response to both conditions was similar, but peak blood sugar after eating was about 10 per cent lower when participants took a hot bath compared with when they exercised. “This suggests that repeated passive heating may contribute to reducing chronic inflammation, which is often present with long-term diseases, such as type 2 diabetes.” It’s like exercising, right, but you can be naked, and also you don’t have to do anything. Perfect. @rosielannersIT is hard to gauge BHIM’s identity as a consumer app without understanding the Unified Payment Interface (UPI) platform that powers it. The UPI concept itself was made possible by the National Payments Corporation of India ( NPCI ), an umbrella organisation set up in 2006 at the behest of the Reserve Bank of India for all retail payment systems of the land. It is singularly responsible for paving the way for tech startups to work with commercial banks on one hand and serve customers like you and me on the other.UPI needed all banks to become interoperable with the UPI technology (between February and June 2016), which is no mean task. NPCI took two extra months to ensure as many banks as possible were on board a compact system.UPI is how apps like PhonePe — built in less than a year — help make the inter-banking experience as simple as email for customers. It is a living and breathing platform that enables immediate payments. And it was a wake-up call for banks to get their technology act together.Bharat Interface for Money (or BHIM ) is another of UPI’s progeny and applications. The buzz in the tech sphere is that it is the shape of things to come — read, technology and micro-lending.If BHIM has had something other apps don’t, it is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s voluntary endorsement. This counts for a lot in a land where banking access is abysmally low and faith in technology stillborn for more than 500 million people. Unsurprisingly, Modi’s endorsement helped BHIM achieve the same number of downloads in 10 days that a slicker PhonePe app clocked in five months.But here’s the thing: PhonePe is a standalone business and business enabler for parent company Flipkart. Paytm is a red-blooded digital wallet business. What’s the Prime Minister doing evangelising an app, especially a basic app and “balancing wheel” for starters?He is helping spawn a technology ecosystem for the poor.The Ratan P Watal Committee mooted strengthening the digital payments ecosystem in a December 2016 report. Its recommendations hold one of the cues that make BHIM relevant. “By enabling the creation of a robust credit history, digital payments can also enable the provision of microcredit to low-income households and small businesses.” It would have taken a private player far longer to reach the mark now set by BHIM.And yet, the process toward a digital payments economy is just underway.AP Hota, managing director and chief executive officer of NPCI, explained it to ET. “In our country of a billion mobile phone connections (active connections could be around 800 million), nearly twothirds of mobile phones are simple feature phones without data connectivity.”NPCI factored Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) technology, which is used to send text between a mobile phone and an application programme in the network, into BHIM. “We have built USSD-based mobile payment system with 51 participating banks. BHIM integrated USSD infrastructure with UPI,” said Hota.In effect, a customer with a feature phone can now have access to UPI just by dialling the USSD short code *99# if the customer’s bank is already UPI-enabled. “There are 35 UPI banks. Thus, the customers of 35 banks will have access to UPI irrespective of whether they have a smartphone or a feature phone. While smartphone based customers will use BHIM, other customers would dial *99#,” added Hota.More importantly, BHIM has demonstrated a consumer app reference point to the app developer and telco community — what it will take to make digital payments possible.“BHIM is one of 30 such apps available today,” said Sharad Sharma, cofounder of the Indian Software Product Industry Round Table (iSPIRT). “It is one of the most limited apps in terms of functionality. In terms of smoothness, it is well-designed. But it is meant to be a reference app.”Sharma’s reading is that even as millions throng the mobile app and feature phone function, competitors (including traditional banks) have to exceed this threshold or benchmark. Even if some banks don’t, they and their customers are not losing out because they are on the UPI platform.Sharma likens BHIM to Google Nexus, which was the smartphone model in 2010 that came to be emulated by handset manufacturers (Samsung, HTC, Motorola, et al) even as app developers knew all the Android functionalities they had to fulfil to feature in Google’s app store. “BHIM is the equivalent of the Nexus phone for Android—the goal was not to make money from Nexus but to show the possible features in a smartphone. In building a better phone, use every feature of Android that is possible. It is called ‘reference implementation’,” he explains. By April, Sharma expects almost 150 apps, including those by traditional banks.NPCI prepared fertile ground almost 18 months before BHIM’s launch. On February 20, 2016, it opened up to the APIs of UPI, which would enable developers to build mobile applications across themes. The application programming interface (API) is the set of functions and procedures that allow creation of applications which access the features or data of an existing operating system. This hackathon was organised in Bengaluru with Hackerearth, which hosts hackathons for clients to evaluate and assess developers. “Even before UPI became a reality, we were in conversation with NPCI at a hackathon,” said Sachin Gupta, chief executive officer, Hackerearth.The first thing NPCI wanted to roll out was a ‘sandbox’ for security reasons. “They don’t want to put out the real data in a hackathon because it may be misused. So you put out a sandbox, where all the functionalities a software needs are available but without real data,” said Gupta.To judge an application and gauge the developer’s mettle, NPCI needed to see proof of concept. So, it gave the developers fields (that change every hackathon) and API elements along the lines of ‘consent of a user who banks’ and data (such as name, location and banking history) but all the data was pseudo. “API allows you to interact, which is what developers need to know, not the data of real users. So the organiser seeds the system with pseudo data (artificial bank records, transactions or intentionally added anomalies like credit card frauds),” said Gupta.“The sandbox gave developers a flavour of the APIs without access to real data. It was followed by a workshop, where NPCI officials explained UPI and its implications. The BHIM rollout is a culmination of the effort NPCI has put in in the last 1.5 years,” he added.Gupta’s big takeaway from UPI is that it is trying to democratise banking, forcing banks to be more consumer-focused. “UPI forces banks to be innovative because then anybody can own an account anywhere and it is about the service you provide.” With the NPCI direction, banks too began to look at crowd sourcing ideas.Second, they evangelised their APIs because they too could make money as developers leverage APIs to build features.Third, banks build a brand for themselves in the tech community to attract talent. The National Payments Corporation’s Hota said the daily average volume of UPI has increased to about 1,80,000 (including 80,000 transactions on BHIM app ). “UPI transactions from feature phones have also started showing an upward trend,” he pointed out. Even as the NPCI paved the way, it did not micromanage.It has selected young digital payment companies like Juspay Technologies in Bengaluru to build BHIM, or be a vendor as Lucideus, a cybersecurity services company, is. In time, this will be seen among the first few engagements between India’s rich developer community and the underserved banking market. “It’s not fully taken off yet among developers. Directly, startups and the government aren’t ready to work with one another completely. They still need a trusted intermediary,” said Sahil Kini, investor at Aspada Investments, which funds startups in healthcare, education, agritech and fintech.For a BHIM-like app, the three main security components would be the application itself, communication between the application and the server and the server security.“If a mobile wallet has one-factor authentication (you need to login and transact and just key in the password) and a credit card has two-factor (swipe plus password), BHIM has three-factor authentication,” said Saket Modi, cofounder of Lucideus Tech, which was involved in security assessment for UPI and BHIM.The first factor is a combination of a user’s device ID
having seen it, while Democrats insist the time for talking is over. If it passes, just enough funds should be released to keep the government running until Nov. 15, the next looming deadline. [Los Angeles Times]The crucial backing the MBTA's Green Line Extension project got this week from the feds may have been helped by one state employee's personal pitch to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. It helps, of course, that the employee was Gov. Charlie Baker. Sitting down at the National Governors Association dinner back in February, Baker's seat placement that night next to first daughter Ivanka Trump earned a lot of headlines the next morning. But on the other side of him, he said, was Chao, who oversees the Federal Transit Administration that this week approved the Baker administration's $2.3 billion budget for the long-stalled Green Line plans. “I spent half the night talking to Secretary Chao about the Green Line Extension project,” Baker said during an appearance on Boston Herald Radio's "Morning Meeting" show today. “I'm very excited about that opportunity. It's a terrific infrastructure project, and the fact the feds will be a big co-sponsor indicates that they believe it's a great project, too.” The FTA's green light is key to ensuring the state gets $1 billion in federal funding the project, which will run 4.7 miles of track through Somerville and Medford, adding seven new stations along the way. How much convincing Baker ultimately had to do that night may have been minimal. The Trump administration had previously highlighted the project, along with dozens of others, and Baker has said that it was a priority project for the feds. State official had stalled the project amid what they say were exploding costs before ultimately paring down plans, and the price tag, last year. “It was running out of control financially,” Baker said. “I think the revised version, they and we both agree, is much more financially appropriate.” But Baker's highly publicized spot next to Ivanka Trump apparently also proved fortuitous. Earlier this month, Baker was tapped for a White House commission to study how to rein in the country's heroin and opioid crisis, a position Baker says he'll use to push local reforms nationally. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Baker ally, is heading the commission and was the one who called Baker asking him to serve on it. But Baker also pointed to his discussion with Ivanka Trump as a likely factor for him being picked. “She was really interested in the issue,” he said. “I have to believe in retrospect that that conversation and that dialogue probably also helped.”No one seems to be able to figure out where the Western Mustangs’ men’s squash team winning record fits among the best records in all sports. Suffice to say winning 33 championships in succession is likely well up there. The men’s team won No. 33 in succession on the weekend at Niagara-On-The-Lake with a 6-0 record. The streak began in the 1983-84 season. It was their 43rd men’s title. Toronto finished second at 5-1 and Waterloo in third. The Mustangs went 29-7 in individual matches. The win surpassed the 32-championships in succession won by the Toronto Blues’ swim team. Jack Fairs was in attendance at the championship. He was the architect who built this team. But Fairs stopped coaching last year and new coach Derek Moore took over this year. Western finished third in the women’s championship with a 3-2 record. The Queen’s Gaels won the title after going 5-0 with Toronto earning silver at 4-1. The Mustangs have built the dynasty by recruiting and playing tough competition. The more the team wins the more top recruits want to play at Western. The Mustangs also compete in the Collegiate Squash Association where they play American universities. The Mustangs men’s team closed out the tournament Sunday with a 4-2 win over the host Brock Badgers and a 6-0 victory against Queen’s. Stefan Houbtchev, Farzin Habib Pour, Bryan Hill, and Pierce Masuhara each won their individual matches against the Badgers and then did the same against Queen’s. Nick Guest and Alex Seto also won matches in the sweep of the Gaels. On the women’s side Western finished the championship with a 6-0 win over Waterloo. Holly Delavigne, Michaela Khan, Nicola Crich, Karen Lam, Robyn Lewis, and Joanna Macleod each earned the win in their matches. Delavigne was also named an OUA all-star.Announced back in September, the Samsung Gear S is the South Korean electronics company’s sixth attempt at making a smartwatch. It’s got the specs of a mid-range phone from a few years back and runs Tizen, Samsung’s own operating system. The intended appeal of the Gear S is that it can be used independently from the rest of your devices. Along with Bluetooth (standard on Android Wear devices and fitness trackers), Samsung’s newest watch also has radios for Wi-Fi, as well as 2G and 3G cellular connectivity. If you get a SIM card through a cell carrier (and Samsung is pushing this on all major US carriers), you can pair the Gear S to a set of wireless headphones and get a playlist for your jog from Samsung’s Milk streaming music service, no phone required. You’ll also be able to navigate using the built in maps application, as well as track your steps and check your heart rate when you pause for traffic when crossing the street. The Gear S is powered by Tizen, the operating system that would have run on the ill-fated Samsung Z and will be on Samsung’s smart TV’s next year. As is the case with most general-purpose computing devices not powered by Google’s Android or iOS, there aren’t many apps available for the Gear S at launch. Samsung gave one of these to a lot of developers at its conference this week, so hopefully that situation will change some in the months to come. Before dropping ~$400 on the device (as with smartphones, the price will vary depending on whether you want to sign a contract or pay in installments) and committing to spending $10 a month for data, go to a carrier or Best Buy and try the Gear S on. It’s huge. I switched from wearing a Basis Peak every day to wearing the Gear S, and the difference seemed ridiculous. The watch section of the Gear S is about twice as long as the Peak, in order to accommodate the curved 2-inch screen. It looks like a small, warped Galaxy S. The screen is pretty, though I have to say that I do not like most the default watch face, which looks like mechanical watch with notification indicators “behind” the hands. I much prefer the ones that show the time, steps, and notifications in straight numeric format. Unfortunately, the menu for switching between faces doesn’t let you preview, so you have to dig through the menu again and again while you find the one you like. Also odd: the inclusion of a very narrow QWERTY keyboard in the messaging app. Nobody will find this keyboard convenient. You have to try very hard to touch the right letters and often miss, with the autocorrect doing an “OK” job of preventing absolute frustration. When possible, you’re going to want to just use voice controls. Despite having all the radios you could ask for (with reasonable expectations for battery life) and a decent amount of storage, the Gear S is still tied to your phone — which has to be a Samsung. You need the phone to activate the watch, to get more apps, and to get a more detailed view of things like your health data. I’ve been using a friend’s old Galaxy S3 with the Gear S, so I’m glad to see that Samsung didn’t exclusively tie it to its current flagship devices. The Gear S is best for those who have a big phone like the Galaxy Note 4 and don’t want to reach into their bag or shimmy it out of their pocket all the time. If you’ve got a smaller phone, the fact that the Gear S can do things independently doesn’t provide enough of a marginal convenience improvement to feel worth the investment in my day-to-day use. That could very well be different if your job doesn’t require you to be strapped to a computer and/or phone all day anyway.Warner Bros. to preview The Hobbit: There and Back Again at CinemaCon at 5:28 pm by - March 25, 20145:28 pm by Demosthenes According to The Hollywood Reporter, Warner Bros. will preview of The Hobbit: There and Back Again at CinemaCon in two days time. On Thursday at 2.30pm Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara, president of domestic distribution Dan Fellman, and president of international distribution Veronika Kwan Vandenberg will showcase a number of the studio’s films that are set to debut this year, including Godzilla, Blended, Edge of Tomorrow, and The Hobbit: There and Back Again. CinemaCon is an annual gathering of USA cinema owners and film distributors. The 2014 edition is being held at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. No word on whether the preview might include footage. However, you might recall that at CinemaCon last year Warner Bros. showed a short reel with Peter Jackson introducing a few clips via video. So, fingers crossed! [Read More]A thief boosted a bakery truck on the Upper East Side Monday – but instead of selling the $60,000 ride, he dutifully made the regularly scheduled dropoffs along the driver’s route, police sources told the Post. Wearing only his underwear, David Bastar, 30, of Nanuet stole a Grimaldi’s Home of Bread truck — full of $8,000 worth of baguettes, whole-wheat rolls and loaves of sourdough — on Second Avenue near East 99th Street at around 3 a.m., police said. He then followed instructions mapped out on a piece of paper on the front seat, parceling out the baked goods to at least three restaurants and stores, police and bakery workers said. "When I heard he actually made a few deliveries, I laughed out loud... I guess he really wants to be a truck driver!" a real Grimaldi’s deliveryman said. Once he was done making real drop-offs, Bastar tossed loaves of bread out the window while zooming down Lexington Avenue, police sources said. Click for more from NYPost.comAre you kind of a jerk? Don't worry, this is a safe place, you can be honest. There are a lot of inconsiderate people out there; people who don't think of anyone but themselves; people who walk through everyday life oblivious to the world and the people living in it. It's often the little considerations that keep us from going completely insane at the end of the day. Think about all the times your day was brought to a screeching halt because you just could not get over that person who was so blatantly inconsiderate to you or even someone else around you. Oh, you can't think of an instance where that's happened to you? Congratulations, you're probably the person we're talking about. It's time to play the part of the surrogate mother holding you painfully by your ear. This is for your own good. 1. Do you hold the door open for people? Well, do you at least look behind you to see if someone needs the door held for them? Please, don't say you make the conscious decision to not hold the door for them. Listen, you don't have to act like holding the door is your job, but it's the thought that counts. Most people appreciate that you made the effort for them. But you know the consideration doesn't stop at the door-holding end. If you notice someone holding the door for you, and you're close enough to oblige, you better walk through that damn door: How dare you not recognize my kindness! 2. Do you chew with your mouth open? If there was a human being handbook given to all of us on the way out of the womb, surely "Eating And You" would be one of the essential chapters. This is Human Basics 101, guys. If we can't nail this down, then we'll never get a human to Mars. It probably takes more effort to open your mouth that wide than it does to relax your jaw a bit and chew like a regular person. Even if it didn't, we're talking minimal effort here, people. Minimal effort to avoid looking like you're Ms. Pac-Manning your way through dinner. Waka waka waka waka waka waka... 3. Do you litter? What the hell is wrong with you? There are trash cans everywhere. EVERYWHERE. There is absolutely no excuse to slothfully drop your refuse on the ground, like the way a sleepy, intoxicated Jabba the Hutt discards his slave dancers. We only get one of these Earths, and we're struggling to keep it up as it is. Even on the Death Star they take (sorry, took) the time to compact their own litter. And they're surrounded by lightyears of empty space in which to dump it! Next time you entertain the idea of throwing garbage straight onto the ground, think: What if Luke Skywalker was watching? Luke is utterly disgusted with you. 4. Do you cut in line? People still do this? What is your problem? Did you not see that everyone was forming a line? Nobody likes waiting in it, but you're not special. A line has three parts: the beginning, the middle and the end. Maybe you were confused by the language. See, where you "begin" is actually at the end. Yes, it's puzzling, but surely you knew not to start in the middle by cutting in front of a bunch of people. We hope. Look, even ducks can do it. 5. Do you blast music on your phone in public? No one wants to hear music -- your music, or any music -- blasted out of the tiny speakers of your phone. Or through your $300 Beats by Dre headphones. Just because you enjoy slowly eating away at the thin film membrane that is your ear drum, that doesn't mean the rest of us want to bear witness. This is how you come off to everyone else around you: Kirk and Spock are not amused. 6. Do you use speaker phone in public? Reality TV popularized this trend. But on the teevee people use speaker phone so that the viewers at home can also hear the person on the other end of the call. Now everyone thinks they're part of the Kardashian family or that we want to hear their personal business broadcast in a Walgreens line. We really, really don't. 7. Do you knock before entering a bathroom? Obviously, we're talking a one-person bathroom here. Do you knock, or do you try to wrench the locked door open and barge your way through, because your bladder has taken control of your brain? Okay, you've got to pee, we get it. But you know who else has to pee? The person currently peeing, and maybe they're scared to death that you might actually get in and find them in a compromising position. So now you're just prolonging your wait in line because public restroom stage fright is a very real thing. It's called paruresis, and you're making it worse. Heeeeeeeerrrrrreeee's Johnn---"SOMEONE'S IN HERE!" 8. Do you use your turn signal when driving? It's really simple and people will completely appreciate it. It's also the law. Even if you're weaving through traffic, most people will still talk themselves down from a murderous rage by saying, "Well, at least they used their turn signal." You may think, "Well, I'm a good driver, I know what I'm doing." Terrific, well, we don't know what you're doing. So your options are 1) telepathically communicate your lane change to us, or 2) use your turn signal. Look at the effort this guy puts into it! Your turn signal work requirement is 1000 times less than this. 9. Do you wait for people to get off the train? When the bus or train finally comes, do you give the people on board a chance to exit? Or do you just stand in front of the doors, or maybe even try to swim upstream like a deranged salmon heading for the promised land (which in this case is just a cold hard seat)? If you do either of the latter, what is your major malfunction? You're not making the situation move any faster. You see, there's a limited amount of room on that train, and it's already taken up by people. It's literally impossible for two humans to occupy the same space at once. That's just physics, or something. Doesn't matter if you know the owner, electrons will not let you through. 10. Are you a bad tipper? If you have received bad service, you're completely within your right to tip your server less. Leaving no tip should be a rare and incredibly extreme circumstance -- we're talking the server telling your girlfriend she's got nice boobs and then calling you a wuss for ordering vegetables, or something. And if it was really so bad that you don't leave a tip, maybe you should speak to a manager, because that dude is really bad at his job. If you're constantly experiencing times when you think leaving little or no tip is acceptable though, then the problem might be you. Everyone should work in the food service industry once in their life, to see firsthand what it's like. The worst thing you can do is punish a server for things they can't control. Or for not meeting your outlandish expectations. Awww poor you, is it super busy on a Friday night? Did somebody forget your sixth side order of bacon? Did somebody spill water over the side of your weird shaped glass while giving you a refill? Next time you consider leaving a bad tip, take out your phone and pull up this article. Now use it to calculate a decent tip. 11. Do you neglect your dog-owning "doodies"? Your animals should be treated like they're your children, for everyone's sake (perhaps especially the animal's). Ask yourself the following questions: Would you watch your child poop in the middle of a sidewalk and then ignore it? Would you let your child run wild, unsupervised, climbing all over perfect strangers? Would you let your child yell and scream throughout the day or night? Of course not, (but if you answered yes, we hereby revoke your privilege to have animals or children). Pick up your dog's poop. Teach it to behave, at least mildly well. You wanted a dog. Well, the poop and the barking come with it. This is what a happy, symbiotic owner/pet relationship looks like when you clean up after your dog. 12. Are you always late? We're all guilty of this once in a while, and how people respond to it will vary from relationship to relationship. One thing is for sure, being late all the time will inevitably piss someone off. Some take it personally, or see it as a form of you establishing dominance. Even if neither of those is your intention, you can be sure that people will notice if you're the one they're constantly waiting on. What it comes down to is your word. If you say you will be at a certain place at a certain time, then that's when should aim to be there by. If you make the effort and get held up and are a few minutes late, they'll understand. If it's obvious that you didn't really care about punctuality in the first place, they'll notice. And if you need help, check out this post. The thing is, when you've screwed up and know you're late, you'll try to overcompensate, then fail to use your turn signal (see #8). It'll just end poorly: I'M LATE I'M LATE I'M LATE I'M LATE I'M LATE I'M LATE--- 13. Do you pull out your phone for everything? This is a particularly disturbing trend. An altercation or incident takes place in front of you and someone needs help. Rather than stepping in to help, some people ignore it or pull out their phones to record it so they can show it off on social media. Talk about a complete disconnect from reality. A study by Intel last month showed that the majority of millennials believe technology causes dehumanization in society. With many people communicating only through only text or sitting on the computer all day and night, they're finding it difficult to connect with other humans because they spend the majority of their day not really connected with humans at all. So, while life plays out before their eyes, they're watching it happen on their screens, or missing it all together! Your brand new iPhone camera can have as many megapixels as it wants, but nothing is more high-resolution than your own damn eyes.EXCLUSIVE: Akira is revving back up, with Warner Bros negotiating with Taika Waititi, the New Zealand-born director and actor who helmed Thor: Ragnarok. Pic is a live action version of anime artist Katsuhiro Otomo’s 6-volume graphic novel. The story takes place in the rebuilt New Manhattan where a leader of a biker gang saves his friend from a medical experiment. Mad Chance’s Lazar is producing with Appian Way’s Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Davisson. The picture has been a big priority since Warner Bros and Legendary Pictures acquired it for 7-figures from manga publisher Kodansha. The intention has always been to make 2 films, each covering 3 books in the series. Akira was first adapted for the screen in 1988. The picture got close several times. Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby and Book of Eli scribe Gary Whitta wrote a script which originally had Ruairi Robinson aboard to direct. The Hughes Brothers and Jaume Collet-Serra were among the filmmakers who sparked to it. It got closest to a start date several years ago, until it closed the Vancouver production office, the studio let lapse test options deals it had with Dane DeHaan and Michael Pitt,. who had been competing for the lead role of Tetsuo, and were going to star alongside Garrett Hedlund, Kristin Stewart, and potentially Ken Watanabe and Helena Bonham Carter. It halted. Waititi’s booked next to direct Jojo Rabbit, a WWII dramedy that is set up at Fox Searchlight with a spring start date. Waititi wrote the script. CAA and Manage-ment rep him.InDaily understands an Adelaide Airport and Uber will hold a joint press conference around midday today to announce an UberX incursion into the lucrative taxi passenger pickup monopoly at the airport. Passengers at the airport are currently only able to use taxis or hire cars, including the luxury car Uber Black service. Uber’s app geo-blocks passengers from requesting UberX cars there. “As of midday today that (geo-block) will be lifted,” an Adelaide Airport spokesperson confirmed. Advertisement The airport has allocated a 16-bay parking area on the western edge of its carpark as a dedicated pickup location for ride-share vehicles. United Taxi Association president Trimann Gill told InDaily the move would be a significant blow to the taxi industry, which was already suffering haemorrhaging income and increasing costs. “When the (State) Government bought into ride-share they said the airport, the ranks and (passengers hailing from the street would be) only for taxis,” said Gill. “If, out of the blue, Adelaide Airport is giving pickup (.. it is) not at all good for the taxi industry. “That will (have) a significant impact.” Gill, who owns 59 taxis, said revenue was down about 30 per cent in only the past six months. Last year he owned 74 taxis, but has been reducing his fleet to eventually exit the industry altogether. He said ending the taxi monopoly at the airport would accelerate the death of the taxi industry. A spokesperson for SA Transport Minister Stephen Mullighan told InDaily whether particular operators can pick up passengers was a matter for the airport, as it is on Commonwealth land. Gill said the State Government should have attempted to lobby the airport and the Federal Government to prevent Uber from picking up passengers there, adding that: “They aren’t at all supportive of the taxi industry.” “In two years time I don’t think taxis will be viable,” he said. “We’re trying to reduce the fleet and get out of the industry. “(Registration costs) for taxis have gone up … if the Government doesn’t reduce the expense of taxis the near future, no-one will be willing to operate a taxi.” Uber confirmed one of its executives would attend the joint press conference, but would not confirm the nature of the announcement. A spokesperson for the company said ride-sharing at the airport was good news for consumers. “Modern travellers like the convenience of using the apps they know and trust when they go abroad or interstate these days, so this is a win for consumers and the travelling public,” the spokesperson said. Advertisement “We’ve worked closely with the airport to ensure our technology makes ground connections in Adelaide simple and safe for arriving passengers. “We’re confident airport pick-ups will be welcome news for local travellers and new visitors to the city, who can now get a safe, affordable and reliable uberX ride out of the airport at the push of a button.” According to the spokesperson, “thousands” of arriving passengers open the Uber app to look for a ride out of Adelaide Airport “every week”. “Riders from 70 different countries have opened the Uber app to look for a ride out of Adelaide Airport in 2017.” More to come. We value local independent journalism. We hope you do too. InDaily provides valuable, local independent journalism in South Australia. As a news organisation it offers an alternative to The Advertiser, a different voice and a closer look at what is happening in our city and state for free. Any contribution to help fund our work is appreciated. Please click below to become an InDaily supporter. Powered by PressPatronSYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Centro, the public bus system for Central New York, will hold six public hearings to explain proposed service cuts and listen to concerns. Centro officials say they are facing a budget gap of at least $4.5 million. To make up the difference, the bus authority has proposed cutting late-night, Sunday and holiday service throughout Onondaga, Oneida, Oswego and Cayuga counties. Here's how and where you can voice your opinion: March 9 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. Rome City Hall Common Council Chambers, 2nd Floor 198 North Washington Street, Rome, NY 13440 March 10 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Oswego County Legislative Office Building Legislative Chambers 46 East Bridge Street, 4th Floor, Oswego, NY 13126 March 11 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. informational session 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. public hearing Oncenter 800 South State Street, Syracuse, NY 13202 March 16 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Auburn Memorial City Hall 1st Floor Council Chambers 24 South Street, Auburn, NY 13021 March 18 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Radisson Hotel-Utica Centre - Adirondack Room 200 Genesee Street, Utica, NY 13502 March 19 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Fulton Municipal Building 141 South First Street, Fulton, NY 13069 If you can't make it to the hearings, you can: Leave a message at 315-442-3400 Write to Centro at 200 Cortland Avenue, Syracuse, NY 13205 Submit online comments Fax your comments no later than March 27 to 315-422-3337 Post your thoughts on Centro's Facebook page Tweet about it Contact Teri Weaver anytime: Email | Twitter | 315-470-2274In this tutorial we will build a preference screen using the PreferenceActivity class. Our main activity will contain 2 Buttons and a TextView. One of the buttons will open the preference screen, and the other will display the values stored in SharedPreferences. The final output should look like this: And here’s what happens when clicking on the Username/Password fields (left screenshot), and the List Preference field (right screenshot): At a first glance it may look a bit intimidating, but as you will see later, actually it’s quite easy to define a preference screen. Trust me, I’m an engineer! (c) 🙂 To put all this things together in a fashionable way, we will be using the PreferenceActivity class. The good thing about this class is that the definition of layout file it’s very simple. It provides custom controls specially designed for preference screens. Another good thing is that you don’t need to write code to save the values from preference screen to SharedPreferences. All this work is done automatically by the activity. So, lets begin creating our preference screen 1. Create a new project in Eclipse: Project: PreferenceDemoTest Activity: PreferenceDemoActivity 2. Create a new Android XML file prefs.xml in the folder res/xml/. This file will contain the layout for our preference screen: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <PreferenceScreen xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" > <PreferenceCategory android:summary="Username and password information" android:title="Login information" > <EditTextPreference android:key="username" android:summary="Please enter your login username" android:title="Username" /> <EditTextPreference android:key="password" android:summary="Enter your password" android:title="Password" /> </PreferenceCategory> <PreferenceCategory android:summary="Username and password information" android:title="Settings" > <CheckBoxPreference android:key="checkBox" android:summary="On/Off" android:title="Keep me logged in" /> <ListPreference android:entries="@array/listOptions" android:entryValues="@array/listValues" android:key="listpref" android:summary="List preference example" android:title="List preference" /> </PreferenceCategory> </PreferenceScreen> Notice that the root element of prefs.xml is the <PreferenceScreen> element, and not a RelativeLayout or LinearLayout for example. When a PreferenceActivity points to this layout file, the <PreferenceScreen> is used as the root, and the contained preferences are shown. <PreferenceCategory> – defines a preference category. In our example the preference screen is split in two categories: “Login Information” and “Settings” <EditTextPreference> – defines a text field for storing text information. <CheckBoxPreference> – defines a checkbox. <ListPreference> – defines a list of elements. The list appears as group of radio buttons. 3. At this stage the prefs.xml might complain that the @array/listOptions and @array/listValues resources cannot be found. To fix this create a new XML file array.xml in the folder res/values/. This file will contain the elements of the ListPreference. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <resources> <string-array name="listOptions"> <item>Option 1</item> <item>Option 2</item> <item>Option 3</item> </string-array> <string-array name="listValues"> <item>1 is selected</item> <item>2 is selected</item> <item>3 is selected</item> </string-array> </resources> The “listOptions” array defines the elements of the list, or with other words, the labels. The “listValues” array defines the values of each element. These are the values that will be stored in the SharedPreferences. The number of list options and list values should match. The first list value is assinged to the first list option, the second value to the second option,… and so on. 4. Create a new class PrefsActivity.java that extends PreferenceActivity: public class PrefsActivity extends PreferenceActivity{ @Override protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); addPreferencesFromResource(R.xml.prefs); } } Notice that instead of the traditional setContentView(), we use here addPreferencesFromResource() method. This inflates our prefs.xml file and uses it as the Activity’s current layout. 5. Add the PrefsActivity.java to the AndroidManifest file: <application......./> <activity android:name=".PrefsActivity" android:theme="@android:style/Theme.Black.NoTitleBar" > </activity> </application> 6. Now, to test our preference activity lets modify the main.xml layout file by adding 2 Buttons and 1 TextView. One of the buttons will open the preference screen, and the other will display the values stored in SharedPreferences. main.xml: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:layout_width="fill_parent" android:layout_height="fill_parent" android:orientation="vertical" > <Button android:id="@+id/btnPrefs" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="Preferences Screen" /> <Button android:id="@+id/btnGetPreferences" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" android:text="Display Shared Preferences" /> <TextView android:id="@+id/txtPrefs" android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content" /> </LinearLayout> 7. Finally, modify the PreferenceDemoActivity to handle our logic implementation: public class PreferenceDemoActivity extends Activity { TextView textView; @Override public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.main); Button btnPrefs = (Button) findViewById(R.id.btnPrefs); Button btnGetPrefs = (Button) findViewById(R.id.btnGetPreferences); textView = (TextView) findViewById(R.id.txtPrefs); View.OnClickListener listener = new View.OnClickListener() { @Override public void onClick(View v) { switch (v.getId()) { case R.id.btnPrefs: Intent intent = new Intent(PreferenceDemoActivity.this, PrefsActivity.class); startActivity(intent); break; case R.id.btnGetPreferences: displaySharedPreferences(); break; default: break; } } }; btnPrefs.setOnClickListener(listener); btnGetPrefs.setOnClickListener(listener); } private void displaySharedPreferences() { SharedPreferences prefs = PreferenceManager.getDefaultSharedPreferences(PreferenceDemoActivity.this); String username = prefs.getString("username", "Default NickName"); String passw = prefs.getString("password", "Default Password"); boolean checkBox = prefs.getBoolean("checkBox", false); String listPrefs = prefs.getString("listpref", "Default list prefs"); StringBuilder builder = new StringBuilder(); builder.append("Username: " + username + " "); builder.append("Password: " + passw + " "); builder.append("Keep me logged in: " + String.valueOf(checkBox) + " "); builder.append("List preference: " + listPrefs); textView.setText(builder.toString()); } } Here we attach 2 listeners for each button and display the values retrieved from SharedPreferences in a TextView. By this time you should compile and run successfully the application.YouTube It wasn't easy being Sega in the 1980s and '90s. It had to compete with one of the best-known companies on the planet, Nintendo, which was responsible for bringing back the video game market from the dead. But Sega had some tricks up its sleeve. Namely, releasing a 16-bit console, the Genesis, before Nintendo could release its version, the Super Nintendo. Sega also had an amazing idea for how to hype up the sequel to its biggest game. The original "Sonic the Hedgehog" was released in 1991, and was an instant hit. When it was time for the sequel, which introduced Sonic's sidekick Tails to the world, Sega knew it needed to do more than just release the game. It needed to make an impact. In the book "Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle That Defined a Generation," which is based on more than 200 interviews with former Sega and Nintendo employees, Blake Harris describes how Sega's crack marketing team of Al Nilsen and Madeline Schroeder decided to celebrate the launch. They needed something "Sonic-worthy." YouTube "We're going to start in Japan, move to Europe, and then end in the US," said Sega marketing director Nilsen to Schroeder, who was the project manager of "Sonic the Hedgehog." "No trucks, no boats: everything will be delivered by plane exactly one day before.... we're going to have the world's first global launch, and in the process we're going to break every single sales record," said Nilsen. They kicked around a couple ideas about what day the global launch should be, and that's when Nilsen came up with an idea that possibly changed the way games were released and marketed ever after. "No, it should be Tuesday, and we'll call it Sonic 2sday," he said. Sonic 2sday landed on Nov. 24, 1992. Before then, video game release dates were all over the place, and retailers just got them when they got them. But Sonic 2sday implemented a method to the madness. Harris writes: ... the idea of a coordinated worldwide release might have seemed interesting but irrelevant. But the point of the global launch wasn't to dazzle with concept; the point was that the concept created connection. Normally, with games released at different stores on different days, customers couldn't help but feel like these things sort of fell out of thin air. But to know the exact date that something would be arriving, to have it circled on the calendar ahead of time, gave the gift of anticipation. ... It was a marketing ploy, yes, but it worked in the same self-fulfilling way as a blockbuster film did. They're not called "blockbusters" just because of their budgets; rather, it's because of the event-like, don't-be-left-out way that they are marketed, which makes people rush to the theater for the opening weekend, which then makes more people rush to the theater when they hear how big that opening weekend was. The art of the blockbuster is that it popularizes something before it even exists, and though Sonic 2 was still months away from completion, Sonic 2sday gave [former Sega North America CEO Tom Kalinske] and company an opportunity to unleash the biggest blockbuster the videogame world had ever seen. Releasing games on Tuesday is now the industry standard in the US, all thanks to a little video game punnery. But it's not the only industry to do so. Although they don't have Sonic 2sday to thank, most CD and DVD releases also happen on Tuesdays.Trying to get honest data from the banking industry regarding the current state of housing is a monumental task. We are left using multiple data sources to get an accurate picture of the current state of the American housing market. Even then, we are left trying to piece
as much as $4.5 trillion with interest, while Obama's could add as much as $3.3 trillion. The reason: neither plan would raise the amount of revenue expected under current tax policy - which assumes all the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts expire by 2011. And neither plan would raise enough to cover expected government costs during those 10 years. "Distributionally, they're markedly different. But in terms of their impact on revenue, the two plans are not terribly different," said Roberton Williams, principal research associate at the Tax Policy Center and the former deputy assistant director for tax analysis at the Congressional Budget Office. A closer look In addition to making the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent, McCain says he would double the exemption for dependents, lower the corporate tax rate, make expensing rules more generous for small businesses and lessen the bite of the estate tax and Alternative Minimum tax. The net result: compared with their tax bill today, taxpayers on average would see their tax bill cut by nearly $1,200. That means their after-tax income would rise by 2%. But those in the lowest income groups would only see their after-tax income rise by less than 1% (or between $19 and $319). By contrast, the highest-income households - those with incomes of at least $603,000 - would see a boost in after-tax income of 3.4%, or more than $40,000. Obama's plan would keep the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts in place for everyone except those making more than roughly $250,000, and he would increase the capital gains tax. Obama would also introduce new tax breaks for lower and middle-income groups. Such breaks include expanding the earned income tax credit, giving those making less than $150,000 a $500 tax credit per person on the first $8,100 in income, giving those making under $75,000 a 50% federal match on the first $1,000 of savings, and exempting seniors making less than $50,000 from having to pay income tax. Like McCain, Obama would lessen the bite of the estate tax and the Alternative Minimum Tax, but to a lesser degree. The net result: compared with their tax bill today, taxpayers on average would see their tax bill cut by nearly $160 under Obama's plan. That means their after-tax income would rise by 0.3%. But those in the lowest-income groups would enjoy the biggest after-tax income rise as a percentage of income - between 2.4% and 5.5% (worth between $567 and $1,042). By contrast, the highest-income households - those with at least $603,000 in income - would see a dramatic decline in their after-tax income - a drop of 8.7%, or $116,000. The campaigns respond Jason Furman, a newly appointed senior economic adviser to Obama, said his preliminary response is that the report's findings bear out what Obama's campaign has been saying: that he's for the middle class. "Middle-class families get tax cuts that are three times larger from Obama than from McCain," Furman said. "And the McCain plan gives nearly one-quarter of its benefits to households making more than $2.8 million annually - the top 0.1%." Douglas Holtz-Eakin, senior economic adviser to McCain, noted that the report does not take into account the spending reforms - such as eliminating earmarks - that are central to McCain's strategy to support tax relief and help reduce the deficit. One of the center's co-directors, William Gale, conceded in a conference call that "if McCain succeeds (in achieving his proposed spending cuts), the fiscal cost of his plan does go down." But spending cuts can be politically difficult to achieve, said Len Burman, the Tax Policy Center's director. Holtz-Eakin characterized McCain's plan as one geared toward "reshaping federal bureaucracies and protecting taxpayers' money. [His] plan is based on kicking down doors in Washington, and delivering tax dollars back to the American taxpayers who are struggling with record gas prices, soaring food costs and a down economy." Not the final word Williams said the Tax Policy Center analysis should be viewed as a work in progress. Researchers plan to update it as they get more information about the plans from the campaigns and if the candidates introduce new tax policies between now and Election Day. The center will also incorporate the tax elements of McCain's and Obama's health care proposals when they update their findings. How the candidates' tax plans would affect economic growth is an open question. "It depends on how the deficits are closed," Burman said. Tax studies have shown that when tax cuts are deficit funded and they're paid for by raising taxes in the future, "the economy is worse off than if you didn't cut at all," Burman said.Feeling extreme loneliness on a long-term basis can be worse than obesity in terms of increasing the potentially lethal health risks that lead to premature death, scientists said. Chronic loneliness has been shown to increase the chances of an early grave by 14 per cent, which is as bad as being overweight and almost as bad as poverty in undermining a person’s long-term wellbeing, a study has found. As more people live longer, they are spending a bigger part of their lives feeling lonely. This is having a significant impact on their physical as well as mental health, the researchers found. We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 $0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras. Loneliness is also becoming more common as people live alone or become isolated from relatives and friends, especially in retirement. Research has shown that at any given time between 20 and 40 per cent of older adults feel lonely. A recent survey by the Mental Health Foundation found that 10 per cent of Britons often feel lonely, a third have a close friend or relative who they think is very lonely and half think that people are getting lonelier in general. A study of more than 2,000 Americans aged over 50 who were followed-up over six-years found that the degree to which they felt lonely could be linked to their overall risk of death due to ill health at the end of this period. Professor John Cacioppo, a psychologist at the University of Chicago, said there are dramatic differences in the rate of decline in physical and mental health as people age and that these can be linked to the number of satisfying relationships people continue to keep with friends and relatives as they get older. “We have mythic notions of retirement. We think that retirement means leaving friends and family and buying a place down in Florida where it is warm and living happily ever after. But that’s probably not the best idea,” Professor Cacioppo said. “Retiring to Florida to live in a warmer climate among strangers isn’t necessarily a good idea if it means you are disconnected from the people who mean the most to you,” he told the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “ We find people who continue to interact with coworkers after retirement and have friends close by are less lonely...it it true throughout the world. I’ve done studies in Europe and China and we are not seeing any differences, regardless of where we look,” he said. “The results were unchanged when you considered their objective social circumstance, for instance whether they were married or lived near family and friends. These didn’t change the association between loneliness and mortality,” he told the meeting. Although many people state that the prefer their own company, the solitude or joy of being alone is not the same as the pain of feeling alone, which can lead to depression and low self-esteem, he said. Chronic loneliness is linked with higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol in the morning, which raises the risk of heart attacks and strokes. Loneliness is also linked with higher blood pressure and a weakening of the immune system, Professor Cacioppo said. One possible explanation for its link with ill-health is that loneliness seems to make people sleep less deeply. Lonely people tend to suffer from brief “microawakenings” in the night, which may reflect a nervousness about being alone at night, he said. “As people age and lose mobility, they are at an increased risk of chronic loneliness, which would threaten the person’s well-being almost immediately, and would increase their odds for depression, compromised immunity, and fatigue due to poorer quality sleep — all of which could hasten their ageing,” Professor Cacioppo said. His advice to people who are worried about being lonely is: “Take time to enjoy yourself and share good times with family and friends. Non-lonely people enjoy themselves with other people.” We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads. Subscribe nowUpdated 8.42 pm AN OIREACHTAS JOINT committee has backed the government’s plan to introduce a minimum unit price (MUP) for alcohol under measures designed to reduce harmful drinking. The plans could also see drinks producers being made to pay a “social responsibility levy”. This charge would be designed to capture the extra profits alcohol producers started taking in when prices were increased through the floor price for all drinks. In a report released today, voiced its support for the government’s approach: The weight of evidence presented to the Committee supported the introduction of a MUP for alcohol, as an effective means to reduce and disrupt harmful alcohol consumption patterns. The committee also recommended setting an MUP at the “upper end” of a range between €0.60 and €1.10 to offer “the best opportunity to reduce harmful drinking and associated social impacts”. At the top of the spectrum, that would put the minimum price on the average 500ml can of beer at about €2, a bottle of wine at more than €8 and a bottle of spirits at nearly €24. The price increase was expected to lead to both higher VAT returns for the government and increased profits for drinks companies, the report said. To “capture” some of those extra profits, the government should also look at bringing in a “social responsibility levy” on the alcohol industry, it added. Any additional revenue generated for the exchequer could be ring-fenced to fund health sector social marketing initiatives, and addiction treatment and rehabilitation services,” it said. Some of the other measure the committee recommended include: Health warnings on alcohol packaging with similar rules to those controlling tobacco labels A 9pm watershed for alcohol commercials on TV and radio Bans on the advertising of either retail discounting or multi-buy alcohol promotions Stopping sports sponsorship by alcohol companies, although the government has indicated this wasn’t realistic “in the medium term” Source: Joe Giddens/PA Archive Below-cost sales and high prices Publicans and off-licenses have backed the MUP move, although the National Off-Licence Association (NOffLA) has called for the laws to go further and include a ban on selling booze at below-invoice costs. But today the group said it was “very concerned” about proposals for a levy on the drinks sector to capture some of the extra cash from floor pricing, which it claimed wouldn’t increase profits for retailers. It produced this table of how a MUP of €1 per 10 grams of alcohol would affect prices: Source: NOffLA Major brewers and distillers have said MUP for alcohol would be “ineffective” and the best policy would be a straight ban on below-cost sales. Scotland has already voted in similar laws, but they are being fought through the EU courts after challenges from the whisky lobby and several major wine-producing nations. Health Minister Leo Varadkar, who unveiled the alcohol-control plans in February, previously said new laws could be before the Dáil this summer although they would likely take up to 12 months to implement. Health Minister Leo Varadkar, centre Source: Leon Farrell/Photocall Ireland. Alcoholic drinks are already more expensive in Ireland, on average, than anywhere else in the EU except Finland, thanks to sky-high excise duties. Meanwhile, Irish people remain some of the heaviest drinkers in the world – and the rate of consumption has been increasing over the past two decades. First published 12.21pmAKA: The Colony Director: Tsui Hark Writer: Don Jakoby, Paul Mones Producer: Moshe Diamant, David Rodgers Cast: Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dennis Rodman, Paul Freeman, Mickey Rourke, Hung Yan Yan, Natacha Lindinger, Valéria Cavalli, Jay Benedict, Joëlle Devaux-Vullion Running Time: 93 min. By Zach Nix International action star Jean-Claude Van Damme (Pound of Flesh) was on a cinematic roll through the late 80s and into the mid 90s. Although few of his films were ever as good or as successful as the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger or Sylvester Stallone, almost every one of Van Damme’s films were commercially successful. Unfortunately, Van Damme’s hot streak came to an end in the late 90s with two of his most commercially disappointing films, Double Team and Knock Off. These films signaled the end of Van Damme’s theatrical career due to their inept plots and poor box office receipts. Van Damme followed up said films with even more disappointing efforts such as Universal Soldier: The Return and his first entries into the direct to video/limited theatrical market, Legionnaire and Desert Heat. Even though Double Team started Van Damme’s slippery slope away from mainstream success, the film is more entertaining than most of his successful theatrical efforts. Directed by Hong Kong filmmaker Tsui Hark (The Taking of Tiger Mountain), Double Team is a highly stylized, although immensely inept, actioner that needs to be rediscovered by action fans for its awesome action sequences and utter insanity. It is arguably the wildest entry in Van Damme’s filmography and an undiscovered cult classic to boot. The biggest hurdle with tackling Double Team is deciphering its plot because it is nearly impossible to recall said plot or even understand it while watching the film. Hark immediately drops the viewer into the life of government anti-terrorist agent Jack Quinn (Van Damme) as he retrieves stolen plutonium in an extended action sequence that also doubles as the film’s credits. As to who decided it was a good idea to lay credits over an action sequence is beyond me. Anyways, the film gets into the thick of things once Quinn goes after terrorist Stavros (Mickey Rourke) who is also apparently his nemesis. When Quinn and his men track down Stavros and his family to a theme park, a shootout engages and Stavros’ son is caught in the crossfire. Unfortunately, Quinn fails to capture Stavros and is sent to a prison island for failed agents who are too valuable to kill. Therefore, Quinn must make his way off of the “inescapable” island and save his wife Kathryn from Stavros’ vengeance. Oh, and an arms dealer played by basketball player Dennis Rodman somehow fits into all of this. Wow, where to begin with this one? The plot, or what resembles a plot, is all over the place and absolutely bonkers. Double Team tries to combine three films of entertainment into one but to no avail. It’s as if Hark and the screenwriters couldn’t decide on a revenge film, a prison escape film, or a buddy film, and decided to blend all of them together and call it Double Team. Even though the film’s poster, trailer, and title advertise it as a buddy picture between Van Damme and Dennis Rodman, Double Team is anything but. It is as if Hark crafted a ‘versus film’ between Van Damme and Rourke, and than decided to tack on a buddy element at the last minute and wedge it into the plot however possible. Van Damme and Dennis Rodman are truly the most mismatched buddy pairing of all time. Even though nobody asked for a team up of ‘The Muscles from Brussels’ and ‘The Worm,’ Double Team delivers exactly that and with no chemistry to boot. While Van Damme does a fine job, as he is always on point no matter how bad the film, Rodman proves that he should never act thanks to a bevy of awful basketball puns. Rodman is equally as bad an actor as other fellow basketball players turned actors Michael Jordan and Shaquille O’ Neal, but he is at least far more fascinating thanks to his ridiculous ever changing hair color and wild outfits. Rodman’s arms dealer character is truly the most fascinating element of the film, as his character serves the plot in no way, shape, or form. He joins up with Van Damme’s character to help him save his wife and child simply because “he likes danger.” Regardless, Rodman’s presence adds to the film’s bizarre charm, as well as Hark’s knack for automated dialog replacement (ADR). Not since Steven Seagal’s On Deadly Ground has an action film featured so much dialog from characters completely off screen. The amount of ADR in this film is absolutely baffling, especially during Rodman and Rourke’s dialog scenes. They typically have their back to the camera, are far away within the shot, or are nowhere in sight, and yet they sound as if they were standing right next to you. This large amount of ADR is due to Hark’s fast paced shooting style that results in lots of voice dubbing during the post-production process. Still, the insane amount of ADR adds to Double Team’s cult-like attraction. Hark, a Hong Kong filmmaker, brings his flair for over the top theatrics to the film and crafts numerous excellent action sequences. Even though Double Team may be boring at times, Hark blesses the viewer with an action sequence every fifteen or so minutes to help get them through the film’s thankfully short run time. All of Hong Kong’s flair for over the top action is here: characters leap through windows while firing guns, launch motorcycles and cars through explosions, and perform flips and kicks while firing weapons. Any action fan would be cheating them selves to ignore Double Team based purely upon its immensely entertaining action sequences. Unfortunately, the film also features a large assortment of crazy Dutch angles and occasionally awful framing that prevents some of its action sequences from even being visually legible. Regardless, these odd creative decisions, coupled with the film’s amazing action sequences, help make Double Team that much more entertaining and fun to experience. Double Team is a mess, but an oddly fascinating and extremely entertaining mess if there ever was one. Regardless of the film’s failure at the box office and the critical backlash it received in 1997, few Van Damme films, and action films in general, are as entertaining and fascinating to watch as Double Team. The film presents a cartoon-like world of changing hair-dos, bonkers action sequences, and crazy characters that help make it one of cinema’s greatest undiscovered cult flicks. I’d much rather watch an energetic mess of a film like Double Team than sleep my way through dull but commercially successful Van Damme efforts like Death Warrant, Nowhere to Run, or Timecop any day. Zach Nix’s Rating: 6/10New DNC Chair Tom Perez managed to garner enough support from the Democratic establishment to defeat Sen. Bernie Sanders-backed candidate Rep. Keith Ellison. After winning, in a desperate attempt to manufacture party unity, Perez gave Ellison a fake position as DNC deputy chair, and they embarked on a tour across the country to rally support from progressives and establishment Democrats. Low favorability ratings show the strategy hasn’t worked. Even so, Perez recently announced he will be going on a cross country “Democratic Unity” tour with Sanders starting on April 17. This facade attempts to convey unity while establishment Democrats fight progressives’ pushes for fundamental reforms. Former DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz claimed on March 30 that the Democratic Party was already a grassroots party. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi asserted in December 2016 that Democrats don’t want a new direction. Hillary Clinton recently lent credence to her supporters’ childish claim that the fault of her election loss lies in part with Sanders. Progressives are often blamed for the rift within the Democratic Party, and the antagonism against them paralyzes the Democratic Party’s ability to mobilize. Progressives’ resentment is in part due in part to the Democratic Party’s failure to acknowledge its mistakes during the 2016 election and prior elections that have led to the state the party currently finds itself in. While many Democrats focus on blaming others for the Democratic Party’s failures, some Clinton partisans have only acknowledged accountability as they seek new marketing strategies. However, even their new strategies double down on their old, failed ones that repel voters. On the Democratic Party’s website, they solicit supporters to become “factivists” to share on social media press releases and talking points directly from the Democratic Party, appropriating activism to serve as echoes of the Democratic establishment. This strategy resembles pro-Clinton Super PAC Correct the Record’s campaign to manufacture support for Hillary Clinton and “correct” criticisms of her. The party’s communications and PR department is run by former Clinton staffers, such as former Clinton spokesperson Adrienne Watson who now serves as the DNC deputy communications director. Their allegiance to Clinton is apparent throughout the party’s recent messaging. For example, on the Democratic Party website, they’re selling a t-shirt that reads “I’m one of 65,844,610 Americans Against Trump,” touting Clinton’s popular vote victory. Sanders’ rallies for Clinton during the election had much lower attendance in comparison to his own campaign’s rallies because the progressives, independents and Democrats who supported Bernie Sanders throughout the primaries knew that Sanders and his supporters were not welcome in the Democratic Party. Rather than extend any olive branches to those supporters, Clinton shifted toward the center and focused on courting wealthy donors and moderate Republicans. Even since Clinton lost, Sanders and his supporters have been the primary scapegoats for the Democratic Party’s shortcomings, despite the fact that Democrats lost majorities in both houses of Congress and 1,000 seats in state legislatures across the country before Sanders announced his presidential campaign.BURGERS. They are the light of many lives and the bane of even more waistlines. They have brought joy to all of us at some point and today we celebrate them on International Burger Day. In commemoration of this fabulous day, we’ve rounded up some of the best burgers around the country. You’re welcome. 1. 8bit (Melbourne, VIC) Everyday is a Double Dragon type of day! Dope pic by @jordyn_cattonar 🍔🍔🐉🐲 A photo posted by Open hours: 11am-11pm (@eat8bit) on Feb 28, 2016 at 4:02pm PST 2. Ze Pickle (Sydney, NSW, Brisbane and Gold Coast, QLD) And only 13 calories* #HELLO #TASTE *parts of this story may not be true 📷 @brisbane_burgerquest A photo posted by zepickle (@zepickle) on Jan 14, 2016 at 2:19pm PST 3. Getta Burger (Brisbane, QLD) 4. Johnny’s Burgers (Perth, WA) 5. Varsity Burgers (Perth, WA) Picture perfect #burger #cheatmeal #food #foodporn #inbawa #ifbb #delicious #cravings #muffinpump 📷: @abdudmajiet A photo posted by Varsity Burgers Northbridge (@varsity_burgers) on May 15, 2016 at 5:40pm PDT 6. Burger Project (Sydney, NSW and Melbourne, VIC) Snug as a bug in a rug! 📷 @laurenaustralia #burgerproject #fastfoodslowfoodvalues A photo posted by BURGER PROJECT (@burgerproject) on May 8, 2016 at 11:28pm PDT 7. Burger Theory (Adelaide, SA and Melbourne, VIC) One thing we've picked up on since launching in Melbourne..... extra patties are pretty popular! 🍔🍔🍔 @spencer_mccarthy A photo posted by Burger Theory (@burgertheory) on Mar 21, 2016 at 8:26pm PDT 8. Huxtaburger (Melbourne, VIC) Baby Denise 😮 #wuuuuttt #nuuupppp #saaahhhcuttteeee A photo posted by huxtaburger (@huxtaburger) on Apr 25, 2016 at 2:22am PDT 9. Burgers by Josh (Sydney, NSW) 10. Betty’s Burgers (Noosa and Surfers Paradise, QLD) 11. Jack Greene (Hobart, TAS) 12. Mr Burger (Melbourne, VIC and Hobart, TAS) It ain't easy, bein' cheesy. Hit the link in our bio to find a Mr Double near you! Pic by @emmaraex #MrBurger A photo posted by Mr Burger (@mrburgertruck) on May 20, 2016 at 5:29pm PDT 13. Nordburger (Adelaide, SA) 14. The Standard (Hobart, TAS) 15. Greaser (Brisbane, QLD)THE VCE exam body has been left red faced after a doctored artwork depicting a huge robot helping socialist revolutionaries during the Russian Revolution was accidentally included in this year’s year 12 history exam taken by 5700 students. Exams for the popular History: Revolution subject were original supposed to include the artwork Storming the Winter palace on 25th October 1917 by Nikolai Kochergin, which depicts events during the October Revolution, which was instrumental in the larger Russian Revolution of 1917. The image that appeared on the exam paper. But when students opened their exam this morning they found an altered version of the work with what appear to be a large "BattleTech Marauder" robot aiding the rising revolutionaries in the background. It is unclear how the doctored version made it into the exam. But a search for the image in Google brings up the robot version as the first result.BOSTON (Reuters) - A malicious software program known as Conficker that many feared would wreak havoc on April 1 is slowly being activated, weeks after being dismissed as a false alarm, security experts said. People attend a workshop at a web conference in Madrid April 20, 2009. REUTERS/Susana Vera Conficker, also known as Downadup or Kido, is quietly turning thousands of personal computers into servers of e-mail spam and installing spyware, they said. The worm started spreading late last year, infecting millions of computers and turning them into “slaves” that respond to commands sent from a remote server that effectively controls an army of computers known as a botnet. Its unidentified creators started using those machines for criminal purposes in recent weeks by loading more malicious software onto a small percentage of computers under their control, said Vincent Weafer, a vice president with Symantec Security Response, the research arm of the world’s largest security software maker, Symantec Corp. “Expect this to be long-term, slowly changing,” he said of the worm. “It’s not going to be fast, aggressive.” Conficker installs a second virus, known as Waledac, that sends out e-mail spam without knowledge of the PC’s owner, along with a fake anti-spyware program, Weafer said. The Waledac virus recruits the PCs into a second botnet that has existed for several years and specializes in distributing e-mail spam. “This is probably one of the most sophisticated botnets on the planet. The guys behind this are very professional. They absolutely know what they are doing,” said Paul Ferguson, a senior researcher with Trend Micro Inc, the world’s third-largest security software maker. He said Conficker’s authors likely installed a spam engine and another malicious software program on tens of thousands of computers since April 7. He said the worm will stop distributing the software on infected PCs on May 3 but more attacks will likely follow. “We expect to see a different component or a whole new twist to the way this botnet does business,” said Ferguson, a member of The Conficker Working Group, an international alliance of companies fighting the worm. Researchers had feared the network controlled by the Conficker worm might be deployed on April 1 since the worm surfaced last year because it was programed to increase communication attempts from that date. The security industry formed the task force to fight the worm, bringing widespread attention that experts said probably scared off the criminals who command the slave computers. The task force initially thwarted the worm using the Internet’s traffic control system to block access to servers that control the slave computers. Viruses that turn PCs into slaves exploit weaknesses in Microsoft’s Windows operating system. The Conficker worm is especially tricky because it can evade corporate firewalls by passing from an infected machine onto a USB memory stick, then onto another PC. The Conficker botnet is one of many such networks controlled by syndicates that authorities believe are based in eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, China and Latin America.Karen Chin doesn’t have all the answers, but she is willing to make those awkward phone calls that will give her the information she needs. There was the time back in 1998 when she needed to know what size animal could produce a fecal mass of 2.4 liters in one go. So she called a physician who studied bowel movements. “I said, ‘This is going to be a funny question, but I’m a paleontologist, and I’m interested in finding out what is the largest fecal mass that a human can produce. I wonder if I can talk to the doctor about this.’ ” She pauses in her anecdote, remembering the silence on the other end of the phone line. “It was a weird question.” It took a while to convince the receptionist that Chin wasn’t making a prank call, but eventually the message was passed on to the doctor. The physician, driven by who-knows-what mixture of courtesy and curiosity, called her later that day. He explained that in his line of work he typically focused on the health of his patients, as revealed through their bowel movements, not on the volume of matter they produced. He couldn’t give Chin a precise figure. However, he told Chin, it just didn’t make sense for a man, or a man-sized animal, to produce 2.4 liters of excrement. That answer was enough to make Chin’s heart sing. Because she was pretty sure she’d identified the first fossil of a Tyrannosaurus rex turd. Chin isn’t the world’s only paleoscatologist—a handful of other researchers around the world study the fossilized excrement of ancient peoples to learn about their diet, health, and lifestyles, and a few others study the fossilized droppings of extinct animals. But Chin is an undisputed leader in the field, and her work has brought new insights to scientists’ understanding of Mesozoic Era, when towering reptiles walked the earth. “I think it’s fair to say I’ve studied more dinosaur feces than most,” she says modestly. “I said, ‘This is going to be a funny question, but I’m a paleontologist, and I’m interested in finding out what is the largest fecal mass that a human can produce.’ ” Also in Paleontology Gold Mining for Profit and Paleontology By Lomax Boyd Just outside Dawson City in northwest Canada, an unmarked gravel road branches from the main highway and snakes along Bonanza Creek—so named by the fortunes that were discovered in this remote outparcel. After a half-day drive the road loops back...READ MORE The fossilized droppings that Chin studies are called coprolites. The basic process of fossilization is not much different from the way bone fossils form: Sediment layers over the dung to protect it from air and water and consuming critters, while mineral-laden water seeps through it. Gradually the minerals replace the original material, leaving a stone facsimile. A warm and cheerful woman, Chin is immune to jokes about her line of work—she’s heard them all. “I like working with dinosaurs because I can more easily constrain what I like to call the poopetrator!” she says. That 2.4-liter specimen from Saskatchewan, Canada, was not only large enough to suggest a king-sized beast, it also contained bone splinters indicative of a carnivorous diet. That evidence, in conjunction with the turd’s discovery in a sediment layer near T. rex bone fossils, gave Chin confidence in her groundbreaking identification. Chin, now an associate professor of geological science at the University of Colorado, Boulder, has specialized in fossilized feces for more than 20 years, driven by their unique potential to reveal extinct ecosystems and to show animals’ places in those webs of life. She studies the leavings to imagine her way back to the beginnings. Chin’s most recent investigation has yielded clues regarding one of the most cataclysmic events to occur on this planet: the global extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous period. When an asteroid or comet slammed into the Earth about 65 million years ago, it doomed not only the non-avian dinosaurs, but also approximately 75 percent of all species in the world: plants, insects, mammals, and so many more. Chin has immersed herself in the destruction and the geological evidence of how the world recovered. In those landscapes of death, life found a way to return, and new species emerged and flourished. Chin and her colleagues think they may have found the humble origin of that resurrection. Chin’s recent discovery is rooted in her early training, which opened her eyes to the role of a lowly creature in the web of life. Like most budding paleontologists, she had read about William Buckland, a 19th-century Oxford University professor of geology, who coined the term coprolite from the Greek words for dung and stone. Buckland became the father of the field after studying remains in Great Britain’s Kirkdale Cave, thought to be prime evidence of Noah’s flood. In fact, Buckland discovered, the cave was a hyena den, where the scavengers dragged their meals for consumption, leaving behind deposits of their own. Buckland’s study of the hyenas’ fossilized feces had large import: It was perhaps the first paleontological study to sketch the contours of an ecological system. That ancient web of life, with its ravenous carnivores and their unlucky meals, could be traced to the droppings left behind by those repasts. In the 1980s, Chin was getting a master’s degree in biology at Montana State University when she took a job with the legendary dinosaur hunter Jack Horner, the inspiration for the paleontologist protagonist in Jurassic Park. At first, Chin’s job was simply to slice fossilized bones into thin sections that Horner could examine under the microscope. They were working with fossils found in Montana’s Two Medicine Formation, a sandstone outcropping that Horner was exploring. The rock layers were rich with bones of a newfound duck-billed dinosaur named Maiasaura, and not just the bones—also nests and eggs, and strange blobby deposits a bit removed from the nests. Horner believed these chunky rocks, embedded with shreds of fossilized plant material, were dinosaur patties. “That was the coolest implication of this research. Here we had evidence of interaction between the dinosaurs and the beetles.” Chin volunteered to work on these fossils, and set to work trying to confirm that they were indeed coprolites. “The context was appropriate,” she says, in that the material hadn’t been found as a uniform layer, but rather as discrete deposits. They didn’t have particularly turd-like shapes, but then, she figured, they would have fallen some distance from the big duck-billed dinosaurs and impacted on the ground. But she found her smoking gun, she says, when she began slicing up the fossils and found what looked like small burrows inside. Could they be dung beetle burrows? She called a leading dung beetle expert in Canada and explained her research question, and they agreed to meet when Chin was in Toronto for a conference. The meeting took place over a coffee table in a generic Toronto hotel room. “He had brought some dung beetle balls from Africa, and I had brought the coprolites,” Chin remembers. The expert compared the burrows in each of the materials, and showed Chin the obvious similarities. In the middle of this scene, the housekeeper came in to make up the room, but the two scientists barely looked up. “He was showing me why the burrows in the coprolite were characteristic—and he got really excited and I got really excited,” says Chin. The two scientists started waving their arms around, exclaiming enthusiastically that it must be dung, it just must be! All the while, the housekeeper dutifully tidied. While most paleontologists dream of reconstructing bones into the skeletons of whole animals, Chin was realizing that modest coprolites could tell a more interesting story. “Body fossils are vital because they tell us the types of organisms that lived in an ancient environment and what they looked like,” she says. “That can tell us that they moved in a certain way and had particular teeth that could take advantage of a particular diet. But they don’t tell us about interactions between specific organisms.” Since a world full of dinosaurs would naturally involve a lot of dung, scientists had presumed there were organisms that recycled that material back into the ecosystem. But no direct evidence had been found of how that process occurred. Chin’s discovery was the first evidence of dung beetle activity before the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction event. “To me, that was the coolest implication of this research,” says Chin. “Here we had evidence of interaction between the dinosaurs and the beetles.” Horner was also delighted with Chin’s identification of the coprolites, and her subsequent analysis that showed that the plant material in the dinosaur patties came from conifers. “The coprolites have the only plant material preserved at the site, and they did help us to put together the ecosystem,” Horner says. “We would always like to reconstruct the ecosystem, but usually it’s really hard to do.” It’s uncommon to find fossilized plants alongside fossilized bones, Horner explains, because plant material preserves better in an acidic environment, while bones do better in an alkaline environment. The coprolites at the Two Medicine Formation offered a way around that conundrum, and yielded surprising information. “Determining the bite-sized pieces that the dinosaurs had chewed off, that told us a lot about how the dinosaurs fed,” Horner says. In the course of working with Horner, Chin decided to get a Ph.D. in geological science, and wrote her dissertation on herbivorous dinosaur coprolites. Still, she didn’t think that coprolites would define her career; she expected to move on to other subjects in paleontology.
are “she, her, hers”) was a speaker at this session. Good that the “Raise Better White People” logo made its way on there! Unpacking privileged group dynamics. How have I participated as marginalized person in internalized #racism @KathyObear #WPC18KC pic.twitter.com/GC5U02FCoU — Colinda Clyne (@clclyne) April 29, 2017 Ms. Clyne appears to be Native American and her Twitter feed is rife with anti-Trump tweets and retweets, including one which criticizes President Trump for calling Senator Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas” — “a racist reference to her Native American heritage.” Not noted by Clyne, naturally, is that Warren has been unable to prove she has any Native lineage, and according to The Atlantic even if she does it would not be enough to claim minority status “or to be a member of any of the three federally recognized Cherokee communities.” EAGNews.org reports that a smartphone app was to debut at the confab which would allow users to report racist incidents: “[it] will allow users to securely capture incidents of bigotry on video, notify users of local incidents and events, and harness the power of social networks to report. It provides a toolkit for anti-bigotry organizing and security, and share (sic) the latest news and updates.” MORE: Get ready, Kansas City: Here comes the National White Privilege Conference MORE: Today’s celebration of big ol’ booties an example of ‘white privilege’ h/t to EAGNews.org Like The College Fix on Facebook / Follow us on Twitter IMAGE: ShutterstockPapparazzi capture Cristiano Ronaldo vacationing in Miami with friends Papparazzi Craze for CR7 in Miami Beach Cristiano Ronaldo finally took some time off. The whistle blow that signaled the end of Portugal's game with Russia in the World Cup qualifiers also meant it was time for CR7 to take a break. The highlights displayed on the Portuguese's slick hair in his final game of the season playing for his country were just a hint that the striker was beach bound. It is no secret that Ronaldo loves to keep his skin dark and smooth, so a couple of days in Miami Beach were just perfect to keep the Portuguese in tone. With what is spare change to him, he rented a yacht and sailed off shore to tan in peace with a couple of his best friends. However, distance wasn't a factor or an impediment for the papparazzi's 55-250mm lens to capture Ronaldo's private moments. The papparazzi found Ronaldo and he graciously accepted the attention posing for the cameras to create this image where the Portuguese resembles the famous plastic figurine, Ken, Barbie's male companion... or Johnny Bravo."War is a great destroyer of true Love." -- anonymous When a person watches tv or a movie, in the course of watching, emotion is experienced. This emotion is stimulated by imaginatively experiencing what is happening emotionally in the show. An aggressive gung ho man may get his thrill watching combat movies, or movies about cool dudes with muscle cars or fighter jets. Or maybe martial arts. Maybe it is more cerebral. Maybe the emotion has more to do with thinking about the show, rather than experiencing it. A woman may get her emotions stimulated by a story about love, or hate, or anger, or romance. And Love and Romance are not the same. Very different. What does that do to us, experiencing artificially stimulated emotions that are in general, out of step with life? We get addicted. In some case, the person stimulated will try to actually experience the simulated experience to stimulate the emotions for real, maybe expecting something more intense. And in some of those cases, it can be devastating. Results do vary. But the addictive, artificially stimulated emotion leads some to a misconception that the experience was real, when in fact only the associated emotion was real. Media is literally as addictive as some of the most addictive drugs on Earth. When you experience emotion, it is chemicals that are released into your brain. You watch the news, tv show or a movie. Or maybe the tv equivalent of a tabloid. Now when I hear someone carrying on about some movie star or pop star or celebrity of whatever, I know why. That person has been taking in the media, experienced intense emotion and become addicted. And they do not understand that they are literally addicted to the 'drugs' their brain produces. And it is not just video media. Books, magazines, news papers, various sources on the internet. All sources of media stimulate emotion. "The brain produces drugs?," you ask. The difference between drugs and the chemicals our brain produces is the meaning. It is the cause of them being stimulated and released into the brain that is the difference. If the cause is a consistent, repeated experience of nature in a pristine environment where the wind, the grass, the trees, the scent of flowers, the observation of wild animals, the thoughts of wisdom that result, then that cause is natural, and those chemicals released into your brain are not drugs. They are not overwhelming and artificial. Real, true Love can result. But if the cause is artificially created by man and technology, then true Love will be very weak or cannot be created at all. The thoughts will be misconceptions of the person consuming the technology. I know that most people will not realize what I am talking about. Those that do must simply set an example by living their life naturally. No artificial sweetener, artificial inspiration or artificial stimulation. No chemicals or hormones in the food. Create a Space of Love for others to see, to experience, more powerful than all the forms of artificial stimulation combined, and then they will see. Their heart will ache for the real Love they see. They will become hopeful that they can experience it themselves, for real. They will feel that all the artificial sources are hollow, and those sources will simply lose their appeal. Your Space of Love must be pristine and beautiful to behold. It must inspire the people who are in deep emotional pain, to heal each other. Only true Love can heal the spirit of Man. And when the spirit of Man is healing, Man will heal the Earth. Create a Space of Love, and the demonstration of life will inspire people to Love. -- Daemon A. BernsteinOWINGS MILLS, Md. — Inside the gleaming mall here on the Sunday before Christmas, just one thing was missing: shoppers. The upbeat music of “Jingle Bell Rock” bounced off the tiles, and the smell of teriyaki chicken drifted from the food court, but only a handful of stores were open at the sprawling enclosed shopping center. A few visitors walked down the long hallways and peered through locked metal gates into vacant spaces once home to retailers like H&M, Wet Seal and Kay Jewelers. “It’s depressing,” Jill Kalata, 46, said as she tried on a few of the last sneakers for sale at the Athlete’s Foot, scheduled to close in a few weeks. “This place used to be packed. And Christmas, the lines were out the door. Now I’m surprised anything is still open.” The Owings Mills Mall is poised to join a growing number of what real estate professionals, architects, urban planners and Internet enthusiasts term “dead malls.” Since 2010, more than two dozen enclosed shopping malls have been closed, and an additional 60 are on the brink, according to Green Street Advisors, which tracks the mall industry.Did you know that you can use a customized theme for your WordPress website? It is actually true since there are a bunch of different free-to-use stock themes for your WordPress websites. And the availability of those stock themes is just one of the reasons why you have got to set up a website using WordPress as your platform. You will want to use a WordPress theme for a variety of different reasons. And if you are still in doubt whether or not such a theme would work well for your site, then you should read through this whole post. You can find out just what makes a WordPress really useful for your site. And you can decide for yourself if a WordPress stock theme is the one for you to use. Free WordPress stock themes The best part about using these stock WordPress themes is that you will be able to use them for free! If you are trying to create a website and you are operating on a budget, then you will need to ensure that the design for your website must be low-cost. And that is where a WordPress stock theme can help you in. It is free to use, so there is no extra cost of getting a personalized site design. Easy to use WordPress themes WordPress themes are incredibly easy to use and install. You just have to select the theme that you want to use, copy the theme code, and then paste that code into your WordPress site. Your site’s whole new design should then instantly give you a great looking site that functions well and should look pleasing to any visitors that do happen to find your website. Well-designed WordPress themes Stock WordPress themes are actually very well-designed. Even if you download the free stock themes, they should still look very high-quality for a site design. The site’s background and menu design will look nice, and you will also not have to worry about the rest of the quality of your site as well. Lots of variety in theme designs There are dozens upon dozens of different WordPress stock themes that you can find. This huge variety in the number of WordPress themes that you can choose will mean that you can certainly find something that will look great specifically for your website. And that will ensure that you will eventually find something that you will love when it comes to your site’s design and theme. So as you can see, a WordPress design theme is practically necessary if you want to set up a website. You will find that you will be in a much better position when it comes to creating a whole new website, with its own unique look if you just choose the right kind of website theme. And since there are a ton of stock WordPress themes for you to choose from, this should not be too difficult at all. You will certainly be able to find a WordPress theme that looks great and also functions well as a well-designed website theme.This post is from PopTech Editions III—“Made to Measure: The New Science of Impact,” which explores the evolving techniques to accurately gauge the real impact of initiatives and programs designed to do social good. Visit PopTech for more interviews, essays, and videos with leading thinkers on this subject. "Access to Savings Accounts: Innovations for Poverty Action" (Image: IPA) Which of these innovations do you think changed the world more fundamentally: televisions or refrigerators? The short answer is that we don’t know. The longer answer is that the question is flawed. What do you mean by changing the world? What do you mean by fundamental? For whom? How? Why? The same is true for programs that aim to improve social or economic development. How do I know that a given program reduces poverty and improves human well-being? How do I know if this is the best investment I can make to improve the welfare of the people I serve? There are two problems with answering these questions. First, people are different in ways that can be observed and some that can’t. The second problem is that we do not live in a lab. It is not just the innovation that presents a change in our environment, but it is accompanied by millions of other changes occurring concurrently in our real-world lives. How then can I honestly attribute a change in people’s lives to just the innovation that I have introduced, and not to any of the other hundred things that changed at the same time? One approach that is gaining prominence in resolving this quandary is to conduct field experiments on a large enough scale to rigorously tease out the effect of an innovation on the average person, on people with different characteristics, in the real world, and in a manner in which we can clearly attribute the observed change to the innovation we have introduced. The approach is very similar to that used in evaluating the effectiveness and drawbacks of new drugs through medical trials. This technique can provide organizations designing and promoting these innovations, as well as the governments supporting and regulating them, with a great deal of insight on how to allocate scarce resources. Let's use the example of the television and the refrigerator. You would start by choosing a population from which you pull a random sample of people, so their characteristics approximate the distribution of attributes in the population. You would collect a set of information from all of these sampled households on the way they live, their consumption patterns, their health, their learning, their well-being. You would then hold a lottery in which you put all the sampled people’s names into a large bucket and you close your eyes and pull out a third who will get televisions, another third who will get refrigerators, and the remaining third who will get neither. The three groups are statistically equivalent, mirrors of one another. And so we expect them to evolve in equivalent fashions, facing all the shocks in the world in a similarly diverse manner, except for the fact that some of them by chance have a television, and others a refrigerator, and others neither. "Innovations for Poverty Action"(Image: IPA) We then return to these families a year or two later and ask them the same or a very similar set of questions on the way they live, their consumption patterns, their health, their learning, their well-being. We then compare the difference in the change in consumption, health, learning and well-being patterns of those with televisions, with those with refrigerators, and those with neither. The reason this research question makes for a valuable experiment is because we do not know the answer to this question with any reliability beforehand. Our intuition and the existing evidence may fail us, because each of these innovations can have impacts on numerous behaviors and activities in the household, they can impact different types of households differently, and they can have positive and negative outcomes. For instance, it may be that perceived well-being is higher among the television households than in the other two groups. At the same time, the actual consumption levels (that correspond with income earned) among the refrigerator households might be higher because now the woman of the house can spend time on paid part-time work in the time freed up from having to cook multiple fresh meals a day. Yet, the health indicators of those in the comparison group that got neither might be higher because they eat more fresh food and spend more time on exercise, since they don’t have a television or a refrigerator. Further, we could find that even within the households, the women in the refrigerator household now report greater confidence and control over decision-making than the women of the households in the other groups. Whatever the findings, the initial randomization of who gets each innovation gives us confidence that the differences we see can be attributed to the change we introduced: having a television or refrigerator. The same process applies to evaluating poverty alleviation programs. These trials allow innovators to determine what best improves specific welfare outcomes at the individual and household level. "The Cost of Convenience? Transaction Costs, Bargaining Power, and Savings Account Use in Kenya." (Working paper: Dartmouth) In a simple innovation tested in Kenya1, ATM debit cards were provided for free, 1) to just the male head of household in one group 2) to just the woman head of household in another, and 3) jointly to both the male and female heads of households in a third group. As we might have thought, providing people easier access to a safe savings account did have a significant positive impact on increasing savings activity and balances—but only when it was a joint account or an account held by a male head of household. It did not do anything for women heads of households. This does not fit in easily with the story that reducing the cost of banking will lead to higher savings and financial inclusion across the board. It compels us to explore why there is such a different impact, and find ways for financial services to be designed in a way that addresses this constraint faced by those women. While our refrigerator and television exercise might sound simple at first, there is great complexity to how you design and execute such experiments in the real world, like the debit card study. Have you made sure that you have a large enough sample to detect whether the differences in outcomes measured between the groups is owed to random variability or due to the innovation, with a high degree of statistical certainty? How would you plan for spillovers, like what if some of your refrigerator households bought televisions and vice versa? How would you control for attrition if, say, a quarter of the people in your original comparison group move to a neighboring state that was offering free refrigerators (a shock that did not affect all groups proportionally)? All these considerations need to be taken into account in the design of the experiment to make for a robust and rigorous study. Further, the innovations themselves need to be at a stage where they can be tested at scale to measure impact, without fear that they start breaking down or are themselves unstable or unreliable in doing what they are supposed to do. Another necessity: Innovators must take great care to protect the participants in any study. There are strict requirements on what is allowed in terms of the ethical and moral and prudential norms that must be followed to minimize risk in conducting human subjects research in the social sciences. This includes the Institutional Review Board approval process that is required for all field experiments involving human subjects research. It is also important to remember that while all this studying is great, innovators should place a higher priority on having the results of such studies translate into timely policies that help people when some program or product is found to be highly effective. Many studies, for example, are designed as phase-in studies, where at regular intervals an additional set of participants from the control group are given the treatment, making the control group shrink and then ultimately disappear when everyone has the intervention across treatment and control. The timeline of this phase-in can be determined based on how strong the positive results turn out to be. Another way to move ahead with spreading effective innovations even as their impacts are rigorously tested is for the intervention, if very positive, to be replicated or scaled in other locations where the experiment is not running. This can take place even as the trial, with its treatment and control groups, continues for the duration of the experiment, so the measurement of impact is robust and clear to enable a strong basis for greater scale-up over the longer term. All this may sound like a lot of fun for academics but perhaps unnecessary and expensive, but it is useful to remind ourselves of the humble premise on which we started. There is a great deal that we do not understand in the world and a great deal that just theory or observation of a few cases cannot answer. The effort at impact evaluation allows us to rigorously measure how people really benefit from innovations, and that is a necessary first step to fundamentally changing the world. 1Schaner, Simone. “The Cost of Convenience? Transaction Costs, Bargaining Power, and Savings Account Use in Kenya.” Working Paper, Dartmouth, 2011 <http://www.dartmouth.edu/~sschaner/main_files/ATM_PaperDraftTABLES_07Jul2011.pdf>.Late last week, the White House decried Israel’s attack on a UN school in Gaza as “totally unacceptable” and “totally indefensible”, then proceeded to approve $225m in funding for its Iron Dome. On Monday, the US state department went further, calling the airstrikes upon a UN school “disgraceful” – and yet America provides Israel with more than $3.1bn every year, restocking the ability of the Israel Defense Force (IDF) to hit more schools, and to wage total war against an imprisoned people, because of their nationality. American taxpayers should not be paying for this. And the western world should stop rejecting serious inquiries about Israel’s moral inconsistencies, or allow it to benefit from cognitive dissonance and information overload amid the current crisis in Gaza. There is a land grab going on. The Israeli prime minister, Binjamin Netanyahu, has shrunk Gaza’s habitable land mass by 44%, with an edict establishing a 3km (1.8-mile) buffer zone, a “no-go” zone for Palestinians – and that’s quite significant, because a good part of Gaza is only 3 to 4 miles wide. Over 250,000 Palestinians within this zone must leave their homes, or be bombed. As their territorial space collapses, 1.8m Gazans now living in 147 square miles will be compressed into 82 square miles. Gaza’s entire social and physical infrastructure of housing, hospitals, places of worship, more than 130 of its schools, plus markets, water systems, sewer systems and roads are being destroyed. Under constant attack, without access to water, sanitary facilities, food and medical care, Gazans face an IDF-scripted apocalypse. With Gaza’s land mass shrinking due to Israeli military action, it’s about time someone asked: What is the end game? Three weeks ago, Moshe Feiglin, deputy speaker of the Knesset, called for Gaza to “become part of sovereign Israel and will be populated by Jews. This will also serve to ease the housing crisis in Israel.” Israel has a housing crisis? After the “no-go” buffer zone is evacuated, there will be 21,951 Palestinians per square mile in Gaza, while Israel’s population density stands at 964 persons per square mile. Deputy Speaker Feiglin wants the Palestinians in Gaza to lose all of their land. One must not assume that Mr Feiglin or his Likud faction speak for the main government actors like Prime Minister Netanyahu. After all, Knesset politics are complex and divergent. But since Gaza has just lost control of that 44% of its land, it may also be time to ask: does the establishment of that 3km zone represent the unfolding of a larger plan? Is that the end game? At the very point where an aroused public becomes aghast at the slaughter of Gazans, the western world becomes inured to the violence, hypnotized by the media’s cadence of body counts. The intolerable becomes normalized, and later ignored as old news. Which would seem a perfect time to leave in place the 3km zone – for security purposes, of course – and then advance the proposal that Palestinians crammed into the remaining 56% of Gaza simply... leave. I assume the IDF acts with deliberation, under orders from the Netanyahu government. And I think the extraordinary and illegal forced relocation of over 250,000 Palestinians from 44% of Gazan land is a crime against humanity under the guise of establishing a “buffer zone” for security purposes. Look at the region’s maps from recent history. Look at the steady erosion of Palestinian land and the acquisition of land by Israel, and you can understand that the present attack on Gaza is not about solely about Hamas. It’s about land. It isn’t just about Hamas’s rockets. It’s about land. It isn’t just about Hamas’s tunnels. It’s about land. It isn’t about kidnappings. It is about land. It isn’t even about meeting a housing crisis in Israel. It is about grabbing land from the Palestinians in Gaza and the natural resources that go with the land, upon the occasion of Israel’s military invasion of Gaza. Yes, Hamas’s attacks on Israel are illegal and should be condemned, and those who ordered the attacks should be held accountable under law. All policies and practices which refuse to recognize Israel’s right to exist should be condemned. Israel has a right to exist. But Israel’s right to exist is impaired when Israel decides Palestinians have no right to exist on their own land. It’s time for us to stop paying for Israel’s dubious, destructive self-righteousness. And it’s time for the solipsism syndrome afflicting Israel’s leaders to get a day of discussion in the International Criminal Court concerning their attacks on Gaza – and especially their new 3km “buffer zone”. • Comments on this article are set to remain open for 24 hours from the time of publication but may be closed overnight (UK time).About Start your day with a dose of wit you won’t find anywhere else. When I’m not writing and publishing novels, I post puns on social media. I get more likes and followers with #wordplay than any other kind of post. Which leads me to believe there are others out there whose minds appreciate and perhaps even crave puns. To appease this underground — punderground? — faction, I’m creating a page-a-day calendar featuring my off-the-beaten-path brand of wordplay. The Pun-a-Day Calendar chronicles several years’ worth of wordplay. These are original creations. If you’ve heard it before, you won’t find it in my calendar (unless you’re already following me on Twitter, of course). Topics cover all manner of miscellany, from food and folk songs to comic books and the Bible. A few free samples: I won’t eat beef on an airplane. The steaks are just too high. I don’t usually use suspenders to keep my pants up, but I’m willing to give it a crack. On second thought “take a gander” was poor wording for the petting zoo sign. Now the strange thoughts that pop into my head on any given day can be a part of your day! Meet the mind behind the madness. David Michael Williams “You think too much.” “You’re weird but in a good way.” “Nice hat!” All of the above has been said about me. No matter what project I’m pursuing, at the end of the day, I’m a storyteller who loves the English language because it provides the tools I need to bring my ideas to life. I’ve been blessed to be able to make a living with my writing. I have a background in journalism, public relations, and marketing. I’m currently a content specialist at a growing Midwestern marketing agency. As far as fiction goes, I’ve written a few short stories in the speculative fiction genre, co-wrote a children’s chapter book, penned four fantasy novels, and am in the process of finishing the third book in a sci-fi series called The Soul Sleep Cycle. In 2016, I formed an indie publishing company called One Million Words and published The Renegade Chronicles, my sword-and-sorcery fantasy series comprised of Rebels and Fools, Heroes and Liars, and Martyrs and Monsters. More about my fiction here: https://david-michael-williams.comOn every backpacking trip, I have three primary goals. In order of importance, they are to: Survive, Maintain a realistic level of comfort, and Have “fun,” the definition of which is subject to personal interpretation. When I embark on a trip, I always try to abide by the Boy Scout motto — “Be prepared” — by bringing three types of resources, either carried on my back or between my ears, to help me achieve my goals: Gear, e.g. clothing, shelter, stove, etc. Supplies, e.g. food, water, fuel, etc. Skills, e.g. how to hike efficiently, select good campsites, purify water, start a fire, navigate on-trail and off-trail, ford snowmelt-fed rivers, stay warm when it’s cold and wet, etc. But how can I ensure that I am, in fact, “prepared” for a trip? Option 1: Assemble a catch-all kit This thinking goes, “By packing a lot of stuff, I will therefore be prepared for everything that comes my way.” Basically, you pack your fears. Beginner backpackers constantly fall into this trap — I was a case-in-point at the start of my first thru-hike, the Appalachian Trail in 2002. But experienced backpackers are not immune either, especially when wandering into new landscapes or climates for the first time. If you adopt this approach, you’ll probably survive the trip — and maybe even Armageddon. But unfortunately you usually also become a “Camper by Default” — because of the weight and number of things you are carrying, the only way to maintain a realistic level of comfort and to have “fun” is to spend most (preferably, all) of your time in camp. Sorry, but hulking backpacks automatically make hiking an arduous activity between camps, not something that can be enjoyed as a distinct activity within a backpacking trip. Option 2: Know what you need to be prepared against This is my preferred strategy. Immediately after deciding to go on a trip, I ask, “What are the environmental and route conditions I will likely experience on this trip for which I need to be prepared?” Then, in light of these conditions, I select the gear, supplies and skills that will make me precisely prepared — not under-, over-, or mis-prepared. By knowing the conditions precisely — plus the gear, supplies and skills that are compatible with these conditions — I can usually take fewer and lighter items. For example: If I know the average and record temperatures, I don’t have to take “extra” clothing or an excessively warm sleep system. If I know how often I will cross perennial water sources — or reliable seasonal water sources — I don’t have to carry extra water bottles or extra water. If I know there will not be insects, my shelter does not need to have bug netting and I don’t need to carry insect repellent or a headnet. If I know there is enough daylight to avoid hiking at night, I don’t have to carry a super bright (and heavy) flashlight and/or an extra set of batteries. List of important environmental and route conditions Climate Average high/low and record high/low temperatures (Note: adjust 3 to 5 degrees for every 1,000 vertical feet, depending on humidity — temperature changes are greater in arid climates) Average and record high/low precipitation per month (Note: precipitation can be affected significantly by orographic lift.) Precipitation type, e.g. rain, snow, hail Precipitation frequency, e.g. constant, sporadic Humidity Wind Cloud cover Patterns, e.g. prevailing storm direction, ominous cloud formations, seasonal weather patterns For an in-depth tutorial on predicting backcountry weather, read this. Daylight Hours between civil sunrise and civil sunset (Note: expect 30-60 minutes of less daylight due to heavy cloud cover.) Daily/weekly change Moon cycle Footing Snow-covered or snow-free If snow-covered: amount of snow coverage, composition of snowpack, daily/weekly changes in snowpack If snow-free: rocks, dirt, sand, vegetation, dry, dusty, wet, muddy, smooth or uneven Vegetation Types, e.g. trees, brush, none Thickness/density Shifts due to elevation, slope aspect, exposure Allergens, e.g. poison ivy Combustibility for fires Navigation aids Visibility, e.g. open or forested Topographical relief, e.g. subtle or prominent features Quality of trail tread Signs, blazes, cairns, posts Quantity/frequency of use or social trails Sun exposure Altitude Sun angle Cloud or tree cover Reflectivity on water, snow, ice Water availability Distance, terrain and time between water sources Reliability Problematic wildlife Bears “Mini bears,” e.g. mice, racoons, marmots Insects Types, e.g. mosquitoes, black flies, no-see-um’s Peak intensity Intensity fluctuations based on time of day, location, wind Remoteness Distance and time to the closest trafficked road and the closest town with services Natural barriers to self-rescue, e.g. canyons, thick brush, big rivers Cell reception Natural hazards Lingering snowfields Avalanches River fords Flash floods Tides Lightning Informational resources What resources should you consult in assessing environmental and route conditions? These will help: Climate atlas and historical weather data Landsat images, e.g. “satelite” view on Google Maps Geo-tagged photos, e.g. photos on Google Maps Topographical maps, e.g. USGS topos viewed in National Geographic TOPO! software Guidebooks, databooks, and water charts Official information published by land mangers and trail associations, made available on their websites and in their printed materials Communities, e.g. online forums, hiking clubs Local experts, e.g. backcountry rangers, lodge owners, experienced backcountry users Sample: Environmental & Route Conditions Assessment For a sample assessment, read this post.SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER A fifth of Swedes have no confidence in the mainstream media, and half the country now gets their news primarily from alternative sources, a new study has found. The results of the study, for which a representative sample of 4,000 people were interviewed, make “grim reading” for Sweden’s media establishment, the news and marketing industry magazine Resumé notes SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER Researchers at the Stockholm School of Economics and market researcher company NEPA said the country is becoming increasingly divided with regards to where people get their news. Half of those surveyed get their news primarily from sources other than the established media, and people in this group “are also very active in sharing content with others online via social media”. Twenty-one per cent of Swedes said they distrust the mainstream media altogether. Local media reports that the gender distribution between the different groups is fairly evenly split, and that confidence in the establishment media is lowest in people between the ages of 35 and 54. The study, which forms the beginning of a new research project, is funded by Sweden’s seven major media companies in the hope of understanding how they can attract news consumers who currently reject the mainstream media. “It shows that there is a group that’s very vocal in social media, and that sets the tone there. And there is a risk that we equate public opinion with what’s shared a lot and heard a lot,” Peter Wolodarski, editor of one of Sweden’s biggest newspapers, Dagens Nyheter, said of the survey results. Under new plans unveiled by the government in November, current press subsidies — which are also available to alternative media outlets — will be abolished from 2018. With the media report grants set to replace subsidies, an “industry committee” consisting of mainstream media figures will be given the right to determine which competitors are granted taxpayers’ cash. Former media commissioner Anette Novak said: “The government will not spend public money on media that do not line up on the values underlying the freedom of expression.” Fria Tider commented that the new rules “serve to strengthen the regime-faithful” established media “against challengers in the so-called alternative media”.Defense Department Weighing COCOM Realignment and Rebrand The Pentagon is considering doing away with two combatant commands---and no longer calling them combatant commands. James Joyner · · 33 comments The Pentagon is considering doing away with two combatant commands—and no longer calling them combatant commands. Defense News (“DoD Weighs Major COCOM Realignment“): The Pentagon is considering a major overhaul of its geographical combatant commands, possibly realigning oversight within hot-button areas of the world and eliminating thousands of military and civilian positions, according to defense sources. While the plans for combatant command (COCOM) realignment and consolidation are still notional, sources say some options include: Combining Northern Command and Southern Command to form what some are calling “Americas Command” or “Western Command.” Dissolving Africa Command and splitting it up among European Command and Central Command. Expanding Pacific Command to include Afghanistan and Pakistan, which are part of Central Command. In all, the realignments could shutter two COCOMs and eight service-supporting commands, totaling more than 5,000 people, both uniformed and civilian. This would be a bold step, although the cost savings would be minor by Pentagon standards. Offhand, all of the proposals listed above seem odd. Southern Command, which oversees Latin America minus Mexico, is arguably our most functional COCOM, characterized by repeat assignments and language and cultural proficiency. AFRICOM is largely useless but the symbolism of shuttering what is already a Potemkin COCOM so soon after standing it up would be horrible. While AfPak is part of the Asian continent, nobody thinks of it as Asian. But there’s at least some real thinking behind this. Combining Northern and Southern commands could lead to greater resources for activities in South and Central America, which experts say has long been DoD’s most neglected region. Combining the regions could better address cross-border issues — particularly drug trafficking — among Mexico, South America and the United States, said Bob Killebrew, a retired Army colonel and senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Mexico is part of Northern Command, which also includes the contiguous United States, Alaska and Canada. “[I]t makes … sense not to have a kind of artificial DoD boundary, not only between Mexico and Central America, but between Mexico and the American border as well,” Killebrew said. It strikes me that the more obvious solution would be to place Mexico into SOUTHCOM, where it belongs linguistically and culturally. For all intents and purposes, NORTHCOM isn’t a fighting command but an administrative creature. So, combining the two would simultaneously take away SOUTHCOM’s unique culture while lumping it in with the least prestigious of the COCOMs; it’s not at all clear why that would improve focus on Latin America. Organizing oversight of Africa has been a topic of debate — mostly in the academic community — ever since Africa Command split from European Command and became a stand-alone COCOM in 2008. Before that, European Command oversaw much of the continent, with Central Command overseeing the Horn of Africa. “The [oversight] that was diffused over multiple commands really wasn’t something that was in our best interest nor in the best interest of our partners on the continent,” said Kip Ward, a retired Army general who was the first commander of Africa Command. Major changes to the existing Africa Command construct are not likely during a COCOM reorganization, experts say. US military operations in Africa, ranging from the 2011 overthrow of Moammar Gadhafi in Libya to the recent campaign against terrorists in Mali, underscore the need for a dedicated COCOM, defense officials say. Since its establishment, Africa Command has added value and has been well received on the continent, Ward said. ”I think that the focus that AFRICOM is able to bring to that vital, important part of the world is still important,” he said. AFRICOM is an odd duck but at least sends a strong signal that we care about Africa. Unique among COCOMs, it’s headed by a four-star officer with a civilian deputy, symbolizing that it’s as much a diplomatic mission as a military one. And it has essentially no organic fighting capability; it’s a headquarters staff. Headquartered in that most venerable of African cities, Stuttgart. Still, I can’t see it going anywhere. Meanwhile, experts agree that Afghanistan, Pakistan and India should fall under the same COCOM, regardless of whether it’s Pacific or Central. India falls under Pacific Command while Pakistan and Afghanistan are part of Central Command. Since security, foreign policy, economic and trade issues with
California Preparing for the costliest weather disaster in the US: How to stay safe before, during and after a flood AccuWeather.com Winter Weather Center Report a TypoSVT (supraventricular tachycardia) is something we see a lot of in Emergency Medicine. Any emergency physician will tell you exactly how satisfying it is to treat a patient with SVT. There must be close to a 100% successful cardioversion rate, one way or another, and after cardioversion patients can usually go straight home soon afterwards. It’s one of those things that gives you a warm glow and reminds you why you did Emergency Medicine in the first place. But not everything is great about the way we manage SVT in practice. More often than not we revert to using adenosine. This is a great drug – rapid onset, short-acting, safe – and we all know how effective it can be. You just have to remember to warn the patient that they might feel that they’re about to die when you give it. But hang on. How much would you like to feel like you’re about to die, even it’s just for a few seconds? I can’t say that I have a desperate urge to feel that way. Wouldn’t we prefer a better solution? Well, many people do – and that’s why things got pretty heated at the RAGE podcast last year when they debated the use of verapamil versus adenosine… http://ragepodcast.com/rage-session-two/ http://ragepodcast.com/rageback-minh-le-cong-verapamil-svt/ Since these podcasts Simon has been using verapamil as first line for his low risk patients with SVT for a while and swears by it. But wouldn’t it be nice if we didn’t have to use any drugs? Wouldn’t that be better? We all know that we could. We could try carotid sinus massage, accepting the small but finite risk of causing a stroke. Hmmm. We could dunk the patient’s face in a bucket of ice cold water. Hmmmm. Or we could try a Valsalva manoeuvre. It’s very safe and it works in almost 1 in 5 patients. We all like to try that – but wouldn’t it be great if it worked for more than 1 in 5? Well, 5 years ago two emergency physicians described a modified Valsalva manoeuvre that might improve success rates in the EMJ. Moving on from that, an inspirational group from the south west of England led by Andy Appelboam put down their PASTIES and set to work on a definitive trial. And their most awesome work has just been published in the Lancet. Let’s take a look at what they did and what they found… First, what is a modified Valsalva and how do you do it? Andy and his team proposed to modify the Valsalva manoeuvre to improve venous return and vagal stimulation in the ‘relaxation phase’ (after the straining bit). Essentially, the patient would puff into a sphygmomanometer at a pressure of 40mmHg for 15 seconds, then lie back in the Trendelenberg position with legs elevated. You can see a video of Andy in action doing the modified Valsalva manoeuvre below… What was the aim of the trial? Essentially, they aimed to test the null hypothesis that, when compared to a standard Valsalva manoeuvre, the modified Valsalva manoeuvre will not improve cardioversion rates measured 1 minute after the procedure. That means this was a superiority trial – they were trying to disprove that hypothesis and show that the modified Valsalva manoeuvre is better than the standard one for achieving cardioversion. Who did they include? This was a multicentre trial run at two teaching hospitals and eight district general (community) hospitals in the UK. The multicentre nature of the trial will help to improve the external validity of the findings, making it less likely that they’re specific to patients from a particular geographical area presenting in a certain way. Being able to run trials like this is one of the key benefits of the truly amazing National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) portfolio in the UK. The NIHR provides the resources needed to deliver studies like this. Without the NIHR, we just wouldn’t have studies of this nature. Adults (>18yr) with regular, narrow complex SVT were included provided that they weren’t shocked and in need of immediate cardioversion, and providing that the diagnosis wasn’t atrial fibrillation or flutter. This seems pretty reasonable. How did they randomise patients? They randomised patients to receive either the modified or standard Valsalva manoeuvre in equal (1:1) proportions. The patients were randomised using sealed envelopes. I’ve never been a great fan of this technique because of the potential that it might be open to abuse. Given that it’s just not possible to blind clinicians to the allocation in a trial of this nature, what if you open the envelope and find that your patient is allocated to a group that you didn’t want them to be allocated to? Could you exclude them from the trial and use that envelope for the next patient? Could you just open the next envelope? Does it therefore mean that we’ve lost allocation concealment? In this trial the answer is actually no. This group asked the team to sign and date the seal of the envelope before they broke it. By doing that, the team couldn’t get up to mischief and abuse the system. They must sign and date before they break the seal and they must include the patient because the seal has been dated. It’s a very clever way of making sure that randomisation is simple and pragmatic (essential for a busy Emergency Department) while maintaining allocation concealment. Randomisation was stratified by centre so that there would be roughly equal numbers of patients in each treatment group at each centre. This removes the potential for confounding by having unequal numbers in the groups at different centres. If the centres had different success rates and there were uneven numbers, this could have been a problem. What did they do? Consenting patients received either the standard or modified Valsalva after randomisation. If the first attempt didn’t work, a second was permitted. An ECG was then recorded 1 minute afterwards. This was later interpreted by an independent cardiologist to determine whether cardioversion had occurred. If the ECG was missing, an endpoint committee used all other available information to determine whether cardioversion had occurred. What OUTCOMES were they interested in? The primary outcome, which is the most important measure of success, was return to sinus rhythm after 1 minute. There were also a number of secondary outcomes, such as the rate of use of adenosine. Who was INCLUDED? Ultimately 433 patients were included in the trial. They seem to have been pretty well matched in terms of baseline characteristics. None of the patients crossed over between the groups and a similar proportion in each group (84% and 86%) achieved the required pressure for the appropriate time when actually doing the Valsalva manoeuvre. What did they FIND? The results are pretty impressive. The primary outcome of return to sinus rhythm after 1 minute was achieved for 43% of the patients who used the modified Valsalva versus 17% for the standard technique. This is an absolute risk reduction of 26.2% (p<0.001) and gives us a number.needed to treat of 3.8. This finding is pretty impressive and my only slight gripe is that they possibly didn’t need to round that number down to 3 – it’s already extremely impressive and if they wanted to round that number to an integer, it should really be the more conservative estimate of ‘4’. The findings are equally impressive for some of the secondary outcomes. There was a 19% difference in the proportion of patients given adenosine (69% vs. 50%, p=0.0002, NNT 5.3). In terms of safety, there was no difference in the incidence of serious adverse events. There were slightly more adverse events reported by patients who had a modified Valsalva, but the difference wasn’t statistically significant and they all seem pretty mild in nature (e.g. transient headache) – and nobody experienced a sensation of impending doom – which adenosine notoriously causes. So what does this MEAN? Clearly, the findings are pretty impressive. The modified Valsalva is safe and can cardiovert 43% of patients with SVT. By using the modified Valsalve instead of a standard technique, we could avoid using adenosine in one out of every 5.3 patients treated, which isn’t bad. What’s more, this is a pretty robust trial with no major weaknesses. My only remaining question is whether you need to adopt the Trendellenberg position after the strain or whether being in the supine position all along would be just as effective. I’ve always been taught that the Valsalva manoeuvre is more effective in the supine position. However, based on these data, I’ll certainly be changing my practice and using the modified Valsalva technique as shown in the video. It also has some more implications. If we teach patients how to do this themselves, maybe they can self-cardiovert without coming to the ED or using a pill in the pocket. From a patient’s perspective, this could be great. Want to hear MORE? If you want to hear more from the first author himself, come to #RCEM15 in Manchester or #EuSEM15 in Torino. Andy Appelboam, the first author, will be presenting his findings at both conferences – be there if you can! * Special thanks to Natalie May and Simon Carley for their input into this post. The graphic and title are Natalie’s awesome work. * RickThe chairman of JD Wetherspoon has laid into the chancellor, Philip Hammond, accusing him of delivering a “budget for dinner parties” rather than pub-goers. Tim Martin used a first-half trading statement to highlight nearly £30m of extra charges Wetherspoon will have to pay as a result of tax hikes, and derided Hammond for threatening the pub sector’s survival. Philip Hammond criticised for exaggerating pub relief scheme Read more He said: “We understand the need for the government to raise taxes. However, there should be a sensible rebalancing of the taxes paid by pubs and supermarkets, if the pub industry is to survive in the long term.” Martin totted up a business rates bill of £7m, a £2m apprenticeship levy and a £4m hit from the sugar tax that will contribute to £29m in extra charges the group will face over the next few years. He also poured scorn on a £1,000 business rates discount for pubs with a rateable value of less than £100,000, saying “that sum is dwarfed by tax and regulatory increases” and that Wetherspoon is not eligible for it in any case. The outspoken businessman pointed out the disparity between how pubs are taxed compared with supermarkets when it comes to VAT on food sales. “The chancellor was less than frank in his budget speech, since he did not spell out the duty increases, giving the impression to many that there would be no increase. “In effect, this was a budget for dinner parties, no doubt the preference of the chancellor and his predecessor – dinner parties will suffer far less from the taxes outlined above, whereas many people prefer to go to pubs, given the choice,” he said.MSNBC host Rachel Maddow saw a steep drop in ratings the day after she released one of President Trump's tax forms. Maddow and her preceding host Chris Hayes heavily promoted Tuesday's broadcast as a "breaking" revelation, and Maddow devoted most of her program to Trump's two-page 1040 form from 2005. BREAKING: We've got Trump tax returns. Tonight, 9pm ET. MSNBC. (Seriously). — Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) March 14, 2017 Maddow on Backlash to Trump Tax Report Hype: People Expected Too Much O'Reilly: 'The American Media Has Now Become a Circus of Ideology & Cynicism' REACTION: Hannity, Lahren and Many More Blast Maddow's Trump Tax Hype "The Rachel Maddow Show" saw its ratings plummet 36 percent on Wednesday, compared to the prior night. That drop was even sharper in the key demographic of 25 to 54-year-olds, the viewership of which fell 54 percent, Sandra Smith reported. Maddow received criticism from all sides after she and journalist David Cay Johnston revealed Trump's tax forms on national television. Geraldo Rivera said it was Maddow's "Al Capone's Vault" moment, referencing a 1986 report in which he opened the mobster's vault live, to find little of value. On "The O'Reilly Factor," Bill O'Reilly said Maddow's broadcast is the latest event in a "circus of ideology and cynicism" surrounding the president. Additionally, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) pointed out that Trump's tax rate reflected on the forms was far greater than that of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is often critical of those who don't "pay their fair share." "Since Senator Sanders is such a good socialist, I think he'd want to pay his fair share. I'm expecting news any day that he's gonna send a couple hundred thousand into the IRS so he can pay his fair share," Paul said. Paul Calls Out Bernie Sanders' Tax Rate After Leak of Trump's 2005 Return Pres. Trump Targets Snoop Dogg on Twitter Over His Shooting in Music Video WATCH: Texas GOP Rep. Barton Tells Man to 'Shut Up' at Heated Town HallWarriors head coach Steve Kerr watches and waits. (Noah Graham/NBAE/Getty Images) The Golden State Warriors opened the 2017 NBA Finals by steamrolling the Cleveland Cavaliers in a performance that highlighted the value of Kevin Durant, emphasized the the major challenges the Cavs will face on defense, and served as a reminder that Stephen Curry’s healthy and in roaring rhythm in this year’s championship round. And the news might’ve gotten even better for the Warriors after the game. Scroll to continue with content Ad From Ramona Shelburne and Chris Haynes of ESPN.com: If Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr feels well over the next few days without any setbacks, there remains some optimism he could coach Sunday in Game 2 of the NBA Finals against the Cleveland Cavaliers, sources told ESPN. “He may coach Sunday. He’s feeling better,” a source close to Kerr told ESPN’s Marc Spears. Kerr had been feeling well enough earlier this week to be hopeful that he would be able to coach in Game 1 on Thursday, but according to team sources, after he had a bad day Wednesday, he decided it was best for acting head coach Mike Brown to continue leading the team. Kerr, who led the Warriors to the 2015 NBA championship and to a 67-win campaign this season, hasn’t taken the sideline since Game 2 of Golden State’s opening-round series against the Portland Trail Blazers, as he has battled pain related to the 2015 back surgery that caused him to miss the first 43 games of the 2015-16 season. His absence hasn’t derailed the Dubs, who entered the NBA Finals having rolled 10 straight wins under acting head coach Brown and promptly torched the defending-champion Cavs to improve to a perfect 13-0 in the 2017 playoffs. Story continues Kerr has made incremental progress over the last several weeks, first returning to practice, then traveling with the team and getting back to breaking down film and taking part in coaches’ meetings. He firmly believes he’ll coach again, but he still didn’t feel ready to return for Game 1. “It’s a pain thing and the repercussions of pain,” Kerr told Tim Kawakami of the Bay Area News Group earlier this week. “I’ve been dealing with it for almost two years. I’ve been able to deal with it for the most part. It’s not a cognitive thing. It’s not even really an energy thing. It’s a pain thing. And the threshold is really important – what’s the threshold?” [Follow Ball Don’t Lie on social media: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Tumblr] NBA Commissioner Adam Silver spoke with Kerr before Game 1, and discussed the Warriors coach’s status in his pre-Finals media session. “My heart goes out to him,” Silver said. “As he and I talked about, it puts this all into perspective. I think for those who have dealt with long-term physical ailments or had family members or others, all those clichés are true, that nothing is as important as your health. And I think that, as Steve said, this should be one of the great moments of his storied basketball career, and instead he’s going to be sitting in the locker room rather than being out on the floor, coaching his team.” That kept Brown in place on the bench to start the Finals. “I feel like I’m pretty easy, I can adapt and adjust,” Brown told reporters before Game 1. “I’ve been in this thing a long time, and so I’m just — I imagine I’m going to coach until Steve tells me he’s ready, and that’s kind of how I look at it.” Warriors general manager Bob Myers said before Game 1 that the team continues to remain open to the possibility that Kerr could return to the bench in this series. “If we were going to rule him out … I’d tell him we’d rule him out, and nobody’s said that,” Myers said during a Thursday interview on Bay Area radio station 95.7 The Game. “I wish for him that I could sit here and say we’re debating that he’s feeling really good. But I can’t say that right now. I wish that for reasons beyond the 2017 NBA Finals — I wish that for him and his family.” Kerr said during his interview with Kawakami that he didn’t want his status to disrupt the Warriors’ attempt to win their second NBA title in three years — “I think just, it’s the Finals, there’s going to be a spotlight, is it a distraction? Is it another storyline? Do we need to deal with all that?” — but that he planned to keep the decision-making calculus simple: “If I’m feeling good, I should coach, and if I’m not feeling up to it, then I shouldn’t.” Should he string together several “good days” in a row before Sunday, it’s possible we could see him back on the bench. If things don’t improve, though, Golden State will look to proceed apace and take a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven series with Brown at the controls. “I give our guys credit,” Brown said after the game. “Steve just said it to our guys at the end of the game: we had a formula, and our guys did a nice job trying to follow it.” More NBA coverage: – – – – – – – Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!Former PM will give a ‘frank’ account of his time in Downing Street, including insights into family life and the EU referendum David Cameron has signed a deal to write his autobiography, saying he will give a “frank” account of his time in Downing Street. The former prime minister will spend the next year writing the book, which will give an insight into family life at No 10 as well as the inside track on his government. Cameron said he would explain the decisions he made and admit “what worked and what didn’t”. The book, which does not yet have a title, will cover his decision to call a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union and subsequent defeat, which led him to quit as prime minister and later as an MP. Cameron adviser reveals No 10's alarm at his holding in offshore fund Read more It will also cover the Scottish independence vote and his reforms to the economy, welfare and education. Cameron’s controversial handling of foreign affairs, including the bombing of Libya and the crucial vote he lost on Syria, will also be examined. William Collins, an imprint of HarperCollins, secured the autobiography and expects to publish it in 2018. Cameron said: “It was an immense privilege to lead the Conservative party for more than a decade and the country for over six years as prime minister. “I am looking forward to having the opportunity to explain the decisions I took and why I took them. I will be frank about what worked and what didn’t.” Cameron has given little indication of his plans for life after Downing Street other than chairing a panel of patrons on the expanded National Citizen Service, a summer camp initiative he set up that is designed to instill social responsibility in young people as part of his “big society”. However, it emerged earlier this month that he would give a speech for the private equity firm Bain Capital in one of his first public engagements since his departure from No 10. The former prime minister was booked to address a private event for the US company, which was co-founded by former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and bought a blood plasma company from the NHS in 2012. Cameron stepped down as an MP after taking a summer holiday, meaning any earnings from the book or his speech will not have to be publicly disclosed.Pushing Back Against a Chinese Lake in the South China Sea China’s aggressive actions in the South China Sea are prompting a soul-searching query from Hanoi to Washington: At what point does a sliced-up salami cease being a salami at all? In a short space of time, China’s unilateral and incremental efforts to carve out a greater presence in the South China Sea — by, for example, turning empty coral atolls into artificial airstrips — have prompted concern that Beijing is not-so-stealthily creating a new strategic reality in one of the world’s most important and potentially volatile flash points. That so-called “salami-slicing” strategy, in which countries undertake a series of seemingly inconsequential steps that add up to a fundamental change, is pushing many Southeast Asian countries closer together and is breathing fresh life into the decades-old U.S.-Japan defense alliance, all with an eye on a common, if often unnamed, adversary. On Tuesday, U.S. President Barack Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe celebrated deeper defense ties between the two allies, meant in part to respond to a shifting security environment in the Asia-Pacific region. “For the first time in nearly two decades, we’ve updated the guidelines for our defense cooperation,” Obama said at a joint news conference in Washington. “We share a concern about China’s land reclamation and construction activities in the South China Sea, and the United States and Japan are united in our commitment to freedom of navigation, respect for international law, and the peaceful resolution of disputes, without coercion,” Obama said On the other side of the world, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a regional grouping, went further than it ever had before in condemning China’s efforts to muscle aside neighbors with an aggressive program of island building in the South China Sea. Prompted especially by Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines, the 26th ASEAN summit concluded with a statement Tuesday that implicitly called out Beijing for destabilizing the region. “We share the serious concerns expressed by some leaders on the land reclamation being undertaken in the South China Sea, which has eroded trust and confidence and may undermine peace, security and stability in the South China Sea,” ASEAN countries said in their joint statement. And even though internal divisions inside ASEAN precluded condemning China by name, Beijing got the message — and shot back with vitriol. China is “gravely concerned” by the statement, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said at a briefing Tuesday. “Relevant construction [on the reefs] is lawful, justified and reasonable and thus beyond reproach. The Chinese side opposes a few countries’ taking hostage the entire ASEAN and China-ASEAN relations for their own selfish gains and undermining the friendly cooperation between China and ASEAN,” he continued. The back-and-forth came just a day after the United States and Japan cemented a more muscular defensive partnership, with new guidelines that bolster the two countries’ militaries’ ability to plan and operate together. Japan has its own territorial disputes with China in the East China Sea — and Obama reiterated U.S. defense commitments to Japan in the event of a clash there — but the revised guidelines go further. They open the door for Tokyo to get involved in armed showdowns even when Japan itself is not attacked, including taking a greater role in possible South China Sea conflicts. Taken together with other beefed-up U.S. defense commitments, including expanded basing rights in the Philippines, as well as closer defense ties between Asian countries such as Vietnam and the Philippines, the new guidelines point toward a growing recognition in the region and in Washington that China’s efforts to change the facts on the ground represent a real threat. In the past month, a bevy of analysts have called for a more vigorous U.S. response to Chinese actions that threaten regional stability. “Together, our forces will be more flexible and better prepared to cooperate on a range of challenges, from maritime security to disaster response,” Obama said about the enhanced security relationship, adding that “Japan will take on greater roles and responsibilities in the Asia-Pacific and around the world.” U.S. Marines, Obama added, will relocate from Okinawa to Guam to help “realign U.S. forces across the region.” Seeking to parry criticism that closer defense ties could suck Japan into U.S. wars, Abe stressed the role that the pact has played in underpinning decades of peace and prosperity in Asia. And in the context of rising tensions in the South and East China seas, Abe said, the revised defense pact will help enhance deterrence and make for a more efficient and functional alliance. Importantly, the traditional alliance partners are no longer apparently alone. The fact that ASEAN’s 10 oft-divided countries managed to condemn, albeit obliquely, China’s behavior simply underscores how the region is waking up, said Holly Morrow, an expert at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. “What we are witnessing is China reaping the fruits of its strategy in the region: a reinvigorated U.S.-Japan alliance, a completely transformed U.S.-Vietnam relationship, a closer U.S.-Philippine alliance than has been seen in many years, and generally a Southeast Asian view of China’s rise that is much more negative than it was even five or 10 years ago,” she said. China’s far-reaching claims to sovereignty over nearly all of the South China Sea, a crowded waterway filled with potential energy riches through which passes about $5 trillion in trade every year, are hardly new. The “nine-dashed line” that China says represents its blue territory on the map dates from just after World War II, and China has had low-level disputes with neighbors over maritime claims for more than a decade. But in the past six months, its ambitious program of building artificial islands potentially gives Beijing the ability to project military power in the region in a way that it could not before. One expert on China defense issues, Andrew Erickson, noted recently that by building an airstrip on the Fiery Cross Reef, located hundreds of miles from China but close to the Philippines, Beijing could install air-defense zones in the heart of the South China Sea. In the great game of weiqi that China appears to be playing in Asian geopolitics, steps such as reef reclamation and aggressive pushback at even mild condemnations by neighboring countries amount to a slate of strategically placed stones that could tilt the balance ever more in Beijing’s direction, experts say. That could be one reason that Washington appears to be putting more vigor behind the “rebalancing” to Asia, especially at the Defense Department, where the top leadership including Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and Deputy Secretary Robert Work, are well versed in Asian security issues. The big question, of course, is what the United States can realistically do to respond to China’s actions. The two countries need to cooperate on a whole range of issues, from managing the global economy to dealing with nuclear threats from Iran and North Korea, as well tackling climate change, cybersecurity, and other transnational affairs. At the same time, and unlike Vietnam or the Philippines, Washington’s attention is divided by multiple and escalating crises in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Ukraine. In that vein, as Foreign Policy columnist Stephen M. Walt recently noted, saber rattling over rocks doesn’t make much apparent sense. But at some point, many experts now say, Beijing’s incrementalist approach to changing the status quo in the Western Pacific will require a full-throated response from Washington. If not, the Asian salami that the United States has spent 70 years defending might just gradually disappear from the plate. Photo credit: CHINAFOTOPRESS/GettyWhy does chopping an onion make you cry? Unstable chemicals. Onions produce the chemical irritant known as syn-propanethial-S-oxide. It stimulates the eyes' lachrymal glands so they release tears. Scientists used to blame the enzyme allinase for the instability of substances in a cut onion. Recent studies from Japan, however, proved that lachrymatory-factor synthase, (a previously undiscovered enzyme) is the culprit (Imani et al, 2002). The process goes as follows: Lachrymatory-factor synthase is released into the air when we cut an onion. The synthase enzyme converts the amino acids sulfoxides of the onion into sulfenic acid. The unstable sulfenic acid rearranges itself into syn-ropanethial-S-oxide. Syn-propanethial-S-oxide gets into the air and comes in contact with our eyes. The lachrymal glands become irritated and produces the tears! Related Web Sites Cooking Onions Without Crying - From the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension. - From the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension. National Onion Association - This website provides onion information & tips, recipes, growing areas, and industry. "The National Onion Association encourages the United States onion industry to voluntarily exercise all reasonable efforts to supply consumers with the highest quality, most nutritious, and safest onions available; and furthermore, to grant appropriate consideration and respect to the issues of food security, sound pesticide management, and environmental stewardship." - This website provides onion information & tips, recipes, growing areas, and industry. "The National Onion Association encourages the United States onion industry to voluntarily exercise all reasonable efforts to supply consumers with the highest quality, most nutritious, and safest onions available; and furthermore, to grant appropriate consideration and respect to the issues of food security, sound pesticide management, and environmental stewardship." NPR Story: Exploring the Stinky Science of Alliums - July 2, 2010 interview with Eric Block author (and chemist) of Garlic and Other Alliums: The Lore and the Science (2010). - July 2, 2010 interview with Eric Block author (and chemist) of Garlic and Other Alliums: The Lore and the Science (2010). Onions - This site from Texas A&M University provides all types of information about onions such as planting tips, the varieties, the history and laws, and onion recipes. - This site from Texas A&M University provides all types of information about onions such as planting tips, the varieties, the history and laws, and onion recipes. Why Do Onions Make You Cry? - From PennState Extension. Further Reading Dille, Carolyn, and Susan Belsinger. The onion book: a bounty of culture, cultivation, and cuisine. Loveland, CO, Interweave Press, c1996. 96 p. . Loveland, CO, Interweave Press, c1996. 96 p. Block, Eric. The chemistry of garlic and onion. Scientific American, v. 252, Mar. 1985: 114-119. Frey, William H. Crying: the mystery of tears. Minneapolis, Winston Press, c1985. 175 p. . Minneapolis, Winston Press, c1985. 175 p. Imani, S., et al. Plant biochemistry: an onion enzyme that makes the eyes water. Nature, v. 419, Oct. 17, 2002: 685. Parsons, Russ. How to read a french fry and other intriguing kitchen science. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, c2001. p. 1-3. . Boston, Houghton Mifflin, c2001. p. 1-3. Rogers, Mara Reid. Onions: a celebration of the onion through recipes, lore, and history. Reading, MA, Addison-Wesley Pub., c1995. 193 p. For more print resources... Search on "onion," "lachrymal gland" and "crying" or "tears" in the Library of Congress Online Catalog.Immigration will take center stage Wednesday night at the final Donald Trump-Hillary Clinton debate. Clinton dreams of “open borders.” Count on her to yank on your heartstrings. But workers who are losing their jobs to newcomers from other countries know first-hand the danger of increasing immigration. Trump’s challenge will be to convince voters that putting American workers first is not racist or xenophobic. It’s simple economics. Hillary’s “dream” of open borders is a nightmare for wage earners. Do the math: In the last 12 months, jobs held by immigrants have increased five times as fast as those held by US-born workers. The American labor force is being displaced at a rapid pace. To add insult to injury, some pink-slipped workers are being forced to train low-wage replacements after they’ve been fired. Last year, Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., fired 250 tech workers and then demanded they spend their final weeks on the job teaching their replacements from India. Clinton promises to protect American jobs. Don’t count on it. Hillary’s “private position” on open borders — her secret dream of unlimited immigration — is one of the bombshell revelations in the recent WikiLeaks disclosure of her paid speeches. Now it’s clear why she refused to disclose these speeches when Bernie Sanders demanded them. Sanders smelled a rat during the primary season, when Hillary courted labor with assurances she’d preserve their jobs. He warned that her globalist views would allow wealthy corporations “to bring in all kinds of people [who] work” for low pay and “would make everybody in America poorer.” He did the math and saw that it’s already happening. Since November 2007, jobs belonging to native-born workers have declined by 1.5 million, while jobs held by immigrants (legal and illegal) have grown by 2 million. In the last year alone, employment by native-born American workers inched up a meager 1 percent. Immigrant employment shot up 5 percent. Some economists point to Adam Smith’s long-held theory that the invisible hand of the global marketplace should allow labor and raw materials to move wherever they will be used to maximum benefit. In short, open borders and free trade. That’s the theory. But in the United States, Smith’s invisible hand is smacking labor upside the head. A steady stream of newly arriving workers keeps wages down in industries like buildings-and-grounds maintenance and food preparation and serving. That benefits business owners and consumers, but the data show it depresses the standard of living of wage earners in these industries — the people mowing lawns, packaging frozen foods and serving burgers. As Harvard economist George Borjas shows, it also hurts immigrants already here who are struggling to make it. Hillary has declared income inequality Public Enemy No 1. She’s campaigning to raise the federal minimum wage. That’s two-faced, so long as she allows immigration to drive down wages of disadvantaged minorities, including high school dropouts and people with limited English skills. Mid-level computer workers and skilled technicians are also getting slammed by an influx of foreign workers brought here expressly to undercut their salaries. US law allows companies to evade immigration limits and bring in foreign workers under H-1B visas to fill jobs as long as it doesn’t “adversely affect” conditions for US workers. But as one laid-off Disney worker said, “Was I negatively affected? Yeah, I was. I lost my job.” During the Republican primaries, Donald Trump attacked these special visas and pledged, “If I am president, I will not issue any H-1B visas.” Trump’s not entirely innocent — he used similar immigration loopholes to staff his resorts. But he says what he did as a businessman and what he’ll do as president are different. Meanwhile, tech firms like Facebook and Apple are pushing for more — not fewer — H-1B visas and looser immigration laws. Tech moguls are shoveling millions into Clinton’s campaign. And remember: Money talks, especially with the Clintons. Betsy McCaughey is a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research.Di Alberto Maggi (@AlbertoMaggi74) C'è grande attesa per le elezioni regionali di domenica 31 maggio. Come è noto è vietato pubblicare i sondaggi, ma Affaritaliani.it informa i propri lettori attraverso una speciale rubrica - 'borsino regionali' - che racconta minuto per minuto gli ultimissimi sentiment sul voto raccolti direttamente nelle sedi vari partiti e nei comitati elettorali dei candidati al ruolo di Governatore - Veneto. Pare che Luca Zaia sia proprio tranquillo e sicuro di essere confermato presidente della Regione. Nella Lega c'è chi scommette su un vantaggio addirittura di venti punti sulla democratica Alessandra Moretti, anche se più prudentemente ci si ferma a quindici. Non solo, la somma di Lega e Lista Zaia potrebbe superare il 30% - dicono nel Carroccio - piazzandosi davanti al Pd. E Forza Italia? Tra i leghisti si sprecano le battute e...le scommesse: si fermerà al 6 o al 7%? E c'è perfino chi punta sul 5... Lotta per il terzo posto, pare, tra Flavio Tosi, sindaco di Verona ed ex leghista, e il grillino Jacopo Berti. - Liguria. Luca Pastorino, ex deputato del Partito Democratico, civatiano doc e candidato della sinistra radicale fa davvero paura a Matteo Renzi. Se Pastorino supera il 15% - dicono alcuni deputati dem - Giovanni Toti rischia davvero di diventare Governatore e di battere di pochissimo Raffaella Paita (Pd-Ncd). E a destra? Anche qui Forza Italia è sconsolata... "Possiamo vincere, ma con la Lega che fa più
the comic adaptation of Herbert West: Reanimator- "The Plague-Daemon" $25,000- Every backer gets a digital copy of the comic adaptation of Herbert West: Reanimator- "Six Shots by Moonlight" $30,000- Every backer gets a digital copy of the comic adaptation of Herbert West: Reanimator- "The Scream of the Dead" $35,000- Every backer gets a digital copy of the comic adaptation of Herbert West: Reanimator- "The Horror From the Shadows" $40,000- Every backer gets a digital copy of the comic adaptation of Herbert West: Reanimator- "The Tomb-Legions"Cyrene: a Philosophical Atlantis Two great intellectual currents converged to create the great river of Epicurean philosophy. The first one is the atomist school founded by Leucippus and Democritus, the laughing philosopher, which concerned itself with the need for scientific and empirical certainly about the nature of things. This evolved into Epicurean physics. The second one was the Cyrenaic school of hedonism, which is the first Greek philosophy that posited that pleasure was the aim of life. This evolved into Epicurean ethics. In the coming weeks I will be exploring the threads that run through the Cyrenaic Schools and that make their way into the Epicurean one based on the highly-recommended book The Birth of Hedonism: The Cyrenaic Philosophers and Pleasure as a Way of Life, by Kurt Lampe. Modern hedonist Michel Onfray in his L’invention du plaisir calls the Cyrenaics “a philosophical Atlantis“. He was referring to its famed ancient glory and intellectual achievement, and also to how it was buried–as if by Poseidon’s wrath–under the violent, terrible ocean of Platonic ideas. He also calls Platonism “a neurosis of Western civilization”, against which Cyrenaics built “an anti-Platonic war machine”. The consensus among Epicureans is that we cannot understand Epicurus properly and in his own terms if we do not understand the anti-Platonic nature of his philosophical project. Hence, we have to look to Cyrene, a Greek polis in North Africa in what is today Libya. Aristippus of Cyrene founded the first philosophical school that proposed hedonism. He believed it to be self-evident that pleasure is the aim that our own nature seeks, and that it also seeks the avoidance of pain. The center of the Cyrenaic school was always in Libya–which is why the school is identified with Cyrene, although many of these thinkers went to Athens and other cities, and their ideas did spread. Epistemology Unlike the Epicureans, who valued and believed in the possibility of scientific and empirical certainty, the Cyrenaics were skepticists. They separated the experiences (pathe) from what caused them. Experiences are direct and self-evident and we could know things about them with certainty, whereas we could know less about their causes. This schism produced a kind of hedonic solipsism. They retreated into their own experiences like turtles into their shell. They knew they were being cut or burnt, but refused to recognize as real the knife that cut them, the iron or fire that burned them. They were so radical in their loyalty to this skepticism that, rather than recognizing the connection between their experiences and external reality, they preferred to speak in terms of “I am being cooled, I am being sweetened, etc.”, therefore ignoring the causes of their experiences. This may seem immature or impractical to us, and in fact later hedonists (i.e. Epicurus) took hedonism to the next level when they acknowledged both experiences and their sources as real. Ethics There is one key doctrine that both Epicureans and Cyrenaics share. To the Cyrenaics, pleasure is satisfying and ergo choice-worthy for its own sake, and pain is repellent and ergo avoidance-worthy. These truths, they argued, are directly experienced and self-evident, and require no arguments or logic. Epicurus also refused to argue about pleasure and pain, saying that these are faculties within our own nature that receive raw data from nature, and not subject to logical formulas or arguments. This constituted an ecological and philosophical revolt of the body against its by-product, the soul. The arrogance of the rebellion and tyranny of Logos against matter was over. Reason was replaced by Nature. Plato’s ideas and Aristotelian logic had been replaced by nature’s hedonic tone. Aphrodite had usurped Athena’s philosophical primacy. Pleasure, sometimes qualified further as “tranquil pleasure”, is therefore the end (telos), in the sense that it is final, comprehensive, and sufficient. Lampe thinks that Cyrenaics are eudaimonics (believed in happiness as the end, not just pleasure), but most scholars disagree. It’s likely that a variety of views existed within the school regarding the end. One of the key arguments for hedonism (i.e. pleasure as the end) in its inception had to do with how pleasure is not the same thing as happiness. Pleasure is an instance, happiness is a collection of pleasures, and as such happiness is therefore an abstraction, a platonized alternative to the real experience of pleasure. This argument is interesting, and still generates debate and various opinions today. The Founder and the Lineage The Cyrenaic school is not entirely uniform in its doctrine. Instead it seems to have evolved and changed, so that various strains of Cyrenaic philosophy evolved. Aristippus was confident. He valued confidence and being comfortable, rather than anxious or fearful. Later hedonists will teach that, in order to secure a life of pleasure, one must have confident expectation and avoid uncertainty, which exacerbates fear. In Vatican Saying 34, we see how friendship is one important source of confident expectation. Aristippus believed that his philosophy gave sociability and adaptability and made him able to associate confidently with others. This adaptability in space and time is an important Cyrenaic and hedonistic virtue. Aristippus “enjoyed what’s present and didn’t hunt after what’s not“–an attitude that would later be paraphrased by Lucretius–and saw the world in terms of opportunities for enjoyment and risks of pain. Aristippus also instructed his disciples in a zen-like discipline known as “presentism”, or being in the present, as a therapeutic spiritual exercise. This virtuous practice was linked to the philosopher’s adaptability: he was willing to put less faith in his ability to control what happens in the future than in his ability to adapt to it. This would later influence defiant attitudes towards Fortune in Principal Doctrine 16 and Vatican Saying 47. The influence of this virtuous adaptability in later Epicureanism shows up in the last two of the four remedies–“pleasure is easy to attain, pain is easy to endure”–and in the fragment that says: “We thank nature for she made the needful things easy to acquire, and the things difficult to acquire she made then unnecessary”. This all sounds like the kind of hedonist ethical training that Aristippus would have instituted. Aristippus’ daughter was Arete, and his student was Antipater. Arete taught the philosophy to her son, Aristippus the Metrodidact, who formally set pleasure as the goal and defined it as kinetic (or moving, dynamic), as smooth motion. He also said that we exclusively and only have perception of our own pathe states (that is: pleasure and aversion, or the hedonic tone). Many people still confuse the first Aristippus with his grandson, when in truth they each made distinct contributions to the philosophy. The Metrodidact’s only named pupil was Theodorus the Godless, who wrote a work titled On the Gods and idealized indifference. He lived in Athens and influenced people in high places. This Theodorus the Godless character reminds me of George Carlin, another atheistic laughing philosopher and one of whose famous speeches is on the importance of “not giving a shit”. Antipater, the initial disciple of the first Aristippus, taught Epitimides, who taught Hegesias–who was known for his pessimism and egoism, and Anniceris–Hegesias’ opponent who valued friendship and sometimes was mistakenly called a proto-Epicurean. He also taught Dionysus of Heraclea, who is known to have said that he “trusted his body instead of the stoa”. From these students of Aristippus’ teachings, three Cyrenaic schools emerged: the Hegesiacs, the Annicerans, and the Theodoreans. We will look at these next. P.S. When events do not go as expected, it is up to us to decide who we are with regards to those events. Look at inconveniences as opportunities to train yourself in the arts of adaptability. You may find that your quality of life improves considerably. I recently found myself initially bothered by the need to spend half a day running errands, but then decided to apply what I had learned from Aristippus. I decided to turn my adventure through town into an opportunity to stop and eat my favorite pizza, which made the entire trip worth it. Little opportunities to apply philosophical insights do make a difference in one’s life. Cyrenaic Reasonings AdvertisementsStory highlights Kaine was asked about top Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani Giuliani suggested earlier this week he knew about the investigation before it was made public Sarasota, Florida (CNN) Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine suggested Saturday that people within the FBI are "actively working" to help Donald Trump's campaign, his most provocative comments since FBI Director James Comey told Congress the bureau was reviewing emails potentially related to Hillary Clinton's server. In an interview with Fusion's Alicia Menendez between Florida campaign stops, Kaine was asked about top Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani, who suggested earlier this week he knew about the investigation before it was made public, comments the former New York City mayor distanced himself from Friday on CNN. "I don't think Giuliani's walkback is credible," Clinton's running mate said. "I think the FBI, sadly, has become like a leaky sieve." Kaine said Giuliani's initial comments signal that some within the FBI are "actively working" to help elect Trump through leaks to the media. "What's come out since suggests that it's probably more likely explained that he (Giuliani) knew that the FBI is not only a leaky sieve but there were people within the FBI actively working -- actively working -- to try to help the Trump campaign. This is just absolutely staggering, and it is a massive blow to the integrity of that body." Read MoreThe aleph null above is the symbol for the first infinite cardinal number, discovered by Georg Cantor in 1873 (see theorem aleph0 ). This is the starting page for the Metamath Proof Explorer subproject (set.mm database). See the main Metamath Home Page for an overview of Metamath and download links. Metamath Proof Explorer Overview From this proposition it will follow, when arithmetical addition has been defined, that 1+1=2. —Principia Mathematica, Volume I, page 360. David A. Wheeler has prepared an excellent 14-minute YouTube video, Metamath Proof Explorer: A Modern Principia Mathematica, on the history of formalization and the motivation for Metamath, the proof of 2+2=4, and more. Inspired by Whitehead and Russell's monumental Principia Mathematica, the Metamath Proof Explorer has over 20,000 completely worked out proofs, starting from the very foundation that mathematics is built on and eventually arriving at familiar mathematical facts and beyond. Each proof is pieced together with razor-sharp precision using a simple substitution rule that practically anyone (with lots of patience) can follow, not just mathematicians. Every step can be drilled down deeper and deeper into the labyrinth until axioms of logic and set theory—the starting point for all of mathematics—will ultimately be found at the bottom. You could spend literally days exploring the astonishing tangle of logic leading, say, from the seemingly mundane theorem 2+2=4 back to these axioms. Essentially everything that is possible to know in mathematics can be derived from a handful of axioms known as Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory, which is the culmination of many years of effort to isolate the essential nature of mathematics and is one of the most profound achievements of mankind. The Metamath Proof Explorer starts with these axioms to build up its proofs. There may be symbols that are unfamiliar to you, but we show in detail how they are manipulated in the proofs, and in principle you don't have to know what they mean. In fact, there is a philosophy called formalism which says that mathematics is a game of symbols with no intrinsic meaning. With that in mind, Metamath lets you watch the game being played and the pieces manipulated according to simple and precise rules, one step at a time. As humans, we observe interesting patterns in these "meaningless" symbol strings as they evolve from the axioms, and we attach meaning to them. One result is the set of natural numbers, whose properties match those we observe when we count everyday objects, and their extensions to rational and real numbers. Of course, numbers were discovered centuries before set theory, and historically they were "reversed engineered" back to the axioms of set theory. The proof of 2 + 2 = 4 shows what was involved in that reverse engineering, representing the work of many mathematicians from Dedekind to von Neumann. At the other extreme of abstraction is the theory of infinite sets or transfinite cardinal numbers. Some of the world's most brilliant mathematicians have given us deep insight into this mysterious and wondrous universe, which is sometimes called "Cantor's paradise." Metamath's formal proofs are much more detailed than the proofs you see in textbooks. They are broken down into the most explicit detail possible so that you can see exactly what is going on. Each proof step represents a microscopic increment towards the final goal. But each step is derived from previous ones with a very simple rule, and you can verify for yourself the correctness of any proof with very little skill. All you need is patience. With no prior knowledge of advanced mathematics or even any mathematics at all, you can jump into the middle of any proof, from the most elementary to the most advanced, and understand immediately how the symbols were mechanically manipulated to go from one proof step to another, even if you don't know what the symbols themselves mean. In the next section we show you how. How Metamath Proofs Work A mathematical theory is not to be considered complete until you have made it so clear that you can explain it to the first man whom you meet on the street. —David Hilbert Read this section carefully to learn how to follow a Metamath proof. What you need to know The only rule you need to know in order to follow the symbol manipulations in a Metamath proof is substitution. Substitution consists of replacing the symbols for variables with expressions representing special cases of those variables. For example, in high-school algebra you learned that a + b = b + a, where a and b are variables (placeholders for numbers). Two substitution instances of this law are 5 + 3 = 3 + 5 and (x - 7) + c = c + (x - 7). That's the only mathematical concept you need! Substitution is just writing down a specific example of a more general formula. [Note for logicians: The substitution in Metamath proofs is, indeed, simply the direct replacement of a variable with an expression. The more complex proper substitution of traditional logic is a derived concept in Metamath, broken down into multiple primitive steps. Distinct variable provisos, which accompany certain axioms and are inherited by theorems, forbid unsound substitutions.] How it works To show you how this works in Metamath, we will break down and analyze a proof step in the proof of 2 + 2 = 4. Once you grasp this example, you will immediately be able to verify for yourself any proof in the database—no further prerequisites are needed. You may not understand what all (or any) of the symbols mean, but you can follow the rules for how they are manipulated, like game pieces, to prove theorems. An animated version of the 2+2=4 proof step in this section is presented starting at 7m32s into David A. Wheeler's Metamath Proof Explorer: A Modern Principia Mathematica. Compare this with the years of study it might take to be able to follow and verify a proof in an advanced math textbook. Typically such proofs will omit many details, implicitly assuming you have a deep knowledge of prior material. If you want to be a mathematician, you will still need those years of study to achieve a high-level understanding. Metamath will not provide you with that. But if you just want the ability to convince yourself that a string of math symbols that mathematicians call a "theorem" is a mechanical consequence of the axioms, Metamath's proof method lets you accomplish that. Metamath's conceptual simplicity has a tradeoff, which is the often large number of steps needed for a complete proof all the way back to the axioms. But the proofs have been computer-verified, and you can choose to study only the steps that interest you and still have complete confidence that the rest are correct. Figure 1. Step 2 of the 2p2e4 proof references step 1, which in turn "feeds" the hypothesis of earlier theorem oveq2i (which used to be called opreq2i). The conclusion (assertion) of oveq2i then generates step 2 of 2p2e4. Carefully note the substitutions (lassoed in thin orange lines) that take place. 21-Mar-2007 See also Paul Chapman's Metamath browser screenshot, which shows the substitutions explicitly. In the figure above we show part of the proof of the theorem 2 + 2 = 4, called 2p2e4 in the database. We will show how we arrived at proof step 2, which is an intermediate result stating that (2 + 2) = (2 + (1 + 1)). (This figure is from an older version of this site that didn't show indentation levels, and it is less cluttered for the purpose of this tutorial. The indentation levels and the little colored numbers can make a higher-level view of the proof easier to grasp.) - Look at Step 2 of the proof. In the Ref column, we see that it references a previously proved theorem, oveq2i. The theorem oveq2i requires a hypothesis, and in the Hyp column of Step 2 we indicate that Step 1 will satisfy (match) this hypothesis. We make substitutions into the variables of the hypothesis of oveq2i so that it matches the string of symbols in the Expression column for Step 1. To achieve this, we substitute the expression "2" for variable 𝐴 and the expression "(1 + 1)" for variable 𝐵. The middle symbol in the hypothesis of oveq2i is "=", which is a constant, and we are not allowed to substitute anything for a constant. Constants must match exactly. Variables are always colored, and constants are always black (except the gray turnstile ⊢, which you may ignore). This makes them easy to recognize. In our example, the purple uppercase italic letters are variables, whereas the symbols "(", ")", "1", "2", "=", and "+" are constants. In this example, the constants are probably familiar symbols. In other cases they may not be. You should focus only on whether the symbols are variables or constants, not on what they "mean." Your only goal is to determine what substitutions into the variables of the referenced theorem are needed to make the symbol strings match. In the Expression column of the Assertion box of oveq2i, there are 4 variables, 𝐴, 𝐵, 𝐶, and 𝐹. Because we have already made substitutions into the hypothesis, variables 𝐴 and 𝐵 have been committed to the assignments "2" and "(1 + 1)" respectively, and we can't change these assignments. However, the new variables 𝐶 and 𝐹 are free to be assigned with any expression we want (subject to the legal syntax requirement described below). By substituting "2" for 𝐶 and "+" for 𝐹, we end up with (2 + 2) = (2 + (1 + 1)) that we show in the Expression column for Step 2 of the proof of 2p2e4. [It may seem peculiar to substitute a + sign for a variable, because you wouldn't do that in high-school algebra. We can do this because the variables represent arbitrary objects called "classes," not just numbers. See the description for operation value df-ov (don't worry about right-hand side of the definition, for now). A number and a + sign are both classes. You have to free your mind to forget about high-school algebra—pretend you have no idea what a number or "+" is—and just look at what happens to the symbols, independent of any meaning. In fact (and ironically), it may be better to look at a proof where all the symbols are unfamiliar, perhaps aleph1re, so that you can observe the mechanical symbol substitutions without the distraction of preconceived notions.] When we first created the proof, why did we choose these particular substitutions for 𝐶 and 𝐹? The reason is simple—they make the proof work! But how did we know these particular substitutions should be picked, and not others? That's the hard part—we didn't know, nor did we know that oveq2i should be referenced in the second proof step, nor did we know that Step 1 would have the right expression to match the hypothesis of oveq2i. The choices were made using intelligent guesses, that were then verified to work. This is a skill a mathematician develops with experience. Some of the proofs in our database were discovered by famous mathematicians. The Metamath Proof Explorer recaptures their efforts and shows you in complete detail the proof steps and substitutions already worked out. This allows you to follow a proof even if you are not a mathematician, and be convinced that its conclusion is a consequence of the axioms. Sometimes a referenced theorem (or axiom or definition) has no hypotheses. In that case we omit and above and immediately proceed to. When there are multiple hypotheses, we repeat and for each one. Done! You should now be able to figure out any Metamath proof. In other words, you should be able to draw a diagram like the one above for any proof step of any proof. You may want to practice the above procedure for a few other proof steps to make sure you have grasped the idea. The rest of this section has some notes on substitutions that you may find helpful and describes the additional requirements for correctness not mentioned above. As you will observe if you study a few proofs, the Metamath proof verifier has already ensured these requirements are met, so ordinarily you don't have to worry about them. Notes on substitutions Substitutions are simultaneous. In other words each occurrence of a given variable in a referenced theorem must be replaced with the same expression. For example, there are two occurrences of 𝐹 in the Assertion of oveq2i, and both occurrences must be replaced with the same expression, which is "+" in the above example. Substitutions are made into the variables of the referenced theorem only, never into the variables of any proof step referenced in the Hyp column (of the theorem being proved). In other words you should pretend that all variables in the theorem being proved are constants for the purpose of figuring out the substitutions. You can see this by looking at examples such as theorem id1. To follow the proof of id1, you should treat the symbol 𝜑 as if it were a constant symbol, when you are figuring out the substitutions to make into the variables of the referenced theorems (or axioms). If the variables of a referenced theorem (or axiom) happen to have the same names as those in the theorem being proved, you may want to temporarily rename the variables in the referenced theorem (or axiom) before substituting expressions for them, to avoid confusion. For example, the proof of id1 will be less confusing if the occurrences of 𝜑 in the referenced axioms are renamed to something else. Specifically, you can rewrite ax-1 as say ( 𝜒 → ( 𝜓 → 𝜒 )). Then, to obtain step 2 of the proof of id1, substitute " 𝜑 " for 𝜒 and " ( 𝜑 → 𝜑 ) " for 𝜓. Legal syntax There is a further requirement for substitutions we have not described yet. You can't substitute just any old string of symbols for a purple class variable. Instead, the symbol string must qualify as a class expression. For example, it would be illegal to substitute the nonsensical "(1 +" for variable 𝐵 above. However, "(1 + 1)" is legal. Here is how you can tell. "1" is a legal class by c1. "+" is a legal class by caddc. Then, by making these class substitutions into the class variables of co, we see that "(1 + 1)" is a legal class. But there is no such construction that would let us show that the nonsensical "(1 +" is a legal class. Similarly, blue wff variables and red set variables can be substituted only with expressions that qualify as those types. In other words, we must "prove" that any expression we want to substitute for a variable qualifies as a legal expression for that type of variable, before we are allowed to make the substitution. The actual proofs stored in the database have additional steps that construct, from syntax definitions, the expressions that are substituted for variables. We suppress these construction steps on the web pages because they would make the proofs very long and tedious. However, the syntax breakdown is straightforward to check by hand if you make use of the "Syntax hints" provided with each proof. Once you get used to the syntax, you should be able to "see" its breakdown in your head; in the meantime you can trust that the Metamath proof verifier did its job. If you want to see for yourself the hidden steps that construct the variable substitutions for each proof step, you can display them using the Metamath program. For the proof above, use the commands "save proof 2p2e4 /normal" followed by "show proof 2p2e4 /all" in the Metamath program. (Follow the instructions for downloading and running the Metamath program. Try it, it's easy!) In the "/all" proof display, you will see that step 21 corresponds to step 2 of the figure above. Steps 14-17 are the hidden steps showing that "(1 + 1)" is a legal class as we described above. To see the substitutions we talked about for step 2, you can type "show proof 2p2e4 /detailed_step 21". In the case of axioms and definitions, we do show their detailed syntax breakdown, because there is free space on those web pages not used for anything else. These can help you become familiar with the syntax. For example, look at the definition of the number 2, df-2. You can see, at step 4, the demonstration that "(1 + 1)" is a legal expression that qualifies as a class, i.e. that can be substituted for a purple class variable. Distinct variable restrictions Our final requirement for substitutions is described in Appendix 3: Distinct Variables below. These restrictions have no effect on how you figure out the the substitutions that were made in a proof step. All they do is prohibit certain substitutions that would otherwise be legal based what we have described so far. Eventually you should learn how they work in order to complete your understanding of the mechanics of logic, but for now, you can trust that the Metamath proof verifier has ensured that they have been met. Class variables Our example of 2+2=4, with its purple class variables, depends on a definitional mechanism that extends the wff and set variables used in the axioms to greatly simplify our presentation. After the axiom section below, we describe the theory of classes, which you should read to understand how these tie into the primitive concepts used by the axioms. The Axioms Perfection is when there is no longer anything more to take away. —Antoine de Saint-Exupery [The material in this section is intended to be self-contained. However, you may also find it helpful to review these suggestions. A more extensive but still informal overview is given in Chapter 3, "Abstract Mathematics Revealed," of the Metamath book (1.3 MB PDF file; click on the fourth bookmark in your PDF reader).] An axiom is a fundamental assumption that provides a starting point for reasoning. The axioms for (essentially) all of mathematics can be conveniently divided into three groups: propositional calculus, predicate calculus, and set theory. Each axiom is a string of mathematical symbols of two kinds: constants, also called connectives, which we show in black; and variables, which we show in color. The constants that occur in the axioms are (, ), →, ¬, =, ∈, and ∀ (left parenthesis, right parenthesis, implies, not, equals, is contained in, for all). Variables are placeholders that can be substituted with other expressions (strings of symbols). There are two kinds of variables in the axioms, set variables (lowercase italic letters in red ) and wff ("well-formed formula") variables (lowercase Greek letters in blue ). A wff variable can be substituted with any expression qualifying as a wff (see below). A set variable can be substituted only with another set variable (in other words with an expression of length one, whose only symbol is a set variable) since there are no rules that let us construct more complex expressions for them; you may want to think of this as just renaming the set variable. [In later proofs you will see a third kind of variable, called a class variable, which is shown in purple (usually as uppercase italic letters) and is a kind of generalization of the set variable. The theory of classes will be discussed in the next section.] Following the tradition in the literature, we use italic Greek letters for wff variables and lower-case italic letters for set variables. [If you are colorblind or use a monochrome display or printout, the red variables are lowercase italic letters, the purple ones uppercase italic, and the blue ones italic Greek. Sometimes we use mathematical symbols (such as +) as class variables, and in that case they are distinguished by both the purple color and a dotted underline. In all cases, the colors are not necessary to disambiguate the symbols. You can see the list of all symbols including variables on the ASCII Symbol Equivalents page.] Any mathematical object whatsoever, such as the number 2, the operation of taking a square root, or the surface of a sphere, is considered to be a set in set theory. The red set variables are placeholders that represent arbitrary sets. A set can be equal to another set, can be contained in another set, and can contain other sets. For example, the set of real numbers contains, of course, all of the real numbers. A specific real number such as 2 is also a set, but not in such a familiar way—it contains a very complex construction of sets, a kind of machine inside of it that causes it to behave according to the laws for real numbers in the presence of the ZFC axioms. The square root operation is a set containing an infinite number of ordered pairs, one for each nonnegative real number; the first member of each pair is the number and the second member its square root. (Recall that a set variable can only be replaced with another set variable, so we cannot replace a set variable with say the symbol "2". Manipulation of such symbols uses the definitional mechanism we will introduce in the Theory of Classes section below.) A wff is an expression (string of symbols) constructed as follows. A starting wff either is a wff variable, or it consists of two set variables connected with either = ("equals," "is identical to") or ∈ ("is an element of," "is contained in"). Two wffs may be connected with → ("implies," "only if") to form a new wff, with parentheses around the result to prevent ambiguity. A wff may be prefixed with ¬ ("not") to form a new wff. And finally, a wff may be prefixed with ∀ ("for all," "for each," "for every") and a set variable to form a new wff. To summarize: If 𝜑 is a wff variable and 𝑥 and 𝑦 are set variables, then 𝜑, 𝑥 = 𝑦, and 𝑥 ∈ 𝑦 are (starting) wffs. If 𝜑 and 𝜓 are wffs and 𝑥 is a set variable, then (𝜑 → 𝜓), ¬ 𝜑, and ∀𝑥𝜑 are also wffs. Note that a wff variable can be viewed as a wff in its own right as well as a placeholder for which other wffs can be substituted. The axioms below are examples of wffs. Each page describing an axiom, for example ax-12, presents the axiom's construction in a syntax breakdown chart, showing that it follows these rules and is therefore a wff. You may want to look at a few of these to make sure you understand how wffs are constructed and how to deconstruct, or parse, them into their components. Wffs are either true or false, depending on what is assigned to the variables they contain. For example, the wff 𝑥 = 𝑦 is true if 𝑥 and 𝑦 stand for the same set and false otherwise—there is no in-between. An axiom (example: ax-1) is a wff that we postulate to be true no matter what (within the constraints of the syntax rules) we substitute for its variables. An inference rule (example: ax-mp) consists of one or more wffs called hypotheses, together with a wff called the conclusion (which on our web pages with proofs we also call its assertion) that we postulate to be true provided the hypotheses are true. A proof is a sequence of substitution instances of axioms and inference rules, where the hypotheses of the inference rules match previous steps in the sequence. The last step in a proof is a theorem (example: id1). For brevity, a proof may also refer to earlier theorems (example: id), but in principle it can be expanded into references to only the initial axioms and rules. We also use the word "theorem" informally to denote the result of a proof that also allows references to local hypotheses and thus has the form of an inference rule (example: a1i); however, strictly speaking, such a theorem should be called a derived inference rule or deduction. In a derived inference rule, a proof is a sequence steps each of which is a substitution instance of an axiom, a hypothesis, or a substitution instance of an inference rule applied to previous steps. (Note that a proof with nothing but references to hypotheses still qualifies as a proof, even though neither axioms nor inference rules are involved. For example, the unusual derived inference rule dummylink is proved before we even introduce the first axiom!) Propositional calculus deals with general truths about wffs regardless of how they are constructed. The simplest propositional truth is "(𝜑 → 𝜑)", which can be read "if something is true, then it is true"—rather trivial and obvious, but nonetheless it must be proved from the axioms (see theorem id). In an application of this truth, we could replace 𝜑 with a more specific wff to give us, for example, "(𝑥 = 𝑦 → 𝑥 = 𝑦)". (You might think that id would be a useless bit of trivia, but in fact it is frequently used. For example, look at its use in the proof of the law of assertion pm2.27.) Our system of propositional calculus consists of three axioms and the modus-ponens inference rule. It is attributed to Jan Łukasiewicz (pronounced woo-kah-SHAY-vitch) and was popularized by Alonzo Church, who called it system P 2. (Thanks to Ted Ulrich for this information.) Axioms of propositional calculus Axiom Simp ax-1 ⊢ ( 𝜑 → ( 𝜓 → 𝜑 )) Axiom Frege ax-2 ⊢ (( 𝜑 → ( 𝜓 → 𝜒 )) → (( 𝜑 → 𝜓 ) → ( 𝜑 → 𝜒 ))) Axiom Transp ax-3 ⊢ ((¬ 𝜑 → ¬ 𝜓 ) → ( 𝜓 → 𝜑 )) Rule of Modus Ponens ax-mp ⊢ 𝜑 & ⊢ ( 𝜑 → 𝜓 ) ⇒ ⊢ 𝜓 The turnstile ⊢ is a symbol (introduced by Frege in 1879) used in formal logic to indicate that the wff that follows is provable (and is traditionally used even for an axiom, which is "provable" in one step, itself); it can be ignored for informal reading. (Technically, the Metamath program needs an initial token to disambiguate the kind of expression that follows. I figured, why not make it the turnstile that logic books use? In the Quantum Logic Explorer, on the other hand, I mapped it to a blank image because my physics colleague didn't like it.) The symbols & and ⇒ are used informally in the table above to indicate the relationship between hypotheses and conclusion; they are not part of the formal language. Predicate calculus introduces three new symbols, = ("equals"), ∈ ("is a member of"), and ∀ ("for all"). The first two are called "predicates." A predicate specifies a true or false relationship between its two arguments. As an example, 𝑥 = 𝑥 always evaluates to true regardless of what 𝑥 is, as the theorem equid demonstrates. The "for all" symbol, also called the "universal quantifier," ranges over or "scans" all possible values of its first (set variable) argument, applying them to the second (wff) argument, and returns true if and only if the second argument is true for every value of the first.
Euclid Special Containment Procedures: Protocol G-3-16 (containment of geographically immobile anomaly) is to be followed, with a containment perimeter established no closer than 5km to the path of SCP-1567-3. Personnel stationed at the perimeter are to adhere to Protocol G-3-18 (operation within a hazardous environment, ionising radiation, level 6). Civilians attempting to cross the perimeter are to be deterred and/or detained as necessary. Use of deadly force is prohibited for any instance of SCP-1567-2 originating from within the perimeter. A no-fly zone is in effect over SCP-1567, out to a range of 26km, monitored by the Foundation radar and communication station at Sector-25 (supported by equipment at outposts OP-1567-01 to 17), with additional enforcement provided by co-operation with the British Royal Air Force (Foundation-UK treaty article 1948). Section 492 of the Foundation disinformation worm "PaTH-L33" is tasked with the expungement of the measurement of radiation levels at the SCP-1567 site by any non-Foundation asset. Standard operating eavesdrop protocols include provisions for detection of information breaches. Any change of conditions that suggests a contradiction of the statements made by SCP-1567-2 in Document SCP-1567-GS ("Cordiality of the People of Gallington") has occurred, or is likely to occur, is to be considered a warning of potential containment breach, and must be reported to the current designated Sector-25 facility head. Description: SCP-1567 is the collective term for the town of Gallington (SCP-1567-1), its population (SCP-1567-2), and the SCP-1567-3 phenomenon. SCP-1567-1 is a small mining town located within Cairngorms National Park, Scotland. Its outskirts are circled by a 22.4km length narrow gauge railway, appearing to relate to a closed coal mine and derelict coal yard situated to the north-east and south-west of the town. No motor vehicles have been observed within SCP-1567-1, despite the presence of modern metalled roads, line markings and signage supporting their use. SCP-1567-1 has no observable supply of food, fuel, electricity or water, although regular use of all of these has been observed within SCP-1567-1. SCP-1567-2 are the human inhabitants of SCP-1567-1, so far believed to be non-anomalous, aside from the unknown means of their present survival, with an estimated population of 1,120 (2009). Limited communication with SCP-1567-2 has been established via electric light semaphore, and continues on an intermittent basis, with SCP-1567-2 refusing all requests for alternative communication methods. SCP-1567-3 is a British Rail Class-365 electric train bearing the number ██████ (matching a train currently in service with █████ ███████ ███████) that continuously travels the railway line surrounding SCP-1567-1 in a clockwise direction, usually maintaining a speed of 131.5km/h. Significant deviations from this speed have been observed, with current maximum and minimum observed speeds of 288.4km/h and 6.9km/h, coinciding with potential intrusions through the perimeter in either direction, invariably resulting in the close proximity of SCP-1567-3 and the intruder. No known explanation accounts for SCP-1567-3's means of propulsion, given the lack of overhead electrical supply and the disparity between the gauge of the train and the track. SCP-1567-3's interior lights emit visible white light at a combined estimated output of 15,457,000 lumens, and gamma radiation with a frequency of 10.3 exahertz. The dose level at 10m range has been measured at 81.78Sv/h. Exposure to SCP-1567-3 typically results in non-anomalous symptoms of acute radiation syndrome. The earliest record suggesting an anomalous nature to the area dates from 1494, in the sealed ledgers of ████████ abbey (which also contained the earliest known reference to SCP-████), which describes the "Beaste of Dunne" terrorising the village of Gallen. Following the identification of SCP-1567-3 as a locomotive in 1826, ███ ██████ established the "Locomotive Assessment Attaché", tasked with determining whether SCP-1567-3's properties extended to other instances of the emerging technology. The Foundation successor to this task force was closed in 1998, following the identification of SCP-1567-3's non-anomalous counterpart. Incident SCP-1567-01/01/1962. At 00:31, a male human of approximately 12 years of age, later confirmed as an instance of SCP-1567-2 and designated SCP-1567-2-1, was observed approaching outpost 15 from the direction of SCP-1567-1. SCP-1567-2-1 was intercepted and challenged by the guard on duty, but gave no response and was detained. SCP-1567-2-1 lapsed into unconsciousness and expired shortly afterwards, without having responded to questioning. Autopsy confirmed the cause of death to be acute radiation syndrome, and found SCP-1567-2-1 and its clothing to be non-anomalous. A typewritten document was found within SCP-1567-2-1's clothing, later becoming the basis for Document SCP-1567-GS (Initial statement 1962).An anonymous Internet troll presumably working in the House has made more than a few transphobic edits to popular pages on Wikipedia, forcing the company to effectively ban all anonymous users in the Capitol from creating or editing content on the website. The Hill reports that disgruntled Wikipedia community moderators took issue with the repeat offender this week after he or she edited the page for the Netflix drama “Orange Is the New Black”, changing a description of Emmy-nominated actress Laverne Cox from “a real transgender woman” to “a real man pretending to be a woman.” This is the third time this summer that such edits have been made from a specific IP address linked to the House of Representatives. Earlier this week, the exact same IP address was responsible for editing the page for “Tranny”, prompting Wikipedia community moderators to open a dispute in order to appeal for a sweeping ban of anonymous accounts working from it. (FYI, anyone can create or edit content on Wikipedia without signing up or logging in. All changes made to pages are later approved or deleted by community moderators, volunteer users from around the world who edit Wikipedia because they believe in its mission. The ban placed on the IP address linked to the House only blocks anonymous accounts, leaving full editing privileges for registered users only.) The dispute page published on Wikipedia has sparked an argument between Anonymous House Staffer and a moderator. The Hill sums up its best parts beautifully: “An obvious transphobe is using this IP to edit the article on transphobia,” a Wikipedia wrote earlier this month, urging administrators to block the account. “I have no problem with Congressional staffers editing Wikipedia,” another user wrote towards the person behind the changes. “I have a problem only with YOU vandalizing Wikipedia.” Someone using the House IP address defended the edits as an attempt to provide fairness on the subject, and said the moves were “official business” endorsed by a member of Congress. “There’s nothing illegal about editing Wikipedia to promote official business that has been explicitly authourized [sic] by the Representative,” someone working in the House wrote in a dispute this week over some of the changes. “When you have other Representatives trying to push for laws such as [the Employment Non-Discrimination Act], or when you have the [European Union] using neocolonialist methods to impose transgenderism on the nation of Georgia through a visa agreement, it’s all the more important.” So apparently people in Congress believe they can literally rewrite history to further their own causes. The disturbing trend was only recently brought to light after the creation of a Twitter account that automatically alerts the public whenever House staffers update Wikipedia anonymously. Since it was created on July 8, it has recorded more than 200 instances in which Congress has edited Wikipedia anonymously. Orange Is the New Black Wikipedia article edited anonymously from US House of Representatives http://t.co/dIeJefU2KV — congress-edits (@congressedits) August 20, 2014 While there’s no way of finding out who the anonymous troll is without further investigation by Wikipedia, a commenter notes that the account associated with the IP address in question “also added Congressman Hal Rodgers to ‘Notable People of Somerset Kentucky’ Hmmmm.”Season two of Microsoft’s Halo-related Hunt the Truth podcast arrives Tuesday, and with it, the landing path to Halo 5: Guardians on Xbox One is finally visible. If you haven’t yet, have a look at our series overview, which includes an exclusive audio preview of the second season. I spoke with Halo franchise development director Frank O’Connor, Hunt the Truth creative director Noah Eichen and season two lead Janina Gavankar (reprising her role as rebel operative FERO) about where we’re headed next. Some of that made it into the preview piece. Here’s the rest, lightly edited for clarity and with spoilers if you haven’t listened to season one. We find out more about Ben straightaway “The first episode will help you come to terms with what direction Benjamin’s going in,” says O’Connor. “He’s absolutely there for the first episode, and obviously regardless of what happens, his effect on the story is vital, like the things that he achieved and failed to achieve in season one are absolutely what season two is about. Even if he weren’t in it, his actions and his legacy would be the central focus of the story in some ways.” Season two is partly a meditation on perspective “I think thematically when we sat down for season two, what kept hitting us was this idea of, guy on the ground versus guy in the tower, and they both have a point,” says Eichen. “The guy on the ground, he may see the human cost of everything, and he’s right there with it. But in the tower, they may think you need to crack a few eggs to save all of humanity. They’re both valid points to some degree, and we play with that a lot in season two, where there’s this idea of perspective, and who’s always right in that situation, it’s never black and white.” The Brief Newsletter Sign up to receive the top stories you need to know right now. View Sample Sign Up Now And it scales up quicker “It gets to that scale of escalation much earlier than season one, largely because a lot of elements of season one’s mystery are now out there for you to think about,” says O’Connor. “Season two gets to the point of the drama and the action much quicker, and part of that is also I think just a confidence in knowing what the story is that we’re telling, whereas with season one there was a lot of experiment and a lot of adjustment in the process. Season two can afford to be much more direct in its storytelling.” It deals with why no one’s asked the questions Ben asked until now “Every single reporter and voice that’s out there trying to say something has been suppressed for years, for decades,” says Gavankar. “It’s easy to erase people when you’re such a strong force. And I think that we answer some of those questions in season two.” Unlike season one, season two was completely written before recording “A lot of the stuff toward the end of season one was very mushy when we started the process, it took us finding that voice to define what it was going to be,” says Eichen. “Season two is very different. Season one, we were writing the whole time, we were literally writing episodes up to the last month. Whereas this time, we wrote it all first, we recorded it in one big chunk. It feels more like it was prepared and we’re telling a very singular story, where first season it felt like we were Ben, and the story was unfolding with us.” Part of FERO’s persona evolved out of technical necessity “You cannot speak casually if you’re going to have voice modulation affecting your voice-slash-performance,” says Gavankar, referring to the way her voice was disguised for parts of season one. “If you listen to it, I’m enunciating to the extreme in the first season, and I think it actually affected the character in a really positive way, because she is so succinct in how she handles Ben over the airwaves.” Mark Hamill got involved simply because he liked the story “With Mark specifically, that was like a shock to me,” says Eichen. “Because we were trying to cast this character that he plays, and we were reaching out to certain people, and an agent that we were talking to offered him up, saying ‘Would you ever consider Mark Hamill?’ And I was like ‘Yes, yes please.’ I guess Mark listened to season one of the podcast, and we heard back from the agent, and we were like, ‘You know, we don’t have... Here’s what we have to offer.’ And the agent said ‘Well, Mark just picks things that he likes, and he loved season one, and he wants to do it, he’s in.’ It was unbelievable.” And he initially pitched his character with an Eastern European accent “Mark Hamill came in and he had a very specific idea of who he wanted his character to be,” says Gavankar. “And he presented an Eastern European accident, and Noah had to go in and say ‘There is no Eastern Europe. There is no Europe. Europe’s been gone for a long, long time.’” [Update: Eichen notes that Gavankar may have misunderstood him, that Europe still exists, and that what he meant was “The Halo Universe is set 500 years in the future and cultural lines are much more blurred, we’re not confined by modern interpretations of names and stereotypes.”] Season two is a ‘brilliant emotional space odyssey’ “I’m doing a TV show right now, so I got the script [for season two], and it’s 50 pages at the most for 44 minutes of content,” says Gavankar. “So you read it, and you get a grasp on the entire episode. When you get a movie, it’s about 120 pages, and we all know that one page equals one minute of screen time. This thing was 136 pages.” “So my stomach just seized up. And I read the entire thing, and it is a brilliant emotional space odyssey that I did not have a lot of time or preproduction to get straight in my head. So doing all of that character work, all of that emotional journey work in like a week is not what actors are used to. And you have to remember, it’s not just the feeling, it’s the recollections of the feeling, and it’s just... there were a lot of tears.” The series was cast with gender-nonspecific roles “With Hunt the Truth, one of the great things about this experience making season two, is that I’ve been in the trenches with Noah and talking about different characters, ones that weren’t cast yet,” says Gavankar. “And every time that I would bring one up, he’d say ‘Oh, that could be a guy or a girl.’ So it was gender nonspecific. And they’ve drawn a really big line in the sand saying in the future, gender and race will not matter.” “So this is the future, and one of the most exciting things about people who work in science fiction or futuristic scenes or anything of the sort, is if they are a person who truly doesn’t think in a sexist or racist way, they can make a statement saying it will not matter, it should not matter, and in the stories I make, I will make sure it doesn’t matter. You can represent parts of the future that you want to exist.” At least one of Hunt the Truth‘s characters may be lurking in Halo 5 “I believe we have at least one character who’s represented in the game, though not in a meaningful way, more like an Easter egg,” says O’Connor. “In terms of ongoing fiction, absolutely some of these characters are very likely to end up in novels in the next couple of years, and then those novels feed back into our game. We may be having this conversation again in three years and saying yes, those two characters are right in the heart of the game. But not for this one. They’re more like background detail and a perspective shift.” “The events, on the other hand, happen both simultaneously and preceding the game. So you’ll see real crossover, and big meaningful events that aren’t just subterfuge and spying. There’s some big world-changing things that happen that affect both our game and the Hunt the Truth podcast.” And season two ties into stuff we’ll see in the next Halo “We’ve already taken elements that were sort of agreed upon premises from Hunt the Truth one and two, and there will be some knock on effects that happen even in our next Halo game,” says O’Connor. “So there’s definitely connections with Halo 5, but it’s also tied to plot elements that will be part of the universe following Halo 5. All of this stuff just feeds into our real history, and stuff that we continue to use.” “I’m almost positive we’re going to do something again, both with the character and scenarios of Hunt the Truth, and with that format. We just don’t know what those things are yet.” Write to Matt Peckham at [email protected] capture and detention of former President Laurent Gbagbo on Sunday, April 10, ends last week’s military standoff in Côte d’Ivoire, also known as the Ivory Coast, but innumerable challenges remain as the new president, Alassane Ouattara, tries to establish authority over the divided West African nation. Ouattara declared “the dawn of a new hope” in a national address broadcast on his own television station Monday and called for militias loyal to Gbabgo to lay down their arms. The following day, several generals from Gbagbo’s army pledged allegiance to Ouattara in an official ceremony. But continued fighting, alleged reprisal killings, accusations of foreign influence and profound ethnic and religious divisions in the country threaten Ouattara’s newfound power. Armed clashes were reported yesterday in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire’s largest city and economic capital. Gbagbo maintained his hold on Abidjan partly through youth militias who purportedly terrorized districts dominated by Muslims and northerners, groups who largely backed Ouattara. Today, French forces in Côte d’Ivoire claim they discovered caches of arms hidden by Gbagbo supporters in the city. Meanwhile, the UN Human Rights Council appointed a committee to investigate human rights abuses by both sides in the Ivoirian conflict. The UN maintains Ouattara’s forces were responsible for targeted civilian deaths last week in western Côte d’Ivoire, where at least 500 bodies have been discovered. In a statement issued yesterday, Amnesty International alleges Gbagbo loyalists were being threatened by men in military uniforms throughout Abidjan. Events over the past week are the culmination of four months of uncertainty, as both Gbagbo and Ouattara claimed the presidency. Gbagbo, the ten-year incumbent, resided in the presidential palace and was backed by the country’s military, while Ouattara was based in a hotel protected by UN peacekeepers and supported by the New Forces, a rebel group that controls the north. Initial results in November’s elections declared Ouattara the winner but were reversed as Gbagbo’s government alleged widespread fraud in the north. Most nations and international bodies, including the African Union, recognized Ouattara as the legitimate president, yet nearly half of Ivoirians voted for Gbagbo in the presidential polls. In addition, the former labor activist and history professor was backed by several African powers, such as South Africa and Angola, who viewed foreign, particularly French, involvement in the Ivoirian crisis as neocolonial interference. While Gbagbo clung to office for months, refusing to hand over power to Ouattara, his downfall over the past week was more sudden than anticipated. After a rapid conquest of territory from their northern capital in Bouaké to Abidjan in the south, including the national capital Yamoussoukro, the rebels, renamed the Republican Forces by Ouattara, were assisted on Sunday by French helicopters and tanks in their final assault on Gbagbo’s presidential residence, where he was holed up in a bunker with about 50 family members plus staff. Gbagbo and his wife appeared apprehensive as they were paraded in front of cameras, surrounded by various soldiers, including UN peacekeepers, in footage broadcast on the new president’s station. Ouattara pledged Gbagbo and his family will be “treated with dignity” while in custody, but vowed Gbabgo and his associates would be investigated and tried by Ivoirian and international authorities. Ouattara also announced that a truth and reconciliation commission would be established to examine crimes, saying he has been advised by Jacob Zuma, president of South Africa, which set a precedent for such bodies following the end of apartheid in 1994. French participation in Gbagbo’s defeat is a particularly explosive issue since it reinforces the notion among his supporters of a plot by the former colonial ruler. The French maintain a significant military presence in Côte d’Ivoire, including about 1,700 troops, and a sizable French community resides in the country. Although French officials deny any direct involvement in Gbagbo’s seizure, there is no doubt their attack on Gbagbo’s bunker greatly facilitated his defeat. Alain Toussaint, a Gbagbo spokesman in Paris, told reporters “It was a coup d’etat which had no other aim but to gain control of the resources of Côte d’Ivoire.” Indeed, the renewed military assertiveness of France, from leading the bombing of Libya to directly engaging the Ivorian army, has been noted by observers across Africa. Once the most prosperous nation in West Africa, hailed as a capitalist success story on the continent, the economy of Côte d’Ivoire is a mess: banks have been closed for months and cocoa exports, the country’s main source of revenue, were halted by western sanctions against Gbagbo’s regime. The conflict also led to the dispersal of hundreds of thousands of refugees throughout Côte d’Ivoire and neighboring countries, principally Liberia, which itself is slowly recovering from decades of instability. The UN World Food Program announced it would begin airlifting food to Ivorian refugees this week. There clearly is no “good” side in the Ivoirian conflict. Despite his socialist background and his legitimate stance against neo-colonialism, Gbagbo embraced the divisive politics of his predecessor, former President Henri Konan Bédié, by stoking anti-Muslim sentiment in southern Côte d’Ivoire. It is telling that Gbagbo’s most vocal supporters in the United States are right-wing Christian zealots like Pat Robertson and Glenn Beck. Moreover, his indiscriminate killing of civilians, including the bombardment of an Abidjan market, may result in charges of crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court. On the other hand, although Ouattara most likely won last year’s disputed presidential elections, the former International Monetary Fund official is the favorite of capitalist powers who expect him to reorient the country to neoliberal economic policies. In fact, within days of Ouattara’s victory, the World Bank pledged to resume financing to Côte d’Ivoire, the French offered over $500 million in emergency aid and the European Union agreed to lift sanctions on the country’s ports. And, regardless of his “democratic” credentials, Ouattara ultimately came to power through a violent campaign in which the military of Côte d’Ivoire’s former colonial ruler, France, played a decisive role. Ouattara plans to move from his hotel headquarters to the presidential palace and arrange an official swearing-in ceremony. His new administration will be watched closely to ascertain if he sticks to his promises to treat his opponents with dignity and investigate abuses by his own supporters. Photo: Refugess flee conflict. Oxfam International // CC BY-NC-ND 2.0Inglewood police are looking for a man who shot and killed the assistant manager of a Price Club store in a street holdup near the store that netted the killer and his accomplice $15 in change. Randy James Terrian, 37, of Agoura Hills, was shot once in the head about 6:45 p.m. Saturday while he and another store employee were walking outside the store on Century Boulevard across from Hollywood Park. It was after closing and the other employee was carrying a black cash box containing credit card receipts and coins. When confronted by two men, one armed with a gun and one with an ice pick, the men handed over the box without resisting, Inglewood Police Sgt. Bill Thompson said, but the gunman shot Terrian anyway. The other employee fled and was not injured. Terrian died at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. Anyone with information is asked to call (310) 412-8825.Without a sketch of your layout, i can only offer somewhat vague advice:- if impulse ramps don't work, they're not constructed the right way. To accelerate, a ramp needs a track branch to a wall and another to a "floor". The "floor" connection is the important one, it determines the acceleration direction; direction and even number of "wall" connections doesn't matter, as long as each ramp tile has at least one. The wiki has a picture of a proper impulse accelerator - if the cart doesn't eject its load, it's not moving fast enough. This ties in with the previous issue. The minimum cart speed for shotgun effects is reportedly 70k, i.e. a cart dwarf-pushed down a three-z incline. An impulse rail of four ramps should be enough. More ramps give more speed and thus a more powerful shot.- fortifications and the like only influence what happens to your payload _after_ it has parted company with the minecart. Whether you get a shot or not only depends on speed. If you bump the cart into a completely walled-off chamber, the ammo will be spilt all over the floor. Fortification "muzzles" don't need much refinement: you can bang a speedy minecart directly into a fortification under closed ceiling and your magma blob or other munition will fly right through.The stationary minecart seen in so many designs is only needed if you send the shooting cart across a hole in the floor for easy recycling: in that case, the cart will "fly" and would pass through the fortification. But it won't fly through a minecart in its way (and that cart counts as on floor after being hit and thus can't pass the fortification, either). If you use a different recycling method and thus don't work with a hole in the track, you don't need the stationary cart.The euro is irreversible just like the Titanic was unsinkable (Wikimedia Commons) It's not everyday that somebody knowingly hops aboard the Titanic after it's already hit an iceberg. But that's what Lithuania is doing now that it's officially become the euro-zone's 19th member. Don't let the door hit you on your way in. All kidding aside though, it's another reminder that the euro, which isn't so much a currency as a doomsday device for turning recessions into depressions, has always been much more about politics than economics. The irony is that just as politics is pushing new countries in, it's politics that's threatening to push old countries out — and sink the whole thing. In Lithuania's case, those politics come down to four words: breaking free of Russia. That, after all, sums up their last 100 years of history. Lithuania gained its independence in 1918 when the Soviets consolidated power by making a separate peace with the Germans, lost it in 1940 when the Soviets and Nazis conspired to divvy up eastern Europe between them, and got it back in 1991 when the dustbin of history gave a belated welcome to the U.S.S.R. Those old fears are new again, though, now that Putin has once again made irredentism Russia's foreign policy. Indeed, it's no coincidence that Lithuania's support for joining the euro has gone from 41 percent in 2013 to 63 percent today in the wake of Russia's incursion into Ukraine. Freedom, in other words, is worth a euro-induced depression. It'd better be, because that's what Lithuania has gotten. It pegged its currency to the euro back in 2002, you see, so it's been importing the euro-zone's monetary policy for over 12 years now. And, like the other Baltics, that's ended quite poorly for them. Lithuania went on a borrowing binge — its current account deficit reached a staggering 14 percent of GDP in 2007 — as rates that were too low for its still-catching up economy pushed housing prices if not into the stratosphere, at least into the lower level clouds. But then Lehman happened, and nobody wanted to lend them any more money. Housing prices crashed, and so did the rest of their economy that, after years of foreign borrowing, had uncompetitively high wages. That left Lithuania with two choices: either give up its hopes of joining the euro and devalue, or cut spending and wages instead. Now, textbook economics would tell you that the easy way out — devaluing — is also the best one. (The easy way out's underrated virtue is that it is, in fact, a way out). That's because people, believe it or not, don't like to take pay cuts, so you have to lay them off to get them to do so. And all that economic pain might not even be for any gain, since people will have a harder time paying back debts that don't fall if their wages do. This wasn't a textbook case, though, because Lithuania's households had borrowed a lot of money in euros. That meant devaluing would make mortgages harder to pay back just like cutting wages would. So, in a choice between worse and worse, Lithuania went with the one that would bring it closer to Europe and away from Russia. It kept its currency pegged to the euro, and slashed government spending. The result, at its peak, was 17 percent unemployment — a number that, despite large-scale emigration the past few years, is still in the double digits today. It's easy to underestimate the euro. The economics of it don't make any sense, and it's only the politics that have kept it from falling apart. That's because, as I've said before, the euro is a paper monument to peace and prosperity that has moral authority in postwar Europe. But you can't eat moral authority, and unless you're worried about Russian aggression, people aren't willing to go hungry forever for the idea of "Europe." For every Lithuania that's rushing to jump on, there's a Greece that's looking for the life rafts to escape the Titanic that is the euro. Europe, in other words, needs to figure out how to end its depression that's now worse than in the 1930s. If it doesn't, the euro might be irreversible just like the Titanic was unsinkable.In every addiction, a part of us is addicted to the process. Laying out the cigarette papers to build the joint; heating the spoon and flicking the syringe; dealing with our emails before our DMs; cueing up Netflix for when the kids go to sleep; methodically polishing the keys to our own prisons. Britain seems to be going through the preliminaries associated with one of its most cherished addictions: bombing. Bombing Syria has probably only been postponed by Russia’s intervention. It was, of course, amusing to see the western press suddenly preoccupied about whether bombs were hitting their intended targets. Perhaps Putin should have avoided such rigorous international scrutiny by bombing only hospitals. The recent immolation of a Médecins Sans Frontières hospital in Afghanistan presented us with the internal contradiction of our media’s presentation of bombing: that we have technology so precise our weapons can hear their victims begging for a trial, and that we sometimes blow up stuff “accidentally”. It has been suggested that non-white people caught up in our foreign wars are “unpersons reported”. More accurately, they are treated as subpersons. A handful of Afghans dying could make the front pages, but only if they were strangled one by one by Beyoncé as the half-time entertainment at the Super Bowl. Historically, Syria has existed as a place where outsiders come to fight, a bit like Wetherspoon’s. No one likes Assad: he has the surprised appearance of a man who has just swallowed his own chin, and a bizarre, faint, fluffy moustache, as if he pulled on a cashmere turtleneck just after eating a toffee apple. He has created a hell for his own people that British teenagers seem eager to go to and fight in, just to give you some idea of how shit Leeds is. But if their desire to go to Syria is deluded, how is our government’s any less so? A government that doesn’t believe it should have any responsibility for regulating our banks or even delivering our post thinks it needs to be a key player in, of all things, the Syrian civil war. Somehow, the plight of this strategically significant state has touched their hearts. Britain is so concerned about refugees that it will do anything – except take in refugees – to try to kill its way to a peaceful solution. Why is war more palatable than more refugees? Why is the destruction of lives you can’t see easier to live with than someone on your bus making a phone call in a language you don’t understand? The idea that war is for Queen and country has always struck me as bizarre. It must be hard for the British royal family to see who we choose to fight against – I can imagine they were as baffled when we went after the Nazis as they are now that we disapprove of the ritualistic murder of journalists. So, which of a variety of awful groups is Britain going to side with? We have all the options of a 39-year-old woman whose Tinder app has given her only one match: Broadmoor. Of course, there are no guarantees that airstrikes in support of rebel groups will work. It’s simply uncharted territory for Cameron, with only the fact that he did exactly the same thing recently in Libya and caused an unmitigated disaster that turned the country in to a kind of jihadi Mad Max to provide any kind of guide. Perhaps we believe the myth that bombing helps because we think bombing beat the Nazis. That was a win, wasn’t it? I mean, it’s not as if we now live in a Europe controlled by the Germans or a country where the poor are restricted from breeding and disabled people are dying as a result of forced labour. We cling to our dependency with the weary rationale of any addict. The addiction is simple; giving up is complicated. It’s a tricky old situation when you get down to it. Our key allies are the people funding the jihad that we are supposedly trying to stop. We want to stand against Islamic State while having a cosy relationship with other Islamic tyrannies. The tiresome thing about social democratic allies is that they don’t usually need to gun down their own people in any significant numbers, and we don’t make our money exporting ballot papers. Bombing is simple. It’s what we’ve prepared for. As the old saying goes, when all you’ve got is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a foreigner you can beat to death with a hammer. Yes, recovery is difficult, but that’s because it’s a return to reality, in all its beautiful complexity. The ability to act unilaterally and the ability to create solutions for difficult situations with multiple actors are mutually exclusive. The very idea of unilateral action is probably a post-imperial hangover. If we wanted to get well as a society, we would end up like anyone in recovery: sitting around a table talking, having awkward conversations and making compromises. Instead, a few months from now, we’ll be dealing with the kind of horror that is unleashed when British MPs are told they can vote with their consciences.It started with a lab experiment for my daughter's class. The assignment was to take 200 pennies and put them in a shoe box. Shake up the box and then open it and remove all the pennies with "heads" facing up. Count the number of pennies left and then repeat the process until there are no more pennies. You might be able to guess that this simple activity gives students an appreciation for radioactive decay and maybe even the idea of half life. As far as it goes, it's not a bad experiment. However, my daughter wasn't pleased. No one wants to count all these pennies. Where do I find 200 pennies anyway? She was at home and I was away, but I told her that I would write a simple python script that will simulate the same thing. It shouldn't be too hard to create something cool (which is why python is awesome). But wait! What if I make the script now and share it with her online? That's exactly what you can do with trinket.io. This is the quick program I put together to simulate the penny shaking experiment. Yes, with trinket.io, you don't need to install python. You just run it in your browser. Alas, at the time I sent this to my daughter she wasn't near a computer. Well that's ok. It also runs on your phone. Isn't that awesome? Later that night, I showed her the code and we talked about how it worked. It wasn't just a demo that she watched, she could change the number of pennies and see what happens. Even better, the code can do things you can't do with real pennies. Look at the code. In line 13 it says Nc = NC +choice([1,0]). This picks either 1 or 0. A zero would be heads and removed from the count. What happens if I change the choice to choice([1,0,0])? Go ahead and change that and see if it makes sense. Even Better Uses For Trinket If you can run this simulation on a phone, couldn't you write some program and also run it on my phone. It's sort of like a mini app that you can write in python and share with others. Here is another example - a tip calculator. I know that's a silly thing, but it's still fun. Yup, it runs on your phone (well, it runs on my iOS device). In fact, I even made a quick url for it - j.mp/calctip. Ok, I can't stop
is wherever my shoes are, and my shoes are wherever there’s a wrong to right.” After Allred and the marines left to wrap up their meeting privately, a camera crew from the L.G.B.T. magazine The Advocate materialized in the conference room. They had come to film a documentary segment with Allred, and they started setting up their gear. “Does she need powder?” one producer asked. “I don’t think so,” another said. “That foundation she’s got on—she knows what she’s doing.” The crew didn’t need to prep her; they began filming as soon as she walked back into the room. With the Hollywood Hills behind her and the bright lights illuminating her frosted and immovable hairdo, Allred ran through an abbreviated history of her work for the gay community. In 1983, she sued the Los Angeles restaurant Papa Choux, which had denied service to a lesbian couple. In 1989, she represented Paul Jasperson, a man with AIDS who’d been turned away from a nail salon in West Hollywood. (She continued with the lawsuit after Jasperson died.) In 2004, she represented Robin Tyler and Diane Olson in the first challenge to California’s prohibition of same-sex marriage. She won all three cases, establishing anti-discrimination legal precedents. She remains close to Tyler and Olson, who surprised her with lunch at Nobu this summer on her seventy-sixth birthday. “I am honored to be part of this battle, and I will continue to be for the rest of my life—and, if possible, from the great beyond as well,” she told The Advocate, her owl-brown eyes locking on the camera. The segment concluded, and the producers erupted in astonished giggles. “You are so iconic, Gloria!” one of them said. “All I can say is wow,” another told her. “It’s four-twenty-nine,” Allred said triumphantly, brandishing her phone and catching my eye. She had a call scheduled at four-thirty. Three hours later, just about everyone at the firm—there are eleven other lawyers, along with paralegals and assistants—had deposited their coffee mugs in the office kitchen and gone home. Allred was still working. The firm has three shifts of secretaries to cover its workday. Allred has no hobbies and few indulgences. She is stylish but doesn’t like shopping. She doesn’t cook. (“If I cook, I could be helping someone else during that time,” she told me.) She works on Saturdays and Sundays. She told me that she hasn’t taken a vacation since the eighties. (When I asked her law partner Nathan Goldberg about this, he said, “I do remember a vacation, but it was in the seventies.”) She maintains her stamina without caffeine, her equilibrium without alcohol. She lost interest in dating a long time ago. “The meaning of existence is this thirty-two-dollar jar of salt.” Shortly before eight, she led me through the office’s cream-colored hallways, decorated with tasteful prints of floral paintings in gilded frames. “I wanted it to be light, because I feel that people come in with very heavy problems,” she said. The walls outside her corner office are covered with large photos of Allred with former Presidents (Reagan, Clinton, Obama) and dozens of diplomas, posters, honors, and awards. The inside of her office is like a rococo educational museum, half dedicated to the storied career of Gloria Allred and half to the history of women’s rights. Suffragist memorabilia are everywhere. Above a red velvet bench is a large antique crest that reads “Dieu et Mon Droit.” There are political cartoons commemorating her victories; framed press clippings; a Lucite plaque that says “BE REASONABLE, DO IT MY WAY.” She walked over to a four-foot-long telescope and tilted it toward the window. “This is so I can watch what the bad guys are doing,” she said. Allred has an affinity for props. In 1981, she presented John Schmitz, a California state senator who had introduced anti-abortion legislation, with a black leather chastity belt. He responded by calling her a “slick butch lawyeress.” The following year, he held a press conference on the first day of Passover to discuss Yasir Arafat’s plans for peace in the Middle East; Allred showed up with an aquarium of live frogs and shouted, “A plague on the house of Schmitz!” Her most famous stunt may be one from 1987, after she filed a complaint against the Friars Club of Beverly Hills for not allowing women access to its recreational facilities. She burst into the club’s steam room, wearing a nineteenth-century bathing suit, waving a tape measure, and singing the Peggy Lee hit “Is That All There Is?” Allred has an unusual relationship to the question of what is proper and what is not. She expects her clients to conduct themselves with integrity, but she is unconcerned with the decisions they made prior to whatever matter brought them her way. This stance makes her a committed, effective champion (some clients call her Mama Gloria); it also attracts criticism from feminists who say that presenting such a wide assortment of women as equally in need of justice undermines the cause of fair treatment. In 2010, in the Los Angeles Times, Sandy Banks defined Allred’s feminist framework as “rights without responsibilities.” At the time, Allred was deep in a tabloid-friendly phase of her career. She had recently, on behalf of the former child star and labor activist Paul Petersen, filed a petition seeking a financial guardian for the children of Nadya Suleman, better known as Octomom. (After giving birth to octuplets, Suleman had courted interview and reality-TV-show offers. “We believe that the babies are entitled to remuneration,” Allred said.) She had represented two of Tiger Woods’s former mistresses, who were seeking compensation from Woods in the form of an apology or, perhaps, a settlement. (Allred negotiated ten million dollars for Rachel Uchitel, reportedly just before Uchitel was scheduled to hold a press conference about Woods. Uchitel was forced to give back most of the money after Woods claimed that she had violated a confidentiality agreement. She then threatened to sue Allred for malpractice.) Allred had also taken on the case of Debrahlee Lorenzana, a woman who claimed that Citibank fired her for being “too hot.” Before her second breast augmentation, Lorenzana had said in an interview that she wanted to look like “tits on a stick.” Allred eventually dropped Lorenzana as a client, but the association stuck. Benjamin Wallace-Wells wrote, in The Atlantic, “What Allred seems to be offering clients such as Lorenzana is shelter, in victimhood, from their own poor choices.” Michelle Goldberg wrote, at Tablet, that there was a “tragic tension at the heart of Allred’s work. Few have done more to advocate on behalf of sexual-harassment victims. And few have done more to make harassment seem laughable.” Allred’s career can be seen as a decades-long project to expand the boundaries of legitimate victimhood. Her clients include Ginger Lee, one of Anthony Weiner’s sexting correspondents, and Amber Frey, one of the mistresses of Scott Peterson, the California salesman who was sentenced to death for murdering his pregnant wife. (Allred represented Frey during the murder trial.) Allred sees these women as victims of male entitlement who are seeking the justice they deserve. Other people see them in the same way they might see Allred: craven, self-interested, and vaguely in bad taste. When asked about criticism from feminists, or whether it’s reasonable to draw a dividing line somewhere between Lorenzana and, say, the female farmworkers in California for whom she negotiated a $1.68-million settlement in a class-action sex-discrimination suit, in 2008, Allred answers by saying that she’s not a philosopher; or by explaining that she operates on instinct; or by dismissing the commentary as boring and unoriginal; or by saying that she thinks everyone should have access to justice, and that’s that. “I’m controversial because the status of women is controversial,” she told me. She believes that she could not engage with people’s disdain for her cases and still keep up the pace of her work and the tunnel vision required to maintain it. The charge of ambulance chaser, at least, does not appear to be accurate. “I’ve been with the firm for forty-one years,” Nathan Goldberg told me, “and I can categorically state that we have never sought out a client.” The screenwriter and “Army Wives” creator Katherine Fugate, who eight years ago became part of Allred’s very small inner circle—she came to her office to try to secure the rights to a client’s story and they ended up ordering takeout and talking into the night—told me, “She should have a bumper sticker that says ‘GLORIA ALLRED: I DON’T CALL ANYBODY.’ ” Most of the firm’s cases are private. But Allred’s temperament, location, and media instincts have led to a self-perpetuating sort of expertise. For many people, hers is the single name that comes to mind when considering the ambitious pursuit of victims’ rights. She is the person you call if you’re a cop with a daughter who’s been harassed by her military colleagues, or if you’re a sixty-year-old woman who’s finally ready to accuse Roman Polanski of molesting you when you were a teen-ager. There is no shortage of the Gloria Allred type of case. Five days after I visited Allred in Los Angeles, I sat in the back of a courtroom in Norristown, Pennsylvania, a half-hour drive from Philadelphia, and watched a bank of journalists whisper as Allred walked in and took her seat. It was 8:30 A.M. on Monday, June 5th, and the criminal trial of Bill Cosby was about to begin. He stood accused of three counts of felony indecent aggravated assault against Andrea Constand, who had been the director of women’s-basketball operations at Temple University, Cosby’s alma mater, in January, 2004, when the incident in question took place. Each count carried a maximum sentence of ten years in prison. The Cosby case had become a high-profile proving ground both for Allred’s media-centered strategy and for the story of righteous victimhood which she has put forward throughout her career. Constand first reported the incident in 2005. Cosby had invited her to his house, she said, then offered her pills, and assaulted her after she was incapacitated. At the time, the Montgomery County district attorney conducted interviews and decided not to pursue the case, citing a lack of evidence. But Constand was not the first woman to accuse Cosby of rape, and, in the years following, many other women came forward. It took a resurgence of media attention—rooted in Cosby’s celebrity status, the salacious nature of the accusations, and a new wave of mainstream sympathy for sexual-assault victims—to prompt the current district attorney to file charges, in 2016, shortly before the statute of limitations was set to expire. In recent decades, the cultural understanding of sexual assault and the legal procedures governing its adjudication have progressed in rough correspondence. As activists in the nineteen-seventies mounted a broad anti-rape movement, feminist legal theorists fought judicial provisions that discriminated against rape victims. (These included rules requiring that the victim physically resist her attacker and provide corroborating evidence, as well as cautionary instructions to juries about the danger of false accusations.) At the Cosby trial, the fact of cultural progress—and its attendant backlash—felt ever-present. I talked to more than a few journalists and casual observers who seemed glad that our conception of sexual assault has expanded but who hesitated to apply new standards retroactively—who said things like “He definitely did it, but, back then, everyone else did it, too.” Deborah Tuerkheimer, a law professor at Northwestern, told me recently, “Over all these years, there may have been a reluctance to hold Cosby accountable for acts that, at the time, didn’t seem like sexual assault. But now these acts have a different meaning. People like Gloria have advanced an outcry.” Tuerkheimer noted that Allred had helped push the case to trial in multiple ways. She had bolstered Constand’s credibility by encouraging women to come forward and publicizing their accounts. “She was able to help construct a narrative that made it very difficult, at least outside the courtroom, to be dismissive of what otherwise would have been dismissed,” Tuerkheimer said. Cosby and Allred have lived much of their lives in strange and striking proximity. Born four years apart, they both grew up poor in Philadelphia, and attended high schools down the block from each other. They both received master’s degrees in education and later became famous and wealthy in Los Angeles. For most of the two and a half decades that Allred spent in Philadelphia, she was an energetic extrovert with no idea, she says, that women occupied a secondary place in the world. She was born Gloria Rachel Bloom on July 3, 1941, to two doting Jewish parents, Morris and Stella. Stella was English; she and Morris had met, Gloria says they told her, “in Baltimore, on a streetcar named desire.” Both left school after the eighth grade. Morris worked six days a week as a door-to-door salesman, hawking Fuller brushes and photographic enlargements, and the family (Gloria was the only child) lived in a row house in southwest Philly. They didn’t attend synagogue together—Morris was too busy, and Stella explored many religious ideas, going to a church one week and an Ethical Culture meeting the next—but Gloria went there for Sunday school, and was confirmed. Her parents were determined to do well by her: on days when they had only enough money for one movie ticket, Morris would send her into the theatre and wait for her in a nearby park. When Gloria was in junior high, she and her mother would put on “American Bandstand” and dance around the living room after school. At fourteen, Gloria was admitted to the Philadelphia High School for Girls, which was, at the time, one of only a handful of all-girls public schools in the country, and highly competitive. The women who ran the school modelled a matter-of-fact female ambition that seemed, during Gloria’s protected adolescence, galvanizing but hardly defiant. On the first day of her freshman year, she met Fern Brown—now Fern Brown Caplan—who was seated next to her in homeroom. Brown’s eyes were still dilated from an ophthalmology appointment, and she was straining to see the teacher. In an anecdote she’s had to relate to dozens of journalists and gala attendees over the years, Caplan remembers Allred leaning over and saying, “You look like you need help. Can I help?” They became best friends. “We were different in high school,” Caplan told me. “I was very studious, a big nerd. She was a cheerleader, class treasurer.” In Allred’s memoir, “Fight Back and Win,” published in 2006, she recounts the story of a boy asking her how she could be a cheerleader at an all-girls high school: “ ‘What’s there to cheer about?’ he asked.” Caplan describes Allred as “always a limelight person,” the most popular girl at every synagogue dance. Allred’s memory is slightly different. “All I did was study,” she told me. Girls High was rigorous, and she wasn’t a proto-Gloria Allred yet. Except, she added, after thinking about it, she did receive a class award for Most Persistent. Also, her French teacher nicknamed her Jeanne d’Arc. “The Wi-Fi password is ‘Don’t call me sweetie.’ ” After high school, Allred enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1960, at nineteen, she married a tall, attractive senior, from a patrician family, named Peyton Bray. In her sophomore year, she got pregnant and gave birth to their daughter, Lisa. (Allred writes that Bray left her side while she was in labor and went out for a beer.) She soon found herself hemmed in by domestic routine. “When I wasn’t caring for Lisa, I was cleaning, studying, or sleeping, in that order,” she writes. She and Bray fought frequently; they divorced in 1962. He was later diagnosed as having bipolar disorder, and eventually committed suicide. When I asked Allred about it, she couldn’t remember the year. “You’d have to ask Lisa,” she said. (Bray died in 2003.) Allred’s parents helped her raise Lisa while she finished college. In 1968, Gloria married William Allred, who adopted Lisa. They divorced in 1987, and, after graduating from law school, Lisa took her grandparents’ last name. As Lisa Bloom, she has followed her mother’s professional trajectory, becoming a lawyer who specializes in women’s-rights cases that often involve celebrities and frequently appearing on cable news shows. (They have their differences: Bloom loves animals and travel and goes to Burning Man every year with her husband and three kids.) Earlier this year, Bloom represented the three women who accused Bill O’Reilly of sexual harassment. “I came up with the media and legal strategy to take him down,” she told me. “We made a video of us calling in the complaints to the Fox News hotline. You can’t let these stories die—you have to keep them in the news.” Advertisers pulled away from O’Reilly, and he was ousted from the network. Bloom also represents two of Cosby’s accusers, including the actress Janice Dickinson. Allred represents thirty-three of them. (There are nearly sixty. Allred has taken Cosby’s deposition in a civil suit brought against him, in California, by Judy Huth, which is set to go to trial in 2018.) Half a dozen Cosby accusers came to Norristown to observe the trial. On the first day, two of them squealed when they saw Allred in the bathroom, and ran over to give her a hug. During the trial, Allred sat in the courtroom and scribbled notes on a legal pad. One day, her phone rang, and she was booted from the courtroom; a Page Six item about it was all over my Twitter feed when I next checked my phone. Each afternoon, she walked out onto the steps of the courthouse, and the cameras assembled in front of her in an enormous flashing scrum. The prosecution had proffered thirteen of the accusers as “prior bad-act witnesses,” hoping to establish Cosby’s modus operandi. In pretrial proceedings, Cosby’s defense team had argued that Allred, who represented ten of the thirteen, had organized this campaign herself. Allred, they said, had contacted law enforcement on behalf of her clients; she had flown to Philadelphia to speak with the district attorney. On the Sunday after the trial began, I met Allred for dinner at the restaurant in the Doubletree Hotel where she’d been staying. Picking at a caprese salad, she responded to the defense’s allegations. “I didn’t say if any of that was true. But if it is true—a big so what. Why shouldn’t I speak to law enforcement if my client has information that could help with a case?” (Barbara Ashcroft, a law professor at Temple and a former chief of the Montgomery County sex-crimes unit, told me that sex crimes are often reported by someone other than the victim—a mother, a friend, a civil lawyer.) The defense attorney Angela Agrusa noted the similarities in the women’s accounts, and suggested that this reflected Allred’s manipulations, rather than Cosby’s pattern of behavior. The thirteen witnesses were winnowed down to one, Kelly Johnson, whose alleged assault had occurred most recently, in 1996. Johnson, who is represented by Allred, was the prosecution’s first witness. She had worked at William Morris as an assistant to Cosby’s agent. Cosby took an interest in her career, she said, and this led to an invitation for lunch in a hotel bungalow. There he gave her a pill that incapacitated her, and molested her. When Johnson was on the stand, the defense attorney Brian McMonagle asked her again and again, with slight variations, whether Allred had written the statement that she gave at their initial press conference. Each time, Johnson said no. He then asked if Allred had told her what to say on the stand, if she had fed her certain words. “No,” Johnson said again, looking bewildered. McMonagle’s cross-examination eventually brought her to tears. Johnson’s story had obvious parallels with Constand’s: a work relationship, an offer of pills. Both women knew that Cosby wielded power over their professional lives and they behaved accordingly. They both testified that they had never been interested in sexual contact with him, nor had they consented to such a thing. There was not much disagreement about the basic facts of the case—the jury’s calculations depended on whether small inconsistencies, both perceived and actual, in Constand’s testimony made her seem like a liar, and whether her story, much of which Cosby had corroborated, met the jurors’ understanding of sexual assault. In a police interview, Cosby described his behavior that night by saying, “I go into the area that is somewhere between permission and rejection. I was not stopped.” Over dinner, Allred repeated the line to me, incredulous. “ ‘Somewhere between permission and rejection’? What is that? I always say—you’re either pregnant or you’re not. There’s no in-between.” I asked her if she’d ever talked about consent growing up. “Absolutely not,” she said. “We didn’t talk about rape, or abortion, or child support, or sexual harassment, or sex discrimination, or anything. It was like the Cave Age.” She recalled one day during a period when she was teaching in Philadelphia and commuting to N.Y.U. for her master’s degree. In a philosophy class, she brought up the lack of rights for black Americans, and her professor asked her, What about women’s rights? “What rights don’t women have?” she remembered saying. “All he said was ‘You’ll find out.’ ” Allred majored in English at Penn, and wrote her undergraduate honors thesis on Ralph Ellison, Alex Haley, and James Baldwin. She graduated as a single mother, “flat broke, recently divorced, and undecided about how to make my way in life,” she writes in her memoir. She took a job as an assistant buyer at a Gimbels department store, earning seventy-five dollars a week. When she found out that a male assistant buyer earned ninety, she asked about the discrepancy and was told that her colleague needed to earn a family wage. (He was a bachelor, Allred says.) She left Gimbels and took the exam to become a public-school teacher, and began teaching at Benjamin Franklin High, which had an all-male and mostly black student body. Bray wasn’t paying child support, and she had a hard time making ends meet. Shortly before she moved to Los Angeles, in 1966—“I figured, if I was going to be poor, then I’d be poor where it’s warm,” she writes—she hired an attorney, and Bray was arrested for nonpayment. The charge was dropped soon afterward; Allred doesn’t remember why. In L.A., Allred and her daughter moved into a rented house just south of the 101. They shared it with one of Allred’s girlfriends, who had three daughters and had recently left her husband. She started teaching at another mostly black high school, in Watts. This was a year after the riots. Allred still didn’t think of her life as “cause-oriented,” she told me. During her first year in California, she went to Acapulco for a vacation. One night, a local physician asked her out to dinner. He had to make a few house calls first, he said, and they stopped by a motel. He took her to an empty room, pulled out a gun, and raped her. She didn’t report the crime to the police, fearing that she wouldn’t be believed. Soon after returning home, she discovered that she was pregnant. It was seven years before Roe v. Wade, and abortion was illegal in California. She made an appointment for one and went alone, as instructed. She began hemorrhaging after she got home, and the man who had performed the procedure declined to offer guidance. Allred was afraid to go to the hospital. She sat at home, feverish and bleeding; eventually, her roommate called an ambulance, which took her to a hospital ward filled with other women who had had illegal abortions. She didn’t realize until later that patients around her had died. A nurse told her, as she was recovering, “This will teach you a lesson.” “Going rimless, with raw, jagged edges, is very hot right now.” “If you were to write a screenplay of her life, that’s the catalyst for the story,” Fugate told me. “That’s what motivates her.” She added, “It’s not the act, either—it’s the aftermath. It’s the female nurse who told her that she hoped she’d learned her lesson. When she talked about that, it was the only time in seven or eight years of friendship that I’ve ever seen her eyes flare. That’s what she wants to protect her clients against. Gloria will never allow herself to be spoken to like that again.” I asked Allred, at the hotel restaurant, if she’d felt, while she was in the hospital, like she needed a champion, and if she’d then decided to become the champion she’d lacked. “No,” she said. “I was just stunned. This was not something I had anticipated for myself, not something anyone had ever talked about with me.” Though she was raising her daughter to be outspoken—“I was born a baby feminist, and I was radicalized after that,” Bloom told me—Allred didn’t talk about her trauma initially. She didn’t tell Caplan for a long time, or her mother. Then, in the eighties, she decided to disclose her abortion to a journalist at the Philadelphia Inquirer. “I thought, If I’m going to be ashamed as a women’s-rights attorney, what hope do we have?” Before Allred moved to Los Angeles, she had dated a law student and developed an interest in what he was studying; she picked up an application to Penn’s law school but discarded it because of the steep tuition. In L.A., she was introduced to William Allred by a mutual acquaintance. He ran an aircraft-manufacturing outfit called Donallco, which he’d founded in the fifties. After they were married, they moved to a house in Burbank, where Gloria invited her students over for pool parties. She left her school to work at the Los Angeles Teachers Association, organizing teachers during the East L.A. student walkouts, and then returned to teaching and earned a credential at U.S.C. to become a high-school principal. “I wanted to be a principal in Watts,” she told me, “but this was the time of the Black Power movement, and they wanted African-American principals in those high schools. I agreed with them—and when they offered me a position in the Valley I said, Thanks but no thanks.” She decided to go to law school, and enrolled at Loyola. Bloom remembers her mother as “extra grateful to be in law school, doing what she was meant to do.” Allred befriended two classmates, Michael Maroko and Nathan Goldberg, who shared her interest in social justice. In 1976, a year after graduating, and with financial support from William, the three of them started a firm. Their expertise developed quickly: discrimination, harassment, sexual abuse, employment. In 1980, Allred successfully fought against Los Angeles County’s practice of shackling pregnant female prisoners during labor and childbirth. In 1984, she sued the Los Angeles archdiocese on behalf of Rita Milla, a devout woman from a low-income family who claimed that she had been regularly forced into sex with Catholic priests. Abuse by priests was not widely discussed at the time; it was another decade and a half before the Boston Globe’s landmark investigative series confirmed the Church’s methods of systematic concealment. Allred fought the case for years, and ultimately proved Milla’s claims. In 1985, she and Maroko settled another high-profile case: A group of Holocaust deniers had offered fifty thousand dollars to anyone who could produce evidence that Jews were gassed at Auschwitz. After a man named Mel Mermelstein, who had survived the camp, provided his own testimony, other eyewitness accounts, and ashes from Auschwitz, the group published a letter accusing him of perpetrating a hoax. Mermelstein sued, and eventually received a ninety-thousand-dollar settlement, a formal apology, and an on-the-record acknowledgment of the truth of his story. Allred became well known in Los Angeles. Fugate remembers being in college in the early eighties and thinking of Allred as a sort of local Wonder Woman figure. “There would be a news story on TV, man after man after man talking about it, and then, suddenly, this petite, dark-haired woman would take the stage, with this air of bravery,” she said. In her structured eighties outfits, Allred cut a bold and recognizable figure. She walked in the gay-pride parade, shouted into megaphones at protests, and posed for photographs to publicize and commemorate her work. Goldberg told me, “It was obvious that, for Gloria, media was very intuitive.” He pointed out that the firm has never hired a public-relations consultant. In 1985, federal investigators opened an inquiry into Donallco, which was suspected of selling counterfeit aircraft parts. In 1986, Gloria asked William for a separation. They divorced the following year, after William was convicted on charges of conspiring to defraud the government. (Allred, Maroko & Goldberg represented William during his criminal trial.) Following a hearing after the divorce, Gloria was awarded four million dollars. William contested the judgment in a bankruptcy hearing, in 1992. “It’s the height of hypocrisy for her to do this,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “I put her through law school, and now she’s going to take everything I ever earned.” He added, “I don’t think feminists would approve of that. Feminists believe in equal rights for men and women.” When I asked Gloria about his comments, she told me, “I’ve never seen that article. I’m not aware of any such quotes.” Eventually, I reached William on the phone. “A reporter for The New Yorker?” he said, after I identified myself. “I think you probably have the wrong Allred. Bye.” When I called back, he said he didn’t want to comment on anything. “It’s all in the past,” he said. On Monday of the second week of the trial, Cosby’s defense team called a single witness, a laconic police sergeant named Richard Schaffer. McMonagle asked Schaffer about a 2005 document he had created, called “Questions for Andrea,” in which Schaffer expressed curiosity about why Constand had agreed to meet Cosby at a casino before the night of the alleged assault. Then, seven minutes after beginning its case, the defense rested. The two sides presented their closing arguments, and the jury began deliberating that night. On Tuesday, the jurors returned to the courtroom to ask the judge, Steven T. O’Neill, several questions, including a request for clarification concerning the phrase “without her knowledge.” Judge O’Neill said that he could not define the charges any further. That night, I spotted Allred in the courthouse. It had been a long, hot day, and the journalists were getting sloppy—complaining, charging their phones next to the bathroom, eating takeout on the floor. Allred was sitting ramrod straight on a little bench, sending e-mails on her laptop. She was supposed to take the train to Washington, D.C., on Thursday, to testify at a city-council hearing about a potential extension of the criminal statute of limitations for rape and sexual assault, but she was waiting for the verdict. “I need to be here for the accusers,” she said. The D.C. hearing was part of a larger effort initiated by several of these women. Frustrated that they couldn’t file charges against Cosby because the statute of limitations had expired, they had asked Allred if an extension would help. It wouldn’t help them, she said, but it would help other people—and, if they found a legislator in their states willing to sponsor a bill, she’d help them advocate for change. She and her clients have successfully won statute-of-limitations extensions in Nevada and Colorado. Thanks to their efforts in California, there is now no statute of limitations for rape, sexual assault, and child-molestation cases in that state. Allred is proud that her clients are working to change the law; she hopes that some of them will think about running for office. Allred was approached years ago by people who wanted her to run for a seat in the California State Senate; she didn’t seriously consider it, she told me. She isn’t particularly religious, but she believes in the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, that it is the job of individuals to repair the world. “Each one of us has the responsibility of turning a negative experience into a positive experience,” she had told me the previous week, in Los Angeles. “Maybe that’s why these bad things happened. Maybe that’s the purpose—if there is a purpose, and I don’t know that there is. But a human being likes to think there is.” “I’ve decided to work from home today.” Extending the statute of limitations will not lessen the inherent difficulty of securing a conviction in a sexual-assault case. The crime is uniquely tough to adjudicate: it frequently occurs in private, without witnesses; the challenge of convincing a twelve-person jury of guilt “beyond a reasonable doubt” will remain prodigious even as attitudes toward the crime change. But there are many avenues that lead to a more victim-friendly world. In her office, Allred had talked about how outlawing the nonconsensual distribution of nude photographs wouldn’t stop the practice. “The fact that rape is a crime doesn’t mean that rape is no longer going to happen,” she said. But, when an act is recognized as criminal, that in itself can “serve as a disincentive. It will mean that there are consequences.” After a week of deliberation, the Cosby jury failed to reach a verdict, and a mistrial was declared. Allred held a press conference outside the courthouse, flanked by two accusers. “Justice will come,” she said, expressing her hope that the court would allow more bad-act witnesses to testify when they retried the case. She praised the courage of the women who had come forward. For a moment, she smiled, as if consoling a dear friend. The Cosby trial will begin again next April, with a new defense team, led by Thomas Mesereau, a Los Angeles lawyer whose past clients—Michael Jackson, Mike Tyson, Robert Blake—are more or less the opposite of Allred’s. (The two lawyers have publicly sparred in the past.) Regardless of the outcome, Cosby’s career is over, and his legacy is in ruins. There is a growing sense among women that it is now possible to name, shame, and prosecute sexual predators—and that they will find public support if they do. In his closing argument for the defense, McMonagle had shouted, “We know why we’re here! We’re not here because of Andrea Constand.” He pointed to the journalists in the back of the courtroom. “We’re here because of them banging the drum!” It would seem that we have entered a new era of women’s empowerment, were it not for ample evidence to the contrary. Last November, for instance, the United States elected Donald Trump President. Allred has tussled with Trump before. In 2012, she represented a transgender woman named Jenna Talackova, who had been barred from competing in the Miss Universe pageant, which Trump bought in 1996. (He sold it in September, 2015, during his campaign.) At a press conference, Allred pointed out that Talackova hadn’t asked Trump for any proof that he was a naturally born man. In a comment to TMZ, Trump took the reference to his genitalia a step further: “I think Gloria would be very impressed with me, I really do.” Talackova was ultimately allowed to compete, but Trump wouldn’t drop it. On Twitter, he asked, “Is Gloria a man or a woman????---- few men would know the answer to that one.” Two years later, one of Allred’s clients was in the greenroom before an appearance on Fox News, and Trump popped in. “Gloria is absolutely relentless,” he said. “Never, ever, ever, ever, ever fire her,” he added, magnanimously, in an anecdote that Allred later relayed to the Daily Beast and repeated to me. At a Thai restaurant near her office, I asked Allred if the election had changed her sense of moral progress in the United States. “The election was a heartbreaker,” she said. “But that’s the way it’s always been for gender progress, which has always been behind racial progress—two steps forward, one step back.” She was a delegate for Hillary Clinton, with whom she is friendly. The two have more than a few qualities in common. They are both prominent feminists whose ambition has grated on the public. (Which is to say that they are both prominent, ambitious feminists.) They speak like people who long ago found the story they wanted to stick to. Each seems temperamentally incapable of absorbing the charge of self-interest, having woven self-interest together so tightly with an interest in the public good. On November 8th, Allred was in downtown Los Angeles at an Election Night party for supporters of the Clinton campaign. As the electoral map started turning red, young women at the event came up to her, sobbing, asking her what they should do, what could be done. “They expected me to have the answer,” she said. Allred prides herself on supplying answers, and options, for women in crisis. But that night she didn’t have one. One answer that Allred provided for herself, later, was to sue the President-elect. During the campaign, more than a dozen women accused Trump of past sexual misconduct. He responded by saying, “All of these liars will be sued after the election is over.” Allred picked up four new clients. Three days before the Inauguration, she held a press conference with Summer Zervos, a former contestant on “The Apprentice,” who alleged that Trump had harassed and groped her at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 2007 and then took back a job offer after she rebuffed him. They announced that Zervos was suing Trump for defamation. On January 21
the pursuit of equality, are means of undermining the people and institutions they hold in contempt. This is what New Labour adviser Andrew Neather meant when he spoke of rubbing the Right’s nose in diversity. As the Left sees it, Britain is dominated by a hegemony of fat cats, bully boys, blazered bigots, and working class racists too selfish to vote Labour. Blair and co hoped to put their noses out of joint by swamping the country with foreign cultures that would dilute their influence and offend their parochial sensibilities, and give Labour a new flock to shepherd into the bargain. If you see nothing in your culture worth conserving, you’re unlikely to have a problem with giving people unhindered access to your country. But there is no historical perspective to this position, no awareness that not all ways of life are compatible with our own, no recognition that importing cheap labour depresses wages and encourages welfarism, and no acknowledgement that it is wrong to disfigure a nation’s culture without the consent of its people. You’re either a saint who favours an open door, or a devil who’s trying to force it shut. A certain amount of immigration is healthy for a nation, but until our elites are willing to give up their fashionable self-loathing and holier-than-thou posturing, the number of people coming to this country will only be half the issue. There is more to British culture than diversity, tolerance and the welfare state, and unless newcomers are encouraged to celebrate it and contribute to it, we will be inviting them share in the disgust the ruling class feels for our country.Truth in beer advertising has become a hot legal topic over the past couple years. Primarily, these lawsuits revolve around “foreign” or “imported” beers that are actually made in the United States. Last year, Anheuser-Busch InBev settled two separate cases, one for Kirin and one for Becks, effectively admitting that the company had mislead drinkers into thinking the brands came from Japan and Germany respectively when both are now brewed here in America. As often happens with cases like this, another lawyer saw an opening to go after another “imported” brand, and now a lawsuit is pending over SABMiller’s claim that Foster’s is Australian, for beer or otherwise. But a new lawsuit brings an interesting new wrinkle to these kinds of cases, with an American beer brand being sued for not coming from the right part of America. According to Courthouse News, a lawsuit has been filed in Florida alleging that MillerCoors deceptively marketed Coors Light, saying the beer is “brewed with pure Rocky Mountain spring water” when, in fact, Coors Light is often brewed at facilities nowhere near the Rocky Mountains. The class action suit claims that though Coors still operates a brewery in Colorado, “it is no longer the sole origin of the Coors brand of beers... Defendants now brew Coors Light in various breweries located throughout the United States but nowhere near the Rocky Mountains,” reads a document quoted by Courthouse. Despite this, however, the plaintiff argues that the brand still prominently features the mountains in their advertising. “Based on this and other marketing by defendants, reasonable consumers believe that Coors Light sold in the U.S. through defendants is exclusively brewed in the Rockies, and not in other parts of the United States,” the plaintiff writes. Some of the slogans specifically cited include “Proudly brewed in the Rocky Mountain tradition,” “Our Mountain is brewing the World's most refreshing beer,” and “Born in the Rockies.” I’m no lawyer, but those all seem pretty ambiguous to me. Still, it’ll be interesting to see if a judge thinks that this is just some lawyer trying to cash in on a trend or a genuine problem for Coors. Related: 5 Boozy Beverages Hipsters Will Drink Now That They're Sick of PBR How to Tell if You're a Beer Geek or a Beer Snob You Can Make Your Own Zima, So We DidBirds & Birding As many of us in the United States prepare to eat turkey, let’s take a look at what wild turkeys eat. The list might surprise you, and their dietary choices may help us figure out what the future holds for wild turkeys. Like that certain uncle at your holiday dinner, wild turkeys will eat just about anything that fits into their mouths. They are the quintessential omnivores. Acorns and azalea galls, bluegills and blueberries, crabgrass and caterpillars … they all go right in. Prickly pear and panic grass, toothwort and tadpoles, grasshoppers and grapes, pecans and paw paws, sedges and snakes … and the list goes on. Depending on the plants species and time of year, turkeys will eat roots, bulbs, stems, buds, leaves, flowers, fruits and seeds. In search of protein, they move about the woods like a pack of velociraptors, thrashing up the leaf litter and eating anything that moves. Their quarry includes all manner of insects as well as salamanders, lizards and frogs. From the treetops, to the ground and across forests, fields and suburban yards, turkeys make use of every inch of habitat available to them. They are even known to venture into the water to eat aquatic plants, fish and crayfish. Peak Turkey? The return of the wild turkey is a triumph of wildlife management. Careful regulation of hunting combined with reintroductions has produced a thriving turkey flock that nearly matches the population that existed before North America was colonized. But credit must also be given to the turkey itself. Thanks to their dietary versatility, turkeys can thrive almost anywhere. Wet or dry, high or low, hot or cold, turkeys can make any habitat work. They only require some trees for roosting at night. Wild turkey populations continue to grow. Across the U.S., the population is increasing by an average of 9 percent each year, according to the Breeding Bird Survey. But how long can the population recovery continue? When do we reach “Peak Turkey”? All animal populations have limits to growth. Food, disease, predation and environmental conditions each play a role. But for turkeys, we can rule out food as a limiting factor. Given this bird’s extreme omnivory, other factors would likely come into to play before turkeys begin starving to death. For example, even in the depths of winter when snow cover blocks access to the ground, turkeys can make do. Until thaw comes, they subsist on white pine and hemlock needles, mosses, lichen and the buds and stems of beech, sugar maple and hop hornbeam trees. Predation, on the other hand, may play a central role in turkey population regulation. As most of us know, turkey is delicious! Surprisingly, the usual suspects – coyote, bobcat and raccoon – do not commonly prey on adult turkeys. These carnivores instead focus on less formidable and wary prey such as rabbits and rodents. Hunters kill turkeys, but regulations are set to manage for population growth. They allow hunters to take a limited number of mostly male birds. It is nesting time that brings the most risk to a turkey. The above predators and many more seek out turkey eggs and chicks. And a hen turkey’s risk of being killed by a predator is also highest when she is sitting on the ground incubating her eggs. A recent analysis of data from 15 Southern and Midwestern states shows that continued growth of turkey populations is limited by nest predation, combined with the limited availability of high quality nesting habitat. In parts of this study area, peak turkey has arrived: the turkey population has begun to level off. The research reveals that in places with the largest turkey populations, hen turkeys are less likely to have a successful brood of turkey poults. According to the authors, this may be because all the best nesting sites tend to be occupied when populations are high. Many turkeys are then forced to choose nest sites that expose them to a higher chance of predation. Overall the production of young turkeys tapers off while adult turkey survival remains high, resulting in a stable population. Living with Abundant Velociraptors? Another factor to consider as we approach peak turkey is how higher turkey populations affect the ecosystems around them. Consider white-tailed deer. This is a classic example of a wildlife management success gone wild. Deer populations in the absence of large predators such as wolves can easily exceed the ecological carrying capacity of their habitat. When this happens, understory plants disappear and tree seedlings are eaten before they can grow. Such dramatic changes to the understory begin to affect other animals that depend on these habitats. Few researchers have given attention to any potential effects of expanding turkey populations on the abundance and distribution of the things they eat. Diet is a product of preference and availability. We know that turkeys eat almost anything, but we know little about what they prefer. Their preferences are important to know because preferred items will be the first thing to disappear from the pantry as turkeys become more abundant. If these preferred items are plants or animals of conservation concern that aren’t able to thrive while being hunted by packs of modern-day velociraptors, then we might have a problem. To put it another way, are turkeys themselves a limiting factor for other organisms? For example, turkeys like to scratch up spring ephemeral wildflowers and eat their roots. Although deer eat such plants too, how culpable are turkeys in the decline of these flowers that crop up in early spring woodlands before trees leaf out? One study did focus on turkey impacts by excluding them from patches of forest. The results showed that turkeys hindered the regeneration of oak trees by scratching up leaf litter in search of food. Deer cause the similar problems with reduced tree seedling regeneration. It may be a while yet before researchers, wildlife managers and hunters come to terms with the success of wild turkey management and the possibility that we are at or near the ecological carrying capacity for wild turkey in many places. The focus of wildlife managers remains on propelling population growth. We still have much to learn about how turkeys influence the ecosystems around them. Filling our knowledge gaps may be important as we make decisions about managing for wild turkey population stability or growth into the future. Only then can we be sure whether gaultheria and gartersnakes, spring beauty and skinks can still thrive in a post-peak turkey world.From September 1st 2015 to June 23rd 2016 the polls were clear that Britain would vote to remain in the EU. According to the Financial Times, there were only two weeks over that period where the Leave campaign were ahead. Yet, when the results came through, British voters had opted to leave the EU with 51.9% voting out. How did the leave campaign strategy overcome the clear gap held for the year leading up to the vote? A clear narrative and a range of big promises? Well, yes. But also by selling those narratives and promises through a slick targeted marketing campaign powered by social media and big data. How the European Union was Trumped In my previous Process Street article looking at political processes and campaign strategies, we analyzed Donald Trump’s campaign for President of the United States. Underneath his media dominance and ubiquitous online presence lay the unlikely driver of Jared Kushner. Trump’s son-in-law operated as COO of the Republican campaign. He brought in his Silicon Valley connections and established a data center where analytics and social media marketing were able to define the campaign’s targeting. Kushner used Facebook micro-targeting to increase the Trump campaign’s daily revenue from $8,000 to $80,000 and leveraged the popularity of short-form video content across social media to generate umpteen millions of views of Donald Trump delivering his policy proposals. This marketing effort strategically targeted winnable states and the core demographics who resided in them. Trump and Kushner felt they no longer needed to rely on the media to disseminate their message and validate their policies. Rather, the media worked as an amplifier while the social media campaigns informed voters of Trump’s views and stances on different issues. The Brexit campaign shares many similarities with the Trump campaign, and their respective victories were both jointly celebrated. The Brexit battleground Unlike in the American election, Brexit was not a two horse race. There may have only been two eventual outcomes, but there were multiple campaigns pushing for results. On the side wanting to stay in the EU, we had the official remain campaign Britain Stronger In Europe which represented a cross-party coalition of politicians. From Conservative Prime-Minister David Cameron to Labour Lord Peter Mandelson and Green Party Member of Parliament Caroline Lucas. Alongside the so-called official campaign, there were multiple other supporting bodies: British Influence, Labour In For Britain, Conservatives In, and Scientists for EU, to name a few. These different groups often shared the same rhetoric and approach to the issue, and other times made different arguments concerning EU matters. The Remain campaign as a whole was well-funded and diverse. On the opposing side, there were again multiple groups campaigning to leave the EU. Two, in particular, are of importance; Vote Leave and Leave.EU. Vote Leave were the out campaign’s equivalent to Stronger In. Both were cross-party platforms which were comprised mainly of politicians and household names. They both campaigned for their respective stances through typical political tactics. They held rallies, appeared on television shows, gave speeches in Parliament, and went door-knocking round key neighborhoods. The anomaly in this scenario is the Leave.EU organization. Leave.EU was founded by committed eurosceptics, businessmen Aaron Banks and Richard Tice, who were aligned with the United Kingdom Independence Party. While Vote Leave and Stronger In treated the vote like a normal election, attempting to win over middle England – who generally decide general elections – Leave.EU aimed at a different demographic. How Leave.EU identified its audience Hannes Grassegger and Mikael Krogerus, writing originally in Das Magazin and republished in English in Vice, explain how the application of psychologist Michal Kosinski’s behavioral mapping techniques by British data analysis firm Cambridge Analytica impacted on the major electoral outcomes of 2016. Kosinski had developed a method to analyze individuals in minute detail based on their Facebook activity. If you want to try this out for yourself to see what data can be gathered, you can run a basic check on your own profile using this public tool ran by the psychometrics center at Cambridge University. This should give you an idea of the kind of analysis being done, only on a significantly larger and more powerful scale. Cambridge Analytica used their analysis of big data for both the Brexit campaign and, as discussed in a previous article, the Trump campaign. The foundation for understanding the data available was to generate scores for the Big 5 psychometric variables – which you’ll have seen if you took the above test. This is supposed to give an overview of someone’s personality. Kosinski uncovered the use of Facebook for gathering this information when he joined Cambridge University to undertake his PhD in 2008. A simple psychometric study where participants gave their Facebook access happened to go viral and left Kosinski with millions of respondents. Ultimately, after 4 years of doctoral work Kosinski had fine-tuned the prediction machine: “Kosinski and his team tirelessly refined their models. In 2012, Kosinski proved that on the basis of an average of 68 Facebook “likes” by a user, it was possible to predict their skin color (with 95 percent accuracy), their sexual orientation (88 percent accuracy), and their affiliation to the Democratic or Republican party (85 percent). But it didn’t stop there. Intelligence, religious affiliation, as well as alcohol, cigarette and drug use, could all be determined. From the data it was even possible to deduce whether someone’s parents were divorced.” The key to being able to make these predictions and make them increasingly accurate is the amount of data available: “Kosinski continued to work on the models incessantly: before long, he was able to evaluate a person better than the average work colleague, merely on the basis of ten Facebook “likes.” Seventy “likes” were enough to outdo what a person’s friends knew, 150 what their parents knew, and 300 “likes” what their partner knew. More “likes” could even surpass what a person thought they knew about themselves.” With the effective use of big data it was possible to have an intimate knowledge of a huge number of people. The result of this knowledge? Facebook becomes a huge search engine, not just for people but types of people. This technique was leaked from Kosinski and Cambridge University by Aleksander Kogan to a company called Strategic Communications Laboratories. SCL billed themselves as an election influencer, with some of their subsidiaries having worked on influencing elections all around the world, and others doing public relations influence in war zones for NATO. In 2013, another SCL group was established: Cambridge Analytica. Come 2015, Cambridge Analytica, of which Trump’s Chief Strategist Steve Bannon sits on the board, were hired by Leave.EU to drive its political marketing through personality targeting. Alexander Nix, CEO of Cambridge Analytica is quoted in Grassegger and Krogerus’ article as describing demographic targeting as: “A really ridiculous idea. The idea that all women should receive the same message because of their gender—or all African-Americans because of their race.” Nix, pictured below, wanted to zone in on the core elements of people’s personalities to influence their decisions. Executing the campaign strategy on social media In an extended article on Aaron Banks by Martin Fletcher for the New Statesman, we learn how Banks provided a considerable amount of initial funding for the Leave.EU campaign. With this money and other donations, Cambridge Analytica would be hired. Then it was a case of reaching out to the identified voters and doing so in a way which was affordable for the campaign. The Leave.EU campaign, after all, did not have comparable funding to the Trump campaign. This gives the campaign two approaches. The first was to run specially tailored individually targeted Facebook advertising to key personality groups – much in the same way that the Trump campaign leveraged their data. This is a very effective route to victory, but also expensive to have as the only outlet. The second was to utilize this knowledge and run lower-cost accompanying promotion. Under Banks’ leadership, the Leave.EU campaign worked out of Banks’ offices in Bristol and created Facebook pages for a range of local areas where they hoped to target. Almost the entire UK was covered by some sub-page. With a strong psychometric knowledge of what key issues motivate on-the-fence voters to join sides with the Leave campaign, Banks essentially begins a media startup. His goal was to target immigration as the key issue and says: “‘Facts don’t work,’ and that’s it. The Remain campaign featured fact, fact, fact, fact, fact. It just doesn’t work. You have got to connect with people emotionally. It’s the Trump success.” Further to that, he was told by the Trump campaign in early meetings with them: “The more outrageous you are, the more attention you get.” These bits of information would influence the directed social media approach which would help Banks’ team sway the nation. Since Brexit, Banks – pictured below – has published the book The Bad Boys of Brexit: Tales of Mischief, Mayhem, and Guerrilla Warfare in the EU Referendum (2016). The title summarizes nicely the approach Banks took to accuracy versus attention. The Brexit social media promotion process was relatively simple: Create provocative media content which appeals to your audience’s key fears or targets your opponents’ weaknesses. Publish that content through as many different media channels as possible. Use a 70 person call center/social media hub operating out of Bristol to follow up with everyone who engages with the post. This third step could be to promote further content to them, to invite them to like the particular Facebook page which shared it, or to direct them to the Leave.EU website to volunteer. Step 3, in a sense, operated as a lead generation tactic for outbound election sales. Is big data deciding big elections? There may be a host of other reasons why these two elections went in the direction they did. Correlation is not causation, etc. However, the fact that both election campaigns utilized similar tactics and even employed the same private companies shows their shared successes are likely linked. The demographics Leave.EU aimed for voted in droves to leave the EU, with only cities in England bucking the trend south of the border. The Trump campaign and Leave both share the key factor this article started with: the polls said they wouldn’t win. Big data driven approaches operate on a much grander scale than the polling methodologies generally employed by YouGov or ComRes, or other UK pollsters. Unless we assume both campaigns won by luck, the pollsters were likely not looking at the right things. As the analytical abilities of key companies in this sector grow, we may have to recognize that big data will decide more than just the elections of 2016. Was Leave.EU instrumental in the Brexit victory or were there other key factors in play? Let us know in the comments and we might follow up with you for more.Originally published Monday, December 12, 2011 at 12:07 PM Islamists are dominating Egypt's elections and some are advocating "sin-free" tourism with restrictions on alcohol, bikini-wearing and mixed bathing at beaches. Associated Press CAIRO — Islamists are dominating Egypt's elections and some of them have a new message for tourists: welcome, but no booze, bikinis or mixed bathing at beaches, please. That vision of turning Egypt into a sin-free vacation spot could spell doom for a key pillar of the economy that has already been badly battered by this year's political unrest. "Tourists don't need to drink alcohol when they come to Egypt; they have plenty at home," a veiled Muslim Brotherhood candidate, Azza al-Jarf, told a cheering crowd of supporters on Sunday across the street from the Pyramids. "They came to see the ancient civilization, not to drink alcohol," she said, her voice booming through a set of loudspeakers at a campaign event dubbed "Let's encourage tourism." The crowd chanted, "Tourism will be at its best under Freedom and Justice," the Brotherhood's party and the most influential political group to emerge from the fall of Hosni Mubarak. Since their success in the first round of parliamentary elections on Nov. 28-29, the Brotherhood and the even more fundamentalist party of Salafi Muslims called Al-Nour have been under pressure from media and the public to define their stance on a wide range of issues, especially those related to Islamic law, personal freedoms, the rights of women and minorities, the flagging economy and tourism. The Salafis of Al-Nour are up front about seeking to impose strict Islamic law in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood says publicly that it does not seek to force its views about an appropriate Islamic lifestyle on Egyptians. Critics say remarks by members of both parties meant to reassure the nation that they don't seek to damage tourism are having the opposite effect. Egypt's year of political upheaval has hit the economy hard and shaken investor confidence. On Sunday, the new interim prime minister, Kamal el-Ganzouri, broke into tears in front of journalists as he spoke about the state of the economy, saying it was "worse than anyone imagines." Turning around the decline in tourism is key to breathing life back into the economy. But tourism presents something of an ideological conundrum for the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Nour. The two parties came in first and second, respectively, in first-round results in the voting, which is staggered and continues through January. Together, they've won an overwhelming majority of votes. The Salafis, who follow the Wahhabi school of thought that predominates in Saudi Arabia, are clear in their opposition to alcohol and skimpy beachwear. And they're still wavering on the issues of unmarried couples sharing hotel rooms and the display of ancient Egyptian statues like fertility gods that they believe clash with conservative Islamic sensibilities. At a Salafi rally in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria recently, party loyalists covered up mermaid statues on a public fountain with cloth. The Muslim Brotherhood, a more pragmatic political force, has sent mixed messages, reflecting perhaps the influence of some who would be more inclined to leave tourism alone for the sake of the economy. Brotherhood and Al-Nour party leaders toured ancient monuments over the past couple of days in an attempt to show they're supporting tourism, releasing pictures of themselves smiling and shaking hands with visitors. One Al-Nour party spokesman in the ancient city of Aswan told a gathering: "We are not going to close temples, we are not going to order the tourists to cover up or put restrictions on their freedoms." Brotherhood leader Saad el-Katatni is also now espousing a hands-off approach. "Tourism is not all about what to eat, drink or wear.... We have nothing to do with beaches," he told the semiofficial Al-Ahram daily. But in August, he told tourism officials that "Egypt is a pious country and the beach tourism and bikini should not be in public beaches." Also, clerics like Yasser Bourhami, influential among hard-line Salafis, are presenting ideas for restrictions on tourism. Bourhami calls it "halal tourism," using the term for food that is ritually fit under Islamic law. "A five-star hotel with no alcohol, a beach for women — sisters — separated from men in a bay where the two sides can enjoy a vacation for a week without sins," he said in an interview with private television network Dream TV. "The tourist doesn't have to swim with a bikini and harm our youth." A leading member of Al-Nour, Tarek Shalaan, stumbled through a recent TV interview when asked about his views on the display of nude Pharaonic statues like those depicting fertility gods. "The antiquities that we have will be put under a different light to focus on historical events," he said, without explaining further. He also failed to explain whether hotel reception clerks will have to start demanding marriage certificates from couples checking in together. "Honestly, I don't know the Shariah position, so I don't want to give an answer," he said. During Sunday's campaign event for the Muslim Brotherhood, candidate al-Jarf said the new approach doesn't have to spell the end of tourism. "Foreigners respect traditions, they didn't come here for nudity," she told a crowd in a middle class district of Giza steps away from the Pyramids where many residents work in tourism. Another candidate at the event, Ahmed el-Khouli, promised they would draw millions more tourists and criticized members of rival, secular parties who he said "promote nudity and prostitution in Egypt" for the sake of attracting tourist dollars. Tourism accounts for roughly 10 percent of Egypt's gross domestic product, employs an estimated 3 million of Egypt's 85 million people, and is one of the top three mainstays of the economy, along with Suez Canal fees and remittances. Huge swaths of the country, like the Red Sea shores with their stunning coral reefs and Nile Valley cities like Luxor with their ancient temples and tombs, are solely dependent on tourism. This year, tourist arrivals fell more than 35 percent in the second quarter, according to government figures. Still, residents of Luxor and Red Sea province voted in large numbers for the Islamists, which opponents said was a result of the parties feeding a "feeling of guilt" over things like serving alcohol. Some Salafis acknowledge their approach could mean losses for the industry but propose ways to compensate, like promoting medical tourism or religious and educational tourism. Their talk prompted an outcry from hundreds of tour guides and the minister of tourism, who recently held a demonstration at the steps of the Great Pyramid. They asserted that each speech by the Islamists translated into reservation cancellations. The minister, Moneir Fakhri Abdel-Nour, said the impact of religious edicts, or fatwas, on tourism is as bad as the impact from Egypt's security troubles. "The tourism industry is facing a double challenge: security... and the fatwas," Abdel-Nour said Monday, according to Egypt's state-run news agency. "No one will be able to destroy or threaten this industry," he added.At long last, it looks as though EON and Sony are finally beginning to circle a new actor to replace Daniel Craig as James Bond. A shortlist has reportedly been seen by The Sun which lists a total of eight actors, most of whom have already been associated with the role. Let's get to the list. The possible nominees are... - Idris Elba - Charlie Hunnam - Tom Hiddleston - Jamie Bell - Aidan Turner - James Norton - Luke Evans - Michael Fassbender According to the report, Barbara Broccoli will make the final decision as to who will play Bond and will move on to deciding upon a director. MGM, Sony and EON are said to be incredibly nervous about the selection process, as the actor will have to carry on the role for several years and a lot's riding on the next Bond instalment. Despite making close to $800,000,000 at the box-office, Spectre was met with middling reviews by many critics (we actually quite liked it) and Craig's comments during the press tour were less than helpful to the cause. Looking at the list, however, there does appear to be a wide variety of actors and potential movements for the series. For example, Jamie Bell and James Norton are both quite young whilst Idris Elba, Michael Fassbender and Luke Evans look slightly more worn and weathered. Could it be that Bond is going to be school - or something along those lines? Or is it going to be a direct continuation from Spectre? Or will it finally acknowledge the long-held fan theory that James Bond is merely an assumed identity and anyone could be Bond? Who knows. The race is wide open, really, and any one of these is a fine choice to play Bond. So, over to you, who should play Bond next? Vote in our poll and let us know what you think in the comments!(Image: Imaginechina/Corbis) Update: Despite initial reports that China’s Yutu rover had been declared dead, covered in the story below, Chinese state media are now reporting that it is waking up after the long lunar night. Read the latest story here (published 2335 GMT 12 February 2014). So long moon bunny, we hardly knew you. China’s lunar rover, Yutu – or Jade Rabbit – was officially declared dead in a terse statement posted on a Chinese state news agency website. Yutu’s troubles began last month, just six weeks into its three-month mission. China’s Chang’e-3 lander touched down on the moon on 14 December and released the Yutu rover about 7 hours later. Both machines successfully entered hibernation mode during their first lunar night. On the moon, night lasts for half of each Earthly month and plunges surface temperatures from daytime highs of about 90 °C to below -180 °C. Advertisement When the second lunar night rolled around on 25 January the lander went in to hibernation but Yutu appeared to have failed. It is impossible to communicate with the vehicles during lunar night, so mission operators had to wait until the new lunar day this Monday to confirm whether Yutu would respond. Communication was established with Chang’e-3 but today, the ECNS news agency reported efforts to reactive the rover were unsuccessful. “China’s first lunar rover, Yutu, could not be restored to full function on Monday as expected, and netizens mourned it on Weibo, China’s Twitter-like service. Yutu experienced mechanical problems on Jan 25 and has been unable to function since then.” No other details were given. Cold cold night The rover’s mechanical problems are likely related to critical components that must be protected during the cold lunar night. When temperatures plunge, the rover’s mast is designed to fold down to protect delicate instruments, which can then be kept warm by a radioactive heat source. Yutu also needs to angle a solar panel towards the point where the sun will rise to maintain power levels. A mechanical fault in these systems could leave the rover fatally exposed to the dark and bitter cold. China’s space agency has not released any more details, but abrasive lunar dust is a top suspect. Moon soil gets ground up by micrometeoroid impacts into a glassy dust that can then become charged as it is bombarded by solar particles. During the Apollo program the sharp-edged dust grains wore through astronaut space suits, scratched up mirrors used for laser ranging experiments and caused moon buggies to overheat. Yutu’s demise does not mean the end of China’s space ambitions, which include a crewed lunar base, and the rover has also helped put the moon back on the map – NASA has recently began a programme working with private companies to build robots for lunar mining.As the dust settles in the wake of The Post‘s firm landing atop the National Board of Review’s annual top 10 list (and reliable best picture-nominee bellwether), the awards train is chugging right along, as the New York Film Critics Circle — the first of many major journalist collectives set to bestow year-end accolades upon 2017’s best films — announced its annual crop of winners on Thursday, positioning Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird atop the competition as its best film of 2017. Critics groups around the country — namely organizations in New York, Los Angeles, as well as the Broadcast Film Critics Association — have established themselves as key players in the weeks leading up to the Academy Award nominations, often heralding the official entry of late-breaking contenders into the race at large, though they often place a spotlight on smaller, independent, and internationally-skewing titles and performances that otherwise might not have registered on industry voters’ radars. This year, the NYFCC has given a key push to several fringe contenders hovering around the edges of the Oscar race, placing a spotlight on Girls Trip supporting actress Tiffany Haddish, whose standout role in perhaps the year’s most beloved comedy (and one of the genre’s biggest box office hits of 2017) could translate to a Melissa McCarthy-style nod from the Academy if she maintains momentum with larger awards bodies in the weeks ahead. On the men’s side, The Florida Project‘s Willem Dafoe picks up more steam following his Gotham Awards nomination with a NYFCC victory in the best supporting actor category. Lead actors Timothée Chalamet and Saoirse Ronan triumphed in their respective categories as well, continuing what appears to be an early consensus forming around Call Me By Your Name (the Gotham Awards’ best picture winner) and Lady Bird (the National Board of Review’s best director winner). Though Lady Bird was the big winner of the day, The Florida Project picked up an additional win for director Sean Baker, who was also recognized with nominations and/or wins from the Film Independent Spirit Awards, the Gotham Awards, and the National Board of Review. While Netflix still faces a bumpy road ahead as its streaming-focused release strategy presents a potential roadblock for its prestige titles like Mudbound and First They Killed My Father, the NYFCC has seemingly given the former film equal footing as its theatrical counterparts, highlighting Rachel Morrison’s camerawork with a well deserved win among the cinematography set. After landing notices from the National Board of Review for its script and as one of the top 10 films of the year, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread additionally courted NYFCC attention, taking the group’s screenplay prize in what’s bound to be a fruitful showing on the precursor circuit for the renowned auteur’s latest project, also touted as the final film starring retiring actor Daniel Day-Lewis. While not a steadfast portent of Academy tastes to come (only three NYFCC best film winners have gone on to take best picture at the Oscars since 2007: No Country For Old Men, The Hurt Locker, and The Artist), the NYFCC’s picks can add much-needed buzz to a given film or performance, reprioritizing respective contenders for non-critic guild voters deciding which movies to watch as they make their way through their collection of screeners. In terms of crossover into Oscar nominations, each of the NYFCC’s best film victors since 2007 — save for 2015’s Carol — has received a corresponding Oscar nomination for best picture. Across the same frame, only two NYFCC best actress winners — Rachel Weisz (2012’s The Deep Blue Sea) and Sally Hawkins (Happy-Go-Lucky) — didn’t follow up with an Oscar nod. When it comes to the men, the only NYFCC best actor champions since 2007 who didn’t receive an Oscar nomination occurred one after the other, when a three-year dry spell saw Robert Redford (All Is Lost), Timothy Spall (Mr. Turner), and Michael Keaton (Spotlight) emerging with NYFCC wins between 2013 and 2015. Check out the full list of 2017 NYFCC Awards winners below, updating live as they’re announced. Best Film: Greta Gerwig – Lady Bird Best Director: Sean Baker – The Florida Project Best Actor: Timothée Chalamet – Call Me By Your Name Best Actress: Saoirse Ronan – Lady Bird Best Supporting Actor: Willem Dafoe – The Florida Project Best Supporting Actress: Tiffany Haddish – Girls Trip Best Screenplay: Paul Thomas Anderson – Phantom Thread Best Cinematography: Rachel Morrison – Mudbound Best Foreign Language Film: Robin Campillo – BPM (Beats Per Minute) Best Documentary: Agnès Varda, JR – Faces Places Best Animated Film: Lee Unkrich, Adrian Molina – Coco Best First Film: Jordan Peele – Get Out Special Awards: Molly HaskellCollin County Sheriff Terry Box says neither he, or his deputies, will enforce unconstitutional gun laws. (Published Monday, Jan. 21, 2013) Collin County Sheriff Terry Box says he, nor his deputies, will enforce unconstitutional gun laws put in place by whom he calls misguided politicians. In the statement, Box said the following: In light of recent events I feel I need to make a public statement of my views on this subject. As the Sheriff of Collin County, Texas, I have for the past 28 years served to protect and keep safe all citizens of our county, recognizing the trust placed in me with this profoundly important responsibility. Unfortunately, the recent surge in the numbers of innocent victims who have died at the hands of unstable criminals has prompted politicians in Washington to seek to pass laws that would seriously erode the constitutional rights of innocent and law abiding citizens. Neither I, nor any of my deputies, will participate in the enforcement of laws that violate our precious constitutional rights, including our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. As long as I remain Sheriff of Collin County, I will not participate in the actions of misguided politicians who seek to impede our citizen’s right to all of the privileges afforded by our Constitution. Respectfully, Terry G. Box Sheriff, Collin County Texas Cleburne ISD Considers Arming Teachers
realize. I can tell you that for certain, you reach #1 because you worked that hard, not because you’re talented. Your players mentioned they’re practicing a lot lately and they’ve been playing well as a result. Going beyond this tournament, what are your goals for this team in LCK 2017? I don’t know about the players, but my goal is to defeat SKT1 and win the championship. A lot of fans and people in the industry will think that’s impossible, but I’ve stood at the top before. In both traditional sports and esports, I think anyone can become a champion. So I’ll do what I can to make that happen. When you decided to retire from StarCraft, were you doubting you own skill? Or did you think you could keep playing well if you wanted to? When I first joined CJ Entus and practiced with them, it was very tough, I lost a lot. I had joined a pro team again after taking time off, away from the lifestyle where you’re at a computer for hours on end. It was a bit tough handling a progamer schedule at first, but after three months I was fine. I was thinking I would be able to play well next year, and go to the military after that. So when I heard the news of Proleague shutting down, I was quite sad. Do you have any regrets about your StarCraft II career? It ended somewhat abruptly. Personally, the thing I regret the most is not being able to win BlizzCon. I’ve won all the other big tournaments. Honestly, it’s sad, you wish it could have gone on for one or two more years. A lot of players are quitting, or thinking about quitting. The fact that there’s no fixed salary is probably the biggest factor. Blizzard is doing lot of things, so I guess the remaining players should keep working hard and show the fans good games. Anyone you’re cheering for at IEM? Of the remaining players, I lived with ByuL, and I’m close with him, so I’m cheering for him. Alright, do you want to say anything to the foreign fans in English? I know you guys sad for I leave StarCraft II scene, But, you know, all people have to change… to another life. So, please just cheer for me, it’s not betray. We love esports and we are together. And keep cheering StarCraft II please. A lot of Korean players still want to play, so Yeah, so, that’s all. You can follow MC on Twitter at @KDM_MC1. MC: Well, I actually didn’t have any plans to quit StarCraft II, but the news came out that Proleague was going away. I learned about it a month before the news stories broke, and the future seemed dark. For me, and I guess it’s the same for other players, but there’s a salary you have to earn every month… It’s hard to keep living as a pro without a salary.After a lot of thought, as I was thinking about it, the Kongdoo Monster spot opened up. I came on last minute as a coach, and one month in, they liked what I was doing. A team must have a head coach in League of Legends, so I ended up being promoted to that position.The CEO of Kongdoo Monster is a progamer who played Brood War with me on MBCGame, Shark, so it helped that I knew him… Progamers are mostly lazy, so the team liked that I was waking up early and things like that. They also had a lot of faith in my ability to communicate with the players, so they told me that if I wanted to give it a shot, it may not be a bad idea. I accepted because I thought it was a fresh challenge and a good opportunity, and worked hard at it for a month.I wasn’t so nervous about that. I was more concerned about how StarCraft II fans would see it, because you could see it as betrayal. But, I think we’re all people who love esports, and I still like StarCraft II. It’s the game that made me the BossToss, and even if the game has been pushed out a bit by games like League of Legends or Overwatch, it’s still the most popular RTS. Also, just because I like StarCraft II, it doesn’t mean that StarCraft II is going to take care of my life. Just like everyone else trying to get by, I had to do it for the money.I was a progamer for almost eight years. During that time, I lived with a lot of head coaches and coaches. The top priority was to not do the things I disliked as a player. I put a lot of thought into trying to use those experiences to help the players play better and focus solely on the game. Honestly, in StarCraft, even if a coach suggests a strategy to you, players all have their own thoughts—some are aggressive players, some are defensive players—that makes them different. Rather than meddle with who a player is, I think a good coach helps an aggressive player be more aggressive, and helps a defensive player be more defensive, so I’m working in that direction.When SK Gaming and Incredible Miracle had a partnership, I was living in the IM house. At the time, there wasn’t a StarCraft II coach. So effectively, I acted as the StarCraft II coach. I helped players out mentally, contacted other teams to help them practice if they had a tournament match coming, and things like that. It was after I joined the house that IM won the GSTL, and I took care of the entrees/rosters for the most part.I felt that around then, even though I wasn’t playing in the games, watching these younger players I was living with being so happy with winning a championship—it was a different kind of feeling. I thought then that being a coach wouldn’t be bad.I enjoyed playing League of Legends since around Season 2, although I didn’t play a ton. But I did enjoy playing it during breaks between StarCraft II. Then, in 2016, from around January to March, I played a lot of LoL myself, to try and get a feel for what being a LoL pro would be like. Playing that way, I was able to hit Masters along the way… But abruptly I felt the desire to be a StarCraft II pro again, so I started that in June.Anyway, playing the two games—StarCraft II is an individual game, and you can take care of the strategic portion by yourself. League of Legends is a game where five people play, but they have to play as one. Regardless of each individual’s skill, I think the team with the better teamwork wins.For instance, the best team in the world right now, SKT1. They’re a special team because their #1 mid in the world, Faker, can play together with the remaining four. I see that a lot in their play.Honestly, strategically, all the progaming teams are pretty similar. Look at Starcraft, everyone knows all the builds. But your instincts and decision-making inside the game, that’s the difference between becoming the best progamer or a so-so progamer. I think I can help my team in that regard, because that’s what I was able to do for myself.To be honest, I don’t really know that well. This is something I’m doing for the first time, and I have my own opinions on all of this. Other coaching staffs might be different in the way they think. I can’t be certain that I’m right, but if lead my guys believing that I’m right, I think the players will buy in and get good results.There’s a lot of people who think that, but I was always a player with good fundamentals. I think that aspect of my playstyle stood out because I was good at micro.I always wanted to play entertaining games. Of all the players who were great in StarCraft II, some of them showed you exceptional macro play but made the game boring at times. My games were never boring, in victory or defeat. Because I would always fight. I think that fans want that kind of excitement, and that was more fun for me as well.So in my head, I would know “I can’t fight this now, I’ll be put at a disadvantage,” but I kept fighting even though I knew that, and I lost a lot of games because of that.In League of Legends, of course you have to win, and it’s a game played by five people, so I guess I shouldn’t try to turn my players into me? I need to make them play safer, so they can secure certain victories.No, my opinion on that hasn’t changed. If I’m up for an interview, I can take care of the entertainment aspect. I won’t force it on the players, but I do remind them about the need to be entertaining. Whether or not the players want to act on my words or not, that’s up to them.I had heard before that League of Legends players were difficult to manage. But that must be different from person to person—Kongdoo Monster has players who follow instructions well. Since they’re young, there are some parts of social relationships they don’t understand that well, but in a way I’m their school teacher, and it’s my job to teach them. Our players are following me really well, so I’m thankful to them for that.Well, it’s not like I’ve met any foreign coaches or lived with them, so I can’t make any judgments, maybe they’re similar. But anyway, Korean coaches, I think that it may be the cultural differences? The players, perhaps… A few foreign players do whatever they want, practice however they want without fixed times. Korean players, they all wake up at the same, a fixed time, and practice together until a fixed time. I think you build teamwork just by doing that. Five, six guys, sharing the day and living together, becoming unified as one. It’s not easy to get everyone to act together like that, so that’s part of a head coach’s job. Putting strategy aside, I think that maybe Korean head coaches are good at getting their players to act as one.It’s a method a lot of head coaches have practiced since StarCraft: Brood War, and if you look at how Korean pro teams are still strong, I feel like it’s a good practice.Frankly, if you’re running a StarCraft team, you’re fine as long as 1~2 players are good. Even if everyone else is bad, the team can still perform well. In League of Legends, if just one player is bad, the team’s results go down, so you have to watch over and take care everyone so that their skill stays up. I didn’t work as a head coach in StarCraft, but I imagine you didn’t have to worry about that aspect.So the first thing I did was become friendly with the players—I like head coaches who are like an older brother. When we’re not playing the game, I’m someone they can talk to and joke with. But when it’s time to practice, I make sure to draw a solid line, scolding guys when they deserve it, and giving them praise when it’s earned.I guess you could say I’m two-faced?Everyone gets that wrong, whether it’s StarCraft or LoL. It’s not about talent—it’s all effort. You become the best player because you put in that much work. Faker, he’s the best because he worked the hardest out of everyone. When I was the best in StarCraft, I worked the hardest. My results dropped off once I started slacking. Jaedong, Bisu, Flash, all of those guys became the best in the world since they worked really hard. That’s something only people who have been #1 realize. I can tell you that for certain, you reach #1 because you worked that hard, not because you’re talented.I don’t know about the players, but my goal is to defeat SKT1 and win the championship. A lot of fans and people in the industry will think that’s impossible, but I’ve stood at the top before. In both traditional sports and esports, I think anyone can become a champion. So I’ll do what I can to make that happen.When I first joined CJ Entus and practiced with them, it was very tough, I lost a lot. I had joined a pro team again after taking time off, away from the lifestyle where you’re at a computer for hours on end. It was a bit tough handling a progamer schedule at first, but after three months I was fine. I was thinking I would be able to play well next year, and go to the military after that. So when I heard the news of Proleague shutting down, I was quite sad.Personally, the thing I regret the most is not being able to win BlizzCon. I’ve won all the other big tournaments. Honestly, it’s sad, you wish it could have gone on for one or two more years. A lot of players are quitting, or thinking about quitting. The fact that there’s no fixed salary is probably the biggest factor. Blizzard is doing lot of things, so I guess the remaining players should keep working hard and show the fans good games.Of the remaining players, I lived with ByuL, and I’m close with him, so I’m cheering for him. Administrator Hey HP can you redo everything youve ever done because i have a small complaint?Any geek worth his / her salt knows that techdom's territory-spanning intellectual property spats are far from over, so we don't begrudge heavyweights like Nintendo for endeavoring to bulk up their litigious arsenal. Filed back in October of 2003 and just recently granted by the USPTO, is patent number 8,157,654 that gives the Big N ownership of a method to emulate video game consoles bearing built-in displays (think: handhelds) and accompanying software on external computing devices. What does that mean in plain 'ol English, dear gaming fanatic? Well, it could presage a device agnostic service that would break the company's vast backlog of handheld titles out of its walled garden and into the vast consumer wild. Or it could just be another legal armament poised for deployment should the sue-happy titans of the electronics industry come a-calling. Either way, the house that Mario built's got another IP bullet locked and loaded.BERLIN (Reuters) - Deutsche Bank shares were indicated down 6.2 percent ahead of the opening of the Frankfurt market on Friday, after Germany’s largest lender admitted it had an image problem with investors as fresh concerns over its stability emerged. A statue is seen next to the logo of Germany's Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt, Germany, January 26, 2016. REUTERS/Kai Pfaffenbach/File Photo The lurch followed a Bloomberg report on Thursday that a number of hedge funds that clear derivatives trades with Deutsche had withdrawn some excess cash and adjusted positions, a sign that counterparties are wary of doing business with it. One large hedge fund in Asia had pulled out its collateral from Deutsche amounting to $50 million in the last two days, while another fund which had a “smallish amount” with the bank was monitoring the situation closely and had not pulled out yet, people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday. Another person with knowledge of the development said it was common to see fluctuations in balances among hedge fund clients, and these actions represented a small portion of the bank’s more than 800 clients in the hedge fund business. In a statement on Friday, Deutsche reiterated its trading clients remained largely supportive. “We are confident the vast majority of them have a full understanding of our stable financial position, the current macroeconomic environment, the litigation process in the U.S. and the progress we are making with our strategy,” it said. A separate Asian hedge fund source said “sophisticated investors” would have already pulled out excess cash or unwound positions held at Deutsche, and, therefore, there would not be a huge wave of these withdrawals. “We haven’t heard any talk that someone stopped trading with that bank in the interbank market. It’s just some hedge funds (that have stopped trading with Deutsche),” a trader at a Japanese bank said. “Basically we do have collaterals for most trades and they are reviewed daily. So the situation is a bit different from before the Lehman crisis. Also, the amount of the fine is not set yet.” Barry Bausano, chairman of Deutsche’s hedge fund business, told CNBC that its prime brokerage division, which services hedge funds, was “still very profitable” but said there was “no question we have a perception issue.” Fabrizio Campelli, head of the Deutsche wealth management business, said the bank was seeking to reassure customers and had not seen “any noticeable outflow of client funds.” “Of course some of our customers are asking what is up with Deutsche Bank at the moment. We are telling them that we are doing better than it might seem from outside,” he told Germany’s Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily. The immediate cause of Deutsche’s crisis is a fine, disputed by Deutsche, of up to $14 billion by the U.S. Department of Justice over its sale of mortgage-backed securities. Profits at Germany’s lenders have been squeezed by the European Central Bank’s money-printing policy. They have been seeking to boost revenue by passing on costs to corporate customers and increasing fees for retail depositors. Deutsche’s shares were seen down 6.2 percent in Frankfurt before market open on Friday, after the bank’s U.S.-listed shares fell more than 9 percent in New York on Thursday after touching a record low in Europe this week. POLITICAL ISSUE Berlin has denied planning any repeat of the taxpayer-funded bailouts that Germany and other Western states staged during the global financial crisis. This followed a newspaper report earlier in the week that the government had made provisional plans to rescue Deutsche. Politicians are reluctant to back a group disliked by many Germans because of its pursuit of investment banking abroad that resulted in billions of euros of penalties for wrongdoing. Eckhardt Rehberg, parliamentary budget spokesman for the ruling conservatives, signaled he would oppose any support. “At the present time I would rule out any capital help. That would not be the right way to go,” he told Reuters, echoing similar comments by Hans Michelbach, who heads the conservatives in the parliamentary finance committee. But Jeffrey Gundlach, chief executive of DoubleLine Capital, said investors betting that Berlin would not rescue Deutsche could find themselves nursing big losses. “The market is going to push down Deutsche Bank until there is some recognition of support. They will get assistance, if need be,” said Gundlach, who oversees more than $100 billion at Los Angeles-based DoubleLine. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s popularity has declined because of her open-door policy for migrants, and if Deutsche Bank were to require state help, her standing as the leader who successfully steered Germany through the financial crisis could also be called into question. Deutsche got through the global crisis without state aid, but Commerzbank, Germany’s second-biggest lender, needed an 18.2 billion euro bailout in 2008 and the state still holds a 15 percent stake. NO LEHMAN REPLAY The problems of Deutsche, once Germany’s flagship on Wall Street, are awkward for Berlin, which has berated many euro zone peers for economic mismanagement and pushed for countries such as Ireland and Greece to cope with their banking problems alone. Austrian finance minister Hans Joerg Schelling also sought to play down fears over Deutsche, saying the case could not be compared with Lehman Brothers, the U.S. investment bank whose collapse in 2008 sent shock waves around the world. “We have all the measures in place at a European level to stabilize financial markets,” he told Reuters. A Deutsche Bank logo adorns a wall at the company's headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany June 9, 2015. REUTERS/Ralph Orlowski/File Photo Like many of its peers, Deutsche has faced a series of lawsuits that often trace back to the boom years before the crash. Its litigation bill since 2012 has already hit more than 12 billion euros ($13.5 billion). In July the bank barely scraped through European stress tests - designed to gauge its ability to withstand a crisis - and has warned it may need deeper cost cuts to turn itself around. (Story refiles to correct name to Campelli in 11th paragraph.)A Liberal candidate in Montreal once paid $25,000 in cash for home renovations without signing a contract laying out the sales taxes to be paid to the federal and provincial governments as part of the deal, court records show. Lawyer Nicola Di Iorio, who is running for Justin Trudeau's team in Saint-Leonard-Saint-Michel, subsequently got embroiled ‎in a dispute over whether the payment – done as part of an oral contract – included the cost of the new fireplace in his home. The matter landed in front of the Quebec Court, where Mr. Di Iorio argued that the $25,000 cash payment covered the cost of the three-sided gas fireplace. But the judge ruled against Mr. Di Iorio and forced him to pay $4,063.50 to the store that had delivered the fireplace, stating that his version of events lacked credibility. Story continues below advertisement Mr. Di Iorio argued in court he had played no part in buying the fireplace, but his secretary at the law firm where he worked had twice been in contact with the store in relation to the purchase, the ruling said. Click here for a link to the ruling in French. Asked about the renovations, Mr. Di Iorio said in a written statement to The Globe and Mail that "at the request of the contractor, I made the payment in cash." "The amount included the taxes that the contractor had to pay," he said, adding he asked the contractor to "follow all the rules" in handling the money. Contractor Daniel Siciliano, who oversaw the work but called on Mr. Di Iorio pay for the fireplace himself, was reached by phone but did not want to comment on the matter. The NDP, which is leading in the polls in Quebec, said the dispute raises questions about Mr. Di Iorio's ethics. "I don't know anyone who would give $25,000 in cash to a contractor without asking for a receipt," said Alexandre Boulerice, who is running to retain his seat of Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie in Montreal. "Where did the money come from? Why is there no paper trail? Did Mr. Di Iorio try not to pay taxes? All of this is very strange." Story continues below advertisement Story continues below advertisement Mr. Di Iorio won the Liberal nomination in Saint-Leonard-Saint-Michel in June, after securing the support of the major figures of the city's Italian community. The riding is a traditional Liberal stronghold, but the nomination was up for grabs after the retirement of long-time Liberal MP Massimo Pacetti, who was hit with allegations of harassment last year and had been sitting as an Independent. The Liberal Party said it was informed of the dispute between Mr. Di Iorio and Foyers-Dépôt Inc. – the company that sold the fireplace – as part of the "green-lighting" process by which all candidates are vetted. "Mr. Di Iorio paid the required amounts to the plaintiff in this matter. The matter has been settled," Liberal spokesman Olivier Duchesneau said. In her 2011 ruling, Judge Brigitte Gouin said she could not uphold Mr. Di Iorio's version of events, given "his contradictory testimony in which there were many hesitations and contradictions." Mr. Di Iorio told the court that the $25,000 payment to Mr. Siciliano included "labour, materials and other accessories, including the fireplace." Still, the judge said Mr. Di Iorio's secretary at his law firm sent at least two e-mails in relation to the fireplace to Foyers-Dépôt, in which its cost was clearly pointed out. On the invoice, the contact person was listed as Mr. Di Iorio's secretary, with her phone number at her office. Story continues below advertisement "One has to conclude, despite the defendant's categorical statements, that his secretary and legal assistant, Louise Huet, was in contact with the plaintiff and negotiated the purchase," the ruling said. Judge Gouin added that while Mr. Siciliano was available to testify, he was never called by Mr. Di Iorio's legal team. Mr. Di Iorio rejected the notion his testimony was not credible, stating the audio recordings of the hearing show there were "no contradictions" in what he told Judge Gouin. An expert in labour law, Mr. Di Iorio came to public attention after his daughter spent a month in a coma after a car accident. She was a passenger in the vehicle, which was driven by someone who had been drinking. Mr. Di Iorio participated in the launch of Cool Taxi coupons, which can be used to get a cab after a night out.TAMPA -- Yankees prospect Jorge Mateo's slow introduction to center field is about to speed up. The talented shortstop will start the season playing a couple games a week at the position as the organization looks to get him to the Bronx quicker, vice president of player development Gary Denbo said at the team's training complex Sunday afternoon. Mateo will also play shortstop and second base. The Yankees pushed Mateo to second base almost full-time after acquiring new top shortstop prospect Gleyber Torres from the Cubs for Aroldis Chapman at the trade deadline last year. Mateo got his first reps in center during the instructional league in the fall. He will begin at High-A Tampa, where he started hot but ultimately struggled after a team suspension in 2016. "We feel like he still has adjustments to make offensively that we would like for him to start in the Florida State League this year and get off to a good start and see what happens, whether he's able to make it to the next level or higher," Denbo said. "But from all indications that we've got this spring, he's already in the process of making those adjustments." McCann talks trade, Jeter Denbo declined to discuss the adjustments Mateo has been asked to make. Mateo hit.136 with a homer and a stolen base this spring. He was sent back to minor-league camp Friday. "We don't take a lot of stock in spring training statistics. But what we do put stock in is when we see a player come back in better shape, bigger, stronger, his mindset is better, he's working harder and he's making adjustments offensively. The statistics don't always bear out how successful you are in spring training," Denbo said. The Dominican Republic-born speedster has worked closely this spring with assistant big-league hitting coach Marcus Thames and Triple-A hitting coach P.J. Pilittere. "The biggest thing that we looked for was... the adjustments that he has to make in his development plan that you allow him to go forward and have success," Denbo said. Last season, Mateo hit.266 with 26 stolen bases, five homers and 25 RBI before the Yankees suspended him for violating an unspecified team policy and forbid him to play in the MLB All-Star Futures Game in San Diego. After the ban, he hit just.236 with three homers and 11 stolen bases in 38 games. Denbo said he watched Mateo's batting practice Sunday morning and that it was the best he'd ever seen from the youngster. "I think he's on a mission this year," Denbo said. "He's going to come out and have a productive year." Brendan Kuty may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @BrendanKutyNJ. Find NJ.com Yankees on FacebookOn NPR's Morning Edition on Monday, ABC News contributor and columnist Cokie Roberts said that Democrats are "nervously beginning to whisper" about what might happen if their nominee for president Hillary Clinton has to step aside for health reasons. "They have looked at what happens in that circumstance," she said. COKIE ROBERTS: People are angry at the lack of transparency -- it was hours before the diagnosis of pneumonia was revealed -- after seeing this incredibly damaging video of her being helped and stumbling into this van. Look: There's a reason why the campaign is not transparent. Obviously it gives Trump ammunition, and he has been setting this up for months. Back in January he said that she didn't have the strength and stamina to be president. And then he knew at some point in the campaign schedule, she, like all candidates would get exhausted. But the fact that it comes now, when the polls are tightening and Democrats were already saying that Hillary was the only candidate who could not beat Trump, and it’s taking her off of the campaign trail,cancelling her trip to California today. It has them very nervously beginning to whisper about her stepping aside and finding another candidate... I think it’s unlikely to be a real thing. I’m sure it’s an overreaction about an already-skittish party, but you know, they have looked at what happens in that circumstance. The Democratic National Committee convenes the convention, and they vote. Ironically the candidate everyone looks at is Joe Biden, who is even older than Hillary, and then again, so is Donald Trump.The Dark Matter movement is growing stronger! First, here’s the data from our first tweet storm back on Friday, September 8th – #RockTheRaza Now here’s the data from our last big tweet storm on Friday, September 15th – #LightTheRaza The fact that we continue to build momentum is nothing short of amazing. I have forwarded these fan metrics to the, uh, relevant parties. Speaking of which… Well, it all comes down to this week. Specifically, in all likelihood, it will all come down to tomorrow. Late Friday, we heard back from one of the three potential new partners we’ve been in discussions with regarding a fourth season pick-up for Dark Matter. Even though it was a no, we took it in stride because this one was the longest of the long shots. The show, admittedly, wasn’t the best fit for them, but the executive who championed us was a Dark Matter fan and gave it a go nonetheless – and for that, I am extremely grateful. And, I am grateful to every one of you – from the members of Dark Matter Council who organized and ran this amazing campaign to all of you who took the time to tweet your hearts out. It’s all come down to this… So, it looks like tomorrow is THE day. Or it really needs to be with time about to run out on our second stage holding the Marauder, the Ishida cruiser, and our swing sets. Tick, tick, tick… Share this: Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print More Tumblr WhatsApp Pocket LinkedIn Reddit Like this: Like Loading...You find yourself in a cave filled with enemies. There's no point in staying here! Grab your weapon and head down to kill as enemies many as you can before your inevitable demise! Collect keys and reach the stairs to go down another floor. FEATURES Fight off hordes of enemies! Each enemy has it's own combat abilities. Use a variety of weapons and items to lay waste to those who oppose you! Railgun trails, bullets and rockets flying through the air, explosions, gore! All kinds of visual effects for extra visceral combat. Randomly generated caves, items and horde spawns, keep on your toes! Who doesn't like boomsticks and chain explosions? Please read the README.TXT before starting the game. KNOWN ISSUES Key for walking down stairs (">") may not work on some non-qwerty layouts. Use tab instead. Doing melee attacks manually (by pressing "a" rather than bumping into enemies) does not trigger new turns. Very exploitable! ABOUT THIS GAME Game made in 7 days for the 2015 7 Day Roguelike (7DRL) challenge. Visit http://7drl.roguetemple.com/ for more info. STRIVE was written by Fabian Goedhart (supperdev). You can contact me at: [email protected] My twitter account: https://twitter.com/supperdev CREDITS The game uses SDL and The Doryen Library. Spritesheet was made by Alloy (found on http://dwarffortresswiki.org/) Thank you for playing! UPDATE HISTORYCamp coverage on NFL Network Watch "Inside Training Camp" this week from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. ET on NFL Network. » Complete training camp coverage Football is coming. We know that sounds crazy. That first regular-season Sunday feels like a mirage deep in the distance. But it's not. It's now actually less than 10 weeks away. First comes training camp. On Monday, the NFL officially released the reporting-date schedule for rookies and veterans on each of the 32 teams. It all begins July 17, when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers become the first team to summon their rookies to report. Veterans will follow one week later. The Buffalo Bills and Indianapolis Colts will be the last teams to have veterans report, with players hitting the scene July 27. The first official practice generally comes the day after veterans report. Find your team in the list below and get excited. Carrie Underwood will be in your living room sooner than you realize. Follow Dan Hanzus on Twitter @danhanzus.Packaging you can EAT: Food ‘skins’ that mimic nature could slash plastic waste Sometimes a tub of ice cream or a pot of yoghurt is so tasty that we spend several minutes scraping out the inside and then, if nobody’s looking, lick the lid. Wouldn’t it be even better if we could simply eat the lot, container and all? It would cut down on the amount of waste we produce and the enjoyment of our food would last that little bit longer. This is exactly what a team of scientists say they have managed to do. They say the invention of edible food packaging will transform how we eat and cut down the amount of plastic we throw away. The packaging, created by researchers in France led by Dr David Edwards, is called WikiCells. It’s designed to imitate how fruit and vegetables are ‘packaged’ in nature with a protective outer layer or skin you can eat. ‘The idea was to use the model of how nature wraps foods,’ said Dr Edwards, a professor from Harvard. ‘It is a completely new way of packaging and eating.’ He has developed a range of yoghurt pots, juice cartons, water bottles and ice cream containers that mimic natural packaging by enclosing food and liquid in an edible membrane. This ice-cream has an edible coating that you can munch through Gaspachio soup in a biodegradable casing that can be eaten, or thrown away The containers are designed to be a similar shape to the fruits they seek to copy and are created using an edible plastic, which is a combination of algae and calcium. This is mixed with food particles, such as cocoa or fruit, so that the packaging tastes like what is inside. They can be used to package both solids and liquids including soup, cheese, cocktails, fizzy drinks and coffee. Those containing liquids can be pierced with a straw and the contents drunk before they are eaten. The membranes can be washed under a tap and eaten, just like the skin of an apple. Consumers worried how many times the packaging has been handled can simply throw it away, like the peel of an orange, because it is biodegradable. So far, the researchers working on the packaging at a laboratory in Paris have created examples including filling an orange membrane with orange juice, a tomato-flavoured skin with soup and mini-membranes the size of grapes that are full of wine. Dr Edwards said: ‘You could put the little grape membranes in your mouth whole and squash them so you get the wine inside. ‘Everything is useful and everything is good for you. You don’t throw things away.’ WikiCells are the brainchild of lead researcher, Harvard professor David Edwards The first product expected to go on sale will be Wiki Ice Cream, which will launch at the end of the summer with vanilla ice cream frozen inside a cookie dough- flavoured membrane. Dr Edwards is currently working with a number of multinational companies – including a fizzy drinks manufacturer and a yoghurt maker – to see how the packaging could be used on a mass scale. A large manufacturing plant is being built in Massachusetts in the US and he expects products to be widely available in stores within the next five years. He refused to reveal which companies he is working with, but his researchers already work with Danone, the makers of Actimel probiotic drinks, Activia yoghurts and Evian water. He said: ‘Clearly we’re going to end the plastic era one day, it could be in a century or in 20 years time. And how that will happen will involve some changes in human behaviour. ‘You could put soup inside these things, buy it in the shops in the membrane, take it home and put the whole thing in a microwave to heat and then serve it as it is or in a bowl with the skin chopped up in the soup.’The moment that humanity is forced to take the threat of artificial intelligence seriously might be fast approaching, according to futurist and theoretical physicist Michio Kaku. In an interview with CNBC's "The Future of Us," Kaku drew concern from the earlier-than-expected victory Google's deep learning machine notched this past March, in which it was able to beat a human master of the ancient board game Go. Unlike chess, which features far fewer possible moves, Go allows for more moves than there are atoms in the universe, and thus cannot be mastered by the brute force of computer simulation. "This machine had to have something different, because you can't calculate every known atom in the universe — it has learning capabilities," Kaku said. "That's what's novel about this machine, it learns a little bit, but still it has no self awareness... so we have a long way to go."A male reader who sent a letter to a small Rhode Island newspaper criticizing women who wear yoga pants in public found that snug-fitting pants were the least of his problems as hundreds of people picketed his home and thousands rebuked him on social media. Alan Sorrentino, 63, in a letter to the Barrington Times — a newspaper which says it has a print circulation of 5,000 — described yoga pants as "stinky, tacky, ridiculous looking." "They do nothing to compliment a woman over 20 years old," he wrote in the letter, which was published on Wednesday. "In fact, the look is bad. Do yourself a favour, grow up and stop wearing them in public." On Monday, the letter was posted on news sites around the world and thousands of commenters made their feelings clear on Facebook and Twitter. Sorrentino told a Providence radio station, WPRO, that he had received death threats, and he compared the threats to those he had received in the past as an openly gay man. In the radio interview, he urged protesters to "calm down." Hundreds of women, girls and other supporters proudly donned their yoga pants
informed electorate, on this view, would never have made such a patently ridiculous choice as Trump. Instead, Clinton would have been rightfully crowned president. “Fake news”, of course, does not concern the systematic deceptions promoted by the corporate media. It does not include the demonstrable lies – like those Iraqi WMDs – spread by western governments and intelligence agencies through the corporate media. It does not even refer to the press corps’ habitual reports – demonstrating a seemingly gargantuan gullibility – that take at face value the endless state propaganda against Official Enemies, whether Cuba, Venezuela, Libya or Syria. Or Russia and now Trump. No, “fake news” is produced only by bloggers and independent websites, and is promoted on social media. Those peddling “fake news” are writers, journalists and activists whose pay packets do not depend on continuing employment by western state-run media like the BBC, billionaire proprietors like Rupert Murdoch, or global corporations like Times-Warner. It is worth noting that the leaked Democratic emails, whether the leaking was done by Russia or not, were certainly not “fake news”. They were documented truth. But the leaks are being actively conflated with “fake news”. Shutting down dissent There have always been patently ridiculous stories in marginal, and not so marginal, mainstream media, whether it was reports of Elvis coming back from the dead or the millennium computer bug that was going to bring civilisation to an end when we entered the year 2000. That problem has not substantially changed; it has simply moved on to new platforms like social media. Much more significantly, the systematic deceptions perpetrated by corporate media for many decades have left swaths of western publics distrustful and cynical. Social media has only added to widespread alienation because it has made it easier to expose to readers these mainstream deceptions. Trump, like Brexit, is a symptom of the growing disorientation and estrangement felt by western electorates. But the claim of “fake news” does usefully offer western security agencies, establishment politicians and the corporate media a powerful weapon to silence their critics. After all, these critics have no platform other than independent websites and social media. Shut down the sites and you shut up your opponents. The campaign against a Trump presidency will exploit claims of foreign, hostile interference in the US election as a pretext to crack down on homegrown dissent. Putin is not waging a war on US democracy. Rather, US democracy is proving itself increasingly inconvenient to those who expect to dictate electoral outcomes.This three-part series by wine and cannabis writer Tina Caputo explores the past, present, and future of the Emerald Triangle, looking specifically at factors that have made the area a venerable growing region; current efforts to divide the region into cannabis appellations; and questions of whether the region can maintain its preeminence as adult-use legalization hits California in 2018. Ask any cannabis enthusiast today where America’s best buds originate, and the Emerald Triangle will invariably top the list. In fact, the Triangle—a triumvirate including Humboldt, Mendocino, and Trinity counties—grows some of the best cannabis in the world, and has for decades. The region’s rise wasn’t the result of great marketing or even intention; it took a serendipitous confluence of hippie fatigue, cannabis-friendly topography, and prohibition-inspired creativity—not to mention 40 years of growing great pot—to earn the Emerald Triangle a reputation as the nation’s cannabis capital. Now, with prohibition falling away and adult-use legalization set to hit the Golden State in 2018, many are wondering: What will it take for the Emerald Triangle to preserve that reputation? Origins of the Emerald Triangle It all began in the 1960s and 70s with the back-to-the-land movement. It all began in the 1960s and 70s with the “back-to-the-land” movement, when thousands of young people, disillusioned with mainstream society and disheartened by the Vietnam War, moved to the countryside in search of sustainable living. Northern Californians who went “up the country” chose the region now known as the Emerald Triangle for its beautifully remote location a few hours north of San Francisco. The settlers didn’t initially view the area as an ideal place to grow pot, but they soon realized that its rugged terrain and redwood forests provided the perfect cover for illicit farming. “The first folks to move there were part of a group called the Diggers, community activists and organizers from Haight-Ashbury,” says Martin A. Lee, director of Project CBD and author of the book Smoke Signals: A Social History of Marijuana. The group had a passionate interest in ecological restoration, and sought to continue its efforts in the wilds of Northern California. “When they moved to the countryside they quickly encountered the hard realities of earning a living,” Lee says, “and it became easy to grow a little weed on the side. It was really a matter of augmenting what they were already doing to make ends meet. A lot of the impetus was to support their ecological activism.” It didn’t take long for their side hustle to become a significant source of income. The surrounding area offered a relatively easy place to grow cannabis, and its nooks and crannies were difficult for law enforcement to access. It was also fairly close to the Bay Area’s pot-loving population, and word of mouth helped spread knowledge of the Emerald Triangle’s primo products. Ties to Off-the-Grid Living “Part of what made the Emerald Triangle a crucible for the cannabis industry was its proximity to the frontier of the off-the-grid rural environment,” says veteran cannabis grower Scott Davies, owner of Humboldt’s Winterbourne Farms and co-founder of Humboldt Legends. “The industry couldn’t have gotten where it is today, out of sight, in a less-remote place.” Such advancements as the availability of solar power, introduced to the region by back-to-the-lander John Schaeffer, set the stage for the industry’s success. Schaeffer moved to Mendocino County in 1972 to live on a commune with 20 like-minded environmentalists, and soon recognized the need for a one-stop shop where hippies could buy off-the-grid living supplies. He opened the Real Goods store in Willits in 1978. Scott Davies, co-founder, Humboldt Legends The Emerald Triangle became a crucible... The industry couldn’t have gotten where it is today in a less-remote place. Along with drip irrigation systems and organic fertilizers, Real Goods sold the first solar panels available in the United States. When used to charge 12-volt batteries, the panels allowed cannabis farmers—the only ones who could afford to buy the expensive systems—to have electricity out in the woods. “In 1975 or 76, just before I started the store, people were just beginning to grow marijuana,” recalls Schaeffer, who is also the founder of the Solar Living Center. “It was totally secretive at the time—people hardly even wanted to tell their best friends they were doing it. We started to see helicopters flying over the area and people were very paranoid about getting caught and spending years in prison.” Logging was the region’s main industry at the time, and the local population was not cannabis-friendly. “People were very conservative,” Schaeffer says. “It was just logging trucks, apples and pears, and good ol’ boys and girls.” When a man from Schaeffer’s commune decided to run for local office, his political opponent created yard signs that read, “Don’t Let Anderson Valley Go to Pot.” John Schaeffer, owner, Real Goods The early to mid-90s... that's when outsiders started coming in. Despite local hostilities, the cannabis industry continued to expand. “In the early 80s we started hearing about 1,000-plant gardens and people bringing in ‘trimmigrants’ from the outside world to work on the farms,” Schaeffer says. The Emerald Triangle’s timber industry began to collapse around the same time, which slowly began helping to change locals’ attitudes about the cannabis business. Many who had opposed the region’s pot culture suddenly found themselves in need of work, and turned to cannabis growing as a lucrative alternative. It was no longer the hippies versus the rednecks. Even so, cannabis didn’t really become big business until the early to mid-90s, Schaeffer says. “That’s when outsiders started coming in.” The Impact of Cannabis Prohibition—and Repeal Lee believes that rather than hindering the cannabis industry’s development, prohibition helped it succeed. “Ironically, I think it helped magnify the growth of the whole thing,” he says. “Prohibition was a catalyst for a lot of innovation on the part of the growers, because they had to be very creative to avoid law enforcement.” Today the Emerald Triangle supports more than 20,000 cannabis growers, by conservative estimate, and is known around the world as America’s cannabis epicenter. A study has never been conducted to measure pot’s economic importance in the region, but local growers’ organizations confirm that cannabis is—by far—the tri-county area’s most important industry. Today the Emerald Triangle supports more than 20,000 cannabis growers—by conservative estimate. “Cannabis growing is completely out in the open now,” Schaeffer says. “People come into the store and say, ‘I need a solar system for my trimming crew. How many lights should I get?’ Before, no one would ever let on what they were doing. Now you’ve got ‘The Cannabis Hour’ on the local radio station.” Even Schaeffer has gotten into the business, at least peripherally; in 2015 Emerald Pharms, a solar-powered medical dispensary, opened in Hopland right next to the Real Goods store and the Solar Living Center, with Schaeffer as its landlord. “Sometimes I see people walking out with bags from the dispensary and lighting up in the parking lot,” he says. “It’s crazy.” California’s legalization of adult-use cannabis will bring about a new phase of transformation for the Emerald Triangle: On January 1, 2018, the region’s growers will finally be able to step into the light and talk about the factors that make the Emerald Triangle arguably the best cannabis region in the world. (Whether all growers will choose to do so is another story.) When the discussion begins, growers in Mendocino, Humboldt, and Trinity counties will have an important advantage. “What the Emerald Triangle has going for it is a very significant history,” Lee says. “The farmers in this region have a lot of experience and a lot of know-how. They have a name that means something.” How to harness that advantage? The urgency of addressing that question is increasing as 2018 nears. Many key players believe the answer centers around the potential of establishing cannabis growing regions, or appellations, for cannabis, similar to the way in which wines from Sonoma and Napa Valley may be legally labeled and marketed as such. In the next article, we explore the challenges and opportunities associated with such a project. Part Two of this series details efforts to divide California’s cannabis country into distinctive growing regions known as appellations.In July 1857 a sensational murder trial swiftly became the most talked about case in the country. The accused was Madeleine Smith, a young middle-class woman charged with murdering her lover with arsenic. Pierre Emile L'Angelier had attempted to blackmail Smith with their old love-letters once she tried to end their relationship. The Illustrated London News described in detail “the violent illness and sudden death of L’Angelier”, and “the prisoner’s declaration in which she admitted having purchased arsenic but stated that she used it in washing, as a cosmetic…for the alleged purpose of killing rats”. The post-mortem found approximately 88 grains of arsenic in the stomach of the victim, a hitherto unheard of amount, whilst L’Angelier’s diary alluded to feeling ill after being served coffee by Smith. Smith was found not guilty, but the case still gained a lasting notoriety, fed by the Victorian fascination for a new ‘Golden Age’ of poisoning. Joanna preparing the poison for Sir John Cleveland - Reynolds’s Miscellany [PP.6004.b Vol.21 No 525 p.1] Images Online One of the main reasons why poisoning became such a common means of murder in the Victorian era was, quite simply, ease of access. Cyanide was everywhere, in everything from paints to daguerreotypes to wallpapers. As a poison, its effects were unmistakable, including unconsciousness, convulsions, nausea, cardiac arrest and death, often in a matter of seconds. Its speed, from a poisoner’s point of view, was a plus, but its distinctive effects were easily recognisable and hard to pass off as anything but murder. Strychnine, meanwhile, was broadly used as a form of pest control in big cities. In humans, it caused frothing at the mouth and muscle spasms which increased in intensity until the victim died from asphyxiation due to paralysis of the neural pathways. Although a fairly unsubtle way to kill someone, strychnine was a popular poison for some years, favoured by murderers such as Thomas Neil Cream and Belle Gunness. In a particularly sinister instance, The Penny Illustrated reported a case in 1871 in which poisoned food parcels were sent to families in Brighton bearing the message: “A few home-made cakes for the children; those done up are flavoured on purpose for yourself to enjoy. You will guess who this is from; I can’t mystify you, I fear”. As the paper noted, a large quantity of strychnine had recently been obtained from a local chemist by way of a forged order. Despite the popularity of Cyanide and Strychnine, Arsenic was nonetheless the chief poison of the Victorian era. Readily available in a staggering array of forms from flypaper to cosmetics, it was comparatively difficult to detect. A tasteless, odourless compound, its effects could often be written off as food poisoning, making foul play harder to trace. Its popularity led to the Arsenic Act of 1851, which enforced tighter restrictions on its sale and required most arsenic to be coloured indigo to make it harder to disguise. Measures like this, as well as development in the fields of toxicology and pathology, marked the beginning of a decline in the poisoner’s free-for-all of the early 19th century. With poisons becoming more easily traceable and mass media broadcasting their effects more widely, old favourites such as cyanide, strychnine and arsenic gradually became less commonly used. However new drugs and new poisons were developed, with figures such as the notorious Doctor Crippen representing further flowerings of disturbing invention on the 19th century murder scene. Julia Armfield Former Intern, Printed Historical Resources Further reading: Esther Inglis-Arkell, The Deadliest Poisons in History Dartmouth Undergraduate Journal of Science, A Poisonous History of Victorian Society Royal Holloway Victorian MA Blog, Murder! The Glasgow Poisoning Case, July 1857 Douglas McGowan, The Strange Affair of Madeleine Smith (Edinburgh: 2007)The waning months of the Bush administration can be characterized by an avalanche of changes to long-standing rules governing domestic intelligence operations. The revisions proposed by U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey and other top administration officials represent the greatest expansion of executive power since the Watergate era and should been viewed as an imminent threat to already-diminished civil liberties protections in the United States. The slippery slope towards open police-state methods of governance may have begun with the 2001 passage of the USA PATRIOT Act, but recent events signal that a qualitative acceleration of repressive measures are currently underway. These changes are slated to go into effect with the new fiscal year beginning October 1, and are subject neither to congressional oversight nor judicial review. Bush allies in Congress kicked off the summer with the shameful passage by the House and Senate of the FISA Amendments Act, an unconstitutional domestic spying bill that gutted Fourth Amendment protections. With broad consensus by both capitalist political parties, the FISA Act eliminates meaningful judicial oversight of state surveillance while granting virtual immunity to law-breaking telecoms. Despite posturing by leading Democrats, including the party’s presumptive presidential nominee, Sen. Barack Obama, the FISA legislation legalized the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program and set the stage for further assaults on the right to privacy and dissent. Further attacks were not long in coming. In the last month alone, mainstream media have reported that the FBI illegally obtained the phone records of overseas journalists allegedly as part of a 2004 “terrorism investigation.” Other reports documented how the Department of Homeland Security asserts the right to seize a traveler’s laptop and other electronic devices for an unspecified period of time and without probable cause. Still other reports revealed that the administration has expanded the power of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to issue “overarching policies and procedures” and to coordinate “priorities” with foreign intelligence services that target American citizens and legal residents. And on Wednesday, The Washington Post exposed how the federal government has used “its system of border checkpoints to greatly expand a database on travelers entering the country by collecting information on all U.S. citizens crossing by land, compiling data that will be stored for 15 years and may be used in criminal and intelligence investigations.” Ellen Nakashima writes, The disclosure of the database is among a series of notices, officials say, to make DHS’s data gathering more transparent. Critics say the moves exemplify efforts by the Bush administration in its final months to cement an unprecedented expansion of data gathering for national security and intelligence purposes. (“Citizens’ U.S. Border Crossings Tracked,” The Washington Post, August 20, 2008) The Post also revealed that the information will be linked to a new database, the Non-Federal Entity Data System, “which is being set up to hold personal information about all drivers in a state’s database.” Posted at the Government Printing Office’s website, the notice states that the information may even be shared with federal contractors or consultants “to accomplish an agency function related to this system of records.” But perhaps the most controversial move towards increasing the federal government’s surveillance powers were unveiled by the Justice Department in late July. According to the Washington Post, “a new domestic spying measure… would make it easier for state and local police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the sensitive data with federal agencies and retain it for at least 10 years.” New rules for police intelligence-gathering would apply to any of the 18,000 state and local police agencies that receive some $1.6 billion each year in federal grants. These proposed changes, as with other administration measures, were quietly published July 31 in the Federal Register. The McClatchy Washington Bureau reported August 13 that Mukasey confirmed plans to “loosen post-Watergate restrictions on the FBI’s national security and criminal investigations,” under cover of improving the Bureau’s “ability to detect terrorists.” Marisa Taylor wrote, Mukasey said he expected criticism of the new rules because “they expressly authorize the FBI to engage in intelligence collection inside the United States.” However, he said the criticism would be misplaced because the bureau has long had authority to do so. Mukasey said the new rules “remove unnecessary barriers” to cooperation between law enforcement agencies and “eliminate the artificial distinctions” in the way agents conduct surveillance in criminal and national security investigations. (“FBI to Get Freer Rein to Look for Terrorism Suspects,” McClatchy Washington Bureau, August 13, 2008) While the Justice Department’s draft proposals have been selectively leaked to the media, and DoJ is expected to release its final version of the changes within a few weeks, even then the bulk of these modifications will remain classified on grounds of “national security.” Under the new regulatory regime proposed by Mukasey, state and local police would be given free rein to target groups as well as individuals, and to launch criminal intelligence investigations based on the “suspicion” that a target is “engaged in terrorism.” The results of such investigations could be shared “with a constellation of federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and others in many cases,” according to Post reporters Spencer S. Hsu and Carrie Johnson. With probable cause tossed overboard, domestic intelligence as envisaged by the Bush Justice Department is little more than a fishing expedition intended to cast a wide driftnet over Americans’ constitutional rights, reducing guarantees of free speech and assembly to banal pieties mouthed by state propagandists. These changes are intended to lock-in Bush regime surveillance programs such as warrantless internet and phone wiretapping, data mining, the scattershot issuance of top secret National Security Letters to seize financial and other personal records, as well as expanding a security index of individuals deemed “terrorist threats” by the corporatist state. Simultaneous with the release of new DoJ domestic spying guidelines, the Bush administration’s “modernization” of Reagan-era Executive Order 12333, as the Washington Post delicately puts it, also calls for intensified sharing of intelligence information with local law enforcement agencies. In addition to consolidating power within the ODNI, E.O. 12333 revisions direct the CIA “and other spy agencies,” in a clear violation of the Agency’s charter, to “provide specialized equipment, technical knowledge or assistance of expert personnel” to state and local authorities. The latest moves to expand executive power follow close on the heels of other orders and rule changes issued by the Bush regime. As researcher and analyst Michel Chossudovsky reported in June, the Orwellian National Security Presidential Directive 59/Homeland Security Presidential Directive 24 (NSPD 59/HSPD 24), entitled “Biometrics for Identification and Screening to Enhance National Security,” is directed against U.S. citizens. Chossudovsky wrote, NSPD 59 goes far beyond the issue of biometric identification, it recommends the collection and storage of “associated biographic” information, meaning information on the private lives of US citizens, in minute detail, all of which will be “accomplished within the law.” The directive uses 9/11 as an all encompassing justification to wage a witch hunt against dissenting citizens, establishing at the same time an atmosphere of fear and intimidation across the land. It also calls for the integration of various data banks as well as inter-agency cooperation in the sharing of information, with a view to eventually centralizing the information on American citizens. (“Big Brother” Presidential Directive: “Biometrics for Identification and Screening to Enhance National Security,” Global Research, June 11, 2008) Indeed, NSPD 59/HSPD 24 creates the framework for expanding the definition of who is a “terrorist” to include other categories of individuals “who may pose a threat to national security.” In addition to al Qaeda and other far-right Islamist terror groups, many of whom have served as a cat’s paw for Western intelligence agencies in the Middle East, Central and South Asia, and the Balkans, NSPD 59/HSPD 24 has identified two new categories of individuals as potential threats: “Radical groups” and “disgruntled employees.” In other words, domestic anarchist and socialist organizations as well as labor unions acting on behalf of their members’ rights, now officially fall under the panoptic lens of federal intelligence agencies and the private security contractors who staff the 16 separate agencies that comprise the U.S. “intelligence community.” These moves represent nothing less than an attempt by the Bush administration to return to the days of COINTELPRO when the Bureau, acting in concert with state and local police “red squads” targeted the left for destruction. “After 9/11, the gloves come off” Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. national security state has ramped-up its repressive machinery, targeting millions of Americans through broad surveillance programs across a multitude of state and private intelligence agencies. While the FBI, CIA, NSA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may be the federal “tip of the spear” of current intelligence operations, they certainly are not alone when it comes to domestic spying. Outsourced contractors from communications, defense and security corporations such as AT&T, Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Verizon Communications, Northrop Grumman, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), L-3 Communications, CACI International and many more, have collaborated with Bush regime war criminals in fashioning a hypermodern, high-tech police state. That these corporations have staked-out “homeland security” as a niche market to expand their operations has been explored by Antifascist Calling in numerous articles. As I have previously reported, it is estimated that some 70% of the personnel employed by U.S. intelligence agencies are now private contractors holding top secret and above security clearances. Unaccountable actors virtually beyond congressional scrutiny, outsourced intelligence agents first and foremost are employees answerable to corporate managers and boards of directors, not the American people or their representatives. Chiefly concerned with inflating profit margins by overselling the “terrorist threat,” the incestuous relationships amongst corporate grifters and a diminished “public sector” demonstrate the precarious state of democratic norms and institutions in the U.S. New rules governing FBI counterintelligence investigations will allow the Bureau to run informants for the purpose of infiltrating organizations deemed “subversive” by federal snoops. Many of the worst abuses under COINTELPRO, the CIA’s Operation CHAOS and the U.S. Army’s deployment of Military Intelligence Groups (MIGs) for illegal domestic operations during the 1960s, employed neofascists as infiltrators and as nascent death squads. While the Bureau may have eschewed close collaboration with fascist gangs, will sophisticated, high-tech private security corporations now play a similar role in Bureau counterintelligence and domestic security operations? If history is any judge, the answer inevitably will be “yes.” Currently equipping the “intelligence community” with electronic specialists, network managers, software designers and analysts, will defense and security corporations bulk-up the Bureau and related agencies with “plausibly deniable” ex-military and intelligence assets for targeted infiltration and “disruption” of domestic antiwar and anticapitalist groups? It can’t happen here? Why its happening already! As investigative journalist James Ridgeway revealed in April, a private security firm, organized and managed by former Secret Service officers spied on Greenpeace and other environmental organizations from the late 1990s through at least 2000, pilfering documents from trash bins, attempting to plant undercover operatives within groups, casing offices, collecting phone records of activists, and penetrating confidential meetings. According to company documents provided to Mother Jones by a former investor in the firm, this security outfit collected confidential internal records–donor lists, detailed financial statements, the Social Security numbers of staff members, strategy memos—from these organizations and produced intelligence reports for public relations firms and major corporations involved in environmental controversies. (“Cops and Former Secret Service Agents Ran Black Ops on Green Groups,” Mother Jones, April 11, 2008) The firm, Beckett Brown International (later called S2i) provided a range of services for corporate clients. According to Ridgeway, the private snoops engaged in “intelligence collection” for Allied Waste; conducted background checks and “performed due diligence” for the Carlyle Group; handled “crisis management” for the Gallo wine company and Pirelli; engaged in “information collection” for Wal-Mart. Also listed as BBI/S2i records as clients were Halliburton and Monsanto. Mike German, a former FBI agent and whistleblower who is now the policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said that once proposed changes are implemented, police may collect intelligence even when no underlying crime is suspected. This is nothing less than “preemptive policing” and a recipe for tightening the screws on dissent. The Post averred, German, an FBI agent for 16 years, said easing established limits on intelligence-gathering would lead to abuses against peaceful political dissenters. In addition to the Maryland case [that targeted antiwar and death penalty opponents], he pointed to reports in the past six years that undercover New York police officers infiltrated protest groups before the 2004 Republican National Convention; that California state agents eavesdropped on peace, animal rights and labor activists; and that Denver police spied on Amnesty International and others before being discovered. “If police officers no longer see themselves as engaged in protecting their communities from criminals and instead as domestic intelligence agents working on behalf of the CIA, they will be encouraged to collect more information,” German said. “It turns police officers into spies on behalf of the federal government.” (Spencer S. Hsu and Carrie Johnson, “U.S. May Ease Police Spy Rules,” The Washington Post, August 16, 2008) In a related report on Fusion Centers, that German coauthored with Jay Staley for the ACLU, they documented how so-called “counterterrorist” national collection agencies are “characterized by ambiguous lines of authority, excessive secrecy, troubling private-sector and military participation, and an apparent bent toward suspicionless information collection and data mining.” As I reported earlier this month, citing research from German and Staley’s report, U.S. Marine Corps officers, enlisted personnel and an analyst with U.S. NORTHCOM, pilfered intelligence files and shared them with private defense contractors in hope of securing future employment. Money talks, particularly in a political culture where the business of government is, after all, business! With little oversight from a compliant Congress, and an “opposition” party in league with their “constituents”–multinational corporate grifters out to make a buck–the final nails are being hammered into the coffin of America’s former democratic Republic.loltribble Profile Joined April 2015 Netherlands 80 Posts Last Edited: 2015-05-11 09:00:11 May 11 2015 07:57 GMT #1 The champions of the 2 best teams of the world face eachother in the final of the Mid-Season Invitational 2015. Faker’s SKT T1 is facing the triple carry threat, EDward Gaming. A final with 2 midlane world champions facing eachother. Would we be able to see undefeated streaks get broken on champions like Leblanc and Jinx? Game 1 Bengi replied to Clearlove his thrashtalk with a level 2 invade on his red buff. Marin had set-up the invade with a ward placed onto Clearlove's red. Bengi forced Clearlove to recall and steal away his buff. Immediately after, Bengi jumps into the midlane, chasing down Pawn who was chunked down from a 1v1 duel with Easyhoon and blows both his summoners and takes first blood. Bengi his early game took out both Pawn and Clearlove and secured a 1.1k lead for his team after 10 minutes. The first reply from EDG came in the botlane as Clearlove picked up the Thresh Lantern express into a Bang’s Kalista who got ulted by Deft and slowed by Thresh his box, as Meiko secures the kill EDG picks up their first dragon of the game. SKT who had learned from their passive early game against Fnatic collapse onto a recalling Pawn inbetween his middle turrets with 4 members. Pawn his recall got sped up by a death as Clearlove his desperate attempt to save him got punished with a death too. In the meantime, not long after SKT’s midlane aggression, the toplane went crazy. Koro1 picked up a solokill onto Marin by chasing and poking him down! Inbetween all the action, Bengi was continuing his dominating game by obtaining a lot of vision in the blue side jungle of EDG. Koro who was looking to be the biggest threat on EDG’s side again, got a VIP gank assigned to him by not just Bengi but also Wolf. A 3v1 gank onto a low health Gnar was supposed to give SKT the turret and the kill, but as Koro1 activated his super powers to escape by jumping away he picked up a kill with the boomerang onto Wolf! At the 20 minute mark SKT was leading the game by 3k gold and 2-1 in turrets but EDG had a 2-0 dragon advantage at this point. Koro1 was playing a good game but kept overextending and in return he kept being punished by the bloodthirsty SKT members who punished him over and over again for this. A fight at the 3rd dragon where Bengi got caught out in the middle of EDG’s team got turned after a misposition from Pawn who died without using his Shockwave. Right before his death Koro1 landed a 3 men Gnar ultimate into the wall of the ramp but Pawn didn’t force the ultimate onto the SKT members. SKT who wisely kept their backline safe, punished EDG and took out 4 members 1 by 1 and rushed the baron! Eventually Bengi’s overextension lead to a mid turret for his team but a forced escape into SKT’s red side jungle. SKT chased them down and split the low dps composition from EDG up as they pick up 4 kills. SKT continued their domination with more vision control and more punishment across the map. Pushing out their lanes and setting up for the next baron, SKT acknowledged the Kalista strength and took it down with brute force. EDG’s Clearlove who tried to steal the baron got send to a quick death. Marin in the meantime was keeping the backline of EDG busy enough to not be able to reach his carries. SKT cleans up the fight 4-1 and ends the game! Analysis: Bengi was the MVP this game, his early aggression dictated the game and gave his midlaner Easyhoon free farm. Bengi his aggression blew Pawn’s summoners twice in a short amount of time and forced kills onto him. Also his aggressive warding and counterjungling set the pace for this game. Koro1 could not carry this low damage team composition that came out of EDG, nor the lackluster performance from his midlaner Pawn who didn’t seem to be able to land a single proper decisive shockwave or to even position correctly in teamfights. Bang his early QSS build was the key for SKT to keep winning teamfights. All credit to SKT who grabbed EDG by the throat and forced their own playstyle upon them. Game 2 The best start EDG could hope for and the worst for SKT, as a level 1 invade ends up in a 5v5 teamfight going 3-0 in favor of EDG. Meiko picks up first blood and Pawn and Jinx the remaining kills. EDG’s early lead got slightly cut down after a good midlane gank from Marin and SKT focussing their mind onto the toplane and taking down 2 turrets by 10 minutes. Clearlove who was recognizing that Marin his Flash was down, focussed his time onto the botlane to pick up multiple kills onto Marin and forcing him to roam the map. A midlane 4v2 fight came up as SKT collapsed onto EDG, taking out Pawn who strangely enough ran away from his turret but towards Clearlove who came in from the topside river. SKT made quick work of their advantage and take both members down as Koro1, who arrived late to the party, couldn’t influence the fight in his team’s favor. SKT seemed to be coming back into this game after some good aggressive plays coming out from them. EDG grouped up mid as Marin and Easyhoon land a Shockwave/Equalizer combo onto EDG. Only the supports got traded after this aggressive play coming out of SKT but EDG re-engaged after their cooldowns were back up. A unexpected Twisted Advance coming out of the still unkillable Koro1 gave EDG enough peel to let both Deft and Clearlove pick up a double kill each and both mid turrets. As we reached our 20 minute mark, EDG was leading by as much as 6k gold, 4-2 in turrets and 3 uncontested dragons. EDG created a double pick onto SKT, by first taking down Bang and little moments later on Marin to secure their first free baron of the game. EDG was taking it down fast but stopped around 1600 health, whereas Bengi was hovering around the outside of the baronpit, tunneled in and….MADE TOOK THE BARON FOR SKT! Even with the Baron, SKT only bought time to sit out their first loss in the finals as EDG was still leading by more then 5k gold and even zoning SKT from the 4th dragon spawn which they picked up after a crazy teamfight! SKT who decided to rush towards the midlane to take the T2 mid turret, got stopped by the backline of EDG returning to lane and Koro1 teleporting behind the team to take out Bang! Marin took out Deft with an Equalizer and the fight went in slight favor of EDG and set them up for their 4th drake. As EDG picked up their 4th drake, SKT engaged and a 3v3 fight got turned slightly in favor of SKT as the remaining members from both teams arrived at the slaughter site. Easyhoon flanked EDG but didn’t have enough damage to take out Pawn who was picking up a double kill and Deft who positioned himself at max range to pick up a double kill for himself. At the next baron spawn, EDG took it down without letting Bengi even getting a chance to steal it again, which would’ve brought SKT back into the game. EDG forces the middle Inhibitor and the bot T2 turret. They pick up their 5th dragon without SKT stopping them and set up for a final push to take down game 2 and tie the series. Analysis: SKT made a big mistake by taking on a high damage level 1 composition with the amount of cc that EDG was running. EDG threw their lead with some cocky plays but SKT is to credit for their punishing playstyle that has got them to the finals. EDG, on the back of Koro1 and Clearlove got back into the lead and provided enough peel to come out on top in teamfights. Pawn’s his positioning though was questionable again during the teamfights this game. SKT is to blame for their naive level 1 teamfight but, EDG did terrible with throwing their lead and their bad positioning in teamfights. Game 3 EDG taking control almost as quickly as they did in the previous game. A powerful invade from Clearlove forces SKT to back off their own blue buff as Koro1 even teleported in for a potential fight. Showing a lot of aggression, Clearlove, Meiko and Deft commit to a 3 men towerdive and take out 2 SKT members which gives Clearlove a double kill after a flash/snowball onto the low health Bengi. Meiko who again was allowed on his
." The numbers are probably much higher than the reported amount. Pam Fuller, the USGS biologist who runs the agency's Nonindigenous Aquatic Species database, said, "The more fisherman and other locals become accustomed to seeing them, the less likely they are to report them." The USGS will next look into the tiger shrimp DNA for clues to its origins, and asks anyone who spots a tiger shrimp to report its location to the USGS.These are external links and will open in a new window These are external links and will open in a new window Image copyright Reuters Image caption An explosive device was placed on a motorcycle parked nearby, investigators believe A blast in Ukraine's capital Kiev has killed a man and injured three others, including an MP, in what officials say may have been an assassination attempt. The victim - whose identity was not immediately known - was about 30 years old, interior ministry adviser Zoryan Shkiryak said. Among the injured is Ihor Mosiychuk, a lawmaker from the Radical Party. The explosion happened when he and several other people were leaving the headquarters of a TV channel. Mr Shkiryak said initial results of an investigation suggested an explosive device had been placed on a motorcycle parked nearby. No-one has so far said they were behind the blast.Spencer "Hiko" Martin has confirmed that he is looking for a new team after leaving Maximum Effort. Spencer "Hiko" Martin was one of the protagonists of the previous off-season in North America as he attempted to build a dream team from scratch together with Tyler "Skadoodle" Latham. However, after the talented AWPer decided instead to sign for Cloud9, Hiko was left with no choice but to join a pre-existing squad, Nihilum, one of the rising teams in the region. Hiko's future is still up in the air The team ended up failing to reach the heights many expected of them, and things hit a new low when Nihilum pulled the plug on the squad just days before the North American ESL One Cologne qualifier, which they attended under the name Maximum Effort. In recent days, Hiko has been trying out for Team Liquid, who are looking for a potential replacement for Kyle "flowsicK" Mendez after failing to qualify for the Cologne major. For now, his future is up in the air, with the player merely confirming that he has stepped down from Maximum Effort, who recently picked up Daniel "roca" Gustaferri and Timothy "autimatic" Ta from Tempo Storm.tree->generator in Common Lisp with cl-cont 2008-09-01 I’ve decided to try Slava Akhmechet’s cl-cont, a continuations library for Common Lisp. My little example for this purpose was to port the tree->generator function from Teach Yourself Scheme in Fixnum Days to Common Lisp. This function takes a tree and returns a function that will successively yield the leaves of the tree. Here’s the code: (defun/cc tree->generator (tree) (let (generate-leaves) (setf generate-leaves (lambda (caller) (labels ((recur (tree) (cond ((null tree)) ; empty leaf: continue ((consp tree) ; recurse into branches (recur (car tree)) (recur (cdr tree))) ('otherwise ; leaf with a value: (call/cc (lambda (rest-of-tree) ;; update generator (setf generate-leaves (lambda (new-caller) (setf caller new-caller) (funcall rest-of-tree))) ;; return the value (funcall caller tree))))))) (recur tree)) (funcall caller nil))) ; return value after exhaustion (lambda () (call/cc generate-leaves)))) The comments are my own, so I could understand how this function works. I did also add the explicit caller argument to generate-leaves, keeping variables as local as possible is generally a good thing (and I didn’t like those dummy values). These changes aren’t specific to CL, I did a Scheme version with those too. There was one problem that took me quite some time to solve: (SETF SYMBOL-FUNCTION) will always operate on the global binding, so I couldn’t use LABELS to define generate-leaves. Therefore, I had to use this trick of splitting the definition into a LET and a SETF to get a local function definition that could modify its own binding. In contrast, porting the continuations stuff was easy: that worked just like in Scheme. Here’s a little usage example: CL-USER> (defparameter *g* (tree->generator '((1 2) (3 (4 5))))) *G* CL-USER> (funcall *g*) 1 CL-USER> (funcall *g*) 2 CL-USER> (funcall *g*) 3 CL-USER> (funcall *g*) 4 CL-USER> (funcall *g*) 5 CL-USER> (funcall *g*) NIL WerbeanzeigenWhen the Los Angeles Chargers started the season 0-4, it was tempting to think that the season was over. But, as I cautioned, not all 0-4 teams are created equally. And while only one team had ever gone from 0-4 to the playoffs (ironically, the Chargers in 1992), that was a little misleading. Most 0-4 teams don’t make the playoffs because of the 0-4 start *and* because they are bad teams. But if the team is a good team, an 0-4 start is not necessarily a death sentence. Los Angeles is proving that to be the case. Right now, the Chargers rank 7th in the NFL in Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt, and 4th in Adjusted Net Yards per Attempt allowed. The Chargers rank 3rd in the NFL in ANY/A Differential — the difference between those two statistics — and rank 1st in the AFC in that category. Take a look: Take a look: the Y-Axis shows each team’s winning percentage, while the X-Axis displays ANY/A differential. Rk Team ANY/A▼ ANY/A All Diff Win % 1 Los Angeles Rams 8.01 4.96 3.04 0.700 2 Philadelphia Eagles 7.59 4.74 2.86 0.900 3 Los Angeles Chargers 7.38 4.56 2.81 0.455 4 Jacksonville Jaguars 5.81 3.25 2.56 0.700 5 New Orleans Saints 7.95 5.46 2.50 0.800 6 Minnesota Vikings 7.46 5.16 2.30 0.818 7 Pittsburgh Steelers 6.61 4.35 2.26 0.800 8 Atlanta Falcons 7.00 5.67 1.33 0.600 9 Seattle Seahawks 6.65 5.39 1.26 0.600 10 New England Patriots 8.36 7.10 1.26 0.800 11 Washington Redskins 7.07 6.05 1.02 0.455 12 Kansas City Chiefs 7.39 6.49 0.90 0.600 13 Cincinnati Bengals 5.99 5.09 0.90 0.400 14 Detroit Lions 6.87 6.15 0.72 0.545 15 Baltimore Ravens 3.85 3.91 -0.06 0.500 16 Arizona Cardinals 5.70 6.07 -0.37 0.400 17 New York Jets 5.70 6.07 -0.37 0.400 18 Buffalo Bills 5.19 5.68 -0.49 0.500 19 Carolina Panthers 5.33 5.83 -0.50 0.700 20 Tampa Bay Buccaneers 6.46 7.19 -0.73 0.400 21 Tennessee Titans 4.98 6.05 -1.07 0.600 22 Houston Texans 6.04 7.13 -1.09 0.400 23 Chicago Bears 5.09 6.25 -1.16 0.300 24 Dallas Cowboys 5.62 6.78 -1.17 0.455 25 Green Bay Packers 4.95 6.65 -1.71 0.500 26 Indianapolis Colts 5.47 7.32 -1.85 0.300 27 Denver Broncos 4.50 6.58 -2.08 0.300 28 New York Giants 5.12 7.21 -2.09 0.182 29 San Francisco 49ers 4.73 7.09 -2.37 0.100 30 Oakland Raiders 6.00 8.47 -2.47 0.400 31 Miami Dolphins 4.82 7.45 -2.63 0.400 32 Cleveland Browns 3.10 6.95 -3.85 0.000 Of course, with a 5-6 record, it’s easy to see why the Chargers have been overlooked. But Los Angeles is the biggest outlier in the NFL when it comes to ANY/A Differential vs. Winning Percentage. Take a look: Los Angeles is third in ANY/A, but below-average in winning percentage. The Redskins and Bengals are the only other teams with positive ANY/A differentials but average or worse winning percentages. On the other side, the Titans and Panthers have “overachieved” in this category, along with the Patriots. A few years ago, I wrote about where each Super Bowl champion ranked in a number of key metrics, including ANY/A differential. Other than record and Pythagorean record, the average Super Bowl champion ranked better in ANY/A differential than any other key metric. And last year, the top two teams in ANY/A differential met in the Super Bowl. At 5-6, the Chargers may not quite be a Super Bowl contender yet, but there are certainly in the running for biggest Super Bowl contender in history among teams that were below.500 entering December. Of course, while going from 0-4 to the playoffs is very Chargersesque, so is being a Super Bowl contender but missing the playoffs.Dogged by accusations that she is too close to financial firms because of the speeches she gave to them for large honorariums, Hillary Clinton has said she will release the transcripts of those speeches on one condition: that her opponents do the same. Clinton's argument is that to require she disclose those transcripts unilaterally would be to hold her campaign to a different standard than the others. If Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and the Republican candidates release the transcripts of their speeches, then she will, too. There's only one hitch: The other candidates may not be able to meet the Clinton standard. Sanders, for example, has noted that he hasn't given speeches to financial firms. He can't as a senator. And now, Gov. John Kasich's presidential campaign says that he has no transcripts to make public. "There is nothing to release," said Kasich's spokesman Rob Nichols. "We don't have anything." The absence of transcripts is not because Kasich didn't give speeches. He did. He was part of multiple speaker bureaus while he served as managing director at Lehman Brothers and hosted "Heartland with John Kasich" on Fox News. He'd charge between $20,000 and $30,000 a pop to discuss topics like "The Battle for America's Soul," "American Values: Doing Well by Doing Good" and "The Power of Ordinary People." Nichols called it an a-la-carte arrangement in which Kasich and others advertised by the bureau would be available to different entities. Sometimes, two people would appear together to give a talk. But Kasich spoke off the cuff at a lot of these, according to Nichols. And he didn't have a person with him to transcribe the remarks, though some of them made their way on to the Internet. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's (R) presidential campaign did not return a request for comment for this piece. But he would not have given paid speeches during his time in the Senate, and it is unlikely he gave them during his time in the Bush administration as a policy adviser or as Texas' solicitor general. The leaves Donald Trump, who definitely has given paid speeches, and whose campaign, likewise, did not return a request for comment. The businessman appears to be the main target of the Clinton campaign's everyone-jumps-together policy on making transcripts public. Brian Fallon, a Clinton spokesman, pointed The Huffington Post to a comment he made on Wednesday morning about the topic that referenced Trump only.Traditional machine learning uses handwritten feature extraction and modality-specific machine learning algorithms to label images or recognize voices. However, this method has several drawbacks in both time-to-solution and accuracy. Today’s advanced deep neural networks use algorithms, big data, and the computational power of the GPU to change this dynamic. Deep learning is essentially an attempt to simulate the senses of sight and hearing, which implies that the applications are as many as there are specific uses for understanding sounds or images. Here are some use cases compiled from various sources. References are available at the end of this article. Image recognition 1. Image Tagging– Facebook has millions of labeled photographs with which to train the algorithms that automatically tag friends in uploading images (see “Facebook Creates Software that Matches Faces Almost as Well as You Do”) 2. Identifying items in real time and help blind and visually impaired people recognise the physical world through their smartphone app (Aipoly, an iPhone app uses technology based on a convolutional neural network trained by Teradeep Deep Learning Software on a 10 million image dataset) 3. Recreating paintings from great masters– A group of researchers at the University of Tubingen, Germany, have developed an algorithm that can morph an image to resemble a painting in the style of the great masters. (A photograph of apartments by a river in Tubingen, Germany was processed to be stylistically similar to various paintings, including J.M. Turner’s “The Wreck of a Transport Ship,” Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night,” and Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.” Read more.. 4. Drug discovery through medical imaging-based diagnosis using deep learning- (find out how Butterfly Network is building a device that will make medical imaging accessible to everyone in the world. It’s a breakthrough that will save millions of lives) 5. Optical Character Recognition which is scanning of images. It’s gaining traction lately to read an image and extract text out of it and correlate to the objects found on image 6. Identifying emotions from video or still images Affectiva is an MIT Media Lab spinoff that uses deep learning networks to identify emotions from video or still images. 7. Identifying company brands and logos in photos posted to social media to help tracking brand presence at events or locations, compare brand performance with competitors, and target advertising campaigns. Ditto Labs has built a detection system that uses deep learning for this purpose. Natural language processing Automatic speech recognition • Speech Recognition for voice based searches like Android OS, Siri or Cortana • Analyzing conversations: identifying speakers, keywords, critical moments, and time-spent-talking, and deducing group take-aways from conference calls. For example Gridspace brings conversational awareness to communications. Translation • NLP is used by Google Translate on the phone. It recognizes text from images and able to translate it from/to 20 languages Speech-to-text (transcription) • Processing text from human speeches- Natural Language Processing (NLP) is used heavily in language conversion in chat rooms. Text-to-speech • Dango is a floating assistant that runs on your phone and predicts emoji, stickers and GIFs based on what you and your friends are writing in any app. Suggesting emoji is hard: it means Dango needs to understand the meaning of what you’re writing in order to suggest emoji you might want to use. see here the engineering behind Dango Drug discovery and toxicology • Deep neural networks (DNN) trained on large transcriptional response data sets can classify various drugs to therapeutic categories solely based on their transcriptional profiles (here’s a paper on Deep learning applications for predicting pharmacological properties of drugs http://www.kurzweilai.net/deep-learning-applied-to-drug-discovery-and-repurposing) • Institute of Bioinformatics found that deep Learning excelled in toxicity prediction and outperformed many other computational approaches like naive Bayes, support vector machines, and random forests. • Understanding of diseases, genetic therapies: How both natural and therapeutic genetic variation changes cellular process such as DNA-to-RNA transcription, gene splicing etc. Deep Genomics applies deep learning to make predictions in these areas. Customer relationship management and Adtech • Brand voice– Using deep learning to helps marketers and advertisers identify the right audiences to target on social platforms and suggest what they should say to customers based on the data (example Affinio http://www.affinio.com/blog/deep-learning-disrupting-social-marketing-and-advertising) • Audience Segmentation: Segment social audiences across multiple platforms, based on an unsupervised identification and segmentation of naturally forming tribes, and extracting the unique features from these tribes. • Content Recommendations: Once specific audience segments have been identified, recommend content (topics, phrases, wording, images, videos, etc) that brands should create based on what is being discussed, shared, published and reviewed within these communities. • Ad targeting Using the combination of natural segmentation and content recommendation capabilities, to suggest who to target as well as keywords, images, etc to use in ad design. • Sponsorships Deep learning can be applied to find out exactly how often the brand appears during the telecast of a sports event Recommendation systems i). Sentiment Analysis and Opinion Mining– Sentiment analysis, also called opinion mining, is the field of study that analyzes people’s opinions, sentiments, evaluations, appraisals, attitudes, and emotions towards entities such as products, services, organizations, individuals, issues, events, topics, and their attributes. It represents a large problem space. here’s an interesting paper on this topic ii). Automatic music recommendation can be addressed through deep learning that has become an increasingly relevant problem in recent years, since a lot of music is now sold and consumed digitally. iii). Subjectivity detection, word sentiment classification, document sentiment classification, and opinion extraction Gaming Artificial intelligence is learning to play Atari games. The Atari addict is a deep-learning algorithm called DQN. The general-purpose DQN learning algorithm could be the first rung on a ladder to artificial intelligence. Fraud detection • A continuous evolution of methods is a prime characteristic of internet frauds. The deep learning algorithms are able to analyze potentially tens of thousands of latent features (time signals, actors and geographic location are some easy examples) that might make up a particular type of fraud, and are even able to detect “sub modus operandi,” or different variants of the same scheme. Autonomous driving • Today’s car crash-avoidance systems and experimental driverless cars rely on radar and other sensors to detect pedestrians on the road. But a vision-based safety system has remained elusive in cars because computers typically face a tradeoff between analyzing video images quickly and drawing the right conclusions. A pedestrian detection system based on deep neural networks can perform in close to real-time based on visual cues alone and bring significant improvement to the existing approach. • By bypassing the hardcoding of detection of specific features — such as lane markings, guardrails or other cars — and avoid creating a near infinite number of “if, then, else” statements, which is too impractical to code when trying to account for the randomness that occurs on the road DAVE2 created a robust system for driving on public roads Preventative Monitoring (anomaly detection) Malware has proven increasingly difficult to detect via signature or heuristic-based methods, which means most Antivirus (AV) programs are woefully ineffective against mutating malware, and especially ineffective against APT attacks (Advanced Persistent Threats). Typical malware consists of about 10,000 lines of code. Changing only 1% of the code renders most AV ineffective. Deep Instinct applies artificial intelligence Deep Learning algorithms to detect structures and program functions that are indicative of malware. Read more.. Building your own use cases: Nervana provides a deep learning framework called neon that allows you to build your own use-case around deep learning networks and a cloud service to import and analyze data using deep learning models. The integration of sight and sound will affect the following fields among a myriad of others: 1. Medical applications – there are tremendous advances in robotic surgery that relies on extremely sensitive tactile equipment. However, if a doctor can advise a robot to “move a fraction of a millimeter to the left of the clavicle” they could potentially gain more control by directing the robot via full understood voice control. 2. Automotive – we are already seeing self driving cars; deep learning will possibly integrate into automated driving systems to detect and interpret sights and sounds that might be beyond the capacity of humans. 3. Military – drones are particularly well suited to deep learning. 4. Surveillance – here too drones will play a role, but the idea of computers that are able to sense and interpret with a human-like degree of accuracy will change the way in which surveillance is done. Futuristic Ideas The way deep learning is solving longstanding human problems by visualizing and grasping the things around us and reading them in context, it would be possible to apply these ideas into lot many areas in the days to come. With huge deep learning capabilities these problems can be addressed in the near future. 1. Conversational cues: you are part of a discussion on a topic you are not very much familiar with. You can just turn on your smartphone app power by deep learning and it will listen to the conversation and suggest ideas (or even facts) that you can contribute to the discussion. 2. Suggesting actions based on mood- your app might know you so well based on your recent conversation, messages, time of the day and recent developments in your life it might suggest you real life actions like watching movies, working out, calling a friend etc. more like a close friend. So deep learning, working with other algorithms, can help you classify, cluster and predict. It does so by learning to read the signals, or structure, in data automatically. When deep learning algorithms train, they make guesses about the data, measure the error of their guesses against the training set, and then correct the way they make guesses in order to become more accurate. This is optimization. Now imagine that, with deep learning, you can classify, cluster or predict anything you have data about: images, video, sound, text and DNA, time series (touch, stock markets, economic tables, the weather). That is, anything that humans can sense and that our technology can digitize. With deep learning, we are basically giving society the ability to behave much more intelligently, by accurately interpreting what’s happening in the world around us with software. References: Deep Learning Use Cases for Computer Vision Thirteen Companies That Use Deep Learning To Produce Actionable ResultsBrooklyn Trans Hate Crime Victim Going Home with Brain Injuries Kimy Hartman has an uphill climb ahead after suffering brain damage from a transphobic beating last month, and friends have set up a fundraiser to defray ongoing medical costs. Kimball "Kimy" Hartman, the survivor of a vicious transphobic assault last month that left her with a traumatic brain injury, was finally able to leave the hospital today, New Alternatives for LGBT Homeless Youth announced in a statement. Hartman's identity had been kept confidential until now. A 28-year-old transgender woman of color, she has been at the Bellevue Hospital Traumatic Brain Injury Rehabilitation unit since October 12, when four unidentified men punched, kicked, and hit her in the head with a piece of plexiglass near her home in Brooklyn's Bushwick neighborhood. Hartman's assailants allegedly yelled antigay slurs at her and a gay male companion before attacking. Her friend escaped with only minor injuries. Still suffering from brain damage, Hartman will require constant supervision at home, as well as 10 medications per day, intensive outpatient brain rehab, and additional neurosurgery to replace a missing portion of her skull, according to New Alternatives' statement. An online fundraiser has been set up to help Hartman with these expenses, as well as those related to her car, which was towed while she was incapacitated. Two of Hartman's four attackers were caught on surveillance tape near the crime scene, but police have as yet been unable to identify them. The NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force is still investigating the attack. Hartman's assault comes amid a rash of anti-LGBT violence in Brooklyn, including a September attack where three young men allegedly fired shots at a gender-nonconfirming person in Bushwick (the unidentified victim was treated for minor injuries and released), while a gay man was attacked with a hammer in the lobby of his Crown Heights apartment building by an unidentified assailant yelling antigay slurs on the same weekend Hartman was attacked. Anyone with information relevant to the case should call 1-800-577-TIPS (8477), text tips to 274637 (CRIMES) then enter TIPS 577, or report them at NYPDCrimeStoppers.com.In situations that require an additional degree of stealth, Newport’s police department will soon have a remote-controlled rover robot at its disposal. At the Newport commission meeting Monday, Duke Energy presented Newport Police Department with check for $9,000 to pay for what the city calls a “SWAT-Bot.” The robot’s prototype was created at Northern Kentucky University. An officer discovered the robot on campus, and began exploring the idea of deploying one on the city’s police force. Since then, several entities, including Checkmate Robotics, Duke Energy and the informatics department at NKU, worked on plans to build a robot for the Newport Police Department. The robot can be controlled from up to a half-mile away, turn in any direction, and climb up stairs if needed. In addition to deploying the robot in particularly risky situations, SWAT-BOT will also be used to show off the college’s STEM programs. “This isn’t the end of a project. This is the beginning of a relationship that entails all of us,” said Lt. Paul Kunkel of the Newport Police. “We’re going to work on improving and adding to the robot. Our police department must embrace technology, and when it comes to community policing, I don’t think it gets any better than this.” Other notes: John Salisbury, co-founder of the Newport-based technology company Nexigen, shared another update on the timeline for implementing a “Smart City” initiative in Newport, which includes the construction of several nodes around Newport that will give off a publicly accessible Wi-Fi signal. The nine-foot-tall nodes will include electrical ports to charge electronics, two 55-inch monitors, and a tablet to access the internet. Salisbury hopes to add charging ports for hybrids once the nodes are installed. Salisbury said the tablet’s internet would be heavily filtered, in an attempt to quell some of the problems other cities have had with users looking up salacious or offensive material on public internet. Local businesses will receive a discounted rate for advertising on the nodes in an attempt to ease some of the tension caused by larger companies advertising on nodes outside of local competitors in other smart cities. The nodes will also compile data on passing pedestrians, including their gender, race, and ethnicity, on what Salisbury compares to a Microsoft Excel sheet. The nodes will not take pictures of passers-by. When one attendee questioned the necessity of the data compilation, Salisbury said recording demographics would help attract advertisers and businesses to the city. “There will be no personally identifying information in this data. We wouldn’t even want the risk of having any of that, because it comes with a tremendous amount of liability,” said Sailisbury. “Privacy was our number one concern. It has a constant video stream, but doesn’t actually record any video. It just takes the script and records the same information that you make from taking a quick glance at someone.” Salisbury said 70 percent of the build-out for the Wi-Fi project is complete, and implementation of the first two nodes on Monmouth and York streets is on track for early 2017. After seeing the smart city initiative start to take form in Newport, Salisbury said Cincinnati is looking into applying a similar initiative to its downtown. “Talk about energy and passion…this guy doesn’t stop,” said Commissioner Tom Guidugli, motioning to Salisbury. “This is one of the best ideas in the country, and that’s why people are chasing you down. It’s a really exciting time.” Nexigen and the city of Newport will present the smart city initiative and plans for the nodes at NKU on October 3. For the second half of the Carothers Road renovation, commissioners unanimously moved to again work with TEC Engineering Inc., which designed the road’s first renovation that was completed recently. The renovation, paid for by federal funds with 20 percent city match, will eliminate overhead electric and replace sidewalks and curbs on Carothers Road from Firestone Auto Care to Monmouth Street. The approved grant is for $1.2 million, and the city plans to apply for another grant to cover the remaining 10 percent of costs. The city estimated the design phase would take about six months, after which they hope to award construction bids in April, and complete the project around October 2017. City Manager Tom Fromme also urged residents to report any issues of vandalism in Newport, citing five recent mast arms that required fixing, costing the city more than $200,000. Anyone who provides a tip leading to the arrest of a vandal is subject to receive a $250 award, though Fromme says no one has taken advantage of the incentive since it was implemented 20 years ago. “It’s frustrating for us, and it should be frustrating for the taxpayers, because they’re the ones paying to fix this,” said Fromme. The next Newport Commission Meeting will take place on Monday, October 24 at the Newport Municipal Building. The meeting will begin at 7 p.m. Written by Alex Valentine, RCN contributorALPHYS VS. UNDYNE CHAPTER 1 One otherwise relatively normal day in the Underground, a rather intense rivalry was rapidly beginning to form between the area's cutest lesbian couple; namely, the weeaboo lizard geek known as Alphys and the equally weeaboo fish warrior known as Undyne. Literally everyone was talking about it, and from the looks of things, it certainly seemed like it wasn't exactly about to die down anytime soon either...much to everyone's dismay. AT GRILLBY'S BAR IN SNOWDIN... "So, uh...what exactly is this so-called RIVALRY you speak of, Sans?" Papyrus asked his brother, who was busy chugging down ketchup right out of the bottle while Papyrus drank a nice, cold bottle of soda like any normal person with half a brain would. "Well, uh...lemme put it to you this way, shall I?" Sans shrugged, setting his bottle down on the bar. "You know how married couples always end up having nasty fights with each other?" "UGH...yes..." Papyrus sighed, remembering how Asgore and Toriel had literally attempted to burn each other alive with their own fire magic over a petty divorce dispute at one point. "Well, it's basically that...only even WORSE!" Sans explained, jumping out at Papyrus and making a scary face at him for emphasis. "WAUGGGH!" Papyrus screamed, lurching back in shock. "Well, if it's really that bad, then I suppose there's really nothing we can do about it, is there?" "We can always start our own rivalry between ourselves, can't we?" Sans suggested with a smug shrug and a sly wink. "Guess you could say we'll get each other's..." "SANS..." Papyrus warned him, knowing well in advance how bad of a pun he was about to make. "Each other's..." Sans snickered, trying not to bust out laughing. "SANS!" Papyrus sneered at him, already boiling with pent-up rage. "BONES rattled!" Sans chuckled with a shrug and a wink as always, prompting the local cameraman to zoom in dramatically on him while Grillby played the classic BA-DUM-TSSH sound effect on his drum kit in the background, just for maximum cheesiness effect. "SANS, YOU SON OF A SNITCH!" Papyrus yelled furiously at him as he tackled him onto the floor, where the two of them engaged in an intense fistfight with each other, filling the entire restaurant with a massive ball of stars and dust and forcing everyone to evacuate as the dust's reaction with Grillby's fire caused the whole place to explode. "Heh, I guess you could say Grillby went out with a..." Sans snickered. "DON'T YOU. EVEN. DARE." Papyrus hissed into his ear menacingly. "BANG." Sans chuckled with yet another shrug and yet ANOTHER wink. "Sans, for the love of God, are you even TRYING anymore?" Papyrus sighed, facepalming. "To piss you off? Why, of COURSE!" Sans laughed, patting him on the back. AT THE BURGER PLACE IN MTT RESORT... "HOLY SHIT, TAKE COVER, BRO!" Burgerpants screamed as him and his reluctant best friend Nice Cream Guy frantically ducked underneath the cash-register table to avoid the onslaught of food that was now being thrown everywhere thanks to Alphys and Undyne. "YOU'RE NOTHING BUT A FAT, SMELLY, ANIME-WATCHING TUB OF LARD!" Undyne yelled furiously at her girlfriend Alphys, throwing a whole tomato at her...or TRYING to, anyway. "Say, what's going on up there...(SPLAT!)...damnit, I should have known!" Burgerpants groaned, not even bothering to wipe the slimy, seedy tomato juice off of his face. "I can help you clean that shit off if you want, you know!" Nice Cream Guy suggested, sticking out his tongue lovingly and cradling Burgerpants in his arms. "Man, GET the fuck out of my face with that shit!" Burgerpants hissed in disgust, shoving Nice Cream Guy away from him before anything gayer could happen between the two of them. "Undyne, you eat like a fucking PIG with Down Syndrome!" Alphys yelled at Undyne, hurling a Glamburger at her, which she then ate...and then immediately spat out in disgust. "Jesus Christ, what in the hell is this frickin' burger MADE out of?" Undyne retched. "Sequins and glue...JUST LIKE YOUR FUCKING UNREALISTIC, BULLSHIT IDEALS OF HOW WOMEN SHOULD LIVE THEIR LIVES!" Alphys yelled at Undyne, throwing a chair at her. "Hey, everyone can be a man if they fucking TRY...which is most definitely something YOU oughta try doing sometime!" Undyne yelled back, narrowly lunging out of the way of Alphys' chair and throwing an entire Mettaton-shaped table loaded with food at her in retaliation. "God damnit, you're driving me fucking BANANAS!" Alphys sneered at Undyne, tackling her face-up onto the floor and jabbing a pair of bananas into her eyes. "GUYS!" Nice Cream Guy yelled at them, lunging in and breaking the two of them up before they could cause any more damage to the restaurant or to each other. "Okay, you know what? I'm very sorry about jabbing phallic-shaped fruit into your eyes." Alphys apologized to Undyne, grabbing her by the hand and pulling her back up onto her feet. "And I'M sorry for stabbing phallic-shaped VEGETABLES into your eyeballs!" Undyne laughed, slapping Alphys on the back so hard that she accidentally spat one of her loose teeth out. "Aww, I love you so much!" Alphys blushed and giggled, cuddling Undyne's massive legs. "You too, pumpkin!" Undyne blushed equally, lifting Alphys up and cradling her in her burly, muscular arms with a hug and a kiss...which, of course, caused Alphys to pass out from sheer embarrassment. "Alphys and Undyne, lying in a bed! F-U-C-K-I-N-G!" Burgerpants rolled on the floor laughing after seeing how ludicrously fast the two of them had gone from literal romantic food-fighting to cuddling each other. "Oh, gee, look who's TALKING, am I right?" Nice Cream Guy snickered, tightening his signature collar around Burgerpants' neck and pulling on the leash seductively. "UHH...Alphys? I, uh...I THINK maybe we should go now, if you don't mind!" Undyne stammered, tapping Alphys on the shoulder nervously. "NEVER..." Alphys gasped in ecstasy, blushing intensely and wagging her tail and drooling at the mouth in arousal as the now-completely-naked Nice Cream Guy proceeded to strip Burgerpants' clothes off and lovingly rape the hell out of him. "Well, I suppose since you never had a girlfriend, I'M probably the closest thing you'll ever GET to one, dare I say!" Nice Cream Guy laughed with a rather noticeable lisp, girlishly playing with his hair as he thrust his blue-balled weiner right into Burgerpants' tight, smelly asshole, roaring a mighty roar as he filled Burgerpants' butt with his love. "OHHH, this shit right here is just living proof that opposites attract...I honestly don't think I've ever had a more passionate love/hate relationship with anyone else in my entire life." Burgerpants moaned, panting and drooling with arousal as he lovingly stroked and caressed Nice Cream Guy's nipples and sucked on his firmly erect penis like the gay, throbbing, muscular lollipop it was. "Oh, MAN...I'm going to straight-up CREAM myself in, like, literally TEN FREAKING SECONDS if you keep THAT up!" Nice Cream Guy moaned in ecstasy while Burgerpants glared at him seductively, sucking and sucking and sucking some more while Nice Cream Guy whipped him with the leash. "OH, YOU'RE SUCH A LOYAL FRIEND...OH, HOW I WISH I HAD TREATED YOU WITH MORE RESPECT BACK IN HIGH SCHOOL...OH, GOD, I THINK I'M GONNA BLOW...OHHHHHHHHHH!" Nice Cream Guy screamed orgasmically as his dick finally blew its glorious, pint-sized load into Burgerpants' eagerly awaiting mouth. "So...how does my Nice Cream taste, brother?" Nice Cream Guy purred lovingly as he placed Burgerpants' chubby little cock in between his toes and began stroking it rapidly. "OHHH...SO GOOOOD..." Burgerpants
crashed during the freestyle competition – during which competitors perform mid-air tricks over a series of jumps – but was not injured and returned to win gold in the best trick final. On Sunday, a young male spectator was hurt during that competition as a runaway snowmobile crashed into a group of fans. The fan was examined by X Games medical staff and released to his father. He was not hit by the snowmobile. Bodin, who is from Sweden, said he has known the Moore brothers for three or four years. "He's very motivated," Bodin said of Caleb Moore. "If he really wants something, he's a hard worker. Whatever it takes to get a medal." He also spoke of Caleb Moore's "big heart. He's been helping me out, not really getting anything back. He just likes to help people." Bodin, who suffered a serious neck injury while riding a snowmobile last year, spent time training with the brothers in Texas before the X Games and then at Electric Mountain Lodge in Colorado. The friends would support each other when traveling through the United States and Europe to compete. "This year we decided to work together," Bodin said. "I fly over to his house and things were going well. It's just so crazy… I still can't believe what's happened here." A Give Forward website that has been set up to raise money for Moore's medical bills topped $26,000 by midday Thursday. Australian Jackson Strong is auctioning the snowmobile he used during the X Games on eBay to help raise money for the family. As of Thursday afternoon, the bidding stood at $8,900. Contributing: Roxanna Scott“Hey!” Eileen says as she walks up to me. “Hey.” I smile at her, “How was the walk?” I ask, not sure exactly what I wanted to talk to her about or why I asked her here. I just needed to get out of the Grotto. “Oh, you know, fire and brimstone. Zombies were rising from the ground. I almost didn’t make it.” She smiles. “Well good thing you did.” I say. “Yea?” She asks with a flirty smile. Usually I turn girls away, but I don’t with Eileen. It feels good and I realize why I text her. I need to move on. Autumn seems happy with Dr. Douche. While I don’t like him and I’ll still try to dig around to make sure Autumn isn’t in danger, I can’t stay hung up on her. I can still protect her and be happy, right? “Yea,” I reply, smiling at her, “I was looking forward to meeting you here.” “Well, now I’m here.” She says softly, stepping closer. She smells fresh and a little sweet, different than Autumn. In fact, she’s entirely different than Autumn. She confident and outgoing, flirty and open with her feelings. I know how she feels being here with me. She’s not hiding it. “Do you want to take a walk?” I ask her. “Sure, I’m down for anything.” She says, falling into step beside me. We walk down the street, back towards campus, talking. My words come easily with Eileen and having no past together is almost a relief. Being with her is a breath of fresh air. I know exactly where I stand. We stop outside my dorm she turns to me. “Can I tell you something?” Eileen asks, looking at me. “Of course.” I say, smiling. “When we met the other day, I knew that it was going to happen. I saw you and Cal at the party the other week and asked Cal about you. He said he’d introduce us.” She explains. “I didn’t know he was just going to leave us awkwardly like that though.” I laugh. “Yea, Cal likes to mess with people.” I say, looking at her. “So you stalked me then, huh?” I tease. “What, no!” She laughs. “You just looked like a fun person to be around.” “Well, thanks. I’m glad you noticed me.” I tell her. “Yea? Why’s that?” She asks, stepping close to me. I’m quiet for a moment, thinking of Autumn. “I want to move on.” I say quietly. “Well, I’d like to help with that.” She whispers. Eileen moves forward closer to me and gently places her hands on my sides. She’s so close our breaths combine. A soft breeze swirls around us, teasing our hair. She smiles and stands on her tip toes, our lips nearly touching. I cup her head with my hands and lean forward, closing the small distance between us. We kiss, softly. Her lips are warm against mine. After a moment she steps back and smiles at me. “I better get going. I’ll see you soon?” She asks. I smile, gently squeezing her hand. “Yea, I’ll text you tomorrow.” I watch her walk away, feeling good. Maybe, in time, I’ll feel great. Autumn will be just a friend, a sister, and I can move on with Eileen. If Autumn didn’t share my feelings, what was the point of hanging onto that wish? I smile to myself and make my way towards my dorm room, weariness weighing down my steps. It’s been a long day. AdvertisementsI’m just going to put this out there right away… I love flowers. Whether for a special occasion or if my husband surprises me “just because”, I enjoy having a fresh bouquet of pretty flowers in my home. Not only do I love the colors and look, the smell of fresh flowers is appealing too. Teleflora has some great choices in their NEW Mother’s Day 2017 bouquets line up that I wanted to share with you today. Sending a big thank you to Teleflora for these gorgeous flowers! Teleflora combines the time-honored tradition of sending flowers along with the technology filled world of today through their advanced florist network of over 13,000 member florists throughout the US and Canada and another 20,000 located outside of North America! Simply place an order on their Teleflora website and know that a beautiful bouquet will be hand-arranged by a local florist who will utilize the best and freshest flowers available in your area that match your request. No pre-packaged flowers or boxes here, as the Teleflora florists work quickly and professionally to ensure arrangements are artistically arranged locally. Plus, Teleflora guarantees satisfaction with every gift order! Now, on to some of the Mother’s Day 2017 line up: Sparkle & Shine Bouquet Bold Elegance Bouquet Artisanal Beauty Bouquet Splendid Garden Bouquet My local florist delivered their personal style and spin of the Teleflora Bold Elegance Bouquet right to my front door this week. Since Teleflora wants to offer each recipient the best and freshest arrangement possible, my local florist utilized a softer pink theme. The bouquet I received is the Premium Bold Elegance and the arrangement is quite big. The flowers look great and smell absolutely amazing too! Do you have a special mom in your life who would love some flowers for Mother’s Day? Buy It: Head over to Teleflora to see for yourself the great selection of bouquets and gift options that they offer. Connect: Don’t forget to like Teleflora on Facebook, follow them on Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, and subscribe to their You Tube Channel for all the latest news and promotions. Win It: Teleflora is generously offering one of our lucky readers $75 plus free delivery to use on their website (by the expiration date)! This giveaway is open to the US and Canada and will end May 9th, 2017. For your chance to win, enter the Giveaway Tools below. Good luck! Entry Form I’m a city girl turned country by my awesome husband and we have three busy boys and two darling daughters. I love spending time with my family, reading Karen Kingsbury novels, and catching up with friends while our kiddos have play dates. I’m blessed beyond measure and can’t wait to see what God has in store. Follow Miranda on Pinterest | Twitter| Blog | Instagram http://www.emilyreviews.com/category/miranda Related posts we've written:Mass Muslim Marriage in Gaza Muhammed married a six year old bride. But Islam has evolved in 1500 years. In Hamas land, in 2009, the brides are almost seven. 450 Grooms Wed GIRLS Under Ten In Gaza by Paul L. Williams, Ph.D. Thelastcrusade.org A gala event has occurred in Gaza. Hamas sponsored a mass wedding for four hundred and fifty couples. Most of the grooms were in their mid to late twenties; most of brides were under ten. Muslim dignitaries including Mahmud Zahar, a leader of Hamas, were on hand to congratulate the couples who took part in the carefully staged celebration. We are saying to the world and to America that you cannot deny us joy and happiness, Zahar told the grooms, all of whom were dressed in identical black suits and hailed from the nearby Jabalia refugee camp. Each groom received a gift of 500 dollars from Hamas. The pre-pubescent girls, dressed in white gowns and adorned with garish make-up, received bridal bouquets. "We are presenting this wedding as a gift to our people who stood firm in the face of the siege and the war," Local Hamas strongman Ibrahim Salaf said in a speech. The wedding photos tell the rest of the sordid tale. The International Center for Research on Women now estimates that there are 51 million child brides now living on planet Earth and almost all in Muslim countries. Twenty-nine percent of these child brides are regularly beaten and molested by their husbands in Egypt; twenty six percent receive similar abuse in Jordan. Every year, three million Muslim girls are subjected to genital mutilation, according to UNICEF. This practice has not been outlawed in many parts of America. The Islamic practice of pedophilia dates back to the prophet Muhammad, who amassed eleven wives and many concubines after the death of his first wife Khadijah in 619 A.D. After Muhammad's elderly wife, Khadijah, died in 619 A.D., he amassed eleven wives. He arranged the visits to the tents of his women around their menstrual cycles. His capacity for sexual congress seemed to be boundless. Sahih Bukhari, one of the most Revered Islamic texts, recounts: The Prophet used to visit his wives in a round, during the day and night, and they were eleven in number. I asked Anas, "Had the Prophet the strength for it?" Anas replied, "We used to say that the Prophet had the [sexual] stamina Of thirty [men]." [1] For in-between treats, the Prophet kept a stable of concubines, including Reihana, his Jewish captive. His wives and mistresses were compelled by Islamic law to satisfy his sexual needs at any time of the day or night, and the Prophet reserved the right to enjoy them from the top of their heads to the bottom of their feet. [2] This might not appear shocking to students of the Kinsley Report, except for the case Of Aisha, Muhammad's favorite wife. Aisha was the daughter of Abu Bakr, the Prophet's closest friend and most faithful follower. As soon as Muhammad laid eyes on Aisha, he came to fantasize having sex with her. There was a problem with this fantasy. Aisha, at that time, was a small child of four or five, while Muhammad was a middle-aged man of fifty. [3] Still and all, the Prophet wasted no time in making his fantasy a reality. When Aisha turned six, Muhammad asked Abu Bakr for his daughter's hand in marriage. Abu Bakr thought that such A union would be improper - not because Aisha was a mere child but rather because he considered himself Muhammads brother. The Prophet quickly brushed aside this objection by saying that the union was perfectly right in the eyes of Allah. Abu Bakr consented. And Muhammad took the little girl as his new bride. When they were married, Muhammad, in his mercy, permitted Aisha to take her toys, including her dolls, to their new tent.[4] The marriage was consummated when Aisha was nine, and the Prophet fifty-three.[5] The three year waiting period was not caused by Muhammad concern of sexually molesting a child. But rather by the fact that Aisha contracted some disease which caused her to lose her hair. [6] Pedophilia was not only practiced by Muhammad but also sanctioned by the Quran. In its discussion of the waiting period required to determine if a wife is pregnant before divorce, the sacred text says if you are in doubt concerning those of your wives who have ceased menstruating, know that their waiting period shall be three months. The same shall apply to those who have not yet menstruated.(65:4). Those who think that modern Muslims have abandoned this teaching should study the pictures and videos that accompany this article and recall the words of Ayatollah Khomeini, the most famous Islamic cleric of the 20thCentury: A man can have sexual pleasure from a child as young as a baby. However, he should not penetrate; sodomizing the child is OK. If a man penetrates and damages the child, then he should be responsible for her subsistence all her life. This girl, however, does not count as one of his four permanent wives. The man will not be eligible to marry the girl's sister. It is better for a girl to marry in such a time when she would begin menstruation at her husband's house rather than her father's house. Any father marrying his daughter so young will have a permanent place in heaven. [7] [1]Sahih Bukhari, 1:268, translated by M. Mushin Khan, Muslim Student Association, The University of Southern California, 2001, www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/fundamentals/hadithsunnah/bukhari [2] Ibn Ishaq,Sirat Rasul Allah, pp. 525-526. [3]Sahih Bukhari, 5: 235. [4] Ibid., 8:151, 5:234. [5] Ibid, 5:62, 63. [6] Ibid, 8:151. [7] Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini,Tahrirolvasyleh, volume 4 (Gom, Iran: Darol Elm, 1990), p. 186. » go to Atheists of Silicon Valley home page « » go to Debate page «Most sports fans and athletes believe in hot streaks. A basketball player who has hit several shots in a row, the thinking goes, has a greater chance of hitting the next one, due to a "hot hand." Think of Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry, who recently hit 77 straight three-pointers in practice. Yet for a long time, scientists were skeptical. In 1985, a hugely influential study by a trio of psychologists argued that the hot hand was a myth. Among the NBA and college players they studied, hitting one shot made no difference in their odds of hitting the next shot. Like coin tosses, players were subject to the laws of probability, with the same baseline percentage chance of hitting every shot. Ever since that study, psychologists have held up fans' belief in the hot hand as an example of human irrationality: our tendency to see patterns in randomness. Now, however, it's starting to look like the hot hand might be real after all. Psychologists thought it was just our tendency to see patterns in randomness A handful of studies published over the past few years have suggested that basketball players, pro bowlers, and volleyball players can indeed heat up, boosting their normal accuracy rates by several percentage points for longer stretches of play than you'd expect from chance. And last week, a new study found one of the strongest pieces of evidence for the hot hand yet. The researchers looked at 29 years' worth of data from the NBA three-point shooting contest and found that players who hit three or more shots in a row had a 6.3 percent higher chance of hitting the next one, compared with their baseline rate. "It could be simple variation in concentration, or the player entering an unconscious flow state, or positive feedback from hitting one shot boosting your confidence for the next," says Joshua Benjamin Miller, an economist and co-author of the new paper. "We don't really know what's causing it, but the patterns are there." The 1985 study debunking the hot hand was incomplete The 1985 study that supposedly dismissed the hot hand — by psychologists Thomas Gilovich, Robert Vallone, and Amos Tversky — looked at three sets of data: every shot taken at home by the 1980 Philadelphia 76ers, every pair of free throws taken by Boston Celtics players from 1980 to 1982, and the results of a controlled shooting experiment with the Cornell University men's and women's basketball teams. They found that in all three sets, a player who had just hit a shot was no more likely to hit the next one. They also found that clustered streaks of hit shots didn't occur any more often than you'd expect by chance. A player who makes 50 percent of his free throws is no different from a coin: every shot he or she attempts has a 50 percent chance of going in, regardless of what happened previously. And any hot streak is purely the result of chance — just like a run of tails when flipping a coin. The tests weren't sensitive enough to pick up hot streaks But there was a problem with that 1985 study. "They used only very particular data that lacked the desired resolution and also didn't use powerful enough statistical tests," says Gur Yaari, a computational biologist who's found some of the recent evidence for the hot hand. In short, the significance tests the researchers used weren't nearly sensitive enough to pick up hot streaks. This was proven by a 2003 paper in which computer scientists Kevin Korb and Michael Stillwell created a fake data set and fed it into the same analysis used in 1985. The fake players sometimes got really hot hands (hitting 90 percent of their shots for 10-shot periods), but most of the time the analysis failed to pick it up, erroneously interpreting it as random variation. As mathematician Jordan Ellenberg puts it in his book excerpt about the hot hand: If the test is less sensitive, it will declare the results of the experiment insignificant, whether or not there's really an effect. If you look at Mars with a research-grade telescope, you'll see moons; if you look with binoculars, you won't. But the moons are still there! Newer studies show evidence for the hot hand The earliest evidence for the hot hand came from a handful of studies looking at larger data sets of NBA players' free-throw attempts. When players made multiple attempts in a row, those who hit their first shots were about 2 percent more likely to hit their second shot. This isn't exactly what fans classically think of as the hot hand — which usually involves taking shots during live play, rather than free throws — and it could be explained by other sorts of mechanisms, such as the first shot correctly calibrating the player for the second shot. But it still suggests that basketball players aren't the robotic shooters we thought, even at the free-throw line. Analyzing shots taken during live play is much more difficult for a few different reasons. One is that if a player has hit several shots in a row, the defense is likely to guard him or her more closely, forcing more difficult shots. And there's some evidence that players on a hot streak become overconfident, taking excessively hard shots of their own accord. These factors might be why the original 1985 paper found a slight negative correlation between a made shot and a player's odds of hitting the next. But last year, using optical tracking technology to correct for these effects, a group of researchers analyzed every shot taken during the 2012-'13 NBA season. When they compared shots of identical difficulty, they found that players who'd made an uncommonly high percentage of their previous four shots had a 1.2 to 2.4 percent increased chance of hitting their next shot. It's a small effect, and could be the result of impossibility of precisely determining the difficulty of every shot taken during live play. So the co-authors of the new paper — economists Joshua Miller and Adam Sanjurjo — looked at data from the NBA's annual three-point contest, which started in 1985. The shots are taken from set locations on the floor, so consecutive shots from the same spot should be equally difficult. But they found that players who hit three or more straight shots had a 6.3 percent elevated chance of hitting their next one. It's not a huge amount, but as they point out, the difference between an average NBA three-point shooter and an elite one is 10 percentage points. It calls to mind the legendary Super Nintendo game "NBA Jam," in which the announcer would declare a player who'd hit three straight shots to be "on fire," almost guaranteeing him to hit his next shot (and causing the net to literally burst into flames). This finding also fits in with a study the economists published last year, using data collected from controlled shooting experiments. And it even jibes with a bit of work done by other researchers in other sports. The top 100 bowlers in the Professional Bowlers Association, Yaari has found, tended to bowl more games at the high- and low-scoring extremes, compared with their averages, than you'd expect from a random distribution of the data. Bowlers and ballers alike, it seems, can get a hot hand. So what's causing these hot streaks? Yaari splits potential explanations for the hot hand into two broad groups. The fact that an NBA player has hit his last few three point attempts might cause him to have an increased chance of hitting the next one. Perhaps it increases his confidence, or the support of his teammates or the crowd somehow makes him a better shooter. Or there might just be a correlation between the previous few hits and the next shot. Maybe they're both the result of a window in which a player's legs are fresher, or some unknown environmental conditions make shooting easier. This would increase a player's odds of success, but it doesn't mean that one success causes the next one. "When they hit a few in a row, they just keep doing what they're doing" At this point, we really don't know which category these hot streaks fall into, and it could be a mix of both. But one clue, Miller says, is that in most of the NBA data, we see clusters of hits, but not misses. The cold hand is much less common than the hot hand. He suggests this could be evidence that one hit is causing the next one, through conscious decisions made by the players. "Maybe when players miss a few in a row, they adjust," he says, "but when they hit a few in a row, they just keep doing what they're doing." Even if hot hands exist, fans might still overrate them However, all this doesn't rule out the possibility that hot streaks do exist but that fans and players also overestimate their degree in a way very similar to the "hot hand fallacy" described in the 1985 paper. Humans are notoriously prone to seeing patterns in random numbers, and even in these recent studies, players don't get quite as hot as many fans like to think is possible. "The fact that a statistical feature exists in large data sets doesn't mean that people accurately describe the long-term trends based on short series in real time," Yaari says. In the new paper, Miller and Sanjurjo suggest discarding the term "hot hand fallacy" and describing this tendency with one that's a bit softer: "hot hand bias."Congressional Republicans and Democrats praised the Justice Department’s decision to appoint Robert S. Mueller III as special counsel to investigate possible coordination between Trump associates and Russia in the 2016 campaign — sparking a rare moment of bipartisanship on Capitol Hill over a politically charged issue. Nevertheless, the Senate and House committees conducting their own inquiries pledged to move forward, setting up a complex landscape of potentially conflicting investigations — and competing goals. Democrats have accused Republicans of making a show of investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia. Several of them, along with some Republicans, said Wednesday that the news of a special counsel investigation should not slow down Congress’s work — and Republican leaders pledged that it wouldn’t. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.), whose panel is conducting one of five congressional probes that are directly or indirectly looking into Russian activity, was among those who hailed the news while also declaring that “our task hasn’t changed.” “By having someone like Bob Mueller head the investigation assures the American people that there’s no undue influence, be it here or be it at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, or within the Justice Department or FBI,” Burr said. Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, was more forceful. “The appointment of a special counsel is not a substitute for a vigorous investigation in Congress and the House Intelligence Committee will take steps to make sure our investigations do not conflict and ensure the success of both efforts,” he said. “We will also want to make certain that the special counsel has all the resources it needs to undertake this important task.” (Victoria Walker,Jayne Orenstein,Dalton Bennett,Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post) The announcement came toward the end of a day in which a growing number of congressional Republicans expressed fresh concerns about the news that President Trump had divulged highly classified information to Russian officials — and the report that he had urged former FBI director James B. Comey to drop his investigation into former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn’s ties to Russia. Throughout the day, lawmakers sounded some of their most aggressive notes toward Trump since he took office. Some GOP lawmakers drew parallels to Richard M. Nixon and the Watergate scandal that sank his presidency, while others raised the possibility of impeachment if Trump’s conversation with Comey is determined to have been an obstruction of justice. Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.), who has often clashed with Trump and other GOP leaders, replied “yes” when a reporter asked whether there could be grounds for impeaching Trump, if Trump’s request of Comey was confirmed. Meanwhile, the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary committees asked the FBI for documents related to Comey, who was leading an investigation into Russian interference in the election before Trump fired him last week. The widespread approval of Mueller’s appointment followed several weeks during which many congressional Republicans, including House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), declined to call for one. Before Wednesday, many of them touted the congressional investigations as sufficiently independent entities. But in the hours after Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein announced the move, Republicans spoke mostly about it positive tones. “My priority has been to ensure thorough and independent investigations are allowed to follow the facts wherever they may lead,” Ryan said in a statement. “That is what we’ve been doing here in the House. The addition of Robert Mueller as special counsel is consistent with this goal, and I welcome his role at the Department of Justice.” By Wednesday evening, McConnell had not commented on Mueller’s appointment. Rep. K. Michael Conaway (R-Tex.), who is leading the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation into Russian meddling, said his panel’s investigation will continue. “If we find criminal things … we’ll definitely refer those to Justice,” he said. “But the importance of our investigation I don’t think is diminished in the least.” That sentiment was echoed by many lawmakers already participating in ongoing investigations. “This effort should in no way be allowed to impede the ability of the Senate Intelligence Committee to conduct and conclude its investigation into the same subject,” said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). “It is my hope that these investigations will now move expeditiously.” Lawmakers also heaped praise on Mueller’s credentials. “Mueller is a great selection. Impeccable credentials. Should be widely accepted,” tweeted House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah). Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.), one of his party’s most imperiled lawmakers in next year’s elections, said Mueller “has got a good background in terms of not being partisan and I hope he gets down to the bottom of what really is a growing list of allegations.” Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.), another embattled incumbent, tweeted that appointing Mueller was the “Right thing to do and the right choice.” But senior Democrats cautioned that Mueller should be permitted a wide berth as his investigation commences. “A special prosecutor is the first step, but it cannot be the last,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a statement. She reiterated her caucus’s support for an independent commission to also probe the matter, saying that Mueller “does not negate the need for vigorous congressional investigations.” Pelosi called on the Justice Department to allow Mueller to review “Trump’s attempt to intervene” on behalf of Flynn. Similarly, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, said Mueller’s probe “should extend to the circumstances that led to the president’s abrupt dismissal of James B. Comey, and to other critical matters that arise.” Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), chairman of the generally pro-Trump House Freedom Caucus, was one of the few lawmakers to offer some caution about Mueller’s appointment. Although Meadows called the appointment “a prudent move,” he also suggested that Mueller “comes with more credibility on the Democrat side than on the Republican side,” a remark he said was based on “sworn testimony that he’s given here on Capitol Hill since I’ve been here.” Earlier in the day, Republicans were leveling serious criticism against Trump over his controversies and edging closer to acquiescing to the long-standing Democratic demands for an independent investigator. Still, many rank-and-file GOP members said Wednesday that they were not alarmed by the explosive reports about the president’s conversations with Comey and Russian officials. Ryan and McConnell spent much of the day trying to direct public attention beyond the firestorm. Rep. Robert B. Aderholt (R-Ala.) was among the lawmakers who claimed to be untroubled by the developments. “It’s very clear there are a lot of people who want to see the president distracted,” said Aderholt, adding that back in Alabama, there is “a lot of frustration that they’re not allowing him to do his job.” The uneven response has fueled widespread anxiety on Capitol Hill about the future of the ambitious agenda Republicans embarked on after assuming control of Congress and the White House in January. Republicans recognize that if they turn fully against Trump, they will lose their most critical legislative partner. But they are also showing increasing worry that standing firmly with a president blanketed in controversy is no longer tenable. “It is a serious issue the way other scandals have been serious issues,” said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who the previous evening had compared the current imbroglio to the Watergate saga. “What I was saying was that these scandals need to be completely — all the information needs to get out as quickly as possible so we can resolve the issue and move forward,” said McCain. The revelation that Comey had written in a memo that Trump pressured him to drop an investigation into Flynn compounded earlier worries about Trump’s decisions to share highly classified material with Russia and abruptly oust his FBI chief. Asked if the allegations facing Trump concern potentially impeachable offenses, Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) said, “I don’t want to go there. I don’t know yet.” But the beginnings of the scandal that ultimately prompted Nixon’s resignation, Simpson said, “was a lot similar to what was going on now: Ah, ‘fake news,’ ‘bad reports,’ ‘that didn’t happen,’ etc., etc., etc. Well, yeah, this did happen, and then the next day something else happens, and pretty soon you’ve got an avalanche of stuff.” Asked about GOP lawmakers making comparisons to the Watergate scandal, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Trump was focused on his visit Thursday with the Colombian president and preparing for his trip to the Middle East and Europe that begins on Friday. Paul Kane, David Weigel, Karoun Demirjian, Kelsey Snell and Amber Phillips contributed to this report.International scouting has come a long way since 1995, when the SuperSonics faxed a memo to EuroBasket officials before the tournament’s quarterfinals saying that they’d drafted “a Lithuanian,” without feeling a need to specify. The papers figured the Sonics had drafted Zydrunas Ilgauskas, who would become an All-Star; they’d actually drafted Eurelijus Zukauskas, who would never play in the NBA. It’s evolved since 2002, when Nuggets GM Kiki Vandeweghe drafted Nikoloz Tskitishvili sight unseen with the fifth overall pick because his assistant had traveled to Italy and marvelled at Tskitishvili’s ability to drain 3s and execute crossovers as a 7-footer in an individual workout; Skita had played only about a dozen games of high-level basketball to that point, and flamed out as one of the biggest busts in NBA draft history. Teams have dedicated international staffers now, along with a network of consultants. The sport is ever-expanding, but we aren’t diving into the world of international basketball blindly anymore. Dragan Bender is the latest prospect in a long line to be transmogrified by the International Man of Mystery Machine. The 18-year-old has been considered the best young talent outside the States, and a top-three stud, for more than a year. He’s best known for his projected draft position, which had remained static for much of the year. Familiarity breeds contempt, and it’s fair to wonder why a kid who can’t seem to get off the bench for Maccabi Tel Aviv would be handed the no. 3 spot in the upcoming draft. But it’s also fair to wonder why, given his entrenched status near the top of the big boards, he hasn’t been seriously factored into the more prestigious Ben Simmons–Brandon Ingram debate at no. 1. The International Man of Mystery is never his own person. He is a referendum on the state of global basketball; he is the vague shadow of his antecedent; he is the wild card, the gatekeeper, the headache that front-office decision-makers would prefer to avoid completely. It’s easier to go with the devil you know — the devil that comes with a season full of readily available tape and stockpiles of anecdotal evidence from coaches and scouts. Risk is inherent in every draft selection, but the panic that accompanies selecting the top overseas player is uniquely amplified. Maybe it’s a matter of semantics, but this draft isn’t necessarily bound to the idea of best player available (an age-old construct established to reward consensus anyway), but rather, the best talent available. Since there is no singular prospect lording over the rest of the draft, what teams are looking for is players with specific abilities that can serve as a passageway into the modern NBA. Franchises suddenly need players who project the ability to shoot, pass, defend three positions in multiple ways, and do it all with a smile. There is usually a clear-cut favorite for the top spot in any given draft, but how often does that consensus prove prescient? There is a bit of a trend that emerges in the past six drafts. The best player, or at least the player who would likely go first overall in a redraft, has followed a type: Paul George in 2010, Kawhi Leonard in 2011, Anthony Davis in 2012, Giannis Antetokounmpo in 2013, Nikola Jokic in 2014 (your cries of “WIGGINS?!” are duly noted), and Karl-Anthony Towns in 2015. These are the faces of contemporary basketball, in all its shapes and sizes — and only two of them (Davis, Towns) went no. 1 overall. Ben Simmons checks off a lot of the boxes, but so does Dragan Bender. This is where the Croatian tantalizes: He has remarkable lateral quickness for a 7-foot-1 player, which bodes well for his ability to switch on screens and guard smaller, quicker players on the perimeter; he’s shown potential as a weakside defender, given his length; he was a savvy facilitator at the junior levels, and while he hasn’t been given the same kind of trust in Tel Aviv, it’s a skill that reflects an individual’s capability more than the talent level of his peers. Most importantly, he’s improved as a shooter every year: In 2013–14, Bender shot 17.2 percent from 3 on 29 attempts; this season, he’s more than doubled up on both his attempts and efficiency. His confidence in his shot is growing, too. In his 39 games so far this season, Bender has attempted at least three 3-pointers in 12 of them (including five games of at least five attempts), and has shot 42.3 percent from the arc in those games. And he kind of smiles! At least four of the first five prospects taken in the upcoming draft will be big men (or at least have the potential to be positioned as big men) who teams hope will one day occupy as many interlocking circles in the league’s skills Venn diagram as possible. Positionality itself is not normative, it is learned and subject to change. So why not target the youngest player in the draft — a tabula rasa who possesses as broad a skill set as anyone in this class? Well, for starters, NBA franchises are awfully bad at sticking to a dream. They want their multidimensional spaceman, and they want him now. Bender is entering the field in a post-Process world, where patience is a virtual death sentence. Both the Sixers and Lakers, the two teams at the top of the draft, are under enormous pressure to turn their fortunes around as quickly as possible. The Lakers are officially (reportedly) taking the Croatian prodigy out of consideration at the no. 2 spot. New Sixers GM Bryan Colangelo would face an optics disaster if he drafted Bender. It would be a bookend to his mortifying decision to select Andrea Bargnani with the no. 1 pick in 2006 when he was the GM of the Raptors. Bender won’t be able to escape Kristaps Porzingis’s shadow, even though they have different games. It’s just the nature of the machine. Bender idolized Toni Kukoc growing up, and that’s at least a feasible window into the player he projects to be — a versatile, perimeter-leaning big man with the kind of imagination to one day operate as a second (or third) facilitator on the floor. It’ll be difficult for Bender to make the kind of immediate impact Porzingis just did
distance at the trial. Uecker, however, gave a written statement later to Congressman Allard Lowenstein in 1975. At that point, Lowenstein was seriously considering calling for a reinvestigation of the case. In his statement, Uecker said: [T]here was a distance of at least one and one-half feet between the muzzle of Sirhan’s gun and Senator Kennedy’s head. The revolver was directly in front of my nose. After Sirhan’s second shot, I pushed his hand that held the revolver down, and pushed him onto the steam table. There is no way that the shots described in the autopsy could have come from Sirhan’s gun. When I told this to the authorities, they told me that I was wrong. But I repeat now what I told them then: Sirhan never got close enough for a point-blank shot. Richard Aubrey heard the shots and saw a blue flame from the gun. He told the LAPD that Sirhan was six or seven feet ahead of Senator Kennedy.Vincent DiPierro told the Grand Jury that Sirhan was four to six feet from Kennedy. Hamill put the gun at a distance of at least two feet from Kennedy; Minasian put the gun barrel about three feet away; Schulte put it six feet away, and Urso said the distance was “three to six feet”. This US Naval record from June 1943 states Hubbard “acts without forethought as to probable results.” L. Ron Hubbard, whose father had been in the Navy, must have fumed over the assessment. In fact it haunted him so much that we find the strange appearance of it in the alleged diaries of Sirhan. At trial, Sirhan had no memory of writing them before the assassination on September 25, 1965 Sirhan fell from a horse and was hospitalized for the head injury. This would have made him particularly susceptible to hypnotism. Hubbard, of course, was considered an excellent hypnotist by his peers. Sirhan allegedly writes: “results, results, results, results….” Jerry Lambert (born December 27, 1940) is a retired American jockey. Also, there was a Jerry Lambert who was a major advertiser and owner of Lambert Pharmical Co, maker of Listerine. Another fact of both the RFK and JFK assassinations is that after both men were killed, someone on the police force on the scene at the time “squelched” the radio. In police terms, a squelch is when someone holds down the transmit button on the radio and nobody else can put a signal through to dispatch because the officer is transmitting silence. In both assassinations, this squelch lasted a matter of minutes. It is also true in Pavlov’s theories, that when dogs were trained to hear the sound of a whistle each time they were delivered food, they started to salivate, even when no food was brought, only the sound of the whistle. Pavlov writes that in order for the experiment of controlling the dogs to be effective, they need a few moments of silence after the action so that they don’t lose their tempers. This was called “classical conditioning.” The Bavarian Ministry Report, “What is Scientology” reports the following: “Behind the cloak of a new religion, this organization described as a psycho-group and not as a religious community by the Investigative Commission was able to skillfully hide its salient structural traits until recently, namely organization and logistics of a commercial corporation; expansionist strategies of an aggressively functioning structural distribution system (marketing of franchises by forming chains of subsidiary companies, hard-selling of human leadership and change in the form of social engineering. In other words, ruthless of psychological and social techniques borrowed from behavioral psychology in order to recruit workers, customers and members; use of totalitarian organization techniques to thoroughly discipline and instrumentalize its workers by constant control in terms of time and space.” for more information regarding the JFK radio dispatches see: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/dpdtapes/ ““In the wake of the assassination, all hell broke loose on the two radio channels used by the Dallas Police Department. Although complicated by a technical glitch that took out Channel 1, the Dallas cops swung into action to clear the president’s path to Parkland hospital, to find the killer or killers, to run down a variety of false leads and nuisances, and finally to capture the killer of one of their own.” for more information regarding the RFK radio dispatch see: “Commander Carroll Kirby – Shortly after receiving the commendation from Brath, Commander Kirby reported reading a survey response I had written. I was immediately transferred into the Inspection and Control Section of the Office of the Chief of Police. Among other members of Kirby’s staff was a Senior Administrative Assistant who had worked in SUS. On the night of June 5th, 1968 Kirby had been the Captain Commanding LAPD’s Communications Division. He had shown up at the Ambassador Hotel, unexpectedly a few minutes after Bobby was shot and just as a nine-minute unexplained radio blackout had prevented officers from broadcasting descriptions of the girl in the polka dot dress and others who had been involved in Kennedy’s murder. In 1993 I got to listen to those tapes and I saw how evidence had been destroyed, time lines altered and a conspiracy concealed.”4 4 http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/pandora/rfk.html SHAMELESS PROMOTION (the etymology of an idiom) In fact, Hubbard acts with such bravado, he actually advertises his efforts within the context of the assassinations themselves. We know for a fact that Hubbard sold books in his religion and offered self-improvement courses for his adherents. The diary, allegedly written by Sirhan Sirhan, states: It is my allegation that Hubbard introduces this information as hypnotic writing to broadcast his efforts with subliminal messages to the public. Then Sirhan Sirhan allegedly writes: Hubbard is the one who considers himself an “author.” This is entirely out of context for Sirhan. In fact, the entire comment regarding how the “multitudes of people are in harmony with his thoughts and feelings” is entirely characteristic of the delusions of grandeur suffered by Hubbard. Then there is the similarity between Sirhan Sirhan and Hubbard in terms of the movement from block to cursive writing within their texts. This is a look at the variation in Sirhan’s diary. This is a look at the changes in Hubbard’s work. Hubbard’s vocabulary, lexicon, or choice of diction is of interest here. Note the use of the word “incident” It is strange to me because it is complex term for a foreign born citizen of the US to be using. See: In this caption, Sirhan is a “writer” (also more in line with Hubbard’s persona then Sirhan’s) and also note the use of the word “abysmal” (also a fairly complex linquistic for a foreign born Sirhan). Sirhan Sirhan was given $1750.00 by the Argonaut Insurance Company. The legendary Greek epic of the Argonaut involves the dethroning of a king (Pelias) and the preparation of a ship that sailed to Greece during the course of these events. During the death of RFK, Hubbard bought the ship The Royal Scotsman and sailed to Greece. The $1750.00 payment to Sirhan by the Insurance Company is for a bump on the head Sirhan allegedly sustained while working as a ranch hand in Corona, California. The ranch is less than thirty minutes from Gilman Springs, where Hubbard set up his Golden Era movie production Studios. Since the late 1950’s Hubbard was experimenting with mind control. An early letter to the FBI by a concerned citizen reports that a woman is flabbergasted by her husband’s materials detailing Soviet Mind Control Techniques and she expresses concern to the FBI about Hubbard’s potential use of this process. She is so concerned about what she finds in her husbands things, she turns both her husband and Hubbard in for investigation. Specifically, Hubbard was using hypnosis as a means of manipulating the human will. It is most likely that Sirhan was a victim of these experiments and was controlled by Hubbard in the course of these events. That is why Sirhan has no memory of ever shooting RFK and cannot recall the bulk of his own actions at the time. “Sirhan Sirhan testified that he had no memory of the shooting. The last thing he remembered was sitting at the bar and being asked by a pretty girl: “Pour me a cup of coffee with plenty of milk and sugar!” And than he saw this shiny coffee urn. The next thing he remembered was being hit by someone and forced against the steam table in the pantry. Therefore, he maintains that he has absolutely no memory of any occurrence directly connected to the shooting. Some people have put forward the theory that this is due to his hypnotized state; this caused whole sections of his memory to be deleted and other memories to be put in, in which nothing occurred, more or less. Proof that Sirhan Sirhan was not self-hypnotized comes from the actual process of forgetting. The experts I have asked all state that in self-hypnosis, one always remembers at least the actual act of hypnotizing oneself. Only when one is hypnotized by another person to carry out a specific action does the phenomena of memory gaps occur.”4 4 An Interview with Larry Teeter, by Paul Nellen, Hamburg, Germany, 1994 “Los Angeles (CNN) — A woman who witnessed the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy says she has agreed to testify for Sirhan Sirhan’s new defense team. Nina Rhodes-Hughes insists Sirhan was not the only gunman firing shots when Sen. Kennedy was murdered only a few feet away from her at a Los Angeles hotel. She says there were two guns firing from separate positions and that authorities altered her account of the crime. “What has to come out is that there was another shooter to my right,” Rhodes-Hughes has told CNN. “The truth has got to be told. No more cover-ups.” RFK assassination witness willing to testify for Sirhan Sirhan’s lawyers By Brad Johnson and Michael Martinez, CNN updated 11:30 AM EDT, Mon July 9, 2012 Trial of Sirhan Bishara Sirhan, Vol 19:pp 5329-5604, 6 Mar 1969 – 10 Mar 1969 Thousands of pictures taken in the kitchen at the moment of the shooting were collected by the Los Angeles Police Department and burned during the course of investigation. It is entirely unknown at this time who ordered the incineration of so much evidence or what could have possibly motivated that act. At the time Sirhan was arrested, Among Sirhan’s possessions, a large brown envelope from the Internal Revenue Service on which someone had written, “RFK must be disposed of like his brother was.” In 1967 respondent (IRS) sent petitioner (HUBBARD) a letter revoking its exemption following audit of petitioner’s records which was in part sparked by litigation involving the tax-exempt status of an affiliated Church of Scientology. Hubbard’s obvious upset over the IRS investigation and the Sirhan envelope forgery on IRS materials further substantiate the credibility of the claim that Hubbard acted knowingly against the Kennedy’s. Then of course, is another compelling handwriting comparison. DESTROYER ESCORTS ” Campaign worker Sandra Serrano, out at a staircase behind the hotel, later heard some “backfires,” and then watched as a woman in a polka dot dress and a male companion burst out of the hotel shouting “we shot him, we shot him” Serrano asked who, and the woman replied “Senator Kennedy.” This incredible account was corroborated by LAPD Officer Paul Sharaga, who arrived quickly at the back lot of the hotel and set up a command post there. He was told a nearly identical story by an elderly couple named the Bernsteins, who told him that a man and a woman in a polka dot dress ran past them, gleefully shouting “We shot him! We shot him!” When queried, the girl replied, “Kennedy, we shot him! We killed him!” ______________________________________________________ HATTED OPERATIONS “In Scientology, it’s a crime to not wear your hat. Not only that, but it’s a crime to prevent people from wearing their hats, and even a crime to prevent people from wearing their hats better… It’s well known that people get royally done in Scientology. But it’s not so well known that it’s a crime for Scientologists to take people’s hats away from them when they’re doing them. It’s a crime to pretend to wear a hat while preventing its action from occurring. Heck, it’s a crime in Scientology to wear no hat at all. A hat in Scientology is a big responsibility, in fact, a duty. David Miscavige, the current Scientology leader, takes his hat as seriously as he takes himself. He orders all Scientologist to wear their hats, even though by doing so he turns them all into criminals, because it’s a crime in Scientology to have to be ordered to wear one’s hat.” (Armstrong vs. Scientology). “Handling” is a very interesting subject in Scientology. In fact, in Hubbard’s technical bulletins, Vol 4., 1960-1961, reference to the term “handle” occurs 190 times in the document. Then, in an argument among the “hats”, a state of disbelief emerges in the Dallas Police Department. “The mechanism is this: All problems are preceded by a Prior Confusion” L. Ron Hubbard, HCO BULLETIN OF 2 NOVEMBER 1961 SHAMELESS PROMOTION PART 2 A very interesting shot not included in the original exhibits. These are the books surrounding the alleged shooting area. They are books from the Scott Foresman Publishing Company. Scott Foresman is the publisher for Applied Scholastics Books, the Scientology based educational concern. Lee Harvey Oswald was the clerk responsible for the Scott Foresman inventory. From the Warren Commission Testimony of Bonnie Ray Williams: Mr. BALL. Did you see Oswald on the sixth floor that morning? Mr. WILLIAMS. I am not sure. I think I saw him once messing around with some cartons or something, back over the east side of the building. But he wasn’t in the window that they said he shot the President from. He was more on the east side of the elevator, I think, messing around with cartons, because he always just messed around, kicking cartons around. Mr. BALL. What was his job? Mr. WILLIAMS. His job was an order filler. Mr. BALL. What do you mean by that? Mr. WILLIAMS. I mean by that an order filler–when orders come in for the State schools mostly, from Austin, he would take the orders and fill the orders. If the orders called for a certain amount of books, he would fill that order, and turn it in to be checked, to be shipped out. Mr. BALL. You say he would fill the order. He would go and get books? Mr. WILLIAMS. He would get books. As an order filler you had access to all the floors, all seven floors. Mr. BALL. And were the cartons that you are talking about containers of books? Mr. WILLIAMS. Yes, they were. Mr. BALL. Would a checker–would an order filler go to the different floors and take books out of canons? Mr. WILLIAMS. Yes, sir. The order filler would have to, in order to fill the order–he would have to move around to each floor, and take the books that he needs. Mr. BALL. Then where would he take the books? Mr. WILLIAMS. Down to the first floor. Mr. BALL. And what was on the first floor? Mr. WILLIAMS. The first floor is where the checkers, the freight, and all–they are checking the books to go out, and also where they wrap the books. Mr. BALL. And were there certain men down there wrapping books? Mr. WILLIAMS. Certain men wrapping, checking, weighing, et cetera. Mr. DULLES. Did you have a schedule somewhere posted up so that you knew which books were on which floor when an order came in? You would know whether to go to the sixth floor or what floor to go to get the particular books that were wanted? Mr. WILLIAMS. Well, as I remember, I don’t know too much about the building. Mr. DULLES. You were not in the order filling business? Mr. WILLIAMS. No, sir; not in that department. At the other building. I was just transferred to that building. I don’t think you really had any schedule to go by, or anything to show you where the books were. You just asked the older fellows that had been there were certain books–if you are looking for a certain book, they would tell you where to find it. MISSING EVIDENCE RFK /CUTS MADE INTO THE LEFT SLEEVE/LEFT CUFFLINK/ HOW DOES THE CANARY SING? “When you move off a point of power, pay all your obligations on the nail, empower all your friends completely and move off with your pockets full of artillery, potential blackmail on every erstwhile rival, unlimited funds in your private account and the addresses of experienced assassins and go live in Bulgravia and bribe the police.” – L. Ron Hubbard, Hubbard Communications Office Policy Letter, 12 February 1967, “The Responsibilities of Leaders” THE KILLERS : PAID IN HEROIN source: http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKsarti.htm PARTIAL TESTIMONY OF BILLY NOLAN LOVELADY The testimony of Billy Nolan Lovelady was taken at 3:50 p.m., on April 7, 1964, in the office of the U.S. attorney, 301 Post Office Building, Bryan and Ervay Streets, Dallas, Tex., by Messrs. Joseph A. Ball and Samuel A. Stern, assistant counsel of the President’s Commission. Mr. BALL – Were you there when the President’s motorcade went by Mr. LOVELADY – Right. Mr. BALL – Did you hear anything? Mr. LOVELADY – Yes, sir; sure did. Mr. BALL – What did you hear? Mr. LOVELADY – I thought it was firecrackers or somebody celebrating the arrival of the President. It didn’t occur to me at first what had happened until this Gloria came running up to us and told us the President had been shot. Mr. BALL – Who was this girl? Mr. LOVELADY – Gloria Calvary. Mr. BALL – Gloria Calvary? Mr. LOVELADY – Yes. Mr. BALL – Where does she work? Mr. LOVELADY – Southwestern Publishing Co. Mr. BALL – Where was the direction of the sound? Mr. LOVELADY – Right there around that concrete little deal on that knoll. Mr. BALL – That’s where it sounded to you? “The word standard. Standard. It’s a distinctive flag. It’s a banner with royal arms. It’s a flag of cavalry regiment. It’s a rallying principle. One of the meanings of standard is carrying a banner forward. Now. It’s a weight or measure to which others conform or by which the accuracy of others is judged. It’s a legal proportion of weight, as in fine metal and alloy in gold and silver coin. It’s a degree of excellence, which is the meaning which we have, required for a particular purpose. It’s a thing recognized as model for imitation. Recognized as possessing the merit of authority.” L. Ron Hubbard, 6809C27 Class VIII TAPE 4, STANDARD TECH DEFINED Abraham Zapruder, the infamous cameraman who took the only credible moving pictures of the JFK assassination was himself a part owner in a clothing company called NARDIS. NARDIS also stands for “naval advanced research data information service.” It is reported that Hubbard was denied admission to the Office of Naval Intelligence. Hubbard himself claims to be an officer in its service. Hubbard, in the course of recruiting scientologists for his newfound religion, probably began with the first people he was closest in contact with – these were the men he served with in the navy. as a result of his decision to create an army of adherents answerable to himself alone and in the process of recruiting those adherents from the government’s own services, the chain of command became crossed and the entire structure of ordering was challenged through the development of the new “religion” of scientology. Indeed this is a phenomenon unique in American history. Hubbard’s scheme envisioned scientology as the sole source of truth and justice in America. In Hubbard’s new world, the non-scientologist was entitled no rights whatsoever and the only people who could participate in society were those who believed in him. This extended as far as control over the entire budgetary agenda of government. Hubbard writes on 2 Dec 1969: ‘Intelligence Actions – Covert Intelligence Data Collections’ “Our total victory will come when we run his organizations, perform his functions and obtain his financing and appropriations.” The most disturbing aspect of his personality emerges here, in the SIRHAN diaries: A review of the evidence as it remains authenticated, cataloged and inventories in the Office of the Secretary of the Dallas Municipal Archives reveals, to me, that many of the documents, including police affidavits and such, may have also been forged by Hubbard. When I reached out to one of the few remaining witnesses, Ruth Hyde Paine, and asked her to confirm whether the signature on her affidavit was hers or not, I sent her a copy of her affidavit and she replied: I believe that after sending her a copy of her affidavit, the evidence as it was inventoried online, was further tampered with and her incorrect signature was corrected. Hubbard and “Alice in Wonderland” Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll Excerpts of CHAPTER III A CAUCUS-RACE AND A LONG TALE `What is a Caucus-race?’ said Alice; not that she wanted much to know, but the Dodo had paused as if it thought that somebody ought to speak, and no one else seemed inclined to say anything. `Why,’ said the Dodo, `the best way to explain it is to do it.’ (And, as you might like to try the thing yourself, some winter day, I will tell you how the Dodo managed it.) First it marked out a race-course, in a sort of circle, (`the exact shape doesn’t matter,’ it said,) and then all the party were placed along the course, here and there. There was no `One, two, three, and away,’ but they began running when they liked, and left off when they liked, so that it was not easy to know when the race was over. However, when they had been running half an hour or so, and were quite dry again, the Dodo suddenly called out `The race is over!’ and they all crowded round it, panting, and asking, `But who has won?’ THE CURRENT USE OF ALICE IN WONDERLAND IN SCIENTOLOGY “TR 1: Dear Alice [ Student reads dialogue from Alice in Wonderland at coach until they get the comm across without embarrassment. ] I thought Bullbait was weird. I had no idea what was in store for me. In this routine, context-free snippets from Alice, printed on a sheet of paper, are read by the student to the coach. Hubbard’s sense of humor shows through on this one. It’s even worse if the coach gets the giggles. The humor is a relief after the stress of TR0 conditioning. However, humor won’t advance you on The Bridge. Some of Lewis Carroll’s stuff is either terribly imaginative or drug-induced, depending on your opinion of him. (Some think the caterpillar is Carroll’s self-portrait, but I digress.) To pass this exercise without getting a permanent case of the giggles requires you to become virtually humorless. The concept of mental image pictures was introduced in TR0. Here, canned script from a master storyteller conjurs up some fantastic and nonsensical images, which the student must refuse to process or fail the exercise. The result is robotic repetition of nonsense phrases, which some have come to recognize as a hallmark of what passes for conversation in Scientology. Rather than conditioning you for the real world where nonsense is met with questions for clarification, Ron is conditioning the mark to confront “Scieno-speak.” Ron’s writing style and propensity to make up words because he couldn’t think of the real ones could give a newcomer the giggles if it were not for this exercise. Some of Ron’s prose, especially the Operating Thetan levels, is highly imaginative just like Carroll’s.” from: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Secrets/TR/critique.html “The impossible means to openly and freely communicate and to openly and freely practise Scientology as they see fit. Some of the very heavy main sources of Scientology come from Zen Buddhism and Hinduism and the Vedic Hymns and the very deep, strong and very, very real (dangerous and destructive I might add) involvement of Dad in the Magick and the Magick tech come straight out of the Bible and are biblically based. As a small aside here, the book Alice in Wonderland (which of course some of the TRs are based on) and the companion book Alice Through the Looking Glass, were written by a master adept at the Magick. And he was, as they all are, unknown and secret. He was also a secret member of the Order of the Golden Dawn of which Aleister Crowley, the English black magician was involved in. And of course it was purposely used and put there by Dad because of its Magick association. And Dad used it secretly in the Scientology training to gain a higher degree of control over staff, students and preclears for himself personally.” from: TRANSCRIPT OF TAPE #1 OF JUNE 28, 1984 – RON DEWOLF (L. Ron Hubbard,jr) “Scientology also has many drills for people with troubles. In one, you sit in a chair, visualize the two upper corners of the room, then “hold” these two corners in your mind and think of nothing else. This is called “Holding Corners.” Its purpose, Hubbard says, is to “make you act younger.” In another drill the Scientologist reads a sentence or two from Alice in Wonderland to the preclear, who repeats it verbatim. The Scientologist then says, “Thank you,” and reads another passage from Alice in Wonderland, and this goes on and on. This drill, called the “Dear Alice,” is supposed to “improve communication.” In at least one instance it resulted in a complete collapse of communication. A police captain in one eastern city, puzzled by reported goings-on at a Scientology office, enrolled an undercover man there. The agent spent several bewildering days listening to Alice in Wonderland, repeating it to the Scientologist, and getting thanked. When he returned to the police station, his superior asked him what went on at this Hubbard place. “I’m not going to tell you,” said the officer, “because you won’t believe me.” Have You Ever Been A Boo-Hoo?, Saturday Evening Post, March 21, 1964 from: http://www.scientology-lies.com/press/1964-03-21/saturday-evening-post/have-you-ever-been.html A Boo Hoo, according to one Scientology I spoke with, is an expression for people who get upset that the process is not working for them. A more modern expression is to “blow.” ________________________________________ There should be some discussion here about the Protestant- Catholic conflict that exists inherently in this confrontation. Hubbard’s family has origins in Protestantism and the Kennedy’s are of course Roman-Catholic. The 30 Years war is considered the bloodiest conflict between the two religious groups (1618–48). Just as Marbury v. Madison, 5 US 137 (1803) was an American demonstration regarding the rivalry of political parties, the origin of the 30 years war involves the rise to power of one group and the coincident political appointments that traditionally follows, one ideology replacing another in the civil administration of government. The same thing is going on today in the Middle East with the political appointments and resulting blood baths between Sunni and Shi’a sects. As one group takes power, the other feels under represented and the cycle never ends. Another important lesson to be learned by the future generation of leadership is fidelity in marriage. JFK’s long history of affairs with married women did not exactly solidify his place as a leader. Certainly, he was a great President. However, his affairs with married women left him susceptible to the power struggle that ensued. Most notable of this was his affair with Mary Pinchot Meyer, wife of CIA operative Cord Meyer. In fact, Cord worked with Operation Mockingbird, the CIA effort to infiltrate and control the US media. So he had wide reach and hurt feelings. President Kennedy left himself particularly vulnerable to power struggles due to his infidelity in marriage. Mary was no doubt murdered for what she knew of the conspiracy as was Marilyn Monroe and Dorothy Dandridge and Karyn Kupcinet. Kupcinet, a Los Angeles actress, is reported to have warned of JFK’s assassination 20 minutes before it happened. Journalist Dorothy Mae Kilgallen is also believed to have been murdered for what she knew.Charliemckimmey Junior Member Las Vegas, Nevada Join Date: Dec 2010 Posts: 1 | Kudos: +10 One day probably 2 months ago I picked my daughter up from school (Durango High School), we live down near Alta and Campbell and are looking to rent a place closer to her school. Well we were near Patrick and Buffalo when out of the clouds on the mountian top a blinding light caught my eye. We stopped to look again, the clouds blocked our view, I sat and waited questioning my own sanity. Once again there it was. Now we had a camera with us and I took several shots of this thing. My daughter has the images on her camera I will get these posted asap. Life has gotten to be so hectic that I honestly had forgotten about this until now. I did a Google search "reflective objects on mountian west of Las Vegas". I am curious as to what they are it looked to me as if there were three seperate objects. I will try to get the images posted somewhere, maybe if not here I will put theme on Facebook. I hate to make promisses that I can't keep. Pleases give me a couple of days, I hope they are still on her camera. Check back I will find out. __________________There are 14 South Africans that will take part in the IPL which will begin on Saturday 9 April. CAPE TOWN - After an enthralling World T20 tournament, the cricket festival that is the IPL is back in its ninth instalment. There are two new franchises (Rising Pune Supergiant's and Gujarat Lions) to look out for after both Rajasthan Royals and Chennai Super Kings were suspended for two years after their involvement in illegal betting and spot fixing. There are 14 South Africans that will take part in the IPL which will begin on Saturday 9 April and ending in late May, EWN Sport takes a look at each of the eight franchises. ROYAL CHALLENGERS BANGALORE Coach: Daniel Vettori Captain: Virat Kohli Overview: A team flush with T20 cricket's biggest superstars such as Kohli, de Villiers and Gayle; it would be a travesty for the franchise if they were not to reach the final at least. South Africans: David Wiese and AB de Villiers Notable players: Virat Kohli, Shane Watson and Chris Gayle Squad: Virat Kohli (c), AB de Villers, David Wiese, Adam Milne, Chris Gayle, Mitchell Starc, Abu Nechim Ahmed, Harshal Patel, Kedar Jadhav, Mandeep Singh, Sarfaraz Khan, Sreenath Arvind, Varun Aaron, Yuzvendra Chahal, Shane Watson, Stuart Binny, Kane Richardson, Travis Head, Samuel Badree, Praveen Dubey, Vikramjeet Malik, Akshay Karnewar, Vikas Tokas, Iqbal Abdullah, Sachin Baby KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS Coach: Jaques Kallis Captain: Gautam Gambhir Overview: South African Jacques Kallis will take charge of an experienced squad in his first coaching gig, the two-time champions will look to make it back into the playoff stage this year after a disappointing campaign last season. South Africans: Morne Morkel Notable players: Andre Russell, Sunil Narine and Colin Munro Squad: Gautam Gambhir (c), Robin Uthappa, Manish Pandey, Shakib Al Hasan, Chris Lynn, Yusuf Pathan, Andre Russell, Sunil Narine, Brad Hogg, Morne Morkel, Kuldeep Yadav, Piyush Chawla, Sheldon Jackson, Suryakumar Yadav, Umesh Yadav, Jaydev Unadkat, Ankit Singh Rajpoot, John Hastings, Jason Holder, Colin Munro, Rajagopal Satish, Manan Ajay Sharma KINGS XI PUNJAB Coach: Sanjay Bangar Captain: David Miller Overview: David Miller takes charge of a team that finished last in the previous campaign, they have genuine match winners in the captain and Maxwell but do not have the Indian talent the other franchises possess. South Africans: Kyle Abbott, David Miller and Farhaan Berhardien Notable players: Glenn Maxwell, Murali Vijay and Mitchell Jonhson Squad: David Miller (c), Murali Vijay, Glenn Maxwell, Shaun Marsh, Axar Patel, Anureet Singh, Gurkeerat Singh Mann, Manan Vohra, Mitchell Johnson, Nikhil Shankar Naik, Rishi Dhawan, Sandeep Sharma, Shardul Thakur, Wriddhiman Saha, Mohit Sharma, Kyle Abbott, KC Cariappa, Marcus Stoinis, Farhaan Behardien, Pardeep Sahu, Armaan Jaffer, Swapnil Singh DELHI DAREDEVILS Coach: Paddy Upton Captain: Zaheer Khan Overview: A team that will rely heavily on their strong South African contingent along with World T20 hero Carlos Braithwaite, their lack of local talent is a worry as they look to improve on a disappointing seventh place last year. South Africans: Quinton De Kock, Imran Tahir, Chris Morris, JP Duminy and Albie Morkel Notable players: Carlos Braithwaite, Pawan Negi and Nathan Coulter-Nile Squad: Zaheer Khan (c), Jean-Paul Duminy, Mohammed Shami, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Quinton de Kock, Saurabh Tiwary, Shahbaz Nadeem, Mayank Agarwal, Imran Tahir, Jayant Yadav, Amit Mishra, Shreyas Iyer, Albie Morkel, Sanju Samson, Chris Morris, Carlos Braithwate, Karun Nair, Pawan Negi, Sam Billings, Joel Paris, Pratyush Singh, Akhil Arvind Herwadkar, Mahipal Lomror, Syed Khaleel Ahmed, Chama Milind, Pawan Suyal, Rishabh Pant MUMBAI INDIANS Coach: Ricky Ponting Captain: Rohit Sharma Overview: The defending champions have a very well balanced side with a strong Indian base with the likes of Sharma and World T20's regulars Jaspirit Bumrah and Hardik Pandya coupled with a solid group of overseas signings, they could go all the way once again. South Africans: Marchant De Lange Notable players: Joss Buttler, Lasith Malinga and Corey Anderson Squad: Rohit Sharma (c), Lendl Simmons, Ambati Rayudu, Corey Anderson, Unmukt Chand, Kieron Pollard, Parthiv Patel, Mitchell McClenaghan, Lasith Malinga, Marchant de Lange, Akshay Wakhare, Harbhajan Singh, Hardik Pandya, Jagadeesha Suchitch, Jasprit Bumrah, Nitish Rana, R Vinay Kumar, Shreyas Gopal, Siddhesh Lad, Jos Buttler, Nathu Singh, Tim Southee, Krunal Pandya, KP Kamath, Jitesh Sharma, Deepak Punia SUNRISERS HYDERABAD Coach: Tom Moody Captain: David Warner Overview: They should improve from a disappointing season last year, with world class talent such as Warner, Williamson and Morgan coupled with Indians regulars such a Dhawan and Yuvraj, they have the capacity to topple any side on match day. South Africans: None Notable Players: David Warner, Kane Williamson and Shikar Dhawan Squad: David Warner (c), Shikhar Dhawan, Moises Henriques, Eoin Morgan, Kane Williamson, KL Rahul, Naman Ojha, Parvez Rasool, Trent Boult, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Ashish Reddy, Bipul Sharma, Karn Sharma, Ricky Bhui, Siddharth Kaul, Yuvraj Singh, Ashish Nehra, Deepak Hooda, Mustafizur Rahman, Aditya Tare, Barinder Singh Sran, Ben Cutting, Vijay Shankar, Abhimanyu Mithun, T Suman RISING PUNE SUPERGIANTS Coach: Stephen Fleming Captain: MS Dhoni Overview: A new IPL franchise packed with stars such from overseas such as Pietersen, Smith and Proteas T20 captain Du Plessis as well as Indian talent like Dhoni, Ashwin and Rahane. If this team can perform to their potential on paper there will not be many sides that will be able to stop them in their maiden campaign. South Africans: Faf Du Plessis Notable players: Kevin Pietersen, Steve Smith and MS Dhoni1) To limit redundant code, such as: Dictionary< string, List< int, bool >> myDictionary = new Dictionary< string, List< int, bool >>(); var myDictionary = new Dictionary< string, List< int, bool >>(); 2) To support anonymous types, which were necessary to implement LINQ, such as: var car = new { Make = "Toyota", Model = "Camry" }; Value types, such as, int, bool, float, and string (as an exception) are explicity declared. Reference types are declared with
environment, Augmented reality lets you interact with the world. Explore the above-said iPhone XS / XR / 8 AR apps and make the most out of your new iPhone experience.The precise origin of the name spirits which is commonly given to alcoholic beverage is unknown. However, the words "alembic" and "alcohol", as well as possibly the metaphors aqua vitæ (meaning "life-water") and "spirit" given to the distilled product, may stem from Middle Eastern alchemy.Distilled alcohol was first noted in Europe among alchemists during the mid 12th century. These alchemists were more involved in medical "elixirs" than in creating gold from lead.The term spirit is Middle English with its roots in Anglo-French or Latin; it stems from the Anglo-French term espirit, spirit; and from the Latin word spiritus, which literally means breath; from the term spirare, meaning to blow, breathe.The term spirits is typically give to those distilled beverages which are low in sugars and which contain a minimum of thirty five per cent alcohol by volume. Some of the common types of spirits include Gin, vodka and rum.A still from The Avengers. Wednesday morning, Indiewire film critic Eric Kohn set off a flurry of retweeting and favoriting on Twitter when he reported an accident at a movie screening: Three hours later, Entertainment Weekly critic Lisa Schwartzbaum corroborated Kohn’s report, joking: How easy is it for a digital projectionist to delete an entire film? Slate asked Steve Kraus, whom Roger Ebert has called one of “the best projectionists in the nation.” Kraus told us that it’s as easy as deleting any important file from your computer. “It’s click to delete from the server and an ‘Are you sure?’ confirmation,” he explained over email. “Of course, as with most computers it’s not really gone … but probably only a real computer geek could get into the system to ‘undelete.’” The lack of real computer geeks—or serious techies of any kind—behind digital projectors was one of Ebert’s plaints when he wrote about the visual pitfalls of digital projection last year. His main concern: Many people employed as digital projectionists lack the skill and training to switch out 3D lenses when projecting 2D films, an oversight that results in dim projections. Whereas film projectionists are skilled workers—and used to be compensated accordingly—digital projection requires the bare minimum of menial tasks, and movie theaters may be tempted to hire (and pay) their new projectionists with that in mind. According to a fascinating story about the death of 35mm film published in L.A. Weekly earlier this month, “Playing a movie on a DCP [Digital Cinema Package] projector involves plugging the hard drive into the projector, creating a playlist, as you would on an iPod, and pressing a button to play.” Though digital projection equipment is costly—up to $150,000 per screen—theaters are increasingly happy to shell out the upfront cost in the hopes of long-term savings (which may include not employing projectionists at all). Studios, meanwhile, save money on printing and shipping when they use DCPs instead of 35mm film. It’s win-win for everyone—except the projectionists who have lost their jobs and the audiences who occasionally endure mishaps like dark screens and deleted movies. And deleting digital movie files is not solely the province of unskilled projectionists—as the makers of Toy Story 2 discovered during production. As the rather delightful video below explains, someone accidentally hit the delete command on the Linux machines used to store the movie files. (“Have you ever accidentally dropped something out of your pocket while the toilet was flushing?” asks Galyn Susman, the supervising technical director of the film, by way of explaining how this blunder felt.) Luckily, this story—like that of the Avengers screening—had a happy ending. In this case, Susman, who’d been working from home while taking care of her newborn, had backup files at home.Sprawl has no single definition. Many people, however, tend to think of “sprawling” cities as places where people make most of their trips by car, and non-sprawling cities as places where people are more likely to walk, cycle, or take transit. This is why Los Angeles, which has more vehicles per square mile than any other urbanized area, and where transit accounts for only two percent of the region’s overall trips, is considered sprawling, while the New York urbanized area is not. We also know (or think we know) that places where people frequently walk, cycle, or take transit tend to have high population densities, and for this reason we tend to view low density as a proxy for sprawl. But as it turns out, the Los Angeles urbanized area—which in both myth and fact is very car-oriented—is also very dense. In fact, Los Angeles has been the densest urbanized area in the United States since the 1980s, denser even than New York and San Francisco. These facts present a bit of a mystery. If one were to measure sprawl by measuring a region’s average level of Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMT), Los Angeles would certainly qualify as sprawling. But if we measure sprawl by population density, LA would not sprawl at all. In fact, it would be the least sprawling urbanized area in the country. How can Los Angeles be so dense and yet also exhibit so many characteristics associated with sprawl, including high levels of car travel (both in per capita and absolute terms) and low rates of walking, bicycling and transit ridership? Part of the answer lies in the vagaries of Census geography. Sprawl is a regional attribute, so when observers point out that LA is denser than New York, they are not talking about the cities of Los Angeles and New York. Rather they are talking about the urbanized area, which is essentially the combined area of the cities and their suburbs. The other part of the answer is that density by itself—the simple ratio of population to square mile—is not a very useful way to measure sprawl. What matters is the distribution of density, or how evenly or unevenly an area’s population is spread out across its geographic area. If we look at the density distribution in Los Angeles, we notice that its suburbs are much denser than those of other large U.S. cities, such as New York, San Francisco or Chicago. These high-density suburbs compensate for the comparatively low density of LA’s urban core, and, in so doing, increase the average density of the area as a whole. In other words, Los Angeles has both a relatively high density and a relatively even distribution of density throughout its urbanized area. The LA region’s combination of high, evenly distributed density puts it in an unfortunate position: it suffers from many of the problems that accompany high population density, including extreme traffic congestion and poor air quality; but lacks many of the benefits that typically accompany more traditional versions of dense urban areas, including fast and effective public transit and a core with vibrant street life. Los Angeles has, to borrow a term coined by urbanist William Fulton, “dense sprawl.” (Or, to be less charitable, it has “dysfunctional density.”) It is too dense to function like classic suburbia, but also has few areas dense enough to be a “city” in the manner of central city New York or San Francisco. Los Angeles has “dense sprawl.” Or, to be less charitable, it has “dysfunctional density.” Why does this matter? The point is not to pick on Los Angeles, which has many wonderful attributes to go along with its problems. Rather Los Angeles highlights a weakness in the way we traditionally think about density and sprawl. Planners are often quick to recommend increased density to combat congestion and make cities more livable, but LA shows us that simply chasing density, without thought as to where that density is, will not do much to help and might actually make things worse. In the remainder of this article I will examine LA’s population distribution in more detail and then discuss how traditional measures of density can mislead planners and transportation policymakers. Finally, I examine three alternative ways to measure density that may be more useful. Density Without Downtown, Sprawl Without Suburbia People are often surprised to learn that Los Angeles is dense. Some of this surprise probably stems from a tendency to associate urban density with busy downtown centers. Many people, when they think about urban density, understandably picture Manhattan or Hong Kong, not LA. And it’s true that Los Angeles doesn’t have much of a center; it is one of the most decentralized urban areas on earth. But of the five densest metropolitan areas in the U.S., LA is the densest, both in people and jobs. At the same time, however, its central city has the lowest job density of these five areas, and the second lowest population density (see Table 1). Only six percent of the region’s jobs are in the central business district, and only twelve percent are located in the region’s nineteen largest job centers. Downtown Los Angeles is even less significant as a residential area: despite a surge in loft construction over the past decade, its daytime population of approximately 500,000 people is over twelve times larger than its residential population of 40,000. The population of Manhattan, by contrast, only doubles during the day. Of the five densest metropolitan areas in the U.S., LA is the densest, both in people and jobs. So it is clear that Los Angeles lacks a super-dense core like Manhattan. But it also lacks a very low-density suburban periphery. Suburban neighborhoods in the Los Angeles region are much denser than their counterparts in the Northeast and Midwest. Indeed, one might say that they are not classically suburban, in the sense that few of them offer large houses on large plots of land, uncongested roads, and easy access to open space. But while the suburbs of metropolitan Los Angeles are dense compared to the suburbs of other U.S. urban areas, most (with some notable exceptions) are not dense enough to support traditional urban amenities like frequent and high quality public transit and bustling commercial districts with sidewalk cafes and pedestrian-oriented retail. Like the distribution of population in metropolitan Los Angeles as a whole, the distribution of density throughout most of these outlying areas is not clustered at nodes or along densely populated corridors that can be easily served by public transit. It is spread evenly throughout these areas. Why Measures of Average Density Fall Short Why do standard measures of density mislead? Two reasons: first, the standard measure relies too much on where the urbanized area’s formal boundary is drawn, and second, the measure is determined by total land area, even if some of the land is sparsely populated. Compare New York and Los Angeles again. By the standard measure, Los Angeles, with 59 people per acre, is considerably denser than New York, with 47. A big part of the reason is LA’s dense suburbs, but this explanation is somehow unsatisfying. I suspect that for many people, the fact that Palmdale (a suburb of LA) is denser than White Plains (a suburb of New York) shouldn’t lead to the conclusion that Los Angeles is denser than New York. But if we measure density simply by dividing land area into population, that is exactly the conclusion we get. So is there a better way to measure density? Below I discuss three alternative approaches that might be more helpful in understanding the development patterns of dispersed and polycentric urban regions like LA. One method measures unequal density in the distribution of population; the other two attempt to measure density as it is experienced by the average resident of a given urban area. Measuring Variation in the Distribution of Population The Gini Coefficient One approach is to measure the extent to which the population density varies across an urban area. Using a statistical tool called the Gini coefficient, we can get a sense of the degree of variation for different urban areas. The Gini coefficient is based on the Lorenz curve, a cumulative frequency curve that compares the distribution of a specific variable (in this case, population density) with a uniform distribution that represents perfect equality. Figure 1 shows the distribution of population for three urbanized areas (Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco) by Census tract, relative to the proportion of land. The diagonal line represents a perfectly equal distribution, or a Gini coefficient of 0. The more the curve strays from the diagonal line, the greater the variation in population density. Perfect inequality—if all the residents of a city inhabited one single census tract—would be represented by a value of 1. Measuring inequality in this way, the Gini coefficient is 0.65 for Los Angeles, 0.77 for New York, and 0.80 for San Francisco. In graphical terms, the Los Angeles curve stays closer to the diagonal line—the line representing an even distribution—than the curves for New York or San Francisco. This might help explain why Los Angeles appears to be less dense (and therefore also less “urban” in the classical sense discussed earlier) than San Francisco and New York, even though its average population density is higher. The population of all three urbanized areas is distributed unevenly. However, this distribution is much more even in Los Angeles than it is in New York and San Francisco. The difference between Los Angeles and the other two regions becomes even more pronounced when one looks only at the most densely populated census tracts in each urbanized area. In Los Angeles, 40 percent of the population live on the most densely settled 10 percent of land. By way of comparison, roughly 66 percent of New York’s population, and 67 percent of San Francisco’s, live on the most densely settled ten percent of the land. By looking even further to the right of the graph, one finds that 25 percent of the population in Los Angeles lives on the densest 5 percent of the land. By contrast, 46 percent of San Francisco’s population, and more than 50 percent of New York’s, live on the densest 5 percent of the land. The overwhelming majority of New York and San Francisco’s residents live on a very small portion of their urbanized areas’ land. But this is much less the case in LA. The overwhelming majority of New York and San Francisco’s residents live on a very small portion of their urbanized areas’ land. Perceived Density Another approach to measuring density, which was developed separately by both Gary Barnes and Chris Bradford, is to use “perceived” or “weighted” density. The purpose of perceived density is to capture the density of the place in which the average person lives. A good way of conceptualizing the difference between “standard density” and “perceived density” is that where standard density measures the average amount of land around each resident of a city, perceived density measures the average number of people around each resident of that city. Measuring perceived density involves four steps: 1. Divide the city into small geographic units such as census tracts. 2. Calculate the standard density of each of these census tracts. 3. Assign a weight to each census tract that is equal to its share of the total population of the city. 4. Average the weighted densities of all of the city’s census tracts. This produces a weighted or “perceived” density for the city. The purpose of perceived density is to capture the density of the place in which the average person lives. For the purpose of illustration, Bradford offers the extreme example of a fictitious city called “Metropolis.” Metropolis has a central core of 100,000 residents who live on ten square miles of land and a suburb with 10,000 residents who live on 100 square miles of land. The standard density of Metropolis is 1,000 people per square mile. However, since 90 percent of the population—those who inhabit the core—live in a very dense environment, this standard density number has little bearing on the way most residents experience their city. By giving the core’s density a weight of 90 percent and the suburb’s density a weight of 10 percent—weights that are equal to the respective proportions of the city’s residents that inhabit each part—we get an adjusted density of 9,100 people per square mile, a number that more closely approximates the density at which the average resident of Metropolis lives. Perceived Density Ranking of U.S. Urbanized Areas Using data from the 2000 U.S. Census, Bradford calculated the perceived densities of the largest urbanized areas in the U.S. He began with data for each census tract that is partially or wholly contained within each of the urbanized areas. He then calculated each census tract’s share of the urbanized area’s total population. From there he assigned each census tract a weight equal to its share of the population and averaged the weights to get the perceived density for the urbanized area. Table 2 below shows the perceived densities of the 15 largest urbanized areas in the US. The resulting measures of perceived density probably align more closely with common perceptions of urban density. New York ranks head and shoulders above other urbanized areas, with a perceived density of over 33,000 people per square mile. San Francisco comes in second, with a perceived density of over 15,000 people per square mile, while Los Angeles drops from first place to third, with a perceived density of about 12,500 people per square mile. This ranking may still strike many as surprisingly high, given that Los Angeles remains ahead of cities that most people would intuitively think of as being dense, including Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, and Washington, D.C. Density Gradient Index Bradford pushed the concept of perceived density a step further by developing the density gradient index. The density gradient index, which is the ratio of perceived density to standard density, is an indication of the unevenness of population distribution—or, to use Bradford’s terminology—a measure of “clumpiness.” Table 2 also shows the density gradient index for each urbanized area. Not surprisingly, New York is also the urbanized area with the highest density gradient at 6.2. Interestingly, the urbanized areas with the next highest density gradients after New York are Boston and Philadelphia—neither of which make even the top ten for standard density, and which only rank sixth and fifth, respectively, in terms of perceived density. The source of Boston and Philadelphia’s high density gradients is almost certainly their age and their resulting urban design; they are older cities with large downtown cores and extensive public transit systems that were developed prior to the automobile era. As a result, development in these urbanized areas naturally clustered around their public transit lines, and the distribution of density within them is therefore very “clumpy” in comparison to cities like Los Angeles, Phoenix and Miami that experienced their greatest period of growth after auto ownership had already become widespread. The source of Boston and Philadelphia’s high density gradients is almost certainly their age and their resulting urban design. Bradford did a regression analysis to analyze the relationship between perceived density and commute mode (the final two columns of Table 2). He found virtually no association between standard density and the percentage of workers commuting by public transit or walking, but a strong association between perceived density and commuting by transit or foot, and an even stronger association between the density gradient index and the percentage of workers commuting by transit or by foot. Conclusion Many urbanists admire places like Boston, New York and San Francisco, which give their residents a wide range of transportation options and have charming multimodal streets. Many urbanists admire Los Angeles as well, of course, but recognize that it is often a difficult place to walk, bike or use public transportation. However, planners who seek to emulate Boston or New York, or to avoid the less desirable elements of LA, will go astray if they simply focus on increasing density. The urban form of older metropolitan areas is one of great variance, not great density. The New York urbanized area offers its residents both a super-dense, vibrant core and a low-density suburbia. The places where land is used very intensively in the center often see it used much less intensively on the outskirts. While it is possible to have an area that contains nothing but extraordinarily high density, such places are unusual, and often islands (think Hong Kong or Singapore). Acknowledging these land use patterns should make us question some conventional planning goals. We might say we want more density or less sprawl. We might even say that we simply want more places to look like San Francisco or New York. But what exactly are we trying to accomplish by doing this? Do we want super-dense urban centers, or very-low density suburbs, or both? These aren’t easy questions to answer, and standard measures of density will offer us little help in trying to answer them. No measure of density, no matter how comprehensive, can capture every dimension of sprawl. It is also important to realize that no measure of density, no matter how comprehensive, can capture every dimension of sprawl. Much of what we consider sprawl is determined less by the density of people or jobs, and more by how buildings and parking are arranged on the street, and whether streets are designed in a way that makes walking and biking safe and comfortable. Nevertheless, in the future planners and policymakers might find it useful to assess the perceived density of the places they are trying to improve. Policymaking is about people, after all, so perhaps we are better off examining density as people experience it. Further Readings Gary Barnes. 2001. “Population and Employment Density and Travel Behavior in Large U.S. Cities.” Minnesota Department of Transportation, September. Chris Bradford. 2008. “Density Calculations for U.S. Urbanized Areas, Weighted By Census Tract. Austin Contrarion blog post. March 24. Eric Eidlin. 2005. “The Worst of All Worlds: Los Angeles and the Emerging Reality of Dense Sprawl,” Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 1902, pp. 1–9. Paul Sorenson. 2009. “Moving Los Angeles,” Access, Vol. 35, Fall, pp. 16–24. Peter Newman and Jeffrey Kenworthy. 1999. Sustainability and Cities: Overcoming Automobile Dependence. Washington, DC: Island PressOriginally Posted by Agony_Aunt (Source) Originally Posted by The Engineering one is worse. Quince is open and similar things have existed for a long time. And without Quince there are dozens of other ways to get tons of credits or data and FD know about them. And Quince has been reported. The Engineering one was sat on for over a year, and i think that is why FD got annoyed over it. Not that people used it, that they never reported it. There could be an argument now for using the Engineer one now that FD are aware. Kind of the ball is now in FDs court to fix quickly. But since FD have announced they are going to take a hardline stance on this one, i think it would be extremely unwise to take advantage of it.WASHINGTON -- Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) has filed legislation that would block the U.S. Treasury Department from putting Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill. King is perhaps best-known in the nation's capital for his anti-immigration rhetoric and his hostility to undocumented immigrants. But this takes his mean-spirited forays into racial politics in a new direction. The congressman introduced an amendment that would bar the Treasury Department from spending any funds to redesign paper money or coin currency. If approved, the language would nullify Treasury's plans to replace the current image of President Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill with a portrait of Tubman -- a black woman after generations of white men on the money. King hopes his language will be attached to a broader bill authorizing the Treasury's overall funding. Harriet Tubman was a dedicated abolitionist and women's suffrage advocate. She aided John Brown as he prepared his 1859 anti-slavery raid on Harper's Ferry and was one of the most prominent participants in the Underground Railroad, a network of abolitionists who helped guide escaped slaves to freedom. Treasury announced its plan to swap Jackson for Tubman two months ago. The department had been considering a redesign of the $10 bill, which features the nation's first Treasury secretary, Alexander Hamilton. Popular enthusiasm for the musical "Hamilton" derailed that project in favor of a redesign of the $20 bill. Several historians have objected to the musical's benevolent depiction of Hamilton, arguing that it erases his authoritarian attitudes and overstates his commitment to racial justice. Jackson's presidential legacy, meanwhile, includes the Indian Removal Act, a key tool in the U.S. government's onetime policy of Native American genocide. Harriet Tubman, who was born before Jackson assumed the presidency and died in the early days of the Woodrow Wilson administration, carries none of this baggage. In the months since Treasury announced the switch, presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has defended Old Hickory's place on the $20 and former Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) has argued there was more to Jackson's legacy than killing.There was one big lesson in the Prime Minister’s immigration speech this week. And it was aimed directly at that those who blindly argue in favour of immigration. Put simply, it is this: it is not inconsistent to argue against continued large-scale immigration, while at the same time ensuring that highly skilled workers, who are crucial for economic recovery, are made welcome in Britain. For nearly five years the Cross Party Group on Balanced Migration, which we co-chair, has been pointing out the consequences of large-scale immigration. We have called for action to reduce it. But, though many of our recommendations have been accepted, the campaign has always been an uphill struggle. The political debate in recent weeks has, however, been transformed, thanks mainly to Ukip’s strong showing in the Eastleigh by-election. The party’s second place result has forced major responses from all three political leaders on immigration. This new focus presents an opportunity for change. First, it is worth rehearsing the figures. Immigration has greatly benefited the UK, but it is at unsustainable levels. In 1997, net immigration totalled 50,000 a year. In 2010, the figure was 250,000. Although that is now falling – thanks, in part, to the acceptance of the Cross Party Group’s proposals – the most recent number remains high, at 163,000. The Office for National Statistics projects that our population will reach 70 million (from 63.2 million now) in 15 years. To level our population off at 70 million would require a net immigration level of 40,000 a year. To put that in context, to accommodate an increase to 70 million – including five million immigrants and their children – we would have to build the equivalent of another Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Bradford, Leeds, Sheffield, Glasgow, Bristol and Oxford. Of course, such a prospect is simply unaffordable. And that’s without even considering whether society can integrate newcomers at anything like that rate. We yield to no one in our desire to ensure that immigration control does not impede economic recovery. We have been forthright in our view that businesses must be able to bring in the talent they need, and are campaigning to make the process simpler and swifter. However, since the implementation of the Government’s new immigration system, the highly skilled route into Britain has been undersubscribed in every month, and not a single skilled worker has been refused a visa. Perhaps we should do more to boost this stream into Britain – but clearly it is not a problem at present. Our need for highly skilled migrants to generate economic growth, however, is not to be confused with mass immigration. Most migrants who come to the UK to work take low-skilled jobs, as we saw following the earlier wave of Eastern European migrants. With one million 18- to 24-year-olds out of work, allowing this to continue does not make sense, quite apart from the increasing pressure on our infrastructure. That is why the Cross Party Group on Balanced Migration wants controlled immigration without endangering our economy. Reducing net immigration to the tens of thousands is the right approach. The elephant in the room is the EU, which accounts for one third of net migration. EU migration cannot be controlled by an immigration system. Naturally the debate has focused on the impending extension of the EU’s “free movement of workers” policy to Romania and Bulgaria. A recent estimate puts a likely annual net immigration figure from these two countries alone at 50,000. Add this to the current 163,000, and the scale of the issue facing the Government and Opposition could not be more stark. The Prime Minister’s speech on Monday was therefore a welcome intervention. Although Mr Cameron was criticised on the basis that very few migrants would be affected by his new proposals, this misses the point. His purpose, instead, was to ensure that future migrants (including EU nationals) are deterred from coming here to seek benefits and services. His proposals on changing the entitlement rules for benefits, social housing and the NHS are welcome. It is right in principle that access to services should be granted on the basis of contribution, and indeed the Cross Party Group has been active in raising these three issues for some time, most recently calling for an entitlement card to access NHS services to replace the current system, whereby anyone can access the NHS after being here for 24 hours. Another area that needs to be considered is whether EU members should have powers, during periods of high unemployment, to restrict the free movement of labour at present guaranteed in EU law. We will seek to support the tightening of immigration policies in the year ahead, not least to ensure that the public can have confidence in our immigration system. We were, after all, elected to Parliament to serve in their best interests. Nicholas Soames is the Conservative MP for Mid Sussex; Frank Field is the Labour MP for BirkenheadPokemon Go: Blissey The Beast Roams the Streets Sometimes it’s easy to dismiss a Pokemon due to there rather plushy nature, however only a fool shall dismiss Blissey. With it’s addition recent addition to the Pokemon roster, Blissey is already making a name for itself on the mean streets it roams. It’s taking up spaces in gyms, and quickly letting others know that it is not a Pokemon to take lightly. The reasons for Blissey’s rise to fame lies in one noticeable fact, it has a boat ton of health at it’s disposal. Which in truth is classic Blissey, as in previous games he was used as a means to soak up major amounts of damage. This works well with the current system in Pokemon Go, because it’s likely the timer at a gym will count down before you are able to knock out this pink marshmallow. So blissey is every gym in town now. pic.twitter.com/TNn6YBtgsL — gibby™ (@soilentgibby) February 17, 2017 As if that wasn’t enough, Blissey also possesses some high CP potential – meaning that he can both defend and potential attack. This combination has made Blissey climb to the top tier of Pokemon that need to be caught by you in your daily strolls. Don’t think it will be easy finding though, as finding a Chansey – it’s original form – is pretty rare. After which it would take a serious amount of candy to upgrade into it’s evolved form. However, considering that you might be the owner of your local gym with this Pokemon – it just might be worth the effort. Follow us on Twitter to keep up with the latest posts, or to recommend a game for the team to review: @TheSaveSpot1New Delhi: US software firm IBM Corp. on Thursday said it has signed an agreement to acquire Indian Information Technology (IT) firm Sanovi Technologies Corp. that deals in cloud computing-related software. “As a cloud-native company, Sanovi will strengthen our resiliency portfolio to manage broad range of applications, data, and IT systems of our clients, balancing digital and hybrid cloud transformation with increased regulatory compliance," said Martin Jetter, senior vice-president, Global Technology Services, IBM, in a statement. Upon closure of the deal, which is expected by the end of 2016, IBM plans to integrate the Sanovi capabilities into the IBM Global Technology Services unit. However, financial details of the deal were not disclosed. Founded in 2003, Sanovi Technologies is headquartered in Bengaluru and operates in the United States, the Middle East and Asia. The firm provides hybrid cloud recovery, cloud migration and business continuity software for enterprise data centres and cloud infrastructure. “Adding these capabilities along with advanced analytics will better enable IBM to bolster its software defined resiliency strategy and delivery of business continuity and disaster recovery services for clients undergoing digital and hybrid cloud transformation," the statement said. With Sanovi’s software, IBM will further empower clients to redefine their disaster recovery strategy in the face of “unprecedented industry change". “IBM’s technology leadership in hybrid cloud infrastructure and resiliency services makes it a clear choice to bring end-to-end services to our customers and transformational value to IBM’s existing client base," said Sanovi co-founder and chief executive officer, Chandra Sekhar Pulamarasetti. In addition to being available as part of a managed resiliency service, IBM plans to make Sanovi DRM available as a stand-alone software licence for partners and customers looking to optimise in-house and vendor run resiliency programmes, the statement said. Today, IBM operates over 300 global delivery data centres and 46 IBM cloud data centres across 68 countries.Bradford Cox photo by Charlotte Zoller On Friday night, Deerhunter performed at the Orange Peel in Asheville, North Carolina. During the show, Bradford Cox told a story about opening for the Smashing Pumpkins at the same venue in 2007. He referred to the experience as "torture camp." Find video of the story below. Cox said that after Deerhunter's set, he grabbed a bottle of water from "this big pyramid of VOSS water". According to Cox, a member of the Pumpkins' crew looked at him and said, “What the fuck are you doing? This is Mr. Corgan’s water.” Cox alleges that the man grabbed and pushed him against the wall. Then-bassist Josh Fauver reportedly defended Cox by lunging at the guy. When they arrived at the venue the next night, Cox said they were approached by a woman who told him, "Mr. Corgan will see you now." Cox says he found Corgan sitting on the stage. They bring me out to the stage, and he says to me, “I hear you’ve been causing a lot of trouble. Do you know who you are? You’re shit. You’re a shitty little insignificant fucking indie rock band, and you were invited, not by me—who knows what fucking idiot in my management did this—but you were invited to open for the Smashing Pumpkins.” Cox reportedly told Corgan that he was "manhandled" by the crew member, but Corgan continued to berate Cox. Cox said he peeled off his backstage pass, told Corgan "fuck you," and "slapped the little sticker, the backstage laminate pass, on his leg." Cox said that Corgan yelled "assault" and threatened legal action. Then, Cox said the Smashing Pumpkins' crew threw Moses Archuleta's drum kit down some steps, damaging them to the point where they needed to be replaced. We've reached out to Corgan's representatives for comment. Update (12/6, 4:55 p.m. EST): The Smashing Pumpkins' manager has shared this statement regarding Cox's comments: "Several eyewitnesses can attest that Cox's account is a complete fabrication, probably to get some much needed attention. He is correct about one thing, that the whole thing is on tape, and that we have a video of the encounter. Since this is intentionally slanderous, I will likely suggest we pursue charges unless a retraction is forthcoming." Update (12/6, 9:39 p.m. EST): Bradford Cox has shared a statement regarding the incident. Read it in full, below. Firstly, I would like to say that my intention was not to defame Billy Corgan. What I did was open my big fucking mouth and go off on one of my usual tangents. Some people call this "stage banter." I do not need, or seek any attention, and in fact was embarrassed that this ended up being uploaded to Youtube, and then considered a news story. The story I told was just a contextual rap about something that happened at the venue we were playing - 8 years ago. I will be the first to admit that there are two sides to every story and it is unfair that I gave mine without the other party being there to counter. The thing that bothered me most about this incident was that after I got off stage I went to the bus and was reading about Scott Weiland's death (which I find very tragic) and happened upon Corgan's very moving and heartfelt tribute to his deceased friend. I do not find any humor in kicking someone while they are down. Bringing up a half-remembered interaction from so many years ago was not beneficial to anyone, especially If it causes someone who is already going through a dark moment to feel slandered or attacked. I feel very insensitive and stupid in that regard. As far as what was said at the show, I prefaced it all by saying it was my recollection of the events. As Corgan's management has confirmed, it is all on video. I would like to avoid any further drama by just categorically retracting my statements out of respect. I respect anyone who has worked hard playing music for decades, seen their band fall apart because of things out of their control, continued to try to pursue artistic interests and had ups and downs. Perhaps I met Corgan and his crew at an especially difficult time for him. It would be completely hypocritical for me to imply that I have never been just as much of an asshole to people around me than I accused Corgan of being. Who am I to cast stones in a glass house? I don't know Billy Corgan other than a 5 minute interaction that left a definite impression on me. I have no doubt there are many sides to his character. My statement was my recollection of the events mixed with some humor. It was meant to be taken as casual stage banter. Not defamation or slander. The easiest thing for me to do to kill this story and hopefully avoid anymore drama is to admit it now. I was tacky and I retract my statements. If the video from 2007 ever does surface I will be very interested to see how my memory matches or contradicts reality. In all earnestness I offer Corgan my apologies and my empathy during what I imagine is a difficult time with the loss of his friend. Here's a short clip from the show in question:If the Miami Heat taught us one thing recently, it’s that it’s perfectly fine for grown men to cry. This notion is both widely criticized but secretly accepted by the men of New England who — much like LeBron James, Chris Bosh and other members of the Heat — have been brought to tears because of a sporting event over the years. Check out the list of moments below, but try to keep it together. 1978: The Bucky Dent game. 1986: World
the recording. In our lab, we show a note in front of the camera that identifies the animals at the very end of each recording. When using this approach the individual subsequently scoring the recording will not know the identity of the animals since the identity is only shown at the very end of the recording. This prevents any identification and record keeping problems that may occur later related to the recordings. Regardless of the record keeping strategy that is being used, it should clearly identify the animals and also prevent the individual later scoring the test from having knowledge of group assignments. During the test be certain you are at a reasonable distance from the animals and do not make any movements or noise that may be noticed by the animals. Mice can readily float in water, however, if either a new strain of mice or a new compound being tested without previous knowledge of their effect on swimming behavior, the experimenter should monitor the animals more closely. In contrast to rats, mice do not typically dive during the FST, however in the event of diving the mouse should be removed from the tank. If the experimenter leaves the room the mice should be monitored by video in the event that a mouse cannot maintain swimming and floating behavior and to stop the test if necessary. Bring the animals into the testing room. If the colony room where the animals reside and the testing room are adjacent or very close to each other, the ambient conditions are similar and the disturbance during the moving of the cage is minimal, then no acclimation period will be necessary. Otherwise, place the animals in the testing room for a period of acclimation (generally at least one hour). If an acclimation period is necessary, make sure the acclimated animals will not be affected by the mice being tested at the same time in the same room. Please be aware that olfactory and ultrasonic cues can be sensed by the other animals placed in the same room. The tanks should be filled with tap water set at the room temperature (23-25°C) to the determined level, which is marked on the tank walls. If your facility does not have constant hot/cold water, you may want to prepare hot water and/or ice to quickly bring the water to the right temperature. Check the water temperature with the infrared thermometer. Alternatively, if the temperatures of hot and cold water are constant at your facility, you can draw on the tank two marks – one for the level of hot water and a second mark for the addition of cold water – to get close to the correct final water temperature rapidly. The overall experimental design should reflect proper counterbalancing between variables specific to your experiment. For example, in our experiments, we try to represent each group equally in every FST session (i.e., if there are four treatment groups, each will be represented in each session). Also, mice are rotated, such that mice from each treatment group are placed in a different tank in each session. This is needed in laboratory environments in which sudden loud noises can be heard that would potentially startle the animals. The noise generator will mask such intermittent disturbing sounds. The volume level of the white noise generator should be selected to be above other ambient and unexpected noises. In our experimental room the ambient noise level (without the white noise generator activated) is 60 dB. The total noise level with the white noise generator activated at the location where the tanks are placed is 70-72 dB. However it should be noted that these figures are provided as example only, and each laboratory should select the right noise levels according to their unique environment and circumstances. In our lab we have two sets of dividers (35 cm height x 22 cm width x 22 cm depth). These are rectangular with three walls and are used as both background and as dividers between tanks to prevent mice from seeing each other during the test and potentially altering their behaviors. One set can be black for albino and light colored animals; the other set can be light colored for dark colored animals in order to render high contrast. The experimenter should make sure that the surfaces of the dividers are not overly reflective so that they alter camera images, or render major differences between illumination levels. We use a video camera supported by a tripod. Since this test usually involves multiple animals being tested at the same time, live scoring will be very difficult and is not advisable. The video camera should record in high enough resolution to render a quality picture that will be used later for behavioral scoring. Always make sure there is sufficient recording memory in the camera before starting the test. We use a video camera that records digitally without the use of mechanical media (i.e. video cassette), allowing for digital transfer of videos. If there are excessive reflections on the tanks, which may occur in laboratory environments with overhead fluorescent illumination, you may want to use a polarizing lens filter with your camera. The cylindrical tanks (30 cm height x 20 cm diameters) required for the mouse forced swim test (FST) in our laboratory are constructed of transparent Plexiglas, as this material is able to withstand the frequent movement of the tanks and accidents better than glass. The water level is 15 cm from the bottom and should be marked on the tank to ensure that the volume of water is consistent across mice. The number of tanks should ideally be at least twice as many as the number of mice being tested at a time, so that the second water tank set can be filled while the first set is in use. The dimensions of the tanks should be selected in a way that the mice will not be able to touch the bottom of the tank, either with their feet or their tails, during the swimming test. The height of the tank should be high enough to prevent the mice from escaping from the tank. Please note that the diameter of tank and the depth of water are important parameters that can be adjusted to change the behavior of mice (for a detailed analysis of these issues see 1-3 ). Discussion The FST (sometimes called Porsolt swim test) was developed first for rats and then modified for mice by Porsolt and colleagues12,13. In addition to the above-described protocol successful in our laboratory, a number of largely subtle test modifications have been published (see Hascoët and Bourin for a complete review1). It is a common test used for evaluation of the efficacy of anti-depressant drugs and the effects of various behavioral and neurobiological manipulations in basic and preclinical research3,14-16. It has been described as rendering a situation in which "behavioral despair" is induced; that is, the animal loses hope to escape the stressful environment13. The mouse version of the forced swim test is a relatively short and low cost behavioral test that requires no training of the mice and can be conducted with minimal equipment. This is in contrast to the rat version of the test, which generally involves exposure to the water tank one day prior to the test day17. Because of its popularity there is a wealth of data regarding the effects of various antidepressants in the FST. This allows researchers to compare and contrast their own results with others (see Hascoët and Bourin for 2009 review1). These characteristics of the FST make it an important tool in academic research and drug discovery in industrial settings where reliability and high throughput screening of novel compounds are essential. An additional feature of the FST is the availability of commercial automated behavior analysis systems that can accelerate the data collection process18-20. However, in our experience, these automated systems require extensive validation by human scoring. Additionally, automated parameters may have to be readjusted when using different strains, especially when the level of background contrast changes, or with mice of different sizes or behavioral responses. Another area in which the FST is used is neurogenetic research in which the genetic basis of depression-related behaviors is investigated. These types of studies involve comparison of various mouse strains with or without the use of anti-depressant drugs and comparisons of genetically modified or selectively bred mice and their wild type counterparts6,21-23. In this regard, the FST has proven to be useful in basic research related to the neurobiology and genetics of mood disorders. However, the FST is not a full spectrum analog of human depression. Even though there are exceptions, the FST has a considerable level of predictive validity, since it is reasonably sensitive to compounds that are effective in humans as anti-depressants and insensitive to those that are not effective24,25. Since the behavioral outcome of the FST is one-dimensional it can only indicate the antidepressant efficacy of compound or experimental manipulations, but it cannot differentiate mechanistic differences between them. This is in contrast with the rat version of the FST, where rats manifest both swimming and climbing behaviors that can differentiate between serotonin and norepinephrine acting compounds26. Also any manipulations that may affect the overall activity levels may potentially alter immobility in the FST leading to spurious conclusions. Therefore it is important to verify the results of FST with separate behavioral tests that measure overall activity such as the open-field test1,27. It is beneficial to keep in mind that the FST does not represent the human condition, and to extent which underlying neurobiological mechanisms of the behaviors manifested by model animals in the FST and human depression overlap is not entirely clear28. However, these types of limitations should not devalue the usefulness of FST as a drug discovery and validation tool.Tabletop Tutorials; what Video Games should have learned from Board Games One is a medium that seems age-old to its youthful players, set in its ways, rarely fresh and dominated by people who think that the old games are the best. The other one is board games. The trend is mature now, but board games over the last few years have been a much more interesting space to watch than video games. The spread of geek culture has made high-quality, complex board games desirable, compared to the cheap, badly-designed rule-systems we grew up with (Monopoly, Snakes and Ladders, Ludo and the rest). Globalisation and technology advances have made small, high-quality board game print runs viable. Kickstarter meant that once designed, board game developers don’t have to fund the costs of creation and shipping – and they might even make a profit before they’ve even shipped. The best of these board games – from the ancient delights of Go or Senet to the more modern Arkham Horror or Catan – are a mess of rulesets and incentive-structures, just like video games. Some are fantastically simple, some impossibly over-complex. However, they’re packed full of learning for video games design, which we don’t take as much note of as we can. So what have we missed? Humans are fun The primary things that video games have slowly learned from board games is that humans are much more interesting than anything anyone can program. Humans, even us geeks and nerds, are fundamentally social creatures, hungering to pick metaphorical lice off each other’s figurative scalps. Even a simple card game like snap manages to be enjoyable, despite having just one rule, because it’s social. We’ve done it clumsily in video games though. Take Johann Sebastien Joust, which is just a version of an intuitive playground game like tag – but made awkward by the tech. Or the way Farmville and Candy Crush used your friends as tokens to encourage you to keep up with the joneses and spend your money, producing a kind of asychronous, unskilful multiplayer that isn’t actually multiplayer. Or we just spend a lot of time shooting each other in the face (thanks to Doom). Also, that human interaction throws up much more interesting things, especially when competing for scarce resources. Dungeon Lords and Libertalia have fun with the order that players act. Agricola and Puerto Rico make players compete for scarce resources. Catan allows you to trade for them. The Resistance and Bang! give every player limited information and (sometimes) shared goals. All through these players are talking, emoting, gesticulating, and hiding. Maths is fun Now, of course video games use maths – they’re built out of it, bootstrapping virtual worlds into existence on the back of 1s and 0s. But the maths of their internal questions or systems are less interesting. Many of Reiner Kniza’s games, like the Lost Cities card game, are just mathematical equations disguised by an ancient theme. A Ticket to Ride is mainly a problem about mapping the cards in your hand to your targets as fast as possible. Catan is about turning the random resources you get into the specific groups to win. Space Alert is about realising that your entire spaceship crew is terrible at programming, and that someone forgot to hit the space bar on the ship’s computer to stop it going into screensav- The key point is that these equations are not soluble. There isn’t an easy answer for what you should do, because of that human interaction, but also because Knizia and others design their games so nothing meshes quite perfectly – and in that scarcity and plenty, you have to make a call, because you have to do something. Similarly, board games use constrained randomness and then supply players with tools to sidestep it, or turn it to their benefit. In Catan, you know the odds and play them; but they’re not the only path to success, as bartering and social manipulation are equally important. The order that cards fall out in Race for the Galaxy or Netrunner is hugely important – but you manipulate it by picking your own goal in the first one, or by building your own deck in the second. With all these systems, you grok them, but you’ll never quite master them. And if the game ever lets you get to the point where you do. you buy a new game, rather than continue doing the same simple actions over and over until the story ends (see – all FPSes). Storytelling is fun Crucially, board games encourage people to take small physical elements and make up stories in their head. The diaries that get written over at RPS have an element of this and Dwarf Fortress has a much bigger chunk, but it’s that representational simplicity and focus on human interaction that sets your mind imagining. Think of the island you create in every game of The Settlers of Catan; the last settlers, arriving to find all the good land is taken, and in the new world they scratch out a living on the desert’s edge; the impoverished mountain dwellers who find themselves in the late game with their town sitting on all the ore in the world; and the towns that were the brick foundries of the new colony, that see demand die off as the game progresses and have to resort to exports to avoid being raided. Games like Arabian Nights or Monsterhearts are entirely about storytelling, setting up structures so your character changes and leaves a shimmering trail through time. Or think of the entire P&P roleplay tradition, now subsumed into board games, in the form of Advanced HeroQuest or Descent, which is about nothing but joint fantasising in a given ruleset. Touching is fun Not that like that. I mean that another thing that board games have taught is that tangibility is wonderful. Our hands are wonderfully sensitive things, containing more nerve endings than there are people in Wales. And boardgames, like Dreadfleet or Mousetrap or Marble Run, are just damn good fun to assemble, and fiddle with and stare at. Face it, without those beautiful little models, the actual Games Workshop battle systems were always a bit shonky and unbalanced. Arcade games knew this, growing as they did out of the Nickelodeons and penny arcades, and throwing up bongos, dance mats, plastic guns and the rest. But it’s taken a lot longer for video games to get to grips with getting to grips. Guitar Hero managed well, as did Rock Band, before they died completely, but it’s really only with Skylanders and Disney Infinity that playing with little things has taken off. Video gaming is fun There are a ton of other lessons that video games can learn. Space Alert and Robo Rally show that programming can be fun. Mighty Empires and Descent: The Road to Legend show that games of huge scale are plausible – and these games should be easier to do online than they are in person. They have excellent asymmetry (Chaos in the Old World), they can be elegant (Hive), they can be modified over time (Risk: Legacy), they have multiple paths to success (Carcassonne), they have huge replayability (Cosmic Encounter), and they have hugely variable set-ups (Dominion). But board games do have failings too. They’re often terrible time sinks. To set up the board for Mansions of Madness the first time can take several hours – and then the game might be over in 30 minutes. And let’s not talk about the Warhammer tabletop battle games, where you might have to build your own scenery first… Many games do have win-formulas, but it just takes longer to get to them. For example, getting up to speed on the few ways of reliably winning Puerto Rico is frankly dull. And playing the horribly internecine Diplomacy with seven people may take a few days – to replicate something standard Civilization multiplayer does for you. Board games haven’t until recently automated stuff. Barring the forthcoming X-Com game and the amazing Space Alert, few of these games make effective use of other tech to speed up the game and set-up process. Just picking out the pieces for the horribly over-complicated Civilization: Through The Ages is a challenge in itself. As Quintin Smith said, many moons ago, board games are the dream of their creator, communicated correctly. Their tangibility, their simplicity, and their use of our humanity make it easier to communicate that dream. Learning from this will make video games much, much better. - Dan GriliopoulosIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said a ground offensive is under way in Gaza. Reuters witnesses and Gaza residents reported heavy artillery and naval shelling and helicopter fire along the Gaza border. Five people have been reported killed so far, including a five-month-old baby. "The prime minister and defence minister have instructed the IDF to begin a ground operation tonight in order to hit the terror tunnels from Gaza into Israel," the statement by Mr Netanyahu said. The Israel Defence Forces Twitter account also confirmed a large ground operation in the Gaza Strip. "A new phase of Operation Protective Edge has begun," it said. "The new phase follows 10 days of Hamas attacks on Israel by land, air & sea - and repeated rejections of offers to de-escalate the situation." A spokesman for Hamas said the ground invasion is "foolish" and will have "dreadful consequences". Egypt's foreign ministry denounced Israel's "escalation" in Gaza and again demanded both sides accept a Cairo proposed truce. "Egypt condemns the Israeli escalation in Gaza and calls for self-control as its air strikes and ground operation only aggravate the situation and do not help preserve Israel's security," the foreign ministry said. Three Palestinian children were killed earlier today after an Israeli aircraft bombed a house in Gaza City. Another two youngsters died in a separate attack. Gaza health officials say at least 246 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and among them over 40 children have been killed so far in the conflict. Israel charges three over Palestinian teen's death The death of five children today comes after four boys, aged between nine and 11, were killed yesterday in an Israeli raid on a beach in Gaza City. The Israeli army said the killings appeared to be the "tragic outcome" of a strike targeting Hamas militants. In Israel, one civilian has been killed in the past ten days by one of more than 1,300 Palestinian rockets fired. Clinton warns Israel about isolating itself Former US president Bill Clinton has warned Israel about "isolating itself from world opinion" due to repeated conflicts in Gaza. "Over the long run it is not good for Israel to keep isolating itself from world opinion because of the absence of a viable peace process," Mr Clinton told the Indian NDTV news channel yesterday. "In the short to medium term, Hamas can inflict terrible public relations damage on Israel by forcing it to kill Palestinian civilians to counter Hamas," he added. Hamas had a "strategy designed to force Israel to kill their own (Palestinian) civilians so the rest of the world will condemn them," while Israel could not "look like fools" by not responding to the heavy missile attacks. Mr Clinton, who pushed hard while president for a comprehensive peace deal at a Camp David summit in 2000, urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to resume serious talks. "I believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu could and should make a comprehensive peace agreement with the Palestinians," he said. US President Barack Obama yesterday said the United States supported Egyptian efforts to bring about a ceasefire. US officials would use their diplomatic resources over the next 24 hours to pursue closing a deal, he added. Egypt had proposed a permanent ceasefire plan on Tuesday, which Israel accepted and Hamas rejected, saying its terms had been ignored. Israeli media reports said Egypt was continuing its truce efforts and that senior Israeli officials would hold talks in Cairo today on a ceasefire. UEFA suspends European club fixtures in Israel UEFA, European footballs governing body, has announced that no matches in the Champions League or Europa League, Europe's two international club competitions, can be played in Israel. In a statement UEFA said it had "decided, due to the current security situation in Israel, no UEFA competition matches may be played in the country until further notice." "Consequently, the Israeli clubs involved in forthcoming fixtures have been requested to propose alternative venues outside of Israel's territory for their home legs in the 2014/15 UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League."Grid concerns for Baltic project 11 June 2013 Share Work may be halted on the Baltic nuclear power plant project as the possibility to export its power appears less certain. The plant is in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, situated between Lithuania and Poland. The two reactors Rosatom is developing there are intended to export to both those countries as well as potentially Germany through an undersea connector. It is a stand-out project for Russia: the first to be opened up to investment by European utilities; the first intended to export most of its output; and the first to use an Alstom-Atomenergomash steam turbine. Construction of the first VVER-1200 reactor began in February last year, with another one planned to follow. The freshly forged 171 tonne rotor for Baltic 1's low-pressure steam turbine cooling at the factory of Atomenergomash's Ukrainian subsidiary EMSS (Image: Atomenergomash) However, Lithuanian energy minister Jaroslav Neverovič recently cast doubt on a proposed upgrade of the single grid connection between the nations. He remarked on local radio that there is no need to upgrade because Lithuania is not considering buying power from the Baltic plant. This could suggest there is only a limited chance of permission for a proposal by Russian grid operator InterRAO UES and its Lithuanian subsidiary to upgrade the connection from today's capacity of about 700 MWe to 1000 MWe. Lithuania, of course, has its own plan to bring on new nuclear capacity at Visaginas alongside its shut-down Ignalina plant. In addition, InterRAO wants to build a new connection to Poland of up to 1000 MWe and set up a new HVDC cable under the Baltic Sea to carry 1000 MWe to Germany. All three new connections could allow the export of about 1800 MWe of the 2300 MWe the Baltic plant is slated to produce from 2018. But without these connections there is no customer for the plant's output, given that domestic demand in Kaliningrad only reaches about 780 MWe with this largely already met by a single fossil fuel plant. Despite being 18 months into construction of its first unit, the Baltic plant is also progressing without the hoped-for foreign investors. One result of this growing uncertainty has been a round of discussions in the Russian industry on the plant's future, with one suggestion to build smaller reactors instead. Researched and written by World Nuclear News Related topicsU.S. Rethinks Security As Mideast Oil Imports Drop toggle caption John Gaps III/AP Within the next two decades, the United States may barely need any oil from the Persian Gulf, due in large part to increased domestic production. That dramatic shift could shake the foundation of U.S. interests in the Middle East. For more than 40 years, the U.S. security presence in the region has been rooted in one reality: It is where our oil comes from. The need to keep the oil flowing has meant U.S. administrations cozy up to Saudi Arabia. It has meant the U.S. military keeps aircraft carriers stationed around the Gulf. And it has meant a U.S. willingness to go to war to keep oil shipping lanes open, a position first enunciated by President Jimmy Carter. "An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America," Carter declared in his 1980 State of the Union address. "Such an assault," Carter said, "will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force." Where The U.S. Gets Its Oil In 2011, net imports accounted for 45 percent of U.S. petroleum demand. Of that, 52 percent comes from the Western Hemisphere. The top sources of crude petroleum and oil products: Canada (29 percent), Saudi Arabia (14 percent), Venezuela (11 percent), Nigeria (10 percent) and Mexico (8 percent). The Carter Doctrine has guided U.S. policy ever since. When Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, threatening the Gulf oil supply, the United States and its allies intervened. The public aim was to help Kuwait restore its sovereignty, but that did not tell the whole story. "There were a lot of oil implications underneath that whole episode and our response to it," says Roger Altman, who served as deputy Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration. "I'm not saying we wouldn't have liberated Kuwait absent the oil factors, but they had to play a big role." A Different Energy Equation The oil picture has changed sharply since then, however. The share of U.S. oil coming from the Gulf is down by about one-third. Much of that oil is going instead to China, Japan and Korea. "The Asian states are really the prime consumers of Middle East oil," says Mikkal Herberg, director of the energy security program at the National Bureau of Asian Research. "We get really very little oil from the Gulf here in the U.S. anymore. In the future we will need virtually no Persian Gulf oil to speak of." The United States is now producing more of its own oil. Plus, it's getting more from Canada, Mexico and Brazil. A new report from the International Energy Agency, or IEA, highlights the shift in the Middle East oil trade. The Paris-based organization projects that by 2035 nearly 90 percent of Persian Gulf oil exports will go to Asia, with the United States getting a negligible amount. "U.S.-Brazil relations will be quite important," says Altman, now chairman of Evercore Partners, an investment banking firm. "Relations with Mexico will be quite important. They will be more important, from an energy point of view, than relationships with Iraq or Libya or potentially Iran." Where Mideast Oil Goes Demand for Mideast oil is dropping in the U.S. and Europe, but growing dramatically in China and India. Notes Units=millions of barrels per day2035 figures are projections. The sharply reduced dependence on Persian Gulf oil is raising questions about whether the Carter Doctrine should still apply. "The U.S. has been the guarantor of the sea lanes and the Gulf producers because we felt that was vital to U.S. energy security interests," says Herberg of the National Bureau of Asian Research. "As we become quasi energy-independent it's likely that there will be questioning here in the U.S. 'Do we really need to carry that load?' " Security For Key Shipping Lanes If protecting the Persian Gulf oil supply doesn't matter so much anymore, would that justify some U.S. disengagement from the Middle East? Persian Gulf oil will remain important, and somebody will need to secure those Gulf shipping lanes. China, poised to become the No. 1 buyer of Gulf oil, is now benefiting from the huge U.S. security presence in the region. Perhaps the United States could turn over security responsibilities in the Persian Gulf to China. "Strategically, that's not something we really want to do," says Herberg. "But in an oil sense they are now the prime beneficiary of this. [They are a] free rider on these free sea lanes the U.S. keeps open. So how do you manage that conflict?" The IEA, which advises governments on energy policy, hinted in its 2012 World Energy Outlook that the shift in the oil trade could redefine military alliances. With the U.S. defense budget under strain, that argument resonates. "It's insane that we have the 5th Fleet of the U.S. Navy tied up there to protect oil that ends up in China and Europe," T. Boone Pickens, the energy tycoon, was quoted as saying recently in Parade magazine. Enlarge this image toggle caption Hassan Ammar/AP Hassan Ammar/AP The Pentagon's new defense strategy, released last January, said the United States should "rebalance" toward the Asia Pacific region. But it did not call for a downgrading of the U.S. role in the Middle East. The Question Of The Global Oil Market Few U.S. defense officials would feel comfortable with the Chinese navy replacing the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf. But there may also be an oil-related rationale for maintaining the U.S. security presence in the Gulf. Oil is traded in a global market. The U.S. may not need as much oil from the Persian Gulf as it used to, but it does have an interest in keeping that oil flowing. A disruption of the Gulf oil trade would raise the oil price for everybody. "In a sense, the U.S. has a new dilemma," says Herberg. "Its access to oil is increasingly very secure in the Western Hemisphere. [There is] little reliance on the Gulf. But in terms of the oil price, the global oil markets, and the impact on the global and U.S. economy, that flow of oil from the Gulf remains a vital interest." If the price of oil were to skyrocket because of some trouble in the Persian Gulf, it would mean a bigger trade deficit in the energy sector, a bigger share of the U.S. national income leaving the country. Carl Pope, the former chairman of the Sierra Club, says that is the reality to keep in mind. "It's not so much the barrels of oil we import," Pope says. "It's the hundreds of billions of dollars we export that threaten our security." Those U.S. aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf may be needed for a while yet.Gaping hole in Oroville Dam spillway is growing, officials warn Butte Sheriff's Department officials said Friday afternoon that the massive crater in the main spillway of Oroville Dam likely won't force the use of an emergency spillway to divert water from the swelling reservoir. Stormwater and snowmelt filled up the reservoir this week, necessitating releases on the spillway to the Feather River. The cement outlet was closed Tuesday after officials noticed water was flowing irregularly. After stopping the flow, engineers found a gaping hole in the concrete chute. By Thursday, the hole had grown to about 45-feet-deep and 300-feet-wide by 500-feet-long, according to a KCBS report. On Friday the Butte Sheriff released a statement suggesting that an unpaved emergency spillway would likely be used for the first time ever. Crews were clearing trees and brush this week in the event that a release was needed. But during the noon hour Friday, the department posted an update on the flow suggesting that the emergency release is not imminent. "Water flow over the Oroville Spillway is currently at 65,000 cfs (cubic feet per second). At the current rate of release, and with the current weather forecast, DWR officials do not believe use of the Emergency Spillway will take place," the department wrote on Facebook. Situated in the western foothills of the Sierra, Lake Oroville is the second-largest man-made reservoir in California after Shasta. It's a key flood-control and water-storage facility within the California State Water Project, and its fresh water releases control salinity intrusion into the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta and protect the health of fish and wildlife. As of Friday morning, the lake was at 98 percent capacity. Earlier this week, photos of the damage and chunks of concrete yanked from the mile-long spillway went viral on social media. Engineers don't know what caused the cave-in that is expected to keep growing until it reaches bedrock. spillway at the #orovilledam - erosion was 1st reported 3 days ago, since then it has grown. pic.twitter.com/MNep5CQ9Ni — CANGJOCOPS (@CANGJ3OPS) February 9, 2017 The latest from crumbling #OrovilleSpillway: Water coming in faster than it's going out, so high releases continue. https://t.co/TnjcW51Ils pic.twitter.com/qcTzIPwQKz — ChicoER (@ChicoER) February 9, 2017 The department does not expect the discharge from the reservoir to exceed the capacity of any channel downstream as the water flows through the Feather River, into the Sacramento River and on to the San Francisco Bay. Officials say Oroville Dam itself is sound and there is no imminent threat to the public. "Despite rumors, no evacuations have been issued at this time due to the Oroville Spillway," the Sheriff's Department posted online Friday. As stormwater poured into the rising Lake Oroville Thursday, the state continued to cautiously continue released down the reservoirs damaged spillway. As stormwater poured into the rising Lake Oroville Thursday, the state continued to cautiously continue released down the reservoirs damaged spillway. Photo: DWR Photo: DWR Image 1 of / 83 Caption Close Gaping hole in Oroville Dam spillway is growing, officials warn 1 / 83 Back to Gallery Conditions are more perilous for the fish population. At the fish hatchery below — one crucial to California's salmon industry, which produces some 7 million fish a season — workers were scurrying Thursday to snap up in nets 4 million fish in danger of dying and then trucking them miles downstream to safety. But nearly 5 million other fish and fish eggs couldn't be moved. The turbidity, or cloudiness, of the water running into Feather River Hatchery was "off the charts," said Harry Morse, a spokesman for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Normal turbidity levels tend to be on a 5 to 10 scale, while Thursday's recordings soared into the 400s, he said. "This is just uncharted territory," Morse said, adding that a team of scientists were working to rig up makeshift filtration systems inside the hatchery to protect the eggs in danger. Workers were moving the millions of young fish, said to be about three months too young to safely release into the wild, about 10 miles down the river to Thermalito via giant tanker trucks, to a spot with existing fish infrastructure far enough off the river that they should survive, Morse said. After dipping down to record-low levels during the California drought, Lake Oroville -the state's second largest reservoir - is now near capacity. The Associated Press contributed to this report.Last night was the Super Bowl, one of the biggest nights on the American sporting calendar, if not the biggest but many people in Britain were also completely involved with the 2014 Super Bowl being watched by more than 4 million people in the UK alone. If people didn’t watch any of the NFL season they could not get away from the fact that it was Super Bowl night which dominated British social networking. The NFL franchise has even seen the market in the UK by playing a game on British soil each year. The United Kingdom is also giving back to the sport producing players such as Osi Umenyiora, defensive end for the Atlanta Falcons and Menelik Watson an offensive lineman for the Oakland Raiders. It is not only in sport that we see this, Steve White the head of the Police federation wants to give all front-line officers a taser. Though not quite as problematic as a gun, it still shows a step towards a more weaponised police force. The aim is to protect the Police against terrorism but they do their job’s well with what they are given, in a scenario needing use, a taser would be needed with someone carrying a weapon most likely a gun, which out muscles a taser deeming it pointless giving only a matter of time before the police are also given guns, so the taser is merely a stepping stone to achieve this. Black Friday shopping has also massively taken over the UK, it is to mark the day after Thanksgiving which isn’t even a celebrated holiday in Britain yet massive companies such as Tesco, Argos and Sainsbury’s all slashed prices to join in with the American fun fair and enjoy a profit. The 2014 Black Friday was the busiest day on record for Amazon UK, they sold 64 items per second clearing over 5.5 million goods. John Lewis, who do take part in the Black Friday sales are not huge fans however the companies managing director Andy Street saying that it puts them under strain to match the demand from customers. American slang has also slipped into British vocabulary, terms such as ‘Bae’ (before anyone else) which is said instead of ‘Babe’ and ‘Sweetie’ etc. The term was widely used across the US, even by celebrities like Pharrell in his BET performance. Another term used is ‘On Fleek’ (very good’) which is widely used in slag across the States to describe anything that has been done well, but you can now go across UK social media and see a vast amount of people putting up images saying terms such as ‘My hair on fleek’. AdvertisementsHurricane Matthew Proves Why "Waiting" to Prepare Could Cost You Your Life - Nathan McDonald By Nathan McDonald 1779 Views October 7, 2016 This is a subject that is dear to my heart. I am the father of two young children and the husband to a loving wife. I take great pride and responsibility in the fact that I am primary provider and protector of my family. Therefore, it pains me deeply and frustrates me immensely when I see example after example of people simply not taking the appropriate steps and NOT being prepared in the "unlikely" event of disaster. The reality is this: disasters CAN and DO happen on a much more regular basis than we would like to admit. I know this cuts into many people's "cookie cutter" perfect world scenario and shatters the mantra of "this will never happen to me". As the world now watches another one of these "unlikely" disasters unfolding along the coast of Florida as Hurricane Matthew wreaks havoc, I am saddened to see that so many are not prepared and are therefore going to suffer greatly because of it. What is most infuriating of all is the fact that ANYONE
S&P 500 and large cap stocks in the aggregate tend to grow in value over the long term — will cease to hold true. In my view, this would certainly precipitate a severe economic depression. But this perilous arrangement is also at the heart of our potential. Our world and our economy is geared towards growth. We understand and expect that the world we will experience in a decade will be far better than that of today, and we know that the world we leave to those who come after us will be profoundly different from our own. Their world will be safer, more connected, and more unified; they will spend more of their time in leisure, they will be healthier, and the greatest problems of our time will be solved — that solution being taken for granted as a fact of life in their world. It was not only curiosity, but an unselfish love for those who would follow them, that compelled our grandparents’ generation to develop penicillin, the microwave, the bikini, and duct tape. Each generation’s iterative improvements to our species, starting with our hunter-gatherer ancestors developing language and control of fire, brought us here. “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” -Isaac Newton With continued, bold investments in science and technology, we can carry this torch further, improving the condition of our species, bringing ourselves greater prosperity, and making good on the covenant we have with our descendants.Having nothing to do with Wizball or Wizkid, the latter of which I remember as one of the truly surreal games of my formative years, Wizorb is an Arkanoid style game with NES-styled graphics and a basic JRPG backdrop. It’s been out on the indie segment of Xbox Live for a while, where I’ve played and enjoyed it, so I’m glad to see the PC release is happening sooner than I’d expected. November 7th to be precise, on Gamersgate. Paddle control should benefit from mouse control, although it could also make the game easier so hopefully there’ll be at least a basic tweak to ball speed. Trailer below, the graphics and music of which are either ‘charmingly retro’ or ‘a pungent throwback’. I’m going to go with charmingly pungent. It’s not quite the Puzzle Quest of brick-breakers, with the RPG elements being mostly cosmetic, but bopping monsters with a ball is more fun than breaking bricks I say. It’s the Devil’s Crush of brick-breakers, how’s that? For me, having a quest and characters adds the carrot of a more meaningful structure to a genre which is usually lacking in that department. Some sort of tasty, tasty structural meta-carrot.The number of atheists in the United States continues to grow. According to a Pew Research Center study, the percentage of Americans who identify as atheist went from 1.6 percent in 2007 to 3.1 percent in 2014. Students at the University of Miami are not immune to the trend steering away from structured religion. Students, even those who grew up religious are turning to becoming religion non-conforming. Ozerk Turan, a junior psychology major, was raised as a devout Muslim, praying five times a day including every night before he went to sleep. Turan, of Turkish descent, abstained from eating pork as well as part of his practice. Turan maintained a connection to his religion until the beginning of his freshman year at UM. It was then, when he first started to stray away from Islam. Turan began to explore the sciences and saw his intrinsic religious beliefs clashed heavily with what he was reading. “I started reading up into astrophysics and quantum physics a lot toward the end of high school and those realms really clash with the basics of religion,” Turan said. For Turan, the non-adaptive nature of religion and its controlling uses are other reasons he no longer identifies as Muslim. He said he began to see how religion played a larger role in society and in its followers more than he was comfortable with. “I also began to think a lot about how religion never really adapts to society and how it is interpreted in millions of different ways and that really started bothering me,” Turan said. “And then I saw how the people in Turkey were so easily controlled by religious propaganda.” Although Turan no longer identifies with a religion, he does not consider himself an atheist. “I would say that I’m non-religious but not specifically an atheist in the way that I don’t believe in nothing,” Turan said. “I believe in some sort of higher power that cannot be perceived.” Junior Eric Purcell, like Turan, was raised with a structured religious upbringing. Growing up in southern Virginia, Purcell attended Catholic Church every Sunday. But, he now views organized religion in a negative light. Purcell said he believes that much of the world’s violence is a result of religion. “I have too many issues with organized religion and its association with violence,” Purcell said, an honors communication major with a focus on motion pictures. “Organized religion has a history of violence. I think a lot of terror organizations of the world operate on a religious basis. In the past, a lot of wars have been based in religion like the Crusades.” Unlike Turan and Purcell, senior Haley Walker was raised without an organized religion. However, Walker said she consciously knew around middle school that she identified as an atheist. Although Walker had a secular childhood, she and her family still engage in activities that are rooted in certain religions including Christianity. Walker said her family decides to focus on different aspects of the holidays and celebrations than what some traditionally do. “I celebrate Christmas, but very secularly,” Walker said, a creative writing major. “My family emphasizes the gift-giving and family bonding aspects of it instead.” Though Turan shares similar sentiments to many others throughout the world regarding organized religion and its practices, he said he still finds value in those who believe in a higher entity. “I do have respect for those who spiritually use religion as a way to guide themselves,” Turan said.It might seem perfectly reasonable that a doctor should feel free to apologize to a patient or survivors after a surgery goes wrong. But state Sen. Pat Vance had to work years to pass a bill that would allow doctors to apologize without fear the apology would be used as evidence during a medical malpractice lawsuit. The bill passed the state House by a 202-0 vote on Tuesday after previously passing the Senate 50-0. It now requires the signature of Gov. Tom Corbett, who has said he supports the bill. UPDATE: Gov. Tom Corbett signed the bill into law on Wednesday morning. "I can't tell you, after eight years, how happy I am," said Vance, a Cumberland County Republican. Vance said the proposal was long stuck in the judiciary committee as the result of the influence of personal injury lawyers. The key was getting the bill into the insurance committee, which gave it the support needed to bring it before the full Senate, she said. She further credited the influence of state Sen. Gene Yaw, a Lycoming County Republican and a lawyer who has represented patients in medical malpractice cases. The purpose of the bill is to shield doctors so an apology following an unwanted or unexpected medical outcome isn't used as evidence of negligence in a lawsuit. It also applies to nursing home staff and administrators. Vance said doctors have historically refrained from apologies out of fear of triggering or aiding a lawsuit. She further said patients and families should have the comfort of knowing their doctor cares about them and shares in their grief. Moreover, she said research shows that many lawsuits result from patients who felt their doctor wasn't caring or open with them following an unwanted medical outcome. It's been proven that apologies reduce the frequency of lawsuits and overall liability-related costs, Vance said. Vance said the bill won't impact the ability of patients to file lawsuits alleging medical negligence. Clifford Rieders, a personal injury lawyer and patient safety advocate, said court interpretations of the bill will decide whether it negatively impacts the rights of injured patients. He said if the apology can't be used to bolster the patient's case, then the court must also bar the apology from being used to sway the jury in favor of the doctor. Rieders contends doctors have sometimes wanted juries to be aware of apologies in the hope it would favorably impact jurors' view of them. He also said it's important that the courts separate the apology from any explanation of the facts related to an unwanted medical outcome. Rieders contents that, historically, some supporters of apology legislation sought to use apology and admission of mistakes as a way to prevent the mistakes from being used as evidence. Yaw said the purpose of the apology law is to enable doctors who feel grief over a medical outcome to fully express their feelings of regret and sympathy toward the patient or their loved ones. He said facts contained in an explanation that accompanies an apology can still be used as evidence in court. For example, if a doctor during the course of an apology explained that he or she was drunk at the time of the mishap, the bill wouldn't prevent those statements from being used in court, Yaw said. “When an adverse outcome occurs, whether because of an unforeseen circumstance or a medical mistake, health care providers want to explain what happened and patients want to be told what happened. But without protections that this legislation brings, providers are afraid to talk to patients,” Dr. Stuart Shapiro, the head of an association that represents nursing homes and assistled living providers, said in a news release. “This is a new and right approach to patient care.” Shapiro said many malpractice lawsuits result from anger rather than financial motivation, and apologies can diffuse that anger. Dr. Richard Schott, the president of the Pennsylvania Medical Society, said in a news release: "As physicians, it is part of our job – part of our moral and ethical responsibility – to respond to patients and families when there are less than favorable outcomes. Medicine is not an exact science, and outcomes may be unpredictable. Benevolent gestures are always appropriate and physicians should not have to fear giving them." Vance said 37 states have similar laws that protect apologies. Note: this story was updated to reflect that Gov. Tom Corbett signed the bill on Oct. 23.Hello again, friends! I said, I was going to update this one pretty sparsely, but I guess this chapter just needed to get out of my head. So here it is! The response I got on the last chapter was just fantastic, so if I haven't said it before, thank you guys for all your support. Beta: Maxaro. Yrros rof lla eht dab gnippihs. Enjoy! Jaune sighed at the stack of paperwork in his lap as he sat, alone on a bench outside in the budding warmth of spring. If he had counted correctly, there were about three more pages left to review in this specific packet… then about a hundred more of those packets to go through. It was daunting, to say the least. This wasn't exactly what a younger Jaune would've seen himself doing at the ripe age of twenty-seven. Of course, quite a few things had changed since then, between his current job and his present relationship with Pyrrha. Speaking of which… Hoooooonk! Jaune looked up to see a dark blue sedan pull up to the curb in front of him. The window rolled down to reveal a grinning Pyrrha, a pair of horn-rimmed glass donned on her face. "Hey Jaune!" The blonde smiled. He hurriedly stuffed the rest of the papers into his shoulder bag and jogged to the car. "Hey, you," greeted Jaune, as he climbed inside the car. "Have I ever told you that you should most definitely wear glasses more often?" "Oh, I just got lazy today," laughed Pyrrha. "I like wearing my contacts more. I don't have to worry about these deadweights sliding down my nose every five seconds." "Well, at least I tried," Jaune sighed. "How's your day been?" Pyrrha shrugged and started to drive. "Pretty dull, for the most part. I went in and got the reward for my last mission, and I actually need to pick up my next one before we go home." "You ever think about relaxing every once in a while? I can't quite remember the last time you took a break from huntress… ing? Anyway, I say you deserve one at this point." The redhead laughed. "You think? A break does sound nice. What about you? How's your job treating you?" Jaune groaned. "It's pretty rough. Sometimes I wonder why the hell I have to get swamped with all these papers all the damn time." "Well, it was your decision to stop being a huntsman and to become a professor instead." "Yeah. I know," Jaune sighed. "I… I just can't go back to that life." Pyrrha gave him a reassuring smile. "I understand. Nobody's making you go back if you don't want to." "It's just… I don't feel like I've escaped my past at all." Jaune gazed solemnly at Pyrrha. "I can't help but keep thinking that I'm just training and teaching these kids to go out on the frontlines to die." "Jaune," answered the redhead sternly. "You have got to stop blaming yourself for all those things that happened. You did all you could to help them, and that's all they could've ever asked from you. Now, I think you taking up a teaching job is the perfect fit for you! You're great at motivating people to better themselves. Trust me, I would know – we were on a team together for four years, after all. But I think what makes you the best professor is that you care about these kids. And if you're the Jaune I know you are, you're going to provide these kids with all the tools to keep them safe in their careers as huntsmen and huntresses." "I'm not going to be able to save them all." "But you'll be able to save most of them." Pyrrha slowed the car down as the traffic in Vale screeched to a halt. "Look, Jaune, these kids know what they're in for. They know they'll be putting their lives on the line to protect the people they love, but you can make sure that many of them will be able to return home to their families. And I think that's an honorable pursuit. So if nothing else, you should be proud of that." Jaune stared distantly at the cars as they crawled by. "You think?" "I do." Pyrrha sighed. "Traffic isn't supposed to be this bad, what the hell?" "You know, I'm not sure," replied Jaune. "Maybe it's another White Fang attack." "I highly doubt it. They haven't been even remotely active in Vale for the last year and a half." Suddenly, Pyrrha grinned. "Hey, let's take a detour. I think I know something that'll cheer you up." Jaune laughed tiredly. "What could that possibly be?" "Well… it's Friday, neither of us have work tomorrow. You know the old arcade near A Simple Wok? I heard they just installed a new DDR machine," Pyrrha replied with a wink. "Really…" Smiling, Jaune pondered over the prospect of beating Pyrrha in the one the he was better at than her. "Don't you need to go pick up the report for your next job?" "Well, I figured maybe that break you suggested could do me some good." "Ah. But we're still meeting with Blake and Yang later for dinner, I think. You sure we'll have time?" "Oh, we'll definitely have time. I just need to give you a proper ass-whooping, that's all," Pyrrha smirked. "Okay, if you put it like that, I'm sold." Jaune cracked his knuckles. "Let's go. This professor needs to give a certain somebody a proper schooling on the history of dance." Pyrrha guffawed. "Oh, it is on." The restaurant that Blake and Yang wanted to meet Jaune and Pyrrha at was rather fancy-looking as well as expensive. Usually, when any of the old eight decided to grab dinner with each other, it was either at someone's house or at a restaurant of much less elegance, so the selection of the current eatery piqued Jaune and Pyrrha's curiosity. The foursome sat in a booth table near the back of the restaurant, the darkened lighting providing for a relaxed ambiance as they talked of old things and new things over drinks. "So, I've got to ask the question on our minds right now – why such a fancy restaurant?" inquired Pyrrha, looking around the place in awe. "Well…" Blake's face began to redden. "We just couldn't wait for everyone else to get back in town. We just had to tell someone." Pyrrha and Jaune leaned forward in their seats, eagerly awaiting whatever news the girls were planning to reveal. Yang beamed and took Blake's hands into her own. "We're getting married!" For a moment, Yang's announcement was met with silence from the blonde and the redhead, and she wondered briefly if she had accidently struck a nerve. Then… "Oh my gosh, that's wonderful!" Pyrrha put her mouth over her hands. "That's absolutely wonderful!" Jaune grinned. "Seriously, congrats you two! Have you got a date in mind?" Blake smiled shyly. "We're thinking either September or December of next year." "Wow," Jaune thought for a moment. "That's more than a year away." "Yeah. We figured we could use the extra time to work out all the details," answered Yang happily. "Ooh!" the redhead exclaimed excitedly. "When did you guys get engaged? Can I see the ring?" "Almost two months now," answered Blake, a smile playing on her lips, and brandished the diamond band. Jaune stared in admiration at the ring. "So… that means Yang proposed? I'm not exactly sure how that works in this kind of situation." Yang burst out laughing. "No Jaune, I proposed and kept the ring for myself," Blake teased mirthfully. The blonde man rolled his eyes. "Okay, okay. Stupid question, I get it." Pyrrha patted him on the back. "It's alright, Jaune. We've come to expect this from you." "Hey –" "Anyway," interrupted the redhead before Jaune could complain. "You two have anything planned for the wedding yet? I know it's more than a year away, but weddings take quite a bit of preparation." "No, not yet," shrugged Yang. "The amount of stuff we gotta take care of… it's a little terrifying." Pyrrha nodded happily. "Oh, that's understandable. You know, Jaune and I have experience with setting up weddings. We could absolutely lend a hand if you two needed it." "Totally!" Jaune agreed. "Uh… thanks, you guys," mumbled Yang, suddenly apprehensive. Blake had the same apprehension on her face. "We… we were actually going to tell you two that you can bring plus-ones, if you wanted to." "Plus-ones?" Jaune and Pyrrha shared a confused look before Pyrrha spoke. "Well, we're probably just going to go with each other. I don't think we'll need the plus-ones." Yang frowned. "Isn't that… maybe just a little bit weird?" Pyrrha glanced at Jaune. "No, I don't think so. Why would that be?" "Yeah, why would that be?" echoed Jaune. "Are you being serious right now?" Yang almost yelled exasperatedly. "Yang," Blake tried to interject. "You shouldn't –" "No, I need to say this." Yang crossed her arms and leaned on the table. "You two have been separated for the last six months. Fuck, you're getting divorced! And you guys still cling to each other every waking day of every week! Isn't that just the slightest bit weird!?" "Well, you're not completely right," protested Jaune. "Pyrrha's out of town most of the time doing her duties, much like you guys are. But I'm stuck at home grading papers and giving lectures to half-awake kids. So I don't get to see her that often." "Ok, that's fair," Yang conceded. "But when she is around, you two are inseparable, which isn't really a thing that happens between two people who about to get divorced from each other. Not to mention, when you say 'home?' You two still live in the same house? I… I just don't get it." "Well, we sleep in separate rooms," countered Pyrrha. "I mean… we're pretty separate." "Totally," agreed Jaune. "Not weird at all. Right?" "It is a little weird," admitted Blake. Yang nodded. "Thank you!" Pyrrha sighed. "Look, you two, we may be getting divorced, but we're still best friends." "The bestest of friends," added Jaune. "Absolutely. In fact, I think you guys should be happy for us. I mean, we used to argue all the time! You don't have to put up with that anymore. We're great now, and I think the fact that we still get along quite well is just a testament to our friendship," finished Pyrrha. Jaune nodded. "So what if it's a little weird? Why should we care what other people think? I say we just do what makes us happy, and I'd say me and Pyrrha staying friends makes us pretty happy." Yang lifted her hands in defeat. "If you say so. I'm just gonna say, as a friend, the way you two are heading right now, things are gonna change. For better or worse, I don't know, but they willchange." "Nah." Jaune waved off her statement. "We'll be good." Pyrrha nodded. "I think so, too. But let's not take the spotlight off of you and Blake! This is big news, after all. We should have a toast." "To what?" "How about… happiness?" "Works for me. To happiness!" "TO HAPPINESS!" It was 10pm by the time Jaune and Pyrrha finished their dinner with the newly engaged couple. Jaune was driving this time around, weaving through the streets of Vale as they made their way back home. They rode in silence for a while, as their thoughts raced, separate of each other. Sure, they still enjoyed each other's company, but it never was the same as it used to be. The two used to relish bathing and breathing in the other's presence, but nowadays their lives were not quite so intertwined. Whether the closeness they once shared was something they missed remained a secret that each kept from the other. Finally, Pyrrha broke the silence. "Hey, Jaune?" "Hmmm?" "… Yang and Blake are crazy, right?" Jaune frowned, the city's lights reflecting off his face as the passed by. "For getting engaged? I mean, sure they might be polar opposites, and maybe human-faunus marriages aren't widely accepted yet, but –" "No, silly!" Pyrrha shook her head, laughing. "I'm talking about what they said over dinner." "How do you mean?" Jaune inquired. "Well, I mean… them saying that what… we do… you know, us hanging out… is weird. We're not weird, right?" The redhead looked to Jaune for assurance. "Nah. I don't think so." "Yeah. Neither do I." Pyrrha smiled. "You're my best friend. You'll always be my best friend. You know that, right?" Jaune smirked. "I do. The same goes for you. You're my best friend, too." "Thanks, Jaune." Pyrrha went quiet for a moment, before turning back to the blonde. "Yang and Blake are completely crazy, right?" "Totally. Like, Oobleck-level crazy." "That's Doctor, to you." "Oh hush," laughed Jaune. "As much as I respect the man, I'd like to forget the shitload of papers he made us write in that class. I swear if someone sent me back a couple hundred years, I could make a pretty decent living as a scribe." Pyrrha giggled. "You could be an author, you know. I'm sure Blake could get you started on that route pretty easily if you wanted to." "Nah. I'm great at writing, not so much at coming up with what to write." Jaune suddenly brightened. "Speaking of Oobleck, I ran into him at… no wait, guess where we ran into each other." "Coffee shop?" "Fuck!" Jaune double-taked. "How did you guess that so quickly?" "It's Oobleck, silly," smiled the redhead. "I can't imagine that man lurking anywhere else outside of Beacon." "… Fair enough," Jaune grumbled. "Anyway, I told him how I was teaching at the local hunter's school. He was surprised, to say the least." Pyrrha rolled her eyes. "To be fair, almost everyone you've told so far has had their jaws hit the floor at your announcement. The great huntsman Jaune Arc retiring from hunting at twenty-six? Nobody saw that one coming." "Okay, no need to patronize me," Jaune laughed. "I wasn't trying to, I swear!" "Uh-huh." Jaune smiled at her. "The hunter's life is brutal. If I'm honest, I'm not sure how you and the rest of the gang still manage to put yourselves through it. I really respect that, y'know." "Not all of the gang," reminded Pyrrha. "Remember, Ruby's not going to be able to do any more missions after that horrible injury she went through last October." "Oh yeah," murmured Jaune remorsefully. "Poor Rubes." "She's a strong girl. She'll figure something out." Pyrrha turned to face him. "Anyway, you were saying how you told Doctor Oobleck you were a professor now?" "Right!" Jaune brightened once more. "I told him all that… and he told me that he could easily put in a good word for me to Ozpin back at Beacon." "Wait…" Pyrrha's eyes widened. "So that means…" "No, it doesn't mean anything yet. But Oobleck says he'll give me a call if anything turns up." "Oh my goodness, Jaune!" Pyrrha squealed in delight. "You might be teaching at Beacon!" The blonde laughed at her excitement. "Nothing's set in stone yet, Pyr." "I know, I know," beamed Pyrrha. "Still, the prospect of you being able to work at a place where we made so many memories is very exciting to me." "Yeah, it would be. I can just imagine those halls and those classrooms… man, that would definitely be a sight for sore eyes." "Yes, yes! And the dorms, and the commons, and… oh my God." She leaned towards him with a rare devious flash in her eyes. "The roof, Jaune." Jaune grinned. "The roof." "Please promise me that the first thing you when you get that job is to sneak me on to the roof so we can spar, just like old times." "If, Pyr, not when." Jaune chuckled. "Plus, it's been a while. I'm probably out of practice. You'd wipe the floor with me." Pyrrha rolled her eyes. "Pleeeeeaaaase, Jaune?" "… Sure," Jaune relented, albeit with a smile. "But if Goodwitch catches us, I'm blaming you." The redhead smirked. "It'll be worth it. I promise." They pulled up to the driveway at 10:30pm. The one-story house was not extravagant, by any means. It was modest, but it was enough for Jaune and Pyrrha's humble lives. If they wanted to, they could most definitely purchase a more spacious and flashier property befitting of their reputation, but that was just not the lifestyle suited for the two. They entered the house – and were greeted by a large, swiftly moving form. "Oof!" grunted Jaune as fifty-five pounds of Atlesian husky pounced excitedly on the blonde, knocking him flat on his rear. "Geez, Hermes. Do you ever get any less enthusiastic or are you just running on eleven all the damn time?" Hermes barked happily in response. Pyrrha chuckled as she knelt down to hug the dog, rubbing the back of his head in the process. "I think he wants to know if you'll ever be any more enthusiastic. Ever." Jaune shook his head. "Between the two of you, I just can't win, can I?" "Nope," Pyrrha replied happily. Hermes barked in agreement. "I figured as much," laughed Jaune, getting to his feet. "I'm gonna make some coffee. You want any?" "No," Pyrrha yawned. "It's been a long day for me. I think I'm just going to shower and turn in. Catch up on some much-needed sleep." "I'll bet." Jaune walked into the slightly outdated kitchen, with Hermes eagerly trotting after him. "Heard your last mission was a doozy." Pyrrha smiled. "It was very rough. But it paid well, so all's well ends well, I suppose." She yawned again. "Oh my goodness, I think I might just fall asleep right here if I'm not careful." "Go clean up and get some sleep, then. You deserve it." Jaune started the coffee maker. "I'll be up for a while reading through papers, if you need me." "Okay." The redhead paused to watch Jaune pour an excessive amount of coffee grounds into the filter before heading to her side of the house. "I hope you don't start developing a dependence on coffee. I certainly do not want Doctor Oobleck as a roommate." "Very funny. I think I'll act like him for a day just to fuck with you." Pyrrha chuckled, already out of Jaune's sight. "Goodnight, Jaune." "Lov-" He caught himself. "Goodnight, Pyrrha." He listened for the door closing on the other end of the house. When it did, he subsequently smacked his head into the closest cupboard. "Shit," he muttered quietly. "It's been six months. I gotta stop doing that." Shaking his head, he checked the coffee brew and poured himself a hot, steaming mug. Looking down, he saw Hermes waiting patiently by his feet, staring at the blonde expectantly. "Oh, you wanna hang out with me tonight? I thought you loved Pyrrha better." He patted the husky's head. "C'mon, then." With the mug in hand, he grabbed the stack of papers from his shoulder bag with his other hand and headed towards the opposite end of the house. Hermes followed along happily. So the cat's out of the bag. Jaune and Pyrrha are separated and getting divorced. Hermes the dog was a very last minute addition. It was the middle of the night, and my brain went, 'They should have a dog,' and I said, 'Okay, brain,' and thus, the husky popped into existence. He's already my favorite character. And for the record, it was Pyrrha who bought and named the dog. If you've figured out what movie this is based on, it was a fantastic movie. If not, then at this point you won't figure it out. At least not until I decide to reveal it. Maybe. But yeah... going forward, the fic will be sparsely updated. I knew exactly what I wanted to do with this chapter - but I have no idea how to even start the next one. Decisions, decisions. It also actually starts to get worse from here. Just so you get the disclaimer. This was a pretty vanilla chapter, if I do say so myself. Reviews are always welcome. Until then, you beautiful people!A unique Dublin 1916 Commemoration jersey marks the 100th Anniversary of the Easter Rising 1916 – 2016. Features a reproduction of the 1916 Proclamation, the ancient Dublin 3 Castles crest and GPO image after the rising, courtesy of the National Library of Ireland. Standard Delivery to Ireland and the UK Delivery for all orders is €4 and FREE for all orders over €50. Your order will be manufactured and personalised in our factory to your requirements. Getting your order dispatched swiftly is of the utmost importance to us. Dispatch will take between 7-10 working days for personalised or made to order garments (Jerseys and Club products). Dispatch will take between 1-5 working days for all other products. We will notify you by email as your order progresses with any update on delivery time. Rest of the World Delivery Delivery in 10-15 working days after dispatch. Delivery cost varies, depending on weight and dimensions of the package. For full information on delivery click here Click here for full details on returns and exchangesRoad Bike Races are deeply entrenched in Alpine communities around the world. One of the most famous and legendary races is the Tour De France running through the Alps. Each one typically has a story or a reason they come to fruition. So, what about the U.S.? Do we have a race with an interesting anecdote? With the July 4th festivities fully underway, we’re on the eve of one of the oldest road cycling races in the U.S. You got it! It’s none other than the Death Ride and it definitely has a great story. BD… Before Death Ride Only in its 36th year, the Death Ride’s history and inspiration go further back in time. In the early 70’s, there was a tour named “SuperTour” organized by Carter Squires of the Diablo Wheelman’s. He categorized the ’75 race as an “utter failure because everyone finished.” To make up for it, the 1976 race was a monster of a course. Only five of the 27 brave souls survived the entire 1,000 mile race across two weeks. Now that’s a Death Ride! The Great Markleeville Death March One of the more unique aspects to the race was that each of the stages had a creative narrative written by a gentleman named John F Scott. It was he who saw the route sheet on Day 5 of the race and named it “Der Grosse Totenmarsch nach Markleeville” which translates to The Great Markleeville Death March. The route has evolved over the years but the inspiration of the name and route came from that eventful day on the SuperTour ’76. Death Ride 2017 – How tough is the modern version? Another monster-of-a-route in its own right, the modern day Death Ride constitutes over 3,000 cyclists using all kinds of two wheel modes to truly test their mettle. As a one day race, the elevation gain has increased to 15,000 feet! The course spans 129 miles with 5 summits across three mountain passes deep in Alpine County, only two miles from historic Markleeville: 8,314-foot Monitor 8,730-foot Ebbetts 8,580-foot Carson pass Event Details Start / Finish: Turtle Rock Park Date: 7/8/2017 For more info: Check out their websiteOne of the best things about Chiang Mai is its amazing range of places to eat and drink – to give you an example, Trip Advisor currently lists about 1,125 restaurants for the (small!) city. I eat out for all my meals apart from breakfast – and I even eat breakfast out a couple of times a week. It’s very cheap to eat out – a meal usually costs between 100-200 baht (£2-4) including a drink. Much less for street food. Whilst I usually rotate around four or five restaurants, when Mum visited recently I made sure we tried more. And we ended up being experts on the city’s French Toast (Ellen) and Pancakes (Mum) in particular. So in addition to my post on fun things to do in Chiang Mai, here are 22 great places to eat and drink. Please do leave your own recommendations in the comments below – I’m always excited to discover new places! Note: I’m a veggie (so all the below are veggie friendly), but Mum’s not, so I have put a (v) after a place if it’s purely vegetarian. Stars go from 1 (don’t bother) to 5 (must visit). Most places have free wifi. Mum’s comments in italics! I’ve linked as much as possible to websites or Facebook sites, see these for addresses, directions, opening times etc. 1. ImmAim (v) This and Freebird Café below tie for my favourite restaurants in Chiang Mai. ImmAim is a little out of the main city (too far for most to walk, but only a few minutes by tuk tuk or Songthaew), in Santitham, and is a friendly vegetarian place with healthy, delicious, non-additive-filled food. Thai fusion in style – classics like Penang curry are my favourite, but also interesting salads, and filling falafel and burritos. Some nice smoothies, love the passionfruit tea. Free wifi. Usually fine to hang out in and work. And I had Christmas dinner here last year! My rating: 5 stars Mum’s rating: 4 stars 2. Freebird Café (v) A small café just North of the city (literally, across the moat) whose profits go to the Freedom House project, which teaches Burmese refugees English for free. The café serves tasty food, and also has a small second hand book and clothes shop. I think this is the best Pad Thai in Chiang Mai. Interesting Shan Salads you probably won’t find elsewhere, and fabulous (and huge) pancakes. Good coffee, and a lovely Chai Latte. Big range of fresh juices and smoothies. No MSG and much of the food can be made vegan. Great to hang out in, the large tables mean you’ll probably end up chatting to other travellers. My rating: 5 stars Mum’s rating: 4 stars. Great pancakes and friendly staff! 3. Akha Ama This is a cafe that serves a huge range of coffees, and is linked with an organic co-operative of hill tribe villages which farm the coffee – the café itself was the brainchild of the first member of his village to go to university, Lee Ayu, whom Mum and I saw speak at TedxChiangMai. The coffee has won a number of awards, and the café itself is tucked away in a more student-y area of Chiang Mai, and has a balance of Thai and Western customers. Not much food – limited to some cakes. My rating: 4 stars (would be more if they had just a little more food!) Mum’s rating: 4 stars 4. Blue Diamond One of the
a touchstone for plenty of readers. Samples; $19.99. Tesoro: Your manga pick of the week, and an interesting one, as Viz brings over a 248-page collection of House of Five Leaves creator Natsume Ono's short comics, which is where I first got to know her work, via a Japanese-language edition. Some attractive variants on the artist's visual style in here, ranging from sketched-out pieces to her curvier, squat look, all but quavering with vulnerability; $12.99. World War 3 Illustrated #42: Hey, another classic comics magazine! Liberation is the theme this time for the gnashing political forum, with contributors from Egypt, Lebanon, Kashmir and Palestine joining U.S. and U.K. artists to evoke a global protest presence for today. Top Shelf is the distributor. List of contributors; $7.00. Richard Stark's Parker: The Martini Edition: A deluxe edition for Darwyn Cooke's Parker adaptations, from IDW, a publisher well-known for their ritzy reprint treatments. Collecting all extant material (so, 2009's The Hunter and 2010's The Outfit) at 9" x 13" in a slipcased hardcover, with 50+ pages of supplemental art and a new eight-page piece; $75.00. The Rocketeer Jetpack Treasury Edition: And on the flip side of the coin, here's IDW attempting to revive the 1970s Treasury Edition format -- thick, 9" x 12"-ish softcover comic albums, mostly used as a reprint forum, though some high-profile originals snuck out, like Jack Kirby's original 2001: A Space Odyssey adaptation -- with 64 pages' worth of its re-colored presentation of Dave Stevens' jaunty period adventure; $9.99. His Dream of the Skyland: Walled City Trilogy, Book 1: I've never heard of this comic from journalist and screenwriter Anne Opotowsky & artist Aya Morton, but Australian publisher Gestalt has released some interesting-looking books, and I'm usually drawn to 312-page bricks of color comics. "Imperialist controlled Hong Kong, the British ruling classes and the ambitious dynasty-influenced Chinese all create an amazing labyrinth," says the publisher, while Paul Gravett (going on sample images) says it's "highly intriguing" with "lively, sinuous linework, dizzying perspectives and vibrant colouring." I do like the looks of it; keep an eye out. Preview; $32.95. Little Lulu Vol. 29: The Cranky Giant and Other Stories: Somebody correct me if I'm wrong here, but I do believe this 192-page color collection of John Stanley-fronted holiday specials marks the conclusion of Dark Horse's Lulu reprint project, at least as far as the main series goes. A lot of apparently enthusiastic kid-appeal from this series. Samples; $14.99. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ultimate Collection Vol. 1: But if it's the b&w boom you want to foist on your beloved issue, nothing would be more characteristic than this new 312-page IDW compilation of comics by Kevin Eastman & Peter Laird, 1984-86, featuring issues #1-7 of the original Frank Miller mutant parody (that's one issue short of the Cerebus guest spot), along with the '85 Raphael one-off. I do believe Richard Corben inked part of issue #7, a color segment, but there's also a b&w version out there; $49.95. Green Lantern Omnibus Vol. 2: Or why not a big ol' hit of Gil Kane? Collects issues #22-45 (1963-66) over 624 color pages in hardcover; $75.00. Showcase Presents: Ghosts Vol. 1: Although DC is also still working the less-expensive b&w phonebook style, here dedicated to 512-pages' worth of the 1971-82 horror series, with art by Carmine Infantino, Irwin Hasen, Leonard Starr, George Tuska, Sam J. Glanzman and others; $19.99. The Smurfs Vol. 9: Gargamel and the Smurfs: I do believe this Papercutz release of Peyo material might be constructed from assorted short stories out of various albums -- as opposed to hinging on a'main' story -- spotlighting the titular alchemist and gourmand; $6.99 ($10.99 in hardcover). RASL #12: We're nearing the end of this Jeff Smith sci-fi project, as the artist releases his first new material from outside the current three collected editions; $3.50. Fantastic Four #600: This is one of those multi-artist anniversary things, noteworthy for the presence of the always-interesting Farel Dalrymple as one of the artists (I think in his first superhero work since Omega the Unknown wrapped). Written by Jonathan Hickman, whom I believe is planning this storyline as a culmination of his tenure on the series; $7.99. The Adventures of Hergé: Creator of Tintin: Finally, your book-on-comics-and-locus-of-potential-confusion for the week, a Last Gasp reissue of Michael Farr's 2008 text survey of one Georges Remi, with photographs and illustrations, none of them L'Association affiliated to my knowledge; $29.95. -- CONFLICT OF INTEREST RESERVOIR: Oh shit, Disney animation showdown. Walt Disney's Donald Duck Vol. 1: Lost in the Andes presents the first in a line of hardcover Carl Barks reprints, newly re-colored with all of the supplements you'd expect; $28.99. In the opposite corner, Pogo - The Complete Syndicated Comic Strips Vol. 1: Through The Wild Blue Wonder begins a comprehensive 12-book collection of the Walt Kelly strip in b&w and color; $39.99. And while I don't think the 144-page, Deepwater Horizon spill-focused graphic novel Oil and Water has anything to do with Disney, it does mark a comics-writing appearance by longtime writer-on-comics Steve Duin, teamed with artist Shannon Wheeler; $19.99.No evidence of DerpTrolling hack of PlayStation Network and Windows Live found by Sony or Microsoft The latest alleged hack of the PlayStation Network (PSN) and Windows Live was a hoax, Sony and Microsoft have confirmed. Hacking group DerpTrolling claimed to have stolen 7m accounts, and allegedly leaked more than 5,500 usernames for the PSN, Windows Live and 2K Games via the anonymous text sharing site Pastebin. Both the hack and the leak now appear to be fake. “We have investigated the claims that our network was breached and have found no evidence that there was any intrusion into our network,” said a Sony spokesperson in a statement. Microsoft confirmed the same to the Guardian. “We immediately investigated reports regarding some Microsoft accounts, including Windows Live and Hotmail, and can confirm that no Microsoft site or service was compromised,” said a spokesperson. A history of trolling Active since 2011, DerpTrolling has previously been linked to attacks on League of Legends, Quake Live and Blizzard Entertainment’s Battle.net, which underpins the multiplayer online game, World of Warcraft. However, the PSN hack was quickly identified as a potential hoax by security experts. “Looking through the list, there’s certainly an awful lot of crossover with data from previous breaches, in particular the Adobe one,” Rik Ferguson, vice president of security research at Trend Micro, explained to the Guardian at the time. “The random sample cross-referencing I have done certainly shows that the majority of data listed here has shown up already in previous breaches with very few exceptions which seem to appear only in this particular paste.” Both Sony and Microsoft confirmed that they were actively looking at the hoax and any future intrusion attempts to monitor for fraud and account compromise. A hack of the PSN would have been the third intrusion into the service since a major attack in 2011, which saw 77m accounts stolen and the online gaming service taken offline for 24 days. In this case, however, it appears that DerpTrolling has lived up to the second half of its name. • Now e-cigarettes can give you malware • Grand Theft Auto 5: does it really look best on PlayStation 4?NINA BURLEIGH IS NOT SO HOT on #WomenAgainstFeminism. “Women Against Feminism had, last time I checked, 16,013 followers on Facebook. Its tumblr is constructed of selfies of young women, dressed and posed like ads for DIY escort services, holding up bits of notebook paper on which they’ve scrawled screeds against feminism.” “DIY escort services?” Burleigh is, of course, the journalist who said about Bill Clinton, “I would be happy to give him a blowjob just to thank him for keeping abortion legal. I think American women should be lining up with their presidential kneepads on to show their gratitude for keeping the theocracy off our backs.” She’s also the authoress of a sophomoric psychosexual analysis of the Tsarnaev brothers. To a certain class of women in the media, it’s always about them, and their various mucous membranes. Which, speaking of psychosexual theories, may explain Burleigh’s reaction to Women Against Feminism. Just check out the pictures; I’m sure these young women need to check their “prettiness privilege” or something. And I think that’s what’s going on with Nina Burleigh. When she, and her generation of feminists, could exercise sexual power directly (see above) it was all “you go, girl!” Now that they’re getting past that age, they’re falling back on the standard refuge of older women: Slut-shaming younger women who try to do the same. Older women have, of course, always tried to limit the sexual power of younger women, for fairly obvious reasons. This is just more of the same. Good luck with that, Nina. Meanwhile, the vast majority of women, according to a Huffington Post poll, don’t consider themselves feminists — and only six percent consider themselves “strong feminists.” So outside the fem-journalist bubble, these women aren’t the outliers. You are. UPDATE: From the comments: “For Burleigh and her crowd I propose a new hashtag: #shrewculture. You know what to do, Internet.”Michael Shermer is the Publisher of Skeptic magazine, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, and a presidential fellow at Chapman University. His new book is The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity Toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom (Henry Holt, 2015). Sen. Ted Cruz, who recently announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential ticket, thinks, like many conservatives, global warming isn’t happening. As he said on Seth Meyers’ talk show on March 16, “Satellite data demonstrate for the last 17 years there’s been zero warming, none whatsoever.” It’s no surprise that Cruz picked that figure: 17 years ago was 1998, an “El Nino” year, when global temperatures were artificially elevated after which they returned to their normal gradually increasing rate. When you look at all the data published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (not just the cherry-picked data that fits neatly into a political ideology), the long-term increase in global temperatures is unmistakable. Story Continued Below I’m not saying that liberals don’t have their own science problem. They have no trouble railing against GMOs and nuclear power, and they ignore the obvious benefits of fossil fuels to pull impoverished people into the age of prosperity (burning cow pies in makeshift fireplaces in mud huts is not an efficient means of heating homes or producing wealth). Don’t even get me started on “anti-vaxxers,” a vocal and determined group that seems to make up a small minority in both parties. The Founding Fathers would be ashamed. Three centuries after the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment gave birth to the principles that drove the American Revolution, we are forgetting that it is scientific facts that should settle such issues, not partisan politics. In these examples the data are quite clear and the jury is in: Global warming is real and humans caused it, GMOs are safe and we need all the sources of energy we can get to meet the demands of our ever-increasing population. Why, then, are we so politically divided on these points? It seems that, in our rush to find support for what we want to be true (it’s an effect called “motivated reasoning,” which is driven by the confirmation bias in which we seek and find confirming evidence for what we already believe and ignore or rationalize away disconfirming evidence), we have forgotten how to discern what actually is true. We’ve forgotten how to use science and reason to solve problems and instead we’ve turned to moralizing about scientific issues. Here’s why we, particularly Ted Cruz, should be very worried about this: The influx of scientific principles into society led not only to the triumph of science, but also to the moral progress of the Western liberal tradition—yes, even to Cruz’s prized “exceptional” American democracy. Since the Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, intellectuals sought to emulate great scientists such as Galileo and Newton in applying the rigorous methods of the natural sciences to solving social and political problems. Enlightenment natural philosophers such as John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and Thomas Paine—America’s Founding Fathers—placed supreme value on reason and scientific inquiry, which in turn led them to prize human natural rights, equality, and freedom of thought and expression. In fact, America’s own democracy is rooted in reasoned analysis and scientific inquiry. Based on his medical training and the influence of many of the biggest scientists of his generation, Locke reasoned that all people should be treated equally under the law. He then sought to verify his theory empirically; and his theory has endured, as countries that practice it have flourished.A dozen or more companies are currently cranking away on the idea of truly wireless earbuds, but so far no one has nailed the execution. That isn't stopping a Seattle-based company called Human Inc. from making its own very weird take on the idea. The company recently raised $5 million and is pouring that into the development of a project called Sound. They are wireless, egg-shaped, over-the-ear headphones, and they look like a prop that belongs in a bad SyFy original movie. Ben Willis, the company's co-founder and CEO, says in a statement that "the Sound program will fundamentally transform the way the world experiences both audio and interpersonal communication." To be fair — and setting the design aside for a moment — what the company claims to be doing with Sound would be a welcome mashup of all the different features you can find in piecemeal from other wireless earbud companies. First and foremost they are headphones that play audio from a device of your choosing. They also allow you to turn up (and, perhaps, augment) the audio in your natural surroundings. They also detach and turn into wireless speakers that "surpasses the volume and sound quality of most smartphones," though that's about as low a bar as you can set. To top it all off, the company is hinting that Sound will also be able to translate languages. Bigger isn't always better A big part of the reason that other wireless earbud companies haven't been able to put all these pieces together in their own products is size. The smaller the earbud, the harder it is to fit more processing power, better (read: bigger) Bluetooth radios, longer-lasting batteries — the list goes on. Making the product bigger would make it easier to incorporate all of these. Of course, the allure of wireless earbuds isn't just the lack of wires — it's also about the discreet design. As for when Sound might appear on the market with the aim of changing that, your guess is as good as mine. According to Human Inc.'s own website, "there have been no formal announcements of when the product will be launched."On May 16, Coast Guard investigator Paul Shultz was walking along a Key West, Florida marina when he came across a red Nikon L18. Although the underwater housing surrounding the camera was battered from what appeared to be a long period at sea, the camera was in tip top shape. After finding nothing in the photos and videos on the memory card that pointed to the owner, Shultz turned to the Internet, posting the photos to Scubaboard.com. Within days, it was determined from clues in the photos that they were taken in Aruba, about 1,100 miles from where the camera was found. The clues included a plane’s tail number that revealed that the plane was in Aruba the day the photo was taken, a blue roof that was located on Google Maps, and a school poster written in Dutch (Aruba is a Dutch island). Once the camera’s origin was known, Shultz published the photos to Aruba.com. Within two days a woman recognized the children in some of the photos as her son’s classmates and, after contacting the family, the mystery was solved. Dick de Bruin, a sergeant in the Royal Dutch Navy, was salvaging an anchor from the USS Powell for a WWII memorial when his camera floated away. One way or another it ended up 1,100 miles to the north and into the hands of Paul Shultz. An interesting part of this story is that among the things found on the memory card was a video recorded by a sea turtle that dragged the camera for a period of time during the journey. The shaky video has amassed hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube: This story is similar to one we reported on in February, where a camera was returned to the owner after spending a year on the ocean floor. Looks like “photo in a camera” is the new “message in a bottle”. (via The Associated Press) Image credit: Sea Turtle by NOAA’s National Ocean ServiceThe Sima de los Huesos hominin, previously thought to belong to an ancient human species known as Homo heidelbergensis, is now reported to be an early member of the Neanderthal lineage. 500,000 to 400,000 years ago (Middle Pleistocene), archaic humans split off from other groups of that period living in Africa and East Asia, ultimately settling in Eurasia, where they evolved characteristics that would come to define the Neanderthal lineage. Several hundred thousand years after that, modern humans settled in Eurasia, too. They interbred with Neanderthals, but even then showed signs of reproductive incompatibility. Because of this, modern humans eventually replaced Neanderthals. The degree of divergence between Neanderthals and modern humans over such a short period of time has surprised scientists. Why did Neanderthals differentiate so quickly from other early hominins? What pattern of changes did Neanderthals undergo? To answer these questions, scientists have needed an accurate picture of European populations around 400,000 years ago, the early stages of the Neanderthal lineage. This has been challenging, however, because the European fossil record—an important tool for answering these questions—is isolated and dispersed, consisting of remains from disparate timelines. Samples at the Sima de los Huesos site in Atapuerca, Spain, however, are different. “What makes the Sima de los Huesos site unique is the extraordinary and unprecedented accumulation of hominin fossils there; nothing quite so big has ever been discovered for any extinct hominin species – including Neanderthals,” said Prof Juan-Luis Arsuaga from the Complutense University of Madrid, who is the lead author of a paper published in the journal Science. “This site has been excavated continuously since 1984. After thirty years, we have recovered nearly 7,000 human fossils corresponding to all skeletal regions of at least 28 individuals. This extraordinary collection includes 17 fragmentary skulls, many of which are very complete,” added study co-author Prof Ignacio Martínez from the University of Alcalá, Spain. These skulls belong to a single population of a fossil hominin species, named the Sima de los Huesos hominin. Some of them have been studied before, but seven are presented anew, and six are more complete than ever before. With these intact samples at their fingertips, the anthropologists made progress characterizing defining features. Their work has helped address hypotheses about Neanderthal evolution, specifically the accretion model hypothesis, which suggests that Neanderthals evolved their defining features at different times, not in a single linear sweep. “For decades the nature of the evolutionary process that gave rise to Neanderthals has been discussed. An important question in these debates was whether the ‘neanderthalization process’ involved all regions of the skull from the beginning, or if, on the contrary, there were various stages in this process that affected different parts of the skull at different times,” Prof Martínez said. The researchers’ skull samples showed Neanderthal features present in the face and teeth, but not elsewhere; the nearby braincase, for example, still showed features associated with more primitive hominins. “We think based on the morphology that the Sima people were part of the Neanderthal clade, although not necessarily direct ancestors to the classic Neanderthals,” Prof Arsuaga said. The Sima de los Huesos hominin is part of an early European lineage that includes Neanderthals, but is more primitive than the later Pleistocene variety. Critically, many of the Neanderthal-derived features the researchers observed were related to mastication, or chewing. “It seems these modifications had to do with an intensive use of the frontal teeth. The incisors show a great wear as if they had been used as a third hand, typical of Neanderthals,” Prof Arsuaga said. The study suggests that facial modification was the first step in Neanderthal evolution. This mosaic pattern fits the prediction of the accretion model. “One thing that surprised me about the skulls we analyzed is how similar the different individuals were. The other fossils of the same geological period are different and don’t fit in the Sima pattern. This means that there was a lot of diversity among different populations in the Middle Pleistocene,” Prof Arsuaga said. Indeed, other European Middle Pleistocene Homo sapiens do not exhibit the suite of Neanderthal-derived features seen in this fossil group. Thus, more than one evolutionary lineage appears to have coexisted during the European Middle Pleistocene, with that represented by the Sima de los Huesos sample being closer to Homo neanderthalensis. ______ J. L. Arsuaga et al. 2014. Neandertal roots: Cranial and chronological evidence from Sima de los Huesos. Science, vol. 344, no. 6190, pp. 1358-1363; doi: 10.1126/science.1253958BEIJING (Reuters) - China has included cybersecurity in a draft national security law, the latest in a string of moves by Beijing to bolster the legal framework protecting the country’s information technology. A map of China is seen through a magnifying glass on a computer screen showing binary digits in Singapore in this January 2, 2014 photo illustration. REUTERS/Edgar Su China has recently advanced a wave of policies to tighten cybersecurity after former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden disclosed that U.S. spy agencies planted code in American tech exports to snoop on overseas targets. The standing committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s legislature, reviewed a cyberspace “sovereignty” clause in a proposed national security law, according to a draft posted online this week after its second reading in late April. “The state establishes national internet and information security safeguard systems... and protects national internet space sovereignty, security and development interests,” the draft said. The country must “achieve security and control in internet and information core technology, key infrastructure, and important data and information systems”, it said, as well as strengthen internet management and punish internet attacks. It also said China’s banking infrastructure must be strengthened and its financial systems improved to withstand international risks and shocks. It did not give specific guidelines for implementation. China’s earlier attempts to regulate cybersecurity were most clearly articulated in bank-technology guidelines and a proposed counter-terrorism law, which called for the similar use of “secure and controllable” technology that is developed in China or source code that is released to Chinese inspectors. China’s banking regulator temporarily suspended the financial industry rules after feedback from banks and an outcry from foreign governments and business, which argued they were unfair and motivated by protectionism. But the foreign business community has said China could revive the banking rules in some form. In addition to the national security law, the controversial anti-terrorism draft law is also still being reviewed by the NPC standing committee, a group of about 200 members, which often adopts laws after three readings. President Xi Jinping, who heads a newly established national security commission, has said China’s security covers a wide array of areas, including politics, culture, the military, the economy, technology and the environment. The sweeping national security law has broad implications for the ruling Communist Party’s governance of society, including powers for dealing with “harmful moral standards”.Management: The issue and act of the episodes of these two shows, Shigofumi’s Episode 3: “Friends”, and Death Parade’s Episode 11 “Memento Mori” and Episode 12 “Suicide Tour,” is, of course, a rather controversial point of discussion in popular and private discourse, and so my intention, with this essay, is to posit Shigofumi’s and Death Parade’s musings on the subject in a thought-provoking way. Additionally, while I may hold a positive opinion overall of this show, this piece in no ways serves as a comprehensive review of the series, but rather an articulation and analysis of an interesting set of ideas brought up. This piece also references a previous post of Shigofumi I wrote, which can be found here. I published a little thematic piece on Shigofumi when I started out blogging. The piece is somewhat of a reflection of how far my blogging voice has come since. My writing then was less lengthy than it is now, by a considerable degree. It was more structurally rigid and emotionally reserved. Now, I’ve gotten to the point where I’m more confident saying a whole variety of different things. The Shigofumi piece ended up drawing some debate, and that debate pertained both to how I interpreted the show’s targeted message as well as the acceptability of the targeted message itself. I made no secret that I was supportive of that message. That message was anti-suicide. While it tells its a separate story, Death Parade makes the same message. It is critical of the reasoning that has driven many people to kill themselves. I understand that suicide is a sensitive topic for a lot of people, and what I will say will sound like suicide victim blaming. Consequently, I will make pains to clarify what kind of suicide these shows and I are calling out on. However, if the creators behind Shigofumi and Death Parade are willing to make these points unreservedly, then it would behoove me to not hold back. The scenario illustrated in Episode 3 of Shigofumi, “Friends,” appears incredulous on face value. A kid by the name of Daiki Senkawa jumps off a building and commits suicide. Everyone, distraught, curious, or some synthesis of the two, from news media to his school to friends, are wondering… why. Why? One friend of Daiki’s, Tooru, is particularly troubled by this question. Barring the indignity of not coming to his friends about this at all, he didn’t seem the person you’d think would commit suicide. He didn’t seem to be depressed, nor did he seem to be concealing any symptoms of depression. By all appearances, the kid was a model student and son. His father was perplexed too, perplexed enough to hold his classmates hostage with a double-barreled shotgun until he could get an answer out of them to alleviate his anxiety. The father insists with the utmost sincerity Daiki wasn’t being abused at home. The next likely place for harassment left, thought the father, must have been school-related. Was he being bullied at school? Which one of you was responsible? I just want to know. I’m his father after all. The unique plot device of the show kicks in as the main recurring character, Fumika, effortlessly bursts through desk-barricaded door and points her own firearm at the father before he can stop her momentum in the form of a hand-mail delivery to Tooru. What she delivered, a shigofumi, is a letter (fumi) delivered from the afterlife (shigo), and what do you know? The letter is from the recently deceased Daiki. Tooru reads it aloud, and Daiki’s words end up clearing all the misunderstanding. Daiki killed himself because he was curious about the experience. “In it, he wrote that he himself became curious of what it would be like to jump. He stated that while he had no particular reason to die, but he had no particular reason to leave either. And that’s that.” Tell that to his terrorized classmates. Tell that to his traumatized father. But, you know, taking a disinterested step back, you can’t help but feel this is a little too convenient. Barring the supernatural, of course, even if this hostage scenario is something that could plausibly occur in real life, it’s not like it’s probable that it would escalate to the extent it did in this show. Additionally, it’s not like this kid knew it would end up as disastrously as it did, that his father would take up a gun in his son’s name to secure justice, revenge, or some synthesis of the two. I’d tell these commenters that they’re missing the point. What they’re claiming threatens to undermine any attempt by creators to use the fantastical and surreal to demonstrate the real. I’d also accuse those commenters of lacking imagination, or at least some historical depth. World War I is essentially a potpourri of numerous worse case scenarios, like the one involving death of the Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and a sandwich, making up a worst one, a disastrous event on a global scale that lead to the deaths of millions. I’d also challenge this implication that the suicide in question would have been less serious if people weren’t physically injured as a consequence. Malaise can be psychosomatic, after all, but suppose the health of one’s mind and body was dualistic. People still end up emotionally upset, and that make people do destructive things. These commenters, however, seem to imply that that kind of hurt deserves much less merit, if any merit at all. That kind of hurt has made people kill themselves and kill other people, hurt themselves and hurt other people. Grief can kill, and even when it doesn’t, it hurts. It really hurts, and to put other family and friends into that potential kind of situation means some two-to-three combination of: 1. Being certain that there’s no potential for them to suffer, 2. Being negligent about their potential suffering, and/or 3. Being self-centered. You can argue that he was being negligent, if not about hostage scenario per se, then at least about the grief he caused his friend, his classmates, and his father. But why was he negligent? Because he only thought to sate his curiosity. He thought only about himself. Daiki was self-centered. Now, I’m not denying that Daiki’s case isn’t exactly representative for the majority of suicides that have occurred. If not unique, his case is probably rare, and when we discuss suicides in society, we typically discuss them in the context of depressed individuals abruptly taking their own lives. I’m going to qualify that the suicide I’m going to address are people who possess a relatively decent amount of agency to do independent things other than suicide, and I’m going to exclude cases where euthanasia is concerned. I’m going to talk about individuals with the relative physical and social mobility of people like Daiki. These individuals take their own lives when their depression overwhelms them, when they either endure misery enough that they feel they have nothing and no one left to live for, or feel pained enough that they feel what and who they can live for isn’t worth the trouble. I’ve had another commenter criticize, albeit respectfully, Shigofumi’s message on suicide for being an attack on personal freedom, a defense I personally feel is dubious. People should be able to take their own lives if they feel like it so long as it doesn’t cause direct physical injury to other people. Said people shouldn’t have to cater to the feelings of others. It’s an individual choice, and we should respect it. After all, people are individuals. Individuals. The first half of Episode 11 of Death Parade, “Memento Mori,” reveals the circumstances that led Kurokami no Onna, the Black-haired Woman, Chiyuki, to her death. A person who developed a love for ice skating after her mother read her a children’s book when she was little, her rising career in the sport was cut short when an accident on the rink left one of knees badly injured to the point that could never skate again. However, what ate at her to the point she slit herself in the bathroom wasn’t that she she couldn’t skate. She realized well enough that there were other in her life that were important, that she could occupy her time with. No, what led her to bleed out from wrists into a pool of bathwater was the fact she was an… Individual. She realized that the friends she made were ones she made through her passion for ice skating. Once she stopped skating, she noticed they weren’t around her like they always were. It’s not like they didn’t necessarily care for her, but the vast share of the time they spent together was correlated to something involving their mutual passions. A vast share of her time was spent distracted on skating. The time she used to devote herself to skating, she now spent, for the first time, consciously alone. Her friends were off doing some skating-related or not, and in the silence of that solitude, her eyes ended up gazing into the abyss. She felt its chill, and she realized in the whispers the abyss mouthed from its gaping and fathomless mouth something about her that many philosophers had previously inferred about the concept of the… …individual. As individuals, we are fundamentally alone. It was in this smallness, in this existential despair of crushingly Lovecraftian likeness, in this… …empty… …voidless… …cold… …that she took her own life. And that’s that. “Except that it’s not.” Episode 12 of Death Parade “Suicide Tour” has Decim taking Chiyuki on a tour of the consequences of her suicide. She wakes up in the house she grew up in and left behind, tours the kitchen and living space before her mother returned. Chiyuki’s mother can’t see her, nor can Chiyuki touch her, but almost automatically knelt down before an indoor shrine to reflect and pray for her daughter. And then the mother gasps, shaking over how she could have let her daughter to this to herself. She cries, agonizing couldn’t foresee this as something her precious daughter would do. She wails, anguishing about how she couldn’t understand her. And with that, Chiyuki gasps, repudiating under her breaking breath her previous personal assertion at the futility of understanding people. She cries. She screams and begs Decim through her sobs to help her make this right and apologize to her mother. Decim almost automatically whips out a solution hearkening to Mayu’s trial by Ginti in the second half of Episode 11. If you press this button, you can save yourself from your suicide. All you need to do is let someone take your place in death. It’s true that perhaps one of your friends and family might be the one chosen, but in a world of 7 billion+ people, that’s highly unlikely. It’ll most likely be a complete a complete stranger. And with a great offer like that, coupled with her desperation, she makes for the button in Decim’s hand. But then, memories of all the past games she helped facilitate where people bared their lives for Chiyuki to see and Decim to judge. What of the people they left behind? The friends? The family? If I took another person’s life in order to live, wouldn’t I be putting that person’s friends and family into the same kind of pain that I subjected my mother to? The people I saw during these games who struggled so hard and cried so much. Why am I the only one allowed to get special treatment? It turns out that “who” Chiyuki was seeing was a “what.” It was a dummy that looked like her mother and acted like her mother based off of Decim’s imagination. Does the fact that Decim imagined this whole ordeal for Chiyuki mean that it was worthless? No, because like the hostage scenario in Shigofumi, what Death Parade was trying to illustrate in this scene was empathy, empathy in the face of callous assertions of personal freedom and maddening bouts of depression. There’s no guarantee of an afterlife that would allow you to see the future when you commit suicide. Matters of afterlives are matters of faith, but hypothetically speaking (and consequently assuming), if there was no afterlife, then death could be really called the ultimate escape from life and the pain associated with it. There would be no regrets in death because you’re dead and gone. But while your own life ends, life for everyone else on Earth goes on, and the people left behind might be definitely be feeling regret. They might be feeling remorse. They might be gasping for air, crying scalding tears, and wailing and screaming in terrible grief and self-loathing. Their depression might fall into a despair they can’t get out of. They might do something desperate and hurt themselves and other people physically. But that’s only physically. Emotionally, they might hurt. They might really hurt. And because you’re dead and gone, it’s impossible to perceive this and reply back like in Shigofumi or Death Parade. You can’t see, hear, or speak… …but that’s okay. That’s okay because you can’t feel pain. Not your pain. Not their pain. Not their pain causing your pain. It might be an escape from life, but it’s also the ultimate escape from pain. Does that not seem cruel? “After all, suicide isn’t just about you.” It’s a simple thought, I know, but when people are so self-absorbed that they can’t exercise a reasonable amount of imagination and not grasp this basic fact, it’s a victory for self-centeredness. It is the defeat of empathy. I understand how much individual liberation can be enriching. I understand how much negativity can be consuming
triumphal entrance into the GOP presidential primary, there's been a sudden spike of attention drawn to the extremist religious beliefs both candidates have been associated with - up to and including their belief in Christian dominionism. (In the Texas Observer, the New Yorker, and the Daily Beast, for example.) The responses of denial from both the religious right itself and from the centrist Beltway press have been so incongruous as to be laughable - if only the subject matter weren't so deadly serious. Those responses need to be answered, but more importantly, we need to have the serious discussion they want to prevent. For example, in an August 18 post, originally entitled, “Beware False Prophets who Fear Evangelicals”, Washington Post religion blogger Lisa Miller cited the three stories I just mentioned, and admitted, “The stories raise real concerns about the world views of two prospective Republican nominees”, then immediately reversed direction: “But their echo-chamber effect reignites old anxieties among liberals about evangelical Christians. Some on the left seem suspicious that a firm belief in Jesus equals a desire to take over the world.” Of course, she cited no examples to bolster this narrative-flipping claim. More importantly, she wrote not one more word about the real concerns she had just admitted. Dominionism is not a myth "What In Heaven's Name Is A Dominionist?" Pat Robertson asked on his 700 Club TV show, one of several religious right figures to recently pretend there was nothing to the notion. Funny he should ask. In a 1984 speech in Dallas, Texas, he said: "What do all of us do? We get ready to take dominion! We get ready to take dominion! It is all going to be ours - I'm talking about all of it. Everything that you would say is a good part of the secular world. Every means of communication, the news, the television, the radio, the cinema, the arts, the government, the finance - it's going to be ours! God's going to give it to His people. We should prepare to reign and rule with Jesus Christ." Furthermore, C Peter Wagner, the intellectual godfather of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), actually wrote a book called Dominion! in 2008. Chapter Three was entitled “Dominion Theology”. When pressed, Peter likes to pretend that his ideas are just garden-variety Christianity, based on Genesis 1:26, in which, before the fall, God gives Adam and Eve dominion over the natural world - a far cry from dominion over other people, who did not even exist at the time, as evangelical critics of this dominionist argument have repeatedly pointed out. Dominionism is not new Dominionist ideas have circulated throughout the religious right for decades prior to Robertson's 1984 speech. A primary source was the small but influential sect known as Christian Reconstructionism, founded by R J Rushdoony in the 1960s, which advocates replacing American law with Old Testament codes. Centrists like Miller make the mistake of thinking that the small size of Rushdoony's core of true believers is the full extent of his influence. But this is utterly mistaken. As Michelle Goldberg wrote in Daily Beast, “Rushdoony pioneered the Christian homeschooling movement, as well as the revisionist history, ubiquitous on the religious right, that paints the US as a Christian nation founded on biblical principles. He consistently defended Southern slavery and contrasted it with the greater evils of socialism.” A second source traces back to the roots of the Latter Rain movement of the late 1940s, long rejected by orthodox evangelicals because they contradicted scripture and denied primary agency to God - which is why they insist that Christians must actively establish church dominance over all of society, because God can't do it alone. The Latter Rain was denounced by the Assemblies of God - the largest American Pentecostal church - in 1949, not solely for dominionist ideology, but for a variety of related beliefs and practices. When similar teachings and practices re-emerged in the guise of the New Apostolic Reformation 50 years later, the Assemblies of God denounced them again in 2000. This time, however, many Assemblies of God congregations have increasingly accepted the NAR influence. Sarah Palin's long-time church in Wasilla is one such congregation. The most clear-cut example of NAR dominionism is the so-called “Seven Mountains Mandate”, which holds that dominionist Christians should control the whole world by infiltrating and dominating the “Seven Mountains” of culture: (1) Business; (2) Government; (3) Media; (4) Arts and Entertainment; (5) Education; (6) Family; and (7) Religion. Dominionism is not a left-wing fantasy A number of authors made charges similar to or derived from Joe Carter, web editor of First Things, who wrote: "The term ["dominionism"] was coined in the 1980s by [sociologist Sara] Diamond and is never used outside liberal blogs and websites. No reputable scholars use the term for it is a meaningless neologism that Diamond concocted for her dissertation." However, at the same time Diamond was working on her dissertation - published as the book Spiritual Warfare in 1989 - evangelical writer/researcher Albert James Dager was taking similarly critical aim, though from a different direction. In 1986 and '87, he published a multi-issue essay “Kingdom Theology” in the publication Media Spotlight. In that text he also used the terms "Kingdom Now" or "Dominion" Theology. In 1990, Dager, too, published a book, Vengeance Is Ours: The Church in Dominion. While his main focus was doctrinal error and non-Christian practices and influences, Dager's work traced dominionism back to the 1940s and even earlier. Many more have followed in his footsteps since then. If you Google the words “dominionism” and “heresy”, you'll get more than half a million hits. It should be obvious to anyone that conventional conservative Christians have big problems with dominionism - if only the United States' establishment media could figure out how to use Google. Dominionism is not an imprecise catch-all term Despite lingering definitional differences that are common with relatively new terminology, those who study dominionism and related phenomenon in a political framework have an increasingly common and precise terminology that most writers and researchers share. Researcher Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates provided a very useful guide, “The Christian Right, Dominionism, and Theocracy”, which addresses issues of terminology from several different perspectives - for example, between “generic dominionism” and specific dominion theologies. Berlet also draws a distinction between “hard” and “soft” dominionists. “Soft Dominionists are Christian nationalists,” he writes. “They believe that Biblically-defined immorality and sin breed chaos and anarchy. They fear that America's greatness as God's chosen land has been undermined by liberal secular humanists, feminists, and homosexuals... Their vision has elements of theocracy, but they stop short of calling for supplanting the Constitution and Bill of Rights.” Hard Dominionists add something more to the mix: “They want the United States to be a Christian theocracy. For them the Constitution and Bill of Rights are merely addendums to Old Testament Biblical law.” Rushdoony's Christian Reconstructionists clearly fall into the hard dominionist camp. But the NAR seems to straddle the soft/hard division. On the one hand, they clearly do claim that conservative Christians are ordained to run the world, not just US society. Thus, the Seven Mountains Mandate. On the other hand, Wagner and others have argued that the Seven Mountains is compatible with democracy. The state of Hawaii shows how: Early in the 2010 election cycle, both the Republican and the Democratic frontrunners for governor were associated with the NAR. That changed when long-time Congressman Neil Abercrombie joined the race on the Democratic side, and eventually won the race handily. But for a while, the NAR came tantalisingly close to realising their dream, at least in one state - not just to win power, but to occupy all the possible paths to power. What's more, in a recent article at Talk2Action, Rachel Tabachnick draws attention to another hedge on Wagner's part, quoting from Dominion! In a section entitled “Majority Rules”: "If a majority feels that heterosexual marriage is the best choice for a happy and prosperous society, those in the minority should agree to conform - not because they live in a theocracy, but because they live in a democracy. The most basic principle of democracy is that the majority, not the minority, rules and sets the ultimate norms for society." This, of course, is utterly false in a liberal democracy, such as the United States. Liberal democracies combine majority rule as a general governing principle with a framework of rights protecting individuals in political minorities from persecution, political repression, and the like. The fact that Wagner so utterly misunderstands the foundations of American democracy shows just how dangerous such “soft” dominionism can be. This same lesson can be drawn from Uganda as well, where several different strains of dominionist theology have combined to bring that nation to the verge of passing a law that will make homosexuality punishable by death. Such is the nature of illiberal dominionist “democracy”. Europe's bloody theocratic wars This brings us, finally, to the serious discussions that dominionists and their enablers, like Miller, are trying to prevent. The first of those is about the very nature of American democracy. For nearly 200 years, Europe was torn apart by a series of religious wars and their bloody aftermath - the major reason that the United States was founded as a secular republic. We're potentially on the verge of forgetting all that history and suffering through it again, just as we're now suffering through forgetting the lessons of the Great Depression. Those centuries of war began with the German Peasants' War of 1524-26, in which more than 100,000 died; continued through the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years War on the European continent; and lasted until the end of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714). This was the bloody European history of religious intolerance and strife that many, if not most, American colonialists were fleeing from when they came to the New World. It was also this bloody history that gave rise to the development of classical liberalism, affirming the individual right to religious liberty and replacing the top-down theocratic justification of the state with Locke's concept of the bottom-up social contract, based on the consent of the governed. The ideas that Locke perfected took generations to develop. Religious tolerance, for example, began as simply a matter of pragmatism: unless people stopped killing each other for differing religious beliefs, war in Europe would never end. But gradually, the idea took hold that tolerance was a positive good, and key to this new perspective was the recognition that torturing someone to change their beliefs could not produce the desired result of a genuine heartfelt conversion. Thus, the moral rejection of torture - another feature of classical liberalism - had its roots in the evolution of the idea of religious liberty. The idea of utterly forgetting the prolonged bloody history that the United States was born out of is no laughing matter. The same could be said of the myth that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, with laws based on the Bible. Of course most Americans were Christians at the time, but the leading intellects were decidedly less so, much more influenced by Enlightenment thought. There were many, such as Jefferson, who were better described as Deists, who believed that God had created a rational universe, but did not intervene supernaturally thereafter. They deliberately used terms like "the Creator" and "Nature's God" to affirm their distinctive, non-Christian view. Moreover, God was not mentioned at all in the Constitution, and religion was only mentioned to exclude its influence, stating that no religious test should be required for office. Finally, US law was based on British common law, not the Bible. The Supreme Court itself is a common law court, following common law precedents and practices. And British common law traces back to Roman law, which first came to England centuries before Rome adopted the Christian religion. Of course the intolerant religious right wants us to forget this. How else could they ever gain power, except through massive forgetting of who and what the United States really is? Not to mention who and what they are: the most fundamental enemies of the United States, who would, if they could, return us to the centuries of blood before the US was born, the nightmare out of which the United States awakened. Theocratic thinking threatens the US today There are very immediate consequences that flow from the theocratic mindset. You'll note, for example, that the "Seven Mountains" of culture do not include science. That's not because dominionists intend to leave science alone, but rather because they see no need to dominate what they can simply cut off, ignore and deny. If science tells them that homosexuality is an inborn trait, why fight that in the realm of science when politics, the media, religion and education offer much, much better places to fight? After all, who says that education has to be based on facts? The same holds true for evolution and global warming as well, not to mention the workings of the economy. One rightwing denier of dominionist influence, Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson, even framed his attack as “An unholy war on the Tea Party, while another denier complained that instead of describing the Tea Party as a movement united around concern about big government, many journalists seem to be trying to redefine the colour red by overlaying religious intent and purpose on the movement. Yet the dominionist connection to the Tea Party goes far beyond just the two candidacies of Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry. Ron Paul, whose extreme anti-government positions helped to fuel the emergence of the Tea Party, has much deeper dominionist connections than either of the two new darlings. During his first term in Congress, one of his aides was Gary North, Rushdoony's son-in-law, and a leading Reconstructionist in his own right, who has written extensively on so-called "Biblical Capitalism", an ideology profoundly at odds with traditional Biblical-based teachings on economic justice. While libertarians once traced their descent from John Locke, and more recently from the deeply anti-Christian Ayn Rand, Reconstructionism represents an increasingly important foundation for their views. A recently released sociology study, "Cultures of the Tea Party", found that Tea Party supporters are characterised by four dispositions: "authoritarianism, ontological insecurity, libertarianism, and nativism". Since traditional libertarianism was purportedly the opposite of authoritarianism, this highlights how radically libertarianism has changed - a conclusion that's echoed by the 2011 Pew Reaserch Political Typology Poll, which found that religious and economic conservatives had completely merged into one single group since 2006 and all previous polling. What this means in the long run is far from clear. But it strongly suggests a solidfying outlook with deep Reconstructionist sympathies that actually looks at government failure to deal with major issues, such as restoring the economy, as a positive good. If faith in American institutions collapses entirely, then who wouldn't give Biblical law a shot? The more loudly such people proclaim themselves patriots, the more loudly they cheer for US collapse. It's not just Obama they want to fail. It's the very idea of America. Paul Rosenberg is the Senior Editor of Random Lengths News, a bi-weekly alternative community newsletter. You can follow Paul on twitter @PaulHRosenberg The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily represent Al Jazeera's editorial policy.Why appliance power matters in data warehousing Analysts “buzz” about speed-of-thought analytics. One observer noted that if the bandwidth of the human mind could be measured in technical terms, the sheer volume of information processed at any given second—including visual, tactile, olfactory, audio and taste, all integrated in real-time context to constitute an “experience” that can be recalled and replayed—would require the fastest, most powerful machines imagined by mankind, all running faster than the speed of light. How does a common computing experience purport to keep up with this kind of bandwidth? Well, the mind has a response-latency that works in favor of such efforts, to the effect that an action is always faster than a human reaction. The Kung Fu television series was famous for the master saying “snatch the pebbles from my hand.” This is more of a testimony to the master’s speed of reflex than the apprentice’s speed of the snatch, because the snatch always has the upper hand, so to speak. In Kung Fu, the student’s reflexes are trained to respond faster than his mind can think about what to do. In the case of speedy analytics, the machine has the upper hand in its speed of delivery. The human mind needs time to assimilate, respond, refactor and retry. While this cycle might take minutes, this usually occurs in mere seconds. The analyst is ready to strike again within moments of receiving a response. In fact, if these iterations continue, the analyst may achieve an “Einsteinian” immersion experience, dilating time itself. Hours pass like minutes. They will forgo lunch, snacks and perhaps forget to pick up their children from school. How disappointing must it be to have the analyst’s readiness thwarted by slow technology? A high-powered data warehousing (DW) appliance can support the analyst’s needs. Why then do so many DW professionals settle for slow response times? Moreover, why do they embrace workarounds rather than learning to use the machine well? Workarounds appear in many forms. If the database truly is slow (for example, a transactional platform) then the environment may see a proliferation of large-scale extracts. Where is all this data going? To Excel spreadsheets, cubes, caches and so on. The vendors of these technologies have streamlined the user experience with a wide range of jazzy capabilities that allow the user to navigate and drill on the information. It’s understood that the data is a limited subset and that it grows stale by the minute. The users will then chant a constant refrain of “refresh” as often as possible. This is when we see the large-scale extracts proliferate further, with greater frequency. For reporting environments that use traditional databases, this scenario is so common that the developers of the various consuming technologies will, by default, install one of them with the full intention of leveraging the cubes and caches without even considering that they may be completely superfluous when standing in the shadow of a high-powered DW appliance. Still others recognize the machine’s power and fully intend to getting rid of the cubes at their first opportunity, but find that the users cannot be weaned from the functionality the cube supports. In the discussion above, something isn’t so obvious: the lack of power in the core DW platform shapes the culture of those who depend upon it. This is why power matters, and why lack of power can build a toxic culture. After all, who really wants to wait an hour or two for a data refresh, and who wants to support those who tolerate it? The user screams for the IT staff to make the extracts faster, ignoring the more obvious truth: they shouldn’t be extracting in the first place. This is reminiscent of one site I visited long ago where the administrative teams were on virtual roller skates moving from system to system to fight this fire or that. Rather than stabilize the systems, which would require considerably more power than their installed hardware, they had chosen, in an abstract sense, to standardize on a roller-skating culture. Newbies were introduced to the ways of navigating around the shallow power base and the many nuances of the workarounds. The lost opportunity in all this is that when a powerful DW appliance is introduced, it doesn’t fit into the culture at all. In fact, toxic cultures like this could turn the platform into nothing more than a storage location; it’s the equivalent of chaining a racehorse to a plow. However, a sophisticated DW appliance can be a powerful cultural change agent. Rather than being completely overwhelmed by a toxic culture, its mere presence starts to change the culture in a very positive way. Explore the power of DW appliances, such as IBM PureData System for Analytics incorporating IBM Netezza technology, in a hybrid, fluid data architecture. Follow @IBMBigDataQueen Victoria herself was asked to choose a capital for the province of Canada, which at that time consisted of the two colonies of Quebec and Ontario, and there’s a story that she simply stuck a hatpin into a map, between Toronto and Montreal. Another story has her choosing Ottawa because she had liked landscape paintings of the area. At the time Ottawa was no more than a small logging town in the backwoods and certainly the choice seemed arbitrary to many Canadians at the time, as Toronto, Montreal and Quebec had all been vying to be chosen, but there were sound reasons for it. The strongest one was precisely that Ottawa was not Toronto or Montreal or Quebec. On the contrary, it was the only settlement of any size on the border between the two colonies and their respective mainly French and British populations, which made it a useful compromise that did not obviously favour either of them. Ottawa was also well away from the border with the United States of America, and the War of 1812 had shown how vulnerable the principal Canadian cities were to American attack. An American newspaper of the time sarcastically remarked that Ottawa was safe from attack because any invader would get lost in the woods trying to find it. Originally in the territory of the Ottawa Indians, who were part of the Algonquin language group, the future capital’s story began when Colonel John By arrived in 1826 in command of a detachment of the Royal Engineers to construct the Rideau Canal to Lake Ontario. He built himself a house and headquarters near the north end of the canal, where there were already two or three log cabins, and a settlement grew up, which was named Bytown after him. It flourished on the timber trade and the area on the canal’s east side, Lower Town, was a lively, violent shanty town amply supplied with brothels, taverns and gambling joints, and inhabited largely by Irish and French labourers, who were Roman Catholics. The more salubrious Upper Town on the other side of the canal mainly attracted English and Scottish Protestants. The town was renamed Ottawa in 1855, the population had reached 14,000 by 1863 and the handsome parliament buildings on the west side of the canal were opened in 1865. When the Dominion of Canada was established in 1867, Ottawa became the capital of all Canada, and it is now the country’s fourth largest city.A staggering new analysis from Zillow highlights perfectly the unintended consequences of central banking policies that drive massive asset bubbles but minimal job/wage growth. According to the study, surging home prices and rising rents have now resulted in a record 30% of American adults, up from 21% in 2005, being forced take on roommates just to afford monthly rent payments. As rent consumes a growing share of household income in many cities, some people must relocate or find ways to offset rising prices. An increasingly popular way to cut costs is by adding a roommate. Nationally, 30 percent of working-age adults—aged 23 to 65—live in doubled-up households, up from a low of 21 percent in 2005 and 23 percent in 1990. We define a doubled-up household as one in which at least two working-age, unmarried or un-partnered adults live together. For example, a 25-year-old son living with his middle-aged parents would constitute a doubled-up household, as would two 23-year-old roommates who are not partnered to each other. A doubled-up household contains people who might choose to live apart under different circumstances, financial or otherwise. Not surprisingly, large metropolitan areas like New York, LA, Miami and San Francisco saw the highest percentage of their adult populations doubling up on housing. Of course, as the following chart illustrates, there is a strong correlation between doubling-up and rent affordability with the most expensive cities seeing more than 40% of their adult residents living with roommates. "As rents have outpaced incomes, living alone is no longer an option for many working-aged adults," said Zillow senior economist Aaron Terrazas. "By sharing a home with roommates -- or in some cases, with adult parents -- working adults are able to afford to live in more desirable neighborhoods without shouldering the full cost alone. But this phenomenon is not limited to expensive cities. The share of adults living with roommates has been on the rise in historically more affordable rental markets as well. Unless current dynamics shift and income growth exceeds rent growth for a sustained period of time, this trend is unlikely to change." As we've noted frequently, the biggest increases in doubled-up houses has come from the millennial generation as thousands of college seniors, armed with their $250,000 anthropology degrees, are apparently finding it difficult to land their dream jobs after graduation. That said, while millennials have seen the biggest increases, people across the age spectrum have also become increasingly reliant on roommates to meet their monthly rent obligations... ...so at least we all have that to look forward to in retirement. With that, here are the full results from Zillow:Will The Oracle Lawsuit End with Google Owning Java? comment on this article Very little has been spoken about Oracle’s patent infringement lawsuit against Google in the past few months. However, right at a time when Java professionals were beginning to hope that perhaps the whole legal battle might be settling down and fading into the background, Oracle has updated their legal filings. The following quote comes from an amended version of Oracle’s lawsuit against Google: "In at least several instances, Android computer program code also was directly copied from copyrighted Oracle America code. For example, as may be readily seen in Exhibit J, the source code in Android's "PolicyNodeImpl.java" class is nearly identical to 'PolicyNodeImpl.java' in Oracle America's Java, not just in name, but in the source code on a line-for-line basis." Why is Oracle pursuing this? One content item sorely missing from any Oracle documentation is why Google is being pursued so aggressively. While the Enterprise Java Platform remains pervasive, valiant efforts in the past by Sun to promote mobile device and client side Java development never gained any traction, and this is a problem. To stop it from becoming this century’s Cobol, Java needs to capture the imagination of the youth, and right now, that means mobile device development. Every kid in college wants to write something for their iPhone or Android device, and the fact of the matter is, the only company succeeding in that space as far as Java is concerned is Google. With this lawsuit, Oracle isn’t just refusing to hold onto the lifeline Google is throwing them, but instead, they’re trying to use that very lifeline to actually strangle their rescuer. An out-of-court settlement The only real strategy that makes any sense here is that Oracle is strong-arming Google into actually taking Java off their hands. There is little doubt that the Oracle lawsuit has legal, if not technical, merit. If this lawsuit goes to court, Oracle will end up with a settlement in the high hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions. Of course, this whole thing won’t go to court. Court isn’t the end game of this lawsuit. "With this lawsuit, Oracle isn’t just refusing to hold onto the lifeline Google is throwing them, but instead, they’re trying to use that very lifeline to actually strangle their rescuer." The big end game here is Java ending up in the hands of Google. The end-game: Google owning Java As a settlement of this case, Oracle will agree to be paid a hefty sum of cash, not for the patent violations, but for Google to purchase Java itself; in turn, the lawsuit gets dropped. Since Oracle has the enviable position of negotiating a price for Java with a billion dollar patent lawsuit pending, Oracle will end up getting a price for Java that will no doubt make Larry Ellison and the other Oracle shareholders happy. On top of that, Oracle ends up with everything they wanted from the Sun acquisition, namely the coveted Sun hardware, while at the same time, getting rid of the Java hangover. By selling Java off to Google, Oracle gets rid of the responsibility of stewarding the Java platform, while also unloading the impossible task of trying to make everyone in the Java community happy. A win-win situation It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved. Google gets to put an end to the lawsuit craziness simply by using their deep pockets to buy their way out of the problem, Oracle gets to focus on their core technologies and strategies, and the Java community gets to move forward with confidence in the Java platform as being not only the strongest enterprise computing solution, but as being the future of handheld and mobile device development as well. And the sooner this all happens, the better. comment on this article"It is simply science fiction fantasy to say that, if you do not raise the debt ceiling, that everything is going to collapse." Mike Lee Raising the Ides of March Debt Limit One of the most played out scenarios in the rarified air of Washington life support is keeping the debt balloon inflating without blowing. Dismissing all the drama from the Kabuki theater that relies upon passing another continuing resolution to raise the debt limit seems to be one of the most reliable predictions that can be made about Congress. Come hell or high water, the borrowing ceiling goes up. So when Mnuchin calls on Congress to raise debt limit as deadline approaches, all seems ready to follow the familiar pattern of kicking the can down the road. Since the election of Donald Trump as President, the confidence level and equity markets have soared. Positive economic sentiments, while not reported in most of the controlled media, has pivoted to be the most optimistic in decades. So when an account states that the US Debt Decreased by More Than $60 Billion Since Trump Inauguration, you can hear the roar from red state supporters. "On January 20th, the day of the Trump Inauguration, the US Debt stood at $19,947 billion. On March 8th, more than a month later, the US Debt load stood at $19,879 billion. Trump has cut the US Debt burden by $68 billion and 0.3% in since his inauguration!" Well, this bit of encouraging news is only part, a snap shot in change of direction and cannot be taken as a long term trend. Another seasonally adjustment adds to the federal coffers. CNSNEWS announces that the Treasury has taken in $611,318,000,000: Individual Income Taxes Set Record Through February. "The federal government collected a record of approximately $611,318,000,000 in individual income tax revenues through the first five months of fiscal 2017 (Oct. 1, 2016 through the end of February), according to the Monthly Treasury Statement released today. That is about $6,733,300,000 more than the $604,584,700,000 in individual income taxes (in constant 2017 dollars) that the federal government collected through the first five months of fiscal 2016. Despite collecting a record amount in individual income taxes, the Treasury still ran a $348,984,000,000 deficit in the first five months of this fiscal year." The abrupt good news of a reduction in indebtedness, just does not negate the harsh reality that the yearly national deficit keeps growing at rates that defy any reasonable way to reverse. It must be stipulated that the Trump administration has placed a low emphasis on tackling the debt juggernaut. With the immediate prospects that the Federal Reserve will embark on a sustained interest rate increase, the task of dampening down future obligations looks remote. The case for stating the risks is energetically made by David Stockman, former Director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Ronald Reagan. Note that his consistent anti-establishment voice, who has enraged the antagonism of the Beltway culture, is dismissed as a mere alarmist. However, if you take the time to read his arguments, it is very difficult not to be horrified. Zerohedge offers this analysis of Stockman: "After March 15 Everything Will Grind To A Halt" sets the stage as the deadline to increase the borrowing limit approaches. "Trump is inheriting a built-in deficit of $10 trillion over the next decade under current policies that are built in. Yet, he wants more defense spending, not less. He wants drastic sweeping tax cuts for corporations and individuals. He wants to spend more money on border security and law enforcement. He’s going to do more for the veterans. He wants this big trillion dollar infrastructure program. You put all that together and it’s madness. It doesn’t even begin to add up, and it won’t happen when you are struggling with the $10 trillion of debt that’s coming down the pike and the $20 trillion that’s already on the books.” Add into the equation the even more problematic condition that reasons, Stockman: Trump's in a Giant Debt Trap. “They need a budget resolution for the next fiscal year. They have to have a debt ceiling increase before then. It is a chicken and egg conundrum. The debt ceiling freeze is in and right now it is on holiday. On March 15 it will freeze in. There will be $200 billion on the balance sheet which will dissipate by the day with no borrowing authority. Then where do they get a majority? The Freedom Caucus, Tea Party Republicans are not going to vote for a multi-trillion debt ceiling increase before they repeal Obamacare. The Democrats are not going to help Trump as long as he is slamming their constituencies and putting up walls at the border.” “The market is totally missing the fact that the tax cut isn’t going to happen. That instead there is going to be this terrible showdown on the debt ceiling. This will create a panic and sell-off like we haven’t seen before. Yesterday was “Tulip Time” and irrational exuberance on steroids. Once it becomes clear that a clock is ticking it will become a massive time to sell.” Such a conclusion would instill panic into the system, if Stockman is correct. Yet, most will simply ignore the warning of this day of reckoning and assume that business as usual will emerge. The public debt jumps from about $19 trillion + this year to over $29 trillion in 10 years by 2026, according to appropriate budgetary levels for fiscal years 2018 through 2026. Will the Freedom Caucus faction of the GOP capitulate to the pressures of avoiding default? Or will the bitter feud over the repeal and replacement of Obamacare leave an anger that destroys any disposition to up the ceiling? Surely, Democrats in Congress may see this crisis as an opportunity to let the U.S. go into technical default. So much for the prospects, Trump Promised to Eliminate National Debt in Eight Years. Good Luck With That. "Donald Trump told the Washington Post he would get rid of the national debt “over a period of eight years.” It may have been the boldest promise he’s ever made, considering the U.S. hasn’t been debt-free since 1835." The careerist politicians are far less fearful of defaulting on the official debt ceiling, because the off budget and total unfunded obligations is so enormous that the entire international monetary system would have to be re-invented to rescue world commerce. For the end reality is that the current debt cannot and will never be paid and the principle retired. Just maybe this March 15, 2017 deadline might become the impetus to end the charade of maintaining a debt ceiling at all and eliminate the pretense of fiscal responsibility. If the Treasury was serious about creating financial breathing room to the burden of unsustainable current interest payments, the short term national debt should be substituted for 30 or even 50 year bond obligations while interest rates are so low. However, this strategy was never used, because the moneychangers have no intention of even providing a temporary relief to the taxpayer. While a Trump tax cut, both corporate and personal will certainly drive economic growth, the absence of any discussion, much less a commitment to cut spending guarantees the sink hole of financial oblivion will only intensify. An example that illustrates this certainty Once Again, Raising the Debt Limit Emerging as a Flash Point, comes from one of the usual and familiar suspects. "In a meeting with reporters Thursday, House Democratic Whip Steny H. Hoyer said Democrats would be “inclined” to vote for a debt limit increase as long as the bill is clean, meaning it would raise the debt limit without any conditions. But the Maryland lawmaker added that if conservatives insist on a trade-off for raising the borrowing ceiling, “that’s a different question.” Partisan brinksmanship is the order of the day in this dysfunctional and surreal club for power elites. Any sincere patriot is soon confronted with compromise or outright sell out of principle in order to maintain their seat in Congress. As long as debt created money is issued by the private Federal Reserve, there can be no way out of this dilemma. Robert Romano offers up this cheerful thought: " After 20 years of excessive borrowing — all but guaranteed as Baby Boomers fully receive their Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits — the national debt would be $93 trillion. And if the economy continues at its current anemic rate, the GDP would only be $40 trillion — a debt to GDP ratio of 232 percent. If that happens, Trump will almost have certainly failed to get the U.S. economy moving again. In a very short span of time, the U.S. could be left with a debt that can never possibly be repaid." If this is the fate that befalls us, eliminating the debt limit ceiling becomes immaterial. Trump may well have to resort to directly issuing Treasury bonds and by pass the Federal Reserve note legal tender laws. In any event, the looming Ides of March, day of reckoning may well be the death nil for the American Caesar Imperial Empire. SARTRE - March 14, 2017MKXL Enhanced Online Beta MKXL_Jana MKXL_Anna MKXL_Christian MKXL_Shden MKXL_Debora MKXL_Oxana MKXL_Anderson MKXL_Markus MKXL_Elayne MKXL_Marcio MKXL_Nizar MKXL_Julien MKXL_Daniel MKXL_Katarina MKXL_Abdu MKXL_Fernando MKXL_Oliver MKXL_Etienne MKXL_Jazmine MKXL_Dave MKXL_Janeen Hello,Thanks for your patience as we’ve been quiet for a while. We’ve been working behind the scenes updating MKX on PC and wanted to make sure when we had something to share with you, it was good news.Beginning today and for the next 4 days only, anyone can play the MKXL Enhanced Online PC Beta for free and experience the enhanced rollback system and other updates made for our PC players.Download now to play the Beta before it endsStay tuned for an invitation next week
at that time the third-largest town in Western Australia after Perth and Fremantle and the largest town in the Western Australian gold-mining districts, while that of Coolgardie Municipality had fallen slightly to 4,249. The total population for the Coolgardie Magisterial Districts (which included Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie-Boulder) was 41,816 men, women and children, being: 8,315 in the Coolgardie Magisterial District centred on Coolgardie; 26,101 in the Coolgardie East Magisterial District centred on Kalgoorlie-Boulder; 4,710 in the Coolgardie North Magisterial District centred on Menzies; and 2,690 in the Coolgardie North-East Magisterial District centred on Kanowna.[253][254][255] The far-reaching nature of the mining excitement (in Western Australia) drew men from all over the world...People immigrated from Africa and America, Great Britain and Europe, China and India, New Zealand and the South Sea Islands, and from mining centres in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, and South Australia.[256] A website managed by the National Trust of Australia (WA) states: The gold rush transformed the Western Australian economy as gold production soared from 22,806 ounces in 1890 to 1,643,876 ounces in 1900 and this was matched by the fourfold increase in WA's population from 46,290 in 1890 to 184,124 reported in the 1901 census.[239] 1906: Tarnagulla, Victoria Gold was rediscovered near Tarnagulla on 6 November 1906 (Melbourne Cup Day), when a miner who had prospected the district for years obtained seven ounces of gold from a shaft nineteen feet (6 metres) deep. With some fairly large nuggets being found soon after, the so-called Poseidon rush, named after the horse that had won the Melbourne Cup that year, set in with "men of all ranks and professions...trying their luck on the field".[257] Several of the nuggets were unearthed within a few inches of the surface. The largest weighed 953 ounces (27 kg) and two others weighed 703 (20 kg) and 675 ounces (19 kgs) respectively. The shallow ground was soon worked out, but operations gave satisfactory results in the deeper alluvial until 1912.[29][258] See also Notes ^ [21] Most sources give the date of discovery as 15 February, but a few indicate the date was 16 February instead. ReferencesFor two weekends over the course of the last few months, Anthony Calvillo took young quarterbacks from the university level (March 12-13) and the CEGEP level (April 9-10) in Quebec, under his wings, during the Anthony Calvillo Leadership Academy. More than 30 young football players had the unique opportunity to be coached by professional football’s most prolific passer. During those weekends, Calvillo shared his knowledge about the game as well as the mental and physical preparation that are required to perform at a high level. PHOTOS -> Anthony Calvillo Leadership Academy university level quarterbacks In 2014, the President and CEO of the Alouettes, Mark Weightman, along with Anthony Calvillo, wanted to give back to the amateur football community. Weightman suggested organizing a football camp for amateur players and Calvillo found the idea very interesting. Calvillo strongly wanted the Academy to focus on young quarterbacks of Quebec and that it wouldn’t cost anything for players to participate. “It was important for me that the Academy was going to be free, because I did not have the money to go to any of these camps when I was younger and I did not want to exclude anyone now,” declared Calvillo. “I did not have the money to go to any of these camps when I was younger and I did not want to exclude anyone now” In the context of the Academy, Anthony Calvillo works alongside Jason Hogan, the Alouettes Offensive Quality Control Coach. Hogan came to know Calvillo gradually throughout the occurrence of several amateur football events on which they worked together. Throughout the years, Calvillo had the opportunity to discover Hogan’s personality, determination and the work ethic of the 29-year-old coach. PHOTOS -> Anthony Calvillo Leadership Academy CEGEP level quarterbacks During the Academy, Anthony Calvillo focused on sharing the importance of the quarterback’s role regarding one’s influence on his teammates. He emphasized on the responsibility the quarterback has, as the leader of the team, and on his role beyond being on the field. Also, the coach insisted on the importance of having a proper mindset. “The players need to understand that one day they will all be competing against one another. Therefore, it is significant that they know how to stand out. In other words, anyone can be good, but how are you going to make a difference to be great?,” concluded Calvillo.Hey, this news is pretty late in coming, but I hate making promises before I'm pretty sure we can come through. The regular schedule of Book 3 updates (Mondays and Fridays) will resume this Friday, February 27th. David's move has simply been a nightmare for him, and it's still not settled. But he is back to work on comic pages now, and can keep to our regular production schedule even though he still has an awful lot to deal with. For my part, I took a lot of time in the last couple of months to focus on the Forecastle story (which grew way beyond the scope I had planned for it) and to work with the web team on an important and exciting new plan for the Toolbox, which we'll be rolling out in March. I'm going to wait for a few weeks to roll out the next Kickstarter backer story, but I am working with a couple of backers on their ideas for upcoming tales. I have been just blown away by the level of positive feedback and support that we got for Forecastle, and I'm looking forward to carving out more stories to throw some light on the darkened corners of Erfworld. With the return to regular updates looming, now's the time for you to start submitting some articles, stories, art and comics to the Gaming, Fiction, and Community streams! Thanks as always for your patience and support.Yooka Laylee, the spiritual successor to Rare’s classic platformer Banjo Kazooie, is getting close to its April 11th release date. Their latest news has included the first look at one of the stages, Capital Cashino, as well as the announcement that Yooka Laylee will no longer be coming to the Nintendo WiiU but will instead be releasing for the also recently announced Nintendo Switch. Today more information has been revealed as Playtonic Games show off multiplayer in Yooka Laylee in their latest trailer. Multiplayer in Yooka Laylee will be accessible through the use of eight different arcade machines, each of these machines will be hidden throughout the different world and protected by Rextro Sixtyfourus, a play on both the word Retro and Rextro’s 64 bit appearance. In all of these arcade games, you can either play them on your own attempting to attain the highest score and top the leaderboard, if you have friends that also want to get in on the action though then you can play all of the arcade games with up to four player couch co-op. So far the arcade games we know about are as follows: Glaciators, an arena type game where you have to fight to earn the most quills Kartos Karting, a simple race to get to the finish line first Blag the Flag, a game where you fight to keep possession of the flag Gun-let Run, a shoot-em-up where you need to take out as many enemies as possible Jobstacle Course Hurdle Hijinx, the last of two seem to test players platforming abilities It isn’t just about competitive multiplayer though as you can ‘plug’ in a second controller and have your friend help you out during the single player campaign too! Playing as the Bee Team your second player will help you out by grabbing quills as well as collecting and storing butterflies for when Yooka and Laylee need more health. If there’s a pesky trap that you just can’t seem to make it past either then they can also work to stop them making your journey that much easier. Yooka Laylee is launching for the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC, Mac, and Linux on the 11th of April. If you digitally pre-order the game from the Xbox Store, PlayStation Network, Steam, or even retailers like GAME in the UK or Amazon in the US you will also receive instant access to the Yooka Laylee Toybox giving you a chance to try out some of the game’s mechanics and even learn about a secret that will be available in the full release. What do you think of Yooka Laylee‘s multiplayer announcement? Are you more excited that you can play these arcade games with your friends, or that you can have your friend play with you through the main game? Share Have a tip for us? Awesome! Shoot us an email at [email protected] and we'll take a look!The Edain 4.0 Demo featuring a return to the classic Battle for Middle-earth castle gameplay with Gondor, Rohan, Mordor and Isengard is now available for download - fully in English! Posted by Lord_of_Mordor on Mar 28th, 2015 Edain 4.0 Demo Released Greetings, companions of Edain! After three years of work we're proud finally release our demo of Edain 4.0! If you experience any problems, check here for frequent issues and solutions: Forum.modding-union.com Back to the roots. Edain 4.0 revives the classic gameplay of the first Battle for Middle-earth, expanded with dozens of new heroes, units and spells. Build a mighty fortress, then sally forth to conquer settlements and outposts. Those not only allow you to improve your economy, but also let you rally supporting factions like Dunland or the Fiefdoms of Gondor. Edain puts the entire breadth of Tolkien's world at your command und lets you journey deeper into Middle-earth than ever before! We have adjusted every single map from both games in the series for our new gameplay and created dozens of new ones, including fortresses like Dol Amroth and Cirith Ungol. Fully in English for the first time. At long last, this is our first version with full English sound and text! In addition, we have greatly expanded our English forums over on our site - all international fans are welcome to share their feedback and suggestions and discuss them with the team! (of course, German sound and text is still available as well) Fight the Battle for Middle-earth your way. Seven different game modes let you customize the game to your style of play. In the dynamic Conquest mode, victory goes to the player who holds more than half the settlements on the map for a time, ensuring intense back-and-forth battles all across the field. Or would you rather crush your foes with Middle-earth's greatest heroes? Then the Legendary Heroes might be for you, putting greatly empowered heroes at the center of the game. Old strengths, newly enhanced. With all these upheavals and new features, we haven't forgotten what so many of you loved about Edain in the first. As in previous versions, every faction has their own Ring Heroes, some of them brand-new, and almost every hero from the original game sports an expansive set of new abilities. What's more, the custom heroes make their return after a long absence and offer more classes and options than ever. At the same time, we have carefully rebalanced the game to eliminate weaknesses that were weighing the mod down. For example, archers no longer completely dominate the field and battles are no longer decided by a single mass destruction spell - you must cleverly bring all of your strategic resources to bear over a longer time to emerge victorious. The beginning of a great journey. This demo contains the four core factions of Gondor, Rohan, Mordor and Isengard. In the future, we will periodically expand it and add the remaining five sides: The Dwarves, the Misty Mountains, Lothlorien, Rivendell and Angmar. After years of modding, it is a fantastic feeling to finally share this latest and best version of Edain with you. Thanks to everyone who has followed us on this road so far, and remember: The Battle for Middle-earth has just begun... Your Edain TeamSending a program to a microcontroller (which is most often called “programming” the device) can be done in multiple ways. For example, one can do it through the use of ICSP headers and dedicated hardware programmers. In the Arduino world the usage of bootloaders is extremely common, since it is what allows you to program your device directly through the Serial (USB) connection. This blog post will explore how we can upload a compiled program (in its Intel HEX form) to an Arduino UNO directly, by interacting with the device’s bootloader from C#. Arduino Bootloaders A bootloader is a small, specialized piece of software on your microcontroller that runs first whenever your board powers on. It provides at least the following functions: provide a way to upload new programs to the device start (“bootstrap”) the main program Once the bootloader has given control to the main program, the latter will keep on running indefinitely. Specific types of Arduino’s come preinstalled with a certain “flavour” of bootloader. You can change your bootloader or perhaps you don’t even have one installed (for example, when you ordered ATMega chips directly). When in doubt, one can always use Nick Gammon’s Atmega_Board_Detector (requires 2 Arduinos) in order to identify the currently installed bootloader. The most common Arduino bootloaders implement (a subset of) upload protocols that originate with Atmel (e.g. STK500v1 & STK500v2). These (binary) protocols are quite well documented. This blog post will focus exclusively on the following combination of elements (as we find them in a modern Arduino UNO): ATMega328P (MCU) - Optiboot (bootloader) - STK500v1 (upload protocol). How the Arduino IDE uploads a program Toggle “Show verbose output” for both compilation and upload in the IDE’s preferences. As of today (Arduino IDE version 1.6.11) the process is two-pronged: Compilation: the IDE calls avr-gcc in order to compile your source code (Arduino sketches are really nothing more than regular C++ code with some domain specific libraries). The end result of this step is a binary file in Intel HEX format. At the end of the verbose output, you will be able to see exactly where these files end up on your filesystem. Linking everything together... "C:\Program Files (x86)\Arduino\hardware\tools\avr/bin/avr-gcc" -Os -flto -fuse-linker-plugin -Wl,--gc-sections,--relax -mmcu=atmega2560 -o "C:\Users\chris\AppData\Local\Temp\build9c9ef3bdfe2fccb480bc6e4bac749e41.tmp/Blink.ino.elf" "C:\Users\chris\AppData\Local\Temp\build9c9ef3bdfe2fccb480bc6e4bac749e41.tmp\sketch\Blink.ino.cpp.o" "C:\Users\chris\AppData\Local\Temp\build9c9ef3bdfe2fccb480bc6e4bac749e41.tmp/core\core.a" "-LC:\Users\chris\AppData\Local\Temp\build9c9ef3bdfe2fccb480bc6e4bac749e41.tmp" -lm "C:\Program Files (x86)\Arduino\hardware\tools\avr/bin/avr-objcopy" -O ihex -j.eeprom --set-section-flags=.eeprom=alloc,load --no-change-warnings --change-section-lma.eeprom=0 "C:\Users\chris\AppData\Local\Temp\build9c9ef3bdfe2fccb480bc6e4bac749e41.tmp/Blink.ino.elf" "C:\Users\chris\AppData\Local\Temp\build9c9ef3bdfe2fccb480bc6e4bac749e41.tmp/Blink.ino.eep" "C:\Program Files (x86)\Arduino\hardware\tools\avr/bin/avr-objcopy" -O ihex -R.eeprom "C:\Users\chris\AppData\Local\Temp\build9c9ef3bdfe2fccb480bc6e4bac749e41.tmp/Blink.ino.elf" "C:\Users\chris\AppData\Local\Temp\build9c9ef3bdfe2fccb480bc6e4bac749e41.tmp/Blink.ino.hex" You can open up the.HEX file in a regular text editor (since it stores information in an ASCII form): Note: For those interested in how to parse the Intel Hex file structure, have a look at the following.NET project on GitHub: IntelHexFormatReader. Upload: the IDE calls a tool called avrdude (homepage) which originated on FreeBSD and has been the de facto standard (for many years) for uploading programs to all kinds of microcontrollers. In the output you can see how it will “flash” the.HEX file generate in the previous step ( to COM port 4, at a baud rate of 115200 bps, with an “arduino” type programmer, targetting the ATMega328P chip on the UNO): C:\Program Files (x86)\Arduino\hardware\tools\avr/bin/avrdude -CC:\Program Files (x86)\Arduino\hardware\tools\avr/etc/avrdude.conf -v -patmega328p -carduino -PCOM4 -b115200 -D -Uflash:w:C:\Users\chris\AppData\Local\Temp\build9c9ef3bdfe2fccb480bc6e4bac749e41.tmp/Blink.ino.hex:i We will take the.HEX file as generated by the compilation process and upload that directly to the UNO (thereby foregoing avrdude directly). Uploading the.HEX file with C# From a high level perspective, we will execute the following steps: Configure and open the serial port connection. Establish sync Check the device signature Initialize the device Enable programming mode Program the device Leave programming mode Important reference: Documentation of the STK500 protocol. The following constants will be used in the code below: namespace ArduinoUploader.Protocols.STK500v1 { internal static class Constants { internal const byte CMD_STK_GET_SYNC = 0 x30 ; internal const byte CMD_STK_GET_PARAMETER = 0 x41 ; internal const byte CMD_STK_SET_DEVICE = 0 x42 ; internal const byte CMD_STK_ENTER_PROGMODE = 0 x50 ; internal const byte CMD_STK_LEAVE_PROGMODE = 0 x51 ; internal const byte CMD_STK_LOAD_ADDRESS = 0 x55 ; internal const byte CMD_STK_PROG_PAGE = 0 x64 ; internal const byte CMD_STK_READ_PAGE = 0 x74 ; internal const byte CMD_STK_READ_SIGNATURE = 0 x75 ; internal const byte SYNC_CRC_EOP = 0 x20 ; internal const byte RESP_STK_OK = 0 x10 ; internal const byte RESP_STK_Failed = 0 x11 ; internal const byte RESP_STK_NODEVICE = 0 x13 ; internal const byte RESP_STK_INSYNC = 0 x14 ; internal const byte RESP_STK_NOSYNC = 0 x15 ; internal const byte PARM_STK_SW_MAJOR = 0 x81 ; internal const byte PARM_STK_SW_MINOR = 0 x82 ; } } 1. Configure and open the serial port Instantiate a serial port instance (of type System.IO.Ports.SerialPort ) first, with the port name pointing to the actual port where the Arduino is attached, at a baud rate of 115200 bps (as that is the speed used to communicate with the Optiboot bootloader). We will reset the Arduino first, as that is the only way to get the bootloader code to run again. There is only a short interval available after powering up the board (where the bootloader listens for a potential upload). After that, it will call the entrypoint to the main program. Resetting an Arduino UNO can be done by toggling DTR/RTS: SerialPort. DtrEnable = false ; SerialPort. RtsEnable = false ; Thread. Sleep ( 250 ); SerialPort. DtrEnable = true ; SerialPort. RtsEnable = true ; Thread. Sleep ( 50 ); 2. Establish sync We will start by establishing sync. The documentation has the following notes with regards to this command: Here is how we will implement this: ... public override void EstablishSync () { int i ; for ( i = 0 ; i < MaxSyncRetries ; i ++) { Send ( new GetSyncRequest ()); var result = Receive < GetSyncResponse >(); if ( result == null ) continue ; if ( result. IsInSync ) break ; } if ( i == MaxSyncRetries ) UploaderLogger. LogAndThrowError < IOException >( string. Format ( "Unable to establish sync after {0} retries.", MaxSyncRetries )); var nextByte = ReceiveNext (); if ( nextByte!= Constants. RESP_STK_OK ) UploaderLogger. LogAndThrowError < IOException >( "Unable to establish sync." ); }... protected virtual void Send ( IRequest request ) { var bytes = request. Bytes ; var length = bytes. Length ; logger. Trace ( "Sending {0} bytes: {1}{2}", length, Environment. NewLine, BitConverter. ToString ( bytes )); SerialPort. Write ( bytes, 0, length ); }... protected TResponse Receive < TResponse >( int length = 1 ) where TResponse : Response { var bytes = ReceiveNext ( length ); if ( bytes == null ) return null ; var result = ( TResponse ) Activator. CreateInstance ( typeof ( TResponse )); result. Bytes = bytes ; return result ; }... protected byte [] ReceiveNext ( int length ) { var bytes = new byte [length] ; var retrieved = 0 ; try { while ( retrieved < length ) retrieved += SerialPort. Read ( bytes, retrieved, length - retrieved ); logger. Trace ( "Receiving bytes: {0}", BitConverter. ToString ( bytes )); return bytes ; } catch ( TimeoutException ) { return null ; } } internal class GetSyncRequest : Request { public GetSyncRequest () { Bytes = new [] { Constants. CMD_STK_GET_SYNC, Constants. SYNC_CRC_EOP }; } } internal class GetSyncResponse : Response { public bool IsInSync { get { return Bytes. Length > 1 && Bytes [0] == Constants. CMD_SIGN_ON && Bytes [1] == Constants. STATUS_CMD_OK ; } } public string Signature { get { var signatureLength = Bytes [2] ; var signature = new byte [signatureLength] ; Buffer. BlockCopy ( Bytes, 3, signature, 0, signatureLength ); return Encoding. ASCII. GetString ( signature ); } } } 3. Check the device signature We will send a command to make sure we are talking to the correct device. This is what the documentation has: Here is how we will implement it: private const string EXPECTED_DEVICE_SIGNATURE = "1e-95-0f" ;... public override void CheckDeviceSignature () { logger. Debug ( "Expecting to find '{0}'...", EXPECTED_DEVICE_SIGNATURE ); SendWithSyncRetry ( new ReadSignatureRequest ()); var response = Receive < ReadSignatureResponse >( 4 ); if ( response == null ||! response. IsCorrectResponse ) UploaderLogger. LogAndThrowError < IOException >( "Unable to check device signature!" ); var signature = response. Signature ; if ( signature [0]!= 0 x1e || signature [1]!= 0 x95 || signature [2]!= 0 x0f ) UploaderLogger. LogAndThrowError < IOException >( string. Format ( "Unexpected device signature - found '{0}'- expected '{1}'.", BitConverter. ToString ( signature ), EXPECTED_DEVICE_SIGNATURE )); }... protected void SendWithSyncRetry ( IRequest request ) { byte nextByte ; while ( true ) { Send ( request ); nextByte = ( byte ) ReceiveNext (); if ( nextByte == Constants. RESP_STK_NOSYNC ) { EstablishSync (); continue ; } break ; } if ( nextByte!= Constants. RESP_STK_INSYNC ) UploaderLogger. LogAndThrowError < IOException >( string. Format ( "Unable to aqcuire sync in SendWithSyncRetry for request of type {0}!", request. GetType ())); } internal class ReadSignatureRequest : Request { public ReadSignatureRequest () { Bytes = new [] { Constants. CMD_STK_READ_SIGNATURE, Constants. SYNC_CRC_EOP }; } } internal class ReadSignatureResponse : Response { public bool IsCorrectResponse { get { return Bytes. Length == 4 && Bytes [3] == Constants. RESP_STK_OK ; } } public byte [] Signature { get { return new [] { Bytes [0], Bytes [1], Bytes [2] }; } } } 4. Initialize the device We will first issue commands to retrieve the current software version (major, minor). Then, we will issue a command to set programming parameters for the request: Relevant parts of the documentation: public override void InitializeDevice () { var majorVersion = GetParameterValue ( Constants. PARM_STK_SW_MAJOR ); var minorVersion = GetParameterValue ( Constants. PARM_STK_SW_MINOR ); logger. Info ( "Retrieved software version: {0}.", string. Format ( "{0}.{1}", majorVersion, minorVersion )); logger. Info ( "Setting device programming parameters..." ); SendWithSyncRetry ( new SetDeviceProgrammingParametersRequest (( MCU ) MCU )); var nextByte = ReceiveNext (); if ( nextByte!= Constants. RESP_STK_OK ) UploaderLogger. LogAndThrowError < IOException >( "Unable to set device programming parameters!" ); }... private uint GetParameterValue ( byte param ) { logger. Trace ( "Retrieving parameter '{0}'...", param ); SendWithSyncRetry ( new GetParameterRequest ( param )); var nextByte = ReceiveNext (); var paramValue = ( uint ) nextByte ; nextByte = ReceiveNext (); if ( nextByte == Constants. RESP_STK_Failed ) UploaderLogger. LogAndThrowError < IOException >( string. Format ( "Retrieving parameter '{0}' failed!", param )); if ( nextByte!= Constants. RESP_STK_OK ) UploaderLogger. LogAndThrowError < IOException >( string. Format ( "General protocol error while retrieving parameter '{0}'.", param )); return paramValue ; } internal class GetParameterRequest : Request { public GetParameterRequest ( byte param ) { Bytes = new [] { Constants. CMD_STK_GET_PARAMETER, param, Constants. SYNC_CRC_EOP }; } } internal class SetDeviceProgrammingParametersRequest : Request { public SetDeviceProgrammingParametersRequest ( IMCU mcu ) { var flashMem = mcu. Flash ; var eepromMem = mcu. EEPROM ; var flashPageSize = flashMem. PageSize ; var flashSize = flashMem. Size ; var epromSize = eepromMem. Size ; Bytes = new byte [22] ; Bytes [0] = Constants. CMD_STK_SET_DEVICE ; Bytes [1] = mcu. DeviceCode ; Bytes [2] = mcu. DeviceRevision ; Bytes [3] = mcu. ProgType ; Bytes [4] = mcu. ParallelMode ; Bytes [5] = mcu. Polling ; Bytes [6] = mcu. SelfTimed ; Bytes [7] = mcu. LockBytes ; Bytes [8] = mcu. FuseBytes ; Bytes [9] = flashMem. PollVal1 ; Bytes [10] = flashMem. PollVal2 ; Bytes [11] = eepromMem. PollVal1 ; Bytes [12] = eepromMem. PollVal2 ; Bytes [13] = ( byte ) (( flashPageSize >> 8 ) & 0 x00ff ); Bytes [14] = ( byte ) ( flashPageSize & 0 x00ff ); Bytes [15] = ( byte ) (( epromSize >> 8 ) & 0 x00ff ); Bytes [16] = ( byte ) ( epromSize & 0 x00ff ); Bytes [17] = ( byte ) (( flashSize >> 24 ) & 0 xff ); Bytes [18] = ( byte ) (( flashSize >> 16 ) & 0 xff ); Bytes [19] = ( byte ) (( flashSize >> 8 ) & 0 xff ); Bytes [20] = ( byte ) ( flashSize & 0 xff ); Bytes [21] = Constants. SYNC_CRC_EOP ; } } For this SetDeviceProgrammingParametersRequest our currently configured MCU (ATMega328P) hardware definition is used as well: internal class ATMega328P : MCU { public override byte DeviceCode { get { return 0 x86 ; } } public override byte DeviceRevision { get { return 0 ; } } public override byte ProgType { get { return 0 ; } } public override byte ParallelMode { get { return 1 ; } } public override byte Polling { get { return 1 ; } } public override byte SelfTimed { get { return 1 ; } } public override byte LockBytes { get { return 1 ; } } public override byte FuseBytes { get { return 3 ; } } public override byte Timeout { get { return 200 ; } } public override byte StabDelay { get { return 100 ; } } public override byte CmdExeDelay { get { return 25 ; } } public override byte SynchLoops { get { return 32 ; } } public override byte ByteDelay { get { return 0 ; } } public override byte PollIndex { get { return 3 ; } } public override byte PollValue { get { return 0 x53 ; } } public override IDictionary < Command, byte [] > CommandBytes { get { return new Dictionary < Command, byte [] >(); } } public override IList < IMemory > Memory { get { return new List < IMemory >() { new FlashMemory () { Size = 32 * 1024, PageSize = 128, PollVal1 = 0 xff, PollVal2 = 0 xff }, new EEPROMMemory () { Size = 1024, PollVal1 = 0 xff, PollVal2 = 0 xff } }; } } } internal abstract class MCU : IMCU { public abstract byte DeviceCode { get ; } public abstract byte DeviceRevision { get ; } public abstract byte LockBytes { get ; } public abstract byte FuseBytes { get ; } public abstract byte Timeout { get ; } public abstract byte StabDelay { get ; } public abstract byte CmdExeDelay { get ; } public abstract byte SynchLoops { get ; } public abstract byte ByteDelay { get ; } public abstract byte PollValue { get ; } public abstract byte PollIndex { get ; } public virtual byte ProgType { get { return 0 ; } } public virtual byte ParallelMode { get { return 0 ; } } public virtual byte Polling { get { return 1 ; } } public virtual byte SelfTimed { get { return 1 ; } } public abstract IDictionary < Command, byte [] > CommandBytes { get ; } public IMemory Flash { get { return Memory. SingleOrDefault ( x => x. Type == MemoryType. FLASH ); } } public IMemory EEPROM { get { return Memory. SingleOrDefault ( x => x. Type == MemoryType. EEPROM ); } } public abstract IList < IMemory > Memory { get ; } } 5. Enable programming mode We will send a command to enter “program mode”. The relevant documentation entry: The implementation: public override void EnableProgrammingMode () { SendWithSyncRetry ( new EnableProgrammingModeRequest ()); var nextByte = ReceiveNext (); if ( nextByte == Constants. RESP_STK_OK ) return ; if ( nextByte == Constants. RESP_STK_NODEVICE || nextByte == Constants. RESP_STK_Failed ) UploaderLogger. LogAndThrowError < IOException >( "Unable to enable programming mode on the device!" ); } internal class EnableProgrammingModeRequest : Request { public EnableProgrammingModeRequest () { Bytes = new [] { Constants. CMD_STK_ENTER_PROGMODE, Constants. SYNC_CRC_EOP }; } } 6. Program the device This method takes a MemoryBlock (a type from IntelHexFormatReader that has the “memory” representation of the HEX file after interpreting the records in it) and iterates over its contents (per page). If a page has any byte set to “modified” (as per the HEX file), we will mark it as needsWrite. This way, we will only write to the pages required. Even if a page is needsWrite, we will first read the contents of the page and compare it to the write payload. That way (e.g. if you are flashing the same program over and over again) we can conserve (finite and thus precious) write cycles. After the read, we will read the page again (in order to verify that the contents have been written perfectly). public virtual void ProgramDevice ( MemoryBlock memoryBlock ) { var sizeToWrite = memoryBlock. HighestModifiedOffset + 1 ; var flashMem = MCU. Flash ; var pageSize = flashMem. PageSize ; logger. Info ( "Preparing to write {0} bytes...", sizeToWrite ); logger. Info ( "Flash page size: {0}.", pageSize ); int offset ; for ( offset = 0 ; offset < sizeToWrite ; offset += pageSize ) { var needsWrite = false ; for ( var i = offset ; i < offset + pageSize ; i ++) { if (! memoryBlock. Cells [i]. Modified ) continue ; needsWrite = true ; break ; } if ( needsWrite ) { logger. Debug ( "Executing paged write @ address {0} (page size {1})...", offset, pageSize ); var bytesToCopy = memoryBlock. Cells. Skip ( offset ). Take ( pageSize ). Select ( x => x. Value ). ToArray (); logger. Trace ( "Checking if bytes at offset {0} need to be overwritten...", offset ); var bytesAlreadyPresent = ExecuteReadPage ( flashMem, offset ); if ( bytesAlreadyPresent. SequenceEqual ( bytesToCopy )) { logger. Trace ( "Bytes are identical to bytes present - skipping write!" ); continue ; } logger. Trace ( "Writing page at offset {0}.", offset ); ExecuteWritePage ( flashMem, offset, bytesToCopy ); logger. Trace ( "Page written, now verifying..." ); var verify = ExecuteReadPage ( flashMem, offset ); var succeeded = verify. SequenceEqual ( bytesToCopy ); if (! succeeded ) UploaderLogger. LogAndThrowError < IOException >( "Difference encountered during verification, write failed!" ); } else { logger. Trace ( "Skip writing page..." ); } } logger. Info ( "{0} bytes written to flash memory!", sizeToWrite ); } In the method above, we used three distinct commands: Read a page Write a page Load a specific memory address Here are the relevant parts of the documentation: public override byte [] ExecuteReadPage ( IMemory memory, int offset ) { var pageSize = memory. PageSize ; LoadAddress ( offset ); SendWithSyncRetry ( new ExecuteReadPageRequest ( memory. Type, pageSize )); var bytes = ReceiveNext ( pageSize ); if ( bytes == null ) { UploaderLogger. LogAndThrowError < IOException >( string. Format ( "Read at offset {0} failed!", offset )); } var nextByte = ReceiveNext (); if ( nextByte == Constants. RESP_STK_OK ) return bytes ; UploaderLogger. LogAndThrowError < IOException >( string. Format ( "Read at offset {0} failed!", offset )); return null ; }... public override void ExecuteWritePage ( IMemory memory, int offset, byte [] bytes ) { LoadAddress ( offset ); SendWithSyncRetry ( new ExecuteProgramPageRequest ( memory, bytes )); var nextByte = ReceiveNext (); if ( nextByte == Constants. RESP_STK_OK ) return ; UploaderLogger. LogAndThrowError < IOException >( string. Format ( "Write at offset {0} failed!", offset )); }... private void LoadAddress ( int addr ) { logger. Trace ( "Sending load address request: {0}.", addr ); addr = addr >> 1 ; SendWithSyncRetry ( new LoadAddressRequest ( addr )); var result = ReceiveNext (); if ( result == Constants. RESP_STK_OK ) return ; UploaderLogger. LogAndThrowError < IOException >( string. Format ( "LoadAddress failed with result {0}!", result )); } internal class ExecuteReadPageRequest : Request { public ExecuteReadPageRequest ( MemoryType memType, int pageSize ) { Bytes = new byte [5] ; Bytes [0] = Constants. CMD_STK_READ_PAGE ; Bytes [1] = ( byte )(( pageSize >> 8 ) & 0 xff ); Bytes [2] = ( byte )( pageSize & 0 xff ); Bytes [3] = ( byte )( memType == MemoryType. EEPROM? 'E' : 'F' ); Bytes [4] = Constants. SYNC_CRC_EOP ; } } internal class ExecuteProgramPageRequest : Request { public ExecuteProgramPageRequest ( IMemory memory, byte [] bytesToCopy ) { var size = bytesToCopy. Length ; Bytes = new byte [size + 5] ; var i = 0 ; Bytes [i++] = Constants. CMD_STK_PROG_PAGE ; Bytes [i++] = ( byte )(( size >> 8 ) & 0 xff ); Bytes [i++] = ( byte )( size & 0 xff ); Bytes [i++] = ( byte ) ( memory. Type == MemoryType. EEPROM? 'E' : 'F' ); Buffer. BlockCopy ( bytesToCopy, 0, Bytes, i, size ); i += size ; Bytes [i] = Constants. SYNC_CRC_EOP ; } } internal class LoadAddressRequest : Request { public LoadAddressRequest ( int address ) { Bytes = new [] { Constants. CMD_STK_LOAD_ADDRESS
consumer [spending] choke from people's perceived and actual loss of wealth," said Kampler. "At the end of the day, people are buying far less stuff. They are buying what they need as opposed to what they want," she said. This spending slump, which started in early 2008, has already claimed a number of retail casualties. Prominent national chains such as Linens 'n Things, Steve & Barry's, KB Toys, Whitehall Jewelers and Shoe Pavilion have gone out of business. Still others such as No. 2 electronics seller Circuit City are barely surviving, hoping to find a lifeline while in bankruptcy protection. But after suffering one of the worst year-end shopping seasons in decades - November and December combined can account for half of merchants' annual profits and sales - experts predict that many more chains will disappear. Kampler said she personally knows of "dozens" of retailers who are taking a very hard look at their entire business. She declined to identify them due to confidentiality agreements. "They are considering closing entire divisions or restructuring parts of their business that they want to keep," she said As retailers' sales continue to tumble and mall traffic evaporates, one of the biggest challenges for sellers is their rent occupancy costs. Kampler explained that the amount of rent a retailer can comfortably pay for a given store location is proportionately related to the volume of sales generated at that location. Ideally, she said a retailer's occupancy cost should be equal to 10% of its sales. But a long stretch of slumping sales and rising mall vacancies can dramatically push up the occupancy costs. "Once rent and occupancy costs hit the 20% to 25% of sales threshold, you are treading water," she said. "You can't run a viable business with those numbers". Also, once a retailer faces a cash shortage, the likely next step is to file for bankruptcy protection. To that end, Kampler predicts that retail bankruptcy filings will " be huge" in January. But given the implosive impact of the overall economy on the retail sector, Kampler said filing for bankruptcy could be the death knell for those merchants. "It used to be that when [a company] filed for bankruptcy, it was to restructure its debt and realign its operations in order to emerge alive," she said. "Now it's almost impossible to restructure," she said, pointing out that a significant number of retailers that did file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this year have eventually gone into liquidation. Burden agreed with Kampler. "Companies in bankruptcy aren't getting debtor-in-possession financing," he said. "This will continue in 2009." Burden said his firm historically advised retailers to always re-evaluate the bottom 10% to 15% of their store base, or the poorest-performing stores in their portfolio, for closures. But given the level of anxiety in the industry about a severe spending freeze, he said many retailers are already looking at closing up to 25% to 30% of their store base. "Obviously fewer stores means less choice for consumers," he said. "I think the whole consumer economy is being recalibrated," said Kampler. "It's something that's not been done in decades. I think it will be a three-year recalibration of consumer behavior and expectations." While it's something that she believes is "unavoidable" and will hit the economy in terms of more job losses, she hopes it will also change the consumers' buy-at-all-cost shopping mentality. "Consumers are used to thinking about buying 50 T-shirts, 10 pairs of jeans and 6 sneakers," she said. "Do we really need all this stuff? Ultimately we will all be buying less."Bungie is saying that there's a very good chance Halo 3: ODST, which is set to be released on September 22 exclusively on the Xbox 360, will not be getting any downloadable content mainly because of the work that development studio needs to do on Halo: Reach, the prequel to the series that is set to arrive in 2010. The statements from Bungie came at the Penny Arcade Expo where a panel on ODST took place. Brian Jarrard, who is community lead on the title, said that “Obviously right now what we're excited about is the impending launch of ODST, so we don't want to totally start talking about next year's model before this one's even off the assembly line. But there is a beta that's coming next year, so all you've got to do is sit tight.” He added that “If you want to be part of Reach from the very beginning then you want to make sure you keep an ODST disc handy.” His statement has been backed by Kars Bakken, who is the senior designer on Halo 3: ODST. The idea is that ODST is already a sort of add on for Halo 3 and Bungie, which has repeatedly said that its days of creating Halo-themed games are soon to be over, is already working on Reach, which is supposed to be as big as the original Halo 3 and ODST combined. The company is hoping that the 10 maps shipped with ODST will be enough to keep gamers occupied for some time, so that a map pack is not needed until well in 2010. Of course, a lot depends on how much ODST sells when it is released and on the online activity in Firefight, the new Horde-like mode introduced.Blizzard’s beloved Diablo series of action role-playing games is about to celebrate its 20th anniversary, but the celebration looks like it will be sneaking into another Blizzard title in a pretty wacky way. Fans have known that Blizzard is planning a Diablo 20th Anniversary Event in World of Warcraft for some time now. Taking place from Jan. 4-10, 2017, the event will allow players to earn special Diablo-themed items, including a twelve-string guitar toy and a super-large "Horadric Satchel" bag to expand their inventory space. But how will players earn these gifts? YouTube video creator MabusGaming believes he’s cracked the code. In the video above, he runs down his theory for why he believes World of Warcraft is about to get a secret cow level. For the uninitiated, the cow level is a joke dating back to the first Diablo, where fan rumors raged about a hidden area populated by deadly bovine opponents. That secret zone did not, in fact, exist in the first game. With Diablo 2, Blizzard added a method to create a special portal to the secret cow level, where players could face off against an army of cows armed with polearms. There was even an extra-difficult "Cow King" final boss. So how does this relate back to World of Warcraft? The achievement WoW players can unlock for taking part in the Diablo 20th Anniversary Event includes the text "There is no cow level," a phrase Blizzard put into popularity with the release of Diablo 2. While digging into the just-released Patch 7.1, MabusGaming found a number of strange new spells: one named "Moo," one titled "The Secret Cow Level" and, naturally, one named "Summon Portal to Cow Level." MabusGaming goes on to note that these spells could just be jokes on Blizzard’s part. They don’t guarantee the existence of a real secret cow level in World of Warcraft. But isn’t it more fun to believe? We’ll likely hear more about Blizzard’s plans to celebrate Diablo’s 20th Anniversary next week at BlizzCon. Polygon will be reporting live from the event with any news about Diablo, as well as what’s next for World of Warcraft: Legion. That kicks off Friday, Nov. 4 at 11 a.m. PT.WASHINGTON - The Senate Energy and Natural Resource Committee today begins a nomination hearing on President-elect Trump’s selection of Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) as the next secretary of the Interior. As secretary Zinke would oversee the nation’s more than 1,500 endangered species, hundreds of millions of acres of public land, including national parks, high deserts and national wildlife refuges. The Center for Biological Diversity sent a letter of opposition to members of the committee in advance of today’s hearing. The incoming Interior secretary will decide the fate of several high-profile Obama administration environmental decisions, including the moratorium on most new federal coal leases and protection of imperiled species like the greater sage grouse. During his short time in Congress, Rep. Zinke has earned a 3 percent rating from the League of Conservation Voters. When given the opportunity, he has voted consistently against protecting America’s public lands, waters and native wildlife while prioritizing the narrow, short-term interests of corporate and extractive industries. “Zinke’s brief political career has been substantially devoted to attacking endangered species and the Endangered Species Act,” said Kierán Suckling, executive director of the Center. “He led efforts to strip federal protections for endangered wolves, sage grouse and other wildlife, voted to exempt massive agribusiness and water developers from Endangered Species Act rules, and opposed efforts to crack down on the international black market ivory trade.” In 2012 Zinke signed the extremist “Montana Constitutional Governance Pledge” promising to “legally and administratively oppose the multitude of bureaucracies that have sprung up to enforce the unlawful seizure of our native land and its resources including, but not limited to: the Bureau of Land Management, the United States Park Service, the various bureaus of Wildlife and Fisheries, etc., and restore the rightful powers over the land to the State and private ownership.” SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT Help Keep Common Dreams Alive Our progressive news model only survives if those informed and inspired by this work support our efforts “If Rep. Zinke is confirmed he would be in charge of the very agencies that this pledge promises to eviscerate,” said Suckling. “During confirmation hearings the Senate needs to thoroughly question Zinke on his stated intentions to hand over federal authority to the state and private interests.” Zinke has voted for the cynically named “Resilient Federal Forests Act of 2015,” one of several schemes to turn control of public land over to industry-dominated panels. It was widely opposed by conservationists, sportsmen, businesses and even some timber companies for dispensing with environmental laws and public involvement in order to ramp up unsustainable logging levels. The coal, oil and gas industries have heavily funded Zinke’s congressional campaigns. Since 2011 he has taken $312,536 from oil and gas industries. He has changed his public position on climate change and now says that it is “not proven science.” He also introduced legislation to overturn President Obama’s moratorium on the federal coal program that contributes significantly to U.S. emissions. “Zinke champions turning control of public lands over to states and private interests to greatly increase logging, livestock grazing, mining and oil and gas drilling while significantly reducing environmental protections and public input,” Suckling said. “Under such a scheme, the federal government, taxpayers and wildlife would bear the costs through nominal retention of land title.” ###HOUSTON -- Houston's Mulbah Car is this week's nominee for the 2016 Capital One Orange Bowl-FWAA Courage Award. Car escaped war in Liberia, landed in Austin, Texas, and, just this past spring, became a U.S. citizen before enrolling at Houston. "Being from another country, it means so much to be accepted as an American," Car told the Houston Chronicle this past spring. "I'm so grateful just to be accepted." Car, his mother and his younger sister lived in tents in an immigration camp as Liberia endured a civil war. The family's name had been drawn in a lottery system to be allowed to leave the country when Car was 5, granting his family a fresh start in Texas. A freshman running back, Car has appeared in six games for the 6-1 Cougars, carrying 49 times for 206 yards with two touchdowns, including a 48-yard, one-touchdown performance this past Saturday in a 38-31 win over Tulsa. The 5-foot-11, 194-pound Carr has added four catches for 37 yards this season. The Courage Award was first presented by the Football Writers Association of America (FWAA) in 2002. A select group of writers from the FWAA vote on the winner each year. The requirements for nomination include displaying courage on or off the field, including overcoming an injury or physical handicap, preventing a disaster or living through hardship. The winner of the award will be included in festivities during Capital One Orange Bowl week and receive his trophy at an on-field presentation. Previous winners of the Capital One Orange Bowl-FWAA Courage Award are Miami offensive lineman Hunter Knighton (2015), Duke offensive lineman Laken Tomlinson (2014), San Jose State defensive lineman Anthony Larceval (2013), Clemson wide receiver Daniel Rodriguez (2012), Michigan State offensive lineman Arthur Ray Jr. (2011), Rutgers defensive tackle Eric LeGrand (2010), the University of Connecticut football team (2009), Tulsa's Wilson Holloway (2008), Navy's Zerbin Singleton (2007), Clemson's Ray Ray McElrathbey (2006), the Tulane football team (2005), Memphis' Haracio Colen (2004), San Jose State's Neil Parry (2003) and Toledo's William Bratton (2002). 2016 SINGLE GAME TICKETS Houston fans interested in purchasing single-game tickets starting at just $22 can do so at the following link. Single-game tickets for two of Houston's three remaining home games are available with tickets to the Nov. 17 showdown vs. Louisville sold out.Apparently, the people at Treasury don’t need to take advantage of the Black Friday sales. Instead, they’re at work and announcing that the Cayman Islands (and Costa Rica) will share information on US taxpayers with the IRS. The move comes after the Brits rolled out a similar agreement earlier this month. I assume we’ll see other advanced countries demand similar agreements. But for the moment, just the NSA and GCHQ’s home countries will be able to learn which of their citizens are stashing money in one of the world’s most important tax havens (and one that has been important to Anglo-American financial dominance). There are two submarine cables serving the Cayman Islands. One — Maya 1 — carries telecom traffic to Hollywood, FL. It is owned, in part, by NSA spy partners AT&T and Verizon. The other carries traffic to Jamaica. Another of the cables that serves Jamaica lands in Boca Raton. A third carries traffic to British Virgin Islands. From BVI, cables carry traffic directly to several other landing spots in the US, as well as — by way of Bermuda — Canada. Earlier this year, someone leaked massive amounts of data on BVI’s tax shelter clients and habits (though curiously, no US persons were identified among the most prominent culprits). As far as I know, no one has ever discovered how that data got leaked, and there seems little concern from the powers that be about this leaker who, after all, was as audacious as Chelsea Manning or Edward Snowden. Now, I’m not saying that the US and UK were already stealing Cayman Islands’ data. I’m only saying that doing so would be perfectly within the known practices of America and Britain’s spy agencies.Nestled in the heart of the Alps and historically valuing neutrality, Switzerland is both in and outside Europe in its very own peaceful way. Beyond its aura of international peacemaker with the famous city of Geneva, which gathers not less than UN and Red Cross headquarters, Switzerland has its own internal challenges and business to deal with. Divided into 26 cantons, Switzerland is a Federal country with strong independence from a legal point of view. Swiss people are asked by their political leaders to express their opinion with monthly votes organised by each canton, and only sometimes at a national level. I have been a couple of time in Switzerland starting by the German-speaking part around Zürich, then I discovered Geneva and the French-speaking part. In this trip which included for the first time scuba diving, I started from Geneva to go the bilingual canton of Bern, visiting both Biel and the Federal Capital, which gave me a better understanding of this small and intriguing country. Every time I visited Switzerland, I had the chance to stay with locals. Influenced by their German, French and Italian neighbors, they took from them the language and culture and mixed it their way to create this relaxing land of peaceful mountains where organization is smooth and perfect, and the pleasure of gastronomy is never forgotten way even beyond their delicious cheese (makes sure to taste “tête de moine” cheese) and chocolate (are you also a fan of Toblerone?). During this trip, I saw for the first time vineyards as we approached Les Mosses. I tasted red and white Swiss wines and had a delicious surprise. In Bern, I stopped for hearty lunch made of a “rösti” (grated potatoes with cheese and an egg) and “vermicelles” which are a dessert made of chestnut spread spaghettis with whipped cream! Unlike many scuba diving destinations, you don’t just show up in a place and go to a dive shop to pay for you dive. Famous training waters for technical divers thanks to its cold deep lakes, most interesting places are in altitude and therefore quite remote which requires the proper organisation to go diving there. Then this is not such a big surprise that diving in Switzerland is mainly a matter of local associative clubs. I’ve been very lucky to be introduced though one good friend to the fantastic people from a club of Geneva who is organising every year in the beginning of February an altitude ice diving week-end in one of the most famous places in Switzerland for this challenging activity: Lioson Lake. I took the opportunity to pass my ice diving certification with CMAS, it involved a lecture on the theory of how to make ice diving safe and a minimum of 2 dives. When organising the dive is longer than the dive itself, remember it’s part of the fun Any dive requires a plan to be followed to make sure it will be safe and enjoyable for everyone. In warm conditions of tropical islands, if you’re not part of the crew, you won’t even notice it except the part told in the briefing. Ice diving, besides in altitude, is somehow the extreme opposite. Everyone will have to know the plan and to follow it: “Plan you dive & dive your plan”. Does it ring a bell? With these conditions, it takes its full meaning. Listening and discipline are not to be put aside. Yes, ice diving is some serious adventure but the good news is, it is accessible to any level diver who is cautious and enjoys preparation as much as the dive itself. Here is a summary of the main steps we have been through to organise and secure our weekend of ice diving, applying the theory of what I learnt during the lecture the first morning. You can also watch my ice diving video summarising this adventure. 1 – Approach with proper equipment First of all, think that going on this dive trip will need some packing skills and knowledge on how to cover up in the mountain and/or snowy regions. If you are a ski addict or you live in Canada or Scandinavia, this should be very natural to you but if not, here is a list of basic equipment you need to pack to keep yourself warm before and after the dive: 2 light underwear t-shirts, made of special thermal fabric (ideally 1 short sleeves and 1 long sleeves 1 fleece jumper 1 pair of fleece leggings 1 pair of waterproof pants (ski type are perfect) 1 waterproof puffer jacket 1 pair of waterproof insulated gloves 1 hat or headband to cover your ears Sunglasses (reflection of sunlight on the snow can be really strong) 1 pair of snow boots I also recommend warm ski socks, some are quite technical such like mine which have silk to protect the toes. The good thing with this snow equipment is that all the undergarment part can be used below the dry suit too, but it will be more adapted if you use neoprene (warmer) than a tri-laminate dry suit that requires special puffer undergarment. Thanks to the fleece that is especially light and compressible, I put all of this on a trolley of medium size besides my BCD, fins, mask and camera housing. When we arrived in Lioson-d’en-Bas, everyone was perfectly equipped for the ascent from 1550m to 1850m in the snow, I did not feel over equipped. It took us between 45 minutes and 1 hour to climb there while all the tanks, gear and luggage when comfortably travelling in a specially modified snow groomer. The walk was quite physical, but I forgot it as I was looking at the amazing white landscapes of mountains surrounding me. 2 – Prepare the holes, Prepare the ropes, Have a very thorough buddy teams shift plan Contrary to my first thought, there were not only one hole in the ice but three. Linked by ropes, they are the minimum requirement in the case of an emergency exit. At Lioson Lake, the holes are kept open during all the winter. However, with an average ambient temperature of -10/-15°C, only a couple of days without activity is enough to freeze them up again. Depending on the thickness of the ice, two methods can be used to cut the ice: manually with what looks like a giant chisel or directly with a chainsaw by cutting small ice blocks one by one. The theoretical part of the ice diving training teaches you how to behave on the ice of a frozen lake, so of course, the person in charge of opening the hole is already wearing its dry suit. Briefing time was all about timing: not everyone can go in the water at the same time. The idea is to make a rotation of budding teams: when one leaves the water, it becomes the surface security team until the next one is ascending. 3 – Prepare the gear indoor and how to avoid regulator freezing Enemy #1 in such conditions is regulator free flow. We all have been taught about it in our classes of open water but most divers won’t experience it at all in their tropical diving life. Just as a reminder, free flow is actually a technical issue that is called a fail-safe. The system of the regulator is designed that if in the case of any material problem it will remain wide open instead of definitely closed. The main reason in these conditions is the risk of freezing your first stage… because when you expand a gas you lower its temperature, imagine what happen in negative outdoor temperature on a single breath taken too early! It is a serious issue to take care of, especially when you have ice ceiling all over you. Even by following every procedure like preparing and testing your equipment indoor and not breathing at all from your second stage once outdoor until being underwater, you can get this issue because not all regulators are equally performing in such conditions. Most manufacturers offer special models for cold water, here this is not luxury but a requirement. My recommendation is: don’t play with the guaranteed operating range of your regulator. Mine is a special traveller model with a guaranteed range which goes down to 10°C. I actually take an extra security margin by not using it below 12/13°C, this is why I didn’t take my beloved regulator to this trip or when I was in Patagonia. Fortunately, recently manufacturers started to release cold water traveller models. I’m still benchmarking the different models. To anticipate any problem underwater caused by first stage freezing, it is a requirement that your main regulator and your octopus are mounted on 2 different first stages which are themselves mounted on a tank with 2 separate valves. In the case of free flow, you can simply close one, and keep breathing from your octopus, with eventually an extra attempt 1 minute later to reopen the valve and try breathing again from your main regulator. One efficient tip to avoid your first stage to freeze, is once you get in the water to relax laying on your back to have your first stage immersed in the water and to wait a couple of minutes it takes the temperature of the water which is usually warmer than the air (yes 3°C can be warm sometimes!!!). 4 – Don’t fall and have fun! Once you all set, with your dry suit on, with proper warm undergarment, dry gloves, about 10 kg of weights, your 2 torch lights, warm thick hood and your tank… Well, you have about 20-25 kg of equipment on you and as you got prepare indoor you still have to walk down to the lake… 100m of extreme care, as if you fall or slide with all this equipment it should be easy to hurt yourself. A ski stick or asking for help from someone who’s not diving can be an excellent idea and nothing to be ashamed about. Once I got in the water it felt actually good to get some “refreshing” water on my face! From then, 20 minutes of pure magic is ahead of you… The magic of the icy glow in crystal clear water I’ve been warned that because of the light reflection on the snow all around the lake, I might feel disoriented on the first meters down the time my eyes would adapt to the lack of light of this ice sealed underwater new world. But finally, maybe because it was toward the end of the day when it was my turn to go diving, I didn’t feel at all such a disorientation and moreover I was completely amazed by the beauty of the ice below the surface, from pure white to deep glacier blue. Yet I wasn’t expecting that the lake would be covered in snow and as a result, the amount of light able to go through it would be dramatically reduced. I guess I will need to go back at spring just before all the ice melts. But still, the few rays of light which can make it through the ice give a fantastic and mystical atmosphere with a very soft blue glow coming from the ice. The vast ice ceiling with shading of blue, green and black spots of accumulated bubbles of air is a playground for many divers: some play with their buoyancy skill walking upside down on the ice. Besides, the water is so pure and clear that you completely forget that you are in 3°C water, comfortably floating in your warm undergarment, dry suit and especially the dry gloves which make a big difference. Depth is not the goal here, being 32 meters deep, Lioson Lake is mostly silty and rocky at the bottom so the most interesting part is just below the ice. Still, we made it down to 15m deep. It not so easy to keep neutral buoyancy at 2/3m deep with a neoprene dry suit filled with puffer undergarment. Besides, altitude changes dramatically the gradient of pressure. Being a fisherman leisure base in the summertime, Lioson Lakes offers a bit of fauna action thanks to the schools of beautiful rainbow trout and red belly char. It was really nice to see them on the way back to the surface as they get attracted by the light coming from the hole in the ice. After a sufficient dive time of 20 minutes, with an elegant exit imitating the most ungainly seal, you still have to stand on your leg and walk back in the snow to change inside! On the positive side, you can’t find a better excuse than ice diving to enjoy a delicious Swiss cheese fondue without remorse! 2 weeks later, I received by post my ice diving certification card and I think this will remain the scuba diving certification I’m the proudest of! I absolutely loved this new experience. I am definitely looking forward to the next opportunity in the Alps for more altitude ice diving but there is also Iceland, Norway and Canada! In the mean time you can also discover this adventure in video : Snow shoes & Scuba tanks in Switzerland. If you enjoyed this post, like our Facebook page and join a community of passionate scuba travellers. PIN IT FOR LATER 46.379254 7.004726 Like this: Like Loading... Category: Adventure, Advice, Europe, ice, Switzerland, Training Post navigation Share this: Facebook Pinterest More Reddit TwitterRoughly a year after thieves broke into a storage unit containing Alice Cooper's archives and absconded with a collection of priceless rock memorabilia, one of the items has resurfaced. Cooper's website (via BraveWords ) reminds us that some of the most valuable items lost in the break-in included the sculpture used on the cover of his 'Hey Stoopid' album and the leather jacket (created by designer John Richmond) that he wore during his 'Wayne's World' cameo. The statue is sadly still AWOL, but the jacket has been returned to its rightful owner, thanks to what sounds like an intrepid bit of dumpster diving. As Cooper's webmaster puts it, "The story we got was that an anonymous gentleman claimed to have found it in good condition behind a dumpster in Culver City, Calif. The man seemed to know what he had found and immediately took it to the LAPD in Culver City. Apparently he wanted to remain anonymous and was not interested in any reward. The LAPD contacted us, arrangements were made to have it picked up and it was finally sent home to Alice in Phoenix. Alice is thrilled to have it back, so much so that he took it out of its glass case and is now wearing it regularly!" Given the amount of publicity the theft generated last year, Cooper's team believes the guilty parties are afraid to fence their ill-gotten gain -- which means the 'Hey Stoopid' statue might still be out there, waiting to be found. If you have any leads, be sure to pass them along to [email protected] NDP government says it will soon respond to companies ditching money-losing coal-fired power contracts — potentially passing the costs on to Alberta consumers — though it won’t provide details about its plans. Since December, Enmax, TransCanada, AltaGas and Capital Power have terminated all of their power purchase arrangements (PPAs) for coal-fired electricity, transferring them back to a government entity called the Balancing Pool. The most recent announcement came last Friday as city-owned Enmax announced it would end its Keephills PPA. But the NDP has signalled it will challenge the moves. “We’re going to be initiating an appropriate proceeding shortly and all the facts will be in front of the public as issues are adjudicated,” said NDP Energy Minister Marg McCuaig-Boyd in an interview this week. She would not specify, however, whether the government will launch legal action. The utilities are using a provision in the PPA contract that allows them to terminate if there has been any change in law that makes the deals unprofitable or more unprofitable. In its announcement last week, Enmax — similarly to other companies — cited the NDP government’s change to the Specified Gas Emitters Regulation, which saw the carbon levy paid by large greenhouse gas emitters increase on Jan. 1, as making the contract more unprofitable and triggering the termination. But McCuaig-Boyd questioned that argument. “These PPAs were already unprofitable and so the issue before us is what the companies, the power companies, believed that the previous government agreed to,” she said. “The companies believe they signed contracts that send the profits certainly in their direction and the losses to the public. But you know, they were already unprofitable because of low pool prices, historically low pool prices.” The contract is being returned to Alberta’s Balancing Pool — a government-created entity which sells power from electrical generation contracts that were not sold at auctions when the province deregulated the electricity market 15 years ago — which may hold, resell or terminate the PPA. Rob Hemstock, Enmax’s vice-president of legal, regulatory and public policy, noted the Balancing Pool has its own process and has already evaluated and accepted the company’s initial move around PPAs, which saw Enmax terminate its Battle River PPA. He said he does not know how the government intends to respond further. “We are confident that this critical provision of the PPA … supports the actions we took,” said Hemstock Thursday. Profits and losses in the Balancing Pool are allocated to power consumers on their monthly power bills. Since 2006, it has refunded consumers more than $2 billion. If the Balancing Pool takes on the coal contracts, it will likely be selling the power at a loss, which could be passed on to Alberta consumers through a rider on their bills. If it terminates the contract, it will be required to pay a significant fee to the power generator. McCuaig-Boyd insisted that “the government will take all necessary steps to protect ratepayers.” But in the legislature earlier this week, Alberta Party Leader Greg Clark noted the Balancing Pool is already anticipating charges to consumers as it reviews the other applications for terminations. In its recently-released annual report for 2015, the Balancing Pool noted that “there is a high degree of uncertainty in regards to the financial impact,” but if the PPA buyers are successful in terminating their contracts it “will result in future charges to electricity consumers.” Clark suggested in question period the extra cost could work out to $100 per consumer annually. “I do support action on climate change, but it’s important to know not just the benefits of a policy but the potential costs as well before implementing that policy,” he said. However, Environment Minister Shannon Phillips, standing in for McCuaig-Boyd, dismissed Clark’s figures as “back-of-the-envelope calculations.”Aside from the longstanding conflicts in the Bitcoin community and the recent upsurge in the capital outflow to other cryptocurrencies, do you think $2000 seems a sure range that could have been reached by now? Bitcoin’s eventful life The price had almost closed in on $1,300 before the March 25 struggle over the scalability issue which dropped the price to $908. This is quite understandable as a factor to cause panic in the market and hinder the flow of interest. The price regained its strength in the most part of April when the “altcoin bubble” was somewhat used frequently. Now, even when some of the suggested factors that are likely to affect the price in May are yet to come, the price hovers around $1,450. The French election, India’s decision on digital currencies, a review of the ETF decision by the SEC and we are not even sure of when the standoff between some banks and digital currency exchanges would end. Three major exchanges Bitfinex, OKCoin and BTC-e have separately reported that they’ve been unable to process transactions in dollars. None of these is certain to change anything in the price. The bar is set What is clear is that Bitcoin isn’t getting any cheaper. The side view it’s been getting from a section of the market, particularly mainstream investors is gradually turning into a full glare. Probably this is because they are getting to realize that there is no other technology like it or because some of them have tried and had seen that it is really worth it. With a meager $21 bln total market cap - or thereabout, the market potential for the digital currency which has been seen as the main backbone for others tends to be unveiling its huge opportunities. More digital currency-linked innovation are introduced day by day by shrewd minds who are bent on making its relevance known to our existence. It is paying off though. Gradually, its market is setting off to rise from the $20 bln cap for the next $20 bln where it would likely get more serious investors involved. Yet, it is still appropriate to say that a lot of those who can afford a full unit of Bitcoin at its current rate are still not into it. On the other hand, not all of the several people in developing countries who are getting introduced to it can afford to claim one. The interest Bitcoin has generated so far - the new all-time high set and the price rise over an ounce of gold - in the mainstream media is a catalyst that would bridge some of the gaps in due time.Link of the day - Free $50 Costco Gift Card The Amish have long been famous for barn raisings. Now, they're becoming known for building houses for the non-Amish, often using ancient construction techniques. About 600 Amish contractors or subcontractors work in at least a dozen states, a rapid increase over the past decade, says Donald B. Kraybill, who has written more than a dozen books on the conservative Christian sect. Not only do some of them specialize in the timber-frame construction method that doesn't use nails, they often can erect a house faster and for less money than traditional contractors, customers say. Yet working with an Amish builder brings special challenges. Imagine trying to keep in touch with a contractor who doesn't own a phone -- most are forbidden to have one at home. They also aren't allowed to drive, so they need a driver or other means to get to the job site. Few use computers, have insurance or will sign a detailed construction contract. But some customers are willing to put up with these constraints for what they say is a better-built house. Kevin Heitland was so impressed by the workmanship of a friend's timber-frame house put up by Amish builder Danny Schwartz that he hired Mr. Schwartz for his new lake house south of Branson, Mo. The builder framed the 2,200-square-foot house using wooden pegs in less than a month, for a total cost of $129,000, including the exterior walls, insulation and three porches. (Other workers finished the interior.) Mr. Heitland, a convenience-store owner in Nixa, Mo., says the work Mr. Schwartz did would have cost at least a third more and taken twice as long if he had used regular contractors. Now he plans to commission the same Amish builder for a spec house he plans to sell. "Their workmanship is second to none," Mr. Heitland says. Customers such as Mr. Heitland are turned off by the anonymous and sometimes sloppy work of mass home builders. The Amish are known for careful woodworking, whether using the timber-frame technique, in which thick beams are assembled with wooden pegs and mortise-and-tenon joints, or the conventional "stick frame" approach using machine-milled lumber and nails. And in an industry known for unreliability and corner-cutting, the Amish -- a community known for its work ethic -- can be refreshing, customers say. Seth Teter/ Ohio Farm Bureau Workers from Amish Timber Framers construct a house in Doylestown, Ohio, using the ancient timber-frame technique, which doesn't require nails. Of course, there are plenty of non-Amish builders who take pride in their craftsmanship. Some use similar old-fashioned techniques, including timber frame. "There are good and bad contractors. It is more based on what someone is willing to pay than on whether the contractor is Amish or not," says Stephen Risser, head of the Department of Building Regulations in Richland County, Ohio. He estimates that work by Amish contractors and subcontractors makes up 20% of his department's inspections. Amish builders trim costs by using family members as workers and keeping their overhead low. Many don't buy insurance, since their communities often have insurance pools to help pay hospital and other medical bills if a member gets sick or injured. (People who
1966, when the US campaign in Vietnam was approaching its peak, the expression "credibility gap" became popular in the United States. Johnson's foreign policy spoiled the success of his domestic policies. He was a wartime president, a role Americans could not reconcile with his image of a conciliator at home. Obama, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, will soon find himself in a very similar predicament. At that point, the entire current global order will most likely be up for debate.A session of South Africa's parliament convened for a keynote address by President Jacob Zuma descended into chaos on Thursday as far-left lawmakers brawled with orderlies after interrupting the speech and the main opposition party walked out. Deputies from the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party fired questions at Zuma for more than an hour, forcing the president - whose authority has been tarnished by a series of scandals - to halt his state-of-the-nation speech. Zuma had earlier authorised more than 400 soldiers to join the security team outside the building during the speech, an unprecedented move his opponents described as a "militarisation" of parliament. Speaker Baleka Mbete ordered the EFF contingent ejected after their leader Julius Malema called Zuma "rotten to the core". Exiting the chamber with his deputies a short time later, opposition Democratic Alliance party leader Mmusi Maimane said the president was unfit to hold office.A woman, in her 40s, has been struck down with a rare nervous system syndrome after last month's campylobacter outbreak in Havelock North. Photo: RNZ / Peter Fowler She has been in Hawke's Bay Hospital since Friday with symptoms of Guillain-Barrē syndrome, which includes rapid onset of muscle weakness caused by the immune system damaging the nervous system. The district health board said the patient had diarrhoea last month, when more than 5000 people were hit by gastrointestinal illness caused by drinking water contamination. It said she was in a stable condition and progressing well with the treatment she had received. The initial symptoms of the long-term syndrome include tingling, pain, and muscle weakness - starting in the feet and hands. It frequently spreads to the arms and upper body. In the most severe cases, it can lead to symptoms resembling almost total paralysis. Infectious disease specialist Dr Andrew Burns said it was important for anyone with those symptoms to seek medical help. "Havelock North residents who experience pins and needles, weakness or clumsiness of hands or feet should seek medical help quickly", Dr Burns said. "Early treatment of this condition can impact on the severity, so early diagnosis is important. "It is important that complications to campylobacter are identified early." An expert on the syndrome, Dr Gareth Parry, told Checkpoint with John Campbell treatment was effective if it was started within two to three days of detection. He said about 70 percent of patients made an excellent recovery but others could be left with varying degrees of disability. Dr Burns had previously said, at a news conference in August about the outbreak in Havelock North, that between about 10 and 40 people could present with joint pain called reactive arthritis over the next few weeks. He had said that Guillain-Barré syndrome was a possible later long-term effect of the bacteria. Hawke's Bay DHB chair Kevin Atkinson said today that up to three to four cases could be expected, but it was difficult to predict who it might affect. The DHB has advised people with symptoms to call their family doctor, visit after-hours services to get a health professional's advice, or call Healthline 24/7 free on 0800 611 116. Meanwhile, the government today announced the terms of reference for its independent inquiry into the town's water contamination.There’s been a lot of media attention recently to the changing demographics of the United States, where, at current rates, people who identify as “white” are expected to become a minority by the year 2050. But in many ways, the shift in national demographics has been accelerated beyond even that. New data from the American Values Atlas shows that while white people continue to be the majority in all but 4 states in the country, white Christians are the minority in a whopping 19 states. And, nationwide, Americans who identify as Protestant are now in the minority for the first time ever, clocking in at a mere 47 percent of Americans and falling. Advertisement: The most obvious reason for this change is growing racial diversity. Most Americans still identify as Christian, but “Christian” is a group that is less white and less Protestant than it has been at any time in history. The massive growth in Hispanic Catholics, in particular, has been a major factor in this shift in the ethnic and religious identity of this country. White Catholics used to outnumber Hispanic Catholics 3 to 1 in the 2000s, but now it’s only by a 2 to 1 margin. But another major reason religious diversity is outpacing the growth of racial/ethnic diversity is largely due to the explosive growth in non-belief among Americans. One in five Americans now identifies as religiously unaffiliated. In 13 states, the “nones” are the largest religious group. Non-religious people now equal Catholics in number, and their proportion is likely to grow dramatically, as young people are by far the most non-religious group in the country. This isn’t some kind of side effect of their youth, either. As Adam Lee has noted, the millennial generation is becoming less religious as they age. These changes explain the modern political landscape as well as any economic indicator. While not all white Christians are conservative, these changing numbers definitely suggest that conservative Christians are rapidly losing their grip on power. And while some non-white Christians are conservative, their numbers are not making up for what the Christian right is losing. And whether conservative leaders are aware of the exact numbers or not, it’s clear that they sense that change is in the air. Just by speaking to young people, turning on your TV, or reading the Internet, you can sense the way the country is lurching away from conservative Christian values and towards a more liberal, secular outlook. And conservative Christians aren’t taking these changes well at all. To look at the Christian right now is to see a people who know they are losing power and are desperately trying to reassert dominance before it’s lost altogether. The most obvious example of this is the frenzy of anti-abortion activity in recent years. Anti-choice forces have controlled the Republican Party since the late '70s, but only in the past few years have they concentrated so singlemindedly on trying to destroy legal abortion in wide swaths of the country. In 2011 alone, states passed nearly three times as many abortion restrictions as they had in any previous year. None of this is a reaction to any changes in people’s sexual behavior or reproductive choices. It’s not like there was a spike in abortions causing this panic. In fact, the abortion rate has been declining. And despite continuing media panic over adolescent sexuality, the fact is that teenagers are waiting longer to have sex, on average, than in the past. Despite this, not only are you seeing a dramatic increase in attacks on legal abortion, the Christian right has expanded its attacks to contraception access, suggesting that something has worked them into a panic they believe can only be resolved by trying to reassert their religious and sexual values. That something isn’t changes in sexual behavior, but it’s reasonable to believe it’s because of changes in sexual values. People might not be having more sex, but they are feeling less guilty about the sex they are having. Since Gallup first started polling people in 2001 on moral views, acceptance of consensual sex between adults has skyrocketed. In a decade’s time, acceptance of premarital sex swelled from 53% to 66% of Americans and acceptance of gay Americans grew from a mere 38% to a majority of Americans. Even polyamory has become more acceptable for Americans, rising from being accepted by 5% of Americans to 14%. Advertisement: The fact that these changes in attitude are rising alongside the growth of irreligiosity is not a coincidence. More perhaps even than the 1960s, Americans are in a period of questioning rigid sexual and religious mores, and concluding, in increasing numbers, that they are not down with guilt-tripping people for victimless behavior and demanding conformity for its own sake. Some of them--now a whopping 22% of Americans!--are leaving religion entirely. Some are continuing in their faith but choosing to interpret their values differently than Christian conservatives would like. And so we see Christian conservatives cracking down in a desperate bid to regain control. They claim that they’re being oppressed by increasing tolerancefor religious diversity. They have latched onto, with some success, the claim that “religious freedom” requires giving Christians the right to oppress others. The Republican Party is in complete thrall to the religious right, to the point where giving the Christian right one go-nowhere symbolic bill instead of another one created a major political crisis. The irony is that this panic-based overreach is just making the situation worse for the Christian right. One of the biggest reasons the secularization trend has accelerated in recent years is that young people see the victim complex and the sex policing of the Christian right and it’s turning them off. And they’re not just rejecting conservative Christianity but the entire idea of organized religion altogether. In other words, the past few years have created a self-perpetuating cycle: Christian conservatives, in a panic over changing demographics, start cracking down. In reaction, more people give up on religion. That causes the Christian right to panic more and crack down more. In the end, Christian conservatives are going to hasten their own demise by trying to save themselves. Not that any of us should be crying for them.A Massachusetts startup called Noblegen is developing a simplified version of nanopore genome-sequencing technology—a technique that promises high speed and low costs but that usually requires complex instruments to carry out. Noblegen, founded last spring, says its technology’s ability to directly and rapidly read DNA sequences could make it economically feasible to bring sequencing technology into clinical labs to diagnose cancer and other diseases. Nanopore chip: This silicon chip is the core of a DNA-sequencing instrument being developed by startup Noblegen. At the center of the chip is an array of hundreds of nanoscale holes through which long sequences of DNA travel while being imaged. Noblegen CEO Frank Feist says the company’s goal is to sequence at a rate of 1000 bases per second. The company won’t divulge details of its current prototypes, but says the technology could be scaled up to arrays of 400 by 400 nanopores that sequence over 500 gigabases an hour—or about one genome, covered 30 times, in 15 minutes. Today, it takes about a month and $10,000 to $40,000 to sequence a human genome. The “next generation” sequencing technologies offered by companies including Illumina and Pacific Biosciences have come a very long way, says Jeffery Schloss, program director for technology development at the National Human Genome Research Institute, but “they leave a fair amount to be desired.” These technologies vary, but in general, they require complex instrumentation. There are also limits on the length of the sequences they can read, and they don’t read those sequences directly. This affects both the amount of time it takes to put the sequence together and the quality of the data. For over a decade, researchers have been working on nanopore sequencing, which could eliminate these problems by directly reading off the sequence of long, unprocessed strands of DNA. The principle is to identify each base in the sequence as the molecule is threaded through a nanoscale hole (or nanopore) outfitted with a sensor. But integrating all the parts and making them work has been challenging. For example, some systems read out the bases by sensing their electrical field; this requires a processing circuit for each nanopore, and integrating large arrays of such systems is complex. One company, Oxford Nanopore, claims to have fully developed such a system, but has not named any product launch dates. Noblegen uses optical imaging to identify the bases. This adds a step at the beginning, but the trade-off is that the instrumentation needed for imaging is much simpler. First, the Noblegen researchers convert genomic DNA into a synthetic version that’s labeled with four different fluorescent dyes, one for each type of base. Each base in the original sequence is represented by one fluorescently labeled segment in the synthetic one. The synthetic sequences are then directly read out by Noblegen’s relatively simple instrument. It’s based on a silicon chip that’s drilled to create pores just a few nanometers in diameter; the chip is illuminated by an inexpensive laser. The long synthetic molecules, which are charged, are pulled through the hole by electrostatic forces. But they can’t move too quickly, because the fluorescent labels are too big to fit through the pore. As the DNA moves through the pore one segment at a time, the labels pop off, creating a flash of light. This light is imaged by a simple CMOS sensor like the one in a digital camera. Feist says Noblegen’s goal is to aggressively drive down the cost and increase the speed of sequencing whole genomes to a point where it makes economic sense for hospital labs in the next three or four years. “We want to deliver whole genome sequencing in the [hospital] lab within the financial constraints of the health-care system,” he says. The Boston University lab of Amit Meller, whose technology NobleGen has licensed, received $4.2 million in funding from the National Human Genome Research Institute last September. Feist says that comes on top of $4.1m in funding that Prof. Meller has received since 2001 which has gone into developing the nanopore consumable and instrumentation. He adds that the company will need another $15 million to develop an industrial-scale prototype.Hi everybody -- been getting up at 3am for the last week, and the large map stuff is finally here! Hope you like it... Will post link in a minute. If it runs slow, try changing the display distance in the SETUP.TXT file -- or if you have a fast machine bump that up to 100. There are some rendering problems with distant terrain (due to the simplistic quality degradation stuff) -- but eventually that'll be replaced by a more elaborate system (that runs faster too)... Anyway -- this version also has some less rudimentary crafting code in place (RECIPE.TXT file in various objects) -- basically, it's a list of 10 other objects that can be combined to create the object in question... Sorta like this... [0][1][2] [3][4 and 5][6] [7][8][9] -- That probably doesn't make sense (and there are some kinks to work out with it) -- but that's the basics of it. This version also has a bunch of Brennan's new music he's been composing -- the title track is really good -- might even make a little intro piece to go with it eventually... It's attached below if you wanna hear it... The artists have also been getting some good work in, and will post some of that in a few days... But for now... Changes from version 0.41... Added crafting recipe system Added basic torch flame effect Added title music Added underground music Added inventory music Fixed object load problem Fixed more crashes due to new map code Fixed crash due to new map code Fixed rendering problem due to new map code Added binary chunk export Rewrote map generation Added large, persistant maps Improved logging to allow choice of log detail (less log spam) Improved loading progress bar The water is currently turned off -- but will be back and better for next time around... Please let me know if you have any trouble with it -- also tried to include a 32 bit Ubuntu build, but not sure if it works (since only have a 64 bit machine to test on)A molecule that transports oxygen in blood could be key to developing the next generation of batteries, and in a way that's environmentally friendly. Lithium-oxygen (Li-O2) batteries have emerged in recent years as a possible successor to lithium-ion batteries — the industry standard for consumer electronics — due to their potential for holding a charge for a very long time. Electronic devices would go for weeks without charging, for instance; electric cars could travel four to five times longer than the current standard. But before this could happen, researchers need to make the Li-O2 batteries efficient enough for commercial application and prevent the formation of lithium peroxide, a solid precipitate that covers the surface of the batteries' oxygen electrodes. One obstacle is finding a catalyst that efficiently facilitates a process known as oxygen evolution reaction, in which lithium oxide products decompose back into lithium ions and oxygen gas. The Yale lab of Andre Taylor, associate professor of chemical and environmental engineering, has identified a molecule known as heme that could function as a better catalyst. The researchers demonstrated that the heme molecule improved the Li-O2 cell function by lowering the amount of energy required to improve the battery's charge/discharge cycle times. The results appear in Nature Communications. The lead author is Won-Hee Ryu, a former postdoctoral researcher in Taylor's lab, who is now an assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering at Sookmyung Women's University in South Korea. The heme is a molecule that makes up one of the two parts of a hemoglobin, which carries oxygen in the blood of animals. Used in an Li-O2 battery, Ryu explained, the molecule would dissolve into the battery's electrolytes and act as what's known as a redox mediator, which lowers the energy barrier required for the electrochemical reaction to take place. "When you breathe in air, the heme molecule absorbs oxygen from the air to your lungs and when you exhale, it transports carbon dioxide back out," Taylor said. "So it has a good binding with oxygen, and we saw this as a way to enhance these promising lithium-air batteries." The researchers added that their discovery could help reduce the amount of animal waste disposal. "We're using a biomolecule that traditionally is just wasted," said Taylor. "In the animal products industry, they have to figure out some way to dispose of the blood. Here, we can take the heme molecules from these waste products and use it for renewable energy storage." Ryu noted that by using recyclable biowaste as a catalyst material, the technology is both effective and could be preferential in developing green energy applications. Source and top image: Yale UniversityGov. Chris Christie leaves Trump National Golf Club Bedminster clubhouse after a meeting with President-elect Donald Trump. | AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster Christie: 'I’m serving the rest of my term' Gov. Chris Christie said on Monday night that he does not plan to accept a job in President-elect Donald Trump’s administration, declaring on his monthly radio show, “I’m serving the rest of my term.” The remarks by the governor, who was among the first mainstream Republicans to support Trump’s candidacy, were his most definitive yet on the subject and come a day after he met with the president-elect at his golf club in Bedminster. Story Continued Below While Christie insisted on Monday that his position had not changed — that he’s been insisting all along that he would remain in New Jersey until his term ends in January 2018 — he had previously left the door open to taking a Cabinet position. And even after Christie was removed from his post as chairman of Trump's transition team, speculation continued to swirl that he may get a high-level position. “I have said to the president-elect, reminding him, that I have 14 months left in my term and that it’s my desire to finish my term,” Christie said on New Jersey 101.5 FM, which airs a monthly “Ask the Governor” program. “You don’t ever look at the president — at least I don’t — look at a president of the United States and say to them, ‘Under no circumstances will I consider anything you ask me to do.’ But I think the president-elect understands that I feel like I’ve got an obligation here in the state to complete the term I was elected to.” Christie chastised reporters for suggesting that he’d be taking a job, saying to host Eric Scott that “your colleagues in the media need something to do.” “They obviously have nothing to do,” he said. “I’ve been really clear about this since I endorsed Donald back in February that I had every intention then and I have every intention and belief now, as I said in Atlantic City last week, that I’m going to fulfill my term. And I don’t know why, when I continue to say it, people don’t believe it. But I’ve been saying it all along.” Christie, among a dozen prominent people to meet with Trump over the weekend, declined to say what the two discussed on Sunday. The president-elect greeted the governor outside the Somerset County golf course but didn’t say whether he was considering the governor for a position. “Very talented man,” Trump said as he posed for photos with Christie. “A great guy.” Asked whether Trump had asked him to take a job, Christie wouldn’t say. “I’m not going to get into that,” he said. “What I’m telling everybody is, that I have absolutely every reason to believe that I will be serving here until January 18th of 2018. And the president-elect has been incredibly generous to me the entire time I had the opportunity to chair the pre-election transition [and] during that time that I’ve been able, in the post-election period, to provide him advice and counsel on putting together the government, not just personnel but things that need to be done and how to do them.” Christie praised the Republican National Committee as “a great group of folks,” but didn’t say whether he had any interest in taking over for Reince Priebus, the RNC chairman who will be Trump's chief of staff. “Those are decisions that are going to be made far down the line, and we haven’t had any conversation about anything like that,” he said. Christie was removed from his position as chairman of the transition team a few days after the election, replaced by Vice President-elect Mike Pence. His allies on the transition team were also demoted. POLITICO reported on Saturday, citing several undisclosed sources, that Trump and his top aides were not happy with Christie’s performance managing the team and also had concerns about the fallout from the George Washington Bridge lane closure trial, where half a dozen different witnesses said the governor knew about the episode before he said he did. In a phone call, details of which were relayed by three sources, Trump expressed worry about the conviction of two former Christie allies for orchestrating the lane closures and that more revelations could still come. And in the days following the election, Trump also said he was deeply frustrated with how Christie had handled the transition. Christie pushed back at that and other similar reports, saying it was “all crap” and that he remains on excellent terms with the president-elect and that nothing has changed in their 14-year friendship. He said some people just wanted to feel important by making inaccurate claims about him. “There are people that try to make themselves appear important to the press and the press is so desperate for something to write that they believe anything any joker calls and tells them,” Christie said. “There’s never been a cross word between us in terms of our feelings toward each other." He said he had discussed the Bridgegate trial with Trump “while it was going on” and that he “told him what was going on and he believed me.” He said, likewise, Trump had discussed with him the infamous Access Hollywood video in which Trump said he would grab women's genitals. “We talk about a lot of different things,” Christie said. “When the video tape came out from Billy Bush, we talked about that, too. We’ve each had problems and challenges in our political life that we’ve helped each other get through.” “We speak on a regular basis, and I trust that we will continue to,” he added.Did a 28-year-old Gresham man kill his cousin because his cousin had just "outed" him as gay -- by shouting to anyone who would listen that the two men were in a sexual relationship together? Or did someone else kill Makeitho "Tito" De Monz Herring for an entirely different reason, possibly gang-related? During opening statements Thursday, jurors listened to prosecution and defense theories into the Sept. 9, 2013, shooting death of Herring, a 37-year-old openly gay man. Gresham police found Herring dead with a 9 mm bullet wound to the side of his head in the parking lot of the Pine Square Apartments, 665 N.E. 178th Ave. His cousin, Brandon Alexander Hickman, was charged with his murder. Prosecutor Steve O'Hagan told jurors that Hickman lived his life as a heterosexual. Hickman was in a relationship with a woman at the time, and they had at least one child together. The incident unfolded as Herring starting shouting out to others in the parking lot that he and Hickman had a sexual relationship. "(Herring) started talking about Mr. Hickman's anatomical details, and obviously, Mr. Hickman was becoming angry at this," O'Hagan said. The more angry Mr. Hickman came, the more Mr. Herring was enjoying (it)." O'Hagan said Hickman responded, according to a witness or witnesses: "You better shut your mouth!" That's when O'Hagan said Hickman pulled out a 9 mm handgun, placed it below Herring's ear and fired. "He was probably dead before his body hit the pavement," O'Hagan said. O'Hagan said one witness told police he saw Hickman shoot Herring, and a second witness said he heard the shot and that he saw Hickman was the only person within arm's reach of Herring. O'Hagan told jurors that defense attorneys had filed a notice with the court that they might argue Hickman killed Herring while suffering an "extreme emotional disturbance" -- a disturbing event that prompted a drastic, sudden response. If a jury finds a defendant suffered from an extreme emotional disturbance, the defendant could still be convicted of first-degree manslaughter -- which would draw a mandatory minimum 10-year prison sentence. But Thursday, defense attorney Brian Schmonsees didn't tell jurors he had any plans to use an extreme emotional disturbance defense. Schmonsees told jurors there were problems with the prosecution's case. Schmonsees said in the summer of 2013, gang violence was a huge problem -- and Gresham police said after Herring's shooting that they thought it was gang-related. What's more, Schmonsees said witnesses on which the prosecution is depending simply aren't reliable. "We have reluctant witnesses," Schmonsees said. "We have changing stories. We have gang threats and violence as a part of daily life. We have people who lie to authorities on a daily basis." A key witnesses -- who claims Hickman told her on the phone that he killed Herring -- shouldn't be trusted, Schmonsees said. She has worked out a cooperation deal to cut her prison sentence in an unrelated case from a potential 22 1/2 years down to two years. The trial is scheduled to continue through next week in the courtroom of Multnomah County Circuit Judge Jerry Hodson. If Hickman is found guilty of murder, he would face a life prison sentence, with the possibility of release after 25 years. -- Aimee Green 503-294-5119Archaeologists have dug up 17 mummies and other artifacts from ancient Egypt near a historical animal graveyard, and they expect to discover even more. Agence France-Presse reported the mummies, which were not of ancient royals, were uncovered in catacombs a few hours southwest of Cairo while the experts were “following a trail of burial shafts.” They are the first such find for this particular area, which “is close to an ancient animal cemetery.” Read: Make Eye Contact with a Mummy AFP reported the 17 mummies were not the only discovery: There were limestone and clay sarcophagi, the decorated coffins often used in ancient Egyptian burials, documents written in the ancient Egyptian script called Demotic on papyrus and gold, and animal coffins. “The discovery is still at its beginning,” Antiquities Minister Khaled al-Enany told reporters. The mummies still need to be officially dated, but it’s possible they are from the 300 years before Alexander the Great conquered Egypt in 332 B.C., known as the Late Period, or from a period shortly afterward during which Ptolemy, Alexander’s general, and his family ruled the land until 30 B.C. As rare as such a find may be, ancient Egyptian artifacts have emerged quite a bit recently. Last month, several mummies were uncovered in a nobleman’s tomb at Luxor, a city in the ancient Egyptian capital of Thebes where you still can find the Luxor and Karnak temples, as well as two royal tombs: the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens. Also last month, officials announced they had found another pyramid, one that dates back about 3,700 years, a period during which there was a quick turnover in pharaohs. Read: Lost Pyramid Found in Egypt The pyramid was in ruins, and the remains of its interior were found at a royal burial site south of Cairo near the Bent Pyramid. That pyramid is about 1,000 years older than the remains found, and got its name from the bent look it has with a steeper angle on its top half than its bottom half. It may have been the ancient Egyptians’ first attempt at making a smooth-sided but more sloped pyramid. Mummies are not exclusive to ancient Egyptians, but that society is the one that made the process famous. Preserving and wrapping a dead body was meant to prepare the dead for the afterlife, and the process included removing and storing internal organs in canopic jars, including the lungs, liver, stomach and intestines. The brain was also removed through the person’s nose.Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of UN's Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), had advocated emission reductions at the recently concluded Copenhagen Climate Summit. But back home in India, he seems to be failing to uphold standards of propriety in his professional dealings. During his tenure, first as director from 1982, and then as director-general of The Energy Research Institute (TERI) since 2001, Pachauri was a member of the boards of the Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC), Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) and National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), three of India's biggest public sector energy companies, all of whom by the very nature of their business contribute heavily to greenhouse gas emissions. These emissions, according to the IPCC, are adding to the country's growing carbon footprint and hastening climate change. TERI, in fact, entered into business dealings with these companies and allegedly benefitted from Pachauri's association with them. Pachauri's dealings have also been noticed by the international media. Recently, the Sunday Telegraph of London had accused him of amassing a fortune using his links with carbon trading companies. Pachauri dismisses the report as "a pack of lies". The climate change hero was an independent director on ONGC's board for three years between June 2006 and June 2009, during which he was entitled to first-class air travel when he attended meetings, five-star hotel stays and an allowance of Rs 25,000 for each meeting attended. This was in addition to having a say in the PSU's decision-making process. It was during this period that TERI had secured business contracts from ONGC. This practice is against ONGC's official code of conduct which says: "The directors and management shall act within the authority conferred upon them in the best interests of the company and will use their prudent judgment to avoid all situations, decisions or relationships which give or could give rise to conflict of interest or appear to conflict with their responsibilities within the company." Pachauri says he is now not on the board of any public sector undertaking. "What is stated applies only for short periods in the past," he replied to a questionnaire sent by Mail Today. "TERI is a not-for-profit organisation working for the welfare of society and its revenues cover costs and provide no private benefit to any party." Pachauri's position is untenable, as ONGC and TERI launched a joint business venture in March 2008 called ONGC-TERI Biotech Ltd (OTBL); this was while the TERI director-general was on its board. This entity's objective was the "large-scale application of microbial product oil zapper for clean-up of oil spills in farmers' fields and around oil installations and treatment of oily sludge hazardous hydrocarbon waste". TERI had a 47 per cent share in OTBL; ONGC held 49 per cent and the rest was picked up by financial institutions. The OTBL official website says ONGC and TERI reserve the rights of patents and the use of technology and patents exclusively. When asked about this, Pachauri said: "The joint venture (OTBL) was established largely at the insistence of ONGC. A decision to set up OTBL was taken only on October 31, 2006, at a board meeting that I did not even attend." Does that mean he wasn't even aware of the decision to set up OTBL? OTBL was set up in 2008, and ONGC insiders told this correspondent all the work awarded to TERI was done on a nomination basis and not through tenders, as is the accepted practice. Pachauri for his part claims that "TERI has not even charged OTBL any royalty for the technology provided to ONGC and other oil companies in India, as is the case with most IITs and CSIR labs. Any funds provided to TERI are purely to cover costs of activities carried out and performed successfully." Another senior ONGC official confirmed to Mail Today that close to Rs 30 crore was paid directly and indirectly to TERI over a period of time for the execution of projects, which included bio-remediation, pipeline corrosion inhibitors and microbial enhanced oil recovery (MEOR). OTBL was also involved in these transactions, he said. Pachauri denied this as well. "The amount of Rs 30 crore has perhaps been mentioned erroneously for OTBL," he said. "It is an independent entity with separate accounts, and any funding received from ONGC by OTBL is separate from any transactions involving OTBL and TERI." Intriguingly, ONGC has two specialty labs - Institute of Reservoir Studies (IRS) in Ahmedabad and Institute of Biotechnology and Geo-Tectonics Studies (INBIGS) at Jorhat, Assam - to do what TERI was contracted to do. Both labs were set up to handle high-value, high- end and extremely specialised research. Pachauri conceded that the decision to set up OTBL was based on the work done jointly by TERI and IRS. Pachauri may not see this as a conflict of interest, but former minister of state for petroleum and natural gas Santosh Gangwar said he had complained against it. "I had demanded an inquiry against Pachauri in a letter I wrote to Petroleum Minister Murli Deora some time back," he confirmed. "This is a case of conflict of interest on Pachauri's part. TERI is benefitting from ONGC." The associate director of the environment NGO, Centre for Science and Environment, Chander Bhushan Singh said Pachauri and TERI need to come clean on their conflict of interest dealings with ONGC. Pachauri doesn't see it this way. "The presence of any TERI person on the board of a PSU cannot be seen as a conflict of interest just as the presence of a secretary to the government of India on TERI's governing council - which is the case - can be seen as serving the public interest." On if the association of anyone from TERI on PSU boards had served any public interest, he claimed: "It is (in) the larger public interest, with no private benefit to any party." Pachauri said projects were awarded to TERI because it served the objectives of PSUs. He said: "TERI's track record of successfully completing projects and serving the objectives of several PSUs is the reason why these were awarded to my organisation, with several of them going back in time well before I joined the boards of these organisations." He added that in certain isolated incidents he had recused himself. But then he contradicted himself later in his reply: "The boards of the PSUs I have been associated with generally consist of over 20 members, and there is no way I could have influenced any decision within this structure even if I was a part of such a decision." Pachauri was also on the board of another OTBL client - IOC - from January 1999 to September 2003. TERI signed a memorandum of collaboration with IOC to treat oil sludge, a waste product thrown up by oil refineries. IOC uses the TERI-developed oil zapper technology to treat the waste. According to IOC, its mini- utility project for charging solar lanterns was launched in technical collaboration with TERI. Pachauri was also on the NTPC board from 2002 to 2005, and then from January 2006 onwards. In 2006, NTPC and TERI signed a MoU to implement rural electrification jointly through distributed generation schemes. Under this project, TERI and NTPC identify suitable technology, and then fund and implement appropriate electricity delivery mechanisms. Pachauri had a reply for this too: "TERI took the initiative of providing that organisation with its biomass gasifier technology to set up power generation in villages that had no access to electricity. TERI did not charge any royalty for the technology developed over decades of research and development and was in fact reimbursed by NTPC sums that were far below costs incurred by TERI." But Pachauri's problems run deeper. The Sunday Telegraph of London, in a recent report, claimed Pachauri had established an "astounding worldwide portfolio of business interests with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in organisations dependent on the IPCC's policy recommendations". Pachauri's answer to this charge is: "I haven't pocketed a penny from my association with companies and institutes," he said. "All honoraria I get go to TERI and to its 'Light A Billion Lives' campaign for reaching solar power to people without electricity. My dealings are above board." The climate change hero is quick with his answers, but doubts over his links linger.CTVNews.ca Staff Hundreds of students walked out of their classrooms in Woodstock, Ont., on Tuesday to draw attention to what health officials are calling an unexplained “suicide contagion” spreading among the city’s youth. Police in the southwestern Ontario city said that five people aged 19 and younger have died of suicide since February. Police have also recorded 36 other cases in
to officials. A $44 mln optical fiber cable between the two countries is also due to be built. If the submarine deal is signed, China may also offer Pakistan concessions on building a refueling and mechanical station in Gwadar, a defense analyst said. China's own submarines could use the station to extend their range in the Indian Ocean.After two lackluster performances from the Blues on the pitch, this week will be remembered more for a draw of fate than anything else. The last sixteen matchups for the UEFA Champions League were decided this week, and the Blues received a draw that produced quite a buzz among the Blues faithful. Chelsea are set to have the standard home and away matchup against Galatasaray FC and Didier Drogba in early 2014. Blues legend and Champions League hero Didier Drogba will make a return to his former club in a showdown that will surely be spectacular. Chelsea coach Jose Mourinho brought the Ivorian striker to Stamford Bridge during his initial stint as manager in 2004. Drogba then became a regular scorer for the Blues and won three Premier League titles with the London club. His best moment, and the one that won him the eternal gratitude of Chelsea fans, was the Champions League Final in Munich. Chelsea’s arrival to the 2012 Final had seemed incredibly unlikely, but the Blues had found themselves ninety minutes away from Champions League glory. Circumstances were bleak however as the end of regulation approached and the Blues were losing 1-0 to Bayern Munich. One last gasp corner from Juan Mata saw Drogba head in a defiant equalizer that sent the match into extra time. Drogba then found himself taking the final penalty to win it all. One kick later and Chelsea fans all around the world were celebrating the club’s first Champions League trophy. Those are the memories that will creep into the minds of players, coaches and fans alike when Drogba makes his return to Stamford Bridge in March. The players will be all business on the pitch, but circumstances will definitely warrant extra emotions from the Chelsea players and their former teammate. His welcome home will most likely dwarf even that of Mourinho’s return to the dugout earlier this season. All of the fans, and especially owner Roman Abramovich will never forget Drogba’s contributions to the club. Mourinho and his players are definitely looking forward to reuniting with their old friend, but they aren’t looking too far into the future. The Premier League hunt is tight right now, and they have many other matches to focus on before the fateful reunions with the Ivorian striker.Government has taken its first official steps in legalising the manufacture of marijuana for medicinal use, according to a report by The Mercury. This follows a letter sent by the Medical Control Council to IFP MP, Narend Singh (subsequently verified by The Mercury) which indicated it would publish its proposed guidelines on cannabis production for medicinal use within the coming months, following the IFP’s presentation to the council earlier in February. “This is a major breakthrough and fantastic news for freedom of choice,” said Singh. Speaking in tribute of late IFP MP Mario Oriani-Ambrosini, a long-time advocate for the legalisation of marijuana in South Africa, Singh noted that while Oriani-Ambrosini had strongly advocated that the drug also be used for recreational use, the IFP alongside other lawmakers had agreed to withdraw any mention of non-medicinal use in the legalisation bill so that it passed muster. This was reiterated the South African Medical Association who warned that access to legal marijuana will follow a strict set of guidelines. “On 23 November, Parliament’s Portfolio Committee on Health announced that the Department of Health would soon regulate access to medical cannabis for prescribed health conditions,” said Sama chairman, Mzukisi Grootboom. “The public, and healthcare professionals, should note, however, that the Medical Innovation Bill seeks to allow cannabis for medical purposes only. The bill, and the regulatory framework to be introduced by the Health Department, do not apply to cannabis for recreational purposes, which remains illegal in South Africa.” The new rules The Medicines Control Council is South Africa’s drug regulatory authority which is governed by the Medicines and Related Substances Act. Under this Act, medical practitioners can apply to the Council for permission to access and prescribe unregistered medicines – including cannabis – for their patients in certain exceptional circumstances. Medicinal cannabis products may thus be made available to specific patients under medical supervision. Only registered medical practitioners may apply for authorisation to prescribe a controlled medicine for a specific patient. Authorisation from the council is dependent on the submission of an appropriate dosage regimen and acceptable justification for the proposed and intended use. The necessary procedures for approval of the importation of suitable cannabis products for medicinal use by patients with defined medical conditions are already in place. Licensed domestic cultivation of medicinal cannabis will be aimed at ensuring the supply of a standardized, quality assured product for medical, scientific and clinical research purposes, and the implementation of control measures necessary to prevent misuse and to ensure patient safety. Cannabis grown / cultivated for medicinal purposes, as well as any resulting products prepared from the plant material, will remain subject to stringent security and quality control measures. The legislative framework to allow for domestic cultivation of medicinal cannabis is currently under development by the Department of Health in consultation with the Medicines Control Council Read: These are the most feared crimes in South AfricaES Football Newsletter Enter your email address Please enter an email address Email address is invalid Fill out this field Email address is invalid You already have an account. Please log in or register with your social account Heung-min Son has handed Tottenham a boost ahead of the new Premier League season with a return to training. The forward broke his right forearm after landing awkwardly while playing for South Korea in Doha in June. The 24-year-old underwent surgery and was expected to be sidelined for three months. On Thursday, Son returned to the training pitch for the first time in over six weeks to rejoin the first-team squad for a non-contact session. Tottenham are currently without Danny Rose, who has been sidelined with a knee injury since January but hopes to return before the end of August. Erik Lamela is the only other long-term absentee, the Argentine undergoing surgery on both hips and has a return schedule of October to complete 12 months out of action. Spurs begin their Premier League campaign, with their home games at Wembley Stadium, away to returning Premier League outfit Newcastle United on Sunday, August 13.According to THR, Transformers star Megan Fox has joined the cast of Screen Gems border thriller “The Crossing.” Fox will play one half of a couple who are carjacked on their way home from a holiday in Mexico. Her husband is kidnapped by the criminals and Fox’s character is forced to smuggle drugs across the border to guarantee his safe release. Byron Willinger and Philip de Blasi wrote the script for the movie, which is being set for a July start date – despite the current lack of a director. That should be remedied soon, with several directors currently in talks with Screen Gems. Megan Fox’s other upcoming projects include “Transformers 2“, “Jennifer’s Body“, “Passion Plays“, “Jonah Hex”, and of course, the geek fantasy movie of all time, “Fathom“.Rand Paul is one of them. Maybe they got to him. Maybe they have the negatives. Or maybe he was just never one of us, no matter how much some of us may have hoped he might be. It doesn’t matter why. What does matter is that Rand Paul has added his voice to the lunatic neocon warble that could very well lead the world to a nuclear war over... Crimea. It’s the Sarajevo of 2014. Why the ruckus? Power politics, of course. There is oil in them thar hills, for one. Well, natural gas. Lots of it. Oceans of it, in fact. All set to be sold to Europe via Gazprom for other-than-dollars. This is an unequivocal shot across the bow to the Petro-dollar’s puppets in the Offal Office and on Capitol Hill cannot abide. They went Medieval on Saddam – and then, Muammar – for precisely this reason and for no other reason. And will do so again. The United State (singular on purpose, in the interests of accuracy) would be wrecked if any major player got away with trading energy without trading it for dollars. Putin threatens to do this. Ergo, Putin must go. Crimea is merely the excuse. Obama, et al, care as much about the people of Crimea as if they do about the people of Nebraska – which isn’t much, in case you hadn’t noticed. The irony is the people of Crimea are in no danger from Putin. By a margin of more than 90 percent, they have endorsed a peaceful Anschluss. Like it or not, they like Putin – and Russia. Why is it Rand Paul’s business – or any American’s business – to tell them otherwise? The problem – for you and me and everyone else caught in the middle of this maelstrom – is that unlike Saddam or Muammar – Vladimir does have weapons of mass destruction. The real deal, too. Not a handful of low-yield first-gen atomic M80s, either. And he has the means to send them our way, if he’s provoked. He has missiles and submarines, just like “we” (i.e., the US government) do. Ever take a gander at a Typhoon Class ballistic missile sub? Apparently, Rand Paul has not done so. This boat can carry 20 nuclear missiles, each fitted with multiple nuclear warheads. Just one of these boats could – theoretically – lay waste to most of North America. Russia has several such boats. Plus land-based missile. Plus airplanes as good as “ours.” Plus an army that’s probably better than “ours.” The last idiot who under-estimated the Russian Army didn’t end up too well. This – and the fact that a serious white person (as they say in South Boston) such as ex-KGB Colonel Putin holds the launch codes ought to give a sane person pause. It was thought – briefly – that Rand Paul was sane. Clearly, he is not. Perhaps he is merely another power-lusting, flag-on-the-lapel, freedom-hustling GOP shyster? Yes, exactly. In a just-published Time article, the son of the usually-sensible Ron Paul writes: “It is America’s duty to condemn these actions in no uncertain terms. It is our role as a global leader to be the strongest nation in opposing Russia’s latest aggression.” Italics added for obvious – depressing – reasons. And then, this: “Putin must be punished for violating the Budapest Memorandum, and Russia must learn that the U.S. will isolate it if it insists on acting like a rogue nation...Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine a gross violation of that nation’s sovereignty and an affront to the international community.” Except Putin did not invade Ukraine, the people of Crimea voted overwhelmingly to join Russia (self-determination, anyone?) and the “international community” is a rhetorical fiction deployed by warmongers like George W. Bush, Barack Obama and – now – Rand Paul. By joining them, he’s proved he can’t beat them. Or doesn’t want to beat them. Or can’t be trusted to try. Regardless, he’s given all of you fair warning. In the immortal words of The Chimp: Fool me once, shame on… shame on… won’t get fooled again.Indonesia hopeful diplomatic relations with Australia will improve under Malcolm Turnbull leadership Updated The Indonesian government has welcomed the leadership change in Australia, saying it hopes diplomatic relations can improve under Malcolm Turnbull's leadership. During Tony Abbott's time as leader a spying row, controversy over boat turn-backs and the execution of the Bali Nine duo saw Australia's diplomatic relationship with Indonesia plummet to what many described as an all-time low. A spokesman for Indonesia's foreign ministry said the Indonesian government had congratulated Mr Turnbull and told him that it stood ready to work with the new Federal Government to continue to strengthen ties. Evi Fitriani, the head of the International Relations Department at the University of Jakarta, said the leadership change provided an opportunity for renewal. "Because of the personality of Malcolm Turnbull himself. I think he is a more sensible person who we can talk with," she said. Ms Fitriani said she believed Mr Abbott's approach did not suit Indonesia's style, and his language was too harsh. Any change at this space will probably have a better chance of the two countries patching up their differences and actually at least start talking again Endy Bayuni, Jakarta Post "Even though Malcolm Turnbull hasn't made any statement about foreign policy yet... judging from his personality — judging from Abbott's personality at least — we think we will deal more communicatively and maybe in a better situation and better environment with this kind of leader," she said. Endy Bayuni, a senior editor at the Jakarta Post, said it could be a positive change. "Any change at this space will probably have a better chance of the two countries patching up their differences and actually at least start talking again," he said. "A change in the Australian leadership hopefully would make things better." People on the streets in Jakarta seem to agree a new Australian Prime Minister could turn things around. "This is a good change. The new Prime Minister will create a good relationship with Indonesia," one said. "I hope it will be better. The last time Tony Abbott spoke of returning the tsunami aid. He was not a good leader," another said. Topics: government-and-politics, federal-government, world-politics, turnbull-malcolm, indonesia, australia First postedSkully's back room was unusually crowded and exceptionally enthusiastic for a Wednesday night. Shamelessly clad in T-shirts bearing the name of the band on stage, swarms of teenagers of both genders surged along to blood-pumping synth bangers that slid seamlessly from hip-hop to house to indie rock. They seemed to know every lyric. Skully's back room was unusually crowded and exceptionally enthusiastic for a Wednesday night. Shamelessly clad in T-shirts bearing the name of the band on stage, swarms of teenagers of both genders surged along to blood-pumping synth bangers that slid seamlessly from hip-hop to house to indie rock. They seemed to know every lyric. The trio of guys on stage fed on the fervor, hopping furiously through each number without missing a beat. Relying on loops and samples to keep the tension building, keyboardist Tyler Joseph often left his post to rouse the crowd with some good old-fashioned showmanship - clapping, hopping, hand-waving and the like. It all came to a head when he and bassist Nick Thomas carried toms to the front of the stage, dropped them on the crowd and began pounding along with drummer Chris Salih. It was probably the first time in my life a band reminded me of Attack Attack and Arcade Fire in the same moment. I first heard about Twenty One Pilots when I spoke to a class at the Charles School and one of the students recommended I check them out. I filed the name away along with the dozens of other monikers that get passed my way until a few months later, when a Facebook friend perked my attention by posting, "You will never hear anything like Twenty One Pilots." I won't go that far. This band isn't a complete anomaly. In fact, one of its biggest strengths is an ability to sound accessible and familiar while slyly pushing the artistic envelope. That said, when the closest reference point I can come up with is Yoni Wolf's bizarre, hip-hop-inspired indie rock wonderland WHY?, a band has tapped into something unique. Twenty One Pilots are much glossier than WHY?, of course, with broader widespread appeal. This local crew is far less artsy and significantly more bubbly, with a boundless enthusiasm that would make Bono blush. It's not hard to imagine them pulling that drum stunt in front of thousands at some big-budget summer festival, and judging by the reaction they got last Wednesday, such fantasies might be realities sooner than they think.A new report from UNICEF suggests the well-being of children living in Canada is lower than those growing up in many other wealthy countries. Canada ranked 17th of 29 countries in an overall ranking compiled by the child-focused international humanitarian organization. The report shows Canada’s standing hasn’t improved since a prior report in 2007. The first report was based on data from 2001-03, while the current one contains data from 2009-10. "As a Canadian, I'm ashamed," says David Morley, president of UNICEF Canada. He says Canada is "stuck in the middle of the pack against other wealthy countries, and that's just not good enough." The overall ranking was based on five broad categories: Material well-being. Health and safety. Education. Behaviours and risk. Housing and environment. Each broad category includes data on detailed subcategories that measure specific areas. Netherlands topped the overall ranking, followed by Norway, Iceland, Finland and Sweden, which rounded out the top five. Greece, the United States, Lithuania, Latvia and Romania were at the bottom of the overall ranking. The survey excluded some wealthy countries, including Japan, Mexico and Australia, due to a lack of data. Rate of cigarette smoking low, cannabis use high Canada's best ranking was in educational achievement by age 15. Canada placed second in this subcategory, behind Finland. Canada also ranked well in smoking rates — Canadian children had the third-lowest smoking rates among countries included in the report. Canada fared most poorly on indicators measuring rates of overweight children and of cannabis use. Canada placed 27th out of 29 on overweight children, and was 29th, and last, on cannabis use. "Most people I know do smoke pot — not as much as I do, but on weekends for sure," one teenage girl told CBC's Lorenda Redekopp. CBC has agreed not to name the teen. The UNICEF data suggests that roughly 28 per cent of Canadian aged 11, 13 and 15 said they had used cannabis in the last 12 months. Norway had the lowest rate of use, and was the only country to report a usage rate of less than five per cent. 27 of 29 on health and safety Canada's worst showing in a category overall was in health and safety, which includes rankings on infant mortality, vaccination rates and child mortality rates. Canada placed 27th out of 29 countries — only Latvia and Romania ranked lower. On infant mortality, which UNICEF counts as deaths under 12 months old per 1,000 live births, Canada ranked 22nd out of the 29 countries. Iris Taylor, who runs a pre-natal program for First Nations women in Toronto, says the infant mortality rate is higher in Canada's First Nations communities, where poverty, isolation and poor access to health care are often problems. "We know what the issues are," Taylor says. "Now that we know, what can we do to address that?" Morley cautioned that methods of reporting infant deaths may affect the figures in this particular measurement, saying that not all countries tally their numbers in the same way. For example, the report notes that numbers in the U.S., which ranked poorly on infant mortality, may be affected by the death of extremely premature babies, or babies born with extremely low birth weights. Some other countries might not classify those cases as live births, the report says. The report does note that infant mortality rate in all developed countries has dropped to less than 10 per 1,000 live births. The UNICEF data put Canada's rate around five per 1,000. Of the countries included in the report, only the U.S., Slovakia, Latvia and Romania had rates higher than six per 1,000. Canada ranked even lower on vaccination rates — 28th out of 29. The report defined the vaccination rates as "average coverage for measles, polio, DPT3 for children age 12 to 23 months." Make children a priority, UNICEF says A report from UNICEF Canada noted that Canada has "made progress over the past 10 years" in most indicators, but the improvements weren't enough to lift Canada out of the middle ranks. The UNICEF Canada president says that he was particularly concerned about the results of a survey that asked children about their own well-being. Canada ranked only 24th out of 29 on children's reported level of satisfaction. UNICEF says the information in the self-reported data from children is a measure of "how children feel about their own lives according to their own priorities in the here and now." It says the overall ranking and the children's satisfaction survey measure "slightly different concepts." "I can't speak for the other countries, but I think when the myth, or the aspirations and the reality are so far apart, children don't have that same feeling of well-being," Morley says. "They feel that they are being thwarted in their hopes and dreams." UNICEF Canada is calling for more detailed information on how much money from municipal, provincial and federal governments actually benefits children. The organization also wants a national children's commissioner and regular "state of the children" reports to help identify priority areas. Morley says there is no question that Canadians want what is best for their kids, but he notes that policy also has an influence on well-being. Canada has to think about more than growing the economy and having individual families earn more income, Morley says. The country must also think about child-specific policy changes that could improve outcomes. "Some takes money, some takes attitude, and I think we have to look at both of those."TAYLORSVILLE, Utah, June 22, 2017 (Gephardt Daily) — Two women were shot and killed in Taylorsville Thursday morning in what police are calling a possible murder-suicide. Authorities received a call of a shooting at approximately 6:35 a.m. in the area of 2500 W. Dutch Draw Dr. (4500 South), Lt. Brian Lohrke, spokesman for the Unified Police Department told, Gephardt Daily. Lohrke said authorities from the UPD Taylorsville precinct arrived and found a tan Chevrolet Equinox crashed into a blue Hyundai Elantra in a back alleyway. One woman, the driver of the blue Hyundai, was found deceased inside her car with multiple gunshot wounds. In a search of the area, police found another deceased female about 100 yards from the crash site, and a handgun near her body. It’s unknown at this time if she was the driver of the tan car, Lohrke said. “We are now investigating the situation,” Lohrke added. “We know these two females were in a relationship and we have been here before on domestic-type disturbances.” Police hope to release more details later this morning about what the relationship was between the two women and what exactly transpired. Police said preliminary information suggests the second gunshot to the woman found outside the car was self-inflicted. “We are taping off the whole area and making it one big crime scene, because we believe one party traveled from the car to where the other female was deceased, so we consider that whole area a crime scene now,” Lohrke said. Police had responded to domestic disturbance calls at the residence multiple times, Lohrke told Gephardt Daily. The most recent call was less than 24 hours before the shootings. The names of the deceased have not yet been released pending notification of family members, but Lohrke said the alleged suspect is a 49-year-old female, and the victim is a 47-year-old female. He said one or both women live at the address police were called to. Gephardt Daily will have more on this developing story as information becomes available.In September 2014 the $860-million Rockefeller Foundation made an historic announcement. Timed to coincide with massive marches for climate action all over the world, the fund revealed it was going to divest from fossil fuels. Following in the footsteps of the World Council of Churches, the British Medical Association and Stanford University, the latest major institution to make such an announcement is also the most symbolic. Because the Rockefeller fortune owes its very existence to oil. The Rockefeller story is also the story of the rise and fall of the first ‘oil major’. Standard Oil, founded by John D Rockefeller in 1870, soon came to control the burgeoning US oil industry, from extraction to refining to transportation to retail. It built an unprecedented monopoly that became so publicly despised that the US government broke it up – birthing Exxon, Mobil and Chevron, among others. The forced break-up created the Rockefeller millions. A century later, those millions are being used to make a dramatic point: we are witnessing the beginning of the end of the oil age.The age of oil has been one of staggering inequality. The discovery of hydrocarbons has brought fortune to the few and misery to the masses. Many oil-rich countries suffer distorted economic development, financial instability, repressive authoritarian rule, stifled human rights, soaring poverty and pervasive corruption. In the oil-addicted West, its toxic political influence echoes through domestic and foreign policy. Today’s oil majors deploy their power deftly, and devastatingly, their probing tentacles lubricated by de facto impunity and state collusion. The CEO of Exxon clicks his fingers: national armies are mobilized. Shell’s chair has a quiet word: democratically agreed policies are shelved. Collision course Yet change is coming. The dominance of the oil majors is being assailed from all sides. Oil’s future is looking increasingly – exhilaratingly – shaky. Oil companies’ current extraction plans for the next two decades set us on course for a six-degree global temperature rise and an unliveable planet. To have a chance of keeping the rise to a disruptive but not catastrophic two degrees, we need to leave 80 per cent of known fossil-fuel reserves in the ground.[1] Furthermore, financial markets and economies have got used to treating oil as infinite. But all the easy-to-extract crude has already been found, and largely consumed. Now, most available oil is either in politically dysfunctional regions such as the Middle East and Nigeria, or in locations and forms that are much more expensive and risky to extract – tar sands, oil shale, ultra-deepwater, the Arctic. The oil majors are pinning their future drilling hopes on these ‘unconventional’ or ‘marginal’ sources of oil. But the technical risks of new oil projects have risen ‘to never before seen levels’, investors are warned by financial overlords Goldman Sachs.[2] So capital expenditure – the amount companies have to invest to get new sources of oil flowing – has gone through the roof, while their all-important ‘Reserve-Replacement Ratio’ (by which markets judge their value) has plateaued. In a nutshell, oil is becoming less profitable. The strain is starting to show. Companies are shelving major tar sands projects, denting their portfolios considerably. This year has seen Statoil’s multi-billion dollar ‘Corner’ development put on ice, Total and Suncor’s $11-billion Joslyn project suspended, and Shell’s massive Pierre River mine plans mothballed.[3] Shell has spent $5 billion so far trying – and failing – to drill in the inhospitable Arctic. Total has said it won’t even try. Even the US boom in ‘tight oil’ from shale fracking, which is hailed as the key to US ‘energy independence’, rests on extremely shaky foundations. Shale oil wells deplete in a matter of months, and the costs of constantly drilling new ones keep profit margins low. Predictions for how much recoverable shale oil is in the ground have been downgraded dramatically.[4] All this new oil is only really viable if the price is above $100 a barrel. At the time of writing, it isn’t – and there’s no guarantee prices will rise enough over the next decades as the renewables boom starts to give oil a serious run for its money. Nevertheless, we cannot just sit back. Big oil may be on its way out, but left to its own devices it will take us all with it. There is still more than enough recoverable oil in the world to fry us. Global oil demand, if there are no interventions for climate or other reasons, is projected to continue to rise until at least 2020,[5] and despite supply constraints, oil companies are planning to more than meet that demand. Current investment decisions on pipelines, tar-sands mines and offshore fields will spawn infrastructure that will lock us into a high-carbon world for decades. We need to hasten oil’s demise – for the sake of our warming climate and collapsing ecosystems, and in the service of democracy, poverty alleviation and justice. It will be technically possible to meet the world’s energy needs, and give the Majority World’s growing populations equitable access to the energy the rich world currently hogs, using a combination of existing renewable technology and energy efficiency.[6] Renewable generation is now breaking records almost daily, and reaching price parity with fossil fuels in many parts of the world.[7] What is missing is the political will to kick oil to the kerb. Carbon bubble The hope that Big Oil can be stopped comes in many forms, but perhaps the most surprising is the investment community. Carbon Tracker, a thinktank of shareholder activists and financial specialists, has been sending shockwaves through the investment world since 2012 when it first revealed the scale of the ‘carbon bubble’ that is building. Looking at the oil industry trends of skyrocketing capital expenditure, shrinking profit margins, intensifying risk and dwindling reserves, it concludes that $1.1 trillion of oil investment over the next decade needs to be challenged by investors as potential ‘stranded assets’ – projects that will never come to fruition in the face of more decisive government climate action and competition from renewables. When I met Carbon Tracker’s founder and CEO Mark Campanale, he was buzzing with the possibilities their work unlocks: ‘The International Energy Agency says that, to 2035, $21 trillion will be spent on developing the oil and gas sector, which is extraordinary at a time when we know we’ve already financed the development of enough fossil fuels to take us beyond two degrees. It’s complete madness.’ Then his eyes light up: ‘This is where the money is going to come from for the low-carbon transition.’ Carbon Tracker is certainly being listened to by the financial sector – as its Chair Jeremy Leggett outlines in more depth on page XX. But financial arguments will not be enough on their own. Mark argues that what oil companies should be doing is giving capital back to shareholders – rather than investing it in ever more expensive extraction projects. This is starting to happen in a small way. Conoco has contracted in size, preferring to focus on ‘high-value’ projects. BP and Shell have been selling off projects to provide their shareholders with healthy dividends. Mark wants to see this trend accelerate until the oil companies are mere shadows of their current bulks. But whether that money is reinvested in a low-carbon economy relies on the whims of largely unaccountable investors. Organizations such as London-based ShareAction are working with pension funds and their members to encourage them to reinvest in the service of a climate-friendly future.[8] But depending on investors has clear limitations. We can’t expect an out-of-control financial sector driven by profit to reallocate capital in a way that takes into account justice or allows power and control to become more decentralized. Indeed, our current system of turbo-charged capitalism developed arm in arm with Big Oil. They will not break ties easily. The push for non-market-based solutions that curtail the oil industry, redistribute power and wealth, and have justice at their core, must come from outside the financial system. Shattering Big Oil’s pipe dreams People have been resisting oil companies since the dawn of the oil age. Stalin cut his political teeth fighting the oil magnates of Azerbaijan. The Ogoni people kicked Shell out of Ogoniland in Nigeria in 1995, though Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others paid the ultimate price (see page XX). But in recent years we have seen a new wave of anti-oil activism, with multiple groups strategically identifying where Big Oil is vulnerable, and targeting those chinks in its armour. One of these is the divestment movement, which has taken the world by storm in the last 18 months. Deftly combining the carbon bubble financial argument with the moral imperative to act urgently on climate change, groups of students, churchgoers and local residents have approached public institutions and states with the argument that the time has come to sever their financial ties with the fossil-fuel industry. This year, 181 institutions around the world have pledged to divest more than $50 billion. The campaign continues to gather momentum, with big-hitting champions such as Desmond Tutu, UN climate chief Christina Figueres and, of course, the Rockefellers. 350.org is a driving force behind the ‘Fossil Free’ movement, and one of its campaigners, Louise Hazan, explained to me the thinking behind it: ‘The primary aim is to stigmatize the fossil-fuel industry to a point where it weakens its grasp over the political system, and the ways it influences the process and blocks progress on climate change.’ The divestment campaign is one of several that are directly challenging Big Oil’s ‘social licence to operate’ – the public support, or at least acquiescence, that allows oil companies to continue. This social licence is carefully cultivated and maintained through partnerships with a range of cultural, scientific and educational institutions – and these are increasingly being targeted by groups seeking to make association with oil companies a social no-no. (See page xx [My Spy]) The recent opening of the (notorious oil billionaire) David A Koch Plaza outside New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art was met with creative protests and arrests. Greenpeace’s campaign telling Lego to end its partnership with Shell seeks to shame the toy-makers into dumping their oily benefactor. Movements on the ground are also seeking to physically block the expansion of Big Oil’s most destructive projects – and are starting to win. The most visible has been the campaign to stop the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would bring tar sands oil from Northern Alberta in Canada down to Texas to be exported to new markets. Approval for the pipeline has been delayed for six years thanks to a powerful coalition of Indigenous communities, landowners, grassroots activists and environmental NGOs that spans the entire route. The campaign has reignited the US climate movement, provoking waves of direct action, huge demonstrations, mass arrests and celebrity support, and even turning it into an election issue. A similarly epic battle is being fought against the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline, slated to take tar sands across British Columbia. After years of opposition-induced delays it has now been approved in theory, but a massive coalition of First Nations and residents has sworn it will never be built.The origins of this push to ‘leave the oil in the soil’ can be traced to Latin America, where for years Indigenous communities have been locked in conflict with governments over oil extraction in the Amazon. This spawned the bold grassroots proposal to leave oil under Ecuador’s Yasuní national park unexploited, with international financial support. Despite the proposal being abandoned last year by oil-hungry President Correa, the grassroots movement of ‘Yasunidos’ lives on, mobilizing hundreds of thousands of Ecuadorians to demand the oil remains untapped. At the top of the world another frontier battle rages – to stop oil drilling in the Arctic. Greenpeace has been the most visible player, with its daring direct actions to block rigs drilling in icy seas. But years of dogged legal challenges by Alaskan Native groups and NGOs have also been crucial in preventing Arctic pioneers Shell from yet squeezing their first drops of oil out of the fragile frozen seabed. Transform or die As the oil industry overshoots its limits in every direction and turmoil in the Middle East snowballs, the arguments for an immediate co-ordinated move away from oil dependence are overwhelming. We need a managed and fair transition, not a massive oil shock which could plunge the already fuel-poor into further hardship and breed economic and social pandemonium. If today’s anti-oil social movements continue to strengthen, this could happen: through the physical disruption of operations by local resistance, pressure from shareholders, the erosion of oil companies’ social licence, the boom in renewable energy, and public pressure on governments to take more decisive climate action. The oil majors will be forced to retreat. Some will disappear. Perhaps there will be enough political will for states to break them up, like Standard Oil. More likely, in the short term, they will suffer painful economic shocks as their favourable terms of trade evaporate, dwindle rapidly as investors remove their capital, be asset-stripped by corporate raiders, and find themselves forced to transform or die. However it happens, the oil majors will ultimately become oil minors, relinquishing their vice-like grip on the political process and making a more diverse, decentralized and democratic energy future possible. ‘We will see the end of the oil companies in the rear-view mirror,’ predicts Big Oil’s long-term adversary James Marriott, who co-founded Platform over 30 years ago to monitor, expose, communicate and inspire creative resistance to the industry. ‘The last thing to disappear – like the smile on the Cheshire cat – will be the logos.’ James, who follows trends in the world of oil more than most, says he is feeling ‘immensely optimistic’ these days. ‘It’s obvious the oil industry is coming to an end. So what is the society we want to build in its wake?’ These seismic shifts bearing down on our civilization could spawn chaos. But if progressive social movements can seize the moment, then the end of the oil age could also be the end of a multitude of wrongs. This article was originally published on New Internationalist. Image credit: SkyTruthDate 24 Jul 2017 Tags Tokyo 2020, Olympic News, Japan Tokyo 2020 3 years to go With three years to go until the Opening Ceremony of the 2020 Olympic Games, a spectacular “Tokyo 2020 Flag Tour Festival / 3 Years to Go to the Tokyo 2020 Games” event was held in Tokyo’s Citizen’s Plaza in Shinjuku with around 5000 spectators joining Japanese Olympian and Paralympians, as well as other guests to celebrate the milestone. The event, which was co-hosted by the Tokyo Organising Committee of the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games (Tokyo 2020), the Japanese Olympic Committee, the Japanese Paralympic Committee and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, featured a newly-created projection mapping display whereby a dazzling video light show was projected onto the façade of the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly building. The show was accompanied by music which showcased the attractions of the 2020 Olympic host city, as well as the power of sport, and gave an indication of what people can expect from the Games in three years time. As there are only three years until Tokyo 2020, we have commenced the preparation of more intangible aspects of the Games – the mascots, the torch relay and the Opening and Closing Ceremonies. Yoshiro Mori Tokyo 2020 President Tokyo 2020 President, Yoshiro Mori, spoke about the expansion of the Organising Committee as the Games
Eliot’s The Waste Land, in 2007, again with a Vendler introduction. He could imagine no more fitting work than R.B. Kitaj’s 1975-76 canvas If Not, Not: a vivid, dreamy composition that Hoyem, picking up on the idea of an in-house master printer, presented across several pages, both as a whole and in fragments. Kitaj, while alive, also contributed lithograph portraits to an edition of Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish, White Shroud, and Black Shroud that the press published in 1992. And although Vendler is a not a scholar frequently associated with Beat poetry, she warmed to the project as well. “It seemed to me it was a new line, obviously depending on Whitman, but it had a different rhythm than Whitman’s,” she says. “A kind of beachhead of gay pride, as we would call it now.” Vendler’s own favorite Arion collaboration has been a collection of Wallace Stevens poems that she introduced, in 1985, with original art by Jasper Johns—an artist whom Hoyem recalls as her special request for the project. (“He is the poet I feel closest to,” she explains, “and I had always wanted to see the poems treated with the dignity they deserve.”) The collection includes 122 poems selected by Vendler; the frontispiece, by Johns, was one of four works he later included in his series The Seasons. After nearly three decades together, Hoyem and Vendler have built a catalog within the press’s greater list—Yeats with original Richard Diebenkorn illustrations, Shakespeare’s sonnets bound in goatskin and Japanese cloth. Not every collaboration has gone wholly as planned. When Hoyem and Vendler hoped to produce an edition of Emily Dickinson poems, the Harvard University Press, which still holds rights to Dickinson’s oeuvre and exercises them actively, wouldn’t let them be printed even in a small fine-press edition. So Hoyem, working alone, devised a work-around, using the public-domain early, edited versions of the poems, with art by Kiki Smith. “Harvard thinks it controls Emily Dickinson,” Hoyem explains, dryly. “I disagree.” Arion Press’s workshop is located on the lower floor of its facility. At one end is the M & H type foundry: a stark, cavernous space smelling of machine oil and metal. There is a kiln, where Hoyem and his colleagues melt lead into ingots to be used for monotype; stations across the room contain casting equipment. Since the 1990s, Hoyem has been using computer interfaces to cast monotype directly from computer-generated text, expediting the scrupulous work of turning sentence after sentence into lead. Some of the press’s most rarefied projects, though, are set by hand. In deference to local printing tradition, Hoyem files his more than 100 tons of poured type largely in what are known as California job cases, with the noncapital and capital letters kept in side-by-side arrays of compartments. More traditionally, though, they’re stacked: the lower case and the upper case. Part of Hoyem’s duty as a master craftsman lies in training. He takes apprentices, as his predecessors did for centuries. It is no mean commitment: an apprenticeship runs four years in the foundry and press room, two in the bindery—and that’s only the groundwork. “To get the quality in press work that we demand, it takes years,” he says. He enforces a schedule. Each morning, staff members are on the job at 8:30; they get a short lunch and an afternoon coffee break and leave promptly at 5. Otherwise, they’re at their stations. A visit to the bindery might find a couple of staffers hard at work making slipcases for Stone from Delphi. At one end of the room is a sewing machine that they use to sew together many books’ spines, though the most labor-intensive volumes are stitched together by hand, on frames. Hand-sewn bindings don’t break or gape or hang open to certain pages, so they’re perfect for books that get lots of scrutiny and use, like the landmark Arion Press Bible that, today, is the volume on the pulpit in San Francisco’s Grace Cathedral. It’s a local connection that fits with many in the press’s past. San Francisco has had a tradition as a printing town, from the Gold Rush era onward, and, in the 1920s, the brothers Edwin and Robert Grabhorn helped set the cornerstone of local tradition. The Grabhorns were trained partly in the principles of “allusive typography”—the idea that typefaces ought subtly to echo the period and style of the writing being typeset. And they believed that the moist, foggy air of San Francisco helped prime paper for inking. In 1930, they published a sumptuous 400-copy edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, set entirely by hand; it’s printed in a large, Goudy type on generous pages (14.4 by 9.75 inches), illustrated with woodcuts, and bound in red goatskin and mahogany. Edwin Grabhorn called the edition “the most perfect book we ever printed.” Hoyem thought so, too. He was born in South Dakota, but his family moved to Iowa during the Second World War. In 1946, they relocated to the Mojave Desert so that his father, a physicist, could take a job in weapons development. Hoyem went to college at Pomona, then enlisted in the navy. When his service ended, he was accepted for graduate school at Columbia, in political science. But he put off installing himself in New York, keen to kill some time and make a bit of money in San Francisco, which was then in the heady throes of a print renaissance. In 1961, on something of a whim, he took a job at Auerhahn Press, an early organ of Beat poetry and the literary avant-garde. (It published William S. Burroughs ’36, G ’40, and Charles Olson, among others.) “We were printing by letterpress mainly because it was a cheap way to get started,” Hoyem explains. At work arranging type, he fell in love. Auerhahn Press was located around the corner from the Grabhorns’ center of operations, and by 1964, he’d begun working there part time, in addition to his Auerhahn duties. Joining Grabhorn Press changed Hoyem’s life. Learning at the knee of the local masters, he trained toward exacting standards. And during the late 1960s, it was Hoyem who stepped in to sustain the Grabhorns’ tradition. Partnering with Robert Grabhorn, he launched a new iteration of their celebrated endeavor. In 1973, not long before Grabhorn died, he arranged to take over all his printing machinery. Endowed with this historical equipment and some aesthetic ambitions of his own, Hoyem launched Arion Press in 1974, taking the name from the Dionysiac poet who, according to myth, was rescued by dolphins. “I was aware of the French tradition of the livre d’artiste,” Hoyem explains—books produced with great craft and in small editions, usually designed around, or prominently featuring, original art. “My goal was to make artists’ books that were entirely cohesive—so that you couldn’t separate the art from the typography, visually or in concept.” In the late 1970s, he undertook to print a new edition of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, using the Grabhorns’ Leaves of Grass as a rough guide both in format and in ambition. The book would be large, 15 inches by 10, and hand-set, like the Whitman, in a Goudy face. Hoyem commissioned 100 wood engravings from the artist Barry Moser, but he was particular about what they could depict. No main characters—including the whale—should appear in an illustration, he advised; no major action scene should be rendered. The idea was to let readers create their own mental images of characters and scenes based on the author’s writing, with the engravings there only to help them fill in the visual details (like whaling equipment) that they weren’t able to envision on their own. To study the Arion Press edition of Moby-Dick today is to have an almost sacred experience of the power of physical print. Its ink is black, with wide margins and initial letters in a dark, aqueous blue. The paper is a faint blue-gray, like the surface of the ocean on a cloudy day. When the reader lifts a page to turn it, the watermark of a whale shimmers through. Because the letter w is particularly wide, Hoyem made the abutting spaces slightly narrower; every semicolon has a hairsbreadth gap before it, as if signaling the partial stop. The result is something that one would not think possible: a nearly perfect book. The audience for Arion Press’s work is small but devout, dominated by specialized collectors and subject to the rise and fall of the art market more than to the changing fortunes of the customers of Barnes & Noble. The press relies a good deal on regular subscribers, who collect the new books as they appear, and on institutions such as Harvard’s Houghton Library, which regularly orders volumes for its collection. (To augment his passion projects, Hoyem takes commissions for private printings.) The ideal buyer, he says, is someone whose interests lie at the intersection of literature, art, and printing craft—and such people come along more rarely than one might expect. “Most art collectors are not readers,” he explained. “They want big, splashy stuff on their walls to show how rich they are.” In more than one egregious case, buyers sliced the original Jasper Johns etchings out of an Arion edition and sold them as self-sufficient works. There is, always, the risk that the market will trump the art. Half a century ago, the main contours of literary connoisseurship were clear. The canon started with the classics, swept up into Modernism, and left few major works of English-language poetry and fiction unstudied along the way. High culture was, in large degree, a body of shared knowledge; scholars tested unknown works as one might assess porcelain: tapping them at crucial points and listening for the familiar, canonic ring. “Although most of the art of the past falls away into what [Wallace] Stevens called ‘the trash can at the end of the world,’ ” Vendler wrote in her Ashbery introduction, “the great European conservatories, the libraries and the museums, keep our collective Western past in a condensed and selective form.” Erudition leaves a material trace, as does its opposite. When Fitzgerald, writing in the 1920s, had Nick Carraway stumble into a vast library stocked with “absolutely real” books whose pages hadn’t been cut, the detail was intended to convey, quite literally, volumes about Gatsby’s habits of mind. The limited-edition art book for years benefited from this outlook. If a handful of texts were the measure of the culture’s strength, what could be more appropriate than dignifying those canonic works with material refinement? Then, in or about the 1960s, high culture changed. The idea of an absolute canon fell into question, and alternatives emerged. When serious critics today turn their attention to rock music, it is with the idea that Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band may have exercised as significant an influence on the creative imagination of its era as Mrs. Dalloway did in its own time. The challenge of the literary world today is not a dearth of quality. It is an excess of excellence, contextually defined. The role of fine-press books, like those Arion Press publishes, has changed, too. There’s now the responsibility not only of perfection but of selection—what to publish at a time when so much may be worthy of attention. Arion Press has played both within that model and against it. The projects it produces have one foot in tradition. (After all, fine press work is virtually extinct.) But the press also embraces a more idiosyncratic approach. Hoyem takes a lot of pride in his new publication of The Moonstone, the Wilkie Collins proto-detective novel, here presented in a luxurious edition with original scratchboard drawings by Stan Washburn: an important, if not traditionally high-literary, text that’s dignified by a generous presentation. Even a reader paging through Stone from Delphi is encountering poetry that’s still relatively fresh. Vendler, who’s built a scholarly career commuting between the old canon and new work, is in many ways a critical counterpart to this effort. As a doctoral candidate at Harvard in the 1950s, she studied with I.A. Richards, himself a University Professor and an enormously influential literary critic often cited as the modern-day father of what’s sometimes called “close reading”: a method of explication based on the idea that authorial intent and word-by-word structure are mutually illuminating. His approach was implicitly an empirical answer to the “why” of the canon: Why might readers attend to Shakespeare more than to Marlowe? Why was the slippery modernism of Eliot [A.B. 1910, A.M. ’11, LL.D. ’47] worth teasing out, line by line? And it provided a standard of appraisal beyond the normal vagaries of taste. Like her teacher, Vendler is now known not only as a guardian and expositor of the poetic classics (her dazzling, line-by-line study of all of Shakespeare’s sonnets is today considered the definitive guide through the Bard’s poetry) but as a prescient arbiter of contemporary esteem. Vendler first encountered Seamus Heaney’s work during a visit to Sligo, Ireland, in 1975, and quickly became his most eloquent American critical champion. Heaney came to Harvard as the Boylston professor of rhetoric and oratory; he was succeeded, in 1998, by Jorie Graham, another rising poet whose poems Vendler helped introduce to readers. That critical relationship remains strong: as it happens, a volume of Graham’s poems is the next project on which she and the press will collaborate. These days, Vendler lives the fast but quiet life of a late-career literary lioness. Her critical opinions are among the most celebrated and distinctive in the nation; her schedule, even in these senior years of her career, runs tight; and she’s accustomed, on the dais or in magazines, to reach audiences of thousands. Why set aside the time and energy to contribute tens of thousands of words, across decades, to books whose press runs seldom exceed 400 copies, and whose audience mainly comprises a small circle of collectors? “It makes me think,” she explained, not too long ago, in the cozy book-lined office that she keeps in Harvard’s Barker Center. “It was strange to be doing these anthologies of so many different poems. Taking on the problem of how to present Stevens to people, or how to present Yeats. “George Herbert says, in ‘The Forerunners,’ [that he brought his] thoughts ‘to church well dressed and clad: / My God must have my best, ev’n all I had.’ I think bringing poems, well-dressed and clad, is a tribute to the poems,” she went on. “I hope people wouldn’t see this as fetishizing—as they say so horribly—the text, but it’s paying the text the honor it deserves.” Others have agreed. Since their early days as publishers, Hoyem and Ketcham have been surrounded, both professionally and socially, by a cohort of creative minds. (In the early 1980s, Ketcham and Wendy Lesser ’73, the founding editor of The Threepenny Review, organized an informal group of local writers that met for lunch at Oakland’s BayWolf restaurant; regular participants included the then-local poets Robert Pinsky and Robert Hass.) Although Ketcham wryly describes Hoyem and herself as “provincials from California,” they take pride in the milieu they have assembled—and that milieu, in turn, enjoys the particular creative opportunities that they provide. At one point, Hoyem, designing an edition of The Great Gatsby, wrote to the architect Michael Graves, M.Arch. ’59, to ask him about contributing art; he’d heard that Graves reread the book every year. Hoyem had been misinformed—it was actually the architect Robert A.M. Stern’s favorite book—but Graves was delighted with the assignment all the same, and, somewhere in the midst of completing his design for the Whitney Museum addition (a project eventually abandoned), he submitted elaborate, intricate designs for everything from wine glasses to garden landscaping for Gatsby’s imagined West Egg estate. Late this past spring, Hoyem and Ketcham flew to New York for a celebration of one of their recent projects, Thomas Jefferson’s Paris Walks—written by Ketcham with photographs by Michael Kenna—at Hermès on Madison Avenue, where the book was on display. The broad social orbit is as much about keeping an eye out for new talent as it is about sharing their wares. Hoyem is 77. He is beginning to think about retirement and about the future of the press. Lately, he’s been casting his gaze around for successors, people who share his exacting knowledge of fine press work and his big ambitions for the smallest arm of publishing. “It could possibly be someone from the art world, but I haven’t met a lot of people who have a strong literary bent,” he says. The trouble is, partly, the point: no one is inventing books quite like those Arion Press makes. Hoyem isn’t too concerned, though, and there’s reason to think everything will work out. So far, he has never had much trouble finding the right people for the task.The native Pashtun tribes, often described as fiercely independent people,[6] have inhabited the Pashtunistan region (eastern Afghanistan and north western Pakistan) since at least the 1st millennium BC.[7][8][9] During that period, much of their mountainous territory has remained outside government rule or control. This is perhaps the main reason why indigenous Pashtuns still follow Pashtunwali, which is a basic common law of the land or "code of life". Pashtunwali rules are accepted in Afghanistan and Pakistan (mainly in and around the Pashtunistan region), and also in some Pashtun communities around the world. Some non-Pashtun Afghans and others have also adopted its ideology or practices for their own benefit. Conversely, many urbanized Pashtuns tend to ignore the rules of Pashtunwali. Passed on from generation to generation, Pashtunwali guides both individual and communal conduct. Practiced by the majority of Pashtuns, it helps to promote Pashtunization.[3] Ideal Pukhtun behaviour approximates the features Pukhtunwali, the code of the Pukhtuns, which includes the following traditional features: courage (tora), revenge (badal), hospitality (melmestia), generosity to a defeated...[10] — Maliha Zulfacar, 1999 Pashtuns embrace an ancient traditional, spiritual, and communal identity tied to a set of moral codes and rules of behaviour, as well as to a record of history spanning some seventeen hundred years.[11] Pashtunwali promotes self-respect, independence, justice, hospitality, love, forgiveness, revenge and tolerance toward all (especially to strangers or guests).[12] It is considered to be the personal responsibility of every Pashtun to discover and rediscover Pashtunwali's essence and meaning. It is the way of the Pathans. We have melmestia, being a good host, nanawatai, giving asylum, and badal, vengeance. Pashtuns live by these things.[13] — Abdur, A character in Morgen's War The Pathan tribes are always engaged in private or public war. Every man is a warrior, a politician and a theologian. Every large house is a real feudal fortress.... Every family cultivates its vendetta; every clan, its feud.... Nothing is ever forgotten and very few debts are left unpaid. Winston Churchill (My Early Life, Chapter 11: "The Mahmund Valley") Main principles Edit Although not exclusive, the following eleven principles form the major components of Pashtunwali. They are headed with the words of the Pashto language that signify individual or collective Pashtun tribal functions.S. Korean dies after setting himself ablaze over Japan deal SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A South Korean Buddhist monk has died days after he set himself on fire to protest the country's deal with Japan on former Korean sex slaves, a Seoul hospital said Tuesday. The monk, 64, set himself ablaze Saturday during rallies against impeached President Park Geun-hye. In his notebook found at the scene, he criticized Park's 2015 agreement to settle an impasse over Korean women forced to be sex slaves for Japanese troops during World War II in return for an apology from Japan's prime minister and a pledge of millions of dollars. The monk was pronounced dead Monday night of multiple organ failures caused by his burns, according to the Seoul National University Hospital. FILE - In this Jan. 7, 2017, file photo, an injured Buddhist monk who set himself on fire is put into an ambulance in Seoul, South Korea. The Buddhist monk died Monday, Jan. 9, 2107, days after he set himself on fire to protest the country's deal with Japan on former Korean sex slaves, Seoul National University Hospital said Tuesday, Jan. 10. (Yonhap via AP, File) Disputes over sex slaves are a legacy of Japan's 1910-45 colonial occupation of the Korean Peninsula. Many in both North and South Korea, divided at the end of the Japanese rule, still harbor bitter resentment against the Japanese period. Park's Japan deal prompted criticism because it was announced without approval from surviving former sex slaves. Under the agreement that both countries described as "final and irreversible" at the time of its singing, Japan promised to fund a Seoul-based foundation aimed at supporting the victims. South Korea, in return, said it would refrain from criticizing Japan over the issue and try to resolve a Japanese grievance over a bronze statue — representing the wartime sex slaves — that had been placed in front of its embassy in Seoul. The future of the deal was thrown into doubt earlier this month after Japan said it would recall its ambassador to South Korea and suspend economic talks in response to the placing of another such statue in South Korea's second-largest city of Busan. Seoul's Foreign Ministry said the decision was "very regrettable." South Korea's main opposition party has stepped up calls to scrap the 2015 deal since parliament impeached Park last month over a scandal involving her confidante. Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, who became government caretaker following Park's impeachment, said Tuesday that Seoul, Tokyo and others involved in the issue must respect the deal's spirits and try to work together to boost bilateral ties.Vote for the NFL's top air and ground performers! In honor of Super Bowl 50, the NFL and FedEx are celebrating epic air and ground performances from yesterday, today and tomorrow. Will this year's rookies become air and ground stars? Which veterans will join the ranks of air and ground legends? Check out this week's nominees and vote for today's epic air and ground performances. When the winners are announced, FedEx will make a $2,000 donation in each of the winning players' names to the American Red Cross. FEDEX AIR -- QUARTERBACK NOMINEES Marcus Mariota, Tennessee Titans Mariota completed 28 of 39 passes (71.8 percent) for 371 yards and four touchdowns for a 135.7 passer rating in the Titans' 34-28 overtime win over the New Orleans Saints. Ben Roethlisberger, Pittsburgh Steelers Roethlisberger threw for 334 yards and two touchdowns in the Steelers' 38-35 victory against the Oakland Raiders. Drew Brees, New Orleans Saints Brees threw for 387 yards and three touchdowns for a 118.2 passer rating against the Tennessee Titans.A new champ is possibly the more eye-catching midweek League of Legends [official site] news to catch up on but I’m far more interested in the overhaul Riot are giving to the game’s honour system. Or, because they’re a US-based company by and large, the honor system. The overhaul is about making it easier for players to reward positive behaviour in teammates and attaching incentives to accumulating rewards for your own positive behaviour. Here’s the video which breaks down what’s happening and I’ll add my own thoughts just after! The basics here are that the prompt to recognise good behaviour in others is far more prominent at the end of the game and that each vote of recognition boosts your honor level across a season of play. If you boost your level you get more rewards but you can also drop points and suffer some consequences for that. As someone who is part of a fair few MOBA communities and has experienced both the extreme patience/positivity/ability to make friends AND the extreme idiocy/casual abuse/misery therein the attempts devs make to shape their communities are really important to me. Obviously we’ll need to see how this works out in the wild but I’ll pop some of my immediate thoughts and concerns here: 1. Honoring one person “You can shout out a single teammate who really stood out” – that line bothers me simply because I’m not in favour of limiting positive recognition online. The honor system is now tied to certain rewards and perhaps the limit is important in regard to that, plus Riot say they made the call so that the honor seems more meaningful (“The big change is that each player can now only honor one teammate; a shift that helps make each honor feel more weighty on both the giving and receiving ends”) but it still feels odd to me. You can honor for shotcalling, for staying calm under pressure/not tilting, or for just being nice to play with. I feel like it should be possible to apply the latter to a whole team if you had a good experience. Maybe you’d gate it to make it a valuable reward once the community was already super positive but until then I’d want to be able to tip as many people for being reasonable and nice as possible. 2. Visibility of Honor levels Everyone starts the new system with level 2 honor, so if you see someone below that it means they’ve already dropped below the baseline by being slapped with penalties for bad behaviour. I’m wondering where you see this on someone’s profile because presumably if you’re aware of it before the match starts it might prime you to see them as a jerk. They might also be a jerk, but starting the match with good faith and it being up to them to prove that assumption wrong is different to starting and expecting them to be a jerk. I *think* that unless you dig around outside the normal screens you’d only see if they had recently earned honor and not if they were losing it though. 3. Begging for Honor “If you stack a bunch of honors from making people’s games better you’ll move up slightly faster but not enough to be worth begging for honors and annoying your whole team” – hmm. Key fragments now ONLY drop through honor. Keys are part of an in-game crafting system and you use them to open chests. Your honor level dictates your key drop rate, so from 2 and upwards it’s the normal rate, if you drop to level 1 it’s a lot worse and if you go to zero (dishonored) it’s nothing. Even with Riot stating it’s not worth begging for honor to increase your levels, given it affects that drop rate at the lowest levels I’ll believe it when I see it. There are also other rewards which start appearing if you get to level 3 and beyond so that incentivises the climb up the ranks. Earning particular skins as rare rewards in those later-level drops also unlocks the associated champs if you don’t have them, and at the end of the season there are rewards to pick up so it’s not insignificant stuff. MOBAs are games about manipulating tiny stats for personal advantage and when that’s tied to a reward system of any kind players will look for ways to make it more efficient, no matter how ham-fisted and no matter how many times a dev tells them it’s not worth it. 4. Support love The GG reward category reads: “The all-around team player who cracked a great joke in chat, or saved your ass with a well-timed Heal.” so I’m wondering if that’s part of trying to find ways to recognise support contributions. I suppose they could also have mentioned wards but wards providing sight are, ironically, invisible to other players while they’re functioning perfectly well and thus will never be remembered fondly at the end of any game. Yes I play support WHY DO YOU ASK? 5. Fake niceness and Honor outside LoL I’m interested in this line on the site: “A quiet, hardworking player will level up and earn rewards even if they earn a few less honors overall. And as you’d expect, a standout player who earns honor more frequently will rise a little more quickly. This means you do not need to be fake nice to earn rewards or level up.” I do think that the system encourages people to be more demonstratively nice. It’s not fake as such, but it’s an attempt to cultivate something which has become outside the norm online and thus I think won’t feel natural at first to a lot of people. I’m used to having to think of an absence of criticism as evidence of positivity, or at least non-anger. That applies to article comments and forums and MOBAs alike. It’ll be interesting to see people settle (or not) into a new way of interacting if the incentivisation here pays off. The other thing is that I’m sure some people *will* fake being nice in order to try to game the system, but the thing there is that if they’re successful it should still improve the encounters other people have with those players. Thus believable fake-nice would still ultimately make another player’s experience better and Riot are incentivising players to adopt that niceness for an entire season if they want extra presents at the end of it. I’m now wondering whether being nudged towards niceness – even if it’s fake – will improve interactions beyond the scope of League of Legends or whether it stops as soon as the rewards do. 6. Old honor system stuff like ribbons and old honor points are disappearing but there will be a gift to players who took part in that older system to acknowledge that. It won’t be announced until the system is live in all regions though. Here’s the dedicated page explaining more about how the honor system works. There’s also an FAQ with more of the nitty gritty.In Philadelphia, civilian complaints against police — including allegations of misconduct, harassment or abuse — are technically public documents, but they’re not easy to access. Members of the public or media have to request a specific complaint from the police department’s Internal Affairs Bureau and then travel to Burholme, where the unit’s headquarters is located, to view them. Requests can take weeks to fill. Starting in the fall, however, such complaints will be posted on a city website, Mayor Kenney’s office announced Wednesday. Certain information, including names of complainants, witnesses, victims and officers and home addresses, will be redacted, but the data sets will offer information including a description of the complaint, the district in which the complaint occurred and the results of the investigative into the complaint. “The release of this data is a common-sense reform that I hope will serve to increase community-police trust,” Kenney said in a statement. “Everyone who works for the city of Philadelphia is a public servant, and the public deserves to know we will take their complaints about any city service seriously.” According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, it remained unclear Wednesday how police would react to the news — but several high-ranking officials had positive things to say. “Any process that creates greater transparency into allegations of misconduct is a good thing,” Ronda Goldfein, chairwoman of the city’s Police Advisory Commission, told the paper, adding that it built on a recommendation from the Department of Justice, which evaluated the city’s use-of-force policies in 2015. “One of the DOJ recommendations talked about transparency and not keeping these things from the public. To the extent that this is an effort to do that, this seems like a step in the direction.” The DOJ cited “serious deficiencies” in Philadelphia Police Department policies and practices in its 2015 report, including “deficient, inconsistent supervision and operational control of officer-involved shooting investigations and crime scenes; and oversight and accountability practices in need of improvement.”REPORT: 1 in 4 EU Citizens ‘On Verge of Total Poverty’ as Leaders Open Continent to Third World Migrant Invasion (VIDEO) Brussels could be facing a revolt, one in four people in the European Union live on the verge of poverty, thid world immigrants have invaded and Europe is now a continent without leadership. One in four citizens living within the failing European Union project lives on the verge of total poverty. A number of EU “leaders” thought that French President Emmanuel Macron would somehow fix problems within the bloc. One wonders the EU leadership’s logic behind thinking that adding another spineless, greedy globalist would be effective in “resetting” anything. The statistics that were revealed at the Brussels Economic Forum only showed the growing income inequality that somehow “shocked” the greedy bastards running the worst governmental system after communism (and associated ideologies). They try to rationalize their success by looking at the fall in unemployment, yet a tenth of those who work make well below the poverty line. The EU leadership will continue importing unskilled and unneeded immigrant and refugee populations, despite this. The more ignorant and culturally disparate the group, the better to import in the eyes of the “kind-hearted” EU shills. Look directly at Angela Merkel. She is the sun that everyone in the EU revolves around. Her unwillingness to address her countless and never-ending failures shows her pomposity. At this very moment, the UN refugee agency head is pleading with President Trump to reconsider cutting key funding, the global elites do not understand that refugees are abusing the system, that manyare not even refugees, that they are an invading class that is creating a fifth column within the EU society. Western leadership – save for a few key figures like Trump, Farage, Netanyahu, Orban and figures like Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen – is either oblivious to the damage they are doing to the citizens of their nations, or they know and do not care. The income inequality in Europe is a byproduct of faulty leadership. Socialism is not working, Europe. The wealthiest 20 percent in the EU earn five times as much as those that make up the bottom 20 percent of income. According to statistics from the European Commission, one in ten full-time workers live in poverty. This is a side effect of Merkel. The young people in Europe are going to be hit the hardest. They are the most vulnerable to poverty and based on the way that Europe has brainwashed their youth into thinking that by tolerating and helping the Muslim invaders, they are going to become second-class citizens in a decade’s time. It should not shock you to know that Germany’s rise in poverty was the largest among the top European nations. This is all thanks to Angela Merkel, a compliant media that does whatever is asked of them, and spineless leadership that partners with Islamic interests. Europe is on the verge of a revolt, there will be a conflict that boils over into something far more frightening than simple income inequality and that conflict will look directly at European leadership.Before deciding on buying this item i've read the reviews and saw many devided oppinions about it... and after reading it I'm still having doubts about giving it 3 or 4 stars. So i went for the higher, and this is why The idea and the story it self are great. The sequence telling of the story functions perfectly and is done very clearly. It has a nice opening to give the reader a clue about the main character and his ghostly situation. And then slowly it takes us in his adventures of truing to save his sister while he is having problems himself in containg control of the ghosts. The art is wonderful, and as the concept of the story switches, and the set it slowly changes as well... u get different color domination, different backgrounds... but from the reviews i noticed that this actually bothered some people -for me it worked well. So... why not 5 stars? Well the dialogues are too plain, weak and stereotypical. Sometimes they are put just so they can fill the image. The thing that bother me the most were the conversations. Especially the stereotype of the "English" character... Also at some points you can notice the extra scene with text added just to fill in the empty space of the page. And at the end i was left with the feeling that the authors could have done much more with the idea, and create a much better story. So my true rating would've been 3,5.Brief Summary: Metformin, an FDA approved first-line drug for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, has known beneficial effects on glucose metabolism. Evidence from animal models and in vitro studies suggest that in addition to its effects on glucose metabolism, metformin may influence metabolic and cellular processes associated with the development of age-related conditions, such as inflammation, oxidative damage, diminished autophagy, cell senescence and apoptosis. As such, metformin is of particular interest in clinical translational research in aging since it may influence fundamental aging factors that underlie multiple age-related conditions. The investigators therefore propose a pilot study to examine the effect of metformin treatment on the biology of aging in humans. Namely, whether treatment with metformin will restore the gene expression profile of older adults with impaired glucose tolerance (IGT) to that of young healthy subjects. Aging in humans is a well-established primary risk factor for many disabling diseases and conditions, among them diabetes, cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer's disease and cancer. In fact, the risk of death from these causes is dramatically accelerated (100-1000 fold) between the ages of 35 and 85 years. For this reason, there is a need for the development of new interventions to improve and maintain health into old age - to improve "healthspan". Several mechanisms have been shown to delay the aging process, resulting in improved healthspan in animal models, including mammals. These include caloric restriction, alteration in GH/IGF1 pathways, as well as use of several drugs such as resveratrol (SIRT1 activator) and rapamycin (mTOR inhibitor). At Einstein, the investigators have been working to discover pathways associated with exceptional longevity. The investigators propose the study of drugs already in common clinical use (and FDA approved) for a possible alternative purpose -healthy aging. The investigators goal is to identify additional mechanisms involved in aging, the delay of aging and the prevention of age-related diseases. In this proposal, the investigators explore the possibility of
was wrapping up a $950 million interior renovation. But he has had a good ride at the Garden, where events attract 4 million people annually. Thanks to friends in Albany, the Dolan family hasn’t paid a dime in real-estate taxes on the property over the two decades it has owned it. The Garden really does need to move—and building the new one within Farley’s capacious masonry envelope is an attractive option—because Penn Station needs to expand vertically to be a station worthy of New York City. Reconstruction of McKim’s station is the best way for that to happen. It is far from certain that a new annex across 31st Street from the existing station will be needed to handle additional rail traffic from a new Hudson railway tunnel, as Amtrak contends. To be constructed over the next two decades, the new tunnel is the centerpiece of Amtrak’s big-ticket Gateway Program, which includes construction of this Penn South annex to accommodate seven new underground tracks. The old Hudson train tunnel was already showing its age when Superstorm Sandy flooded it with saltwater in 2012. The resulting damage from corrosive sulfides and chlorides to the tunnel’s concrete and electrical systems is ongoing, according to Amtrak. If even one of its two tubes had to be shut down for extended repair, the impact on commuters would be severe. The tunnel needs to be rebuilt, but that can’t happen without the new tunnel. Gateway is the largest infrastructure program in the country, and no firm estimate of its cost exists, though it could exceed $20 billion. How the new tunnel will be paid for has not been worked out, either, but it almost certainly will come down to a combination of federal and state funds and riders’ fees. The near certainty of a New Yorker being elected president in November makes it a good bet that it will be funded. A decision to rebuild McKim’s station makes excellent sense on its own terms, but it also would provide the visionary, symbolic impetus that Gateway needs. Like Dresden’s glorious Frauenkirche, the faithful reconstruction of which was completed 60 years after the building’s destruction by Allied bombs, the old Penn Station was not architecture “of its time” but architecture for all time. Cameron puts the cost of rebuilding it at $2.5 billion. Demolition of 2 Penn Plaza as well as the Garden could move the price tag up to $3 billion. But thanks to Hudson Yards and the High Line, property values in this neighborhood have risen dramatically. Even under existing zoning, the station’s reconstruction would yield millions of square feet of transferable air rights that would make a big dent in that price tag. Assuming that the Penn South annex won’t happen and that the largely run-down block earmarked for it will thus escape demolition en masse, it’s still not hard to spot sites in the existing station’s immediate vicinity where those air rights could be exploited, though rezoning would be necessary. Moreover, reconstruction of McKim’s low-rise station would provide welcome relief from the wave of high-rise construction in the neighborhood. The foundations and train platforms of the old station are in place, and an enormous trove of drawings for the original station—plans, sections, elevations, exterior and interior details, even shop drawings—is archived along with construction specifications at the New-York Historical Society. Apart from McKim’s august façades, entrance arcade, waiting room, and concourse, the new-old station would not be a replication. Secondary spaces and circulation patterns would be reconfigured. In a proposed amendment to the Gateway Program, urban planner Jim Venturi would both reduce the number of existing Pennsylvania Station platforms and widen them by making Penn a through-station rather than a logjammed terminal for NJT and LIRR trains—which would continue on to new final destinations in the Bronx and at Secaucus, New Jersey, respectively. Venturi’s plan eliminates the need for the costly Penn South annex and its seven new tracks. And extending the widened platforms under Farley, as Venturi proposes, would be a boon to a relocated Garden. It would be as if the old station had undergone a natural process of adaptation to changing circumstances over time—and not just to accommodate new mechanical systems and the Americans with Disabilities Act while making it as easy as possible for passengers to get to their trains. The new-old station would be a place to hang out instead of just passing through, a place where you might find a yoga studio, art gallery, or wine bar as well as a Starbucks, newsstand, or pizza joint. The result would be a stupendous public resort like Milan’s Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, with a major transportation component built in. McKim’s gently sloped, cavernous internal driveways along 31st and 33rd Streets, punctuated by pedestrian bridges into the waiting room, were superb open-air spaces, though pairs of columns at the entrances made automobile access a bit tricky. Cameron thinks that it would be impractical to retain them as driveways in the rebuilt station. Could their monumental articulation and scale be retained in repurposing them for commerce? Similarly, a pair of spacious, sky-lit underground courts, originally used as baggage stations, would hold intriguing commercial potential. An international food court would be one possibility. The old Pennsylvania Station’s reconstruction, then, could be the crown jewel of an immensely challenging transportation and urban redevelopment agenda involving a new Hudson rail tunnel—and a new Madison Square Garden. Rebuilding McKim’s station starts with a political decision, not a business decision. Its reconstruction would reflect a political consensus that New York City has a vital, long-term cultural as well as economic interest in recovering this masterpiece and that the public sector has an important but subordinate role to play—for instance, in facilitating the Garden’s move with some kind of incentives package. This cannot be a replay of the taxpayer-funded $3.9 billion blowout that yielded the notorious white elephant—OK, white stegosaurus—of the new World Trade Center transit hub, a facility of small importance compared with Penn Station. Time-consuming environmental-impact reviews for the Moynihan train hall are complete; after a development team has been selected, Cuomo can be expected to push his quick fix aggressively. He will encounter plenty of opposition because his plan is unworthy of America’s greatest city. What’s missing is vision among movers and shakers in New York, Albany, and Washington—starting with key Gateway proponent Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and key stakeholder Vornado Realty Trust, whose portfolio includes 2 Penn Plaza, the 1,700-room Pennsylvania Hotel across Seventh Avenue (another McKim, Mead and White landmark), and the enormous 1 Penn Plaza skyscraper across 33rd Street. Let’s hope that that changes during the seven years remaining on Dolan’s operating permit, with Cameron’s proposal culminating in a newly great Pennsylvania Station. Top Photo: A smashed decorative statue from the original Pennsylvania Station’s façade in a Secaucus, New Jersey, junkyard (EDDIE HAUSNER/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX)Photo: CTV It was a successful experiment in recovering an endangered species — too successful, for some, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service now ponders lifting protections for transplanted Canadian grey wolves across the United States. Almost two decades ago, the wolves were relocated to Yellowstone National Park in an effort to return them to where the animals had been hunted to extinction. The change would result in hunting the nocturnal predators at a time when conservationists feel the animals are only beginning to gain a foothold and the federal agency is facing numerous lawsuits from those opposed to the wolf being removed from the endangered species list. "I think it was successful in that it demonstrated that clearly it can be done," Paul Paquet, a senior scientist at the Raincoast Conservation Foundation and adjunct professor at the University of Victoria, says of the reintroduction effort. "Whether it can be sustained is where the questions is." The problem lies not in whether the wolves can adapt, says Paquet, but whether people who have lived without the top-tier predators for generations can do so. He believes the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service should not lift the endangered designation. "It is true that it can be very difficult to live with wolves if you're trying to make a living as a rancher or a farmer," Paquet says. The last wolves were killed in Yellowstone in 1926. The massive park covers the northwest corner of Wyoming, and a small percentage of the park dips into Montana and Idaho. In 1995, the first 14 grey wolves from Jasper National Park in the Rocky Mountains were reintroduced in Yellowstone National Park. Seventeen more were relocated there the following year. As the wolf population increased, the repercussions — good and bad — were seen far and wide. Elk declined but beavers increased. Coyotes declined but their prey increased. Cattle predation spurred opposition. As early as 2005, under pressure from ranchers and state officials, the federal agency turned over management of wolves in Montana and Idaho to the states. Eight other states followed. In the spring of 2008, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service lifted the endangered status of the Northern Rocky Mountain population of grey wolves and the first legal wolf hunt went ahead in Montana the next year. By the end of 2012, the agency estimated the wolf population was almost 1,700 adults and in June 2013 it proposed removing the grey wolf from the list of threatened and endangered species across the country. "This population has exceeded its recovery goals for 11 consecutive years. Thus, this population has been delisted and is now being successfully and responsibly managed by the states," the agency says on its website, calling the reintroduction an "amazing success." "The proposed rule is based on the best science available and incorporates new information about the wolf’s current and historical distribution in the contiguous United States and Mexico," the website says. The long-term goal is to maintain an average of about 1,000 wolves. Delisting is premature says Noah Greenwald of the Centre for Biological Diversity, which has taken the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to court over wolves before and will do so again if the agency proceeds. "Several states have enacted aggressive hunting and trapping seasons," says Greenwald. He said people have prejudicial views against wolves and are putting pressure on American politicians for the hunt. Similar debates are taking place in Canada. The Alberta Fish and Game Association has proposed bounties across the province because the animals are hunting popular big-game animals. In British Columbia — where the predator population is at a historic high while their prey populations like moose and caribou are at historic lows — the provincial government's draft plan for managing wolves doesn't offer a bounty but also doesn't rule out a cull in future. The public comment period on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife proposal ended last month and a final decision is expected this year.Earlier this week, a Tesla Model S hit a barrier on the highway near Dallas, Texas. The driver, who fortunately wasn’t injured, first blamed Tesla’s Autopilot for the crash. We now have footage of the accident and it actually shows a situation that the Autopilot probably shouldn’t be expected to be able to handle, at least not yet. Ultimately, it serves as a reminder not to trust the system without paying attention. Following our articles on a series of accidents last year where the Autopilot was activated during or right before the crashes, some readers were confused on whether the driver or the Autopilot should be considered at fault. Since under its current form, Tesla’s Autopilot is only a “driver assist” system and drivers are asked to keep their hands on the steering wheel, the responsibility falls on the driver. Of course, that’s unless the Autopilot malfunctions and automatically steers away from the lane and into the side of the road, which is almost what we were led to believe with this latest accident, but that has so far never happened as far as we know. The driver described the accident in a Reddit post on Monday: “I was driving in the left lane of a two lane highway. The car is AP1 (first generation Autopilot) and I’ve never had any problems until today. Autopilot was on and didn’t give me a warning. It misread the road and hit the barrier. After the airbags deployed there was a bunch of smoke and my car rolled to a grinding stop. Thankfully no one was hurt and I walked away with only bruises.” He attached pictures of the aftermath: Fast forward to 3 days later. Another Redditor on the Tesla Motors subreddit found footage of the accident taken from the dashcam of a vehicle following the Tesla during the event. The footage shows that the Tesla needed to merge or change lane in order to avoid the barrier – something the Autopilot should never be left to do without the driver intervening. What is also clear from the footage is that the design of the road here is quite awful since even the driver in the vehicle with the dashcam almost hit the barrier and there presumably wasn’t any driver assist at play in this case. As far as the Autopilot’s Autosteer feature, it did its job, which is to keep the vehicle in its lane which was still marked on the road leading right into the barrier. What potentially didn’t work is the ‘Forward Collision Warning’ feature since the driver claims that there was no warning. Some would assume that Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) should have kicked in, but it’s actually not designed to engage if there’s an alternative and in this case, the vehicle wasn’t supposed to brake in order to avoid the barrier – it could have been even more dangerous considering a vehicle was close behind and there was traffic to the right of the vehicle. Tesla explains what the feature does: “AEB does not engage when an alternative collision avoidance strategy (e.g., driver steering) remains viable. Instead, when a collision threat is detected, forward collision warning alerts the driver to encourage them to take appropriate evasive action.” Of course, collision warning is no substitute to paying attention when driving. Basically 3 things went wrong here and if any one of them hadn’t, this collision wouldn’t have happened. The road construction was poorly implemented. Looking at this footage, you can see that the construction comes up relatively quick and the lane markers go right into the wall. Usually there are cones and signs leading up to the cutover. That’s confusing to humans as well as vehicles. The driver should have been awake at the wheel and looking forward. Had he been alert, he could have easily taken over in time to steer the car to the right. Clearly he wasn’t alert in this instance with his hands on the wheel per Tesla’s instructions. The vehicle theoretically should have detected the upcoming wall and either stopped or freaked out in some way. We don’t know if it started beeping ahead of the collision inside the vehicle since the driver’s story is already suspect. In traffic, the car could have decided it was less risky to sideswipe the wall rather than cut over into what it perceived as another lane of traffic. More importantly, Tesla doesn’t advertise that its cars should be considered level 4 or 5 autonomous but to get there, it will need to make the cars smart enough to handle this type of situation. Until Tesla’s Autopilot reaches level 4 or 5 autonomy, which shouldn’t be until at least the end of the year, the driver remains responsible for monitoring the vehicle. That means keep your eyes on the road and be safe out there.American Airlines agreed this week to do something nice for its employees and arguably foresighted for its business by giving flight attendants and pilots a preemptive raise, in order to close a gap that had opened up between their compensation and the compensation paid by rival airlines Delta and United. Wall Street freaked out, sending American shares plummeting. After all, this is capitalism and the capital owners are supposed to reap the rewards of business success. “This is frustrating. Labor is being paid first again,” wrote Citi analyst Kevin Crissey in a widely circulated note. “Shareholders get leftovers.” Indeed, major financial players were so outraged by American’s decision to pay higher wages that they punished airline stocks across the board. American itself took it hardest on the chin, of course, but the consensus among stock analysts was that higher pay at American could signal higher pay at other airlines too, with negative consequences for the overall industry. But taking a broader view, this blinkered Wall Street perspective on labor compensation is, arguably, exactly what’s gone wrong with the American economy. Any given company obviously benefits when it’s able to get away with paying its workforce less. But one company’s workers are another company’s customers. A world in which labor never gets paid is ultimately one in which nobody has much of anything but leftovers. Wall Street analysts hate the idea of paying workers JP Morgan’s Jamie Baker was even more scathing than Crissey. "We are troubled by AAL's wealth transfer of nearly $1 billion to its labor groups,” he wrote, suggesting that the move was not just contestable as a matter of business strategy, but somehow obviously illegitimate. The argument from American’s managers and unions, by contrast, is that the raises are a question of basic fairness and long-term sustainability. The ups-and-downs of various bankruptcies and mergers had created a situation where American was paying pilots and flight attendants less than its direct competitors Delta and United. Now that American had emerged from bankruptcy and was profitable again, that created an obvious morale problem. What’s more, while the unions had no way to force a raise in 2017, the collective bargaining agreement is set to expire in two years, so ultimately a showdown was inevitable. By that view, the raise represents American making a demonstration of good faith to its workforce to keep people happy and set the table for an eventual negotiation. Baker, however, takes a darker view, saying that not only does the raise increase costs, it “establishes a worrying precedent, in our view, both for American and the industry." Labor’s share of income has been declining Baker is certainly correct that for workers to get a larger slice of the pie would be a dramatic new precedent relative to recent trends. As a report last year from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development shows, in both the United States and other rich countries workers as a whole have been receiving a smaller and smaller share of national income. Noah Smith of Bloomberg View recently wrote a column summarizing the various main theories professional economists have about why this is happening — monopoly power, global trade, robots, and landlords are the leading contenders for villain. It’s less quantifiable, and thus not-beloved by academic economists, but my personal view is that what amounts to a management fad for treating workers poorly is an underrated factor here. The beating American took in the stock market — and the outraged tone of the analyst letters — is a clear sign of the constant pressure that modern companies are under to be as stingy as possible with their workforce. Combine that pressure with what amounts to a 16-year span of objective labor market weakness and you have a whole cohort of corporate executives who’ve probably never even considered the possible merits of a different approach. And as we’re seeing, those who do are smacked down immediately. A company like Apple that thinks nothing of investing money in environmental or accessibility initiatives would never dream of taking a similarly high-minded attitude toward labor issues, even though it obviously could make Apple Store retail employees as well-paid as any manufacturing worker from the “good old days” if it wanted to. Low pay leads to collective economic weakness One big problem here is that even if obsessive cost-cutting is a good strategy for any given business, it’s a terrible strategy for a national economy. Broad-based income growth creates broad-based business opportunities. The vast majority of Americans earn a living supplying services to other Americans, so when wages don’t rise we struggle to find economic opportunities. As the rich get richer, they still find limits to what they can realistically consume, plowing money instead into financial assets. That creates low interest rates that the government could take advantage of to go deeply into debt and massively expand public sector employment. But politicians, with some good reason, are reluctant to embrace a growth strategy that’s so heavily dependent on debt and centralized control. A far better approach would be something more like a generalization of the American Airlines model. Profitable companies could pay workers more and shareholders less, leading to more spending on the products made by other companies. Those companies would then see their revenue, profits, and wages rise and people might find themselves buying more plane tickets. That’s how functioning market economies used to work, and in the end even executives and shareholders ended up just fine. With the unemployment rate finally down to a reasonably low level after years of painfully slow improvement, there’s a chance we just may get it. But for it to happen, economic elites will have to learn to live with a world where labor really does get paid first.OAKLAND (CBS 5) — You may have seen them, children asking for donations at Bay Area BART stations. Two years ago, a CBS 5 investigation raised questions about their school and fundraising practices. Now, a joint investigation with our media partners at California Watch is raising new questions about how the school is getting tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars. It’s a tedious job, especially for a child: asking for donations on a street corner, day after day. A boy named Moses has been doing it for years. CBS 5 first talked to him in an undercover investigation in 2010. He was fundraising near the Ferry Building in San Francisco and said he was raising money for the St. Andrew Missionary Baptist Church Private School, located in West Oakland. Our three month investigation then found the school sending students out to solicit money five days a week, often until after dark. One young student said, “It’s called interpersonal communications class.” Another girl said the children had to go out fundraising Monday through Friday. And a third student told us they were usually out 5-to-6 hours a day. The school’s pastor, Robert Lacy, didn’t want to talk to CBS 5 back then, saying “It’s the wrong time.” After CBS 5’s report, the children disappeared for awhile. But now, they’re back. “They would take us to the BART stations in Oakland,” said Courtney Corbitt. She left Saint Andrew in February. Corbitt said Pastor Lacy still takes students out every day to panhandle. She often rode in the same white van that we spotted dropping children off two years ago. “The seat belts didn’t work, we would sit on each others laps,” Corbitt said. Other kids went out in the pastor’s Escalade. We followed it on a recent weekday afternoon across the Bay Bridge to downtown San Francisco, and watched Moses hitting the streets to panhandle. There is no way of knowing just how much money the children bring in. Saint Andrew is a private religious school, so they not required to file tax forms. But a California Watch and CBS 5 joint investigation revealed Saint Andrew is getting lots of taxpayer money from the Federal Government. Documents obtained from the Oakland Unified School District show the school was awarded $50,000 in federal funds this school year, based on a reported class size of 195 students. In reality, there are nowhere near that many students. “There’s like 23 people. Five adults and the rest were children,” Corbitt said. On a recent morning we saw three students waiting to get in at 8:30 a.m. Five more arrived in the school van an hour later, a total of 8 students for that day. A state social worker documented only 12 students during a visit in March. Yet the school has been reporting up to 265 students a year, for the past 12 years, collecting hundreds of thousands in federal education dollars. So what’s going on? CBS 5 tried asking Pastor Lacy, but once again he didn’t want to talk. Neither did anyone else at the school. We took the question to the Oakland Unified School District. Spokesman Troy Flint said, “We don’t really have an enforcement role.” Flint said the district’s job is just to disburse the federal funds. “It’s really more of a bureaucratic process,” he said. CBS 5 asked Flint: “So someone can inflate the numbers and you wouldn’t even know it?” His response: “Well you have to remember it’s a federal program.” CBS 5: “I realize that, but the school district is in charge of doling out the money. So in some sense there’s a responsibility for you to make sure these numbers are accurate.” Flint: “There’s no way we can verify enrollment at every single school that receives this money.” Most of the money is awarded through contracts. The pastor’s wife Carrie Banks gets $100 an hour for teacher training. The pastor’s son Robert Lacy Jr. gets $40 an hour for teaching struggling students. CBS 5 asked Flint if he didn’t think that was excessive. He said, “I am not aware of their compensation level.” CBS 5: “It’s all in your documents, the school district’s approved. Is that acceptable?” Flint: “Really, it’s according to the programmatic guidelines.” How is the money benefitting students? Corbitt said half the time Robert Lacy wasn’t even in class. “We would just be by ourselves, like from the morning. And then he’ll come back at our lunchtime,” she said. In fact the Courtney Corbitt and her mom Kelli said there wasn’t much learning going on at all. “The whole time I was there, we were working on the same chapter, chapter 5 in our math,” Courtney said. When asked if that was acceptable, Oakland Unified spokesman Troy Flint said, “It’s not acceptable, but I think we need to draw a distinction between what’s unseemly and what’s illegal.” For Kelli Corbitt it’s all been very frustrating. “It’s such a fraud, they have been doing this for so long,” Kelli Corbitt said. She took Courtney out of Saint Andrew after two months. But she’s still worried for the kids left behind. “They need to be shut down, and those kids need to be taken away from the pastor,” Kelli Corbitt said. The Oakland Unified School District said that they talked about the issues we raised with the California Department of Education. But when we talked to state authorities, they referred us back to Oakland. Also, neither the pastor’s wife nor his son has teaching credentials. But those credentials also are not necessary. To read the full story from California Watch, go to http://californiawatch.org/node/16428. (Copyright 2012 by CBS San Francisco. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)(Anybody remember that Karl Rove set up a private e-mail account in the George W. Bush White House under the domain name “gwb43.com,” from which he purged 22 million e-mails in 2007 at the height of the Valerie Plame scandal? Jon Ponder tells the story in the online Pensito Review.) By all measures, Donald Trump is one of the most corrupt business figures ever, by his own self-obsession a veritably storied one, who brings one thing only: the personality and demeanor of a galling bully. This he is good at, having as the New York Times’ Jonathan Mahler and Matt Flegenheimer wrote last month, learned at the knee of New York shyster lawyer Roy Cohn, one of his closest collaborators until Cohn died of AIDS in 1986. Cohn, chased by authorities for years for conspiracy, bribery, fraud and income tax evasion, was eventually disbarred for “unethical, unprofessional and particularly reprehensible conduct.” He was a major player in Trump’s rise as a real estate mogul, as documented in Nicholas Von Hoffman’s Citizen Cohn: the Life and Times of Roy Cohn, Harry Hurt III’s Lost Tycoon: the Many Lives of Donald J. Trump and other sources. Perhaps the best representation of Cohn was in Academy Award winning playwright Tony Kushner’s incredible Broadway play (and HBO mini-series classic), “Angels in America,” with Al Pacino so brilliantly playing Cohn as a central figure. Trump seemingly stands just offstage in so much of this play. You see in Cohn where Trump came from and is now. Peter Fraser, Cohn’s companion for his last two years who spent much time with Trump, said for the Mahler-Flegenheimer article, “I hear Roy in the things he (Trump) says quite clearly. That bravado, and if you say it aggressively and loudly enough, it’s the truth — that’s the way Roy used to operate to a degree, and Donald was certainly his apprentice.” In the Von Hoffman book, Cohn friend Liz Smith said of Cohn, “He was absolutely great where it was a matter that he could call somebody he knew and say, ‘I’m going to kick your ass from here to the Brooklyn Bridge if you don’t get this quashed,’ or whatever, but when it came to actually having to file papers and do things, I have begun to wonder if he really – he just didn’t want to bother…He was a wonderful intimidator and bluffer and bullshit artist. I don’t think, in a way, that he could write a paper or draft anything.” That’s Trump to a tee. In Hurt’s Lost Tycoon, a best seller in 1993 but now out of print (which, curiously, the publisher, W.W. Norton, has recently said it isn’t interested in reviving), a caveat was printed onto the first page as agreed to with Trump’s lawyers, a statement from Trump’s first wife Ivana that qualified her testimony in a deposition in the divorce case where she stated Trump “had raped me.” There was one occasion in 1989, she explained, when she “felt violated,” adding the following: “I referred to this as ‘rape,’ but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense.” Now, the mainstream media is looking the other way in another case where the word “rape” is associated with Trump. A lengthy article published last week on the Huffington Post by Lisa Bloom, an NBC News legal analyst, entitled, “Why the New Child Rape Case Filed Against Donald Trump Should Not be Ignored,” has been, well, ignored. It accuses Trump of raping the plaintiff when she was 13. Bloom wrote, as a journalist to journalists, “No outsider can say whether Mr. Trump is innocent or guilty of these new rape charges. “But we can look at his record, analyze the court filings here, and make a determination as to credibility – whether the allegations are believable enough for us to take them seriously and investigate them, keeping in mind his denial and reporting new facts as they develop. I have done that. And the answer is a clear ‘yes.’ These allegations are credible. They ought not be ignored. Mainstream media, I’m looking at you.” Share this: Print Email Tweet Comments commentsLIVESTRONG Sporting Park to Host its First World Cup Qualifier; Final Match of Semifinal Round to be Broadcast Live on ESPN2, ESPN3 and TeleFutura at 6 p.m. CT The 4th of june 2012 in CHICAGO – The United States Men National Team is going to start a World Football Cup qualifications at the LIVESTRONG firstly with Guatemala on the 16th of October in the final game of Semifinal qualifiying. Kickoff in the Kansas is going to happen at the 6th in the evening. CT, game will be shown on the most popular channels. Visitors please go on the organisation website – ussoccer.com and on Twitter @ussoccer. Everything about card-passes will be available in a couple of days. “We are exceptionally eager to make a game of a World Cup teams selection in the Kansas,” chief mentor Jurgen Klinsmann says. “There is a stunning young office in LIVESTRONG Sporting Park, and admirers have truly exhibited amazing help for the European football through in the region. We anticipate that it’s going will be an incredible ambiance.” “It’s an immense praise to the association,” Peter Vermes said. “Being a supervisor of the group, youre should place recreations in settings that you believe is an advantage. Furthermore, it will be an incredible ballpark for unilizing. As Klinsmann point of view, he sees our office and association that way and we ought to be to a great degree pleased that a Championship could me played here. This is the thing that we had as a primary concern in the attempt of creating LIVESTRONG Sporting Park and making it the thing it represents nowadays.” The United States are going to start their World Cup selection effort this at June 8th, playing with Antigua and Barbuda at Raymond James Athletic Field in Tampa, Fla. Semifinal 19:00 ET, with live scope on ESPN, ESPN3 and Galavision. United States at that point confronts Guatemala in World Cup qualifying at 10 p.m. ET on Tuesday, the twenty third of June, at Estadio Mateo Flores in Guatemala, with live scope on ustream.tv. U.S. MNT in Kansas City: The United States is showing up in the province of Kansas and at the LIVESTRONG. The group played the main global in the recently stamped stadium amid the 2011 Gold Cup, with the U.S. winning 1-0 against Guadeloupe on June 14, 2011. United States had one gami in the Kansas – a FIFA World Cup qualifying win with Costa Rica on the 25th of April, 2001, when Josh Wolff beat the solitary kick in front of 37,319 followers. Guatemala joins Antigua and Barbuda, Jamaica and the U.S. in the Group. Every rival will play twice – at the native stadium and at the enemy’s gaming field. The main two playing teams from each of three gatherings is going to progress to the Last Game of qualifying, which is occured in 2013. Three groups will consequently fit the bill for the 2014 FIFA World Cup, while the fourth place group will play in a playoff with the champ of the Oceania area.SANFORD – Disbarred attorney Julie Kronhaus has already been sued by several former clients, who say $1.5 million of their money disappeared. Now, she's being sued by her husband. But not for divorce. His lawsuit alleges a forgery in a real estate deal that he is asking a judge to cancel. Cardiologist Kenneth Kronhaus, 62, says someone forged his name on a mortgage and note last year, putting in jeopardy the $1 million, 6,500-square-foot home he shares with his wife in Alaqua, one of Seminole County's most prestigious neighborhoods. According to the lawsuit, filed Tuesday, he knew nothing about the $900,000 mortgage and note that gives an Oviedo couple a stake in the house until he saw the documents three weeks after they were signed. The notary's signature also is a forgery, he alleges. The notary public whose stamp appears at the bottom is Leigh Smith of Mount Dora, a Starbucks employee at the time. Smith gave a sworn statement two months after the date on the mortgage, saying she has never met Ken or Julie Kronhaus and, though she is a notary public, has never notarized any documents. CAPTION UCF head coach Josh Heupel on 2019 National Signing Day UCF head coach Josh Heupel on 2019 National Signing Day CAPTION UCF head coach Josh Heupel on 2019 National Signing Day UCF head coach Josh Heupel on 2019 National Signing Day CAPTION Residents of Lake Nona take a ride on the new autonomous bus service, Beep, in Lake Nona. Residents of Lake Nona take a ride on the new autonomous bus service, Beep, in Lake Nona. CAPTION Orange County is considering a mega-park in Horizon West, the fast-growing community near Walt Disney World, that could feature an outdoor amphitheater for major concerts, botanical gardens and an aquatics center. Orange County is considering a mega-park in Horizon West, the fast-growing community near Walt Disney World, that could feature an outdoor amphitheater for major concerts, botanical gardens and an aquatics center. CAPTION UCF President Dale Whittaker's wife and daughter make public statements before the Board of Trustees urging them to retain him. UCF President Dale Whittaker's wife and daughter make public statements before the Board of Trustees urging them to retain him. CAPTION Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg answers questions during a media availability about the possibility of his running for president in 2020, after a visit to Orlando Utilities Commission's sustainable energy facility, Friday, February 8, 2018. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel) Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg answers questions during a media availability about the possibility of his running for president in 2020, after a visit to Orlando Utilities Commission's sustainable energy facility, Friday, February 8, 2018. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel) Dr. Kronhaus did not respond to a Thursday phone call. Neither did his attorney, his wife or her attorney, August J. "Jay" Stanton Jr. of Winter Park. The suit also names Alan and Brenda Cook of Oviedo, who accuse Julie Kronhaus, their longtime attorney and trust manager, of stealing nearly $1 million from them. Last year, a Sanford judge awarded them more than $2.7 million in damages — triple what they say she stole — but they have been unable to collect. Dr. Kronhaus' suit does not name the suspected forger, it simply lists three defendants: Julie Kronhaus and the Cooks. Aegis Law Firm Julie Kronhaus, a former Longwood attorney, was permanently disbarred after clients accused her of embezzlement. Julie Kronhaus, a former Longwood attorney, was permanently disbarred after clients accused her of embezzlement. (Aegis Law Firm) His 51-year-old wife was permanently disbarred last year by the Florida Supreme Court, which accused her of misappropriating funds, misconduct, violating accounting standards and failing to shut down her law practice when she had been ordered to do so months earlier. The state also stripped her of her certified public accountancy license. At least eight former clients have accused her of misappropriating more than $2 million. Three of them have sued, claiming they lost more than $1.5 million. Judges have awarded the trio $4.9 million in damages. The clients who filed complaints include the mother of a severely disabled child in Lake County, a Casselberry widow and her teenage son, several small business owners and a Baltimore lawyer. The most recent ruling against her came Thursday, when Circuit Judge Michael Rudisill in Sanford ordered her to pay more than $800,000 to Marissa Timony, a woman involved in a Broward County legal case who accused Julie Kronhaus of stealing $273,000. Also, three people who claim they were damaged by Julie Kronhaus will be paid something by the Florida Bar's Client Security Fund, which pays clients who say they were cheated by Florida lawyers. The Bar would not identify
nothing – less useful to the advance of the human race than the opinions of a person in their 20s. Don’t take this the wrong way. There are many wonderful things about people in their 20s. They’re funny. They look fabulous in objectively terrible clothes. They are creative, and make the best things with the least money. But, as the Don’t take this the wrong way. There are many wonderful things about people in their 20s. They’re funny. They look fabulous in objectively terrible clothes. They are creative, and make the best things with the least money. But, as the memoir penned by Paris Hilton at age 24 might suggest, there is quite simply no value in hearing what a person aged between 20 and 30 thinks about anything deeper than “what is the best Instagram filter’. Tubes tied at 30 Perhaps the best example of this is Perhaps the best example of this is Holly Brockwell, a Londoner who spent the last four years of her 20s campaigning to get her tubes tied, so certain was her belief that she does not want children. Initially, to Holly’s apparent horror, her GP refused the request. But four years of arguing her cause later, she is now enjoying life as a person who not only does not want, but now will never be able to have, the inconvenience of a 20-month-old painting the bars of its cot in poo. Better still for Holly, she gets to be a martyr. Having shared her irreversible 20-something decision with the world’s media, she has attracted an army of haters. The haters have attracted defenders, like the Australian Better still for Holly, she gets to be a martyr. Having shared her irreversible 20-something decision with the world’s media, she has attracted an army of haters. The haters have attracted defenders, like the Australian journalist and commentator Shelly Horton, who have decided it’s reasonable to hold Holly and her self-imposed sterility up as a monument to feminine freedom. Holly Brockwell begged her doctor to tie her tubes throughout her 20s Media commentator Shelly Horton says she has abuse hurled at her online because she doesn’t want to be a mother Holly could well have said to herself, “I’m young now, so I’ll probably just use protection and put it out of my mind”. But would this have done the trick? Oh no. For no medical reason other than narcissistic fervour for attention, she ensured she will never be able to change her mind. She’s treated her body like someone who got handed the 70 metre Bayeux Tapestry, realised they did’t have room for it in the bedroom of their current sharehouse, and set fire to it. Then went to the media to brag about it. To the people who wouldn’t mind owning the Bayeux Tapestry, it’s kind of offensive. It’s what our bodies were meant to do When a childless person tells you they weren’t able to conceive, or that the right person never came along, it’s sad. It’s also human and relatable. But when a person tells you they didn’t have kids because they didn’t want them, it means something different altogether. It means they couldn’t perceive a world in which they were inconvenienced. It means they thought doing the one thing their body was designed to do was less important than getting a night of uninterrupted sleep. Perhaps it’s appropriate that people who can’t conceive of being inconvenienced won’t ever conceive. Imagine the attention-starved little monsters they’d raise. Eventually you wake up and go ‘is this all there is?’ For the rest of us, nature eventually plays a trick where it says “Guess what. You’re boring. You’ve travelled. Now it’s time to put your energy into the next generation.” In fact, doesn’t happen to the rest of us. It happens to all of us, including Holly Brockwell. She doesn’t know it now, but over time her views will soften. She’ll become bored telling people of her brave decision over fashionable whisky cocktails. She’ll realise she’s agnostic about the whole “kids” thing. Could take it or leave it. Then, she’ll meet a man who loves her, and with whom she can imagine setting up a home, and he’ll tell her the thing he wants most in the world is kids. And, because getting your tubes tied is not the same as getting a dolphin tattoo on your ankle and vaguely regretting it later, she’ll have to tell him. I can’t have children because once upon a time I made the decision that I would never be able to. The man may hang around, although probably not, men are fickle like that, and she’ll become an aunty who’s loads of fun but doesn’t much fit in with the clubbing crowd anymore and actually doesn’t feel like another bloody trip to Thailand or New York or Melbourne… I know, I know. It’s cruel to pick on a young person just because they don’t want kids. And I’ll be happy to stop. Just as soon as they stop telling me about it.CLOSE Hurricane Irma caused massive damage as it pounded Cuba's northern coast on Saturday with residents left reeling in the aftermath. Video provided by Reuters Newslook Strong waves brought by Hurricane Irma hit the Malecon seawall in Havana, Cuba, on Sept. 9, 2017. (Photo: Ramon Espinosa, AP) The first day of fall may be followed by the last day for us all if predictions of our demise hold true. Fall officially starts on Friday at 4:02 p.m. Eastern Time, and then on Saturday (the time isn't specific), the Earth allegedly has a date with the apocalypse. And given recent world events, it does seem feasible the end of the world could be coming. Earlier this year, doomsaying author David Meade tied his predictions of a Sept. 23 apocalypse to the Aug. 21 total solar eclipse across the United States, which he said would be a telltale sign that the mysterious (undocumented) planet Nibiru will come out of hiding and head straight for us, destroying Earth. More: After Aug. 21 eclipse, Earth will be destroyed by rogue planet Nibiru, says iffy doomsayer It was good for a laugh. Remember the Mayan calendar in 2012? Or how about Y2K? But then Hurricane Harvey put Houston under water, Hurricane Irma sideswiped Florida, and Hurricane Maria plowed over Puerto Rico. Meanwhile, wildfires raged all over the West, and Mexico had two major earthquakes in less than two weeks. A cat tries to find dry ground around an apartment complex after it was inundated with water following Hurricane Harvey on August 30, 2017 in Houston, Texas. Harvey, which made landfall north of Corpus Christi August 25, has dumped nearly 50 inches of rain in and around Houston. (Photo: Scott Olson/ Getty Images) And that’s all just from the past month in North America alone. We won’t even talk about the escalating tension with North Korea. Making sense of it all When real and sobering events link together over time, we look for ways to make sense of it all. Some may find comfort in church or with family and friends, while others escape to nature. More: The world is definitely going to end — just probably not Saturday Still others are drawn in to conspiracy theories, like that of Meade’s, which is fueled by his notion that NASA is covering up the existence of Nibiru. A 2016 study by Anglia Ruskin University professor Viren Swami found a direct correlation between stress (and what could be more stressful than unending natural disasters?) and susceptibility to hoaxes like Nibiru. A wildfire fire burns near Weber Canyon in Utah this week in Utah. More than 1,000 people were evacuated as high winds fed the flames that started in a canyon north of Salt Lake City. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue is calling for better use of funds to manage forests and cut the cost and devastation of wildfires. (Photo: SCOTT G. WINTERON/THE DESERET NEWS) “Stressful situations increase the tendency to think less analytically. An individual experiencing a stressful life event may begin to engage in a particular way of thinking, such as seeing patterns that don’t exist,” said Swami of the study. Sign Up: Great breaking news headlines in your inbox. “Therefore stressful life events may sometimes lead to a tendency to adopt a conspiracist mind-set. Once this worldview has become entrenched, other conspiracy theories are more easily taken on board.” A man heads into the building surf at Seagull Park in South Patrick Shores. (Photo: Craig Bailey/FLORIDA TODAY) Now that Meade’s theory, which is largely based on Biblical passages, seems less of a joke, other end-of-the-world predictions are dovetailing with his. Popular prophesy One popular Bible quote currently making the rounds as evidence: Luke 21: 25-26, which says: “25. There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken. “26. Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.” Footnote: The eclipse was Aug. 21, Hurricane Harvey hit Texas on Aug. 25 and flooded Houston on Aug. 26. (Luke 21: 25-26 … See how that works?) Other explanations NEWSLETTERS Get the Sneak Peek newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong A weekly email of entertainment news and cool things to do in Knoxville. Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-844-900-7097. Delivery: Thurs Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Sneak Peek Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters Others attribute these natural disasters to some sort of karma on humanity - for a virtual buffet of transgressions. Our sins? Our elections? The Kardashians? Take your pick. A different explanation for this summer’s numerous intense hurricanes and wildfires is climate change. The surface temperatures of the Atlantic Ocean are unusually warm this season (and warm, open waters feed hurricanes with energy), and record temperatures in the West have essentially baked the vegetation, making it more vulnerable to wildfire. CLOSE Dramatic timelapse video shows a raging wildfire take hold in the Columbia River Gorge area in Washington state, 52 miles east of Portland, Oregon. The video was shot from Monday night to Tuesday mnorning. (Sept. 6) AP So even though they’ve come to their conclusions in entirely different ways, zealots and scientists are essentially on the same page about Earth’s impending doom. Maybe there’s something to this apocalypse after all. Read or Share this story: http://knoxne.ws/2xXGienHe calls himself “Reddit’s resident historian of pornography”—and now he’s got the book to prove it. After debuting his first tome—a well-researched romp through “the bawdy and forgotten corners of Western civilization”—Brian Watson (username vertexoflife) invited redditors to test his knowledge in an informative, if very NSFW, AMA (Ask Me Anything). Last year, the New Hampshire-based author shared with news.com.au, “It’s my honest belief (and has thus far been supported by my research) that in most cases, we are no more or less weird sexually than all of our ancestors dating back to prehistoric times.” To prove his thesis, he delved deep into the archives to answer redditors’ questions about the very first porn star, the future of erotica, and sex toys throughout the centuries. Oh, and balloon porn. “… we live in an era of free access to pornography for everyone,” Watson writes in the introduction to his AMA, “yet no one is talking about it—and when they do, they are ignorant of its history as a genre that critiqued and challenged the people in power—the church, the state, and society. “After I finished grad school I decided that I wanted to expand my thesis into a full length book, which I called Annals of Pornographie: How Porn Became Bad.” On March 5, Watson self-published the book, noting that “a lot of [literary] agents do not want to touch it because of its subject matter.” Although he launched his AMA partly in hopes of attracting attention from prospective publishers, the author was happy to give users on the fence about checking it out a TL;DR-level summary. “The short story of ‘How Porn Became Bad,'” he writes in a comment, “is this: the printing press made reproduction of ‘immoral’ texts and images remarkably easy and cheap. When this was joined with increasing middle- and lower-class literacy, it created [a] ‘type’ of work that supposedly had an ‘bad’ effect upon the general population that the Church and various countries attempted to control through moral reform and legal regulation.” After concisely covering the book’s subject matter in just two sentences, Watson gives his readers the hook: “But the long answer is so much more entertaining and ridiculous.” Here are a few of the highlights. First: A Few Puns to Get Out of the Way How Did Porn “Become Bad”? The World’s First Porn Star Any Stories for, Umm, Cocktail Parties? What Were Pre-20th Century Sex Toys Like? When one redditor expressed curiosity about adult toys throughout history, Watson was ready with a few surprising (and NSFW) images to show just how far we’ve come: Most Interesting Kinks/Fetishes? Wait—”Balloon Porn”? Ducks vs. Horses When asked the classic Reddit toss-up between fighting 100 duck-sized horses or one horse-sized duck, Watson was prepared for battle: The Porn Historian’s Predictions for the Future of Porn To read all of Watson’s answers to redditors’ questions, check out the original AMA thread. The Annals of Pornographie is available now on Amazon, Smashwords, and Nook.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption One mother tells the BBC's Reeta Chakrabarti she sometimes doesn't have time to give her children breakfast Free breakfasts for all primary school pupils are to be provided by a council, in a three-month pilot project to stop children starting the day hungry. Blackpool council says teachers are finding too many pupils coming to school without having any breakfast. Council leader Simon Blackburn says a healthy meal before lessons will help pupils "focus on learning". National Association of Head Teachers' president, Steve Iredale, said the scheme would have a "huge impact". The £700,000 project, beginning with the new term on Tuesday, will provide breakfasts for all 12,000 primary pupils in Blackpool, regardless of their family income and whether they are eligible for free school meals. Drink and drugs Breakfasts such as cereal, fruit and yoghurt and milk at break time, will be given to pupils by the school meals service - in a scheme the council hopes will be extended for the rest of the school year. "Every pupil will be able to start their school day fed and ready to learn," said Mr Blackburn, the council leader. "There will be no discrimination between those families that can afford it and those that cannot." It is an attempt to give all children a healthy start to the day in one of the country's most disadvantaged areas. For too long it's something we have reflected on, but now it's time to do something about it Steve Iredale, President of National Association of Head Teachers The seaside town is among the most deprived in England, it has one of the lowest levels of life expectancy and has high levels of drink and drug abuse. Such factors mean that children in Blackpool are more likely to face malnourishment, says the council. This local scheme is addressing a problem that has been identified as a national concern by teachers. A survey from Kellogg's charitable trust in the autumn found that four in five teachers had seen examples of pupils arriving at school without having eaten any breakfast. A majority believed that the problem was getting worse. As well as a shortage of money, teachers believe the biggest cause is poor parenting. "In many families, parents are leaving children to fend for themselves in the morning. This is because some parents simply don't have the time or inclination to prepare breakfast, let alone supervise their children or encourage them to eat it," says the report into teachers' experiences of children who arrive at school unfed. There have also been accounts of teachers using their own money to buy food for pupils. Last term, teachers at a primary school in Bristol took over the funding of breakfasts for 130 pupils, when a charity was unable to continue the financial support. The free breakfast scheme in Blackpool will be monitored for its impact. But there have been previous assessments of pilot projects for free school meals. Last summer researchers found positive results from free meal schemes in three local authorities. The study looking at projects in Durham, Newham and Wolverhampton found that free meals for all helped to close the gap in test results between rich and poor pupils. There is a free breakfast scheme for primary pupils in Wales, supported this year by £12.7m from the Welsh government. More than three quarters of primary schools are participating. The scheme, running since 2004, aims to improve the health and concentration of pupils. Mr Iredale said: "This is an issue on which central government and local government have got to sit down and act. "For too long it's something we have reflected on, but now it's time to do something about it."When the federal government violates your rights, you’re not supposed to wait four years for new politicians in the hope that they’ll fix it. You’re not supposed to wait two, or four, or more years for some black-robed judge to pronounce that they’ve violated your rights. You are supposed to resist those violations of your liberty as they happen – and it is your state’s solemn duty to do the same…Michael Boldin Michael Boldin’s post We Refuse over at the Tenth Amendment Center (TAC) defines the core beliefs he holds as founder of the TAC: The Tenth Amendment codifies in law this principle of popular sovereignty – that “We the People” of the several states created the federal government to be our agent for certain, enumerated purposes – and nothing more. But unfortunately, that’s not how things have been working, and very little that the government does is actually authorized by the constitution. And, this is a problem that didn’t just start in January 2009 – it’s been going on a long, long time. He then asks the question, “What to do about it?” (emphasis mine): Question – What do we do about it? Do we call and email our representatives in Congress and ask them to limit their own power? Do we march on D.C. and demand that the government limit its own power? Do we sue them in their own courts and ask their judges to limit their power? Do we vote the bums out in 2010, or 2012 – and ask new politicians to limit their own power? Thomas Jefferson and James Madison both warned us that if the federal government ever became the sole and exclusive arbiter of the extent of its own powers – that power would endlessly grow…regardless of elections, separation of powers, courts, or other vaunted parts of our system. Guess what – they were right. For a hundred years, we the people have been suing, and marching, and lobbying, and voting the bums out – but yet…year in and year out, government continues to grow and your liberty continues to diminish – and it doesn’t matter who is the president, or what political party controls congress – the growth of power in the federal government never stops. The problem we face today is not about personalities or political parties – it’s about power. Until we address the absolute fact that the federal government has too much power, things will never change. The emphasized text defines the very crux of the issue that surfaces when we begin to take it upon ourselves to change a party from within. To believe this actually makes a difference in the current environment of continuous growth in federal power is dangerous. The real issue that must be tackled is the growth of the federal government, how and why this growth occurred, why it is anathema to the very principles held by our founders, and what to do about it. Dr. Larry Hunter writes in The Soft Despotism of Democratic Fascism: By all means my fellow Americans, go to the polls in November and vote out the bums who are most aggressively subverting our free-market republic and transforming it into Democratic Fascism, i.e., Democrats. But just know when you do, the people you replace them with, Republicans, are themselves subverting the American free-market republic by offering nothing but Socialism Lite as an alternative. So many scoundrels; so few alternatives. Had John McCain been elected president in 2008, we almost certainly by this time would have seen a version of RomneyCare enacted into law, which is a lite version of ObamaCare, an idea hatched inside conservative think tanks as a Socialist Lite alternative to HillaryCare all those years ago—can’t stand to be the Movement of No don’t you know. A trial run of a scaled-down model of the democratic fascist healthcare reform machine was enacted into law with the Medicare Prescription Drugs (Part D) program in 2003 by a Republican president and Republican Congress: a Rube Goldberg device that conscripts the private sector to run the democratic fascist drug machinery, complete with a lite version of an individual mandate—call it contracting out tyranny. Indeed, RomneyCare and its prescription-drug prototype is precisely the template the Democrats used to forge public-private insurance and drug cartels beneath a private patina. No wonder the stock prices of the pharmaceutical companies and the biggest health insurance companies rose markedly during the run up to ObamaCare and right after it was signed into law… …With only a few exceptions, Republicans are not demanding a roll-back of the welfare state, not talking about scaling back the size of government from its current almost 38 percent of GDP to 15 percent or less. Not more than a fraction of them talk seriously about a total repeal of the income tax (which only half the American people pay) or repeal of the Federal Reserve System, which subverts sound money and undermines economic growth, and no more than couple of them have any clue about how to restore sound money. Beyond a handful, there are no courageous Republicans calling for an end to empire and a return from our counterproductive search abroad for monsters to destroy. Fearful of their own shadows, there are not significant numbers of Republicans urging a dismantling of the domestic police state with its creeping total-information awareness system that is gradually smothering individual freedom and privacy; indeed South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham is actually pushing hard for a biometric national ID card. No Republican is calling for constitutional amendments to put the federal Leviathan back in chains, the kind of chains we all can believe in. So, once you throw out the Democratic rascals and replace them with Republican scalawags, don’t expect things to change much. While every republican in Congress voted against ObamaCare, the Grand Old Party cannot now even muster the courage to run on a platform of repealing it. Perhaps not in this election nor even in the presidential election to follow but soon the American people will come to understand a very sad and frightening fact about the United States today: Elections no longer work to divert the nation’s decent into the soft despotism of democratic fascism; they simply perpetuate the fraud of two parties, one Establishment, democratic in appearance, increasingly fascist in operation. I urge the reader to survey the material presented here, particularly Dr. Hunter’s expose of the scurrilous truths about current Beltway politics practiced between the two parties titled Who Lost Healthcare. The need we all feel for action is pressing. The current target of the symptom of unconstitutional governance by a strong central power is ObamaCare. Talk of repeal is thick in the air – lawsuits and rumors of lawsuits even thicker. Talk of taking back the party from the ground up is the strategy of the day for many. Repeal will never happen for obvious reasons. It sounds good, looks good on paper, but is impossible until 2013 due to the power of the veto pen and the realities on the ground. To over-ride a veto takes more votes in the Senate than the Republicans could hope to have under the best of circumstances in the upcoming 2010 midterms. Therefore, 2013 is the best chance for repeal and only if Obama loses the election in 2012 and the Republicans control both chambers of the legislature. Even then, we must assume and count on Republicans having the nerve to take on such an undertaking, something recent history quite clearly demonstrates as contra-indicative of GOP tendencies. Not to mention the fact that most if not all of the bureaucracy for ObamaCare will already be in place, making the repeal of the entire bill a dangerous undertaking as insurance companies and doctors – those who are still around – position themselves to work within the new framework. The damage to the existing system, already done, could be exacerbated as the entire structure is torn down. So much inertia will exist within the scaffolding and foundation of ObamaCare the momentum of this monstrosity of a bill would require great courage to take on, repeal, tear down, and replace. I don’t believe for a second ObamaCare will be repealed and putting our eggs in that basket is dangerous and negligent. Then there is the lawsuits challenging the individual mandate. Forget for a moment the absence of any real enforcement mechanism for the insurance mandate. Many scholars believe the mandate will not be struck down by the Supreme Court. As the entire history of the Supreme Court since the days of the Marshall Court is a history lesson in how the federal powers absconded with the rights of the states and the people through judicial activism and negligence, I would not be surprised. But I will cede ground and assume that it will be struck down. What occurs then? What are we left with? ObamaCare absent the mandate is a recipe for either single-payer socialized medicine of government backed insurance cartels (fascist medicine). If the mandate cannot be collected, then by default taxes will need to be raised. As it will take years for this case to make it to the Supreme Court, the arguments in the previous paragraph still hold. Strike the mandate with Republicans in control and watch the GOP bailout a few large insurance companies creating a cartel-like environment where insurance companies now make your medical decisions for you with the backing of the government. Great system. As for those who think taking back the party and changing it from within is the panacea to our problems, I can only point to the above information from Mr. Boldin and Dr. Larry Hunter. There is not point of reference to indicate this approach possesses any efficacy whatsoever. As indicated above, the evidence is quite to the contrary. There is also this to consider: Further evidence of Federal lucre and its consequences can be found in many aspects of welfare programs enacted in past century and the beginning of this century: As of 2003, Medicare we underfunded to the tune of $27 trillion, four times the national debt at that time. This funding crisis was in terms of future obligations versus projected tax receipts. No wonder a Value Added Tax is now being discussed. Chris Edwards and Tad DeHaven found in 2003 that an average male that reached age 65 will receive $71,000 more in benefits from Social Security and Medicare that he had put in. Contrast that with the average twenty-five year old male expected to pay $322,000 more in taxes that he would ever receive. Prior to Medicaid, doctors provided services to the poor for free or at reduced rates. Prior to Medicaid poor families had higher hospital admission rates than those in wealthier brackets and both were almost on par with each other concerning the number of doctor visits per year. Medicaid ended that and resulted in a massive decline in reduced-cost and free services to the poor as the government’s payments for medical care for the poor now compensated doctors and hospitals for services once rendered at reduced rates or pro bono. Medicare and Medicaid basically transferred income from the middle-class taxpayer to middle-class health-care workers and the sudden stimulation of demand played a large role in raising the cost of healthcare. The free-market, effectively chocked off by government regulation and welfare services, was unable to work to lower cost and increase consumption by allowing for natural market competition mechanisms. A study in 1960 by Charles Murray concluded the Great Society lead to stagnation for the poor. Budget cuts are a myth. Even during President Ronald Reagan’s tenure the rate of increase in government spending slowed but continued its upward trend. While defense spending played a large role, non-defense spending was 17.5% of GDP in 1985 compared to 10.1% in 1965. In the aggregate there was neither tax nor budget cuts during the Reagan era. Spending grew faster than taxing, but both lines continued to grow. While some welfare spending was cut slightly, some spending increased by as much as 18% from 1981 to 1989. Of even greater surprise is that even though Reagan reduced the top marginal tax rate from 70% to 28%, taxes overall actually increased in the decade of the 80s, with some increases negating and then offsetting the reductions of 1981. Social Security taxes in the early 80s were among the largest in U.S. history. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 increased taxes by closing loopholes and eliminating some tax credits. Federal taxes averaged 18.9% of GNP during the 80s, compared with 18.3 for the 70s and 18.2 for the 60s. Even under Reagan, federal government grew. One of the greatest twists on logic in DC is the idea of cuts. Under President Clinton’s seven year budget proposal the President called for a $500 billion dollar increase in federal spending while Republicans called for a $350 billion dollar increase. I can look at that sentence all day and I still do not see the work cut. There is no reduction in federal spending by either Clinton or the Republicans. Yet the liberal press was able to tout the tired old line of Republican cuts and tie them to popular federal programs, leading 47% of Americans to believe Republican cuts too deep. Again, what cuts? When Speaker Newt Gingrich proposed a 6% annual growth in Medicare spending and Clinton a 7.5% growth, the liberal press and political commentators went apoplectic over the proposed cuts to the Medicare program proposed by Speaker Gingrich. Both parties are guilty of this political double speak, redefining the meaning of the word cut to mean a reduction in how fast the government grows. All of our current solutions are nothing less than men gathered around a campfire screaming into the night to scare away the predators. Lawsuits, repeal, changing the party from within – all take time, none are guaranteed or even likely to make a difference either to ObamaCare or the issue of federal lucre symptomatic of a practically supreme centralized government that should not even possess these powers to begin with. The real change needed is the use of education and information. For example, did you know the final arbiter of the constitution is not the Supreme Court, cut the states? Did you know that nullification has been successfully used by the states to stop a federal law at the boundaries of that state? Do you know what nullification is? Back to Mr. Boldin from the TAC, who continues (emphasis mine): Question – What do we do about it? Jefferson and Madison gave us the answer. In response to the unconstitutional attacks on liberty that were the Alien and Sedition Acts, they secretly authored the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798. Here are a few excerpts that really define exactly how things are supposed to work when two or more branches of the federal government conspire against the constitution and your liberty. the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force. where powers are assumed [by the federal government] which have not been delegated [by the Constitution], a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy So while it might be important to call, petition, demand, march, sue and vote bums out, because they’re all bums, there’s much more we’re supposed to do. When the federal government violates your rights, you’re not supposed to wait four years for new politicians in the hope that they’ll fix it. You’re not supposed to wait two, or four, or more years for some black-robed judge to pronounce that they’ve violated your rights. You are supposed to resist those violations of your liberty as they happen – and it is your state’s solemn duty to do the same. Mr. Boldin then provides information on nullification resolutions and laws within the states: Already a dozen states have passed 10th amendment resolutions reaffirming the Constitution as the founders and ratifiers gave us. 25 states have passed laws and resolutions nullifying the Real ID act – stopping it dead in its tracks in most of the country. 7 states have passed Firearms Freedom Acts – nullifying some federal gun laws and regulations in their states. 14 states have now passed laws nullifying unconstitutional federal laws on marijuana 3 states have already passed Health Care Freedom Acts to ban federal health care mandates in their states. Other states are considering nullification laws on cap and trade, the misuse of state national guard troops, monetary policy and much more. However, even nullification has its own issues as it also relies on state politicians to rescue us from the federal government and re-instate our rightful position as the real power brokers within our states. Probably one of the most accurate truisms concerning politicians was made by President Reagan: It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first. From Shane Musgrove writing at the TAC: Are the States and their representatives any better? My assumption is that some, if not many, fall into the same political traps, yet not so deeply nor to the same extremity. I believe with great hope along with many others that there are representatives at the State level who do take these matters as genuinely concerning and view it as their responsibility to protect their citizens from what we can now define as “federal lawlessness.” I commend you on your courage, will, integrity, and your strength. Now, as Linscott said, “You cannot expect the problem to fix the problem,” referring to the federal government, so we emphatically hope that these problems will be answered at the State level. So, the answer to the perplexing philosophical statement is none other than the States, their representatives, and the people that vote them into office. Therefore, what follows is in essence, “A Call from ‘We the People’ to All State Representatives.” As a preface, it is a responsibility of the States to assert their rights, specifically in times such as these. It is absolutely necessary to recognize that responsibility and accountability exists among State representatives rather than open-ended, unmoving opinions based on political philosophy and liberal views of the Constitution. To the best of my knowledge, an oath is taken in all States in some form of an edict to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States and of this State.” In addition, it should be noted that this call for responsibility is void of any form of violence or sedition, lest the leftist accusations of “inciting violence” and “hate” come forth with great force. Therefore, let it be said: For legislators who are weakly or mildly concerned with these problems and see your duty as a representative half heartedly, resign. For governors who do not have the courage to stand and fight for State rights in accordance with the following words from James Madison, resign. Strong words, but are they enough? Looking at the list of states with non-binding resolutions vs. the list of states we need to actually nullify via law not only ObamaCare but any other attempt at federal over-reach before this country falls off the financial cliff, I am not convinced. That is why it is incumbent upon us to initiate a program of massive non-violent passive-aggressive resistance in the spirit of Gandhi and Martin Luther King. As Gandhi once said: 40,000 British troops cannot force 300 million Indians to do what they will not do. This is true of our situation as well – a few elites in Washington can not make a majority of American’s accept something they are unwilling to endure. Shortly after the War of Independence, our founders looked for the source of the problem that allowed tyranny to fester and thrive, a tyranny so abusive the only way to abolish it was to remove it by force. Wisely, they recognized the sovereignty of Britain lay in the hands of a few, concentrated in the Parliament itself. As they set about creating a new form of governance, our forefathers rejected the very idea of a strong central sovereignty, the United States of America was to be a Union of sovereign states, and the role of the federal government limited by definition. Despite liberal revisionism, the fact remains the Constitution was not ratified by national referendum, but by individual conventions in each state. This fact is indisputable and definitively makes the case that the Uniting of the States was not intended to be a under a strong federal power, but rather that of thirteen sovereign states under a limited federal government. Since its ratification, our Constitution, under constant assault by activist judges, corrupted legislators and Presidents, is now turned on its head. Thomas Jefferson noted that: The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. The very nature of man is corrupt and today, after more than two centuries of the corruption of power we find a small island off the coast of France replaced by a city called Washington DC. This state of affairs cannot be allowed to stand. At risk is the future of this country and its people. Our goal is to educate and the taking back of this country through non-violent civil disobedience and the constitutionally sound tool of nullification. Over time I will outline the tactics and continue to define the philosophy of this approach. Never will we rely on the assistance of those whose stake in this fight is the loss of the addictive and corruptive power gained at our expense. One may as well attempt to force a crack addict to part with their beloved drug. Until the Statists are utterly destroyed under the weight of truth and knowledge this Republic is in danger of utter ruin. If is only through self-power that we can win this fight. This is the hill we live or die on. Cross-posted at the Wolves of LibertyDe poem), drawn by Giuseppe Casanova, ca. 1807 Herculaneum papyrus 1425 (), drawn by Giuseppe Casanova, ca. 1807 The Herculaneum papyri are more than 1,800 papyri found in the Herculaneum Villa of the Papyri
sensitivity to CO2 is too large. Further, 20 years is approaching the length of the warming period from 1976-2000 that is the main smoking gun for AGW. This has led skeptics – and some scientists –... Rather scary that Nature does not seem to acknowledge that skepticism is one of the norms of science, and regards ‘skeptics’ and ‘scientists’ are mutually exclusive groups. “If you are interested in global climate change, your main focus ought to be on timescales of 50 to 100 years,” says Susan Solomon, a climate scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. JC comment: People are interested in climate change on all sorts of time scales, including decadal. Solomon should have stated that if you are interested in the climate response to a long-term secular buildup of greenhouse gases, then your main focus should be timescales of 50-100 years. I agree with this. And if you look at the last 100 years, you have that other inconvenient pause to explain: 1940-1975. With the reduction in sensitivity to aerosol forcing, the aerosol explanation for this earlier pause no longer holds up. Stadium wave dynamics can explain both the 1940-1975 and the current hiatus; a further inference is that warming of 1976-2000 was enhanced by natural climate variability. This variation in ocean temperature, known as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), may be a crucial piece of the hiatus puzzle. JC comment: I certainly agree that the PDO is probably a crucial piece of the puzzle, but one of the quickest ways to get labeled as a ‘denier’ has been to argue that the PDO in its warm phase contributed to the 1976-2000 warming. “You can’t keep piling up warm water in the western Pacific,” Trenberth says. “At some point, the water will get so high that it just sloshes back.” And when that happens, if scientists are on the right track, the missing heat will reappear and temperatures will spike once again. JC comment: Well that is an interesting ‘forecast.’ If this is natural internal variability, e.g. the stadium wave (which includes the PDO), then you would expect warming to resume at some point (I’ve argued this might be in the 2030’s). This would make the hiatus 30+ years (similar in length to the pevious hiatus from 1940 to 1975). This is long enough to invalidate the utility of the current climate models for projecting future climate change. And about the missing heat reappearing, well stay tuned for my next post on ocean heat content. Other blog posts Here are two relevant blog posts worth looking at. Bob Tisdale has a post at WUWT discussing the Nature article that focuses on the PDO. Fabius Maximus has an extensive article Scientists explore causes of the pause in global warming, perhaps the most important research of the decade, which includes a survey of some recent papers. Public Opinion Chris Mooney has an article in Mother Jones entitled Global-Warming Denial Hits a 6-Year High. Excerpts: The obvious question is, what happened over the last year to produce more climate denial? According to both Anthony Leiserowitz of Yale and Ed Maibach of George Mason, the leaders of the two research teams, the answer may well lie in the so-called global warming “pause”—the misleading idea that global warming has slowed down or stopped over the the past 15 years or so. This claim was used by climate skeptics, to great effect, in their quest to undermine the release of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assessment Report in September 2013—precisely during the time period that is in question in the latest study. As Maibach’s colleague Anthony Leiserowitz of Yale adds, it isn’t as though those who were already convinced about global warming became less sure of themselves over the last year. Rather, the change of views “really seems to be happening among the ‘don’t knows,'” says Leiserowitz. “Those are the people who aren’t paying attention, and don’t know much about the issue. So they’re the most open-minded, and the most swayable based on recent events.” Journalists take heed: Your coverage has consequences. All those media outlets whotrumpeted the global warming “pause” may now be partly responsible for a documented decrease in Americans’ scientific understanding. Well, if the scientists don’t understand the cause of the pause, and the public is aware of the pause, then exactly what are we to conclude about the public understanding of climate change? Maybe that the public is not sufficiently ‘sophisticated’ to believe climate model projections that are running much warmer than observations for the past decade?Church in Rome, Italy The Papal Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls (Italian: Basilica Papale di San Paolo fuori le Mura), commonly known as St. Paul's Outside the Walls, is one of Rome's four ancient, papal, major basilicas,[a] along with the basilicas of St. John in the Lateran, St. Peter's, and St. Mary Major. The basilica is within Italian territory and not the territory of the Vatican City State,[1] but the Holy See owns the Basilica, and Italy is legally obligated to recognize its full ownership[2] and to concede to it "the immunity granted by International Law to the headquarters of the diplomatic agents of foreign States".[3] James Michael Harvey was named Archpriest of the basilica in 2012. History [ edit ] The basilica was founded by the Roman Emperor Constantine I over the burial place of St. Paul, where it was said that, after the Apostle's execution, his followers erected a memorial, called a cella memoriae. This first basilica was consecrated by Pope Sylvester in 324.[4] In 386, Emperor Theodosius I began erecting a much larger and more beautiful basilica with a nave and four aisles with a transept. It was probably consecrated around 402 by Pope Innocent I. The work, including the mosaics, was not completed until Leo I's pontificate (440–461). In the 5th century it was larger than the Old St. Peter's Basilica. The Christian poet Prudentius, who saw it at the time of emperor Honorius (395–423), describes the splendours of the monument in a few expressive lines. Under Leo I, extensive repair work was carried out following the collapse of the roof on account of fire or lightening. In particular, the transept (i.e. the area around Paul's tomb) was elevated and a new main altar and presbytery installed. This was probably the first time that an altar was placed over the tomb of St. Paul, which remained untouched, but largely underground given Leo's newly elevated floor levels. Leo was also responsible for fixing the triumphal arch and for restoring a fountain in the courtyard (atrium). Under Pope St. Gregory the Great (590–604) the main altar and presbytery were extensively modified. The pavement in the transept was raised and a new altar was placed above the earlier altar erected by Leo I. The position was directly over St. Paul's sarcophagus. In that period there were two monasteries near the basilica: St. Aristus's for men and St. Stefano's for women. Masses were celebrated by a special body of clerics instituted by Pope Simplicius. Over time the monasteries and the basilica's clergy declined; Pope St. Gregory II restored the former and entrusted the monks with the basilica's care. As it lay outside the Aurelian Walls, the basilica was damaged in the 9th century during a Saracen raid. Consequently, Pope John VIII (872–82) fortified the basilica, the monastery, and the dwellings of the peasantry,[5] forming the town of Johannispolis (Italian: Giovannipoli) which existed until 1348, when an earthquake totally destroyed it. In 937, when Saint Odo of Cluny came to Rome, Alberic II of Spoleto, Patrician of Rome, entrusted the monastery and basilica to his congregation and Odo placed Balduino of Monte Cassino in charge. Pope Gregory VII was abbot of the monastery and in his time Pantaleone, a rich merchant of Amalfi who lived in Constantinople, presented the bronze doors of the basilica maior, which were executed by Constantinopolitan artists; the doors are inscribed with Pantaleone's prayer that the "doors of life" may be opened to him.[6] Pope Martin V entrusted it to the monks of the Congregation of Monte Cassino. It was then made an abbey nullius. The abbot's jurisdiction extended over the districts of Civitella San Paolo, Leprignano, and Nazzano, all of which formed parishes. San Paolo fuori le mura Cloister of the monastery of The graceful cloister of the monastery was erected between 1220 and 1241. From 1215 until 1964 it was the seat of the Latin Patriarch of Alexandria. On 15 July 1823, a workman repairing the lead of the roof started a fire that led to the near total destruction of this basilica, which, alone among all the churches of Rome, had preserved much of its original character for 1435 years.[4] Pope Leo XII issued a document Ad plurimas encouraging donations for reconstruction. It was re-opened in 1840, and reconsecrated in 1855 in the presence of Pope Pius IX and fifty cardinals. The basilica was reconstructed identically to what it had been before, utilizing all the elements which had survived the fire.[4] The complete decoration and reconstruction, in charge of Luigi Poletti,[7] took longer, however, and many countries made their contributions. Muhammad Ali Pasha, Viceroy of Egypt sent pillars of alabaster, the Emperor of Russia the precious malachite and lapis lazuli of the tabernacle. The work on the principal façade, looking toward the Tiber, was completed by the Italian Government, which declared the church a national monument. On 23 April 1891 the explosion of the gunpowder magazine at Forte Portuense destroyed the stained glass windows. On 31 May 2005 Pope Benedict XVI ordered the basilica to come under the control of an archpriest and he named Archbishop Andrea Cordero Lanza di Montezemolo as its first archpriest. Architecture and interior [ edit ] The Holy Door The covered portico (or narthex) that precedes the façade is a Neo-classicist addition of the 19th-century reconstruction. On the right is the Holy Door, which is opened only during the Jubilees. The new basilica has maintained the original structure with one nave and four side aisles. It is 131.66 metres (432.0 ft) long, 65 metres (213 ft)-wide, and 29.70 metres (97.4 ft)-high, the second largest in Rome. The nave's 80 columns and its wood and stucco-decorated ceiling are from the 19th century. All that remains of the ancient basilica are the interior portion of the apse with the triumphal arch. The mosaics of the apse were greatly damaged in the 1823 fire; only a few traces were incorporated in the restoration. The 5th-century mosaics of the triumphal arch are original (but also heavily reworked): an inscription in the lower section attest they were done at the time of Leo I, paid by Galla Placidia. The subject portrays the Apocalypse of John, with the bust of Christ in the middle flanked by the 24 Doctors of the Church, surmounted by the flying symbols of the four Evangelists. St. Peter and St. Paul are portrayed at the right and left of the arch, the latter pointing downwards (probably to his tomb). From the inside, the windows may appear to be stained glass, but they are actually translucent alabaster.[8] The tabernacle of the confession of Arnolfo di Cambio (1285) belongs to the 13th century. In the old basilica each pope had his portrait in a painted frieze extending above the columns separating the aisles from the nave. A 19th-century mosaic version can be seen now. The nave's interior walls were also redecorated with painted scenes from Saint Paul's life placed between the windows of the clerestory. South of the transept is the cloister, considered "one of the most beautiful of the Middle Ages".[9] Built by Vassalletto in 1205-1241, it has double columns of different shapes. Some columns have inlays with golden and colored-glass mosaics; the same decoration can be seen on the architrave and the inner frame of the cloister. Also visible are fragments from the destroyed basilica and ancient sarcophagi, one with scenes of the myth of Apollo. Tomb of St. Paul [ edit ] Plan of the basilica According to tradition, St. Paul's body was buried two miles away from the place of his martyrdom, in the sepulchral area along the Ostiense Way, which was owned by a Christian woman named Lucina. A tropaeum was erected on it and quickly became a place of veneration.[b] Constantine I erected a basilica on the tropaeum's site, and the basilica was significantly extended by Theodosius I from 386, into what is now known as Saint Paul Outside the Walls. During the 4th century, Paul's remains, excluding the head, were moved into a sarcophagus. (According to church tradition the head rests at the Lateran.) Paul's tomb is below a marble tombstone in the basilica's crypt, at 1.37 metres (4.5 ft) below the altar. The tombstone bears the Latin inscription PAULO APOSTOLO MART ("to Paul the apostle and martyr"). The inscribed portion of the tombstone has three holes, two square and one circular.[10] The circular hole is connected to the tomb by a pipeline, reflecting the Roman custom of pouring perfumes inside the sarcophagus, or to the practice of providing the bones of the dead with libations. The sarcophagus below the tombstone measures 2.55 metres (8.4 ft) long, 1.25 metres (4.1 ft) wide and 0.97 metres (3.2 ft) high. Front of the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls The discovery of the sarcophagus is mentioned in the chronicle of the Benedictine monastery attached to the basilica, in regard to the 19th century rebuilding. Unlike other sarcophagi found at that time, this was not mentioned in the excavation papers.[11] On 6 December 2006, it was announced that Vatican archaeologists had confirmed the presence of a white marble sarcophagus beneath the altar, perhaps containing the remains of the Apostle.[12][13] A press conference held on 11 December 2006[14] gave more details of the work of excavation, which lasted from 2002 to 22 September 2006, and which had been initiated after pilgrims to the basilica expressed disappointment that the Apostle's tomb could not be visited or touched during the Jubilee year of 2000.[15] The sarcophagus was not extracted from its position, so that only one of its two longer sides is visible.[16] A curved line of bricks indicating the outline of the apse of the Constantinian basilica was discovered immediately to the west of the sarcophagus, showing that the original basilica had its entrance to the east, like Saint Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. The larger 386 basilica that replaced it had the Via Ostiense (the road to Ostia) to the east and so was extended westward, towards the river Tiber, changing the orientation diametrically. Abbots [ edit ] Colonnade of Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls The complex includes an ancient Benedictine Abbey, restored by Odo of Cluny in 936. Archpriests [ edit ] Other burials [ edit ] Gallery [ edit ] Saint Paul Outside the Walls Interior of the church Apse mosaic (1220). Christ flanked by the Apostles Peter, Paul, and Andrew and St. Luke Detail of the apse mosaic: Pope Honorius III, who commissioned it. See also [ edit ] Notes [ edit ] References [ edit ]2017 was not a good year for many things, but it was a good year for TV. Peak TV kept us sane in a completely insane time and hopefully it'll do the same in 2018. For now, let's look back at the 17 best episodes of 2017 and how they reflected, resisted, or blissfully ignored the hellscape of reality. SEE ALSO: 20 pop culture duos that warmed our souls and broke our hearts in 2017 1. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, "Josh's Ex-Girlfriend is Crazy!" It doesn't score high with feel-good vibes or carefree musical numbers, but Crazy Ex-Girlfriend fully embraced a dark plummet after Rebecca's friends find out her history with Robert and she tells Josh the truth. Rebecca hits rock bottom and hits it hard; she says horrible things to her closest friends in West Covina and ends up sleeping with the absolute last person on earth she should sleep with. 2. The Good Place, "The Trolley Problem" After a stunningly twisted Season 1 finale (which made Mashable's best episodes list six months into the year), The Good Place embraced its extraordinary premise by diving headfirst into it with Season 2. We get more Janet, more of the weird rules of Michael's world, and more ethics, made remarkably digestible by impeccable writing and the charm of Chidi. "The Trolley Problem" is probably being shown in classrooms around the country now (if it's not...what are you doing) to illustrate the ethical conundrum of utilitarianism: Why save one life when you could save five? Oh...that's why. 3. This Is Us, "Number Three" It didn't take long for the This Is Us team to realize that Sterling K. Brown as Randall Pearson is the show's not-so-secret weapon. He was at the center of Season 1 standout "Memphis" (an honorary mention on this list) and therefore the final installment of a trilogy of episodes each focused on one of the triplets. As he struggles to lose Deja (Lyric Ross), Randall reflects on his relationship with his adoptive and biological fathers, including a devastating Sliding Doors-esque sequence in which he and William imagine being in each other's lives for longer. 4. Master of None, "Thanksgiving" Master of None Season 2 premiered in May, but made its mark on the later half of the year with an Emmy win for Aziz Ansari and Lena Waithe. Waithe is the first African American woman ever to win a writing Emmy, and the episode – a largely personal character study for Denise that drew from Waithe's own experience – is a deeply moving portrait of friendship, family, and identity. Even if the show never comes back, we're thankful for this episode. 5. Better Call Saul, “Chicanery” The lower Jimmy sinks, the higher Better Call Saul seems to soar. Never has that been more apparent than in “Chicanery,” the devastating centerpiece of Season 3. As the brothers’ feud comes to a head in the courtroom, Michael McKean delivers an explosive monologue that makes for two of the most riveting minutes of television this year – and Bob Odenkirk matches that intensity with quiet devastation that lets you know just how much this “victory” has cost Jimmy. -Angie Han 6. black-ish, "Lemons" One of the toughests tasks since the 2016 election has been bridging the gap between voters on either side. black-ish did this brilliantly with its first season of 2017 (tied to the inauguration), giving its characters a wealth of views and reasons for voting the way they did and a common goal, as Americans, to make this work – to make lemonade, even from the sourest lemons. 7. The Last Man on Earth, "Got Milk?" In 2017, The Last Man on Earth faced a threat of nuclear winter, stranded our survivors on an island, and currently has them unknowingly in the vicinity of an unidentified explosive in Mexico. But the show set the bar with its first episode of the year, a special episode following Pamela (Kristen Wiig) from the first days of the virus. Pamela loses her husband, her friends, her enemy (Laura Dern, who should be in everything), before finally catching up with Tandy and the rest of the gang. 8. Alias Grace, "Chapter 6" Grace undergoes hypnosis as a last measure to prove her innocence – a measure mostly imposed by the men who are in love with her, A.K.A. Dr. Jordan and Jeremiah. The procedure reveals that Grace is grappling with multiple identities, one of which sounds an awful lot like the earthbound soul of her dead friend Mary Whitney. So that's cool!! Sarah Gadon – the show's shining light – gives a spine-tingling performance during Grace's confession. Alias Grace was a bit of a slow burn, but that finale is a scorcher. 9. Dear White People, "Chapter V" In the first several episodes, Dear White People established itself as intelligent, nuanced, and sharply funny. In episode 5, it added a layer of grim reality. Even on the fictional island that is Winchester University, we've seen racial tension build, and when Reggie can't stand his friend singing the n-word at a party, quick escalation leads to campus security pointing a gun at him. The incident shakes every character and completely alters Reggie's arc moving forward. 10. Black Mirror, "U.S.S. Callister" Premiering Dec. 29 – so we'll keep this spoiler-free – "U.S.S. Callister" packs together a Star Trek spoof, a revenge story, and an actual space adventure with a true Black Mirror twist about ethics and technology. It gives us a surprisingly nuanced performance from Jimmi Simpson, a dramatic leading role for Cristin Milioti, and Jesse Plemons as the enigmatic Callister captain who has more than a few secrets. 11. American Vandal, "Hard Facts: Vandalism and Vulgarity" The show no one needed or asked for but for which we could not be more grateful opened by establishing the world of Hanover High School which had been rocked by a mysterious crime. Dylan Maxwell was expelled for spray-painting 27 penises on faculty cars, but there are holes in his story, in the witnesses, and in many more as two intrepid documentarians dive deeper into the events. Vandal's first episode showed us exactly how committed this show was to its premise and its farce, and even then nothing could have prepared us for that finale. 12. Broad City, "Witches" Abbi finds a gray hair and panics immediately about getting old, a fear barely assuaged when she has a lot in common with an elderly woman selling art outside the Met. Meanwhile, Ilana goes to see a specialist about her difficult relationship with sex since the 2016 election. Both girls overcome their difficulties because guess what? They're witches – we all are! 13. The Handmaid's Tale, "Faithful" Offred hits her lowest point in this episode when she's asked to have sex with Nick in order to bear a child for the Waterfords...only it's not much of a choice. Flashbacks reveal the start of her relationship with Luke and their innate physical chemistry – a chemistry Offred redirects toward her stirring feelings for Nick when she visits his bedchamber at night to do things right. 14. Great News, "Honeypot" The eerily timed sexual harassment episode of Tracey Wigfield's local news comedy stars Tina Fey as Diana St. Tropez, a powerful executive preying on the employees of MMN. Katie is crushed to learn this about her mentor, but finds out that Diana was only acting out to get a big payout, like Bill O'Reilly or Roger Ailes. "Maybe someday...we'll live in a world where a woman can be a creep, and go home with a huge golden parachute," Diana says. Sigh. Someday. 15. The Leftovers, "The Book of Nora" The Leftovers may have ended, but its fan base (critics) will never stop singing its praise. The final episode played to one of the show's greatest strengths: the tragically not-Emmy-nominated Carrie Coon as Nora Durst. Nora lost the most in the Departure, and it haunted her even as she built a new life with Kevin and eventually pushed him away. In a show about loss and grieving, we saw this character isolate herself from the living, but finally (hopefully) find her way back for good. 16. Rick and Morty, "Pickle Rick" Long before Season 3 released, "Pickle Rick" was the conductor of the Rick and Morty hype train. Somehow, the episode managed to surprise, disappoint, and yet go above and beyond expectations. Viewers expecting Pickle Rick to be another wacky sci-fi premise like the Tiny Rick of Season 2 got, well, a lot more than they bargained for. The episode was so divisive, in fact, that it began a fandom civil war; but as co-creator Dan Harmon’s favorite episode, "Pickle Rick" signaled a new era of maturity for Rick and Morty. It was still the crass, nihilistic, intelligent, savage show it’d always been, but its honesty about the nature of family, mental health, and trauma introduced a whole new level of brutality. -Jess Joho 17. Nathan for You, "Finding Frances" You never go into an episode of Nathan For You expecting "normal" television, but the two hour-long season finale was a journey into the cringe-worthy unlike any other. To summarize poorly, comedian Nathan Fielder forgoes his schtick of “helping” small businesses to instead help the (subpar at best) Bill Gates impersonator from a previous season reunite with a lost love. Somewhere along the way, he initiates a relationship with a sex worker — and if you’re uncomfortable already, you’re onto something. In an episode that will make you question the definitions of love, honesty, and the fabric of reality, Fielder brings his entire high-brow, dead-pan comedy experiment to a close. We just dare you to get through the whole thing without screaming. -Jess JohoWhile same-sex marriage, according to him, is not Pope Francis has reaffirmed his stance on ‘traditional’ marriage, saying a man and woman married is the ‘masterpiece of society’. In what is being taken by some as a plea for the US Supreme Court to reject same-sex marriage, the head of the Catholic Church reiterated his view that he believes straight people are the only ones that should marry. ‘Jesus teaches us that the masterpiece of society is the family: the man and the woman who love each other,’ he said in his public speech today (30 April). While he made no reference to the US, Francis said: ‘In many countries, the number of separations is increasing, while the number of children is in decline.’ ‘Christians do not marry only for themselves,’ the pope added. ‘They marry in the lord in favor of all the community, of society as a whole.’ Pope Francis is widely seen as taking a far less judgemental position on homosexuality than his predecessor Benedict XVI, who considered gay people a ‘defection of human nature.’ But the leader of the Catholic Church is still opposed to gay marriage and adoption, and famously earlier this year compared trans people to nuclear weapons.The Tom Vasal Preview! Yay! UPDATED & IMPROVED Stretch Goals! http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1893407396/the-new-science/posts/322934 Customer praise for our previous game! "Quickly becoming one of my favorite games." "The fact of the matter is that I love this game." "I'm dazzled by the combos." "Incredibly well done." "Thanks for the A+ Customer Service" "The quality of the box, the board and the pieces exceeded my expectations!" The game box and all art from the talented Heiko Guenther. WILL YOU PROVE TO BE THE GREATEST MIND IN HISTORY? The New Science gives you control of one of five legendary geniuses from the scientific revolution in a race to research, successfully experiment on, and finally publish some of the critical early advances that shaped modern science. This fun, fast, easy-to-learn worker placement game for 2-5 players is ideal for casual and serious gamers alike. The rules are easy to learn and teach, but the many layers of shifting strategy make each game a new challenge that tests your mind and gets your competitive juices flowing. Each scientist has their own unique strengths and weaknesses. No two scientists play the same way, so each time you try someone new it provides a different and satisfying play experience. Your scientist's mat also serves as a player aid, repeating all of the key technology information from the game board for your easy reference. You control one of: Sir Isaac Newton, arguably the greatest scientist in history. Galileo Galilei, who first dubbed the scientific revolution "The New Science". Johannes Kepler, who built off Tycho Brahe's immaculate research to accelerate this new science. Gottfried Leibniz, the towering 17th century intellectual popularly remembered for his role in the calculus dispute. Athanasius Kircher, the superstar scientist of his era who published voluminously but many of his thought-provoking claims were later proven to be wrong. Actions, Discoveries and Tracks: oh my! Each turn you have three precious energy that allows you to spend your time in one of six ways: Here are all the actions players may take. RESEARCH - begin learning about a new potential discovery EXPERIMENT - a chance to successfully experiment on your ideas PUBLISH - publish your discovery for the world to wonder at INFLUENCE - to succeed as a scientist you must network with the right people: spend time schmoozing with government officials, religious gatekeepers, businessmen and inventors, as well as other scientists HAPPENINGS - each turn there are random happenings, some of which you can take advantage of. Some are other great minds like Rene Descartes and Robert Hooke; others are tools or apprentices for your workshop; still others are intrigue such as rivalries among the scientists Similar to the cards in Agricola, the Happenings make every game spicy and different. REST - this gives you bonus strength to use in future actions, and moves you up in the turn order You place your energy one-at-a-time, in-turn, then quickly resolve all of your actions and start over again. The focus of the game is the five level discovery tree in the middle of the board, containing 26 different important advances in the fields of Mathematics, Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry and Biology. Making your way up the discovery tree is a balance of guile and panache. In order to advance up the discovery tree you must have knowledge of the preceding, pre-requisite discoveries. This requires first researching, then successfully experimenting upon that discovery. Then you are faced with a decision: either start researching higher level discoveries, or publish the lower discovery you already have knowledge of. Here is the dilemma: the way you get most of your prestige - required to win the game - is by publishing. But once you publish, all players share your knowledge of that discovery. That means they can start climbing higher up the discovery tree, too. Smartly deciding when to publish and when to keep climbing is at the heart of the interesting decisions you have in The New Science. You can download the rules in PDF format from Boardgamegeek at this link. Beautiful box and insert Large mounted game board 5 scientist mats 54 happening cards 50 wood discovery markers 35 wood track markers 15 wood energy markers Six-sided die Eight page rulebook 6 plastic zip bags to neatly hold all components And we absolutely will be Kicking It Forward http://kickingitforward.org. Special thanks to Jason McMaster for doing the videos! https://twitter.com/mcmaster AS SEEN AT Springboard Seal of Quality The Springboard Seal of Quality is your assurance that a new game project is worth your time and attention. All titles approved for Springboard campaigns are vetted by the game professionals at Game Salute. During this comprehensive evaluation process, Game Salute works with the publisher to ensure solid designs, thorough play testing, excellent presentation, and high quality components. figureThe sad but true answer is good marketing. Here is the story.In the late 90s, PBR was doing poorly. Really poorly. They were shutting down its breweries, selling their formula to Miller, and in 2001, they would sell only a million barrels, its lowest in dozens of years, and 90% below its peak in the mid 70s. They believed that their demographic was the 40 to 60 year olds, who were the ones who loved PBR during its peak. But boy oh boy were they wrong.Around 2001, there were a couple of interesting things that popped up. Kid Rock wore a PBR belt buckle, and some top snowboarders in Utah adopted PBR as their drink of choice. Most likely these were intentionally ironic actions, but these days, who knows? Also, people in Portland were drinking it too. This was all brought to the notice of a newly hired marketer named, who was only 27 at the time, and soon rose to be the brand marketing manager.So he went around the bars in Portland and he started handing out PBR schwag. He wouldn't be dressed PBR, and he would never overtly advertise. He'd just sit there, and people would come up to him and ask for the stuff that most other beer companies could never force on people. The people liked PBR because it was scarce, cheap, and plagued with persistent rumors of imminent bankruptcy. Neal saw this, and decided to cash in on it. Under him, PBR's marketing was to do as little as possible. When Kid Rock came around to ask for an endorsement they told him to shove it, and made it public. When the Pro snowboarders offered for PBR to endorse their competitions, PBR did nothing, but they made sure people knew they were doing nothing with the big guys.Instead, who they sponsored were the Portland hipsters. They sponsored skateboarding meets, art galleries, independent publishers, and they did it in such a way as to not appear corporate. And with every little event they sponsored, they built their network, they built brand loyalty among subcultures that hate corporations, hate marketing, and were previously thought immune to such tactics. Having Kid Rock endorse them would have cost 500k, hiring 10 reps per city to go convince small bars and neighborhood institutions to carry PBR cost the same and was much more effective. In 2003, at the peak of these marketing campaigns, half of PBR's whole workforce was involved in these marketing efforts, and in the end, it was such grass roots marketing that got PBR firmly established as the hipster beer of choice.More info can be found atorPamela McCreary is an award-winning author, actor, television producer and keynote speaker. Professionally, Pamela has run the gamut of experience: acting (over 100 television and radio commercials), writing (award-winning author of Out of the Shadows), Managing Editor of Denver's Life Magazine, and producer of the award-winning Three Perfect Days series for United Airlines. Her memoir, Dancing On The Head Of A Pin, has just been released by Ghost Road Press: In this inspiring memoir, Pamela McCreary recounts with refreshing honesty her life inside the somewhat secret world of Mormonism. Raped at nineteen, she was certain it was her punishment for disobedience, and so attempted to design a righteous, and thereby, safe life. Married at the age of twenty-one in the Mormon Temple in Washington D.C., McCreary embarks on a life of motherhood and homemaking. Hoping to find security and fulfillment, she turns her back on the over-riding passion of her life. In the process, she loses herself, her religion, and the love she desires above all. McCreary's journey of reclamation, reconciliation, and faith is both poignant and funny - and a testament to the healing power of love. This is a story for anyone who has ever lost hope and heart, and Pamela tells the truth, all the truth, and nothing but the truth about her "one-step forward, one-step back" journey away from the Mormon church and toward her real self. Through it all, she learned how to fight those old victim feelings that are familiar to so many of us. She will share strategies and practices for reclaiming your power and stepping to your authentic life.Matthew Stafford (Photo: Daniel Mears, Detroit News) The Lions are ranked No. 19 on ESPN’s annual NFL Future Power Rankings (pay site). The rankings are a forecast of success for the next three seasons, including 2016. ESPN’s Louis Riddick, Mike Sando and Field Yates graded every NFL team from 0-100 on five categories, which were weighted according to the following percentages: Roster (excluding quarterback) – 30 percent Quarterback – 20 percent Draft – 15 percent Front office – 15 percent Coaching – 20 percent The Lions earned an overall score of 65.7. Their highest score was quarterback (Matthew Stafford) at 73.3. The lowest was the draft at 62.3. “While it feels like Matthew Stafford has been in the league for a long time, he is still just 28 years old,” Yates wrote. “At times inconsistent, Stafford possesses immense arm talent and had his most efficient NFL season in 2015 (67.2 completion rate, 32 TDs, 13 INTs). Building a steady offensive line around Stafford is among the chief tasks for new general manager Bob Quinn, as Stafford begins life without Calvin Johnson.” Riddick noted the Lions’ spotty record in the draft: “If you exclude the retired Megatron and the departed Ndamukong Suh, the Lions have drafted and developed just two players since 2005 who have made at least one Pro Bowl and are still with the team (Stafford and Ezekiel Ansah). That is not good, at all, which is why the team hired Quinn in his first go-around. Quinn had what I would describe as
any other stimulant medication, what it does is help bring up the levels of dopamine and norepinephrine. If you get optimal levels of dopamine and norepinephrine, you are pretty focused. But if you get too much, you can stress out the brain. Then you look almost like the ADHD is worse. There’s a perception, especially among teenagers: “Oh, if it’s good at this dose, more will be even better.” No, it won’t. It can feel worse, and you can get a lot of side effects. So trying to get that right balance is what’s key. When it comes to stimulant medications for ADHD, there are a lot of alternatives to choose from, and they’re not all created equal. So if I don’t think one med is working as well as I would like, I want to try something else. Children can respond very differently to different formulations. Effectiveness of Meds If you have ADHD, studies show there’s an over 80% chance that you are going to respond to medication. Within that group, 50% will respond equally well to the two main classes of ADHD medications: methylphenidate (Ritalin and other brands) or amphetamine (Adderall and other brands). Of the other 50%, half will do better on methylphenidate and half on amphetamine. There are also several medications that aren’t based on stimulants, but they are considerably less effective in treating symptoms. The challenge with stimulant medicines is how to deliver an effective dose over a desirable period of time. When Ritalin was first used to treat ADHD in 1961, it was with a kindergartener or a first-grader in mind. It lasted three or four hours. But kindergarteners now have homework, and the older kids get, the longer they need to stay focused to succeed in school and get along with their friends and family. So technology has been developed to make the medication release gradually, peaking at the desired time, so users don’t have to remember to take pills multiple times a day. Related: Will ADHD Medication Change My Child’s Brain? Methylphenidate Medications On the methylphenidate side is Ritalin, the granddaddy of them all, and other forms of methylphenidate that have been engineered to release optimally over a particular period of time. First up is Concerta, one of the longest–acting methylphenidate medications on the market, lasting 10 to 12 hours, the equivalent of 3 tablets of Ritalin. What’s unique about Concerta is that it has a hard shell; you can’t chew it or open it. You’ve got to swallow it whole, which can be a problem for some kids. It has triple-release: First, there’s a coating of medicine on the outside, so within 10 or 15 minutes you’ll be getting some effects of the medication. On the inside, there’s a push compartment filled with a polymer fiber that expands like a sponge as it gets wet, and pushes out the medicine through a laser hole on one end. The capsule itself doesn’t get absorbed. Concerta has two compartments of the drug, 30% in the first, and 70% in the second. This is called an “ascending dose,” and it is designed to offset a decline in the impact of the medication that can occur the second half of the day. But for some kids, it might be too long. There are also capsules filled with medication in beads. What’s good about these is that for kids who can’t swallow pills, you can open up the capsule and sprinkle it on a spoonful of applesauce. One of the beaded forms is Metadate CD, which lasts about six to eight hours. It has two kinds of beads in it, also in an “ascending dose”—30% are quick release, to work the first four hours, and 70% slow release, for the latter four hours. Ritalin-LA also has beads, but they’re 50-50—that is, half the beads are going to be released immediately, to peak in the morning, the other half in the afternoon, for a total of six to eight hours. So you have much more of a two-equal-phases effect on focus and attention. Focalin, which has been around for about eight years, is a super-strong methylphenidate. In some ways, being stronger can be good, because it’s more effective. But for some kids, especially younger ones, it’s too strong and causes too many side effects. It comes in a capsule with beads, in a 50-50 distribution, and lasts 12 hours. For kids who have trouble swallowing capsules and even have trouble with beads, there are liquid forms of methylphenidate medication.Quillivant XR is a long-acting formulation that I often describe as “liquid Concerta,” and is a good alternative. Related: Side Effects of ADHD Medication The Patch And then there’s Daytrana, which is the methylphenidate patch. Basically, the patch is like a carpet of medication that’s embedded in this adhesive, so you peel the liner off, and you put it on the hip, because the hip is the area that has less muscle, so the medicine will get into the body quicker. In developing the patch, the company thought two things. First, it’s good for kids who can’t swallow pills. And second, you bypass the gut, so it doesn’t have to be metabolized to get into your bloodstream. It will go through the skin, right into the bloodstream. Now, that said, it doesn’t work right away. Since it absorbs slowly, it takes about two hours to get up to therapeutic level. But once it’s there, it stays pretty constant until you actually take it off. So another thing that parents like is that they feel they can have more control over when the medicine ends by taking off the patch. If you want to take it off at 2:00pm one day but at 5:00pm the other, you have that ability. Usually the medicine will drop in the bloodstream an hour and a half to two hours after you take off the patch. Kids often aren’t as enthusiastic. Some kids don’t like the idea of wearing a patch. A lot of ADHD kids are tactile-sensitive, and they’ll take it off. And when you take it off it doesn’t go back on. But I have some college kids who like the patch because they don’t have to worry about taking medicine later in the day; they can just keep it on as long as they want to. If they forget to take it off it doesn’t matter: There’s only about nine to 10 hours of medication in the patch, so they’re still able to fall asleep. Amphetamine Medications On the amphetamine side, there is Adderall, which is the immediate-acting form of the medication, which is effective for three to four hours. Adderall XR is the longer-lasting form, designed to be effective for 10-12 hours. It’s a capsule with beads that are 50-50, so 50% of them are immediate release, and the other 50% are delayed release. Vyvanse is amphetamine plus an extra compound called lysine, which attaches itself to the active ingredient in Adderall, amphetamine, creating an extra step that the body has to go through to cut it off, to make it active. That means Vyvanse lasts very long—up to 14 hours. That could be too long for a seven-year-old, but if you’re in high school or college, or an adult, it could be great. It’s not beads; it’s just a powdered medicine. But it’s going to have a consistent release, without peaks and troughs. For a very detailed comparison of these medications and the research on each, click here.I've missed the last couple of #StampingSaturday posts because I've been so busy, but I'm happy to be back. I love this little group who participates weekly, so I miss being among them on Saturdays. Today I started with a base of KBShimmer Owl Miss You a soft beige base filled with gold and copper metallic flakes. It's so stunning, I almost left it alone. I used two easy coats for full coverage. I then went in with Mundo de Unas Gold and an image from It Girl Nail Art IG-101. I really love how the image frames the base and the gold plays with the metallic tones in the base. *self purchased KBShimmer So there you have. Don't forget to join us in the link up below.Enjoy & until next time, Amy LeeShare Scandinavian Unexceptionalism 3 – Gender equality Scandinavian Unexceptionalism 3 – Gender equality Nordic countries have the lowest share of women amongst directors and chief executives Nordic countries have the lowest share of women amongst directors and chief executives Bulgaria is unique as the only EU nation where women actually work more (1pc more) hours than men If you want to find gender equality, turn to Scandinavia. In international rankings the Nordic countries tend to outpace the competition. In the Global Gender Gap Index 2014, published by the World Economic Forum, for example, Iceland has the number one spot followed by Finland, Norway, Sweden and Denmark. In the Complete Mothers’ Index 2015, compiled by Save the Children, Norway scores on top followed by Finland, Iceland, Denmark and Sweden. Sweden has the highest score in the European Union Gender Equality Index followed by Denmark and Finland (the two other Nordic countries are not included in this index). Employment rate of women aged 20-64 across the European Union (per cent) Data given for 2011. Source: Statistics Sweden (2013). Indeed, Nordic countries have for a long time been, and continue to be, pioneers when it comes to gender equality. Women entered the labour market early and have succeeded on their own merits to reach high political positions. Nordic countries also have uniquely gender equal attitudes. It would thus seem that the egalitarian Nordic nations have the best conditions for women to reach the top. Interestingly enough, this is not the case in the private sector – since welfare services monopolies, high tax wedges and social insurance systems limit women’s career opportunities and enterprise. Where in Europe would you expect to find the highest share of women reaching top executive positions – in Western, Northern, Southern or Eastern Europe? This is a question I have often amused myself by asking. Most people expect to find the highest share in the Nordics, and the lowest one in Eastern Europe. They are somewhat surprised to see the map below, based on data gathered by Eurostat about the share of executives. The data shows that Nordic countries have the lowest share of women amongst directors and chief executives – and that the Eastern European countries have the highest. Then difference is stark between Bulgaria, where almost half of the executives are women, at one end and Sweden and Denmark, where one in ten executives are women, on the other. Source: Sanandaji (2014). That Nordic countries struggle with women’s career progress has been noted for some years. In 1998 the International Labor Office concluded that an unusually gender‑segregated labour market had developed in Scandinavian countries, since many women worked in the public rather than the private sector: “in terms of differences amongst industrialized countries, several studies comment on how Nordic countries, and in particular Sweden, have among the greatest inequalities”. A key explanation lies in the nature of the welfare state. In the Nordics, female-dominated sectors such as healthcare and education are mainly run by the public sector. A study from the Nordic Innovation Centre notes: “Nearly 50 per cent of all women employees in Denmark are employed in the public sector. Compared to the male counterpart where just above 15 per cent are employed in the public sector. This difference alone can explain some of the gender gap with respect to entrepreneurship. The same story is prevalent in Sweden.” The lack of competition reduces long-term productivity growth and overall levels of pay in the female dominated public sector. It also combines with union wage setting to create a situation where individual hard work is not rewarded significantly: wages are flat and wage rises follow seniority, according to labour union contracts, rather than individual achievement. Women in Scandinavia can of course become managers within the public sector, but the opportunities for individual career paths, and certainly for entrepreneurship, are typically more limited compared with in the private sector. On the other hand, the former planned economies in Central and Eastern Europe are well behind in terms of attitudes towards gender equality. However, during recent years many of these nations have transitioned to market economies which are often freer than the Scandinavian countries, not least when it comes to the issue of welfare monopolies. In these countries, the work patterns of women tend to be more similar to those of men than in Scandinavia. The average employed man in the Nordics works between 16 per cent (Finland) and 27 per cent (Norway) hours more than the average woman. In Lithuania the gap is 13 per cent, and in Latvia and Estonia merely 7 per cent. Bulgaria is unique as the only European Union nation where women actually work more (1 per cent more) hours than men. So although the Nordic countries seemingly have the optimal conditions for women’s career progress, their welfare state systems in fact limits the chances for women to reach executive positions or run their own enterprises. And although the Eastern European are well behind the rest of Europe in terms of attitudes and women’s labour market participation, the women that do work in this part of Europe often manage to reach the top. Free markets foster women’s career progress where gender equality is lacking, whilst public sector monopolies and high tax wedges hinder women’s career progress where gender equality is prospering. Dr. Nima Sanandaji is a research fellow at CPS, and the author of Scandinavian Unexceptionalism. The entire book is available through the Institute of Economic Affairs which has published it. ShareFormer Navy SEAL Tej Gill joined Breitbart News Daily SiriusXM host Stephen K. Bannon Tuesday to discuss the T-shirts his organization, Project War Path, has created, which read “Hillary Clinton Killed My Friends.” Originating with a bumper sticker, “they’ve gone viral in the SEAL community,” said Gill. “So we started making T-shirts, and we want to get the word out there what Hillary Clinton did.” Asked if the charge was too harsh, Gill did not back down: She literally killed my friends, Ty Woods and Glenn Doherty. I’ve known Ty since 1997 and Glen since 2003. They were both good friends. Her actions led to their deaths. By denying multiple requests for the upgraded security at the outpost, it was attacked. Terrorists just literally pushed the gate open. They flooded that compound in ten seconds, took it over, and then they got killed because of her. If that consulate would have been hardened like it should have been, none of that would’ve happened. Gill also does not think much of the Benghazi committee, which released its report Tuesday. “No, not satisfied,” Gill replied when asked. “They talked it up like they were going to ask her some real questions, and it seemed like they basically let her off the hook.” The shirts are available at Projectwarpath.com. Breitbart News reported on the effort Monday: Tej Gill, a former Warfare Operator of the United States Naval Special Warfare Group who served as a Navy SEAL for 10 years with SEAL Team 5, spoke exclusively with Breitbart News about his organization Project War Path and its latest campaign, “Hillary Clinton Killed My Friends.” Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.Next month, CoinAgenda will debut the first conference dedicated solely to Bitcoin and virtual currency investors. Taking place October 7 to 9 at the Palms Casino and Resort in Las Vegas, CoinAgenda is broken into two events. The main CoinAgenda conference features two days of keynotes and specialized sessions on cryptocurrency investment, trading and hedging strategies, and allocation of virtual currency portfolios. Approximately 40 speakers will present during the conference. Throughout the conference there will be meals and cocktail parties, including a special dinner on the 8th at the former Mike Tyson mansion made famous in the film “The Hangover.” BitAngels, the world’s largest angel network for investing in Bitcoin companies, and whose co-founder, Michael Terpin, is organizing CoinAgenda, will hold a concurrent event focusing on startups and early-stage investments, with 20 early-stage startups presenting. As stated in a news release CoinReport received, those 20 startups will be selected on merit to attend the BitAngels conference to present at no cost to both CoinAgenda delegates and BitAngel members in joint sessions, and another 10 ramp-up firms can buy presentation sponsorships to demonstrate their products at a significant discount over the standard sponsorships. Startups have until September 29 to submit their presentations. The winning firms, who will also receive complimentary tickets to the BitAngels event, will be announced on October 1. This concurrent event will include social events for BitAngels’ 500-member global network, but does not include all of the investment sessions nor the same hospitality options. CoinAgenda delegates will have access to both events. Terpin said in an interview with CoinReport: “For the past year and a half since co-founding BitAngels, I’ve noticed that most conferences I’ve attended and/or spoken at have had a fairly general focus, dealing with merchant adoption, wallet software, legal and regulatory issues, and generally only one or two tracks per conference on investing. At this point in time, with bitcoin companies on track to raise half a billion dollars this year – and the currency itself having traded as high as more than $10 billion – it’s high time that a serious conference focused solely on bitcoin investing take place.” He added: “We’re also the first conference that is aimed at bringing in new investors as well as seasoned ones, providing a high-end conference for family offices and individual investors accustomed to more luxurious accommodations, food and parties, mixed in (with) the company track that’s more nuts and bolts and available separately, minus the frills.” The news release notes two other nationally-focused Bitcoin events are taking place in Las Vegas the same week at CoinAngenda. Terpin told Coinreport that “it’s not surprising that two other conferences (Inside Bitcoins Las Vegas, which targets professionals in the cryptocurrency sector, and Hashers United, a new mining conference) would take place in Las Vegas,” given that one-quarter of all major conventions take place in the city, which is Terpin’s hometown. Terpin notes that Las Vegas has a large Bitcoin presence for a city its size, with an active weekly meet-up group, several funded Bitcoin startups, and some of the earliest Bitcoin ATMs in the States. In a CNNMoney article published in March, Terpin proposed that a state and/or city establish itself as a special economic zone for Bitcoin, and that Las Vegas would be a prime candidate for such a zone. Terpin said that developing CoinAgenda and moving BitAngels’ headquarters is a start. The company will also ”be holding our second annual bitcoin startup showcase for the media, Startup Debut, at the start of the Consumer Electronics Show, but there’s much more to be done. I’m a believer of building a foundation first, then seeking support and building community around that core.” When asked what he found attractive about virtual currency, Terpin said he has “always been attracted to learning about and participating in technologically driven innovations that have the potential for widespread positive change. I was very active creating and launching companies at the dawn of the consumer Internet era (when I founded Marketwire) and at the beginning of the social media era (when I founded SocialRadius). I see bitcoin’s promise in creating consensus-driven systems around money and business to be an opportunity on the scale of the Internet itself.” Terpin added:What's The Scoop On Bulk Foods? Enlarge this image toggle caption John Rose/NPR John Rose/NPR We've all been trained to think that when you buy big, you save money. That's why many people join warehouse clubs like Costco, or scoop their own nuts and grains in the bulk section of the local supermarket. But shoppers who care to compare know the bulk bins don't always seem cheaper than their packaged counterparts. And when the Bulk Is Green Council, a bulk industry trade group, claimed they had independent research showing that customers can save an average of 89 percent by shopping in the bulk aisle, we here at The Salt were skeptical. We examined the original study, then crunched some numbers at a couple of Washington, D.C., grocery stores to see whether our figures agreed. Turns out that the 89 percent figure, while not exactly wrong, isn't the full picture. The research was conducted by a team of MBA candidates at Portland State University's Food Industry Leadership Center. Bulk Is Green made a donation to the school in exchange for the results of the research, but did not have control over the design and execution of the study. The students compared bulk and packaged prices for organic products at 12 stores in the Portland, Ore., area, from co-ops to national supermarket chains. They found that packaged versions were, on average, 89 percent more expensive than bulk counterparts. But that translates to a savings of just 56 percent when you switch from packaged products to the bulk bins. Still, that's an impressive number – like discovering there's a permanent two-for-one sale on dozens of organic foods and ingredients. We saw similar trends at the stores we visited here in D.C. It's hard to make direct comparisons, both because food prices differ between cities, and because our sample included only two stores with bulk sections, and only one of those carried organic products in bulk. But for what it's worth, we found that buying in bulk would provide an average savings of only 21 percent on organic products at that store. Averaging across all bulk products at both stores, savings dropped to 14 percent. But averages aside, the savings – or lack thereof – varied widely from one item to another. And price isn't the only concern. Buying in bulk also has practical and environmental advantages: You can buy just what you need, and reduce or eliminate wasteful packaging. In part two of this foray into the world of bulk food, I'll look at what the Portland State researchers found on those environmental fronts, and where you might get the most bang for your buck in the bulk aisle.Here are some signs that your local team is doing well: City buses begin tweaking their LED displays to big-up the team on game nights; adults begin wearing ball caps on their morning commute; children begin writing all their book reports on their first-, second-, and third-favorite players’ autobiographies; national networks begin requesting that your games be moved to nighttime to accommodate their schedule; and local rappers begin penning paeans to the future champions who walk your streets. San Francisco rapper Bailey knows how to pick a winner. In 2010 he recorded “Black and Orange” in honor of the Giants’ playoff run. This week he released “Who’s Got It Better?” the title a reference to one of 49ers coach (and Star Wars enthusiast) Jim Harbaugh’s motivational chants. “Follow, while I ball like Smith,” Bailey raps, “Reggie, Alex, or Aldon, take your pick.” It’s a measure of Alex Smith’s standing in the community that a local rapper is even bothering to try to bask in some of the Niners quarterback’s reflected shine. As the saying goes: To err is human, to forgive divine, and to be a fan is to never forgive. It is to remain scornful and withhold forgiveness until someone proves his or her own divinity, or demonstrates some fundamental unwillingness to err. Before this season, Alex Smith had never really come close to offering any reason for the mellow, raging 49er fan to feel anything approaching patience, let alone forgiveness or even affection. Fans in the Bay Area have made a pastime of wondering exactly where it all went wrong for the once-proud Niners. Unerringly, they have pointed to the selection of Alex Smith as the first overall pick in the 2005 draft. Even at the time, Smith was an unexciting and, thanks to his University of Utah pedigree, somewhat inscrutable pick. Every other highlight clip seemed to feature a quarterback draw and/or artificial turf. There were doubts as to whether his skill set would translate in the pros. And, on a purely superficial, poster-in-a-kid’s-bedroom level, there was that unglamorous, decidedly un-“Joe Montana”-like name. It’s hard to describe the low that has afflicted the Niners fan base in the 10 years since their last playoff appearance, except to offer that they are the only major franchise in the area whose fans feel a sense of entitlement. During that glorious period, winning ceased to be pleasurable; it was a pathological necessity. While the Raiders, Athletics, Giants, Warriors, and Sharks — even Stanford and Cal — have each enjoyed moments in the sun at some point during the Niners’ decade-long absence from the playoffs, none of them could claim the same sense of institutional privilege as the Niners. None of them had, within the memory of their middle-aged fans, once been considered a flagship franchise of their respective league. The 49ers of the 1980s and 1990s didn’t just win. They embodied that special sense of continuity — Bill Walsh’s coaching tree; those star-studded lines of succession at the skill positions — that distinguishes a dynasty from a great run. One is hard-pressed to describe Alex Smith’s success this season as some kind of rise, return, or comeback, for such terms suggest that he was ever here to begin with. He is still more or less the same player, only he is a better decision-maker and more efficient risk-taker. Most important, in a league of storylines he is finally in control of his own story. He has somehow morphed into one of the most compelling and unlikely underdogs of the season — certainly more so than Cam Newton, Tim Tebow, or — in their own minds, at least — the Detroit Lions’ defense. There were concrete reasons for Smith’s underperformance these past few years, foremost among them the revolving door of head coaches and offensive coordinators with whom he has had to work. There have been injuries, faintly amusing rumors that his hands were too small to properly grip the ball, and many years when the roster surrounding him was simultaneously too young and too old. But Smith’s problem in the public imagination was always the weight of expectation thrust upon him. The first overall pick should possess gravitas, presence, vision. Smith’s lopsided grin didn’t project confidence. He wasn’t allowed to look glum or turn inward amid that chorus of boos and discouragement. He couldn’t be a pleaser — one of the lessons the accommodating Smith learned the hard way. But this has all changed. The expectations affixed to his selection have expired. Other than perhaps Jeff George — and the comparison is admittedly a stretch — what other first-overall quarterback over the past two decades has taken this long to develop into a solid pro? Instead, the mere fact of Smith’s survival has become all that one needs to know about his past. There’s a dignity to his persistence, a sense of self-awareness and humility that isn’t usually associated with players of Smith’s supposed stature. The first-overall pick isn’t supposed to have a chip on his shoulder or play the underdog, since the narrative of being snubbed or doubted simply doesn’t hold. That’s what makes Tom Brady so absorbing, the champion who is unable to forget the six quarterbacks taken ahead of him in the 2000 draft. It’s what powered one of Smith’s predecessors, Jeff Garcia, to court grievous bodily injury on a weekly basis. Regard Aaron Rodgers’ placid intensity, as though he got all the clenched-fist rage out of his system years ago; now his seething is ambient, a self-powered motor. A Niners fan as a child, Rodgers dreamed of being selected first overall and becoming the team’s next great quarterback. Instead, they selected Smith and he tumbled to the Packers at age 24. It was weirdly fitting that the first two teams to clinch playoff berths last week were Smith’s Niners and Rodgers’ Packers, forever twinned in the consciousness of the Niners fan, only now Smith is the one with something to prove. For the Niners faithful, it is slightly painful to revisit the recent, intertwined histories of these two franchises. Rivals for a brief spell in the late 1990s — and only the Angel of History can speculate as to what would have happened had Terrell Owens not made this catch — the Packers have flourished under the guidance of coach Mike McCarthy, a former Niners coordinator who oversaw their abysmal 2005 offense, and Rodgers. The decision by then-head coach Mike Nolan to select Smith over Rodgers remains folkloric. Was there a moment that could have produced a different future? Perhaps it was Rodgers’ sour attitude toward the battery of Nolan’s diagnostic drills, a sideways glance as he was asked to throw the ball through a hoop or hop around on one leg. Or maybe it was during an interview, as Nolan scrutinized their faces when presented with the same riddle-like questions. Or maybe the sum total of interactions suggested to Nolan that Smith was the more cerebral, predictable, and teachable prospect. Whatever the truth may be, the stories remind us how close the decision was. And they also suggest the importance of a given team’s organizational culture. Logic breaks down whenever one considers the sport counterfactual: Would Rodgers have flourished with the Niners without those years of solitude and the humiliation of draft day? Would Smith have been better served by sitting and learning during his rookie season rather than reinventing himself on the fly and getting repeatedly pummeled? All that matters for now is that these are questions a Niners fan might finally ask without contempt. The comparisons between the two are still lopsided. But the possibility of Smith authoring a new ending to his story is one of the more unusual things to happen in the NFL in some time. It’s not too late for a rivalry between Aaron and Alex — the disgraced and the triumphant, the top dog and the underdog, at least for now. Hua Hsu teaches at Vassar College. He is finishing his first book, A Floating Chinaman. Previously from Hua Hsu: Genuine Glee Highbro/Lowbro: On Harold & Kumar Harbaugh vs. Schwartz: Coach Fight! Waiting for Radiohead Varieties of Disturbance When They Were Kings: Paid in Full to Tha Carter IV Never Been in a Riot To comment on this story through Facebook, click here.Former Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara and his breakaway group of lawmakers have decided to call their new party Jisedai no To, which roughly means “party for new generations,” they announced Thursday. The name was chosen from about 600 suggestions sent in from the public. The group of 22 have all but broken from Nippon Ishin no Kai (Japan Restoration Party) and plan to launch the new party in August. Ishihara said one of their priority concerns is to help younger generations solve the serious problems they face, such as the widening disparity between rich and poor and difficulties getting married and finding financial security. “We all share the same sense of crisis... It’s our responsibility to fix those problems so that younger generations can have hope for the future,” he said. But at a news conference Thursday, party members did not unveil specific policies for younger generations, such as those concerning the sustainability of social security. Hiroshi Yamada, a senior group executive, said the party will try to hammer out a basic platform by the end of July. The group is apparently trying to build a fresh, youthful image because the 81-year-old Ishihara is known for his nationalistic views, and his group includes many elderly, conservative lawmakers. During the news conference, younger lawmakers took the front-row seats while Ishihara and the other senior members sat in back. Ishihara, who is rumored to be close to sitting out the next Lower House election, did not take the post of interim president, which will remain in place until the party’s formal launch in August. The 19 Lower House members and three Upper House members broke away from Nippon Ishin to support Ishihara’s call for the creation of a new constitution that does not renounce war.The words "statistics" and "baseball" are often found near each other, but there's a lot more to statistics than dividing the number of hits by the number of swings to get a batting average. And there's a lot more to sabermetrics -- the statistical analysis of baseball -- than averages, too. Many baseball fans are also stats geeks (and vice versa) and have done deep statistical analysis of baseball data, oftentimes with R. Dave Allen of the Baseball Analysts website regularly uses R to visualize PitchFX data, as does his stablemate Jeremy Greenhouse (for example, in this analysis of optimal swing rates). ESPN's the Sports Guy inspired a detailed analysis in R by Ryan Elmore. Ricky Zanker of the Hardball Times has published a guide on reading baseball data into R. Mike Driscoll created an interactive R application to visualize data from PitchFX. Even the widely-read New York Times election analyst Nate Silver got his statistical start with sabermetrics. If you're a baseball fan and you'd like to do some sabermetrics of your own, but haven't made the leap to learn R yet, Millsy is here to help. He's a graduate student in Sport Management at the University of Michigan, and has created a series of tutorials to help you learn R by analyzing baseball data. The tutorials take the new R user and baseball fan step-by-step through your first R commands, reading in data, manipulating objects, and even creating charts and doing simple analysis. Good practical advice is scattered throughout, such as advice "to use color to help portray the information you are trying to communicate, rather than just to make things bright", with this awesome example of what not to do: There are five parts to the series so far, and I'm looking forward to seeing more in this great series. The Prince of Slides: sab-R-metricsImage copyright AP Image caption The Ain al-Fijeh spring provides 70% of all Damascus water UN human rights experts say the Syrian air force deliberately bombed a spring outside Damascus in December, cutting off the water supply for 5.5 million people living in and around the city. The Syrian government blamed rebels for damaging the Ain al-Fijeh spring during the battle for the Wadi Barada valley. But a new report by a UN commission of enquiry says evidence showed the damage was caused by at least two air strikes. The attack, it concludes, was grossly disproportionate and was a war crime. The report was published a day before the sixth anniversary of the start of the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, which evolved into a civil war that activists say has left more than 320,000 people dead. On 22 December, government forces launched an offensive to regain control of Wadi Barada, in the hills north-west of Damascus, after a siege lasting three years. Image copyright AP Image caption Wadi Barada is of high strategic value for the government and the opposition On the second day of the offensive, Ain al-Fijeh was bombed, causing extensive damage to the structures of the spring and killing at least one rebel fighter. Both sides blamed each other for the attack. On the same day, the Damascus Water Authority announced that it had cut off water supplies, accusing armed groups of contaminating the water with fuel. The UN investigators looked into the allegation and found no reports of people suffering from symptoms of contamination on or before 23 December. Image copyright AP Image caption The Ain al-Fijeh water structure was eventually repaired in early February However, they were told by witnesses that shrapnel from the bombing had damaged fuel and chlorine storage tanks, which contaminated the water. The investigators also examined videos of the bombing, photographs of the damage to the spring, and satellite imagery. They concluded that the area was struck several times by high-explosive aerial bombs dropped by the Syrian air force, which indicated the spring was purposely targeted. Image copyright RFS via AP Image caption Russia claimed the pictures of the air strikes on the schools in Haas were fabricated The commission of inquiry also says the Syrian air force committed another war crime by bombing a complex of five schools in Haas, a village in rebel-held Idlib province, on 26 October. Twenty-one children were among the 36 civilians killed. Witnesses told the UN investigators that there were no checkpoints of armed groups present in Haas at the time of the attack, which they said involved jet fighters dropping several bombs in the vicinity of the schools and returning soon afterwards to target parents and rescue workers. Video footage purportedly of the strikes taken by an interviewee shows a Sukhoi 22 jet dropping a parachute bomb, and remnants of FAB-500ShN parachute bombs were found in the area and photographed, according to the report. Image copyright AFP Image caption Twenty-one children were killed and 61 others injured in the attack Russia, which is carrying out air strikes in support of President Assad, denied the Russian or Syrian air forces had attacked Haas and claimed the pictures of the incident were fabricated. But the UN investigators said such an assertion was clearly contradicted by the evidence. They also noted that while both the Russian and Syrian air forces had FAB-500ShN bombs in their arsenals, only the Syrian air force were flying Sukhoi 22s. The use of banned chlorine munitions on several occasions in attacks on rebel-held areas of the Damascus countryside and Idlib province is also documented. The investigators concluded that government or pro-government forces were behind incidents in Saraqeb on 1 August, Bseema on 8 January, and in the eastern Ghouta region between 30 January and 21 February, which left one person dead. Rebel and jihadist groups are meanwhile accused of carrying out indiscriminate attacks with indirect artillery fire, resulting in dozens of civilian casualties.Coordinates: The Battle of Hastings[a] was fought on 14 October 1066 between the Norman-French army of William, the Duke of Normandy, and an English army under the Anglo-Saxon King Harold Godwinson, beginning the Norman conquest of England. It took place approximately 7 miles (11 kilometres) northwest of Hastings, close to the present-day town of Battle, East Sussex, and was a decisive Norman victory. The background to the battle was the death of the childless King Edward the Confessor in January 1066, which set up a succession struggle between several claimants to his throne. Harold was crowned king shortly after Edward's death, but faced invasions by William, his own brother Tostig, and the Norwegian King Harald Hardrada (Harold III of Norway). Hardrada and Tostig defeated a hastily gathered army of Englishmen at the Battle of Fulford on
political landscape has been a substantial upsurge in domestic activism of the MEK. Its activists throughout the country have been risking arrest and torture by hanging banners and posters in major express ways and walkways urging regime change and support for Maryam Rajavi. The July 1 rally is expected to be viewed by millions, via a banned Resistance television network. The Trump administration has moved Iran policy in the right direction but has yet to exploit the unique opportunity to turn the page against the ayatollahs for good, for the betterment of the Iranian people and the world as a whole. Ken Blackwell, former Secretary of State in Ohio, is the Senior Fellow for Family Empowerment at the Family Research Council. He serves on the board of directors of the Club for Growth and the National Taxpayers Union. DONATEIn the aftermath of a national scandal last year involving mass manipulation of wait times at Veterans Administration (V.A.) facilities, the acting V.A. Secretary, Sloan Gibson, said that what the V.A. really needed to fix the system was more money. Gibson backed a $17.6 billion request for federal funding as necessary to hire 10,000 additional clinicians and set up new facilities and infrastructure in order to meet demand for care and treatment within the system. Wait times would only increase without the money, he argued, and veterans advocates seemed to agree. President Obama seemed to agree with the basic idea that funding was key to reforming the system. Last August, he signed bill providing some $16.3 billion for the V.A. A White House blog post explained that "the main focus of the new law is to ensure that veterans have access to the care they've earned." A new report from a senior V.A. official suggests that the V.A. may not have had a funding problem so much as a wasteful spending problem, The Washington Post reports: The Department of Veterans Affairs has been spending at least $6 billion a year in violation of federal contracting rules to pay for medical care and supplies, wasting taxpayer money and putting veterans at risk, according to an internal memo written by the agency's senior official for procurement. In a 35-page document addressed to VA Secretary Robert McDonald, the official accuses other agency leaders of "gross mismanagement" and making a "mockery" of federal acquisition laws that require competitive bidding and proper contracts. Jan R. Frye, deputy assistant secretary for acquisition and logistics, describes a culture of "lawlessness and chaos" at the Veterans Health Administration, the massive health-care system for 8.7 million veterans. "Doors are swung wide open for fraud, waste and abuse," he writes in the March memo, which was obtained by The Washington Post. One of the biggest problems mentioned in the memo is the use of purchase cards, which are supposed to be limited to relatively small dollar purchases, but have instead been used to circumvent federal purchasing rules in order to buy multiple billions in medical supplies without any of the usual contracts in place. Frye isn't the first person to raise some of these concerns; some of the same issues regarding contracting practices have previously been documented by the V.A.Inspector General. The public disclosure of Frye's memo, which was clearly intended to go outside the V.A.'s chain of command, is likely to give these issues a fair amount of outside attention, but you can't say he didn't try first. According to the Post, Frye's memo "discloses his repeated efforts to raise his concerns with other senior officials at the agency but says he was consistently ignored. He also accuses top agency officials of deceiving Congress when they were asked about questionable practices." That last bit is important, because, presuming that Frye is on target, what it tells us is that the V.A.'s questionable spending practices weren't just errors or mismanagement; they were intentional deceptions. Which means that the V.A. was spending $6 billion a year in a manner they understood to be dubious, and they tried to cover it up even while begging Congress for more funding to fix a separate problem that also stemmed from internal corruption and deception.It’s long been known that artificial light impacts the breeding, migration, sleeping, and eating of animals. If you’re skeptical, you don’t have to look any further than an urban backyard for proof. But don’t look for what’s there—look for what’s missing. Native species of plants and animals that would have once been found in the city no longer exist. “It’s not just because people cut their grass that you don’t see certain wildflowers in the city—it’s because it’s too bright for them to live and they’ve long since disappeared,” explains Robert Dick, Chair of the Light-Pollution Abatement Committee and the manager of the Dark-Sky Preserve Program in Canada. “The environment of the city has entirely changed because of the lights.” Unless further action is taken, similar results may occur closer to your cottage. “Plants and animals aren’t going stick around. They’re going to find a place without this problem. As humans start putting up artificial lights at night in the country, animals have to move further and further away,” says Dick. The solution is simple though. “Reduce the wattage of lights, make sure they shine nowhere beyond your property line, use amber-coloured CFLs, and turn lights off when you’re not using them,” he advises. Unless preventative measures are taken, here are some significant ways that nature will continue to be impacted by light pollution: 1. Light pollution affects animals’ ability to navigate and migrate. Animals make use of stars at night, particularly those on the horizon, to help guide them. It’s estimated that up to 98 million migratory birds in North America die annually from crashing into brightly lit buildings at night. But it’s not just birds that are affected—even in cottage country, nocturnal animals such as porcupines may not be able to navigate due to lit-up porches and roadways. “Biologically animals have evolved to know that lights are stars and that stars move,” explains Dick. “They actually compensate for the rotation of the earth so over time they’ll walk to the left. If you leave a door light on, they’ll assume that’s a star and they’ll start curving their path and they’ll get lost.” Disorientation can lead to exhaustion, dehydration, and death. 2. The amount of time dedicated to foraging, mating, and feeding is reduced. It’s no secret that moths are attracted to bright lights, particularly in the country. When insects mistake artificial light for a natural source, such as the moon, they can become trapped in luminary sources. This not only makes them a prime target for predators, but also reduces the amount of time they can dedicate to mating and feeding. Ultimately, the result is a decrease in the amount and diversity of nocturnal insects, which in turn affects animals that feed on them, such as bats. On the other end of the spectrum, animals that typically use the cloak of darkness as a means of protection from predators—including salamanders and mice—become reticent to leave their hideaways. This reduces the likelihood that they will devote energy to nighttime feeding and reproduction. Finally, even breeding can be affected. In the case of frogs, artificial light causes them to reduce their mating calls at night, which inhibits their ability to reproduce successfully. 3. Artificial light affects the very structure by which organisms grow, including hormone levels. Increasingly, research is demonstrating that the amount of light animals are exposed to affects not only their natural circadian rhythms, but their stress and hormone levels as well. Light affects the amount of melatonin that animals produce, which is responsible for controlling the hormones that affect sleep and the immune system. Case in point: in the study of meadow voles, those that have been exposed to more nighttime light produce young that develop slowly in terms of weight and sexual maturity. Similarly, research has demonstrated that light at night causes deer mice to sexually mature later in the season, which in turns delays mating until the next year.The Long Run: Push To Achieve A Personal Record Scott Jurek / June 12, 2012 Setting a PR is never an easy task but it’s often more in your head than in your legs. Many runners arrive at a start line ready to set a PR, but often don’t pull it off. On the flip side, many people have set PRs when they thought their training didn’t go as well, or they were sick and missed training. People always ask me how I mentally pull things together on race day, and how I maintain focused when competing in events lasting 16 to 24 hours. Here’s my mental approach to setting a PR in any race. RELATED: Read an exclusive excerpt from Scott’s new book, “Eat and Run”! Trust your training: Avoid worrying about whether you executed the perfect training leading up to the event; focus instead on those runs that went well and the confidence you had after finishing hard workouts. Decide you really want it: Visualize achieving success while you’re training. You have to really want it on race day. There is nothing stronger than an intense will, so make sure you focus on that passionate drive to achieve your goal. Have a plan: The week before the race, develop a plan for your race. Don’t just do it in your head—write it down and share it with those who might be assisting you at the race (crew, family, pacer, etc). Take detailed notes on your pacing and fueling plan, such as what you’ll eat and drink and when. For pacing and splits, have an A and B goal—one that is realistic and another that is a bit loftier. Know something might go wrong: As important as it is to remain optimistic, it’s very healthy to know that something may go wrong. Be prepared to manage a problem if it arises. It is crucial to stay calm and focused when facing a setback—focus on the things you can adjust. There is hardly a problem that is too big to overcome. Use small goals: While it’s important to gather motivation from your desire to PR, setting small goals will ensure that you achieve the larger one. These small goals could be pacing goals such as getting to the next 5K split or next water stop. Sometimes small goals can be as micro as getting to the next shady spot or bend in the road. Whatever small goals you set, be sure to use the motivation of achieving them to drive you forward. They will make the larger goal of a PR more attainable. Stay in the present: It can be hard to stay focused during a race. A big part of staying mentally strong includes achieving calm amid the mental “storm” of pressure and expectation. The athletes who are successful at achieving goals and PRs perform well under pressure by staying in the present moment. I find it helpful to focus on things like my running form, breathing, fueling and hydrating. These focus points can take the edge off the discomfort and fatigue that set in during the second half of a race. Trust me, even top-level athletes feel discomfort, even if we make it look easy. Setting a PR is never an easy task but it’s often more in your head than in your legs. Dig deep mentally and that PR will be in your reach! This column first appeared in the May 2012 issue of Competitor magazine. **** About The Author: Based in Boulder, Colo., Scott Jurek is a seven-time winner of the Western States 100-mile trail run. Have a question for Scott? Ask him here!Alphabet Inc. – better known by its former name, Google Inc. (GOOGL) – is a technology conglomerate that oversees a number of businesses, including the world's largest internet search and advertising service, the popular streaming video website YouTube, the Android mobile operating system, cloud storage services and varied other growth ventures. Virtually synonymous with online search engines and the internet, it's even become a verb – to google something means to look it up on the web. The California-based company processes billions of search requests each day, and it is among the most visible and recognizable private entities in the world. Although it has ventures in a wide array of internet-based fields, including email, social media, video, analytics, robotics and many other areas, internet search remains the primary driver of its sales and earnings. Google is one of the most successful stocks of the 21st century, launching at just over $50 a share in August 2004 before reaching an all-time high of $1,004 in June 2017. Despite its non-dividend paying status, investors of all stripes have flocked to Google and helped transform it into a $660 billion company. What are some things investors should know before deciding whether to go for Google? Stock Mechanics There are two ticker symbols for Google on the NASDAQ – GOOGL and GOOG – representing two different share classes. GOOGL stands for Google’s A shares, and GOOG is its C shares. Google’s co-founders, company chairman and a few other directors own its B shares, which do not trade publicly. Google split its stock in April 2014, creating A and C shares. The split doubled Google’s number of shares and cut the price in half. But the important difference is holders of GOOGL, or the A share, get one vote per share, and C shareholders get no votes. B holders get 10 votes per share, meaning they hold most of Google’s voting power. Google’s A shares have frequently traded at a small premium to its C shares, showing the market does place some value on voting power (the price quoted above is for the A shares). The bottom line is Google allows investors to buy large shares of its equity, but relinquishes little control. Investors interested in Google who want to vote at its stockholder meetings should aim for the A shares. In 2015, Google established a holding company named Alphabet and changed its slogan from "Don't be evil" to "Do the right thing." This reorganization is just one of many changes coming down the pike for Google investors, and it remains to be seen how the tech giant will handle the transition. Google's Formidable Moat Stocks that are safe investments have moats – that is, an enduring competitive advantage. Examples of a moat are cable companies, given the massive costs of building new wiring infrastructure, or Coca-Cola, which has an iconic name among consumers. Google certainly has a moat in the internet. This is particularly impressive given the rate of change and intense competition on the web, whose flat structure means anyone can build a competing service However, Google has been able to gain and maintain dominance by delivering better results tat faster speeds than its competitors. Further, it has been able to consolidate its market share with its Chrome browser and Android operating system, and it pays Apple to be the default search engine on Apple mobile devices. Billions of Searches Over 3.5 billion searches are made on Google every day. Each search generates a tiny bit of revenue for Google as the company sells ads against these results. Google has 75% of the internet search market and 85% of the mobile search market. Additionally, search on the internet continues to grow as it becomes a more integral part of peoples' daily lives on a global basis. A massive profit driver for the company, this is the main ingredient in making Google a safe investment. Nearly 90% of Google's earnings and revenues come from search. These profits and revenues fund the projects Google hopes become future profit centers. It allows the company to take on massive risks that other companies could not even consider. Additionally, search has given Google a massive war chest and borrowing capacity that allows it to buy out any competitor before it becomes a serious threat. The ubiquity of its search product also ensures it continually evolves its algorithm to deliver better results for users. The more people who use Google search, the more data is collected. Due to these inherent advantages, Google is in a much better spot than its smaller competitors, and is able to withstand competition and stress from economic weakness. And it has a history of doing so. Thriving in Tough Conditions The Great Recession in 2007-2008 was a massive stress test that many companies failed. Like all stocks, Google was also badly damaged by the selling pressure, falling 65% from its high at the tail end of 2007 to early 2009. However, once the stock market recovered and the economy began to show signs of growth, the company recovered all its losses in just three years. More importantly, even while the economy weakened over this time period, Google maintained growth in revenues. With Google's competitive advantage and cash reserves, it has a beta of 1.03, which is significantly less than its smaller competitors that have a beta of 1.6 on average. Additionally during the Great Recession, many of its competitors were unable to survive, with others falling to the brink of bankruptcy. Regulatory Risks This is not to say that Google doesn't face challenges. Governments like to regulate things, though sometimes it takes them a while to get started. This pattern is evident in today's Internet sector, especially for conglomerates such as Google, Amazon and Facebook. The entire net neutrality debate in the United States appears to target Google's competitors specifically, such as Verizon and Sprint, all under the auspices of internet fairness. But Google could be next. Having installed more than 100,000 miles of Internet service provider (ISP) fiber worldwide, the firm is a major contributor to the internet infrastructure. Net neutrality is a slippery slope. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulates radio and TV content, essentially limiting the services that communications companies can provide for their customers and their shareholders. Federal regulation over internet speed is the first stage in regulating Google content, search engine results and advertising. Google could find itself fighting the U.S. government for control over its own business. This is already evident on an international scale. In 2015-16, the European Union brought charges against Google for manipulating search results to promote its own shopping sites. Facing billions in fines, Google could join the likes of Microsoft and Intel among companies successfully targeted by the EU. Similar charges were levied by the Competition Commission of India in 2015, which accused Google of "abusing its dominant position to rig search outcomes." The fine system in India is revenue-specific; Google faces a fine of up to 10% of all income, which is equal to billions of dollars. Underwhelming Diversification If a company grows large enough, it runs into problems of scale. Larger companies have to deal with enormous infrastructure, compliance requirements, staffing headaches and relative inflexibility compared to their competitors. Google may find itself unable to generate more and more revenue through traditional means consistently, which translates into dwindling multiples for investors. In a June 2015 letter to shareholders, co-founder Sergey Brin highlighted so-called "moonshots" that Google was taking. These include major capital investments in driverless cars, Google Glass, biotechnology and artificial intelligence. Most of these projects fall under the operating jurisdiction of Google X, a high-tech laboratory focused on futuristic experiments. Brin and CEO Larry Page had previously warned Google shareholders that the company wanted to be unconventional. Short-term earnings wouldn't always be the focus, they said, because the potential for future innovation was just too exciting. It's a great sentiment for consumers, but it raises alarms for investors. Shareholders may see returns stagnate if Google focuses on unproven, lower-returning ventures and less on generating efficient revenue. There's a possibility that Google could strike it big with a groundbreaking product or two, but there's always the chance that it won't. So far, Google's more down-to-Earth attempts at diversification have yielded modest results at best. Google+ was supposed to be an exciting answer to Facebook and LinkedIn; instead, Google+ has hundreds of millions of members and very little activity. Google Glass has not performed any better. Mobile Apps Replacing Search Engines In terms of mobile access, Google lags behind its competitors. Apple generates a ton of revenue through mobile apps, which is the right space to be in when consumers are increasingly on mobile devices. Traditional search engines – i.e., the old web browser – generate the bulk of ad revenue for Google. Every time a mobile user clicks on an app rather than using a search engine, Google's advertisers lose potential access. Smartphones don't have to go through Google.com to shop, travel or find restaurants. Google used to be the gatekeeper, but now there's a big new door for mobile users to travel through. Google can compete in the mobile access arena, but it doesn't have the same overwhelming advantage against Apple and Facebook that it enjoyed over Yahoo or Bing. Google shareholders will eventually feel this squeeze unless the company can bring in other kinds of income. Broader Market Risks Every stock faces certain kinds of risk, albeit in different ways. In the short term, Google faces serious headline risks over anti-trust lawsuits, regulatory challenges and the continued failure of its Motorola acquisition. Shareholders begin to get cold feet when they read too many negative news stories for too long. In the long term, Google faces the same broader risks as all technology companies. The NASDAQ has plummeted before, and there's no law that tech bubbles can't form – and burst. Stocks in the U.S. experienced remarkable growth between 2010 and 2015, but it's not entirely clear that the fundamentals back up that growth. Even a small pop could cost Google investors hundreds of dollars per share. Capital markets are flush with cash on the back of the Federal Reserve's years-long low interest rate policy. Startup companies are receiving enormous valuations; Xiaomi, a Chinese smartphone maker with very little performance history, received a $46 billion launch in late 2014, for example. If interest rates go up and investors spook, the technology sector may prove to be soft. The Bottom Line“If you didn't learn anything on Jan. 27 when you issued an unconstitutional executive order, if that didn't teach you anything, you’re unlikely to be taught anything under any circumstances,” Dannel Malloy said. Malloy: It feels'really good' to be targeted by White House Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy, an outspoken critic of the Trump administration, said Friday it felt “really good” to be targeted by the White House over his immigration policy. “You should probably be known by your enemies,” Malloy said at POLITICO’s annual State Solutions Conference. Story Continued Below White House press secretary Sean Spicer blasted Malloy on Thursday, saying the Connecticut governor “chooses not to follow the duly passed laws of this nation” after Malloy told the state police they should not take action “solely to enforce federal immigration law.” “Whether you’re a governor or mayor or the president, laws are passed in this country and we expect people and our lawmakers and our law enforcement agencies to follow and adhere to the laws as passed by the appropriate level of government,” Spicer said. Malloy fired back, criticizing the Trump administration, even making a joke about the size of Trump’s hands. “I think Sean misses the point, and clearly had not read a single phrase of the advisory I sent out,” Malloy said. “I think they just don’t get it and they rushed to judgment.” The Democratic governor referenced a law the state passed in 2013 setting guidelines about how the state would interact with ICE. “The president can’t trump that,” Malloy said. “You can’t, by waving a magic wand or signing a decree in crayon, change the law of the state that you are otherwise trying to give direction to.” Malloy said the administration has proven it is unable to learn from its mistakes. “If you didn't learn anything on Jan. 27 when you issued an unconstitutional executive order, if that didn't teach you anything, you’re unlikely to be taught anything under any circumstances,” he said.[Editor’s Note: This essay resides within Anderson Blanton’s “The Materiality of Prayer,” a portal into Reverberations’ unfolding compendium of resources related to the study of prayer.] * * * Part I in an ocasional series by Don Seeman on the materiality of Jewish prayer. Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi (1745-1812), the so-called Alter Rebbe, or founding teacher of the Chabad movement, was once asked to explain to his students how he prays. He is said to have responded, “I pray with the table and with the chairs.” When I first heard this story many years ago, I assumed he meant merely to say that he prayed with great intensity, so that the tables and chairs shook with his fervor. Anyone who has seen Orthodox Jews engrossed in speaking to their Creator while bowing and shaking in constant motion—shuckling, as it is sometimes known in English— will know what I had in mind. I was more wrong than right though, because I underestimated the central importance of tables and chairs and the whole world of mundane materiality to Hasidic prayer. Far from being merely a backdrop or a disturbance to the pursuit of pure spirituality, it is precisely the material world that serves as the setting and telos of Hasidic prayer, whose ultimate agenda is to render—or better, to reveal—this mundane space we inhabit as a fitting habitation for divinity, or what they call dirah ba-tachtonim, “a home in the nether regions.” But what does all this have to do with tables and chairs? The Chabad movement began to take hold in the Jewish communities of White Russia and Lithuania more than two hundred years ago and has developed today into an important global network of “emissaries” and spiritual entrepreneurs devoted to the promotion of Hasidic ideals and practice in every conceivable format and context. In its origins though, the movement was premised on intensive forms of contemplative study and prayer designed to transform human beings by focusing not on the emotions like other Hasidic groups, but on the intellect. The term Chabad itself is a Hebrew acronym for “wisdom, understanding, knowledge,” which represent the cognitive faculties targeted by these practices. Interesting comparisons with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy have recently been advanced. Active contemplation of paradoxes like the coincidence of divine immanence and transcendence helped to fill the mind of the worshipper with divine light, which alone could offer lasting transformation of human affect and ultimately, it was to be hoped, of human practice and existential condition as well. Chabad contemplative practices were meant to engender a sense of bittul or self-abnegation, a marvelously labile term that stands for a whole host of different spiritual, moral, and cognitive conditions. One of its most basic meanings is that the world and all existence comes to seem (to the mind and even to the senses and feelings) “as if it were naught” (ke’lo hashiv) when viewed through the prism of contemplation upon the greatness of the divine. The “as if” is important here, because Chabad teachers throughout the generations have been careful to deny a view that is sometimes attributed to various forms of Eastern mysticism which holds that the world is an illusion (maya). This, no Orthodox Jew can easily maintain, because the whole sweep of Jewish religious tradition starting with the Bible and through all the later teachings is that the world created by God is real, that human responsibility for good or for evil is far from illusory, and that divine prerogatives in history must be fulfilled. “God forbid,” exclaimed the third hereditary leader of Chabad, known as Zemach Zedek (1789-1866), “that we should say the world is not real!” And yet, nearly every page of classical teaching in the Chabad school insists that the world is “completely nullified” before the great light of God, “like the light of a candle extinguished in the light of the sun.” This is the apparent paradox of materiality which is both real and not real, and it is this dilemma which is addressed through the delicate praxis of contemplative prayer. The Lurianic mystery of zimzum, the divine “contraction” that makes space for the phenomenal world, is by now well-known.. Modern thinkers like Edmund Jabes, Jacques Derrida, and Emmanuel Levinas have each appropriated this sixteenth-century Kabbalistic imagery for their own ethical and interpretive projects. For example, Levinas’ arranges his whole ethical phenomenology around the demand to make space for the Other, giving to him or to her, as it were, a chance to breathe and a space to inhabit, though it be at one’s own expense. Levinas may go out of his way to identify himself with the nineteenth-century opponents of the Hasidim in his famous essay on “Rabbi Hayyim of Volozhin” (for reasons that may become clear in a moment), but his startling adaptation of the zimzum metaphor for interpersonal relations was most clearly anticipated in an essay by by the fifth Chabad Rebbe, known as the Rebbe Rashab (1860- 1920), who desribes human zimzum at length as an act of ethical imitatio Dei (see Kuntres He-Chaltzu). Levinas may well have been aware of the essay (we know that he studied some early Chabad literature) but I believe he would have shied away from the Chabad formulation precisely because of its insistence on contemplative practices designed to show zimzum to be merely a metaphor. Correct interpretation of zimzum was an important feature of the debates that distinguished early Hasidim from their opponents. Though there is some debate on this point, the standard account holds that the great and fierce opponent of the Hasidism, R. Elijah of Vilna, took the idea of zimzum in its literal sense (zimzum ke-peshuto), meaning that God evacuated, as it were, a space for creation. This would be a comfortable position for someone like Levinas not just because of his Lithuanian Jewish origins, but also because it implies that the analagous moral sacrifice “for the other” is real and irreducible. Variations on the zimzum ke-peshuto argument were made by various writers in what they took to be the defense of normative distinctions between right and wrong, pure and impure, that they sensed might be compromised by the idea of a God whose presence resides everywehere without distinction, in places sacred as well as very profane. Even Levinas’ hero, R. Hayyim of Volozhin, who did not accept the simple reading of zimzum, thought that one should act as if it were literally true so as to avoid the potential for antinomianism. Not so for Chabad. Like other Hasidim, Chabad opted for the radical solution that zimzum itself is the illusion grounded in human perceptual limitations but that in fact nothing ever changed—the divine light before creation and after creation are identical, as is the immanence of the divine glory, except that the world conceals this glory even as it also stands witness to it. The parallel between this position and the psychological or perceptual problem of bittul (self-annihilation) should now be perfectly clear: when we reflect upon the divine light we realize cognitively and perceptually that we “are as naught,” but we also come to recognize that our “naught” is included in (rather than excluded by) unmediated divinity. Bittul is the cognitive-perceptual process whereby we train ourselves to see behind the veil. The world is real, but not in the way that we thought it was before. How is this accomplished? Here we return to the importance of prayer as a transformative praxis. Contemplative prayer is a complex ritual system in Chabad, corresponding to many different spiritual and cognitive levels of attainment. On the simplest level, contemplating the greatness of God engenders love and fear and a pervasive sense of bittul ha-yesh (nullification of the coarse material aspect of the human personality, the part that craves physical satisfaction and acts for itself, disobeying the divine will). The contemplative person continues to experience his or her separate existence but attains a great clarity and transparency to the divine will over time. One is no longer held in thrall to physical fears or desires and is actively willing to give oneself, one’s very life (mesirut nefesh), for the sake of not being separated from God. For early Chabad, which developed at the same time and in direct response to modernizing trends among the Jews of Europe, this was an important political as well as religious message, because it provided a practical means of combating the colonization of Jewish religious habitus by secularized perceptual structures—the idea that religious motives for example, even where they are respected, should be treated as no more compelling than other sorts of human motives and instinctual reactions, like the hunger for food, for economic advancement, or for political freedom. Contemplation on this level reformulates everything, putting the consciousness of God and the divine will at the center of one’s perceptual schemas and at the heart of one’s motivational framework, such that even martyrdom might appear as but a trifling thing compared to the awesome intensity of divine intimacy. Many religious movements would have been content with having achieved this level of religious feeling. Chabad sources insist however (and I am simplifying a great deal) that there are deeper levels of contemplation available to adepts and that these do more than simply ensure the primacy of religious motivation over other forces but also allow a glimpse of the truth obscured by zimzum—the truth that the world itself and all that is in it “is considered as naught before thee.” This is called bittul ba-metziut, or “annihilation within existence.” In this reality, every existent being and thing must be perceived (and experienced!) as ultimately contingent upon the divine vitality that creates and gives life to it, not once and for all, as in a simplistic reading of the Genesis story, but constantly and at all times. Like the phenomenological epoché, which brackets the “natural attitude” of the world as given to sense experience, contemplative prayer brackets the untrained perspective by which our world appears as “really real” and firmly existent, and reveals instead the divine light and contingency underlying all things. One does not see merely a “table” or “chairs,” nor does one come to see them as illusory and false, but one learns to perceive the divine vitality that is in them and that constitutes their true reality. To pray with the tables and with the chairs means, at least in part, to take one’s cue from materiality but to work backwards to its divine source and vitality, to learn to truly see this vitality where once there was only a chair or a table, and then to reveal, to the extent one is able, the truth that zimzum—divine absence—is itself the illusion that reveals materiality, and that alles is Gott (“all is God”). The meaning of dirah ba-tachtonim, that the world should be revealed as a fitting habitation for divinity, is thus an act of uncovering as much as it is one of tikkun (repair). The tikkun is in fact the uncovering. This has been explicit or implicit to Chabad teaching since the beginning, but it received unprecedented and explicit emphasis from the seventh (and last) Rebbe, R. Menachem Mendl Schneerson (1902-1994) of New York, who over the last generation shepherded the transformation of post-Holocaust Chabad into a global movement. As R. Schneerson announced in his inaugural address to his Hasidim in 1951 and never tired of repeating in many ways over the years, he believed that the “generation of the seventh” (the seventh generation since the founding of Chabad by R. Schneur Zalman) was destined to be the generation of redemption, the generation in which the fitting habitation of this world for God would finally be made plain. While the relationship between this perceptual transformation and more traditional notions of Jewish redemption remain to be made clear in subsequent posts, the Rebbe emphasized in many settings over the years that the final telos of history is the revelation of the divine essence (atzmus) as God is in Godself in plain sight upon the phenomenal world, something we do not yet have language to describe. This is not, in the final analysis, the flight from materiality or its suppression (as in much of classical Jewish pietism), but the emergence of the material as the very throne and expression of divine glory. This is, moreover, the revelation of a truth already present, pulsing just beneath the façade of our secular existence. If Chabad has sometimes chafed against narrow doctrines of separation that are used to push religion out of the public sphere in the United States and elsewhere, this needs to be understood as fundamental to Chabad’s overall project. The sacred and the profane as human categories must both dissolve like the light of a candle in the noonday glare. It is the eve of Rosh Hashanah in Jerusalem as I write these words. There is a a pensiveness and excitement in the air very different from that which accompanies our secular “New Year’s Day.” It is Yom Ha-Din, the Day of Judgment, and Yom Ha-Zicharon, the Day of Memory. In the earliest Chabad sources, it is a day for the contemplation of the ultimate, paradoxical unity of the “light that fills creation” (divine sovereignty, immanence) and “the light that surrounds creation” (infinitude, transcendence). The day does not stand alone but is part of a broad ritual framework in which Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and the other liturgical days of this season each stand as particular moments in a broad process of self-transformation, self-annihilation, and renewal. Many people will spend many hours in synagogues hoping for at least a few moments of transcendence and clarity which may or may not ever come. In later posts in this ocasional series on the materiality of prayer, I hope to describe my ethnography of prayer in the lives of contemporary Chabad practitioners and flesh out more of what is at stake for them in this life they have chosen. For now though, it is enough to emphasize that the contemplative practice described in Chabad teachings ensures that those who engage in it will not be praying alone. If you listen closely you can hear the tables and the chairs praying, too.Chinese Hacks Of Google Database Of Surveillance Targets Highlight How Dumb Technology Backdoors Are from the how-can-people-still-not-see-this dept "What we found was the attackers were actually looking for the accounts that we had lawful wiretap orders on," Aucsmith says. "So if you think about this, this is brilliant counter-intelligence. You have two choices: If you want to find out if your agents, if you will, have been discovered, you can try to break into the FBI to find out that way. Presumably that's difficult. Or you can break into the people that the courts have served paper on and see if you can find it that way. That's essentially what we think they were trolling for, at least in our case." Defenders of the FBI proposal tend to pooh-pooh security concerns raised about requirisng such backdoors: Our brilliant American
source code or tools (such as ours) which target them. To register with Sony: http://www.us.playstation.com/develop To register with Microsoft: http://www.xbox.com/en-us/Developers/id Step 2: Contact Epic to verify your registered status If you are accessing Unreal Engine 4 through a custom license, or direct eval, you should email your Epic sales contact. If you are a subscription customer, head here and fill out all the appropriate information. Finally, Epic will send you an electronic Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) via DocuSign. Once you’ve completed that, we’ll send you an email containing instructions for accessing the console code and tools. This is a manual process for now, so please allow a few days to receive access. Step 3: Develop! Once you’ve received console access, you’ll need to compile the code for your desired platforms. For discussion and community support, we’ve created two new sections in the UE4 Forums for this purpose, “Xbox One Development” and “PlayStation 4 Development,” which are visible only to registered developers for those platforms. Please keep topical console discussions within these forums, as the console-maker NDAs only allow console code and information to be shared among registered developers. UE4 Shooter Game sample upgraded for console! UE4’s Shooter Game sample, freely available to subscribers in the UE4 Marketplace, provides a clean example of using UE4 to develop a console game. Shooter Game is currently undergoing certification for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. This sample contains numerous polished, console-targeted features: split screen, safe zones, loading screens, play-as-you-download, Trophies, Achievements, and more. This engine-level certification effort reduces the steps each individual team has to take to pass the very rigorous console certification processes. Never outgrow Unreal! In all, Unreal Engine 4.1 now supports all of the following platforms: PC, Mac, iOS, Android, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 (including Morpheus VR support), SteamOS, Linux, HTML5 (preview), and Oculus VR technologies. With each new version delivering significant new features and improvements in performance, platform support, and workflow, driven by feedback from the community, and informed by Epic’s experience developing games like Fortnite, we aspire for Unreal Engine 4 to be the engine you never outgrow. Thank you very much for joining us on this journey! To join the discussion in the forums, click here.NATO asks for more troops for Afghanistan as protesters in Kabul denounce US The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan is asking for 2,000 more soldiers to join the 140,000-strong international force here, NATO officials said Monday. It was unclear how many would be Americans. Coalition officials said nearly half will be trainers for the rapidly expanding Afghan security forces and will include troops trained to neutralize roadside bombs that have been responsible for about 60 percent of the 2,000 allied deaths in the nearly 9-year war. The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not supposed to talk about the issue with media, said the NATO-led command had been asking for the troops even before Gen. David Petraeus assumed command here in July. Petraeus recently renewed that request with the NATO command in Brussels. The alliance has had trouble raising more troops for the war effort, with at least 450 training slots still unfilled after more than a year. With casualties rising, the war has become deeply unpopular in many of NATO’s 28 member countries, suggesting the additional forces will have to come from the United States. In Europe, polls show the majority of voters consider it an unnecessary drain on finances at a time of sharp cuts in public spending and other austerity measures. An additional 30,000 U.S. service members have already been sent to Afghanistan as part of a surge aimed at finally suppressing the stubborn Taliban insurgency that has already claimed the lives of more than 1,100 American troops. NATO announced that an American service member was killed Sunday in eastern Afghanistan. The additional trainers are considered essential to meeting the goal of increasing Afghanistan’s army and police from the present 300,000 members to 400,000 by next year, when the drawdown of international troops is expected to start. One of the officials said the new trainers were needed to staff new schools for combat support and service support specialties to enable the transition of responsibility to the Afghan forces. NATO officials have said the extra instructors are hard to find because none of the member states has large numbers of such specialists available for assignment to Afghanistan. Another NATO official said the renewed request for more trainers and explosives disposal experts was part of a routine review of force requirements. “There is an ongoing discussion on possible additional resources needed to continue supporting the efforts under way,” she said. Also Monday, several hundred Afghans shouted anti-American slogans and “death” to President Barack Obama to protest plans by a Florida church to burn the Islamic holy book the Quran on Saturday to mark the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks in the United States that provoked the Afghan war. The crowd listened to fiery speeches from members of parliament, provincial council deputies, and Islamic clerics who criticized the U.S. and demanded the withdrawal of foreign troops from the country. Some threw rocks when a U.S. military convoy passed, but speakers shouted at them to stop and told police to arrest anyone who disobeyed. The Gainesville, Florida-based Dove World Outreach Center announced plans to burn copies of the Quran on church grounds but has been denied a permit to set a bonfire. The church, which made headlines last year after distributing T-shirts that said “Islam is of the Devil,” has vowed to proceed with the burning. “We know this is not just the decision of a church. It is the decision of the president and the entire United States,” said Abdul Shakoor, an 18-year-old high school student who said he joined the protest after hearing neighborhood gossip about the Quran burning. The U.S. Embassy in Kabul issued a statement condemning Dove World Outreach Center’s plans, saying Washington was “deeply concerned about deliberate attempts to offend members of religious or ethnic groups.” Protesters who had gathered in front of Kabul’s Milad ul-Nabi mosque raised placards and flags emblazoned with slogans calling for the death of Obama, while police looked on. They burned American flags and a cardboard effigy of Dove World Outreach Center’s pastor, Terry Jones, before dispersing peacefully. Muslims consider the Quran to be the word of God and demand it, along with any printed material containing its verses or the name of Allah or the Prophet Muhammad, be treated with the utmost respect. Any intentional damage or show of disrespect to the Quran is considered deeply offensive. In 2005, 15 people died and scores were wounded in riots in Afghanistan sparked by a story in Newsweek magazine alleging that interrogators at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay placed copies of the Quran in washrooms and had flushed one down the toilet to get inmates to talk. Newsweek later retracted the story. Meanwhile, police said they were investigating the stabbing death of well-known Afghan journalist Sayed Hamid Noori outside his Kabul home Sunday night. Afghan President Hamid Karzai issued a statement ordering authorities to spare no effort in bringing his killers to justice. Noori had been a former state television news anchor, as well as a member of Afghanistan’s Association of Independent Journalists. Reporters in Afghanistan face pressure from the government, local politicians and Taliban insurgents, all of whom look askance at negative reporting. At least 20 Afghan journalists have been killed and 200 physically assaulted in the past decade, with scores more leaving the profession or fleeing the country amid threats to their safety. ___ Associated Press writers Slobodan Lekic in Brussels and Rahim Faiez in Kabul contributed to this report. Source: AP News Mochila insert follows…The study of online social networks has revolutionized the way social scientists understand human interaction on a grand scale. It is based on the assumption that the fundamental unit of interaction is the social tie that exists between two individuals. This tie can be a message that one person has sent to another, that one person follows another, that one person “likes” another and so on. These social ties are the atoms of social network structure. And much of the research on social networks has focused on how these atoms join together to create complex networks of interaction. Much less thought has been given to the atoms themselves, whether they fall into categories themselves, whether different atoms have different social properties and how combining atoms of different types might be indicative of entirely different relationships. Today, Luca Maria Aiello at Yahoo Labs in Barcelona, Spain, and a couple of pals, change that. They tease apart the nature of the links that form on social networks and say these atoms fall into three different categories. They also show how to extract this information automatically and then characterize the relationships according to the combination of atoms that exist between individuals. Their ultimate goal: to turn anthropology into a full-blooded subdiscipline of computer science. Aiello and co used two data sets from a pair of large social networks. The first consists of over 1 million messages sent between 500,000 pairs of users of the aNobii social network, which people use to talk about books they have read. The second is a set of 100,000 anonymized user pairs who commented on each other’s photos on Flickr, sending around 2 million messages in total. The team analyzes these messages based on the type of information they convey, which they divide into three groups. The first type of information is related to social status; messages displaying appreciation or announcing the creation of the social tie such as a follow or like. For example, a user might say a photograph is “an excellent shot” or say they’ve followed somebody or acknowledged attention they’ve got by thanking them for visiting a site. The second category of information involves social support of some kind. The main purpose of a message that falls into this category is to greet or welcome someone to a website, to explicitly express affection or to convey wishes, jokes and laughter. The final category of information is an exchange of knowledge. Messages that fall into this category share information and personal experience, or ask for opinions and suggestions, or display knowledge of a particular field. Aiello and co then develop an algorithm that automatically categorizes the messages sent between individuals according to the content they contain and their similarity to messages of the same type. Finally, they evaluate the results of the algorithm by asking human editors to assess a sample of 1000 randomly selected messages from each website and label them according to the three categories. They then compared the human choices with the algorithms and found good agreement. The results of this analysis allow them to work out how often people use the different modes of communication and also how they transition from one to another during a conversation. They find that in aNobii, the most frequent interactions involve status giving where the archetypal message is “nice library”, referring to a user’s collection of books. By contrast, Flickr users communicate in a different way. “In Flickr the proportion is very balanced instead, with no domain being predominant on average,” say Aiello and co. More interesting is the way that social ties evolve over time. Aiello and co say that status exchange is particularly common in short conversations and at the beginning of longer ones. However, the conversations rapidly evolve into a mix of knowledge exchanges and social support. “It thus appears that status exchange serves to set the foundation for the future relationship, feeding to the interactional background after the tie-formation stage,” say Aiello and co. That’s a fascinating study that provides a new way of looking at social ties as strings of interactions. In a way, it changes the atomic theory of social ties into a kind of string theory. Aiello and co clearly think this should lead to plenty of new insights and they are optimistic about the future. “The ultimate goal of such analysis is the unpacking of “culture” as a formal, computational concept,” they say. And they think of the patterns of strings of interaction as a kind of grammar of society. “We hope our work provides yet another step towards a truly computational understanding of human societies.” That’s an ambitious goal– a truly computational understanding of human society. Both fantastic and a little frightening the same time. Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1407.5547 : Reading the Source Code of Social TiesAdapted from recent online discussions. Dear Carolyn: My wife is friends with a former co-worker (also married). I have always supported their friendship and never thought much of it, until one night when I saw an e-mail from him that read, “Can I see you tonight?” Immediately something struck me as off — the wording of the e-mail... it just didn’t strike me as a “friend” tone. I thought if it was nothing (i.e., just getting together to chat about work), then my wife would mention it to me, but she didn’t. I went into her e-mail later to see her reply, and found the message deleted from her inbox, as well as her trash folder, which made me think it was something she didn’t want seen. Later I looked at our phone bill and found she was making multiple texts and calls to him on an almost daily basis — so much so it rivaled what she and I make day-to-day. I brought it up with my wife, who claimed she had no idea it was so much, that they are simply friends, and that it’s not a big deal. Am I reading too much into this? I just can’t shake the feeling something is going on outside of being just friends. Anonymous It sure appears as if you have something to worry about; people don’t double-delete innocent e-mails. Presumably there were other e-mails from the same dates in her trash folder that hadn’t been wiped out? I think you need to go back to her and say that you’ve thought about it, that you want to believe it’s nothing, but that you can’t shake the feeling that she’s not telling you the truth. Cite the double-delete and whatever else you’ve seen that doesn’t track with “simply friends.” Then say you’d rather have a bad truth here than false reassurance. Of course, if she decides to stick to her story, you do hit a wall; you either get to act on the evidence you have, twiddle your thumbs waiting for something to happen — unappealing options, both — or you become a chronic snoop, which is among the lower roads to travel. Until you hit that wall — and in the interest of avoiding it — I suggest you make telling you the truth as palatable for her as possible, whatever that truth may be. Hi, Carolyn: The boyfriend and I broke up just the other week. I completely agree that it was the right thing to do because we needed and wanted different futures. But I cry every day! I was crazy about him and miss his company. I don’t want to get back together. What can I do to help my heart catch up to my head in getting over this? Heartbreak Hotel Hearts are notoriously resistant to help with these things. Which is the great thing about hearts — if they could just switch themselves on and off, what would be the point? So just give yourself time to cry. If you don’t force yourself into a million distractions, then your cry phase will run its course naturally, the tears will taper off, you’ll even get sick of them, and you’ll surprise yourself by finding you have room for other feelings again. There’s just no substitute for time. I’m sorry.Sunday River plans to open for the ski season Monday, the second-earliest opening in 20 years. The ski resort in Newry announced the news Wednesday after watching the current weather forecast, which has temperatures in western Maine dipping into the 20s heading into the weekend, allowing for extended snow making over the weekend on the mountain’s Locke Mountain peak. “We can’t make any promises, but this forecast looks very favorable,” said Dana Bullen, resort president and general manager, in a statement. “Our snowmakers are dedicated to opening as early as possible and this year is no different. But, we wanted to let our passholders and guests know so they can make their plans.” The mountain expects to open on the upper T2 trail, accessible via the Locke Mountain Triple lift in Barker Basin. Lift tickets are expected to be $29 for all ages. After Monday’s opening day, the mountain won’t open again until the following weekend. It will then only be open on the weekends until mid-November. “Of course, everything is weather dependent,” said Sarah Devlin, Sunday River’s spokesperson. Oct. 19 is the second earliest opening day the mountain has had in 20 years. The earliest the mountain has opened in the past 20 years was on Oct. 14 in 2009. The mountain launched its ski season Nov. 3 in 2014, and Oct. 26 the year before that. ShareLAS VEGAS (AP) — A gunman perched high on the 32nd floor of a Las Vegas Strip casino unleashed a shower of bullets down on an outdoor country music festival below, killing at least 50 people and wounding more than 200 as tens of thousands of frantic concert-goers screamed and ran for their lives, officials said Monday. It was the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Country music star Jason Aldean was performing Sunday night at the end of the three-day Route 91 Harvest Festival when the gunman opened fire across the street from inside the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino. Confirming that one suspect is down. This is an active investigation. Again, please do not head down to the Strip at this time. — LVMPD (@LVMPD) October 2, 2017 SWAT teams quickly descended on the concert and the casino, and officers used explosives to get into the hotel room where the suspect was inside, authorities said. The gunman died at the scene and was identified by Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo as Stephen Paddock, 64. A motive was not immediately known. At this time we do not believe there are any more shooters. More information to come shortly from @Sheriff_LVMPD. — LVMPD (@LVMPD) October 2, 2017 Aldean was in the middle of a song when the shots came rapidly: Pop-pop-pop-pop. Video of the shooting then showed Aldean stopping and the crowd getting quiet as if they were unsure of what had just happened. The gunman paused and then fired another volley of muzzle flashes from the gold glass casino as more victims fell to the ground while others fled in panic. Some said they hid behind concession stands and other crawled under parked cars. Kodiak Yazzie, 36, said the music stopped temporarily when the first shots began and the tune even started up again before the second round of pops sent the performers ducking for cover and fleeing the stage. “It was the craziest stuff I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” Yazzie said. “You could hear that the noise was coming from west of us, from Mandalay Bay. You could see a flash- flash- flash- flash.” Thousands in the crowd fled as the bullets ran rampant. Monique Dumas from British Columbia, Canada, said she was at the concert, six rows from the stage when she thought she heard a bottle breaking, and then a burst of popping sounds that may have been fireworks. She said as she made her way out, it was “organized chaos” as everyone fled. “It took four to five minutes and all that time there was gunfire.” In addition to Paddock, police said they located a woman who may have been his roommate — Marilou Danley, 62. Lombardo said they believe this was a “lone wolf” attack. “It’s a devastating time,” Lombardo said. Police shut down the usually busy Las Vegas Boulevard and authorities across the state and federal ranks converged onto the scene as dozens of ambulances ferried those struck by gunfire. Nearby Interstate 15 and flights at McCarran International Airport were briefly closed. Hospital emergency rooms were jammed with victims delivered by ambulance. Others loaded the wounded into their cars and drove them to hospitals. Jose Baggett, 31, of Las Vegas, said he and a friend were in the lobby of the Luxor hotel-casino — directly north of the festival — when people began to run, almost like in a stampede. He said people were crying and as he and his friend started walking away minutes later, they encountered police checkpoints where officers were carrying shotguns and assault rifles. “There were armored personnel vehicles, SWAT vehicles, ambulances, and at least a half-mile of police cars,” Baggett said. Among those killed were two off-duty police officers who were attending the concert. Two on-duty officers were wounded, including one who underwent surgery and was upgraded to stable condition early Monday, police said. Hours after the shooting, Aldean posted on Instagram that he and his crew were safe and said the shooting was “beyond horrific.” “It hurts my heart that this would happen to anyone who was just coming out to enjoy what should have been a fun night,” Aldean said. President Donald Trump extended condolences to the victims and their families. In a tweet Monday, Trump offered “My warmest condolences and sympathies to the victims and families of the terrible Las Vegas shooting. God bless you!” White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump was “briefed on the horrific tragedy in Las Vegas.” Sanders said that “we are monitoring the situation closely and offer our full support to state and local officials. All of those affected are in our thoughts and prayers.” The shooting at the sold-out Route 91 Harvest festival was the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Forty-nine people were killed when a gunman opened fire at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando in June 2016. Sunday’s shooting came more than four months after a suicide bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, that killed 22 people. Almost 90 people were killed by gunmen inspired by Islamic State at the Bataclan concert hall in Paris during a performance by Eagles of Death Metal in November 2015. ___If you’ve ever thought that your cat would choose treats over your companionship any day, you’re not alone, but a new study suggests otherwise. The Department of Animal and Rangeland Sciences at Oregon State University conducted a study and found that, contrary to popular belief, cats preferred interaction with humans over food. In the study, researchers observed the behavior of adult pet and shelter cats. Researchers then presented the cats with four different kinds of stimuli — human social interaction, food, toys, and scents — and recorded the time of interaction with each stimulus. Results showed that the most preferred stimulus of both cat populations was interaction with humans. The second preferred stimulus was food. According to the authors of the study, future studies regarding felines can observe how preferred stimuli can be used as “enrichment” and also see how motivated cats are to work for their favorite stimulus. To read about how cats took over Pizza Hut Japan in the “Pizzeria Cat” campaign, click here.Share. I still don't think my mother's forgiven me for the last phone bill I ran up... I still don't think my mother's forgiven me for the last phone bill I ran up... To celebrate the release of the Nintendo Entertainment System: NES Classic Edition, Nintendo is bringing back the Nintendo game counselor service, the Power Line. For three days only (November 11-13 inclusively), the Power Line - at one time (and pre-internet) the only place to get help for some of Nintendo's classic games - will be back up with tips and tricks. Available from 6am to 7pm PT each day, the advice line will be fully automated, but callers to (425) 885-7529 will hear "recorded tips for several games, plus behind-the-scenes stories from original Nintendo Game Play Counselors". Exit Theatre Mode Nintendo's social media #NESterday takeover will "go completely retro to a time when'social media' involved trading passwords and game tips on the school bus". Visitors to Nintendo's NY store will also be able to partake in activities with a retro 80s-themed launch event, with the first 250 visitors able to play classic NES games, participate in a costume contest dressed as their favorite Nintendo characters, and show off their NES knowledge in a retro Nintendo game show. “Many of us have fond and wonderful memories of the original NES,” said Doug Bowser, Nintendo of America’s senior VP of sales and marketing. “With these launch activities for the NES Classic Edition, we want to replicate the nostalgic feelings of sitting down and playing the NES with your family for the first time.” The Nintendo Entertainment System: NES Classic Edition system includes 30 classic NES games such as Super Mario Bros, Metroid, Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, Kirby’s Adventure, and Pac-Man. It launches on November 11. Exit Theatre Mode In our Classic NES Edition review, we gave it 7.5, stating: "The selection of 30 beautifully emulated, mostly classic games makes a strong case to own a NES Classic as a way to easily revisit old favorites and introduce them to new generations. Nintendo made sure to pick the visual filters that made the most sense for its first dedicated classic video game machine. "I just can’t understand why somebody thought limiting us to 2.5ft controller cables was a good idea, because it really limits where and how you can enjoy these games." Vikki Blake is a very jumpy survival horror survivalist. You can find her twittering over at @_vixx and twitching at twitch.tv/vixxiie.The 1953 London Debt Accords show that European leaders know how to resolve a debt crisis in the interests of justice and recovery. Here are four key lessons for Greece’s debt crisis today. On 27 February 1953, an agreement was signed in London which resulted in the cancellation of half of Germany’s (then West Germany’s) debt: 15 billion out of a total of 30 billion Deutschmarks.* Those cancelling the debt included the United States, the UK and France, along with Greece, Spain and Pakistan – countries which are major debtors today. The agreement also included private individuals and companies. In the years following 1953 other countries signed up to cancel German debts, including Egypt, Argentina, Belgian Congo (today the Democratic Republic of Congo), Cambodia, Cameroon, New Guinea, and the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (today Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe). (1) The German debt came from two periods: before and after World War II. Roughly half of it was from loans Germany had taken out in the 1920s and early 1930s, before the Nazis came to power, which were used to meet payments ordered by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. They were a legacy of the huge reparations forced on the country after defeat in World War I. The other half of the debt originated from reconstruction following the end of World War II. By 1952, Germany’s foreign-owed debt was around 25% of national income. This is relatively low compared to debtor countries today: Spain, Greece, Ireland and Portugal’s debts to foreign lenders are all over 80% of GDP. But West Germany had to undertake huge reconstruction following the war, and foreign currency with which to pay foreign-owed debts was scarce. The German delegation at the conference convincingly argued that its debt payments would rise sharply in the near future, and that this would significantly hinder reconstruction. Following the debt cancellation, West Germany experienced an ‘economic miracle’ with large-scale reconstruction, and high rates of growth in income and exports. This stability contributed to peace and prosperity in western Europe. Creditors to West Germany were keen to stabilise the country’s politics and economics, so that it could be a ‘bulwark against communism’. This unique political reasoning led to creditors adopting a much more enlightened approach to dealing with a country’s debt, which has unfortunately not been repeated in debt crises of the last thirty years – in Latin America and Africa (1980s and 1990s), East Asia (mid-1990s), Russia and Argentina (turn of the millennium) and Europe today. Through these crises, Germany has been a creditor, as can be seen most starkly in the current European debt crisis. As well as the scale of debt cancellation, there were several other features of the London Debt Accords which were of great benefit to Germany, and the principles of which could be applied to debtor countries today. 1) Setting limits on debt payments Most ingeniously, it was agreed that West Germany’s debt payments could only come out of trade surplus. If the country had a trade deficit, no payments would need to be made. This meant that it only made debt payments using revenue it had actually earned, rather than having to resort to new borrowing or using up foreign currency reserves. It prevented a return to crisis or long stagnation. If it did have a trade deficit, West Germany was also allowed to restrict imports. For creditor countries it meant that if they wanted to be repaid, they had to buy West German exports. The mechanism for doing this was that they allowed their currencies to ‘rise’ against the Deutschmark. This meant it was cheaper for their citizens to buy products produced in Germany. This increased German exports, earning the country the money to repay the remaining debt. This effectively meant that creditors had to restructure their economies as well – by importing (ie. consuming more) rather than forcing the debtor to implement austerity. Deficits, surpluses and debt If a country is exporting more than it is importing, it has a trade surplus. This means it has left over revenue which is not spent on any imports. It either has to be spent on paying debts, or has to be lent to other countries, creating debt for them. If a country has a trade deficit, it is importing more than it is exporting. To be able to do this it either has to borrow money from other countries, or sell assets it owns to other countries. Debts between countries are therefore caused by (or cause) trade deficits and surpluses. If one country wants to have a surplus, it relies on another country having a deficit. The more countries are in balance with each other, the more stable the world economy will be. In order for debts to be repaid, debtor countries need to have trade surpluses, and countries which are owed money need to have trade deficits. It is very difficult for debtor countries to move to having a trade surplus, if creditors are not willing to also move to having deficits. It is not theoretically possible for all countries to have surpluses, short of the Earth trading with another planet. West Germany did indeed have trade surpluses throughout the period of debt payment, and so the clause never needed to be invoked. But its presence helped rebuild the West German economy and export base by giving an incentive for creditors to buy West German exports, and allow the Deutschmark to devalue against their currencies. However, German competitiveness and under-valuation of the Deutschmark continued following the period of debt repayment, and was ‘locked in’ with other Eurozone countries with the creation of the Euro in the 1990s. Whilst in the 1950s and 1960s West Germany’s trade surpluses enabled the debt to be paid, in more recent decades they have contributed to increased debt in other countries, most notably countries such as Greece, Ireland, Spain and Portugal today. Given the debt cancellation, and reduction of interest rates, West Germany’s relative debt payments were 2.9% of exports in 1958, the first year for repayments, and then fell as exports grew. In contrast, today the IMF and World Bank regard debt payments of up to 15-25% of export revenues as being ‘sustainable’ for the most impoverished countries. In 2015, Germany is expected by the IMF to yet again have a trade surplus, of 5.8 per cent of GDP, when it could be buying exports from debtor countries to help get them out of the crisis. Moreover, debt payments are far higher as a percentage of exports than the maximum spent by West Germany following debt cancellation. The Greek government’s foreign debt payments are around 30 per cent of exports.(2) Heavily indebted countries in the global South are also making debt payments at much higher levels than West Germany did. Pakistan, the Philippines, El Salvador and Jamaica are all spending between 10 and 20% of export revenues on government foreign debt payments.(3) This does not include debt payments by the private sector. 2) Including all types of creditor All types of creditor were brought into the restructuring, whether foreign governments or companies. This ensured equal treatment for all, whilst preventing Germany being pursued by companies for double the amount of debt it was paying to others. This is in marked contrast to debt restructurings of recent years. The Heavily Indebted Poor Countries initiative, which cancelled $130 billion for 35 of the most impoverished countries in the 2000s, only cancelled debts owed to international institutions and foreign governments. Private companies were not compelled to take part. This has led to some of the poorest countries in the world, such as Sierra Leone, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, being sued in western courts by vulture funds, for huge amounts on debts which they paid very little for. In late 2001, Argentina defaulted on its debt when it became simply too large to pay. Many of the private creditors agreed to sign up to new agreements where they would be paid 30 cents in every dollar that was owed. However, some holdout creditors, many of them vulture funds who bought the debt cheaply in the midst of the crisis, are suing the now-solvent Argentina for the full value of their debt. In June 2014, the US Supreme Court upheld a New York court judgement in favour of two US vulture funds, NML Capital and Aurelius Capital, who are seeking $1.3 billion from Argentinian debts dating back to the 2001 crisis. The judgement made it illegal for Argentina to pay any of its debts unless it agreed to pay the vulture funds in full. Argentina refused, forcing it into a new debt default and a stand-off which continues today. In Greece, two debt restructurings were held in 2011, which resulted in over 90% of private creditors taking a more than 50% reduction in the debt owed to them. This ‘reduction’ was still more than the private holders of the debt would have got if they had sold the debt on the market. And creditors insisted that the new debt was issued under foreign, mainly British law, giving the Greek government much less control over its debt in the future. Furthermore, creditors who held the old debt under non-Greek law, such as in the UK or Switzerland, were able to stay out of this deal, and are still being paid the full amount, more than double what other creditors are receiving. Again, many of these are vulture funds who bought the debt cheaply and so are making a huge profit out of the Greek people. Moreover, bailouts over the previous couple of years mean much of the Greek debt has been transferred away from being owed to banks and to public institutions such as the IMF and EU governments instead. This debt was exempted from any reduction, and so Greece’s foreign-owed debt is now well over 100% of GDP. 3) Including all debts owed, not just government The London Debt Accords addressed all debts owed by the West German economy to people, governments and companies in other countries. It therefore included debts of German individuals and companies, not just those of the government. Much of the debt crisis today has been caused by debts owed, at least initially, by private companies, especially banks. For example, borrowing by Ireland’s private sector led to the foreign debt of the country as a whole reaching 1,000% of GDP by 2007. In contrast to the reckless lending and borrowing of the private sector, the government had a budget surplus during this time, and its total net debt – owed to both Irish savers and foreigners was down to just 11% of GDP by 2007. For an economy to escape from the stagnation caused by debt, the debts owed by both governments and private companies need to be addressed. 4) Negotiations rather than sanctions If West Germany did not, or was unable, to meet debt repayments, the agreement said there would be consultations between the debtor and creditors, whilst seeking the advice of an appropriate international organisation. This is in marked contrast to debt ‘negotiations’ over recent years where creditor governments and institutions, such as the Paris Club, IMF and European Central Bank, have dictated terms to debtor countries, and forced them to implement austerity and free market economic conditions. As it transpired, West Germany did not have further problems with the debt, so again the clause never had to be invoked. Greece: Break the chains Inspired by the ancient idea of jubilee, a time when debts were cancelled, slaves were freed and land was redistributed, Jubilee Debt Campaign is calling for a new debt jubilee in response to today’s global economic crisis. Such a jubilee would provide a framework for tackling today’s debt and banking crisis in Europe, as well as the continuing burden of unjust debt in the global South. It would mean: Cancelling the unjust debts of the most indebted nations Promoting just and progressive taxation rather than excessive borrowing Stopping harmful lending which forces countries into debt Greece is clearly one of the countries most in need of debt cancellation today. After more than four years of austerity, Greece’s debt has risen from 133% of GDP to 174% of GDP. The minimum wage has fallen by 25%, and youth unemployment is over 50%. Plus more than 20% of the 11 million people in Greece are now living below the poverty line. It is vital that Greece’s creditors learn the lessons of Germany’s debt deal of 1953 and break the chains of debt for Greece today. What you can do Notes * The debt cancellation was with West Germany, which had inherited all of Germany’s debt owed to the western world after World War II. So the cancellation was of ‘Germany’s’ debt, although negotiations were only with West Germany. 1. This, and much of the information in this briefing on the German debt cancellation deal, comes from: Kaiser, J. (2003). Debts are not destiny! On the fiftieth anniversary of the London Debt Agreement. Erlassjahr.de (Jubilee Germany). And two other Erlassjahr.de documents ‘Double standards applied’ and ‘Q&A about the London Debt Accord for Germany 1953’. 2. IMF, World Economic Outlook database. 3. World Bank, World Development Indicators database. This briefing has been produced with the assistance of the European Union. It is the sole responsibility of Jubilee Debt Campaign and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the European Union.After an explosive first qualifier with some shocking upsets, this weekend kicks off the second and final qualifier of the spring season. The outcome of this qualifier will determine who will – and will not – be going to this season’s live championships, with only the top eight teams
hypnotized. The stages of realization can move from being a staunch supporter defending your team from the “haters” to being open to listening to both sides, perhaps to ending up on the opposing side, or somewhere in the middle. The important part is keeping your eyes and ears open and being smart enough to admit when we’ve had the wool pulled over our eyes. Wherefore it can be hard to admit that a person who seemed so nice and talked about God blessing them with their status is actually a wolf in sheep’s clothing, we can still pray and have grace for them, since we may realize there are times when we acted the same way and have been forgiven. And thank the Lord that the scales of confusion fall off our own eyes. [Featured Image by Alex Brandon/AP Images]Things are starting to pan out in Vintage Magic: The Gathering, now a few weeks after Treasure Cruise was restricted, Gifts Ungiven was unrestricted, and Fate Reforged entered the format. More changes are still to come, no doubt, but we can look at what’s winning now to see where things might be headed. Restrictions are usually easier for the format to adjust to than unrestrictions. Often restrictions simply drive a deck out of existence. How do you deal? You find a new deck! In the case of Treasure Cruise, which was most frequently used in Delver, however, that deck will probably survive. It was around before Treasure Cruise, used the spell well while it lasted, and will continue on now with one copy instead of four. They may also add Dig Through Times to make up the difference. Gifts Ungiven’s unrestriction will take a lot more effort. It has been used before, but a lot has changed in the eight years since it was restricted, so there are new combinations to look at. Eternal Central had a series of articles from Jason Jaco, Jamie Cano, Stephen Menendian, and Guillem Ragull, all part of #GiftsWeek, looking at potential new decks. My cohorts and I on “Serious Vintage” also looked at Gifts past and future with Andy “Brassman” Probasco, one of the great abusers of the card from its previous heyday. And at Star City Games, Carsten Kotter put together a great Gifts overview, along with some of the decks he’s looking at to use it in as a four-of. Definitely check these out if you’re interested in playing the card because, as is appropriate for a shiny, wrapped present, Gifts Ungiven could turn out to be anything! Kotter’s article posits that “Whoever thinks Jace, the Mind Sculptor, is even close to Gifts Ungiven in power level is kidding themselves,” and he’s almost certainly right. In my testing with the card, resolving Gifts Ungiven in a deck designed to abuse it leads directly to victory. Resolving Jace regularly leads to several Brainstorms, which is also very good, but less certain. Gifts Ungiven is great for putting combinations of cards together, a trait that Adam Subirana recognized when he used it as a four-of in his Tezzeret Control list to make top eight out of 37 players at the inaugural event of the 2015 Liga Catalana de Vintage in Barcelona, Spain. The deck is focused and chock full of some of the best spells in Vintage. In this case, Adam looks to use Gifts to set up Time Vault with either Voltaic Key or Tezzeret, the Seeker, to take the remaining turns and win with Blightsteel Colossus, planeswalker activations, or Snapcaster Mage. Snapcaster, Noxious Revival, and of course Yawgmoth’s Will help set up game-winning Gifts piles, since their ability to recur critical spells and permanents puts opponents into a no-outs situation. Tezzeret himself allows a Gifts pile that includes Demonic Tutor and Vampiric Tutor, that can always find Time Vault and establish the combo. Postboard, Adam has access to the obvious and necessary cards against Dredge and Workshops. The Thoughtseizes and Flusterstorm are strong ways to fight through opposing counters, especially alongside Notion Thief against Gushes and combo decks armed with draw sevens. I’m a little surprised to see Rebuild in a deck without a storm win condition and no Helm of Obedience to go along with Leyline of the Void and Tezzeret, but that’s okay. The deck looks solid. Vasu Balakrishan put Gifts Ungiven into the top four of the 62-player Black Magic Invitational, 31 January, in Coopersburg, Pennsylvania. There’s a lot going on in this decklist. This list has everything! The Bomberman combo of Auriok Salvagers and Black Lotus, one of the first big appearances of Tasigur in Vintage, Unburial Rites, Sphinx of the Steel Wind, four Containment Priest and two True-Name Nemesis in the board—it’s great. Tying it all together is Gifts Ungiven, again with a one-of Noxious Revival. Revival and Unburial Rites can put Salvagers and Lotus together, and with the limitless mana, Tasigur can combo to “draw” all the non-lands in your deck. You can then take all the turns with Time Walk and deck your opponent with Ancestral Recall. I said in my Fate Reforged review that I didn’t think Tasigur would quite make the cut in Vintage, but he’s definitely worthwhile here. He gives Bomberman a legitimate aggro plan beyond attacking with Trinket Mage and Salvagers. Post-board, the Containment Priests and True-Name Nemeses accentuate that plan, as well as provide answers to Dredge, Oath, Tinker, and opposing creatures. This looks like a fun deck to play, if only because the Gifts piles would be so varied situationally. Vasu also wrote a tournament report that’s worth checking out. When Fate Reforged released, Monastery Mentor was the card that got immediate attention as a potential Vintage playable. Young Pyromancer had already made its presence known, and Mentor had some notable upgrades to go along with its slightly higher cost. Importantly, because of prowess, the Monk tokens it makes are legitimate threats in their own right, even if Mentor gets removed. Depending on player preference, white also offers some sideboard advantages over red, able to hit graveyards and enchantments like Oath of Druids. Monastery Mentor decks were quick to appear, constructed similarly to the UR Pyromancer Delver decks that had been popular. Kevin Cron, co-host of the “So Many Insane Plays” podcast with Stephen Menendian, put a new twist on the previous Delver decks by adding Mystic Remora along with Monastery Mentor. His first iteration of this deck was played at an unsanctioned tournament before Treasure Cruise’s restriction but after Mentor was spoiled, so he played four of each, making him the only person to win a tournament with that configuration. His later build, played to the finals of a Team Serious event in Norwalk, Ohio, followed the new restrictions: Mystic Remora is a strong control option that will either fill your hand with spells to trigger Monastery Mentor or discourage your opponent from doing anything so that you can progress your plan at your own pace. Remora shows up in Vintage when opponents are playing lots of non-creatures: Gush-based cantrip decks and storm decks, for example. Against Kevin’s deck, of course, opponents won’t have time to wait for Remora go away. Kevin can keep drawing cards and playing control, triggering Mentor with free spells like Gush and Gitaxian Probe, as well as things like Sensei’s Divining Top that get replayed every turn and Hurkyl’s Recall, which allows a mass triggering from returned Moxes. Postboard, the red splash for Red Elemental Blast lends a really efficient hard counter for bombs like Tinker, Gifts Ungiven, or Dig Through Time, as well as an edge in counterwars. Engineered Explosives and Hurkyl’s Recall are both good against Workshop decks, especially as Explosives can get played around Sphere of Resistance effects, thanks to sunburst. Grafdigger’s Cage and Containment Priest do double duty against Oath and Dredge, so the sideboard looks balanced overall. Speaking of… I rarely feature Dredge decks because they often look pretty much the same. Game one do the Bazaar of Baghdad thing, make some tokens with Bridge from Below, and win either with the Zombie horde or a Dread Return target that puts the game away. Games two and three, come up with a plan to win against your opponent’s six or more anti-Dredge cards. Of course, Dredge is a viable and important part of the metagame, so it deserves some love too. Lance Ballester played a somewhat unconventional list, also to the top four of the Black Magic Invitational. Game one looks pretty typical, except that it has 10 free counterspells, which along with Cabal Therapy would give this deck a legitimate control game. The deck drops to two Bridge from Below, looking to win with Dread Returns for Griselbrand and Laboratory Maniac rather than with Zombie tokens necessarily. Postboard, rather than worrying about graveyard hate at all, Lance’s deck transformed into aggro-combo. Adding four Divining Witch allows an easy combo with Laboratory Maniac, first helping find LabMan and then helping trigger it with a search for a nonexistent card. Mental Misstep now helps protect LabMan from Lightning Bolts and Swords to Plowshares. Adding Mayor of Avabruk powers up the other humans, making them into red-zone threats. Cards like Rest in Peace and Grafdigger’s Cage won’t even be a concern at this point. Across the world, at CanCon in Canberra, Australia, Adam Douglas unleashed this deck. The sideboard is pretty typical anti-Dredge-hate cards, but the maindeck kill using Sharuum the Hegemon is uncommon. The combo works as normal in Dredge, but it allows a player to win without attacking. When it comes time to Dread Return, Sharuum the Hegemon can either get Possessed Portal to soft-lock the opponent without hindering the dredge ability, or it can get Altar of Dementia. With the Altar in play, a second Dread Return (sacrificing the first Sharuum in response) for a second Sharuum allows a player to chain Sharuum through the Altar to mill the opponent (or dump more cards in the graveyard) and to make limitless Zombie tokens. Sharuum can also get Lion’s Eye Diamondor Seat of the Synod to fuel Fatestitcher and more dredging. So, Where Are the Workshops? Mishra’s Workshop decks are still very much alive and well, but as it turns out, I can only make room for so many decklists. Prison strategies are still the most common, aiming to lock the opponent out of doing anything relevant, usually by hindering mana. If fully powered Gifts decks do make a complete comeback, Shops will have to deal with that, including a potential return for Null Rod. Small creatures like Monastery Mentor will also continue to be an issue as well, perhaps meriting answers like Triskelion and Duplicant. As it is now, Martello Shops—with Kuldotha Forgemaster for specific answers and sometimes Blightsteel Colossus—is still the most popular and best performing, but Terra Nova—with Mishra’s Factory, Mutavault, and Dismember—has had some high finishes as well. Multiple examples of both lists made the elimination rounds of the Black Magic Invitational and can be seen here (along with the other top performers). Watching Vintage change and adjust itself to cards’ entering and exiting is generally exciting. There are plenty of options available and more to be uncovered as players develop decks and react to opponents. Thanks for reading! Nat Moes @GrandpaBelcherRABBIT HASH, Ky. – The people who led the charge to rebuild the Rabbit Hash General Store can hardly believe it happened so fast. The 185-year-old landmark reopens Saturday less than 15 months after it almost burned to the ground. “People come in and they go, 'Oh, you painted the store!' They don't even know the store burned down and got put back up, so it's quite a compliment when they say that because it really does look like the old one,” said Don Clare, president of the Rabbit Hash Historical Society. “It feels like it never left,” said Bobbi Kayser, Historical Society secretary. “Coming in here to a lot of happy people, enjoying a lot of food, enjoying good music, is just normal to me.” The space is new but the feeling is so familiar. The stove again awaits musicians and gathered crowds. The mailboxes are back. The shelves are filled with goods. “The people are so endeared to this building,” said Clare. “It's an inanimate object, but what it represents is something animate and it's all part of what’s in us. You know, the General Store was always the pulse of this community. I call it the Facebook of Rabbit Hash.” “The night it was burning, before the locals grabbed fire extinguishers and started putting out hot spots, after the firemen left, it had already been decided that this store was going to be rebuilt,” said Kayser. Video from the fire: They turned to a local guy, Ed Unterreiner of Rivertown Construction, to get it done. “My mission was, in another year or so, it will just be a bad memory and everything will be exactly the way it was and as if nothing happened,” Unterreiner said. RELATED: Photo gallery from the fire MORE: Photos of the store’s restoration “I think what was so incredible about this experience was that our local feeling bled out into the greater community and we felt their love as well,” said Kayser. “When we cut the ribbon and the doors open, that's going to make it real. It’s going to be the public in here again. It’s going to be everybody’s store again. And I think that's really going to put the feather on the whole thing.” The store will feature live music from noon to 8 p.m., including performances by Mike Hicks, The StarDevils, The Modified and Cadillac & Catfish. Verona Vineyards Wine Tasting Room will be open and featuring a re-release of its “ID. Clare Sweet Concord American Wine.” The town’s seasonal businesses, The Scalded Hog restaurant and Amber’s Antiques will also be open for the first time this year. Parking is limited, so organizers have set up a lot and a shuttle at the corner of East Bend Road and Rabbit Hash Road. Visitors are asked to carpool and not bring coolers. RELATED: How Rabbit Hash got its nameShare The sheer number of Windows 8 tablets set to launch in the next few months is staggering. We kept thinking we had finished the list, but went back to the drawing board once we found another hidden gem. Throughout this list you’ll find tablets aimed at the mobile competition, enterprise users, and the larger consumer market. Every major PC manufacturer has brought something to the table. Whether Windows 8 ends up being a huge success or a major flop, nobody can say the operating system isn’t being fully supported by a huge amount of hardware. Microsoft Microsoft Surface RT OS: Windows RT Screen: 10.6-inch ClearType 1366×768 pixel display, 16:9 ratio, 208 ppi Specs: Nvidia Tegra 3+ processor, 32 or 64GB storage Camera: “HD” cameras in front and back Connectivity: Wi-Fi Price: $500 ($100 for TouchCover keyboard) Description: The Surface tablets are proof that Microsoft is taking control of Windows 8 and its mobile counterpart, Windows Phone 8, by setting the bar for third-party manufacturers. The magnesium casing is sturdy and scratch-resistant and the HD display is covered in second-generation Gorilla Glass. The Touch Cover, though it hasn’t been available for testing, is arguably one of the most innovative accessories in the world of slates, building a full keyboard and trackpad into a screen cover. Microsoft Surface Pro OS: Windows 8 Screen: 10.6-inch ClearType HD display, 16:9 ratio, 208 ppi Specs: Intel Ivy Bridge Core i5 processor, 64 or 128GB storage Camera: “HD” cameras in front and back Connectivity: 3G, 4G LTE, Wi-Fi Price: TBA Description: While the Microsoft Surface RT is saddled to a mobile-only version of Windows 8, with no access to the classic desktop and legacy applications, the Pro version comes with all the power and flexibility of a laptop. This comparison can be pushed even further when your Surface is hooked up to a monitor and wireless peripherals to become a true work station. Plus, it’s extremely easy on the eyes. Bravo, Microsoft. Dell Check out our full review of the Dell Latitude 10 tablet. Latitude 10 OS: Windows 8 Screen: 10 inches, 1366×768 pixels Specs: Intel Clover Trail, 2GB RAM, 128GB storage Camera: 8MP rear, 720p webcam front Connectivity: Wi-Fi, TBA broadband options Price: TBA Description: Aimed at enterprise users, the Latitude 10 is a sturdy piece of hardware. Built from a rubberized metal, Dell’s latest tablet is in it for the long haul. It has a removable battery, four USB 2.0 ports, Ethernet port, and HDMI out. The Latitude also sports a fingerprint reader and an optional Wacom stylus. No doubt Dell is hoping business users will appreciate the Latitude’s wide viewing angles, ability to run legacy apps, and practical hardware. XPS 10 OS: Windows RT Screen: 10-inch display Specs: Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor Camera: TBA Connectivity: Wi-Fi Price: TBA Description: The XPS 10 is a tablet first and a laptop hybrid second. The design of the tablet flows seamlessly into the keyboard dock, which also doubles the battery life; a popular feature it seems. In size it’s more of a netbook than a laptop, but the keyboard seems to be a respectable size with spacious keys and a generous trackpad. It’s clear that Dell is hoping to rope in the crowd of PC users looking for a less-business focused tablet compared with the Latitude 10. Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2 OS: Windows 8 Screen: 10.1-inch IPS display, 1366×768 pixels Specs: Intel Atom “Clover Trail” processor, 2GB RAM, 64GB storage Camera: 8MP rear, 2MP front Connectivity: HSPA+, 4G LTE (AT&T), Wi-Fi Price: $650, $800 with keyboard Description: A successor to the Android-powered ThinkPad, the second generation device is just one of Lenovo’s entries into the growing Windows 8 ecosystem. Like most of the tablets on this list, the ThinkPad Tablet 2 will have an optional keyboard dock similar to those available for tablets now. The drawback here is that the dock forces the tablet to sit at a fixed angle and can’t be closed like a laptop. Check out our full review of the Lenovo IdeaTab Lynx tablet. IdeaTab Lynx OS: Windows 8 Screen: 11.6-inch IPS display, 1366×768 pixels Specs: 1.8GHz “Clover Trail” Atom processor, 2GB RAM, 32 or 64GB storage Camera: 5MP rear, 1.3MP front Connectivity: Wi-Fi Price: $600, $750 with keyboard Description: Unlike the more enterprise-focused ThinkPad Tablet 2, the Lynx is aimed squarely at the consumer market. It’s light enough that it left early reviewers feeling like they were holding something closer to a Kindle than the iPad. The keyboard dock is outfitted with high-end island-style keys. The battery life is nothing to sneeze at either. The Lynx is touting 8 hours of use that can be bumped up to 16 hours when used with the bendable keyboard dock. Sony VAIO Tap 20 OS: Windows RT or Windows 8 Screen: 20 inches, 1600×900 pixels Specs: Core i3, i5, or i7 processor, 8GB RAM, 750GB or 1TB storage Camera: 1.3MP front Connectivity: Wi-Fi Price: $880 Description: Called a “tabletop” by Sony, the VAIO Tap 20 is geared towards the household PC market. It features family-friendly applications like Family Paint, an exclusive app that lets two people create virtual art together, and Fingertapps Organizer, a collaborative calendar and scheduling app to keep everyone in sync. Though it may look like a touchscreen all-in-one, the Tap 20 can run on battery and be moved from room to room as needed. Game night will never be the same. Samsung ATIV Tab OS: Windows RT Screen: 10.1-inch HD LCD display, 1366×768 pixels Specs: 1.5GHz dual-core processor, 2GB RAM, 32 or 64GB storage Camera: 5MP rear, 1.9MP front Connectivity: Wi-Fi Price: TBA Description: Seemingly based on the design of its Galaxy Note 10.1, Samsung decided to try their hand at a tablet for Microsoft’s latest baby. The battery has been upgraded from the Galaxy Note, however, and will last even longer than before. The ATIV Tab also rejects the optional keyboards of the Smart PCs and runs on Windows RT so it will rely on the strength of Modern UI developers to create a compelling app ecosystem and convince consumers that Windows can be fun, as well as productive. ATIV Smart PC (Series 5) OS: Windows 8 Screen: 11.6 inch LCD display, 1366×768 pixels Specs: Intel Atom “Clover Trail” processor, 2GB RAM, 128GB memory Camera: 8MP rear, 2MP front Connectivity: 3G, 4G LTE, Wi-Fi Price: TBA Description: The ATIV Smart PC and its souped up brother are Samsung’s first tablets designed with the full Windows 8 experience in mind. Like its infamous smartphone-tablet hybrid, the Samsung Galaxy Note, Samsung has chosen to place its Smart PCs firmly on the line separating tablet from laptop. The Smart PC also comes preloaded with Samsung’s signature S Note apps that work with, you guessed it, the S Pen for all sorts of tasks that a finger is just too fat for. ATIV Smart PC Pro (Series 7) OS: Windows 8 Screen: 11.6-inch HD LCD display, 1980×1020 pixels Specs: Intel Core i5 processor, 4GB RAM, 256GB SSD Camera: 5MP rear, 2MP front Connectivity: 3G, 4G LTE, Wi-Fi Price: TBA Description: Following the emerging pattern, Samsung made sure to offer a solution for users with serious productivity needs that still want to try out a new form factor. The Smart PC Pro caters to a more power-hungry audience and amps up the processing power with some seriously intense specs for a tablet. If you’re worried about the latch Samsung uses to fuse tablet with keyboard, review units seem to be solid; remaining attached even after being shaken quite vigorously. HP ElitePad 900 OS: Windows 8 Screen: 10.1 inch display, 1280×800 pixels Specs: 1.8GHz Intel Atom “Clover Trail” processor, 64GB SSD Camera: 8MP rear, 1080p HD front Connectivity: 3G, 4G, Wi-Fi Price: TBA Description: Like Dell, HP wants to make sure its loyal base of enterprise users can access the newest iteration of Windows. To accommodate a business environment, the ElitePad 900 features wide viewing angles. It also has built-in security with HP Client Security 10, full of applications for managing passwords, encrypting drives, and easily accessing BIOS settings. The ElitePad 900 has various peripherals available as well, like a bluetooth keyboard, stylus, and docking station. Envy X2 OS: Windows 8 Screen: 11.6 inch IPS display, 1366×768 pixels Specs: 1.8GHz Intel Atom “Clover Trail” processor, 2GB RAM, 64GB SSD Camera: 8MP rear, 1080p HD front Connectivity: Wi-Fi Price: TBA Description: According to HP’s website, the Envy X2 is “the laptop that doubles as a tablet.” It’s a phrase that will become all too familiar with the surge of keyboard-docking Windows 8 tablets set to flood the market. The Envy X2 features a gorgeous, brushed metal chassis and will apparently pack some hefty battery power. Like other PC-makers, HP has added an additional battery in the keyboard to double the use time and keep you further away from an outlet. Acer Iconia W510 OS: Windows 8 Screen: 10.1-inch IPS display, 1366×768 pixels Specs: Intel Atom “Clover Trail” processor, 2GB RAM, 32GB storage Camera: 8MP rear, 2MP front Connectivity: Wi-Fi Price: $500 for 32GB, $600 for 64GB, $750 for 64GB and keyboard dock Description: The build quality of the Iconia W510 is questionable. Ars Technica received a review unit that wouldn’t power on and had a cracked hinge. With prices comparable to Lenovo’s Windows 8 devices, it seems like a recipe for disaster. At least the Iconia’s design makes it stand out a little from the competitors. Acer’s decided to pack a secondary battery in the keyboard dock as well, boosting battery life from 9 hours to a substantial 18 hours. Iconia W700 OS: Windows 8 Screen: 11.6 inch IPS display, 1920×1080 pixels Specs: Ivy Bridge Core i3 or i5 processor, 4GB RAM, 64 or 128GB SSD Camera: 5MP rear, 720p front Connectivity: Wi-Fi Price: $800 with keyboard stand Description: The Iconia W700 aims to fill a separate void than its cheaper partner-in-crime. The W700 is more tablet-desktop, rather than the popular tablet-laptop hybrid. The cradling station acts as a charging dock, includes 3 USB ports, Micro-HDMI, and can be set at a 70-degree or 20-degree angle. For comparison’s sake, it’s more aligned with the HP ElitePad 900 and Latitude 10. But we have to admit the W700 looks very unbalanced in that L-shaped dock. Asus Vivo Tab RT OS: Windows RT Screen: 10.1-inch Super IPS+ display, 1366×768 pixels Specs: Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core processor, 2GB RAM, 32GB SSD Camera: 8MP rear with LED flash, 2MP front Connectivity: 4G LTE, Wi-Fi Price: TBA Description: Based on specs, the Vivo Tab RT is clearly Asus’ entry level Windows 8 tablet. Vivo stems from the Latin verb meaning “to live”, a banal marketing ploy Asus may be regretting after Samsung’s ATIV moniker. Where the Vivo Tab RT suffers is in build quality when compared to its higher-spec’d older sibling. The actual tablet is less refined and the keyboard dock is made from plastic, complete with a slight rattle while typing. Vivo Tab OS: Windows 8 Screen: 11.6-inch Super IPS+ display, 1366×768 pixels Specs: Intel Atom “Clover Trail” processor, 2GB RAM, 64GB SSD Camera: 8MP rear with LED flash, 2MP front Connectivity: Wi-Fi Price: TBA Description: The Vivo Tab offers the user the full Windows 8 experience, legacy apps and all. Once docked, the Vivo Tab RT could be mistaken for a full laptop with even weight distribution, a solid keyboard, and premium build quality. 64GB of storage is probably not enough for the average media consumer, but it’s not crippling. It would be nice to see some more storage there, though. The Vivo Tab also supports Wacom technology and can mimic the S-Pen benefits of Samsung’s hardware. Asus Transformer Book OS: Windows 8 Screen: 11.6, 13, or 14-inch HD IPS display Specs: Intel Core i7 processor, 4GB RAM Camera: 5MP rear, front-facing webcam Connectivity: Wi-Fi Price: TBA Description: The Transformer Book is Asus’ most powerful Windows 8 tablet, packing the punch of an ultrabook rather than the slap of a tablet. The screen sizes are much more practical for everyday use as well, capping out at a decent 14 inches. The aluminum construction doesn’t hurt either, especially paired with a full-sized and backlit keyboard. We are missing a few details about the device, like storage sizes (though we know it will be packing SSD option) and pixel density, but we know enough to be impressed. All in all, PC manufacturers have outdone themselves and seem eager to show off the touch-centric side of Windows 8. Whether you need a tablet computer for business or pleasure, there’s a device on this list that will fit your niche, whichever it may be. A lack of hardware is definitely not a problem for Microsoft right now but it will be interesting to see which devices rise to the top. Do you have a favorite? Or would you prefer a true hybrid or more conventional laptop to run Windows 8 on?The intense battle for Saanich North and the Islands continues to attract the attention of party leaders in the run-up to the B.C. election on May 9. John Horgan was the latest headliner to stop by the riding Thursday to whip up support for incumbent NDP candidate Gary Holman. article continues below Standing on the shores of Swartz Bay, with ferries passing in the distance, Horgan repeated his promise to restore free weekday ferry fares for seniors, cut fares on smaller routes and freeze fares on major routes pending a review of B.C. Ferries. >> MORE B.C. ELECTION COVERAGE Liberal candidate Mike de Jong, who served as finance minister the past five years, says the NDP’s ferry promises will cost far more than the party admits in its platform, but Horgan dismissed that criticism as “nonsense.” “We’re a vital part of the province, we deserve the same level of respect from government that other parts of B.C. [receive],” he said. “We’ve haven’t been getting that under the B.C. Liberals.” The NDP leader needs to hold the ferry-dependent riding with its large population of seniors if he hopes to form government. Holman won the seat by just 163 votes over Liberal Stephen P. Roberts in 2013, while Adam Olsen of the B.C. Green Party finished a close third. All three are back for the rematch and Horgan admits it will be another nail-biter. “I believe this is going to be a tight, tight race, but I know Gary and I know how hard he’s working,” Horgan said. “It’s going to stay in the orange column and we’re going to form a majority government on May 9.” The Greens have equally high hopes for the riding, which is held federally by Green Party of Canada Leader Elizabeth May. She joined B.C. Green Party Leader Andrew Weaver in the riding last week as he tries to expand his beachhead in Oak Bay-Gordon Head. “All of the indicators for the campaign are very good for us right now,” Olsen said Thursday. “There’s a huge amount of momentum growing.” Olsen said Liberals’ mismanagement of the ferry system will be a key issue. The Greens are committed to restoring B.C. Ferries as a Crown corporation and conducting a full review before promising any changes, he said. “The experiment that the B.C. Liberals have had has not worked. I’m hearing it clearly in our riding the impact this is having on the Gulf Island communities.” He criticized the NDP, however, for making specific promises in the absence of a comprehensive review. “Certainly, I’ll be a huge advocate for the Gulf Island communities and for Vancouver Island and ensuring that we return us back to a position where we see the ferries as a very, very valuable and important part of our transportation network,” he said. “But what you don’t see from the B.C. Greens are these boutique promises that are there just to attract votes. I think we’re taking a more responsible approach in taking a look at the system overall.” Roberts could not be reached for comment Thursday, but the Liberals are hoping their new Island platform will help them regain the seat once held by former Liberal cabinet minister Murray Coell. The platform promises a B.C. Ferries’ loyalty program by 2020 to cut costs for frequent users in ferry-dependent communities. Until that’s in place, the Liberals say they will offer a tax deduction of 25 per cent of ferry fares up to $1,000 to offset costs to users in those same communities. “This means that Island residents can reduce their ferry fares by up to $250 per year if they spend $1,000 on B.C. Ferry fares,” the platform states. [email protected]: Daniel Stephens Gary Johnson’s campaign has just been given a potent shot of financial vitality, receiving their largest single donation yet. Former GOP donor (and billionaire) B. Wayne Hughes, Jr. gave $117,000 toward former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson’s run for the White House, just $5,000 shy of the legal maximum amount. Hughes is a well-known conservative who has donated to multiple GOP-related efforts in the past. Reason.com reports: Hughes had, as he said, a “long history of donating to the Republican Party” and was “involved as a donor in both Bush campaigns.” He had also been a major funder of Karl Rove’s American Crossroads PAC that helped win Congress for the GOP in 2010. Why the switch? The billionaire philanthropist said that he isn’t walking away from the GOP, but that they walked away from him. [I]t’s a matter of them [the GOP] walking away from me … I don’t see any ideas and any track record on either side [of the two major parties] that would lend itself to good government,” Hughes says. He studied Johnson and his vice presidential partner William Weld’s records as Republican governors of New Mexico and Massachusetts, respectively, and saw them “speaking reason and sanity into what was otherwise cacophony” in the election. While he’s been aware of the Libertarian Party, “I never thought of throwing my vote” to it until now. “I’m conservative,” he says. “I characterize myself as a conservative before a Republican. I’m very fiscally conservative and socially moderate.” He says he first heard about Johnson from “a friend” about six months ago who “said there was a third [choice] trying to carve out a place at the table. What are your thoughts on this latest development? Will the support of one billionaire mellow the water for more power players to step in on the side of Johnson? Let us know on Facebook or in the comments below.It was in the second month of my gap year in India that I learned to get aggressive. It certainly didn’t come naturally. Like most happy teenagers, my three friends and I left our all-girls school full of optimism and eager to please. But from the very first day in the vivid, colourful and thrilling country of India, wandering hands were a constant problem for all of us. Giddily piling into rickshaws, I was the first to discover that sitting in the front seat means that many drivers will look for the ‘radio’ between your thighs. Hands were slipped underneath our trousers while we watched a fireworks display. Holi, the festival of colour in which people throw paint at each other was a free-for-all for Indian men intent on daubing the front of our shirts with coloured powders. The list goes on. For most British women, sexual assault - casual or otherwise - is a blessed rarity, but the problems that exist in India have been sharply brought into focus by the appalling recent case in Delhi. When we visited, around three years ago, we were prepared for the poverty; we’d read the guidebooks back to front to learn the scams and the tricks that thieves employ to steal cameras and iPods. We weren’t warned that travelling without a man in India is an invitation for unwanted advances. At the start, we simply did not know how to react. If truth be told, whenever we were placed in uncomfortable positions, we simply felt deeply embarrassed. We would push the offending limbs away with a nervous laugh and make as quick an escape as possible. After a month, however, we learned this is not always an adequate solution. In Tamil Nadu, we decided to go swimming at a popular beach. We knew women were fully clothed in the water, and dutifully presented ourselves, as usual, in t-shirts and full-length trousers. The beach was crowded with young men in swimming trunks soaking up the sun and chatting. A few older Indian ladies waded in the shallows in saris. We were greeted with the stares that all Westerners come to ignore, and we did just that. As we swam into open water, we became aware we had been followed in by at least ten young men. Before we knew what had hit us, hands were everywhere. We screamed, and they darted nimbly away. A friend caught one of the boys and dealt him a sharp smack across the face as we beat a hasty retreat back to the beach. I can honestly say the experience counts among the most frightening ten minutes of my life. In Pondicherry, we encountered an American exchange student from Kentucky. We bonded with her over horror stories of unprovoked remarks and sexual aggression. She was living in Bangalore and introduced us to a group of her male Indian friends. They were middle class, westernised, on our wavelength, and after a few days hanging out with them, we accepted the group’s invitation to travel back with them to Bangalore. I have since felt very guilty about accepting their hospitality, because despite their invitation to stay, the men were worried sick for us. We
designed to improve readiness and efficiency. However, the 1916 Act did not authorize the transportation of federalized National Guard troops to a foreign country. The Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Army ruled that the Guard could only be used domestically, owing to the Militia Clause of the U.S. Constitution that only allowed the National Guard in federal status to "execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrection and repel invasions." This phrase alone deemed necessary the draft action. The mobilization order of June 18, 1916, that ordered the Guard to the Mexican border represented the second milestone among the changes in national defense strategy. It demonstrated the power of the National Guard as the country's principal reserve force for the U.S. Army to be mobilized in a declared national emergency. This gradual evolution of legal precedents allowed the Army ample opportunity to make corrective action and improve the deployment process. Heightened national security concerns earlier in 1917 allowed the National Guard's mobilization to move forward after the draft order of August 5. The draft's impact was immediate. On June 30, 1917, the Regular Army consisted of 250,357 officers and enlisted men. By August 5, 1917, through means of incremental federalization of state National Guards and the draft order, 379,323 officers and enlisted men of the National Guard were drafted into the federal service. With one pen's stroke, the Operations Department within the Office of the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army more than doubled the size of the Army. The National Guard's presence proved essential to raise the significantly larger fighting force, and it added the element of experience through its training completed in the four southwest border states during 1916 - 1917. Legal considerations remained paramount in this time of war. Statutes and laws regulated the operations of the militia from its very beginning in colonial New England. Thus, the draft order only continued the tradition of commitment to rightful principles administered under these conditions. On July 18, 1917, War Department General Order 95 established the first 16 National Guard divisions. A few weeks later after the draft order, the 42nd "Rainbow" Division mustered. From August 5th throughout the remainder of 1917, these units traveled to their respective training across the country to prepare for the voyage to Europe and the fight against the Central Powers. The settlement of legal and administrative matters allowed the federal government to assemble and accelerate the development of a National Army, and federal priorities turned to the training and the assembly of a highly effective fighting force. The German Empire proved every bit a formidable opponent, but the presence of the National Guard and the cumulative services proved decisive for the Allies. After the war's combat phase ended on Nov. 11, 1918, the German High Command's appraisal of American combat divisions assessed that eight divisions' effectiveness earned ratings of "superior to excellent." Among those eight, six were National Guard divisions. The Guard's highly effective success proved critical in the victory of Allied forces in their grueling months in the "War to End All Wars."The Surface Pro is set to be released in Europe in just a matter of days, but not everyone will be paying the same for the Intel-based tablet. From the end of the month, the Surface Pro will be available in 16 countries in Europe: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Finland, France, Italy, Ireland, Norway, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK. However, there's a difference of €150 (£127) between Europe's cheapest and most expensive 64GB Pro, and a €163 discrepancy between the highest and lowest-cost 128GB version. Switzerland is the cheapest place on the continent to buy a Pro, charging CHF 959 (€770), or CHF 1,059 (€850) for the 128GB. Sweden is the costliest, with a 64GB Pro costing 7,895 SEK (€920) while a 128GB version setting shoppers back 8,695 SEK (€1,013). Fellow Nordic countries Denmark and Norway are also at the more expensive end of the scale. In Denmark, the 64GB version costs DKK 6,799 (€912) while the 128GB goes for DKK 7499 (€1,006). Their Norwegian counterparts are priced at NOK 6690 (€890) and 7390 (€983). For a number of countries whose currency is the Euro — Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Portugal, and Spain — pricing is standardised at €879 for the 64GB Surface Pro and €999 for the 128GB. Not all Euro-using countries will pay the same, however. Italy will pay €20 extra for the 64GB, but the same price for the 128GB, while the Netherlands will pay slightly more for the 64GB at €886 but slightly less for the 128GB: €986. The UK, meanwhile, pays slightly less than most European countries — £719 (€848) and £799 (€942) for the 64GB and 128GB versions respectively. However, European consumers are still shelling out more than their counterparts elsewhere. In Australia, which will get the Pro around the same time as it launches in Europe, customers will pay AU$999 (€759) and AU$1,099 (€835) for the 64GB and 128GB versions. US shoppers are still getting the best deal, though. A 64GB Pro costs $899 (€698) while the 128GB is $999 (€776). The Surface Pro went on sale in the US in February. Malaysia, Russia, South Korea, Singapore and Thailand will also get the Surface Pro, with launch slated for the end of June. No pricing has been released yet for these territories.Hungry students and their supporters sit for the seventh day in front of University of California at Berkeley’s California Hall, after a futile meeting with University Chancellor Robert Birgeneau. The students asked Birgeneau yesterday to reinstate fired ethnic-studies staff members. “We're still here, we're still fighting and basically, we're not going anywhere," said a weary-looking, third-year Native American studies major, Zoila Lara-Cea. They are protesting cuts resulting from a comprehensive audit of university operations conducted by the consulting firm Bain and Company. The auditors recommended trimming two-and-a-half staff positions from the Ethnic Studies Department. Even though cuts are distributed university-wide, “people of color are targeted first,” asserted third-year ethnic studies student Edward Rivero. “This institution is very white-dominated,” added Luzilda Carrillo, a fifth-year student majoring in integrative biology and anthropology. Over the years, students and faculty in the ethnic studies department have grown accustomed to protesting. Present at the current demonstration were several professors, who had advocated for the department’s creation in the late 1960s. As a UC student, Harvey Dong, now an ethnic studies lecturer, participated in the 1969 Third World Liberation Front, a movement that lead to the creation of the department, which became a model for similar programs nationwide. At the time, Dong and fellow students sought the creation of an entire Third World College devoted to the study of marginalized groups, but settled for a department. Professor Emeritus Carlos Muños, also present at the protest, benefited from Dong’s actions and became the first chair of Chicano Studies at California State University, Los Angeles. Spearheading this new field, Muños and Dong recalled their responsibility to respond to a basic gap in college curriculums. A Mexican American, Muños said he remembers “being a graduate student and not being able to find books on ourselves.” He added, “At that time we were an invisible people in this country.” While ethnic studies have since matured, Muños said students must continue to fight for the survival of the field. “We have to go out of our way to legitimize ourselves,” he said. “Students have had to struggle on our behalf.” At UC Berkeley, cuts will mean reduced office hours and unanswered phones. The history and psychology departments face similar cuts. However, Carleen Sanchez, vice president of the National Association for Ethnic Studies, said that the protest represents a broader cause. “Ethnic studies are under assault,” she stated in a phone interview. “Administrators do not recognize the importance of ethnic studies,” Sanchez continued. “Given our origins in civil rights, I think that that type of direct action and individual sacrifice is part of our history.” She emphasized, “A hunger strike is not silly.” Sanchez cited a law signed last May by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer that bans classes “designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group,” or which “advocate ethnic solidarity instead of treatment of pupils as individuals from K-12 classrooms.” At Berkeley, though, protesters may have to remain patient. Claire Buss, two-time hunger striker who hadn’t eaten in 176 hours when interviewed for this story said she can wait. “I’m feeling great,” she said. “I could go forever.” The students plan to continue their protest throughout this week.A good demo is your first step to getting heard, but in today's competitive music world, it's not good enough to just roll out a live recording. The good news is that it's possible to make demos that sound like a finished product without a lot of gear, if you know what you're doing. In this free course, veteran sound engineer Vishal Nayak, owner of Black Lodge Recording, will take you through the process of recording a professional-grade demo in a day using only two microphones. We'll cover what's known as the "basics" — how to record all of your instruments and sort out your arrangement so you have a track you can be proud of. Throughout the course, we'll follow along the recording of Arthur Lewis' original track "We Ride" to illustrate the concepts being taught. Note: You'll get the most from this course if you have a song ready to record, a basic understanding of digital audio workstations (DAW), two microphones, and an interface, but they are not requirements. We'll elaborate more on the recommended gear within the course.The following is research that was done for my post titled “The K’un-Lun of Netflix’s Iron Fist [Within the Larger Context]”, as a means of supporting one of my points. Due to its length I decided to dedicate another short post to it to avoid adding to what was already too lengthy an article. I would encourage you to read that one in full, though this should certainly be interesting enough on its own. For the vast majority of my blog posts about Marvel comic books I refer to the Marvel Database, an unofficial wiki updated by fans. While that format can and does lend itself to the occasional error, the citations at the bottom of the page referring to specific runs and issue numbers allow for fact-checking if needed. At this point in time there are no direct mentions to K’un-Lun being anything other than one of the Capital Cities of Heaven, besides a heading for the alien race the H’ylthri with no text underneath it. However a number of other sources have slightly differing origins. Comic Vine, another well-regarded comic book wiki, mentions on its entry for the city that: “K’un-Lun is the stronghold of a colony of humanoid aliens, place of origin unknown, whose spaceship crash-landed upon a small, extradimensional world, approximately a million years ago.” Unfortunately there are no citations listed anywhere. This tidbit of information is also listed on Marvel Directory, a largely defunct site that appears to have been last updated in 2015. Their entry categorizes K’un-Lun as an “Alien world” and only refers to the issue where the location first appeared, Marvel Premiere #15. As far as anything from Marvel themselves, the page on the publisher’s own wiki currently does not exist. An explanation for these unsubstantiated claims can be found on The Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe which has been compiled by one Jeff Christiansen, which exists to “stimulate interest and supply information about the vast universe Marvel has created (and to have fun).” It should be clear that this is a passion project of his, and not an official source. On the page for Yu-Ti, one of K’un-Lun’s rulers, he reveals: “The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe I#6: K’un-Lun entry revealed(?) that the natives of K’un-Lun were actually aliens who had crash-landed upon a small extradimensional world a million years ago. I don’t THINK that information was mentioned elsewhere prior to that, but I thought the H’ylthri had described them as aliens at some point…meaning only that they weren’t native to K’un-Lun (meaning possibly from Earth).” Down below that are comments from another contributor, Daniel Campbell, who searched for further clues in the text in support of the place being founded by aliens: “…the idea that the people of K’un-Lun are the descendants of extraterrestrials has not been substantiated and in fact has been contradicted somewhat. Chris Claremont first introduced the idea that the people of K’un-Lun were “alien” to the H’ylthri-dominated planet in Iron Fist #2 and I have no doubt that the back-story which he had planned for them would have been somewhat that they were extraterrestrials who had been trapped in K’un-Lun since their spaceship crashed there long ago. Unfortunately, as with so many of his storylines, Claremont never got around to developing that back-story and so it appeared only in the pages of the OHotMU [Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe]. Eventually, John Byrne decided to resurrect Iron First and, in the course of the storyline which did so, he consistently referred to the people of K’un-Lun as “human” (as in Doctor Strange’s statement that “The H’ylthri had gained dominance on that world long before the human settler came.”). In Namor I#24 the Plantman stated: “The H’ylthri were seeking a means to attack the world from which their greatest enemies originated.” I take this to mean that the people of K’un-Lun came from Earth. Sure, these statements could be explaiend away (like, maybe the H’ylthri lied to the Plantman) but until it is, it remains something that contradicts OHotMU material.” On one hand we have a few sources which point towards the extraterrestrial origin of this mystic city, although none of them have any citations whatsoever. Debunking that are two Marvel superfans with references to several issues and sources. While once again neither side are definitive authorities on the matter, I’m far more likely to side with the latter than the former.I am a Hapa man and this is my truth. From my 1995 letter published in the L.A. Times: • No thank you to the “classic love story of our time” being about a white soldier and his Asian prostitute. I’ve seen enough stereotyping of white male saviors and submissive Asian sex vixens to brainwash a nation. • No thank you to the two white men who were so moved by a picture of a mother bidding farewell to her Amerasian child that they were compelled to tell their story. Most of the Hapa (Amerasian) children you write about were left in Vietnam by white men. We can tell our own stories. Thousands of Asian American writers, actors and performers do so daily, but apparently it takes white male perspectives to be profitable. • No thank you to the argument that this musical opens doors for Asian American actors. I’ve seen enough Asian barmaids, soldiers, prostitutes and pimps on television to last a lifetime. Hollywood movies consistently pair exotic Asian women with white men while Asian men are reduced to cooks, ninjas and idiots. • No thank you to the Asian American activists who protest only why an Asian American is not cast in the role of the Eurasian engineer. If the character is Eurasian, both white or Asian castings are equally incorrect. Amerasians are pulled to either side for our support when needed, then discounted as not being really Asian or really white. If you see “Miss Saigon,” don’t get too lost in the fantasy. Some of us are real.E-cigarettes aren't "tobacco products," but to the Washington, D.C., city council, that's just semantics. The proposed 2016 budget includes an amendment to "include 'vapor products' in the term 'other tobacco product,'" a change that, if passed, will allow the city to tax e-cigarettes at the same rate as their combustable forebears. According to an August 2014 memo from the Office of Tax and Revenue, "the rate of tax applicable to wholesale sales of other tobacco products is 70%." D.C. has already experienced firsthand the effects of excise tax hikes. When it raised the tax on cigarettes by 25 percent in 2009, instead of revenue increases, the city lost income. As Reason's J.D. Tuccille noted, "Politicians simultaneously want to maximize revenue and raise taxes so high that they discourage…socially unacceptable tobacco consumption. Those are not compatible goals." High excise taxes cause consumers to take their dollars elsewhere, Tuccille argues. And D.C. vape shop owners see that reality as the end of the line for their burgeoning businesses. "That would double our prices, at least, and make it very difficult to stay in business," says Eric Miller, owner of DC Vape Joint, one of the handful of local shops specializing in e-cigs. "There’s no way people are going to spend double the price for the same thing they’ve been getting. They’ll just go to Virginia or Maryland, or they’ll go online." Sean Robinson, owner of District Vape, echoed Miller's concerns: "The tax is really geared toward big tobacco, which can take the hit," he says, but "mom-and-pop shops" like his won't survive if the budget passes in its current form. Several of the more ubiquitous e-cig brands (like Blu) are owned by tobacco conglomerates, but shops like Miller's and Robinson's specialize in smaller boutique brands. "Taxes like this hand the market over to the bigger companies," says Alex Clark, legislative director of the Consumer Advocates for Smoke-Free Alternatives Association (CASAA). The CASAA website features a post asking visitors to call and voice their concerns to the D.C. Council, and Miller and Robinson have been asking the same of their customers. But Robinson says he doesn't think the Council realizes the effect the change will have on local businesses like his. The D.C. budget amendment isn't the first time lawmakers have tried to morph the definition of "tobacco" to include e-cigarettes. In January, an Arkansas state representative introduced a dedicated vaping tax, which is still under consideration. And in December of last year, Reason's Jacob Sullum reported on an attempt by three members of Congress to retroactively include e-cigs in a Master Settlement Agreement (MSA) that resolved state lawsuits against the tobacco industry by restricting Big Tobacco's ability to advertise. As Sullum pointed out, the maneuver wouldn't work: First, as Michael Siegel notes on his tobacco policy blog, the MSA defines a cigarette, in part, as a product that contains tobacco. E-cigarettes do not contain tobacco. Durbin et al. argue that they sorta do, "because their key ingredient is nicotine, which is produced from tobacco leaves." By the same logic, THC is marijuana, quinine is cinchona bark, electricity is coal, milk is a cow, and maple syrup is a tree. The D.C. Council is scheduled to vote on the proposed budget June 30. Check out Reason's coverage of the New York e-cig ban:Published: 11 July, 2011 http://rt.com/usa/news/reopen-attacks-building-two/ Those who lost loved ones during terrorist attacks at New York’s World Trade Center are asking the US Attorney’s office to reopen a case related to September 11. The 9/11 Parents and Families of Firefighters & WTC Victims, along with the Skyscraper Safety Campaign, is demanding that all evidence from a Ground Zero high-rise that was damaged as a result of the terrorist attacks be reviewed again in full, citing a lack of accountability in the death of two firefighters. The former Deutsche Bank building in lower Manhattan was damaged during the 9/11 attacks but remained standing in part for years after. A 2007 blaze in the building, however, left two firefighters dead and activists are saying questions are being left unanswered about the incident. According to a statement issued by the two groups, numerous violations in the building were never reported. A construction contractor and two supervisors were acquitted of manslaughter, among other charges, in what led to the two 2007 deaths. The Deutsche Bank skyscraper was opened in 1974 and was damaged by the debris that blew through New York following the collapse of the Twin Towers. A 2005 investigation of the 41 story of ruins that once housed the financial institute revealed human remains on the roof. An investigation then opened up to analyze the rest of the building for missing persons. Deconstruction finally began in March of 2007, but a seven-alarm fire that summer caused by crews working on the dismantling of the structure led to the death of two city workers. Joseph Graffagnino, 33, and Robert Beddia, 53, died from smoke inhalation and carbon monoxide poisoning on the fourteenth floor of the building on August 18, 2007. An additional 115 firefighters were also injured responding to the blaze. http://rt.com/usa/news/reopen-attacks-building-two/Looking for news you can trust? Subscribe to our free newsletters. The private prison giant Corrections Corporation of America has made states an offer they can—and should—refuse. That’s the message that went out to state governors on Thursday in letters signed by 60 policy and religious groups. The letters urged the governors of all 50 states not to take up a blanket deal CCA has put forth to buy and privatize their state prisons in return for a promise to keep those prisons filled. Two weeks ago, the Huffington Post revealed that CCA was reaching out to states, offering to buy their prisons as a way to deal with their “challenging corrections budgets.” The company is proposing that it receive, in exchange for the cash, a 20-year management contract that would require the states to keep their prisons at least 90 percent full for the duration. This power play by the private prison firm may indicate some anxiety in what has historically been a growth industry. (See charts below.) Beginning in 2009, for the first time in nearly 40 years, the overall US prison population declined slightly. And in several states, plans to privatize prisons have been scaled back, stalled, or rejected. The most notable of these defeats came last month in Florida, where the state Senate narrowly rejected a plan that would have turned over more than two dozen Florida prisons to private companies. Had the proposal moved forward, it would have transferred 14,500 prisoners into private hands and represented “the largest single contract procurement in the history of our industry,” George Zoley, CEO of the GEO Group, told investors. (GEO, headquartered in Florida, is the nation’s No. 2 prison corporation behind CCA.) The Florida Senate has a strong Republican majority, but nine GOP senators broke ranks and voted with Democrats against privatization, reportedly citing public safety concerns. Within days of the vote, Florida Gov. Rick Scott indicated that he hadn’t given up on the plan, which is supposed to save the state $16.5 million a year. “I’m disappointed the Senate didn’t do that; I’m going to look at what I have the opportunity to do,” he told reporters. Scott also said he was exploring opportunities to pursue the massive prison privatization plan unilaterally, presumably by executive order. More private prisoners (top) beget a kickass stock (above). From Mother Jones‘ July/August 2008 prisons package. The governor made the unlikely promise that the money saved on prisons could be spent on education and health care, while lawmakers supporting the bill warned that those areas might be cut further if the privatization plan fizzles. But there are other options that neither Scott nor most Republican legislators are willing to put on the table. Florida’s overall corrections budget topped $2.3 billion in 2010—but contrary to Scott’s claims, the state spends relatively little per prisoner. (On its website, the Florida DOC boasts that most of its prisons are not air-conditioned, and that its inmates work long hours in prison-based fields and factories.) Private prison companies, meanwhile, are notorious for saving money by depriving prisoners of decent food and health care, but in Florida they would be starting out from an already lean position. Some lawmakers have expressed doubt that the savings would ever materialize. Florida hosts 100,000-plus inmates. New York, with a larger population, has only 56,000. Corrections cost so much in Florida not because of profligate spending, but simply due to the sheer number of inmates. Thanks largely to laws dating back to the 1990s, which raised mandatory sentences and cut opportunities for parole, the Sunshine State hosts more than 100,000 inmates. New York, with a slightly larger total population, has 56,000. The logical way to save money on corrections is to reduce the prison population. Even get-tough states like Texas, Oklahoma, and Mississippi are now reforming draconian sentencing laws and diverting low-level nonviolent offenders into alternative programs. Not so, Florida. In 2009, as the national prison population declined, Florida’s increased by 1.5 percent, according to a Pew report. The state’s only proposed solution has been this privatization bid. The advocacy groups who sent Thursday’s letters hope that states will take a harder look at the alternatives. CCA’s offer, notes one letter spearheaded by the ACLU and signed by 26 other organizations, “is a backdoor invitation to take on additional debt while increasing CCA’s profits and impeding the serious criminal justice reforms needed to combat the nation’s mass incarceration crisis.” Another, signed by 32 religious entities, says there is a “moral imperative in reducing incarceration through evidence-based alternatives to imprisonment.”Israeli and Palestinian teenagers are gathering in Japan to participate in a judo tournament as organizers hope to promote world peace through the sport, a renowned Japanese judoka said on Monday. International judo championship in Ashdod, 2006. Limor Edri Yasuhiro Yamashita, 53, gold medalist in the open category at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games, said he had invited them to the one-day tournament on Sunday in Fukuoka, western Japan. "Through exchanges with Japanese and overseas participants, I hope the Israeli and Palestinian children will learn and experience many things and nurture friendship," Yamashita told a news conference. "One of the most important things in the spirit of judo is to respect an opponent, who is not an enemy but someone who helps you improve yourself," Yamashita said. During their trip, supported by a group that Yamashita founded in 2006, the children will also join other programs and visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum tomorrow. The invitation came after Yamashita and Kose Inoue, another celebrated Japanese judoka, visited Israel and the Palestinian territories in July to hold a workshop for children. During their visit, the two judoka trained 32 Israeli and 25 Palestinian students, and more than a dozen of them arrived in Japan last week.Story highlights American MotoGP rider Nicky Hayden dies aged 35 Hayden was involved in a cycling crash five days ago He was crowned MotoGP world champion in 2006 (CNN) Former MotoGP world champion Nicky Hayden has died five days after being involved in a cycling accident in Italy, according to Italy's ANSA news agency and Red Bull Honda, a sponsor of Hayden. He was 35. Hayden, the 2006 MotoGP world champion, had been hospitalized at the Maurizio Bufalini Hospital in Cesena, Italy, following the accident last week. "It is with great sadness that Red Bull Honda World Superbike Team has to announce that Nicky Hayden has succumbed to injuries suffered during an incident while riding his bicycle last Wednesday," Red Bull Honda posted on its website Monday. "The nicest man in Grand Prix racing" Thanks for the memories, Nicky. #RideOnKentuckyKid pic.twitter.com/BX4VvGgKWC — MotoGP™ (@MotoGP) May 22, 2017 The statement also said that fiancée Jackie, mother Rose and brother Tommy, who flew in from the US, were at his side. "On behalf of the whole Hayden family and Nicky's fiancée Jackie I would like to thank everyone for their messages of support -- it has been a great comfort to us all knowing that Nicky has touched so many people's lives in such a positive way," Tommy Hayden said. Read MoreThe Dinosaurs Most of the dinosaurs will be created using CG but they did create animatronic raptor heads for the squeeze cage in Owen’s raptor paddock. A practically-built animatronic dinosaur was created for a sequence filmed in Hawaii, but we were not told much about that scene as its a spoiler. (Thus, we probably also won’t see it in the marketing of the film.) The dinosaurs in Jurassic World will be created using performance capture. Humans are playing the T-rex dinos. Colin Trevorrow went to ILM before production and conducted a ton of tests. They found that when a human is behind the movements you can feel the weight and it feels unlike what we’ve seen before. They have actors on set who wear lifesize models of the dinosaur heads for the actors to respond to on set. The film features four key raptors, each of which will be played by a different person to keep the movements consistent from scene to scene. No dinosaurs in the movie do anything that the closest real animal equivalents can’t do. One of the themes in the movie is that all of the dinosaurs are organic and the synthetic must die. All of the issues of the first Jurassic Park have been supposedly “fixed”. The dinosaurs in Jurassic World can mate in the wild but all of the dinosaurs are monitored and tracked at all times. Even the surviving dinosaurs in the closed off section of the island have microchips and are tracked. However those areas of the park like the old visitors center don’t have the security camera monitoring systems of the new areas. The T-rex from the original Jurassic Park will make an appearance in Jurassic World. She looks a bit older now, and Trevorrow describes her as having a bit of Burt Lancaster thing going on. Jurassic World will not feature weaponized dinosaurs from the infamous abandoned Jurassic Park 4 script. Screenwriter Derek Connolly actually never read that script. Colin Trevorrow came up with the idea of featuring Mosasaurus, the film’s main water dino which you see in the trailer. He pitched the idea to Spielberg of having the Mosasaurus feed on a shark in front of bleachers filled with park guests. Spielberg loved the idea of the Mosasaurus eating the shark but suggested that when the animal grabs the shark that the whole bleacher section submerge underwater using a hydraulic system so that the audience will be able to see the Mosasaurus feeding underwater. 200 extras sat in the bleacher section. The dino jumps out of the water and soaks the crowd. This was Colin’s favorite moment of shooting.The Islamic State militant group claimed Tuesday to have beheaded an American photojournalist in retaliation for U.S. airstrikes in Iraq. A video posted on YouTube, later removed, purported to show the execution of James Foley after he recited a statement in which he called the U.S. government “my real killers.” A second prisoner, said to be Steven Joel Sotloff, like Foley an American journalist who disappeared while covering Syria’s civil war, then appears in the video. The masked executioner, speaking in English with what sounds like a British accent, identifies Sotloff and says that “the life of this American citizen, Obama, depends on your next decision.” American intelligence officials believe the video is authentic but are continuing to evaluate it, senior U.S. officials said Wednesday morning. In a statement Tuesday, National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said of the video: “If genuine, we are appalled by the brutal murder of an innocent American journalist and we express our deepest condolences to his family and friends. We will provide more information when it is available.” The Islamic State released a video claiming it executed Foley. President Obama was briefed on the video aboard Air Force One as he returned to his Martha’s Vineyard vacation and will be updated on further developments, the White House said. British Prime Minister David Cameron cut short a family vacation and returned to London to chair emergency meetings on Iraq and Syria. In an interview with the BBC, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond acknowledged that the apparent executioner spoke with a British accent and said the video seemed to be genuine. Hundreds of Britons are believed to have traveled to Syria to fight in the country’s civil war, including many who have joined the Islamic State. “We’re absolutely aware that there are significant numbers of British nationals involved in terrible crimes, probably in the commission of atrocities,” Hammond said. “Many of these people may seek at some point to return to the U.K., and they would then pose a direct threat to our domestic security.” A European intelligence official said the British government was examining the video, and the speech of the purported executioner, to compare it with former Guantanamo Bay prisoners and other British residents believed to have joined the Islamic State. Both prisoners in the video are wearing orange shirts and pants, similar to orange jumpsuits worn by detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A similar outfit, believed to be a jihadist symbol of the prison, was worn by Nicholas Berg, an American businessman kidnapped in Iraq in 2004 whose execution by an Islamic State precursor organization was recorded on video and posted online. Foley, 40, was working in Syria for the Boston-based news Web site Global­Post when he disappeared on Thanksgiving in 2012. Philip Balboni, GlobalPost’s chief executive and co-founder, said in a statement: “On behalf of John and Diane Foley, and also GlobalPost, we deeply appreciate all of the messages of sympathy and support that have poured in since the news of Jim’s possible execution first broke. We have been informed that the FBI is in the process of evaluating the video posted by the Islamic State to determine if it is authentic. Until we have that determination, we will not be in a position to make any further statement. We ask for your prayers for Jim and his family.” In a statement Tuesday night on a Facebook page dedicated to his freedom, Foley’s mother appeared to accept that the video was authentic. “We have never been prouder of our son Jim,” Diane Foley wrote. “He gave his life trying to expose the world to the suffering of the Syrian people. “We implore the kidnappers to spare the lives of the remaining hostages. Like Jim, they are innocents. They have no control over American government policy in Iraq, Syria or anywhere in the world.” Praising James Foley as “an extraordinary son, brother, journalist and person,” she asked that the family’s privacy be respected. Sotloff, a freelancer who worked for several news organizations, disappeared in Syria in August 2013. In addition to Foley and Sotloff, at least three other Americans are believed to be captives in Syria, including Austin Tice, a freelance journalist whose articles appeared in McClatchy publications and The Washington Post before his disappearance in August 2012, according to a 2013 GlobalPost article. No one has claimed to be holding them. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 66 journalists, all but 10 of them Syrian, have been killed covering the Syrian war. If the video is authenticated, Foley would be the first American journalist known to be executed since the conflict began in early 2011. The video evoked the 2002 taped execution in Pakistan of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl by al-Qaeda. The Islamic State, an offshoot of al-Qaeda, is the most powerful among a number of extremist organizations that have emerged during the Syrian civil war, which began as a popular uprising against President Bashar al-Assad. Fighting against both Assad and U.S.-backed rebels, the militants now control much of eastern Syria and claim to have established an Islamic caliphate spanning Syria and neighboring Iraq. As the group has grown, it has merged with the group formerly known as al-Qaeda in Iraq, under the leadership of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. According to U.S. intelligence, it numbers in the thousands, including foreign fighters from Europe and the United States. In April, Islamic State fighters swept across the border into northern Iraq, taking over the city of Mosul before moving southward to within 60 miles of Baghdad. Extensive reports of executions, including beheadings and crucifixions, have emerged from areas under the group’s control. This month, amid reports of stranded and besieged Iraqi minorities threatened with execution, the militants advanced eastward toward Irbil, the capital of the semiautonomous Kurdish region of Iraq. On Aug. 7, Obama authorized U.S. airstrikes to rescue stranded minorities and protect U.S. personnel and facilities in Irbil and Baghdad. On Monday, after a total of 68 strikes from jets, bombers and drones, Obama announced that Iraqi and Kurdish forces, with U.S. air support, had retaken a strategic dam north of Mosul from the militants and that they had been pushed back from Irbil. Within hours of that announcement, the Islamic State posted an online message warning it would attack Americans “in any place” in response to the airstrikes. “We will drown all of you in blood,” it said. The title of the video posted Tuesday was “A Message to America” and was produced by the Islamic State’s media arm, according to the Site Intelligence Group, which monitors extremist Web sites. A masked man dressed in black is shown standing in an unidentified desert location beside a prisoner kneeling beside him with his hands behind his back. “Obama authorized military operations against the Islamic State effectively placing America upon a slippery slope towards a new war against Muslims,” the masked man says. The video then shows a clip of Obama’s Aug. 7 announcement, followed by a statement from the prisoner. “I call on my friends, family and loved ones to rise up against my real killers, the U.S. government, for what will happen to me is only a result of their complacent criminality,” he says. He asks his parents not to accept “any meager compensation from the same people who effectively hit the last nail in my coffin with the recent aerial campaign in Iraq.” The prisoner also appeals to “my brother John, who is a member of the U.S. Air Force,” to “think about what you are doing.” “I wish I had more time,” he says. “I wish I could have
be common to all religions, but it belongs to none — it pre-dates religion, in fact, and is still embodied in the first peoples of the world, as well as our own pagan roots, reflected in the rituals of this solstice season. For centuries, we’ve made the mistake in the West of thinking religion and spirituality were somehow opposed, that you had to choose one or the other. This radically subversive “ensouled” world view has been culturally drummed out of us, because it is anathema to the consumerism that fuels corporate domination of the world as resource, not life-source. We even have a cynical, smugly dismissive term for this natural human urge to connect spiritually with one another through nature: kumbaya. I can speak from experience in telling you that cynicism is no substitute for activism — and we are all being called by Earth to become climate activists now. But how we choose to engage is more important than if we choose to engage. As climate author Charles Eisenstein points out, “If this planet and our civilization [are] to heal, it cannot be through winning a contest of force … [B]y entering into war mentality we strengthen the field of war, including the reduction and domination of nature.” Another political observer who appreciates the historic significance of what just happened at Standing Rock, Richard Moser sums up the reasoning underlying this social imperative to be prayerful in our activism quite nicely: In a world hungry for spiritual sustenance, the fusion of politics and the sacred has already touched millions. Like most white people, I know little of native beliefs. But the straightforward reverence for nature — a theme common to many indigenous cultures — is a universal truth that appeals to the whole person and to people around the whole world. Even the veterans showed up (unarmed) at Standing Rock, including Indigenous Member of Congress, Tulsi Gabbards of Hawaii, which forced President Obama’s hand politically. And each of the 25,000 men, women and children that were standing as one, united by prayer, when the Army Corp of Engineers backed down at Standing Rock would agree that happened there on the frigid, blizzard-swept banks of the Missouri River was just the beginning of something much larger than stopping a pipeline in its tracks. That is their prayer, still carrying on the wind and on the water across Turtle Island and around the Earth, falling on our privileged ears. Will we heed their call? Can we answer their prayers with powerful prayers of our own? That is the question I will be pondering on the darkest, longest night this year, as I light a candle at sunset and keep it burning till sunrise. I’m not afraid of the dark, and I’m not afraid of Donald Trump. I love my Mother, and I’m willing to die for her. If enough of us feel the same way, we can turn back the night. Notes. *”Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”Integrating systemctl --user and your Graphical Session For those of us nerds who have been running Linux on the desktop for years now, the addition of systemd in recent releases has opened up some interesting user service management solutions. While not often discussed, systemctl --user is a per-user systemd service management system which sports most if not all of the features of the parent PID 1 systemd. One issue I ran into on elementary 0.4 Loki (Ubuntu 16.04) was that the environment of systemctl --user was pretty barren: naftuli@laststand:~$ systemctl --user show-environment HOME=/home/naftuli LANG=en_US.UTF-8 LOGNAME=naftuli PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin SHELL=/bin/bash USER=naftuli XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/1000 This constitutes the bare minimum of what a user service might need. However, for starting user services on the desktop, this environment doesn’t have a reference back to the DISPLAY or anything else about the desktop session. I found a workaround for this limitation by defining a script called by the desktop session on login and a user target called user-graphical-login.target which other services can depend on. My script simply imports the current environment and starts the user-graphical-login.target, allowing other units to start: #!/usr/bin/env bash systemctl --user import-environment systemctl --user start user-graphical-login.target Drop this wherever you’d like, and then add it as a startup script in your distribution’s startup applications: Next, let’s define our target at ~/.config/systemd/user/user-graphical-login.target : [Unit] Description=User Graphical Login Requires=default.target After=default.target Log out, log back in, and then check that the target has been started: naftuli@laststand:~$ systemctl --user status user-graphical-login.target ● user-graphical-login.target - User Graphical Login Loaded: loaded (/home/naftuli/.config/systemd/user/user-graphical-login.target; static; vendor preset: enabled) Active: active since Wed 2017-12-27 11:54:16 PST; 1 day 3h ago Dec 27 11:54:16 laststand systemd[1938]: Reached target User Graphical Login. Dec 27 11:54:27 laststand systemd[1938]: Reached target User Graphical Login. If we now dump the environment from systemd --user, we should now see a ton of environment variables: DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=unix:abstract=/tmp/dbus-4CdgBoOWOy,guid=54269270bb9eccd9b83e0e1f5a43fa10 DEFAULTS_PATH=/usr/share/gconf/pantheon.default.path DESKTOP_SESSION=pantheon DISPLAY=:0 EDITOR=vim GDMSESSION=pantheon GDM_LANG=en_US GIO_LAUNCHED_DESKTOP_FILE=/usr/share/applications/org.pantheon.terminal.desktop GIO_LAUNCHED_DESKTOP_FILE_PID=3930 GNOME_DESKTOP_SESSION_ID=this-is-deprecated GPG_TTY=/dev/pts/4 GSETTINGS_SCHEMA_DIR=/home/naftuli/data GTK_CSD=1 GTK_MODULES=pantheon-filechooser-module:gail:atk-bridge HOME=/home/naftuli LANG=en_US.UTF-8 LANGUAGE=en_US LESSCLOSE=/usr/bin/lesspipe %s %s LESSOPEN=| /usr/bin/lesspipe %s LOGNAME=naftuli LS_COLORS=rs=0:di=01;34:ln=01;36:mh=00:pi=40;33:so=01;35:do=01;35:bd=40;33;01:cd=40;33;01:or=40;31;01:mi=00:su=37;41:sg=30;43:ca=30;41:tw=30;42:ow=34;42:st=37;44:ex=01;32:*.tar=01;31:*.tgz=01;31:*.arc=01;31:*.arj=01;31:*.taz=01;31:*.lha=01;31:*.lz4=01;31:*.lzh=01;31:*.lzma=01;31:*.tlz=01;31:*.txz=01;31:*.tzo=01;31:*.t7z=01;31:*.zip=01;31:*.z=01;31:*.Z=01;31:*.dz=01;31:*.gz=01;31:*.lrz=01;31:*.lz=01;31:*.lzo=01;31:*.xz=01;31:*.bz2=01;31:*.bz=01;31:*.tbz=01;31:*.tbz2=01;31:*.tz=01;31:*.deb=01;31:*.rpm=01;31:*.jar=01;31:*.war=01;31:*.ear=01;31:*.sar=01;31:*.rar=01;31:*.alz=01;31:*.ace=01;31:*.zoo=01;31:*.cpio=01;31:*.7z=01;31:*.rz=01;31:*.cab=01;31:*.jpg=01;35:*.jpeg=01;35:*.gif=01;35:*.bmp=01;35:*.pbm=01;35:*.pgm=01;35:*.ppm=01;35:*.tga=01;35:*.xbm=01;35:*.xpm=01;35:*.tif=01;35:*.tiff=01;35:*.png=01;35:*.svg=01;35:*.svgz=01;35:*.mng=01;35:*.pcx=01;35:*.mov=01;35:*.mpg=01;35:*.mpeg=01;35:*.m2v=01;35:*.mkv=01;35:*.webm=01;35:*.ogm=01;35:*.mp4=01;35:*.m4v=01;35:*.mp4v=01;35:*.vob=01;35:*.qt=01;35:*.nuv=01;35:*.wmv=01;35:*.asf=01;35:*.rm=01;35:*.rmvb=01;35:*.flc=01;35:*.avi=01;35:*.fli=01;35:*.flv=01;35:*.gl=01;35:*.dl=01;35:*.xcf=01;35:*.xwd=01;35:*.yuv=01;35:*.cgm=01;35:*.emf=01;35:*.ogv=01;35:*.ogx=01;35:*.aac=00;36:*.au=00;36:*.flac=00;36:*.m4a=00;36:*.mid=00;36:*.midi=00;36:*.mka=00;36:*.mp3=00;36:*.mpc=00;36:*.ogg=00;36:*.ra=00;36:*.wav=00;36:*.oga=00;36:*.opus=00;36:*.spx=00;36:*.xspf=00;36: MANDATORY_PATH=/usr/share/gconf/pantheon.mandatory.path PANTHEON_TERMINAL_ID=0 PATH=/home/naftuli/bin:/home/naftuli/.local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games POWERLINE_COMMAND=powerline PROMPT_COMMAND=__bp_precmd_invoke_cmd; dbus-send --type=method_call --session --dest=org.pantheon.terminal /org/pantheon/terminal org.pantheon.terminal.ProcessFinished string:$PANTHEON_TERMINAL_ID string:"$(history 1 | cut -c 8-)" >/dev/null 2>&1; __bp_interactive_mode; PWD=/home/naftuli QT_ACCESSIBILITY=1 QT_IM_MODULE=ibus QT_LINUX_ACCESSIBILITY_ALWAYS_ON=1 QT_STYLE_OVERRIDE=gtk SESSION_MANAGER=local/laststand:@/tmp/.ICE-unix/2023,unix/laststand:/tmp/.ICE-unix/2023 SHELL=/bin/bash SHLVL=2 SSH_AGENT_PID=2095 SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/home/naftuli/.gnupg/S.gpg-agent.ssh TERM=screen-256color TMUX=/tmp/tmux-1000/default,1956,1 TMUX_PANE=%1 USER=naftuli VTE_VERSION=4205 XAUTHORITY=/home/naftuli/.Xauthority XDG_CONFIG_DIRS=/etc/xdg/xdg-pantheon:/etc/xdg XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=Pantheon XDG_DATA_DIRS=/usr/share/pantheon:/usr/local/share/:/usr/share/ XDG_GREETER_DATA_DIR=/var/lib/lightdm-data/naftuli XDG_MENU_PREFIX=gnome- XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/1000 XDG_SEAT=seat0 XDG_SEAT_PATH=/org/freedesktop/DisplayManager/Seat0 XDG_SESSION_DESKTOP=pantheon XDG_SESSION_ID=c2 XDG_SESSION_PATH=/org/freedesktop/DisplayManager/Session0 XDG_SESSION_TYPE=x11 XDG_VTNR=7 XMODIFIERS=@im=ibus _=/bin/systemctl Now, your user services can start graphical applications and interact with the session.Rick Gedeon The government spends over a million dollars per annum per soldier in Afghanistan and after almost 10 years of occupation— the longest war in American history —the American public tacitly accepts the responsibly of this enormous financial burden without question. Going back almost a decade it is imperative to understand and to appreciate why America finds herself in Afghanistan. We were told in November, 2001 by the New York Times in an opinion column entitled Liberating the Women of Afghanistan, that “the reclaimed freedom of Afghan women is a collateral benefit that Americans can celebrate.” It was another comical propaganda ploy at convincing us that America’s post-9/11 raison d’être was to help women in “uncovering their faces, looking for jobs, walking happily with female friends on the street and even hosting a news show on Afghan television.” Collateral benefits, yet no mention is made of the reality called collateral damage—the euphemism for killing innocent people—that the Women of Afghanistan would actually endure. Enver Masud masterfully details the motive, which he contends was due in part because of a gas pipeline being built through the region. From his book, 9/11 Unveiled : The attacks on 911 led to the U.S. war on Afghanistan—a war planned prior to 9/11, after negotiations with the Taliban had broken down. The Taliban, after initially negotiating with Unocal, had begun showing a preference for Bridas Corporation of Argentina. During the negotiations—which occurred prior to 9/11 (by which the Taliban representatives were actually invited and flown to attend the meetings at Uncocal headquarters in Sugar land, Texas)—U.S. representatives told the Taliban, ‘either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs’. On October 7, 2001, without the benefit of a UN resolution, the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom launched their war on Afghanistan—one of the world’s poorest countries, already devastated by 23 years of war and civil strife resulting from the Russian invasion of 1979. Download Your First Issue Free! Do You Want to Learn How to Become Financially Independent, Make a Living Without a Traditional Job & Finally Live Free? Download Your Free Copy of Counter Markets Shortly after the illegal invasion, NATO (which incidentally is backed by the US fronted International Security Assistance Force) would officially and incrementally replace the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and the Northern Alliance, primarily in the public’s mind, in order to add credibility to the occupation. The result is that in addition to 23 years of Russian and internal strife, there has been further devastation caused by almost a decade of NATO-led intervention on the already decimated country. Afghanistan continues to be a gaping sore and a void into which American taxpayer money slides, while Americans finds themselves facing the loss of its AAA rating, homeless mothers find themselves being arrested for registering their children in school, 7.25 million are finding fewer payroll jobs than before the recession started in 2007, and 13.5 million Americans currently unemployed. As China launches warning shots across our bow, the American people remain heedless in their march toward the abyss. Lemninghood is apparently now embraced as the official American Way. The pseudo-educated, uninformed, unaware, unscrupulous, unprincipled, unempathetic, and an unwilling public adamantly refuses to hold its elected representatives accountable. Even when presented with irrefutable evidence, the American people emphatically refuse to see the gravity of the situation, instead finding themselves preoccupied with bread and circuses. Inattentive of what lies ahead. SUPPORT OUR TROOPS THEY SAID The bitter reality of troop support is revealed in a recent study that found 16 percent of homeless adults in a one-night survey in January, 2009 were veterans, though vets make up only 10 percent of the adult population. More than 75,000 veterans were living on the streets or in a temporary shelter that night. In that year, 136,334 veterans spent at least one night in a homeless shelter — a count that did not include homeless veterans living on the streets. The urgency of the problem is growing as more people return from service in Iraq and Afghanistan. The study found 11,300 younger veterans, 18 to 30, were in shelters at some point during 2009. Virtually all served in Iraq or Afghanistan. At a time when government funds for mental health help have dried up, Americans are in greater danger of becoming depressed and suicidal—principally due to a recession which has a deep connection to military spending. Avoiding The Eye - Ships Free Today! It’s time to rethink this conundrum and decide once and for all if it is worth spending one million dollars per soldier to occupy a foreign country, when it only helps to result in veteran poverty when they return home. The cessation of war will only come about by public pressure, but at this point I am convinced that the point of no return has been crossed and the end will most likely mimic that of the Russians. Ron Paul agrees: America is headed for a Soviet-style collapse if our ship of fools is not turned around immediately. Rick Gedeon is graduate from USAF Air University, amateur historian, and anti-imperial/anti-police brutality activist. Rick Gedeon has traveled extensively throughout the US and Asia. A political marketeer, routinely bringing together and forging alliances with different political organizations that share similar goals. He considers himself a Political Atheist and sympathizes with many Libertarian causes. He can be reached at [email protected] var linkwithin_site_id = 557381; linkwithin_text=’Related Articles:’Google takes a snapshot of each page it examines and caches (stores) that version as a back-up. The cached version is what Google uses to judge if a page is a good match for your query. Practically every search result includes a Cached link. Clicking on that link takes you to the Google cached version of that web page, instead of the current version of the page. This is useful if the original page is unavailable because of: Internet congestion A down, overloaded, or just slow website The owner’s recently removing the page from the Web Sometimes you can access the cached version from a site that otherwise require registration or a subscription. Note: Since Google’s servers are typically faster than many web servers, you can often access a page’s cached version faster than the page itself. If Google returns a link to a page that appears to have little to do with your query, or if you can’t find the information you’re seeking on the current version of the page, take a look at the cached version. As part of efforts to provide a clean and simple redesign of the search results page, Google moved cached and similar links within the Instant Previews. Just hover over the search result, then hover over the arrows that appear to the right of the result. Learn more about the recent changes to the Instant Preview feature: Instant Previews refresh blog post: http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2011/09/choosing-result-you-want-just-became.html Let’s search for pages on [ sugar cubes math ]. Click on the Cached link to view Google’s cached version of the page with the query terms highlighted. The cached version also indicates terms that appear only on links pointing to the page and not on the page itself. When Google displays the cached page, a header at the top serves as a reminder that what you see isn’t necessarily the most recent version of the page. The Cached link will be omitted for sites whose owners have requested that Google remove the cached version or not cache their content, as well as any sites Google hasn’t indexed. If the original page contains more than 101 kilobytes of text, the cached version of the page will consist of the first 101 kbytes (120 kbytes for pdf files). You can also retrieve Google’s cached version of a page via the cache: search operator. For example, [ cache:www.pandemonia.com/flying/ ] will show Google’s cached version of Flight Diary in which Hamish Reid documents what’s involved in learning how to fly. On the cached version of a page, Google will highlight terms in your query that appear after the cache: search operator. For example, in the snapshot of the page www.pandemonia.com/flying/, Google highlights the terms “fly” and “diary” in response to the query [ cache:www.pandemonia.com/flying/ fly diary ]. Use the Wayback Machine when you want to visit a version of a web page that is older than Google’s cached version. These problems give you practice accessing Google’s cached version of a page. For hints and answers to selected problems, see the Solutions page. After Nelson Blachman received reprints of a paper he wrote for the June 2003 issue of The Mathematical Scientist, he wanted to discover what other sorts of papers appear in the same issue of this semiannual publication. Find a table of contents for The Mathematical Scientist for Nelson. Compare the dates on the current page with the dates on the cached version for the following organizations: CNN New York Times Linux Magazine North Texas Food Bank Note: Google indexes a page (adds it to its index and caches it) frequently if the page is popular (has a high PageRank) and if the page is updated regularly. The new cached version replaces any previous cached versions of the page. Check the dates that the Wayback Machine archived versions of Google Guide. tags (keywords): cached, results, search operators, toolbarOculus Rift isn't ready for public consumption just yet, but for those developers who will be pre-ordering the second dev kit for the VR device, the improvement in visual quality and the ability to lean into the image will make that $350 seem very reasonable. The difference in visual quality is illustrated by having the original dev kit and the new version side-by-side at an event near GDC. I try out the Tuscan villa demo, transitioning from the familiar and somewhat blurry vision of a pleasant surrounding to something far sharper where I can now tilt my head clockwise and get a resulting interaction in-game. This tech has come a long way in a year. There's almost no motion blur when I quickly turn my head, an issue with the original, and in general it feels like longer term play will be more feasible with a resolution of this quality. It's really impressive and a lot more professional-looking as a model, and given the mileage we've gotten out of the original in our office, I'm eager to start testing it with the novelty tech demos we've enjoyed over the months and something as impressive as Elite Dangerous with the improved visual quality. One of the two tech demos Oculus were using to show off DK2 was the same Unreal Engine 4 demo Cory saw at CES earlier this year. In that, you can lean in to a tower defence-like design and witness individual soldiers marching around a high fantasy environment. There's limited interactivity - I can spam a few orcs with fire attacks - but it showcases how the Rift doesn't necessarily need to be associated with first-person games. Here, the player almost functions as a free camera as a result of wearing the headset, which is an interesting use of the tech that opens up a lot of other potential genres for use with the Rift - you could see how an RTS could play out neatly in this fashion, or even a game of FIFA. As restrictive as the demo is in terms of the player's abilities, showing how the camera control can be carefully mapped to the Rift is an important breakthrough of DK2 that unlocks more potential ideas for experimental developers. The second tech demo is a fighting game set in a living room, where myself and another journalist could control our avatar's heads in a 3D space. We were looking at each other in game, but in real life we're staring in opposite directions. In the midst of this fairly realistic-looking space comes two fairly outlandish looking miniature fighters on the table in front of me, who have sword and fire attacks to damage each other with. I'm encouraged by Oculus to get my fighter to jump on my virtual knee and look down on it with the headset. It's a bizarre moment, especially because the trousers I'm wearing in real-life are near identical to those in the game that are now being occupied by a small blue knight with a sword. After this odd moment of having my mind blown by virtual jeans, our characters start jumping around the living room and having a scrap. The score is tallied on the TV in front of both avatars. Again, it's nothing special in terms of actual game design, but there was a neat feeling of player expression as we tilted our heads from side to side and casually got our fighters hitting each other in a convincing environment. The quality of the headset display means I don't have to squint to make out details - even if it's not consumer-ready right now, it feels like they're getting there from the vast improvement in resolution and functionality. There is still no timeframe for a mainstream release, and Luckey clearly still believes there's some way to go until this is ready to be in the hands of consumers. My time with the DK2 just reaffirms my belief that this is the most exciting thing happening in PC gaming, and its power to heighten traditionally passive interaction through the way it presents virtual places is remarkable. The DK2 is a good indicator of how fast Oculus VR is able to progress its technology - now I can't wait to see what developers do with it.I recently began blogging about one of my favorite hobbies and pastimes: nail art. I found a subreddit for it and an awesome support and fan base. Needless to say, when it came to sign up for Secret Santa, I knew what I wanted to put on my list. My gifter, xtremepado, and his girlfriend hooked me up! They sent me 11, count em', 11 gorgeous nail polish bottles in all colors of the rainbow. Also included was a package of colorful emery boards and a clever nail clipper. The clipper, shaped like a foot with an eye-catching heart bangle pierced on the big toe, has a unique little filing surface just underneath the clipper's handle. The polishes range from Ulta to Wet n' Wild, and the colors really do cover the spectrum. My favorite is Essence's "Can't Cheat On Me," a glitzy little silver polish. Everything was packaged with a note and color legend from xtremepado and his girlfriend. The note reads: "Dear kehteh, Here are some nail polishes and accessories that I picked with the help of my girlfriend. She also made you this color legend. I hope you enjoy them! Happy Holidays, xtremepado" Enjoy them I will, sir! Thank you so much! Both of you!A few days ago an article surfaced on Medium titled “Why we moved from Angular 2 to Vue.js (and why we didn’t choose React)”. It finally made it to my circle of peers today, so I finally managed to read what the article is all about. What started out as a promising article quickly derailed into an endless stream of bad takes, to the point where I had to write a counter-critique. Full disclosure: I’ve spent a fair amount of time on all three frameworks, and while I spend more time on Angular 2+, I’ve spent sufficient time on React and Vue as well. And while I try to make these counter-critiques as balanced as possible, you don’t have to take my word for it. Missing the point of TypeScript The article expresses about how TypeScript is their main source of frustration of Angular 2. Many other people even state how using TypeScript means learning an entirely different language altogether. But here’s the thing: Your JavaScript code is already TypeScript. TypeScript is not “a different language”. This is pretty much misconception #1 whenever people talk about TypeScript. TypeScript is merely a superset of JavaScript, which adds optional static type-checking on top of standard JavaScript. Based on my personal experience (when writing my personal AI code for Screeps), 75% of the time you’re just writing standard ES6, the rest is just a sprinkle of types. On top of that, it has top-notch IDE integration which allows for auto-completion experience that has never been seen before in any JavaScript environment. To reiterate, the typing syntax provided by TypeScript is entirely optional, but it helps a lot on catching typing errors at compile time. That’s because TypeScript is JavaScript. Beating the Angular dead horse The author initially started strong with the argument that Angular 2 has undergone many different mutations throughout its beta phase, its Release Candidates, and its final release. And while I find there’s nothing that’s inherently wrong with Angular 2, I totally agree that most developers who have lived their life with Angular 1¹ find the massive changes of Angular 2 to be quite the dealbreaker, and it’s one of the many reasons people prefer to switch to libraries like React. I did dabble around with Angular 1 back in the day, but not too much, to the point that I could pick up Angular 2 at a much faster pace. And to be honest, I’m quite comfortable with it. It has a unique, modular structure, and writing apps with it makes me care a little more about best practices. My attention was drawn into the comparison chart the author made of the three frameworks. The table outlines that Angular is “slow” to code in, which is a highly subjective thing. In fact the author echoes this subjectivity as well in the “Easy to learn part”, particularly with not-at-all scientific units like “slow”, “medium”, and “fast”. It’s very useful to do a little bit of benchmarking and compare this with other peers who have gone through the same path (as the author mentioned in the comments). Unfortunately, I didn’t see any of these in the article. Reactivity: Kind of Actually, Angular 2+ is built for reactive programming! There’s a reason that it’s built on top of RxJS, a library that adds functional reactive programming capabilities to JavaScript. Glancing over React like it’s nothing In this article, the section on React contains only one paragraph. When I read that, my initial takeaway on their answer to the question “why we didn’t choose React” is that they never actually taken a deep dive into it. In fact, the whole article is more about Angular and Vue than it is about React. The other part where they brought up React is when they talked about their licensing. At the time I write this, there is great amount of discussion because Facebook changed the React license to BSD+Patents. The BSD+PATENTS license has been used by React since 2015, and Facebook has never changed it ever since. In fact, it was only recently brought into the spotlight because the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) finally realised that React’s BSD+PATENTS license clashes with the Apache License’s terms, therefore marking it incompatible with ASF’s projects. Why we should never compare apples to oranges, again The vagueness of the article begs to imply that the author wrote off Angular due to mere frustration, and thanks to the time spent on trying to overcome their frustration, has lost all belief in Angular, whilst glancing over the garden of React and throwing a random paper plane into the general direction of Vue.js. The way they threw the other two frameworks off is a little unfair. I believe that with a level head, the author will be able to see the intricacies of these frameworks. As I said, I’ve spent enough time with all of these three to be able to make a conscious decision about which framework you should use. I’m currently working on an Electron app in Angular, I wrote a video aggregation site in Vue.js, and while I haven’t made anything notable in React, I’m looking forward to creating sleek apps with it sometime soon. And these frameworks do adapt to very specific use cases. For instance, Angular fits well in an enterprise environment, React is better suited for developing declarative, cross-platform apps that work on both desktop and mobile, whereas Vue fits well if you want your single-page application to be as lightweight as possible. Either way, if you understand the general gist of how these frameworks work, you can easily adapt yourself to all the other frameworks. These three frameworks are nearly similar by the typical pattern of a framework, they’re just packaged in a different way. I personally classify Angular and Vue as frameworks while React as a library. The former forces design decisions on you and promotes best practices, while the other forces you to make your own decisions about how your own coding practices are going to shape up as your project grows. While people still love to compare these three frameworks, I believe that comparing them are like comparing apples to oranges. In which case, the decision falls on you. You like Vue? Cool! You prefer React? That’s great! You want to get down and dirty with Angular? That’s adventurous of you, but oh well, you do you!The craze to take a selfie in the most dangerous and uncanny places and situation seems to continue to take a toll on the country's youth. After the recent incident where a youth died while trying to take a selfie on a railway track, comes another case where 18-year-old boy was detained after taking a selfie with a Uttar Pradesh District Magistrate. Faraz Ahmad the 'over-enthusiastic' youth who wanted a selfie with the woman DM of Bulandshahr was arrested on Monday after a scuffle with local officials and the police who asked him to delete the selfies, reports a leading English daily. According to the additional DM Vishal Kumar, the boy, from Kamalpur village tried to take the selfie when the DM B Chandrakala, was speaking to elders about some local issues. " He tried to click a selfie with the DM, after which he was asked to behave several times," says Kumar. DM Chandrakala said that the youth should have behaved responsibly knowing that the she was not only a government official but also a woman. "A woman has her own dignity, which should be respected by one and all," she said to the daily. "One needs to behave responsibly and must in no way hamper freedom of work for women. In general, I am concerned about today's youth because they tend to become irresponsible at times. They have a great responsibility towards the nation," she added. ADM Kumar said that Ahmad was asked to leave as he continued to take pictures. "The boy was continuously clicking pictures. And he was told that this should not happen without permission," she said. "It's your camera but whatever object you are trying to capture, do you have their consent? This is shocking," the DM said. Chandrakala also added that the youth was sent to jail not for taking a selfie but for disorderly conduct after being asked to delete the pictures. "Don't know what happened outside the office, but I heard that he said that this is my camera,'meri marzi', when asked to delete picture," she added. The ADM said that Ahmad got into a fight with the police, officials outside the office when they asked him to delete the images. "It was then that police challaned him under CrPC section 151 (intent to commit crime) and sent to jail," Kumar said to the daily. Ahmad's family met with the DM and asked her to drop charges against him to which she agreed. "He made a mistake, which was certainly punishable. But we are thankful to the DM, who not only listened to us but also agreed to forgive him. We have assured her that he will not repeat such behaviour in future," said Mohammad Irfan, Ahmad's uncle said. Rakesh Singh, station in-charge of Kotwali police station confirmed that Ahmad was charged under section 151 of CrPC but wsa released on bail after three days.Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton speaks during a rally at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland on Tuesday. (Photo: Tony Dejak, AP) It’s been a stomach-churning fall in America, where the ways of obstructionist politics have come home to roost in an uprising of common people hell-bent on seeing their government make sense again. That those people have coalesced behind a candidate so far-fetched as Donald Trump matters not. Many have argued eloquently that he would be the worst president in the history of our nation. What’s important here is the emergence of a coalescing force to rage against what has become decades of political stonewalling by power brokers defiant of the best interests of our nation and our people. We saw it in the upstart candidacy of Bernie Sanders, who tapped into the liberal-progressive wing of the disillusioned. He ran against the Democratic machine that anointed Hillary Clinton, challenging the structural inertia with populist ideals. Mainstream Republicans, in disarray after a third straight fractious primary season, watched helplessly as Trump amassed the delegates to win their nomination. So here we are. The choice? There is no choice. We endorse Hillary Clinton as the only qualified candidate for the presidency of the United States. The challenge: As we endure four more years of obstructionism, as forces move to develop candidate slates for the 2018 mid-term election in Congress, Americans who are concerned about our dysfunctional government must work hard to put true reformers into positions of power. Should we fail at reform again and again, the danger grows that a populist candidate who appeals to the base elements of our electorate as Trump does, without his hideous character flaws, may come along and steer us into an abyss. There’s every reason to believe that new crops of leaders will rise in the springs ahead. Let us sow the seeds of reform wisely. Read or Share this story: http://bcene.ws/2f6zbcKHouse of Pain's smash hit "Jump Around" is a timeless classic, second only to Primus's "Is It Luck?" in '90s basement party danceability. In addition to giving millions of young men an easily mastered dance move, the song also seems ideally suited for party companies that rent
include increased protection for the area, as well as increased awareness and tourism. Learn more about International Dark Sky Parks and browse the others that have made the cut here.From wild child to UEFA Champions League winner to cancer survivor, new Bayer Leverkusen coach Heiko Herrlich has handled every challenge life has thrown at him. bundesliga.com looks at the man charged with bringing Die Werkself back to the business end of the Bundesliga table. Read: Herrlich appointed Leverkusen coach 1)Wild child Born in Mannheim, Herrlich grew up further south in Baden-Württemberg and the considered adult he is now stands in marked contrast to the almost uncontrollable youngster he was at school. "I didn't see it as being my fault, I couldn't understand why I was being punished, and just generally ran amok," he admitted. When Berti Vogts, then coach of Germany's U15 team, failed to call up Herrlich, the youngster threatened to quit the game only for Vogts to talk him round. Herrlich in his playing days at Leverkusen. - © imago / imago/Kicker/Liedel 2)Leverkusen, Part I After three years at local club Freiburg, Herrlich moved to Leverkusen for the first time, making his Bundesliga debut in a 1-1 draw with Karlsruhe on Matchday 5 of the 1989/90 season. It was the first of 75 top-flight matches for Die Werkself in which he scored six goals and laid on five more for his team-mates, and contributed to the victorious DFB Cup run of 1992/93. 3) Freescoring Foal Leverkusen's Westphalian rivals Borussia Mönchengladbach brought in Herrlich in 1993, and after a modest eight goals in his first season as a Foal, the then-23-year-old striker enjoyed his best season individually. A return of four goals in his first ten Bundesliga matches of 1994/95 suggested a positive campaign ahead, but a flurry of seven strikes in the following six laid the foundations for a Torjägerkanone-winning season. He ended with 20 top-flight goals from 32 matches, sharing the honour with Bremen's Mario Basler, who played a game more. Given Herrlich ended his career with 74 goals in 258 Bundesliga games, it was by far his most prolific season. Herrlich enjoyed coaching success at Jahn Regensburg in the last two seasons. - © DFL DEUTSCHE FUSSBALL LIGA / Alex Grimm 4)Bible in the bathroom "A strange guy, who sits on the toilet and reads the Bible," said Martin Dahlin of his former Mönchengladbach team-mate. "My deep faith is not simply structured," said Herrlich. "If there is a God, then he is certainly not a machine to dispense wishes." 5) European champion If his '94/95 season was his best as a player, the '96/97 campaign was undoubtedly the most memorable in terms of silverware. After swapping the Gladbach version of Borussia for the Dortmund brand in 1995, Herrlich helped BVB lift the Bundesliga title in his first season before playing his part in Die Schwarzgelben's historic UEFA Champions League win. He started the final against highly-fancied Juventus on the bench, replacing two-goal hero Karl-Heinz Riedle to enjoy the glorious final 23 minutes on the Olympiastadion pitch in Munich. Herrlich's 1999 face-to-face meeting with Bayern 'keeper Kahn is the stuff of BVB legend. - © gettyimages / Mark Sandten 6)Faced up to 'Dracula' Kahn If Herrlich's part in Dortmund's scaling of European club football's summit earned him an immortal part in the club's legend and a star in the Walk of Fame of a grateful city, his defiance in the face of Oliver Kahn in April 1999 gave his iconic status an added facet. Bayern Munich arrived in Dortmund closing in on the title, BVB needed the points to boost their hopes of qualifying for the Champions League. "I remember Jürgen Kohler told me, 'Olli can be bothered at high balls. Just ruffle him a bit, and he'll lose his nerve." The fact Herrlich had scored twice, dashing the Bayern 'keeper's hopes of breaking the Bundesliga record for minutes without conceding a goal, did not help Kahn's mood. "Kahn didn't look good for the second goal. Perhaps it was too much for him. He came and pressed his nose into my neck," said Herrlich. "He didn't bite me, but I was celebrating inside that this exceptional goalkeeper had shown a weakness." 7) Determination personified The unruly child has developed into a man whose determination took him through some of the toughest challenges anyone could face. "His strong will is his most distinctive trait," admitted his mother Erika. "With it, he would smash through a wall with his head." Watch: Herrlich's spectacular goal for Leverkusen against Wattenscheid in 1990/91 8)'Worst time of my life' It was a quality that would serve him well when he was diagnosed with a brain tumour in October 2000 while still a Dortmund player. "It was the worst time of my life," he acknowledged. He recovered, making his return in a derby with Schalke and earning an ovation from the fans of his club's bitter rivals just over a year later. Unsurprisingly, the Royal Blues' supporters were not the only ones whose perspective was changed by Herrlich's illness. "It's certain that no-one dies when you lose a game," he said. Since, Herrlich has been a tireless ambassador for cancer charities within Germany, notably encouraging sufferers to keep fit, "because I would like to motivate cancer patients who are in the same situation as I was to stay physically active." 9)Career end, new beginning Though he returned from illness and saw Dortmund extend his contract through to 2005 shortly after his comeback, Herrlich never recaptured his best form. He played just over 90 Bundesliga minutes over the next two seasons before finally hanging up his boots in April 2004. "Even when I tried to play with the reserve team, it became increasingly clear to me that I no longer had a chance of proving myself as a footballer," Herrlich said. But as that door closed, another opened soon after when, having taking his first coaching badges, he was put in charge of Dortmund's U19 team in 2005. 10)Coaching, the story so far... Success with the BVB youngsters was followed by a two-year spell with the DFB where he finished third with at the 2007 U17 World Cup with a Germany team featuring Kevin Trapp, Toni Kroos and Sebastian Rudy. He took over the U19s a year later, and would have succeeded Dieter Eilts as U21 coach only to reject the chance. He did step into the job at then-Bundesliga side Bochum in October 2009 only to fail to finish the season as the club was relegated. Spells at Unterhaching and Bayernf's U17 team followed before he led Jahn Regensburg to back-to-back promotions over the last two seasons and back into Bundesliga 2. "I'm very happy and get a lot of job satisfaction. To be clear: I would like to be in Regensburg next year," Herrlich said in mid-May, but that was before Leverkusen came calling. Click here for the latest Bayer Leverkusen news.MADRID (Reuters) - Catalonia President Artur Mas said on Tuesday he would forge ahead with his region’s plans to hold a referendum on independence in November after Spain’s parliament overwhelmingly rejected the petition. An electronic board shows the results of a vote for a petition from Catalonia to hold a referendum on independence at the Spanish Parliament in Madrid April 8, 2014. REUTERS/Sergio Perez After a seven-hour debate in the national parliament in Madrid, and despite heavy support for the separatist movement in the wealthy north-eastern region, 299 lawmakers voted against, 47 voted for and one abstained. The regional parliament of Catalonia, which has its own language and a long history of fighting for greater autonomy from Spain, sent the initiative to the national legislature in January asking for permission to hold a referendum. “They are afraid that the Catalan people vote. Some would like to present this as the end of the matter but, as President of Catalonia, I say to them that it is not the end,” Mas said in a live speech in Catalan immediately after votes were counted. “Catalan institutions will search through the legal frameworks to find a way to continue with this consultation.” Catalan lawmakers said the movement had already gained too much momentum to stop the referendum completely. All the major parties, including the ruling conservative People’s Party (PP), the main opposition group, the Socialists, and the centrist Union for Progress and Democracy (UPyD), voted against the petition. Catalan and Basque nationalist parties voted in favour. “Maybe I believe in Catalonia more than you do. I love Catalonia like it was my own,” Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said during the debate. “Together we all win, but separate, we all lose. This isn’t just a question of law, but of sentiment... I can’t imagine Spain without Catalonia, or Catalonia out of Europe.” The spectre of a breakaway Catalonia, which accounts for a fifth of the Spanish economy and 16 percent of its population, has become a big headache for Rajoy, who is battling high unemployment and the scars of a deep recession. Mas has already set a date of November 9 for the referendum, two months after an independence vote in Scotland that is being closely watched in Catalonia. Rajoy has said he will use the courts to block the Catalan government from holding the vote, though Mas argues that if it is a non-binding consultation, it should be legal. Mas has also signalled he will not break the law. So if the referendum is shut down by the courts, he is expected to use the next election in Catalonia, which must be held by 2016, as a proxy vote on independence. BUSINESS LEADERS CAUTIOUS Opinion polls show that roughly half of Catalans support independence but a much higher number want the right to vote on the matter. Catalonia, the land of artists Joan Miro and Salvador Dali and architect Antoni Gaudi, is home to some of Spain’s biggest companies, including banks Caixabank and Sabadell, global infrastructure company Abertis and utility Gas Natural. Catalan business leaders have been cautious about taking sides on independence, fearing a backlash. But the head of Spain’s largest pharmaceutical company, Barcelona-based Grifols, broke the silence last week when he backed Mas’s drive to hold a referendum. The view from the central government is that self-determination does not apply in Catalonia’s case, because it is not a colony and is not suffering rights violations. Spain’s highly devolved system already gives Catalonia significant self-governing powers over its education and health systems and its police. With the European Union backing the Spanish government, political analysts believe the endgame will likely be some sort of negotiation between Catalonia and Spain for the region to get additional fiscal powers. A perception that Spain’s tax system is unfair to Catalonia and tussles over the Catalan-language education system have fuelled the independence movement, as has the national economic crisis. Slideshow (14 Images) Rajoy is hoping time will be on his side. With the recovery gaining momentum in Spain, independence fervour could lose some of its heat. Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine after a snap referendum staged under military occupation has done the Catalans no favours, highlighting the risk of the self-determination principle in Europe. The Catalan government has circulated a petition paper to European governments to distance its referendum campaign from the Crimean situation.Oct 22, 2013; Auburn Hills, MI, USA; Detroit Pistons point guard Will Bynum (12) drives past Washington Wizards point guard John Wall (2) during the third quarter at The Palace of Auburn Hills. Pistons won 99-96. Mandatory Credit: Tim Fuller-USA TODAY Sports Washington Wizards Preview: Wizards Take On Phoenix Suns, Looking For Third Straight Win Washington Wizards Preview: Wizards Take On Phoenix Suns, Looking For Third Straight Win by Ben Mehic Ray Allen is reportedly atop the Washington Wizards‘ wish list, but that doesn’t mean Ernie Grunfeld and the rest of the front office won’t explore other options. Will Bynum, who’s currently playing in the Chinese Basketball Association, has received interest from the Wizards: Aside from Cavs, Wizards have placed interest in guard Will Bynum, sources tell RealGM. Bynum likely available from China in late March. — Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) January 28, 2015 After being traded by the Detroit Pistons, Bynum was later waived by the Boston Celtics. Instead of waiting for an NBA deal, he opted to sign with the Guondong Southern Tigers, who were seeking a replacement for Emmanuel Mudiay. For Washington Wizards fans, Will Bynum is known for being on the long list of “Wizards Killers.” Bynum, who’s probably shorter than his listed 6’0″ height, averaged slightly over 8 points per game in seven seasons in the NBA, but seemed to torch the Wizards. Here’s some grainy footage of Will Bynum dishing out 20 assists against the Wizards: It’s no secret that the Wizards could use another guard off the bench. Andre Miller is the oldest player in the NBA, and point guard isn’t Garrett Temple‘s natural position. While the team is still very much interested in signing Ray Allen, realistically, I think he’ll end up elsewhere. The Golden State Warriors and Cleveland Cavaliers are both interested in Allen, and quite frankly, it would be shocking if the future Hall-of-Famer ended up in the nation’s capital. After waiving Glen Rice Jr., the Wizards have opened up their final roster spot. Trades are always an option, especially since the Wizards have multiple trade exceptions, but veterans will become available after the trade deadline and the conclusion of the CBA season. Instead of trading a player, the Wizards could sign a free agent for the minimum before the beginning of the playoffs. That’s where Will Bynum could come in. Washington signed Drew Gooden late in the season last year and he made a tremendous impact. The Wizards haven’t gotten consistent production from their bench recently, and Will Bynum could potentially make a difference. He’s small, isn’t great on the defensive end of the floor, but he could score the ball. He’d also continue the fast-paced basketball Washington wants to play when John Wall isn’t on the floor. As the 15th man, I think the Wizards could do a lot worse than Will Bynum. The Wizards will likely continue to see who will become available throughout the season. We’ll just have to wait and see if anything develops with Will Bynum.We all know about academic “trigger warnings”: advance advice to students that they may encounter things in a lecture or course that disturb them. I’m not opposed to such warnings in toto (I’d tell students, for example, if I were going to show gruesome photos or videos in class), but I don’t think that these warnings should allow students to avoid necessary course material, for exposure to a distressing but common situations is the way to get over it. Proper warnings allow students to prepare for things that they find disturbing. Now, though, those triggering issues are said to include “bones”. As the Oct. 25 issue of The Times (UK) reports: You may think that it comes with the territory, but archaeology students have been given permission to walk out of lectures if they feel they may be traumatised by the sight of skeletons. Tony Pollard, a professor of conflict history at the University of Glasgow who co-presents the BBC TV series Two Men in a Trench, said that he issues “trigger warnings” before displaying images of human remains in lectures. He dismissed suggestions that students were being mollycoddled and insisted that it would be irresponsible not to give individuals the chance to opt out of seeing graphic images.... Writing in The Conversation journal, Professor Pollard said: “Some of the material I refer to in my classes is disturbing, with images of the dead appearing regularly. “Students are a diverse group and some of them might have suffered domestic abuse, violent attack or trauma in war. In these cases, such exposure might trigger flashbacks or aggravate recently suppressed trauma. “It is only common sense to provide these individuals, and those who just can’t stomach images of dead bodies in shallow graves, with the option to walk out of the classroom.” Professor Pollard added that as a student he had been disturbed by graphic images from the First World War. “I think back to the mass graves of Australian soldiers buried by the Germans at Fromelles in 1916. Although the remains were skeletal they were still upsetting, with many of them exhibiting the trauma caused by a machinegun burst or grenade blast,” he said. “This doesn’t make me or my students a wuss or mean they need to man up. It makes me a human being and one sensitive enough to deal with the remains of the dead in a professional and respectful manner.” It looks as if the Times’ assertion that it’s the “sight of skeletons” that is the stimulus may not be correct, for the images from World War I may include dead bodies, not just bones (see the Times’s headline below). And I agree with Professor Pollard on one count: it’s fine to give advance warnings that bodies (although perhaps not bones) will be shown. I dissent, however, on issues like “eating and drinking”, as “triggering” subjects have expanded to include nearly everything. And I disagree that students should be allowed to walk out. If they’re warned in advance, and have an aversion to the sight, they should be given independent counseling to deal with the issue. But on no account should they be able to walk out of an entire lecture that includes the disturbing images. If that’s the case, they should be told in the first class so they can drop the course. h/t: GregoryDamaged, disturbed and prone to appalling violence, they are often demonised as 'feral'. Amelia Hill visits Mulberry Bush school in Oxfordshire where 40 youngsters are helped to come to terms with their nightmare pasts When Lucy plays with her dolls, there are no happy endings. Instead, the nine-year-old tortures her toys, inventing plot lines focusing on violence, murder and bloodbaths. Lucy doesn't have an overactive imagination. Far from it. Her games are based on cold, hard facts. They are an accurate reflection of the only home life she has ever known: abused both physically and sexually, and severely neglected from birth, Lucy also saw her mother beating her older sister to death. It took five years for social services to remove Lucy from her mother and place her in care, by which point she was profoundly traumatised, a state revealed most obviously through her compulsive need to repeatedly act out her early experiences in behaviour so disturbed and disturbing that she was rejected by 27 foster families, as well as numerous mainstream and special schools. But Lucy has been lucky in one respect: she is being treated at one of the few establishments in the country providing residential, therapeutic care and education for severely emotionally troubled and traumatised children aged from five to twelve years of age. Based in the Oxfordshire countryside, Mulberry Bush school was set up in 1948 by Barbara Dockar-Drysdale, one of the world's pioneers in children's residential therapy. Inspired by the work of Donald Winnicott, the paediatric psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, Dockar-Drysdale took in evacuee children during the second world war and went on to study emotional deprivation and trauma in early years. Bright, airy and compact, the school is home to 40 profoundly traumatised children who have such extreme and destructive patterns of behaviour that three members of staff need to be on hand to contain their violence: a level of care that costs £138,000 per child for a year – considerably more than any public school. Eton, for example, charges around £28,000. The necessity for this 3:1 ratio of care became clear within hours of the Observer's week-long visit to Mulberry, an unprecedented level of access to the school. On our first day, we met seven-year-old Stan. Four years ago he was rescued from a paedophile ring in which he saw other children murdered by members of his own family. By the time he arrived at the Mulberry Bush, Stan had been through 73 foster placements and was widely considered to be beyond rehabilitation. Our first sight of Stan was during one of the many white-hot rages that punctuate his days, often erupting without any discernible trigger. For his own safety, and the safety of those around him, the small, wiry child has to be pinned down in a full body restraint by three adults until the fury has passed. As Stan thrashed, spat and tried to bite the adults restraining him, he betrayed the horrific experiences of his early years by screaming out shockingly explicit and unchildlike obscenities. Kneeling beside him and pinning his arms, legs and skinny body to the floor, the members of staff took it in turns to speak to him in slow, calm and low-pitched monotones, explaining why he was being restrained, exploring what he might be feeling and suggesting techniques he could use to calm himself down. As exhaustion overtook him, Stan's passionate, flailing fury gave way to twitching anger beneath the adults who continued, as gently as possible, to hold him down. Eventually, with his frenzy abated, he lay, spent and silent, listening passively to the single member of staff who remained holding him in a less restrictive, but still close, restraint, continuously talking him through what had just happened. Foster or adoptive families find it impossible to deal with children such as Stan. When local authorities try to place these children in families – sometimes without telling the new foster parents what the child has gone through or is capable of – the consequences are appalling. They include the recent case of the family who sued their local authority after the 10-year-old boy they adopted in Co Durham stabbed his adoptive father with a kitchen knife and attempted to sexually assault his half-sister. Or the couple who took Essex county council's adoption agency to court and won substantial damages after their adoptive son, who was five at the time of his placement, threatened to kill his pregnant, adoptive mother, putting her in hospital for several days. One can only guess at a level of terror and brutality experienced by these small children that causes them to behave in such horrifying ways. Local authorities are not obliged to keep data on adoption breakdowns, so there are no government statistics indicating whether there has been an increase as a result of children's disruptive behaviour. However, a survey in June of the 92 (out of 450) local authorities in England, Scotland and Wales that do keep figures found a doubling in the past five years in the number of adoptive children returned to care because their new parents could not cope. The increase is insidious – in the past year alone, the number of children returned to care by foster families unable to cope with their traumatised and uncontrollable behaviour increased by a third. This increase comes despite a fall in the number of children being adopted overall: 4,637 children in 2007, the lowest number since 1999. They might be the only people able to take on youngsters this damaged but there are no miracles at the Mulberry Bush. The school can't take away what has happened to children like Stan. Nevertheless, 45 minutes after we saw Stan carried from the classroom, kicking and screaming, he was back, calmly filling in a worksheet. Shortly afterwards, when the girl sitting next to him exploded in a similar rage, throwing chairs and screeching like an animal in pain, Stan, who would usually have joined in, ignored her. A few minutes after the second child had been carried from the room, with her arms wrapped tightly around her body to prevent her clawing the eyes of her care worker, Stan quietly walked over to his teacher. He had finished his worksheet and wanted a gold star. "The sight of three adults holding a primary-school age child in a full body restraint does look deeply shocking, and we would like to find a way to ensure the safety of these children, and those around them, without having to resort to physical intervention," said Dave Roberts, who trains Mulberry Bush teachers in techniques approved by the British Institute of Learning Difficulties, which operates the only nationally accredited scheme for techniques of physical intervention suitable for children. Roberts acknowledged that it was hard for the children to be held in this way, especially those who had been subjected to physical abuse. "We try to minimise the stress by constantly feeding back to the children during the restraints what we are doing and why," he said. "But I think most of the children here need restraints to feel contained and safe when their fear, panic and anger begins to overwhelm them. If we didn't restrain, their raw emotions would spill out and the school would implode in a ball of chaos." Chaotic, impulsive and unpredictable, these are the children often condemned by the press and public as "feral". Even the school's own staff admit the children are often unlovable. "Some of our pupils are the most abused, distrustful, cold and hardened of children," said John Diamond, chief executive of the Mulberry Bush. "They are so traumatised and confused that their behaviour can oscillate between being cut off and withdrawn, to aggressive attacks and outbursts of outrageous violence with no apparent trigger or motive." Everyone involved in Lucy's care admits that this is her last chance to have anything like a normal life. Like the other children at the school, her experiences have caused her to adopt behaviours so dangerous she is already well on her way to a life revolving around reform school, detention centres, lock-down units, prison and, in all likelihood, an early death. John Turberville, the director of the school, said: "If these children are ever going to be able to have any sort of normal future – and if society is going to be prevented from suffering the fallout from their behaviours – it is desperately important that they develop some sort of understanding about their traumatic start to life." Bright, airy and compact, the Mulberry Bush is built on a radial model, with a central school surrounded by four smaller buildings in which the children are divided into small groups, to live in as close to a home environment as possible. In these residential settings, the children learn what it means to co-operate, live with and relate to other children and adults in a normal, healthy way. The children's interactions are observed and closely managed by the "mother" or "father" of each house, then discussed in detail with the youngsters involved. The hope is that, over time, the children will realise they are no longer alone and marginalised in a hostile world. Eventually, the aim is to help them come to a degree of understanding about their early experiences and adopt new behaviours that could see them integrated, instead of ostracised, from wider society for the first time in their lives. Such battles, however, are not easily won. "Love is not enough for these children," said Diamond. "A well-intentioned but sentimental view of providing a bit of 'tender loving care' will not work. We practise'stern love', which is all about using one's determined personal authority to manage children in a robust and unambiguous way. These children's only hope of recovery requires great commitment and thoughtful relationship-building in a specialist holding environment, such as ours." Diamond is deeply concerned, though, about what he sees as the increasing social exclusion and outlawing of those children and young people most in need of loving care and attention. "The so-called'moral panics' and social anxiety around these children invite us not to think but instead to rush into simplistic and concrete solutions which can demonise children and deepen mistrust and anxiety," he said. "There is very little public sympathy for profoundly disturbed children, even when they are as young as ours. They're not seen as victims. People are incredibly sympathetic when cases like Baby P hit the headlines but when a child is excluded from three primary schools for stabbing teachers and causing general chaos, people often don't look beyond that shocking and intimidating behaviour in their rush to condemn and demonise." The Mulberry Bush can offer sanctuary to a maximum of 40 children, referred by local authorities across the country as day or residential pupils. During an average stay of three years, the independent, non-maintained residential special school strives to teach the most basic tenets of socially acceptable behaviour to children for whom family, friends, society and school are alien and frightening concepts. But this is a great deal to expect from children so disturbed that they have commonly experienced between 25 and 30 failed fostering relationships before they arrive. Diamond said the only thing the school could guarantee pupils was sanctuary. For many children, simply staying at the school for three years is a massive breakthrough. "We attempt to transform hate into love but the prognosis can often seem full of despair and hopelessness," said Turberville. "We have to keep alive the possibility of a hopeful outcome. Our work is about embracing tiny possibilities of emotional growth towards the child becoming lovable." The uncomfortable truth is that it is impossible to gauge the success of the school's ceaseless work and dedicated effort. Incidents of aggression and antisocial behaviour drop by an average of 95% per pupil. But once the children return to a home environment, on the verge of adolescence, there is no guarantee this will be sustained. "Over their time here, we hope to have done enough work with the child to enable them to be in a classroom, and to be less harmful and suicidal as adolescents," said Caryn Onions, head of psychotherapy at the school. "But we have to be realistic. We will not have healed them. Instead, the most we can hope is that we have helped them be more integrated into mainstream society." The near-impossibility of measuring success is a problem for the management team. During the Observer's visit, a letter arrived from a man in his late 50s. Now living in America with a family of his own and working for Microsoft, the former pupil admitted that the decades after leaving the Mulberry Bush had been "horrendous". But, he added, in the last 10 years, he had become stable and happy. His years at the school were his only positive experience while growing up, he said. "So how should we judge success?" remarks Diamond. "A few years ago, this man would have been considered a failure. Now he's a success. We also have to remember that some children want to forget they were ever so out of control that they had to come here. I'm not sure how helpful it would be for them to be contacted every year for a follow-up assessment." But although the outcomes are nebulous, the risk to the children – and to society – of doing less is too great to contemplate. These children are often not only the victims of Baby P-like failures on the part of local councils but might well end up as perpetrators of similar tragedies, like the two brothers aged 10 and 11 who last September pleaded guilty to the grievous bodily harm of two younger children by subjecting them to planned torture, sexual humiliation and prolonged, sadistic violence in the South Yorkshire town of Edlington. There was one simple way of ensuring children got more help, said Onions: earlier referrals from social services and local education authorities. "There's too much emphasis on keeping children in their abusive and neglectful families," said Diamond. "The reasons are multiple. There are the financial causes: local authorities simply can't afford to give residential care to all children who need it. "But there is also systemic failure, long before children get here," he said. "It's not unusual for children to have six social workers in a single year, each of whom is overwhelmed by cases." But, said Turberville, the responsibility for these children cannot simply be laid at the door of social services. "How many of us can honestly say we keep an eye on the safety of children in our community – or even know who they are?" he asked. "I'm not saying that other countries do better but that's no excuse for this mass collective shirking of responsibility towards our children. At the Mulberry Bush, we see the terrible results of that failure every single day."BANGKOK (Reuters) - Southeast Asian nations agreed on Friday to intensify search and rescue efforts to help vulnerable “boat people” stranded in the region’s seas, as Myanmar said its navy had seized a vessel off its coast with more than 700 migrants aboard. More than 4,000 migrants have landed in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar and Bangladesh since Thailand launched a crackdown on people-smuggling gangs this month. Around 2,000 may still be adrift in boats on the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal, the United Nations said. Countries affected by the crisis agreed at a meeting in Bangkok to set up an anti-trafficking task force and approved a wide-ranging list of recommendations to tackle the “root causes” of the crisis - although the plan was carefully worded to avoid upsetting Myanmar, which denies it is the source of the problem. Just as the meeting was wrapping up in Bangkok, Myanmar’s Ministry of Information announced its navy had intercepted a boat with 727 “Bengalis” aboard and was taking them to a base on an island off its southern coast to determine their identity. “That the summit took place at all with this wide participation is itself a good result,” William Lacy Swing, director general of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), told Reuters. “It’s a very important first step. Having Myanmar there was key. I’m pretty optimistic. We’re pleased that they’ve retained an emphasis on intensifying search and rescue operations.” While some of the migrants are Bangladeshis escaping poverty at home, many are members of Myanmar’s 1.1 million Rohingya Muslim minority who live in apartheid-like conditions in the country’s Rakhine state. Myanmar does not consider the Rohingya citizens, rendering them effectively stateless, while denying it discriminates against them or that they are fleeing persecution. It does not call them Rohingya but refers to them as Bengalis, indicating they are from Bangladesh. The final statement from the meeting on Friday included a paragraph that called for addressing factors in the areas of origin of migrants, including “promoting full respect for human rights” as well as investing in economic development. It did not mention Myanmar by name. Myanmar signed off on the agreement, Htein Lin, director general at Myanmar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and head of the country’s delegation told Reuters after the meeting. “It’s not only about Rohingya, in your terms - in our terms, not only for Bengalis,” he said. “The language (in the document) speaks for itself. For Myanmar, root causes are development and a sense of security for all people living in Rakhine state and the rest of Myanmar.” In his opening remarks to the meeting earlier, he had sharp words for those that blamed Myanmar for Southeast Asia’s migrant crisis. “You cannot single out my country,” he told delegates. “In the influx of migration, Myanmar is not the only country.” ROOT CAUSES The Bangkok gathering brought together 17 countries from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and elsewhere in Asia, along with the United States, Switzerland and international bodies such as the UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency, and the IOM. One delegate said Myanmar had pushed for other participants not to use the term “Rohingya” and that most were respecting Myanmar’s request. Htein Lin said nobody had raised “the Rohingya question”. Thailand's Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister General Tanasak Patimapragorn (C) poses with delegates during an opening ceremony of the Special Meeting on Irregular Migration in the Indian Ocean at a hotel in Bangkok, Thailand, May 29, 2015. REUTERS/Chaiwat Subprasom Volker Turk, Assistant High Commissioner for Protection at the UNHCR, said earlier the deadly pattern of migration could only be ended if Myanmar addressed discrimination against its Rohingya minority. “This is a very good beginning,” Turk said after the meeting. “There is a strong paragraph on root causes in the agreement... There is a sense of opening from Myanmar that I welcome. There was a discussion about Rakhine State.” There were also pledges of money to help deal with the crisis from the United States, Australia and Japan. PEOPLE SMUGGLING CAMPS Officially called the Special Meeting on Irregular Migration in the Indian Ocean, the gathering took place against the grim backdrop of Malaysia’s discovery of nearly 140 graves at 28 suspected people-smuggling camps strung along its northern border. Thai authorities had found 36 bodies in abandoned camps on their side of the border at the start of this month, which led to the crackdown. When the Thai crackdown made it too risky for traffickers to land migrants, they abandoned thousands at sea, triggering the crisis. Regional governments have struggled to respond, although images of desperate people crammed aboard overloaded boats with little food or water prompted Indonesia and Malaysia to soften their initial reluctance to allow the migrants to come ashore. Malaysia, which says it has already taken 120,000 illegal immigrants from Myanmar, and Indonesia said last week they would give temporary shelter to those migrants already at sea, but that the international community must shoulder the burden of resettling them. Thailand has refused to allow the boats to land, saying it is already sheltering more than 100,000 migrants from Myanmar, but has deployed a naval task force to offer medical aid at sea. Slideshow (4 Images) Thailand said on Friday it had given the United States permission to fly surveillance flights over Thai airspace to identify boats carrying migrants. “We have to save lives urgently,” U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Anne Richard told reporters before the meeting. U.S. air missions were already operating from bases in Malaysia, she said.By Allison Fedirka There is no denying that Venezuela finds itself in the midst of an economic and political crisis. On Jan. 23, the South American country will make headlines with nationwide anti-government protests. Our 2017 forecast states that the government of President Nicolás Maduro in its current form will not survive because the status quo in the country is unsustainable. We expect the breaking point to arrive this year, but we do not believe the Jan. 23 protests will bring it about. However, the groundwork for its fruition is already being laid, and marking the baseline at the start of the year will be helpful for tracking its evolution. The economic crisis stems largely from Venezuela’s dependence on oil revenue and heavy social spending. Approximately 95 percent of Venezuela’s foreign currency comes from oil sales, and the World Bank’s latest
copy which has this for its lead sentence: I is expert in english and know how to show people the ways best to write groups of words for understanding. How persuaded would you be that my claim of expertise with the English language is true? I suspect you might in fact question my literacy. When you see this construction, the very structure of the sentence serves to disqualify the author, and calls his competence into question. To a majority of Americans it would be self-evident that this sentence was either a joke, or a sad commentary. When I read technical trade magazines and other works written by those purporting to be technological guiding lights, I’m often very surprised that the measurement unit equivalent of the mangled sentence above is ubiquitous. Worse, its incongruous nature is often completely invisible to technical readers, and technical authors. I’m not here to cast blame on particular people, this poor practice is common, but I will uses specific examples from trade magazines for illustration. I will not directly cite the article, author, and title. The articles I cite are not the issue, it is the accepted use of poor measurement unit descriptions by people in the technical community that is the issue. My first example is from an article which is described as “Educational.” It describes a type of printing roller called an Anilox Roller. This roller has a large number of dimples etched into its surface which hold ink for printing. Here is what the author states: Simply put, the anilox roller is a measuring cup made up of volume carrying pockets that have a particular unit of volume measurement called a “BCM/Square inch.” ….However, unlike measuring cups, there is no standard off the shelf anilox specification. Unfortunately, there is an infinite variety of anilox volumes… So what is a BCM/Square inch? He explains: Volume of ink available from an anilox is measured in BCM’s (billion cubic microns). Because the size of a micron (25,400 microns per inch) and the number of cells the laser can engrave into the ceramic, a second unit had to be added to get the volume unit up to an understandable number. BCM/square inch is the volume unit for North America. The European anilox volume is measured in Cm3/M2 (cubic centimeters per square meter). I will not go through the difference between a micron and a centimeter. I will just move to the down and dirty conversion factors. A BCM is converted to European unit by multiplying the BCM by 1.55. The European unit is converted to a BCM by multiplying by 0.6455. For example, 12 BCM/in2 x 1.55 = Cm3/M2 Yes, the C of centimeter and the M of meter are capitalized in the original. I have tortured you and myself enough. Lets pause and talk about this for a moment. The mixing of metric and Ye Olde English units is bad enough, but giving a separate name to a clearly defined metric quantity of volume is unit proliferation at its worst. So a BCM is a billion cubic microns, and it is a volume. The metric system has a nice unit for volume called the liter. Those of us who do not live in the 19th century use the term micrometer rather than micron. My understanding is that a billion is 109 and a cubic micrometer is 10-18 cubic meters, or, when the two are multiplied, they become 10-9 cubic meters. We know there are 1000 liters in a cubic meter. That means this volume is 10-6 liters or a microliter. Therefore a BCM is a microliter. Unless I’ve made a mistake converting, this means that 12 BCM/in2 is 12 µL/in2. The “rationale” used is that they had to choose units that give numbers that are understandable. Pat Naughtin argued for numbers to be expressed as integers when possible. He calls this his whole number rule and I’m at one with this view. The author is trying to express a volume contained in small dimples over a given area. One square inch is 645.16 square millimeters. The 12 µL/in2 is therefore 12 µL/(645.16 mm2). To keep with Naughtin’s convention, we shift to nanoliters and have 18.6 nL/mm2. So instead of creating a ridiculous ad hoc pigfish measurement unit like BCM/in2 one could easily use nanoliters/square millimeter. This actually gives me some feeling for the volume of ink contained in an area. The Europeans embraced the pseudo-inch, also known as the centimeter. They use a square meter as the unit to project upon the Anilox Roller, which seems odd for a roller. When viewed by a pressman, an ink roller would never present anything like that size of an area to him. A millimeter area makes considerable sense. Even so, if the European’s insist that the centimeter be used, why not write the cubic centimeter as a milliliter and use 18.6 mL/m2. This is also a unit that may be easily visualized. This numerical value, 18.6 mL/m2, is the same as 18.6 nL/mm2 and is so easy to convert—just multiply by 1. The rewriting of the European specification with mL would also eliminate the possible confusion caused by using a ratio of length units (i.e. cm3/m2 = 1 µm) rather than using a volume unit in the numerator to provide clarity. Jargon combination units like BCM/in2, which is a mix of metric and Ye Olde English units, is like my poorly executed sentence in English above. When examined, the unit expression is very, very poor engineering practice. This is either from ignorance, or it’s from willful obfuscation, which acts as an intellectual barrier to those who might embrace the trade. It may accidentally be the latter, but I suspect it is born from the former. I have spent enough time harping on this “Educational Article.” I will toss out one more example. There has been considerable excitement in recent years about the development of 3D printers. If one has a computer model of a 3D object, it is possible to have that object fabricated in plastic using this printing device which puts down layers of melted plastic. I came across an article which compares available low cost 3D printing units. First the volume of the object which may be fabricated is described: …the MakerBot Replicator 2, with a build envelope of 11.22 x 6 x 6.12 inches and the Cubify CubeX, with a build envelope of 10.82 x 10.43 x 9.49 inches (basically the size of a basketball). A basketball has a volume of about 7.5 liters. The MakerBot Replicator 2 has a build envelope of 285 mm x 152.4 mm x 155.4 mm and the Cubifiy Cube X is 275 mm x 265 mm x 241 mm. The resolution of the 3D printing is next described: Resolution: Of the two machines we considered, the Replicator 2 can print to a layer height of 100 microns. The CubeX can only go as fine as 125 microns, but it has options for 250 and 500 micron layers. Once again, we in the US have never reformed our measurements and gone metric, so we use a 19th century term for the micrometer—the micron. The article goes on to discuss printing speed: Speed: We recently built one part that took about 20 hours to finish at the highest resolution of 125 microns; it measured 9 inches tall by about 3 inches square. The same piece took about four hours at 500 microns. Again we see a mixture of metric and Olde English. The resolution he first used was 125 micrometers. The printed part is about 228 mm x 76 mm x 76 mm. One can quickly see this is about 608 layers when the dimensions are all given in metric. This is about 118.4 seconds per layer. The volume of each layer is 76 mm x 76 mm x 0.125 mm or 722 cubic mm. Each layer printed is 722 microliters, so the volume deposit rate for the 125 µm resolution setting is about 6.1 microliters/second. When the resolution was changed to 500 micrometers, it took four hours to print. The number of layers is now 152 which comes out to 94.73 seconds per layer. Each layer has 2888 µL which gives us 30.48 µL per second. Considering that 3D printing is creating a volume, it might make sense to describe the printing speed in terms of microliters/second (µL/s) deposited. When set to 125 µm resolution the deposition speed is about 6.1 µL/s and when set to 500 µm resolution its 30.48 µL/s. The fact that the US has not changed to the metric system produces an isolation, both from our own understanding of technical issues, and from the rest of the technical world. This in turn freezes our metric usage in the past, which is demonstrated by the constant use of the micron in US industry, rather than the micrometer. It reflects poorly on the technical writers of this nation that they do not appear to understand, that from a measurements standpoint, they sound completely innumerate. We in the US like to pat ourselves on the back as technologically advanced. Well at this point it’s more like we use technologically advanced equipment, which even our technical writers can only describe to us with a mismatched set of metric and pre-scientific units. We flatter ourselves at the expense of numerical understanding, even if we can’t perceive that it is happening. If you liked this essay and wish to support the work of The Metric Maven, please visit his Patreon Page.Johnathan Hankins will count $10 million toward the Colts' 2017 salary cap. (Photo: Bill Kostroun, AP) INDIANAPOLIS — Trapped inside the 6-2, 320-pound body of Johnathan Hankins is a running back longing to escape. During his childhood in Detroit, a much smaller Hankins was a feared running back in pee wee football. Hankins’ idol was Jerome Bettis, a Hall of Fame running back and fellow Detroit native. Hankins said he ran like Bettis, punished tacklers like Bettis, and wanted to become an NFL running back like Bettis. But then something derailed Hankins’ running back career. He kept growing. “The way he looks now is the way he looked in high school,” said Donshell English, the current coach at Detroit Mumford who coached Hankins at Detroit Southeastern. “He’d tell you in a minute, ‘Man, I’m a running back.’ I took one look at Big Hank, as we call him, and said, 'Well, we don’t have 300-pound running backs.’’’ More Colts coverage: Feds: Money manager stole $4.5 million from former Colt Cory Redding Insider: Should we worry about Colts' injuries? Colts observations: Keep an eye on Le'Raven Clark, defensive line Neither do the Indianapolis Colts. “Big Hank” is making big dollars playing defensive tackle in the NFL. He was the Colts’ largest addition in every way during free agency, signing a three-year deal that could pay up to $30 million with incentives, as the new centerpiece of the defensive front. The Colts aren’t paying Hankins to play running back. They are paying Hankins to squash running backs. The Colts hope Hankins will be a disruptive force that brings a tougher identity to a revamped defensive unit. During this month’s organized team activities, Hankins has quickly tried to bring a forceful attitude. He made an appearance on NFL Network and said he viewed the Colts as having the NFL’s best defense. Maybe that sounded over the top, but the bigger point was that Hankins wanted the Colts defense to think more boldly, to command more respect. During a recent conversation, Hankins also took exception when it was suggested he might not be as effective with the Colts as he was with the Giants, when Hankins played alongside two studs on the Giants’ defensive line: tackle Damon Harrison and defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul. “I don’t really listen to outside talk like that,” said Hankins during a break from OTAs. “I’m going to work hard. I’m going to lead. I’m really looking forward to building something special here.” Whatever Hankins does will be noticed. When you are his size, with his talent, at just 25 years old, expectations are high. The Colts need Hankins to be a run-stuffer on defense, and they would also like him to put occasional pressure on opposing quarterbacks. While Hankins had 43 tackles and three sacks with the Giants last season, racking up statistics was not his forte. Dominating the line of scrimmage is Hankins’ bread and butter, using his strength and athleticism to occupy multiple offensive lineman. Even when Hankins can’t make the tackle himself, his goal will be to create opportunities for other Colts defensive playmakers. CLOSE Colts Insider Stephen Holder discusses the importance of the Colts signing defensive tackle Johnathan Hankins. Stephen Holder/IndyStar Nobody can blame new General Manager Chris Ballard for pursuing Hankins and taking a wrecking ball to the 2016 Colts defense. Last year they ranked 30th in total defense — 25th against the run and 27th against the pass. Pick any defensive scheme you wanted, the Colts played it poorly. Ballard hopes Hankins will be a catalyst for a defensive transformation. Defensive tackle may not be a glamour position, but if Hankins is an immovable object in the middle, he will help set the tone for the entire defense, especially against the run. “Everybody’s trying to find a guy that big who can do the things that he can,” said Urban Meyer, coach at Ohio State, where Hankins became a star. “Bill Belichick, Nick Saban, a lot of great defensive coaches love a defensive tackle like Jonathan. He’s a true gap defender. With him, you can move on to the next issue. He’s not going to get knocked out of there with his size and technique. “Nowadays a lot of NFL teams also have questions about a guy’s character — what kind of kid will he be? Is he going to represent the organization the right way? That’s the No.1 thing they want to know. Johnathan’s character is off the charts, an awesome kid from an awesome family. And the bonus is that he’s a hell of player.” Hankins has a history of exceeding expectations. He wasn’t even the most heavily recruited player on his high school team. That honor went to William Gholston, now a starting defensive end with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who went to Michigan State. Hankins wanted to stay near home as well, and his first choice was the University of Michigan. However, Hankins said the Wolverines were not interested until it was too late. He was sold on going to Ohio State after meeting with former Buckeyes coach Jim Tressel. “Coach Tressel is a calm, laid-back dude,’’ said Hankins. “We clicked.” NEWSLETTERS Get the IndyStar Motor Sports newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong The latest news in IndyCar and the world of motor sports. Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-888-357-7827. Delivery: Sun - Fri Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for IndyStar Motor Sports Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters Tressel said they clicked because Hankins was low maintenance. “He didn’t talk about how much playing time he would be guaranteed, how many snaps would he play, none of that,” said Tressel, now president of Youngstown State University. “I think he’ll fit in great with the Colts. He won’t say much, won’t make a big deal out of himself. But he’ll play hard every snap. CLOSE Colts players Andrew Luck, Johnathan Hankins, Kamar Aiken and Sean Spence spoke to the media Monday for the start of the organized team workouts. Clark Wade/IndyStar “He’s a big guy, but make no mistake, he’s an athlete. Those Colts linebackers will love him. He’ll free them to make plays, but he’ll also pursue. He makes guys around him play harder, because they don’t want to look bad, seeing that big guy moving faster than they are in practice.” During high school practice, English would often pit Gholston and Hankins against each other in drills. English wanted to challenge them, knowing he had two players with NFL potential. He told schools that came to see Gholston but overlooked Hankins that they were making a mistake. “I don’t know what the deal was with Michigan State, but we told them how good Big Hank was,” said English. “In fact, Gholston and Hank were talking at one time about going someplace together. But once Michigan State got Gholston, they dragged their feet on Big Hank. When he signed with Ohio State we told Michigan State, ‘He’s going to terrorize you for the next three or four years. That’s exactly what he did.’" Read more from Clifton: Driver at Indy 500 meets safety crew member he nearly killed 25 years ago IMS president’s race to save his son: ‘It was all scary’ Alonso and the Indy 500: The power of Fernando Hankins had an outstanding season for Ohio State as a junior and decided to enter the 2013 draft. Meyer had only been at Ohio State for one year, taking over from Tressel. Watching Hankins walk out the door was tough, but Hankins was ready for the NFL and Meyer knew it. “I wish I could’ve had him for more than one year,’’ Meyer said. “But we didn’t really try to talk him into staying.” Hankins expected to be a first-round pick in 2013, but when his family gathered with excitement on the first night of the draft, Hankins’ phone never rang. First Hankins was deflated. Then he was motivated when the Giants took him in the second round with the 49th pick. For the Giants, getting Hankins at No. 49 proved to be a steal. “My expectation was that I would go in the first round,” said Hankins. “But I felt lucky to get a call the very next day from the Giants. It was still exciting. Everything you dreamed of, everything you worked for, was still right in front of you.” That still holds true for Hankins. Asked his greatest NFL disappointment, Hankins didn’t mention being snubbed in the first round of the draft or having never been named to a Pro Bowl. He talked about the emptiness he felt in January, when the Giants lost to the Packers 38-13 in the opening round of the playoffs. Hankins thought the Giants had a legitimate chance to reach the Super Bowl, and that was his first taste of the playoffs. The Colts have missed the playoffs the past two seasons, and Hankins said that needed to change. “Losing in the playoffs was depressing,” said Hankins. “I’m coming here to help the Colts get back there, and go further.” Does Hankins still think he could help the Colts as a running back? “Sure,” said Hankins, laughing. “But my coaches keep crushing those dreams.” Meyer offered a retort. “Yeah, I remember hearing him say he could play running back,” Meyer said. “I don’t buy it. God made Hankins a tackle. And a darn good one.” Follow IndyStar reporter Clifton Brown on Twitter: @CliftonGBrown.I was watching the NBA Finals last night. While the series has been good, watching professional basketball requires a certain tolerance for flopping–i.e., players pretending like they got hit by a freight train when in reality the defender barely made incidental contact. Observe LeBron James in action: And that’s just from this postseason! No one likes flopping, but it is not going away anytime soon. This post explains the rationality of flopping. The logic is as you might think–players flop to dupe officials into mistakenly calling fouls. There is a surprising result, however. When flopping optimally, “good” officiating becomes impossible–referees are completely helpless in deciding whether to call a foul. Worse for the integrity of the game, a flopper’s actions force referees to occasionally ignore legitimate fouls. The Model This being a blog post, let’s construct a simple model of flopping. (See figure below.) The game begins with an opponent barreling into a defender. Nature sends a noisy signal to the official whether contact was foul worthy or not. If it is truly a foul, the defender falls to the ground without a strategic decision. If it is not a foul, the player must decide whether to flop or not. The referee makes two observations. First, he receives the noisy signal. With probability p, he believes it was a hard foul; with probability 1-p, it was not. He also observes whether the defender fell to the ground. Since the defender cannot keep standing if the offensive player commits a hard foul, the referee knows with certainty that the play was clean if the defender remains standing. However, if the player falls, the referee must make an inference whether the play was a foul. Payoffs are as follows. The referee only cares about making the right call; he receives 1 if he is correct and -1 if he is incorrect. The player receives 1 if the referee calls a foul, 0 if he does not flop and the referee does not call a foul, and -1 if he flops and the referee does not call a foul. Put differently, the defender’s best outcome is what minimizes the offense’s chance at scoring while his worst outcome is what maximizes the offense’s chance. (click image to enlarge) Equilibria Since legitimately fouled defenders have no strategic choices, we only have to solve for the non-fouled defender’s action. Therefore, throughout this proof, “defender” means a defender who was not fouled. (Rare exceptions to this will be obvious.) We break down the parameter space into three cases: For p = 0 Flopping does not work, since the referee knows no foul took place. This is why players don’t randomly fall to the ground when the nearest opponent is ten feet away from them. For p > 1/2 Note the the referee will call a foul if he believes that the probability the play was a foul is greater than 1/2. Thus, if the defender flops, he knows the referee will call a foul. As such, the defender always flops, and the referee calls a foul. This is intuitive: on plays that look a lot like a foul, defenders will embellish the contact regardless of how hard they are hit. For 0 < p < 1/2 Because mixing probabilities are messy, I will appeal to Nash’s theorem to prove that both the defender and referee mix in equilibrium. Recall that Nash’s theorem says that an equilibrium exists for all finite games. Therefore, we can show both players mix by proving that neither can play a pure strategy in equilibrium. (In other words, we expect players to sometimes flop and sometimes not to, while the referees to sometimes call a foul and sometimes not to when they aren’t sure.) First, can the defender flop as a pure strategy? If he does, the referee’s best response would be to not call a foul, as the referee believes the probability a foul occurred is less than 1/2. But given that the referee is not calling a foul, the defender should deviate to not flopping, since he will not get the call anyway. Second, can the defender not flop as a pure strategy? If he does, the referee’s best response is to call a foul if he observes the defender falling, as he knows that the play was a legitimate foul. But this means the defender would want to deviate to flopping, since he knows he will get the foul called. This exhausts the defender’s pure strategies, so the defender must be mixing in equilibrium. Third, can the referee call a foul as a pure strategy? If he does, the defender’s best response is to flop. But then the referee would not want to call a foul, since his belief that the play was actually a foul is less than 1/2. Fourth, can the referee not call a foul as a pure strategy? If he does, the defender’s best response is to not flop. But this means the referee should call a foul upon observing the defender fall, as he believes the only way this could occur is if the foul was legitimate. This exhausts the referee’s pure strategies, so the referee must mix in equilibrium. Strategically, these parameters are the most interesting. In equilibrium, the defender sometimes bluffs (by flopping) and sometimes does not. Upon observing a fall, the referee sometimes ignores what he perceives might be a flop and sometimes makes the call. The real loser is the legitimately fouled defender. He can’t do anything to keep himself from falling over, yet sometimes the referee does not make the call. Why? The referee can’t know for sure whether the foul was legitimate or not and must protect against floppers. While this seems unfortunate, be glad the referees act strategically in this way–the alternative would be that defenders would always flop regardless of how incidental the contact is and the referees would always give them the benefit of the doubt. Conclusion One of game theory’s strengths is drawing connections between two different situations. Although this post centered on flopping in the NBA, note that the model was not specific to basketball. The interaction could have very well described other sports–particularly soccer. As long as fouls provide defenders with benefits, there will always be floppers waiting to exploit the referee’s information discrepancy. Postscript If I ever expand my game theory textbook to cover Bayesian games, I think I will include this one. This also makes decent fodder when random people ask “what can game theory do for us?”Image caption Several protests against university spending cuts have been staged in London Members of human rights organisation Liberty will act as independent observers at a march in London against spending cuts. The event on 26 March will culminate in a rally in Hyde Park and organisers - the TUC - expect it to be its biggest demonstration for decades. Before Christmas the Metropolitan (Met) Police was criticised for its tactics at student tuition fee protests. Dozens of people were arrested when violence flared in central London. The TUC and the Met said they hoped using independent legal observers would ensure the 'March for the Alternative' ran smoothly. Liberty, who were invited to police planning meetings, will have a presence in the police special operations room and on the streets giving them an overall view of the protest and its policing. Liberty's James Welch said: "Our roots lie in the legal observation of demonstrations in the 1930s and our founders would have been delighted with the kind of cooperation offered by the police and protest organisers of today." 'Open to scrutiny' Nigel Stanley, of the TUC, said: "Liberty's involvement can only provide extra reassurance that our right to speak out against deep spending cuts will be policed in a way that recognises our right to protest, just as we recognise our share of the responsibility for the public safety of such a huge event." Last year, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson admitted the force made mistakes during student fees protests in November. Students had accused officers of "heavy handed brutality" during a march on 10 November and protests led to a riot at the Conservative Party's headquarters in Millbank, central London, earlier that month. Met Assistant Commissioner Lynne Owens said an essential part of retaining the public's trust was ensuring they were always open to scrutiny and being challenged on what they do. She said: "We learn from every operation, but it is invaluable to have independent observers take an objective look at how we police protests."ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan 24) – Iraqi Forces and Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) on Sunday night launched an attack on Kirkuk from two front lines, according to the Kurdistan Region Security Council (KRSC) Monday morning. The two armed factions at 23:30 pm advanced from Taza Khurmatu, south of Kirkuk, onto the city with the intent to gain control of the K1 military base and oil fields, the KRSC stated. It also mentions that at 02:30 am, early Monday morning, Iraqi forces opened fire on Peshmerga units from two fronts at the Taza - Kirkuk intersection and Maryam Bag bridge in southern Kirkuk. The Iraqi units were reported using US military equipment, including Abrams tank and Humvees, on the US' Kurdish ally. A significant number of forces have allegedly been deployed to Maktab Khalid intersection, south-west of Kirkuk, as part of the offensive. "Peshmerga forces have destroyed at least five US Humvees used by PMF. Peshmerga will continue to defend Kurdistan, its peoples, and interests," KRSC added. Tensions escalated after Iraqi forces and PMF mobilized near Kirkuk as part of Baghdad’s 'collective punishment' measures on the Kurdistan Region in response to the Sep. 25 referendum on independence. "Commander-in-Chief @HaiderAlAbadi has instructed Iraqi Army, Federal Police, CTS to secure bases & federal installations in Kirkuk province," the official Twitter account of the Iraqi government stated. Following the crisis in Kirkuk, Peshmerga commanders met with the US-led coalition commanders in Erbil, a source from Peshmerga Ministry told Kurdistan 24. Iraqi forces gained control of the K1 military base in western of Kirkuk. Thousands of people in Kirkuk took up arms on Monday morning to defend the city in case of an invasion by Iraqi forces, who claim they will not enter Kirkuk's center. Watch Kurdistan 24's live coverage of Kirkuk crisis: Editing by G.H. RenaudDespite the twin facts that European Union affairs came to dominate political news towards the end of last year and the eurozone crisis remains the single most important factor in deciding whether or not the UK economy can recover in 2012, Britain - or rather the British media - just don't seem to be able to sustain in interest in the EU for very long. Most of the political coverage and commentary in the weekend just passed has focused on two themes: the troubles with Ed Miliband's leadership and David Cameron's ambitions to occupy the electorally popular terrain of moral outrage at the excesses of freewheeling capitalism. Hardly anyone seems to have noticed or picked up on an extraordinary scoop on Friday by ITV business correspondent Laura Kuenssberg - a draft copy of the proposed new treaty for Eurozone members and their fellow EU travellers. This, remember, is the document that David Cameron will not sign. Its very existence rather contradicts the established story that the prime minister somehow wielded a "veto", since - as has subsequently been noted on a number of occasions - a veto prevents something from happening. And yet here, the other 26 members of the Union are pressing ahead with their plans unimpeded by grumpy Britain. And, as Evan Davis successfully established in his interview with Cameron on Friday, the fact of the UK's exclusion doesn't actually guarantee any of the safeguards for the British financial services industry, procurement of which was the ostensible motive for wielding a "veto" in the first place. Of course, the document revealed last week is just the starting point for negotiations. There is a European summit due at the end of this month when the real work of putting a new treaty together will get under way. How much influence Cameron will have over that process is an open question - as is the matter of how much leeway his party will give him to inch back towards a slightly more cooperative stance (as Nick Clegg insists ought to be the case). One thing helping Cameron is the fact that several of the proposed signatories to the euro-plus pact share Britain's concerns about a hardcore fiscal union run, essentially, by Paris and Berlin. The 26 v 1 scenario that emerged at the end of last year masks more subtle diplomatic manoeuvres as negotiations around an actual treaty proceed. Still, the outcome is looking very tricky indeed for Cameron. Here are just a few paragraphs that stand out from the draft treaty (written, as usual, in the arcane jargon of European legal documents): The Contracting Parties undertake to work jointly towards an economic policy fostering the smooth functioning of the Economic and Monetary Union and economic growth through enhanced convergence and competitiveness. In this context, particular attention shall be paid to all developments which, if allowed to persist, might threaten stability, competitiveness and future growth and job creation. To this aim, they will take all necessary actions, including through the Euro Plus Pact. That sounds a lot as if the inner core of EU members that sign up to the treaty (i.e. not Britain) will be talking on a regular basis about all sorts of economic plans that cut across the wider single market. The idea of the europlus group hatching a "competitiveness" agenda without consulting London will be completely unacceptable to the UK. With a view to benchmarking best practices, the Contracting Parties ensure that all major economic policy reforms that they plan to undertake will be discussed ex-ante and, where appropriate, coordinated among themselves. This coordination shall involve the institutions of the European Union as required by the law of the Union. So that confirms it - the euro-plus group will set the economic agenda for the whole EU in advance of Brussels summits and then railroad their plans through the Council. The President of the Euro Summit shall keep the other Member States of the European Union closely informed of the preparation and outcome of the Euro Summit meetings. Britain will be allowed to find out what has been arranged in her absence and invited to agree. Within five years at most following the entry into force of this Treaty, on the basis of an assessment of the experience with its implementation, an initiative shall be launched, in compliance with the provisions of the Treaty on the European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, with the aim of incorporating the substance of this Treaty into the legal framework of the European Union. And eventually - in the not too distant future - whatever grand new economic schemes have been settled by all of the signatories to the new treaty will be presented to the non-signatories as a fait accompli and turned into a new pan-EU treaty after all. At that point Britain will have to sign up (having had minimal input) on a take it or leave it basis. It is very hard to see any government agreeing to that, let alone parliament ratifying it, whoever is running the government by 2017. In other words, this draft treaty sets up a framework and a timetable for the evolution of European economic policy as mediated by EU institutions that, if not substantially amended, all but guarantees Britain's departure from the Union. Not long ago it was scarcely thinkable; a distant hope for the most hardline sceptics. Now it's all queued up to happen in five years' time. It is odd, to say the least, that this didn't get more coverage over the weekend.First read this piece by St. Feser: So you think you understand the Cosmological Argument? about the traditional structure of Cosmological Arguments, rebutting several popular misconceptions. Now take the following argument scheme, making suitable choices as needed: (Major Premise) Every [thing/event] with property X needs a [cause/explanation/reason] outside of itself to [cause/explain/be the reason of it] . (Minor Premise) There is at least one [thing/event] with property X. . (Inductive Principle) You have a choice... A. argue that an infinite regress of [causes/explanations/reasons] for the X's is unreasonable, OR B. argue that such an infinite causal chain would itself have property X, OR C. argue that the entire set of X's taken together (which might, depending on X, include the entire physical universe we know and love) has property X. . (Conclusion) Tracing back the [causes/explanations/reasons] back to their ultimate origin, we find that there is [one/at least one] thing which does not have property X, which, taken [singly/together], [causes/explains/gives the reason for] all the things which do have property X. . (Atheist Baiting) Add the famous words: "And this all men call God". Works best if ~X is a traditional divine attribute, or even better if you can collect several such ~X's and can argue that they all refer to one and the same Exalted Being! For example, in the debate, St. Craig's kalam argument used "comes into existence" as X, and then used a lumping strategy (3C) to talk about the universe as a whole and ask whether it had a cause. This form of the Cosmological Argument ended up being strongly dependent on what the Science of the Big Bang actually shows, but most forms don't really depend that strongly on Science. Other traditional X's include "changing with time", "contingent" (something that might or might not exist), "composite", and some other possibilities mentioned in the link above. The idea is that there are some features of objects which make us seek out causes for them, for example if an object is composed of several disparate objects, we naturally want to know what brought them together. Depending on what you pick for X, the Cosmological Argument may be more or less plausible. You will also want to consider what type of causal concept you want to include in your argument. A key question is how we know there is such a thing as causation? If it is primarily for empirical reasons, then presumably we know about it through some type of inductive argument from experience, in which case we could wonder how applicable it will be in unusual situations. On the other hand, if it is primarily motivated by reason, through analyzing what types of explanations would make sense of the universe, it may be less dependent on observation. Or perhaps the truth is somewhere in the middle. Another thing to figure out is what types of entities are connected by cause-effect relationships. Does a cause have to determine the effect with certainty, or is it sufficient if it in some way produces it? For example, if we want to argue that all contingent things were caused by something which is necessary, this is a contradiction in terms unless a necessary thing can produce contingent things, i.e. if causes don't have to be deterministic. A related question: when we talk about causes, are we primarily talking about beings causing things to happen (a.k.a. agent-causation), or
system to shows their support/lack thereof. Kaper-Dale for Governor's Campaign Manager, Geoff Herzog, had the following to say: "It's disgusting the Goldman Sachs candidate is claiming to be progressive, but couldn't take the time to respond to this important survey from a leading progressive organization in New Jersey. We know Seth's the best candidate, maybe now the media will begin to better inform the voters about our campaign, so that they can make the best choice come November." Kaper-Dale is a pastor at the Reformed Church of Highland Park, and first gained national recognition in 2012, following his church became a sanctuary for Indonesian immigrants who were threatened with deportation. The New Jersey gubernatorial election will take place on November 7, 2017.Dan Aykroyd is a Canadian actor and comedian known for his performances on Saturday Night Live, and in the hit films The Blues Brothers and Ghostbusters. Synopsis Dan Aykroyd was born on July 1, 1952, in Ottawa, Canada. He studied at Carleton University and joined the Second City group in Toronto. He was an original Saturday Night Live cast member, wrote the screenplay and starred in The Blues Brothers, and starred in Ghostbusters. He earned an Oscar nomination for his role in Driving Miss Daisy. Aykroyd is married to Donna Dixon and has three children. ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website Early Life and Career Born on July 1, 1952, in Ottawa, Canada, actor-comedian Dan Aykroyd is best known for his roles in the films The Blues Brothers and Ghostbusters. Aykroyd began performing in high school, and explored his interest in comedy while attending Carleton University. Dropping out of college, he eventually made his way to Toronto, where he became part of the famed Second City improvisational troupe in 1973. ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website With Second City, Aykroyd had a chance to work with other rising talents such as John Candy, Bill Murray and Gilda Radner. He also found work on television, appearing on the short-lived Canadian series Coming Up Rosie. Saturday Night Live In 1975, Aykroyd helped make television history when he became part of the original cast of the late night-comedy program Saturday Night Live. He delighted audiences with his skilled impersonations of the likes of President Jimmy Carter, talk show host Tom Snyder and TV chef Julia Child. Aykroyd developed several original characters, including "Beldar," the father of an alien family (this character later spurred the development of the spin-off film Coneheads). Aykroyd and fellow SNL cast member Jane Curtain also served as co-hosts for the program's news segment. Additionally, Aykroyd, working with John Belushi, developed a musical act called "the Blues Brothers," which first appeared on Saturday Night Live. He played Elwood Blues, a harmonica-playing sidekick to his front-man brother, Jake (Belushi). The duo toured together in 1978 and released three albums, but perhaps their greatest success was the 1980 comedy The Blues Brothers, which went on to become a comedy classic. Aykroyd and Belushi made two more movies together, 1941 (1979) and Neighbors, before Belushi's untimely death in 1982. Later Film and TV Career After leaving Saturday Night Live in 1979, Aykroyd enjoyed a wave of success as an actor and a screenwriter. He co-starred with Eddie Murphy in the 1983 hit comedy Trading Places. The following year, Aykroyd acted and co-wrote the script for the humorous supernatural blockbuster Ghostbusters. The movie also starred Bill Murray and Harold Ramis, and the trio reprised their roles as ghost-hunting scientists in the 1989 sequel. Aykroyd worked with fellow SNL alum Chevy Chase in 1985's Spies Like Us. In 1989, he took on more serious fare with a supporting role in the drama Driving Miss Daisy; Aykroyd received an Academy Award nomination for his work in the Jessica Tandy-Morgan Freeman film. Along with all of these hits, Aykroyd also had his share of misses. He co-starred with Tom Hanks in his own take on classic television police show Dragnet (1987), which received mixed reviews. With Coneheads (1993), Aykroyd saw one of his favorite SNL skits fail to perform at the box office. The following year, he appeared in the critical and commercial flop Exit to Eden, alongside Rosie O'Donnell and Dana Delany. In 1998, Aykroyd tried to revive his famous musical act with the disappointing Blues Brothers 2000. Also around this time, he made a short-lived return to TV with a part on the sitcom Soul Man. Aykroyd fared better when he hosted the non-fiction series PSI Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal, which aired from 1996 to 2000. A known spiritualist, he was a natural fit for the show. "Like my great-grandfather and father before me, I have always been intrigued by ghosts, magic and demonology; and these kinds of subjects figure prominently in our myths," he told psiberific.com. These days, Aykroyd acts infrequently. In recent years, he has made appearances on Jim Belushi's legal drama The Defenders and Fran Drescher's sitcom Happily Divorced. On the big screen, he had a supporting role in the political comedy The Campaign (2012), starring Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis. Other Projects In 1992, Aykroyd co-founded the House of Blues, a nightclub in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with Isaac Tigrett. This business venture reflects his lifelong interest in music. "Heaven to me is percussion and bass, a screaming guitar and a burbling Hammond B-3 organ," he explained to People magazine. The House of Blues has grown to include venues around the world. Aykroyd also operates a thriving wine and spirits business. In 2007, he debuted his line of wine in Canada. Also around this time, he helped develop a brand of vodka, Crystal Head, which is sold in skull-shaped bottles.The Only "Real Money" Is Actually Human Labor Think about it the earth actually provides everything we need debt free. all we have to do is apply the magical touch of human labor to turn thethe earth's raw natural resources into literally anything we want.We humans have been on this planet for a long time and foras long as we have lived here, we have been working, laboringour life away and for what? We have nothing to collectively showfor all this hard work over billions of life spans and when welook forward into the future, we see nothing but more work andmore labor for future generations to come. What happened here? Whereis our equity as Earthlings? Its like paying a mortgage that nevergoes down, you never gain any equity for yourself so the bankstill owns 100% of the house forever even though you have beenworking and paying for years.Why buy the house in the first place if that is what’s going tohappen. A very depressing scenario when you look at it truthfully. This isthe result of having the wealth of a few men surpass the combinedmonetary worth of entire countries.Most people don't realize that if a man has $50,000,000 in his bankaccount just sitting there, that's not just money sitting in a bank... that'sthe collective equity of millions of years in human labor that is not doinganything for humanity. Once a person has surpassed the amount ofmoney necessary to sustain their life and the lives of their family forgenerations, then there is no use in having any more money just sittingin a bank somewhere collecting interest while not being put to work torelieve human strife.This is the problem that keeps earthlings trapped in the debt of theirown birth, and debt is slavery, for the only way to relieve debt is to workit off. Traditional slavery, was too expensive for the slave owner becausethey had to pay for the living expenses of the slave. But in modernsociety, labor is controlled by wages, thus, creating the "self-financedslave" who is responsible for feeding, housing and securing themselves.This type of slavery does not discriminate by race but enslaves all peoplefrom birth, for the benefit of a few who manipulate wages from the topof the pyramid while storing the sweat equity of the majority as digitsinside a computer network displayed on their bank account screens.The capitalists ideology documented by men such as Adam Smithin his writings, The Wealth of Nations encourages each human to pursuetheir own self interest because it will produce a more efficient society.Yet, all capitalism has produced is a monetary based economy thatresults in corruption, class separation, selfishness, and abuse of laborleaving us at the point where we are now with nothing but our laborremaining which was exactly what we started with a long time ago.This type of society results in the majority of the best and brightesthumans becoming trapped in a cubical wasting their intellect tomake as much money as possible rather than for building and inventingcreations that will assist with the evolution of society.Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window) Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Weinstein insisted they have drinks inside her apartment and that’s... The actress accusing movie mogul Harvey Weinstein of rape doesn’t want her mental health records turned over to Manhattan prosecutors. Paz de la Huerta’s lawyers filed papers to block access to those records after her psychologist, SueAnne Piliero, was hit with a subpoena on November 6. The papers sought “Any and all medical treatment records, including both typed and handwritten records, pertaining to [Paz DeLahuerta (sic)].” The motion describes de la Huerta as “an actor of some renown and the victim of a series of alleged sexual assaults by Hollywood producer, Harvey Weinstein, which are the subject of an above-referenced investigation and criminal grand jury proceedings.” Her lawyer, Alex Straus, called the subpoena excessively broad and argued that the records are confidential. “The Subpoena as currently structured threatens to exacerbate her injuries through the disclosure of highly sensitive, potentially harmful, and privileged communications wholly unrelated to any facts or issues regarding the alleged sexual assault,” the filing states. De la Huerta hasn’t even had an opportunity to review the records, which were believed to have been destroyed up until about a week ago, according to the papers. Since the filing, de la Huerta has hired a new lawyer, Carrie Goldberg, who didn’t immediately return a request for comment. It wasn’t clear whether she’ll pursue the motion to quash the records. Meanwhile, Manhattan prosecutors have also subpoenaed records from Harvey Weinstein’s former production company and two law firms that represented him. The New York Times reported Friday that the documents include legal settlements made with women who previously accused the movie mogul of sexual harassment. Weinstein’s defense lawyer, Ben Brafman, declined to comment. A spokeswoman for the Manhattan DA also declined to comment.Did Humphrey Bogart really say "Play it again Sam"? And what movie was it in? The Answer: In the 1942 film classic Casablanca, Richard "Rick" Blaine (Humphrey Bogart's character) never says "Play it again, Sam." In fact, nobody does. There are two exchanges that come close. The first takes place between Ilsa Lund Laszlo (Ingrid Bergman) and Sam (Dooley Wilson). Ilsa Lund: Play it once, Sam. For old times' sake. Sam: [lying] I don't know what you mean, Miss Elsa. Ilsa Lund: Play it, Sam. Play "As Time Goes By." Sam: [lying] Oh, I can't remember it, Miss Elsa. I'm a little rusty on it. The second takes place between Rick and Sam. Rick: You played it for her, you can play it for me! Sam: [lying] Well, I don't think I can remember... Rick: If she can stand it, I can! Play it! It's been reported that "play it again, Sam" originated in the 1946 Marx Brothers film A Night in Casablanca, but we can't confirm that, not having seen the film ourselves. For more movie history and information check out the Movie channel at infoplease.com. -The EditorsDear Ashley Graham, Please stop. Just… stop. Look, I know you’re the hot name of the moment in plus-size models and you’re getting a lot of media and marketing attention. Congratulations, enjoy it. But you seriously need to knock it off with the whole thing about not wanting the term “plus-size” to be used. What am I talking about? Well, there’s this… I get that you don’t want to be called a “plus-size” model because let’s face it, you’re not a plus-size woman. Unlike myself and so many other women who shop at the stores you collect cheques from for modelling their clothes, your body is not fat. To anyone walking past you on the street, you’re just a woman, and a very beautiful one at that. But when I walk down the street, I’m a fat woman. Nobody is going to dispute that fact. That’s where the vast chasm lies between the models who are chosen and paid to showcase clothes for fat women, and the actual women who are buying them. The thing is, women like me need the label “plus-size”. We know that the label doesn’t refer to us or our actual bodies, but refers to the section in the store that we need to find – almost always a dingy corner in the back with no signage, poor housekeeping and terrible lighting – if we are lucky. You wouldn’t know what it’s like to need that section because your body is catered to in most standard “straight” sized clothing ranges. When you want to buy a swimsuit, you need to know where in the store to go to buy one right? So you go to the swimsuit section. Well, we need and want to buy clothes that fit our body, so we need to be able to find the section that has those clothes, and for the last century, almost anyway, there has been a conveniently named section called “plus-size” that we can seek out. This saves us from wading through the other 90% of clothing that doesn’t include us. When you, who have far more access to the media and marketing than we do, by the blessing of your pretty face, hourglass figure and relatively small size (compared to actual plus-size clothing customers) start trumpeting that the clothing industry needs to get rid of the term plus-size, two things happen. Firstly, you stigmatise fatness further than it already is. You might not be actually saying that, but that’s what many not-fat people, including the businesses who are supposed to be serving us, actually hear. The corollary of that is that not-fat people and businesses stop listening to us. They don’t listen to us much anyway, but your efforts are causing them to shut us out even further. Secondly, businesses start thinking that they can “drop the plus” which means they start literally dropping plus-size product. They downsize their collections. They trim the size range, removing the larger sizes, which are already as rare as hens teeth. So you are actively making it harder for many of us to find the clothing that we want and need. While we’re at it, let’s touch on the “curvy sexylicious” thing. I personally find it cheesy and childish, but you get to decide how you identify and you’re perfectly entitled to decide on that label for yourself. But the reality is, the vast majority of women who actually buy plus-size clothing will never get to or want to be referred to as “curvy sexylicious”. To start with, many of us a “boxy fat fabulous” or “roly-poly arse-kicking” or “shaped-like-the-magic-pudding awesome”. We’re fat. We don’t have neat little hourglass figures with a tiny tummy bump or a pair of thick thighs. We have big, fat bodies. Bodies that are still awesome, but they’re not being given the opportunity to model for Lane Bryant anytime soon. Also, I can’t go to work in a lacy bra and tight skirt and call myself “curvy sexylicious” like you do when you go to work. I need to wear something suitable for my job and call it “creative professional woman”. Sexing up is all well and good, but we need more than lacy bras and sparkly evening wear (don’t get me wrong, I love a bit of lace and sparkle). We need suits for the office, dresses for daytime, skirts and blouses to go to church in, smart casual gear to go to the school event in, all those sorts of thing. When I go through my work day, I don’t make kissy faces and toss my hair – I have to answer phones and go to meetings and do a whole lot of innovative thinking, plus a lot of networking with people of all types – from management to politicians, from librarians to electricians. That’s not exactly “curvy sexylicious” appropriate, you know? Besides, not everything in plus-size has to be “sexy”. In fact, not everything about womanhood has to be “sexy”. Sexy is fun sure, and has it’s place, but women are worth far more than their worth to the male gaze. We are more than valuable for our fuckability. When I see models promoting plus-size clothing brands, they’re almost always naked, in lingerie or in some state of “sexyfication”. I know why this is done – mostly for the shock value of seeing a body that has some small rolls or curves in a world where most models are ultra-thin. We often don’t get to see the products actually showcased in the same way that straight-sized clothes are. Which makes it so hard to shop for the clothes we want and need. Particularly when our clothes are relegated to online shopping or badly maintained racks in the back of the store. We need to see what an outfit will look like when we wear the whole outfit – very hard when we’re forced to shop online. The lacy bra and tight skirt is cute on you in a promo shot, sure… but how do I know what it looks like with a jacket or blouse in the same range? How do I know what it will look like on a body shaped like mine, rather than tall, hourglass and slim like you are? What it really boils down to is that we need more clothing options than there currently are in our sizes, and we need to be able to see them in a way that reflects how we live, feel and look. We need to see ourselves. Your constant calls to lose the term “plus-size” don’t help that. Perhaps if you don’t want to be called a “plus-size model”, it’s time for you to step back, stop collecting the cheques for jobs that are supposed to serve fat women and let some larger, more realistic to the customer, models take the jobs. Yours sincerely Kath aka Fat Heffalump AdvertisementsForest conservationists who established a blockade of old growth forest in East Gippsland are celebrating today after environment groups secured a legal injunction that has stalled the logging operation. Controversy erupted last week when VicForests constructed a road into the forest to commence logging. Goongerah Environment Centre launched an online petition calling on Environment Minister Lily D’Ambrosio to step in and protect the old growth forest, the petition has so far attracted over 6500 signatures. Lawyers from Environmental Justice Australia acting for Fauna and Flora Research Collective secured a Supreme Court injunction this morning to halt the logging arguing that the government has not protected the minimum required area of old growth forest in East Gippsland. "It's a relief that this precious area has been given temporary protection, however it's disappointing the state government failed to act and community groups have had to take legal action to force the government to protect old growth forests as they are required to," said Goongerah Environment Centre spokesperson Ed Hill. “It’s absurd that the government refused to prevent logging and are now going to spend tens of thousands of tax payer’s dollars in a court battle arguing they don’t have to protect old growth forests. The government are completely out of touch, not only with their legal obligations but with the community, who overwhelmingly support the protection of old growth forests,” said Ed Hill. "Twenty people took peaceful direct action to prevent logging from starting as the government failed to protect this forest, now that the Courts have ruled that no logging can take place until legal proceedings are resolved the blockade camp is celebrating," said Ed Hill. "Protestors have vowed to return to the forest if logging does go ahead after legal proceedings have run their course, logging of old growth forests in a rich state like Victoria in 2017 is completely unacceptable and people will peacefully protest with the backing of the Victorian community who overwhelmingly want to see Victoria's forests protected from logging,” said Ed Hill. "The Minister's announcement that some trees would be protected did not go far enough to protect this forest. So called habitat trees that are left standing by loggers are almost always killed in the post logging burn conducted by VicForests and the Department, grave yards of dead and burnt so called habitat trees can be easily seen in almost every logging area in East Gippsland," said Ed Hill. "The forest was still going to be clearfell logged and burnt even with the Minister's proposed protections, any logging of old growth forests in Victoria in the 21st century is unacceptable to the overwhelming majority of Victorians, it's not the 1920s anymore we don't need to be logging untouched old growth forests at all." "This forest is part of Victoria's forest heritage, a rare example of what our forests looked like hundreds of years ago. To continue to destroy these last remaining unprotected old growth forests is not only having a profound impact on biodiversity and the threatened wildlife that depends on them but it's also robbing future generations of experiencing these forests that remain in a pristine untouched state." ​"Daniel Andrew's must move the government's environment policy into the 21st century, protecting East Gippsland's highly valuable and biodiversity rich forests must be at the top of his list and will win widespread support from the voters who overwhelmingly want these forests protected from logging." "VicForests is applying for Forest Stewardship Council certification later this year, this certificate is internationally regarded as having the strictest environmental standards and prohibits logging in old growth areas and threatened wildlife habitat,” “The logging that was to take place in the Kuark forest and many other forests in East Gippsland is completely out of step with the strict standards required by the FSC certificate, unless VicForests make drastic changes to their practices and protect high conservation value forests they will fail achieve FSC certification and the much needed access to timber markets that increasingly demand sustainably sourced FSC certified products,” Media contact – Ed Hill: 0414 199 645 Make a donation to support the legal case hereHere’s yet another story that the mainstream media will ignore because they support Obama’s idiotic crusade to let out all the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Well one of those guys he released is now a leader of al-Qaeda in Yemen. From the Long War Journal: Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) released a new video featuring a former Guantanamo detainee, Ibrahim Qosi, who is also known as Sheikh Khubayb al Sudani. In July 2010, Qosi plead guilty to charges of conspiracy and material support for terrorism before a military commission. His plea was part of a deal in which he agreed to cooperate with prosecutors during his remaining time in US custody. Qosi was transferred to his home country of Sudan two years later, in July 2012. Qosi joined AQAP in 2014 and became one of its leaders. Qosi and other AQAP commanders discussed their time waging jihad at length in the video, entitled “Guardians of Sharia.” Islamic scholars ensure the “correctness” of the “jihadist project,” according to Qosi. And the war against America continues through “individual jihad,” which al Qaeda encourages from abroad. Here, Qosi referred to al Qaeda’s policy of encouraging attacks by individual adherents and smaller terror cells. Indeed, AQAP’s video celebrates jihadists who have acted in accordance with this call, such as the Kouachi brothers, who struck Charlie Hebdo’s offices in Paris earlier this year. The Kouachi brothers’ operation was sponsored by AQAP. Here’s what Republican Peter King said about the release back in 2012: Decision to release Ibrahim al Qosi from Guantanamo is disgraceful: http://t.co/zTXJZJCT — Rep. Pete King (@RepPeteKing) July 12, 2012 Now just imagine if the same thing happened under Bush – the name “Qosi” would be better known in American households than “Kardashian.” More on Qosi’s terrorist resume: Qosi’s appearance marks the first time he has appeared in jihadist propaganda since he left Guantanamo. His personal relationship with Osama bin Laden and time in American detention make him an especially high-profile spokesman. A leaked Joint Task Force Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO) threat assessment and other declassified files documented Qosi’s extensive al Qaeda dossier. In the threat assessment, dated Nov. 15, 2007, US intelligence analysts described Qosi as a “high” risk to the US and its allies. “Detainee is an admitted veteran jihadist with combat experience beginning in 1990 and it is assessed he would engage in hostilities against US forces, if released,” JTF-GTMO found. In 1990, Qosi met two al Qaeda members who recruited him for jihad in Afghanistan. Qosi was then trained at al Qaeda’s al Farouq camp, which was the terror group’s primary training facility in pre-9/11 Afghanistan. In 1991, Osama bin Laden relocated to Sudan and Qosi followed. He worked as an accountant and treasurer for bin Laden’s front companies, a role he would continue to fill after al Qaeda moved back to Pakistan and Afghanistan in the mid-1990s. Well, we can only blame Global Warming for radicalizing him in the first place. Now go replace your SUV with a skateboard and recycle more before we create more terrorists.The Chicago Public School system is broke. By now you know the score: pension promises cannot be met and union salaries and benefits are out of line with reality. Combined with bloated administration costs, the system is bankrupt. The Sun Times says the best hope is for teachers to accept a wage freeze. Best Hope? Not so fast. The contract is not up until 2012, and knowing what we know about unions, the picture is set for massive teacher layoffs or a gut wrenching strike and legal battle if the CEO unilaterally imposes a wage freeze. Please consider No way around CPS teacher pay freeze. Chicago Public Schools CEO Ron Huberman on Thursday painted the grimmest financial picture the Chicago schools have ever seen. The budget deficit could top $900 million, a hole so big that Huberman says he needs major concessions from teachers -- a move that could easily lead to a teachers' strike if the unions refuse to play ball. We're not alerting parents to cause a panic or to bash beleaguered teachers. We're alerting parents now, when there's still time, to try to resolve this crisis and avoid a strike. The best hope is for the Chicago teachers to accept a wage freeze. Huberman can't say that out loud. On Thursday, he simply laid out the sorry facts of the deficit, saying concessions are one piece of a multi-part solution. He's courting the unions now, giving them a chance to pick their poison, hoping they'll offer up cost-saving ideas. It is nearly impossible to see a way out of this mess -- or a teachers' strike -- without a wage freeze. The Chicago Teachers Union contract locks in 4 percent raises through 2012 -- really about 5.5 percent with experience and higher degrees added in. Eliminating that raise in 2011 saves $135 million. Undoubtedly, the union will balk at a wage freeze. Already, Union President Marilyn Stewart has rejected altering the union contract. In turn, Huberman won't budge, arguing he has no cash to spare -- and he won't be lying. CPS' massive budget deficit, Huberman says, is driven by three biggies: a $138 million drop in tax revenue, $135 million in increased salary costs and, most significantly, a $280 million increase in its pension bill. Ron Huberman isn't crying wolf. It's time for big concessions now -- rather than face massive disruption in the schools and an ugly and fruitless strike down the road. Not Crying Wolf Addendum: I sat next to a public school teacher at a dinner party last night. He was saying there is total "war" going on at his school right now because they are voting on whether to convert to a charter school. He blatantly, casually said with no shame whatsoever that converting to charter would be better for the students, but he planned to vote against it because it wasn't clear his benefits and salary would be protected. He said this same thing is going on at several other public elementary and high schools in L.A.March 29, 2017, 1:51 PM GMT / Updated March 29, 2017, 1:51 PM GMT By Julie Compton People around the world have contributed $17,000 — well above the $10,000 goal — to send Pittsburgh artist Randy Gilson and his partner, Mac, who has terminal cancer, on their dream vacation. The two want to see the Grand Canyon and walk along a California beach together before Mac succumbs to the disease. The couple created Randyland, a colorful three-story house covered in murals and eclectic folk art that has become a popular Pittsburgh landmark. Gilson said most people don’t realize he and Mac built it together. The couple have been with each other for 23 years. “We were newly lovers and all of a sudden in ’95 we got this giant building, and we came up every day and started gutting it out and cleaning it up and doing as much as we could,” Gilson said. Randy Gilson and his partner, Mac. Courtesy of Randy Gilson Gilson said many visitors don’t know the two men are a couple, despite the rainbow flag that hangs in the entrance. He said they first locked eyes at a festival in downtown Pittsburgh in 1994. “He started smiling at me, and boy was he pretty,” Gilson recalled. The two men began dating and fell in love. After a year, Gilson convinced Mac to help him build Randyland, which he said is now one of the most painted houses in the world. By the time they purchased the 100-year-old house — built long before Pittsburgh’s steel industry collapsed in the early 1980s — it had become just another eyesore on a street overtaken by gangs, according to the painter. “I saw it had been kicked in and used for drugs and squatters. So I took my flashlight and went to the building and thought, ‘Oh, if I could buy this building, I would give it back … So I thought, ‘God, if you give me this building, I’ll give it back better than it is,’” Gilson said. Randyland in Pittsburgh, PA Foo Conner The artist purchased the house on a credit card for $10,000, which he paid off by waiting tables at a local hotel for 30 years. After he and Mac gutted and cleaned the property, they bought thousands of gallons of discounted “oops paint,” custom paint that fickle costumers decide not to buy. Gilson got to work painting murals of dancing silhouettes, butterflies, dinosaurs and other whimsical images along the 40-foot-high walls. He repurposed old junk into colorful pieces of art that overflow its courtyard. “It is one piece of art in itself,” he explained. “It’s a giant puzzle, is what it is.” The 60-year-old, who has lived in Pittsburgh his entire life, keeps the property open to the public for free. It can get hundreds of visitors a day, he said. Art students eager to meet him are ushered in on buses, while local residents peek in after eating at nearby restaurants. He said many visitors are tourists who heard about the landmark by word of mouth. “I hate being famous, but I am,” said Gilson, who is often spotted wandering his property in a paint-spattered shirt and jeans. Gilson said he has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which he said causes him to be passionate. He frequently stops mid-sentence to greet visitors. “I want you to know I love you! I don’t know you, but I love all of you!” he exclaimed to one group as they entered the property. Randyland in Pittsburgh, PA Foo Conner Mac, too, can often be found in Randyland’s courtyard, but he is shy and tells visitors he’s “just the gardener,” according to Gilson. “There are people all over the world, they love me so much, [but] a lot of them don’t know Mac, because Mac has always been the quiet one on the back burner,” Gilson explained. Mac was diagnosed with advanced cancer in 2016. Gilson was devastated to learn his longtime partner had only six months to live. He said their trip to the Grand Canyon and California will be their first and probably last vacation together. “I will have to say goodbye,” Gilson said, his voice breaking. “It’s going to break my heart. It’s probably going to be one of the worst days of my life. It’s going to be a happy day, but the worst day.” Gilson said he could sell his house for at least a million dollars, but wants to follow through on his dream to turn it into a nonprofit museum. Randyland in Pittsburgh, PA Foo Conner “If I sold Randyland I could be very wealthy,” he said. “I could live in a nice house, and live happy ever after. But my goal is not to live like that. I just want Randyland to be gifted to the people of Pittsburgh.” Gilson said he plans to hang pictures of himself and Mac together throughout the property so people know they are a couple. “I’m a guy who was kind of afraid to come out and say I was gay, because I didn’t know the people coming into my yard,” Gilson said. “Now it’s time for me to say it is a gay man that actually built this,” he concluded. Follow NBC Out on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram0 When the casting stories for X-Men: Days of Future Past began to hit, it became clear very quickly that director Bryan Singer was bringing back nearly every actor who had ever appeared in one of the proper X-Men films. The split timeline of the superhero pic made it possible to use Patrick Stewart and James McAcvoy in the same movie, and towards the end of the film, even more actors popped up in some quick, exciting cameos. Once such actor was Kelsey Grammer, whose first and only other appearance as Beast was in 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand. While speaking with Grammer in Hong Kong in anticipation of the release of Transformers: Age of Extinction, Steve also asked the actor about his appearance in X-men: Days of Future Past. Grammer revealed that he actually called Singer personally to see if he could come back, and expressed his desire to play Beast again in another future X-Men film. More after the jump. Grammer said he was “delighted” to get back in the Beast makeup for his appearance in the new timeline at the end of Days of Future Past, and told Steve that he took the initiative to see if he could perform the cameo: “Actually I called Bryan. I bumped into Hugh Jackman and he said, ‘Oh you’re gonna be in another X-Men, mate!’ and I said, ‘No I’m not, I don’t know anything about it.’ So I made a couple of inquiries, got a hold of the script, found out that it’s primarily dealing with the past and that timeline I don’t have a place in, but I saw that at the end there was this coda where he made an appearance. I said, ‘Listen, I really wanna be involved,’ so Bryan arranged for it and I had a lovely time.” The actor reiterated his delight at returning to the role, adding that he hopes it wasn’t for the last time: “I hope to do another. I hope they find some way to come up with a new story that involves Beast in my timeline.” For the immediate future, Fox is putting together the Days of Future Past sequel X-Men: Apocalypse which takes place in the 1980s. However, given the tease of the new timeline at the end of Days of Future Past involving the original X-Men cast, it’s certainly possible that there are more stories to be told with that group of actors. Should this come to pass, it’s sounds like Grammer would very much like to be involved. Watch the portion of Steve’s interview with Grammer regarding X-Men below, and look for the full interview on Collider soon. Please enable Javascript to watch this videoThe Ontario government has kicked off the search for a contractor to build the $1.2 billion Finch West LRT. The 11-km. line will have 18 stops between Humber College and an underground terminus at the new Finch West station on the Spadina subway extension. Light rail vehicles will eventually run on the Finch West LRT line. The province is searching for a contractor to build the line. ( BOMBARDIER PHOTO ) The government's public-private partnership agency, Infrastructure Ontario, has asked for interested companies to submit their qualifications for the design, build, finance and maintain contract. It also includes a maintenance and storage facility at Keele north of Finch. But the winning bidder isn't expected to be announced until 2017. The transit line is supposed to be finished in 2021, Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca announced in April. Construction will begin next year, however, on utility relocations in the corridor, according to Metrolinx, the Liberal government's Toronto-area transportation agency. Article Continued Below While there has been some local opposition to the project, notably from councillor Giorgio Mammoliti, the LRT is being billed as a boost to the economic fortunes of the northwest corner of the city. "The project will help transform Finch Ave. West's priority neighbourhood into a vibrant community, accessible to motorists, transit riders, cyclists and pedestrians," according to joint press release from IO and Metrolinx on Tuesday. The public-private partnership is similar to the one being used to build the $5.3 billion Eglinton Crosstown LRT and is expected to be used for the $
res Carolina Hurricanes Calgary Flames Colorado Avalanche Question #2: In 1980, The Atlanta Flames Became what team Colorado Rockies Calgary Flames New Jersey Devils Ottawa Senators Question #3: In 1976, The California Golden Seals became which team? Colorado Rockies Vancouver Canucks Edmonton Oilers Cleveland Barons Question #4: In 1996, The Winnipeg Jets became which team? Carolina Hurricanes Buffalo Sabres Dallas Stars Phoenix Coyotes Question #5: In 1993, The Minnesota North Stars became which team? Colorado Avalanche Dallas Stars Winnipeg Jets Ottawa Senators Question #6: In 1976, the Kansas City Scouts became which team? Colorado Rockies Colorado Avalanche New Jersey Devils Minnesota North Stars Question #7: In 1997, the Hartford Whalers became which team? Buffalo Sabres Carolina Hurricanes Colorado Avalanche Phoenix Coyotes Question #8: In 1982, the Colorado Rockies became which team? Vancouver Canucks Edmonton Oilers Minnesota North Stars New Jersey Devils Question #9: In 2011, the Atlanta Thrashers became which team? Carolina Hurricanes Buffalo Sabres Winnipeg Jets Minnesota Wild Question #10: In 1978, The Cleveland Barons became which team? Dallas Stars Minnesota North Stars Calgary Flames New Jersey Devils Congratulations! You know your NHL history pretty well Maybe you should go back and next CommentsThe following article contains spoilers for the recently released film ‘Jason Bourne’. After a lengthy hiatus the ‘Bourne’ film franchise returned this year with the no nonsense if not slightly lame titled ‘Jason Bourne’ with series veterans Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass both returning. To call the Bourne films a franchise is still a little weird because for years we only had the Bourne trilogy – comprised of Identity, Supremacy and Ultimatum – which concluded Jason’s narrative in a richly satisfying way with Bourne floating in the water after being shot in the back bookending the trilogy while Moby’s Extreme Ways plays for what we thought would be the final time. However soon ‘The Bourne Legacy’ was released giving us everything you expect from a Bourne film just without Jason Bourne himself, instead Jeremy Renner took centre stage as Aaron Cross. The Bourne Legacy has now seemingly become the estranged relative of the Bourne franchise, purposely being pushed aside to cater for the return of Jason Bourne himself. Despite being a fairly irrelevant film I enjoyed Jason Bourne a lot, about on par with The Bourne Supremacy, the weakest of the original trilogy, but the movie garnered a mixed reception from both critics and audiences which makes it apparent the old Bourne formula just isn’t enough anymore especially after Bond and other franchises have been copying it for years. So how exactly do the Bourne films reinvent themselves enough to become a sustainable franchise without losing what made them so special to begin with? For Bourne to truly become a franchise it needs a much greater sense of continuity with several supporting characters appearing in more than one film. According to the Bourne films the CIA seems to shuffle around its staff on an annual basis with very few characters/actors returning for the next film other than Joan Allen as Pam Landy, Brian Cox as Ward Abbot and Julia Stiles as Nicky Parsons. Do you remember that Walton Goggins played a CIA analyst in The Bourne Identity? Well he did and wouldn’t it make sense to bring him back in another film instead of casting a new actor for essentially the exact same role. Walton Goggins in The Bourne Identity, Tom Gallop in The Bourne Supremacy, Corey Johnson in The Bourne Ultimatum and Craig Jeffers in Jason Bourne play essentially the same character and so why not actually have them be the same character because in a film series featuring an expressionless, almost silent protagonist the audience needs some interesting and relatable supporting characters. Hopefully Alicia Vikander’s character Heather Lee returns for the next film after being a highlight of ‘Jason Bourne’ but I don’t want her to become the head of the CIA like the ending suggests, it just seems too unrealistic for a film series constantly striving for realism. To many viewers of the television series Homeland the show, during its second and third seasons, seemed like it was going on too long and was overstretching it’s already tired concept. However the espionage thriller reinvented itself during the fourth and fifth seasons while still maintaining the same protagonist by highlighting real world issues whether it was ISIS, Syria or European terrorist attacks. To become a sustainable franchise ‘Bourne’ could do the same thing by turning it’s tired concept into relevant stories worth telling. Jason Bourne succeeded in doing this with the Greece riots, social media snooping and CIA leaks and continuing this at least gives us a reason for why they are continuing with this franchise; although maybe next time the writers can be a bit more subtle with the frequent Snowdon name-drops. The main thing they have to do with the Bourne franchise if it were to continue however is to mix it up a bit. We can’t have another film with the same formula of Bourne discovering a shadowy CIA program which reveals unknown information about his past while ‘an asset’ attempts to assassinate him. The amnesia plotline should be left alone completely with no more low frame rate dream sequences revealing little pieces of the puzzle instead I’d love to see Bourne return to the CIA and working with them in some capacity under new leadership like the ending of Jason Bourne suggests. After 4 films it would be great to see Bourne actually work with other people because that’s when the character was at his most interesting in previous films, when he was with Marie and Nicky and actually had a personality rather than the silent brooding tortured protagonist who does very little but walk through crowds like in Jason Bourne. It would be interesting to see Bourne team up with another agent like Edgar Ramirez’s character Paz from The Bourne Ultimatum who refused to shoot Bourne during the movie’s climax. Or maybe Jeremy Renner’s Aaron Cross from The Bourne Legacy could return to work with Bourne with them teaming up to stop terrorists rather than on the run from the CIA again with them discovering that is what they were born to do (pun intended), becoming active assets again but this time with a conscience. Or now that he’s a much bigger star maybe Karl Urban can return as Kirill who could have survived The Bourne Supremacy adding a greater sense of continuity between the original trilogy and the new movies. Whatever the future holds for the franchise the Bourne films need more than just Jason Bourne to succeed. What do you want to see from the future of the Bourne franchise? Let me know in the comments and geek out with me about movies on Twitter @kylebrrtt.Home THE LIBERAL MIND: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness By Lyle H. Rossiter, Jr., M.D. Nonfiction -- Politics/Psychology Softcover, 419 pages $19.95 ISBN-10: 0-9779563-0-X ISBN-13: 978-0-9779563-0-2 Welcome to Libertymind.com, the official website of The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness. Welcome to Libertymind.com, the official website of Please take a few minutes to read about a book that will change forever the way you look at politics. The Liberal Mind is the first systematic examination of human nature and human freedom. It is the first book to explain why certain economic, social and political arrangements are compatible with human nature -- and why some are not. The Liberal Mind is the first book to explain how modern liberal collectivism undermines the legal and moral foundations of ordered liberty. Read The Liberal Mind and learn why: The laws and moral codes--the rules--that properly govern human conduct arise from, and must be compatible with, the biological, psychological and social nature of man. The liberal agenda's Modern Parental State violates all of the rules that make ordered liberty possible. The modern liberal agenda is a transference neurosis of the modern liberal mind, acted out in the world's economic, social and political theaters. The liberal agenda's Modern Permissive Culture corrupts the foundations of civilized freedom and is destroying America's magnificent political achievements. The liberal agenda's basic principles are not only antithetical to our most cherished liberties; they are also directly contrary to all that is good and noble in the human enterprise. The Liberal Mind is the first work to explain why modern liberalism appeals to the irrational tendencies of the human mind. It is the first work to explain how liberalism can be defeated. In the course of this analysis, The Liberal Mind asks and answers the following critical question: Why would anyone want a political system that restricts personal freedom instead of enhancing it; denounces personal responsibility instead of promoting it; surrenders personal sovereignty instead of honoring it; attacks the philosophical foundations of liberty instead of defending them; encourages government dependency instead of self-reliance; and undermines the character of the people by making them wards of the state? The Liberal Mind contains the elegant solution to the problem of modern liberalism; it is a systematic, fact-based analysis of why the left's collectivism not only does not work but cannot work. The Liberal Mind explains: The two major goals of the modern liberal agenda: the Modern Parental Society and the Modern Permissive Culture, and why they violate the basic principles of freedom. The two major goals of the modern liberal agenda: the Modern Parental Society and the Modern Permissive Culture, and why they violate the basic principles of freedom. How the modern liberal agenda attacks the moral and legal foundations of individual liberty. How the modern liberal agenda violates the defining characteristics of human nature and ignores the essential realities of the human condition. How the modern liberal agenda corrupts the character of the people by appealing to their base instincts and undermining the constraints of conscience. How the modern liberal agenda's ideas and goals are self-contradictory and logically inconsistent. Why the liberal mind believes in the irrational principles of the liberal agenda -- and what it takes to effect a cure. The Liberal Mind is the most comprehensive, intellectually-coherent analysis of political psychology ever published. The Liberal Mind will empower you to understand why the political madness of modern liberalism is destroying individual liberty in all corners of the world. What you will learn from The Liberal Mind is worth far more than its cost to you. Please act now, and we'll send you a paperback copy of The Liberal Mind for only $19.95 plus shipping. If you're still in doubt, please click on Praise and Kudos to read what others have to say about The Liberal Mind. Thanks for stopping by. We appreciate your interest. Please give The Liberal Mind a try -- you won't regret it. Available in paperback or e-book! CLICK HERE TO ORDER NOW! The unexamined political belief is not worth holding. The unanalyzed political agenda is not worth promoting.The woozy-sounding ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument, adds another touch of instability, seeming to symbolize the force holding the guests prisoner. If you saw “The Tempest” at the Met, you’ll remember the indelible sound of the soprano Audrey Luna soaring well beyond the stratosphere as Ariel. She reprises those coloratura feats in “The Exterminating Angel” as Leticia, an opera diva, in a part that reaches up to an A above high C. And the piece is well aware of its place in the tradition. “Early in the guests’ captivity, when their inability to leave seems more absurd than abject, waltz rhythms proliferate,” Mr. Ross wrote, “variously recalling classic Johann Strauss, the boozy dances of ‘Der Rosenkavalier,’ and the deconstructed waltzes of Ravel and Stravinsky.” A set of variations on a song from the Ladino tradition of Sephardic Jews spins, Mr. Tommasini wrote, “modal melodies into fleecy lines.” And late in the opera, an aria for Leticia is, Mr. Ross said, a “harshly radiant” setting of another Sephardic text, before “colossal, demonic” fragments from the Requiem mass close the work in a mood of “mystical dread.” HOW DOES IT COMPARE TO HIS PREVIOUS OPERAS? Earlier this year, when the work was presented at the Royal Opera in London, Erica Jean wrote in The Guardian that this “is a far less brittle score than his 1995 chamber opera ‘Powder Her Face,’ lusher than 2004’s ‘The Tempest,’ and Adès is more willing to linger in music of unabashed beauty.” SOME QUIBBLES More than other opera composers, Mr. Tommasini wrote in the Times, Mr. Adès “sacrifices verbal clarity for the sake of musical expression, something that usually annoys me.” But, he added, the music is so confident that he was surprisingly little bothered by the obscurity. Rupert Christiansen, the critic for The Daily Telegraph in London, found the first act to be bombastic overkill but wrote that “as so often with Adès’s music, it matures as it simmers down and stops showing off: saturated in melancholy, much of the more reflective second half is truly magical and even insidiously moving.”I’ve been taking every game as a championship opportunity, and I’m just happy we have another one coming up this Sunday with Arizona. We’ve been doing a really good job of zoning in each week, and focusing on the importance of that one game. If we continue approaching it that way, then when the real championship opportunity comes in a playoff game or the Super Bowl, we will have been preparing for it all this time, and it will be just like we’ve been there before. That really calms your mind, and when your mind is relaxed and your body follows, that’s when you play at your best. Larry Fitzgerald is a game changer for the Arizona Cardinals. (Getty Images). The great thing about this upcoming game is we’ve already faced the Cardinals this year. I always like to have a game under my belt against an opponent as far as having film, just to watch and see what happened. I look for what I did well against them the last time, and if they got any plays on me. That’s always a big help. With Carson Palmer, it’s his first year in this division, so that first game’s film will help me really understand how they will try and attack us. Their record speaks for itself. They’re 9-5 and it’s hard to win in this league, so obviously, they’re a good team. It just shows how good the NFC West has become. We definitely have to pay attention to detail because I think this could be a trap game and one we could lose if we fall asleep. Larry Fitzgerald is definitely a game changer for them, especially if he builds confidence and feels like he’s having some success. He does a great job of building on that. So we definitely have to know where he is at all times, and be ready when the ball goes up, because he has the ability to go up over two or three defenders and catch the ball. This is a great opportunity for our team to use the personnel of the teams we’re playing to raise our game. I love playing the best because that’s how you measure yourself — when you’re playing against guys like Larry Fitzgerald. But we feel very comfortable as a group, and we don’t change for anybody. We stick to who we are, and if you can beat us straight up, you deserved to win. We work on our craft going into every game so we’re very prepared and very connected to it throughout the whole week. We always feel like our chances are good, and we really feel good about the receivers we’re facing this week. INSIDE THE LEGION Our secondary is a tight knit group. We have guys who are at the top of the game in their positions. Richard Sherman is considered the league’s best corner. Brandon Browner is up there. Kam Chancellor is considered one of the best safeties in the league. We even have guys who are developing into that like Byron Maxwell and Jeremy Lane at cornerback. These guys all look at me as a leader, and it just fills my heart. You couldn’t ask for any better honor from better guys. I think these guys are some of the most genuine people you would want to meet. People talk about Sherm and Kam as intimidating on the field, but there are two sides to every coin, and these guys are two of the goofiest guys around. They always have everybody laughing. Sometimes you can see it, like when we’re winning big and we’re at home, you’ll see guys out there dancing and just having fun. That’s just how they are off the field. Kam looks very serious, but he’s a goofball. He loves to do that Chingy Chickenhead dance, and it’s the funniest thing because you don’t imagine a big dude moving like that. You have to see it to believe it. (I’ll try to make that happen.) The Legion of Boom (courtesy of SeattleSeahawks.com). As a group, we just have this chemistry. We’re tight off the field, but even more so on it. So when we’re at home, and the 12th Man is shaking up the opposing offense, we don’t even have to communicate or talk to each other about the play. We just have this feel for each other. We have certain looks we give each other, maybe a hand signal or a quick movement and just read each other’s body language for the call. We’re so well connected, especially right now, that everybody knows where each other is and is going to be. My interception in last week’s game against the New York Giants is a perfect example. That play was the result of work we put in during practice. We’re all so in-tune with the game of football, we’re always coming up with ways to make the most of opportunities. We learned a lot from watching the Ravens with Ed Reed and their secondary. We saw a lot of tipped balls being capitalized on. On that play, the Giants were in the red zone and tried to throw a fade ball on Sherm. We know in the league great quarterbacks always try to throw it to the pylon, and that’s what they were doing. Sherm was on it, but couldn’t get into position to make a pick. I’m always telling him and the other corners: If they can’t catch it, tip it up and I’ll be there. I got a great break on it and was right there to make a pick. Then I just tried to make like a receiver, and get two feet in before going out. That is that unsaid connection I’m talking about. LAST WORDS Before I sign off, I just want all my fans to know how dedicated I am to my craft, how much this game of football really means to me and how much I want to be the best to ever do it. Not just the best safety, but the best teammate. Thanks for reading. (Area 29 is the blog of Earl Thomas. To learn more about why it is called Area 29, click here.)The final polls of the campaign all told the same story – the LNP leading with 52% of the two-party-preferred vote over Labor. This is certainly not what happened – in the seats where Labor and the LNP came in the top two, Labor has polled just over 52% of the two-party-preferred vote so far. But when you look at the primary votes, they aren’t far off. All three polls that produced a 52-48 figure had about 41% for the LNP and 37% for Labor, which was only off by 1% from the actual figures. The problems came in estimating preference flows. Most, if not all, pollsters rely on actual preferences from the previous election to estimate how minor party and independent votes will flow, rather than asking people how they will preference. Yet the pool of preferences in Queensland at this election was quite different. At the last election, Katter’s Australian Party polled over 11% of the vote, and made up a majority of the pool of minor party preferences. At this election, a majority of these votes belong to the Greens, thanks to KAP’s declining vote and focus on a small number of seats. Unlike in federal elections, the ECQ does not conduct a two-party-preferred (2PP) count in every seat. Indeed, the ECQ has now taken down the notional 2PP count for most seats, and we’ll have to wait for the final distribution of preferences to get the official seatwide figures, and the ECQ will not publish notional 2PP figures by polling place. You can only calculate a 2PP in a seat where the top two candidates are Labor and LNP. The AEC refers to these seats as “classic” electorates. At the moment, there are 77 seats where we have a Labor vs LNP count for most of the votes counted so far, with a 78th count being undertaken in Gaven. Out of the remaining eleven seats, there are four others where we will eventually get a Labor vs LNP count, but not until we get the final distribution of preferences, since the ECQ conducted a two-candidate-preferred count between other candidates on election night. So at the moment we can only compare preference flows in the 77 classic seats to the 71 classic seats in 2012 and the 83 from 2009. Year Classic seats Labor preferences LNP preferences Exhausted 2009 83 32.01% 20.58% 47.40% 2012 71 26.97% 22.08% 50.95% 2015 77 46.59% 14.34% 39.07% What we’ve seen is a significant increase in Labor preferences, and a decline in LNP and exhausted preferences, even compared to the last Labor win in 2009. While part of this change is likely due to the decline of KAP, that doesn’t explain the whole picture. Even in strong Greens seats where KAP was a minor presence in 2012, you see a similar trend. In the inner-city seat of Mount Coot-tha, the preference flow from minor parties to Labor has increased from 45% in 2009, to 54% in 2012 and is now just under 75% in 2015. Most of these votes come from the Greens, and allowed Labor to win the seat despite being 10% behind on primary votes – normally such a feat is not possible under an optional preferential system. Liked it? Take a second to support the Tally Room on Patreon!Image caption Protests against housing benefit changes were being held in Glasgow Labour has said it has not pledged to reverse housing benefit changes, after a suggestion from the party's Scottish welfare spokeswoman that it will. Jackie Baillie told BBC Radio Scotland the party would abolish controversial cuts to the subsidy for people with unused spare rooms. She said an announcement on what critics have labelled the "bedroom tax" would be made soon. But a Labour source told BBC Scotland Ms Baillie had "gone a bit too far". Her comments came ahead of two rallies in Glasgow against the changes to housing benefit. On the Good Morning Scotland programme, she was asked: "Would a Westminster Labour government abolish the bedroom tax?" Ms Baillie replied: "We are very clear. Labour rejected this approach when it was put to them in government, for social landlords. We have campaigned for its abolition. "Yes we will abolish it. My understanding is that you can expect an announcement relatively soon." 'Real danger' But a UK Labour spokeswoman said Ms Baillie's remarks were at odds with current UK party policy. "It goes against what we are saying - we haven't made that pledge to date," she said. She went on: "Labour has consistently said that the bedroom tax is as cruel as it is incompetent, and there is a real danger it is so badly thought through it could actually end up costing more than it saves. It is simply not affordable to pay housing benefit for people to have spare rooms DWP spokesman "David Cameron should drop this policy and he should drop it now." Welfare policy is reserved to Westminster, meaning the devolved Scottish government cannot unilaterally scrap the housing benefit changes. Scottish Labour has launched a campaign against the subsidy cut, pledging a ban on evictions in Labour controlled Scottish councils, and calling for a Scotland-wide ban backed by £50m of Scottish government cash to cover rent arrears. Launching the campaign earlier this month, Ms Baillie rejected suggestions that UK Labour leader Ed Miliband has refused to commit to reversing the changes. "I don't think he's refused to commit. I think you'll find that that it is under active consideration," she said. Benefit changes Scottish deputy Labour leader Anas Sarwar has also previously said that if Labour was "in power tomorrow, we would abolish the bedroom tax". Earlier this week the Scottish government announced £20m as part of its budget statement to support those struggling with UK-wide housing benefit changes. Finance Secretary John Swinney also said £68m would be invested in each of the next two years to "limit the damage of Westminster's welfare cuts". The Bin the Bedroom Tax Coalition held two demonstrations in Glasgow on Saturday, one to coincide with the Liberal Democrat conference taking place at the city's Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre. The group has been formed by the Scottish Trade Unions Congress, the Glasgow and West of Scotland Forum of Housing Associations, the Scottish Tenants' Organisation, no2bedroom tax, Glasgow Disability Alliance and the Beat the Bedroom Tax Collection of Musicians. The protesters called on Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, and other Liberal Democrat MPs, to withdraw their support for housing benefit changes. 'Different views' Mr Clegg has previously admitted there is a problem with the policy, but insisted additional funding had been made available to help the most vulnerable, such as the disabled and their carers. A spokesman for the Department of Work and Pensions said: "It is simply not affordable to pay housing benefit for people to have spare rooms. Even after our necessary reforms we continue to pay over 80% of most claimants' rent if they are affected by the ending of the spare room subsidy. ‪"These changes will help us get to grips with the Housing Benefit bill and make better use of our housing stock.‬" The SNP has said the Labour party is "mired in confusion when it comes to the bedroom tax". Linda Fabiani MSP, who sits on the welfare reform committee at the Scottish Parliament, said: "There appears to be different policies and views from Labour spokespeople in different parts of the UK. Miliband needs to get a grip on this. "UK Labour must come out now to say what they would do - why should the victims of the bedroom tax have to wait for an announcement to come'soon'."It all started with the simple idea of wanting to design something for myself. I wanted to create something that could make people smile and could never be found anywhere else and I'd feel I had truly achieved my aim when people would think this is just too cute. My concept is to capture the squatting action of a dog and freeze-frame it in colorful Sofubi, a soft Japanese vinyl material. I used to have a Shiba dog when I was a kid. I think his squatting pose is the cutest and most touching memory I have kept of my dog. Sakura, Oct 1984 - Dec 2000 I really wanted this figurine to be made in Sofubi - a typical material in Japanese craft culture - because of the lifelike qualities of this wonderful material. Sofubi figurines that were made in the Showa era, in the 50s and 60s are still cherished today because they don't deteriorate over time and they remain malleable to the touch. I think Sofubi is quite emblematic of the Japanese craft culture. *When we meet our goal and are ready to ship the item, we will contact to ask you which color(s) you would like. Or please let us know your color preference from "Ask a Question" section. I'd like to share with everybody in the world my Squatting Dog and this is why we decided to come to Kickstarter. This project was started from scratch and it took one year and a half to move from the concept stage to design and finally the production-ready clay mold we have now. We need your support to make this Squatting Dog and make it famous worldwide. Regardless of languages and cultures, everybody has witnessed a Squatting Dog at lest once in their life and it never fails to put a smile on people's faces. At this stage, we already have the prototypes you have seen in the video, and our goal is to raise enough money to start production of the actual figurines and cover basic costs such as shipping and Kisckstarter's fees. Like our Squatting Dog, our project team has its feet planted firmly on the ground. Thanks a lot for your support! I made a point of not naming or identifying the Squatting Dog because I would like you to think of it as your own pet, not just a toy figurine. I would like all owners to name their Squatting Dog and create their own stories about his or her background. But the only starting point I can give you is that your Squatting Dog was made and born in Japan. Why made and born in Japan? Right now, it cannot be made anywhere else. The texture of the material, the facial expression, the precise and intricate composition necessary to achieve the perfect balance between the four legs, the fine detailing of every squatting muscles all require the technical expertise only found in Japan. Also, the beautiful warm colors are made possible because Japanese Sofubi is used. The Squatting Dog looks like it could come alive at any moment. An original Japanese production method called slush molding was used in the manufacturing process, and it requires an excellent technical skill. A metallic mold is used and the body of the Squatting Dog is split into 3 parts in order to obtain the perfect balance for the 4 feet at the base. We selected simple colors to give our Squatting Dog a cool, cute and artistic look. The Squatting Dogs used in the videos are cast copies of working prototypes made of polyurethane. The actual finished product will be made of Sofubi, a soft vinyl also known as polyvinyl chloride, and will be mass produced following the manufacturing process already described above. The texture and the coloring will be much warmer compared to the prototypes, and even the collar is attached to it. All of the Squatting Dogs are engraved with the original mark for Kickstarter “Thank you” and “♡” to express our gratitude. It is a soft vinyl developed in Japan and used in molding toy figurines. It's quite light and pliable because of the microscopic air holes inside.In the Showa Era in Japan, in the 1960s, Sofubi figurines of monsters and manga heroes were a huge hit among children. Many people are now remembering with nostalgia the warm texture and the many bright colors of Sofubi figurines. Nowadays, it's popular with creative artists abroad. Japanese Sofubi figurines are manufactured by using an original Japanese method called slush molding, which gives excellent detailing. They are mainly produced in the Katsushika neighborhood in Tokyo and they have become popular all over the world. You'll need an HTML5 capable browser to see this content. Play Replay with sound Play with sound 00:00 00:00 *When we meet our goal and are ready to ship the item, we will contact to ask you which color(s) you would like. Or please let us know your color preference from "Ask a Question" section.At the international airport in Conakry, capital of the West African nation of Guinea, four men arrived on an Air France flight from Paris: two were Canadian immigration enforcement officers; another man, the only African among them, was their prisoner, Canada’s so-called Man With No Name because his identity cannot be proven. Completing their unusual foursome was a Serbian businessman working as a “facilitator” for Canada Border Services Agency. Their arrival — a daring and unorthodox deportation plan using a suspiciously pricey passport arranged by the facilitator with a country the deportee was not a citizen of — quickly turned into a debacle. Met by suspicious Guinean police, there was a tense confrontation. Threatened with arrest and facing pointed questions about the legitimacy of their prisoner’s travel document, Canada’s immigration officers nervously deleted sensitive messages from their BlackBerrys in case they were seized. The National Post can reveal that this failed deportation, which CBSA worked to conceal, exposed the involvement of a mysterious facilitator in some of Canada’s most difficult immigration cases, working outside normal channels and using unconventional methods in attempts to deport special cases of long-term illegal immigrants living in Canada to Iran, South Africa, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Guinea and Cameroon. An internal review conducted by CBSA said the use of the facilitator violated the agency’s own payment policy, security policy and even Canada’s immigration act. The government is so desperate to settle this case But the twisting tale of a foreign businessman trying to solve the already bizarre case of the Man With No Name took even more unexpected turns, with Reg Williams, the CBSA director who called in the facilitator and lost his position, he said, because of the airport debacle, saying he was sacrificed by senior CBSA brass who had approved his plan and were ready to take credit if it had succeeded, but then punished him when it failed. “They knew this was unusual,” Mr. Williams said in an interview when asked about the case. “They were briefed up and down.” The circumstances of the aborted deportation and the involvement of the Serbian facilitator angers the immigration consultant working to free the Man With No Name. “The government is so desperate to settle this case, it seems they are taking extraordinary measures, but to get to the point where they would try to use a fraudulent travel document is crazy. The whole thing is really sketchy,” said Macdonald Scott. The Man With No Name arrived in Canada on an Amtrak train in 2005 using a bogus U.S. passport in the name of Andrea Jerome Walker. When he was convicted the following year for carrying $10 worth of crack cocaine, CBSA tried to deport him back to the United States — but the name and his passport proved to be false. For more than seven years, he has lived in jail in Ontario because his identity cannot be confirmed. Until Canada knows who he is and where he was born, officials cannot deport him. A global fingerprint search by Interpol, the international police organization, came back with eight different identities he used before coming to Canada. After years of lying to police, CBSA and the Immigration and Refugee Board, claiming several different identities, he now insists he is Michael Mvogo from Cameroon. Unable to prove it, however, the Cameroonian government declined to issue a passport. It was in the midst of this bizarre state of limbo that Mr. Mvogo, if that is his name, was introduced to Ivan Simic, the facilitator. Mr. Simic is an international man of some mystery. He travels widely, has diplomatic connections with countries around the world, displays enviable charm and is involved in foreign media projects. Born in March of 1980 in Serbia’s capital, Belgrade, near the banks of the Danube River, he maintains a home there but is often travelling. In late 2010, Mr. Simic visited Canada on a visa declaring him to be the director of the European office of Korea’s Seoul Times newspaper. In his visa application he said the purpose of his visit was to do post-election analysis, visit government institutions, meet South Korea’s embassy staff and promote Canadian tourism in the Korean media. He intended to be in Canada from November 2010 to January 2011. It was near the end of his trip that Mr. Simic was contacted by Mr. Williams, the director of the Greater Toronto Enforcement Centre (GTEC), Canada’s largest and busiest immigration centre, handling more than half of all immigration enforcement activity in the country. Mr. Simic was recommended to Mr. Williams by contacts in Europe who said the mystery man had good connections in many African countries. CBSA certainly had problematic cases — illegal immigrants facing deportation who can’t be removed for one reason or another from Iran, South Africa, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Guinea and Cameroon. But the No. 1 headache for CBSA was the man currently known as Mr. Mvogo. The high-profile case meant weekly pressure from CBSA headquarters in Ottawa and regular questions from the minister’s office, Mr. Williams said. At their first meeting, on Jan. 6, 2011, Mr. Williams showed Mr. Simic a copy of the Post’s published investigation on Mr. Mvogo. Within days, Mr. Simic had taken the story and used portions of it for news stories that appeared in newspapers in the Caribbean and across Africa, in some cases publishing his email address as the person to contact with answers, not the special CBSA hotline. Mr. Simic offered to help in more direct ways. CBSA introduced Mr. Simic to Mr. Mvogo inside the immigration holding centre in Toronto where Mr. Mvogo was being held. “Mvogo was talking to him on a consensual basis. I wasn’t forcing him to talk to him. Mvogo started calling him on his own and talking to him,” Mr. Williams said. “Ivan Simic had a much better rapport with him than CBSA did. It looked like he was making progress.” Mr. Simic visited Mr. Mvogo several times in the detention centre and talked to him on the phone often. It was to Mr. Simic that Mr. Mvogo finally admitted he wasn’t Michael Gee from Haiti, another false identity he had claimed, and was really from Cameroon. But even that admission did not help as Cameroon’s embassy declined to issue Mr. Mvogo a travel document without proof. That’s when Mr. Simic suggested Guinea. CBSA quickly learned Mr. Simic really did have diplomatic connections. Immigration officers escorted Mr. Mvogo to the Guinea embassy in Ottawa, with Mr. Simic. “When they walked in, Ivan Simic was welcomed with open arms, they were ushered right in to the ambassador’s office,” said Mr. Williams. “Iranian diplomats, Ivory Coast diplomats, they all knew him on a first name basis. He did have a lot of contacts.” Mr. Williams concedes he did not subject Mr. Simic to careful scrutiny. “We didn’t do a background check, we didn’t do a security check, I didn’t think it was necessary because he didn’t have access to CBSA systems or facilities. He was talking to Mvogo on a consensual basis. And he was getting information from him,” he said. In a matter of weeks, Mr. Simic secured a Guinean passport for use by Mr. Mvogo — although it was in the name of Michael Milimono, a name unrelated to him and with unmatched biographic data. This was a problem for CBSA. There was no way we can use a fabricated name on a
are now beginning to describe Trump as “serious,” meaning you can’t dismiss him. I’ve read so far five mea culpa pieces, different Drive-Bys, apologize. The most recent was Chris Cillizza, the Washington Post (paraphrasing): “I didn’t think Trump was gonna go anywhere, I knew Trump was gonna bomb out. I didn’t know Trump was serious. I’ve gotta take it all back. I apologize! I was wrong.” Five of these in the past few days. Media people who predicted Trump was a flash in the pan, wasn’t gonna last, was gonna embarrass himself, wasn’t even serious about it, are now beginning to ask: Can this guy win? Nervously, they’re beginning to ask: Can this guy win? Jeff Greenfield is among them, too. They’ve all noticed that in the past week Trump hasn’t been the Trump that he was prior and people now it’s Jeb Bush throwing insults around, according to The Politico. Okay. Very uncivil, don’t you know. And, of course, the debate tonight. Here’s a story, Washington Post. The ivory tower-weighing in: “How in the World Do You Debate Donald Trump? Here’s What the Experts Prescribe,” and the experts are David Birdsell of Baruch College; David Kimel, Yale Debate Society; Angela Minor, attorney, Washington; Howard University law professor, Ben Voth, the director of forensics, professor communication SMU Dallas. These are the experts that are writing here and being interviewed about how you would debate Trump. Now, we know some things are gonna happen here tonight, folks, just because of the law of averages. We know that there will be at least one candidate who says something that destroys them. There’s gonna be somebody that steps in it. It always has. You got 10 people on the stage and you got seven people prior too them in the pregame meal. You got 17 people here. But let’s address the nine o’clock debate, the prime-time debate. You know somebody is going to say something that’s gonna doom them. Just happens. Somebody is going to end up with the sound bite of the night. Somebody is gonna get the biggest applause, even after the moderators have admonished the audience not to applaud. Somebody’s gonna get big laughs. Somebody is going to really deliver a knockout blow to another candidate. There’s all kinds of things like these that we know are going to happen. And they’re all exciting. Say what you will but people love seeing people self-destruct in public. The gaffe that ends a career, people will tune in just to see that, who is it gonna be and what is it gonna be. Others will tune in to see who ends up winning, who the media says wins, who comes up with the best most pithy sound bite. And who, after the first round, it can officially be said is finished. There’s all kinds of things. And these are all going to happen to one degree or another tonight. I have to take a break here. And it’s also gonna be… Parts of it are gonna be boring. It can’t help but be. Moderators are gonna at first try to maintain strict control. They won’t succeed for very long. It’s gonna become freewheeling. I don’t care what these people say right now. And the focus is gonna be on Trump and how he deals with all this. He’s set himself up with low expectations. BREAK TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Of the candidates, ladies and gentlemen, who are said to have been given the biggest anti-Trump marching orders is Marco Rubio. Apparently big donors have gone to Rubio with the greatest sense of urgency and have told Rubio… It’s not just Rubio, by the way, that the big donors have approached. But this particular story says that the candidates were said to have been given their anti-Trump marching orders last night. One was apparently told with the greatest sense of urgency was Senator Marco Rubio. Okay, so we got Jeb here and these personal insults of Trump in this wanton incivility. It’s just so unlike the GOP establishment! Could it be, ladies and gentlemen… I mean, I knew this piece would come out today. I mean, everybody in The Politico piece knew it was gonna air or run the day of the debate. Could it be that this is the first of what will be many attempts to get Trump to blow his top tonight? One thing that’s known about Trump is he occasionally will go on offense and start attacking somebody, but it’s guaranteed he will do it if you insult him. If you take a shot at Trump, you are guaranteed to get return fire. Well, what if this is a strategically placed insult, even before the debate begins, designed to get Trump ticked off even before it starts? If the big money people behind the Republican Party are scared and they want Trump taken out, they may figure that the best way to do it is to have him blow his stack and demonstrate whatever they think that would demonstrate — a lack of presidential temperament or take your pick. Anyway, just guessing. I’m trying to put these pieces all together for you. BREAK TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Okay. Okay, there’s no question now that there’s a psychological operation underway aimed at The Donald. I have just uncovered it, ladies and gentlemen. It’s there for anybody to see, but it takes me to put the pieces together, to read between the lines, to read the stitches on the fastball. The Mediaite website: “Fox Debate Hosts Already Have a Secret Plan to Deal with Donald Trump.” However, Mediaite is linking to a Politico story, the second Politico story of note of the day. The first Politico story is actually from The Politico magazine. This is where Jeb Bush is quoted as insulting Trump as a “clown,” a “buffoon,” and a “[butt]hole.” Now The Politico has a story claiming that the Fox debate hosts — which are Megyn Kelly, Bret Baier and Chris Wallace — have a secret plan to deal with Trump. (laughing) How secret can it be? I just love this. It’s a secret plan that we all know about. You know, it’s like I’ve always said, if you have a great marketing plan, secret or otherwise, you don’t divulge it; you execute it. You don’t give people a chance to defend against it. Anyway, it does seem like a psych-ops operation, and it’s from The Politico. Let me read to you a couple things from the article. “In an interview with Politico, Fox News hosts Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly, and Chris Wallace revealed they already have a plan if Donald Trump refuses to obey the rules of Thursday nightÂ’s Republican presidential debate.” If Trump “refuses to obey the rules”? Only Trump runs the risk or poses the risk of not obeying the rules? I would like to remind you on Monday that I made predictions and comments about this very thing. You know, Trump came out and said, “You know, I don’t know about debates.” He was setting expectations low. “I don’t know about debates. I don’t debate! I’m a doer. I’m a man of action. I tell other people what to do, and if they don’t do it, then they’re fired. “I tell ’em what to do. I don’t sit around and debate people. That’s all these guys do. They sit around and debate all day. They sit around and talked all day. I don’t do that, so I don’t know how I’m gonna do.” Given Trump’s behavior so far, it wasn’t difficult to predict that it wouldn’t be long in the debate before Trump began to criticize the whole setup, as, “Look, we’ve been losing, right? We’ve been losing presidential elections. “This is not a winning formula. These debates like this, we’re not learning anything here. We’re not teaching anybody.” I can see him blowing it up any number of ways, in the sense of attacking the quote/unquote “system,” which is what he’s doing with his campaign anyway. Trump said, “Ah, ah, ah! That’s not me. I’m not gonna be lobbing any grenades; I’m not gonna be throwing any bombs,” thereby setting up the possibility that he would. That means that everybody’s on the lout now for Trump not to play by the rules. And do you know what the rules are? The time limits include 30 seconds to reply, one minute to make a statement. There are going to be candidates on this stage tonight in a two-hour debate or hour and a half, I’m not sure how long it is, that you’re not gonna see more than three minutes of. For people to be seen and heard in this debate, they’re gonna have to break the rules. They’re gonna have to go outside the guidelines, if you will. And that’s when the moderators are gonna move in there and do everything they can to maintain control, because to the moderators, what we have tonight’s a TV show. To the candidates, what they have is a rare opportunity to address the nation on equal footing with everybody else. And if they’re serious about winning, they’re not going to voluntarily be shut up. Somebody… This is why I say, somebody’s gonna bust the rules. Somebody’s gonna do something memorable good, memorable bad, but there will be some conflicts. The moderators, trying to put on a good television show, are gonna enforce the rules ’cause the rules and the format are godlike. Don’t doubt me. I am a highly trained broadcast specialist. And these anchors are gonna have people shouting at them in their ears about enforcing time limits, about making sure that somebody gets equal time that hadn’t been seen for a while. You’ll never hear any of this, but the IFB chatter is going to be furious. The hosts — call ’em the anchors, the moderators — are gonna be under a lot of pressure to maintain order. The candidates are gonna be equally desirous of busting out. And nobody wins points for following the rules. Tomorrow the review of this debate is not gonna be, “And the winner of last night’s debate was Senator Marco Rubio, because he never once violated a single rule set forth by the moderator!” Does anybody ever remember a post-debate review of somebody winning it or getting even a lot credit ’cause they were nice and obeyed the rules and were fair and were tolerant and did not try to dominate it? No! So Bret Baier, Megyn Kelly, Chris Wallace reveal they already have… I’m not criticizing ’em. I don’t want anybody misunderstand here. Just telling you. They “already have a secret plan if Donald Trump refuses to obey the rules.” What if somebody else refuses to obey the rules. Do they have a secret plan to deal with that? Is the secret plan to deal with anybody breaking the rules, or they just gonna be focused on Trump breaking the rules? Is Trump gonna be the only one that they use force to keep him in line? We just have to see. Bret Baier is quoted in The Politico piece: “Listen, heÂ’s going to be treated like everybody else. WeÂ’re going to treat every candidate the same. … Are we thinking about different scenarios? Sure. Our job is to make sure everybody plays by the rules.” See? It’s a TV show, folks. And these people are rooted in format, formula rules, time limits, time checks, hitting the mark. That’s why they are seasoned professionals. That’s one of the many talents that broadcasters have to be able to master. And if they’re having trouble, the people behind the scenes, the producers and directors, are gonna be all over ’em in the IFB, their ear pieces, urging them to go here, go there, shut up, make sure Trump doesn’t… Whatever they gonna say. We’ll never hear it. Megyn Kelly said that they had a plan if Trump refused to stop talking. “We have plan. We’re not gonna share it with you,” she said. But if Trump doesn’t stop talking, they have a plan. What if Jeb doesn’t stop talking? What can…? (interruption) Well, what can they do if Trump doesn’t shut up? (interruption) Well, they could shut off his mike, but that won’t work because there are gonna be so many other microphones up there that he’ll still be heard. They’d have to shut off everybody’s mike. No, I don’t think that’s what the plan is, to shut off his mike. I think it’s just to keep shouting at him and if they have to talk over him. “Mr. Trump! Mr. Trump! Mr. Trump, you have exceed time. Mr. Trump.” Just, I don’t know, but they’ve got a plan. I don’t know. We doing commercials in this debate? No. Maybe they go to a commercial break when there isn’t one scheduled. I mean, it could be something drastic. They could say, “Mr. Trump is refusing to play by the rules and, as such, this entire debate format has been placed at risk. “We are going to take a brief break while we attempt to restore order,” and then they go to O’Reilly doing a commentary on ISIS or something, and they come back after they’ve restored order and Trump has been admonished and he’s been spanked and he promises to be a good boy and they continue. Who knows what the plan is! This is why, I’m telling you: If they shut his microphone off, you know what he’ll say? “I paid for this microphone. I’m rich. I’m really rich. And I’m making this microphone possible.” He’d just do it out of habit. BREAK TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Just a brief observation in the form of a question. I can’t remember the last presidential primary debate where there were 10 people on stage. Now, it might have happened in 2012. I’m not sure. I know there were a lot. But one thing I know, you look at this Politico piece, these two Politico pieces, the first one, Jeb with his insults of Trump, and then this second one where the GOP — well, that’s another point. Where the Fox News moderators make it clear they have a secret plan to deal with Trump. Not a secret plan to deal with anybody else. So my question, do you remember, can you ever remember where one person, candidate, owned the pre-publicity on an event like this? Where every story pre-debate is about one candidate? What’s that candidate gonna do? What will that candidate not do? How are we gonna control that candidate if candidate does X? Do we have a plan for dealing with it? It’s all Trump, all the time. Now, it’s gonna put some performance pressure on him from the standpoint of the audience. He’s got a lot of supporters that are gonna be tuning in tonight and they’re gonna want to be validated. They’re going to want to hear Trump, they’re gonna want to see Trump be Trump. So he’s got some performance pressure here. I don’t mean to imply otherwise. I don’t think that’s a problem. He can handle it. I’m just telling you, as the singular focus of this, and he’s fully aware that he is, it’s gotta irritate everybody else. I mean, if you’re one of these other candidates with all these stories about secret plans to deal with Trump, I’m telling you, if you’re Rand Paul, if you’re Rubio or Cruz, you’re saying, “What do you mean, why are you worried about Trump? Why aren’t you worried about what I might do? What’s the secret plan to deal with me?” Believe me, all this attention on Trump is gonna make every one of these other people try to wrest the spotlight away. It could be fireworks tonight. It also could end up, because of all these expectations, it could end up being, by comparison, pretty dull, depending on how everybody tries to play this tonight. Anyway, let me grab a phone call here quickly. Oh, one other thing. Not a big deal. As you know, we have a pretty established conservative media out there now. I mean, let’s look at ’em. We’ve got Red State, we’ve got Power Line, we’ve got Hot Air, we have Ace of Spades — I mean, look, I don’t want to leave any of them out. It’s a risk I run. I can’t mention them all. They’re all over the place. We got National Review, National Review Online, and who does the GOP go to? Who does the GOP grant access to? Politico. Now, there’s gotta be a reason for that. What do you think it is? Why is Jeb telling all this super-secret stuff about what he thinks of Trump to The Politico? The Politico magazine. I can answer it. I mean, I have my own theory as an answer. I’m just bringing it up here as a talking point. Why didn’t Jeb tell this to a National Review Online reporter? I mean, National Review Online is pretty tight with the Republican establishment. I mean, they’re not thought of in the same vein by the establishment as talk radio is. They’re considered buttoned down, coat and tie, loyal. Why not go to them? Or, take your pick. I mean, there’s any number of other credible news and commentary websites, magazines, organizations. But the GOP always goes to Politico. They leak everything to Politico or they grant access, non-leak access to Politico. And I think it says a lot. I think it says that the GOP still considers its own supportive media to be fringe, and Politico and all the others as the genuine mainstream. But worse than that, I think it says that the GOP establishment types really think that they’re not gonna win or get their message out unless they do it in the mainstream media. And who knows. They may be right. But clearly I think they think this.CLOSE Michigan State players talk about Thursday's 42-17 win over Washington State and what it means for the program moving forward. Matt Charboneau, Detroit News MSU quarterback Brian Lewerke dives for a first down against Washington State in the Holiday Bowl. (Photo: Dale G. Young / Detroit News) San Diego — When Mark Dantonio first took over at Michigan State back in 2007, the Spartans suffered a bitter defeat to their rival, Michigan. Michigan State gave up a 10-point lead in the fourth quarter that early November day in Spartan Stadium and a day later, a frustrated Dantonio said the rivalry was only beginning to heat up. “It’s not over,” he said. “It’s just starting.” He was talking, on that day, specifically about the rivalry. But fast forward to the end of his 11th season and the feeling is permeating the program. Fresh of a 42-17 victory over Washington State on Thursday night in the Holiday Bowl, the return of Michigan State football seemed complete. “We’re back to where we’ve been and I think we reaffirmed our stature in college football,” said Dantonio, whose team finished 10-3 and potentially with a top-15 ranking. “This has been a good football team and it should continue to be a good football team. We’ve got good players and we’re young and we’ve had great leadership from our seniors.” The misery of 2016 was a distant memory — in reality, it had been for months for those within the program — and after a dominating performance that ended the biggest turnaround in program history, the thoughts were quickly turning to next season. Fifteen seniors Only 15 seniors were on Michigan State’s roster and just three started in the Holiday Bowl – center Brian Allen, defensive end Demetrius Cooper and linebacker Chris Frey. Running back Gerald Holmes and linebacker Shane Jones were the only other seniors that played significant roles, meaning the core of the Spartans will be back. Needless to say, confidence is high. “We’re back. That’s it,” sophomore linebacker Joe Bachie said. “We’re gonna take this into next year and we’re gonna grow." They have plenty of key pieces to believe that growth will continue. Bachie is at the center of it, the leading tackler on the defense and an emerging star. He’ll be surrounded by proven talent on defense next season with only linebacker Andrew Dowell and safety Khari Willis among starters entering their senior seasons. On offense, it’s a similar picture. Quarterback Brian Lewerke, who capped of the second-best season in Michigan State history in terms of total offense, will be a junior and have all of his weapons back. The offensive line loses just Allen and gained valuable experience all season. Scott coming back But the most important return only became clear late Thursday night when running back LJ Scott confirmed he’ll be back for his senior season, reminding Dantonio of 2015 when quarterback Connor Cook and defensive end Shilique Calhoun came back for their senior seasons and helped lead the Spartans to the College Football Playoffs. “I think he could be a tremendous tailback, a guy that we can hand the ball to 250 times and do great things, much like when Shilique Calhoun and Connor Cook made the decision to come back,” Dantonio said. “They followed with a ring, a Big Ten championship ring and I think those things become possible. We have an established tailback coming back and he’s a special player.” More: Niyo: Challenge for MSU now is to remember humble beginnings Scott said he’d known for weeks, and his coach and some teammates confirmed that. Why put the NFL off? It was simple for Scott. “We’ve got a bright future and a huge chance to do good things,” Scott said. “With the hard work we put in, the blood sweat and tears with this team, I can’t leave them early.” Confidence is high For those seniors not coming back, the confidence is just as high. Led by Allen and linebacker Chris Frey, the senior class got Michigan State back to what it hand known — winning bowl games and competing for championships. They believe the Spartans are back on track. “The future is bright for this team,” Frey said. “I’m excited to continue watching this team grow because we have so many young guys that have the ability to be great and with the work ethic I know they have that they showed in the off-season. The sky is the limit for everybody on this team.” And Allen reminded them, as fulfilling as 2017 was, it’s not the ultimate goal at Michigan State. “I thanked everybody for what they’ve done and just let them know that the Holiday Bowl is not the goal,” Allen said. “As awesome as it is to be out here, the expectations for next year are going to be even higher. That’s what is most special about this. “I’m excited where the program is at.” There are no guarantees. Last season proved that. But there’s no doubt Michigan State will enter 2018 with lofty expectations. However, nothing will be taken for granted with Ohio State, Penn State and Michigan still ready to battle in the Big Ten East. “We take ours one at a time,” junior receiver Felton Davis said about the team’s goals. “So, first one is winning the East and then the Big Ten championship and then put ourselves into a position to win the national championship.” That’s a long way off, but until then, Michigan State feels confident in the fact it is back where it belongs. The 10 victories this season made up the fourth double-digit win season in the last five and the sixth under Dantonio. And as much as he and the Spartans reveled in that Thursday, the realized winter conditioning is coming quickly. “I would like to say we’re back, but 2018 is around the corner,” Dantonio said. “So, you can’t say that because you’ve got to start proving yourself all over again. “But this was as great of a football season that I have had as a coach because of where we came from and what we were able to accomplish.” [email protected] twitter.com/mattcharboneauEuropean leaders Thursday rushed to defend the embattled euro, with France's Nicolas Sarkozy declaring he would never let it fail and Europe's top central banker denying there was a crisis. Addressing political and business elites at the World Economic Forum at the Swiss ski resort of Davos, President Sarkozy said both he and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were firm in their commitment to the European single currency. “Whether it be Chancellor Merkel or myself, never, never will we turn our backs on the euro. We will never abandon the euro, we will never drop the euro,” Sarkozy told participants. The euro was more than an economic project, the French president said, being fundamental to the region’s identity. “The euro spells Europe. The euro is Europe and Europe has spelled 60 years of peace on our continent, therefore we will never let the euro go nor let it be destroyed,” he said. And he warned off those who speculate against the currency. “For those of you who want to bet against the euro, be careful how you invest. We are determined to ensure the strength of the euro,” he said. On a separate panel, European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet said: “There is no crisis of the euro currency.” Debt problems affect certain countries within the 17-nation zone, admitted Trichet, but the issues confronting the eurozone as a whole are no more serious than those faced by other major economies such as Japan or the US. However, Trichet called for improved international oversight and “good individual behaviour” from member states. Eurozone countries have been battling to prevent a debt crisis from spreading from Greece and Ireland to Portugal and other economies in the bloc. Heavily indebted Greece was forced to seek help last year from the European Union and International Monetary Fund to avoid a default that many feared could have sunk the decade-old common currency project. Greek Prime Minister Georges Papandreou told the Davos meeting his country was not about to restructure its debt and had taken the necessary measures to contain the crisis and return to growth. “I can also say we are not moving to restructuring. We have a very clear path, a roadmap to move out of the debt problem,” he said. “We are on a path, we think, that we can get to growth in 2012 and restore confidence and we are hoping to open up to the markets even this year. We are doing what we should.” Reflecting an increased bullishness on the euro after a successful bond auction on Tuesday to raise cash for its bailout fund, industry leaders also talked up the common currency. Maurice Levy, chief executive of French advertising giant Publicis, said: “I think the European system … has worked pretty well. It has proven to be resistant to this type of crisis. “If you look back to what would have happened in Europe if we had not had the euro, if we had not had the EU and the co-ordination that happened recently, I think we would have been through a terrible crisis,” he added. “Greece would have gone bankrupt. They would not have been able to pay their debt, same for Ireland.” Eckhart Cordes, chief executive of German retail group Metro, also pointed out that his country, Europe’s top economy, had “significantly benefited from the euro. “Had we not had the euro, we would have seen a significant appreciation of the German deutschmark, which has not happened,” he said, referring to fears that a strong currency would hit exports, the key driver of Germany’s economy. James Dimon, chairman and chief executive of US investment bank JP Morgan, praised the European Union as “one of the greatest human endeavours of all time.” But the more cautiously optimistic mood did not encourage Europe’s biggest non-euro country to jump on board. Asked whether Britain should join the euro, deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, previously one of the main cheerleaders for entry, said he would “not now” advocate London scrapping the pound.The Gold Star father of Capt. Humayun Khan, who blasted President-elect Donald J. Trump at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, told Breitbart News that he has “no animosity” towards Trump, though he still opposes Trump’s policies. “I really have no animosity towards him, but towards his policies? Yes,” said Khizr Khan, a attorney and supporter of Hillary R. Clinton in the last presidential election. “If he says: ‘We must reconcile. We will treat all citizens equally in all of this and there is no discrimination based on religion or race and all that’ I will support him,” Khan said. “My country, my nation is divided, needs reconciliation, and nobody is taking that step,” he said. “I am just amazed that after winning the election, I was hoping that Donald Trump or his surrogates would take pro-active steps to hearten people, to remove the divide, to take certain pro-active steps–public steps, statements, actions that would hearten the entire country and remove the divide,” he said. Throughout the campaign, amid news stories of Islamic terror attacks overseas and at home, Trump took a skeptical line towards Islam, noting how often the ideology has been tied to murderous attacks. In December in 2015, following the mass murder of 14 Americans by two Muslims in San Bernardino, California, Trump cited data showing “great hatred towards Americans by large segments of the Muslim population,” and called for a temporary halt to the awarding of Green Cards to Muslims living in Islamic countries “until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” Islamic advocacy groups sharply oppose limits on the migration of Muslims into the United States. Those groups include the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which Khan aided recently by hosting a Dec. 17 fundraiser. CAIR has been declared a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates and was named by federal prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas-funding operation. U.S. court documents and news reports show that at least five of CAIR’s associates — either board members, employees or former employees — have been jailed or repatriated for various financial and terror-related offenses. Khan was in the audience for Wednesday’s confirmation hearing for Sen. Jeff Sessions (R.-Ala.), Trump’s nominee for attorney general — a nomination that Khan opposes. The attorney did not call attention to himself as he passed the harried reporters just outside the Kennedy Caucus Room. On his brown trench coat he wore a small pin with the “Big Red One” shoulder patch of the Ist Infantry Division, the division his son was serving with when he was killed in Baqubah, Iraq, in 2004. Although, he did not testify, Khan released an open letter Monday critical of Sessions and what Khan said was his lack of support for voting rights. “There is no constitutional principle or American value that is strengthened by making it harder for some Americans, especially those who are already disadvantaged, to exercise their right to vote,” he wrote. “People around the world look to our Constitution with envy, they are inspired by its promise of equal protection of the law to everyone–not just people from powerful families, or a favored ethnic group or religious community.” In the letter Khan wrote that three decades ago, senators were correct when they voted down President Ronald W. Reagan’s attempt to put Sessions on the federal bench. “His record since then does not give us any reason to believe that those senators were in error.” Khan told Breitbart News he does not know Sessions personally, so he does not want to weigh in on his character. “All I know is his voting record as a senator and then the statements he made yesterday,” he said. Sessions came before the Senate Judiciary Committee for two days of hearings, Monday and Tuesday, and Khan said he took note that Sessions testified that as attorney general he would not support a ban on all Muslims entering the country, surveillance of mosques, or a registry for individuals identifying as Muslim. “I am a patriotic American Muslim, so yesterday it was heartening to hear him say this,” Khan said. The question for Khan is whether Sessions and Trump now agree, he said. Khan said he knows that Sessions has the votes to be confirmed by the Senate, but the hearings were an opportunity for people to air their concerns.Xiaomi has just sent out invites for its special event to be held on July 16th. The Chinese company confirmed the launch event in a teaser post on Weibo and shared an image letters “PK” imprinted in the middle of the picture. The teaser invite confirms that the event will see a new device; though at this point it is not clear whether the company will be launching the a new smartphone or another device. The event could be the announcement of the Xiaomi Mi 5 and probably the Mi 5 Plus, the company’s next flagship device, which is to succeed the Xiaomi Mi 4. Another possibility is the rumored launch of the Xiaomi Redmi Note 2 mid-range flagship. The Xiaomi Mi5 Plus was recently certified by TENAA (Chinese equivalent to the FCC) and basically confirmed the phone’s specs and design. The handset will sports 13MP rear camera with a 4MP snapper in front if the listing is to be believed. According to the listing, Mi 5 Plus will come with an 5.7-inch 1440 x 2560 resolution screen, protected by Gorilla Glass 4. It is the 64-bit Snapdragon 820 SoC, which offers an octa core 2GHz CPU coupled with 4GB of LPDDR4 RAM along with 64GB of internal storage. Recently it was reported that Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi is working on development a full-fledged e-commerce business model for its phones and other devices in India. Xiaomi Indian Head Manu Kumar Jain said the mobile phone maker is actively considering investing in a few startup technology companies to develop an eco-system.The second place on our Top 20 of 2013 ranking by eSportsventure.com goes to Patrik "f0rest" Lindberg who had one of the best years of his career, helping NiP win nine international titles. He had a number of amazing tournaments, but his MVP-worthy display at Copenhagen Games stood out as the best in CS:GO's short history. He was also the most consistent player of the year and the king of pistol rounds. Basic info and history Patrik "f0rest" Lindberg is probably the most experienced person among the top players in the scene, having started his international breakthrough in CS 1.6 way back in 2005. Back then he took the world by surprise by starring for a relatively unknown Begrip squad during their unsuspecting triumph at WEG Season 2 in South Korea. He then moved to fnatic in 2006 in which he stayed until the end of 2010, having a number of successful seasons, especially the one in 2009 when his from then on teammate Christopher "GeT_RiGhT" Alesund joined and they dominated the scene. During all those years he was always one of the best players in the world, grabbing awards left and right, and he also ended up in 6th place on our Top 20 of 2010. Later he also got 5th place in the Top 20 of 2011 following a great year with SK Gaming where they were neck and neck with the Poles of ESC in the battle for the best team of the year. In 2012 they had some disappointing results by their standards, and the team was earlier than most rumored to have their eyes set on the new game, CS:Global Offensive. Lindberg and Alesund were some of the main supporters of switching to the new game, and they were among the first to do it, creating NiP in August of 2012 and beginning a new chapter in their careers. Already in the first international CS:GO event, DreamHack Valencia, Lindberg showed he would do quite well in the new game, as he put in his first of many MVP worthy performances. From then on, together with Alesund, they ruled the world as the two best players while NiP went on a winning streak of 58 map wins in a row to end the year. 2013 continued in the same manner, with the Ninjas dominating the early part of the year starting with Mad Catz Vienna. As they beat the likes of Nostalgie, ESC Gaming and Anexis, Lindberg was as usual one of the best players of the event with 0.83 kills per round and a 1.31 rating, only trailing his teammate Alesund. Starting the year off at Mad Catz Vienna The deadly duo would continue alternating in their domination during the next several events, with Lindberg's time to shine coming at TECHLABS Cup Moscow and, more importantly, at Copenhagen Games. In the warm-up for the Danish event that would attract all the best teams in the world, NiP attended TECHLABS Cup in Moscow where they had to fight off a rising Virtus.pro squad with 16-12 and 16-10 victories. The streak was extended to 70-0 while Lindberg put in his first definite MVP performance, having an amazing 0.96 kills per round in this short tournament. But that wasn't the best he can do, as his play the week after at Copenhagen Games set up an impossible standard for anyone to repeat any time soon. As NiP notched up another 15 map wins and grabbed another title, Lindberg had a stunning year's highest 1.03 kills per round and a 1.61 rating, playing exceptionally well in every single match. He particularly destroyed his former organization fnatic's squad in the upper bracket semi-final, having the best series anyone has had all year long with a 65:18 score and a 2.23 rating, including 39 kills on the second map. f0rest's Man of the Match video vs. fnatic Lindberg himself pointed out that match as one of his best memories of the year, although even he can't quite explain how it came to that performance. "Well the thing that stood out the most this year was obviously our streak which was an unbelievable achievement and I believe all of us are really proud of that one. But there is one other thing that stands out which was the game against fnatic at Copenhagen Games where I came up with some huge number and it was such an amazing match to play. I felt like the good old f0rest who could destroy anything. That feeling kept me going and wanting to improve. I can't really remember if I did anything special that day or what kind of state of mind I was in, I guess it just came as a surprise to myself when I was able to rise to that kind of level. It was really incredible and I just felt like I could do anything during that game (which I pretty much could). Those games don't happen often, but when they do it's about to get nasty." With two MVP-worthy performances behind him, Lindberg ended up on top of all the charts at their next event as well, SLTV StarSeries V Finals (1.22 rating), but this time it was not such a happy occasion. The big streak was ended at
.youtube.com/watch?v=3t4qc8Fai74 *Tip : Feel free to put any queries you have in the comments section below and we will solve them for you. Like this: Like Loading...Update: It's Christmas day and Ars staffers are enjoying a winter break (inevitably filled with series binge-watching and fancy egg preparations). As such, we're resurfacing a few favorites from the site archives appropriate for the occasion—like this review of what may possibly be the nerdiest (and most awesome) gift any of us could receive. This piece originally ran on December 17, 2016, and it appears unchanged below. If you want to fake like a true Jedi master, your hardware options are limited. Robes and beards are easy enough to track down, but sword-like hilts that project concentrated beams of controlled, tactile light are still at least a few years out. For those who insist on dressing in their finest Vrogas Vas linens and representing the Jedi Order in our own, simpler galaxy, replica lightsabers are the only way to go. I don't mean the fold-up, whip-out toy sabers that you can buy at Target. For whatever reason, the legal eagles at the Disney/Lucasfilm trust have stood back and let custom saber makers run amok. As a result, you can now buy sabers that purport to be on par with movie set props—and aim to be the coolest dude in line for the next Star Wars film. One of those manufacturers, Ultra Sabers, reached out to Ars ahead of Rogue One's premiere this week to see if we wanted to whip one of their rods around. As you can see in the above video, I most certainly whipped it. Lights, sounds, and plastic bonks Sam Machkovech Sam Machkovech Ultra Sabers' replica sabers start in the sub-$100 range, but if you want the kind of light-and-noise saber fun seen in the above video, you'll spend no less than $150 for programmable light and sound options. Hilts, pommels, and other details can be customized as well. I went through Ultra Sabers' site and built a maxed-out version of the "Dark Catalyst" handle, complete with a "V4" soundboard and a programmable blade (which uses WRGB light information to make the saber light up). The total cost before shipping and tax? $434. Ohhh, maxi big da price! You do get more for paying more; the customization options and build quality exceed what you'll find at places like Disneyland's own "build your own lightsaber" stations. The plasticky handle I received is solid and finished with a coating that has proven mostly smudge-proof in my on-and-off sabering over the past two weeks. That build quality extends to the toy nature of this thing—meaning, you can, and are probably expected to, bang the plastic "blade" around, onto walls, cushions, and friends, without the blade portion coming loose from the handle or getting too dinged up with marks. Insert a battery, hit a small power button, and the Jedi magic begins. The plastic casing and its domed tip do a good job of bouncing and projecting bright light through the entirety of the blade. Ultra Saber offers incredible uniform brightness with only a single light source. The saber's sound performance, on the other hand, may disappoint some hopeful Jedis. The main issue I found in my testing is with the accelerometer used to register sword swipes and trigger appropriate sound effects. It's a binary, on-off trigger, so you won't hear blade-whirr noises that reflect your speed or motion. Worse, this trigger just isn't consistent. The unit is supposed to trigger noises due to both motion and blade impact, but I found the whirring didn't trigger about a fourth of the time. (You can also quick-tap the power button to trigger an "impact" mode, in which a secondary color flashes and sounds trigger as if your saber is actively clashing with another saber.) Let's be clear: you're a proud dork if you buy and own one of these things. That's great. But your dorkiness shouldn't be affected or diminished because your sick spin-and-jump move isn't matched with a sick saber sound effect. In better news, the saber sound options pre-loaded into Ultra Sabers' "version four" sound chip are intense and Star Wars-worthy. Really, I'm amazed these sounds, in particular, don't draw the ire of Lucasarts' legal brass. A simple Windows app makes loading new compatible sound files into the saber's circuit board easy. Reprogramming the blade's colors is easy, too, should your Ultra Saber come built with a programmable light array. Once new sounds are loaded in, a long-press of the power button triggers a sound-selection process that works quickly and neatly. (Want a saber that makes loud tiger noises with every swipe? Meow, baby.) All sound projects from the bottom of the handle, which makes sense in terms of how hands are likely to cover the rest of the handle. Indoors, this more than suffices, but the sound doesn't project well when outdoors. You could win this saber Make no mistake: Ars is nowhere near an authority on replica lightsabers. This review isn't an ironclad endorsement of Ultra Sabers' offering, especially since I have yet to test any other high-end sabers. (I invite any saber makers in the wild to let us test their wares, so that I may become our staff's leading replica saber critic.) One thing I can say definitively at this time is that many nerds are manufacturing their own love-filled takes on lightsabers—or, at least, as much as they possibly can without bending the known rules of physics. This "Dark Catalyst" model has been fun to test, and while I wonder whether its $434 cost reflects Ultra Sabers' BOM and R&D costs, I fully believe the price is right for the kind of Star Wars fan who would buy and use one of these in the first place. That price will be far less for one of you, by the way: we're giving away this Ars Technica-colored saber (black handle, orange default light, green "impact" light) as part of our annual charity drive. Head over there, read our official rules, and find out how this, or many other products reviewed by Ars over the past year, could be yours. Listing image by Sam MachkovechElgin man convicted for possessing kilogram of cocaine An Elgin man was found guilty Friday of possessing a kilogram of cocaine, which he hid from police in his car. Carlos Garcia-Perez, 51, was convicted of a felony charge of unlawful possession of a controlled substance with intent to deliver, according to the Kane County state’s attorney’s office. He will face a sentence between 15 and 60 years, according to the state’s attorney’s office. He remains in Kane County jail where he has been held since his arrest in lieu of a $200,000 bail. Garcia-Perez prepared to sell a kilogram of cocaine to a police informant for $27,000 in March 2013, prosecutors said. While he was on his way to complete the deal, Carpentersville police stopped the vehicle Garcia-Perez was riding in and served a search warrant. Officers then found a kilogram of cocaine hidden inside the car. Garcia-Perez, of the 400 block of Dwight Avenue in Elgin, was scheduled to appear in court March 9 and then March 24.Rosie O’Donnell Donates $1,000 to NSA Leaker Who Pledged Allegiance to Taliban, Wanted to Burn Down White House Liberal blowhard, Rosie O’Donnell defended NSA leaker, Reality Winner, who was charged with leaking classified U.S. documents to news outlet The Intercept, calling her a “brave, young patriot.” As TGP previously reported, Reality L. Winner was recently arrested for leaking classified documents to new outlet, The Intercept. TGP documented her hatred for President Trump via her social media, but what she said Thursday in her testimony sent shock waves across the internet. Reality Winner said she wanted to burn the White House down and pledged her allegiance to the Taliban. A GoFundMe was set up for NSA leaker, Reality Winner. The description read, “This is a time to come together and unite in peace and hope and show the world LOVE ALWAYS WINS over hate! Good resists even when evil persists!” The largest contribution was from Rosie O’Donnell. Rosie O’Donnell confirmed she contributed to the GoFundMe by tweeting it out from her official Twitter account, calling Reality Winner a ‘brave young patriot’.Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says that Donald Trump's five big wins Tuesday night mean the only thing left for establishment Republicans to do is to "get over it" and accept that Trump will be the GOP nominee. "You see the momentum building here," Gingrich said on Fox News Tuesday night. "I think it'd be very, very hard, virtually impossible, to stop him from winning the nomination at this point." "This is an enormous achievement building on New York, and means that he's almost certainly going to have an absolute majority of the delegates before you get to the convention in Cleveland," Gingrich added. Gingrich also laughed off the idea of a contested convention, after Fox host Bill Hemmer showed that Trump now has a likely path to getting the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the nomination. "My question to my good friends who talk about a contested convention is, if Trump comes out of California and New Jersey, somewhere, I think Bill Hemmer had him above 1,250 at that point, what's the contest?" Gingrich asked. "He won," he added. "And the challenge then for the Republican establishment is to get over it."We've been chronicling our experience and take on Qtrax, a new "free" P2P service that leverages DRM to push ads at users. Originally slated to launch this last weekend, the whole thing came unraveled when it was revealed that Qtrax didn't even have the licenses it needed to open its doors. Then they did the inexplicable: they posted the beta client 24 hours ago and opened up the service. The only problem? You can't download or play any music from the service. You download the client, install it, go through a registration process, and shazzam: hurry up and wait for "Downloads coming soon!" Installation was not easy, either. I cannot determine why, but when Songbird searches my disks for audio tracks to add to its built-in library, it causes my RAID array to flip out. The test machine was an nForce 4 board with NVIDIA's RAID, and once Songbird started scanning, Windows Vista and then the NVIDIA monitoring tool both reported that the RAID array was inaccessible. I then had five minutes of "RAID Access Failure" notifications before it stopped. Running diagnostics, I could find nothing wrong with the array. With all that behind me, I hopped on the service to check it out. Performance was painfully slow; browsing the Qtrax service via its Songbird-based player application is an exercise in frustration. In over an hour trying to use the site, I experienced nothing better than a 50% success rate trying to pull up pages or conduct searches. It took me 15 tries to "validate" my registration. "It's beta," you might say. Sure, they call it beta (version 0.2), but it doesn't even begin to work. How this is meant to generate excitement for Qtrax is beyond me. It seems like yet another colossal mistake from the Qtrax crew. The search function, for what it's worth, did turn up several hits on queries for popular artists. That's where the fun stops though, because you can't do anything else with it. Just before press time, the player reported that there were over 9.6 million songs on Qtrax and more than 18,000 users logged on. Qtrax claimed that they would have more than 25 million tracks. Since posting this, the service has gone kaput, reverting back to a generic Oracle Application Server page. It did this earlier in the day, too, only to return several hours later none the better. This time, I won't be holding my breath for something better to come out the other side. I can't recall a launch this hyped that failed so miserably in recent years. None of the key pieces are there—the licenses, playable music, well-tested client code, the web site itself—yet they opened it to the public. Ernest and Julio Gallo would not be pleased.LAGOS, Nigeria (CNN) -- More than 400 people have been killed in a spate of violence in northern Nigeria, the president of a human rights group said Tuesday. More than 150 alleged militants were arrested by Nigerian police after clashes. The violence has pitted Islamic militants against government police and troops in the north-central part of the nation, officials said. Attacks continued Tuesday in the suburbs of the northern city of Maiduguri, said Shehu Sani, president of the Civil Rights Congress, a human rights organization based in northern Nigeria. People there are seeking refuge in police and military barracks and in hospitals, he said. Police and troops were dispatched to the militants' hideouts after they began attacks on government establishments Sunday, said police spokesman Moses Anegbode. As authorities exchanged fire with the militants, 41 people, including a soldier and a policeman, were killed, Anegbode said Monday. In addition, some 176 people were arrested in Bauchi, he said. Besides Bauchi, militants also staged attacks on the nearby states of Yobe and Borno on Sunday and Monday, said Emmanuel Ojukwu, spokesman for the national police. Yobe's police commissioner, Alhaji Muhammed Abbas, said that 23 suspected militants were arrested in connection with a bomb attack at a police station in Potiskum that killed a policeman and a civilian and wounded seven people. Don't Miss Nigerian police accused over riot deaths The official News Agency of Nigeria reported that as many as 100 members of a religious sect led by Sheikh Mohammed Yusuf may have been killed in a confrontation with police. In Borno, police spokesman Isa Azare said that two policemen were killed in an attack on police headquarters late Monday. "The religious fanatics took the police unawares," Azare told the government-affiliated New Nigerian newspaper. "That was why they succeeded in killing all the officers on night duty." Panicked residents stayed inside in all three states, and businesses shut down, even though officials said the situation was under control. The militants used guns, bows and arrows and machetes in the attacks, officials said. The militants disagree with the government's teaching of Islam in the region, maintaining that the government allows itself to be influenced by Western values, and have been attacking government offices and Islamic clergy. There is a history of religious violence in central Nigeria, where majority-Muslim north Africa meets largely Christian sub-Saharan Africa. Human Rights Watch estimates that more than 1,000 people were killed in riots in 2001. The human rights organization alleged last week that police and soldiers killed at least 133 people during two days of riots between Muslims and Christians in Nigeria last year. Most of the victims were young Muslim men, often unarmed, the group charged in testimony before a state commission examining the riots and in a separate report. More than 700 people died in the violence, the organization said, citing local religious authorities on both sides of the divide. CNN's Christian Purefoy contributed to this report.[Editor’s note: while all Faith & Heritage writers are in basic agreement on fundamental principles, we are not monolithic on secondary issues or even always on how those fundamental principles should be applied. An example of this is these two articles examining the early Trump presidency from differing points of view. We present both of them to you for your consideration.] First, let me say that if you haven’t been paying attention since the inauguration or are in the “all of Trump’s failures are actually 4D chess” camp, then Colby’s article will be a much-needed bucket of cold water in the face. Trump ran on a specific platform, and when he fails to live up to that platform people need to take notice, hold him accountable, and not just hand-wave it away. My two main problems with Colby’s article are that he treats Trump voters as a monolithic group rather than the heterogeneous coalition it was, and that he fails to articulate the goals and motivations of the portion of that pro-Trump coalition associated with this website. Colby does distinguish early on in the article between the Alt-Right who have led the charge in the criticism of Trump for failing to deliver on his foreign policy promises and those more mainstream Trump supporters who either approved of it, didn’t care, or made 4D chess excuses. But that distinction largely disappears for the rest of the article, which thus seems to convey criticism of all Trump voters rather than only those who aren’t holding him accountable. This is doubly important, because that failure to differentiate between the different pre-election pro-Trump groups prevents an accurate assessment of whether or not Trump’s presidency so far should induce “buyer’s remorse.” Let’s take a step back and address the question, “Why does the right wing vote?” I speak not of the classical liberals who call themselves conservatives, as they vote for the same reason as progressive liberals: religious faith in the system of democracy. An Enlightenment faith born out of the bloody revolution cry of “Liberté, égalité, fraternité” – to which the Right answered, “God, king, country.” So why does a group with a firm belief in hierarchical authority, disdain for the idea of “one man, one vote,” scorn for the democratic process and the leaders it produces, and a hall of heroes including a wide array of kings, autocrats, and authoritarians participate in democracy? The answer is very simple: rightists see reality clearly, understand their duty to struggle for their principles, and possess the pragmatism to engage in that struggle using whatever tools are available to them. When the liberal, whether classical or progressive, pulls the voting lever, it is with a religious faith in democracy and democratic solutions; when the rightist does so, it is with a sneer and a view towards the wider long-term struggle. Democracy is a false god, and voting is not a sacred act. It is from this framework that I view the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the Trump presidency. The argument for voting for the lesser of two evils is not automatically valid; we are not required to vote for the Republican candidate just to defeat the Democrat candidate of [the current year]. One must make an argument that the candidate in question constitutes a positive good that outweighs the bad, and such a case can still be made for Trump. Such a case could not have been made for any of the other previous presidential elections I was able to vote in (’04, ’08, ’12), and in fact I would argue that Obama was the lesser of two evils in 2008, because John McCain is literally insane. I normally vote Constitution Party and will likely go back to voting that way in 2020 if Trump does not sufficiently deliver. But in 2016, supporting him was the correct choice and I do not regret my vote for him, because I’ve already attained the minimum I wanted from him: Trump sparked a great political realignment; white working class in and (((New York political class))) out in terms of party base Trump brought a truly right-wing political platform to the national stage for the first since Pat Buchanan; whether he follows through or not is immaterial to the fact that things like America First and a border wall are now a part of the national conversation again Trump ripped the masks off the cuckservatives and party elite; whether or not he stands up to their agenda is immaterial to the fact that many normal Republican now view them as the enemy Trump ripped the masks off mainstream media; phrases like the Lying Press and Fake News exist in the national lexicon because of the Trump presidency The Trump candidacy has propelled the Alt-Right into the national spotlight and given us a platform we otherwise wouldn’t have had Because the Left believe him to be literally Hitler, we’ve gotten a nonstop stream of hysterical headlines divorced from reality that will continue to delegitimize the Left in the eyes of normal people Note that all of these things are independent of anything he has done or will do in office. Did I hope that Trump would swiftly deliver on all his campaign promises? Absolutely. And he has done that on a number issues. For example, Trump killed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, appointed the great Jeff Sessions as Attorney General, and exposed the federal judiciary as treasonous snakes by forcing them to block his half-hearted attempts at border security. But Trump was never going to fix the United States, which is almost certainly unfixable at this point. There was a pipe dream that if Trump was very, very good, he might lay the foundation for someone else to enact a peaceful and orderly national-level solution, but that was always a remote possibility at best, and it was never going to be Trump himself. In all likelihood, the best outcome of Trump keeping his promises would only have been to make our situation more favorable for the impending civil war once the Republican party stops being nationally viable. It would not have prevented it. But making our situation more favorable for that conflict is still a completely valid reason for supporting Trump. The problem with Colby’s analysis is that he is taking all the negatives from Trump’s administration, focusing on them to the exclusion of everything else, and then extrapolating them out over the next four years. The reality is that there seems to be an ongoing power struggle inside the Trump administration between nationalist and globalist camps resulting in a stream of ever-oscillating decisions and rhetoric that are good, then bad, then good again And this struggle is crippling the speed of implementation for the promises that are actually being kept. This being the case, trying to extrapolate out a trajectory for Trump’s entire first term at this point is foolhardy. It will likely end up being a mixed bag of promises kept and broken, policies good and bad, the exact ratio of which will only be clear in hindsight. We will continue to capitalize on the good and criticize the bad. My expectation was always that we would be exiting the Trump Train sooner or later, because Colby is correct: Trump is no ideologue, and he would eventually abandon Trumpism. Do I feel betrayed and disappointed that the derailment appears to have happened so quickly? Of course. Do I have buyer’s remorse? Absolutely not. The choice to board the Trump Train was based not on faith in democratic solutions, but on a belief that Trumpism would result in progress for our movement. The nationalist struggle continues with or without Trump, whether that be in highlighting the highly negative Jewish influence of Kushner and company in Trump’s administration, or battling communists in the streets for the right to hold our rallies unmolested (both of which Colby seems to disapprove of for some reason?). And let’s us be clear: we knew exactly what we were getting with Hillary – evil. Trump was a dice roll, a dice roll with a chance that Trump was a Pat Buchanan-lite. The anti-Trumpers did not possess a crystal ball, they did not know for certain that Trump would not carry through on all his campaign promises. Both sides were betting on that dice roll; it’s just that the anti-Trump side was betting on a losing result. As much as they are enjoying the satisfaction of being partially correct, we will never make progress by betting on a losing result. You don’t win a war by sitting on your thumbs waiting for the perfect opportunity to come along for a one-step victory. Victory comes by seizing every good opportunity that materializes and capitalizing on them for incremental progress. Trump was a good opportunity, I’m glad we took it, and we have made progress.Media outlet “outs” corporate executive as man behind Twitter account encouraging terrorism http://t.co/FO6O1mvNbL pic.twitter.com/K0DXAVmvhO — Think AgainTurn Away (@ThinkAgain_DOS) December 11, 2014 For years, a Twitter account bearing the name @ShamiWitness had been one of the most vocal online voices on the war in Syria. The person behind the account — which had 20,000 followers, including analysts in the Middle East and farther afield — appeared to have a vast knowledge of the conflict and had a surprisingly polite tone. At some point, however, it became clear that Shami Witness wasn't just an observer of the war. By the start of 2014, he had become a big supporter of the Islamic State: On Twitter, he would defend the Sunni militant group from detractors and offer support to people thinking of traveling to join its fight. As the Islamic State beheaded journalists and wrought terror on Iraq and Syria, many people who interacted with him online grew increasingly uncomfortable. On Thursday evening, Britain's Channel 4 News revealed that it had discovered the identity of Shami Witness. They reported that he was an executive named Mehdi living in Bangalore, with a Facebook page full of pictures of "pizza dinners with friends and Hawaiian parties at work." Despite his support for the Islamic State, Mehdi had not gone to fight with them. "If I had a chance to leave everything and join [the Islamic State] I might have," Mehdi told Channel 4, explaining that his "family needs me here." Channel 4, citing his concerns for his safety, did not reveal his full identity, and the Shami Witness Twitter account was deleted soon after. Among those following the Syrian war and the jihadist movement online, this'semi-doxxing' of Shami Witness produced both shock and schadenfreude. Some mocked the mundanely normal life the Islamic State supporter seemed to lead, while others suggested that Shami Witness had always been taken too seriously by his international audience. Shami Witness cheered when people were beheaded - but when outed by the news, he begged for privacy claiming his life would be endangered. — Shiraz Maher (@ShirazMaher) December 11, 2014 So many counter-terrorism experts considered Shami Witness to be an authority on Syria. Too bad he was just some loser in India... — James Miller (@MillerMENA) December 11, 2014 If Shami Witness had emigrated to Raqqa from Banglore he would now be cleaning all the toilets in the city. Subhana Allah. #Baqia — BSyria (@BSyria) December 11, 2014 In a war that has proved exceptionally difficult for the international media to cover, the saga of Shami Witness may well reveal the limitations of following the conflict online. "Shami Witness was an example of a certain kind of person on social media, someone who repeats what they see from other sources as his own comments on the situation at hand, often information shared by pro-IS accounts in Arabic, which gives a false sense of his knowledge about the situation," Eliot Higgins, a British blogger who has tracked the war under the name Moses Brown, explained in an e-mail to WorldViews. "These kinds of individuals are harder to identify for the casual user on social media, so they tend to gain followers which lends them more credibility," Higgins added. "He demonstrates that judging the credibility of a source isn't always straight forward, and why with social media it's important to use multiple sources before relying too much on one claim being credible or not." While most of Shami Witness's extremist life appeared to be lived out online, there may well be serious problems for him now in real life. Despite Channel 4's attempt to conceal his identity, revelations about his purported full name are now spreading online. It seems likely that Indian authorities and many others will be very interested in that. In a conflict where much of the battle for hearts and minds has been fought online, perhaps that is appropriate. And it is worth noting that after Channel 4's story went live, a number of other extremist Twitter accounts deleted themselves.While the NHL will conclude the Conference Finals this week and begin the Stanley Cup Finals in the days after Memorial Day, the countdown is on until next season in Minnesota, with puck drop on opening night somewhere in the neighborhood of 140 days away. ST. PAUL -- In the weeks since a disappointing end to the 2016-17 season, the power brokers within the Wild have been gathering at team headquarters to get a jump on the 2017-18 season. Between now and then, the Wild will navigate an unprecedented summer, with an expansion draft, an entry draft, a free agency period and a prospect camp, all of which could help shape the team that will hit the ice for training camp in September. Two weeks ago, Wild General Manager Chuck Fletcher met with his pro scouts to gauge how to move forward with things like trades, free agency and how guys in the minors could make a jump next season, among other topics. Last week, it was time to meet with the amateur scouting staff. Assistant General Manager Brent Flahr, who helps shape the Wild's NHL Draft war room, was also in attendance. Minnesota does not have a first- or second-round pick in the upcoming edition of the draft, which will be held in Chicago June 23-24. Still, the club has a strategy in place should that change over the next month. "I've had our guys approach it like we have a late first and a second. Just normally prepare and keep focused on players in those areas," Flahr said. "If we're looking to add picks, there's picks out there to get if we want to move something and get one in both the first and second round." Normally, the Wild may not be in a position to deal an asset for a high draft pick. As a cap team with a number of pieces that could interest clubs, the looming expansion draft could change that strategy. Minnesota, along with every other team, is guaranteed to lose one player in the draft, meaning clubs could seek some sort of compensation as opposed to losing a good player for nothing. Whether the Wild chooses to do that remains to be seen, but it's certainly an option that is on the table and has been discussed internally. "Chuck is on the phone daily, getting a number of different scenarios thrown at him as far as potential trades," Flahr said. "I've spoken to Vegas a number of times, as well, in terms of what they're looking for and maybe what they would [need] to take a certain player or not take a certain player. But we've gone through these scenarios 100 times and we'll keep going through them right up until the draft." One of the reasons the Wild felt comfortable surrendering a first-round pick in this year's draft was the perceived quality and depth of players available. The class of 2017 has been viewed by scouts and analysts league-wide as one of the weaker classes in recent memory. The Wild, which had one of the NHL's best records at the deadline, was willing to trade a high pick as long as it kept its hold on its high-end prospects already in the pipeline. Minnesota's second-round pick was dealt to Buffalo at the 2015 trade deadline in a swap that brought Chris Stewart to the club. Stewart had since left the team via free agency, signing a one-year deal with Anaheim in 2015 before re-signing with the Wild last summer. "This year, just looking at it for a couple years we saw it coming, as being a shallower draft," Flahr said. "There are some good players. There are no [Connor] McDavids at the top end, but there are some good players at the top. Unfortunately, in this draft, it just doesn't have the depth of higher-end talent. But there are still going to be some useful players as we get through the first few rounds. Some of them, you just have to project. They're not finished projects." As of now, the Wild does have one third-round pick to work with, as well as two fourth-rounders and one selection in each the fifth, sixth and seventh rounds. Without the benefit of a high draft pick, the Wild will instead be hunting for upside in hopes of hitting on at least one late round pick. Flahr has had some success in doing just that over the years, selecting players like Erik Haula (seventh round) and Darcy Kuemper (sixth round), who have already made contributions at the NHL level. Kirill Kaprizov (fifth round, 2015) and Dmitri Sokolov (seventh round, 2016) are each coming off seasons in which they flashed high-end potential. "First round picks, you can't miss. You're trying to hit upside with certain picks. After the first round, you're looking at different strengths or assets," Flahr said. "Obviously, if a player has a couple of major assets that you feel strongly about and you think the rest of his game could round out, then you move them up on your list." Both Kaprizov and Sokolov are also examples of the Russian market, one which the Wild hasn't dipped into as often during Fletcher's time with the organization. Minnesota, like other franchises, is becoming more willing to invest in Russian players. "I think we've seen in recent years, there's somewhat of a flood of players coming from the KHL to over here. I think teams are more comfortable drafting them because they feel strongly that they can get them over here," Flahr said. "There's some quality players, Russia produces some very good players historically, [but] you have to do your homework and find guys that really have a passion to play in the NHL. That's as important as anything." For Flahr, this time of year is the most exciting part of his job. While the season didn't end the way it was expected to, now the job of improving the future is up to Flahr and his army of scouts. "It really stung for awhile. I don't think anybody is over [how the season ended]. There are some really good teams left, and you just wonder what might have been if we were able to get past that first round," Flahr said. "But it is what it is. Now we have to try and get better for next year."Study: Christians Concerned About Global Poverty, Unaware of Progress Email Print Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin According to a new study, 93 percent of Christians say they are concerned about global poverty, but many of them are unaware of the progress that has been made in the quest to eliminate poverty worldwide. The study was conducted in September by the Barna Group, which surveyed 1,429 adults in the U.S. with an oversampling of young Christians. The survey was commissioned by Compassion International, a Christian organization that ministers to over 1.2 million needy children in 26 different countries worldwide. One-third of Christians surveyed said they were “extremely concerned” about the world's poverty problems and four out of five of Christians said they feel a special responsibility to help solve them. Scott C. Todd, senior ministry advisor in the President's Office of Compassion International, said Christians, especially those belonging to younger generations, have become increasingly involved in taking up the cause of the impoverished. "What would happen if these millions of Christians began to live out the fundamental teachings of their faith in a new way? What if they began to take seriously the Biblical teachings about the poor and oppressed? What if they formed a new relationship with the global poor?" asked Todd. "I believe these changes are underway on a massive scale. We are witnessing an awakening." The study found that younger Christians, those under the age of 40, give 50 percent more than older Christians to fight global poverty. Also, 45 percent of young Christians believe their churches should do more to help the poor, as opposed to just 23 percent of older Christians who believe the same. The study also found many Christians, despite their concern and generosity toward the poor, aren't aware of how much progress has been made in the last several decades. Over the last 30 years the extreme poverty rate has actually decreased from 52 percent to 26 percent worldwide, but 93 percent of those surveyed guessed the rate to be the same or worse than it was in 1990. Ending extreme poverty seems like an unrealistic goal to most people, but Todd says it is closer than most realize. His book, Fast Living: How the Church Will End Extreme Poverty, tackles this issue and says the goal is within reach. “As Christians who are already deeply concerned about global poverty begin to understand they can bring an end to extreme poverty – that it is doable – we will see an even more dramatic increase in engagement," he writes. According to the Barna study, 46 percent of those surveyed said they would “do significantly more” to end poverty if they knew that it was possible. Todd doesn't just think it's possible, he thinks it is possible within the next 25 years if Christians step up to address the problem. Todd played a major role in the creation of 58:, a coalition of Christian organizations, churches and individuals who are working together to address the poverty problem. “58: The Film” is a documentary promoting the organization's cause by showing the horrors of extreme poverty – the lack of food, water, education and a safe place to live in some places of the world – and how God and His people are making a difference. The film was released this past weekend and can be viewed at group screenings or in DVD, broadcast and online formats. In September, the film's co-director, Tony Neeves, told CP, "The Bible is really clear that God loves the poor and the oppressed, and has a very special concern for them, and really calls His children, His followers, to have that same heart.” On the Web: live58.orgIn Jonathan Franzen’s 2010 novel Freedom, lauded for its biting critique of the US environmental movement, a conservationist enters a Faustian pact with a coal miner. He cuts a deal in which a community of 200 families are to be relocated and a mountain denuded in return for the creation of a sanctuary for warblers. In this week’s New Yorker, Franzen flirts with his own protagonist’s folly by proposing to protect birds by giving up on the fight to slow down climate change. A suggestion that has angered and confused bird conservationists across the world. Franzen begins his essay with an expression of deep and admirable love for birds, for which he has been a long-time advocate. He “cares more about birds than the next man”, he says. His typically brilliant opening double entendre works as an ode to birds, but also reveals an apathy for his fellow humans. They are beyond help from climate change and thus beyond caring about it. Birds on the other hand have a future. It’s a modern, nihilistic rendition of Byron’s declaration: “I love not man the less, but Nature more.” “The Earth as we now know it resembles a patient whose terminal cancer we can choose to treat either with disfiguring aggression or with palliation and sympathy. We can dam every
the precincts reporting, voters have correctly rejected the Amendment I will update this page as updated results come in. Keep in mind that you must have 60% of the votes in order to pass an amendment in Florida, so this one isn’t even close. For now, the wall between church and state remains standing! ***Update***: A couple of atheists are rejoicing on Twitter: I’m psyched about amendment 8 failing. Thank you #fsr12 attendees an organizers — David Silverman (@MrAtheistPants) November 7, 2012Despite desperate media efforts to mislead and stonewall, it has become common knowledge that Syed Farook was a Muslim terrorist, as was his ISIS-tied wife Tashfeen Malik. It looks like the Obama Administration has given up on the “workplace violence” line. The gloves have come off: Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Thursday warned that the Justice Department could take aggressive action against people whose anti-Muslim rhetoric “edges towards violence” and told the Muslim community that “we stand with you in this.” Speaking at Muslim Advocate’s 10th anniversary dinner, Lynch said since the terrorist attacks in Paris last month, she is increasingly concerned with the “incredibly disturbing rise of anti-Muslim rhetoric … that fear is my greatest fear.” At least this should resolve any lingering doubts about whose side the federal government is on. We are under armed attack on our own soil, and our government is threatening to imprison us for criticizing the attackers. The Civil War was fought over less than what Obama and his enablers have brought us to. The ugly winds are here. On tips from Artdlgr, Sean C, Henry, JeffersonSpinningInGrave, Byron, and Stormfax.Quickly, when you hear the name “Bulletman”, what’s the first thing that comes to your mind? Personally I image some sort of dark, brooding, Punisher type hero who lets his guns do the talking and they aren’t taking “no” for an answer. Kind of like what you might have found in a lot of comics from the 1990’s. Side note: the above image is a character named Overtkill. Yes, that is how you spell his name. Well, in the 1940’s a company called Fawcett Comics created a character named Bulletman and he looked like this: Good Lord…that hat! Origin and Career Bulletman made his first appearance in Nickel Comics #1 in May of 1940. He was published by Fawcett Comics and was created by writer/editor Bill Parker and artist John Smalle. Bill Parker created Fawcett’s most popular character, Captain Marvel. Remember this, it will be important later. As for origins, Bulletman’s civilian identity is Jim Barr. His story takes a welcome break from the “I’m just going to fight crime because I’m rich and I have nothing better to do” school of thought and takes its cues from the Batman school of crime fighting. Namely, his parents get killed by criminals so he decides to fight crime at a young age. No word on what happened to his mom. A couple of things are interesting in this origin story. First, the boy is a scientist and never had any aspirations to be an athlete, so that’s a pretty good deviation from the norm. Second, he develops a “crime cure” because he believes that crime is a disease that can be treated like malaria or small pox. Wow, there’s…enough to unpack in that last panel alone to fill an entire book. So let’s skip over that and save it for arguing in the comments. Sadly, Jim suffers from the plight that all smart people seem to suffer from in fiction, having his career hampered by idiots and jocks. Three things to note here on this page. First, this is the best scan I could find. Second, the only one who believes in him is a pretty lady named Susan Kent, who eventually becomes his girlfriend and wife. Finally, notice how the cop in the second to last panel is openly justifying torture to extract a confession from a criminal using a rubber hose. Meanwhile the “crime cure” works! Sort of… I mean, it turns him into a superhero so yeah…he gets to cure crime by punching things. He continues his reckless use of using things without testing them by building a gravity defying helmet and leaping out a window before it can be tested. Thankfully the helmet works, even if he looks hilarious in it, and he manages to stop the criminals and save the day. Bulletman would go on to be one of Fawcett’s most successful heroes, second only to Captain Marvel. After his career took off (har har) he did something strange and actually didn’t fight Nazis or Nazi spies. Instead he fought criminals both with his superpowers and as a police scientist. Of course, just punching people can get boring pretty quickly so in April of 1941 Bulletman appeared in Master Comics #12 and his lady friend Susan Kent wound up discovering his identity. The police chief’s daughter did in a matter of months what Lois Lane couldn’t do in years and in the following issue she confronts him about it. The two wind up reconciling after Susan saves Bulletman’s life by giving herself the same powers and “finding an extra helmet lying around”. And the two became a crime fighting couple to be reckoned with. So what happened? By all accounts Bulletman and Bulletgirl should have survived into the modern day. He was a popular character, he had an interesting backstory, and he was regularly seen with one of the most popular superheroes of the 1940’s. And that was the problem. See, while Fawcett Comics had a huge amount of success with Captain Marvel it turned out that his greatest enemy wasn’t a super villain, but legal action. It turned out that DC Comics looked at the hordes of tall white guys with super strength, super speed, flight, and a secret identity and decided that a lot of them were a little too close to their big time money maker: Superman. We can debate the truth to this statement all day, but what’s not debatable is the results and in the case National Comics Publications v. Fawcett Comics National Comics won and Fawcett was forced to pay damages and cease publication of Captain Marvel. It’s worth mentioning that the case made its first initial court appearance in 1941 with the final decision made a decade later, making this one of the longest copyright cases in comic book history. Fawcett was decimated by the case and ceased publishing comics in 1953, and while they would restart publishing comics in the 60’s, they wound up handing their entire stable of superheroes over to DC comics in 1972. Bulletman and Bulletgirl made the leap as well and appeared in a new superhero group called “The Squadron of Justice” to defeat the forces of a villain named King Kull. They kept the helmets because why the hell not? They make the costume. The two would be moved into the All Star Squadron, a DC Comics superhero team that was placed in a universe where World War 2 was still happening. The two would go on to have a fairly important supporting role in DC’s SHAZAM! books. He got to meet Green Lantern mentor Abin Sur, and at one point, Bulletman was actually accused of being a Nazi collaborator in 1998’s Starman #39 although he was naturally cleared of all charges. Bulletman and Bulletgirl would also have a kid! In 1997 they had a kid named Deana who donned her mother’s helmet and became the hero Windshear. She dated Captain Marvel for a bit and helped her Dad rescue Marvel from a villain named Chain Lightening. The group has even inspired copies of their own, although they were all published within DC Comics so there was no court case. In 2005 Grant Morrison published a book series called Seven Soldiers, which was based on many of the old Fawcett characters. Bullet girl became “Bulleteer” and she looked like this. So nice to know the phallic helmets didn’t just remain, they got bigger. In a way I’m upset that Bulletman and Bulletgirl wound up where they are today. By all accounts they should still be around today since they did hold their own with some of the big name heroes of the Golden Age of Comics and the fact that they were a capable pairing as husband and wife adds an interesting dynamic that you don’t really see with a lot of comic book superheroes. They were a solid team with a solid story and a solid power set and deserve a place right alongside their famous colleague Captain Marvel. AdvertisementsNova Scotians who participated in radon testing are urging others in the province to protect their health and check their houses for the cancer-causing radioactive gas. Conny McRiner of Timberlea was shocked to learn her home had high levels of radon: 524 becquerels, or more than double the maximum of 200 recommended by Health Canada. A becquerel is a unit of measurement for radioactivity. McRiner's husband, Scott, spends his days in their basement where he has a home office. "That's what really scared me," said Conny McRiner. "If we weren't in the basement, if it was just where he had a workshop, I wouldn't be as concerned. But where he is down there Monday to Friday, all day working, that is a really big concern for me." Known cause of lung cancer Timberlea is an area of Nova Scotia identified as having high levels of the naturally occurring gas, which is created by the breakdown of radium in soil, rock and water. Long-term exposure to the odourless, tasteless gas is known to increase the risk of lung cancer. Conny McRiner's home tested high for radon with a reading more than twice the recommended Health Canada limit. (CBC) McRiner and her husband bought their home less than two years ago. She said if they'd been living there for longer, she would be urging her husband to talk to his doctor. She recommends others test for radon. As a real estate agent, McRiner said testing can make a difference when it's time to sell. "You can say, "We had our radon checked. It was high and this is the system we have to protect you and your family when you buy our house.'" 'What would have happened over the years?' Testing at Carly Brake's Halifax home also identified a problem. "We have a result of 353 [becquerels], which is above the recommended 200," she said. "They're telling me I have to get remediation done within the next two years to be able to get into a safe zone." Brake, who has a toddler, said she was surprised by the results. "As much as you know it can happen anywhere, you still kind of don't think it's going to be you," she said. Her basement area is used mostly for laundry and storage but she has already contacted companies to get rid of the radon. Halifax resident Carly Brake and her family plan to stay in their home for a long time. She wonders what the health effects would have been had she not tested for radon and learned she needs to take action against it. (CBC) "What would have happened over the years?" she said. "This is our home. We expect to stay here for a long time. Elevated levels over the years would have certainly increased our chances of cancer." 'Peace of mind' On the other side of the spectrum, Marilyn Martineau of Eastern Passage was delighted with her results, which showed very low levels of radon in her downstairs family room. Her husband, Denis, spends a lot of time there watching sports. "Just knowing there could be a silent killer roaming around in your basement is very unsettling and this just gave us peace of mind," she said. McRiner, Brake and Martineau were three of five homes tested after the Radiation Safety Institute of Canada offered five tests to the CBC as a way of raising awareness about radon and the dangers it can pose. Marilyn Martineau of Eastern Passage was delighted with her radon results, showing levels well below the acceptable limits. (CBC) The tests were distributed to the first five people who were interested in participating. Two of the tests showed high results, the remaining three were below acceptable levels. Lung Association tests show high levels The Lung Association of Nova Scotia also recently offered free radon test kits to 500 Nova Scotians who live in areas where radon is known to be high. They included Cape Breton, central Nova Scotia, the South Shore, the Annapolis Valley and the Halifax municipality. "The results we have so far show that about 50 per cent of the homes were actually over the 200 becquerel guidelines which is cause for concern, no question," said Robert MacDonald, a spokesperson for the association. He said previous studies show that approximately 10 to 15 per cent of homes in the province are usually above the limit but in this case they did target areas that are known to have higher levels. Radon is everywhere Radon seeps into homes through sump pump holes, cracks in the foundation, earthen floors or anywhere there's an opening. There are still people that have not heard of radon and the danger that it can cause. - Robert MacDonald, Lung Association of Nova Scotia Outside, it disperses to harmless levels. But inside homes it can build up and be very dangerous, particularly when it's inhaled over a significant period of time. The lung association has said it's estimated 120 Nova Scotians die from lung cancer caused by radon every year. Still, the problem isn't on everyone's radar. "There are still people that have not heard of radon and the danger that it can cause," said MacDonald. Tests easy and inexpensive Test kits can be purchased through the lung association or at many hardware stores for approximately $40. The association recommends people use long-term kits that stay in place for three months rather than the three-day tests that are also on the market. The cost of getting rid of radon can vary depending on individual situations. "Ninety per cent of the work we do costs between $1,400 and $1,500," said Mike Hennessey, the owner of Radon Atlantic. "Occasionally it can cost as much as $2,500 but I can't remember the last time the bill was over $3,000."Have your say A FOOTBALL pitch in the Western Isles has been recognised by FIFA as one of the most remarkable places in the world to play a match. A match played on the field on the island of Eriskay has been recorded for screening at FIFA’s new museum in Switzerland, due to open next year. “One time we had five corners, now we are down to four corners” Martin Macaulay The island, which has a population of fewer than 150, is known for the shipwreck that inspired Compton Mackenzie’s novel Whisky Galore! - the SS Politician ran aground off Eriskay in 1941 with a cargo of whisky. Martin Macaulay, the manager of Eriskay FC, told BBC Alba that the playing surface was far from pristine. “[It’s] well bumpy. It’s just all over the place. “One time we had five corners, now we are down to four corners.” Fans of the island football team have claimed that a rock once lay in part of the pitch, which the home side used to ‘play one-twos off’. Mr Macaulay added: “It is unique with its views of Eriskay. It is a nice place.” Eriskay FC compete in the Uist and Barra League, coming up against the likes of Benbecula FC; North Uist United; Iochdar Saints; Barra FC and Southend.When you test your autosomal DNA, your X-DNA is also examined and included in your raw data &/or match results. When you match someone on your autosomal DNA and also share segments on the X-chromosome, the unique inheritance pattern of X-chromosomes can help isolate your common ancestor to particular lines of your ancestry. X-Matches in autosomal results Family Tree DNA's Family Finder test identifies X-Matches with people you already match via your autosomal DNA, and clearly displays them in your match list (as below). You can also view the X-match detail in the FTDNA chromosome browser, and download all chromosome browser data to Excel or other software or sites for further analysis if desired (eg. GEDmatch). 23andMe X-DNA can be viewed in the 23andMe chromosome browser or downloaded, but only for those matches who choose to share genomes with you. The raw data can be transferred to GEDmatch for comparison with other kits in the GEDmatch database. AncestryDNA does not provide or show any X-DNA information, so X-chromosome information can only be accessed by transferring a copy of the raw data to FTDNA or GEDmatch for analysis. X-Chromosomes Your sex is determined by the X and Y sex chromosomes: chromosome pair number 23. Males inherit a Y chromosome from their fathers and an X chromosome from their mothers. So all their X-DNA is inherited from their mother. Females inherit an X chromosome from their fathers, and an X chromosome from their mothers. (Click on image above to open in a new tab, then right-click to save a copy if desired) A mother contributes an X chromosome that is usually a recombined mix of both of her X chromosomes (but not always), and fathers contribute their whole X chromosome intact to their daughters. Because males only inherit an X chromosome from their mothers, if a male has an X-match in his DNA results, the shared ancestor must be on an ancestral line that follows the male X-inheritance pattern, as below (in green): (Click on chart above to open a higher resolution image in a new tab, then right-click to save a copy if desired) Because females inherit X chromosomes from both parents, if a female has an X-match in her DNA results, the shared ancestor must be on an ancestral line that follows the female X-inheritance pattern, as below (in green): (Click on chart above to open a higher resolution image in a new tab, then right-click to save a copy if desired) X-DNA cannot be passed down through two successive male generations. Because some X chromosomes pass down intact (through males) and skip a generation without recombining, and others are recombined (through females), the average expected percentage of shared X-DNA at each generation varies depending on the branch of the pedigree chart. (Click on chart above to open a higher resolution image in a new tab, then right-click to save a copy if desired) Compare the percentages across the same generations below. For example, at the great-great-great-grandparent level, notice how the expected percentage of inherited X-DNA is only 3.1% on the far right direct maternal line, versus 12.5% on the left-most paternal line (and some other lines) at the same generation level. (Click on chart above to open a higher resolution image in a new tab, then right-click to save a copy if desired) With no X inherited from some ancestors, varying amounts inherited from others, the randomness of DNA recombination at each generation, and occasional sticky segments passed down intact over several generations, X-DNA can be quite unpredictable and difficult to interpret exactly where it came from. It is common to share segments of X-DNA with people who share no significant amount of autosomal DNA. Males generally get far fewer X-matches than females. X-DNA's best and most practical use is for isolating matches to particular family lines, even though the amount inherited cannot tell you from whom or how far back it came. Nor can the absence of any X-DNA disprove your relationship (except for immediate family members - see below). Focus on larger X-matches, such as 20cM or more, as smaller segments may not be reliable. For FTDNA X-matches, use the chromosome browser to check the segment sizes. Excel Surname Template Click the image to the right to download an Excel spreadsheet surname template to create your own X inheritance pattern pedigree charts - create one for each person that you test (separate sheets for male & female charts). Practical uses of X-DNA If a male shares X-DNA with a match, then the ancestor in common will be on his mother's ancestral lines, according to the X inheritance patterns in the 'Male' charts above. If siblings have tested their autosomal DNA, and a brother has X-matches in common with his sister(s), then the sisters will know that those particular X-matches must have come from their mother, as their brother could only have inherited them from their mother If brothers share very little X-DNA with each other, one would have inherited most of his X from his mother's father and the other would have inherited most of his X from his mother's mother, or they inherited the exact opposite of a recombined X. If brothers share most of their X-DNA, they would have inherited it either from the same maternal grandparent, or the same or very similar recombined X from both maternal grandparents. If half sisters with the same mother share very little X-DNA with each other, one would have inherited most of her X from her mother's father and the other would have inherited most of her X from her mother's mother, or they each inherited the exact opposite of a recombined X. If half sisters with the same mother share most of their X-DNA, they would have inherited it either from the same maternal grandparent, or the same or very similar recombined X. A daughter will share a whole X chromosome with her father. Full sisters will share a whole X chromosome, from their father. Half sisters will share a whole X chromosome if they have the same father. You can attribute X segments to particular grandparents by comparing your X-DNA with cousins and other close relatives from each side of your family. Don't forget to ask your match to look at the charts above and work out which of their lines you could match them on, to narrow down the possible branches from both sides of the family! Useful Links“Mosul Eye,” a self-described historian who covertly recorded Islamic State (ISIS) crimes and helped get the information out into the world, has revealed his real identity. For “nearly two years,” 31-year-old Omar Mohammed “wandered the streets of occupied Mosul, chatting with shopkeepers and Islamic State fighters, visiting friends who worked at the hospital, swapping scraps of information,” which he used to alert the outside world, according to an AP report. “He grew out his hair and his beard and wore the shortened trousers required by IS. He forced himself to witness the beheadings and deaths by stoning, so he could hear the killers call out the names of the condemned and their supposed crimes,” AP reported. “He wasn’t a spy. He was an undercover historian and blogger.” “As IS turned the Iraqi city he loved into a fundamentalist bastion, he decided he would show the world how the extremists had distorted its true nature, how they were trying to rewrite the past and forge a brutal Sunni-only future for a city that had once welcomed many faiths,” they explained. “He called himself Mosul Eye. He made a promise to himself in those first few days: Trust no one, document everything. Neither family, friends nor the Islamic State group could identify him. His readership grew by the thousands every month.” Mohammed, who worked as a teacher, used his information to alert the world of ISIS’ crimes. Crimes which started with the stoning and shooting of around 500 women accused of prostitution. He finally escaped to Turkey, where he then received asylum in Europe. “Then it went after men accused of being gay, flinging them off tall buildings,” AP wrote. “When the only Mosul residents left were fellow Sunnis, they too were not spared, according to the catalog of horrors that is Mosul Eye’s daily report. He detailed the deaths and whippings, for spying and apostasy, for failing to attend prayers, for overdue taxes. The blog attracted the attention of the fanatics, who posted death threats in the comments section.” According to Mohammed’s reporting, ISIS also “beheaded a 14-year-old in front of a crowd,” and severed “the hand of a child accused of stealing,” while Yazidi women received forced abortions and tubal ligation surgeries. Mohammed claimed that a doctor told him “there had been between 50 and 60 forced abortions and a dozen Yazidi girls younger than 15 died of injuries from repeated rapes.” Last month, Omar Mohammed revealed his real identity to the public, declaring, “I can’t be anonymous anymore. This is to say that I defeated ISIS. You can see me now, and you can know me now.”Analysis A computer at the center of a lawsuit digging into woeful cyber-security practices during the US presidential election has been wiped. The server in question is based in Georgia – a state that narrowly backed Donald Trump, giving him 16 electoral votes – and stored the results from the state's voting systems. The deletion of its data makes analysis of whether the computer was compromised impossible to ascertain. There is good reason to believe that the computer may have been tampered with: it is 15 years old, and could have be harboring all sorts of exploitable software and hardware vulnerabilities. No hard copies of the votes are kept, making the electronic copy the only official record. It is feared the machine may have been hacked by Russian agents, who have taken a keen interest in the 2016 White House race, or potentially any miscreant on the planet. While investigating the Kennesaw State University's Center for Election Systems, which oversees Georgia's voting system, last year, security researcher Logan Lamb found its system was misconfigured, exposing the state's entire voter registration records, multiple PDFs with instructions and passwords for election workers, and the software systems used to tally votes cast. "You could just go to the root of where they were hosting all the files and just download everything without logging in," he said. He also noted the files had been indexed by Google, making them readily available to anyone looking in the right place. Despite Lamb letting the election center knows of his findings, the security holes were left unpatched for seven months. He later went public after the US security services announced there had been a determined effort by the Russian government to sway the presidential elections, including looking at compromising electronic voting machines. Let's have a look In an effort to force the state to scrap the system, a number of Georgia voters bandied together and sued. They asked for an independent security review of the server, expecting to find flaws that would lend weight to their argument for investment in a more modern and secure system. But emails released this week following a Freedom of Information Act request reveal that technicians at the election center deleted the server's data on July 7 – just days after the lawsuit was filed. The memos reveal multiple references to the data wipe, including a message sent just last week from an assistant state attorney general to the plaintiffs in the case. That same email also notes that backups of the server data were also deleted more than a month after the initial wipe – just as the lawsuit moved to a federal court. It is unclear who ordered the destruction of the data, and why, but they have raised yet more suspicions of collusion between the Trump campaign team, the Republican Party, and the Russian government. So far, everyone is claiming ignorance of the event. A spokesperson for Georgia’s secretary of state, Brian Kemp, who is in overall charge, denied having anything to do with the decision. And the election center's director, Michael Barnes, is refusing to comment. Since the server was not under a court protection order, the destruction of its data is not illegal but it is extremely suspicious. As for the information itself, there is one more avenue to recover it: the FBI took a copy of the server's filesystem contents when it opened an investigation into the system back in March. So far the Feds have refused to say whether they still have that copy. ®Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond left the BBC’s Top Gear television show after Clarkson assaulted his producer, both verbally and physically. They took their brand of masculine tomfoolery to Amazon Prime for a new show with a massive budget. It is expected to finally break Amazon Prime into the UK Market that has been quite resistant for their programming, preferring the likes of the iPlayer and Netflix. But what will the new show entail? Publicity and expectation have focused on the belief that it’s a car show, with confirmed shooting of Ferrari LaFerrari, McLaren P1, and Porsche 918 Spyder cars at Algarve International Circuit near Portimão, in Portugal last year as well as filming with Maserati Biturbo 430 cars around Le Havre, Honfleur, and the Port of Le Havre in northern France. And a tentative title at one point was “Gear Knobs”. However, I found myself quite accidentally in discussion last night with some very senior television figures in London that revealed that a lot of the show isn’t car based. The observation was made that Top Gear before the Clarkson trio took the lead had very limited appeal, their success was less about the cars but their bumbling machismo. And, freed from the format restraints of Top Gear, they will take that approach to other matters as well. One example given was undergoing anti-terrorist training. Or possibly terrorist training, it wasn’t clear. But it does suggest a switch in focus for the three, and extending their appeal even further. For what was stereotyped as a “male” show, Top Gear had a 40% female audience, was one of the BBC’s biggest hits, nationally and internationally. It has been observed that much of that had very little to do with the cars. It looks like it may have even less to do with them… About Rich Johnston Chief writer and founder of Bleeding Cool. Father of two. Comic book clairvoyant. Political cartoonist. (Last Updated ) Related Posts None foundIt's nice to be a grandparent because you can enjoy spending time with your grandkids without worrying about the minutia of parenting. Plus, it's your second go around with little rascals so you get to have fun with it. Like Steve and Jeri Wakefield, two grandparents who are having so much fun at being awesome grandparents that they built their grandkids this amazing tree house mansion. I don't think kids have ever dreamt of tree houses this nice. The Wakefield's enlisted the help of architect James Curvan to get their project going and boy oh boy, it's a sight to see. There's different stories, staircases, a climbing wall, rope ladder, zip line and even a suspension bridge. The air-conditioned, electricity equipped tree house took three months to build and is 100 square feet big (huge in tree house terms!) with two decks and two lofts for sleeping. Advertisement Even though their grandkids have grown up now, the tree house is open for neighborhood kids to play in. Man, grandparents are the best. See more of this tree house mansion here. [Houzz via Laughing Squid]Royal Oak's Modern Skatepark 40 Gallery: Royal Oak's Modern Skatepark DETROIT, MI -- The for three years is getting a boost from Dan Gilbert, The group that's has moved from a Midtown apartment into Gilbert's Compuware building and is getting financial and leadership support from the Quicken chairman, according to the report. "(Gilbert's) involvement makes it all the more serious and realistic," sports media consultant Lee Berke . "I think Detroit has a real shot." Detroit was named in January as one of 17 cities in consideration for hosting the X Games, which feature action sports like skateboarding and Motocross. The choice is expected to be announced Aug. 1. Bid organizer Kevin Krease estimates that holding the games in Detroit would cost corporate sponsors $9.3 million, and could have an economic impact of up to $170 million. Other cities in the running to host the 2014-16 X Games, include Atlanta, Austin, Charlotte, Chicago, Fort Worth, Long Beach, Minneapolis, Montreal, New Orleans, Pasadena and Philadelphia. Follow Khalil AlHajal on Twitter @DetroitKhalil or on Facebook at Detroit Khalil. He can be reached at [email protected] or 313-643-0527. XGames Detroit Teaser from XGamesDetroit on Vimeo.Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., an Arizona representative is pushing to criminalize all abortions after 20 weeks with the express purpose of keeping “attention on the Gosnell case.” And in Florida, the advocacy group Americans United for Life has cribbed imagery from Gosnell to cheerlead a bald-facedly political bill. The “Infants Born Alive Protection Act,” HB 1129, provides “that all infants born alive are entitled to the same rights, powers, and privileges as any child born in the course of natural birth.” As Ron Bilbao of the Florida ACLU pointed out to me, the federal government already makes provisions for these rights. “It’s not an abortion bill,” he emphasized. “Since [pro-life legislators] are not getting any traction with their other pieces of legislation, they want to be able to go back to their districts and say they got something done.” The image of Gosnell severing the spines of 30-week-old newborns, still fresh in the popular imagination, made it easy to sell this bill as a pro-life victory. The painful irony is, the laws that are shuttering clinics all over America would have done nothing to stop Gosnell, who, it's alleged, was fully aware that he was operating outside of a long list of rules and regulations. Pennsylvania's abortion laws were strict long before the 2011 TRAP-style addition: NARAL, a pro-choice group that grades states’ laws, gave Pennsylvania an “F” for its harsh codes on abortion in 2010, the year Gosnell was busted (Pennsylvania got an “F” this year, too). The problem wasn’t a lack of legislation, but a lack of enforcement. Pennsylvania’s Department of Health did not investigate abortion clinics between 1993 and the fateful raid on the Women's Medical Society, and it ignored multiple reports of illegal activity going on behind Gosnell's doors. Law enforcement only invaded the clinic because they had heard Gosnell was selling narcotics on the side. Reproductive rights advocates argue that not only would more stringent regulations have failed to stop Gosnell, they actually would have helped his business. Harsher rules mean fewer clinics, and more women who struggle to find or afford good care early in pregnancy. The grand jury report alleges that women heard through word-of-mouth that Gosnell was the least expensive option around—an important credential when first-trimester abortions usually run over $300. Susan Schewel of the Philadelphia-based Women’s Medical Fund, which raises money for women who cannot pay for abortions, said her group gave over 1,500 grants to women last year, and the last time they tried to estimate overall need in their area (in 2006, before the recession) they guessed that 4,500 women a year were coming up short to pay for the procedure. The grand jury report suggests that Gosnell knew he was preying on women who had nowhere else to go, and blames the state for failing to protect its most vulnerable citizens. “Every aspect of that practice reflected an utter disregard for the health and safety of his patients, a cruel lack of respect for their dignity, and an arrogant belief that he could forever get away with the slovenly and careless treatment of the women who came to his clinic. The only thing Gosnell seemed to care about was the cash he raked in from his illegal operation.” The report goes on to say: “We think the reason no one acted is because the women in question were poor and of color, because the victims were infants without identities, and because the subject was the political football of abortion.” There shouldn’t be anything political about a man who murdered infants; operated on women in unsafe, degrading conditions; and sacrificed his patients’ safety for pecuniary gain. But we can add another travesty to this episode’s list of horrors: a case that exemplifies the danger of targeting skilled, safe abortion providers, and the need for more good options, has been claimed as proof positive of the opposite argument. Follow me @ncaplanbricker.This evening (Wednesday 20 September), a first-of-its-kind UK-US Science and Technology agreement has been agreed, outlining a commitment to collaborate on world-class research and innovation. Signed by Science Minister Jo Johnson and US Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs Judith G Garber, the treaty builds on existing successful research co-operation in recognition of the value of open data to further scientific research and strengthen the UK-US economies. The government has been clear in its commitment to collaborate with countries around the world in science, research and innovation, and is investing significant levels of funding to maintain the UK’s strengths in these key areas through its forthcoming Industrial Strategy. On signing the agreement, Jo Johnson commented: “The UK is known as a nation of science and technical progress, with research and development being at the core of our industrial strategy. By working with our key allies, we are maintaining our position as a global leader in research for years to come.” “Our continued collaboration with the US on science and innovation benefits both nations and this agreement will enable us to share our expertise to enhance our understanding of many important topics that have the potential to be world changing.” The first major project of the UK-US Science and Technology agreement is UK investment in the Long Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF) and Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE), for which the government has confirmed £65m funding. Under construction in the US, the major international LBNF/DUNE project aims to answer some of the most important questions in science and advance our understanding of the origin and structure of the universe. One aspect of study is the behaviour of particles called neutrinos and their antimatter counterparts, antineutrinos. This could provide insight as to why we live in a matter-dominated universe and inform the debate on why the universe survived the Big Bang. The UK is a major scientific contributor to the DUNE collaboration, with 14 UK universities and two Science and Technology Facilities Council laboratories providing essential expertise and components to the experiment and facility. This £65m investment makes the UK the largest country investor in the project outside of the US. UK involvement in the project will also provide opportunities for UK industry to build capability in new and developing technologies, for example, in precision engineering, cryogenics and accelerator-based applications. Building on the UK-US partnership, the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Smithsonian Institution are extending a successful history of partnerships by developing a new collaboration based at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and focused on increasing the use of digital research skills in museums. Enhancing these skills will benefit areas such as data analysis, curating, accessibility of collections and also further audience engagement, all focused on
notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email Gareth Bale is ready to inspire a generation after claiming he can help ignite a new passion that will see football overtake rugby as the most popular sport in Wales. Bale was last night crowned the country’s finest footballer yet again when he picked up the prestigious FAW Player of the Year Award. It was the fourth time he has scooped the prize – a new record after overtaking three-times winners John Hartson and Mark Hughes in the 24-year history of the honour. But Bale, who helped club side Real Madrid to a groundbreaking ‘Decima’ of 10 European Cup triumphs with his goal in last season’s Champions League final, is already eyeing more history. With Chris Coleman’s side in action against Bosnia on Friday as part of a crunch Euro 2016 qualifying home-double header, the world’s most expensive footballer has got his sights set on a long-awaited major finals for Welsh football. And with a biggest home crowd in years expected for Friday’s clash with World Cup qualifiers Bosnia and Cardiff City Stadium, the country’s most iconic sportsman says he and the rest of Coleman’s side can help the game hit new heights in his homeland. Pictures: Bale beats Andorra on his own Bale wants to see football take its place as the country’s No.1 sport after watching rugby retake its crown on the national front, and as he laid bare his determination to see Wales succeed, the 25-year-old said: “This side has massive potential. We've been together for quite a long time now, we get along really well and it's really a tight-knit group. “I think we're all growing as players, we're all growing in confidence and as long as everyone stays committed and working hard we can all go on to achieve out goals. “And for all of us that is to qualify for a major tournament. “Everyone wants to test themselves at highest level for club and in international football and that’s our target. “I want to make history with Wales and qualify for a major tournament and we're all on the same path. “There is no point in playing football if you don't believe you can do that. We all firmly believe we're pushing in the right direction. “There is a buzz around the team and I feel football can overtake rugby in Wales soon. “I remember when I was younger the Millennium Stadium was full every time I went to watch. Rugby has obviously overtaken it in recent years but I feel football is on the incline and we can get a lot of fans to the games and get the support behind us. “So it is not only important for us to get to a major championship, but as a nation as a whole we want to inspire more kids to play football and become a better national team.” (Image: 2011 David Rawcliffe/Propaganda) Bale knows he has a key role to play in that, despite putting individual honours aside to praise the rest of his teammates. Wales skipper Ashley Williams’ claims Bale is helping people in Wales fall in love again with the national side were modestly laughed off by the ex-Tottenham man, although he did add pulling on the red shirt remained “the ultimate honour”. Yet he insisted he does not feel the pressure of delivering as Wales get set to take on second seeds Bosnia before facing Cyprus on Monday – despite the hammer blow of Arsenal ace Aaron Ramsey and Liverpool star Joe Allen pulling out with injuries. Coleman’s top three talents played together for only the first time in 13 games in last month’s nervy win in atrocious conditions in Andorra, but Bale will have to carry much of the creative burden alone come Friday with neither Ramsey nor Allen available. Yet after getting used to the pressure-cooker environment of Real’s Bernabeu following his £85m move to Madrid a year ago, Bale says he doesn’t feel the weight of expectation. (Image: PA Wire) He said: "It's a big blow - Joe and Aaron are two fantastic players. “But we have players who can come in and do a good job for us like they would do. “So I'm looking forward to the game and I don't feel any more pressure. I want to go out and do the best for my country and that's all I can do. I will always go on the pitch and give 100 per cent and hopefully that will be good enough. “We know Bosnia are a good side – they showed that by getting to the World Cup and they've obviously got some good players. We know a lot about them and that they're a good team but we believe in ourselves and hopefully we can give them a good game and get the victory on Friday.”I feel like I’m still adjusting from switching from freelancer to full-time employee life, but one big benefit is paid vacation days! A friend and I took a long weekend in Porto, Portugal for a bit of warmer (than Berlin) weather, wine and wandering. It was much cheaper to fly to Porto from Berlin than to Lisbon and quite affordable once we were there. I loved the different tile on all the buildings and hope to go back and explore more of Portugal at some point! Tip: Most restaurants are closed Sunday and Monday. I was there Saturday to Monday, so this was a bit unfortunate as most of the places I wanted to eat at were only open one day while I was there. If you do a long weekend there, I recommend going Thursday to Sunday instead! Where to Stay (Poets Inn Hotel Porto – picture from Booking.com) My friend and I booked a room with two twin beds at the Poets Inn Hotel. It only cost us €20 each per night including breakfast and was a great location. Right down the road from Pop101, my favorite vegan place we went! They served soymilk at breakast, so it was easy to eat vegan cereal, plus there were apples and oranges out and rolls with jam. So, not vegan gourmet, but totally veganizable for that first burst of fuel before heading out to the streets. I super recommend this hotel for an affordable and cute place to stay. The owner was able to recommend us some vegan places to eat as well. View outside my hotel window Street art in Porto Quintal Bioshop (link) Address: Rua do Rosário 177 The first place we went was Quintal Bioshop, a little cafe and organic shop I found on Happycow. It was lunch so we wanted something simple and tasty and my friend had just returned from a yoga retreat with a liquid-only diet, so she was looking for simple return to solid foods. I loved this place and we went twice during the weekend. They have a tea of the day, labeled vegan stuff and they spoke English. Everything was very affordable. There’s a really nice peaceful backyard courtyard with cats wandering around you can sit in, too. Tea of the day (ginger-something?) with their cute little table settings They had a vegan chocolate cake the first time, and it was melt-in-your-mouth amazing. If they have it when you go…get it. Once of the best chocolate cakes I’d had, more like a brownie. My friend Mandy’s lunch, a salad and some vegan cheese raw zucchini rolls. My lunch, I think it was some type of chickpea brain patties with salad, sauteed onions and chickpea flour crunchies on top, yum! Soup of the day, veggie soup. Porto has lots of accidentally vegan simple soups and they are affordable and yummy! Smoked tofu and tapenade sandwich from my second visit Cultura dos Sabores (link) Address: Rua de Ceuta 80 We went here on one of the days everything (but this) was closed. It’s a vegetarian all-you-can eat buffet. Everything looked nice and it was cool you could sit in swings, but neither of us were especially excited by the food. I found everything a bit bland, but it got good reviews on Happy Cow so maybe it was just an off day? I imagine since it’s a buffet they change the food up. They also have a menu you can order from so try that too. All-you-can-eat lunch buffet (around €9). I found it all a bit bland, but I liked the little sushi. My friend Mandy modeling the swings. Da Terra (link) Address: Rua Mouzinho da Silveira 249 We only went here quickly for cafe, coffee and wine before heading to the airport. It’s also a vegetarian all-you-can-eat buffet, and from the looks of it I wished we had gone here first before Cultura dos Sabores as the food looked better to me. Same idea with simple dishes, salads, etc. an a big, bright, open space. I think it’s a chain too, or at least there’s another somewhere else in the city. If you also end up there on a day everything is closed, this place is open, choose here! I made a noob mistake and ordered a cake that looked like chocolate, but was actually plum. I wasn’t a fan of it, but it’s my fault. My friend’s apple cake was awesome, as was the coffee and wine. We tried white Port wine here, which was interesting! Espaço Compasso (link) Address: Rua da Torrinha 113 An alternative social and cultural association that does vegan meals for dinner, loads of cultural events and has a big backyard garden you can hang out in. The woman at our hotel recommended we go here for dinner. They were doing a big salsa night when we went. We just went in quickly for food because we were exhausted after wandering around the city all day. Simple affordable home-cooked food, vegetarian and vegan. You have to get buzzed in, so don’t be alarmed! Places I Didn’t Get To Lupin Restaurante Vegetariano (link) This was at the very top of my list, but unfortunately closed most of the time we were there. The food online looked AMAZING and they do a vegan version of the Porto special, the Franchesina sandwich. It’s basically a sandwich filled with meat (seitan or tofu), topped with melted cheese and in a tomato gravy. I want to go back so I can actually try it! Please go and tell me how it is in the comments! Black Mamba Burgers and Records (link) Everyone raved about this all-vegan burger place online, but unfortunately it was also closed while we were there. Next time! Wandering Around Porto Alien Street art in Porto Some beautiful tile covering the buildings in Porto More tile-covered buildings from far away Even more tile, okay, I was obsessed! Near São Bento train station, a ruined building turned art? São Bento station, how pretty is that?! Have you been to Porto? What did you do there and what did you think of it? Let me know in the comments!SACRAMENTO AND LOS ANGELES — California's unemployment rate in May hit 11.5% -- its highest level in more than three decades -- but the pain of losing work isn't being shared equally between the sexes. The state lost 68,900 jobs in May as unemployment rose from a revised 11.1% in April and 6.8% in May 2008. This is the highest rate since the national record-keeping system began in 1976. Out of every four jobs lost nationwide since the recession began in December 2007, three have been lost by men. Some experts have dubbed the phenomenon a "mancession." In California, the gap between the two groups has been widening since the end of August. Back then, the unemployment rate over the preceding 12 months was the same for men and women, 6.3%. By May, the 12-month rate was 9.6% for men and 8.2% for women. The result: Pressure on households that once had two earners and were relatively comfortable. "Now there are many families in which the woman is the sole earner" and the man has been laid off or is working part-time, said Lauren Appelbaum, a UCLA researcher. The loss of the man's earnings makes it hard for once-middle-class families to make ends meet because the average female worker earns just 78% of what a man gets in a similar occupation, Appelbaum said.News Microsoft To Add React JavaScript to Visual Studio 2015 In response to overwhelming user requests, Microsoft has started a project to add support for a React JavaScript component to Visual Studio 2015. (Note: an earlier version of this article incorrectly reported that the JSX support was being added to Web Essentials. While the request to add JSX support was featured on the User Voice site for Web Essentials, the new capability won't be part of the Web Essentials package. We regret the error.) Specifically, the project is to add React JSX support. JSX is the XML-like syntax extension for JavaScript commonly used with the React library. JSX support has long been the No. 1 request on the Web Essentials User Voice site used to gather feature requests from the user base, garnering more than four times the number of requests of any other project. JSX, to accommodate the React approach of coding, makes extensive use of embedded HTML within JavaScript used to compose React components, the building blocks of the library. Last week, Web Essentials Program Manager Mads Kristensen announced Microsoft is finally taking on the project: We've started working on a prototype today. If everything goes according to plan, JSX support will be included in Visual Studio 2015 RTM. Fingers crossed. Visual Studio 2015 is expected to arrive in the second or third quarter of this year. For more than a year, Kristensen has been messaging back and forth with users in the comments section on the Web Essentials request site, gathering input and sharing details about implementation plans. React provides a radical new way of building UI views. It has been described as a library for the View part of the Model-View-Controller (MVC) approach. Developed internally at Facebook and then open sourced in 2013, it defies some traditional JavaScript conventions regarding separation of concerns and project structure. Immensely popular on the Web, the ReactJS way of coding will also be coming to bear on native mobile app development via a React Native project announced by Facebook engineers at a developer conference earlier this month. Some of the features that make React unique are a declarative programming style, a Virtual DOM used to re-render only components that have changed via a "diffing" process, and one-way data flow that helps simplify the mental models programmers need to keep in their heads while working with various components. React components are created through JavaScript variables that use a createClass method to render HTML that presents data supplied in the form of properties ("props") or state, depending on whether the data will be subject to change. For example, here's the simple Facebook "Hello" component in JSX that gets the "name" property assigned to the component when it's created in the React.render method (click on "Edit in JSFiddle" to fiddle around with the code and see live results): For production, that gets compiled into plain JavaScript that looks a little more verbose: var HelloMessage = React.createClass({displayName: "HelloMessage", render: function() { return React.createElement("div", null, "Hello ", this.props.name); } }); React.render(React.createElement(HelloMessage, {name: "John"}), mountNode); Facebook's Tom Occhino, in announcing the React Native project at the developer conference earlier this month, noted that React has several advantages in addition to the Virtual DOM that has now become commonplace in other JavaScript frameworks. These include server rendering, a custom event system, descriptive warning messages and many more. "But the thing that makes all these features and more possible, is the fact that React replaces an imperative, mutative API with a declarative API that favors immutability," he said. Although designed by in-house engineers -- primarily Jordan Walke -- for the incredible scale-out needs at Facebook, Occhino and other coders are enthusiastic about the benefits of React. "I think that React's real power lies in how it makes you structure your code in terms of React components," Occhino said. Here's the video that reviews the creation of React for Web and introduces React Native in case you want to hear the whole story yourself:Carolyn Crippen and her husband Al were at home channel surfing in December 2009 when they stumbled upon a Canucks game. The couple, which relocated from Manitoba to BC a year prior, knew nothing of the Canucks, or their opponent, but they're Canadian and hockey is hockey. Crippen was awe-struck by everything, and two players in particular. "There were these two guys with red hair and red beards, they certainly caught my eye," explained Crippen. "I watched their dynamics and listened to the announcers talk about them being the Sedin twins. It was truly something." Crippen, an associate prof of Leadership Studies at University of Victoria, is a qualitative researcher who focuses on servant leadership. She recognized something unique about Daniel and Henrik Sedin, something familiar. The Sedins exemplify servant leadership. Seven years later Crippen has published three papers on the Sedins, her most recent titled "A Case Study of Servant Leadership in the NHL," published December 2016 in Volume 48, Number 1 of Interchange, A Quarterly Review of Education. Crippen visited Rogers Arena Monday to discuss her recent case study with the media. In her latest paper, Crippen investigates the organizational culture of the Canucks, beginning with Pat Quinn and moving through Trevor Linden to focus on Daniel and Henrik, who she deems to be exemplary examples of servant leaders. What is servant leadership? Crippen references Robert Greenleaf, the founder of the modern Servant leadership movement, stating: "The philosophy of servant leadership illustrates the values of character, the belief in putting others first, of working collaboratively, and making wise decisions in an organization and using experiences of the past to show foresight in the present and future. It lateralizes leadership within an organization." To Crippen, the Sedins display evidence of The 7 Pillars of Servant Leadership, as first introduced by James Sipe and Don Frick. They include: putting the needs of other people first, being skilled communicators, being compassionate collaborators who build teams and community and displaying a moral authority including responsibility and creating a culture of accountability. That sure sounds like the pair of 16-year Canucks veterans who have amazed us with their Sedinery since 2000-01. After watching a few games on TV, Crippen knew she was on to something. She began religiously filling notebooks with observations from games, TV and radio interviews and print articles, and before long she knew as much about the Sedins as anyone. It was time to take her research a step further and interview Daniel and Henrik, which proved to be impossible at first. "I mentioned it to one of my students that I'd like to speak with the Sedins," said Crippen. "He laughed and told me that wasn't going to happen. I laughed back and reminded him I'm an old lady, I wasn't going to hit on them - this was for research!" Emails from Crippen explaining her research and outlining her request began arriving at Rogers Arena and although she didn't get an immediate response, she pressed on. More emails, more emails, more emails. Even some phone calls. Remember in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone when the owls are inundating the Dursley home with Hogwarts acceptance letters? It wasn't quite that intense, but Crippen was not taking no for an answer. She was given a sit-down with the Sedins in 2011, and 70-minutes, a full notebook and two tape recorders later, Crippen had not only confirmed her Sedin servant leadership theory, she became a fan of the brothers. "They are two of the most humane and genuine people, not just athletes, but people, I've ever met," she said. "They're exactly what you want to see in role models for children, they take the high-road and lead by example. They are the real deal and what you see is what you get." The 36-year-old Sedins won't play hockey forever, despite fitting the ageless wonder mold to a tee. One day they'll hang up their skates and their jerseys will be be raised to the rafters at Rogers Arena, but Crippen says their legacy will be forever felt within the Canucks. "They have influenced the organizational culture by maintaining a solid work ethic, a humbleness, respect, plus responsibility and accountability to themselves, their team, and the Canuck organization," she wrote. "They are examples of positive, well-prepared athletes whose civility and respect define them on and off the ice and they are the legitimate cultural carriers for the Vancouver Canucks and its legacy for good." Crippen hasn't missed a game since accidently finding the Canucks and their servant leaders eight years ago and she doesn't intend on missing one any time soon. "Everything happens for a reason," she laughed. "I was meant to find the Canucks and the Sedins and I'm grateful it happened."As expected, the Giants activated closer Brian Wilson from the disabled list before today’s game, hoping upon hope they might need a closer soon. That would mean they have a lead. Either way, manager Bruce Bochy hopes to get him into today’s game. They placed reliever Santiago Casilla on the 15-day disabled list with right elbow inflammation. That buys them time to make the tough roster decision they ultimately face, unless they keep getting a string of players hurt. Casilla allowed one run on Opening Day, his only inning thus far. Manager Bruce Bochy said Casilla’s elbow has been barking since then, so this was the logical move. Also, first baseman Travis Ishikawa cleared waivers and was sent outright to Triple-A Fresno, where he will play first base mostly. He could DH and play some left field. The Giants could have traded Ishikawa after they designated him for assignment on Opening Day. But there were no takers, obviously. This is a tough time to make a trade, with teams having set their 25-men rosters just last week. Today’s lineup is the same as yesterday’s: Torres CF, Sanchez 2B, Huff 1B RF, Posey C, Sandoval 3B, Burrell LF, Belt 1B, Tejada SS, Lincecum P. In other critical news, Sergio Romo is no longer trying to challenge Wilson for beard length. He cut off most of it and now is going with the mustache plus mutton-chop look. Welcome to 1862, Serge.I recently saw both your articles regarding the sale of infant foreskins to pharmaceutical companies. Africa must be informed that western "humanitarian aid" organisations may be interested in a little more than just "public health." The following products are also derrived from infant foreskins: Dermagraft-TC Dermagraft-TC which is an artifical skin created from harvested foreskins from infant circumcision.[1] It is made and sold by Advanced Tissue Sciences (ATS), which is a corporation based in La Jolla, CA. Dermagraft-TC is FDA approved,[2][3] and it sells for about $3,000 per square foot; one foreskin contains enough genetic material to grow 250,000 square feet of skin.[4] References 1.↑ "Dermagraft-TC: Overview". Advanced Biohealing, Inc.. http://www.dermagraft.com/about/overview/. Retrieved 2011-03-06. "Dermagraft is manufactured from human fibroblast cells derived from newborn foreskin tissue." 2.↑ "Dermagraft-TC". MediLexicon. http://www.medilexicon.com/drugs/dermagraft-tc.php#GeneralInformation. Retrieved 2011-03-06. "...fibroblast-derived temporary skin substitute for the treatment of partial-thickness burns that has been approved for marketing by the FDA." 3.↑ "Advanced Tissue Sciences' temporary wound covering Dermagraft-TC approved for marketing by FDA". Transplant News. 2007-03-28. http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-47248437.html. Retrieved 2011-03-06. "...the Food and Drug Administration has approved Dermagraft-TC for marketing, making it the first human fibroblast-derived temporary skin substitute to be approved." 4.↑ Circumcision. Daecher M. Icon 1998;2(2):70-3. Apligraf Apligraf is a synthetic skin created from harvested foreskins.[1] It is FDA approved,[2] and it is made and sold by Organogenesis, which a corporation based in Canton, MA. Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp. has global marketing rights to Apligraf. References 1.↑ "Apligraf: How Is It Made?". Organogenesis. http://www.apligraf.com/professional/what_is_apligraf/how_is_it_made/. Retrieved 2011-03-06. "Human keratinocytes and fibroblasts are derived from neonatal foreskins" 2.↑ "Apligraf". Organogenesis. http://www.organogenesis.com/products/bioactive_woundhealing/apligraf.html. Retrieved 2011-03-06. "Apligraf® is the first bio-engineered cell based product to receive FDA approval (in 1998)." AlloDerm AlloDerm(R) which is a skin graft created from harvested infant foreskins.[1] It is approved by the FDA[2] and it is made and sold by LifeCell Corporation (Nasdaq:LIFC), which is a corporation based in Branchburg, NJ.[3] References 1.↑ "LifeCell Research Demonstrates Potential". Business Wire. 1995-05-16. http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-16828845.html. Retrieved 2011-03-06. "...the culturing of human neonatal foreskin keratinocytes..." 2.↑ "AlloDerm®Tissue Matrix defined". LifeCell Corporation. http://www.lifecell.com/alloderm-regenerative-tissue-matrix/95/. Retrieved 2011-03-06. "...screened and tested according to FDA regulations..." 3.↑ "Index". LifeCell Corporation. http://www.lifecell.com. Retrieved 2011-03-06. The following corporations stand to gain from the acquisition of infant foreskins, and the public needs to be informed about them. Advanced Tissue Sciences Advanced Tissue Sciences is a corporation based in La Jolla, CA. They are the makers of Dermagraft-TC, which is an artifical skin created from harvested foreskins from infant circumcision.[1] They are also the makers of NouriCel, another product made from harvested foreskins,[2] and one of the main ingredients of SkinMedica's TNS Recovery Complex product.[3] Earnings Dermagraft-TC is FDA approved,[4][5] and it sells for about $3,000 per square foot and one foreskin contains enough genetic material to grow 250,000 square feet of skin.[6] Advanced Tissue Sciences has sold about $1 million worth of cultured dermis to Proctor & Gamble, Helene Curtis, and other such businesses for pre-market testing. Advanced Tissue Science's foreskin-derived merchandise held a $32 million stock offering in the beginning of 1992.[7] In 1996 alone, Advanced Tissue Sciences could boast of a healthy $663.9 million market capitalization performance.[8] References ↑ "Dermagraft-TC: Overview". Advanced Biohealing, Inc.. http://www.dermagraft.com/about/overview/. Retrieved 2011-03-06. "Dermagraft is manufactured from human fibroblast cells derived from newborn foreskin tissue." ↑ "The Foreskin Mafia". Acroposthion.com. http://www.acroposthion.com/acroposthion_019.htm. Retrieved 2011-03-06. "TNS contains... NouriCel-MD which is... a combination of Natural Growth Factors, matrix proteins, and soluble collagen. Human Growth Factors extracted from cultured cells of foreskin..." ↑ "SkinMedica Introduces TNS Recovery Complex". SkinMedica. 2002-02-12. http://www.corporate.skinmedica.com/press/2002/skinmedica-launches-tns-recovery-complex. Retrieved 2011-03-06. "TNS Recovery Complex is the only product containing a professional concentration of NouriCel®, a new cosmetic ingredient from leading tissue-engineering company Advanced Tissue Sciences." ↑ "Dermagraft-TC: General Information". Advanced Tissue Sciences. MediLexicon International Ltd. 2011. http://www.medilexicon.com/drugs/dermagraft-tc.php#GeneralInformation. Retrieved 2011-05-07. "Dermagraft-TC is the first human, fibroblast-derived temporary skin substitute for the treatment of partial-thickness burns that has been approved for marketing by the FDA." ↑ "Advanced Tissue Sciences' temporary wound covering Dermagraft-TC approved for marketing by FDA". Transplant News. HighBeam Research. 1997-03-28. http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-47248437.html. Retrieved 2011-05-07. "the Food and Drug Administration has approved Dermagraft-TC" ↑ Circumcision. Daecher M. Icon 1998;2(2):70-3. ↑ Julie Pitta. Biosynthetics. Forbes 10 May 1993: 170-171 Note: The 32-page Advanced Tissue Sciences, Inc. 1997 Annual Report refers to "fibroblasts" but does not contain the word "foreskin." ↑ Biotech's Big Discovery. Hall CT. San Francisco Chronicle. October 25, 1996: E1, E4. Organogenesis Organogenesis is a corporation based in Canton, MA.[1] They profit from Apligraf, which is a synthetic skin created from harvested foreskins.[1] Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corp. has global marketing rights to Apligraf. Call for increase of foreskin harvesting WE MUST BE ABLE TO OBTAIN ADEQUATE SOURCES OF SUPPLY "We manufacture Apligraf for commercial sale, as well as for use in clinical trials, at our Canton, Massachusetts facility. Among the fundamental raw materials needed to manufacture Apligraf are keratinocyte and fibroblast cells. Because these cells are derived from donated infant foreskin, they may contain human-borne pathogens. We perform extensive testing of the cells for pathogens, including the HIV or "AIDS" virus. Our inability to obtain cells of adequate purity, or cells that are pathogen-free, would limit our ability to manufacture sufficient quantities of our products." -- Organogensis, 2001 Annual Report (Delaware: Organogenesis, 2001), p.8. References ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Headquarters". Organogenesis. http://www.organogenesis.com/about_us/headquarters.html. Retrieved 2011-03-06. "The corporate headquarters and manufacturing facility are located in Canton, Massachusetts." LifeCell Corporation LifeCell Corporation (Nasdaq:LIFC) is a corporation based in Branchburg, NJ.[1] The profit from the creation and sale of AlloDerm(R) which is a skin graft created from harvested infant foreskins.[2] References ↑ "Index". LifeCell Corporation. http://www.lifecell.com. Retrieved 2011-03-06. ↑ "LifeCell Research Demonstrates Potential". Business Wire. 1995-05-16. http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-16828845.html. Retrieved 2011-03-06. "...the culturing of human neonatal foreskin keratinocytes..."Donald Trump’s been accused of being a bully and a bigot. But he stands out among Republican presidential hopefuls for his comparative sensitivity to one politically potent minority group: the gay community. Trump has advocated for banning workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation. He criticized a Kentucky county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses after the U.S. Supreme Court found, earlier this year, that the Constitution protects the right of same-sex couples to marry. He is also one of only two Republican candidates — along with New Jersey Governor Chris Christie — that the Human Rights Campaign deems to have even a “mixed” record on gay rights “He is one of the best, if not the best, pro-gay Republican candidates to ever run for the presidency,” said Gregory T. Angelo, president of the Log Cabin Republicans, an advocacy group for LGBT Republicans. Trump would do no harm on same-sex marriage, Angelo said, and has a “stand-out position” on non-discrimination legislation. That’s not to say the real-estate mogul and former reality TV star trumps Democrats when it comes to issues of importance to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley are all vocal advocates for most of the priorities of the LGBT community. Nor does it mean gay and lesbian Republicans will ignore Trump’s treatment of other minority constituencies — or base their votes on LGBT issues. But it does mean that Trump has an opening to draw support from gay Republicans in the primary, and that could matter in states where the LGBT community is particularly well organized. It also means he could get financial and political support from the Log Cabin Republicans and their allies in the general election. Whether or not he’s the favored Republican among gay and lesbian voters, Trump could be their ally if he makes it to the White House. Social issues were absent from Tuesday’s Republican presidential primary debate in Las Vegas, the first GOP confab since the Paris and San Bernardino, California, terrorist attacks. But even without emphasizing his stance on issues important to LGBT voters — and perhaps in part because he doesn’t — Trump appears to be gaining traction with gay Republicans. Pax Hart, a 45-year-old software engineer in New York, was a Rand Paul supporter and low-dollar donor until he saw video of Trump’s immigration speech in Phoenix, Arizona, this summer. Where some voters see xenophobia in Trump’s promise to build a wall between the United States and Mexico and his proposal to put a moratorium on Muslims traveling to the United States, Hart, who is gay, says he sees policies that would prevent dilution of LGBT rights in the country. “We are importing people who are the absolute most hostile to gays and lesbians,” Hart said of discrimination against LGBT citizens in some Middle Eastern and Latin American countries. “We’re bringing in people who are indoctrinated that gays [should be] exterminated.” As Hart points out, Trump is hardly emphasizing his positions on gay rights or social issues as he seeks the nomination in a party heavily influenced by religious conservatives. “It’s not that he’s an advocate or anything like that,” Hart said. “It’s not an issue for him. It’s about fairness for him.” But among the top candidates for the nomination, Trump’s tone, temperament and record are distinct. Texas Senator Ted Cruz backs a constitutional amendment that would reverse the Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage and has opposed workplace anti-discrimination legislation. Likewise, Florida Senator Marco Rubio opposes marriage rights and efforts to ban employment discrimination. And Ben Carson, who is mostly in line with Cruz and Rubio on policy, has further angered LGBT-rights groups with his rhetoric. Trump, too, opposes same-sex marriage. But he criticized the Kentucky clerk, and, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter this year, he condemned Republican candidates who called for a reversal of the court’s judgment. “Anybody that’s making that an issue is doing it for political reasons,” he said. “The Supreme Court ruled on it.” Of course, Trump’s moderation on gay rights won’t bring him many votes from LGBT Democrats. Boasting a more tolerant record than the rest of the Republican Party hardly merits a medal, they say. “The truth is if you are a Republican who is either gay or a Republican for whom gay rights are important, there is nobody in that field who is attractive to you,” Richard Socarides, a former top adviser to President Bill Clinton and prominent gay-rights advocate, said. “Trump, because he was part of the New York business community and obviously knew a lot of gay people, probably has supported gay rights measures as one-offs,” Socarides said. “But at the core of the gay civil-rights movement, are ideas of diversity and inclusion. Of all the candidates he is probably the least supportive of diversity and inclusion.” And therein lies the rub for Angelo’s Log Cabin Republicans. They have asked for an audience with Trump, and in January they are due to begin discussing their criteria for endorsing whomever the GOP nominates for president. Angelo qualified his praise for Trump’s record with the caveat that he’s been polarizing on other issues. That, Angelo said, “is something that should at least come into the discussion.”Since 1992, the Log Cabin Republicans have endorsed or withheld their endorsement from Republican nominees based on key issues. But Trump might be able garner its support. Whether Trump’s record is good enough for Log Cabin Republicans, the Human Rights Campaign argues the differences between Trump and his GOP rivals are minimal on the issues of greatest importance to the LGBT community. “Not one of the major Republican candidates supports the Equality Act, which would guarantee full federal equality for LGBT people by adding them to our nation’s civil rights laws,” said JoDee Winterhof, senior vice president of policy and political affairs at the organization. “Not one of them supports marriage equality, but several say they’ll appoint justices who’ll seek to overturn the Supreme Court’s ruling. Not one of them has vowed to protect President Obama’s executive order protecting LGBT federal contractors, though some have vowed to immediately repeal it. “Trump is no different, and he is not an ally of the LGBT community.” The group’s website makes clear, however, that Trump is the least offensive of the Republican candidates for supporters of LGBT rights — with the possible exception of Christie. Though Trump can’t expect to pick up support from large numbers of gay and lesbian Democrats in a general election, his record and rhetoric may win him the backing of LGBT Republicans in the primary, and, if he wins the nomination, next November.I am really excited about VSAN 6.5 and what it brings to the table and like some of you out there we all want to get our hands on it. So I decided to build a VSAN 6.5 cluster running on nested ESXi. Nested ESXi is not supported by VMware so make sure you are only using this for testing or educational purposes. So what’s new in VSAN 6.5? One of the features I am looking forward to is its ability to function as an iSC
/The-Plaza-BetaCLOSE USA TODAY Sports' Lindsay H. Jones examines why the NFC South champions could be a tough test for the 11-win Cardinals. Dec 28, 2014; Atlanta, GA, USA; Carolina Panthers strong safety Roman Harper (41) celebrates a touchdown against the Atlanta Falcons in the second quarter at the Georgia Dome. (Photo11: Brett Davis, USA TODAY Sports) CHARLOTTE, N.C. – It's rare in an NFL locker room to hear the word "dumb" thrown around as a compliment, but that was certainly safety Roman Harper's intent when he used it to describe his defensive back teammates. "I just really like how young and dumb they are," Harper told USA TODAY Sports on Wednesday. "They don't know any better, and when you don't know, you don't know. And that's good. They're flying around, not apologizing for what they're doing. Sometimes, you might blow a coverage. We'll correct it on the sidelines. Guys are just playing with confidence, and when you get a confident group, you're going to make plays." Harper, the longtime New Orleans Saint who signed with the Panthers as a free agent this year, is the only Carolina defensive back to start every game this season, as the teammates around him rotated in and out at both cornerback spots and at free safety, before head coach Ron Rivera and defensive coordinator Sean McDermott settled on a group they liked four weeks ago. That group includes two rookies – corner Bene Benwikere and safety Tre Boston, and third-year corner Josh Norman. In the four games since those four defensive backs began playing together, the Panthers have won four games and the defense has held opponents to less than 11 points per game. Carolina held the Atlanta Falcons to just a field goal last week, while also scoring on two interception returns (by Harper and Boston). "It was a big deal. It was a statement, it was saying that we're trying to get some things done here, and obviously we weren't making enough plays at the time," Harper said. "These young guys have stepped up, made plays and it's really helped us out. We've been a more competitive defense because of it. And I like it. Change is good sometimes." Indeed, change has been the constant for the Carolina Panthers defense this season, starting with the loss to star defensive end Greg Hardy in Week 2, when he was first deactivated because of his pending domestic violence trial. He was later placed on the commissioner's exempt list, effectively ending his season and removing from the Panthers' lineup a player who had 26 sacks over the previous two seasons, including 15 in 2013. It took time for the Panthers to account for Hardy's absence, and head coach Ron Rivera said Wednesday that the team had to get creative to find a pass rush threat that could complement left defensive end Charles Johnson, because there wasn't only player who could just replace Hardy. "You try to go through combinations and fit guys into position, and sometimes it's hard to find that second, third and fourth guy," Rivera said. It meant moving Wes Horton into the starting lineup, but also figuring out ways to try to force plays to Johnson's side of the defense, or coming up with exotic blitz packages that could try to compensate for the lack of an elite rusher. And it didn't always work, and in mid-October, the Panthers were ranked 25th or worse in most of the major defensive categories. But thanks to the changes in the secondary, a late-season surge from Johnson – who finished the season with 8.5 sacks but 44 quarterback pressures, and a defense that no longer has to rely on blitzing and is routinely rushing the quarterback with just four players, the Panthers head into the wild card round ranked 10th in the NFL in total defense. "When you don't have to blitz, when you can put guys back in coverage and just use the front four to get pressure on the quarterback, that makes a big difference, and that's what we've been able to do against Atlanta. Our back seven, linebackers and DBs did a great job," defensive tackle Star Lotulelei told USA TODAY Sports. "I think guys finally turned it around during the season. Charles has been playing great these last couple weeks, and I think we just follow his lead. He's been the leader of our group -- last year he was the leader of our group, this year, he's the leader of our group. We go as he goes, and these last couple weeks he's been really dominating out there."Verizon is rolling out a new software update to both the Galaxy S8 and S8+ which adds support for the Google Daydream VR alongside a few other new features. The update is arriving with the software version G950USQU1AQG4 and G955USQU1AQG4 on the Galaxy S8 and S8+ respectively. What’s surprising, though, is the fact that Verizon is the first carrier to roll out support for Google’s Daydream VR for both the handsets. Also, now that Verizon has already rolled out the update, AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and all the other carriers (alongside the international variants) should soon follow suit and release support for Daydream shortly. Read: Samsung Galaxy S8 and S7 Android 7.1.1 update should release soon, first 7.1.1 build is out Anyways, moving ahead, with the update installed on Verizon’s Galaxy S8 and S8+, you can make use of a couple of new features. Firstly, you get to send animated GIFs to the person on the other side of the phone call. For this to work, however, you’ll have to enable the Profile Sharing option from the Contacts app. Secondly, you can further increase the screen’s real estate of your Galaxy S8 and S8+. How, you may ask? Read: [Hot Deal] Get Verizon Galaxy S8 and S8+ for $420 and $516 at Best Buy Well, you can turn off the navigation bar to maximize your screen view. There’s a small circular toggle on the left side of the navigation bar which can be used as a lock/unlock button. All you have to do is tap on the toggle to unlock the navigation bar to hide it. If you want to use the navigation bar, you can simply swipe up to view it again. In addition to these features, the OTA update also installs the latest Android security patches on the both the smartphones. Source: Verizon (1 | 2)Data: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees No Wall Will Stop Them : The map shows the world flow of refugees in 2015, including refugees fleeing the civil war in Syria, where climate-related drought is believed to have been a factor in the war’s beginning. International leaders are meeting in Bonn, Germany, to continue planning the world’s fight against global climate change. These meetings, known as Conferences of the Parties or COPs, have been held for 23 consecutive years, but one thing makes this COP unique: It is the first time the U.S. government will be an outlier due to Donald Trump’s decision that the United States will not participate in the historic agreement that 195 nations reached two years ago to keep climate change under control. If Trump’s decision is carried out (it takes three years for a country to withdraw from the accord), America will be the only nation in the world not to participate. Our national government will be more than a dropout; it will be a pariah in the international community. Trump’s dismantling of federal climate policies combined with his aspiration to make the United States the world’s largest producer of fossil fuels would in my view constitute nothing less than a crime against humanity, present and future. While Trump will send a delegation to Bonn to make sure nothing happens that is disadvantageous to the United States, the more important representatives of the U.S. will be the coalition called “We Are Still In”, which includes more than 2,580 U.S. mayors, governors, corporate CEOs and university presidents who promise to meet the commitments that President Obama made in the Paris agreement. Early reports from Bonn are that other nations are not sure whether they should be talking to Trump’s people or to these “sub-nationals”. I recommend the sub-nationals. Yet while the sub-nationals are doing us proud, the ignorance and immorality of Trump’s actions on climate change create a significant crack in the world’s unified response to global warming. All the science, diplomacy and negotiations of the last 20 years have persisted because nations share the atmosphere and the consequences of the pollution we put into it. Trump cannot build a wall to keep climate change out. The well-being of the American people is now physically as well as economically interconnected with the rest of the world. Let’s put a finer point on the immorality of Trump’s decision. The United States is world’s second largest source of manmade carbon pollution. We also are the nation most responsible for the climate-changing gases that are already in the atmosphere and that are exacerbating the weather disasters that are killing, injuring and displacing millions of people around the world. One moral dimension of this is that the people in less developed countries are suffering most even though they have polluted least. The developed world has an obligation to help them deal with climate change and it is in everyone’s self-interest to help them grow their economies with cleaner fuels. I use the word “ignorance” advisedly about Trump’s actions. His stance on climate change is so detached from reality that it’s astounding. Our understanding of climate change is incredibly complicated, but the President of the United States has unparalleled resources and advisors to educate him on the issues he must address. Instead, Trump seems to delight in a disdain for science. He and his team have dismissed or lost many of the experts and diplomats who worked on climate change. He is replacing them with climate cynics as misinformed as he is. Trump’s rhetoric and actions on global warming come straight from the Far Right and its paranoid conspiracy theorists, from false news, and from special interests that want to keep profiting from the United States’ addiction fossil fuels, regardless of public harm. In reality, America’s transition to clean energy will not ruin the economy. More than 30 states and 35 nations including the United States have proved this by increasing their GDP while reducing their carbon emissions, a process called “decoupling”. In the real world, clean energy technologies are not job-killers. Jobs in renewable energy grew 17 times faster than those in the overall economy last year. Solar energy jobs grew 82% over the past three years, while jobs in wind energy grew 100%. Clean energy technologies are disruptive but they are also rich in opportunities for workers. Trump says he wants the United States to have a better deal in the Paris agreement, but he has offered no specifics on the changes he would like to see. In reality, all the commitments nations have made in the Paris accord are voluntary. If he doesn’t agree with President Obama’s commitments in the Paris accord, he can simply rewrite them and submit a new plan to the UN. Trump has also canceled U.S. participation in another product of international negotiations — a Green Climate Fund to help developing countries deal with climate change. Developed nations are supposed to contribute $100 billion to the fund by 2020. Under the Obama Administration, the U.S. pledged to contribute $3 billion; $1 billion has already been paid. Trump complained that the Fund requires the United States to contribute a “vast fortune” and “billions and billions and billions” of dollars. He claimed that most other nations haven’t paid anything. He is wrong on both counts. As of last Sept. 15, 43 governments had submitted pledges totaling more than $10 billion. Contributions to the fund are meant to come from the private sector as well as national governments. If Trump thinks the U.S. pledge is too high, he could use his bully pulpit to rally American businesses, philanthropists and foundations to pitch in, including the CEOs who encouraged him not to withdraw from the Paris accord. On lesser issues, basing presidential decisions on inaccurate information might not be as consequential, but the implications of unmitigated climate change are staggering. The refugee crisis and climate’s impact on health are two examples. Internal Displacement Monitoring Center There were nearly 230 million people displaced by disasters around the world between 2008 and 2016. Weather caused 86% of the disasters. The number of people displaced by weather disasters is expected to reach 200 million or more by mid-century. Climate refugees: Trump is not the only leader worried about insecure borders. Between 2008 and 2014, floods, drought and other weather disasters displaced nearly 160 million people around the world. More than 23 million people were displaced by weather disasters last year alone, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. On our present path, the number is expected to reach at least 200 million people by 2050. In an effort to prevent environmental refugees from crossing national borders, some 70 border walls have been built in Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. The most prominent refugee problem right now involves people fleeing from violence like the civil war in Syria. A prolonged drought is believed by some analysts to have been one ingredient in a simmering soup of social and economic conditions that boiled over to start Syria’s war. Climate change will be a factor, and often the leading factor, in future conflicts as people compete for depleted resources or cross international borders in search of food, water and safety. As Trump’s military and intelligence advisors undoubtedly have told him, climate change increases the likelihood of conflicts, regional instability and state failures, all with implications for U.S. security. However, we don’t have to go far to find climate refugees. Hurricane Katrina displaced more than 400,000 people. Hurricane Sandy displaced nearly 780,000 people across 24 states. California’s wildfires have left thousands of families homeless. Fifteen percent of Puerto Rico’s 3.4 million people are expected to leave the island in the coming year as a result of Hurricane Maria. Building walls instead of decarbonizing economies is a poor response to climate change. When refugees and their children flee starvation or weather disasters or the loss of their lands and livelihoods to rising seas, walls will not stop them. That will be the case on the U.S.-Mexico border. A study led by Princeton Prof. Michael Oppenheimer and published in the journal Nature estimates that as many as 6.7 million Mexican adults will try to migrate into the United States over the next 70 years as climate change compromises Mexico’s ability to grow food. Nearly a dozen federal agencies signed an agreement in the last year of the Obama Administration to create an organized government response to our domestic refugee problem, but the Trump Administration reportedly has not implemented it. Public health: The biggest public health issue in the United States is not the fate of Obamacare; it is the real and present dangers that climate change poses for the American people. To substantiate this, Trump would be wise to turn off Fox News and his Twitter account for a few hours to read the Climate Science Special Report federal scientists released last week. In a separate report, researchers from 26 institutions including the World Health Organization warn that climate change is endangering the health of hundreds of millions of people and “threaten(s) to undermine the gains made in public health and development during the past half-century”. In addition to deaths, illness and direct injuries, the ripple effects of extreme weather events include lost labor productivity, the spread of infectious diseases, food and water shortages, psychological trauma, homelessness and social conflict. The Paris accord provides a framework for reducing these impacts, but it is widely acknowledged that the commitments countries have made so far to decarbonize their economies fall far short of what’s necessary to keep global temperatures in check. In fact, the World Meteorological Association reports that carbon dioxide pollution in the atmosphere reached levels last year that have not been seen for more than three million years. Again, the reality here is simple and inescapable. The interdependence of nations is not just a political philosophy or foreign policy choice. It is a physical fact. The United States cannot wash its hands of responsibility for climate changes elsewhere in the world. No nation has a sovereign right to pollute the atmosphere. Nor can we seal our borders against the pollution of other nations. NASA Industrial pollution from China drifts across the Pacific Ocean toward the West Coast of the United States. This NASA photo is visual evidence that every nation’s carbon pollution affects every other nation. I have just returned from Italy where I met with leaders in the Puglia region. They are working to decarbonize their economy, to cope with drought that is threatening their vineyards and olive groves, to deal with the erosion of their coastline on the Adriatic Sea and to deploy more renewable energy, even though they already lead Italy in that regard. Like the other people I’ve met overseas, they are mystified and disappointed at what they see happening to leadership at the highest levels of the U.S. government.© The Independent, UK Washington and Tokyo, normally the staunchest of allies, have been drawn into an unexpected diplomatic spat over the annual slaughter of dolphins in a secluded Japanese cove.Japan's top government spokesman Yoshihide Suga, defended the controversial cull in the town of Taiji as "lawful", swatting away criticism from the US ambassador, Caroline Kennedy.Ms Kennedy, the only surviving child of the assassinated US President John F Kennedy, joined the chorus of global outrage this week when she said her government opposed the practice. "Deeply concerned by inhumaneness of drive hunt dolphin killing," she tweeted, as fresh images appeared online showing apparently bloodied dolphins being herded into the cove for the slaughter, which is expected to take place today.Conservationists say a rare albino dolphin is among about 250 of the animals thrashing behind nets overnight. "Babies and mothers will be torn from each other's sides as some are taken for captivity, some are killed, and others are driven back out to sea to fend for themselves," said the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which is monitoring the cull.The hunts are notoriously brutal. Fishermen on boats surround pods of migrating dolphins, lower metal poles into the sea and bang them to frighten the animals and disrupt their sonar. Once the dolphins are herded into the narrow cove, the fishermen attack them with knives, before dragging them to a harbour-side warehouse for slaughter. The best-looking dolphins are separated and sold to aquariums.Ms Kennedy's message was translated into Japanese and retweeted thousands of times, prompting a backlash by nationalists who resent Western criticism of the cull. "Laughable," wrote one anonymous post to an online bulletin board. "What about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, the indiscriminate bombings of Japanese cities and US killings in the Middle East?"Traditionalists say dolphin and whale have been eaten locally for centuries. Restaurants and shops offer dolphin and whale sashimi and blubber, along with tuna and shark-fin soup. Dolphin meat sells for around £6-£10 a pound. Some local fishermen say the cull is necessary to keep dolphins from eating too many fish.Taiji was exposed to worldwide scrutiny four years ago in the Oscar-winning documentary The Cove, which followed a party of eco-activists as they battled fishermen and police to stop the cull. The documentary was attacked by Japanese ultra-rightists who threatened cinemas that showed it, and by Taiji officials who said the documentary-makers had "psychologically tortured" the fishermen.The Cove triggered a brief, heated debate in the Japanese media, which had largely ignored the practice until then. Many activists, including the most famous - Ric O'Barry, a former dolphin trainer-turned-campaigner - predicted the global spotlight would end the tradition. "I honestly believe when the world finds out about this it will be abolished," he said.But the annual cull of about 2,000 small porpoises and dolphins has continued. The former Guns n'Roses drummer Matt Sorum is among the latest high-profile campaigners to visit the town. "In what boats did they chase these dolphins with centuries ago?" he tweeted. "Lies... this has only been in the last 30 years... Greed not tradition."Last year the local prefecture announced plans to build a marine mammal park where it said tourists would be able swim alongside dolphins and whales, and sample local cuisine - including whale and dolphin meat. The plans drew yet more international flak but Taiji's mayor Kazutaka Sangen was undeterred. "We are not going to change our plans for the town based on the criticism of foreigners," he said.If anything, Taiji's growing infamy has widened the cultural gulf between the town and the rest of the world. Taiji, which has a population of about 3,000 people, has installed a 24-hour police box to deal with the steady stream of activists making their way to the cove. Locals bristle at the sight of Westerners.Conservationists say the fishermen have already killed over 170 dolphins and small whales this year and taken 24 captive since the start of the new year. A tweet from a team of activists overlooking the cove said the animals had spent a fourth night without food and would be slaughtered today by a party of about 40 to 60 fishermen."I've been here for three years and this is absolutely the largest I've seen driven into the cove," Melissa Sehgal, leader of the Sea Shepherd group, told Australian media.Ms Kennedy's intervention has again produced a flurry of stories in the Japanese media. The state broadcaster NHK said the ambassador was known as an animal lover and her comments were likely to be taken in that light. "The debate is likely to continue," it said. The message from Mr Sangen was more uncompromising. "The hunting of whales and dolphins has been carried out since long ago and is performed on scientific grounds," he told Japanese reporters last night. "I will protect this tradition."During his press tour for his latest film In the Heart of the Sea, Ron Howard stopped by Good Morning America today and spoke with Amy Robach, who asked the Oscar-winning director about the status of Arrested Development‘s Season 5. “Well, Mitch Hurwitz the creator of the show is working with writers now,” Howard informed, “Netflix is behind it, 20th Century Fox is behind it.” Beamed Robach, “That sounds like a yes!” Howard replied: “It’s hopeful. What has happened is that the cast has become so freakin’ in demand and busy. Everyone wants to do it. Fans want it. I would be saddened if we didn’t achieve it. I’m the announcer and the narrator, and I have to get back to that microphone.” Howard also serves as EP on the show, and his Imagine Entertainment label produces it. At last summer’s TCA, Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos told the press corps that another season was underway: “We are plugging along,” he said. “It’s a long, complex deal to make; talent is very busy. … The intent to have a new season of Arrested Development, and all negotiations are underway.” Netflix said in November 2011 that it had picked up a fourth season of the comedy, which originally aired from 2003-06 on Fox. The 15-episode Season 4 went live on the streaming service on May 2013, and the notion of a fifth season has bandied about pretty much since then. Creator Mitch Hurwitz inked a multiyear deal with Netflix in April 2014, and talk of more Arrested Development heated up again this year. Series co-creator/co-executive producer Brian Grazer said in June that a 17-episode fifth season would premiere in 2016Microsoft started off the week with the introduction of a new video series, touting “familiar things” with the best of Windows 7 and the best of Windows 8, creating an all new awesome experience that is Windows 10. Microsoft also showcased several new TV advertisements for Windows 10, featuring babies! The advertisements have a great polished look with cute kids and are able to talk about multiple features of Windows 10 in plain English, without even mentioning the names of the features like Windows Hello, Cortana and Microsoft Edge. Instead, it is a very much more human and personal way to tell the story of how Windows 10 can simply be “a more human way to do.” You can watch the videos below, in case you missed them. This past week, Microsoft revealed that Cortana would be made available in the United States, United Kingdom, China, France, Italy, Germany, and Spain on July 29th, alongside Windows 10’s official release. Following this, over the next few months, Windows Insiders in Japan and Australia will receive the service, and in English to users in Canada and India. Later in the year, the service will be expanded to Brazil and Mexico, and eventually to French speakers in Canada. Microsoft also rolled out a promo video hyping Cortana as a big reason to upgrade to Windows 10. You can watch that video below. Must Read: Microsoft says Windows 10 is the ‘best combination of the Windows you already know’ Microsoft has launched a new promotional tool to hype the launch of Windows 10. Gabe Aul, the General Manager for Microsoft’s OSG Data and Fundamentals team, posted on Twitter his new profile picture with his “Do Windows 10” badge and link for you to create your own. Microsoft also released new wallpapers as a small token of appreciation — and these wallpapers feature ninjacat! For those wondering, many new features and some old favorites arrive with Windows 10 but there are some things that are being removed. Two such features are the ability to sync Start Screen layouts and installed apps across devices. Throughout the week, Microsoft continued its countdown to the release of Windows 10 with yet another video in its “10 Reasons to Upgrade to Windows 10” series. This particular momentum building video is featuring the all new browser in Windows 10, Microsoft Edge. You can watch that video below. We learned this past week that Minecraft Windows 10 Edition will launch through the Windows Store on the 29th of July, alongside the release of Windows 10, as well as with Achievements. What Achievements will be made available is not yet possible to tell, however it is likely that they will involve the soon-to-be-introduced main quest, along with kill counts and resource collection among other things. Microsoft rolled out yet another video showcasing how one can do “multiple things” at once in Windows 10. You can watch this video below. Windows Insiders, if for some reason you are not running the latest Windows 10 build (10240), Microsoft will be imposing limitations on you. In an announcement, Microsoft revealed that access to the Windows Store will be revoked from anyone running an older Insider Preview of Windows 10. This is done to ensure that users take advantage of all the latest bug fixes and performance improvements, offering a more reliable user experience. More on that here. Microsoft released yet another video to showcase the security benefits of Windows 10. As Windows Insiders will already know, Windows 10 brings with it several improved security features, including Windows Hello, SmartScreen, Windows Defender, Family features, and more. You can watch the video below. One particular feature in Windows 10 is called Windows Hello, which allows consumers to seamlessly and securely log into their PCs. Windows Hello supports three types of biometric entry, which includes fingerprint recognition, iris, and facial recognition. In a new video, Microsoft is touting Windows Hello as a feature that adds a more personal experience to Windows 10 — in fact, with Windows Hello, you are the password! Watch the video below. Gaming was another topic Microsoft touched on in regards to Windows 10. “Find out why gaming is at its best on Windows 10 with Xbox. From streaming Xbox One games to a PC or tablet, to the biggest franchises and the largest online gaming community, you’ll find many reasons to game with Windows 10.” Microsoft also rolled out several security updates this past week, as well as a new graphics driver for those of you running Windows 10 on a Surface 3 or Surface Pro 3. Speaking of performance, both Microsoft and Intel are working together to kill some battery life bugs before the launch of Windows 10. Don’t Miss: How to help Cortana hear you loud and clear in Windows 10; How to change the default Microsoft Edge search engine in Windows 10 Big Story of the week Windows 10: RTM is dead (sorta) — Long live Windows as a Service, by Zac Bowden. “Ever since news broke of Windows 10 reaching the RTM (Release to Manufacturing) milestone of development, my inbox has been full of people claiming that I’m wrong about build 10240 (the build released to Insiders) being the official Windows 10 RTM. Build 10240 is the RTM, but not in the traditional sense.” Read more about this story here. Stay tuned for yet another exciting week of Windows 10 news. Windows 10 is set for release in just a few days! Share This Further reading: CortanaArthur Andersen returns to the world stage with global offices LinkedIn Facebook Twitter By Eleanor O'Neill, CA Today Key points Arthur Andersen & Co. will operate as a professional services firm in 16 countries around the world. The global relaunch was initiated by the French arm of the firm, based in Paris. There has been a four-year effort to relaunch the firm's global operations. Professional firm Arthur Andersen have announced that they will be relaunching worldwide operations after a four-year effort. Arthur Andersen was originally founded in 1913, and effectively dissolved at the end of 2002 with the name remaining active as a holding company. Efforts were made to revive the business from their European headquarters in Paris, France in 2013, and a year later, former partners of Arthur Andersen bought the rights to the name and re-branded as Andersen Tax in San Francisco. Now it has been confirmed that the firm is relaunching in full, and commencing operations in 16 countries across the globe under the title Arthur Andersen & Co. Carlo Alberto Brusa, Partner, Spokesperson and Pilot of the project, said: “It is a colossal job of reconstruction we’ve undertaken. It has also been a constant legal battle. "Setting up our firm worldwide from the time it re-launches is proof that our pugnacity has paid off. It seemed incredible, but we were convinced of the pertinence of our initiative and our business model. "A successful gamble against all comers who repeatedly explained to us what to do or why it wouldn’t work.” Arthur Andersen needs to become once again a synonym for world excellence in professional service. The new locations of the firm include offices in the United States, Greece, India, Brazil, Qatar and Egypt. The process for hiring new leaders in these regions began in 2016. Speaking at a press conference on 1 March 2017, Global Managing Partner Stéphane Laffont-Réveilhac stressed that the firm was focused on looking forward. He said: “In each country, we are setting up an inter-professional member firm with high-quality players who are fully up to meeting the current needs of clients with a focus on a vision of the future, while maintaining the spirit and historical values of our historic firm founded in 1913 in Chicago." Véronique Martinez, also an Arthur Andersen & Co. Partner, added: "We have a moral responsibility of success and loyalty towards the values and Alumni, both Partners and employees, of the firm that disappeared from the business world in 2002. "Arthur Andersen needs to become once again a synonym for world excellence in professional service." Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Topics Previous PageIn Kansas City they’re calling it the biggest series since 1985. There’s no doubt that’s true. For the Detroit Tigers this three-game series which gets underway in Kansas City tonight is less historic but it’s no less crucial. The series in the next-to-the-last weekend of the season will play a large part in deciding who wins the American League Central, who gets a wild card, or who might miss the playoffs completely. Since 1985 the state of Missouri has seen 12 playoff teams and four of them have advanced to the World Series. But none of those clubs were wearing Royal blue. They were all wearing Cardinal red. Missouri loves baseball but it’s baseball played in that other city in that other league by that other team. The Royals have been like a missing child for three decades and for much of that time no one bothered to put their photo on a milk carton. Kansas City baseball hasn’t mattered for a very long time. But this weekend it does and the Detroit Tigers are smack dab in the middle of it. The Tigers, under rookie manager Brad Ausmus, are trying to do something only 12 teams have done in baseball history: make it to the postseason in four consecutive seasons. Their little quasi-dynasty has yet to produce a championship but it has seen the Tigs go to baseball’s “final four” three straight years. Anything less than that will be a major disappointment in 2014. The Tigers hold a half-game lead over the Royals as they enter tonight’s game. The Royals really need a sweep, since even winning two of three would get them to only a half-game ahead. Two of three by Detroit would give the Tigers a 1 1/2 game margin entering the final week of the season. It’s important to remember that KC also has a “loss in hand” in the form of their suspended game against the Indians that will be completed early next week. The Royals trail that game by two runs with just the last three outs left to play. Assuming they lose that game, that’s another 1/2 game they lose in the standings to Detroit. Here are nine things to look for in this series. #1. How sharp will Detroit’s starting pitching be? Everything will tip off with Justin Verlander on the mound for the Tigers on Friday night. We all know JV has struggled this season and he’s been inconsistent in September too. Which Verlander will show up? He’s handled the Royals very well in his career (18-7, 3.23 ERA in 34 starts), but the right-hander is essentially a two-pitch pitcher this year and one of them is a slower fastball. On Saturday Max Scherzer will toe the rubber and Max has been excellent this season, but in two of his last three starts he’s lost early leads. Max is starting to look like he might be tiring under the workload of the last two seasons, when he’s pitched a lot of innings and also pitched deep into the postseason. Amazingly, Rick Porcello is probably the most sure thing on the staff right now for Detroit. He’s pitched very well throughout the season and he’s got all of his pitches working. He’ll finish up on Sunday when Detroit has the best chance of scoring some runs as they face Jeremy Guthrie. #2. Who will play the smartest? The Royals have a light-hitting lineup and as a result they have to maximize scoring opportunities. They play the best defense in the American League and they also steal and run the bases as well as any other team in the league. They have to play smart to win, and they usually do. The Tigers are able to overcome mistakes in the field and on the bases because they have potent offense. But last week in Detroit when the Royals dropped two of three, it was the Tigers who played good baseball while KC made several uncharacteristic errors. Whichever team plays cleaner ball this weekend will come out on top. #3. Will Joe Nathan look old or rejuvenated? As the season winds down, Joe Cool looks like Joe Ancient. The Detroit closer often seems like he’s going to pass out on the mound and his patented breaking balls are finding way too much dirt as they bounce to the plate. You can tell Nathan doesn’t fully trust his stuff and opposing teams smell blood in the water when they have a chance to score against him. If Nathan isn’t on his game, the Tigers will lose this series. #4. Will Alex Avila know where he is? A few nights ago for the umpteenth time, the Detroit catcher suffered a concussion and left the dugout to rest. KC loves to steal bases, and if Avila isn’t in the game, they will have no one to really stop them. #5. How will the bottom of Detroit’s batting order respond to the challenge? Miguel Cabrera, Victor Martinez, and J.D. Martinez are hitting very well this month, and the top of the order (Ian Kinsler and Torii Hunter) will also get respect from the Royals’ pitching corps. When they have a chance, the Royals will pitch around Detroit’s big three, leaving it up to the bottom of the order to produce runs. Nick Castellanos hasn’t hit a home run since August 16, in fact he has only six extra-base hits in the last month. He and Alex Avila, Andrew Romine, and Rajai Davis will need to make things happen at some point if the Tigers are going to score enough to win this weekend. #6. Can James Shields shut down the Tigers again? The only player who stopped the Tigers from sweeping the Royals last week was Big Game James, who mastered the Detroit lineup with a dominant performance. Shields will pitch Saturday in a pivotal swing game in this series. Detroit will need to get good at-bats against him. #7. Will Ausmus use his whole roster? One of the strengths of Jim Leyland was his blindness to inexperience. If he felt he had a young player on his team who could help him win, he played him. It didn’t matter if he was as green as the grass in Comerica Park. Two seasons ago Avisail Garcia played many key games down the stretch for Detroit. Last season Drew Smyly was used in critical spots, and a long way back Justin Verlander was given the ball as a rookie under Smoky Jim. So far, Brad Ausmus seems to favor veteran players, at least in crunch spots. Andrew Romine has been getting most of the playing time at short over rookie Eugenio Suarez. (The one unfortunate exception was Ezequiel Carrera playing center field a few nights ago and misplaying a ball that directly led to a loss). Top prospect James McCann, a good right-handed hitter who played very well at Toledo this season, has seen little action at all since coming up when the rosters expanded earlier this month. There might be times this weekend when a pinch-hitter will be needed. Will Ausmus have the nerve to call McCann or Tyler Collins or Steven Moya to the plate in place of Don Kelly or Bryan Holaday? #8. What odd move will Ned Yost pull? Most KC fans will tell you that they win in spite of their manager, not because of anything he does. Ned Yost has a reputation for making some bizarre personnel moves and he’s not known for being a tactical manager. At some point this weekend will he make a mental mistake? #9. J.D. is red hot, will that continue? If the Tigers win the division this year
national average. A few of these states are also home to a disproportionately large number of elderly Americans. More than half of people ages 65 and older live in just 11 states, including Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, and Texas. Moreover, states that may reject the expansion are seeing some of the fastest growth rates among their elderly population. With this backdrop, we considered how many seniors with incomes below the poverty line live in states that may not expand Medicaid. According to our analysis, up to 164,466 seniors in these states would be at risk of becoming uninsured if the Medicare eligibility age were increased today. Table 1 shows the breakdown by state of seniors who could be left without options for coverage under the increased eligibility age. These numbers will only grow as the wave of the boomer generation crests. There may be instances in which affected seniors would still have health care coverage. Certain low-income, disabled seniors may qualify for Medicaid under their state’s current eligibility standards. Others may continue to qualify for Medicare under the program’s end-stage renal disease or Social Security disability insurance criteria. In two of these states—Iowa and Oklahoma—seniors could currently qualify for limited Medicaid coverage, but there is no guarantee this coverage would continue. In Iowa, adults with incomes up to 250 percent of the poverty level are eligible for limited coverage, and in Oklahoma certain seniors with incomes up to 200 percent of the poverty level also have limited subsidized health insurance. Maine and Wisconsin have similar limited programs, but enrollment in both states is closed. New Jersey’s Medicaid program also covers some nondisabled seniors with extremely low incomes of less than one-fourth of the poverty level. Still, even when taking these sources of coverage into account, there are tens of thousands of nondisabled seniors with incomes below the federal poverty level in the states that may not expand their Medicaid programs who would not qualify for coverage under their states’ current Medicaid eligibility criteria. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that 270,000 people would become uninsured in 2021 if the eligibility age were gradually increased over the next 10 years. This estimate “assumed that people with the lowest income would qualify for Medicaid benefits,” and in fact, the report notes that “many more people would become uninsured” if seniors were unable to gain Medicaid coverage or purchase insurance through the exchanges. Combining our conservative calculations with the estimated number of uninsured under the Congressional Budget Office study, raising the Medicare eligibility age would put approximately 435,000 seniors at risk of becoming uninsured by 2021. Our estimates are conservative because the numbers are based on 2011 census data. As the boomer generation ages over the next decade, the population of affected seniors will grow significantly. Moreover, our estimate of 164,000 uninsured seniors is only a one-year snapshot of the affected elderly population. Each year, a new group of 65-year-olds will face this coverage gap as they enter what once was retirement age without access to Medicare. These estimates also do not include the number of low-income beneficiaries living at or slightly above the federal poverty level in these states who could find the plans offered in the insurance exchanges unaffordable, even with the income-based assistance they are eligible to receive. Seniors whose incomes fall into this category are at risk of becoming uninsured, in addition to those whose incomes fall below the poverty level. Raising the eligibility age worsens the crisis of rising health care costs Supporters of raising the eligibility age for Medicare consider only the federal government’s bottom line, but they should be looking at the nation’s overall health care costs. Health care costs throughout the system are increasing at an unsustainable rate, growing at a much faster rate than either wages or gross domestic product, which has created a palpable strain on our economy. Simply cutting the amount of money the federal government spends on health care does nothing to address the problem of rising costs. In fact, if 65- and 66-year-olds lost Medicare coverage and had to turn to other areas of the health care market to find coverage, costs would rise throughout the system. First, federal health care expenditures outside of the Medicare program would increase because low-income 65- and 66-year-olds who would lose Medicare coverage would find coverage through Medicaid or would qualify for federal subsidies through the exchanges. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that raising the Medicare eligibility age would reduce federal spending by $148 billion from 2012 through 2021 but also estimated that the net total savings for the federal government would be $113 billion during that time period, after accounting for increased federal spending on Medicaid, exchanges, federal retirees, and Social Security retirement. Second, a significant portion of the cuts to federal spending would be shifted onto state governments by increasing the cost of states’ Medicaid programs. Studies show that the average state would spend an additional $700 million a year on their Medicaid programs in order to cover expenses for dually eligible beneficiaries for whom Medicare would otherwise have been the primary payer. Third, businesses would also see increased costs, as approximately half of the seniors losing Medicare coverage under the increased eligibility age would pick up employer-sponsored coverage. This coverage shift would increase employers’ costs in two ways: Employees might stay in the job market longer to keep their health insurance; and some retirees may be able to use their former employer’s plan as a primary source of coverage rather than supplemental insurance. In addition to the cost shift from covering additional employees, businesses could face increased premiums overall, as older and on average less healthy employees and retirees are added to employers’ insurance pools. This would increase premiums for all other employees, as well. At a time when employers are already struggling with the costs of health care, especially when they face international competition from companies that have lower health care costs, adding older workers to their insurance pools could dramatically increase their employment costs. Because Medicare is much better at controlling costs than private insurance, moving these seniors to other sources of health insurance will increase overall health care spending. Medicare has the benefit of lower administrative costs than private insurance, and the program’s greater purchasing power is able to drive payment and delivery-system reforms. If the increased eligibility age were in effect in 2014, the costs to individuals, businesses, and states would be twice as large as the federal savings. In effect, Americans would pay $2 to save the federal budget $1—thereby increasing overall health spending. If policymakers are serious about lowering total national health expenditures, they must strengthen Medicare, not shrink the program. Raising the eligibility age increases costs for both seniors and younger health care consumers A significant percentage of 65- and 66-year-olds who lose Medicare coverage would subsequently obtain coverage though the health exchanges. But shifting their coverage from Medicare to plans offered through the exchanges is not sound policy. Since 65- and 66-year-olds would be older and on average less healthy than the nonelderly population in the exchanges, shifting these individuals to the exchange pools would increase premiums for all enrollees in the exchange by an average of about 3 percent. Premium increases in the exchanges would be highest for the youngest exchange beneficiaries, as those younger than age 30 would see an increase of 8 percent and those between the ages of 30 and 34 would see an increase of 5 percent. Such substantial increases in premium costs for young and relatively healthy individuals could result in these individuals choosing not to purchase health insurance—a process known as adverse selection—which would increase costs for the less healthy individuals remaining in exchanges. This scenario could threaten the viability of the exchanges. Paradoxically, the 65- and 66-year-olds who would drive up costs in the exchanges because of their age and average health status would also have been on average the healthiest beneficiaries in the Medicare pool. Removing the youngest, healthiest seniors from Medicare will also have the effect of increasing premiums for all remaining elderly and disabled Medicare beneficiaries by an average of about 3 percent. This means, then, that costs for both seniors purchasing insurance in the exchanges as well as those remaining in Medicare would increase. Raising the Medicare eligibility age would require many seniors to pay more for their health care. More than 3 million people—two-thirds of 65- and 66-year-olds—would pay more out of pocket for their health care. The average increase in costs would be $2,200 per year, forcing many seniors to forgo necessary care to save money. In addition, approximately 5.4 million seniors would experience care disruption, as they would be forced to change or lose coverage and possibly change their doctors. As noted above, many of the seniors who would lose Medicare coverage under increased eligibility age are projected to pick up coverage through Medicaid if states accept the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of the program. But Medicaid benefits for many 65- and 66-year-olds could be less generous than the Medicare coverage they would otherwise have received. Conclusion Raising Medicare’s eligibility age was never a good idea. One goal of the Affordable Care Act was to lower health care costs, but raising the Medicare eligibility age would actually increase health care costs. Following the Supreme Court decision, there is even greater risk associated with this proposed change. States that do not currently plan to expand their Medicaid programs are home to disproportionately large elderly populations and have some of the highest senior poverty rates in the country. If states carry out plans to reject Medicaid expansion, thousands of low-income seniors will have no recourse to prevent themselves from becoming uninsured. Policymakers must address the federal deficit, and finding savings in Medicare will be part of that effort. But they should target those savings on waste and inefficiency and, if necessary, by increasing cost-sharing in a way that protects low- and middle-income beneficiaries, as the Center for American Progress proposed in its Senior Protection Plan. Blunt cut-and-shift policies, like the one described in this brief, harm the most vulnerable Medicare beneficiaries and do nothing to solve the real challenge facing our health care system—rising health care costs. Maura Calsyn is the Associate Director of the Health Policy Team at the Center for American Progress. Lindsay Rosenthal is the Special Assistant for Health Policy and Women’s Health and Rights at the Center. The authors thank Sarah Jane Glynn, Policy Analyst on the Economic Policy team at the Center for American Progress, for her work in contributing calculations to this brief. See also:Kennesaw State defeated Alabama A&M University in an 8-0 win Sunday afternoon, propelling the Owls to their best start since 2008. Senior midfielder Shannon Driscoll led KSU with a hat trick and an assist. Other scorers included Abby Roth, Brittney Reed, Jessica Sexton and Kim Fincher. Sexton notched her first goal as an Owl, while Fincher found the goal twice. From the start, KSU pressured the AAMU defense with aggressive long passes through their back line. KSU had plenty of fast break opportunities that afforded them chances for one-on-ones with the goalkeeper as well as easy shots. Early in the mid-afternoon match, the Owls saw two great scoring opportunities go awry. An AAMU defender kicked away one shot at the goal line, and Sexton missed a pass just inches in front of her outstretched foot while in the box. KSU’s rampant scoring began in the 16th minute by defender Abby Roth’s patient strike off of an AAMU goalkeeper’s punch-out in the box. That goal was quickly followed by an easy tap into a wide open goal for midfielder Brittney Reed in the 21st minute. Forward Kim Fincher notched back-to-back goals in the 24th and 36th minutes off of assists from Monica Herrera and Shannon Driscoll, respectively. Fincher paid Driscoll back with a through-ball into the box, allowing her to get by a lone AAMU defender for the Owls’ final goal of the first half. Ten minutes into the second half, Sexton scored her first goal as an Owl on an assist from freshman midfielder Morgan Harrison. Driscoll rounded out the 8-0 victory with an unassisted goal in the 81st minute with a nicely bent ball around the AAMU goalkeeper. She scored another just six minutes later off of a feed from midfielder Isabella Contreras. The Owls totaled 27 shots with 21 of them on goal. In addition to those shots, the Owls piled up six assists and ten corner kicks. Head coach Benji Walton was pleased with the eye-popping numbers from his now 3-0-1 squad. This victory marked the 100th win of his career. “Our spacing this week has been all we’ve really been talking about,” Walton said. “We’ve been playing with a lot more rhythm the past two games and that just kind of carried over.” Freshmen Charlotte Rindt, Emely Sosa, Morgan Harrison and Raegan Peters all saw playing time. Peters had three shots on goal, Sosa attempted two shots and Harrison gathered an assist. “[The freshmen are] starting to make a lot of progress and we’re getting some contributions from them,” Walton said. “We’re going to need them down the road, so it’s good to have a game like this where they can go out there and make some mistakes and learn from them.” Despite the win and the best start in 11 years, Walton insists the team has to keep its composure. “We’ve got to stay humble,” Walton said. “I told them not to be satisfied. We’ve got to pick up where we left off and build and get better.” KSU now faces a five-game road trip to Western Carolina, UNC Asheville, Georgia Southern, the University of Georgia and Samford. The Owls won’t play at home again until Sunday, Sept. 18 at 1 p.m. against Winthrop University.Est. 1100 pounds of crawfish. Slap Yo Mama crawfish are $4 a pound and Sunny D crawfish are $5 a pound. Live rock music. Large crowd. March 23 at 3:00pm until March 24 at 1:30am Crawfish live music and lots of space. 7 bands and near 1200LBS of Crawfish Facebook Event page San Leon, Texas 77539 Bing Directions To Mudbug & Music Fest Location in Google Maps Lots of space for parking Here is the line up locked in for the show. METALLOYD 3:00-3:55 SOLITUDE ENDEAVOR 4:20-5:05 ***Surprise Guest*** 5:35-6:15 SUBCOOL 6:45-7:45 FAULT 8:15-9:10 C.O.A. 9:35-10:20 ALL THE DEAD PILOTS 10:45-12:15 or after The location, day, and time of event. The 18th Street Pier Bar & Grill in San Leon. I-45 to Hwy 646. Go left until Bayshore Drive. Go right until 18th Street. On left @ the water. March 23, 2013 Crawfish, Potatoes & Corn will be available at approx. 2:30pm and will be served until they are gone!!! Live Music will begin at 3pm Est. 400-500 pounds of crawfish. Slap Yo Mama crawfish are $4 a pound with potato’s and corn. Will begin serving at 2:30 until they’e gone!! Live music feauturing; Metalloyd from 3:00-3:55, Solitude Endeavor from 4:20-5:05, Surprise Guest*** from 5:35-6:15, Subcool from 6:45-7:45, Fault from 8:15-9:10, C.O.A. from 9:35-10:20, and All The Dead Pilots! from 10:45-12:15 or after. Location has changed to on the water for a bigger better environment! Convenient for rain or shine show must go on! Play the 50/50 cash giveaway game inbetween bands. P.s. got a fishing pier!Alberta’s Wildrose Party held its annual convention this past weekend in Calgary. Surprising no one, party leader Brian Jean received a 78 per cent approval rating from the delegates. (Actually, 78 per cent of attendees voted against having a leadership review, which amounts to the same thing.) It should have been higher. Jean did a yeoman’s job of resurrecting the party after its previous leader’s attempt at self-destruction. It has been a turbulent year in Alberta politics. Eleven months ago, the then-leader of the Wildrose opposition, Danielle Smith, walked across the floor of the Alberta Legislature, taking half her caucus with her. Stunning the province’s politicos, they joined Premier Jim Prentice’s Progressive Conservative caucus. Loud cries of “traitor” could be heard from Fort McMurray to Fort McLeod. To Wildrose’s rescue came the affable but low-key former Member of Parliament Brian Jean. Notwithstanding the tragic death of his son during the leadership campaign, Jean was easily able to fend off two challengers and became leader of the Opposition, squaring off against Prentice, his former federal caucus colleague. With the Opposition in complete disarray, Prentice seized what he saw as an opportunity, broke Alberta’s vague fixed election date window and called an election a year earlier than planned. With Jean having been party leader for just days, and the third-party Liberals getting by with an interim leader, a PC re-election seemed assured. But politics is a funny business. Alberta voters, tired of Allison Redford’s free-spending habits and angry with Prentice over the early election call and an unpopular budget, put an end to the PCs’ four-decade run in power. Rachel Notley, leader of the fourth-party New Democrats, was the only opposition leader with any familiarity with her job; the NDP was also the only opposition party with enough cash to purchase even a modest media buy. The NDP went from a caucus of four to an improbable 54 seats and Notley became premier. The PCs were reduced to 10 seats and humbled by third-party status. Wildrose survived. Although its popular vote slid from 34.29 per cent in 2012 to 24.23 per cent, it actually increased its seat count from 17 (which dropped to eight with the defections) to 21 and maintained Official Opposition status. Most observers had written Wildrose off after Smith’s desertion; Brian Jean deserves credit for hauling them back from the brink. He also has shown himself adept in question period. Less adversarial than Ms. Smith, he appears to be more interested in constructive criticism than in being contrarian and mean-spirited. Alberta is rapidly shedding the remnants of its ‘redneck’ social conservatism, although it’s still present in southern and rural Alberta and (not surprisingly) in some corners of Wildrose. Alberta is rapidly shedding the remnants of its ‘redneck’ social conservatism, although it’s still present in southern and rural Alberta and (not surprisingly) in some corners of Wildrose. But Wildrose has set its sights on the brass ring in the next election, not expected now until 2019. The usual unite-the-right activism is on display at gatherings like the party’s weekend convention. “Conservatives can’t and shouldn’t be fighting each other,” Jean said in his keynote speech. But then came the twist: Rather than merging the so-called conservative factions, Jean is proposing more of a takeover. Specifically, he held out an olive branch to disenchanted PC supporters, promising them they would be welcome in the Rose Garden. Jean cleverly wants to “unite the right people”, as opposed to formally uniting the parties. But building a viable conservative coalition may prove a daunting task. It’s true that the Alberta PC party has suffered severe brand damage. The party raised an impressive $800,000 in the first three months of 2015 but a paltry $15,000 in the third quarter. But it’s far from certain that most disaffected Progressive Conservatives would pick Wildrose as their home if and when their own house is destroyed. Jean’s olive branch notwithstanding, most Wildrose members don’t consider the average PC supporter to be truly “conservative”. They certainly didn’t when the PCs were in government. The Wildrose has hard core conservative Alberta locked up. The ‘progressive’ conservatives, or Red Tories, may prove difficult to attract. It’s a myth that Alberta is built on conservative bedrock. For decades, from Lougheed through Getty and Klein, Albertans demanded the best of everything — the widest highways, the best schools and hospitals. When resource revenues were plentiful, governments could keep taxes low. When natural gas and crude prices tanked, governments racked up huge deficits. But at no time did Albertans lose their appetite for big, expensive government. Alberta is also rapidly shedding the remnants of its ‘redneck’ social conservatism, although it’s still present in southern and rural Alberta and (not surprisingly) in some corners of Wildrose. Alberta is becoming increasingly urban and we have welcomed domestic immigration from every province and from beyond Canada’s borders. We are Canada’s youngest province and getting younger and more urban with every census. New and younger Albertans dispel old stereotypes and are generally more welcoming and tolerant. Meanwhile, the Wildrose Party is ideologically, almost pathologically, opposed to deficit financing. In the recent federal election, the Liberals went from zero to four seats in Alberta after promising to run deficits for at least three years. In seats that the federal Conservatives held, the Liberal vote still doubled. Pragmatists understand that deficits are occasionally unavoidable and sometimes even desirable. It’s also interesting to note that in the May election, the PCs — although they got less than half the seats Wildrose won — actually got more votes than Wildrose, indicating a broader, less centralized base of support. Alberta is not an ultra-conservative province; it’s not a socialist province either. The NDP had to abandon many of its hard-left positions to win mainstream electoral support. Albertans are increasingly more progressive than conservative socially, and fiscally conservative only in a pragmatic sense. A perfect storm of timing and preparedness set the conditions for Rachel Notley’s meteoric ascent to the premier’s office. But the future of Alberta lies neither in the hard right nor the left. In May, almost 35 per cent of Albertans chose a progressive centrist party (PC, Liberal or the upstart Alberta Party). Electoral success in Alberta depends on uniting the center. Brent Rathgeber was the Conservative MP for the riding of Edmonton—St. Albert from 2008 to 2013, when he resigned from the Conservative caucus to protest the Harper government’s lack of commitment to transparency and open government. He ran and lost in the 2015 federal election to a Conservative candidate. He is the author of Irresponsible Government: The Decline of Parliamentary Democracy in Canada. The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.After that collective Four of five Pac-12 teams who took the court Saturday in the 2017 NCAA Men's Tennis Championships locked up berths to the round of 16 in Athens, Georgia starting on May 18. [Related: 2017 NCAA Men's Tennis Championships bracket (NCAA.com)] Second round: California 4, Northwestern 1 While things didn't start off quite as smoothly for the Golden Bears in Berkeley, they recovered nicely and punched their ticket to Athens with a 4-1 win over Northwestern. The visiting Wildcats came out strong, taking the doubles point with a pair of quick wins on courts three and one. NU's Chris Ephron/Michael Lorenzini topped J.T. Nishimura/Bjorn Hoffmann (more on him in a bit), 6-2, before clinching the point with a win by Sam Shropshire/Konrad Zieba over Filip Bergevi/Florian Lakat, 6-4. As things transitioned to singles, the Golden Bears found their footing. Nishimura evened the match at 1-1 overall with a 6-3, 6-3 victory over the Wildcats' Ben Vandixhorn. Cal's Billy Griffith carried some momentum from a first set tiebreak win to close out Dominik Stary 7-6 (5), 6-2. Then it was Andre Goransson who pushed things further out of reach for Northwestern with a 7-5, 6-4 victory over Zieba. But in by far the best image of the day, it was Hoffmann who avenged his doubles loss and clinched things for Cal with a hard-fought 3-6, 6-4, 6-4 over Jason Seidman. Bjorn beats Seidmann @NUMensTennis 3-6, 6-4, 6-4 to clinch Cal's 4-1 win & trip to Athens for the @NCAATennis round of 16! #GoBears pic.twitter.com/CRKeYwmgrZ — Cal Men's Tennis (@CalMensTennis) May 14, 2017 In Athens, eighth-seeded Cal will match up with No. 9 seed North Carolina on May 18 at 4 p.m. PT. Second round: Stanford 4, Michigan 1 The last Pac-12 men's tennis to go final on Saturday had perhaps one of the more dramatic beginnings as the Cardinal claimed a 4-1 win over Michigan. For the doubles point, the Wolverines got things going with a victory by Alex Knight/Runhao Hua over Michael Genender/Sameer Kumar, 6-3. The Cardinal quickly evened it up thanks to Brandon Sutter/David Wilczynski topping Myles Schalet/Kevin Wong, 6-4. It all came down to the first court, where Stanford's Tom Fawcett/Yale Goldberg edged Connor Johnston/Jathan Malik, 7-6 (5). Sporting a 1-0 lead, the Cardinal headed to singles play with momentum on their side and capitalized quickly as Sutter defeated Wong in straight sets, 6-2, 6-4. Fawcett nudged Stanford closer to securing the win, topping Malik 6-4, 6-4. Michigan wasn't finished yet though as Carter Lin defeated William Genesen 6-4, 6-2 on court six to stave off elimination. But it was the Card's Kumar that closed things out on The Farm, needing a third-set tiebreak to defeat the Wolverines' Knight 6-0, 3-6, 7-6 (6). KUMAR with his career-first clinching point to send Stanford to the round of 16 in Athens!! pic.twitter.com/XN3eQmu7uR — StanfordMTennis (@StanfordTennis) May 14, 2017 Stanford will now square off with No. 1 seed Wake Forest on Thursday, May 18 at 4 p.m. PT in Athens, Georgia. Second round: UCLA 4, Ole Miss 0 The Bruins continued their march through the NCAA Championships bracket, still having yet to drop a match as they shut out Ole Miss 4-0 Saturday in Los Angeles. For the doubles point, UCLA's Maxime Cressy/Ben Goldberg took down Filip Kraljevic/Tim Sandkaulen, 6-3, before Joseph Di Giulio/Austin Rapp locked things up over Zvonimir Babic/Ricardo Jorge, 6-3. The Bruins didn't relent one bit heading into singles play as Evan Zhu bested Jorde in straight sets, 6-2, 6-1. Logan Staggs kept things rolling for the group from Westwood, downing the Rebels' Sandkaulen 6-2, 6-1. Martin Redlicki put the capper on the shutout as he defeated Gustav Hansson 6-3, 6-2. Fifth-seeded UCLA will next square off with No. 12 seed Texas A&M on May 18 at 1 p.m. PT in Athens. Second round: USC 4, Wisconsin 0 In the Pac-12's second sweep of the day, the Trojans handled Wisconsin at home to clinch a trip to Athens. Nick Crystal/Laurens Verboven got things going for USC in the doubles competition, downing Chase Colton/Lamar Remy, 6-3. It was Rob Bellamy/Jack Jaede that clinched the point, defeating John Zordani/Osgar O'Hoisin 6-2. Jaede picked up the Troajns' second overall point by defeating O'Hoisin 6-0, 6-3. Logam Smith pocked up another straight-set win over the Badgers' Chema Carranza 6-2, 6-4. For the second-straight day, Thibault Forget closed it out for the Trojans, defeating Colton 6-3, 6-4. USC carries energy and momentum into its trip to the NCAA Round of 16 and beyond in Athens after 2 wins at home! #FightOn pic.twitter.com/eS2pucKExC — USC Men's Tennis (@USCMensTennis) May 13, 2017 No. 4 seed and Pac-12 Champion USC will now face de facto NCAA host Georgia on May 18 at 1 p.m. PT. Second round: Texas A&M 4, Oregon 0 The Ducks bowed out of NCAA competition with a 4-0 loss at the hands of regional host Texas A&M in College Station. Oregon got a bit of a bad break to start things in the double competition. After claiming the first match with Thomas Laurent/Cormac Clissold defeating the Aggies' Jordi Arconada/Hady Habib 6-4, things went back to even as Aleksandre Bakshi/Max Lunkin topped Simon Stevens/Ty Gentry 6-4. In the deciding doubles match, Texas A&M's AJ Catanzariti/Arthur Rinderknech needed a tiebreak to edge Jayson Amos/Armando Soemarno 7-6 (7-2). Having lost the first point in heartbreaking fashion, the Ducks struggled to regain any momentum. Catanzariti defeated Tanaka 6-3, 6-2 to put the Aggies up 2-0 before Arconada took down Stevens 6-2, 6-4. With the match on the line, Rinderknech that triumphed over UO's Laurent to make things official, 6-4, 6-2.CYCLONE Ita has now been declared a category 5 storm as it tracks towards the far north Queensland coast, where it is expected to hit tomorrow evening. LATEST UPDATES: Follow our live coverage as Cyclone Ita shapes up to hit the Queensland coast. 9.30pm: Manager of the Cooktown Hotel, Michelle Thompson said the town was experiencing the calm before the storm. “At the moment the weather’s pretty calm so there is a bit of an eerie feeling.” “It’s calm, the wind isn’t anything unusual. “It’s drizzled, but just a little bit of rain nothing threating just your typical Cooktown four seasons in a day kind of thing.” Ms Thompson’s family had just taken over the Cooktown business seven days ago. She said she thinks the longstanding tavern will hold up well against the powerful storm. “She’s an old pub, it went through the 1943 cyclone, It was built in 1885 so I’d say it’s probably seen its fair share,” she said. “It should fair up a bit better than some others, hopefully we don’t get too affected by it anyway.” 5.15pm: Cyclone Ita has been declared a potentially devastating category 5 storm as it moves towards the far north Queensland coast. It is estimated to be 375km north northeast of Cooktown and 325 kilometres northeast of Cape Melville, and moving west southwest at 18 kilometres per hour. Ita is predicted to land north of Cooktown tomorrow night and there’s a strong chance she will coincide with a 7pm high tide. This will create dangerous storm surges, about 1.5 metres bigger than usual high tides, from Port Douglas to Cape Melville, Queensland’s Bureau of Meteorology says. News_Module: Cyclone Ita: NOAA Satellite and Information Service The bureau’s senior forecaster Pradeep Singh says heavy rain will also trigger flash floods. He said while Ita was intense, it’s a smaller system and would move slower than category five Cyclone Yasi in 2011 and category four Cyclone Larry in 2006. It’s expected to bring 280km/h winds when it hits the coast, with 9000 people directly in its path. 2.10pm: Cyclone Ita has hit Category 4, with winds to 280km/h. It was about 410km northeast of Cooktown and 380km east northeast of Cape Melville at 2pm and increasing speed to 16km/h. Destructive winds may develop between Cape Sidmouth and Cooktown as early as tomorrow morning before extending inland to Laura and further south to Cape Tribulation later in the day. Gales are expected almost 200km out from the cyclone’s eye. 1.40pm: Cyclone Ita is now expected to cross the coast near Cape Flattery, north of Cooktown, about 7pm tomorrow, pushing a combined storm surge and waves of about 2.7m. It will then turn south, travelling as a low before veering back into the Coral Sea on Sunday where it may again reform into a cyclone. Forecasters say computer modelling of the storm’s path is starting to firm up after a confusing week in which projections on its landfall have varied from the tip of Cape York to about Cairns. The cyclone may make a damaging category 5 - the most powerful - shortly before it comes ashore and is forecast to produce flood rains well south of Cairns. 12.30pm: Premier Campbell Newman says steps are being taken to warn campers in far north Queensland, with authorities considering sending a helicopter up and down the coast to ensure campers are located, alerted to the approaching danger and moved to a place of safety. “I am probably most concerned with people who could be camping along the coast, particularly between Mossman and Cooktown because there are many small little communities there and camping areas and the like so we are trying to get the message out so we have rangers out there and we are contemplating putting a helicopter up to run up the coast,” Mr Newman said. He said the beaches were closed and stinger nets removed. Power could be out for several weeks in the affected areas following the storm and the road system is also expected to be impacted. He stressed residents should be prepared for the intense rainfall that will come with the storm. “The rain impacts on the Tablelands, the hinterland around Cairns, will be the thing,” he said. “That is why I want to stress, local intense rain could see significant flash flooding. There are some steep hillsides for example, around the suburbs of Cairns, you’ll see a lot of rain coming off those hillsides, and surrounding areas, and that is an issue. The rain causing local flooding is something people should be particularly conscious of.” Midday: Premier Campbell Newman says up to 9000 people could be affected by Cyclone Ita, including 400 people in the town of Bloomfield, 400 in Coen, about 300 in the Cook shire and Laura, 2400 in Cooktown, 1100 in Hopevale, 270 people in Wujal Wujal, 1700 in Mossman and 5000 in Port Douglas. He warned people not to underestimate the storm surge, which could as high as 1.5m above the highest tide, as well as the cyclonic winds and intense rain. “Tropical Cyclone Ita is currently heading towards the Far North Queensland coast... and it is heading towards an area of the coast that is relatively unpopulated but it is the case that, if you look across the communities there, there are around 9000 Queenslanders who will be directly impacted by this system,” Mr Newman said. “It is expected Tropical Cyclone Ita will cross the coast north of Cooktown some time around 10pm on Friday night. It is expected to hit the coast at around a category 4, maybe category 5 intensity. “It will then turn nautical south, diminishing in intensity and heading down inland, down Cape York towards the Atherton Tablelands. “The big concerns that people need to be preparing themselves for are storm surge which means in low-lying areas water much higher potentially then normal tides, potentially 1.5m higher than the highest tide you would normally ever see and that could be all the way down the coast, through Cooktown to places like Port Douglas. “The other big concern of course will be the normal high winds that can cause debris flying around... and finally very intense rain causing quite severe local flooding. “We will see hundreds of millimetres of rain in certain catchments, fast rising rivers and creeks and also problems in suburban areas potentially as far south as Cairns.” SCROLL DOWN FOR MORE INFO AND ROLLING COVERAGE THROUGH THE DAY 11.20am: National Parks Minister Steve Dickson has ordered the closure of all camp grounds and day use areas from Townsville to Cape York, including the Tablelands and the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area and coastal islands such as Hinchinbrook. “Cyclone Ita is an intense and powerful cyclone, potentially the strongest since Cyclone Yasi in 2011,” Mr Dickson said. “...We ask those currently in national parks to work with us and follow the directions of our park rangers.’’ Mr Dickson said it might take weeks or even months for rangers to restore access and to repair facilities, depending on the extent of damage. 11.15am: LOOK out far north Queensland. Cyclone Ita is intensifying and may make category 5, just as big, powerful and dangerous as Cyclone Yasi that devastated the Mission Beach and Cardwell areas in 2011. Weather Bureau forecasters say they cannot rule out that it will become a category 5 - the strongest possible - just before hitting land. Storms of this size have winds of more than 280km/h and are very destructive. There are few atmospheric conditions occurring to reduce the power of Cyclone Ita. Yasi was one of the most powerful cyclones to have hit Queensland since records started. Previous cyclones of a comparable intensity include the 1899 Cyclone Mahina at Princess Charlotte Bay and two cyclones of 1918 at Mackay and Innisfail. Most global computer models show the cyclone will cross about 10pm tomorrow between Cape Sidmouth and Cooktown. At 11am Cyclone Ita was about 490km east of Lockhart River and 440km northeast of Cooktown, and moving west southwest at 14km/hr. Although still a category 3
> : < / span > < span > & quot ; Barry, Manager & quot ; < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > } }, { < / span > < span > & quot ; Name & quot ; < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > : < / span > < span > & quot ; Barry, Manager & quot ; < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > } ] < / span > C# class for above JSON object will look like below. <span style="background: white;color: blue">public class </span><span>Rootobject </span><span style="background: white;color: black">{ </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">public </span><span>Class1</span><span style="background: white;color: black">[] Property1 { </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">get</span><span style="background: white;color: black">; </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">set</span><span style="background: white;color: black">; } } </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">public class </span><span>Class1 </span><span style="background: white;color: black">{ </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">public string </span><span style="background: white;color: black">Name { </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">get</span><span style="background: white;color: black">; </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">set</span><span style="background: white;color: black">; } </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">public </span><span>Manager </span><span style="background: white;color: black">Manager { </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">get</span><span style="background: white;color: black">; </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">set</span><span style="background: white;color: black">; } } </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">public class </span><span>Manager </span><span style="background: white;color: black">{ </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">public string </span><span style="background: white;color: black">Name { </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">get</span><span style="background: white;color: black">; </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">set</span><span style="background: white;color: black">; } } </span> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > public class < / span > < span > Rootobject < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > { < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > public < / span > < span > Class1 < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > [ ] Property1 { < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > get < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > ; < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > set < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > ; } } < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > public class < / span > < span > Class1 < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > { < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > public string < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > Name { < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > get < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > ; < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > set < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > ; } < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > public < / span > < span > Manager < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > Manager { < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > get < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > ; < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > set < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > ; } } < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > public class < / span > < span > Manager < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > { < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > public string < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > Name { < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > get < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > ; < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > set < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > ; } } < / span > VB. NET class as below <span style="background: white;color: blue">Public Class </span><span>Rootobject </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">Public </span><span style="background: white;color: black">Property1() </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">As </span><span style="background: white;color: black">Class1 </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">End Class Public Class </span><span>Class1 </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">Public </span><span style="background: white;color: black">Name </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">As String Public </span><span style="background: white;color: black">Manager </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">As </span><span style="background: white;color: black">Manager </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">End Class Public Class </span><span>Manager </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">Public </span><span style="background: white;color: black">Name </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">As String End Class </span> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > Public Class < / span > < span > Rootobject < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > Public < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > Property1 ( ) < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > As < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > Class1 < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > End Class Public Class < / span > < span > Class1 < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > Public < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > Name < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > As String Public < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > Manager < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > As < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > Manager < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > End Class Public Class < / span > < span > Manager < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > Public < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > Name < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > As String End Class < / span > Multi-Dimensional Arrays You can convert multi-dimension JSON arrays to classes. JSON Example for two dimensional array: [ [ 1, 2, 3 ] ] C# class for above JSON object will look like below: <span style="background: white;color: blue">public class </span><span>Rootobject </span><span style="background: white;color: black">{ </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">public int</span><span style="background: white;color: black">[][] Property1 { </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">get</span><span style="background: white;color: black">; </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">set</span><span style="background: white;color: black">; } } </span> 1 2 3 4 5 < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > public class < / span > < span > Rootobject < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > { < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > public int < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > [ ] [ ] Property1 { < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > get < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > ; < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > set < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > ; } } < / span > VB.NET class: <span style="background: white;color: blue">Public Class </span><span>Rootobject </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">Public </span><span style="background: white;color: black">Property1()() </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">As Integer End Class </span> 1 2 3 4 < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > Public Class < / span > < span > Rootobject < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > Public < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > Property1 ( ) ( ) < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > As Integer End Class < / span > Also you can convert JSON with objects having arrays inside array as shown in the example below <span style="background: white;color: black">{ </span><span>"results"</span><span style="background: white;color: black">: [{ </span><span>"address_Office"</span><span style="background: white;color: black">: [{ </span><span>"street_number"</span><span style="background: white;color: black">: </span><span>"One"</span><span style="background: white;color: black">, </span><span>"city_name"</span><span style="background: white;color: black">: </span><span>"Bellevue"</span><span style="background: white;color: black">, </span><span>"state_name"</span><span style="background: white;color: black">: </span><span>"Washington"</span><span style="background: white;color: black">, </span><span>"street_name"</span><span style="background: white;color: black">: [ </span><span>"Microsoft Way" </span><span style="background: white;color: black">] }], }] } </span> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 < span style = "background: white;color: black" > { < / span > < span > & quot ; results & quot ; < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > : [ { < / span > < span > & quot ; address_Office & quot ; < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > : [ { < / span > < span > & quot ; street_number & quot ; < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > : < / span > < span > & quot ; One & quot ; < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" >, < / span > < span > & quot ; city_name & quot ; < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > : < / span > < span > & quot ; Bellevue & quot ; < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" >, < / span > < span > & quot ; state_name & quot ; < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > : < / span > < span > & quot ; Washington & quot ; < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" >, < / span > < span > & quot ; street_name & quot ; < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > : [ < / span > < span > & quot ; Microsoft Way & quot ; < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > ] } ], } ] } < / span > C# class for above JSON object will look like below: <span style="background: white;color: blue">public class </span><span>Rootobject </span><span style="background: white;color: black">{ </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">public </span><span>Result</span><span style="background: white;color: black">[] results { </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">get</span><span style="background: white;color: black">; </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">set</span><span style="background: white;color: black">; } } </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">public class </span><span>Result </span><span style="background: white;color: black">{ </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">public </span><span>Address_Office</span><span style="background: white;color: black">[] address_Office { </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">get</span><span style="background: white;color: black">; </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">set</span><span style="background: white;color: black">; } } </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">public class </span><span>Address_Office </span><span style="background: white;color: black">{ </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">public string </span><span style="background: white;color: black">street_number { </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">get</span><span style="background: white;color: black">; </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">set</span><span style="background: white;color: black">; } </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">public string </span><span style="background: white;color: black">city_name { </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">get</span><span style="background: white;color: black">; </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">set</span><span style="background: white;color: black">; } </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">public string </span><span style="background: white;color: black">state_name { </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">get</span><span style="background: white;color: black">; </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">set</span><span style="background: white;color: black">; } </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">public string</span><span style="background: white;color: black">[] street_name { </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">get</span><span style="background: white;color: black">; </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">set</span><span style="background: white;color: black">; } } </span> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > public class < / span > < span > Rootobject < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > { < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > public < / span > < span > Result < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > [ ] results { < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > get < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > ; < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > set < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > ; } } < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > public class < / span > < span > Result < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > { < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > public < / span > < span > Address_Office < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > [ ] address_Office { < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > get < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > ; < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > set < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > ; } } < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > public class < / span > < span > Address_Office < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > { < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > public string < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > street_number { < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > get < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > ; < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > set < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > ; } < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > public string < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > city_name { < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > get < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > ; < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > set < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > ; } < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > public string < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > state_name { < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > get < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > ; < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > set < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > ; } < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > public string < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > [ ] street_name { < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > get < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > ; < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > set < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > ; } } < / span > VB.NET class: <span style="background: white;color: blue">Public Class </span><span>Rootobject </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">Public </span><span style="background: white;color: black">results() </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">As </span><span style="background: white;color: black">Result </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">End Class Public Class </span><span>Result </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">Public </span><span style="background: white;color: black">address_Office() </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">As </span><span style="background: white;color: black">Address_Office </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">End Class Public Class </span><span>Address_Office </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">Public </span><span style="background: white;color: black">street_number </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">As String Public </span><span style="background: white;color: black">city_name </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">As String Public </span><span style="background: white;color: black">state_name </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">As String Public </span><span style="background: white;color: black">street_name() </span><span style="background: white;color: blue">As String End Class </span> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > Public Class < / span > < span > Rootobject < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > Public < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > results ( ) < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > As < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > Result < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > End Class Public Class < / span > < span > Result < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > Public < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > address_Office ( ) < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > As < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > Address_Office < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > End Class Public Class < / span > < span > Address_Office < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > Public < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > street_number < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > As String Public < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > city_name < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > As String Public < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > state_name < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > As String Public < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > street_name ( ) < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: blue" > As String End Class < / span > Troubleshooting If JSON Object in clipboard is invalid, error message will be shown with the reason. Example: Below JSON object contains max value for decimal data type. Newtonsoft JSON Parser does not recognize values above 1.7976931348623157E+308(which is max value for double data type). <span style="background: white;color: black">{ </span><span>"DecimalMax"</span><span style="background: white;color: black">: 1.79769313486232E+308, }</span> 1 2 3 < span style = "background: white;color: black" > { < / span > < span > & quot ; DecimalMax & quot ; < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > : 1.79769313486232E + 308, } < / span > This will result in error like below when “Paste JSON As Classes” is called. Another example of invalid JSON object where “” are not valid character: <span style="background: white;color: black">{</span><span>"login"</span><span style="background: white;color: black">:””;}</span> 1 < span style = "background: white;color: black" > { < / span > < span > & quot ; login & quot ; < / span > < span style = "background: white;color: black" > : ”” ; } < / span > This will result in error like below when “Paste JSON As Classes” is called. Thank you for your time reading this blog post. Looking forward to hear your feedback on this feature!^^^ANALYSIS^^^ ^^^ NEW INFO^^^ NOTE: If you haven’t read the first three parts, It’s highly recommended that you read the first three to catch up to speed. PART 1: https://thegodofrage.wordpress.com/2017/10/25/the-finders-cult-the-missing-pizzagate-links-part-1-of-many/ PART 2: https://thegodofrage.wordpress.com/2017/10/25/the-finders-cult-the-missing-pizzagate-links-part-2-of-many/ PART 3: https://thegodofrage.wordpress.com/2017/10/25/the-finders-cult-the-missing-pizzagate-links-part-1-of-many-2/ Welcome to the fourth part of “The Finders” investigation, where in the third part, we wrapped up the analysis of the “Tallahassee Incident”. Over the course of the investigation and analysis, we found some very important details that could lead to a major breakthrough in the Pizzagate/Pedogate case that has fallen stagnant. In this part, we will again go though the most important parts of the “Tallahassee incident” in chronological order, but also follow the paper trail that stems from these findings. Where these pieces of information lead and uncover will shock you and make you think. In the last part, we wrapped up the overview of the “Tallahassee incident” and discovered that the case abruptly ended once the CIA became involved in the investigation, leading to a rushed and discredited US Customs report documenting the investigation timeline. We understand that the CIA took control of the investigation as a reason of “internal matters” and closed the case shortly after. While “The Finders” have been documented in the pizzagate case, it has not been sought after on a major scale, which may have been a very critical mistake in the course of the citizen investigation. It can be guaranteed that this investigation will unearth findings that can be used for future investigation and reference. Please note that some of the information documented in this series has some graphic description. If you are sensitive to this information, but like to continue on, please read at your own risk. If you have not read the first three parts yet, it is necessary that you read them first so you are up to date on the current investigation. Without any delay, let’s jump right into the crux of the series. The first four days do not provide much information that can be used at the current moment, but will be useful in future concerns. To start, we will push all reports from the 4th to the 7th of February to the side until it is necessary to use them to make connections. The major connections do not start until the 8th of February. February 8th, 1987 Concern #1: Methods of Communication. Going back to the February 8th report, The finders did have an enclosed communication system to notify each other of police movements and arrests of their members, and instruct members on where to go and hide. This was also referred to the children as “The game”. To refresh your memory, here is the report of the Laptop discovery in which messages to this system were found on: However, on the third page of the February 24th report, it was confirmed that the Laptop was being used to distribute messages, but in a very particular way. This is discussed on the 4th page, where the laptops were hooked using Phone lines to a “central computer system where other members of the same group could exchange messages.” What is bizarre is that there were several pages of messages found on these central system, but never closely monitored by the NSA, because it could not. In another odd twist of fate, the messages were never released to the public, and have been “lost” in the realms of time. Does this sound familiar? For those that have forgotten, Secretary Clinton used a private email server while at the State Department, breaking federal law. However, this was not detected early by the NSA, because it was void of back-doors, and then-technician Paul Combetta made sure that the server was linked between staffers and Clinton for work-related business, with some emails containing classified information at the top-secret level. 33,000 of these emails, unexpectedly, were deleted and have not been recovered, though some have alleged they are in the possession of several FBI and CIA agents. The NSA, unsurprisingly, has no copies or traces of these emails. We know that the emails that were obtained contained Clinton Foundation pay-for-play; illegal business dealings; and many other illegal activities. This begs the question: Is there a more sinister reason why these emails have been erased, and nobody has been able to retrace their origins or subject matter? What exactly warranted a bleach-bit from IT-assistants Paul Combetta and Bryan Pagliano instead of a normal delete or simple destruction of the server? February 9th, 1987: The First Interviews. On February 9th, investigators were able to secure a small interview with one of the children, named Mary. As the oldest of the group, she was the easiest to talk to and gave some of the first crucial information to the investigation. Concern #1: Location of the Finder’s HQ. During the interview, Mary was able to reveal the location of her “home” as the following address: 3918 W Street NW, Washington, D.C. Through a simple map search, this is what the house looks like as of 2014: Upon further investigation, this is the surrounding area within a 5-10 mile radius around the address: In an odd coincidence, the former HQ of the Finders lays approximately three-miles away from Comet Ping Pong Pizzeria, where the Pizzagate talk first started, and about five miles away from the CIA Headquarters. In addition, the Finder’s HQ was also in the vicinity of about six schools, as well as Rock Creek Park, which is also important. Why is Rock Creek circled in red? Last December, citizen researchers found Instagram posts of what appeared to be construction underneath Comet Ping Pong: As cited in the article last December “The Roots Beyond Pizzagate (Part 2)”, the building owners had no construction permits, nor were inspectors allowed to step inside the building, let alone file reports on the building to see if it was obeying guidelines. During that research, we also uncovered the following: Also, Another discovery is that there were hidden tunnels under Rock Creek in Washington, D.C.to improve the ecosystem around the park and the Creek itself, which were buried for Years. It is possible that there are other tunnels linking here from CPP to the Rock Creek Tunnels to perform some sort of “satanic ritual” as some suggest. s: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/11/141125-dc-daylighting-broad-branch-stream-restoration-science/ As depicted in the map above, the HQ of the Finders was located very close to Rock Creek Park. When workers found these tunnels during infrastructure projects, some of them were underground streams, while some were dried up and became natural tunnels. However, it is not known how long these streams or tunnels were there for, or what their purpose was. It is entirely possible that these tunnels were man-made, or happened by nature, but the strange thing is that, despite the discovery, no photos or other documentation exists. The supposed tunnels also were found about three to five miles away from The Ellipse in Washington D.C., and just MINUTES away from Comet Ping Pong. Considering the underground DuPont tunnels that were found near DuPont circle years ago, now converted into a pop-up art museum, this opens several questions. Focusing back on the report, The investigators then began to ask Mary a series of questions relating to the time before their discovery. She revealed that the children were not allowed to go into that house, by orders of the “game caller”, or Finders Head, Marion Pettie. He was the leader of the Finders, and directed older members to instruct the children on what “game” to play, and direct older members to do various acts, as described in the report, such as instruct the children to play a game involving a ripped-shirt, and other clothing articles. Pettie also dictated where the children could be, especially in and out of the house. Little is known about Pettie, but he is described as a “very intelligent, extremely well-read, a perceptive thinker who gathered around him over-educated people who find current society, as I do, not very interesting.“, according to a post on the website Brainsturbator. Pettie has kept a low profile, and it is currently unknown if he is even still alive today. There isn’t even a definitive picture of Pettie to be found, nor any recording of his voice, let alone any recording of him alone. However, Pettie did participate in a 1998 interview with Kenn Thomas and Len Bracken. In the interview, Pettie is asked about his life and career in his “alternative lifestyle.” However, when questioned about “The Finders” being a front for the CIA, this wa shis answer: Some investigators back in the 60s tailed me for four years. At first they said they thought I was a dope dealer big time because, I didn’t use it myself. Then they decided that I was a front for the CIA. They asked I was a front for the CIA. Of course I wouldn’t have told them anyway, but I asked those people, they said they ran the name through the computer and they said, “No, we don’t own that guy.” So then the investigator says, “I’ve been working on you for four years and I can’t figure out what you’re doing. What the hell are you doing?” So the point is that actually I’m not doing anything, just enjoying life and working on good ideas all of the time. I considered when I was 12 years old that my mission in life was to know everything and do nothing. When questioned about the “Finders” being accused of pedophilia, this was Pettie’s response: Q: What do you make then of these stories that connect the Finders up to a pedophilia ring in the CIA? A- The pedophiles and all that stuff.. Q: That’s all smear? A; I just kept open house to a lot of the counter-intelligence and intelligence people over the years. I have been reported to their security officers probably plenty of times for trying to find out what’s going on in the world. I’ve tried all of my life to get behind the scenes in the CIA. I sent my wife in as a spy, to spy on the CIA for me. She was very happy about it, happy to tell me everything she found out. She was in a key place, you know with the records, and she could find out things for me. And my son worked for Air America which was a proprietary of the CIA. There are some connections, but not to me personally. Q: But do you have any suspicions … the Finders sounds like a real open group that attracts a lot different elements … disinformation stories could be planted by certain elements to try to connect it to pedophilia… A: The reason the CIA wouldn’t hire me is that they wouldn’t have the control factor over me. That’s one of the things. They may have used me at some time without me knowing it. They have categories of unwitting agents. Maybe you two were sent here by them. But I’m pretty open about this kind of stuff, though. They wouldn’t hire me as a contract employee because 1 wouldn’t sign the papers. Anybody that’s a contract employee must sign an agreement and then they pay you out the money. Well, I don’t need the money, but I am trying to find out all about them. Basically, the one sentence about the CIA is that I have been studying them since before they were burn, I was studying them back in the 30s. It was ONI Back then [Office of Naval Intelligence], and then
a dog a fraction of a second before it misbehaves. He can read a dog as if he himself is a dog. This also debunks the argument that Millan is out of touch and that positive reinforcement is the new, better way. The truth is the opposite. What dog trainers call “positive reinforcement” is an example of something called “operant conditioning,” a method of learning that relies on reward or punishment. One of positive reinforcement’s earliest incarnations was “clicker training,” developed by Marian Kruse and Keller Breland in the 1940s. In clicker training, a dog or any other animal—Kruse and Breland used the technique with more than a hundred species including bears, chickens, and humans—is given a reward and hears the sound of a click whenever it does something the trainer wants it to repeat. In time, the treat is eliminated leaving only the click, and eventually the click can be removed too, leaving only the training. Kruse and Keller were students of B.F. Skinner, who, along with Ivan Pavlov of salivating dogs fame, was a founder of the school of psychology called “behaviorism.” In Skinner’s view, living things, including humans, were “organisms” that do what they do merely as a result of response to stimulus. It was not necessary to understand their goals or motives—only to condition them to provide the desired response on command. This approach shaped dog training for decades. An obedient dog is not always a happy one When dogs first became urban pets instead of rural hunters and herders, the first wave of dog trainers, influenced by Skinner, Pavlov and others, taught dogs to perform tricks like “sit” and “roll-over” by using command-based conditioning. The goal was not happiness but obedience. Behaviorism, like breed purity, dates back to the late 19th century. By the end of the 20th century, it had been displaced by a more complete, humane understanding of what living creatures do and why, called “cognitive psychology.” Cognitive psychology treats people and animals as complicated, sentient thinkers, with behaviors that result from instinct, intuition and reason, and are often directed by goals. Behaviorists train dogs to be obedient. Cognitivists lead dogs to be happy. Millan is in this latter category, the ultimate dog cognitivist. He seeks to understand what dogs need and think and why. He is not behind the times, but way ahead of them. It is the positive reinforcers who are out of date. Now, three years after he tried to kill himself, Millan is rebuilding. He is in a serious relationship, has a new TV show, and a new dog psychology center, where he is getting back to his roots by recreating his grandfather’s farm in Mexico—a humble place with livestock and adobe that is about as far from Hollywood as it could be, permanently occupied by the immortal spirit of his favorite dog, Daddy. Of the vital function that dogs perform, Eckhart Tolle says: They keep millions of people sane. They have become guardians of being. Tolle is a spiritualist, but his observation is more than mystical. It is supported by science. The findings are not as simple as dogs improving human life. It depends on the dog, and most of all, it depends on you But for all the proof that dogs need humans, a fairly consistent body of research does show benefits of the reverse. People with dogs feel more relaxed, less lonely, exercise more, and are even less likely to have infants with allergies. Some of the biggest impacts of dog ownership are felt by two types of people in particular: women and single men. A single man with a dog is much less likely to suffer from depression than a single man without one. This article is part of Quartz Ideas, our home for bold arguments and big thinkers.The video will start in 8 Cancel Get the biggest celebs 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 Little Mix’s Perrie Edwards has no sense of smell - and can’t tell when she breaks really disgusting wind. The singer, 23, suffered complications with her ear, nose and throat as a child, and it left her unable to get a whiff of anything. Especially when she does a bad fart. Speaking on This Morning, Jesy Nelson revealed the extent of her bandmate’s affliction. “The worst bit is when Perrie does it and doesn’t know how bad it is!” she said. (Image: Getty) (Image: Rex) Perrie then bashfully defended her trump habit, saying: “I don’t do that - I’m a lady!” But not all is lost for the star, as she reminded Phillip Schofield she can’t smell everyone else's wind. When he mentioned about people farting in lifts, Perrie chipped in: “I’d be surrounded by poo particles and I’d have no idea.” Perrie was forced to undergo a series of operations as a youngster to widen her oesophagus. (Image: Getty Images) The operation caused a scar on her stomach, which she’s talked about in Little Mix’s new book, Our World. "I've got a scar like a little wiggly worm that runs all the way down my front and through my belly button,” she explains. Perrie's been unable to smell since birth, due to the rare condition called congenital anosmia, but admits she 'thinks' she once smelled coffee. (Image: FameFlynet) "People are always like, 'Oh, isn't that really horrible?' and I'm like, 'No', because I've never known what it's like to smell. If I'd had it and then it disappeared I'd be like, 'Argh'," she told BBC Newsbeat back in 2013. "I wear the same perfume all the time, because everyone says, 'Oh you smell nice' and then I'm like, 'Ah, OK'."You get nothing. And you get nothing. And you get nothing. Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images Donald Trump’s tax plan is still a bit of mystery. For instance, it might include a roughly $1.5 trillion tax cut that would benefit wealthy business owners like himself. Or it might not! His campaign has sent mixed signals, and four days after rolling out the proposal during a big event in New York, that trifling detail still isn’t clear. But you know what is transparent at this point? That Trump’s tax package—including its much-hyped child care plan—is basically worthless to the middle class. The thing is a multitrillion-dollar gift to the rich. That’s one very obvious takeaway from a new analysis released Monday morning by the conservative Tax Foundation. In order to deal with the ambiguity hanging over Trump’s proposal, the think tank ran two sets of calculations. One included the tax cut that Trump’s campaign has waffled on—a controversial break for so-called pass-through businesses—and one did not. Either way, the picture is pretty much the same for middle-class households. They get very little, while upper-income Americans reap a windfall. Here’s the Tax Foundation’s breakdown showing how much families at each rung of the income ladder would see their after-tax income increase if Trump got his way. You want to pay attention to the “static” analysis on the left, which sticks to the effect of tax cuts on their own. The dynamic analysis on the right factors in the impact of all the economic growth the Tax Foundation thinks Trump’s cuts would spur—which, to put it lightly, is extremely hypothetical. Under the static analysis, the bottom 80 percent of families would generally see their income rise by less than 2 percent (taxpayers in the 20th to 40th percentile would get less than a 1 percent increase, on average). Top 1 percenters, meanwhile, get a 10.2 percent average boost without the pass-through tax cut, and 16 percent increase with it. Now keep this in mind: The foundation tells me its analysis incorporates all of Trump’s child care plan, which operates through the tax code using a combination of credits, deductions, and tax-exempt savings accounts. In many states, center-based child care can cost up to 10 to 15 percent of a typical family’s income, according to Childcare Aware. The sum total of Trump’s tax and child care benefits don’t come close to touching that for the families who need it. In fact, they’re so small as to be practically negligible. This is all in the context of a tax plan that will cost between $4.4 trillion to $5.9 trillion, according to the Tax Foundation’s estimates. We are talking about trickle-down economics at its extreme. In the true style of a man who loves Las Vegas, Trump has made his offer to the middle class, and it is this: nothing. Read more Slate coverage of the 2016 campaign.Fl 282 Kolibri Flettner Fl 282 during flight trials after World War II, with US markings. Role Helicopter Manufacturer Anton Flettner, Flugzeugbau GmbH First flight 1941 Introduction 1942 Retired 1945 Primary user Luftwaffe Number built 24 The Flettner Fl 282 Kolibri ("Hummingbird") is a single-seat intermeshing rotor helicopter, or synchropter, produced by Anton Flettner of Germany. According to Yves Le Bec, the Flettner Fl 282 was the world's first series production helicopter.[1] Design and development [ edit ] The Fl 282 Kolibri was an improved version of the Flettner Fl 265 announced in July 1940, which pioneered the same intermeshing rotor configuration that the Kolibri used. It had a 7.7 litre displacement, seven-cylinder Siemens-Halske Sh 14 radial engine of 150-160 hp mounted in the center of the fuselage, with a transmission mounted on the front of the engine from which a drive shaft ran to an upper gearbox, which then split the power to a pair of opposite-rotation drive shafts to turn the rotors.[2] The Sh 14 engine was a tried-and-true design that only required servicing every 400 hours, as opposed to the nearly 27 litre displacement, nine-cylinder BMW/Bramo Fafnir 750 hp radial engine powering the larger Focke Achgelis Fa 223 helicopter, whose outdated design required maintenance every 25 hours. The Fl 282's fuselage was constructed from steel tube covered with doped fabric, and it was fitted with a fixed tricycle undercarriage. The German Navy was impressed with the Kolibri and wanted to evaluate it for submarine spotting duties, ordering an initial 15 examples, to be followed by 30 production models. Flight testing of the first two prototypes was carried out through 1941, including repeated takeoffs and landings from a pad mounted on the German cruiser Köln. The first two "A" series prototypes had enclosed cockpits; all subsequent examples had open cockpits and were designated "B" series. In case of an engine failure, the switch from helicopter to autorotation was automatic.[3][4] Three-bladed rotors were installed on a test bed and found smoother than the vibrating 2-blade rotor, but the concept was not pursued further.[4] The hover efficiency ("Figure of Merit") was 0.72[5] whereas for modern helicopters it is around 60%.[6] Intermeshing rotors were not used on a mass production helicopter until after World War Two. Operational history [ edit ] Model of the 282 Intended roles of Fl 282 included ferrying items between ships and reconnaissance. However, as the war progressed, the Luftwaffe began considering converting the Fl 282 for battlefield use. Until this time the craft had been flown by a single pilot, but by then a position for an observer was added at the very rear of the craft, resulting in the B-2 version.[7] Later the B-2 proved a useful artillery spotting aircraft and an observation unit was established in 1945 comprising three Fl 282 and three Fa 223 helicopters.[8] Good handling in bad weather led the German Air Ministry to issue a contract in 1944 to BMW to produce 1,000 units. However, the company's Munich plant was destroyed by Allied bombing raids after producing just 24 machines.[9] Towards the end of World War II most of the surviving Fl 282s were stationed at Rangsdorf, in their role as artillery spotters, but gradually fell victim to Soviet fighters and anti-aircraft fire. Variants [ edit ] Fl 282 V1/7 Prototypes. Fl 282A-1 Single-seat naval reconnaissance type, for operation from cruisers and other warships. Tested in the Baltic, Mediterranean and Aegean Seas. Fl 282A-2 Single-seat reconnaissance type for submarines equipped with special deck hangar, project only. Fl 282B-1/B-2 Two-seat land reconnaissance-liaison helicopter Operators [ edit ] Surviving aircraft [ edit ] A single Fl 282 was captured at Rangsdorf by Soviet forces Two, which had been assigned to Transportstaffel 40 (TS/40) — the Luftwaffe's only operational helicopter squadron — at Mühldorf, Bavaria, were captured by U.S. forces.[8] Fl 282 V-10 28368 Midland Air Museum, Coventry, England. Partial aircraft, frame with rotor head & wheels. Fl 282 V-23 was at one time to be found at the National Museum of the United States Air Force, Dayton, Ohio.[10]The Smithsonian has the rotor heads and transmission of the V-12 model. The V23was loaned to Prewitt Aircraft but subsequently disappeared. Reports decades later of being seen in a barn but never verified. Specifications (Fl 282 V21) [ edit ] Fl 282 Data from [11] General characteristics Crew: 1 1 Length: 6.56 m (21 ft 6 in) 6.56 m (21 ft 6 in) Height: 2.2 m (7 ft 3 in) 2.2 m (7 ft 3 in) Empty weight: 760 kg (1,676 lb) 760 kg (1,676 lb) Max takeoff weight: 1,000 kg (2,205 lb) 1,000 kg (2,205 lb) Powerplant: 1 × Bramo Sh.14A 7-cyl. air-cooled radial piston engine, 119 kW (160 hp) 1 × Bramo Sh.14A 7-cyl. air-cooled radial piston engine, 119 kW (160 hp) Main rotor diameter: 2× 11.96 m (39 ft 3 in) 2× 11.96 m (39 ft 3 in) Main rotor area: 224.69 m2 (2,418.5 sq ft) Performance Maximum speed: 150 km/h (93 mph; 81 kn) at sea level 150 km/h (93 mph; 81 kn) at sea level Range: 170 km (106 mi; 92 nmi) 170 km (106 mi; 92 nmi) Service ceiling: 3,300 m (10,800 ft) 3,300 m (10,800 ft) Hover ceiling: 300 m (984 ft) 300 m (984 ft) Rate of climb: 1.52 m/s (299 ft/min) 1.52 m/s (299 ft/min) Rotor loading: 8.84 kg/m2 (1.81 lb/sqft) See also [ edit ] Related development Aircraft of comparable role, configuration and era References [ edit ] Notes BibliographyIran has said it would not allow any of its enriched uranium stockpile to be shipped abroad, but could sanction other curbs on its nuclear programme to reassure the international community, it is not interested in building a bomb. The statement, the clearest outline of Iran's negotiating position since the election in June of President Hassan Rouhani, was delivered as an Iranian negotiating team prepared to fly out for nuclear talks in Geneva on Tuesday, with hopes of a breakthrough at their highest point in four years. A senior member of the team, the deputy foreign minister, Abbas Araqchi, told Iranian state television: "Of course we will negotiate regarding the form, amount, and various levels of [uranium] enrichment, but the shipping of materials out of the country is our red line." In earlier rounds of nuclear negotiations, a group of six major powers had suggested a confidence-building measure by which Iran would stop producing 20%-enriched uranium – the main proliferation concern – ship out its stockpile and shut down its underground enrichment plant at Fordow, in exchange for limited sanctions relief, on trade in gold, precious metals and petrochemicals. The 20% enriched uranium is seen as a particular worry because it could relatively easily and quickly be turned into weapons-grade uranium (90% enriched and above – the percentages refer to the concentration of the highly fissile isotope, U-235). Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu has said that Iran's accumulation of enough 20% uranium to make a bomb – about 250kg – would trigger a military response. The Iranian stockpile is currently about 190kg. However, a refusal to ship this medium-enriched uranium out of the country will not necessarily be a deal-breaker in Geneva. In previous discussions, the option has been floated of keeping it under surveillance by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in a remote part of Iran such as the island of Kish. Furthermore, the clear statement from Araqchi that his country was willing to accept curbs on its future enrichment activities will be seen as encouraging by the diplomats arriving in Switzerland from the six-nation group: the US, UK, France, Germany, Russia and China. The group is chaired by the EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton. After positive talks at the UN general assembly last month, Ashton asked Iran to send its proposals early so a response could be prepared before this week's two-day talks. But the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, who will lead the delegation to Geneva, said on his English-language Twitter account on Friday: "We will present our views, as agreed, in Geneva, not before. No Rush, No Speculations Please (of course if you can help it!!!)" Four years ago in Geneva, Iran struck a tentative agreement to stop 20% enrichment, but the deal was later rejected by conservatives in Tehran and ultimately by the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. However, an Iranian official said President Rouhani was in a much stronger political position in Tehran than his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was locked in a long-running power struggle with Khamenei. "Rouhani has the full backing of the Supreme Leader, but not only that. He is respected as a veteran of the [1980s] war with Iraq, by the military and the Revolutionary Guards," the official said. "People feel that Rouhani has always been with us. With Ahmadinejad they didn't feel that way. They didn't know where he had come from." The official said that the Rouhani government was confident a deal could be done. When asked whether Iran would be prepared to accept strict curbs on its enrichment programme and more stringent IAEA inspections in return for sanctions relief and the recognition of Iran's right to enrich uranium in principle, the Iranian official nodded. But he added: "Everything depends on how this is done, the sequencing. Rouhani and Zarif has to be able to show he is gaining something for Iran - that this is not a trick." William Luers, a veteran US diplomat who runs the Iran Project advocating reconciliation with Tehran, said: "I get the impression from talking to both Zarif and Rouhani … that they have made a decision that they want to open up their economy to the world again, and are prepared to do substantial things to make that happen. And they will say: 'We want to know what you will do in terms of sanctions relief.'"If progress is made at the talks, the impasse between Congress and President Barack Obama could become a significant obstacle as most US sanctions have been imposed by Congress and would require congressional approval to be limited permanently. However, European officials point out that Obama has the power to suspend US sanctions and that the EU could independently lift its oil embargo and financial sanctions if it was thought necessary to maintain momentum towards a comprehensive deal.Earth’s first big predator may have been an underwater scorpion that grew to nearly six feet in length, according to a new study. Some 150 pieces of previously unknown fossils were recovered from the site of a meteor impact by Iowa Geological Survey geologists, under the Upper Iowa River. The creature is estimated to have lived 460 million years ago, long before the dinosaurs reigned, when Iowa was still an ocean. First described Monday in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology, the scorpion – named Pentecopterus decorahensis, after an ancient Greek warship – could grow to 5ft 7 inches long (170 centimeters) and had a dozen arms sprouting from its head, which it used to grab prey and push it into its mouth “The new species is incredibly bizarre,” the study’s lead author James Lamsdell of Yale University said in a press release. “The shape of the paddle – the leg which it would use to swim – is unique, as is the shape of the head. It’s also big!” The creature’s huge size is particularly notable because of its close relation to spiders and scorpions, and its comparative largeness to other forms of sealife which it lived alongside. “This is the first real big predator,” Lamsdell said. “I wouldn’t have wanted to be swimming with it. There’s something about bugs. When they’re a certain size, they shouldn’t be allowed to get bigger.” Lamsdell and his colleagues believe that the Pentecopterus was a euryptid, which is an order of extinct sea scorpions related to modern scorpions, spiders and mites. The Pentecopterus is the oldest and largest of the group that has been discovered, but unlike modern land scorpions, it used its tail as a paddle to move through the water, rather than for stinging. The creature is also notable for being incredibly well preserved, Lamsdell said in a statement. “Perhaps most surprising is the fantastic way it is preserved – the exoskeleton is compressed on the rock but can be peeled off and studied under a microscope,” he said. “At times it seems like you are studying the shed skin of a modern animal - an incredibly exciting opportunity for any paleontologist."Walt Disney Co. is a participating partner behind Family Outfest, a week-long event for gay, lesbian and transgender families set for this summer. Family Outfest is set to take place in Orlando, home to popular family attractions including the iconic Disney World, Epcot, Sea World and Universal Studios, during the first week of July. A description of the event states that its mission is “to celebrate the shared cultural heritage of what all families look like, regardless of who you are, how you identify or whom you love.” The website advertising the event, orlandogaytravel.com, lists Disney as a “main partner” along with Nickelodeon Suites Resort, Macy’s and Hilton Orlando Lake Buena Vista, according to an Orlando TV station. The station also reported that the event is part of a larger effort to increase spending in central Florida by LGBT families. With over 1,000 families expected to attend, it predicted that the area could receive $2 million in spending. The announcement of Family Outfest also comes just days after the introduction of Disney’s first ever same-sex couple on last Sunday’s episode of “Good Luck Charlie.”Congratulations on another successful N7 Operation! Victory Packs and Commendation Packs will arrive no later than Thursday, May 3rd. Make sure to redeem them and prepare for battle. Hit the jump for all the details! From: Admiral Steven Hackett Re: Operation EXORCIST Confidentiality Classification: XB-PRIME Distribution: N7 Forces Only Soldiers of the Milky Way – It is with great pride that I announce that we stopped a galaxy-wide Cerberus offensive. They expected surprise and speed to be on their side. They had neither, and they quickly discovered who had the superior force. You thinned their ranks and made our command and control structures safer. Since no small number of my colleagues were their targets, I offer my personal thanks. When an assassin dies, his target lives. When thousands of assassins die, their leadership loses a major strategic option. That is the blow you have dealt. It will take Cerberus time to recover from losing their elite Phantom soldiers, time we do not intend to give them. Captured Phantoms are being interrogated to help us crack down on more Cerberus cells and sleeper agents. The intelligence we won today will be critical in the battles we face tomorrow. Regrettably, we cannot stomp Cerberus out all at once, not yet. Our primary focus must be on the Reapers. But had we not won today, we would be hard-pressed to defend our colonies and homeworlds. That means everything to the friends, families, and fellow citizens for whom we are fighting. Good work. –Admiral Hackett Congratulations on another successful N7 Operation! Victory Packs and Commendation Packs will arrive no later than Thursday, May 3rd. Make sure to redeem them and prepare for battle. We’re currently planning our course of action for the next N7 operation – stay tuned to the comms for more information on the next N7 operation. Share this: Twitter Facebook Reddit Google TumblrThere were so many things stunning numbers in the Chicago Bulls' 93-86 win over the Miami Heat in Game 1 of their second-round playoff series, but the one that jumped out at me most was 35. Thirty-five as in 35 fourth-quarter points by the Bulls, despite missing Derrick Rose, Kirk Hinrich and Luol Deng and dealing with a stifling Heat defense that had slowed them at every turn. Down the stretch, the Bulls were scoring at will. Chicago scored on eight of its last 10 possessions, and they did so without going to the standard "clear out and let the star go to work" strategy. Rather, the Bulls ran real offense and -- surprise, surprise -- got good shots out of those sets. With a couple exceptions, the Bulls used one set on those late-game plays. It appeared to be a form of the Hawk offense, popularized by Hubie Brown and Flip Saunders. The set calls for the point guard go to one side, run a cutter through to a staggered double screen on the other side and set up a simultaneous side pick and roll with the point guard. Many different plays result from that setup, which is why many coaches use it in the NBA. The Bulls versions we saw down the stretch were more fragmented, and they didn't feature all the elements of the alignment, but they were legitimate sets that worked beautifully. (Why Hawk? My theory: the Bulls didn't want to run conventional pick and rolls because the Heat's traps are so devastating. Hawk lends itself to guard/guard and guard/small forward pick and rolls, which are more difficult to pressure). Let's take a look at a couple of them. First: the three by Marco Belinelli that initially tied the game at 76. As you see here, the Bulls sort of have two plays set up, a Hawk staple. On one side, Jimmy Butler is acting as a decoy screener for Nate Robinson. On the other, Joakim Noah and Taj Gibson are setting up a double stagger screen for Belinelli. The Heat must be alert, because Butler can pop to the open right corner for a good look. That may explain why Mario Chalmers, guarding Belinelli, falls asleep, yielding this much of a head start on his curl. It's almost as if Chalmers expect Ray Allen to help in some capacity. Allen doesn't, and Belinelli uses the space to fire for the game-tying shot. Here's the play in real time. Here's another example of the same formation that doesn't yield a good look initially, but eventually pays dividends due to the spacing of the court. The Bulls begin in their same three-on-one-side/two-on-the-other alignment, but this time, Butler will complete the Hawk cut, curling to the double screen on the opposite side. Meanwhile, Belinelli starts as if he's coming to screen for Robinson. But Robinson does an interesting thing here. As he sees all this attention happening, he breaks the play, taking advantage of Miami looking away from him. One quick crossover and Robinson gets by his man into the open space in the right corner. This doesn't initially work. Robinson gets swallowed up by Miami's defenders, and his only play is a pass back to Belinelli for a wild three. But there is a silver lining. The Heat's defenders have converged on Robinson, thereby leaving their initial assignments. In a weird way, Robinson's pass back to Belinelli helps, because it allows Noah and Gibson to carve out rebounding position. In this way, the Bulls have essentially set up a Kobe Assist, a term created by Grantland's Kirk Goldsberry to describe missed shots that end up in the hands of offensive rebounders. (Does this mean Robinson had a Hockey Kobe Assist? How deep down the rabbit hole do you want to go?). Robinson's freelancing didn't create an efficient shot, but it opened up offensive rebound opportunities because the other Heat players were dealing with the motion of the rest of the play. Ultimately, Noah grabs the board, and the Bulls simply reverse the ball to Belinelli for the game-tying three. Here's the play in real time: The eventual dagger -- the Robinson finger roll -- looked like a simple isolation, but a closer look reveals the Bulls ran the same set as the previous two plays. As you can see, the Bulls have again set themselves up in the same alignment. The benefit of having players in two opposite spots on the floor is that the defense can't tell which side is the decoy. In this case, it's the opposite side that proves to be the fake play. Belinelli will pop to the corner, and Robinson will throw him a bounce pass. The Heat react by switching Dwyane Wade onto Belinelli and Allen onto Robinson. This isn't as good as leaving Belinelli wide open, but it's still beneficial for the Bulls. Allen cannot stay with Robinson off the dribble, so Belinelli throws the ball right back to his point guard. Noah initially comes to set a screen, but Robinson waives him off to go one-on-one. It's an ISO, sure, but it's an ISO on the Bulls' terms with a favorable matchup. Without all the motion to set this up, it would not have worked. Instead, Robinson gets left, Allen opens his stance and nobody helps, giving the Bulls the dagger. Here's the play in real time: *** Three plays, all from the same alignment, all with different options, all with the same ending. The Bulls bucked the conventional wisdom that you need to "put the ball in your star's hands" and let him go to work. Maybe they didn't have a star to go to in the first place, but when you score on eight of 10 clutch possessions in the final six minutes against a defense as ferocious as the Heat's without Derrick Rose, Luol Deng and Kirk Hinrich, it sends a powerful message. That message? Running actual plays -- any plays -- works late as well as any other time in the game as long as the staff and players are committed to the cause. More from SB Nation: • Flannery: NBA playoffs are the stuff of dreams • Prada: Bulls buck hero ball • Video: Give Steph a Big Mac | #Lookit • Spurs win in double-OT: How Manu got open • Ziller: MVP voting and the perils of anonymity • Herbert: How Paul George evolved into a starCassini Arrives at Saturn Cassini arrived at Saturn in 2004, after a seven-year voyage. It was the first spacecraft to orbit the ringed planet. Northern Winter Like Earth, Saturn has a tilted axis. Cassini arrived in the depths of northern winter, with Saturn’s rings tipped up and its north pole in darkness. A Hexagonal Storm Cassini used infrared to view the hexagonal jet stream swirling around Saturn’s north pole, a six-sided vortex capped with a shimmering aurora. The Light Returns As spring approached and sunlight returned to Saturn’s north pole, Cassini studied the polar hexagon and the dark hurricane at its center. Approaching Spring Each season on Saturn lasts about seven Earth years. Cassini watched as Saturn’s rings slowly tipped downward, casting narrower and narrower shadows. Saturn’s Spring Equinox The shadows grew narrower until the spring equinox, when Saturn’s rings and equator were flat to the sun. A Yearlong Storm The change in seasons brought a huge storm that wrapped around Saturn’s northern hemisphere. Cassini detected lightning deep within the planet. Titan Mission scientists were particularly interested in Titan, Saturn’s largest moon — a hazy ball larger than the planet Mercury. Cassini’s cameras were able to pierce Titan’s smoggy nitrogen atmosphere, revealing sunlight glinting on frigid lakes of liquid methane and other hydrocarbons. A radar image of Ligeia Mare, a lake of liquid methane on Titan. Parachuting to Titan Cassini released the Huygens probe to parachute through Titan’s atmosphere. As it descended, the probe recorded rivers and deltas carved by methane rain. Images taken in four directions as the Huygens probe parachuted through Titan’s atmosphere. Moon Landing Huygens sent back the first images from the surface of an alien moon. Gravity Assist Cassini returned to Titan over 100 times, using the large moon’s gravity to gradually shift the spacecraft’s orbit around Saturn. Titan’s backlit atmosphere. Titan and Rhea, Saturn’s largest moons. Earth’s moon is larger than Rhea but smaller than Titan. Around the Rings Cassini used Titan’s gravity to tour Saturn’s rings, climbing high above the ring plane and threading gaps between the rings. The moonlet Atlas, only 19 miles across, follows the sharp edge of Saturn’s A ring. The faint D ring, Saturn’s innermost ring. The bright and narrow F ring. The moon Epimetheus, barely visible at top center, casts a shadow across the A ring. The dark Cassini Division separates Saturn’s A and B rings. A detailed view of the B ring. Rainbows and Starlight Cassini photographed the sun’s reflection and used background stars to measure the opacity of the rings. A rainbow effect from reflected sunlight. Light from the star Antares filters through the rings. Sixty-Two Moons For 13 years, Cassini joined the intricate dance of Saturn’s 62 moons. The moons Rhea and Epimetheus. Clockwise from top: Telesto, Prometheus, Titan and Dione. Glowing Titan and tiny Janus. Rhea hovers above three distant moons. From left: Dione, Prometheus and Tethys. From left: Tethys, Enceladus and backlit Titan. Enceladus But of all of Saturn’s moons, Enceladus was the most surprising. Enceladus on the ring plane. A Hidden Ocean The icy crust of Enceladus encases an ocean of water, dotted with hydrothermal vents and warmed by the stretching and squeezing of Saturn’s gravity. Geysers and Plumes Cassini discovered geysers near the south pole of Enceladus, where plumes of water shoot into space and fall back as bright snow. Geysers erupting during a Cassini flyby. Inside the Plumes Cassini flew through the plumes many times. The spacecraft’s instruments detected several molecules associated with life, but were not designed to search for microbes. Could alien microbes be living inside Enceladus? It will take a future mission, and another spacecraft, to find the answer. Spray from Enceladus forms Saturn’s diffuse E ring. Rhea Rhea, Saturn’s second-largest moon, is nearly 1,000 miles wide and pocked with craters. Iapetus Like Earth’s moon, Iapetus orbits with the same side facing its planet. The moon’s leading hemisphere sweeps its orbit clean of dark dust, giving Iapetus a two-toned appearance. Dione Cassini flew close by Dione four times, and it discovered evidence of another ocean of water under the moon’s wispy crust of ice. The cratered moon Rhea hovers over distant Dione. Wispy terrain on Dione. Tethys Tethys is mostly water ice, marked with a large crater on one side and a canyon running from pole to pole on the other. Tethys appears ghostly white in ultraviolet light. Mimas Mimas is one of the most battered moons in the solar system, bearing dents and dimples from ancient impacts. Hyperion Not all of Saturn’s moons are round. Hyperion is pockmarked and irregular, and tumbles chaotically in its orbit around the planet. A Shared Orbit The moons Janus and Epimetheus share the same orbit, slipping past each other every four years in an endless relay race. Epimetheus Janus Spiral Waves When Janus and Epimetheus trade places, gravity forms a crest in Saturn’s B ring. Over decades, the crests form a spiral wave, a grooved record of past moon crossings. Waves in Saturn’s B ring caused by the moon Janus. Bright Spokes Cassini studied the mysterious bright spokes, first seen by the Voyager spacecraft, that appear under the raking light of Saturn’s spring equinox. Faint spokes crossed by the long shadows of Janus and Mimas. Budding Moonlets The spring light also helped Cassini find small clumps and moonlets casting shadows over the rings. A tiny moonlet embedded in dense rings. Clearing a Gap The flattened moonlet Pan clears a path inside the rings, while Daphnis leaves a rippled wake where it passes. Pan Pan circling within the Encke Gap in Saturn’s A ring. Daphnis, the “wavemaker” moon. Shepherd Moons The moons Prometheus and Pandora straddle the narrow F ring, a thin band that is kinked and braided by the inner moon’s gravity. Prometheus and Pandora. Kinks and twists in the F ring. Prometheus carves a new ripple in the F ring. Overlapping Planes Some of Cassini’s most striking images were abstract — concentric rings with underlapping shadows. Banded Saturn Moons
team. According to an online profile, he was also a manager for the Canadian national women's ski team from 1995 to 1998. The initial eight alleged victims were junior athletes at the time the alleged incidents took place. Victim speaks to CBC's The Current Charest was arrested after one woman came forward, nearly 20 years after the alleged abuse is said to have begun. CBC News cannot identify the woman because of a publication ban. What did it for me is that I found out at the beginning of the winter that he was coaching again. - alleged victim of abuse She alleged Charest began touching her and making inappropriate comments when she was 13 and that he began sexually abusing her when she was 15. She decided to come forward after discovering Charest was teaching children to ski at Mont Blanc, in Quebec's Laurentian mountains. He has since been suspended from his job as a ski instructor there. "What did it for me is that I found out at the beginning of the winter that he was coaching again, a group of U12, so under 12 — 10 and 11 year olds. I couldn’t bear the idea of little girls going through what I went through in the '90s, so I decided to do something about it," the alleged victim told The Current on Thursday.Calgary's Maria Samson has got brains and brawn aplenty. In 2014, she helped carry Canada to silver at the Women's Rugby World Cup final in France, all while working full-time at Imperial Oil. Now, she's one of five contestants left vying for the title of Canada's Smartest Person on CBC Television. CBC host Doug Dirks caught up with Samson on The Homestretch ahead of Sunday's finale to ask her how the two challenges compare. Why did you want to be on the show in the first place? You're smart, obviously. [But] there's quite a potential for embarrassment as well. You sign a waiver that says you can be humiliated, and you then can't sue them. It was a real thought process as I'm reading the agreement that I had to sign. When CBC contacted me about being on the show, I thought, "Well, this could be cool." There was still the whole application process. It wasn't like I was a shoe-in. I don't know. I thought it would be neat. You've taped the finale. Of course, we can't give it away. Are you good at keeping secrets? I love keeping secrets. I love knowing things that other people don't know. It sounds so sadistic, but I'm a lockbox when it comes to stuff that I'm not allowed to tell. What was the experience like? It was insane. I would compare it to probably playing in the World Cup in terms of the amount of emotion and feeling I was having. You're shooting for a whole day. It was about a 12- to 13-hour filming day. A rugby game, I'm ready to go for 80 minutes. That was multiple rugby games over and over again, where I was super high on adrenaline. That was really hard for me to control. I probably burned a lot of calories that day from nervous energy. How do you prepare for something like that? I didn't prepare. After winning my episode, I had a few days between then and the finale. I watched more episodes with my family. I just thought having watched a few of the episodes that I did, I didn't think that there was really that much preparing that I could do. Probably would've made me more nervous than anything else. I just thought, "You know what? Just bank on the skills you have." In rugby, like all team sports, you have people there to support you. On this show, it's just you. Was that a different experience as well? 100 per cent different. I actually ended up encouraging a lot of the other members. There were some probably funny scenes that don't end up on camera where I'm literally like, "C'mon, you got this! Let's go! Pick it up!" You're supposed to be cheering against them. I know! That's what Jessi [Cruickshank] said on the show. She's like, "Did you just feel bad for them because they missed a question?" I'm like, "Yes, because I want everybody to do well!" With files from The HomestretchA key Federal Election Commission Republican warned Wednesday that liberals are moving aggressively to "amend the First Amendment" so that conservatives are silenced and businesses are chased "out of the democracy." In some the toughest criticism leveled at Democrats, Commissioner Lee E. Goodman said that the attack started once the Tea Party changed American politics in the 2010 election and now dominates the politics of the left. "It has triggered a very aggressive movement by people to amend the First Amendment, left intellectuals have placed it on the table," Goodman said on Boston's Howie Carr show. "The general tenor of the left in American politics today has certainly spoken out against First Amendment rights. It has been a reversal over the last 50 years," he added, citing FDR Democrats who defended socialists and communists. Stay abreast of the latest developments from nation's capital and beyond with curated News Alerts from the Washington Examiner news desk and delivered to your inbox. Sorry, there was a problem processing your email signup. Please try again later. Processing... Thank you for signing up for Washington Examiner News Alerts. You should receive your first alert soon! From trying to reverse the Citizens United decision to using the IRS to kill Tea Party groups, Goodman said that the Democrats have moved to change free speech in the country. "I have been concerned about bias both in how complaints are brought to the commission just like in the way, the lobbying campaign for Lois Lerner. It was all one sided. But generally I try to make my First Amendment case by pointing out that we have to impact liberal and conservative speech in the same way. But I have been concerned from time to time about every time a conservative group comes up, somehow, some way, exceptions and distinctions are made and this is the problem giving government the power to regulate speech in the first instance because ultimately human beings have to make that decision," he told Carr. "It's now the left attacking conservative speakers, like free market speech because they are concerned that the big corporations might convince somebody, they might speak about free market economics," he said, adding that liberals want to "chase them out of the democracy." Democrats on the FEC have led the attacks, publicly calling for reversal of Citizens United and even for regulating conservative news sites like the Drudge Report. They have also treated complaints against conservatives differently and tougher than those against Democrats or left-leaning outlets.Expand Heather Barr In Afghanistan, this year’s observance of International Human Rights Day, December 10, began with the murder of a rights advocate. An unknown gunman shot and killed Najia Sediqi, acting head of the Afghan government’s Department of Women's Affairs in the eastern province of Laghman, as she traveled to work that morning. Sediqi’s murder is appalling, but not surprising. Sediqi had held her post only a few months following the murder of her predecessor, Hanifa Safi. Safi was killed on July 13, when an improvised explosive device attached to her car was remotely detonated. Safi’s husband and daughter and six other civilians were wounded. No one has claimed responsibility for Safi's murder, nor for Sediqi’s. There have been no arrests in either case. The murders of Sediqi and Safi are more than just a measure of Afghanistan’s ongoing slide toward lawlessness and violence that is likely to accelerate as the international community draws down its support in concert with the departure of international combat troops by the end of 2014. They are also highly symbolic attacks on the tentative progress toward women’s rights, embodied by the Department of Women’s Affairs offices, since the U.S. invasion toppled the repressive Taliban regime in 2001. Each of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces has a Women’s Affairs office. These offices, outposts of the Ministry in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, are the front line in the Afghan government’s effort to advance women’s rights – and to fight violence against women. The overall effort by the Afghan government to promote women’s rights has fallen far short of what it should, but no one can question the challenges that the staff of the DoWA office face, working every day to help women in often insecure provinces in a country where many view women’s rights as an affront to Islam and to national sovereignty. Under these desperately difficult working conditions, some Women’s Affairs officials show exceptional courage and compassion. For example, Human Rights Watch has heard of cases where, in provinces with no shelter for women fleeing violence (there are only 14 such shelters in all of Afghanistan) Women’s Affairs staff members have protected battered women in the staffers’ own homes, at great personal risk. They have their work cut out for them. The roll call of Afghan women and girls who have been victims of targeted violence just this year is far too long to recount. But a few cases tell the story of many more women and girls: Anisa, 22, was a student and polio vaccination campaign volunteer shot to death in Kapisa Province in December; Giseena, 15, was killed and nearly beheaded in November in Kunduz Province by a rejected suitor and his friend; Mah Gul, 25, was murdered by throat slashing in October in Herat Province, allegedly for refusing her in-laws’ demand to become a prostitute; Sabira, 15, was lashed 101 times in September in Ghazni Province for immorality after reporting that she had been raped; Benafsha, 22, an actress, was murdered in Kabul in August; Najiba, 22, was killed in June by her husband in a public execution in Parwan, which was filmed and watched around the world. There are many more cases, including some investigated by Human Rights Watch. Friba, 35, who is deaf and mute, was raped in April or May in Parwan Province, and has tried to kill herself repeatedly, while also being threatened with “honor” killing by her family. Rabia was burned to death in Kunar Province in August, in what her in-laws say was an accident but her parents believe was murder. Masoma, a teenager, was executed in September in Herat Province after running away to escape forced marriage; the man she ran away with was also killed. The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission reports that 4,000 cases of violence against women occurred in April through October of this year, an increase of about 1,000 cases over the same period in 2011. When President Hamid Karzai signed Afghanistan's Law on Elimination of Violence Against Women in 2009, for the first time, many forms of abuse of women were made a crime. However, enforcement by police and prosecutors has been desperately lacking. Foreign support for women’s rights in Afghanistan is also on the wane. International engagement in Afghanistan is declining sharply, with cuts in assistance already under way. Foreign aid, including for essential services for women and girls, is likely to decline dramatically in the years ahead. With increasing rates of violence, declining international interest, and a national government unwilling to make protecting women a priority, the reality is sinking in that guarding the slow-but-important gains in women’s rights in Afghanistan will only get harder in the years ahead. Gains in women’s rights have been an undeniable, if fragile, victory over the last decade. As Afghan women face an increasingly dangerous future, there has never been a more important moment for the United States and other countries that have been so closely engaged in Afghanistan for the last 11 years to lay out solid commitments for how they will support Afghan women in the hard years ahead. Heather Barr is Human Rights Watch’s Afghanistan researcher.The wind industry appears to be getting its mojo back after the funk that preceded the Jan. 1 extension of the federal production tax credit (PTC). Broadwind Energy (BWEN), one of the leading U.S. turbine tower manufacturers, just announced a $14 million order for delivery in 2H 2013. That follows announcements of a $35 million order in March and a $27 million order in February. “We are quoting orders for 2014 delivery as the wind energy industry recovers from the downturn at the end of 2012,” Broadwind President and CEO Peter C. Duprey recently reported. Another indicator: E.ON Climate & Renewables (EC&R) North America recently secured $174.9 million in equity financing for its 200-megawatt Wildcat 1 Wind Farm in Indiana from a group of investors that included J.P. Morgan’s JPM Capital and Wells Fargo Wind Holdings. “Nobody knew last year whether or not we were going to have a PTC this year,” a top equity finance banking executive recently told GTM, “so all those negotiations pretty much came to a halt and were suspended. Now all that is picking back up again.” Utilities continue to seek more wind -- especially those, like Xcel Energy (NYSE:XEL), that have a more in-depth understanding of its value. Xcel Energy, which got a record 33 percent of its Upper Midwest system’s electricity from wind on February 17. Xcel just issued an “all-source” request for proposals (RFP) for Colorado that includes a fast-track process for wind projects. Xcel would begin negotiating wind power purchase agreements (PPAs) around mid-June and will make final selections by October 9, allowing developers to begin building in time to qualify for the PTC under its new “in construction” provision. "Utilities are very smart,” the banking executive said. “They realize they need a mix of sources.” Natural gas is cheap now, but utilities don’t know how long that will last, he added. Wind allows them to lock in a fixed price over a long term. One thing that is a little different this year that has been very helpful in financing renewables is that a number of banks, through their commodity trading businesses, have offered fixed-price, long-term commodity hedges for wind power, GTM’s source pointed out. Such hedges allow tax equity investors to participate in a project that does not have a traditional PPA. Tax equity investors and banks don’t like too much price volatility, he said. Without a fixed price that has been contracted for in a PPA, a generator is subject to the daily power industry market price swings. “That makes a deal difficult if not impossible to finance,” he explained. A commodity hedge is a financial instrument that trades the daily market variable price for a pre-agreed fixed price for ten to fifteen years. That can eliminate the price volatility associated with a project and has allowed wind farms to get built that probably would not have otherwise. A hedge’s ten-year term suits tax equity investors, the bank exec said, because such financings are generally looking at a ten-year term that matches the term of the PTC. Hedges could play a much bigger role in wind (and utility-scale solar) until policymakers push through the new financial instruments like Master Limited Partnerships, Real Estate Investment Trusts, and securitizations that are now under scrutiny. The emergence of the hedge strategy could even attract institutional capital investors that are not interested in tax equity if the PTC phases out. But don’t count on that phase-out occurring too soon. AWEA was backed into the phase-out talk by some of the politicians on the hill, wind industry sources have told GTM, but it was offered in the expectation there would be broad tax reform. Most Washington watchers agree that broad tax reform is a mirage. What that means for a PTC phase-out remains to be seen. One last sign that the U.S. wind industry is on the verge of big new things: the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ (NYSE:MTU) signed up as commercial bank debt financing lead for Cape Wind, which is on the verge of becoming the first U.S. offshore wind project in go into construction. The Bank will also provide a significant amount of commercial bank debt capital to develop and construct the now fully permitted 468-megawatt project to be built in Nantucket Sound off Cape Cod.It seems like just the other day we were bringing you the first footage of a 3D-printed plastic gun being test fired, mostly because it was totally just the other day. Since video of the successful test fire and plans for the gun — a single-shot affair known as the Liberator — were posted earlier this week, more than 100,000 people have downloaded the instructions and blueprints for the weapon. Meanwhile, proving that Newton’s third law of motion holds up pretty much everywhere, a California State Senator is already drafting a bill to outlaw 3D-printed guns in that state. Defense Distributed, the open-source weaponry group behind the Liberator prototype, told Forbes they were surprised by the popularity of the schematics this week. California State Senator Leland Yee, meanwhile, was also surprised, but his surprise took a different turn, prompting him to begin drafting a bill that would ban 3D-printed guns in the state over concerns that they would be too hard to trace or keep out of the hands of criminals. Now, it’s important to remember that nowhere near all of the 100,000 people who downloaded these plans are going to print guns. Many, no doubt, are simply the intellectually curious type, interested in seeing the schematics and learning more about how the items work. Some are just avid 3D printers of other items who are curious about the stress and heat the weapon can absorb, and the techniques that made it possible. The downloads really shouldn’t worry anyone that much, because if you’re looking for a gun and you aren’t supposed to own one, there are still plenty of ways for you to get one, from a gun show to a dealer who simply doesn’t do background checks. It’s not hard to get a gun, and building a really poor one in a 3D printer isn’t exactly the most efficient means of doing so. That said, the long-term application here is that people who we as a society have agreed should not have access to firearms for a number of reasons — let’s just pick “domestic abusers” out of the hat as an example — will be able to print their own, hard to detect weapons whenever they please. While that’s not something a law like Yee’s will probably stop, it should give us pause to think about what that means, and if it brings us closer to or farther from the world we want to make. Now, since writing pretty much anything about guns on the Internet will get you classified as either a right wing nutjob or a liberal (effete at best, police state at worst) in comment threads from here to Facebook, I’d like to take a moment here to acknowledge a couple things, if you’ll indulge me. First, like most of you, I’m just some guy, and while I know that some of you will expect me to be a 100% neutral observer of the world I live in, the fact is I’m not. I could tell you I am, but I would be bullshitting you and we’d both know it, so why bother? Like you, I have friends and family and a history that’s at once really complicated and totally boring. And I have feelings about things. Most of the time I try to keep them to myself, but as I’ve pointed out, I’m going to take flack from one side or the other on literally whatever I write here, so you should know where I’m coming from on this one when you’re accusing me of hating freedom or being a sociopath in the next five minutes. I think we can respect one another that much. Or, at least, I can catch hell from people on both sides of an issue, in which case I will feel like I’ve done my job. All of this is to say that I, like most of you, have a stance on gun laws. And like I imagine most of you, it goes something like this: Most of the time, I just don’t give much of a crap. Not to get all silent majority on you, but I genuinely believe this is how most people really feel. Not doing anything unseemly with your guns? Great, have fun. Do something stupid or dangerous or harmful to someone else with your guns? No more guns for you. Pretty simple, really. I wasn’t raised around guns, but have had many a good time firing off a couple of rounds at a range or the back forty of a friend’s property. Coming from gun country — the Pacific Northwest — I have friends and family who are gun owners, and gun dealers, and avid hunters. I have a grand total of zero problems with responsible gun ownership. It’s a thing I choose not to do, but it’s not my business if someone else does, and it’s not really my business whether that’s a handgun or a big ass rifle. So long as you’re not looking to hurt me or mine with it, it’s not my business what you do with it. If taking an AR-15 out in the woods and knocking over cans with it is your thing, I’m not one to judge. And not for nothing, but a thing being mentioned in the Constitution is something I take seriously. After all, the Second Amendment is right below the one that’s key to my making a living as a journalist, and if you’re going to respect one, you should damn well respect the other nine. Do I sound like a gun nut yet? I hope I don’t, but I’m sure I do to some of you. Don’t worry, though, I’m about to piss off the other half of my readers, too, so you’re in good company. That’s because to steal a well-worn phrase, with great power comes great responsibility. And that responsibility means being accountable for the firearms you own. That means being above the board, and having a license and some basic safety training in the extremely dangerous thing that you’ve decided you want. It means when you buy a gun, whether it’s at a shop or a show, you go through the same basic regulation that you go through for plenty of other things in our world — whether you want to drive a car or make a sandwich at Subway. You put your name next to it and acknowledge your responsibility for it, because if you’re going to go to the Second Amendment to tell me why you should be allowed to own any gun you please, you don’t get to ignore the “well-regulated militia” part of that sentence. You just don’t. That means I believe in thorough background checks to keep people who we’ve decided aren’t responsible enough to own guns from owning them. It means keeping guns unloaded, locked up and away from children. I know, I know, most of you do, and great, but the fact is if we were hitting 100%, we wouldn’t be seeing pretty much weekly stories of kids accidentally killing themselves and others with guns. Guns they probably didn’t unlock themselves. Guns they almost certainly didn’t load themselves. This in turn means I am, in principle, uncomfortable with the idea of people cooking up homemade weaponry in their basement, though I also don’t labor under the impression that there’s any law that’s going to stop it. As I’ve said here before, the genie is out of the bottle on this one. For my money, though, I’m much more comfortable with the idea of a licensed Glock than a homemade Liberator, because the guy with the Glock doesn’t give me the impression he has anything to hide. The guy with the Liberator worries me. And I don’t know what the solution is here, so I’m not going to pretend I do. But I hope I can admit to being worried by a development without leaving my integrity at the door. So yeah, I believe people have the freedom to own guns. I also believe that freedom does not come without responsibilities to the social contract and the people you live around, and that there should be consequences when that freedom is abused. Here’s hoping that stance hasn’t become too controversial in these troubled times of ours. (via Forbes, CBS) Relevant to your interestsWe’re living in an age where our resource for focused, undistracted creative time is being threatened! There is a fierce assault on our attention all day every day with a steady barrage of rings, pings, dings, pops, clicks and buzzes. We feel the enormous pressure to be always connected and available 24/7. Leading to my belief that 2017 is the hardest time for a creative person to do creative work. One could argue that it’s the easiest! With the many opportunities and resources for creative work that the internet has made possible, how could it not be? Though, even with all the resources at our fingertips we still end up wrestling with our inability to focus on one important task for an extended period. Multitasking habits, compulsively scrolling through social media sites, and reactive “knee-jerk” impulses to texts and email kill our attention span. I have struggled with these distractions for far too long, and if you’re reading this right now, I’m sure you have too. Initially, I set out to write this as a personal manifesto that I could use to get my butt in gear, but the more I researched and wrote the more I realized how many folks have these same problems. I have found the following mini-strategies to be most useful in my life when building new habits that foster creative work and artistic growth. I urge you to test the following in your life to find what works for you and your unique creative process and workflow! (Related Reading; 20 Daily Practices That Inspire Creative Thought) Determine Your Priorities Sit down with a pen and paper and determine what your priorities are. It sounds simple and in theory, it is, but in practice, it poses some hard to answer questions. Writing down all your goals no matter how big or small on one piece of paper helps to visualize them. Most of us have big plans to do all sorts of projects, but at the end of the day take no action for the simple reason of being overwhelmed on where to begin. It’s so easy for the hustle of life to take over and rob us of our dreams. The overwhelm creates a paralysis of creative pursuits. Your creative goals deserve to be prioritized! Without concrete goals, you’ll never develop concrete plans to achieve them. Once you have written out your goals, ask yourself which one inspires and motivates you the most. If possible, I would recommend choosing the most manageable and realistic goal. Try not to choose a behemoth project off the bat. Take baby steps in building the discipline and creative confidence. Start by breaking your project down into various phases. Take it a step further by making small and actionable steps to get your project rolling. Make the steps dead simple to get the ball rolling and to build momentum. Keep the long view in view. Write down your current goal on a sticky note and post it somewhere near your workstation. I love this trick, and I find it helps to keep the big picture in view. Life is busy, but without priorities, for our meaningful creative work we end up full of regret and wishing we had done more when we had the chance. It’s easy for life to take the reins and take control of your time. Setting your priorities is the first step in putting your foot down and taking control of your life and what you want out of it. Define What Success Looks Like “Success to me is, “Yep, holds water. Someone else might dig this. I sidestep my ego to really look at this, and it still does not suck too hard.” Wrap your knuckles on the hood and send it out into the light of day.” - Henry Rollins Determining priorities dovetails nicely into defining success. Going into a project with a clear vision of what the finish line looks like is crucial for using time efficiently and keeping your eyes on the prize. For too long I was diving into creative projects like making music without a clear idea of how the song would sound in the end. I didn’t have a “checklist” so to speak of, as to what I wanted the music to accomplish. After contemplation of the intention of the music, the creative decision-making process became much more simplistic and less hindered. It’s a bit like creating a mission statement for the undertaking. Try laying out in point form anything you would like to see, hear and feel from your work. Refer back to the note on a regular basis to check in on your direction. The picture of success might change as you move along. That’s okay. Pivot and reimagine as you go along. Block Out Time Gaining clarity is a great first step to getting down to some creative work, but now we get into the meat and potatoes. At the start of each week sit down and review your calendar. Take inventory of the obligations for that week and tasks that you need to complete. Schedule blocks of time where to be dedicated to the project that you aim to complete. It is of utmost importance that you stick to the schedule that you make for yourself.Image caption The departures board at Perth Airport in Western Australia showed a string of cancellations Flights into and out of Perth in Western Australia have been cancelled due to the volcanic eruption in Chile. Airlines Qantas, Virgin and Jetstar said the ash cloud was too low around Perth for aircraft to fly safely. Winds have carried particles 5,600 miles (9,000km) from the Puyehue-Cordon Caulle volcano range. The eruption, which began on 4 June, has caused levels of flight disruption not seen since an Icelandic volcano paralysed Europe in 2010. Experts monitoring the Puyehue volcano believe its eruption is likely to grow more violent in the coming days. Previous eruptions in 1960 and in 1921 lasted for about two months. Widespread disruption In a mixed picture, the restrictions in Western Australia came as air travel in other parts of the country was getting back to normal. Virgin said the ash was too low in the atmosphere to permit safe flights to and from Perth. Image caption Lightning strikes over the Puyehue-Cordon Caulle volcano in Chile "The ash plume is forecast to be at a lower band level of approximately 15,000ft and with this in mind, Virgin Australia will suspend all services into and out of Perth as a precautionary measure," said Group Executive Sean Donohue in a statement. Qantas and its subsidiary Jetstar followed suit shortly afterwards. Qantas has again cancelled all flights to New Zealand and the southern island of Tasmania, as well as to the Argentinian capital Buenos Aires. Meanwhile, flights to and from Adelaide were resumed by Qantas, Jetstar and Tiger on the fourth day of disruptions in Australia. Flights to and from Melbourne are also back to normal. Virgin Australia and Air New Zealand have continued services to New Zealand and Tasmania by changing flight paths to avoid the ash cloud. Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre forecaster Graham Weston told ABC radio that cold air from the south of Western Australia was pushing the ash towards Perth. "It is drawing up some of that ash we do have in the Southern Ocean towards the south-west of the continent," said Mr Graham. In South America some international flights resumed overnight from Argentina's main airport in Buenos Aires, but domestic flights are still affected. On Tuesday there were no flights in or out of Buenos Aires. The United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was forced to take a boat from Buenos Aires to Montevideo in Uruguay.Rebeka was promptly following the duo with her gaze. As soon as the duo stepped out she instructed the man sitting with her to come close, "Keep an eye on the man, make sure that he reaches his apartment safely." The man instantly rose up and followed the order. Rebeka was slowly sipping her alcohol. The small flutter of tired wings didn't go past her hearing. A Mantis was stretching her wings and muscles. The Mantis girl promptly got up from her seat and went out of the cafe. Her behaviour appeared to be a bit out of context as if she was hurrying to do something mighty important. Rebeka payed her bill and tipped the changes to the little dragon maid. Rebeka silently followed the Mantis. The Mantis had brought her own car, she promptly rode it and started following Robert's vehicle while the Cyclops was nowhere to be seen. Rebeka pulled out her mobile and texted, "Somebody else is following him. Keep your eyes open, don't give away your location to the pursuer." Rebeka put down the mobile in her pocket and was immersed in thought, "It's a good thing that I opened his letter. Somebody surely wanted the poor man to distrust his partner. Who can it be? Well this mysterious person does know that his partner is female. Probably wanted to hide his/her hand writing that's why the letter was typed. So that means the person who sent him the letter already knows about his partner and masked her handwriting. Probably an insider, Hannah how heartless will you get?" Suddenly her face showed signs of unbound rage and disgust. But unbeknownst to her there was a third person lurking in the same bar, she was yet to come out. To be precise she didn't really come out because Rebeka was still there. That person called another waitress. A horned water dragon came to her, she promptly gave her a 10 dollar bill and said, "Hey just go out and see whether the Hellhound has left or not? She's a dangerous one and she'll probably kill me if she sees me. I cheated with her Husband and she's furious about it." Elma didn't bother to question this Elf lady further. She was already drunk, so the request never seemed unnatural to her, but she did take a look outside. The Hellhound had already left. She informed the lady about it. The Elf lady patted her back and came out, "Huh...what a bother." She stretched her limbs and called for a Taxi. (With Robert) "If Manako is really getting the accurate information then it really had been a turn coats job. I can seriously discount that agent whose cover got blown. Kazan is already dead so he also can't be the insider. But Hannah and the other infiltrator seem suspicious. Hannah could have been the inside agent who blew up the whole mission. Then the organization tried to her rid of her so they wanted to kill her. Still there is another loose end here, what did happen to the other infiltrator? Even if she killed why didn't nobody got any news of that. Manako mentioned that she went missing, what if she was the original double agent who blew up her fellow's cover and made sure that the organization does away with Hannah and Koman? There are other issues also, why Doppel insists that the drug cartel that we had apprehended were going to become approvers in the more sensitive underage liminal sex trade scam. But somebody got them arrested for a different crime and the main sensitive case is being covered up by a to honcho in the meantime. Also this stupid letter trying to make me disapprove Doppel, but if someone from that Organization has already figured out that Doppel is my partner and Doppel would probably notice this anomaly and inform me. So they wanted to sever this bond of trust between us. Makes sense, if Doppel would really have been a turn-coat she wouldn't have informed me about this insight. This letter really confirms that Doppel is my ally. Wait a second, only the Bureau chief, I and Doppel know about this mission, then who leaked the information about Doppel. What Doppel is up to is not an accessible info. for the outsider. Shit why didn't I realise this sooner?" Robert reached for his cellphone and redialled Manako's number, "Sorry to bother you Manny, but who was the chief supervisor of the failed infiltration mission back then?" ... "Thanks a lot." Robert took a sigh of relief. "Now it's all clear like daylight. That's why the assassin was sent. It was to silence me and make sure no such infiltrating mission existed in the first place. Probably I think only trust Manako, I know Doppel isn't involved but..." (With Karen) "What the fool is up to? I really have to clear the air or else it might be too late. That Jinko or the Hellhound seem to be more cunning than I had thought. The Hellhound especially. The way in which she was sneaking in on Robert and then on me was marvellous. But she can't fool me, though her partner is still on my ass, I see. Still I think Robert is her priority, guess what I'll pull out of this and tail him instead." With a swift left turn Karen's car the second lane while Rebeka's accomplice still tailed Robert's car without being suspicious. ( Smith's tale) Smith never thought to get a call at this hour of the day. This was an unknown number, Smith even thought of ignoring it, but something forced her to take the call. "Hello, Who is this?" she promptly asked. ... "It's you! Such a pleasant surprise." she replied. ... "What Robert is in danger? You want to have a talk with Manako?" She looked a bit surprised. ... "You think so, yeah that woman was suspicious all along. The way you were compromised back then and Kazan even lost his life, it's fair to suspect her." Smith looked firm. ... "It's more than that? You've already come to my apartment. Ok I'll see you, just wait a second." Smith peeked out of her window to see the familiar person standing on the opposite sidewalk. (Hannah's deductions) Chief Hannah was really engrossed in an old file. She was lying on her abs over her bed and the file lay open. It was about the mysterious disappearance of an intelligence agent. "She was in the same team with me but we never get to see her face. All we ever knew was that she was a Liminal. Her disappearance was also mysterious. To even think that such an old case will become this much important was beyond my comprehension. I'm pretty sure that the current case is somehow related to them. Robert is related but is he a pro or a con? Still how can this happen, that agent's cover didn't blow up like Rohanda's. She just disappeared, then again, the only person who saw her face was Kazan. Kazan was mysteriously killed in that chase. I knew that the culprit whom we were chasing didn't have an Uzi. He had just one of those cheap Chinese models. It wasn't an Uzi, but when Robert was discovered it was found that he was shot at by the culprit from Uzi and the culprit himself got killed by bullets fired by Kazan himself. I was also astonished to found that the and then supervisor of our mission aborted the whole investigation of Kazan's death, he even went on to eliminate all the files concerning the two infiltrators. Rohanda's case I can understand. Her cover blew up but the other one? Guess what he's now the Bureau Chief. It's perfectly fine if the Home ministry finds him to be dealing in some shady business.
. Now I have a way to remove all the badUsers, if necessary 🙂 Don’t make me do it! Another last point I want to mention is that we’ve only really scratched the surface here. One sort of basic feature I didn’t cover is Solidity “events”, which is a way for you to push updates back down to the browser, sort of like a “socket” connection watching and activating browser events when a new registered users or image is detected. The really coolest parts of Ethereum and Solidity come from smart-contracts that interact with Oracles, and smart-contracts that talk and act amongst each other using “messages” (DAO’s). There’s also some The really coolest parts of Ethereum and Solidity come from smart-contracts that interact with Oracles, and smart-contracts that talk and act amongst each other using “messages” (DAO’s). There’s also some pretty serious security considerations you should learn about, before you go trying to store real ethereum within your smart-contract and send it out to people based on function calls, a bunch of people lost about $60M dollars over that one and it ended up splitting the Ethereum network in a contentious hard-fork. That’s something you should really watch out for, and I should probably cover that in another article, of course 🙂 This article should be good to get you going and be “dangerous” as I said, and I encourage you to learn it, even get some nice company to pay you to learn it if you can, but there’s still more to this path. Another, the last point I want to talk about is the very structure of Ethereum and the real cost of using smart-contracts, right now. Ethereum is a network that runs on a big, single, public blockchain, where everyone can pay to access and store data in there. However, actually doing that is somewhat expensive. You can see above in my image, I was being charged 0.004182 Ether, which today is equivalent to $0.96 in real US dollars, to store an image URL, SHA256 notary hash, and timestamp, comprising 196 bytes, to the Ethereum Mainnet. This works out to a data storage cost of $5,159.03 per MB! That’s literally insanely expensive. The original idea for gas cost described in the Ethereum Whitepaper says that gas cost is ideally supposed to stay somewhat constant, however gas cost is tied to blocknumber, in the real implementation, and the block number is not going up nearly as fast as the current market price of Ethereum, so gas is getting way more expensive in real terms. Also, the hard-fork situation shows that this really is a public chain, and if something really contentious happens on it, it could fork and your data could theoretically be subject to rollback, or the underlying asset class could drop in price steeply. The sheer expense of data, and the sheer oceans of data out there waiting to be stored means that the amount of data storable in any chain might need to be limited, or may be self-limiting. Ethereum might be best suited for things that need only a small amount of publicly-available data-storage to be on-chain, like maybe an online reputation system, or a data notary project. It may not make sense to build a blockchain project to put all the US widget-industry data onto the Ethereum blockchain, for example, because you might not want all that info publicly available, and you need to get those transaction fees way down for your widget-industry-specific usages. You might consider that a proof-of-stake blockchain model may be more energy-efficient, even if that may represent a theoretical weakening of the consensus security model versus Nakamoto proof-of-stake for your blockchain project. I suggest that before embarking on a new blockchain project, consider carefully the platform you want to use, look at the newest stuff out there and don’t be afraid to explore, and also consider carefully the node incentive that will attract people to download your cool node code, and run it! The best compliment a programmer can get is simply people using their code in the real-world, and being productive with it. Secret Crazy Bonus Section Deploy me up to the Mainnet, Captain I’m back, with more awesome stuff for you and the Ethereum community! So I sort of skipped an important detail above, you may have noticed. Once you write your smart-contract, test compiling it a thousand times until it works, deployment, localhost test all works. Now, how the hell do you get this thing onto the Mainnet!? It’s sort of It’s sort of difficult and usually involves having to run your own full Ethereum node, or pay someone to run one for you and allow you to access it (like via a VPS). So, that was really inconvenient for me, because I’m impatient and I am writing this article under a deadline, people! I don’t have time to wait for my new Ethereum full node to sync, and I don’t feel like blasting away a couple hundred gigs of hard-drive space and one of my boxes to crunching Ethereum tx full-time, and I’m also too cheap to pay for a VPS to do it for me, lol. So I used some special javascript web kung-fu, and just figured out how I can make a web page with a box and a button, where you can just paste your contract, click the button, and deploy a Solidity smart-contract directly to the Mainnet, via Metamask Plugin. Mainly I did this just for the convenience, to write this article, but it turned out to be a surprisingly useful tool, so I put it up on the web for everyone to use. For the first time, you can do all your testing and even full smart-contract deployment to the Ethereum Mainnet, without needing a full Ethereum node of your own! Let me introduce the EthDeployer tool, it’s freeware for you guys because free software gives us freedom 🙂 Here’s a link to the EthDeployer Repo on Github, and you can also simply access my live running Tectract’s EthDeployer and deploy your contracts directly from there, you just need to install Metamask Plugin and connect to the Ethereum Mainnet first, plus you’ll need a little Ether in your Metamask wallet to pay the Mainnet smart-contract deployment fee too, of course! This tool uses the Browser-Solc tool, which is just a browserified, minified loader tool for loading up javascript version of Solidity Compiler, directly into the client-side browser, for parsing / compiling a smart-contract on-the-fly. This makes the tool completely stand-alone and portable, meaning you don’t need to worry about installing the Solc compiler on your computer, and I don’t need to worry about installing it on my server either, which is excellent for everyone. Let me point out the code that loads the latest available solidity compiler: <script src=”./browser-solc.min.js” type=”text/javascript”></script> I have the minified browser-solc.min.js javascript loading via the top-level index.html page, which makes a window.BrowserSolc object available to my lower-level react scripts. This is another very simple create-react-app that can be installed and deployed in minutes on your own machine, I even provided an actually useful readme.md in the github repo showing you how to do that. setupCompiler(){ var outerThis = this; setTimeout(function(){ // console. debug(window. BrowserSolc); window. BrowserSolc. getVersions(function(soljsonSources, soljsonReleases) { var compilerVersion = soljsonReleases[_. keys(soljsonReleases)[ 0 ]]; console. log( "Browser-solc compiler version : " + compilerVersion); window. BrowserSolc. loadVersion(compilerVersion, function(c) { compiler = c; outerThis. setState({statusMessage: "ready!" },function(){ console. log( "Solc Version Loaded: " + compilerVersion); }); }); }); }, 1000 ); } The setupCompiler function waits for a second for the window.BrowserSolc object to be available after the page loads, then does it’s internal.getVersions() and.loadVersion() functions, there’s really not much to it, and we have a functional Solc compiler available to us directly in a fully client-side environment, nice! For completeness, I’ll show some relevant lines that actually handle compiling and deploying the contract from within a javascript function, when the “compile & deploy!” button is pressed: compileAndDeploy() {... var result = compiler. compile(this. state. contractText, optimize); var abi = JSON. parse(result. contracts[_. keys(result. contracts)[ 0 ]]. interface); var bytecode = "0x" + result. contracts[_. keys(result. contracts)[ 0 ]]. bytecode; var myContract = web3. eth. contract(abi);... web3. eth. estimateGas({data: bytecode},function(err,gasEstimate){... myContract. new({from:web3. eth. accounts[ 0 ],data:bytecode,gas:inflatedGasCost},function(err, newContract){... thisTxHash: newContract. transactionHash, thisAddress: newContract. address We have all our familiar objects from before, we call compiler.compile() on the contract text, and get a compiled contract “result” object from which we extract the abi and bytecode, and send it off in a new transaction. We see our old familiar.estimateGas() function thrown in here for good measure too. We grab the transaction ID and the new contract address to display back to the user when the contract is successfully deployed. Bam, done! Let’s see it in action: “Oh yeah, if you get an error message on deployment, make sure to actually check the transaction ID link, the contract most likely DID actually deploy succesfully, sometimes Metamask just fails to pick up the deployment success transaction state and new contract address and return those to our browser environment succesfully. “ It’s still alive. This makes me so happy! Secret Crazy Extra Bonus Unlocked! So, I paid 0.02268 Ether in gas, which is about $5.30 USD (June 1st, 2017), to deploy this contract onto the Ethereum Mainnet. Remember this was supposed to be a super-simple demo app, with literally just two possible data structs. It was only like $2 a couple weeks ago, this is wild! But still affordable, you shouldn’t really need to deploy your contract to the main-chain that often, really only once should do it. That’s all I have for you this time, guys! Hope you found this tutorial super-useful, and that you can put good use to the EthDeployer tool in your dev adventures out there. I look forward to hearing questions and comments, thanks! Ryan Molecke Ryan Molecke, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of EnLedger Corp., is a highly multi-disciplinary academic computational science researcher, who transitioned into the world of finance technology and trading systems. He’s worked at several notable and successful finance-tech startups, helped architect trading systems and brokerage/exchanges, and is now focused on permissioned ledgers and blockchain systems integrations, tokenizations, and credits programs. He holds a B.S.E. in Computer Engineering and a Ph.D. in Nanoscience and Microsystems Engineering, both from the UNMDescription Over this last week, we've all been feeing a bit lost, feeling out this new reality - a big gaping hole in our Northern Sky. Gord was the best of us. We owe it to him to keep trying. To keep working on the things he worked on his whole life. To keep connecting with each other, to share art, to stay complex. To do it together. In that spirit, our Artery community is coming together in the best way we know how - to put on a special showcase, an Ode to Gord. An opportunity to say thank you. We hope this will be the first in a series of dozens of small, intimate showcases performed across this country. All proceeds from this show (and all these showcases) will go directly to the Gord Downie Fund for Brain Cancer Research. This will give Sunnybrook the tools to help beat brain cancers that are currently unbeatable. Your support will help Sunnybrook conduct groundbreaking research that benefits patients not only at Sunnybrook, but across Canada and around the world. Craft beer has been graciously donated by Steam Whistle Brewing & local cider will be poured by the boys of Two Blokes cider (all beverages by donation - funds to go to the same charity) - and there will be multiple artist paying homage to Gord and the Hip all night long. What to expect A talented tribe of local musicians and artists will come together and pay tribute to Gord Downie and the Tragically Hip as Canada's most iconic band. All of the funds generated from this Artery showcase will go straight to the Gord Downie Foundation for Brain Cancer Research. The man was epitome of authentic, poetic, and artistic. Lets bring a community together to celebrate him and help his legacy continue to grow! Why is this happening? As an ode to Gord Downie, and everything he stood for. Raising funding for his Brain Cancer Research Foundation.ALEPPO, Syria — Military operations are ongoing near al-Bab, northeast of Aleppo, between the Free Syrian Army (FSA) factions and special Turkish forces on the one hand, and the Islamic State (IS) on the other. The battles that the armed Syrian opposition is waging with Turkish air and land support in the framework of Operation Euphrates Shield that Turkey launched on Aug. 24 face major challenges against IS. The organization is defending, ever so strongly, its main stronghold in the Aleppo countryside. Al-Monitor accompanied FSA soldiers participating in the battle and closely watched the progress of the military operation that has been faltering for many reasons. For one, bad weather conditions were far from helpful. Besides, IS’ strong resistance in al-Bab — which the organization considers an important hub for moving men and military equipment — did not make the battle any easier. The strong presence of civilians in the city also complicated the operation, as IS forbade them from leaving the city and is using them as human shields. IS has also benefited from defenses it has built and planted around the city, such as tunnels and trenches and the sowing of mines of varying sizes and types. Some mines are anti-personnel, while others target armored and four-wheel drive vehicles. Euphrates Shield fighters lost many of their vehicles and men during IS’ ongoing raid attempts. Notably, IS relies on car bombings and motorcycle suicide attacks. A car bombing targeting Euphrates Shield recently occurred in Jubb al-Barazi near al-Bab and killed seven people, including two civilians. During Al-Monitor’s field visit to Operation Euphrates Shield battlefronts near al-Bab, FSA leader Mohammed Haj Ali told Al-Monitor, “Despite our repeated attempts to raid al-Bab city and open new battlefronts against IS, we have failed so far in breaking the organization’s defenses and its front lines surrounding the city from the north and west. We changed our military tactics several times by attacking Qabasin, Suflania and Bizaah towns in the east and northeast of al-Bab. The battles are ongoing on these axes to pave the way for besieging al-Bab and threatening it from the east, at the same time as the land attacks in the west and north.” He said, “Turkish air raids against IS locations, ammunition warehouses and military headquarters in al-Bab and its surroundings have increased lately. The Turkish tanks have also been increasingly targeting IS locations, but the shelling did not really weaken the organization, which is maintaining its fierce defense. IS has large amounts of weapons and ammunition, including anti-tank missiles.” Ali added, “IS has many local fighters in al-Bab and its surroundings, in addition to hundreds of foreign members who came to the aid of their fellows in the battles to deter Operation Euphrates Shield. IS has a remarkable amount of heavy weapons and ammunition and is using them in al-Bab battle. Perhaps those are part of its spoils of war in Palmyra city.” Operation Euphrates Shield forces failed to gain control of nearby Jabal al-Sheikh Akil and Al-Farouq Hospital — two strategic locations where IS members are positioned. Jabal al-Sheikh Akil is a key passage for controlling al-Bab. For that reason, IS increased its reinforcements there to protect the area from any land attack from Euphrates Shield forces. The forces also failed to take the town of Qabasin, located just northeast of al-Bab, despite violent battles with IS on Nov. 15, which resulted in the Euphrates Shield forces’ controlling the town for a few days. In an interview with Al-Monitor, Mustafa Sejari, the head of the political bureau of Al-Mu’tasim Brigade, which is affiliated with the FSA, said, “The battles on the outskirts of al-Bab are ongoing, and the FSA factions are trying to weaken IS by striking its defense lines and burdening it with losses. Operation Euphrates Shield forces are expanding the battlefronts against IS to catch the organization off guard in several locations and disperse its military efforts. But the weather in al-Bab was rainy and cloudy almost all the time a month ago, thus impeding the forces’ advance and gains.” He added, “Due to the large number of civilians in al-Bab, the operation is more difficult. The forces are trying to avoid massacres against civilians as much as possible. Several calls have been made to urge civilians to leave the city, but in vain. IS does not allow them to leave, and civilians are afraid to sneak out through byroads due to mines that the organization had planted in the city’s surroundings and that have killed dozens.” The head of the Sultan Murad Division affiliated with the FSA, Col. Ahmad al-Othman, told Al-Monitor, “The Turkish army has made new reinforcements in Syria. It has sent [in late December] more than 2,000 soldiers and armored vehicles to support the efforts of Operation Euphrates Shield to control al-Bab and settle the battle. The battles will escalate in the coming days and the forces will enter the city soon. The next target will be Manbij city, which is under the control of the Syrian Democratic Forces [SDF].” The forces leading Operation Euphrates Shield, which includes FSA factions and special Turkish forces, have been at odds with the SDF, of which the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) constitute the backbone. Turkish officials consider the SDF a threat to Turkey's security as the organization is an extension of the Kurdistan Workers Party, which Turkey considers a terrorist group. The interests of Turkey and the FSA are similar, as they both fear the SDF’s separatist goals. The YPG has sought to establish an autonomous entity in the Syrian north under the name Rojava.It is important to note that the research and subsequent advisory do not introduce a new type of vulnerability or attack technique, but rather a continued weakness in many default configurations of Internet-connected devices. These devices are now actively being exploited in mass-scale attack campaigns against Akamai customers. The Threat Research Team has observed SSHowDowN Proxy attacks originating from the following types of devices: CCTV, NVR, DVR devices (video surveillance) Satellite antenna equipment Networking devices (e.g. Routers, Hotspots, WiMax, Cable and ADSL modems, etc.) Internet connected NAS devices (Network Attached Storage) Other devices could be susceptible as well Compromised devices are being used for: Mounting attacks against a multitude of Internet targets and Internet-facing services, such as HTTP, SMTP and Network Scanning Mounting attacks against internal networks that host these connected devices Once malicious users access the web administration console, they have been able to compromise the device's data and, in some cases, fully take over the machine. "We're entering a very interesting time when it comes to DDoS and other web attacks; 'The Internet of Unpatchable Things' so to speak," explained Ory Segal, senior director, Threat Research, Akamai. "New devices are being shipped from the factory not only with this vulnerability exposed, but also without any effective way to fix it. We've been hearing for years that it was theoretically possible for IoT devices to attack. That, unfortunately, has now become the reality." Mitigation Some recommended approaches to mitigation include: If the device offers access to alter the SSH passwords or keys, change those from the vendor defaults. If the device offers direct file system access: Add "AllowTcpForwarding No" into the global sshd_config file. Add "no-port-forwarding" and "no-X11-forwarding" to the ~/ssh/authorized_ keys file for all users. If neither option above is available, or if SSH access is not required for normal operation, disable SSH entirely via the device's administration console. If the device is behind a firewall, consider doing one or more of the following: Disable inbound connections from outside the network to port 22 of any deployed IoT devices Disable outbound connections from IoT devices except to the minimal set of ports and IP addresses required for their operation. Akamai continues to monitor and analyze data related to this ongoing IoT threat. To learn more, please download a complimentary copy of the research white paper at https://www.akamai.com/us/en/multimedia/documents/state-of-the-internet/sshowdown-exploitation-of-iot-devices-for-launching-mass-scale-attack-campaigns.pdf. About Akamai As the global leader in Content Delivery Network (CDN) services, Akamai makes the Internet fast, reliable and secure for its customers. The company's advanced web performance, mobile performance, cloud security and media delivery solutions are revolutionizing how businesses optimize consumer, enterprise and entertainment experiences for any device, anywhere. To learn how Akamai solutions and its team of Internet experts are helping businesses move faster forward, please visit www.akamai.com or blogs.akamai.com, and follow @Akamai on Twitter. Contacts: Rob Morton Media Relations 617-444-3641 [email protected] --or-- Tom Barth Investor Relations 617-274-7130 [email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20100225/AKAMAILOGO SOURCE Akamai Technologies, Inc. Related Links http://www.akamai.com1. Enter a relationship because of money or looks. 2. Neglect old friends because your partner doesn’t want you to hang out with them anymore. 3. Hang out with people who disrespect the other sex. 4. Watch porn excessively over a long period of time. 5. Get too comfortable in your relationship and become a different person than you were when you entered the relationship. 6. Get mad at your partner for not pleasing you sexually. 7. Assume that you deserve a high-quality partner without being a high-quality person yourself. 8. Believe that your partner is the only person you can ever love. 9. Pay for sex because you don’t think you could sleep with attractive women otherwise. 10. Have unprotected sex with strangers. 11. Say such hurtful things to your partner that it leaves scars. 12. Let your partner pressure you into a marriage. 13. Date several people simultaneously without telling them about the others you are seeing. 14. Guilt your girlfriend into a threesome. 15. Suppress everything that pisses you off about your partner and let it surface in a fight. 16. Cheat on the person you love. 17. Stay with someone out of fear, comfort, or security. 18. Detach yourself from your emotions so you can never get hurt again.ORLANDO (JULY 31, 2015) – Orlando City SC continued its success off the pitch with the Club winning several accolades in the Orlando Weekly’s annual Best of Orlando celebration. In this year’s edition of Best of Orlando, City was named Best Sports Team, Best New Thing in Orlando, Best Tailgate, Best Salvaging of a Stadium Deal. In addition, recognized supporter group, the Ruckus, was named Orlando Royalty. The winners were selected by both writers and readers from Central Florida. The announcement comes after Orlando City’s fans were recently listed as the friendliest and most engaged among Major League Soccer (MLS) teams in the United States, according to a survey by WalletHub.com, showcasing the Club’s and city’s effort to repeatedly defy expectations in the team’s inaugural MLS campaign. “We’re very honored to receive these awards,” said Orlando City Founder and President Phil Rawlins. “It’s a true testament to a lot of hard work put in from not only the Front Office and the team but also our incredible fans, showing once again that Orlando is the ‘Soccer Capital of the South.’”We’ve been trailing the Kubernetes 1.3 release for the past few weeks, mostly to ensure that etcd data migrations are preserved from 1.2 to 1.3. We’re also in the process of adding TLS between all the nodes for security reasons, and that has led to use being a bit behind on getting Kubernetes 1.3 out to you, but don’t worry, we’re in the process of testing the upgrade path and this post will outline how to set up a Kubernetes 1.2 cluster and upgrade it to v1.3.3. Once we get good feedback from the community on how this is working out for you, we’ll go ahead and set v1.3.3 (or subsequent version) as the new default for Ubuntu Kubernetes. Our bundle, which we call “observable-kubernetes” features the following model: Kubernetes (automating deployment, operations, and scaling containers) Three node Kubernetes cluster with one master and two worker nodes. TLS used for communication between nodes for security. Etcd (distributed key value store) Three node cluster for reliability. Elastic stack Two nodes for ElasticSearch One node for a Kibana dashboard Beats on every Kubernetes and Etcd node: Filebeat for forwarding logs to ElasticSearch Topbeat for inserting server monitoring data to ElasticSearch As usual, you get pure Kubernetes direct from upstream and of course it’s cross-cloud, making it easy for you to use your own bare metal for deployment. Your First Kubernetes Cluster After configuring Juju to use the cloud you prefer we can start the cluster deployment. juju deploy observable-kubernetes This will deploy the bundle with default constraints. This is great for testing out Kubernets but most clouds won’t give you enough CPU and memory to use the cluster in anger, so I recommend checking out the documentation on how to modify the bundle to more accurately reflect either the hardware you have on hand, or the instance size you prefer. We can watch the cluster coming up with a watch juju status, this will give us a near-realtime view of the cluster as it comes up: Making sure your cluster works We just wait for things to come up and hit an idle state before moving on. Once we’re up we can manage the cluster with kubectl. We’ve provided this tool for you on the master node with a config file prepoluated for you, first let’s find the master node. juju run --application kubernetes is-leader The output will show you which node is the master node, you can then copy the tools to your local machine: juju scp kubernetes/0:kubectl_package.tar.gz. Untar that wherever you’d like and cd to that directory, you should have a kubectl binary and a kubeconfig file for you to use along with kubectl. You can now check the status of your cluster with: ./kubectl cluster-info --kubeconfig./kubeconfig Kubernetes master is running at https://104.196.123.155:6443 KubeDNS is running at https://104.196.123.155:6443/api/v1/proxy/namespaces/kube-system/services/kube-dns Now let’s check the version of Kubernetes we’re running, note how it responds with both the client and server version. ./kubectl version --kubeconfig./kubeconfig Client Version: version.Info{Major:"1", Minor:"2", GitVersion:"v1.2.3", GitCommit:"882d296a99218da8f6b2a340eb0e81c69e66ecc7", GitTreeState:"clean"} Server Version: version.Info{Major:"1", Minor:"2", GitVersion:"v1.2.3", GitCommit:"882d296a99218da8f6b2a340eb0e81c69e66ecc7", GitTreeState:"clean"} Upgrading to a new version So far we’ve done the usual bits on getting Kubernetes running on Ubuntu, now we’re ready to test the latest stuff from upstream. juju set-config kubernetes version=v1.3.1 And then check juju status again while the model mutates. Now let’s see the version: ./kubectl version --kubeconfig./kubeconfig Client Version: version.Info{Major:"1", Minor:"2", GitVersion:"v1.2.3", GitCommit:"882d296a99218da8f6b2a340eb0e81c69e66ecc7", GitTreeState:"clean"} Server Version: version.Info{Major:"1", Minor:"3", GitVersion:"v1.3.1", GitCommit:"fe4aa01af2e1ce3d464e11bc465237e38dbcff27", GitTreeState:"clean"} Aha! As you see here, the cluster has upgraded to v1.3.1, but my local tools are obviously still v1.2.3. Obviously I can just recopy the kubectl tarball from the master node again, but I appear to have made a mistake, as the latest upstream version of Kubernetes is actually v1.3.3. No worries man: juju set-config kubernetes version=v1.3.3 And let’s check our version: ./kubectl version --kubeconfig./kubeconfig Client Version: version.Info{Major:"1", Minor:"2", GitVersion:"v1.2.3", GitCommit:"882d296a99218da8f6b2a340eb0e81c69e66ecc7", GitTreeState:"clean"} Server Version: version.Info{Major:"1", Minor:"3", GitVersion:"v1.3.3", GitCommit:"c6411395e09da356c608896d3d9725acab821418", GitTreeState:"clean"} Now that my cluster is up to date, don’t forget to copy a new version of kubectl from the master so that your client is also up to date. Now we’re ballin’ and on the latest upstream, now we can go ahead and dive into the Kubernetes docs to get started deploying a real workload inside your cluster. Future Goals So why isn’t v1.3.3 the default? Well we’d like to see some real feedback from people first and we’re still in the process of validating that your data will get migrated without issues as you upgrade. As you can see upgrading an empty cluster is trivial, and we’d like to make sure we’ve dotted all the t’s and i’s before moving on. We’d also like to take the next few weeks to prep the charms for the upcoming v1.4 release, as well as revving the etcd and Elastic stacks to their latest upstream versions, as well as revving the OS itself to xenial so that the ZFS backed storage is more robust and has a better out-of-the-box experience. We should also make it so that getting kubectl from the master isn’t so annoying. Got any feedback for us? You can find us on the Juju mailing list and #sig-cluster-ops and #sig-cluster-lifecycle on kubernetes.slack.com. Hope to see you there!Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Ford chief executive Mark Fields on his 'vote of confidence' in Trump Ford has said it will cancel a $1.6bn (£1.3bn) plant it planned to build in Mexico and instead extend operations at its factory in Michigan. The US car giant will spend $700m on expanding the plant at Flat Rock. Ford boss Mark Fields said the decision was partly due to falling sales of small cars and partly a "vote of confidence" in Donald Trump's policies. The President-elect has criticised both Ford and its rival General Motors over production of models in Mexico. Mr Trump earlier on Tuesday tweeted criticism of GM's production of its Chevy Cruze model in Mexico. 'Vote of confidence in Trump' Ford's chief executive, Mark Fields, told the BBC that the main decision to cancel the plant in Mexico was because of a "dramatic decline for the demand for small cars here in North America," allowing the company to cope with its existing plant. But he said another factor in the decision was the "more favourable US business environment that we see under President-elect Trump and some of the pro-growth policies that he's been talking about". "That did play a part and it's a vote of confidence that he can deliver on these things," Mr Fields added. Electric cars Ford is not abandoning production completely in Mexico, but is switching production of its Focus model to its existing plant in Hermosillo there to improve profitability. It makes the current version at its plant in Wayne in Michigan. Production at that facility will switch to two new models, which it says will safeguard 3,500 US jobs. The planned $1.6bn plant in Mexico was to be built in San Luis Potosi, but Ford said it would now invest some of that sum in Flat Rock, creating 700 jobs building a range of electric cars. Mexico's economy ministry said it regretted Ford's decision, adding that it had assurances that the US car firm would pay the state of San Luis Potosi for any costs incurred from the cancellation. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption GM says most Chevy Cruze models are made in the US Earlier on Tuesday, Mr Trump criticised General Motors on Twitter for making cars built in Mexico and made available tax-free in the US. "General Motors is sending Mexican made model of Chevy Cruze to US car dealers-tax free across border. Make in U.S.A. or pay big border tax!" he tweeted. However, GM said most of its Chevy Cruze cars were made in the US. A spokesman said only the hatchback model, which forms a small percentage of sales, was made in Mexico. He added that the car was built there for global production and said that although some Cruze sedans were made in Mexico for a while last year, all the ones now sold in the US were manufactured in Ohio. Image copyright Twitter Analysis: Simon Jack, business editor Cars made in Mexico can move across the border tax free thanks to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), something that Donald Trump attacked during his campaign for causing the loss of US manufacturing jobs to cheaper labour. In fact, only a tiny fraction (2,400 out of 190,000) of the GM model he singled out, the Cruze, are made in Mexico. But while he may have picked on the wrong model, the message was unmistakable - the President-elect's hostility to NAFTA hasn't faded post-victory. That position - and its popularity among many US consumers - is clearly not lost on car makers. Read Simon's blog in full Glenn Johnson, president of a union at the Lordstown factory in Ohio, said there had been no protest about the move of sedan production across the border. And responding to Mr Trump's tweet, he said: "It makes for news, that's all." Mr Trump has criticised other US industry titans since his election win and has vowed to make good on campaign promises to bring jobs back to America by, as he puts it, levelling the playing field. However, some commentators have expressed concern that restricting imports could damage the US economy. In November, GM said it would lay off around 1,250 workers at Lordstown and around 800 at its plant in Michigan from the middle of January, although some may find work at other factories.TOKYO -- The international impact of the Kobe Steel data scandal grew clearer Thursday as more than 30 companies outside Japan were found to have received products with falsified specifications. It has also now emerged quality inspection data was falsified in its core business of steel products. Aluminum and other products with doctored inspection certificates were used in vehicles built by the likes of General Motors, Tesla, Daimler and Peugeot maker Groupe PSA, on top of such Japanese automakers as Toyota Motor, Nissan Motor and Honda Motor. The products in question also made their way into planes built by Boeing and Airbus, as well as General Electric aircraft components. As of Thursday, a total of roughly 200 companies inside and outside Japan had been identified as recipients of products with falsified certificates. The range of industries affected is just as alarming. Falsely certified aluminum and copper products had been supplied to pillars of Japan's defense and space sectors, such as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Kawasaki Heavy Industries and IHI. Misrepresented material also surfaced in Panasonic's semiconductor-related components, as well as air-conditioning equipment manufactured by Daikin Industries and the Toshiba group. Even U.S. chipmaker Intel was affected. Demand for such lightweight materials as aluminum and carbon fiber has grown as manufacturers work to make autos and planes more fuel-efficient. Japanese manufacturers' reputation for quality in this area means that their products are used the world over. After revelations of malpractice in the peripheral segments of aluminum, copper and iron powder earlier in the week, Chairman and CEO Hiroya Kawasaki tried to save face Thursday by declaring there was no evidence of cheating at the company's core steel operation "at this time." Hours later, it was discovered that Kobe Steel also overwrote quality certification data for wire rods made outside Japan. Kobe Steel controls large global shares in some wire-rod products, which include axle springs and tire-reinforcing material. If the company ends up losing trust across the board, the impact could spread to other Japanese material makers looking to expand their overseas footprints. America's Alcoa produces the lion's share of aluminum material for passenger planes. But Japanese rivals have in recent years expanded business with Western clients by not only supplying materials, but also processing materials into finished components. The Kobe Steel scandal threatens to stall the growth of that revenue source. Quality standards are stricter for military hardware than they are for automobiles and other consumer products. Kobe Steel is likely to not only lose customers, but also face lawsuits. "If accidents and such were to happen due to insufficient parts strength, Kobe Steel could be subject to damage claims," said Yoji Maeda, an attorney well versed in international business transactions. At least one Japanese client appears to be moving toward that action. West Japan Railway, also known as JR West, said Thursday that its own high-speed shinkansen trains are running on parts whose inspection certificates were falsified by Kobe Steel. The components' strength missed Japanese Industrial Standards specifications by a few percentage points. Although the parts present no
Please enable Javascript to watch this video HENRICO COUNTY, Va. -- A woman fought off and killed a rabid raccoon that attacked her Saturday along the Wildside Walk Foot path at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden on Lakeside Avenue. Cass Overton, age 75, is a volunteer at Lewis Ginter. The raccoon ran out of the woods near the path where she was walking and began to scratch and claw her leg. When the raccoon then began to bite her leg, Overton reacted quickly. She grabbed the animal by its neck, threw it to the ground, and then put her knee on its neck until the raccoon stopped breathing. She called the front desk, and they called 911. She said EMS officials responded quickly and got her to St. Mary's for treatment. She is expected to be okay, but has received six shots so far, with several more to go. She said it's more exhausting than painful. Please enable Javascript to watch this video "The raccoon’s remains were submitted to the Virginia Division of Consolidated Laboratory Services for testing," said Lt. Eley. Those test results confirmed the raccoon had rabies. It was Henrico's first confirmed positive rabies case this year. Now the Henrico Health Department has asked anyone who may have been exposed to the raccoon to contact them. "Our visitors safety is our first priority," said spokeswoman Beth Monroe. She said that footpath is now closed to visitors, until garden staff members determine that it's safe. "We're just encouraging people to stay on the main pathways to not feed any wildlife," Monroe said. "And that's a really key thing. That was not the case in this particular instance. But it is never a good idea to feed wildlife." "Henrico Police Animal Protection reminds everyone to be sure to keep their pets’ rabies vaccinations current to ensure the safety of their pets and our community," Eley said. He asked people to report "abnormal wildlife behavior" to the Henrico Police Non-Emergency Communications Center at (804) 501-5000. Anyone who may have come in contact with the raccoon was asked to call the Henrico Health Department at 804-501-4529 or the Henrico County Animal Control Office at 804-501-5000. The Henrico Health District strongly advises that people take the following steps to prevent families and pets from being exposed to rabies: Vaccinate all cats, dogs and ferrets against rabies and keep them up to date! Avoid contact with wild animals or stray cats and dogs. Do not feed wild animals or stray cats and dogs. Report stray animals to your local animal control agency. Eliminate outdoor food sources around the home. Keep pets confined to your property or walk them on a leash. If you see ill or injured wildlife, call a licensed wildlife rehabilitator for advice on how to proceed. This is a developing story.Divock Origi's development will continue rapidly over the coming years and help establish him as a central figure for Liverpool, predicts Luis Garcia. The striker ended the 2016-17 campaign as the Reds’ fourth-top goalscorer having helped himself to 11. Garcia feels it’s important to highlight Origi has only just recently turned 22, and therefore has plenty of progress still to make in his burgeoning career – enhancement the Anfield legend does not doubt will be fulfilled. He told Liverpoolfc.com: “I love to see Origi on the pitch. He is so young. People think that because he has been there for a few years and playing quite a bit – and we only count young players if they are on the bench – [but] he is only 22 years old. “He is so young and has so much to continue improving. He showed us in some of the games how good he is and I think he can give many good games to the team in future. “He has been waiting for his place. We have to remember last year, when the season was ending, until his injury he was a key player for us. He scored a few very important goals. This season he was more involved in the team and he will continue getting more and more. “He is a very strong player, very fast, he can score goals, he moves all around and he does a lot of work for the team. And he’s only 22.”At Build Conference, we announced the addition of new Azure Disks sizes – which provide up to 4TB of disk space. These new sizes allow you to perform up to 250 MBps of storage throughput and 7,500 IOPS. The details of the announcement are captured in the Build session here. We introduced two new disk sizes, P40 (2TB) and P50 (4TB) for Managed/unmanaged Premium Disks; S40 (2TB) and S50 (4TB) for Standard Managed Disks. For Standard unmanaged disks, you can create disks with maximum size of 4095 GB. These new sizes are available to use now in our West US Central Region using Azure Powershell and CLIs through ARM. You’ll see us continue to expand availability and roll out the Azure Portal support around the world in more regions in the coming month. Along with that, we will release new versions of the Azure tools to support upload of VHDs more than 1TB. New Disk Sizes Details The below table provides more details on the exact capabilities of the new disk sizes:"I Won't Back Down" is a song by American rock musician Tom Petty. It was released in April 1989 as the lead single from his first solo album, Full Moon Fever. The song was written by Petty and Jeff Lynne, his writing partner for the album. It reached number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the Album Rock Tracks chart for five weeks, starting the album's road to multi-platinum status. Background and writing [ edit ] Petty recalled the recording of this song to Mojo magazine: "At the session George Harrison sang and played the guitar. I had a terrible cold that day, and George went to the store and bought a ginger root, boiled it and had me stick my head in the pot to get the ginger steam to open up my sinuses, and then I ran in and did the take."[1] Content [ edit ] A message of defiance against unnamed forces of difficulty and possibly oppression, the lyric is set against a mid-tempo beat: Well I know what's right, I got just one life in a world that keeps on pushin' me around but I'll stand my ground, and I won't back down Due to its themes, the song was played often on American radio following the September 11 attacks.[2] Petty and the Heartbreakers played a quiet but resolute version of the song at the America: A Tribute to Heroes telethon following the 2001 attacks.[2][3] In the 2007 documentary Runnin' Down a Dream, Petty said that he felt some initial hesitation about releasing the song, given its clear and unabashed message.[4] Music video [ edit ] The music video, directed by David Leland, was shot on March 22 and 23, 1989 on a sound stage at Pinewood Studios and released on April 24, 1989. Traveling Wilburys bandmates George Harrison and Jeff Lynne appear in the video. Mike Campbell and Harrison's former Beatles bandmate Ringo Starr are also featured in the video[5] along with Harrison's famous painted Fender Stratocaster "Rocky" being played by Campbell. Starr is depicted in the video as playing the drums on the song, though drumming was actually performed by Phil Jones on the record. Agreement with Sam Smith [ edit ] In January 2015, it was revealed that an agreement had been reached whereby Petty and Jeff Lynne would be credited as co-writers of Sam Smith's song "Stay with Me" and receive 12.5% of its royalties. Petty's publishing company had contacted Smith's publisher after noticing a likeness between "Stay with Me" and "I Won't Back Down".[6] Petty clarified that he did not believe Smith plagiarized him, saying "All my years of songwriting have shown me these things can happen. Most times you catch it before it gets out the studio door but in this case it got by. Sam's people were very understanding of our predicament and we easily came to an agreement".[7][8] Smith claimed he had never heard "I Won't Back Down" before he wrote "Stay with Me",[9] but he acknowledged the similarity after listening to the song, and said that the likeness was "a complete coincidence".[10][11] Petty and Lynne were not eligible for a Grammy Award ("Stay with Me" was nominated for three awards at the 57th annual ceremony, winning two of them) as the Recording Academy considered "Stay with Me" to have been interpolated from "I Won't Back Down" by Smith, James Napier, and William Phillips, the writers of "Stay with Me"; Petty and Lynne were instead given certificates to honor their participation in the work, as is usual for writers of sampled or interpolated work.[12] Personnel [ edit ] Charts [ edit ] Use in political campaigns [ edit ] George W. Bush used "I Won't Back Down" at campaign events during the 2000 presidential campaign but was compelled to stop using the song after receiving a cease and desist letter from Petty's publisher.[21][22] Petty then went on to perform the song at Al Gore's home after Gore conceded the election to President Bush.[23] Jim Webb used the song for his successful bid for one of Virginia's U.S. Senate seats in 2006, as did Hillary Clinton during the 2008 Democratic presidential primary campaign. The song was also used at campaign events for Congressman Ron Paul of Texas during the 2008 Republican presidential primary campaign, as well as for events for his Campaign for Liberty. The song was also played at an event for Republican Connecticut gubernatorial nominee, Tom Foley.[24] The song was also played at the 2012 Democratic National Convention after speech delivered by President Bill Clinton, in which President Barack Obama came out on stage to salute him. Use in sports campaigns [ edit ] The Ottawa Senators used the song as a campaign anthem in December 1990 at their presentation to be awarded an NHL franchise at the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida. The unlikely bid received unanimous support from the NHL and the franchise was awarded on December 6, 1990.[25] The Johnny Cash cover has also been used for a Rogers Sportsnet advertising campaign for the 2010-2011 NHL season.[26] The song was used as the walkout song for the Australian Rugby League club the Melbourne Storm from 1999-2007. It was also used as the slogan for the TCU Horned Frogs during the 2009 season, and incorporated into their merchandise during the year.[27] Beginning on October 7, 2017, the song has become a staple at University of Florida football games. Fans sing the song between the 3rd and 4th quarters, right after the traditional university song, "We are the Boys from Old Florida". All appearances [ edit ] The song was also released as downloadable content for Rock Band 2. Cover versions [ edit ]Story highlights The reunions will take place between February 20 and 25, South Korea says North Korea canceled previously scheduled reunions last year Seoul says it told Pyongyang that "what happened last year cannot be repeated" North Korea has called for better sides, but tensions remain over U.S.-South Korean drills North and South Korea have agreed to hold reunions later this month of families separated since the Korean War, Seoul said Wednesday. If they go ahead, the meetings of divided Korean families would be the first to take place since 2010. The reunions of about 100 people from each country are scheduled to take place between February 20 and 25, the South Korean unification ministry said Wednesday, following face-to-face talks between the two sides. But those scheduled to participate are likely to be aware that North Korea has unceremoniously pulled the plug on such meetings in the past. Past disappointment Reunions were due to take place last September, but Pyongyang canceled them with only a few days notice, accusing Seoul of souring ties between the two countries. South Korea says it sought reassurances in Wednesday's talks that the families' hopes wouldn't be dashed this time around. JUST WATCHED Koreans push for family reunions Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Koreans push for family reunions 02:00 JUST WATCHED The big prize on N. Korea's black market Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH The big prize on N. Korea's black market 01:37 "Our side expressed the position that what happened last year cannot be repeated," the unification ministry said. "The North shared the view." The reunions are an emotive issue. And time is running out for many of the surviving members of the families that were split by the 1950-53 war between the two Koreas. A lot of them are now in their 80s and 90s. Tens of thousands of people in South Korea are on the list of those wanting to take part in the reunions. This month's planned reunions are scheduled to take place at the site where previous ones were held: Mount Kumgang, a resort on the North Korean side of the border that used to be jointly operated by both sides. Calls for better ties The agreement on the date for the reunions follows a series of calls by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's regime for better relations between the two countries. South Korean officials had said they wanted to see action rather than words from Pyongyang, including moving ahead with family reunions. Wednesday's deal is a small step forward. But a contentious issue between the two sides is also looming at the end of this month: annual military exercises in the region by South Korean and U.S. forces. The drills infuriate North Korea, which says it sees them as a prelude to an invasion. Last year, it ratcheted up its threatening rhetoric to alarming levels as the exercises took place. In its calls so far this year for better relations, North Korea has asked South Korea not to take part in the drills -- a request that Seoul and Washington have rejected.The Telegraph reports that European Union police officials are quietly meeting to develop a system that would allow law enforcement to kill any car's engine from a central control facility. The fundamental technology already exists and is deployed with some auto manufacturers — GM, for example, offers "Stolen Vehicle Slowdown" as a service on 2009 and newer OnStar-equipped vehicles — but the goal of the EU effort appears to be a standardized, mandated system that would be controlled directly by police, not by car companies. If pushed through, The Telegraph suggests that it would be required by the end of the decade. The technology already exists Reaction to the news has been strongly negative, with one member of British parliament saying that "the price we pay for surrendering our democratic sovereignty is that we are governed by an unaccountable secretive clique." Another questions the liability to governments should the kill switch be triggered accidentally while a car is traveling at highway speeds, potentially causing a crash. Besides the concerns about an invasion of privacy and freedom for law-abiding citizens, it's easy to imagine the potential for catastrophic consequences if the "switch" fell in the wrong hands. Documents obtained by The Telegraph claim that the technology behind the remote-stop feature has yet to be developed — but considering that automakers have already developed it on their own, it seems unlikely that police would face engineering roadblocks if it ends up being mandated.CHEOPS will search for exoplanets by looking for a drop in brightness they cause when they pass in front of their parent star. The European Space Agency will launch a new satellite in 2017 to study super-Earths and other large alien planets orbiting nearby stars, agency officials announced Friday (Oct. 19). The small CHaracterising ExOPlanets Satellite, called Cheops for short, will orbit the Earth at an altitude of about 500 miles (800 kilometers) and search for new exoplanets around nearby bright stars already known to harbor alien planets, ESA officials said. "By concentrating on specific known exoplanet host stars, Cheops will enable scientists to conduct comparative studies of planets down to the mass of Earth with a precision that simply cannot be achieved from the ground," Alvaro Giménez-Cañete, the ESA's director of Science and Robotic Exploration, said in a statement. One of the methods for detecting exoplanets is to look for the drop in brightness they cause when they pass in front of their parent star. Such a celestial alignment is known as a planetary transit. (Image: © CNES) Cheops' high-precision monitoring will help scientist spot the telltale dips in the stars' brightness that occur when a planet passes, or "transits," in front of its star, according to a statement from the ESA. These observations promise to yield more accurate measurements of exoplanets, which could provide clues about their internal structure. ESA officials said the mission will last run for about 3 1/2 years and is aimed at improving understanding the formation of alien planets ranging in size from so-called super-Earths (planets a few times the mass of the Earth) to giant Neptune-sized worlds. The mission is also designed to identify alien planets with significant atmospheres. The Cheops mission was selected from a field of 26 different proposals from ESA's Call for Small Missions in March, ESA officials said. It is the first of a potential new class of space missions for the European Space Agency's science program, they added. Since 1992, astronomers have discovered more than 800 confirmed alien planets using the transit method and other planet-hunting techniques, with the aid of ground and space-based telescopes. Follow SPACE.com on Twitter @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+.Istanbul airport breaks another record ISTANBUL Istanbul's Atatürk Airport broke its air traffic record June 13 when a total of 1,294 planes took off and landed at the transportation hub, Orhan Birdal, General Director of State Airports (DHMİ), has announced on his Twitter account."Records continue at Atatürk Airport," Birdal said, stressing that some 142,000 passenger used the airport on the same day, thanking the personnel for "the problem-free service."The latest peak of air traffic activity at Atatürk Airport was recorded on June 9, when 1,272 planes took off and landed, carrying some 138,000 passengers.The construction of Istanbul's third airport had begun on June 7 with a massive groundbreaking ceremony with the participation of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.As Atatürk Airport is streched to its capacity limits, the new facility under construction is touted as the world's largest.After all that teeth-gnashing over the Chicago Cubs’ 2-1 NLCS deficit against the Los Angeles Dodgers, the city of Chicago slept easier Wednesday night, thanks to the the Cubs series-tying 10-2 victory in Game 4. Going into the game, the Cubs were pennant underdogs for only the second time all season; now, FiveThirtyEight’s Elo prediction model has them back as NL favorites, with a 61 percent chance of going to the World Series. But at the moment, the Cubs are still not the most likely club to win the World Series. That’s because another team — the Cleveland Indians — has already won its league championship series. And they did it in relatively convincing fashion, needing only five games to dispatch the favored Toronto Blue Jays. Now they await the result of the NLCS — and with it, the potential to make history. We’ve already seen one Cleveland team go through a historically difficult championship path when the Cavaliers knocked off the record-setting Golden State Warriors last June. The Indians might do them one better if the Cubs end up advancing (and Cleveland can pull another upset). The Indians’ path has already wound its way through two of baseball’s best teams: the Red Sox and Blue Jays, who still rank second and fourth, respectively, in Elo. If the top-rated Cubs are indeed next, the Indians will have faced the fifth-toughest group of playoff-series opponents of any World Series team since the wildcard era began in 1995, according to their average pre-series Elo rating: OPPONENT IN… YEAR TEAM LG. DIVISION SERIES LG. CHAMP. SERIES WORLD SERIES AVG. ELO WON WORLD SERIES? 1 1998 SDP HOU ATL NYY 1591 2 2001 NYY OAK SEA ARI 1585 3 2002 SFG ATL STL ANA 1573 4 1999 ATL HOU NYM NYY 1568 5 2016 CLE BOS TOR CHC* 1566 — 6 2011 STL PHI MIL TEX 1565 ✓ 7 1999 NYY TEX BOS ATL 1560 ✓ 8 2005 CHW BOS ANA HOU 1560 ✓ 9 2012 DET OAK NYY SFG 1559 10 2004 STL LAD HOU BOS 1558 11 2009 PHI COL LAD NYY 1558 12 2002 ANA NYY MIN SFG 1558 ✓ 13 2010 TEX TBR NYY SFG 1558 14 2004 BOS ANA NYY STL 1558 ✓ 15 2009 NYY MIN ANA PHI 1558 ✓ 16 2007 BOS ANA CLE COL 1556 ✓ 17 2016 LAD WSN CHC CLE 1556 — 18 2013 BOS TBR DET STL 1556 ✓ 19 2010 SFG ATL PHI TEX 1555 ✓ 20 1997 CLE NYY BAL FLA 1555 21 2005 HOU ATL STL CHW 1555 22 2013 STL PIT LAD BOS 1554 23 2003 FLA SFG CHC NYY 1553 ✓ 24 2014 KCR ANA BAL SFG 1553 25 1995 ATL COL CIN CLE 1552 ✓ 26 2008 TBD CHW BOS PHI 1552 27 2016 CLE BOS TOR LAD* 1550 — 28 2001 ARI STL ATL NYY 1550 ✓ 29 2011 TEX TBR DET STL 1550 30 2000 NYY OAK SEA NYM 1549 ✓ The most difficult World Series paths, 1995–2016 * Hypothetical match-ups contingent upon 2016 NLCS winner. Based on average pre-series Elo ratings of each opponent. Excludes Wild Card Game for teams who participated since it began in 2012 Source: Baseball-Reference.com All four of the teams that rank ahead of the Indians on that list lost the World Series, so a Cleveland victory would be far from assured. (Conditional on Chicago making the World Series, Elo thinks the Cubs would be about 60 percent favorites to beat Cleveland.) But the flip-side is that the 2016 Indians could potentially rank as the greatest underdog champions of the wild-card era. And that’s on top of the history an Indians-Cubs World Series would produce anyway. Neither team has captured a title since Cleveland last won in 1948, and the Cubs have famously been waiting 108 years for their turn. So this is just one of many historical angles to watch for — rampantly speculating that the Cubs beat the Dodgers, of course. (Which is never a great idea when talking about a team with the Cubs’ history.) VIDEO: Cleveland fooled us twiceGet the latest news and videos for this game daily, no spam, no fuss. Gears of War 4 will be a "graphical showcase" for Xbox One, according to producer Rod Fergusson. He says in the latest issue of Official Xbox Magazine that developer The Coalition's work on Gears of War Ultimate Edition is shaping how the studio is approaching Gears of War 4 with regards to visuals. "Delivering [with Ultimate Edition] the first 60fps multiplayer experience in franchise history really taught us a lot about what it means to have a 60fps culture on the team and we're leveraging that experience for Gears of War 4," Fergusson said, as reported by Nerdleaks. Achieving 60fps on Xbox One was not only possible for the Gears of War Ultimate Edition, but also for Halo 5: Guardians, Fergusson pointed out. The producer, who worked on the original Gears of War at Epic Games, said he sees history repeating itself with regards to Gears of War's graphical quality as the franchise moves to new hardware. "Like how the original Gears of War was a visual showcase for the Xbox 360, Gears of War 4 will be a graphical showcase for the Xbox One," Fergusson said. Halo 5 used a dynamic resolution to maintain 60fps, but it remains to be seen how Gears of War 4 will handle this. Gears of War 4 is due out sometime this fall. A beta will be held prior to launch, with those who purchased early copies of Gears of War Ultimate Edition guaranteed access to it.For the last 2 years I’ve been living in a block house downtown Bucharest. It’s a small and cosy place and it’s very close to the center (that’s why we picked it in the first place). It certainly has it quirks, though. For instance, neighbors. They’re either (very) old women, or (very) young people (working, probably, in various corporations). At times, you can almost feel the eyes of the old ladies gazing at you from behind closed doors. In the beginning it felt a little weird but in a few months, we got used to it. Because of the neighbors, most of the time the place is really quiet. Except when the dogs are barking. Yes. The dogs. The building is U-shaped and inside the U there is this backyard. There are a few parking places near the building’s walls and, right in the middle, there is a small cottage where the parking guardians are staying. A small fence is surrounding the cottage and around the cottage there are a few trees that are giving a lot of shade during summer. It’s a nice, quiet backyard. Most of the time. Around the cottage, in time, a pack of 4 dogs gathered. Or, to be more precise, they were adopted. Guardians are feeding them and use them during the night as, of course, sentinels. All 4 of them were previously stray dogs, with a history of abuse or hurt. The most clever dog of all 4 is a female called Samantha. She has only 3 legs (that’s part of her pas abuse stories) but she’s undoubtedly the leader of the pack. She only needs to see you, (or smell you) once or twice, then she remembers you. I assume she saw and still remembers hundreds of people since she’s staying there. When the going gets rough, she’s the last one to bark, especially because she is good with people and she can instantly tell the difference between a friend, and a potential foe. Also, the other dogs are following her, meaning they’re kinda supportive when Samantha goes after someone. But the other dogs are not so smart. They can get started pretty easily when there is movement around. Sometimes, it’s Samantha who is calming them down, but sometimes they can bark for a few dozens of minutes, without any apparent reason. The Stage The other day a beggar came around. They do cross the yard every once in a while. Because she instantly smelled the difference, Samantha started to bark aggressively. Other two dogs followed through, and, all of a sudden, three dogs were barking behind the small fence, forcing the guy to speed up his pace. Right in the middle of the yard, there was this fourth dog, somehow separated from the entire scene. His name is Zombie. Maybe because he’s black. Or maybe because he’s not that smart. As he heard the barking of his friends, he suddenly stood up. Looking straight up, without even bother to check the cause of his friends barking, he started to howl. Just like that. As the barking of Samantha’s pack continued, Zombie got even more aggressive. He saw a pigeon sitting a few meters from him and he jumped towards it. The pigeon walked rapidly, then we gently started to fly when Zombie got closer. After a few meters, he landed again. Zombie, without stopping his barking, followed through. The pigeon walked again, gently flew and landed again. After a few of these sessions, Zombie started to circle around, in the backyard, chasing the pigeon. The beggar was gone for quite a few minutes now and the other 3 dogs ceased barking. But not Zombie. Nope. He was still circling around the backyard, chasing that pigeon around. Something in this story made me stare out the window for at least 15 minutes. I couldn’t unglue myself from the glass, watching how Zombie was barking with no reason, constantly chasing the pigeon (who didn’t seem to give much fucks, anyways). And then it hit me… We’re All Chasing Pigeons. Most Of The Time. Yes, we all do this. Because of our confusion, our ignorance, or simply because we’re lazy, we act just like Zombie. We hear something that gets us started, we look around, we follow through and we take on the first thing that we lay eyes on. Without even knowing what’s going on. We waste our energy, our time, maybe our experience and knowledge, chasing pigeons. Following elusive constructs which seem to continuously escape our reach. It happens almost every time. For instance, on New Years Eve. Because everybody is barking at the passage of a new year, we start to follow some elusive New Year resolutions, without even knowing from where the hell they came into our lives. Well, since everybody is barking around, there must be something valuable in following that pigeon, right? Wrong. Of course. Or when there is this new super-never-exposd-to-the-public-before self-improvement technique, we’re all following through, just because there is some barking around that thing. Maybe, for some people, the technique is good, or relevant. Just like for Samantha, barking at that beggar, was something good. But that doesn’t mean it was the same for Zombie. He had nothing to do with it. And yet, he started chasing pigeons, just because he thought it would be good to do this. We’re seldom as aware as we should be. Most of the time we’re just lazily sitting on top of our stuff, picking up half-thought pieces of information and we rush acting upon them. We’re rushing towards those “pigeons”, just like Zombie was rushing towards that elusive, flying piece of feather and meat. So, before taking any action, take some time. Look around. See exactly what you’re chasing. Otherwise you will perfectly fit in this quote from the late Jim Rohn: “Motivation alone is not enough. If you have an idiot, and you motivate him, now you have a motivated idiot”.Russ Angold, the co-founder and CTO at exoskeleton maker Ekso Bionics, says he can tell how old someone is by which pop-culture reference they make when he tells them what he does for a living. Kids talk about the suit Tom Cruise wears in Edge of Tomorrow. Millenials name-check Iron Man. Gen-Xers go classic: Sigourney Weaver in Aliens. Nobody ever mentions Starship Troopers. But building a power-enhancing exosuit isn't easy. And nobody knows that better than Ekso. Angold has his own high standards to live up to; when he was a kid, his brother decided to become a Navy SEAL—and Angold promised to become an engineer to build cool gear for him. “The spec that the users want for all exoskeletons is very clear,” says Angold. “It can’t suck.” Ekso started out trying to build Iron Man suits for the military, then spread into the world of physical therapy, with powered walking suits that help people learn to walk again after strokes or accidents. Over 4,000 people have used those. Now Ekso is trying to break into a new market: construction. The Ekso Works Industrial Exoskeleton is an unpowered frame that lets a person heft heavy powertools as if they weighed nothing at all. Josh Valcarcel/WIRED The key to typical exoskeletons is power. That was the genius of the first Iron Man movie—the macguffin, nerds will recall, was the “arc reactor,” a fantastically small source of huge amounts of power. The lack of any such magical technology in the real world has held exosuit development back for a decade, especially for the military. A human being uses about 10 watts just standing around, and 1 kilowatt working, according to Ekso. No battery can keep a suit going all day long with that output. The industrial exoskeleton doesn’t care about that, though. It’s unpowered, relying instead on counterweights and a standard, sprung arm used on image-stabilizing steadicams. The trick is the carbon fiber harness and metal-tube frame running down a user’s legs. It translates the weight of whatever’s on the end of the arm down through the suit and into the ground. The effect is unsettling. When I strapped into the suit, a grinder that I’d previously had trouble holding above my head for more than a few minutes felt utterly weightless…until I tried to move it away from my body. Then the counterweights kicked in and moved me around in the harness. Angold had warned me about this, I realized. “The suit can take the weight of the tool, but you’ll still feel the inertial effects,” he said. The weight of the tool was getting shunted mechanically through the suit’s Vibram-soled footplates, but the mass was still banging me around. And walking was awkward, but just a little practice improved my gait almost immediately. So by and large the suit works as advertised. Now the question is one of marketing and uptake. The construction business—which is what Ekso is targeting—is perhaps a bit more conservative than the military. Also, Ekso wouldn't discuss the price of the suit, saying instead that the company would prefer to "focus on value." Josh Valcarcel/WIRED One other bit of weirdness: Last year Lockheed Martin sold unpowered, steadicam-arm-armed exoskeletons to the US Navy. The suit is called the Fortis, and if you look at the images, you can see that it looks a lot like the Ekso Works Industrial Exoskeleton. I asked Heidi Darling, Ekso's director of marketing communications, about the similarity, and she emailed: "LM Fortis is Ekso Bionics technology (Ekso Bionics Inside) and it has been designed primarily for Navy ship maintenance applications." But John Kent, senior manager for media relations at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, said: "I can tell you Lockheed Martin has not purchased any exoskeletons from Ekso Bionics. Fortis was independently developed by Lockheed Martin with support from Robrady Design." Robrady Design is a "design and development studio" in Sarasota, Florida, according to a company website that does indeed tout work on the Fortis. Each spokesperson denied the truth of the other's statement. Meanwhile, Ekso’s eventual marketing plan is to sell suits with arms adapted to specific tools. Wearing the exoskeleton it’s easy to imagine one with arms built to specifically carry Milwaukee or DeWalt—maybe even with batteries for power tools instead of dead metal as the counterweight. It won’t be Ripley fighting an alien queen in a loader, but maybe it’s a start.Agency claims waterboarding KSM prevented attack, despite alleged plot being debunked by scores of intelligence professionals in 2006 Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet.com Wednesday, April 22, 2009 As the controversy surrounding revelations of the Bush administration’s torture program builds, the CIA has attempted to diffuse the furore by claiming that the torture of Khalid Sheik Mohammed prevented a terror attack on an L.A. skyscraper, a completely ludicrous assertion since the credibility of the alleged “L.A. attack plot” was debunked by scores of intelligence professionals years ago. “The Central Intelligence Agency told CNSNews.com today that it stands by the assertion made in a May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that the use of “enhanced techniques” of interrogation on al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) — including the use of waterboarding — caused KSM to reveal information that allowed the U.S. government to thwart a planned attack on Los Angeles,” reports CNS News. This claim was made the day after after former Vice-President Dick Cheney urged the CIA to “put out the memos that show the success of the effort….reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity.” The “planned attack on Los Angeles” refers to an announcement made on February 9th 2006 in which it was claimed that an Al-Qaeda plan to fly a plane into the LA Library Tower was thwarted in 2002. The release of the news that the plot had been prevented by means of tapping terrorist suspect’s phone, and not torture as the CIA now claims, was politically timed to coincide with the start of legal hearings on the Bush administration’s domestic eavesdropping program. Fox “News,” the White House’s PR mouthpiece, immediately began showing footage from the movie Independence Day, in which the famous tower is destroyed. A d v e r t i s e m e n t Hours after the announcement, the mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa, went public with his absolute bewilderment concerning the alleged plot. “I’m amazed that the president would make this (announcement) on national TV and not inform us of these details through the appropriate channels,” the mayor said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I don’t expect a call from the president — but somebody.” The day after the announcement, twenty three separate intelligence experts, all with either CIA, FBI, NSA or military credentials, both in and out of service, angrily disputed Bush’s remarks about the alleged L.A. plot, with one going as far as saying that the President was “full of shit.” Another described the claims as “worthless intel that was discarded long ago.” A New York Times story cited “several counter-terrorism officials” as saying that “the plot never progressed past the planning stages…. ‘To take that and make it into a disrupted plot is just ludicrous,’ said one senior FBI official.” The New York Daily News cited another senior counterterrorism official who said: “There was no definitive plot
going to get away from any time soon. It’s the modality that is most often preferred by a pragmatic adversary.”Given the sensitivity and complexity of the subject, Majidi says he tries to present all the issues in context: “One of my jobs is to make sure I put all of these things in an appropriate light, because if you were in my job you would see that everyone always tries to elevate things to a tremendous level.”Of one thing Majidi is sure: “There’s a probability of 100 percent that a WMD event will happen.”Kevin King of Mount Vernon claimed that he was standing near the corner of Elm Street and Nepperhan Avenue on Nov. 23, 2012 when he was detained by police, taken to the City Jail and strip searched. Judge's gavel. (Photo: Getty Images/iStockphoto) Yonkers will pay a $20,000 settlement to a man who claimed he was falsely arrested. The city will pay the money to Kevin King, who in 2014 filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Yonkers Police. King, of Mount Vernon, claimed that he was standing near the corner of Elm Street and Nepperhan Avenue waiting for a bus after having Thanksgiving dinner with his family on the evening of Nov. 23, 2012 when he was detained by police, taken to the City Jail and strip searched. King had a small pocket knife in his pocket that led to a weapons charge. He was held in jail for six days and after several court appearances a judge ruled that his knife was legal and all charges against him were dismissed, according to King's lawsuit. In the settlement Yonkers denied any liability in the case and on July 14 King accepted the city's offer. More Yonkers news BUSINESS: Roaster produces craft coffee in Yonkers PARKS: Rail trail construction to begin in spring DOWNTOWN: Who released the koi in Larkin Plaza? SIGN UP for The Y-O, reporter Ernie Garcia's Yonkers newsletter Twitter: @ErnieJourno Read or Share this story: http://lohud.us/2bi2e9PToronto police are requesting the public’s help in identifying a man who kicked another man in the back on a TTC bus. According to police, the incident occurred on Sunday, Sept. 27 at 11:53 p.m. At that time, a man boarded a TTC bus heading east in the Finch Avenue and Yonge Street area. As the man approached the back of the bus, he got into a dispute with the suspect, who had his foot on the seat across from him. The suspect raised his foot and held it near the victim’s face, in an attempt to intimidate him. When the victim left the area, the suspect kicked the man in the middle of the back, causing him to slam into one of the support bars. The suspect then exited the bus and fled the area. The suspect is described as black, approximately 27 years of age and six-feet tall with short, dark hair and scruffy facial hair. At the time he was wearing a collared shirt with a pizza logo on it, glasses and dark shoes. Anyone with information is asked to contact police at 416-808-3200 or Crime Stoppers at 416-222-TIPS.Blood and Darkness, Chapter 22 By Twilight Sparkle (Age 16) Kefentse crept through the caves, her green eyes glowing in the darkness and allowing her to locate the cultists' deadly traps with ease, as her consummate hearing pinpointed their distant chants. She crept up on their blasphemous ceremony — using her mechanical wings to levitate over the traps, her innate zebra stealth to approach in perfect silence, and her sharp claws to dispatch a guard who wandered too close. Finally, after such a long journey to clear her name of the murder she didn't commit, the moment of her exoneration was close at hoof! (*Here, the hornwriting skips a few lines and gets hurried and shaky) So she leapt into the hooded ponies with a draconic roar, sending all of them scattering, their evil laughter fading into terrified screams at her righteous vengeance. Hornbolt after hornbolt from the metal tip of her reconstructed horn transformed all the ponies into the mindless lemmings they truly were in their hearts, weak-willed creatures that had simply been following their leader and mocking that which they could not understand. They ran away yipping piteously, forever sorry that they had not stopped to think before treating Kefentse so badly. Then, in the rose-red crimson glow of the burning torches, it was just the dracozebris and the evillest pony of them all. "You may have neutralized the greatest weapon of my popularity," the cult leader laughed, "but I don't need my followers, because the darkness gives me strength!" She produced a wicked dagger from under her robes and took a swing at Kefentse. But this time Kefentse would not back down. With a graceful leap she dodged away from the scything blade. Then she fought back with her greatest and most powerful weapon — knowledge. Using martial arts techniques long thought lost, which she had researched in her many hours in the library after her secret agent classes, Kefentse planted a hoof right in the leader's stupid insufferable muzzle. It took her out with a single blow. THAT'S the power of research, you smug timberwolf. The cult leader fell to the ground with a cry of defeat. "No, how could this be — you're still so strong, after all I did to destroy your life?" "Maybe you should spend more time studying and less time picking on innocent ponies," Kefentse said, graciously offering advice in victory, because she was no bully like this poor pathetic creature. The cult leader nodded sadly and sat up, her hood falling away to reveal an all-too-familiar midnight coat and cream-and-blue mane. She was one of the fellow students that, many years ago, had been in classes with Kefentse at Princess Celestia's Secret Agent School, except she had failed after falling behind in her studies, and then fallen to darkness and corruption. Kefentse gasped. " Moondanc- Dark Pirouette! I should have known." "You may have beaten me, but you'll never convince the princess of your innocence," the dark young mare said. "I would revise your probability estimate of that statement," a voice said. A large white form stepped from behind a nearby pillar, the perfect spiral of her horn glowing amid the radiance of her ethereal mane. "Princess Celestia!" they chorused. "Thank you for disrupting the cult's spell and saving me, my most faithful secret agent," the princess said. "I should have known Dark Pirouette would be trouble, way back when she told me that you broke into her locker and I believed her and her friends over you. Then when she stole your homework to get you in trouble for missing an assignment. Then when I encouraged you to be more social with your classmates and she spent all afternoon making fun of you. Then today she pushed you around between classes and all I said was that you should try working out your differences. Well, I was wrong. It was so clear she was evil, and I don't know how I failed to see it. I'm so sorry I doubted you for even a second." (Also it led to Kefentse being framed for murder and getting her horn broken and her wings removed, which was of course the important thing) Kefentse felt her cheeks heat and her emotions stir as Celestia apologized. Everything was going to be alright. She could take her place as an alicorn again. Yet there were some secrets which still had to remain hidden. Celestia turned to the sniveling cultist, the glow of the princess' horn intensifying and then winking out as her enchantment took hold. "And now that I've cast a truth spell, it's time for some answers." "Yeah," Kefentse said. "Like, why would you do such a thing?" Dark Pirouette burst into tears, since she couldn't rely any more upon the lies that had fooled her flock of sycophants and misled Princess Celestia. "I was jealous of you, Kefentse," she said. "You're better than me. You're smarter, and you get better grades, and you're more talented at magic." "Don't forget prettier," Princess Celestia added, and then her cheeks flushed. "Oh dear," she murmured. "You're right," Dark Pirouette said, color creeping into her own muzzle. "She's prettier. Actually, she's naturally hot, in a way I could never hope to be, and that's why I mock her fashion sense all the time." Kefentse blushed too. "I … uh … Princess, what did you mean by 'oh dear'?" she said, modestly trying to change the subject. "I must still be a little disoriented from what the cult did to me," Princess Celestia said. "I meant to cast the truth spell on Dark Pirouette, but it appears to be affecting all of us." Kefentse gasped, feeling her chest tighten and her heart begin to pound. She stumbled backward on trembling hooves. "Are you alright, Kefentse?" Princess Celestia asked, worried. "No," Kefentse replied, helplessly listening to herself speak as the truth was ripped from her lips. "I'm terrified that you'll learn my deepest, darkest secret, of how passionately in love with you I am, and you'll hate me because you're so perfect and amazing and wonderful and wise and I'm just a stupid little filly who tries so hard to be worthy of your attention but nothing she ever does is good enough." An awkward silence filled the cave. Hot tears of shame pooled in Kefentse's eyes. But as she was whirling to flee, Celestia cleared her throat. The sound pinned Kefentse to the spot, as if she were a Danaus plexippus in the displays of the Academy biological studies building, Lepidoptera wing. "Well," Celestia said, "that certainly makes this a great deal simpler, because I was also terrified that you'd discover I felt the same way about you." Kefentse's eyes widened. "What?!" "It's true," Celestia said, placing a hoof on Kefentse's shoulder, lowering her muzzle and blushing hotly. "I'm so hard on you because it's the only way to cover up my true feelings. I thought if I expected perfection from you, and you slipped up, it would give me an excuse to keep you at wing's length. But I can't lie about my desires now, thanks to the truth spell." "Neither can I. I'm secretly in love with you too, Kefentse," Dark Pirouette cried. "I thought the only way I could ever get you to notice me was if I made myself look like I was better than you. It was really dumb and I regret everything." "Not yet you don't," Kefentse said. "You're creepy and stupid and I hope you cry yourself to sleep for the rest of your life for being such a jerk." She turned to Princess Celestia. "What should we do to punish her for her crimes?" "We should make out in front of her," Celestia said, "so that she can get a good look at what she'll never, ever have." Kefentse smiled. "That sounds like an excellent idea, Princess." So they did.(USL) Baltimore is in prime position to land an expansion team in the United Soccer League, a fast-growing, second-division circuit one level below MLS. USL President Jake Edwards told the Insider on Monday that league executives will meet with the Baltimore group, as well as local officials, in the next two weeks to continue discussions about the expansion bid and tour potential sites to build a stadium. “It’s moving along nicely,” Edwards said. “I think it’s going to be a tremendous success in Baltimore.” Asked if he thought expanding to Baltimore seemed almost certain, Edwards said: “Yes.” Baltimore is among eight markets to submit applications to begin play in 2019 or ’20. The league is deep in talks with the eight and, if they meet standards and conditions, all would enter the league. Separately, the USL expects this summer to finalize deals with Las Vegas and Fresno, Calif., to join in 2018 and Birmingham in 2019. Previously announced, Nashville will start next year. The USL has thrived in markets such as Cincinnati, Sacramento, Louisville and San Antonio. This season, the USL features 30 teams, with about one-third owned by MLS clubs. In January, the U.S. Soccer Federation granted provisional Division II status to the USL after six years in the third tier. The struggling North American Soccer League, which is down to eight teams, is provisionally Division II, as well. The USSF will revisit the leagues’ status in August. Edwards declined to identity the backers of the Baltimore campaign but said a “very successful local businessman is at the forefront of the group” and that it plans to build a stadium and launch a youth academy. The minimum seating capacity for second-division teams is 5,000. Last year, in its expansion season, FC Cincinnati averaged 17,296. Last fall, the owners of the Wilmington (N.C.) Hammerheads explored relocating to Baltimore but eventually folded the USL side and invested in an existing team, the Harrisburg (Pa.) City Islanders. D.C. United has also submitted an application to the USL to operate a team in the lower flight. The organization is exploring stadium opportunities in Northern Virginia as part of a large project that would also include fields and facilities for the first team and youth academy. George Mason University in Fairfax and Loudoun County are the early candidates. United broke ground this winter on a 20,000-capacity MLS stadium at Buzzard Point in Southwest D.C. A lower-tier team would end United’s affiliation with the USL’s Richmond Kickers and allow it to have direct oversight of staffing and player development in a single location. Such a team could begin play at a temporary location next year, but 2019 seems more realistic. “We continue to work through that project with D.C. United,” Edwards said. “I know they’ve got a lot going on right now with the new [MLS] stadium, but they did submit a nice application to us. It might take a little bit longer than all parties expected, but they remain committed to it. “They’re going about it in the right way. They want to do things at a very high level, so if that’s means we go from 2018 to ’19, that’s fine. No one’s in a rush.” A second United team might end up with other MLS-operated squads in a third-division league that was recently proposed by the USL to launch in 2019. The first priority, though, is to identify smaller markets to make up the foundation of the new league, Edwards said. About a dozen have shown initial interest, he added. “We’re going to attack this the same way we’ve built the USL into an extremely competitive D2 league,” Edwards said.Committing to not eat meat, or eggs, dairy, or any other animal by-products can limit a lot of restaurant options. Vegetarians/vegans can usually find something on a menu to eat, but its rarely on par with other options, or just a salad of sorts. Fortunatley, Montreal has some fine vegetarian dining options. Don't limit yourself to leafy greens because here is MTL Blog's list of restaurants too tasty to use meat. Aux Vivres Where: 4631 St. Laurent Why: Aux Vivres does every meal so well you won't even notice a lack of meat in the mix. Start at breakfast for their fully vegan brunch, featuring grilled polenta and tempeh bacon. For on the go, or light lunches, Aux Vivres has a solid sandwich selection. If you're looking for a big evening meal, try Aux Vivres' fully vegan burgers, Asian-fusion bols, and tons of other options. Aux Vivres even has dessert and a long list of teas to finish off any meal. Truthfully, a little pricey, but Aux Vivres is always quality and you get what you pay for back in flavour. Crudessence Where: 2157 Mackay & 105 Rachel O. Why: No matter what your lunch needs are, Crudessence will have you covered. Taking dishes from various food cultures, Crudessence has an eclectic menu with some cool raw, gluten free, and vegetarian twists on classic favourites. A fan of Pad Thai, but not the meat or gluten rich noodles? Crudessence does Pad Thai with daikon and zucchini noodles. Feeling like comfort food? Grab a bowl of sweet potatoe and black bean chili served on a bed of gluten-free quinoa, or raw food nachos. With two locations (Mackay and Rachel), along with catering and online product ordering options, Crudessence has a lot to offer the gluten-free eater. La Panthère Verte Where: 2153 Mackay & 66 St. Viateur Why: Either sitting down, or in the street via food truck, Green Panther has your vegetarian eating needs covered. A little more lunch oriented, Green Panther boasts a long list of sandwiches, freshly made juices, and a bunch of smoothies. 'Cookies & Cakes' is an entire section on the Green Panther menu, so anyone with a sweet tooth will be very pleased. Priced pretty fairly, Green Panther is a great vegetarian lunch spot. Website Commensal Where: 1204 McGill College & 1720 St. Denis Why: A classic vegan/vegetarian option in Montreal, and for good reason, Commensal is great for its variety. Nearly anyone, vegan or otherwise, can always find something that catches a hungry eye. If anything, delicious eye candy is the largest negative of eating at Commensal. Set up kind of like a cafeteria, You may end up packing your plate up pretty high at Commensal and then have a pretty steep bill when it comes time to pay. Website Burritoville Where: 2055 Bishop Why: Before M4 and BurritoShop came on to the food scene, Burritoville was, and still very much is, your best bet for a great burrito. Replacing meat with delicious fillings like sweet potatoe and vegetarian chili, Burritoville makes deliciously meatless quaesadillas, tacos, and of course, burritos. Burritoville does all three very well, but their menu essentially stops there, so be mindful is a slight lack of variety. Website Lola Rosa Where: 545 Milton & 4581 Parc Why: With beers on tap and a very large menu, Lola Rosa has everything a 'normal' restaurant would have, and more. Great options are abound for those who aren't a fan of gluten too. Lola Rosa also serves up what are arguably some of the best nachos in the city, a must try for bar-food connoisseurs. Not too long ago, Lola Rosa opened up a new restaurant on Parc, to spread some vegetarian food love outside of the McGill ghetto. Website The list is very far from complete. Let us know where you eat vegetarian in the comments below!England has become the team that pines for success in football, yet just seems to fumble out of the rubble and misery as gluttons for punishment. Since their disastrous World Cup bid in Brazil, the team has no doubt felt rather sore about how they attacked the tournament; Roy Hodgson, the beaten, tousled boss to constantly bestow upon the public a tirade of bad news, has shown that he understands what the next step must be for his squad, in order to develop into rising champions. The events of the summer must hereby be wiped clean; The Three Lions must now regroup, recharge and roar in the faces of defeat. Keys to the English Winning Streak How to progress I felt a little that Hodgson happily hurled Liverpool’s knights, Raheem Sterling and Daniel Sturridge, up the field in an uninformed attempt to bag a few goals during their somewhat short duration in South America months ago. This slightly hasty decision left England gasping for air, as its disproportionate midfield-to-upfront ratio was poor, and neither line of men seemed to gel particularly easily. In the Costa Rica match, for instance, James Milner’s pace came and went, whilst Ross Barkley showed potential, and that was all. Despite obviously being a huge supporter of ex-Saint, Adam Lallana, his growth for Southampton had not perhaps reached international level quite yet; Jack Wilshere has often been haphazard and not one hundred per cent focused, whilst Frank Lampard has been getting on for quite some time. These niggles combined with a shaky defence really conveys how imbalanced Hodgson’s team was. The patch-job English side presented to fans and World Cup-goers/viewers was very discouraging, but hope is certainly not lost. Hodgson’s belief in his boys is overwhelmingly enlightening and his plans to utilise youngsters will eventually pay off. With regards to Wayne Rooney’s captaincy debut (although it puzzles me, it somehow makes a fair semblance of sense, too) England should be able to look to an elder member and take on board useful tips from a different skipper, whilst Hodgson himself knows he has much to show the press if he wants to remain in his comfy ‘England head honcho’ chair. Nurturing younger players, including Luke Shaw, the man of much promise, should give England more of a bulky defence; whilst Sterling and Sturridge reconnecting at Liverpool should help to bring some solidarity to previously unknown pockets of players, especially upfront. What can we deduce from their international action of late? I would certainly say we can infer that Hodgson’s new tactics are paying off. Whether it’s a wealth of goals (though I’m not talking by Germany’s standards) or just better technique, any form of improvement presents itself as the baton to be run with until the next international fixture, and England seems now to be the team taking on board all sorts of criticism and seeking decent scores. The debris of shattered World Cup visions has certainly been shunted out of the way, and the path has seemed a lot clearer since. England vs. Norway (1-0) Weeks ago, England’s friendly against the Norwegians wasn’t exactly all rainbows and smiles, but one cannot possibly expect them to go from zero to hero in such speedy succession. Familiar ex-England player and chirpy BBC pundit admitted he had dozed off during the game, due to its usual dire structure (BBC Sport, The Sun, September 2014). Despite Shearer’s cheeky reluctance to stay awake, the new skipper neatly slotted in a penalty during the 68th minute. But penalties are a fickle thing; so many fiery comments often derive from the only goal being a penalty, because it’s not fully from a team’s own merit, and credibility was exactly what England needed to show. It was a win, but rather by the skin of their teeth, and probably more by a whole heap of luck than genuine footballing judgement. Brede Hangeland’s international retirement from the Norwegian side was not too dissimilar from Steven Gerrard’s, which meant that both teams were in a fairly even position, in that they had to seek guidance elsewhere. Despite being evenly pegged in some cases, England’s victory should be taken as something to build upon, rather than entirely shun. England vs. Switzerland (2-0) It’s controversial, but I’ll just quickly whisper that my GBP was on Switzerland (sssh). However, in came Danny Welbeck, and Hodgson’s side looked more impressive than they had in a remarkably long period. In Basel, the Euro 16 Qualifier could realistically have gone to the Swiss, who had played eagerly during the World Cup, and were a joy to watch (especially Xherdan Shaqiri). BBC Sport notes just how well (or not, in certain cases) England fared; Leighton Baines finally showed some growth and determination, whilst Gary Cahill came equipped with a better, more rigid form. Sterling and Fabian Delph were another two to morph into pristine shape during the game. Despite not being his best piece of play yet, Welbeck was a desirable fit for scoring on the night, and successfully flung in two goals, which gave England both the edge and accolade largely deserved. Where to now? I wouldn’t want to get ahead of myself, especially as I’m a mad sceptic when it comes to England, but their knack with the ball has been vastly different lately. Would it be too much to suggest that this form could continue, and better still, develop into some big international wins? Next stop: a string of fortune*. *Feel free to visualise a small red question mark next to this, because we all know it might be a tall order. Thank you for reading. Please take a moment to follow me on Twitter – @lastwordimogen. Support LWOS by following us on Twitter – @LastWordOnSport and @LWOSworld – and “liking” our Facebook page. For the latest in sports injury news, check out our friends at Sports Injury Alert. Have you tuned into Last Word On Sports Radio? LWOS is pleased to bring you 24/7 sports radio to your PC, laptop, tablet or smartphone. What are you waiting for? Feel free to discuss this and other footy related articles with thousands of fans at r/football.UPDATE (7/30): Cumulus Media Inc. declines comment on Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity status on its radio network during an investor conference call. ORIGINAL POST: The second-biggest radio broadcaster in the country is threatening to dump Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, but before you celebrate the demise of conservative-talk’s most polarizing voices or curse the development as some liberal-media conspiracy — depending on your political view — take a deep breath and relax. Nothing is really going to change. For once, Limbaugh and Hannity aren’t engrossed in a political imbroglio. Reports that Cumulus Media is planning to drop the pair from 40 or so of its channels is all about the money, as Cumulus is currently in negotiations with Clear Channel’s Premiere Networks, which syndicates both shows, over distribution rights and licensing fees. Politico trumpeted the news as a “major shakeup for the radio industry,” but that overstates the impact on Limbaugh and Hannity themselves. “The political guys just love to run with this stuff,” says Michael Harrison, the editor and publisher of Talkers magazine, a trade publication that covers talk-media. “Any time any talk-show host gets into any kind of controversy or has something happen that can be spun into a setback — the ratings go down — it’s blown out of proportion for political purposes.” But the fact of the matter is that whether Cumulus pays Premiere’s asking price or decides to cut ties with the conservative talkers, the hosts will not lack a microphone. “If that happens, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity will be added to every Clear Channel station that’s in a market that doesn’t have them where they were on with Cumulus,” says Harrison. “And in markets where they don’t have a station, there will be other companies that will be champing at the bit to get what are clearly the two biggest properties in talk radio: Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.” In fact, Cumulus’ hard-ball tactics could backfire. “[Cumulus CEO Lew Dickey] is playing with real fire here, because if Rush and Sean go off of Cumulus stations, then the value of their radio stations goes down because they bought them as conservative-talk stations,” says Jerry Del Colliano, an industry analyst who runs the subscription media site, Inside Music Media. “Plus, they don’t have anybody to put on the air in an era where talk radio is really dying. Who do you have to replace them? Huckabee? Michael Savage? Cumulus does not have any real options.” Dickey has publicly lashed out at Limbaugh before, chiding him for the lost revenue that was caused by political boycotts following Limbaugh’s crude remarks about Sandra Fluke in 2012. But if Cumulus wanted to be out of the Limbaugh business once and for all, they likely wouldn’t still be negotiating with Premiere, in and out of the media. (Neither Cumulus nor Premiere responded to EW’s requests for comment.) Tomorrow, Dickey is scheduled to announce Cumulus’ second quarter earnings at a shareholders’ meeting, and one can imagine that he’d like to bring some good news with him. “This is like two snakes in the grass,” says Del Colliano. “They’ll hurt each other, they’ll call each other names, but don’t be surprised if there isn’t a deal at the end of the day.”By Kari Dequine, staff writer At first, 4-year-old Jonathan Bush wanted to sell all of his toys to help save the oiled pelicans. The images on the evening news upset him, said Lori Bush, his mother. Lori Bush told him he did not have to take that extreme a step -- plus she had planned to pass along his toys to a younger brother, eventually. "How about selling lemonade?" she suggested. Jonathan jumped on the idea immediately, helping his mother organize a well-patronized lemonade stand Saturday morning. "I want to help the pelicans," Jonathan said, adding that he cannot help directly with the cleanup "because (the oil will) get in my eyes and ears and nose and mouth." The stand, at Fortier Park, raised $200 in the first 15 minutes it was open for business, Bush reported. While she suggested a 50-cents donation, many people gave $5, $10, and $20. "Our neighbors have been fantastic," Bush said. "They've really stepped up." When the Faubourg St. John Neighborhood Association got word of Jonathan's plan, what started out as "a little bitty lemonade stand" turned into a much bigger fundraising effort, Bush said. People mailed checks to Jonathan. One lemonade customer dropped off a check for nearly $150 from four different businesses who had been collecting donations. Jonathan, who made the lemonade himself, stayed busy pouring, collecting money and posing for cameras. Occasionally he took a break to sneak in a little play time and eat some gummy worms. The donations will go to the group of students and faculty from the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine working to care for the injured wildlife. While costs for visibly oiled animals are being reimbursed, a growing number of birds who ingested oil also need care, said Bush. Bush said she hopes her son continues to respond to misfortune with compassion. "I would love for his first response to be: 'I want to help.' It's a wonderful lesson. I hope even at 4 he is internalizing this," she said. By a little after 11 a.m., the small crowd around the stand was in high spirits and the cash box looked full. Bush estimated the effort raised more than $500 in total. With that success, the family felt close to calling it a day. The young entrepreneur was ready for a nap.CORAL GABLES, Fla. – University of Miami junior third baseman David Thompson became the second Hurricane picked in the 2015 Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft Tuesday, as the New York Mets selected him with their fourth-round pick. Thompson, selected No. 119 overall, joins Andrew Suarez (San Francisco Giants, No. 61 overall) as Miami draftees. A junior from Miami, Fla., Thompson earned first-team All-America honors from Collegiate Baseball Newspaper and first-team All-ACC accolades by the league's coaches after a dominant season in the middle of Miami's offense. The nation's RBI leader (87) and tied for the national home run lead (19), Thompson was a critical member of a Miami offense that finished the regular season ranked first nationally in runs scored and runs per game. He led the Hurricanes in nearly every offensive category, including home runs, RBIs, doubles (18), total bases (159) and slugging percentage (.677). Thompson's 87 RBI already rank as the fourth-most in a single season in program history. Thompson was one of just three players to start all 64 games in 2015, helping power the Hurricanes to a 49-15 overall record, their second straight ACC Coastal Division crown, the NCAA Coral Gables Regional title and the 24th College World Series berth in program history. The 2015 MLB Draft continues Tuesday with rounds No. 3-10 at 1 p.m. Rounds No. 11-40 are set for Wednesday, June 10 at 12 p.m.MONACO (Reuters) - Some have already written off Sebastian Vettel’s chances of a fifth successive Formula One title but Red Bull team principal Christian Horner is not one of them. Red Bull Formula One driver Sebastian Vettel of Germany looks on during the second free practice session of the Monaco Grand Prix in Monaco May 22, 2014. REUTERS/Max Rossi As the 26-year-old German gears up for his 100th race for Red Bull in Monaco this weekend, Horner told Reuters there was still everything to play for despite Mercedes’ current domination. “It reminds me very much of 2012, which started with us on the back foot and he turned it around and put a run of results together in the second half of the year and then won the championship at the last race,” he said. “Of course, Mercedes are in a formidable position. But nobody has given up on anything and least of all Sebastian. One thing’s for sure, he’s a true fighter.” In 2012, Vettel - then also the defending world champion - won only one of the first 14 races but strung together a run of four wins in a row to beat Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso by three points overall. Alonso had been 40 points clear of his nearest rival after the 11th round of the season in Hungary but retirements in Belgium and Japan blew the championship wide open. Mercedes have won the first five races of this season, with Lewis Hamilton taking the overall lead from team mate Nico Rosberg with four victories in a row, while Vettel has made just one podium appearance. Hamilton has 100 points to Vettel’s 45 but there are 14 races left and double points at the final round in Abu Dhabi. Vettel’s relaxed new team mate Daniel Ricciardo, replacing fellow-Australian Mark Webber, has also given the champion something to ponder by outqualifying and beating him in the last three races. But the German, who has not found the new V6 turbo hybrid powered cars fully to his liking, showed in Spain this month that he was picking up speed when he fought from 15th on the grid to fourth at the finish. “I just don’t think he’s had the feedback from the car that he needs,” said Horner. “He’s very sensitive to corner entry and the car’s not been giving him that feeling that he needs. “I think we’ve made some advances with the engine management, how the engine is behaving under braking, and with setup and I think we should be getting closer and closer.” FANTASTIC CHASSIS Monaco, with its tight and twisty streets rewarding driveability and precision more than outright engine performance, offers a chance to strike back. “It’s very easy to get caught up in the moment and at this moment in time they (Mercedes) are doing a fantastic job and are ahead of everybody else,” said Horner, speaking in his team’s floating ‘energy centre’ in the Monaco harbour. “But as you can see from pre-season to now, which is only two and a half months, we’ve come a long way. So if in the next two and a half months we can go just as far, hopefully we can really start to challenge them. “We know we’ve got a fantastic chassis. The Renault guys are working tremendously hard and are making progress,” added the Briton. Since he joined Red Bull in 2009, after making his debut in 2007 with BMW-Sauber and then moving to Red Bull-owned Toro Rosso later that year, Vettel has won 38 of the 99 races he has started. The German has stood on the podium 62 times, had 44 pole positions, 23 fastest laps and led 63 races. “It’s a remarkable run that Seb’s had with the team,” said Horner. “And it’s gone amazingly quickly. What we have achieved together is quite phenomenal and the exciting thing is what is still to come.” Vettel won Monaco in 2011 and Horner said that triumph would always rate as one of the driver’s many career highlights. “There’s the race he won to win his first world championship in 2010. There’s the first win (for Red Bull) in China, there was the win in Monaco when we fitted the wrong tyres,” said the principal. “It was so close, and against the odds, that he did that. There’s so many races that he’s just been fantastic in that it’s difficult to pick out one highlight.”Eating disorders are often portrayed as a disease that only affects the young and privileged, yet this is not the case. Eating disorders can affect anyone at any time, regardless of age, gender identity, race, ethnicity, sexuality or cultural background. Eating disorders can affect people regardless of their age, race, gender identity, ethnicity or sexuality. Eating disorders can affect people regardless of their age, race, gender identity, ethnicity or sexuality. While eating disorders are often considered to be a "teenager's problem," older people can also be affected by these diseases. Not only are they susceptible to eating disorders, but there are a number of unique problems that are experienced by this social group. "We have heard of cases where physicians have told patients that they should have 'grown out of' eating disorders," Prof. Cynthia M. Bulik told Medical News Today. "Or that they are 'too old' to be suffering from anorexia, bulimia or binge-eating disorder." In this Spotlight feature, we investigate precisely how older people can be affected by eating disorders, what unique problems they face and what is currently being done to raise awareness of this issue. What are eating disorders? Eating disorders are serious conditions that can have a significant impact on an individual's physical and emotional health, as well as affecting their productivity and their relationships. These diseases have the potential to be life-threatening, and anyone that develops an eating disorder should seek professional help. The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) state that people with anorexia nerv
-quarters of the samples. The vast majority were some form of diarrhea-causing E. coli. Some strains produce a molecule that literally tells your GI tract to leak water and chloride (hello, watery diarrhea). Others punch holes in your gut. Viruses and parasites can also cause traveler's diarrhea, but they're much rarer, says Dr. David Shlim, president of the International Society of Travel Medicine and director of Jackson Hole Travel & Tropical Medicine. "Importantly, giardia, amoebas and other parasites don't typically show up in the first month of travel," he says. 2. If I keep eating the local cuisine for a month or so, I'll build up immunity to the bacteria. FALSE. Shlim has spent 30 years studying travelers' illnesses in Nepal. He found that long-term trekkers and expats will eventually build up immunity to diarrhea-causing bacteria. But it takes years, not weeks or months. "Over a five-year period, your chances of coming down with diarrhea continue to drop," he says. "And you get less severe cases. But nothing changes much for one to two years." So why don't the locals get sick? They did — when they were kids. Young children in developing countries are frequently exposed to diarrhea-causing E. coli and thus build up immunity to these strains during the first few years of life. These types of E. coli are much rarer in the U.S., so kids here never become immune to them. 3. Washing my hands will keep me from getting sick. FALSE. Sure, a quick wash with antibacterial soap will knock out bad E. coli. But that's unlikely to cut your risk of getting sick, Shlim says. "You can never really be against hand-washing," he says. "But the fact is that it usually takes a high quantity of bacteria, sometimes in the millions, to overcome your stomach acid. So just the random bacteria you get on your hands, I think, is unlikely to make you sick." 3. If I avoid certain types of foods, I won't get sick. MAYBE. The major source of traveler's diarrhea is contaminated food and water at restaurants, Shlim says. Avoiding the bad water is easy — just buy bottled water, boil it or treat it yourself. But the food part is trickier. Many travelers swear by the old saying "boil it, cook it, peel it or forget it." But scientific studies don't really back it up. One meta-analysis of seven studies didn't find a connection between getting bacterial diarrhea and eating raw vegetables or unpeeled fruits. But it did find a link between illness and foods that sat around at room temperature for a while. For example, if a kitchen worker accidentally contaminates a lasagna or quiche — and the dish then stays warm for a while at a buffet — it can make you sick, even though it's been thoroughly cooked. The problem is usually poor hygiene in restaurants' kitchens, Shlim says. "There may be a toilet in the kitchen and no place to wash hands. Or raw meat is chopped up on the same surface as fresh vegetables and fruit," he says. But there is one strategy that seems to work, Shlim and Connor say: high temperature. "So the food is too hot for you to initially bite into right when it comes to your plate," Shlim says. "That makes safe foods." In the end, he says, getting sick often boils down to bad luck. You picked the wrong restaurant or even just took a bite of the wrong piece of fish. 5. If I get sick, I should take an antibiotic. MAYBE. Ten years ago, standard advice from travel clinics was clear-cut: Take a pack of Cipro on your trip and pop a pill at the first rumbles in your belly. Back in 2006, I was given that exact advice from a clinic in Berkeley. Now the advice is a bit more nuanced. Travel doctors don't recommend taking antibiotics for mild or moderate cases of diarrhea — and definitely not as a preventive measure. "Your body will naturally fight off bacterial diarrhea in three to seven days," Shlim says. But if you're running to the bathroom several times a day — or have bloody stools — then Shlim recommends a quick dose of antibiotics. "You'll feel much better in six to 24 hours." And you don't need to take a full five-day regime, Shlim says. "Most people will be cured with one day's treatment, either two doses of ciprofloxacin or a single dose of azithromycin. The message is you can stop [taking the drug] when it is clear that you are starting to recover." One concern with travelers using antibiotics is the rise of drug-resistant bacteria around the world. Some studies have suggested that travelers may exacerbate the problem. But, Shlim says, compared to the widespread misuse of antibiotics in many developing countries, tourists' use of the drugs is a tiny drop in a vast ocean. "I don't think a traveler can go to India with more than a billion people in it, take an antibiotic and change the resistance pattern of the subcontinent," Shlim says. "It's the pharmacy on every corner that gives out antibiotics for every illness that causes resistance, not tourists" — not to mention the wide use of antibiotics in agriculture around the world. Another concern about using antibiotics on vacation is that the drugs disrupt a healthy microbiome. More research is needed to figure out if and how a brief dose of antibiotics alters the microbiome in the long run, Connor says.To build a home in Inuvik in the 1950s, construction workers had to drive wooden piles about seven metres deep into the permafrost to account for naturally shifting land. Today, homebuilders in the Northwest Territories town must hammer those piles nearly 20 metres into the ever-softening Arctic ground. Permafrost is seen in the Mackenzie Delta area of the Northwest Territories. As the world continues to warm, so too does the northern hemisphere’s permafrost — located mostly in Canada, Alaska, Russia and parts of Scandinavia. ( CHARLES TARNOCAI / ARICULTURE AND AGRI-FOOD CANADA ) Permafrost is seen in the Mackenzie Delta area of the Northwest Territories. As the world continues to warm, so too does the northern hemisphere’s permafrost — located mostly in Canada, Alaska, Russia and parts of Scandinavia. ( CHARLES TARNOCAI / AGRICULTURE AND AGRI-FOOD CANADA ) “It’s probably the most telling tale of what’s happening,” said Mayor Denny Rodgers. “There are areas in town... that are being washed away.” As the world continues to warm, so too does the northern hemisphere’s permafrost — located mostly in Canada, Alaska, Russia and parts of Scandinavia. By the middle of the century, an estimated 20 per cent of permafrost in the north is likely to disappear, a 2007 International Council on Climate Change report says. Beyond Inuvik and other northern communities, where the continued thaw poses a significant environmental threat, the impact of melting permafrost is predicted to be widespread. Article Continued Below Scientists with the Permafrost Carbon Network warned in a Nature article released Thursday that melting permafrost, loaded with enormous amounts of toxic gasses, is a ticking time bomb that could intensify global warming. The group of scientists predicts that about 45 billion metric tonnes of greenhouse gasses trapped in frozen ground will slowly leech into the air by 2040 as permafrost continues to melt. By 2100, an estimated 300 billion tonnes of carbon from carbon dioxide and methane are expected to disperse into the atmosphere. The pollution from permafrost carbon will never outpace factories, cars and other human fossil fuels, said Edward Schuur, a University of Florida scientist and lead author of the study in Nature. But it will accelerate the pace of global warming, he said. “Unmanaged parts of the earth, arctic systems, are going to have a major role in the pace of climate change in the future,” he said. Carbon, naturally accumulated in the soil as plants and animals decay, has been locked in the frozen ground for thousands of years. The trouble comes when soil begins to thaw. As it unfreezes, bacteria attack the carbon and release carbon dioxide and methane into the air. While previous permafrost studies tested the top metre of soil that thawed in summer months, scientists say carbon found several metres below the surface now pose a threat due to rising temperatures. Article Continued Below That carbon will reach the surface as soil thaws in the summer months and transform into toxic gasses over the next few decades if global warming continues on par, the study said. Little is known about how quickly carbon will be emitted from permafrost when it melts and how it will affect the atmosphere. But the physical changes already seen in northern landscape is telling, said Dr. Merritt Turetsky, a University of Guelph ecologist who participated in the permafrost study. “The (International Panel on Climate Change) outlined several scenarios and we are exceeding the worst case scenario,” she said. Turetsky began her research on Canadian permafrost in the late 1990s. Over the last decade, she travelled to a number of permafrost sites in northern Alberta and the Northwest Territories — and she’s seen the melting permafrost drastically change the landscape. “In that short time, the transformations are quite drastic,” she said. “It literally turns a forest into a semi-aquatic pool... vegetation starts to slump, thaw and sink into the ground. Trees start to pitch. This is causing the landscape to change in ways that most of the community hasn’t quite recognized yet.” She said “collapse scars,” where trees and other types of vegetation slump over and sink into ponds, are becoming an increasingly common sight across the Canadian North. In Inuvik, Rodgers said the town has experienced “permafrost stumpage” over the last several years — eroding roadsides and ditches dug in the permafrost that quickly transform into large, gaping holes. Turetsky said the risks posed by permafrost remain high if human-made greenhouse gases remain on pace. With nearly half of the country covered by permafrost, the impact will reach beyond already affected northern communities in the coming decades if scientists’ predictions are accurate. Turetsky said a limit on human-made emissions could help keep some carbon frozen in the permafrost, but added that she fears an enormous amount of damage has already been done. “The analogy is that it’s a big train about to derail,” she said. “Once it begins, permafrost thaw occurs slowly but you can’t stop it. That lack of control makes anybody feel nervous.” Read more about:Every year, Reddit publishes a transparency report detailing how many requests for information it received, along with more mundane things like copyright takedowns. What Reddit can’t say, by law, is if it’s been sent any National Security Letters, aka secret subpoenas. Nod nod wink wink. Reddit can’t outright say if it has received any NSLs, but it can not say that it hasn’t received any NSLs. Confused? It’s simple: in the 2014 transparency report, Reddit included the following paragraph: Advertisement In the 2015 transparency report, no such paragraph existed. The statement is known as a “warrant canary”—its absence implies rather heavily that Reddit has received a NSL since last year. Luckily, the distinction hasn’t escaped Reddit’s crack team of amateur sleuths, as evidenced by the top comment on the transparency report. Advertisement Stay suspicious, Redditors. [Reddit]Akka actors fits nicely with DDD (Domain Driven Design) to design an application. E.g. It’s quite natural to model entities as individual actors who can be persisted, … One of the key aspect in DDD is the notion of bounded context. A bounded context is simply a “self-content” component. It can interact with other components but it is coherent on its own. Each bounded context has its own domain model which belongs only to itself and should not leaked or be influenced by other bounded context. Anti-corruption layers (aka translation layers or adapter layers) are used to enforce this principle. Basically their role is to translate the core domain objects into/from another domain that is used for communication or persistence. In this blog post we’re going to try to follow the DDD principles to build a small (contrived) application using Akka and try to figure out the best way to build efficient anticorruption layers. The context We’re going to build a tiny application with 2 services. Auth: The authentication service in charge of creating sessions and verifying tokens Blog: The blogging service which stores a list of posts Then we have the App which simulates a scenario involving these 2 services. Each of these services is persistent in order to recover from failure and doesn’t leak its domain model into the persistence layer or with the outside world (e.g. the App client). Implementation Both services follow the same implementation model and relies on 3 different domains: Model.scala defines the core domain. This is the model used by the entities to implement their business logic. defines the core domain. This is the model used by the entities to implement their business logic. Persistence.scala defines the model used to persist the events representing the actor state. defines the model used to persist the events representing the actor state. Protocol.scala defines the model (or the protocol) used by the other components to communicate with the service The domain model Given that this is just a proof of concept focusing on the anti-corruption layers, there is little to say about the core services. They are implemented as Akka actors and are the only place where the core model is used to implement the business logic. What they do is not really important but it’s worth noting that they call persist with domain objects. They also receive domain objects directly inside the receiveCommand method. Finally sending messages to the outside world requires a call to translate to convert domain objects into protocol objects. The persistence layer The persistence layer is implemented in 2 steps: An Akka EventAdapter ensures the translation between the domain model and the persistence model An Akka Serializer ensures the serialisation from the persistence model into the protobuf binary format Fluent The translation between the domain model and the persistence model is done using fluent. It makes the translation super-simple as we just have to specify which class gets transformed into which one. import akka.persistence.journal.{EventAdapter, EventSeq} import cats.instances.option._ import fluent._ class AuthEventAdapter extends EventAdapter { override def manifest(event: Any): String = event.getClass.getName override def fromJournal(event: Any, manifest: String): EventSeq = event match { case e: Persistence.Authenticated => EventSeq(e.transformTo[Model.Authenticated]) case e: Persistence.Terminated => EventSeq(e.transformTo[Model.Invalidated]) } override def toJournal(event: Any): Any = event match { case e: Model.Authenticated => e.transformTo[Persistence.Authenticated] case e: Model.Invalidated => e.transformTo[Persistence.Terminated] } } PBDirect The serialisation into protobuf is assured by pbdirect. It allows to transform the persistent model case classes directly into protobuf without having to declare the same data structure into a.proto file. import antikkor.example.auth.Persistence.{Authenticated, Terminated} import antikkor.serialization.PBAkkaSerializer import cats.instances.option._ import pbdirect._ class PBAuthSerializer extends PBAkkaSerializer { override def identifier: Int = 1340982252 override def serialize: PartialFunction[AnyRef, Array[Byte]] = { case event: Authenticated => event.toPB case event: Terminated => event.toPB } override def unserializeTo: PartialFunction[(Class[_], Array[Byte]), AnyRef] = { case (claSS, bytes) if claSS == classOf[Authenticated] => bytes.pbTo[Authenticated] case (claSS, bytes) if claSS == classOf[Terminated] => bytes.pbTo[Terminated] } } As you can see PBAuthSerializer doesn’t extend the Akka Serializer directly. Instead it inherits from PBAkkaSerializer which checks if the implementation has a serialisation/deserialization defined for a given class. import akka.serialization.Serializer trait PBAkkaSerializer extends Serializer { def serialize: PartialFunction[AnyRef, Array[Byte]] def unserializeTo: PartialFunction[(Class[_], Array[Byte]), AnyRef] override def toBinary(o: AnyRef): Array[Byte] = if (serialize.isDefinedAt(o)) serialize.apply(o) else throw new IllegalArgumentException(s"Can't serialize ${o.getClass.getName}") override def includeManifest: Boolean = true override def fromBinary(bytes: Array[Byte], manifest: Option[Class[_]]): AnyRef = manifest match { case Some(claSS) if (unserializeTo.isDefinedAt((claSS, bytes))) => unserializeTo.apply(claSS, bytes) case Some(claSS) => throw new IllegalArgumentException(s"Don't know how to deserialize to ${claSS.getName} in ${this.getClass.getName}") case None => throw new IllegalArgumentException("Need a protobuf serializable class") } } Note that if you use several serializers (typically one per service) you need to make sure their id s are unique otherwise you might be asked to deserialise unexpected messages. The translation layer Similarly the translation layer is in charge of the translation between the domain model and the protocol model used to communicate with the outside world. The implementation relies on fluent as well and look similar to the persistent’s layer EventAdapter. import akka.AdapterActor import cats.instances.option._ import fluent._ trait AuthAdapterActor extends AdapterActor { override protected def translate: PartialFunction[Any, Any] = { case message: Protocol.StartSession => message.transformTo[Model.Authenticate] case message: Protocol.Verify => message.transformTo[Model.Verify] case message: Protocol.EndSession => message.transformTo[Model.Invalidate] case message: Model.Authenticated => message.transformTo[Protocol.SessionStarted] case message: Model.Verified => message.transformTo[Protocol.SessionVerified] case message: Model.Invalidated => message.transformTo[Protocol.SessionEnded] case message: Model.InvalidUser => message.transformTo[Protocol.InvalidUser] case message: Model.InvalidToken => message.transformTo[Protocol.InvalidSession] } } However this translation doesn’t fit into any of the Akka components. One possible solution might be to implement a proxy actor in front of the business domain actor. The proxy actor would be in charge of translating messages into the appropriate model and forward it to the intended actor. Here I tried another approach: define a wrapper using the aroundReceive method to intercept the message and translate them before they are delivered to the actor’s receive method. This is exactly what the AdapterActor does. trait AdapterActor extends Actor { protected def translate: PartialFunction[Any, Any] override protected[akka] def aroundReceive(receive: Receive, msg: Any): Unit = { val adaptedReceive = if (translate.isDefinedAt(msg)) translate andThen receive else receive super.aroundReceive(adaptedReceive, msg) } } It works just fine for the incoming messages. On the other hand sending messages is performed directly by the ActorRef representing the destination actor. As it’s not possible to override the! ( tell ) method on the ActorRef, there is no easy way to automate the translation for outgoing messages. It’s possible to define another operator for “translate and tell”, but I found that actorRef! translate(message) is clear and explicit enough (compared to another “obscure” operator). Conclusion The bright side The core business model is contained inside the core actor and doesn’t leak into the persistence layer or to the outside world. The translation mechanic is hidden from the core and lies in specific classes (or trait) which makes the code well organised and easy to navigate. PBDirect and fluent libraries makes it ease to weave things together. The pitfalls Implicit resolution occurs at compile time which is good because it minimises the runtime penalty but it doesn’t play well with Akka where the configuration is resolved at compile time (by reading the akka.conf file). Moreover the Akka API are defined as Any => Any or Any => Unit methods which doesn’t play well with implicit resolution which relies on type parameters. I might be worth to have a look at Akka-typed to see how the “translation” behaviour can be implemented “around” another behaviour. As usual you can find the code on github and let me know what you think or how do you implement your anti-corruption layers in Akka using the comments below.Most remain largely autonomous. The Egyptian branch of the Islamic State, deemed second after Libya’s in the scale of its threat, had a long record as a domestic insurgency before pledging its allegiance. The branch appears to have acted on its own initiative to carry out the bombing of the Russian charter jet on Oct. 31, say Western officials familiar with the intelligence reports. But the objective, those officials say, was to impress the group’s central leadership in order to win financial support. The core Islamic State immediately embraced the bombing, which killed 224 people, trumpeting the achievement of its Egyptian “brothers.” The Nigerian group Boko Haram has been around for two decades and became a regional scourge five years ago. Western officials say its pledge of allegiance to the Islamic State this year changed almost nothing. The group had been almost comically inept in its use of social media, though, and it has evidently learned from the Islamic State’s savvy example. Western officials believed that a breakaway faction of the Taliban in Afghanistan was also using the Islamic State name primarily to distinguish itself. But then in recent months the core group delivered several hundred thousand dollars to the Afghan fighters, helping them gain ground and recruits. Western officials say its operations so far have mainly sought to attract publicity or stir sectarianism, but clashes with the Taliban are increasing. Foreigners in Control Two fuel truck drivers recently released after a month in Surt’s main prison said they were stunned by the extent of the foreign control over the group’s Libyan outpost. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity for their safety but provided consistent accounts in separate interviews, backed up by a third interview with their employer, Mr. Mangoush, who had also debriefed three other drivers kidnapped with them. The drivers were stopped on Oct. 6 on a desert highway 90 miles south of Misurata, in part for the fuel in their trailers and in part to be taken as hostages. They were surprised to find themselves surrounded by two dozen masked fighters who spoke mainly in foreign dialects of Arabic — there were many Tunisians, but also Egyptians, Iraqis, Yemenis and Sudanese, they said.Measures to force pornography sites to check the age of UK viewers have been unveiled, signaling the next step in a government crackdown on adult online content. The ID checks are due to be part of the Digital Economy Act, which encompasses the introduction of age-verification rules for sites that provide porn "on a commercial basis" to UK viewers, as well as the introduction of a regulator to check sites are complying with the new rules. That regulator is believed to be the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), which polices age limits on films and video games. It will be the regulator’s responsibility to oblige porn sites to maintain age-restriction barriers, with a likely punishment for incompliance being the threat of blocked access from internet service providers (ISPs). While it's believed the BBFC will be appointed, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport said specific details wouldn't be finalised until the autumn. Also waiting to be finalised are details of how enforcement would work. According to the Mail on Sunday, sites could also face £250,000 fines for failing to comply. The paper also claims that users will need to prove their age by providing details from a credit card – which cannot be legally issued to anyone under the age of 18. The plan is for the measures to be rolled out across all porn sites by April 2018. The minister of state for digital, Matt Hancock, began the official process on Monday by signed the commencement order for the Digital Economy Act. Ahead of this, he claimed authorities were “taking the next step” to ensure there is a legal requirement for adult websites to ensure content is “behind an age verification control”. “All this means that while we can enjoy the freedom of the web, the UK will have the most robust internet child protection measures of any country in the world,” he said. The measures look to have the backing of advocacy groups for child safety. An NSPCC spokesperson told Alphr: “Watching online pornography can have a deeply damaging effect on children and teenagers development, both in how they think and behave. “This is why having workable and enforceable measures that will protect them from adult content on the internet are a vital part of creating a safer online world for young people.” Will Gardner, the chief executive of internet safety charity Childnet, said that steps to restrict child access to adult content “are key”. “It is essential to help parents and carers, as well as young people, be more aware of this risk and what they can do to prevent exposure and also to make sense of exposure if it happens.” While the Digital Economy Act became law in April, a number of groups have criticised the legislation for being draconian and breaching the privacy of their users. Amongst the criticisms was the concern that, by providing personal information to access adult content, vast pools of user data could be misused – either monetised for personal gain by the companies themselves, or leveraged as blackmail by hackers. “Age verification could lead to porn companies building databases of the UK's porn habits, which could be vulnerable to Ashley Madison style hacks," Open Rights Group’s executive director Jim Killock told Alphr. “The Government has repeatedly refused to ensure that there is a legal duty for age verification providers to protect the privacy of web users. There is also nothing to ensure a free and fair market for age verification." Killock pointed to porn parent company MindGeek, which runs a raft of services including PornHub and YouPorn. He said there is a risk it will become the "Facebook of age verification", potentially monopolising the market by creating a shared age-verification login for all its sites. "They would then decide what privacy risks or profiling take place for the vast majority of UK citizens."Image copyright GDS TV Image caption A tulip tree, all at sea Images of an enormous tree being transported upright by boat along Georgia's Black Sea coast have gone viral among social media users in the country. The tulip tree, which is thought to be about 100 years old, is the latest to be selected for life in a new park being created by Georgia's billionaire former Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, the Rustavi 2 channel reports. It was uprooted in the western Ajaria region on Wednesday, but transporting a 650-tonne tree complete with the entire root system was no mean feat. Its sheer weight meant workers spent much of the day just trying to get the boat started, the report says. Mr Ivanishvili's park plans have proved controversial in some quarters, with opponents complaining that he shouldn't be allowed to buy up historic trees and take them away. Protests erupted in the village of Tsikhisdziri in February as a number of trees were removed. "I am developing a park, where I think it is appropriate," he told one protester, later adding that he would ensure at least 10 new trees were planted in exchange. Photos of the tulip tree floating along the coast have caused amusement for some social media users, with one dubbing it a "swimming tree" and others calling it a "surreal" sight. But while some people are impressed by the scale of the undertaking, there's plenty of criticism from Mr Ivanishvili's opponents; one Facebook user describes it as "idiocy". Mariam Kanchaveli, an activist with Guerrilla Gardening Tbilsi, told BBC Outside Source she was "mad, sad and at the same time still laughing" while watching the tree sailing to its new owner. The head of opposition channel Tabula TV, Tamara Chergoleishvili, touched upon Mr Ivanishvili's reputation as a collector of unusual things - among them exotic animals. She remarked dryly: "If he gets fanatically obsessed about gigantic mountains, then it will become a real headache for his people." Image copyright Rustavi 2 Image caption It took workers hours to get the tree moving because of its weight Next story: Vanuatu shows off 'best toilet in the South Pacific' Use #NewsfromElsewhere to stay up-to-date with our reports via Twitter.A few years ago, right-wing pseudo-historian David Barton developed a new talking point in which he claimed that the Constitution is filled with direct, verbatim quotes straight out of the Bible. We pointed out repeatedly that the clauses in the Constitution that Barton insisted were direct quotes from the Bible were nothing of the sort and Barton eventually stopped making this obviously false claim. But when he appeared on the Messianic Jewish program “Jewish Voice” recently, Barton dusted it off when he once again insisted that the Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution by using the “exact language” of the Bible. Barton was making the case that the Bible tells voters all they need to know about how to choose their elected leaders, repeating his false claim that 34 percent of the political documents from the founding era cited the Bible, which he claimed is why the Constitution is filled with direct quotations from the Bible. “I can show you clause after clause in the Constitution where they used the exact language of the Bible in the Constitution,” he said. “It’s just that we’re so biblicaly illiterate today that we don’t recognize that in the Constitution.”The city that never drains A weak hurricane could drown Jacksonville. Will its leaders protect it in time? Scroll down↓ JACKSONVILLE — William Andralliski followed Hurricane Matthew here last fall, chasing construction work. He found a job repairing the damage the storm left behind. He met a woman in the city, and they made a life together. Less than a year later, another hurricane swept that life away. Hurricane Irma forced flood waters under the door of the 28-year-old’s tiny apartment. Andralliski, his girlfriend and her mother fled for the nearest shelter, running from the water pooling in his living room carpet. Now they own little more than their phones and the clothes they were wearing. Their apartment is condemned. OCTAVIO JONES | Times Irma did all of that despite skirting Jacksonville, its eye passing more than 70 miles away. By then it was a tropical storm, its winds half the speed they were when it made landfall on the other end of Florida as a ferocious hurricane. Yet flood waters here were so high they lapped at the light switches in Andralliski’s apartment. Gov. Rick Scott was surprised by the damage. “I don’t think many people thought they'd get all the flooding that they got,” he said. But the way Irma’s waters surged into Jacksonville and sat in some neighborhoods for days was no fluke. It was proof of something local officials have known for years: In the aftermath of Hurricane Irma last month, Tampa Bay Times reporters traveled to Jacksonville to see the resulting damage firsthand, reviewed hundreds of pages of public documents and historical records, and interviewed current and former city leaders along with scientists, engineers and historians. They found that local leaders let key plans to fix the region’s flooding stall, despite alarming reports about the extent of the risk. “Duval County is risking significant loss of life and hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage and business disruption for a category 2 or 3 hurricane,” a group of regional emergency preparedness officials warned in 2010. In 2013, a Duval County report showed that a Category 3 hurricane could create a 20-foot storm surge along the St. Johns River. Even a Category 1 storm could bring 6 feet. But in 2015, records show, more than half of all active projects aimed at making the region more able to survive a storm were unfunded. Most of the projects that were completed in the past five years have been small in scale, the Times found. Few had estimated costs of more than $750,000. Former city officials say the city would need to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to fix decades-old problems with drainage. Those issues are most severe in the impoverished, mostly black neighborhoods near the polluted waterways tied to the St. Johns — communities filled with vulnerable populations that would struggle to recover after a major disaster. Community leaders say the fight for money to fix flooding has spanned generations. said John Delaney, Jacksonville’s mayor from 1995 to 2003. Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry and his top administrators did not respond to interview requests. “Mayor Curry has demonstrated his commitment to safer and vibrant neighborhoods throughout Jacksonville,” a spokeswoman wrote in a statement. City Council president Anna Brosche said she’s heard some concerns about flooding but needed to investigate. Council member John Crescimbeni said there is little the city can do to help neighborhoods where drainage is old, inadequate or missing. “We don’t want to allocate $30 million from the pot to a project that has little to no likelihood of moving forward in upcoming years, because that doesn’t do anyone any good,” he said. Some of the deadliest U.S. natural disasters in recent memory came when hurricanes hit flood-prone cities, like Katrina in New Orleans and Harvey in Houston. In 2014, a study of 50 years of hurricane fatalities found that about 90 percent of victims died from water, not wind. Most drowned. The first and last time Jacksonville was hit head on by a storm at hurricane strength was Hurricane Dora on Sept. 10, 1964, 53 years before Irma flooded the city. There have been close calls. Last year, the National Weather Service warned that Hurricane Matthew could strike Jacksonville as a Category 4 storm, which would be “unlike any hurricane in the modern era.” At the last second, it steered away. Some early storm tracks also showed Hurricane Irma crossing Jacksonville as a Category 5 storm with 175 mile per hour winds. It ultimately swerved toward Florida’s west coast. For Jacksonville to go so long without a large storm, “that’s just chance,” said Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Kerry Emanuel, who specializes in hurricane physics. At the Times’ request, Emanuel used an algorithm to simulate 16 million potential Atlantic hurricanes, then calculated the odds that one would graze Jacksonville. Every year, there’s a 1 in 14 chance that a Category 2 storm or higher will come within 95 miles of the city, he found. ■■■ SEAN RAYFORD | Getty Images The area we now call Jacksonville was wetlands for thousands of years. The St. Johns River sprawls across northeast Florida, collecting water from one-sixth of the land in the state. Then it dumps into the Atlantic in Jacksonville. The river is wide and shallow — so flat that it often doesn’t appear to be moving at all. It can take 3 to 4 months for water to reach the ocean. When it does, the river’s current is far weaker than the ocean’s tide. Every high tide, ocean water forces into the river’s mouth and miles upstream. The water in the river becomes trapped until low tide, as though by a dam, said Don Resio, director of the University of North Florida’s Taylor Engineering Research Institute in Jacksonville. That makes a hurricane especially dangerous, Resio said. Its rains can raise the river’s level by several feet — but during high tide, the water has nowhere to go. That effect is even worse during a nor’easter, strong Atlantic winds that are common during hurricane season. The winds trap water in the river, too. But unlike high tide, it can last for days. The St. Johns sloshes back and forth with the wind as it waits to drain. Rainfall on the swollen river spills over its banks. A hurricane blowing in from the south can easily scoop the river water into the city. “Everyone looks to the coasts or the beaches as hotbeds for flooding during storms like Irma,” Resio said. In 1964, Hurricane Dora hit as a Category 2 during an unusually high tide with a strong wind offshore. It dropped only 6 inches of rain on the city. But it caused four feet of flooding and the equivalent of more than $2 billion in damage today. This pattern — strong winds, high tide and extra rain — led to damaging flooding in 41 of at least 100 recorded storms in Jacksonville since 1794, according to a Times analysis of hundreds of pages of historical diary entries, weather reports, newspaper articles and scientific journals. Two centuries of development replacing the wetlands along the river’s mouth has only made the flooding worse. “When you look at the location of Jacksonville, you say, ‘Why? Why would a city want to build here?’ ” said Emily Lisska, executive director of the Jacksonville Historical Society. “But we had made our living out of the shipping industry.” SEAN RAYFORD | Getty Images Today, about two city blocks sit on a pier-like structure atop the river itself. Over the years, sections of those streets have repeatedly caved in, most recently in 2015. That year, county emergency managers estimated a 73.8 percent chance that a future flood could lead to injuries, deaths or property damage, records show. Lisska has learned to track the tidal cycles for her commute. During low tide, she can shave about two minutes off her drive by cutting through a wide alley street. If it’s high tide, she goes around; the alley is inevitably underwater. In some parking lots, built over the water, OCTAVIO JONES | Times ■■■ Jacksonville officials know the area is ill-equipped to handle a hurricane. The area’s Local Mitigation Strategy, a report made every five years, ranks the county’s risks from potential disasters. The top three hazards in the 2015 report are wind, storm surge and flooding — all side effects of a hurricane. Strong winds would rip up trees and send wood flying “even following a strong tropical storm or weak hurricane,” the report warns. Along the water, storm surge would act as a “bulldozer clearing everything in its path,” turning the debris it picks up along the way into battering rams. Flooding would be amplified by the geography of the St. Johns. It would damage property, block roads and slow evacuations, especially around coastal and low-lying communities. Despite this, the report shows virtually no progress since 2010. Jacksonville added some shelters but remains “shelter-deficient.” The local utility buried some electrical lines. The city elevated or bought out about 20 flood-prone homes and one popular seafood restaurant. And Atlantic Beach’s drainage system was replaced, but the project relied heavily on federal money. More than half of the 98 initiatives listed as “in progress” had insufficient funding or no funding source at all. Some were added that same year. But more had also been listed in the same report five years earlier. Most of the large-scale projects to fix storm and flooding issues that communities have dealt with for decades cost tens of millions of
were less productive for the Chinese teams, though, as China was the only region where the first Baron led to a win rate under 80 percent. Pacing Based on average game length and league-wide combined kills per minute (CKPM), the LPL plays some of the fastest, bloodiest LoL in the world. While Europe’s games in the playoffs and regionals were even shorter, the LPL crammed in 10 percent more kills each minute. Somewhat surprisingly, the LCK was not the slowest-paced region on patch 6.15. Korea has typically taken a more methodical, drawn-out approach to the game, by taking fewer risks and focusing more on vision control and information flow. However, the LMS, NA LCS and IWCQ all played longer games than the LCK, and the LMS saw fewer kills. At major international events in the past, the interaction between regional play styles has produced noteworthy jumps in kill pacing. It’s reasonable to expect that this could happen again this time around, for two main reasons. First, games between unequal opponents are more likely to produce high kill numbers, so when the ROX Tigers come up against Albus NoX Luna, watch out! Second, teams sometimes have difficulty predicting the movements and decision-making of their international opponents due to a lack of familiarity, and that can lead to fights breaking out unintentionally when the teams stumble upon each other in unexpected places. Vision Vision volume is another area where the LMS has taken over from the LCK as a frontrunner. In fact, as a league, the LCK was out-warded during their playoffs and regionals by most of the other regions. With many teams around the world stepping up their ward output, the World Championships will be a chance to directly compare how efficient each team is with its wards. Effective warding involves using vision in important areas during important times, such as covering the area around an objective that you’re about to target, or getting deep vision on the split pusher’s side of the map before they get their minion wave pushed past the river. Widely distributed vision may produce high ward numbers, but if it leaves blind spots in a key location, or if it empties your Sightstones prematurely, then that vision is not efficient. Takeaways Though regional play isn’t always a perfect indicator of what we’ll see from each region’s teams at Worlds, we can draw some general inferences to help set our baseline expectations. Champion pools will be shifting across the board, and the EU LCS teams may be the most naturally comfortable with champions like Elise, Ryze, and Lucian whose popularity may be growing. Look for Asian teams to focus a bit more on utility mid laners, including the possible return of Orianna as a priority pick, while the LCS and IWCQ teams give their mids more chances to hard carry. Overall, we’re likely to see a bit of a faster pace at Worlds, with more kills than we’ve been seeing in domestic play, assuming the historical trends hold true. The LPL and IWCQ teams are the most likely to drive that tempo, assuming Albus NoX Luna and INTZ can maintain the confidence to be proactive, while the LMS teams will probably take things relatively slow. When it comes to objectives, each region has tended towards its own tier list. Europe has placed significant value on early towers and Barons. North America’s interest lies more in dragons. The LMS teams seem to avoid early combat, instead taking down the fastest towers and playing a longer game. Korean teams are generally on the slow side when it comes to nabbing objectives, but they are the most consistent at turning dragons and Barons into wins. For China’s part, they believe the best kills and Barons are the ones taken the soonest, but their first Baron win rate hasn’t shown good reward for their efforts. In the vision game, the LMS’s ward volume may lead the way, but efficiency will be the real question. The best teams in the world know how to make every ward count, and how to work with the information they do and don’t have. At Worlds, we may see important differences in the timing and spread of wards between teams like the Flash Wolves and the ROX Tigers. All of these stylistic differences will be highlighted over the first few days of play. As the tournament plays out, the teams will draw more inspiration from one another, and will seek ways to exploit their opponents’ tendencies. The styles will blend and evolve at a rapid pace, and that’s one of the greatest parts of the grand spectacle of the World Championship. Tim "Magic" Sevenhuysen runs OraclesElixir.com, the premier source for League of Legends esports statistics. You can find him on Twitter, unless he’s busy giving one of his three sons a shoulder ride.The video will start in 8 Cancel Get the biggest Daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email Watch Joshua Murray's video report from the Pirelli Stadum above as Burton Albion were downed 2-1 by Ipswich Town after the visitors scored a heartbreaking 89th minute winner to leave the Brewers stunned. (Image: Richard Burley/Epic Action Imagery) Bersant Celina came off the bench with just minutes to go and then fired a free-kick past a helpless Connor Ripley to complete the ultimate smash-and-grab from Mick McCarthy's side after Burton opened the scoring earlier on. Ben Turner's 57th minute header finally broke the deadlock after a first-half of utter domination from Albion, but they were made to pay for not taking their chances later just ten minutes afterwards when Martyn Waghorn fired home. It then fell to substitute Celina to step up and send the travelling Ipswich fans delirious, and leave the rest of the Pirelli stunned as the Brewers continued their winless run - which now stretches to seven matches in all competitions.Copyright by KOIN - All rights reserved Robert Richardson Jr. stands as Judge Tom Ryan reads the verdict. His criminal defense attorneys, Russell S. Barnett III (left) and Christopher E. Burris (right) stand next to their client on Oct. 19, 2017. (Brent Weisberg/KOIN) Copyright by KOIN - All rights reserved Robert Richardson Jr. stands as Judge Tom Ryan reads the verdict. His criminal defense attorneys, Russell S. Barnett III (left) and Christopher E. Burris (right) stand next to their client on Oct. 19, 2017. (Brent Weisberg/KOIN) PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) – It took a jury less than 24 hours to convict 23-year-old Robert Richardson Jr. for the aggravated murders of Anthony Howard and Eric Takemoto. The two men were gunned down at the Hour Glass Pub on October 2, 2015 in Northeast Portland in a storm of 12 rapidly fired bullets. A third man, Joshua Wiebe, was struck in the leg and survived the shooting. Wiebe, along with family and friends of Howard and Takemoto crowded a downtown Portland courtroom Thursday afternoon as Judge Tom Ryan read the jury's unanimous verdict. In convicting Richardson of two counts of aggravated murder, the jury rejected his self-defense claim. Here's a breakdown of how the jury voted on each of the 10 charges that Richardson faced. Count 1 – Aggravated murder with a firearm – GUILTY Count 2 – Aggravated murder with a firearm - GUILTY Count 3 – Attempted aggravated murder with a firearm - GUILTY Count 4 – Attempted aggravated murder with a firearm - GUILTY Count 5 – Attempted aggravated murder with a firearm - GUILTY Count 6 – Attempted aggravated murder with a firearm - GUILTY Count 7 – First-degree assault - GUILTY Count 8 – Second-degree assault - GUILTY Count 9 – Second-degree assault - GUILTY Count 10 – Unlawful use of a weapon – GUILTY The sentencing phase of the trial will start on Oct. 30. The jury must now decide if Richardson should be given the death penalty, a true life in prison, which means he could never be released, or life in prison without the possibility to apply for parole until after serving a minimum of 30 years. Richardson testified that he was protecting himself from what he believed was a threat. The defense team claimed that Takemoto started a fight with Richardson while the two were outside in the bar's back parking lot, which also serves as a smoking area. Richardson testified that after being punched by Takemoto, he was then pushed aggressively by Howard. After the push, Richardson claims he saw a group of people surrounding him. According to prosecutors – Howard was the "peacemaker." He was attempting to separate Takemoto and Richardson. Senior deputy district attorney Glen Banfield told the jury earlier in the trial that Howard was moving towards Richardson with "his hands up and out." The other prosecutor on the case, senior deputy district attorney Nathan Vasquez told the jury during closing arguments that there was never a self-defense claim to be made because Richardson had always been the aggressor. Video from the bar shows Richardson reaching into his waistband and pulling out his gun. He is seen shooting Howard at close range and then shooting towards Takemoto. Both men were struck by multiple bullets and died at the scene. Multiple witnesses testified that Richardson was the only person being aggressive, and that he was the only person armed. Howard and Takemoto were at the Hour Glass Pub to celebrate the birthday of several of their friends. Richardson was already at the bar when they arrived. He told the jury he also went to the bar to celebrate his 21st birthday, which was two days earlier. Richardson spent about 2.5 hours playing pool inside the bar. Surveillance video from the bar shows him playing three games of pool with Wiebe. Wiebe was shot in the leg when Richardson unloaded his.357 caliber Sig Sauer handgun. He testified that he still has physical and emotional pain from the incident. About six minutes after the shooting, police took Richardson into custody several blocks away from the bar. He testified he ran from the scene and got rid of the gun on purpose. It was later recovered during a K-9 article search. The four counts of attempted aggravated murder were for the four people Richardson shot at after he killed Takemoto and Howard. After the verdict was read, family and friends of Howard and Takemoto embraced one another, the detectives on the case and the prosecutors. Richardson's family and friends left the courtroom quickly. Many had their heads lowered and cried as the verdict was read. Richardson stood and showed no observable reaction. The entire trial process, including jury selection, was overseen by Multnomah County Judge Karin J. Immergut. She could not be available for the reading of the verdict so it was presided over by Multnomah County Judge Tom Ryan.Schooner is a boomer with beer fans Posted on by in News Growth in craft beer has been credited with boosting the use of ‘schooner’ glassware in the on-trade. The two-third pint measure is said to be proving popular with craft beer fans as it allows them to try a greater variety of beers, many of which have a higher ABV than traditional lager. John Cockerell, director of glassware and catering supply firm James F Kidd & Son, said the firm has noticed a marked increase in the sale of 2/3 pint ‘schooner’ glassware in the last two years. “The volume [sales] never really kicked in until the introduction of craft beer which has had a huge impact,” he said. “Because there was so little to start with, we’re now [selling] four or five times what we were doing when it [schooner] was first introduced.” At craft beer-focused bar CASC in Aberdeen, the schooner is the largest increment available to customers. General manager Aly Mathers said the strength of some craft beers makes the schooner a more appropriate measure as it allows customers to sample a broader range of beers in one evening. “People’s attitudes to drinking have changed, so you’re not normally drinking the same thing all night,” said Mathers.A nine-year veteran of the Boston Police Department has been placed on leave pending the outcome of an anti-corruption investigation, authorities said Friday. Officer Eddie B. Odney, who was most recently assigned to District B-3 in Mattapan, was placed on paid administrative leave Friday, according to a department spokesman. The spokesman, Officer James Kenneally, confirmed that federal investigators were involved in the probe and said he could not release additional details because the review is pending. Advertisement Representatives of the FBI and US Attorney Carmen M. Ortiz’s office declined to comment. Get Metro Headlines in your inbox: The 10 top local news stories from metro Boston and around New England delivered daily. Sign Up Thank you for signing up! Sign up for more newsletters here A call to a number listed for Odney, 37, was not returned on Friday night. His union president did not immediately return a call seeking comment late Friday. Odney earned $183,818.24 in 2014, including $75,997 in paid details, according to city payroll records. He also received $28,228.76 in injury compensation, according to the records. In July 2014, Odney was the subject of an internal affairs review dating back to May 2013, when he reported working 92 and 1/2 hours during a weeklong period, according to Police Department records. The outcome of that case was not immediately clear on Friday night. Advertisement Odney was quoted in 2010 in a Boston Globe story about police officers playing basketball with city youths as part of an outreach effort. “It’s a way to connect with the kids,’’ he said at the time. “Sports bring everyone together. It gives the kids a chance to see we’re human, too.” Travis Andersen can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @TAGlobeRemove the legs with ball jointed legs before making any changes to waist. Now it's time to modify the waist to make it shorter and look just UltraLords. Take your wire cutters and cut the back and front part of his waist up to the end line where the waist pegs into place. Mold waist into place, don't forget to use a picture as reference. Next mold parts of the leg into pieces of four going by the photo of how his legs look. Next I took my wire cutters and cut two rods of paperclip to form the arm mature for the legs. I stuck the arm mature very carefully Into the legs without ruining any details. Lastly, I stuck the legs into his waist to test them out to make sure he stands straight.Mohammed Haji Sadiq, 81, outside court last month A 'dark and deviant' Koran teacher has been jailed for 13 years after carrying out sex attacks on four girls during lessons in a mosque. Mohammed Haji Saddique, 81, would call the pupils to sit next to him and read in Arabic from the Muslim holy book. He sexually touched girls aged between five and eleven in front of his class and slapped students repeatedly if they made mistakes during lessons. Cardiff Crown Court heard Saddique had metal and wooden sticks, which he used to poke the children as they studied. He taught primary school pupils, who called him 'uncle' at the Madina Mosque in Cathays, Cardiff, for 36 years. Saddique would touch the girls under their traditional loose-fitting clothing during his lessons, and rub them against his groin and legs. Cardiff Crown Court heard the assaults took place between 1996 and 2006. Prosecutor Suzanne Thomas read a victim personal statement from one of the girls in which she described the lasting impact the assaults had had. She said: 'I have had nightmares waking up in the night, and it can only be described as feeling unsafe.' A statement from another girl said: 'My body didn't feel like mine anymore. 'I didn't feel safe in a place where I should feel safe. Mohammed Sadiq has put me off my religion.' Sadiq taught primary school children who called him 'uncle' at the Madina Mosque in Cathays, Cardiff, for 36 years Sadiq, from Cyncoed in Cardiff, denied seven counts of indecent assault of a girl under 14, and eight counts of assaulting a girl under 13 by touching. But a jury found him guilty of 14 offences - six indecent assaults and eight sexual assaults. Judge Stephen Hopkins QC jailed Saddique for 13 years and ordered him to register as a sex offender indefinitely. Sadiq claimed he was a victim of an internal conspiracy within the mosque 'All four complainants were very brave indeed in overcoming not only personal but cultural barriers which they faced in making formal complaints and giving evidence against you,' the judge said. 'There is a darker, deviant side to you which this trial has exposed. 'This was a gross breach of trust - parents sending their young, female children to be taught the Koran by you.' Saddique, who insisted the allegations were a conspiracy by other members of the mosque, has 'no idea' of the harm caused by his actions, the judge said. 'You would attempt to maintain discipline and concentration by tapping or slapping the child sitting next to you who didn't read correctly,' the judge said. 'Every time one of these small children made a mistake you would slap them until they got it right and slap them for every mistake they made.' Police first launched an investigation in 2006 following complaints by two girls but Saddique denied any wrongdoing. The investigation was restarted in 2016 after two other girls came forward. Cardiff Crown Court heard the assaults took place at the mosque between 1996 and 2006 In victim impact statements read to the court, the girls, now in their 20s, spoke of the lasting impact of Saddique's offending. Speaking of one, the judge said: 'It has put her off religion, she deliberately doesn't own a Koran. '[For her] the ethos of going to the mosque at any time is that when you are there, God is protecting you. 'Her idea was shattered because you abused her when she was reading from the holy book.' Another victim said giving evidence went against 'the culture and ethos of those who follow the Islamic faith' and she feared there would be consequences for Saddique's conviction. The court heard Saddique was born in Hong Kong and moved to Pakistan before coming to the UK in 1967, eventually settling in Cardiff. He was a member of the Madina Mosque and was involved in running it, including as a treasurer and teaching Koran studies to primary school pupils. Classes took place four times per week after school and pupils referred to the imam as 'Uncle Saddique' as a mark of respect, the court heard. Representing Saddique, Caroline Rees described her client as a 'frail and unwell' great-grandfather who was held in high esteem by his family and community. 'This is a man of 81 whose life expectancy is not good given his health and age,' she added. The judge also made Saddique the subject of a sexual harm prevention order. An NSPCC spokesman said: 'This was an appalling breach of trust and Sadiq has rightly received a significant prison sentence for these heinous offences. 'He abused his authority and the faith placed in him to carry out a succession of sexual assaults against vulnerable children. 'Clearly Sadiq's actions have had a huge impact on his victims, both at the time and since, but it is thanks to their bravery that he has been brought to justice. 'It is absolutely right that people who suffered child sexual abuse know where to turn for support and feel confident that their voices will be heard, no matter how much time has passed since their ordeal.' Detective Chief Inspector Rob Cronick, of South Wales Police, added: 'Mohammed Sadiq abused his position of trust within the community he served. 'Last month's verdict shows the magnitude of Sadiq's offending and the devastating effect this has had on his victims.'Buy Photo State Rep. Dane Eagle, R-Cape Coral stands with Governor Rick Scott at Thursday's Comcast jobs event in Fort Myers. (Photo: Sarah Coward/news-press.com)Buy Photo State Rep. Dane Eagle, R-Cape Coral, said all along he was not guilty of driving while intoxicated, and now the courts agree. Eagle will no longer be charged with driving under the influence after his April 21 arrest in Tallahassee, and instead is being cited for reckless driving. Negotiations in Tallahassee between Eagle's attorney and prosecutors resulted in the court-approved reckless driving settlement, for which Eagle must do 100 hours of community service in Southwest Florida, Eagle said Friday. Eagle said he wanted to apologize "to constituents, family and friends for the embarrassment this whole ordeal has caused. Today I am very pleased to let you know we can finally put this entire matter behind us." Eagle, who refused Breathalyzer tests at the time, maintained throughout that he was not intoxicated — it was late, he'd picked up takeout food, and he was distracted behind the wheel. "I take full responsibility for my actions, and accept the penalties for reckless driving," he said Friday. Eagle said he does not yet know what the community service work will entail, but he hopes to be able to work with young people who might find "a learning experience" from what happened to him. He still automatically loses his license for a year because he declined to take the Breathalyzer test. He is allowed to drive for work. Eagle, who was elected two years ago, is up for re-election this fall and faces three Republican primary challengers. None have made a campaign issue of the incident. The winner will be on the November ballot against a write-in. Miller speaks up Matt Miller, an east Lee County business owner running for the state House seat held by Rep. Matt Caldwell, R-Lehigh Acres, made it clear from the start of a forum this week that he does not like speaking before a crowd. His first move was to give the audience printed material that he said would tell them everything they needed to know about why he was running, and he waited while BUPAC members read. "Public speaking is a major fear," he said, adding that he becomes "stressed out" at forums and other events; it was also an issue during his last, unsuccessful race for Lee County Commission. He also said the Q&A session was tough, although he knew audience questions are part of the hourlong presentation. NEWSLETTERS Get the Breaking News newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong Urgent developments you should know now, not later. Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-800-468-0233. Delivery: varies Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Breaking News Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters Audience members asked how, if he found speaking and questions so stressful, he could deal with not just the campaign, but with the spirited debate and questions legislators face daily during session and other times. Miller, 43, said he's battled the problem for years, and he still runs because he believes public service is important and changes are needed. "I'm not a politician, I'm a public servant," he said. "I'm tired of the way our government is ruining our country. It's time for a change." Incumbents have an unfair advantage in fundraising, Miller said, and he supports term limits to help level the field. Caldwell, first elected in 2010, has raised about $212,000, much of that, as Miller pointed out, comes from businesses and interest groups affected by legislation. Miller's account shows a $500 self-loan, plus a $1 donation from an individual. Poll: Should Rep. Dane Eagle's DUI charge have gotten dropped? On other matters, Miller said his initial impression of fracking is that it's not good for Southwest Florida, but he wants to learn more about it. And he supports medical uses of marijuana, when prescribed by a doctor. Miller, whose businesses include farm supply and tractor stores, also said he thinks more organic fertilizer should be used to help battle pollution in the Caloosahatchee River. With Miller and Caldwell, both Republicans, the only candidates now in the race, that election is open to all voters in the August primary. Democrat Larry Aguilar, who has campaigned for the seat, failed to meet qualifying requirements and is disputing that decision through legal means. If Aguilar becomes a candidate, then only Republicans will vote between Miller and Caldwell. Dreikorn unhappy A mailing from the Republican Party of Florida on behalf of Sen. Lizbeth Benacquisto, R-Fort Myers, and Gov. Rick Scott, has Benacquisto's election opponent unhappy. Michael Dreikorn, a Republican who's challenging Benacquisto's Senate re-election, said the mailer "smacks of cronyism and demonstrates this party really is the party of good ol' boys." Dreikorn said it's not right for the party to take sides and support one Republican over another in the primary. The mailer, clearly identified as from the state party, is a large postcard with photos of Scott and Benacquisto, who's Senate Majority Leader. "The Conservative Leadership Florida Needs" is the headline, and smaller type outlines accomplishments for both, including cutting taxes, reducing state debt, and "taking on Tallahassee." Dreikorn said he's called the state party and the governor's office, among others, to ask about the mailer, but has had no response. "What it tells me is that the people in the party have no voice," he said. "It's all decided by the elite at the top." A party spokesman responded Friday morning to media questions on the matter. "The RPOF will continue to promote the successes of our Republican leaders across the state," Susan Hepworth, communications director, said via email. The mailing does not mention any upcoming elections, nor does it urge recipients to vote for anyone. Such mailings in the past have been described as information about elected officials, and not campaign material. Dreikorn said most recipients won't notice that subtle difference in wording, especially when such mailings go out during elections. "That's word games. The question in my mind is, is it ethical? If you want to set higher standards, you have to do it all the time." Dreikorn and Benacquisto are the only candidates in this race, which will be open to all voters, including Democrats and minor party members, in August. Nelson man of year Rickey Nelson, who's been president of Southwest Florida's Young Republicans, was given the "Man of the Year" award by the statewide Florida Young Republicans last week. Nelson's honor was based largely on his work organizing the YR's state convention in downtown Fort Myers last weekend, along with recognition of the local club's activities and achievements under his leadership. Betty Parker is a freelance writer specializing in politics. Her column appears in Saturday's The News-Press and on news-press.com. Related: Benacquisto, Eagle outearn in re-election campaigns Rep. Dane Eagle: I'm not guilty Rep. Dane Eagle resigns job with Building Industry Association Rep. Eagle blasted for handling of arrest CLOSE DASH CAM: Rep. Dane Eagle arrested for DUI Special to news-press.com CLOSE Rep. Dane Eagle holds a press conference to talk about his recent DUI arrest. Poll: Should Rep. Dane Eagle's DUI charge have been dropped? Read or Share this story: http://newspr.es/1lvS7hLA street in Keighley where drug dealing and the grooming of young girls for sex took place Susie and Elizabeth are not the victims' real names, which have been changed in this article for privacy reasons. The names of the alleged perpetrators have been changed for legal reasons. ​ Susie didn't know she would become a victim of sexual exploitation when she first met 24-year-old Tariq. It was the summer of 2001 when their eyes across a crowded shopping centre. Susie (then 14) and her mates used to hang out there after ballet class on a Saturday afternoon. She knew Tariq's younger brother, Sajid, from school, and kissed Sajid when she was drunk. She didn't like him in "that" way, but with Tariq it was different. Susie couldn't have known that the handsome, charming, older Tariq was a serial groomer. But agencies were aware that Tariq and his three brothers were linked to the sexual exploitation and trafficking of dozens of young teenage girls in Rotherham, Sheffield and Bradford. She probably wouldn't have listened to their concerns anyway. Within 24 hours, Susie was in love. After 48 hours, she went missing. Susie said: "My parents tried everything to keep Tariq away from me, but I thought I was in love with him." 12 months later, Susie was in the care of Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council, where her foster family would let Tariq pick her up outside their door. Tariq was a heroin dealer with big connections. "He was involved in anything that would get him money. He was the one to go get the big deal and give it to his workers. He didn't have people ringing him and asking him for this and that. He never got his hands dirty," says Susie. Susie occupied a special place in the hierarchy as Tariq's "girlfriend" – along with 18 other girls who had caught his eye – and was subjected to relentless sexual abuse, resulting in two pregnancies. At 14, Susie became immersed in a drug culture where sexual exploitation was the norm. At 16, she became a sex worker and had already had two pregnancies. "Susie", a victim of CSE Over the last few months, it has become clear just how many children were subject to similar atrocities. To those who understand what's going on, the string of disclosures that have emerged since the Rotherham sex scandal won't be surprising. Perhaps the most disturbing fact, though, and the one that the government seems determined to ignore, is that, in towns and cities across England, Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) is just one franchise within a multi-million pound organised crime network. Professor Jenny Pearce, Director of ​The International Centre: Researching Child Sexual Exploitation, Violence and Trafficking said: "One of the scandals of our time is that we haven't embraced CSE fully as a form of organised crime. It has lots of different levels and complexities. The trafficking of young people is being organised by very manipulative and sophisticated adults." When I asked the Home Office if Theresa May, the Home Secretary, had ever made this connection in any speeches about CSE, they couldn't point me to any. Searching through newspaper cuttings, the horror of child prostitution in Northern towns first hit the headlines in the 1990s, when it was revealed that children from care homes in Bradford were being sold for sex in the city's notorious red light district in Manningham, right under the noses of the authorities. Barnardo's opened Streets and Lanes in Manningham in '94, which was the first agency in the UK dedicated to working with children involved in sexual exploitation, and, within a few years, similar projects were operating in Sheffield and Rotherham. 20 years on, the problem remains. Susie's story isn't extraordinary. Across the board, the grooming of children for sex follows a gradual but startlingly similar pattern to involving young people in the sex and drugs industry. In 2000, The Home Office issued statutory guidelines quoting research by Streets and Lanes, saying, "A girl is identified by an older man who becomes a 'boyfriend'. Gradually, the boyfriend ensures the girl becomes emotionally dependent on him, initiates her into sex and detaches her from other influences in her life – friends and family – using emotional and physical violence. This abuse progresses into the older man selling her for sex." I've been taken to derelict houses in Rotherham and Keighley by victims who had no connection with each other, and yet all had been abused at the same addresses at various times over the past ten years. These were known as "party houses". A mother trembled as she told me how her daughter had been injected with heroin by her abuser while under the influence of date rape drugs. She went on to develop an addiction not by choice, but by force. She was 14. Susie knew that the "parties" she was taken to were not what they initially seemed. Apart from a mattress on the floor and some condoms, the party houses were completely empty. They were well known to the local community as brothels, and, of course, drugs and sexual exploitation went hand in hand. "Tariq said he was going to put crack in a spliff and get a girl addicted," says Susie. "You might just think you are having a bit of weed, but dealers are soaking it in heroin. That's how they make the money – you get addicted." Shakeel Aziz is a youth worker with the Star project in Keighley and has been delivering ​anti-grooming strategies for over ten years. To him, child grooming and other organised crime are deeply intertwined. "Grooming is an extracurricular activity to an already criminal lifestyle," he says. Children are inducted into this criminal world at a very young age. In Keighley, I encountered boys of about eight or nine who appeared to be playing innocently in a local park. The kids told me they were "employed" to provide unobtrusive surveillance to alert dealers to any strangers or unusual activity around the "party houses". By the time the spotter kids reach their teens, they are immersed in the predatory culture of exploitation. Aziz told me how it works. "During the day, young 'Mr A' works as a drug dealer for a local drug supplier supplying cannabis and cocaine. 'Mr A' has a friend who rides with him, and helps him out. He's selling drugs and making about £200 per day for his own profit. The grooming starts when Mr Street Dealer is cruising in his car with a big wad of cash, a couple of bottles of vodka, some cocaine and cannabis. 'Mr A' sees two young girls walking on the street, or in town, and it's as easy as parking next to them and sparking up conversation." Mothers in Rotherham told me how their girls are targeted from the age of 11, in the primary school playground. By the time they transfer to secondary school, they are befriended by older, charming boys handing out soft drinks laced with vodka to unsuspecting children. Angela Sinfield From 2001, ​Angela Sinfield successfully campaigned with Ann Cryer, MP for Keighley, for changes in the law to enable prosecution of CSE. Sinfield's daughter was embroiled in exploitation and, for four years, and she spent every waking moment trying to protect her daughter from a powerful, violent gang who, it seemed, were immune to prosecution. As a councillor for Keighley on Bradford Council from 2006 to 2008, she continued to raise her concerns with police, the council, social services, Barnardo's, Parents against Child Exploitation and the Home Office. Sinfield walked me through the deserted Keighley alleyways where she says children are still being groomed. Hidden in the bushes were discarded pizza boxes, sweet wrappers, fag packets and broken vodka bottles. Innocent enough on face value, but Sinfield said: "I've seen girls in school uniforms sat waiting to be picked up. I've seen the older men passing bottles to the girls out the car windows. The dealers and the girls sit on the wall and it's obvious they are together. You can hear the girls on their mobile phones arranging to meet. Once the girls are drunk, the cars pull up to take them to a nearby deserted school playground. The school caretaker goes every day to clear the yard because there are always bottles, cans and used condoms – it's still a very big problem." We visited the alley at night in torrential rain, but prestige cars still flew up and down the modest terraced streets, eyeing us with suspicion. When we retreated to observe from a distance, we saw the cars visibly slowing down to crawl the kerbs. For all the progress she made, Sinfield's campaigning hit a brick wall when she claimed it was organised crime involving prominent members of the community. "An agency told me I was on my own," she said. "I said, 'that's fine, love, I've always been on my own'." "If they [the gangs] didn't have the money from the drugs, there wouldn't be half the exploitation," she continued. Why? "Because it needs the money. They need it to treat the girls, to buy the flash cars and all the things they give them. They wouldn't be able to do it [without drugs money]." Two years after Susie met Tariq, another victim, Elizabeth, also came to him through Sajid. Elizabeth told us how she "accidentally" bumped into a group of young Asian lads – including Sajid – during a Saturday afternoon shopping trip. They were introduced by a friend who was already involved in exploitation. Elizabeth – then 13 – and her friends began to meet the men regularly, having a drink and a laugh in Rotherham's town centre and Clifton Park. There was always a bottle of vodka and a spliff in the glove compartment of the sports cars driven by Sajid and his brothers. She felt part of a group of older, more exciting friends, who had money, cars and time to shower her with attention. Taken in by the intimidating charisma of the gang, at 14, Elizabeth was subjected to a horrifying initiation. She was gang raped while another friend looked on in terror, fearing she would be next. The men – a group of about six or more – began filming. Such videos fetch good money when uploaded to international porn sites. Teenagers in a Rotherham park Beyond getting girls to drink and drug themselves by choice – or pure brute force – the groomers have other tactics, too. On one occasion, Tariq took 14-year-old Susie to a "party" and her drink was spiked. "I can't remember much about it, to be honest," she told us. "It went on all day and all night. We just had sex, to the point that I became really, really sore. That's all I remember about it, the sex. I don't even know how long I was there for. Later, I was moved to a house down the road." Elizabeth was sold for
Further, we’ll have bonus interviews with the cast as well as with Ben Robbins, who organized the game, and designer Jason Morningstar, who will share his reaction to how his game, Fiasco, was adapted to an unusually dramatic style. What is Fiasco? Fiasco is a roleplaying game designed by Diana Jones Award winner, Jason Morningstar. Traditional roleplaying games tend to focus more on mechanics and the accumulation of power through gold, magic items, and “leveling up.” Fiasco is a game where the emphasis is on story creation. Fiasco also shuns the traditional notion of requiring a game master; the players collaborate with one other to create a wholly original story, and the mechanics are focused around rights of narration. Fiasco, by Jason Morningstar Why Kickstarter? Using story games to develop a script is a new concept, and community-based funding allows us to explore this idea of merging story games with cinema. So, with your help, we can afford to hire the cast and crew to make this the best film possible. Come join us in making the dream of creating a movie out of an exciting gaming session a reality. Participate at any level that works for you, and together we’ll make gaming history. Not only will you receive cool rewards for joining our little filmmaking “club,” you’ll know that without you, this film would never have been produced. While I believe this project will be well-received by the gaming community, I also hope it will help make roleplaying games more accessible to those who are curious about what happens in the basements of gamers around the world. In other words, I hope we provide a showcase for what roleplaying is all about. Whether you’re a film buff or a gamer, I hope this project inspires you as much as it inspires me. Vision for the Future I’ve enthusiastically played roleplaying games since 1978. I merged this passion with my career in 1990 when I founded Wizards of the Coast and authored that company’s first product, The Primal Order, a treatise on mythology in gaming. Then in 1997, we acquired TSR, the publishers of Dungeons & Dragons, and I had the opportunity to publish D&D 3.0, one of the most successful D&D editions of all time. During the last decade, I’ve taken a deep dive into expanding my passion into story games. Yet one thing that’s always troubled me about roleplaying games is that the experience is ephemeral. Just last night (at the time of this writing), I was dining with some local gamers, and Ryan Macklin described an incredible session he had played recently, which led to us discus how roleplaying experiences can never be adequately shared with others. Wil Wheaton, Zak Smith, and others, including me, have explored this by filming roleplaying sessions, which is great but is greatly limited by the patience of the audience for watching what Jeff Grubb calls, “Twenty minutes of excitement crammed into four hours.” Perhaps the desire to share memorable roleplaying experiences could be addressed (albeit to a limited extent) through screenplay adaptations? This is the underlying question I want to address with this this film and with future projects.CLOSE Citing security concerns, Apple has filed a motion to vacate an order that would have required the company to help access Syed Farook's iPhone. Video provided by Newsy Newslook Apple CEO Tim Cook, shown here testifying in Congress in 2013, is battling the FBI over its request for a back door to a killer's iPhone. (Photo: Shawn Thew, EPA) SAN FRANCISCO — With Apple filing a motion Thursday to dismiss the government's request for help accessing a killer's iPhone, consider the battle now officially joined. In one corner, U.S. law enforcement officials argue that public safety hangs in the balance if they cannot command tech companies to help with its investigations. In the other, Tim Cook and a global brand that prides itself on products that are both beautiful and secure. Who will win? And when? Given the far-reaching ramifications of the outcome, legal experts anticipate lots of legal wrangling with neither party holding an edge. “Apple says this is a matter of the Constitution, and the FBI says it is of national security,” says Larry Downes, a project director at Georgetown Business School. “There are millions of possible courses this can take. This (case) is in the earliest possible stage, and these types of things go back and forth, among courts, for months, if not years.” The government's task will be to make a public case against a company with legendary marketing prowess and a powerful public fan base, said Downes. Apple's dilemma is trying to do battle on the legal turf of the federal government in Washington, D.C., where Apple has low visibility and influence compared to its Bay Area base. Plus, it's making an anti-law enforcement case in an era of terrorist alerts and random shootings. The Cupertino, Calif., company's Thursday motion rejecting an order that it create new software to allow the FBI to break into the iPhone 5C belonging to one of the assailants in the San Bernardino massacre was anticipated -- and supported by the tech industry at large. Google and Facebook will be among those filing a joint amicus brief in support of Apple's position, according to two people familiar with the plans but who weren't authorized to speak publicly on the matter. Twitter confirmed it would support Apple as well. Twitter and Microsoft are among the companies that may also join that brief or write their own, said a person familiar with the discussions who was not authorized to discuss it publicly. Microsoft officials would not comment on whether it would be part of the group. Apple said that assisting the government to crack into the phones is "in conflict with the First and Fifth Amendments of the United States Constitution," referring to free speech and the right to avoid self-incrimination. Also, complying with the government order would force it to create "a new 'GovtOS,'" in other words, an operating system that has a route around its current operating system's encryption, as well as a FBI forensics lab on site, Apple said in a statement to reporters. Justice Department spokeswoman Melanie Newman said Thursday that its attorneys "are reviewing Apple’s filing and will respond appropriately in court.” As Apple filed its response in a California federal court, FBI Director James Comey told a House panel that he did not “fully understand’’ Apple’s opposition in the San Bernardino case. “This is a single phone in a very important investigation,’’ Comey said, adding that the government request was narrowly tailored and did not threaten the privacy of other Apple customers. “I’m a big fan of privacy; I love encryption…But if we get to a place in American life where certain things are immune from a judge’s order, then we are in a very different world.’’ Comey said federal investigators were obligated to pursue every lead in the San Bernardino case to determine if others, perhaps unknown to authorities, may have been involved and to account for every moment of the terrorist’s activities before and after the December attack. Authorities still have been unable to fully account for 19 minutes of the terrorists’ movements following the deadly mass shooting and before they killed in a shootout with law enforcement. “We ought to be fired in the FBI, if we didn’t pursue that lead,’’ he said. APPLE RISKS 'BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS' Several lawmakers encouraged Comey to continue his pursuit of Apple’s cooperation, including Rep. David Jolly, R-Fla., who thanked the FBI director during his appearance before the House Appropriations Committee. “Apple’s leadership,’’ the congressman said, “risks having blood on their hands.’’ Apple's motion to vacate boils down to three arguments, according Apple. The first hinges on the fact that "no court has ever granted the government power to force companies like Apple to weaken its security systems," which also would have the added financial impact of potentially harming the company's reputation with consumers. “The government wants Apple to build in flaws with a backdoor,” says Harvey Anderson, chief legal officer at computer-security company AVG Technologies. “It’s like asking an automaker to design a less-safe car. This undercuts Apple’s relationship with its customers, who value the security of its products.” Anderson adds that while the government ultimately "may win this (case), the tech industry will work even harder to build stronger products that are not vulnerable to backdoors.” According to reports, Apple is in fact working on new encryption technology that would make it impossible for anyone - including its own engineers - to access data in a mobile device. The second point amounts to a rejection of the All Writs Act, which in the past has allowed the government to get assistance in accessing technological devices used in criminal activities. Apple's statement notes that "the question whether companies like Apple should be compelled to create a backdoor to their own operating systems to assist law enforcement is a political question, not a legal one." Apple CEO Tim Cook has said that the issue at large should be taken up by Congress. CODE IS SPEECH “Code itself is considered speech,” says Mark Bartholomew, a professor of cyberlaw and privacy law at University of Buffalo. “But the line between speech and conduct is fuzzy under First Amendment law. “Apple’s stronger strategy is that the government’s request is unwarranted under the All Writs Act.” And the last point contends simply that "the government's demands violates Apple's constitutional rights." Specifically, Apple wrote computer code to protect data on its products due to its views about consumer privacy. "By forcing Apple to write software that would undermine those values... (it forces) Apple to express the government's viewpoint on security and privacy instead of its own." Public opinion remains divided on the Apple vs. FBI case, with some siding with the government's need to battle terrorism while others remain concerned about officials eavesdropping on citizens. At the moment, Apple has the support of a range of organizations and tech companies. Microsoft president Brad Smith announced Thursday that his company also would be filing a friend of the court opinion. Similar briefs will also be filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Amnesty International. Contributing: Kevin Johnson in Washington, D.C. Follow USA TODAY tech reporters Marco della Cava, Jessica Guynn and Jon Swartz on Twitter. Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/20Xzns8Thomson revealed that for several days now he has been battling problems with the wind instruments on his cutting-edge 60ft race boat Hugo Boss, which in turn have prevented the yacht's autopilot from working properly. In spite of knocking miles off Le Cléac'h's lead overnight he said he had not slept for two days and was now dangerously tired. Speaking to the Vendée Live show today Thomson said his thoughts were on getting Hugo Boss' anemometers working again rather than the impending finish in Les Sables d'Olonne, France. "I don't think I can catch Armel," he said. "The routing is very clear – we will go nearly to the Scilly Isles, wait for a left shift and when it comes we tack. There are no real options for me any more, I think my options have run out. It might be possible to catch a few miles but it's difficult for me at the moment. Until I can get my autopilot driving on a wind angle it'll be very tricky in the conditions I have. I can't imagine another few days like the last couple of days. I don't have any tension about the finish. I have tension about trying to make the autopilots work. I've got an anemometer in my hand and I'm trying to splice wires. I don't care about the finish right now, I just want to sleep.” Le Cléac'h, runner-up in the past two editions of the Vendée Globe, might now be odds-on favourite to claim his first race win but he was not taking anything for granted as he prepared to tack and head down the west coast of France to Les Sables. The race mantra of 'to finish first, first you have to finish' will be ringing in his ears as he sails into his final night at sea in 74 days. “For the moment I’m holding my own against Alex,” the 39-year-old Breton said, “but the final 24 hours are going to be complicated. I'm going to have to be careful as there are a lot of dangers - we have been seeing fishermen and cargo vessels since yesterday. I’ll be passing the tip of Brittany tonight, then going along the south coast of Brittany. I have to remain cautious to avoid doing anything stupid.” Le Cléac'h is expected to cross the finish line between 1300 and 1900 UTC tomorrow, barring any mishaps, with Thomson following suit around four hours later. The race tracker will update hourly once the leader gets to within 100 miles of the finish, and live streaming will begin 30 minutes from the line. For more information on how to follow the arrivals click here https://www.vendeeglobe.org/en/village-for-the-finish/how-to-follow-the-finish Third-placed Jérémie Beyou said his routing software has calculated that he should arrive in Les Sables on Sunday evening, around three days behind the leaders. “Over the past few days I have been faster than expected,” said Beyou, whose podium position is secure for now with fourth-placed Jean-Pierre Dick trailing him by more than 1,000 miles. “The seas are not as cross and are more manageable. I’m trying not to think of the finish, as I still have the Bay of Biscay to deal with, and it’s not looking very cooperative, as there won’t be much wind, so I won’t be advancing very quickly.” Seventh-placed Louis Burton will be the next skipper to cross into the northern hemisphere. At the 1400 UTC position update he was just 20 miles south of the Equator. Tune into Vendée Globe Live tomorrow at 1200 UTC at https://www.vendeeglobe.org/en/ where host Will Carson will be joined by French offshore sailing legend Loick Peyron. Quotes Jérémie Beyou, Maître CoQ: “Things aren’t going too badly today. I’m trying to slip in between the trough and the ridge of high pressure. I’m just coming out of that corridor with 20 knots of wind. Wind charts are a great decision-making tool, but when you don’t have them, you have to observe things around you. I can see the general pattern. For the finish, I’m looking at Sunday evening, but it’s hard to predict, and will depend on the wind conditions in the Bay of Biscay.” Eric Bellion, CommeUnSeulHomme : “Yesterday I suddenly got thirty knots of wind, which I hadn’t seen on the charts. Today I have light airs. There are times when it’s hard and I wonder what the hell I’m doing here and then times, when I enjoy it. When I see how far I have come, I can see how lucky I am. Even becalmed last night, I didn’t want to be anywhere else. Why have I moved to the west? It’s down to the weather. Because of the currents, I didn’t go through the Le Maire Strait, then climbing back up north, I found myself close to the coast trying to avoid a high.”Over the weekend, the Internet ran rampant with rumors that Nicki Minaj was pregnant after she called Meek Mill her "Baby Father" during a Pinkprint show. While it was sort of clear that Nicki wasn't actually pregnant, and rather just joking around - she's said this twice on tour now - people kind of lost their minds thinking of Nicki and Meek having a baby together. Well, now TMZ has confirmed the obvious with Nicki's camp that she is indeed not pregnant right now, but the report did state that her and Meek want to possibly have kids in the future. If you remember, Nicki said on Twitter last month that she doesn't want to have kids until she's married. And she's called Drake her baby daddy, too: Nicki said the same thing about Drake last year at Summer Jam so not sure why people overreacting. 😒 https://t.co/3zyNOCcANg — The Megan (@MegYuup) August 9, 2015 So, carry on everyone.Cow photo via Shutterstock As a top industrialized nation, the United States is responsible for spewing a great deal of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. But a study published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science estimates that the US dumps 50 percent more methane than the EPA is willing to admit. Methane is an extremely potent gas that is 21 times more effective at trapping heat than CO2. Image via Wikicommons user Tim Evanson The report states that in 2008, the US released 49 million tons of methane. This figure, which is significantly higher than the 32 million tons calculated by the EPA, was gathered from over 13,000 measurements taken from towers and airplane flights. And nearly one quarter of all methane emissions came from just three states. A bulk of the methane can be traced to livestock production and leaks from drilling operations in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. While the impacts of CO2 have been the subject of much study, methane is a relatively new source of investigation. Scientists have only recently begun to use computer models to predict the effects of the gas on climate change. The authors of the report are beginning to analyze the impact of hydraulic fracturing on methane levels. With a more accurate picture of how much methane is being produced by the US, climate advocates will soon realize that they have a massive new challenge to tackle. Via NewsDailyLois Lerner at House Hearing: “I Am Very Proud of the Work I Have Done in Government” (Then Pleads the Fifth) Lois Lerner, the director of the IRS division that singled out hundreds of conservative groups, told a House Committee today. “I am very proud of the work I have done in government.” Then Lerner: 1.) Blamed her subordinates for the targeting scandal, 2.) Pleaded the Fifth Amendment, and 3.) Left the room. For Twenty-Seven months the Obama IRS refused to approve any Tea Party applications for tax-exempt status. At the same time the Obama IRS approved dozens of progressive applications. 500 conservative and Christian groups were illegally targeted by the Obama IRS. Lois Lerner has a history of harassment and inappropriate religious inquiries. Related… The claim that the ongoing IRS scandal is limited to low level employees is falling apart.Natal launch details leak from secret Microsoft tour The intriguing 3D interactive interface for XBox is going to be a hit with consumers when it launches late in 2010. Microsoft are making sure by leaking the price – less than $100 for the 3D camera and interface – and expected shipping rate of 5 million units. From the demo, it looks like WII Plus. Microsoft introduces spatial hands free controller – a revolution in computing The real break through will occur when we can compute with our hands off a keyboard and mouse. “Our sources say the innovative controller-free 360 camera will be released worldwide in November 2010. This and other details have emerged following a behind-closed-doors Microsoft tour of UK publishers and studios – the format-holder has been demoing the tech and detailing its 2010 plans in order to spur more development support. Microsoft is planning to manufacture 5m units for day one release, with a mix of console and camera plus solus SKUs expected. The device should cost under £50 when sold solo. One publishing source says Microsoft is “trying to get as close as possible to ‘impulse buy’”. Another even says the camera could even retail for just £30. Natal was unveiled earlier this year at E3 in Los Angeles. The device uses an array of cameras and microphones to track player movements. Activision, Bethesda, Capcom, Disney, EA, Konami, MTV, Namco Bandai, Sega, Square Enix, THQ and Ubisoft all committed to make games for the device in an announcement made at last month’s Tokyo Game Show. It’s expected a large chunk of launch games will be first-party offerings from studios such as Rare with third-party games to follow. It is not known if Lionhead’s widely-discussed Milo, which uses advanced AI to create realistic characters, will be in the mix. Natal will arrive almost five years to the day after the Xbox 360 and is perceived by many, Microsoft included, as a way to lengthen the lifespan of the hardware without resorting to a new console launch. The first Xbox was sold in the UK for only three years before 360 hit. This summer Xbox studios boss Phil Spencer told MCV the 360 still ‘hasn’t peaked’. “When Natal arrives it will feel like a new generation has come,” he said. “I see it like the launch of 360 in November ‘05. Consumers don’t want another $400 box right now.” Sony has said it will launch PS3’s motion-sensing wand peripheral – movement of which is tracked by the already-available PlayStation Eye camera – before Microsoft’s kit in spring 2010. However, so far the Japanese firm has kept details of the launch closely under wraps. MCV.comLO Trump march organizer: 'Liberals totally hate me' Copyright by KOIN - All rights reserved Kevin Kerwin is a co-organizer of Oregon's March 4 Trump taking place on March 4. February 26, 2017, (KOIN) [ + - ] Video Eileen Park and KOIN 6 News Staff - LAKE OSWEGO, Ore. (KOIN) -- In less than a week, supporters of President Donald Trump will host a nationwide march to say they're behind him every step of the way. On Saturday at 12 p.m., Trump supporters will gather at George Rogers Park in Lake Oswego, but they won't be the only ones there. The president's contentious relationship with the media has his followers riled up. "You guys are the racists. You guys are the violent ones. You guys are the Marxists," said Kevin Kerwin, co-organizer of the March 4 Trump. A small business owner in Lake Oswego, Kerwin is one of the organizers of Oregon's March 4 Trump rally happening March 4. "Liberals totally hate me, and I totally hate liberals," said Kerwin. He is no stranger to controversy. His support for the president is on full display at his computer repair shop in downtown Lake Oswego. "There's so much hate going on with the women's march and all those kind of things. That isn't a women's march. That was a hate march for Trump," said Kerwin. Kerwin expects hundreds of people to show up for the pro-Trump rally. And already, several counter protests are in the works for those who don't agree with policies rolling out of the Trump administration. "We just want to be there," said Alison Renz, co-founder of Women in Action Northwest. "Our mission is not to meet hate with hate, but to meet hate with love." Renz's group is now 80 members strong and growing. She said she's not afraid of what will happen at the march because her group will "rise above that." Many have close ties to the park where the march will take place. "That playground is a place where I learned to include others and to be a part of a community. And the fact that they are gathering in a place that to me and other people is a sacred place, is just not acceptable to me," said Renz. The Trump rally and resulting counter protest exemplifies the sharp divide in U.S. political ideology. "Liberals are the most lawless people I've met in my life. And when Obama was elected? He let everything happen. He did not care," said Kerwin. Counter protest groups include: Oregon Students Empowered, Lake Oswego Love and Women in Action Northwest.Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid/14.10 Utopic, previously we had shared useful indicators for 14.04 and 12.04, if you are using any of that version make sure you check these Indicators for 12.04 Precise. Are you used to use panel indicators? Can't you find all useful indicators in one place? So here we brought mostly used indicators for you in one place, for now you don't need to explore the Internet to locate them, if any indicator is mission let us know in the comment below (or just drop a line with some info via contact page) and we will add it in this list. Application indicators helps us access bold features of the application or standalone indicator offers various functionality to make user experience better on desktop computer. Since this long list of indicators only available for, previously we had shared useful indicators for 14.04 and 12.04, if you are using any of that version make sure you check these Indicators for Ubuntu 14.04 Vivid/Linux Mint 17.x These indicators can work with most of Linux desktop environments (compatible with panel using AppIndicator) like Unity, Gnome, Cinnamon, Mate, Xfce, and others. You may find some indicator doesn't load in specific desktop, I didn't tested in all desktops but let us know if this happens to you. 1: Indicator Netspeed Unity 2: Copyq Indicator 3: System Monitor Indicator 4: Keylock Indicator 5: Caffeine Indicator 6: Crypt-folder Indicator 7: Windows-List Indicator 8: Tomboy Notes Indicator 9: Brightness Indicator 10: Diodon Indicator 11: Recent Notification Indicator 12: HackerTray Indicator 13: Calendar Indicator 14: Classic Menu Indicator 15: FluxGui Indicator 16: Reminder Indicator 17: Sticky Notes Indicator 18: Touchpad Indicator 19: Multi-Load Indicator 20: Sensors Indicator 21: CpuFreq Indicator 22: Psensor Indicator 23: My-Weather Indicator 24: Google Tasks Indicator 25: Fortune Indicator 26: Lunar Indicator 27: StarDate Indicator 28: Virtualbox Indicator 29: Privacy Indicator 30: Sound Switcher Indicator 31: Pomodoro Technique Indicator 32: PushBullet Indicator 33: Truecrypt Indicator 34: Places Indicator Netspeed Unity Indicator displays the current upload/download speed on the unity panel. It is compatible with most of the panels, it can work with any panel which uses AppIndicators. If you are using multiple network interface, it also allows you to choose between them to check speed.You can change position of the indicator, gsettings:/apps/indicators/netspeed-unity (use dconf-editor) CopyQ is advanced clipboard manager with searchable and editable history with support for image formats, command line control and more. Command interface and graphical interface accessible from tray. By default the application stores any new clipboard content in list in the first tab. Main window can be opened by either left clicking on tray icon, running command copyq show or using system-wide shortcut (configurable from Preferences). System Monitor display CPU and memory usage on panel, Also you can access system monitor from this indicator. Indicator keylock is very useful utility, if your laptop/keyboard doesn't have leds to indicate that Num/Caps/Scroll keys are turned on/off. It shows notification on/off whenever Num/Caps/Scroll keys pressed and it allows indicator to choose icon between Num/Caps/Scroll to show in indicator panel. So with this utility a user can quickly see if Num lock, Caps lock or Scroll lock is turned on/off. After installation start indicator keylock from dash/menu, first time it doesn't show indicator in panel but works perfectly then you need to press any lock key and indicator will popup in panel then go to preferences and select option'show indicator while lock key is inactive'. Caffeine indicator allows user to temporary disable screensaver/sleep mode, Also there is option to add program in list to disable screensaver permanently for that program.With Crypt-Folder you can manage EncFS folders via this indicator, You can mount, unmount EncFS folders, create new EncFS folders, stores the password in Gnome Key-ring and mounts it at login, change existing EncFS folders password. Window-list is an application indicator to display a list of all current open windows via indicator. Each window can be activated by selecting from the list. Tomboy is a desktop note-taking application which is simple and easy to use. It lets you organise your notes intelligently by allowing you to easily link ideas together with Wiki style interconnects. Brightness indicator allows you to control your laptop display brightness with indicator.- Clicking the icon shows you all the possible brightness values, to a maximum of 15 steps.- The current value is indicated with a dot.- Clicking a menu item sets the brightness to the desired value.- Scroll wheel event is enabled on the icon. Scrolling up means higher brightness, scrolling down lower.- Control screen brightness with custom keyboard shortcuts. Diodon is a lightweight clipboard manager for Linux written in Vala which "aims to be the best integrated clipboard manager for the Gnome/Unity desktop".Diodon features include Ubuntu indicator, clipboard sync (primary selection and Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V clipboard) and an option to set the clipboard size.The Recent Notifications applet displays the recent NotifyOSD notifications and allows you copy the text or a link from a notification. You can also click on a link to open it. There are options to blacklist applications within the applet to hide the associated notifications and set the time limit to show a message.Logout and Login back to get it work HackerTray is a simple Hacker News Linux application that lets you view top HN stories in your System Tray. It open links in your default browser and remembers which links you've visited. It relies on appindicator, so it is not guaranteed to work on all systems. It also provides a Gtk StatusIcon fallback in case AppIndicator is not available.After installation open terminal and run indicator with this command "" without quotes. Calendar indicator is linked with Google Calendar, You can access your Google account calendar via this indicator and get notifications directly on your desktop. ClassicMenu Indicator is a notification area applet (application indicator) for the top panel of Ubuntu's Unity desktop environment. It provides a simple way to get a classic GNOME-style application menu for those who prefer this over the Unity dash menu. Like the classic GNOME menu, it includes Wine games and applications if you have those installed. F.luxGui indicator applet is an indicator applet to control xflux, an application that makes the color of your computer's display adapt to the time of day, warm at nights and like sunlight during the day Remindor indicator is an indicator app specially designed for Ubuntu to set schedule reminders. These reminders can be configured to play a sound, show a notification, and/or run a command. Indicator Reminder has a powerful date/time selection feature that allows you to express recurring dates/times in plain English. For example: "every day", "every Monday", "every other", "every weekday", "every 30 minutes", and more!. They can also be set to repeat minutely or hourly.or install QT version of Remindor indicator via following commands in Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty:Indicator Sticky Notes is use to note important tasks, to-do things for remember to do in time. Sticky Notes just stick to desktop with user convenience. StickyNotes offers to make notes with any background color and with text color, just create a new category from settings and choose it.With Touchpad indicator you can enable/disable your laptop touchpad. Multi-Load indicator displays information about your system resources. Sensors Indicators display your PC sensors information. In order to use this indicator, your PC must have sensors. Hardware sensors indicator for Unity to display and monitor the readings from various hardware sensors (temperature, fan speeds, voltages etc). CpuFreq indicator applet for displaying and changing CPU frequency on-the-fly. It provides the same functionality as the Gnome CPU frequency applet, but doesn't require Gnome panel and works under Unity. Psensor application Indicator is providing a quick access to sensor values and settings. When a sensor temperature is too much hot, a desktop notification bubble appears and the Application Indicator icon is changed to a red one. My-Weather indicator is an application especially designed for Ubuntu, you will be informed of current weather and the weather forecast. Integrated with the Ubuntu desktop via an indicator. Google Tasks indicator shows most recent Google tasks from our account on the Panel. Fortune indicator shows fortune cookies by OSD notifies, it calls the fortune program and shows the result in the on-screen notification. Lunar indicator shows the moon phase, moon/sun/planet/star/satellite ephemeris and other astronomical information.This indicator shows the current Star Trek stardate VirtualBox indicator is a simple yet very useful appindicator which you can use to launch VirtualBox machines without opening VirtualBox. It works with both VirtualBox and VirtualBox-OSE. Privacy Indicator is a notification area applet (application indicator) for the top panel of Ubuntu’s Unity desktop environment. Sound input/output selector indicator for Ubuntu/Unity. It shows an icon in the indicator area in Ubuntu's Panel. Icon's menu allows you to switch the current sound input and output ports with just two clicks.An indicator for working with Pomodoro Technique With Pomodoro-Indicator you have a tool to work with the Pomodoro Technique. This is a simple indicator that helps keep concentrated. You start it before a complicated problem and you have to keep concentrated for at least 10 minutes after it becomes green you can continue to work on your problem but you get thing done.An indicator for working with PushBullet With PushBullet-Indicator you can send addresses, files, links, lists, and notes to the configurated devices on PushBullet.Free open-source disk encryption software TrueCrypt is a software system for establishing and maintaining an on-the-fly-encrypted volume (data storage device). On-the-fly encryption means that data are automatically encrypted or decrypted right before they are loaded or saved, without any user intervention. No data stored on an encrypted volume can be read (decrypted) without using the correct password/keyfile(s) or correct encryption keys. Entire file systems can be encrypted. This package replaces the standard tray icon with a unity indicator. Places is a simple indicator that shows common folders and all bookmarks, the indicator updates automatically if bookmark was added or removed.Digg this! See: Pennsylvania is a closed primary – March 24 deadline to change party Can Republicans vote in Ohio’s Democrat presidential primary? According to the Ohio Secretary of State’s website: How do I establish which political party’s ballot I am entitled to vote? “You may vote the primary ballot of the political party with which you currently wish to be affiliated. If you voted the primary ballot of a different political party in 2005 or 2006, you will complete a statement at your polling place confirming the change in your political party affiliation.” Switching party affiliation on primary election day, at polling place. I would expect that poll workers, being political critters by nature, will not like Republicans or independants voting in the Democrat primary election, and they may try to throw sand into the gears. —– Here’s how it works, as best I can figure: 1. A registered Ohio voter goes to the appropriate primary election voting place, with the required personal identification. 2. A poll worker will ask if you want a Republican or a Democrat ballot. 3. The poll worker checks which party primary you voted in last time, and if it is not the same party as you are asking to vote in this time, you may be challenged. If you are not challenged, then there should be no problem. 4. If you wish to switch party affiliations, say so. 5. You will be given a form, either Form 10-X or Form 10-W, which you must fill out and sign. 6. Ohio Revised Code 3513.20 Effect of challenge to voter at primary, states in part: “Before any challenged person shall be allowed to vote at a primary election, the person shall make a statement, under penalty of election falsification, before one of the precinct officials, blanks for which shall be furnished by the board of elections, giving name, age, residence, length of residence in the precinct, county, and state; stating that the person desires to be affiliated with and supports the principles of the political party whose ballot the person desires to vote; and giving all other facts necessary to determine whether the person is entitled to vote in that primary election. The statement shall be returned to the office of the board with the pollbooks and tally sheets.... ” ——– A mere pro forma change of parties is not contemplated by the statute, but I don’t want to get into a discussion of what the meaning of ‘principles’ is. According to the The Democratic Party web site, the party’s principles are: Honest Leadership & Open Government, Real Security, Energy Independence, Economic Prosperity & Educational Excellence, A Healthcare System that Works for Everyone, and; Retirement Security. If you can support these principles, you can legitimately align yourself with the Democratic Party Please remember, things frequently don’t go as they are supposed to. Don’t panic, and don’t over-react. – – – – – – – – March 21, 2008 – Possible problems for malicious party switchers: Will Rush Limbaugh Be Indicted for Voter Fraud? “On Thursday, March 20, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that the “Cuyahoga County Board of Election has launched an investigation that could lead to criminal charges against voters who maliciously switched parties for the March 4 presidential primary.” According to the report, “One voter scribbled the following addendum to his pledge as a new Democrat: “For one day only.” “Such an admission amounts to voter fraud,” the report continued, attributing that conclusion to BOE member Sandy McNair, a Democrat.”We are told again and again that Russia is a dangerous aggressor looking for any excuse to start wars. But just imagine if a top American diplomat had dropped dead in Moscow. We were the first alt media organization to point out that Vitaly Churkin's sudden death means that no less than four senior Russian diplomats have died unexpectedly in the last two months. (We have many admirers; one attempted to take credit for this observation without proper attribution. Alas, they made a real mess of it. "So it goes.") The western media's disgusting glee and slime-slinging in response to Churkin's death was nothing less than expected. Far more extraordinary is how constrained Russia's response has been. Allegations of conspiracy or foul play have been nearly nonexistent in Russian media. Even alternative media has been surprisingly quiet about the obvious red flags Churkin's New York death raises. We will know the truth eventually Perhaps this is because many see Churkin's death as an extremely poorly-timed coincidence. There are other theories, of course: Everyone knows what's happening, we just can't say it because that would mean big war.@RussiaInsider — Enrico Ivanov ☦ (@Russ_Warrior) February 20, 2017 Can we all just take a moment and recognize that if a top U.S. diplomat had dropped dead in Moscow, every major American media outlet
37.9MB PWA: 350KB PWAs are very lightweight, and this should mean they are less likely to be deleted. Reason #3: Easy to add to the screen & linkable = Higher readership levels Today, the average adult within the U.S. downloads an average of 0 native apps per month. At each stage of the installation process, 20% of users abandon the download. At a time when the use of native applications is dropping, Progressive Web Apps are easy to add to the home screen with just a couple of clicks. They are easy to share too, making readers even more likely to find and download your application. Reason #4: Service worker background updates = Smoother UX Service Workers mean that your application can be updated in the background, without your readers having to download very large updates. This will keep your app looking fantastic with all the latest features and content, without the need for the headache surrounding app updates. Reason #5: Push Notifications = Strong re-engagement PWAs allow you to send push notifications to readers. This feature empowers publishers with the ability to harness the power of the web to fight against audience segmentation, and address their audience together. When you break the next big story or produce that immaculate piece, you can put an end to segmentation and extend your reach across the web, letting your loyal audience know in a way that grabs their attention. The benefits are clear: Weekly notifications could increase 90-day app retention by 2x on iOS and 6x on Android. High-value notifications can increase app retention by 2x on iOS and 6x on Android. Reason #6: Offline capabilities = Constant engagement Service workers make it possible for your PWA to work offline or in areas of low connectivity. Given the importance of “The Next Billion” and the devices and bandwidths they will be browsing on, this can connect you with new audiences both online and offline. Reason #7: Discoverable = Attract new audiences PWAs are easily identified as applications and can be indexed by search engines, meaning that your app can be found in search engine results by new and existing audiences alike. Reason #8: HTTPS & Enhanced Security = Stronger reader trust HTTPS is required to enable the emerging technology and APIs (such as service workers) that make PWAs possible. This means that PWAs are very safe and secure, and your readers can be safe in the knowledge that you run a quality publication that takes their security into account. A Note on Apple’s Shifting Relationship with Service Workers Service Workers are the script that browsers can run in the background — separate from a web page — to unlock the functionality of devices such as push notifications and background synchronization. Apple does not currently support Service Workers. But that might change soon, given the status of the feature recently changed on Apple’s WebKit feature list to “In Development”.The Rangers manager has been informed by Derek Llambias and Sandy Easdale that each loaned player must play in every game. SNS Group Rangers manager Kenny McDowall has been told that all five Newcastle United players must start every match while on loan at the Ibrox club. The caretaker manager says the instructions have been handed down to him by chief executive Derek Llambias and chairman of the football board Sandy Easdale. Gael Bigirimana, Shane Ferguson, Kevin Mbabu, Remie Streete and Haris Vuckic all arrived at Ibrox on the final day of the January transfer window. Bigirimana, Streete and Vuckic are all available to play in Sunday's Scottish Cup tie with Raith Rovers while Ferguson and Mbabu are still injured and receiving treatment in Newcastle. McDowall claims that he has no say on bringing the players to the club. Asked if he was duty bound to play all five incoming players each week, McDowall replied "yes". Then asked if he had to play every one of them every week, he again, replied: "Yes. They are obviously good players - they play for Newcastle - but I will carry on and do what I am told to do." He added: "I was told at the offset that players would be coming in that wouldn't be my responsibility. So I'll carry on regardless. "I'd like to think I can make a substitute and make a change, but that's where we're at." When asked who selected the players to come to Scotland McDowall stated it had been a decision made by Llambias and Easdale. "Well they're the board, it's up to them," added the caretaker manager. "I've been told what to do and I'm happy to carry out what they've told me, so I don't have a problem with it at all." When questioned over how comfortable he was with the situation, McDowall said: "Well I've handed in my notice and I'm working my 12-month notice period and I've told the guys I'm happy to take the team. "So I'm not going to complain, I'll carry out the instructions that they give me and I'll do my best." The interim Ibrox boss went on to add that his squad were not aware of the new arrangement with the arriving players before today's press conference. Simply stating that he expected them to be professional and that such scenarios "happen at clubs all the time". He added: "Rangers are a big club, the boys are here and come up to play and they'll play. "That's just how it is. They're in the squad and they'll just have to keep doing their best and hope that they get a chance to get on the field. In a statement given to Sky Sports News HQ, chief executive Llambias denied the board picked the team. He said: "There's no way the board is picking the team. "The basis of any loan deal is that the players who arrive bolster the side and give the squad more depth. That's exactly what is happening here." SPFL rule 65 states: "Other than as expressly provided for in the Rules and these Regulation, it shall not be permitted to stipulate when or against whom, a player temporarily transferred may or may not play and any such stipulation in any agreement shall be void and of no effect." It's understood unless this is in writing between Newcastle and Rangers - which is highly unlikely - the league won't need to investigate. I will need to score a hat-trick to stay in the Rangers team says Aird Fraser Aird appeared stunned by the news, struggling to digest what he had been told. The midfielder joked he made have to score a hat-trick in each game to stay in the Light Blues' starting eleven.Back in December we broke the news here on Bloody Disgusting that TNT’s “Tales From the Crypt” had hit snag, causing a lengthy delay. Apparently, there are some rights issues that caused the cable channel to hit the pause button. With that said, they assured us that the Crypt Keeper’s return to the small screen was still in the cards, hopefully later this year. “Tales From the Crypt” – part of TNT’s planned Horror Block, which was to also include “Time of Death” and “Creatures” – was greenlit last April as they were ramping up an initial 10-episode order of the anthology series that would have reinvented the Crypt Keeper, based on the original EC Comics. M. Night Shyamalan was to host/curate, which has got to have boosted in value since Split beat the crap out of the box office earlier this year. Speaking of…Bloody Disgusting reader Xander A. came across a pair of promos for “Tales From the Crypt” that, for all intents and purposes, look very real. The first is basically a glossy featurette with Shyamalan discussing his plans for the “Horror Block”, which sound abstract and immensely interesting. The second video, below, looks like an actual promo TNT would air to hype people to “Tales From the Crypt’s” return. It’s incredibly well made, but doesn’t really represent my own expectations. Michael Smiy allegedly directed it for mOcean and TNT.“I’m skeptical about many things, including the notion that government always knows best, and that the people can’t be trusted with the truth. The time to pull the curtain back on this subject is long overdue. We have statements from the most credible sources – those in a position to know – about a fascinating phenomenon, the nature of which is yet to be determined.” – John Podesta, Chief of Staff for Bill Clinton, Counsellor To Barack Obama (taken from Leslie Kean’s 2010 New York Times bestseller, UFOs: Generals, Pilots, And Government Officials Go On The Record, for which Podesta wrote the forward) For more on Podesta and his comments on UFOs, you can read this article. For a short list of these statements (out of hundreds upon hundreds) that Podesta is referring to, you can check out this article. There you will also find a few documents pertaining to UFOs. Dr. John Brandenburg, PhD, is a plasma physicist. He did his graduate work in California at Lawrence Livermore National Lab in controlled plasmas for fusion power, and has worked in energy, defence, and space research for a number of years. He is currently a consultant at Morningstar applied Physics LLC, and a part-time instructor of astronomy, physics, and mathematics at Madison College. He is the principle inventor of the MET (Microwave Electro-Thermal) plasma thruster using water propellant for space propulsion. Brandenburg was involved in the Clementine Mission to the Moon, which was part of a joint space project between the Ballistic Missile Defence Organization (BMDO) and NASA. The mission discovered water at the Moon’s poles in 1994. He was the deputy manager of that mission. (Source: page 16 of 18)(source)(source) It’s noteworthy to mention here that the Russian government recently called for an international investigation into the U.S. moon landings regarding missing artifacts (lunar rock) and the dissapearance of film footage. You can read more about that story here. Brandenburg asks, “It was a photo reconnaissance mission basically to check out if someone was building bases on the moon that we didn’t know about. Were they expanding them?” (The quote is taken from the documentary Aliens on the Moon. Some people are having trouble with the above link, but documentary is also available on Netflix.) He also went on to state that after the completion of the Clementine Mission, they were analyzed by an elite defence department team with the highest security clearance. He said, “They basically kept to themselves and just did their work, and we were told not to interfere with them.” The mission was designed to investigate and map all corners of the moon. This is a very brief background of someone who is clearly well respected in his field. Not long ago, he joined a long and growing list of academics who are helping to pull back the curtain that’s been blinding us for years, even though this subject is still ridiculed by some in the academic world. It was during the Clementine Mission’s mapping of the lunar surface that he began to suspect an extraterrestrial presence on the moon: Of all the pictures I’ve seen from the moon that show possible structures, the most impressive is a picture of a miles wide recto-linear structure. This looked unmistakably artificial, and it shouldn’t be there. As somebody in the space defence community, I look on any such structure on the moon with great concern because it isn’t ours, there’s no way we could have built such a thing. It means someone else is up there. He’s also been quoted as saying: We were aware there was a possibility of an unknown presence, possibly alien/extraterrestrial near the Earth.... There I am sitting in a room of retired army and airforce generals and a few admirals, and we’re watching what looks like a firefight in space. The most senior general there... turned to me and said, “Where do you think they’re from?” and I said, “I don’t know sir, I’ve heard they’re from 40 light years from here.” Bradenburg was and still is a very respected academic. He did, however, open himself up to much criticism in 2012 when he suggested there was evidence of a thermonuclear war on Mars in the distant past. Since then, he has been heavily criticized, as has every one of the hundreds of credible witnesses that have now come forward to speak about the extraterrestrial reality. With more and more people like Brandenburg coming forward, the stigma associated with such claims is slowly being stripped away, giving others the courage to share their stories. Here are a few quotes from other academics, taken from a very long list: “Intelligent beings from other star systems have been and are visiting our planet Earth. They are variously referred to as Visitors, Others, Star People, ETs, etc.... They are visiting Earth NOW; this is not a matter of conjecture or wistful thinking.” – Theodore C. Loder III, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Earth Sciences, University of New Hampshire (source) “There is another way, whether it’s wormholes or warping space, there’s got to be a way to generate energy so that you can pull it out of the vacuum, and the fact that they’re here shows us that they found a way.” – Jack Kasher, Ph.D, Professor Emeritus of physics, University of Nebraska (source) “There is abundant evidence that we are being contacted, that civilizations have been visiting us for a very long time, that their appearance is bizarre from any kind of traditional materialistic western point of view, that these visitors use the technologies of consciousness, they use toroids, they use co-rotating magnetic disks for their propulsion systems, that seems to be a common denominator of the UFO phenomenon.” – Dr. Brian O’Leary, former NASA astronaut and Princeton physics professor (source)My daughters have been dancing competitively for 5 years now, and although I’m not a professional sports photographer, I have through trial and error, compiled my list of top 9 tips to getting that amazing dance image. I wish I had a top 10 because it sounds a lot more technical but for now I’ll just have to be content with 9, maybe next year I’ll come across the infamous number 10! My camera of choice is a Canon 5D Mark II camera body, and for these images I paired it with my 85mm 1.8 portrait lens. Although you may be afraid of your camera’s manual settings, they are truly the secret to getting those great images. Hopefully, something I’ve learned will bring a new perspective to your images. 1. No Flash Photography. For the safety of all performers, make sure your flash is always disabled. Remember, no matter how dark you think it is, there is always enough light projected onto the stage as long as you make use of high ISO settings. I like to use ISO 2000 or ISO 2500 for most indoor photography. 2. Large Open Aperture. I almost always use a large aperture setting like 2.8 or 3.2 to really focus my audience to the details of position and alignment. There is usually so much action going on during a dance that it can often be distracting with too many options to look at. I pick one dancer for each 8-16 counts and follow that person around. There are definitely times for large group images but I find the ones that really emote feeling are focused on a particular dancer. 3. Fast Shutter Speeds. In dance, you will rely heavily on fast shutter speeds to freeze your action. These girls are spinning, turning, and leaping so quickly that you will often just miss that magic moment. I like to use at least a 400 speed if not 500 if I can. 4. Take a lot of Pictures. Don’t be afraid to take 50-75 pictures per 3-minute dance. Sometimes the best shot is one that you weren’t intending to capture. 5. Choose an Alternate Angle of View. Sometimes it’s best to choose a side angle to shoot from. Most parents push and shove to get front and center seating for their daughter’s performances, and if you could only raise your seating 4 feet I would probably be bustling right there with them. However, in reality your eye level will usually land at their feet level, which sometimes doesn’t present the best angle of view for pictures. You will usually also be trying to shoot between judges heads or if you weren’t lucky enough to get that prized front row – the heads of other parents! I prefer instead to move to the side areas that are usually raised a little, or stand against the wall so as to not block others behind me. Often you’ll find this view presents new formations that aren’t seen from the front. 6. Lighting. The stage is usually set with varying degrees of lighting so just keep in mind that all your subjects will not be sharing the same light pool. It is almost impossible to capture all the dancers in the correct exposure, so as soon as you accept this you can feel free to focus on a lead dancer and let the light illuminate and bring focus to them while letting your other dancers form a backdrop. Feel free to play around with which performer you wish to correctly expose, sometimes I choose the front dancer while other times, if my daughter is in the middle group lost in the mix lol, I correctly expose her and underexpose the girls in front of her and overexpose those behind. 7. Focus Point. Don’t be afraid to use your far right or left focusing points to direct attention to the edges of your image. I used to simply leave the camera on center focus and follow the girls around, capturing all of action in the middle of the frame. After playing around at a few competitions, I actually prefer to have the focused dancer to the edge and then direct the viewer’s attention to the rest of the image. 8. Leaps and Jumps. These can be tricky. I try to stick to 2 basic rules; never rely on continuous shooting mode, and take 3 shots. Firstly, continuous shooting will likely lock your focus on your starting point so your chance of obtaining that great focused leap is slim to none. Secondly, when I say 3 shots I mean I take the first shot as the dancer leaves the ground, then by the time you are ready to hit the shutter button again your dancer is usually at the peak of her jump, then I take a final landing shot as sometimes the finish pose can be just as breathtaking. The 3 shot rule is very simplistic and will take some personal tweaking with time. The more attempts you make, the better you become at spotting that sweet shutter release spot. I just find if you force yourself to take the beginning shot you can usually erase the chance of shooting too early. 9. White Balance. Although listed last, it’s usually the first thing I tamper with at a competition. I will take test shots of other studios dances and check the color temperature of my camera. The stage is usually warm so I have to manually lower my color temperature to around 3200. This can change from one venue to the next but it is usually between 2900 and 3500. I tend to start at 3200 and go up and down from there. I find if I zoom in closely on a girl’s face I can tell if the image is going to be too warm or not. You also need to keep in mind that the stage is sometimes lit on purpose with red lights giving an overall warm tinge to skin tones. I play around with 2-3 different dance teams from other studios, until I find a setting I like and then I stick to it for the rest of the event. If you leave the camera set to AWB (automatic white balance) you will almost always have an orange or muddy tinge to your images. This can be minimized in post production, but really who wants to have to spend time correcting the color later if you can set it right at the beginning! That’s about it for my advice pool. Hopefully, there was something in there that will peak your interest and cause you to play around a little more. Sometimes the best images are those that are unexpected. While the front on full team image has a purpose, I believe the best images that evoke emotion are those taken from a different view, with a purpose in mind. Be creative, and let your vision shine! All the best…Melissa Related Share Share How to capture the Perfect Dance Image by Melissa Barnier-Tokarchik Facebook About the author Guest PostHouse Republicans drop rule change gutting ethics watchdog Read more The last time a Republican president took office after losing the popular vote, he made it clear that ethics were his highest priority. How could we tell? At every campaign stop, George W Bush ended his stump speech by raising his right hand and promising to uphold not just the laws of the land but what he called “the honor and dignity of the office”. For good measure, he added: “So help me God.” We may all need divine intervention to defend ethics inside the new US Congress and the new Trump administration. It’s not clear why the new Republican-dominated Congress thought it was a good idea to gut the Office of Congressional Ethics. But it is clear why they decided to abandon the plan: public pressure from social media and a deluge of phone calls to their offices. House Republicans apparently felt burdened by all those pesky investigations into their questionable conduct. But they couldn’t bring themselves to make that argument in public, so they voted to gut the office behind closed doors on a public holiday. Instead it was left to Kellyanne Conway, counselor to a swamp-draining president-elect, to defend the anti-ethics vote in public, telling ABC News: “There’s a mandate there for them to make significant change.” Outcry after Republicans vote to dismantle independent ethics body Read more Funny. The only Republican discussion of ethics through the election year was their insistence that Hillary Clinton was unqualified to be president because of her private email server. That’s even less of a mandate than President-elect Trump after losing the popular vote by almost 3 million. Conway complained, like all those oppressed members of Congress, that the ethics office suffered from “overzealousness”. “We don’t want people wrongly accused and we don’t want people mired in months if not years of ethical complaint review,” she explained. This from the campaign manager of a candidate who insisted there was a law and order crisis in America. It would be refreshing to hear Conway’s concerns about overzealous policing in US cities, or the suffering of people mired in years of criminal justice proceedings. Instead we got to hear a couple of tweets from her boss, who also criticized the ethics office as “unfair” before questioning the Republicans’ priorities. For that nudge on priorities, many in the media gave Trump all the credit for the House Republicans caving on its ethics evasions. Welcome to the slippery moral slope of Trump’s Washington. A president-elect who continues to enrich his own business through the course of his presidential transition chides a new Congress over ethics. Never mind the hypocrisy and lies about “draining the swamp”. Of course Trump thinks there are other priorities than ethics. Otherwise he wouldn’t be meeting with his Indian business partners, and his new Washington hotel might not do business with foreign diplomats. He might find his treasury decisions compromised by his large debts to foreign banks, his choice of IRS commissioner compromised by his personal tax audit and his new hotel lease compromised by the fact that he is now his own landlord. This is the same slippery slope that places the publisher of far-right garbage inside the West Wing. Steve Bannon hasn’t personally written racist or antisemitic stories; he was merely the executive chairman of Breitbart which published those stories. Just as Trump isn’t really going to deport millions of undocumented immigrants this month; he merely stoked racial resentment with that promise. Back in the 1990s, conservatives called this moral relativism Slouching Towards Gomorrah. Today the Republican party is slouching towards something uncomfortably close to Moscow. For the past eight years, the Republicans have been seized by an anti-Obama fever that was supposedly rooted in a constitutional defense against an abusive president. If there was any point of agreement between all those Republican primary candidates, it was the notion that Obama had ignored the founding fathers. And yet here we are on the brink of inaugurating a president who thinks nothing of Article I of that same constitution, and its clear prohibition against the kind of foreign dealings in which Trump is so expert. As ethics experts from both the Bush and Obama administrations have written, the founders saw the so-called emoluments clause as a way to stop corruption by foreign powers. If a president accepts any gifts and benefits from foreign nations, he faces the threat of impeachment. Instead the newly elected Trump claims, wrongly, that there is nothing to prevent him from being president of the United States and CEO of his company at the same time. “In theory I could run my business perfectly and then run the country perfectly,” he told the New York Times. It takes real leadership to create a culture of ethics, and it takes very little leadership to destroy any semblance of ethics. It’s only natural that the House Republicans would follow Trump’s lead by treating ethics as some kind of low-priority interference with their real business: business itself. Having sworn to uphold the dignity of the presidency, George W Bush kept his promise to keep his pants on in the Oval Office, after two years of the Monica Lewinsky saga. Setting aside a catastrophic war and approving torture, he was indeed true to his family. He also never sought to profit from the presidency through the kind of private business deals so beloved in banana republics. But even Bush’s presidency was undone by unethical conduct in Congress and a House Republican party that misunderstood the notion of a mandate. After finally winning the popular vote in the upset victory of 2004, the House set itself on an anti-immigrant path that destroyed Bush’s self-proclaimed political capital. Along the way, the same Republican party was embroiled in a series of corruption scandals personified by the disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The result of those scandals was nothing less than the creation of the congressional ethics office. After serving several years in prison, Abramoff (today a supporter of ethics reforms) now condemns the same party he once courted for having misread the voters’ desire for reform in last year’s election. “I guess some people in Washington still don’t get what happened in November,” he told Politico. Single-party rule rarely ends well. Two years after Bush’s thumping re-election, Democrats took control of Capitol Hill. Two years after Obama’s historic win in 2008, Republicans took back the House. The voters’ desire for reform will not be satisfied by the survival of the congressional ethics office. And it certainly won’t be satisfied by the sight of the Trump children running the president’s businesses. If Donald Trump fails to drain his own family swamp, he will quickly discover how you can win the electoral college but lose the battle for power.Instead of going over signs in the first catchers meeting of the year on Monday morning, Mauer was getting ready to participate in workouts with the rest of the dozen or so position players who have arrived in camp early before Friday's official report date. FORT MYERS, Fla. -- It was a strange sight when Joe Mauer strolled into the Twins' clubhouse for the first time on Monday, and didn't have his customary catcher gear with him. FORT MYERS, Fla. -- It was a strange sight when Joe Mauer strolled into the Twins' clubhouse for the first time on Monday, and didn't have his customary catcher gear with him. Instead of going over signs in the first catchers meeting of the year on Monday morning, Mauer was getting ready to participate in workouts with the rest of the dozen or so position players who have arrived in camp early before Friday's official report date. Twins manager Ron Gardenhire did a double take upon seeing Mauer -- who is making the transition to first base -- in his workout shorts, instead of getting ready to catch his first full bullpen of the spring. "It was really weird seeing him in the clubhouse, not going out with the pitchers and catchers and not strapped up and going out," Gardenhire said. "Going out in the short pants and going down to the other field, that was crazy. I haven't seen that in a while. Yeah, that was a little bit nuts. But I think he'll be better for it and I think it'll really help him out. I think it's going to give him a chance to play a lot more baseball." Mauer, 30, made the decision this offseason to give up catching after suffering a season-ending concussion on a foul tip while catching on Aug. 19. The six-time All-Star and former AL Most Valuable Player consulted both team doctors and doctors from the Mayo Clinic before making the decision to move to first base. It's still sinking in for Mauer, and he said he'll really feel it once the first official workouts begin this weekend. "I think it'll hit me more Saturday," Mauer said. "It's new to me. The first workouts I think will be a little different. I'm still working out, but it's definitely a little weird not being in catchers meetings and things like that. But it's good." First base isn't totally foreign to Mauer, who played 18 games there in 2011, 30 games in '12 and eight games last season. But Mauer is excited to learn the nuances of the position this spring, and plans to work with former Twins manager Tom Kelly, who arrives to camp on Friday, and is well-known for his work with first basemen. "I've played 50 games there, but that's just scratching the surface," Mauer said. "I kind of learned on the go. I look forward to focusing a lot of attention on that this spring. I'll be on that short field with TK quite a bit." Mauer added that he likely won't turn to video for help, as he likes to learn things while out on the field. He's already been working with first-base coach Joe Vavra on positioning at first base and said he'll also turn to Hall of Famer Paul Molitor for advice. But the main thing Mauer is looking forward to is staying healthy, as he believes the position change will allow him to see the field more often and protect him from suffering another concussion. "Physically, I'll be better," Mauer said. "I won't be taking foul tips off the shoulder or hand or legs. That will be nice. Not worrying about hitters as much or scouting reports during the season, I'll be able to focus on the offensive side, which will be good." Mauer also talked this offseason with former Twins first baseman Justin Morneau, who began his career as a catcher, about what to expect, and Morneau told him the biggest difference will come later in the season. Mauer also tinkered with his workout plan this offseason to account for the positional change, as he doesn't have to prepare for the rigors of catching. "He said it's a big difference," Mauer said. "He said, 'You're really going to notice it in September.' So I have a long time to wait for that, but I'm looking forward to it. It's new for me." Mauer believes his overall offensive numbers will improve with the position change, if only because he'll be playing in more games. Mauer's career high in games played is 147, set in '12, and he has played at least 140 games in just three of his 10 years in the big leagues. But Mauer was hesitant to make a prediction on just how much his numbers will improve, because he's still trying to simply wrap his head around the position change. "I think 20 more games playing that position, I think my numbers will be better, but I think it's a lot of unknowns, what is going to happen," Mauer said. "I'm not going to try to be anything I'm not. I'm going to go out there and just try to have good at-bats and play the game like I always have. It will just be at a different position."==================== WHY IS BATTLE FOR WHITE HOUSE ONLY CONTEST THAT'S A CLIFFHANGER? # # # # is A STEADY STREAM OF RACIALLY-CHARGED INCIDENTS AGAINST OBAMA CONGRESSMAN WESTMORELAND: OBAMAS 'UPPITY' EVEN FELLOW DEMOCRATS MAKE RACIAL SLIPS OF THE TONGUE Daily Breeze New York Observer EXPOSED: ANTI-OBAMA BOOK AUTHOR HAS TIES TO WHITE SUPREMACISTS The Obama Nation The Obama Nation VANDALS HIT OBAMA CAMPAIGN OFFICES -- AND A SUPPORTER'S HOME -- WITH RACIST GRAFFITI The Washington Post AFTER MAKING NUMEROUS THREATS, SUSPECTS ARRESTED IN ALLEGED PLOTS TO KILL OBAMA CONSERVATIVE GROUP SELLS IMAGES OF OBAMA IN RACIAL STEREOTYPES WHITE VOTERS' LIES TO POLLSTERS COST TOM BRADLEY '82 GOVERNOR'S RACE IN CALIFORNIA... ...WHILE LAST-MINUTE OVERT RACE-BAITING COST GANTT, FORD THEIR U.S. SENATE BIDS Love in Black and White OBAMA, MEDIA MUST FACE REALITY: RACE WILL BE A FACTOR IN '08 ELECTION must # # # Volume III, Number 55 Copyright 2008, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.One of the most distressing aspects of the state of the US economy is the decrease in social mobility. It is much, much harder now than it used to be for Americans to improve their circumstances. In other words, if Americans are born poor, they're overwhelmingly likely to stay poor. Similarly, if Americans are born rich, they have a much better chance of staying rich than someone born poor or middle class. No one minds inequality as long as one's station in life is a function of one's own decisions and effort. When inequality becomes the luck of the draw, however, if becomes much more profoundly unfair. America's social mobility is now not only one of the lowest in the country's history--it's one of the lowest in the first world. If that doesn't change, the fundamental promise of America for the past 250 years will disappear. The country will no longer be a place in which you can control your economic destiny. Rather, it will become the sort of society that so many of those who emigrated here sought to escape: A country in which your destiny is determined at birth. Earlier this week, professor Joseph Stiglitz sat down with my Yahoo colleague Aaron Task to talk about this issue. Here's the video and Aaron's writeup:Not too long ago, over on DonJones.com, I wrote an article that tried to explain some of the confusion between Microsoft's World of Management Instrumentation - e.g., WMI, OMI, CIM, and a bunch of other acronyms. I glossed over some of the finer details, and this article is intended to provide more specificity and accuracy - thanks to Microsoft's Keith Bankston for helping me sort things out. CIM and the DMTF Let us begin with CIM. CIM stands for Common Information Model, and it is not a tangible thing. It isn't even software. It's a set of standards that describe how management information can be represented in software, and it was created by the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), an industry working group that Microsoft is a member of. Old WMI, DCOM, and RPC Back in the day - we're talking Windows NT 4.0 timeframe - Microsoft created Windows Management Instrumentation, or WMI. This was a server component (technically, a background service, and it ran on Workstation as well as Server) that delivered up management information in the CIM format. Now, at the time, the CIM standards were pretty early in their life, and WMI complied with what existed at the time. But the standards themselves were silent on quite a few things, like what network communications protocol you'd use to actually talk to a server. Microsoft opted for Distributed Component Object Model, or DCOM, which was a very mainstream thing for them at the time. DCOM talks by using Remote Procedure Calls, or RPCs, also a very standard thing for Windows in those days. New WMI, WS-MAN, and WINRM Fast forward a bit to 2012. With Windows Management Framework 3, Microsoft releases a new version of WMI. They fail to give it a unique name, which causes a lot of confusion, but it complies with all the latest CIM specifications. There's still a server-side component, but this "new WMI" talks over WS-Management (Web Services for Management, often written as WS-MAN) instead of DCOM/RPC. Microsoft's implementation of WS-MAN lives in the Windows Remote Management (WinRM) service. The PowerShell cmdlets that talk this new kind of WMI all use CIM as part of the noun, giving us Get-CimInstance, Get-CimClass, Invoke-CimMethod, and so on. But make no mistake - these things aren't "talking CIM," because CIM isn't a protocol. They're talking WS-MAN, which is what the new CIM standard specifies. Sidebar: From a naming perspective, Microsoft was pretty much screwed with the new cmdlets' names, no matter what they called them. "Cim" is a terrible part of the noun. After all, the "old WMI" was compliant with the CIM of its day, but it didn't get to be called CIM. The new cmdlets don't use any technology called "Cim," they're merely compliant with the newest CIM standards. Maybe they should have been called something like Get-Wmi2Instance, or Invoke-NewWmiMethod, but that wasn't going to make anyone happy, either. So, Cim it is. OMI Now, at some point, folks noticed that implementing a full WMI/DCOM/RPC stack wasn't ever going to happen on anything but Windows. It was too big, too "heavy," and frankly too outdated by the time anyone noticed. But there was a big desire to have all this CIM-flavored stuff running elsewhere, like on routers, switches, Linux boxes, you name it. So Microsoft wrote Open Management Instrumentation, or OMI. This is basically a CIM-compliant server that speaks WS-MAN, just like the "new WMI." But it's really teeny-tiny, taking up just a few megabytes of storage and a wee amount of RAM. That makes it suitable for running on devices with constrained compute capacity, like routers and switches and whatnot. Microsoft open-sourced their OMI server code, making it a good reference item that other people could adopt, build on, and implement. Under the Hood: Provider
ratings company said General Musharraf’s decree had created “heightened and prolonged political uncertainty” in Pakistan with a “potential impact on economic growth, fiscal performance, and external vulnerability.” In street interviews, Pakistanis expressed sweeping opposition to General Musharraf’s emergency declaration. The general’s popularity, already low, appears to have further declined. Pakistanis complained that business had dropped off since the emergency declaration over the weekend, with Pakistanis staying at home rather than navigating more police checkpoints. And they dismissed General Musharraf’s claim that he needed additional powers to combat terrorism. The decree, they said, was a naked effort by the general to cling to power. They called for a return to democracy. “There are weak points in the political parties,” said Yasir Mehmood, a 31-year-old cellphone store owner, referring to corruption. “But one cannot deny that political parties and democracy are better than martial law.” One policeman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he and many other officers believed that General Musharraf was “not acting according to the law.” But he said they feared defying orders. “It would be good if he leaves with dignity,” the officer said. “Nobody respects him anymore.”Cheap game keys are a hot topic right now, particularly when it comes to fraudulent purchases and chargebacks for developers. You may have noticed some digital stores have managed to stay out of the headlines on this topic, particularly Humble Bundle, the good guys who sell keys for good prices and for a good cause. They’re very good, and now they’re speaking up about game key reselling and how they tackle the unscrupulous. What’s better than cheap? Our list of the best free games, for a start. In a recent blog post, Humble say they’ve “invested heavily” in anti-fraud technology and they lay out all the steps they’re taking to fight for this worthy cause. “Our first line of defense is a machine-learning-based anti-abuse startup called Sift Science, which we’ve been training for years across 55,000,000 transactions,” says Humble about the not-so-humble numbers. “Given how many orders we process, Sift Science has a really good idea when someone is up to no good. The model adapts daily as we get more data. “If the transaction risk is high, we ask the user to verify their phone number through SMS. This helps us confirm that our legit customers are who they say they are. We are able to ban fraudsters by phone numbers, which substantially raises the cost of attacking us. This can be annoying for legitimate customers, but thanks to our machine learning, only a tiny fraction get flagged for verification.” If the transaction still looks dodgy, the company escalates it to a manual review. Here customer services check through the transaction and the customer’s transaction history, among other things. Transactions will be blocked only if they’re sure, as “the only thing worse than fraudsters is blocking legitimate customers from getting their game”, which is another thing I have a lot of time for. Beyond these methods, captchas stop any cheeky robot robbers, while limit rates make sure the amount of games stolen stays humble. “So they might be able to steal two copies of a game,” Humble say, “but they’ll need to steal another credit card to steal the third. We were among the first test cases for Google’s latest captcha implementation. “We’re diligent about cancelling orders and the included digital goods when the rare transaction slips by us. Sometimes we find related transactions during a manual review, or even more rarely, a purchase results in a chargeback. When that happens, we cancel the order, revoke the download page and the Steam, uPlay, or Origin keys associated with that order. We send those keys back to the developer or publisher, and to the platform owner (Valve / Ubisoft / EA). The person holding that key loses access to the game. If they purchased it from a reseller, that means the reseller’s reputation is diminished.” It’s a daily job that has lots of resources pointed at it – the methods are always being tweaked and improved, just as the tactics of fraudsters change with the times. “We have great relationships with our payment processors,” explain Humble. “We even have shared Slack channels with PayPal and Stripe so that as we see problems, we work together in real time to diagnose, fix, and improve our joint system together.” These efforts have seen fraud reduced to a “tiny fraction of all the transactions” on Humble Bundle. Of course, not everywhere you buy from is quite as diligent, so what can you do to make sure the right person gets the money for your purchase? “Purchase from stores that have a known relationship with the developer or publisher, like the Humble Store,” say Humble. “If you get caught in one of these fraud checks, we apologise. “It’s an unfortunate necessity to protect our developers’ products. We ask for your patience while we work it out and forgiveness if we make a mistake. This most commonly happens to customers who are new or spending a lot in a short period of time.” This follows the recent controversy with key resellersG2A and developers speaking up against them.G2A have taken some steps to changealready, but whether it’s enough just yet remains to be seen.THOSE in the know at Richmond say you won't notice Dan Butler unless he wants you to. In that case, Butler clearly decided 2017 was his year to shine, because it's been impossible to miss him. There is his blinding speed, prominent place in the Tigers' mosquito fleet of forwards and that table tennis competition, which left housemate and teammate Jason Castagna with 'D.B' tattooed on his rear. And now his round 11 NAB AFL Rising Star nomination, after two goals, 13 disposals, six score involvements and four inside 50s in Saturday night's win over North Melbourne. Butler, 20, was drafted way back in 2014, but spent two years somewhat in the wilderness because of a knee injury in his debut season, then was left in the VFL in 2016. Three times he was a senior emergency last year – including the last two rounds – before a big pre-season and coach Damien Hardwick's increased focus on forward-half pressure created an opportunity. Butler made his AFL debut in round one and has missed only two games since because of a groin injury, forming a strong combination with Daniel Rioli, Castagna and, more recently, Shai Bolton. "It's been a long time coming … there were a few times where I was kind of in a dark place and questioned whether I was good enough to be here," Butler told AFL.com.au in March. "Form wasn't going my way, but I kept working hard and results came my way. "I've put in a fair bit of hard work the past year and it's paid off. It's a very exciting time for me and my family, and I can't wait. I'm pretty pumped for it." Butler has made a quick impression on Richmond's general manager of football, Neil Balme, since the latter returned to Punt Road in September last year. "He's a pretty quiet kid and naturally very modest, but he does have a strong belief in himself, which is clear with the way he's come on this year," Balme said. "He's also naturally very competitive, but not in an overt way – he just goes about his business. "Being recognised in this Rising Star capacity will be a really good thing for him, to have some confidence in himself. He won't admit it, but he will treasure it. "Some people get an opportunity really early. He's had to work very hard for his and he'll be quietly really chuffed about the fact he's been recognised." Balme is confident Butler has the makings of a midfielder in the future, or even a backman if the Tigers needed him there, such is the Lake Wendouree product's versatile skillset. But it is unlikely Hardwick will break up his small forward corps any time soon, given they have helped Richmond become the AFL's No.1 forward-half pressure side. Butler is the Tigers' first Rising Star nomination since Rioli in round 22 last year, but Balme predicted there could be more before season's end. "It's very hard to predict, but we do have a good bunch of kids who would be eligible," Balme said. "I won't put too many names in everyone else's heads, but there are a couple of them who play pretty close to this guy who play pretty good."As the death toll from opioids — both prescription and nonprescription — spiked to an estimated 33,000 in 2015, counties across the United States were filling dramatically different numbers of opioid prescriptions. In 1 in 5 U.S. counties, the number of prescriptions increased by more than 10 percent over five years, from 2010 to 2015. Half of all counties experienced reductions in prescriptions over that same time period. The data was previously described in a July report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and made available by The Associated Press last week. Quintiles IMS, a health technology company, provided the raw retail prescription data based on 59,000 pharmacies representing 88 percent of all U.S. prescriptions. The numbers reflect the amount of opioids prescribed using a standardized unit of measurement, morphine milligram equivalents, not the number of doctors’ prescriptions filled. The prescriptions are also shown in the county where they were filled, not where a patient lives. This could affect the numbers by, for example, making prescriptions look particularly high in counties located next to a county without a pharmacy. The data shows that changes in the amount of opioids being prescribed over the five-year span varied greatly by place. In 80 percent of Florida counties, some of which contained clinics unofficially labelled as “pill mills” (the name refers to the ease with which people could buy prescription pain medication), prescriptions dropped from 2010 to 2015. By 2015, many of these counties’ numbers were in line with the national average. Meanwhile, in the heart of Appalachia, the number of opioid prescriptions filled per capita dropped in many counties — even though numbers remained higher than figures in most of the U.S. In general, the places with the largest number of prescriptions filled tended to have more white residents and higher rates of poverty and unemployment, the CDC found in its study. Maps of the per capita opioid prescriptions by county and the change in those prescriptions over time reveal regional variations as well. Prescriptions are low and decreasing in much of the middle of the country. Ohio and Kentucky, two of the states that have been hit hardest by the opioid epidemic, have made some changes to curb inappropriate prescribing, according to the CDC. Those include mandating that doctors review a state database of prescribing data to monitor patients’ prescriptions and changing regulations on pain management clinics. Both states saw declines in prescriptions in a majority of counties. CORRECTION (Aug. 7, 1:10 p.m.): A previous version of this article misstated the annual number of drug overdose deaths that involve a prescription or non-prescription opioid. It is approximately 33,000, not 60,000. CORRECTION (Aug. 2, 11:07 a.m.): A previous version of this article incorrectly described U.S. opioid deaths. An estimated 60,000 people die each year from prescription and non-prescription opioids, not just prescription opioids.When Baltimore residents settle lawsuits alleging police brutality or other misconduct, they must promise to keep silent about the incidents that sparked the suits — an arrangement that shields key details from the public. The penalty for disobeying: Lawyers for the city may try to recoup tens of thousands of dollars from the settlement. But many other cities — including Washington, Philadelphia and Las Vegas — have rejected the use of such confidentiality clauses in an effort to increase the transparency of government operations. "The plaintiff can publicly discuss the case — no restrictions," Ted Gest, spokesman for the attorney general's office in Washington D.C., said as he described that city's policy. Jeffrey Furbee, assistant city attorney in Columbus, Ohio, said such clauses in public lawsuits "would be illegal. We are an open-records state." Baltimore's standard settlement agreement has drawn criticism from defense lawyers and some city officials after it was highlighted in an investigation by The Baltimore Sun. The investigation revealed the city spent $5.7 million on 102 court judgments and settlements for alleged police misconduct since 2011, and critics said the nondisparagement clause helped keep the scope of misconduct allegations from becoming widely known. The clause states that limitations on "public statements shall include a prohibition in discussing any facts or allegations … with the news media," except to say the suit has been settled. In recent years, a wide range of residents have settled civil suits for significant amounts. For example, an 87-year-old woman who alleged that an officer shoved her against a wall received $95,000. A pregnant accountant was awarded $125,000 after alleging that an encounter with an officer left her facedown — bleeding and bruised — on a sidewalk. In those and other settlements, the city and officers do not acknowledge any wrongdoing. But the risks of violating terms of the agreement became clear in October, when city lawyers cut the amount of another settlement. They withheld $31,500 — about half the settlement — from a woman who had posted online comments about her allegations of police brutality. Since The Sun's investigation was published in September, the Police Department and city have taken steps to provide more information about misconduct allegations. For example, city officials began posting the outcomes of all civil lawsuits alleging police brutality and vowed to give the city spending board more details about proposed settlements. City Solicitor George Nilson also said his department would reconsider the policy of requiring plaintiffs to keep silent after settlements are reached, and pledged to determine whether the nondisparagement clause is consistent with best practices. City lawyers could not say how long it has been used in Baltimore. Previously, city lawyers told The Sun that the clause is common in legal settlements. "We don't want to pay taxpayers' money and then have people saying things that they couldn't say in court. Some facts are hotly disputed," David Ralph, deputy city solicitor, said last summer in addressing questions about the settlements. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake expects to have results from the law department's best-practices study sometime in January. Her spokesman said the mayor will eliminate the clause if it is a bad policy. "The mayor looks forward to getting the law department's report to see if there are additional ways to bring more transparency to the process," Kevin Harris said. He added, "You don't order studies and be afraid of the results." Clauses preventing public discussion of such settlements are common in the private sector, where they are seen as a tool to help resolve cases in which no one is admitting wrongdoing. But critics say they should not be part of cases settled using taxpayers' money. As the General Assembly's 2015 session nears, some lawmakers said Maryland should consider a law banning nondisparagement clauses in settlements for police misconduct. "If settlements are paid with public money, there shouldn't be a confidentiality clause," said Del. Curt Anderson, a Democrat who chairs Baltimore's House delegation in Annapolis and a proponent of bringing more transparency to police issues. "I would clearly agree with a law that would ban that clause in any agreement with public dollars." State Sen. Bill Ferguson, a Baltimore Democrat, said transparency is the best "disinfectant" in lawsuits that involve public funds. Banning the clause in police misconduct lawsuits makes sense, he added. "That would be a positive step to make [misconduct] go away," he said. "We should learn from other cities." Del. Jill P. Carter, who has already pledged to propose changing a state law that guarantees procedural protections for officers accused of misconduct, agreed. "It's something we should explore," she said about enacting a new law. In October, Baltimore Police Commissioner Anthony W. Batts asked the U.S. Department of Justice to review his agency and help with reforms. He praised similar efforts in Las Vegas and Philadelphia. Those cities underwent federal reviews to stem excessive-force cases after paying millions in recent years to settle lawsuits. In 1991, long before the Las Vegas review began, Nevada lawmakers banned any confidentiality connected to lawsuits settled with public money. At the time, some public agencies were shielding names and settlement amounts, records show. "We don't do that here," Clark County counsel Mary Miller said about making residents remain silent when settling lawsuits with Las Vegas police. A similar policy exists 90 miles north of Baltimore. "The city cannot ask forconfidentiality in settlements," said Officer Jillian Russell, Philadelphia police spokeswoman. "It is an open public record under our state statute." Mark McDonald, spokesman for Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, said the city does not expect residents to remain silent after settling police lawsuits. Even "if we wanted to, we could not" enforce an agreement, he added. Since officials announced the federal review in Baltimore, Ronald L. Davis, the Justice Department's director of the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, said police departments need to be open, transparent, accountable and engaging to be reformed. City officials are aware that one of the Justice Department's objectives is openness, Harris said, but he stressed that Rawlings-Blake didn't want to make a rash decision to eliminate the nondisclosure clause without researching the topic. He also noted the city's decision last month to begin posting online the outcomes of all civil lawsuits alleging police brutality.On This Day Tuesday 15th December 1896 122 years ago The U.S. government awarded Patent Number 573,174 to inventor Stephen M. Balzer of New York, for a gasoline-powered motor buggy that he built two years earlier. Balzer never mass-produced any of his cars, but his "experimental" vehicle was one of the first functioning automobiles to be built in the United States. Today, the Balzer car is on display at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. It was the first gas-powered car in the museum's collection. In 1894, Balzer was working in the machine-manufacturing business by day; by night, he was building an internal-combustion motor car that he hoped would make him famous. The Balzer car had a three-cylinder, air-cooled rotary motor. It was open at the top and sides, so it looked a bit like a park bench held awkwardly aloft by four pneumatic bicycle tires. Unlike other autos of the era, the Balzer's rear wheels were much larger than its front wheels--they were 28 and 18 inches across, respectively. This design quirk helped the car to keep its traction and its maneuverability. (Some modern-day tractors still use this wheel configuration.) Though his car could not go faster than 4 miles per hour, New York City police officers still insisted that Balzer be accompanied on his test-drives by an assistant marching ahead of the sputtering vehicle, warning pedestrians out of the way by waving a giant red flag.The secret rules of the internet The murky history of moderation, and how it’s shaping the future of free speech By Catherine Buni & Soraya Chemaly | Illustrations by Eric Petersen Julie Mora-Blanco remembers the day, in the summer of 2006, when the reality of her new job sunk in. A recent grad of California State University, Chico, Mora-Blanco had majored in art, minored in women’s studies, and spent much of her free time making sculptures from found objects and blown-glass. Struggling to make rent and working a post-production job at Current TV, she’d jumped at the chance to work at an internet startup called YouTube. Maybe, she figured, she could pull in enough money to pursue her lifelong dream: to become a hair stylist. This article was reported in partnership with The Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute It was a warm, sunny morning, and she was sitting at her desk in the company’s office, located above a pizza shop in San Mateo, an idyllic and affluent suburb of San Francisco. Mora-Blanco was one of 60-odd twenty-somethings who’d come to work at the still-unprofitable website. Mora-Blanco’s team — 10 people in total — was dubbed The SQUAD (Safety, Quality, and User Advocacy Department). They worked in teams of four to six, some doing day shifts and some night, reviewing videos around the clock. Their job? To protect YouTube’s fledgling brand by scrubbing the site of offensive or malicious content that had been flagged by users, or, as Mora-Blanco puts it, "to keep us from becoming a shock site." The founders wanted YouTube to be something new, something better — "a place for everyone" — and not another eBaum’s World, which had already become a repository for explicit pornography and gratuitous violence. Mora-Blanco sat next to Misty Ewing-Davis, who, having been on the job a few months, counted as an old hand. On the table before them was a single piece of paper, folded in half to show a bullet-point list of instructions: Remove videos of animal abuse. Remove videos showing blood. Remove visible nudity. Remove pornography. Mora-Blanco recalls her teammates were a "mish-mash" of men and women; gay and straight; slightly tipped toward white, but also Indian, African-American, and Filipino. Most of them were friends, friends of friends, or family. They talked and made jokes, trying to make sense of the rules. "You have to find humor," she remembers. "Otherwise it’s just painful." Videos arrived on their screens in a never-ending queue. After watching a couple seconds apiece, SQUAD members clicked one of four buttons that appeared in the upper right hand corner of their screens: "Approve" — let the video stand; "Racy" — mark video as 18-plus; "Reject" — remove video without penalty; "Strike" — remove video with a penalty to the account. Click, click, click. But that day Mora-Blanco came across something that stopped her in her tracks. "Oh, God," she said. That day Mora-Blanco came across something that stopped her in her tracks Mora-Blanco won’t describe what she saw that morning. For everyone’s sake, she says, she won’t conjure the staggeringly violent images which, she recalls, involved a toddler and a dimly lit hotel room. Ewing-Davis calmly walked Mora-Blanco through her next steps: hit "Strike," suspend the user, and forward the person’s account details and the video to the SQUAD team’s supervisor. From there, the information would travel to the CyberTipline, a reporting system launched by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in 1998. Footage of child exploitation was the only black-and-white zone of the job, with protocols outlined and explicitly enforced by law since the late 1990s. The video disappeared from Mora-Blanco’s screen. The next one appeared. Ewing-Davis said, "Let’s go for a walk." Okay. This is what you’re doing, Mora-Blanco remembers thinking as they paced up and down the street. You’re going to be seeing bad stuff. Almost a decade later, the video and the child in it still haunt her. "In the back of my head, of all the images, I still see that one," she said when we spoke recently. "I really didn’t have a job description to review or a full understanding of what I’d be doing. I was a young 25-year-old and just excited to be getting paid more money. I got to bring a computer home!" Mora-Blanco’s voice caught as she paused to collect herself. "I haven’t talked about this in a long time." Mora-Blanco is one of more than a dozen current and former employees and contractors of major internet platforms from YouTube to Facebook who spoke to us candidly about the dawn of content moderation. Many of these individuals are going public with their experiences for the first time. Their stories reveal how the boundaries of free speech were drawn during a period of explosive growth for a high-stakes public domain, one that did not exist for most of human history. As law professor Jeffrey Rosen first said many years ago of Facebook, these platforms have "more power in determining who can speak and who can be heard around the globe than any Supreme Court justice, any king or any president." Launched in 2005, YouTube was the brainchild of Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim—three men in their 20s who were frustrated because technically there was no easy way for them to share two particularly compelling videos: clips of the 2004 tsunami that had devastated southeast Asia, and Janet Jackson’s Superbowl "wardrobe malfunction." In April of 2005, they tested their first upload. By October, they had posted their first one million-view hit: Brazilian soccer phenom Ronaldinho trying out a pair of gold cleats. A year later, Google paid an unprecedented $1.65 billion to buy the site. Mora-Blanco got a title: content policy strategist, or in her words, "middle man." Sitting between the front lines and content policy, she handled all escalations from the front-line moderators, coordinating with YouTube’s policy analyst. By mid-2006, YouTube viewers were watching more than 100 million videos a day. In its earliest days, YouTube attracted a small group of people who mostly shared videos of family and friends. But as volume on the site exploded, so did the range of content: clips of commercial films and music videos were being uploaded, as well as huge volumes of amateur and professional pornography. (Even today, the latter eclipses every other category of violating content.) Videos of child abuse, beatings, and animal cruelty followed. By late 2007, YouTube had codified its commitment to respecting copyright law through the creation of a Content Verification Program. But screening malicious content would prove to be far more complex, and required intensive human labor. They followed a guiding-light question: "Can I share this video with my family?" Sometimes exhausted, sometimes elated, and always under intense pressure, the SQUAD reviewed all of YouTube’s flagged content, developing standards as they went. They followed a guiding-light question: "Can I share this video with my family?" For the most part, they worked independently, debating and arguing among themselves; on particularly controversial issues, strategists like Mora-Blanco conferred with YouTube’s founders. In the process, they drew up some of the earliest outlines for what was fast becoming a new field of work, an industry that had never before been systematized or scaled: professional moderation. By fall 2006, working with data and video illustrations from the SQUAD, YouTube’s lawyer, head of policy, and head of support created the company’s first booklet of rules for the team, which, Mora-Blanco recalls, was only about six pages long. Like the one-pager that preceded it, copies of the booklet sat on the table and were constantly marked up, then updated with new bullet points every few weeks or so. No booklet could ever be complete, no policy definitive. This small team of improvisers had yet to grasp that they were helping to develop new global standards for free speech. In 2007, the SQUAD helped create YouTube’s first clearly articulated rules for users. They barred depictions of pornography, criminal acts, gratuitous violence, threats, spam, and hate speech. But significant gaps in the guidelines remained — gaps that would challenge users as well as the moderators. The Google press office, which now handles YouTube communications, did not agree to an interview after multiple requests. As YouTube grew up, so did the videos uploaded to it: the platform became an increasingly important host for newsworthy video. For members of the SQUAD, none of whom had significant journalism experience, this sparked a series of new decisions. In the summer of 2009, Iranian protesters poured into the streets, disputing the presidential victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Dubbed the Green Movement, it was one of the most significant political events in the country’s post-Revolutionary history. Mora-Blanco, soon to become a senior content specialist, and her team — now dubbed Policy and more than two-dozen strong — monitored the many protest clips being uploaded to YouTube. On June 20th, the team was confronted with a video depicting the death of a young woman named Neda Agha-Soltan. The 26-year-old had been struck by a single bullet to the chest during demonstrations against pro-government forces and a shaky cell-phone video captured her horrific last moments: in it, blood pours from her eyes, pooling beneath her. Within hours of the video’s upload, it became a focal point for Mora-Blanco and her team. As she recalls, the guidelines they’d developed offered no clear directives regarding what constituted newsworthiness or what, in essence, constituted ethical journalism involving graphic content and the depiction of death. But she knew the video had political significance and was aware that their decision would contribute to its relevance. Mora-Blanco and her colleagues ultimately agreed to keep the video up. It was fueling important conversations about free speech and human rights on a global scale and was quickly turning into a viral symbol of the movement. It had tremendous political power. They had tremendous political power. And the clip was already available elsewhere, driving massive traffic to competing platforms. The Policy team worked quickly with the legal department to relax its gratuitous violence policy, on the fly creating a newsworthiness exemption. An engineer swiftly designed a button warning that the content contained graphic violence — a content violation under normal circumstances — and her team made the video available behind it, where it still sits today. Hundreds of thousands of individuals, in Iran and around the world, could witness the brutal death of a pro-democracy protester at the hands of government. The maneuvers that allowed the content to stand took less than a day. Today, YouTube’s billion-plus users upload 400 hours of video every minute. Every hour, Instagram users generate 146 million "likes" and Twitter users send 21 million tweets. Last August, Mark Zuckerberg posted on Facebook that the site had passed "an important milestone: For the first time ever, one billion people used Facebook in a single day." The moderators of these platforms — perched uneasily at the intersection of corporate profits, social responsibility, and human rights — have a powerful impact on free speech, government dissent, the shaping of social norms, user safety, and the meaning of privacy. What flagged content should be removed? Who decides what stays and why? What constitutes newsworthiness? Threat? Harm? When should law enforcement be involved? While public debates rage about government censorship and free speech on college campuses, customer content management constitutes the quiet transnational transfer of free-speech decisions to the private, corporately managed corners of the internet where people weigh competing values in hidden and proprietary ways. Moderation, explains Microsoft researcher Kate Crawford, is "a profoundly human decision-making process about what constitutes appropriate speech in the public domain." Moderation is "a profoundly human decision-making process." During a panel at this year’s South by Southwest, Monika Bickert, Facebook’s head of global product policy, shared that Facebook users flag more than one million items of content for review every day. The stakes of moderation can be immense. As of last summer, social media platforms — predominantly Facebook — accounted for 43 percent of all traffic to major news sites. Nearly two-thirds of Facebook and Twitter users access their news through their feeds. Unchecked social media is routinely implicated in sectarian brutality, intimate partner violence, violent extremist recruitment, and episodes of mass bullying linked to suicides. Content flagged as violent — a beating or beheading — may be newsworthy. Content flagged as "pornographic" might be political in nature, or as innocent as breastfeeding or sunbathing. Content posted as comedy might get flagged for overt racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny, homophobia, or transphobia. Meanwhile content that may not explicitly violate rules is sometimes posted by users to perpetrate abuse or vendettas, terrorize political opponents, or out sex workers or trans people. Trolls and criminals exploit anonymity to dox, swat, extort, exploit rape, and, on some occasions, broadcast murder. Abusive men threaten spouses. Parents blackmail children. In Pakistan, the group Bytes for All — an organization that previously sued the Pakistani government for censoring YouTube videos — released three case studies showing that social media and mobile tech cause real harm to women in the country by enabling rapists to blackmail victims (who may face imprisonment after being raped), and stoke sectarian violence. A prevailing narrative, as one story in The Atlantic put it, is that the current system of content moderation is "broken." For users who’ve been harmed by online content, it is difficult to argue that "broken" isn’t exactly the right word. But something must be whole before it can fall apart. Interviews with dozens of industry experts and insiders over 18 months revealed that moderation practices with global ramifications have been marginalized within major firms, undercapitalized, or even ignored. To an alarming degree, the early seat-of-the-pants approach to moderation policy persists today, hidden by an industry that largely refuses to participate in substantive public conversations or respond in detail to media inquiries. In an October 2014 Wired story, Adrian Chen documented the work of front line moderators operating in modern-day sweatshops. In Manila, Chen witnessed a secret "army of workers employed to soak up the worst of humanity in order to protect the rest of us." Media coverage and researchers have compared their work to garbage collection, but the work they perform is critical to preserving any sense of decency and safety online, and literally saves lives — often those of children. For front-line moderators, these jobs can be crippling. Beth Medina, who runs a program called SHIFT (Supporting Heroes in Mental Health Foundational Training), which has provided resilience training to Internet Crimes Against Children teams since 2009, details the severe health costs of sustained exposure to toxic images: isolation, relational difficulties, burnout, depression, substance abuse, and anxiety. "There are inherent difficulties doing this kind of work," Chen said, "because the material is so traumatic." Even basic facts about the content moderation industry remain a mystery But as hidden as that army is, the orders it follows are often even more opaque — crafted by an amalgam of venture capitalists, CEOs, policy, community, privacy and trust and safety managers, lawyers, and engineers working thousands of miles away. Sarah T. Roberts is an assistant professor of Information and Media Studies at Western University and author of the forthcoming Behind the Screen: Digitally Laboring in Social Media’s Shadow World. She says "commercial content moderation" — a term she coined to denote the kind of professional, organized moderation featured in this article — is not a cohesive system, but a wild range of evolving practices spun up as needed, subject to different laws in different countries, and often woefully inadequate for the task at hand. These practices routinely collapse under the weight and complexity of new challenges — as the decisions moderators make engage ever more profound matters of legal and human rights, with outcomes that affect users, workers, and our digital public commons. As seen with Black Lives Matter or the Arab Spring, whether online content stays or goes has the power to shape movements and revolutions, as well as the sweeping policy reforms and cultural shifts they spawn. Yet, even basic facts about the industry remain a mystery. Last month, in a piece titled "Moderating Facebook: The Dark Side of Social Networking," Who Is Hosting This? suggested that one third of "Facebook’s entire workforce" is comprised of moderators, a number Facebook refutes as an overestimate. Content moderation is fragmented into in-house departments, boutique firms, call centers, and micro-labor sites, all complemented by untold numbers of algorithmic and automated products. Hemanshu Nigam, founder of SSP Blue, which advises companies in online safety, security, and privacy, estimates that the number of people working in moderation is "well over 100,000." Others speculate that the number is many times that. At industry leaders such as Facebook, Pinterest, and YouTube, the moderation process is improving drastically; at other platforms it might as well be 2006. There, systems are tied to the hands-off approach of an earlier era, and continue to reflect distinct user and founder sensibilities. At 4chan, for example, users are instructed against violating US law but are also free to post virtually any type of content, as long as they do so on clearly defined boards. According to the site’s owner Hiroyuki Nishimura, 4chan still relies heavily on a volunteer system of user-nominated "janitors." These janitors, Nishimura said in a recent email exchange, play a critical role, "tasked with keeping the imageboards free of rule-breaking content." As a janitor application page on the website lays out, "Janitors are able to view the reports queue, delete posts, and submit ban and warn requests" for their assigned board. 4chan janitors, Nishimura said, use "chat channels," to discuss content questions with supervising moderators, some paid, some unpaid. "If they can’t decide," he wrote, "they ask me, so that I’m the last one in 4chan. And, in case I couldn’t judge. I asked with lawyers." Even after more than a decade, 4chan remains a site frequently populated by harassment and threats. Content has included everything from widespread distribution of nonconsensual porn, to "Niggerwalk" memes, to racist mobs evoking Hitler and threatening individual users. "People who try to do bad things use YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and 4chan also," Nishimura told us. "As long as such people live in the world, it happens. Right now, I don’t know how to stop them and I really want to know. If there is a way to stop it, we definitely follow the way." The details of moderation practices are routinely treated as trade secrets The details of moderation practices are routinely hidden from public view, siloed within companies and treated as trade secrets when it comes to users and the public. Despite persistent calls from civil society advocates for transparency, social media companies do not publish details of their internal content moderation guidelines; no major platform has made such guidelines public. Very little is known about how platforms set their policies — current and former employees like Mora-Blanco and others we spoke to are constrained by nondisclosure agreements. Facebook officials Monika Bickert and Ellen Silver, head of Facebook’s Community Support Team, responded to questions regarding their current moderation practices, and Pinterest made safety manager Charlotte Willner available for an interview. However, Facebook and Pinterest, along with Twitter, Reddit, and Google, all declined to provide copies of their past or current internal moderation policy guidelines. Twitter, Reddit, and Google also declined multiple interview requests before deadline. When asked to discuss Twitter’s Trust and Safety teams’ operations, for example, a spokesperson wrote only: "Our rules are designed to
was the fifth planet. I am not fully convinced myself." Nesvorny's research is detailed online in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters. © 2011 TechMediaNetwork.com. All rights reserved.The hostage situation started in the town of Pfaffenhofen in Upper Bavaria at 8.30 am on Monday morning when a 28-year-old man barricaded himself into the third story office of a caseworker at the office. The young man then threatened the 31-year-old woman with a knife and inflicted a wound on her upper body, police report. By rolling down the shutters on the upper floor of the building he was able to block off all possible visible contact the police could have established. What followed was a nerve-wracking standoff between police and the hostage taker, which lasted for several hours. As a first step the police evacuated everyone who was still in the building. The surrounding area was then evacuated, while special forces (SEK) moving into the cordoned-off zone. Ambulances also arrived to be on standby in the event of casualties. A negotiating team managed to make contact with the hostage taker via telephone. While the hostage situation was still in progress, a police spokesperson confirmed that the negotiators were trying to persuade the man to allow his captive to leave unharmed. When the woman asked to be able to speak to a doctor in the early afternoon, the SEK team stormed the building and overpowered the man. No shots were fired in the operation. "They made the most of a good opportunity," the police spokesman said. The victim was suffering psychologically in the wake of the incident but had not sustained any serious physical injury, the police announced. The hostage taker was also not seriously injured. The motive for the hostage taking is still not completely clear, but police have indicated that it had something to do with a conflict over care of the young man’s child. The man is believed to have known the caseworker in a professional capacity.Australia’s national rail network will reportedly be privatised, possibly through a share market listing, under plans to be announced in the federal budget tomorrow night. Treasurer Joe Hockey will outline a plan to sell the Australian Rail Track Corporation as part of a suite of measures to shrink bureaucracy and provide an exit for government from some areas of operations where the private sector can step in. The ARTC manages over 8,500kms of interstate track across South Australia, Victoria, WA, Queensland and NSW. It maintains the national rail network, runs its capital investment, and sells access to rail operators. The sale has been discussed as an option for years and was contemplated by the Commission of Audit in its report to the government last year. The audit commission noted: In 2012-13, the Corporation reported annual infrastructure maintenance expenses of $174.6 million. Also, in recent years there has been a significant level of investment as part of past stimulus packages, resulting in improved track reliability and transit times on some sections of track. A major capital investment programme in excess of $3 billion is committed to 2017-18. However, the audit commission also said “in recent years some of the capital projects undertaken by the Australian Rail Track Corporation have had marginal benefit-cost ratios, were not needed to meet future demand projections or did not effectively address expected capacity constraints”. The commission valued the fixed assets of the ARTC at $4.4 billion. (For comparison, the Medibank Private float last year raised almost $5.7 billion.) With the government facing a deficit of some $45 billion, a valuation in that region won’t put a huge dent in the red column, but it all helps. There’s more at The Australian. Business Insider Emails & Alerts Site highlights each day to your inbox. Email Address Join Follow Business Insider Australia on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.I'd like to thank @Team_Kaliber for all they have done for me. I would like to announce my departure from the tK roster! I love @Sharp_tK @Goonjar and @Namelesslike brothers and will always look after them as brothers. Outside the game we had tons of fun and I cherished every moment a part of the team. Every player on the team is very skilled in their own right however our team didn't mesh on a consistent basis and had we stayed together our placements would have continued to be poor and inconsistent so for the best of the team and the best for myself I decided to part ways and continue my career elsewhere. As of now I am looking for a team for season 3. Thank you for your support and most of all thank you @Kosdff for everything you have done for me while I was on the squad. Reply · Report PostDavid Gregory just interviewed McCain spokesperson Nicole Wallace on MSNBC, and kept asking her if McCain would bring up Bill Ayers tonight. When Wallace criticized Ayers, that's how Gregory responded - by asking if McCain would make those same points tonight. That's just an inept question. All it does is give Wallace a chance to bash Obama. And there's no upside: who cares what Nicole Wallace says at 6 pm about whether McCain will bring something up at 9 pm? We'll find out whether he will soon enough. The blindingly obvious question would have been to ask Wallace about McCain's ties to Gordon Liddy, who served four and a half years in prison as a result of his role in Watergate, plotted to murder journalist Jack Anderson and Howard Hunt and to firebomb the Brookings Institution, and who instructed radio audiences in the 1990s to shoot federal law enforcement agents and bragged that he named his own shooting targets after Bill and Hillary Clinton. McCain and Liddy are buddies. Of course, Gregory didn't do that. Instead of asking her about McCain's own close ties to criminals, Gregory just invited her to attack Obama. UPDATE: Now David Gregory is sitting there as former Nixon aide Pat Buchanan attacks Obama over Ayers. Surely Gregory will ask Pat Buchanan about McCain & Liddy? No.Your message has been sent successfully The Mississippi Senate on Tuesday passed "Mississippi Church Protection Act, opening the door to houses of worship forming militias there. The Act would, in part, "provide that killing a person while acting as a participant of a church or place of worship security team is justifiable homicide." Such church security teams would authorize "designated members... to carry firearms for the protection of the congregation of such church or place of worship." Advertisement: Permissible firearms, according to the bill, include "a stun gun, concealed pistol or concealed revolver." The bill will now return to the House of origin for further deliberation before it reaches Republican Gov. Phil Bryant's desk. What the Act effectively allows is for churches to form militias. And the red-tape requirements to form these armed militias are only marginally more stringent than getting a firearms permit in the state of Mississippi. Assuming you already have a permit, all you need to do is take "an instructional course in the safe handling and use of firearms," and then, congratulations, you're certified to pack heat at your church! In explaining the legislative precedence for the Act, Republican state Sen. Sean Tindell cited the shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, where a lone white supremacist, Dylann Roof, shot and killed nine black members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church last June. Tindell argued that the bill would "allow a church to have a sergeant-at-arms to protect the church body." Advertisement: The bill passed in the State Senate 36-14, despite opposition from Democratic state Sen. Hillman Frazier, who "waved a sheathed sword and quoted Bible Scripture as he argued against passage of the bill," according to the Jackson Clarion-Ledger. Contrary to the well-known proverb, the (sheathed) sword is apparently not in fact mightier than the pen (nor, in this case, the stun gun, concealed pistol, or concealed revolver).Bjork's 'Biophilia': Interactive Music, Pushing Boundaries Enlarge this image toggle caption Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin Bjork's new album, Biophilia, is also an interactive multimedia project. Inez van Lamsweerde & Vinoodh Matadin The title of Bjork's new album came to her after she read a book by neurologist Oliver Sachs about the mind's empathy for music. Hear The Music Crystalline Cosmogony "He called it'musicophilia,' she says. "Obviously, I make music, but I wanted to do a project about nature. So I thought, if I call it Biophilia, it's sort of empathy with nature." So there are song titles like "Solstice," "Dark Matter" and "Crystalline." The lyrics actually touch on processes in nature — for instance, how crystals grow. During the time that Bjork was writing Biophilia, the iPad came out. Bjork says she was intrigued by the touch-screen technology and the creative possibilities it presented. She'd seen music apps before, but found most of them pretty superficial — just updates about tours or an extra interview. She says she wanted to go beyond that. "The interactiveness goes really to the core of the music, the structure of the song," Bjork says. "It's not just something like an accessory.... It is the song." Bjork fans with iPads or iPhones (there's no Android version yet) can download a main app for Biophilia that's free. You tap on it and open up to a black background with white, glowing starlike objects. Using your fingers to swipe and tap, the universe expands and turns, and bits of music and songs emerge. Each song has its own star. You tap on it, and you can buy its app for $1.99 from the iTunes Store. Each one has essays about music and science, and each interacts with its song in a different way. Take "Thunderbolt," whose arpeggiated bass line you can change by tapping on a lightning icon. "You change the speed of the arpeggio, or the range," Bjork says. "Basically, you're like this crazy lightning bass player." Songs As Games In "Virus," Bjork turns a virus into a sort of natural femme fatale, to create a narrative about love so strong it kills the object of its affection — living cells. The app for that song, as well as several others, was designed by Scott Snibbe — he also helped coordinate the efforts of the other designers, who hailed from all over the world. "Virus," he says, works a bit like a game, in which beautiful pink cells are attacked by spiky green viruses. "You can try to save the cell," Snibbe says, "but if you succeed in saving the cell the song stops progressing. And meanwhile, the cells around are singing along: You see nuclei turn into lips that sing along with the song." Bjork says her view of nature is hardly romantic, and that she took care to ensure that the project didn't become Disney-fied. "Coming from Iceland... nature is anything but cute," she says. "I could never really understand why, when people think of nature, they think of flower power and acoustic guitars. It's very creative, nature. But it's also very destructive." Musical Education Scott Snibbe says he and Bjork communicated regularly, sometimes exchanging hundreds of emails a day. They also worked with scientists to make the apps as scientifically accurate as they could. But, Snibbe says, the project is more about whetting people's appetites than providing a lesson plan. "It gets you excited to learn more about it. If you associate viruses with a great song by Bjork and this emotional, strange, animated love story, then you might pay attention a little bit more in class," Snibbe says. "Or you might type it into Google and see a little bit about how it works." Bjork says she wants to help people explore. Rather than schedule a traditional concert tour, with a day or two in each city, she plans residencies that will last for two months or more in 10 cities around the world. She'll play a couple nights a week and then spend time at a local museum, working with kids on music and science projects. Bjork says watching her 8-year-old daughter play with the Biophilia app of the solar system made her she realize its potential. "She knew more about the solar system than I learned from five years of school — that certain things are not meant to be in a book, you know? If... it's more like a little game, then you understand it in 3D, like in space," Bjork says. "Music is like this: You cannot learn it from a book." But Bjork says music is still central to Biophilia. People can buy the apps and play along, or they can just buy the CD, which she says will hold up on its own. Her multimedia experiment is attracting a lot of attention from people in the music industry, who hope it'll inspire a new way of making and selling albums to consumers, who seem to want to do more now than just listen.WADE'S WOES CONTINUE Let's get this straight: LeBron now comes up big late in games, yet Wade has become unreliable? Cory Wade, that is. The righty reliever continued his recent slump with four runs allowed in the ninth inning before Rafael Soriano was needed to record the final out in a 6-4 win over the Indians. "He's been struggling," Joe Girardi said of Wade. "I'm sure he's gone through this before. Everyone's going to go through it. We saw a guy who has almost 3,200 hits (Derek Jeter) go through (a slump) for two months last year. "It's different sometimes when it's a pitcher. It makes it a feel a little different, and it doesn't make it any easier to know that some of the greatest players of all-time have struggled, but we have to get him right. That's the bottom line." Wade, who posted a 2.04 ERA in 40 games for the Yanks last season, has been pounded for nine earned runs on 14 hits in just 6 2/3 innings over his last 10 appearances to boost his ERA to 4.45. GARDED PESSIMISM Brett Gardner's return to the Yankees before the All-Star break isn't likely to happen. Gardner, who has endured more than one setback since first injuring his right elbow in mid-April, will accompany the Yankees to Tampa next week. He is expected to resume taking dry swings by mid-week, and "he'll have to play some games after the (July 9-12) All-Star break in a rehab (assignment) if everything goes okay," Girardi added.Sennan Fielding was victorious at Knockhill in an MSA Formula race two which had two safety car periods and a last-lap change in the lead. Starting from sixth on the reversed grid, Fielding gained two places at the start to slot in behind pole-sitter Dan Ticktum, Josh Smith and Colton Herta. The safety car made an appearance at the end of lap one, in order to clear the beached cars of first-lap retirements Jessica Hawkins and Tarun Reddy. There were no changes at the front after the restart but the race was neutralized again soon. The culprit was championship frontrunner Lando Norris this time, whose car was stuck in the gravel following a spin. Once going back to green, contact between Smith and Herta allowed Fielding to sneak into second. Herta managed to retake the position temporarily but Fielding was soon back through, set to finish the race as runner-up. That all changed however, as Ticktum, who was leading by three seconds at that point, lost drive on the final lap and was forced into an early retirement, with several drivers crashing behind. As a result, Fielding won the race ahead of Herta and Smith. The Arden trio of Sandy Mitchell, Enaam Ahmed and Ricky Collard finished fourth, fifth and seventh respectively, while Matheus Leist secured sixth. The top ten was completed by Rafa Martins, Jack Butel and Ollie Pidgley. Race results Pos. Driver Team Time/Gap 1 Sennan Fielding JHR Developments 19 laps in 18:52.111 2 Colton Herta Carlin +0.722 3 Josh Smith Fortec +1.498 4 Sandy Mitchell Arden +3.076 5 Enaam Ahmed Arden +3.438 6 Matheus Leist Double R +3.827 7 Ricky Collard Arden +4.353 8 Rafael Martins SWB Motorsport +6.851 9 Jack Butel JHR Developments +8.949 10 Ollie Pidgley Richardson Racing +11.315 11 Petru Florescu Carlin +12.278 12 Louise Richardson Richardson Racing +16.848 13 Dan Ticktum Fortec +1 lap 14 Daniel Baybutt JTR +1 lap Not classified James Pull Fortec +6 laps Lando Norris Carlin +10 laps Tarun Reddy Double R +19 laps Jessica Hawkins Falcon Motorsport +19 laps'Saturday Night Live' Takes On Bill O'Reilly, Trump And That Pepsi Commercial Saturday Night Live YouTube The cast of Saturday Night Live returned after a three-week break to take on Fox News host Bill O'Reilly amid recent sexual harassment allegations he is facing, all while continuing their coverage of the Trump administration. In the video above, Alec Baldwin portrays O'Reilly in a segment of his show, The O'Reilly Factor. It opens with O'Reilly addressing "a scandal" of allegations against the Obama administration As O'Reilly's show goes on it's apparent he's having some issues with reporters, who all happen to be women. The first problem occurs when a reporter doesn't appear. "What's that? Laura no longer works at the company? Well, did she get the check? OK, fine," O'Reilly says. After a reference to the $13 million O'Reilly used to settle with five women who filed sexual harassment allegations against him, he moves to a segment from Malia Zimmerman (Cecily Strong), an investigative correspondent, who's reporting from outside the building, away from O'Reilly. While O'Reilly questions Zimmerman about her interview with former National Security Adviser Susan Rice, it's not exactly about the facts. When Zimmerman tells O'Reilly that Rice said she didn't leak the names, O'Reilly continues looking for a different answer. "OK, but when she said no, what was her vibe?" he says. "Like, when she said 'no,' did her eyes say 'yes?' Sometimes they'll do that." O'Reilly pushes forward looking for some type of confession from Rice, all while Zimmerman is clearly uncomfortable with the host. O'Reilly's language mirrors a common dilemma with sexual consent that's often seen on college campuses. The conversation becomes more direct as O'Reilly addresses the allegations against him. "Apparently several women have come forward and accused me of offering them exciting opportunities here at Fox News," he says. "Beyond that, the details are a bit fuzzy, but one man was brave enough... one man... to come to my defense, a man who was unimpeachable on all female issues. Now, he's here tonight." Donald Trump, also played by Alec Baldwin, enters the show and comes to O'Reilly's defense, much as he did in real-life last week. When the allegations came out, President Trump told reporters from the New York Times, that he didn't think O'Reilly did anything wrong. "I think he's a person I know well — he is a good person," Trump said of O'Reilly in the Times interview. "I think he shouldn't have settled; personally I think he shouldn't have settled. Because you should have taken it all the way. I don't think Bill did anything wrong." Trump, who also had women make allegations of sexual assault against him during the campaign, made these comments at the beginning of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, which caused some to think the comments supporting O'Reilly were lacking substance. Even the short breaks in O'Reilly's segment reflect his show's reality. The ads were lacking major name players, a reference to the number of companies that have pulled ads from the program. Saturday Night Live YouTube The cast also took on Pepsi, another entity that spurred conversation this week with their ad, that they have since pulled, starring Kendall Jenner. They offered an idea to what the production of the ad might have looked like. As the final taping is about to begin, the writer-director (Beck Bennett), a white man, gets a call from his sister in which he shares his vision. "It was like completely my idea and now they're doing it," he says excitedly. "OK, so well, it's an homage to the resistance, so there's this huge protest in the street reminiscent of Black Lives Matter. So everybody's marching, right? And they get to these police officers and you think it's going to go bad because there's kind of like a standoff and then Kendall Jenner walks in and she walks up to one of the police officers and she hands him a Pepsi. And then that Pepsi brings everyone together. Isn't that like the best ad ever?" The description is pretty accurate with the actual ad, but the sister does not think the ad is the best thing ever. She, along with two others, tell him it's a "sort of tone-deaf," but there's not time to change it. The SNL ad ends with a different message "Live And Learn." Later the show returned to Trump during the Weekend Update segment with Colin Jost and Michael Che. "The only thing scarier than Donald Trump acting un-presidential, is Donald Trump acting presidential," Jost said. Jost went on to say that Trump's response to fire 59 Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airfield after a chemical weapon attack on civilians was similar to the President's tweets. Che then explained how Syria is part of a complicated relationship between the U.S. and Russia, but also an ally to the U.S. movement to defeat ISIS. Che likened the relationship between three countries to The Three Stooges, another trio. Saturday Night Live YouTube The show returns on April 15, with host Jimmy Fallon and musical guest Harry Styles.On April 18, 2013, our daughter, Emma Sulkowicz, CC '15, reported that she was raped by a fellow student to the Office of Gender-Based and Sexual Misconduct. What followed was a prolonged, degrading, and ultimately fruitless process. It was an injury to her humanity from what was once, for her, a trusted institution. The trauma of this process has contributed to the rerouting of her life, her identity, and the form of her self-expression as an artist. Emma's performance piece, "Carry That Weight," has galvanized forces around the world for gender equality, sexual assault policy reform, and empowerment of the disenfranchised, and has received praise from the art world. Needless to say, we are proud. However, as Emma's parents, we do not want her recent celebrity to be a distraction from the fact that the University's failure to place sanctions on the man she reported for rape, Jean-Paul Nungesser, CC '15 (whose name has previously been published by Spectator), is a cause of her continued suffering. The investigation, hearing, and appeals process that followed her complaint to the University were painfully mishandled. We feel that they violated standards of impartiality, fairness, and serious attention to the facts of the case. When we wrote to University President Lee Bollinger on Nov. 18, 2013, we assumed that alerting him to the facts of the case, the existence of procedural errors, and the failure to abide by University policy in the scheduling and administration of the hearing would engender his concern. We also assumed that the violent and serial nature of the claims being adjudicated would make the case one that necessitated careful oversight. We received no reply from President Bollinger, and our daughter's request for an appeal was subsequently denied by Columbia College Dean James Valentini. We were left with the impression of a University intent on sweeping the issue of campus rape under the rug. In retrospect, it's hard to see the conduct of the investigation of our daughter's complaint and the subsequent hearing as anything but a circus. Emma complied with the administrator's recommendation that she not engage a lawyer for outside advice, and was advised solely by Rosalie Siler, then-assistant director of Student Services for Gender-Based and Sexual Misconduct. But Ms. Siler did not effectively present our daughter's case to the panel, and the deck was stacked against Emma. Here are some of the most telling instances during the process: 1) During the hearing, Nungesser, advised by his outside attorney, lied in order to cast doubt upon Emma's character and present an alternative and perverse motivation for her complaint. Our daughter was instructed by Ms. Siler not to answer these allegations in any way, and not even to inform the panel that he was lying. He repeatedly stated that there was an online video that he was not allowed to show the panelists, but wished he could, because it "proved that she had an irrational fear of immobilization," which would lead her to imagine or lie about being raped even if the experience was actually consensual. Emma begged Ms. Siler to allow her to expose the lie by explaining the video's content to the panelists, but was refused. In the video, which was an interview posted as part of a women's issues project, Emma, then 18 and a fencer on Columbia's varsity team, talked only about a fencing injury and her drive to do extra strength training after her recovery because of her fear of being weak. The "immobilization" was a walking cast she'd had to wear on her foot. The online project is still readily viewable, and the boldness of the lie can be easily verified. 2) Emma was not allowed to explain, in her own words, the timing of her reporting. Emma tried to explain that, after meeting two women who told her they too had been raped by Nungesser (only one of whom filed a complaint), she realized that she should overcome personal shame and report him to ensure the safety of others. Ms. Siler told her to stop talking and pulled her from the room. To the panelists, the timing of Emma's decision to report that she was raped—seven months after she said it had occurred—remained a mystery. The reason for her conflict with Ms. Siler could only be fodder for their speculation. 3) The fact that Nungesser had previously been found "responsible" by a Columbia panel for following another Columbia student to her room, shoving his way in, forcefully pinning, and groping her was not allowed as evidence in Emma's hearing. Just days before her hearing, Dean Valentini granted an appeal of this verdict, which re-opened the case and consequently disallowed it as evidence. This effectively hamstrung Emma's case. (An aside: The final hearing for this other case was scheduled and held at a time the complainant had specified that she was not available to testify. Without her presence, the original panel's "responsible" verdict was easily overturned.) 4) Because of the accommodation of multiple postponement requests by Nungesser, Emma's hearing did not take place for six and a half months. This included allowing him to be unavailable for an entire summer vacation. Not only were these delays cruel to our daughter and our family, they were contrary to the 60-day recommended timeframe imposed by Columbia's (and federal) policy. 5) Dean Valentini responded to Emma's request for an appeal by taking the unusual step of "re-convening" the same panel that had returned the "not responsible" decision, and discussing the case with them to inform his decision. This did not constitute a fair, independent, and unbiased look at the proceedings, and it is not the way an appeal should be either granted or denied. 6) Emma's request that the investigative report presented to the panelists be cleared of errors and presented in clear narrative form was denied. Due to the carelessness of the investigator's note-taking, the incoherent report—full of confusing errata and addenda—contained factual errors as well, such as the length of time that Emma said Nungesser lay next to her after the incident (seconds, not "minutes"). There is no doubt that the denial of this request actively hurt her case. Columbia is now at the center of a national discussion on the performance of our society in preventing and adjudicating sexual assault, and protecting the rights of survivors. Although Emma filed a criminal report with the NYPD against Nungesser, she has learned from the district attorney's office that pursuit of criminal charges would result in another prolonged investigation and adjudication that would not be resolved during the remainder of her time at Columbia University. Thus, over two years after the incident, Emma remains dependent on the University to determine whether Nungesser remains on campus. We feel that the board and the president have the opportunity to modify the course of events in keeping with what they deem best for the University and for our daughter given their right to exercise oversight over the administration of the University as a whole. As other avenues have failed, we wish that the president and the board would act as a higher court of appeals, and allow Emma a properly conducted retrial in which she has the right to an advocate, unfettered by conflict of interest, who will prosecute her case on her behalf; the right to present the best case possible; the right to present her motivations truthfully; the right to cross-examine; the right to answer unfounded allegations about her character; and the ability to demonstrate a pattern of behavior on the part of the accused party. At the very least, we recommend that Nungesser be expelled for lying at his hearing. Truthfulness is an absolute requirement for any system of justice to operate. Allowing Nungesser to lie with impunity makes a mockery of all such proceedings, and violates the spirit of the University itself. Meanwhile, Columbia's policies remain problematic and affect other students. [Related article: Columbia releases aggregate data on sexual assault adjudication] The policy that disallowed the fact of multiple allegations against the accused as evidence in Emma's hearing still remains. Columbia's policy states that respondents must have been found responsible by a panel before an additional allegation of similar behavior can be used as evidence. This is a stricter filtering of evidence than even exists in many courts of law. Evidence for a pattern of behavior is crucial to the adjudication of some crimes—such as rape—and is recognized by most legal systems. If several victims' voices together cannot be deemed stronger than a single victim's voice, the system is deaf. In this light, Columbia's policies seem to be overly concerned with litigious reprisal by displeased respondents. This misguided policy supports unexamined prejudices and discrimination against women. It also deprives those who are guilty the chance to learn and reform their behavior, and does them no good service. (We feel that expulsion for a crime at a young age is a much milder and potentially more instructive punishment than incarceration at a later age.) We find it necessary to remind the University that rape is not merely an assault on the body, but an assault on the mind, and in particular, the will. Those who have withstood the violence of rape are often injured in their ability to assert themselves and to trust that they will be treated with humanity when they attempt to be heard. It is inhumane and unrealistic to expect that every survivor of sexual assault who can bear reliable witness will also have the strength, determination, and support that are currently required to lodge, and see to its conclusion, a formal complaint. It is clear that Columbia's misunderstanding of the psychology of sexual assault survivors has contributed to abysmal rates of reporting, with even lower rates of those who continue to an investigation. [Related article: Columbia releases aggregate data on sexual assault adjudication] If Columbia remains passive in the face of Emma's suffering, and does not attempt to rectify the injustice done to her, survivors at Columbia will feel discouraged from entrusting themselves to the system that Columbia has recently worked so hard at putting into place. In a few months, Emma and Paul will graduate. If Columbia does not act to expel him before then, their graduation will not relieve Columbia of the burden of this episode. Instead, in this important moment in the history of sexual assault on college campuses, Columbia will remain indelibly in the public mind as the university where good men and women did nothing. The authors, Sandra Leong, M.D. and Kerry J. Sulkowicz, M.D., are the parents of Emma Sulkowicz, CC '15. To respond to this op-ed or to submit an op-ed, contact [email protected] time! Thanks to the kind people at Tor, I have five hardcover copies of L.E. Modesitt Jr.’s newest novel Princeps to give away to five lucky readers in the U.S. and Canada. This novel is the fifth installment in the author’s excellent Imager Portfolio. For more information about the series, please check my write-up of the first three books and my review of the fourth book Scholar elsewhere on this site, and my review of Princeps itself on Tor.com. To enter the giveaway, simply send an email with subject line “PRINCEPS” to fbrgiveaway AT gmail DOT com with your full name and mailing address. One entry per person, please: multiple entries will result in disqualification, but please feel free to tell your friends! The giveaway will end on Thursday, May 31st at 11:59 PM, and I’ll contact the winner the following day. Please note again that, at the publisher’s request, this giveaway is only open to residents of the US and Canada. Void where prohibited by law, rules are subject to change, may impair your ability to operate machinery, and of course, batteries not included. Bunch of cheapskates.Vice President Mike Pence: "The American people know that I could not be more honored to be working side by side with a president who is making America great again." | M. Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO Pence blasts NYT report about 2020 ambitions Calling it "disgraceful and offensive," Vice President Mike Pence on Sunday denounced a New York Times report that he is quietly building his own shadow campaign for 2020. "Today's article in the New York Times is disgraceful and offensive to me, my family, and our entire team," Pence said in a statement Sunday. "The allegations in this article are categorically false and represent just the latest attempt by the media to divide this Administration." Story Continued Below The Times article, headlined "Republican shadow campaign for 2020 takes shape as Trump doubts grow," was written by Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns. The article said Pence has worked to build an independent power base — mentioning Sens. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio) as adopting similar tactics in light of the current administration's struggles. "Mr. Pence has been the pacesetter," Martin and Burns wrote. "Though it is customary for vice presidents to keep a full political calendar, he has gone a step further, creating an independent power base, cementing his status as Mr. Trump’s heir apparent and promoting himself as the main conduit between the Republican donor class and the administration." Pence's statement expressed support and confidence in President Donald Trump. Morning Score newsletter Your guide to the permanent campaign — weekday mornings, in your inbox. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. "The American people know that I could not be more honored to be working side by side with a president who is making America great again," the statement said. "Whatever fake news may come our way, my entire team will continue to focus all our efforts to advance the President's agenda and see him re-elected in 2020. Any suggestion otherwise is both laughable and absurd." White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said on ABC's "This Week" that there was "zero concern" about Pence setting up a shadow campaign. "That is complete fiction," she said. Zachary Warmbrodt contributed to this report.Don’t blame me, I voted for Jong-un. President Trump is bleeding support from his populist base of white, working-class Russians. A new survey from the Kremlin-backed pollster VTsIOM finds that 39 percent of Russians have an unfavorable view of Trump, up from only 7 percent in March. But unlike Trump’s other political troubles, this decline really can be blamed on “fake news” — or state-run propaganda, anyhow. The Kremlin’s favorite television personality, Dmitry Kiselyov, spent the first months of this year singing paeans to the new American president’s statesmanship, and his wise decision to seek warmer relations with Russia. Now, Kiselyov is warning his viewers that the conflict over North Korea’s nuclear-weapons program pits an impulsive, untrustworthy madman against Kim Jong-un. “Trump is more impulsive and unpredictable than Kim Jong-un,” Kiselyov said on his Sunday-night program, according to a translation from Bloomberg. Kiselyov also described Trump as “more dangerous” than his North Korean counterpart, and lamented that “the world is a hair’s breadth away from a real nuclear war with all its catastrophic consequences.” The state-run television show went on to suggest that the North Korean dictator, who inherited his post from his father (who inherited the post from his father), was a more principled opponent of nepotism than Trump: After all, Kim hasn’t given his daughter a cushy government job, while Trump has provided Ivanka with her own White House office. (Kim Jong-un’s daughter is 4 years old.) “Ivanka already convinced Trump to bomb Assad, what if she convinces him to bomb Kim?” one Russian state television newscaster, Irada Zeynalova, recently asked. Officially, Russia condemns the “brinksmanship” of North Korea’s ballistic missile tests. But Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has emphasized that it would be both unwise — and illegal, under international law — for the United States to use unilateral force against Pyongyang. “I really hope that the same unilateral actions we saw in Syria won’t happen,” Lavrov said Monday. It wouldn’t be totally crazy for the Kremlin to see Trump as less predictable than Kim Jong-un. Three weeks ago, the White House was officially indifferent to toppling Bashar al-Assad, while the president had publicly mocked the idea that America has a responsibility to stop foreign dictators from using “a little gas” on their own people. Then, two days after an apparent gas attack by the Assad government on rebels in Idlib province, Trump ordered an air strike on a Syrian airfield, so as to protect America’s vital national-security interest in deterring the use
Salter, Edinburgh University Favoured locations would be the Faroes and islands in the Bering Strait, he said. Towers would be constructed, simplified versions of what has been planned for ships. In summer, seawater would be pumped up to the top using some kind of renewable energy, and out through the nozzles that are now being developed at Edinburgh University, which achieve incredibly fine droplet size. In an idea first proposed by US-based British physicist John Latham, the fine droplets of seawater provide nuclei around which water vapour can condense. This makes the average droplet size in the clouds smaller, meaning they appear whiter and reflect more of the Sun's incoming energy back into space, cooling the Earth. On melting ice The area of Arctic Ocean covered by ice each summer has declined significantly over the last few decades as air and sea temperatures have risen. For each of the last four years, the September minimum has seen about two-thirds of the average cover for the years 1979-2000, which is used a baseline. The extent covered at other times of the year has also been shrinking. What more concerns some scientists is the falling volume of ice. Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics at Cambridge University, presented an analysis drawing on data and modelling from the PIOMAS ice volume project at the University of Washington in Seattle. It suggests, he said, that Septembers could be ice-free within just a few years. Image caption Projections suggest the Arctic Ocean could be free of sea ice at the September minimum within a few years "In 2007, the water [off northern Siberia] warmed up to about 5C (41F) in summer, and this extends down to the sea bed, melting the offshore permafrost." Among the issues this raises is whether the ice-free conditions will quicken release of methane currently trapped in the sea bed, especially in the shallow waters along the northern coast of Siberia, Canada and Alaska. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, though it does not last as long in the atmosphere. Image caption Dramatic methane release would bring major impacts to Arctic indigenous peoples Several teams of scientists trying to measure how much methane is actually being released have reported seeing vast bubbles coming up through the water - although analysing how much this matters is complicated by the absence of similar measurements from previous decades. Nevertheless, Prof Wadhams told MPs, the release could be expected to get stronger over time. "With 'business-as-usual' greenhouse gas emissions, we might have warming of 9-10C in the Arctic. "That will cement in place the ice-free nature of the Arctic Ocean - it will release methane from offshore, and a lot of the methane on land as well." This would - in turn - exacerbate warming, across the Arctic and the rest of the world. Abrupt methane releases from frozen regions may have played a major role in two events, 55 and 251 million years ago, that extinguished much of the life then on Earth. Meteorologist Lord (Julian) Hunt, who chaired the meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Climate Change, clarified that an abrupt methane release from the current warming was not inevitable, describing that as "an issue for scientific debate". But he also said that some in the scientific community had been reluctant to discuss the possibility. "There is quite a lot of suppression and non-discussion of issues that are difficult, and one of those is in fact methane," he said, recalling a reluctance on the part of at least one senior scientists involved in the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment to discuss the impact that a methane release might have. Reluctant solutions The field of implementing technical climate fixes, or geo-engineering, is full of controversy, and even those involved in researching the issue see it as a last-ditch option, a lot less desirable than constraining greenhouse gas emissions. "Everybody working in geo-engineering hopes it won't be needed - but we fear it will be," said Prof Salter. Adding to the controversy is that some of the techniques proposed could do more harm than good. The idea of putting dust particles into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight, mimicking the cooling effect of volcanic eruptions, would in fact be disastrous for the Arctic, said Prof Salter, with models showing it would increase temperatures at the pole by perhaps 10C. And last year, the cloud-whitening idea was also criticised by scientists who calculated that using the wrong droplet size could lead to warming - though Prof Salter says this can be eliminated through experimentation. He has not so far embarked on a full costing of the land-based towers, but suggests £200,000 as a ballpark figure. Depending on the size and location, Prof Salter said that in the order of 100 towers would be needed to counteract Arctic warming. However, no funding is currently on the table for cloud-whitening. A proposal to build a prototype ship for about £20m found no takers, and currently development work is limited to the lab. Follow Richardon TwitterToday in History (TIH): November 24 in History Welcome geeks, to Today in History, your daily dose of fun historical facts! Today let’s take a look at November 24 in History. Watch the video below & please remember to Like, Comment, Share and if you want to keep tuned to our daily history videos, visit Kokonuzz Youtube Humor & Parodies channel & please Subscribe! Share a piece of Fun History with your Friends: Topics Included on this Video for November 24 in History: 1. Charles Darwin publishes “On the Origin of Species” (November 24th 1859). November 24th is another world changing day cause in 1859 Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, which became an instant bestseller selling out the 1,250 copies he made in just one day. That might not seem a lot, but for a book without wizards or vampires, that’s a home run. In that book Darwin explained his theory of evolution where He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors and gave strong evidence that there is a natural, even observable, way for life to change: a process he called natural selection. To be fair, there was this other guy, Alfred Russel Wallace, that reached the same conclusions and published them at the same time but history is cruel and while Darwin is now a god of science, Wallace contribution is kind of… who cares? Actually Darwin had initially developed his theory while on a 5 year research trip aboard the HMS Beagle that took him around the world. But once back he was afraid of publishing it because of its the radical implications… He did not want to end up burned crisp by the Church so he stalled for years and years… until he saw the work of Wallace, who had reached basically the same conclusions. Now it was publish or be forgotten, so he published. Luckily nobody ended up on the spike for this although evolution was very unpopular among religious people. Actually even now, when evolution has become a basic pillar of scientific development, and there’s mountains of proof of its validity, some still deny it… And let’s face it, they offer very attractive arguments: Jesus riding a dinosaur… cool! 2. Freddie Mercury passes away (November 24th 1991). November 24 also marks the sad day in 1991 when Freddie Mercury passed away. Who was he? He was a rock singer legend and lead vocalist, songwriter and soul of rock band Queen. Freddie Mercury had a short but intense life, and left a legacy of amazing songs, such as Bohemian Rhapsody, We are the Champions and We Will Rock you. Mercury was a force of nature on-stage and has been defined as one of rock’s greatest all-time entertainers with a legendary performance at Live Aid in 1985 that’s been described as the greatest live performance in the history of rock music. His talent went beyond music cause did you know that he studied Art & Graphic Design and actually designed himself the Queen crest? What an amazing person. Unfortunately his life was cut short because of a pneumonia brought on by AIDS, just one day after he announced that he was HIV positive. Click here to watch the whole NWIH: Next Week in History (November 23 to November 29) Youtube video#SAVECINDYSSIGN Hi! We're Monique King and Paul Rosenbluh. You may know us from our first restaurant, Firefly. We've been making delicious chicken dinners and amazing brunch and breakfast classics with a twist for the last 15 years. We've always had a passion for old-school aesthetics with new-school flavors and we're sharing that passion with the Eagle Rock community through our newest project - the restoration of Cindy's Diner! We've worked hard to maintain the integrity of Cindy's, a mid-century modern landmark in the tight-knit community of Eagle Rock, CA. We've kept the original booths, wallpaper, counter tops and spirit of Cindy's intact - but there are still some major renovations needed to fully restore this architectural gem. The sign at Cindy's is more than just a whimsical reminder of the golden era of diners. It's a community landmark that (along with the restaurant) has been a part of Colorado Blvd.'s history since 1948. During the many years Cindy's was shut down, the sign fell into serious disrepair. If we don't act now, together, an important piece of Los Angeles history will soon be gone. Here's what you're backing: Conservation of the sign's salvageable parts Restoration of the rusted metal A new neon "OPEN" sign Structural reinforcement of the sign Construction of replacement parts/letters/etc. The Kickstarter community is known for it's commitment to fulfilling artistic dreams and funding missions that both beautify and make our world a more interesting place. Join us now on our mission: to help save the sign at Cindy's Eagle Rock Restaurant and revitalize a Route 66 landmark! When you decide to back our mission, you'll not only be treated to the satisfaction of helping restore an architectural treasure, but you'll also receive some AWESOME rewards! Most of the rewards above will be available to anyone who pledges! But we also have several ULTRA LIMITED EDITION rewards... so be sure to get them before we run out! (And if we DO run out, keep checking back -- we'll do our best to add more when we can!) And if you're an organization, business or group of people - check out our ONE-OF-A-KIND Ultimate Party Package!Visit any of our 11 locations on Tuesday, January 31 (open to close) and when you purchase any beverage, we’ll give you a FREE VEGETARIAN ENTREE* ONLY THESE SIX ENTREES ARE AVAILABLE FOR THIS PROMOTION: Vegetarian Tacos | Vegetarian Migas | Veggie Deluxe Sandwich Vegetarian Zinfandel Pasta | Vegetarian Omelette | Veggie Crepe *The Fine Print: You must print off this blog post and present it to your server or show this post on your smartphone/iPad/laptop/etc. You cannot pass your phone around the table. Each person must present their own proof of connection. Just like a physical coupon, every person must have one. No substitutions. For dine-in service only, not valid on to-go orders Offer valid while supplies last No other purchase necessary, but anything extra is appreciated. So is tipping your server. Comments commentsSneak Peek Promo EW Interview ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: How far into the future are they? JED WHEDON: We’ll say definitively how far they’re in the future in a few episodes, but the idea is 70+ years in the future. JEFF BELL: Between 70 and 100 years from now. It’s said that Daisy caused the destruction of Earth. Should we take that as truth or should we question that? WHEDON: There’s no question whether or not you’re going to question it. I think everyone should take it as truth, sure. BELL: We’re X number of years in the future, and this is what this person knows, and this person presents a certain amount of evidence that seems to support that, so I think there’s truth in that, but that doesn’t mean that’s the whole story. Source: Read More on EW JED WHEDON: We’ll say definitively how far they’re in the future in a few episodes, but the idea is 70+ years in the future.JEFF BELL: Between 70 and 100 years from now.WHEDON: There’s no question whether or not you’re going to question it. I think everyone should take it as truth, sure.BELL: We’re X number of years in the future, and this is what this person knows, and this person presents a certain amount of evidence that seems to support that, so I think there’s truth in that, but that doesn’t mean that’s the whole story. “A Life Spent” – Daisy decides she will rescue Simmons – even if it means risking everything to do it, on “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” FRIDAY, DEC. 8 (9:01-10:01 p.m. EST), on The ABC Television Network, streaming and on demand. “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” stars Clark Gregg as Agent Phil Coulson, Ming-Na Wen as Agent Melinda May, Chloe Bennet as Daisy Johnson, Iain De Caestecker as Agent Leo Fitz, Elizabeth Henstridge as Agent Jemma Simmons, Henry Simmons as Agent Alphonso “Mack” MacKenzie and Natalia Cordova-Buckley as Elena “Yo-Yo” Rodriguez. Guest starring are Jeff Ward as Deke, Eve Harlow as Tess, Dominic Rains as Kasius, Florence Faivre as Sinara, Max E. Williams as Tye, Kaleti Williams as Zev, Pruitt Taylor Vince as Grill, Rya Kihlstedt as Basha, Tunisha Hubbard as Ava, Ciara Bravo as Abby and Doug Simpson as emissary. ”A Life Spent” was written by Nora Zuckerman & Lilla Zuckerman and directed by Kevin Hooks. Source: ABC DAISY’S MISSION TO RESCUE SIMMONS COULD DOOM THEM ALL, ON ABC’S ‘MARVEL’S AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D.’“A Life Spent” – Daisy decides she will rescue Simmons – even if it means risking everything to do it, on “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” FRIDAY, DEC. 8 (9:01-10:01 p.m. EST), on The ABC Television Network, streaming and on demand.“Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” stars Clark Gregg as Agent Phil Coulson, Ming-Na Wen as Agent Melinda May, Chloe Bennet as Daisy Johnson, Iain De Caestecker as Agent Leo Fitz, Elizabeth Henstridge as Agent Jemma Simmons, Henry Simmons as Agent Alphonso “Mack” MacKenzie and Natalia Cordova-Buckley as Elena “Yo-Yo” Rodriguez.Guest starring are Jeff Ward as Deke, Eve Harlow as Tess, Dominic Rains as Kasius, Florence Faivre as Sinara, Max E. Williams as Tye, Kaleti Williams as Zev, Pruitt Taylor Vince as Grill, Rya Kihlstedt as Basha, Tunisha Hubbard as Ava, Ciara Bravo as Abby and Doug Simpson as emissary.”A Life Spent” was written by Nora Zuckerman & Lilla Zuckerman and directed by Kevin Hooks. Thanks to Ivan for the heads.The New Kabul ‘Green Belt’ Security Plan: More Security for Whom? Afghan policemen survey the crater caused by a truck bomb that was detonated on 31 May 2017, near several embassies, the presidential palace and the international 'Resolute Support' military mission headquarters. Credit: Andrew Quilty 2017. Following the devastating 31 May 2017 bomb attack in the Afghan capital, President Ashraf Ghani commissioned his security experts to develop a new security plan for Kabul. Although apparently not officially approved or fully funded yet, the plan called the ‘Zarghun Belt’ (Green Belt) was announced in mid-August. Jelena Bjelica and Kate Clark (with input from the rest of the AAN team) have been collecting details about the new plan and mapping out what it should entail. They find it designed largely to improve the security of key government institutions and some of the diminishing ‘international community’ in Kabul, despite official claims that its aim is to protect everyone. The lethal truck bomb attack near Kabul’s Zanbaq Square on 31 May 2017 (see AAN’s dispatches here and here) killed at least 92 civilians and injured nearly 500. It also caused heavy damage to surrounding infrastructure, including the German Embassy which had to be closed. This and the subsequent protests that ensued (see AAN reporting here) have been game-changers for Kabul’s security planners. A week after the attack, on 7 June 2017, President Ashraf Ghani, chairing the armed forces’ commander-in-chief’s meeting, ordered high-ranking security officials to undertake comprehensive efforts to improve Kabul’s security, including its diplomatic areas, and the wider province. (1) One of the two international security experts that AAN spoke to for this report hinted to us, however, that the plan that has emerged was driven as much by high-ranking internationals residing in Kabul; it is not clear whether they were from the various diplomatic missions or NATO’s Resolute Support or both. The roll-out of the new Kabul security plan was announced at the Government Media Information Centre (GMIC) on 14 August 2017 (see here; see also Reuters’ reporting based on an interview with a security official from 6 August here) by the Ministry of Interior and the Kabul Municipality. (Based on AAN queries with relevant security authorities, it is not clear which authority is responsible for enacting the plan or its various parts.) The details that follow have been somewhat tricky to collate as there are apparent contradictions within and between official statements and press reporting, not only about the what and where of the security measures, but also the when. The plan has been presented as comprising various new or improved security measures for Kabul city, but many had actually already been discussed or had been waiting to be implemented or had already been in use for long time. It also appears that the plan, despite being announced by the government, has not actually been finalised or signed off, but is, AAN was told by an international security analyst, still sitting on Ghani’s desk. Another security expert said the plan was waiting for funding, and only a few steps had, thus far, been initiated. The larger projects within the plan, he said, would only be executed once funding was secured. Further confusion has been caused by officials and the media using terms such as ‘diplomatic area’ and ‘green zone’ as well as ‘Green Belt’ which they then often do not define in geographical detail. So, a warning: there is some inherent confusion in how the plan has been presented. We have tried to clarify, where possible, and point up remaining contradictions, where necessary. A three-phase plan – as presented by the Ministry of Interior Deputy Minister for Security at the Ministry of Interior and acting chief of Kabul’s Asmai Police Zone 101, Muhammad Salem Ehsas, said at the GMIC press conference that the security plan, named the ‘Zarghun Belt’ (Green Belt, sometimes also, confusingly, translated as Green Zone) would be implemented gradually over the next six months. He said that “Wazir Akbar Khan, Shashdarak, Sherpur and some other areas [of the city] were part of the Green Belt.” Abdul Basir Mujahed, spokesman for Kabul police, in conversation with AAN said the plan, which he referred to as the ‘New Plan for Kabul Province’, had been endorsed by the Ministry of Interior and approved by the president and would be rolled out in three phases, firstly, covering ‘the diplomatic area’, then other Kabul urban districts and finally Kabul’s rural districts. (2) It is probably worth trying to pin down the geography of the plan, here. The first phase of the plan appears to concentrate on what is often referred to, by officials and the media, as the ‘diplomatic area’ of Kabul, or the green zone (after the heavily fortified area of Baghdad used by successive Iraqi regimes and the US and other military and civilian authorities). The map below shows the extent of the current green zone and its proposed extensions, as discussed in security meetings. The extent also matches the neighbourhoods mentioned by deputy minister Ehsas under ‘Green Belt’. Kabul’s green zone/diplomatic area (the green area on the map) does indeed host many embassies, including those of some of Afghanistan’s key backers – the United States, Germany, France, the UK, Saudi Arabia, India and Turkey, as well as the World Bank country office. Moreover, this area also hosts key government agencies and ministries, including the presidential palace, the Chief Executive’s palace, the ministries of interior, defence and foreign affairs, the NDS, Independent Directorate of Local Government, Sedarat and Radio Television Afghanistan. The CIA and the international military’s headquarters is also within this zone, as are some international contractors. Many commanders and politicians live there and even some ordinary people. However, many other embassies, including many northern European ones are located elsewhere in the city. The term ‘diplomatic area’, then, is a misnomer. The red area on the map – the extension of the green zone as we know it so far – brings the northern part of Wazir Akbar Khan and Sherpur into the zone. Sherpur used to be a popular neighbourhood. “For centuries,” AAN wrote in 2010, “this plot of land was part of the finely woven agricultural fabric surrounding Kabul [comprising of] traditional mud houses, small pieces of farmland and a historical garden.” One morning in 2003 though, then Kabul Chief of Police, Bashir Salangi ordered it to be bulldozed. 100 armed police forcibly evicted the people living there, injuring some. The land was then parcelled out by the Minister of Defence, the late Marshal Qasim Fahim, to cabinet members (then Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani was one of the very few to refuse land and to criticise the land grab), politicians and commanders (with a strong bias towards Fahim’s Jamiat-e Islami comrades; read more here). Today, northern Wazir Akbar Khan and Sherpur is home to a few embassies, but also to many commanders and politicians. As will be seen below, some new security measures have already been taken in this area. The other possible extension (in blue on the map) would bring in some stretches of the approach road to Kabul Airport. It seems, according to New York Times reporting, that this will mean US embassy employees will “no longer need to take a Chinook helicopter ride to cross the street to a military base [formerly the headquarters for American Special Operations forces in the capital] less than 100 yards.” It would, of course, mean ‘safe access’ to the airport for everyone else located within the extended green zone. General Ehsas has tried to insist that diplomats would be better defended, motorists little affected and the whole of Kabul protected: In fact, we don’t have any special plan to close or open the roads. The traffic is normal, but on days that we have a VIP guest, the Wazir Akbar Khan roads will be temporary closed for an hour. Wazir Akber [sic] Khan is a diplomatic area and we are making efforts [to ensure] the diplomats’ security and this is our priority. We want to enhance our security plan on Wazir Akbar Khan area. All Kabul is our ‘green zone’ because all Kabul people need security. We have a special security plan and it’s carried out day by day and our aim is not to close the streets. Other politicians have also sought to insist that everyone will benefit. Member of Kabul provincial council Rahimullah Mujahed claimed the plan would benefit 80 per cent of the population of Kabul, because the installation of new security posts in various squares and other locations would stop security threats to the city, as a whole. Positive claims were also heard from President Ghani and the head of the Capital Zone Development Authority, Ilham Omar Hotaki, as reported by Pahjwok: [Hotaki] said the Kabul Green Zone plan would bring about a positive change in the living style of Kabul residents and would play a role in improving their economic and social standard. President Ghani said the government would also contribute to the execution of the green zone plan, which he called as effective in bringing about change in social living and improving security of the foreign diplomatic missions. However, speaking to Reuters, Ehsas appeared to be more frank. “In this security plan, our priority is the diplomatic area,” he said. “The highest threat level is in this area and so we need to provide a better security here.” Looking into the details of the plan, it appears indeed that the new security measures will largely benefit the already protected and may lead to worsening security for others. What are the new security measures in Kabul? The security plan, despite not having been officially published and apparently being confidential, includes at least six elements that have been spoken about by officials or written about in the media. That information provides the basis for the details below. Many are in the current green zone; others outside it. More checkpoints According to acting deputy interior minister General Ehsas, “26 checkpoints have been placed around diplomatic areas in Kabul so far, 10 mobile checkpoints have been considered in the routes connected to it.” Elsewhere, he mentioned the 26 checkpoints being in the Green Belt (which he defined as located in Wazir Akbar Khan, Shashdarak, Sherpur and some other areas). At each of those 26 checkpoints, Kabul police spokesperson Mujahed told AAN, the number of security personnel had been increased from between eight to ten policemen to 15 or 16. He also said that two companies from a Kabul anti-riot police battalion had been sent for training before they undertook the security of the checkpoints. Many of the new fixed checkpoints have been under discussion by the relevant authorities and their foreign counterparts for many years now. For example, the new Sherpur checkpoint at a much used road fork, just in front of Emergency Hospital, an international security analyst told AAN, had been on the agenda of many security meetings. Meanwhile, some checkpoints outside the green zone in the Qala-ye Fatullah and Taimani areas have been dismantled. Since 2009, those were parts of another series of checkpoints, called the ‘Ring of Steel’, introduced by then minister of interior Hanif Atmar. This neighbourhood is home, not to diplomats and government ministries, but to many international and national NGOs, as well as ‘ordinary Afghans’, of course. It has been heavily targeted by kidnappers over the last couple of years, as well as by suicide bombers. The checkpoints at the Salim Karwan intersection, in Medinat Bazar, near the Attorney General’s Office and at Street 3, Taimani, have all been removed, “This seems to run counter to the Kabul police’s declared prioritization of NGO-inhabited areas,” said one analyst, “and indeed, there are empty checkpoints where there used to be manned ones.” While the police have appeared diligent looking for insurgency-related materiel and individuals at these checkpoints, there have been repeated accusations of police collusion with the kidnap gang(s), given their ability to pass through the checkpoints. Vehicle barriers and metal gates Kabul police spokesman Mujahed told AAN that a number, possibly up to 40, of metal ‘security gates’ (these are tubular roadblocks that prevent vehicles of a certain height from passing through streets; Reuters has a photo here) were being installed. Some would be flexible and mobile, allowing big vehicles to pass in an emergency. He said he could not disclose their exact number until all were erected. In July and August 2017, the Afghan National Security Forces installed a number of metal gates on specific roads leading to the Green Belt. These gates range in height from two to two and a half metres. A few are outside the green zone or its proposed extensions (as per the map) Those installed close to the city centre are located at: the Sherpur crossroads, close to Vice President Abdul Rashid Dostum’s house; the intersection in front of the Emergency Hospital in Shahr-e Now; near to the Kabul police compound/ Sedarat intersection; Pul-e Mahmud Khan intersection; the Abdul Haq Square; in Third Macrorayon; in front of the Kabul municipality; near Azizi Plaza in Bibi Mahru from where a road leads to Fourth Macrorayon; in Pul-e Bagh-e Umumi. New gates are going up in fresh locations. At the 14 August press conference in GMIC it was announced that large lorries delivering necessary services would be directed along specified roads within the Green Belt and would now only be allowed to enter the Green Belt via the airport road after the police had searched them (see here). Reuters reported that cars would also be generally barred on nine of the fifteen streets in the “diplomatic area” or leading into it and totally and permanently barred from the remaining six (it is not clear if or how residents will be allowed to use these roads). Mujahed told AAN, “Kabul police have the right to check any kind of car and if anyone tries to avoid this, legal action will be taken.” In practice, police inspect cars selectively and ‘known people’ (meaning passengers who are known to the policemen on the checkpoint) are usually not inspected; at most checkpoints, female passenger are also not searched. The security forces are also now blocking almost all the roads leading towards the presidential palace (and the Serena Hotel) from 10:00 at night until 6:00 in the morning. The roads include those passing behind Ministry of Telecommunications along Zarnigar Park, from Pul-e Mahmud Khan and from Pul-e Kheshti overnight. This measure starts from 10:00 at night until early morning. Scanners Four hangar-style scanners, each weighing around 30 tonnes have been installed at the four ‘gates’ to Kabul city, in Pul-e Charkhi, Company, Tank-e Logar and Sar-e Kotal at Khairkhana, ie respectively on the roads to Nangarhar, through Logar to Loya Paktia, through Maidan Wardak to Ghazni and southern Afghanistan and the Shomali to the Afghan north. The scanners, donated by China as part of an economic and security agreement with Beijing signed in 2012, had crossed into the country by rail from Uzbekistan. (See also this Reuters report from December 2016). It was reported that the scanners had been ‘gathering dust’ for over a year in a Kabul warehouse because of infighting between different Afghan interior ministry’s departments over which one should install them and a dispute over who should purchase the land on which the giant scanners would be installed. (3) After the terrorist attack at Zanbaq Square, the scanners were finally, it seems, taken out of storage. Mujahed told The Kabul Times they would stop the entry of drugs, explosives, ammunition and other illegal substances into the city. Several Kabul residents whom AAN spoke to said they had observed that it takes the police at least ten minutes to scan a car and at certain times of day when there is a heavy traffic congestion, the policemen do not scan any vehicles at all. K9 units In early August, ANSF deployed five ‘K9 units’, dog teams trained to search for explosives and other illegal materials, to several locations in Kabul City: Pul-e Mahmud Khan, Wazir Akbar Khan, Bibi Mahru Hill, Abdul Haq Square and Kabul Airport’s main entrance. Although K9 teams have been intermittently present at Kabul Airport for almost a year, deployed there on a 24-hour basis, some vehicles have been exempt – those belonging to VIPs and ‘known people’ and those with female passengers. There is no fixed time frame for how long the K9 teams will be deployed to these five locations. Other measures Deputy Minister Ehsas said that police patrols, both on vehicle and motorcycle, would be increased in Kabul city. Apparently, 80 motorcycle patrols will be established, but as the motorcycles have not been purchased yet, it is a presumption that this will only happen at some point in the future. Ehsas also said a 500-member police anti-riot battalion featured in the security plan. It appears that they have been deployed to guard the Wazir Akbar Khan and Sherpur areas. However, this 500-strong battalion was always part of the Kabul security architecture and it had, previously, been spread around Kabul City, an international security expert told AAN. According to this expert, the plan is now to re-train the battalion. The money for this may also be part of the Afghanistan-China 2012 economic and security agreement, the text of which is confidential. Known parts of the agreement suggest that a number of policemen would be sent to China for training. Either way, it seems that the green zone will benefit from a concentration of police on motorcycles, while the rest of the city will suffer a corresponding scarcity. According to one of the international security analysts AAN consulted, there would also be increased patrolling in the Wazir Akbar Khan, Sherpur, Qala-ye Fathullah, Kart-e Chahar and Kart-e Se neighbourhoods. T-wall removal: part of the plan or not? The removal of anti-blast ‘T-walls’ is not part of the security plan, but worth mentioning in the context of Kabul’s security. A campaign to remove them was started a few weeks after the Zanbaq Square attack, announced by acting Kabul mayor Abdullah Habibzai, on 23 June 2017, supposedly in response to the demands of the citizenry (see here and here). Removing T-walls has been a demand from the public for many years now. Former president Karzai ordered their dismantlement in 2010, in order to improve traffic flow on the capital’s roads (see here). The move was short-lived, however, and it was noticeable that the former president fortified his own residence with concrete blast walls as soon as he left the presidential palace. T-walls protect those behind them, but amplify the blast for everyone else in the vicinity. For the common people then, they are an ‘insecurity mechanism’. In some places, they seem particularly appalling, for example, on the road outside the old Ministry of Interior. They actually increase the exposure of the Lycée Malalai girls school and the Jamhuriat and Antani Hospitals on the other side of the road to danger; if there was an attack on the ministry, the school and hospitals would receive a far greater blast. T-walls also partially block roads and hamper traffic flow, as they are rarely built within the perimeter of the protected person’s property, but jut out onto the pavement or even into the middle of the road, blatantly grabbing land from the public. Many would also argue that by increasing security for those with power sheltering behind them, they reduce their incentive to improve the security for everyone in the city. (Compare similar dynamics when those who can afford generators and bottled water are in charge of systems which fail to deliver mains electricity and drinking water to the general population.) New roads The new security plan’s biggest ambition is to totally close off the ‘diplomatic area’ by building by-pass roads. Head of the Capital Zone Development Authority Hotaki presented a proposal, on 3 August 2017, to build ten kilometres of new roads as part of the security plan which he called the “Kabul Green Zone.” He said short and long-term measures had been considered in the security plan and five ‘security zones’ would be established in Qala-ye Musa, Bibi Mahru, Qala-ye Khayat and Qala-ye Nazir/Qala-ye Khatir (both names were reported, here and here), all neighbourhoods adjacent to the ‘core zone’ of Wazir Akbar Khan, Shashdarak and Sherpur. On 16 September 2017, Tolo television reported an announcement by the municipality to build one such new road linking the Airport Road to Bibi Mahru and onto Qala-ye Musa (police district 10), north of Bibi Mahru hill, to avoid Wazir Akbar Khan and Sherpur (which are in its south). This would mean the destruction of homes in popular neighbourhoods. So the creation of ‘security zones’ here means security for others, not the inhabitants. Hotaki said anyone losing their homes, would be re-housed. However, particularly given that government promises on housing and land are rarely honoured those facing the demolition of their homes could be forgiven for being sceptical (see also AAN analysis here and here). Indeed, rather like building T-walls, this looks like another grab of resources from ordinary people to improve the security of the already privileged. A few thoughts about the new Kabul security plan In general, it is difficult to protect the population when Taleban and Daesh insurgents are prepared to kill civilians and do not (despite statements to the contrary) recognise the city’s population as ‘their people’ who have to be safeguarded in any attack. The insurgents’ readiness to commit suicide also makes them a tricky enemy to protect against. Physical barriers alone will also never be able to protect a large and sprawling city like Kabul. Even in Najibullah’s time, when the population was smaller and more homogenous, his triple-ring defences could not protect the population then from mujahedin attack, in those days mainly the systematic targeting of relatively low-profile targets – police and army checkpoints, barracks and individuals (see AAN analysis here). Even if the Taleban did not have sympathisers inside the city ready to help with logistics or provide safe houses, they would still be able to force cooperation through threats, for example from people with relatives in villages under Taleban influence or control, or for money. Good intelligence is important here. Even so, physical security measures can help. In terms of the overall safety for the Afghan capital, the new vehicle barriers at the city’s gates and the K9 teams would seem to be positive steps and will be the most visible changes in Kabul’s security architecture. Otherwise, it seems the new measures are actually aimed at the already well-protected, despite claims by officials to the contrary. One security expert told AAN that the Palace was committed to protecting its citizens and boosting Kabul’s security, but that the availability of foreign funding was affecting where the plan was being rolled out. Moreover, although some diplomats and some government ministries will become safer, others, including the majority of international NGOs and the vast proportion of the population, will see little
met Irwin, a few reflections from reading about him and his works come to mind. The first is the example of a true man of conviction. Whether you agree with him or not, he is an incredible illustration of someone who did not compromise on his beliefs, right up to his own death. Second, he unfortunately provides a real-life confirmation of the fact that the power of government and taxation ultimately comes from the barrel of a gun. Many progressives like to delude themselves that government is The People and that we all happily bear our share of the burden. When asked if it is right for the government to take from some by pointing a gun at them, and then give that money to others, the reaction is almost always “Who said anything about guns?” Finally, the way Irwin Schiff was treated as a prisoner reveals an unfortunate reality of our current court and prison system. Even if you agree that Mr. Schiff should have ultimately gone to prison, it is hard to read about the lack of care he received and the conditions he endured towards the end of his life. Chris Kuiper, CFA is currently a student and researcher at George Mason University, pursuing a Master’s of Economics. His previous experience includes asset management, investing and banking.Norwich City midfielder Andrew Surman interests Bournemouth chief Eddie Howe Norwich City midfielder Andrew Surman is wanted by Bournemouth again after a successful season-long loan stint. Picture by Paul Chesterton/Focus Images Ltd ©Focus Images Limited www.focus-images.co.uk +447814 482222 Norwich City midfielder Andrew Surman is a top summer transfer target for Bournemouth after a successful season-long loan stint at the Championship outfit. Share Email this article to a friend To send a link to this page you must be logged in. Cherries’ boss Eddie Howe has already recruited former Newcastle and Everton starlet Dan Gosling and Surman is another Premier League player he wants to bring to the south coast club. Howe hinted on Thursday he wants a reunion, but confirmed no talks have taken place with the Canaries’ hierarchy over a permanent move for the 27-year-old, who has one year left on his current City deal. Surman made a major impact during a 35-game stint last season to help Bournemouth finish in the top 10. “Andrew Surman did very, very well for us. He is Norwich’s player now so it is out of our hands what happens with his future,” said Howe. “It is very much in the hands of his club and we respect that. We were very grateful to Norwich for giving him to us for a year and in the first place so we will certainly see what happens with him. We value him very highly. “We know the type of players we are looking for. We are pretty well organised on that front but it may be that we have to be patient with a few of them. We are always looking to improve the squad and looking to move forward. Midfield is a really important area of the pitch and I think you need quality in that position. It was definitely one of our strengths.” Howe believes the Cherries have already pulled off one transfer coup with a pre-contract deal agreed for Gosling, who will officially join Bournemouth on July 1 following his Newcastle United release. “He is very ambitious and a very dedicated professional and his aim is to get promoted with a Championship club,” said Howe. “We had to fight off some competition to get him and it is always a good sign when other clubs are interested.”A family fight over control of an Orange County megachurch after the death of the founder heads to the courts.The family of Pastor Chuck Smith is embroiled in a legal battle over control his Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa megachurch. His daughter has filed suit alleging elder abuse and neglect when Smith died.Pastor Chuck Smith died nearly a year ago. He was married to his wife Kay for 65 years. They grew their congregation from 25 people to 1,400 churches worldwide.Janette Manderson, Smith's daughter, spoke exclusively to Eyewitness News on behalf of her 87-year-old mother, Kay, who suffers from dementia."It's still a shock. It's almost a year later and still I can't really process it. Why didn't they help my dad?" said Manderson.A lawsuit filed on Kay's behalf alleges elder abuse and neglect, and points the finger at Smith's son-in-law, Brian Brodersen, married to the Smiths' youngest daughter, Cheryl.The lawsuit alleges Smith's "death was hastened" and he suffered "significant pain and anguish" the night he had trouble breathing and died from a heart attack.Smith had terminal lung cancer. Manderson was appointed by her parents as trustee and put in charge of his healthcare. She says she was out of town and not told how close he was to death."Nobody had called 911 until my nephew finally stepped in and did it. The nurse wouldn't do it and told him not to call 911," said Manderson."The son-in-law, Brian, is the one who oversaw the selection of the nurse and she's directly under his supervision, and from what we know he's the one that she contacted for instructions," said Jillyn Hess-Verdon, Kay Smith's attorney. "The evidence we have, the paramedics got there and said 'Why haven't you people called 911?'""When Pastor Chuck died, the church cut off Kay," said Hess-Verdon.A monthly annuity benefit of up to $10,000 to support the Smiths was gone.The lawsuit alleges the annuity was in exchange for Smith taking himself off the church payroll years before.A $1-million life insurance policy was also gone.The lawsuit alleges that in 2006, the board of directors got Smith to change the beneficiary from Kay and Smith's non-profit organization "The Word For Today" to the Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa."I believe dad was pressured. The board started pressuring dad several years ago on various things," said Manderson.The lawsuit alleges Brodersen and the board of directors, which he chairs, took advantage of Smith's failing health and age to take control of the megachurch.According to the lawsuit, within a day of the pastor's death some members of the board took over the pastor's office and computers and took full control of The Word For Today Incorporated property.The Word For Today non-profit organization includes radio broadcasts, books and DVDs."Pastor Chuck and Kay's desire was that The Word For Today be a non-profit under independent leadership so that it could oversee his legacy for many, many years to come," said Hess-Verdon.Manderson says that "independent leadership" meant her and her family, not the board of directors."The board is holding on to everything of dad's and not giving it to us," said Mandrson.Brodersen had no comment and referred Eyewitness News to Roger Wing, the board's assistant secretary. Wing said he couldn't comment on specific allegations but stressed: "Everything we did, we did according to the law and according to stipulations given... what Pastor Chuck and the board had worked out.""It makes me sad, it makes me feel that they're dishonoring my dad and disrespecting his wishes," said Manderson.Manderson says the church began paying some of the monthly annuities owed, but only after she retained attorneys.According to Legislative Auditor Daryl Purpera, borrowing maneuvers under former Gov. Bobby Jindal in his attempts to get quick cash for the state budget have had unforeseen long-term effects and have increased state debt by as much as $231 million, pushing the state closer to its debt limit. The report says Louisiana got extra money upfront by agreeing to pay higher interest rates over the life of the debt, which will ultimately cost the state an additional $71 million. The report also disclosed that the Jindal administration used $335 million in surplus dollars that could have been used either to pay off debt or for construction projects, which would have saved $160 million in interest payments on long-term debt. But perhaps the most alarming practice to come to light is that Jindal began using payday loans to fund the state payroll. When questioned about the prudence of the decision, Jindal replied, “Well, isn’t that what they’re for? Why else would they call them ‘payday loans’?” Auditors also have learned that Jindal borrowed from CashNetU$A, whose motto is “Have No Fear, CashNetU$A Is Here.” According to its website, its loans are “Easy, Convenient and Fast.” The annual percentage rate charged on some of the loans offered by CashNetU$A’s “Easy, Convenient and Fast” loans is 912.5%, and I am not making that up. After all, they are “Easy, Convenient and Fast.” These are the kind of loans that would make Vito Corleone blush, but then CashNetU$A never has been known to break the legs of a delinquent borrower. That’s because it operates perfectly within the law. Unfortunately, Jindal soon learned that CashNetU$A loans had to be repaid within 30 days. Once again, fortune smiled on our man Bobby. While watching reruns of The Brady Bunch, he saw an ad for Western Sky Financial: “The Problem Solver Loan — Get up to $10,000 in a day!” Another strategy considered by Jindal was to send money to Joel Osteen or one of the other televangelists who promise God wants you to prosper. Jindal, in order to deal with the state’s financial woes, held a prayer rally where he proclaimed “Our God wins,” which indicates he interpreted the ad for Western Sky Financial to be an answer to his prayers, if not a message from the Almighty Himself. The APR for a typical WSF loan of $10,000 is 89.68%, with 84 monthly payments of $743.49, resulting in the debtor repaying $62,459.16 over the life of the loan. Any prudent financial manager would readily see that 89.68% is much better than the 912.5% charged by CashNetU$A, so naturally, Jindal signed on the dotted line. Jindal also considered lenders located in Baton Rouge, like Speedy Cash, with APRs as high as 697.41%. Again, I am not making that up. However, forgetting that he was more recognizable in Iowa than in Baton Rouge, he was concerned someone might recognize him when he went in to pick up the cash. Another strategy considered by Jindal was to send money to Joel Osteen or one of the other televangelists who promise God wants you to prosper. Evidently, there are a considerable number of people who have adopted that investment strategy, as Osteen lives in a $10 million mansion, travels in his own private jet, and has great teeth. Grover Norquist once said, “I’m not in favor of abolishing the government. I just want to shrink it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub,” and it appears that his disciple Bobby may have come pretty close to accomplishing that for Louisiana. To date, Gov. John Bel Edwards has not called upon Jindal to help with the transition.Noida. Leading Hindi news channel India TV has bought a “psychic donkey” that would predict outcomes of cricket matches by back-kicking footballs representing the contesting teams in a match. The donkey, apparently named Chunky by its former owner, would be branded as “Chunky, the Shy-Kick Donkey” and is expected to be a major TRP grosser for the news channel during the upcoming World Cup and IPL tournaments. “We are calling it ‘Shy-Kick’ as Chunky doesn’t appear too upbeat upon taking part in the post-match discussions in our studio,” India TV’s Managing Editor Vinod Kapri clarified, “Our original plan was not only to use Chunky for predictions, but also involve him in analysis of the game.” India TV is already promoting its new hero “We tried our best to teach Chunky to at least nod or shake his head as responses to some typical questions by news anchors, but he is very shy,” the channels’ editorial head expressed his helplessness. Mr. Kapri rejected criticisms that it would have been too outlandish and maybe even offensive to involve a donkey in analyzing performances of the teams in a television news studio. “With proper training, donkeys can take part in prime time news debates,” he claimed, “But this Chunky guy seems low on self-confidence as compared to other guests we normally see on television.” “Gadha kahin ka,” he muttered with a little annoyance in his tone. It’s not yet known how much did India TV pay to buy Chunky, but the donkey is now an integral part of the editorial team of the news channel, unless the channel decides to lay him off or transfer him to some other news channel. “We got a good deal,” confirmed the HR head of India TV, “Chunky would not be drawing any monthly salaries, would be always on duty, and the only operational cost involved would be the leftover food of the canteen!” “Chunky is a dream employee,” added the HR head, though he declined to comment how good a “journalist” Chunky would prove to be. “Let’s wait till the performance appraisal next year,” he said after persistent questioning by Faking News. The show involving Chunky, the Shy-Kick Donkey could tentatively be called “Gadhe Ka Gyaan” (wisdom of the donkey) so that it can be used for non-cricketing predictions as well in future.The replacement of diseased organs and tissues by the healthy ones of others has been a unique milestone in modern medicine. For centuries, transplantation remained a theme of fantasy in literature and the arts. Within the past five decades, however, it has developed from a few isolated attempts to salvage occasional individuals with end-stage organ failure to a routine treatment for many patients. In parallel with the progressive improvements in clinical results has come an explosion in immunology, transplantation biology, immunogenetics, cell and molecular biology, pharmacology, and other relevant biosciences, with knowledge burgeoning at a rate not dreamed of by the original pioneers. Indeed, there have been few other instances in modern medicine in which so many scientific disciplines have contributed in concert toward understanding and treating such a complex clinical problem as the failure of vital organs. The field has been a dramatic example of evolution from an imagined process to an accepted form of therapy. advances in medicine and related sciences have long complemented each other. A novel medical approach may open new concepts in biology. Experimental data produced years before may suddenly become relevant in solving clinical conundrums. Organ transplantation and its biology are examples of this parallel relationship. Each stemmed from relatively separate origins, and each has increasingly cross-fertilized the other. The startlingly successful resurrection of a patient with end-stage renal failure by a kidney transplanted from an identical twin in the 1950s brought to the attention of professionals and the public that such a radical departure in treatment of a hitherto fatal condition could have far-reaching future possibilities. In contrast, the inevitable acute destruction of foreign tissue grafted to normal subjects, initially an experimental curiosity, was later defined more precisely in controlled animal models and then in patients. A morphologically unprepossessing circulating cell, the lymphocyte, was recognized in the early 1960s to be immunologically competent and primarily responsible for the rejection phenomenon. Over the ensuing years, the cellular and molecular cascade involved in host alloresponsiveness (see Table1) and graft destruction has gradually been unraveled. Strategies to inhibit these events were subsequently designed to allow successful allograft placement into a recipient. These strategies included total body x-radiation and then the use of increasing numbers of chemical agents. More recently, new generations of ever more effective immunosuppressive drugs have been developed; the actions of these drugs have also been better understood on a molecular level. In addition, as the associated physiological, immunologic, molecular, and pharmacological puzzles presented by the subject have become progressively understood, the number of biological therapies to produce specific unresponsiveness toward a foreign graft has increased. Table 1. Glossary of terms Adoptive transfer Transfer of activated cells (lymphocytes) into a naive isologous host Allograft Graft from a member of the same species Alloresponsiveness Host immune reactivity to allografted tissue Autograft Graft from the same subject B lymphocyte Bursa (equivalent) derived lymphocyte involved with antibody formation Bursa An aggregation of lymphoid tissue near the cloaca of birds responsible for antibody production. The bursa equivalent in mammals probably lies in the lymphoid tissue of the gut and in the bone marrow Histocompatibility antigen Antigens expressed on graft cell surfaces that are targets of host alloimmunity Hybridoma B lymphocyte fused with a myeloma cell to produce an immortal line of cells that produce a specific antibody IgG Immunoglobin G, an antibody with high affinity dependant on T cell help IgM Immunoglobulin M, an antibody with low affinity independent of T cell help Isograft Graft placed between identical twins T lymphocyte Thymus derived lymphocyte responsible for cellular immunity Tolerance A state of specific unresponsiveness against a given antigen by a host in whom the remainder of its immunologic repertoire is intact Xenograft Graft from a member of a different species Significant developments in the evolution of transplantation and transplantation immunobiology will be reviewed in this paper. The birth of the idea in fantasy will be discussed first, and then early experimental and clinical attempts, which ultimately have led to routine clinical practice, will be reviewed. Although hardly inclusive, a broad picture of this biomedical adventure will be presented. FANTASY The transformation of a part of one individual into another has been a theme recurring throughout lore and literature since ancient times. The Egyptians and Phoenicians worshipped gods bearing the heads of animals. In Greek mythology, creatures with attributes of both humans and beasts were plentiful: Pegasus, the fierce Minotaur, lusty Satyrs chasing nymphs through classical landscapes. Snakes coiled from Medusa's scalp; those who caught her glance turned to stone. Homer sang of the sailors of Ulysses transmogrified into swine by the enchantress, Circe. Indeed, his Chimera, part goat, part lion, and part dragon, has become a modern symbol of clinical transplantation. Virgil described his own utopian Arcadia, that peaceful landscape of the boy-god Pan and other beast-gods. The tradition has also flourished in children's fairy tales and in adult literature, as exemplified by descriptions of the inhabitants of Heaven and Hell by Dante, Milton, and later by Blake. The features of Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll were converted reversibly into those of Mr. Hyde, and the face of Wilde's Dorian Gray altered drastically as his character deteriorated. On his island, H. G. Wells' Dr. Moreau created humanoid forms from animals by sequential surgery. The use of specific tissues for restoration or reconstruction was only occasionally considered. Although pagans, infidels, and believers alike were adept at removing skin for punishment, no record suggests that this tissue was ever used for therapeutic purposes. Mercury excised a sheet of skin from Marsyas, whereas St. Bartholomew, as portrayed by Michelangelo, holds his own skin, skillfully flayed by the Indians, which he will be able to reclaim on Judgment Day. Early Christians reflected on the benefits of tissue replacement but as a supernatural event. Christ, for instance, restored the ear of a servant of the high priest following its amputation by an angry Simon Peter. St. Peter, having witnessed this accomplishment, was later able to replant the breasts of St. Agatha, which had been pulled off with tongs during torture. St. Mark replaced a soldier's hand lost in battle. In the 5th century, Pope Leo I, tempted by a woman kissing his hand, cut it off. The hand, however, was restored by the Virgin Mary, appearing in a vision, as a reward for resisting further temptation. In the 12th century, St. Anthony of Padua replanted the leg that a young boy had amputated in a fit of remorse after kicking his mother. The best known restoration with saintly surgery was the replacement of the gangrenous leg of a bell tower custodian with a healthy leg of an Ethiopian by the patron saints of transplantation, Cosmos and Damian. In these and other examples, the richness of human fantasy has long envisioned, at least theoretically, the goal of reconstructing or replacing diseased or missing parts with healthy living tissue from others. EARLY VENTURES The concept of tissue transplantation was not totally relegated to the imagination, as a few early physicians devised practical methods to cover bodily defects that are still used in modern reconstructive procedures. Susruta, a surgeon of ancient India (∼1000 BC), discussed in his monumental treatise, Susruta Samhita, a technique for creating a new nose for those lacking one. Nasal amputation, a popular form of punishment at that time, forced many unfortunates into lives of misery and disfigurement. Susruta devised a skin flap from cheek or forehead to cover such large defects. This idea was embellished further by Gasparo Tagliacozzi in 16th century Bologna, a period when swordplay was rife, punishment mutilative, and syphilis, with its destruction of nasal cartilage, endemic in Europe following the discovery of the New World. Tagliacozzi formed a pedicle flap from the upper arm to restore such defects. Once healed in place, the other end of the pedicle was released from the arm and fashioned into an appropriate shape. Later, in an article in the Gentleman's Magazine of October 1794, a description of the continuing practice of rhinoplasty in India produced much excitement in England for two reasons: the interest in Indian affairs during the expansion of the Empire, engendered by such political figures as Robert Clive, Warren Hastings, and William Pitt, and the influence of the experimental surgeon John Hunter. Hunter's observation that the spur of a rooster would grow normally when transferred from its foot to its highly vascularized comb intrigued natural philosophers of the time (Fig. 1). He followed this experiment with the successful replacement of the first premolar of a patient several hours after it had been knocked from his jaw and then engrafted a human tooth into a cock's comb. Resultant clinical efforts in transplantation of teeth, however, a short-lived misadventure of the latter 18th century, not only exploited the poor as donors but often ended in infection and death of the recipients. Fig. 1.A cock's spur was successfully transplanted to its comb by John Hunter in 1770 (from the Hunterian Museum, Royal College of Surgeons of England). From these beginnings and persisting until after World War II, sporadic reports of the transplantation of skin and other tissues occasionally caught the interest of surgeons. In 1804, shortly after Hunter's death, the Milanese surgeon Guiseppe Baronio published an account of the grafting of skin between a variety of animal species, noting in passing that those from the same animal healed and those from others did not. These studies encouraged the transfer of skin grafts from one part of a patient to cover a raw surface on another site too large to be closed primarily or with a flap. In 1817, Astley Cooper, a surgeon at Guy's Hospital, amputated a thumb and used the remaining skin as a graft to cover the stump. By the end of the 19th century, skin autografts were used relatively frequently to treat many open ulcers and nonhealing wounds. A more exotic form of transplantation arose, during and after World War I, when the grafting of testes from monkeys, goats, and other animals was used to rejuvenate the weary and increase the sexual appetites of older men. Initiated in 1916 by Chicago surgeons, popularized in the 1920s in Paris by Serge Voronoff, and continued through the 1930s in Switzerland and in Kansas, the reputed efficacy of glandular grafting gained much public attention. With its overlay of charlatanism, however, the practice declined and eventually ended, although at the time it appeared to be a natural extension of the use of newly discovered extracts of endocrine glands. However, despite hints from several investigators, there was little general appreciation of differences in behavior between autografts, allografts, and xenografts (see Table 1). In the 1920s, Emile Holman, a young surgeon working in Boston, grafted skin on several burned children, both their own and that of their mothers. The healing of the patient's own skin but not the maternal grafts provoked him to conjecture about the importance of genetic differences between individuals as well as to note that the tempo and intensity of destruction increased after a second grafting from the initial donor but not from a third party. On three occasions during the next decade, surgeons in Germany and the United States successfully treated deformities and burns with isografted skin from identical twins. These occasional clinical observations were placed on a more scientific basis during World War II, however, by a young Oxford zoologist, Peter Medawar (Fig. 2), working with Thomas Gibson, a plastic surgeon in Glasgow. Pairing autografts and allografts on patients, they concluded that the latter were inevitably destroyed but also observed, as had Holman, that destruction of second grafts from the same foreign donor was hastened. “The second set of … grafts did not undergo the same cycle of growth and regression as the first; dissolution was far advanced … after transplantation.” Here, we find the first use of the term “second set,” a definition that was to be widely used to describe the phenomenon of “memory” in allografting. Equally as important, however, was their final conclusion that such accelerated rejection “was brought about by a mechanism of active immunization.” Medawar carried forward his investigations in rabbit models and began to determine in detail the meaning of morphological changes associated with the phenomenon of rejection of foreign tissue grafted to a genetically dissimilar host. His findings would later become the basis for increased interest in transplantation biology, which soon led to an explosion of activity into the meaning of the immune system and the function of cells and tissues that comprise it. Fig. 2.Peter Medawar opened up the field of transplantation biology with his experiments on acute rejection and immunologic tolerance. JINGOISM OF THE BODY: THE IMMUNE RESPONSES With both the stirrings of clinical activity in kidney transplantation after World War II and data becoming available from a few experimental models, the dramatic and complex series of host immunologic responses called into play by and leading to the destruction of foreign tissues provoked increasing interest among scientists. Indeed, the concept that such activity was on an immune basis and was moderated predominantly by lymphocytes took a long time to develop. The basic features of inflammation (heat, redness, swelling, and tenderness) have been recognized since the writings of Celsus and Galen. Details of the process, however, remained unclear until 1872 when the German pathologist Julius Cohnheim described the migration of leukocytes from blood vessels into the injured or inflamed footwebs, mesentery, and tongues of frogs. In 1905, Elie Metchnikoff, a Russian zoologist working in Paris, demonstrated the central importance of cellular activity in inflammation, first examining the reactions of simple organisms to foreign bodies and then expanding his observations up the evolutionary scale to the vertebrates. Controversy raged during this period regarding whether cellular activity or serum-based humoral factors, generally considered the most important, were responsible for innate or acquired immunity to infection. The polemics became so strident that they drew public ridicule, fueled particularly by George Bernard Shaw in the Doctors Dilemma. However, calm was restored when the 1908 Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine was awarded jointly to Metchnikoff for his observations on cell-mediated events and to Paul Erlich, the principal supporter of the humoral theory, which was based on his “side chain” hypothesis. It had also become clear at that time that recovery from infection was often accompanied by “immunity” or resistance to a subsequent exposure from the same organism, a critical observation based on the 18th century smallpox vaccination experiences of Cotton Mather and Zabdiel Boylston in Massachusetts and Edward Jenner in England. The often heated controversy between Metchnikoff, Ehrlich, and others on the importance of cells and antibodies in the host defenses was rekindled after World War II because of increased interest in allograft rejection. Medawar had become the highly visible proponent of cellular immunity, and Peter Gorer advocated the role of humoral antibodies in this dramatic process. Although the dialogue was conducted on a more genteel level than that which occurred a half-century previously, it engaged much attention among those in the field. After completion of his medical studies at Guy's Hospital in London, Gorer joined the great, albeit difficult and eccentric, geneticist J. B. S. Haldane. His important research in the 1930s led to the discovery of H-2 in the mouse, the first major histocompatibility (MHC) locus to be identified. His subsequent observations, complementing experiments by George Snell at Bar Harbor, Maine, whom Gorer spent a year with, produced the general concept of “histocompatibility genes,” transplantation antigens that were to become a mainstay of research in the field and that opened up the new area of tissue typing between donor and recipient. By crossbreeding and backcrossing generations of inbred strains of mice, Snell, who won the Nobel Prize in 1980, was able to segregate several histocompatibility systems, later identified as genes. Gorer then noted that the mice could only make antibodies against foreign H-2, a finding that made him a major proponent of their role both in transplantation of tissue and in the behavior of a host toward tumor antigens. In modern immunology, the concept of the MHC and its related components has become a critical piece of the puzzle of activation and interaction of T cells with foreign antigens, triggering intense and ongoing investigations in defining the role of the phenomenon in initiating the rejection event and stimulating strategies to modulate it. Medawar's descriptions of “the homograft (allograft) response” involved the sequential changes occurring in rejecting skin grafts and in their draining lymph nodes. Indeed, it was becoming clear that the lymphoid system, developing relatively early in evolution and attaining remarkable functional sophistication in higher animals, was important in immune responses. For instance, no lymphoid organs are recognizable in most subvertebrates, which can mount only sluggish, nonspecific inflammation against foreign stimuli. In contrast, less primitive organisms such as annelid worms and tunicates can reject foreign grafts slowly via activity of their predominant blood cell, the hemocyte, which can evoke a weak inflammatory response, has phagocytic properties, and can elaborate bacteriocidal substances. The lowest marine vertebrates, hagfish and lamprey, have erythrogenic splenic tissue in the submucosa of the gut as well as crude circulating granulocytes. They can also produce IgM antibodies. The cartilaginous and bony fish have a well-developed spleen and thymus gland and can mount a cellular response that causes rejection of skin grafts and form both IgM and IgG. Birds are the first to elaborate distinct classes of specific humoral antibodies via specialized lymphoid cells in the bursa of Fabricius, a cloacal outpouching. Cellular immunity, mediated via lymphocytes schooled in the thymus, and antibody-mediated humoral activity from bursa-associated lymphocytes in the gut and bone marrow have reached their most sophisticated and complex forms in mammals. Taken in bulk, mammalian lymphoid tissues constitute an organ of considerable size, the overall function of which, surprisingly, is still not completely defined. One theory was proffered by Australian immunologist McFarland Burnet, who shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine with Medawar in 1960. He conceptualized that these tissues and their associated lymphocytes are involved in “immunologic surveillance,” the identification and elimination of genetic errors occurring occasionally in rapidly dividing cells that may become neoplastic. Even more importantly, it was realized that, although populations of leukocytes destroy opportunistic microorganisms that may threaten the subject throughout its life, resident lymphocytes orchestrate continuing host immunity against further challenge. An understanding of their role in transplantation came later. After Medawar showed that host lymphocytes gathering in the bed of skin allografts preceded complete tissue destruction, the increasing attention afforded these cells during the 1950s and 1960s represented a dramatic change in attitude from a few years before. In the 1930s, Arnold Rich, a pathologist at Johns Hopkins, summarized existing knowledge about lymphocytes by concluding that they were merely “phlegmatic spectators watching the turbulent activity of phagocytes.” Despite the fact that their function could only be conjectured through static morphological studies, clues were already present to indicate their importance in the body's defenses. The presence of small lymphocytes surrounding tubercles or luetic lesions and in patients with certain types of chronic inflammation had been repeatedly described. They were also noted to congregate in the vicinity of particular types of tumors and allografts. Their ability to initiate an immune response by interaction with antigen was first appreciated in graft-vs.-host models in the early 1950s. In the 1960s, James Gowans in Oxford demonstrated that a large proportion of such cells continuously recirculate through tissues, lymph, and blood and confirmed that they were “immunologically competent” by their ability to reject stable skin grafts after adoptive transfer. About the same time, Rodney Porter in Oxford and Gerald Edelman in New York defined immunoglobulin structure, opening the way for increased understanding of antibodies produced by lymphocytes and their role in immunity. They were to receive the Nobel Prize for this work. The burgeoning information about cellular and humoral function as mediated by the mammalian thymus and the avian bursa or mammalian bursa equivalent, respectively, stimulated a torrent of immunologic studies relating to the activities of lymphocytes, which continue unabated to the present time. These included the gradual understanding that there were different subpopulations with differing functional behavior. In 1966, Henry Claman and his colleagues from Colorado published observations that effector lymphocytes needed the influence of another lymphocyte population before they could produce antibody. A few years later, Avrion Mitchison and his group in London defined more precisely the “help” given by thymus (T)-derived lymphocytes to bone marrow [bursa (B)]-derived lymphocytes in antibody production. The subsequent identification of specific T and B cell markers unequivocally confirmed the presence of these two distinct subpopulations. Identification of histocompatibility antigens and elaboration of their critical role at both cellular and molecular levels have continued to unfold. The rapid advances in hybridoma technology allowed the creation of monoclonal antibodies in the 1980s. Such antibodies, designed against specific antigenic determinants on cell surfaces, have facilitated characterization of the cellular cascade mediating allograft rejection and allowed progressive understanding of the activities, interrelationships, influences, and contributions of cell populations, subpopulations, and their factors in the host defenses. The recent explosion in molecular biology and the elaboration of T cell receptors and their interaction with the T cell-MHC complex have allowed the further unraveling of the complexities of host immunoresponsiveness. Entire fields concerning the function of various cell products such as cytokines, accessory molecules, and adhesion molecules have burgeoned. In addition, it must be stressed that, only 35 years ago, particulars about the lymphocyte, its function, and its properties were not understood. REALITY: THE KIDNEY Emboldened by advances in anesthesia, antisepsis, and surgical methods, a few investigators during the opening years of the 20th century began to explore the possibilities of renal transplantation in animals and occasionally in humans. In 1902 in Vienna, Emerich Ullmann reported the transfer of kidneys from their location in the flank to the necks of dogs and goats using prosthetic tubes and rings to join the vessels. During the same period in Lyon, having developed and refined direct suture techniques for vascular anastomosis, Alexis Carrel began to transplant kidneys into experimental animals. As his experience grew, first with Charles Guthrie in Chicago, then at the Rockefeller Institute, he began to realize that grafts from the same animal survived and functioned, whereas those from other animals inevitably failed, explaining this difference on the basis of some undefined host activity. Guthrie became discouraged by the inevitably of this event despite technical perfection in organ placement and left this field for other avenues of research. The earliest kidney transplants were attempted in humans as desperate measures to salvage individuals dying of renal failure. Carrel's teacher in Lyon, Mathieu Jaboulay, performed the first two recorded human kidney transplants in 1906 by suturing the donor organ to the recipient arm vessels. In 1909, Ernst Unger in Berlin engrafted both kidneys of a Macaque monkey to the femoral vessels of a 21-year-old seamstress, a procedure stimulated by the new knowledge that monkeys and humans were serologically similar for red cell antigens. In the 1930s, the Russian surgeon U. U. Voronoy performed kidney transplants in six patients poisoned by chloride of mercury. None functioned. He also may have been the first to detect specific serum antibodies in graft recipients. After the end of World War II, a few surgical investigators once again became interested in the subject, comparing the deteriorating function of the rejected renal allografts with changes in their morphology and with immunologic events occurring in the canine host, much based on Medawar's previous observations of the rejection of skin grafts in rabbits and mice. In 1947 at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, Ernest Landsteiner, Charles Hufnagel, and David Hume (Fig.3) anastomosed the vessels of a kidney taken from a cadaver to the antecubital vessels of a young woman with acute renal failure. The graft diuresed transiently as she recovered her native function. In 1950, Richard Lawler in Chicago engrafted a cadaver donor kidney to the patient's own renal vessels, directly joining allograft and recipient ureters. This organ appeared to work long enough to allow the remaining native kidney to recover and sustain the patient for 5 years. Beginning in 1951, Marcel Servelle, Charles Dubost, Rene Küss, and their colleagues in Paris placed renal allografts in eight immunologically unmodified hosts, none of which functioned for significant periods. About the same time, Hume initiated a series of cadaver kidneys in nine recipients. The surprising
the upcoming two or three sprints. User Story Creation Creating user stories does not equal breaking down requirements documents received from stakeholders into smaller chunks. Writing user stories is a collaborative effort involving the entire scrum team. The process should create a shared understanding of what will be built, and for what reasons. Because it’s a collaborative effort, a user story is a subject of discussion for the scrum team. This might take up to 10% of the team’s availability during a sprint. A product owner will need to come to an agreement with their team as to what standards user stories need to achieve before being considered suitable for the sprint backlog (i.e. defining and achieving the “Definition of Ready”). Planning poker — the process of estimating user stories — is, most importantly, knowledge transfer. It supports the creation of a shared understanding within the scrum team of what needs to be built. User story estimation is a critical part of the risk mitigation strategy for the scrum team. With respect to the “Definition of Ready”: a candidate for the role of product owner should have heard of Bill Wake’s INVEST acronym (from the article INVEST in Good Stories and SMART Tasks). Product Owner Theses: Sprint Planning, Reviews, and Retrospectives The final set of theses concern product delivery: the sprint itself. A product owner defines the scope of upcoming sprints by identifying and prioritizing the most valuable user stories in the product backlog. A product owner should participate in all scrum ceremonies related to sprints. The product owner is the person responsible for defining a sprint’s goal. A product owner understands that, in addition to user stories, technical tasks, bugs, and research need to be addressed in every sprint. (For more detail, refer to Barry Overeem’s The Backlog Prioritisation Quadrant.) A product owner should be available on short notice to clarify any questions that the scrum team may have during a sprint. A product owner is responsible for accepting user stories into each sprint, and for deferring user stories that require additional work to meet the ‘Definition of Ready’ standard. This does not apply to user stories that are related to technical or refactoring tasks. The decision on those is the prerogative of the scrum team. A product owner is responsible for deciding whether to release a product increment at the end of each sprint. A product owner should host the sprint review, which is an event meant to provide the scrum team an opportunity to demo the outcome of each sprint to the product’s stakeholders. A product owner must embrace the sprint review as a vital inspect and adapt feedback loop — for both the development team and the product’s external and internal stakeholders. Conclusion: The Product Owner Theses—Scrum From Product Discovery to Delivery I believe that the scrum product owner role is the most demanding of all three scrum roles. It covers a lot of ground, from product discovery, politics, and stakeholder management to systems thinking, and maximizing the return on investment for his or her team. It is also the scrum role that the dark side can misuse simpler than the two other roles. Am I missing product owner theses to describe the scrum product owner correctly? Please share with me in the comments. Related Posts Scrum: 19 Sprint Planning Anti-Patterns. 28 Product Backlog and Refinement Anti-Patterns Hiring: 42 Scrum Product Owner Interview Questions to Avoid Agile ImpostersMeeting for Committee Chairs: Nov. 2, 2018 @6PM The meeting will be in the SSMU Boardroom, located in the SSMU Offices. Please enter through the Brown Building, go down the stairs, and take a left though the double doors. This is a mandatory meeting, if you are unable to attend please email [email protected] with your reasoning. Email Change!! SSMU recently migrated its email and cloud systems from Vibe and Groupwise to Google Drive and Gmail! As such, the Elections SSMU email has changed from [email protected] to [email protected]! Though emails sent to the old address should be forwarded to the new account, please be aware of the change. FYC Elections Timeline Nomination Period – September 10th – 20th at 5:00 PM – September 10th – 20th at 5:00 PM Pensketches – September 25th at 8:00 PM – September 25th at 8:00 PM Candidates’ Meeting – September 20th from 6:00-7:00 PM – September 20th from 6:00-7:00 PM Campaign Period – September 20th at 9:00 AM – 30th at 5:00 PM – September 20th at 9:00 AM – 30th at 5:00 PM Polling Period – September 28th at 9:00 AM – September 30th at 5:00 PM Elections SSMU FYC Powerpoint: FYC Info Session 2018 Candidates: President: Kelly Yeung Nour Mohsen Yi Heng Liu – Pensketch Zach Probst – Pensketch Tan Akpek – Pensketch VP External: Robert Hu – Pensketch Lara Kocoglu VP Finance: Kerry Yang Zheng (Tomas) Yang Alex Liu – Pensketch Tarik Murat Iri – Pensketch VP Internal: Melissa Ben Meddour – Pensketch Catherine Shi – Pensketch VP Student Affairs: Karam Soussi Holly Sandvold Flavia Ouyang – Pensketch Quebec Election Poll 2018 Polling Period: September 28th at 9:30 AM – October 1st at 8:00 PM All SSMU members will be permitted to vote in this poll. This includes anyone below the age of 18, anyone from outside Quebec or anyone from outside Canada. The following parties will be present on the ballot: Alliance provinciale du Québec Bloc pot Changement intégrité pour notre Québec Citoyens au pouvoir du Québec Coalition avenir Québec – L’équipe François Legault Droit des sans droits Équipe autonomiste Nouveau Parti démocratique du Québec Parti conservateur du Québec / Conservative Party of Québec Parti culinaire du Québec Parti équitable Parti libéral du Québec/Quebec Liberal Party Parti libre Parti marxiste-léniniste du Québec Parti nul Parti québécois Parti vert du Québec/Green Party of Québec Parti 51 Québec cosmopolitain / Cosmopolitan Québec Québec en marche Québec solidaire Voie du peuple Quebec Election Debate Elections SSMU is proud to announce an English and French debate for candidates running in the upcoming Quebec general election in the riding of Westmount – Saint-Louis, the riding encompassing McGill!! Come on down to Burnside Hall Room 1B45 on September 19th from 6:30pm-9:00pm and see candidates from a variety of political parties discuss their views on issues important to Quebec! The candidates who will be debating are: Jennifer Maccarone – Quebec Liberal Party | Le Parti libéral du Québec Jocelyne Marion Benoit – Parti Québecois Michelle Morin – Coalition Avenir Québec Ekaterina Piskunova – Québec solidaire Sam Kühn – Green Party of Quebec | Parti Vert du Québec Nicholas Lawson – New Democratic Party of Quebec | Nouveau Parti démocratique du Québec Mikey Colangelo Lauzon – Conservative Party of Quebec | Parti Conservateur du Québec There will be 8 questions asked to each candidate, 4 in English and 4 in French. We would also like to know if you have any questions for the candidates! If you would like to submit questions (English, French or both), please fill out this Google form: https://goo.gl/forms/XAvhJJnfkrU5lSvr1. We will also be taking a few direct questions at the end of the debate from the audience! Fall 2018 Referendum Timeline Nomination Period for Council-Initiated Questions: September 4th – November 1st Nomination Period for Student-Initiated Questions: September 4th – November 1st Meeting for Committee Chairs: November 2nd at 6:00 PM in the SSMU Boardroom Campaign Period: November 3rd – November 12th at 6:00 PM Polling Period: November 9th – November 12th at 6:00 PM Committee Chairs’ Meeting PowerPoint: Committee Chairs Meeting DPS Existence Referendum 2017 Turnout: 6,354 (20.7%) of 30,637 electors voted in this ballot. DPS Existence Question (Total) Option Votes Percent Yes 3,962 64.2% No 2,207 35.8% Abstain 185 2.9% Total 6,354 Turnout: 725 (9.5%) of 7,636 electors voted in this ballot. DPS Existence Question (Graduate) Option Votes Percent Yes 496 71.4% No 199 28.6% Abstain 30 4.1% Total 725 Turnout: 5,629 (24.5%) of 23,001 electors voted in this ballot. DPS Existence Question (Undergraduate) Option Votes Percent Yes 3466 63.3% No 2008 36.7% Abstain 155 2.8% Total 5629 Winter 2018 SSMU Elections Turnout: 7,100 (32.8%) of 21,636 electors SSMU President Option Votes Percent Tre Mansdoerfer 2,400 50.7% Corinne Bulger 2,331 49.3% Abstain 2,369 33.4% Total 7100 Vice President – Internal Affairs Option Votes Percent Matthew McLaughlin 3,713 87.3% No 539 12.7% Abstain 2,848 40.1% Total 7100 Vice President – Student Life Option Votes Percent Sophia Esterle 3,675 88.4% No 480 11.6% Abstain 2,945 41.5% Total 7,100 Vice President – External Affairs Option Votes Percent Marina Cupido 2,791 62.9% No 1,645 37.1% Abstain 2,664 37.5% Total 7,100 Vice President – University Affairs Option Votes Percent Jacob Shapiro 3,753 90.5% No 392 9.5% Abstain 2,955 41.6% Total 7,100 Vice President – Finance Option Votes Percent Jun Wang 3,106 82.6% No 653 17.4% Abstain 3,341 47.1% Total 7,100 Winter 2018 Referendum Turnout: 7,100 (32.8%) of 21,636 electors Motion Regarding the ECOLE Project Fee Levy Renewal Option Votes Percent Yes 3,417 80.5% No 830 19.5% Abstain 2,853 40.2% Total 7100 Motion Regarding the Black Students’ Network Fee for the 2018 Winter Referendum (Pt. I) Option Votes Percent Yes 3,634 79.8% No 921 20.2% Abstain 2,545 35.8% Total 7,100 Motion Regarding the Black Students’ Network Fee for the 2018 Winter Referendum (Pt. II) Option Votes Percent Yes 2,801 66.2% No 1,431 33.8% Abstain 2,868 40.4% Total 7,100 Motion to Amend the SSMU Campus Life Fee Option Votes Percent Yes 3,313 84.9% No 588 15.1% Abstain 3,199 45.1% Total 7,100 Motion to Amend the SSMU Clubs Fee Option Votes Percent Yes 3,248 85.0% No 575 15.0% Abstain 3,277 46.2% Total 7,100 Motion to Amend the University Centre Building Fee Option Votes Percent Yes 2,741 77.3% No 804 22.7% Abstain 3,555 50.1% Total 7,100 Policy on Implementation of a Fall Reading Break Option Votes Percent Yes 6,435 96.6% No 229 3.4% Abstain 436 6.1% Total 7,100An Akron officer may face disciplinary actions after leaving a prisoner inside a transport van last week. The 24-year veteran officer was transporting prisoners to the Oriana House and the Summit County Jail, according to Akron Police Lt. Rick Edwards. When he arrived at the jail, he took two of the prisoners and their paperwork inside. He forgot a third prisoner was inside the van. He then drove the van back to the police station and parked it in a parking garage. The prisoner, 21-year-old Stacy L. Carritz, of Akron, had fallen asleep in the back of the van. The jail later called to ask the officer where the prisoner was. He went back to the van and woke up Carritz. Authorities say she was left in the van for less than two hours and did not require any medical attention.Shoppers walk past a store in London. The British government will not be attending the event “The situation and rights of EU citizens in the U.K.," featuring remarks by chief Brexit negotiator Guy Verhofstadt | Chris J Ratcliffe/AFP via Getty Images UK officials snub MEPs on Brexit British representatives appear to be skipping out on a hearing on Brexit implications for EU citizens living in the UK. The British government appears to be skipping out on a European Parliament hearing on the implications of Brexit for EU citizens living in the U.K. The Thursday hearing titled “The situation and rights of EU citizens in the U.K." is scheduled to include remarks by Guy Verhofstadt, the parliament's Brexit negotiator, and Anne-Laure Donskoy, co-chair of The 3 million, a group which campaigns for the rights of EU citizens living in the U.K. According to a draft program sent to POLITICO last week, “representatives of the U.K. Home Office” would be part of the hearing organized by the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee (LIBE) as well as the Petitions and the Employment and Social Affairs committees. But a recent update of the program didn’t include any reference to U.K. representatives. A senior EU official said they would not participate and that "no further explanation was given." “It’s disappointing but not surprising. It’s a sign of how they really feel about citizens” — Sophie in ’t Veld, MEP Sophie in ’t Veld, a member of the LIBE committee and an MEP from the liberal ALDE group, said she regarded the move as a snub. “It’s disappointing but not surprising,” she said. “It’s a sign of how they really feel about citizens." In February, in ’t Veld and other MEPs sent a letter to U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May urging her to combat any bureaucratic harassment of EU nationals living in the U.K and to guarantee their rights. But in 't Veld wasn't satisfied with the response and formed a task force to examine cases where EU citizens have faced a “bureaucratic wall." “The tone of that letter was absolutely ridiculous,” she said. “It was a sign of how insensitive and careless they are about people.” A spokesperson for the British Home Office told POLITICO that they had received the Parliament’s invitation to attend. On Wednesday, a U.K. government spokesperson said: “We are grateful for the European Parliament’s invitation to attend the joint hearing on Thursday and have written to them offering to send a government representative to speak to the committees about this on an alternative date.” Although Parliament won't participate directly in the Brexit negotiations, MEPs will have the power to veto the final withdrawal deal by a simple majority, once the remaining 27 EU member countries have endorsed it. They are likely to disrupt or slow things down by issuing political resolutions during the negotiations. Since the U.K. voted to leave the EU, the Parliament has struggled to get May, Brexit secretary David Davis and other high-ranking British officials to testify publicly about Brexit in plenary sessions or committee meetings. A Parliament official said Verhofstadt, Parliament President Antonio Tajani and former Parliament President Martin Schulz had all invited May at different times. Tajani raised the issue at a one-on-one meeting with May in Downing Street last month. “A commitment could not be made because of the U.K.’s general election,” the official said, adding: "She is keen to come.” Some contact has taken place behind closed doors. In November, several parliamentary leaders, including Manfred Weber, the head of the conservative European People's Party group, met privately with Davis. Verhofstadt is said to be in close contact with British officials but these meetings are generally not open to the public. In April, some MEPs met with David Jones and Robin Walker, respectively the minister of state and the parliamentary under-secretary of state at the Brexit department. But these meetings were not made public, either. Giulia Paravicini contributed to this article.If one was looking for some solid examples of the cultural decay that would follow the legalization of marijuana use, I believe I may have just found it. A Dutch opera company is currently putting on a Klingon Opera (and yes, it is as awful as it sounds)... The Terran Research Company is currently putting on an opera (entittled "u") at The Hague in the Netherlands that is almost totally performed in Klingon. Why not have a gander, so you can feel free to judge with impunity... Figaro... Figaro...Figaro... Wow... A stage production put on by professional singers that one can actually describe very accurately as sounding exactly the way a few retarded people having an orgy on a pile of loose pots and pans would sound like... And according to the guys putting it on, it is actually selling... It amazes me what our ever so tolerant Western Culture will justify as art... Granted, I did spend four hours last night trying to Autotune few choice recordings of loud juicy farts to the tune of Eminem’s "Not Afraid"... Like my mother always said, one man’s trash...Jim will be at MisCon in Missoula, MT this weekend! The full schedule is here, but here are the events that may most interest Jim’s readers: Being a Published Author... (Writing) Fri 2:00 – 2:50 PM, (Great Hall) Pros and Guests: Patricia Briggs, Jim Butcher, Rhiannon Held, J.A. Pitts Moderator: J.A. Pitts Learn about some of the things no one told the panelists about being published. What surprised them, both positive and negative about their newfound status? Writers’ Workshop Meet and Greet (Writing) Fri 4:00 – 4:50 PM, (Containment Room) Pros and Guests: Carol Berg, S. A. Bolich, Larry Bonham, M. H. Bonham (Maggie), Patricia Briggs, Jim Butcher, Brenda Carre, Diana Pharaoh Francis (Di), Deby Fredericks, James Glass, Rhiannon Held, Andrea Howe, J.A. Pitts, Joyce Reynolds-Ward, Peter Wacks (pjwacks), Parris ja Young Moderator: Justin Barba Participants and Critiquing Authors get together to meet and discuss how the workshop works. They’ll also discuss workshops in general, and how to take criticism. Even though he’s not critiquing manuscripts, Jim Butcher will add his 2 cents. Open to anyone interested in the Writers’ Workshop. Opening Ceremonies (Geek Discussion) Fri 7:00 – 7:50 PM, (Containment Room) Pros and Guests: Paizo Publishing, Justin Barba, Jim Butcher, John Compton, Adam Daigle, Dragon Dronet, Kyle Elliott, Dave Gross, CthulhuBob Lovely, Ryan Macklin, Theresa Mather Moderator: CthulhuBob Lovely Attend our opening ceremonies and watch CthulhuBob cry. Also find out what’s happening at MisCon 27. Jim Butcher Book Signing (Writing) Sat 10:00 – 11:50 AM, (Hotel Lobby of Doom) Pros and Guests: Jim Butcher Moderator: Justin Barba Jim will sign books. This is a controlled event, and is limited to 3 items per person per trip through the long line. Jim will only personalize one item per person. Plot, Plot, Plot (Writing) Sat 2:00 – 2:50 PM, (Great Hall) Pros and Guests: Carol Berg, Jim Butcher, J.A. Pitts, Patrick Swenson Moderator: Carol Berg What is plot? How is it different from storyline? How do you keep your writing moving fast? Our experts will share what they know. The Dresden Files: a Discussion (Geek Discussion) Sat 4:00 – 4:50 PM, (Upstairs Programming 1) Pros and Guests: Beth Stoops Moderator: Beth Stoops An affectionate discussion/hint of roast of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Series. [Note: Why is this at the same time as another of Jim’s panels? We don’t know either.] Private Eyes in Fiction and Real Life (Writing) Sat 4:00 – 4:50 PM, (Containment Room) Pros and Guests: Carol Berg, Jim Butcher, John Goff, Peter Wacks (pjwacks) Moderator: Jim Butcher How do you put a little mystery in your fantasy and science fiction? In addition to discussing the fictional side of private eyes, John Goff, a private detective for 12 years, will bring some realism to the table. Working With Licensed Intellectual Properties (Gaming, Writing) Sat 5:00 – 5:50 PM, (Containment Room) Pros and Guests: Paizo Publishing, David Boop, Jim Butcher, John Goff, Dave Gross, Ryan Macklin Moderator: Ryan Macklin A discussion of the issues and pitfalls of working with someone else’s property and dealing with fan expectations of said property. Dystopia/Utopia (Writing, Gaming) Sun 10:00 – 10:50 AM, (Great Hall) Pros and Guests: Patricia Briggs, Jim Butcher, Diana Pharaoh Francis (Di), J.A. Pitts Moderator: Diana Pharaoh Francis (Di) We’ve heard a lot lately about post-apocalyptic dystopia, but what about utopia? Could utopia ever truly exist? Could a story exist within a utopia? If so, how do you write about conflict in a world where conflict is minimized? Or IS that the conflict? Snarking Up Your Characters (Writing) Sun 11:00 – 11:50 AM, (Containment Room) Pros and Guests: Carol Berg, Jim Butcher, C.J. Cherryh, Diana Pharaoh Francis (Di) Moderator: Jim Butcher Who would Malcolm Reynolds, Harry Dresden, and Tyrion Lannister be without their snark? Join us to learn what it means to be snarky, how to add snark to your characters, and how to write perfect one-liners. Reading: Jim Butcher (Writing) Sun 1:00 – 1:50 PM, (Containment Room) Pros and Guests: Jim Butcher Jim will read from one of his recent works. *If the weather is nice, this panel will relocate to the BBQ Area* Writing Yourself Into (and Out of) Corners (Writing) Sun 4:00 – 4:50 PM, (Containment Room) Pros and Guests: M. H. Bonham (Maggie), Jim Butcher, John Goff, Dave Gross Moderator: Jim Butcher “Jack scoured the alley for a brick, a broken piece of glass—anything he could use as a weapon. But the alley was as bare as his backside, which he now pressed against the wall blocking his escape. He’d have to remember to thank Pallermo for that little jape. The thug behind the wheel hit the gas…” In this panel we’ll talk about how to write your character into a corner (literally, figuratively, emotionally), and how to get them back out again. Jim Butcher Q and A (Writing, Geek Discussion) Sun 5:00 – 5:50 PM, (Containment Room) Pros and Guests: Justin Barba, Jim Butcher Moderator: Justin Barba A question and answer session with Jim Butcher. If time permits, he will take moderated questions from the audience. Jim Butcher Book Signing (Writing) Mon 10:00 – 10:50 AM, (Containment Room) Pros and Guests: Jim Butcher Moderator: Justin Barba Jim Butcher’s signing is moderated, and we will maintain a STRICT 3 item maximum per person–zero exceptions. In order to keep the line moving, Jim can only personalize one item per person per trip through the line. Author Book Signing (Writing) Mon 11:00 – 11:50 AM, (Containment Room) Pros and Guests: Carol Berg, S. A. Bolich, M. H. Bonham (Maggie), David Boop, Patricia Briggs, Jim Butcher, Brenda Carre, C.J. Cherryh, Jane Fancher, Diana Pharaoh Francis (Di), Deby Fredericks, James Glass, Dave Gross, Rhiannon Held, J.A. Pitts, Timothy Quill, Patrick Swenson, Peter Wacks (pjwacks) All authors are invited. Jim Butcher’s signing is moderated, and we will maintain a STRICT 3 item maximum per person–zero exceptions. In order to keep the line moving, Jim can only personalize one item per person per trip through the line. Breaking Through Writer’s Block (Writing) Mon 1:00 – 1:50 PM, (Containment Room) Pros and Guests: Jim Butcher, Dave Gross, Rhiannon Held, Patrick Swenson Moderator: Jim Butcher How do the pros beat writer’s block? They will share tips, tricks, and the best ways to cope with a writer’s worst nightmare. Writing Fight Scenes and Arguments (Writing, Fight Demo or Class) Mon 2:00 – 2:50 PM, (Containment Room) Pros and Guests: Larry Bonham, Jim Butcher, Dragon Dronet, J.A. Pitts, Chad Volpe (The Fin) Moderator: J.A. Pitts We can talk about conflict until we’re blue in the face, but how do you write the details? Better yet, how do you know the right details? What’s the best way to write a sword fight? A fist fight? An everyday argument? You may have seen the fighting all weekend, now come learn how to translate that into words. Closing Ceremonies (Geek Discussion) Mon 3:00 – 3:50 PM, (Great Hall) Pros and Guests: Paizo Publishing, Justin Barba, Jim Butcher, John Compton, Adam Daigle, Dragon Dronet, Kyle Elliott, CthulhuBob Lovely, Ryan Macklin, Theresa Mather, Chad Volpe (The Fin) Come see CthulhuBob cry for joy and catch a sneak peek at what’s in store for you next year at MisCon 28 May 2014.Researchers have known for years that marriage seems to give straight men a long-term health boost. For example, just consider that unmarried heterosexual men have a 250% greater mortality risk than their married peers [1]. In other words, unmarried guys tend to die much sooner than would be statistically expected relative to married men. But is marriage linked to better health among gay men too? Given that legal recognition for same-sex relationships is a relatively recent development, researchers have only now begun to look into this question. Although it is too soon to say whether there are any long-term health benefits of marriage for gay men, recent research suggests that just the act of extending equal marriage rights to same-sex couples may yield health benefits in and of itself. For instance, in one recent study, gay and bisexual men’s visits to a local health center in Massachusetts were tracked for the one year period after marriage rights were extended to same-sex couples in that state [2]. Researchers looked at over 1,200 patients and considered the number of visits they made for both medical and mental health needs. Over the course of that year, there was a significant decrease in the number of times gay and bisexual men sought care for medical and mental health issues. What is especially interesting about these findings is that this decrease in healthcare use occurred for both partnered and unpartnered men; thus, the medical benefits were not necessarily specific to those in relationships. Given the nature of these data, we cannot definitely say why that was the case, but one interpretation is that the legalization of gay marriage was part of a broader movement toward increased acceptance of sexual minorities, which ultimately reduced stress on the entire gay and bisexual community. As a result, it was something that stood to benefit everyone. Future research is needed to explore the potential long-term implications of marriage for health among sexual minorities and to extend this work to lesbian and bisexual women. For now, however, it appears that just granting the option of legal marriage to the sexual minority community is linked to a measurable improvement in their health outcomes. Want to learn more about Sex and Psychology? Click here for previous articles or follow the blog on Facebook (facebook.com/psychologyofsex), Twitter (@JustinLehmiller), or Reddit (reddit.com/r/psychologyofsex) to receive updates. [1] Ross. C. E., Mirowsky, J., & Goldsteen, K. (1990). The impact of the family on health: The decade in review. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 52, 1059-1078. [2] Hatzenbuehler, M. L., O’Cleirigh, C., Grasso, C., Mayer, K., Safren, S., & Bradford, J. (in press). Effect of same-sex marriage laws on health care use and expenditures in sexual minority men: A quasi-natural experiment. American Journal of Public Health. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2011.300382 Image Source: mourgefile.com You Might Also Like:A court in Bangladesh has postponed the case of some 18 people facing trial for alleged construction code violations related to the Rana Plaza tragedy, when nearly 1,130 people lost their lives in a building collapse. The April 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza building housing garment factories in Dhaka ranks among the world's worst industrial accidents. It prompted a global outcry for improved safety standards in the country's massive garment industry. Bangladesh is the world's second-largest exporter of ready-made garments. Tuesday's scheduled court case was expected to give some of the 130 witnesses a chance to take the stand in a case where it is alleged that three extra storeys were added to the structure. "Justice delayed again," said Al Jazeera’s Tanvir Chowdhury, reporting from outside the court in Dhaka. The case was postponed after the defendants appealed to the judge for a delay on the grounds that they had filed a petition challenging their charges with the high court. "The judge complied with their request and postponed the hearing until October 26," Chowdhury said. The owner of the building, Mohammad Sohel Rana, and former chief engineer are in custody, but at least five of the accused are on the run. Victims are demanding justice and they want the court to speed up the process. But whether that happens remains to be seen, Chowdhury said. "Bangladesh does not have a good track record of bringing people to justice in any major industrial accident," he said. Hundreds of witnesses are scheduled to give evidence when 41 people appear on murder charges in a second trial in September. 'Not enough' The Rana Plaza disaster put pressure on global brands such as Gap, JC Penney and Walmart to improve conditions in Bangladesh where they have garments made. But rights groups say not nearly enough has been done. "In 2015, the workers get some money from the Trust fund but still the manufacturers and the government couldn't pay them any compensation," Nazma Akther, the president of the combined Garment Workers Federation, told Al Jazeera. "And now most of the injured workers are severely injured and they need proper treatment and healthcare. It is very absent and nobody takes care of them." READ MORE: When workers die, no company can walk away Almost three in four survivors of Rana Plaza have been unable to work owing to physical ailments and trauma. Low labour costs and shortcuts on safety standards make Bangladesh the cheapest place to make large quantities of clothing, critics says. Companies are split over how to improve conditions. Big European firms signed an accord that would make them legally responsible for safety while US groups such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc have broken ties with non-compliant factories. In 2013, the Bangladesh government raised the monthly minimum wage for garment workers by 77 percent to $68, and amended its labour law to boost workers' rights, including the freedom to form trade unions.Facebook has rolled out a new version of its popular Photos app, complete with speed improvements and larger images. "Now, the photos you share on Facebook are bigger (720 pixels to 960 pixels) and load twice as fast, giving you quicker access to more detailed images," Facebook's Justin Shaffer said in a blog post. "Photos you've already uploaded to your profile will also be displayed at this higher resolution." In addition to the increased photo size, Facebook is rolling out a revamped photo viewer. The new viewer takes up more screen real estate (since photos are now larger) and reduces clutter so users can focus on the photo and nothing else. "The light box is now set against a simple white background that puts more of the focus on the photo, and less on the surrounding frame," Shaffer noted. Facebook rolled out its revamped Photos interface in February with the lightbox UI and support for hi-res photos. Check out the new Photos interface and let us know if you like the improvements in the comments.Blue collar workers in Sydney are taking a stand for brutalist architecture. Australia’s largest construction union Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) and the Unions NSW have barred their members from taking bulldozers and wrecking balls to the Sirius building, a 79-unit public housing complex with stellar views of the Sydney Opera House. The dramatic building is an icon of 1970’s brutalist architecture. “The Sirius building is not only an important piece of architectural history—it is one of the last areas of public housing in the district,” explained Rita Mallia, president of the CFMEU in a Sept 16 statement. Sirius was slated for demolition after the New South Wales government decided to exclude it from the register of protected sites in July. The government plans to flatten Sirius and evict its long-term tenants to make room for new commercial redevelopment. Despite the outpouring of support from locals, architecture fans and endorsement from the local heritage council, New South Wales’ minister of environment and heritage Mark Speakman says the real estate in the Sydney suburb is just too precious to keep for outdated architecture and public housing. “I am not listing it because, whatever its heritage value, even at its highest that value is greatly outweighed by what would be a huge loss of extra funds from the sale of the site,” Speakman said in a press statement explaining the decision. He said that saving Sirius would cost the city AU $70 million (US $52 million). In a strategy called ”green bans,” labor unions in Sydney have previously help defend public spaces and cultural heritage sites by refusing to work. They’ve helped save a park called Kelly’s Bush, the homes in the working-class residential area of Darlinghurst and several heritage buildings such as the Regent Theatre, the Newcastle Hotel and the Helen Keller Hostel for Blind Women. What’s been referred to the “most hated architectural style,” many brutalist buildings in the world are at risk today. Characterized by raw concrete surfaces and rugged, monumental geometric forms, brutalism is an offshoot of modernism and was the dominant architecture style from the 1950’s to the mid-1970’s. The German architecture museum Deutsches Architekturmuseum maintains #SOSBrustalism, a growing database of nearly 1,000 threatened brutalist structures around the world.There’s no denying that multiple monitors are a boost to productivity. It’s convenient, and lets you keep an eye on more windows at once, so none of those important interruptions go unanswered. But in an age of ubiquitous laptops, the whole multi-monitor thing sort of ties you down. It’s not like you’re going to lug around a monitor to use as a display with your laptop. Fortunately, there’s a smaller, lighter alternative: use your Android tablet as overflow screen. Plus, you can use the Android device for touchscreen computer input. iDisplay, the app that lets us accomplish this, is compatible with OS X and Windows. Here's a quick step-by-step to getting your Android-powered second display up and running in Windows. Step 1: Install and download Shape’s iDisplay ($5) app from Google Play. Step 2: On your PC, go to getidisplay.com and click on the Windows download button and choose your Windows operating system on the resulting page. The PC/Mac portion of the software is free, but the tablet app will cost you $5. Step 3: Follow the prompts to install the software and drivers. Then restart your computer when prompted. Allow the installed software to gain access through the PC’s firewall by clicking on the Allow Access button on the Windows Security Alert dialog that will appear when the PC restarts. Step 4: Make sure your PC and Android device are connected to the same local network. Step 5: Look for the iDisplay icon in the Taskbar Notifications Area on your computer. Hover your mouse over it, and you’ll see an IP address and Port. Write them down precisely. Depending on your configuration, the connection list may auto-populate, and you can ignore all that IP address stuff. Step 6: Launch the iDisplay app on your Android device. Touch the “+” button. Then enter the IP address, port, and any description that you’d like to give your PC. Your configuration may not even require this
from lower expectations. Many see him as an unnatural fit in the second-most secular state in the country. Several candidates, including Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and John Kasich, will need strong performances here in order to survive. Cruz does not. New Hampshire is Cruz’s “bye week,” said former New Hampshire GOP Chairman Fergus Cullen. "It’s not like Christie or Bush.” The Cruz campaign sees a win here as anything between second and fourth place, O’Brien said. Tyler said he would be “ecstatic” with second place, “very happy” with third, and “fine”— then he corrected himself and said “happy”— with fourth. Still, Cruz can’t completely write off a poor performance, given the significant time he’s spent here the past month. He took time away from Iowa last month to spend several days stumping across the state here. And in the past week, Cruz packed in five-event days in New Hampshire instead of heading to friendlier, and less crowded, South Carolina. For weeks his campaign has welcomed out-of-state volunteers to Manchester to help him get out the vote. “He needs to back up the rhetoric he’s brought to the table over the last week or two,” said one senior Republican in the state who’s unaligned. “If he can’t, having laid that on the table, if he can’t produce to some degree in New Hampshire, that puts his appeal into question.” In an effort to show he’s not a one-dimensional candidate, Cruz has been mixing up his stump speech in New Hampshire. In some venues he makes no mention of investigating Planned Parenthood -- a key promise for evangelicals that he invoked routinely in Iowa — instead emphasizing his support for the Second Amendment and opposition to regulations. On several occasions, he sought to connect with populist-minded voters by saying he shares Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders' concerns about Washington corruption, even though believes in different solutions. In an appearance here at a packed Mexican restaurant in Keene Sunday afternoon, Cruz sounded a libertarian note when he was asked about where transgender people fit in his vision for the country. “Listen, the great thing about America is we are a welcoming nation built on individual liberty, and each person can choose how to live without the government getting in the way,” Cruz said. Threading the needle on the hot-button social issue of gay marriage, he noted that he believes marriage should be left up to the states—something he rarely mentions unprompted in more conservative venues. The Supreme Court’s ruling that struck down bans in every state, he added, was “naked judicial activism.” “We allow people — actually, New Hampshire sums it up very well,” Cruz continued. “To live free or die.”Ecologists know that the trees that add color, beauty, and shade to America’s national parks are at risk from climate change. Unlike animals, trees cannot pull up their roots and quickly migrate to another area. But figuring out which trees are the most vulnerable is complicated. The types of trees and forests vary from park to park, and even within some parks. Projected shifts in rainfall and temperature patterns in the future are just as variable and uneven. Some species will thrive as climate changes, but many are expected to suffer. And the question is: what can national park managers do about it? To figure out what changes the parks can expect, scientists from Montana State University, the Woods Hole Research Center, the National Park Service, and NASA established the Landscape Climate Change Vulnerability Project (LCCVP). They want to use scientific observations and computer models to help the parks adapt to climate change. The data and models could give park managers context and insight on when and where to let nature manage the park and when human intervention could help. For instance, which species and forest stands should managers focus on? Where would it make sense to plant new stands of trees, and which species would benefit? Climate change can make an area less suitable for some trees and plants, and more suitable for others. Within several decades, the primary vegetation found around places like Yellowstone National Park is predicted to undergo substantial transformation. The map above, based on data from the LCCVP, shows how habitat in Yellowstone looks now, and how it is projected to look by 2090. In Yellowstone, spruce and fir forests have adapted to and thrived in a climate where summertime temperatures rarely surpass 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32° Celsius). But 30 years from now, if climate models are right, the park will see an average of two weeks every summer with temperatures surpassing 90°F. “If temperatures keep increasing, things will shift in ways that parks haven’t seen before,” said Patrick Jantz, an ecologist at the Woods Hole Research Center. “So there’s been a shift in the parks from managing for historical conditions—to bring things back to a pristine ecological state—to a whole new way of thinking: managing for species turnover.” Read more about climate change and protected landscapes in our new feature story Natural Beauty at Risk: Preparing for Climate Change in National Parks. NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using data from the Landscape Climate Change Vulnerability Project. Caption by Kathryn Hansen.You don't need to be a scientist to see the toilet queues on a Saturday night, or at an event, to make the link between drinking alcohol and the need to pee. So why exactly does drinking alcohol make us need to pee more than when we drink soft drinks or water? The science of why alcohol makes you pee more “Alcohol is a diuretic,” says Professor Oliver James, Head of Clinical Medical Sciences at Newcastle University. “It acts on the kidneys to make you pee out much more than you take in – which is why you need to go to the toilet so often when you drink.” In fact for every 1g of alcohol drunk, urine excretion increases by 10ml1. Alcohol also reduces the production of a hormone called vasopressin, which tells your kidneys to reabsorb water rather than flush it out through the bladder. With the body's natural signal switched off, the bladder is free to fill up with fluid. Find out if you're drinking too much with our Self Assessment tool. Dashes to the toilet A common side effect of drinking is needing the toilet just five minutes after your last visit. This irritating experience (usually known as 'breaking the seal') happens because alcohol delivers a hefty double whammy to your kidneys. "Suppose you have a pint at lunchtime," explains Oliver. "At some point you'll need to go to the toilet and get rid of the pint of liquid you've just drunk. Then, an hour later, you'll have to pee again because of the added diuretic effect." Find time for water when drinking alcohol With fluid leaving your body so quickly, dehydration can be a big problem. Though it might seem like even more liquid is the last thing you need when you’re having to dash to the gents/ladies, regular sips of water during and after drinking are what you need to keep yourself hydrated. Another way to avoid dehydration from alcohol is to stay within the UK Chief Medical Officers' (CMO) low risk drinking guidelines which advises: To keep health risks from alcohol to a low level it is safest not to drink more than 14 units a week on a regular basis. If you regularly drink as much as 14 units per week, it's best to spread your drinking evenly over three or more days. If you have one or two heavy drinking episodes a week, you increase your risk of death from long-term illness and injuries. The risk of developing a range of health problems (including cancers of the mouth, throat and breast) increases the more you drink on a regular basis. If you wish to cut down the amount you drink, a good way to help achieve this is to have several drink-free days a week. Use our Unit and calorie Calculator to see how many units are in your drinks. Alcoholic drinks with less volume won’t stop the need to pee! Switching to alcoholic drinks with less volume, such as shots, won't stem the flow either. That’s because whether you're drinking pints or doing shots, it's the diuretic element of the alcohol which is key to producing all that wee. Does weeing all the alcohol out of my system help prevent a hangover? Unfortunately not. Because alcohol promotes peeing, it can lead to dehydration, which causes the nausea and headache associated with bad hangovers. It's also why your mouth might feel like the driest place on earth the next day. Want to learn more about what a hangover is?Bang on the money if you ask me The Republican Party whilst doing nothing for the nation have decided a fun way to do less than nothing and with complete disregard to any costs incurred. On the kangaroo court Republicans vying for a seat on the Benghazi kangaroo court, also known as the Select House Committee to Inflate a Tragedy Into a Scandal. All because the frothing at the mouth brigade smell blood where there is none. Of course the GOPs persecution complex is also fed. The day before, they voted to hold in contempt Lois Lerner, the former Internal Revenue Service official whom they would love to blame for the administration’s crackdown on conservative groups, if only they could prove there was a crackdown, which they can’t, because there wasn’t. Democrats who are now debating whether to participate in the committee shouldn’t hesitate to skip it. Their presence would only lend legitimacy to a farce. Little nuisances like constitutional rights or basic facts can’t be allowed to stand in the way when House Republicans need to whip up their party’s fury. As for Democrats joining in the Benghazi CircusAs for Republican disregard of others rightsRepublicans have demonstrated yet again that when they cannot start preemptive wars, torture, give the wealth of the nation to the rich, persecute anyone not like them, they fall into their standard set of procedures: 1] If we cannot impeach a President we will just fuck up government. 2] Hold pointless proceedings to stir up the crazy. 3] If all else fails throw a wrench into the works and then go on Fox Noise to complain that the wrench has broken the works. It is astounding that they look at science as a conspiracy. It is funny [in a sick kind of way] how they regard equality for all as infringing upon their rights. It is going to be an ugly couple of years.Overview: Valve has been creating advanced prototype VR HMD's since mid-2013 that are more advanced than other developers currently have access to, and this head start has allowed us to gain a ton of VR-specific rendering knowledge that we'd like to share with developers who are actively working on VR or plan to in the near future. This talk will start with the base requirements of VR rendering, and it will progress into advanced rendering topics focusing on both performance and visual quality. First generation consumer HMD's are expected to require renderers to shade over 4 million pixels per frame at a minimum of 90 fps. Due to the wide FOV of these HMD's, each pixel ends up feeling lower resolution than viewing the same image on a monitor and requires better shading algorithms than rendering in non-VR. Higher resolution rendering and higher quality pixels at much higher frame rates than games traditionally target is cause for taking a step back and rethinking many aspects of rendering. Some topics that will be covered include: efficient stereo rendering, reducing rendering latency, saturating the GPU despite synchronization points, reducing pixel cost for low-priority pixels, specular antialiasing, constrained anisotropic lighting, and other tips and tricks relating directly to VR rendering performance and quality.Navy appoints first female Admiral Updated The Navy has announced the appointment of its first female Admiral, Robyn Walker. Admiral Walker is the first woman in the Navy to attain the rank of Rear Admiral and to take on the job of Surgeon‑General for the Australian Defence Force. The Admiral, who joined the Navy in 1991, says she is honoured by the promotion. "Navy and Defence have provided me with every opportunity to learn and develop as an individual; and if you take the opportunities that are provided and work hard, your efforts will be noticed and rewarded," she said. "I am looking forward to the challenges that I will face and continuing to make a positive difference in my new role." Admiral Walker, originally from Brisbane, has been heavily involved in the Navy's health service. She was in charge of planning Australia's military medical response to the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. Chief of Navy, Vice Admiral Ray Griggs, says Admiral Walker is a role model for all women in Defence. "Admiral Walker's achievements as director-general of health for the Navy with broader responsibilities to the ADF in leading a $270 million revamp of the ADF’s health capability, and her previous role in supporting the health of operational Defence personnel in Iraq and East Timor, have been recognised in the decision to promote her," he said. "Her promotion reflects her outstanding service and dedication to Defence health services, the Royal Australian Navy and the Australian Defence Force." Topics: navy, defence-forces, defence-and-national-security, australia, qld First posted'I almost turned into a doughnut!' Brad Pitt reveals the reasons he quit smoking marijuana Oscar-nominated actor Brad Pitt has admitted he almost turned into a 'doughnut' from smoking too much marijuana. The Moneyball star, who is in the running to be named Best Actor at the Academy Awards, said his fame led him to depression in the late 1990s. He told the Hollywood Reporter magazine:'I got really sick of myself at the end of the 1990s. Couch potato: Brad Pitt, seen here in movie True Romance, says he quit smoking marijuana because he was 'turning into a doughnut' 'I was hiding out from the celebrity thing, I was smoking way too much dope, I was sitting on the couch and just turning into a doughnut and I really got irritated with myself.' Pitt, 48, opened up about his former drug use in the latest issue of the magazine. Revealing snippets of the interview, the magazine’s executive features editor Stephen Galloway explained: 'He said it’s like he had a semester of depression. Waiting for the right time: Brad said his and Angelina Jolie's children have yet to watch any of their parents' films 'He hasn’t had that in this decade, but he definitely wrestled with it in the past.' Competition: Brad will battle it out with George Clooney for the Best Actor Oscar later this year Pitt also spoke about his and partner Angelina Jolie’s brood of six children, and said the kids had not yet seen their parents’ movies. He said: 'They understand Mommy and Daddy work in stories and work in movies and they understand movies just for that. 'I want them to find them on their own when they’re a bit older and I can see what they mean to them then.' Yesterday, Pitt learned that he will go head to head with pal George Clooney for the Best Actor Oscar at this year’s Academy Awards. The pair also face competition from Jean Dujardin, Gary Oldman and Demian Bichir. But Pitt, who has been known to light-heartedly poke fun at Clooney, said he could not begrudge the Descendants star success.A Slavic workshop of stylists and photographers called Treti Pivni (translates as Third Rooster) have decided to bring back one of the more amazing Ukranian traditions by giving it a new meaning. They’ve produced a portrait series of modern Ukranian women dressed in traditional Ukranian floral headdresses. According to the tradition, these headdresses were worn by young, unmarried women to show their “purity” and marital eligibility. Now though, the artists are using them as a reminder of Ukrainian identity in rough times the country is going through. With continuing political and actual physical pressure from Russia, the country faces serious threats to its integrity and unity is needed more than ever. As model Nadiia Shapoval told Vogue Magazine: “I think we are coming back to floral themes because fashion is starting to react on wars that we are having around the globe. We need some tenderness.“ More info: instagram | facebook (h/t: slavorum, boredpanda)16 June 2017 | sweetromantic 10 | A must must watch, a masterpiece for everyone This is really interesting, to know the Russian perspective, and the struggle of Russia since 1990s to have friendly relations with the USA...it shows how many times Russia tried to join USA in different fields to be part of the block and not be considered a threat or an outsider. It shows how the US denied Russia of becoming part of the NATO, and then surrounding Russia by all the NATO allies countries situated in close proximity with the Russia, establishing military bases in those countries which will always posses a threat not only to the Russia but to the whole world. This also shows that the US might also make Afghanistan a part of the NATO and establish military bases there for long term, which is also in close proximity with the Russia and Iran,China, Pakistan. This is really important to watch for those who don't know much about Russia and their point of view about the world.“We all possess wisdom that we lack the strength properly to enact in our lives.” Whatever you think of Alain de Botton (who wrote that sentence), it’s certainly true that we don’t always act as we wish we would. For example, maybe we have a genuine intention to improve our diet, until the chips are down. Then we eat them. They’re just so crunchy and salty. So too with meditation. Many people think that meditation is a great thing to do, really enjoy it when they do it—and don’t do it all that often. In fact, according to a survey we conducted in 2012, about two-thirds of meditation practitioners wish they meditated more. We made Medivate to help fill in that gap. Wanting to meditate and actually doing it may not always equate in our lives. This is why we say we’re working toward a world where “Everyone who wants to meditate, does.” Here are some things that keep us, and people we know, off the cushion—despite our best intentions. We’ve given our best advice for working with each challenge, and we’ve also matched each one to Medivate resources that we hope can help. “It’s boring and hard.” This is a real difficulty, and it’s worth talking about. After all, nobody writes blog posts about staying motivated to eat potato chips. Meditation can feel difficult, strenuous, and frustrating. Even if it’s none of those things, it can feel desperately blank, like eating white cardboard in an empty room. For these reasons, meditation does take a bit of discipline—but it does not have to be something you “put yourself through.” If it’s feeling that way, read on. What might help: • Don’t be hard on yourself. Many people feel guilty because they’re not meditating the way they “should.” Leaving aside all the likely contradictions in that attitude, developing a feeling of guilt or inadequacy around meditation is really toxic and hugely increases the chance that you’ll quit altogether. Please don’t worry: you’re doing a great job. • Start slow and get in a rhythm. A great way to fail at a new activity is the “hero approach.” This is the approach that tests out running by signing up for a marathon, or creative writing by selling everything and moving to a log cabin with a typewriter. Even if you don’t end up in the hospital, you’ll probably view running or writing as an epic, bizarrely painful act of self-sacrifice—not the healthy, enjoyable, steady activity it really is. So for meditation, especially if you’re just getting into it (or back into it), we strongly recommend you start out with a gentle, enjoyable daily practice schedule—as little as five or ten minutes a day. At the same time, really try to commit to meditating that amount every day: let yourself build up the momentum of steady, pleasant daily practice. Then, if you like, you can gradually grow your practice from there. Medivate tools: • For daily tracking of your meditation practice, our online meditation timer automatically syncs to your meditation log, which has a quick numeric “How it felt” box, space for both private and public comments, and a number of other features. (The timer’s also available as an Android app; a full version of the app, and an iOS app, are coming soon.) • Meditation goals: These are a great way to formally set an achievable regular meditation schedule for yourself. They can be day- or week-based, for any amount of time, and you can even set a custom “reward” for yourself (like “dinner at my favorite restaurant”) when you complete a goal. “It’s not working.” We may have the sense that meditation is a very healthy activity. Depending on our background, we may even have heard descriptions of seemingly far-out states of bliss and spiritual attainment. But then we sit a bit, and we don’t feel any different. In fact, maybe we’re even a bit discouraged and frustrated, whereas we were “fine” before. “I don’t know why I’m doing this,”—and, especially, “I can’t do this” or “It’s not working”—are powerful impediments to practice. What might help: • Please don’t be hard on yourself. Meditation is definitely not an excuse to beat up on yourself. If meditation is painful because you feel inadequate or like a failure, try regarding yourself with some gentleness. Picture a loved one and think, “How would I want that person to regard himself or herself?” Then try seeing yourself that way. • Read up on the benefits of meditation. They’re insane. Learning the “wonder-drug” properties of meditation has been one of the most unexpected parts of working on Medivate for us, and very motivating. (The “benefits of meditation” tab at the top of the page lists the benefits we’ve found so far.) • Track meditation’s impact on your life. The benefits of meditation can be subtle, although they are very profound over time. If you notice that you’ve been a little more patient with a coworker than you would be if you weren’t practicing, really make a note of that. It wouldn’t be too much to write it down and put it on your fridge. Don’t risk failing to notice the ways meditation helps you in your life. Medivate tools: • Your meditation log is a great way to track your meditation practice over time. You can view your thoughts from past weeks, months, and years, and even graph trends in your practice. This is one way to uncover slow improvements (or at least changes) in how your practice feels and how rewarding it is. • The practice journal is a “mini-blog” for meditation events. If you really do treat a coworker more kindly as a result of your practice, write about it here so you don’t forget it. (We’ve built ways to bring these journal entries back up for you as you browse the site.) You can also optionally share journal entries with the Medivate community. • Your meditation portrait is the most robust way for tracking the interaction between meditation and your daily life. “I’m too busy.” This is a common complaint, but nobody is actually too busy for meditation. After all, you had time to watch four episodes your favorite TV show yesterday, and you’re even going on a ski trip next weekend. And you should do those things: you enjoy them, and they cheer you up. The point is that it’s a question of priorities: meditation doesn’t feel important enough to put in front of the other important things, or fun enough to put in front of the other fun things. What might help: • Remember why meditation matters to you. Why did you want to meditate in the first place? Perhaps you wish you could rein in your out-of-control temper and stop needlessly hurting yourself and your loved ones. Maybe you have insomnia or panic attacks and you’ve found that meditation helps. Or perhaps you were inspired by the wisdom and compassion of a great meditation teacher, and wanted to “be like them.” These are all really important things! If you can keep them in mind, regular meditation will naturally start to float closer to the top of your priorities list. • Meditate early in the day, and for a manageable amount of time. If you’ve committed to meditating two hours every day, and you wait until late at night when you’re exhausted and frazzled and your favorite talk shows are on, you’re done. Choose an amount of time that fits (more or less) comfortably into your day’s schedule, and try to sit as early in the day as you’re able. If you do want to meditate for long durations every day, consider breaking that time up into several more manageable sessions. Medivate tools: • Our meditation portrait is designed to help you understand and express just why meditation is important to you—as well as the challenges you face, like an overfull schedule. • Setting a meditation goal is a way to declare that “This is important”; and it lets you define a specific, regular commitment, so that meditation at least has a formal place on your calendar. “It feels like an obligation.” There’s a real danger in telling yourself you “have to” do something: when we treat something as an unpleasant obligation, we’ll feel like rebelling against it. Meditating out of a grudging sense of duty feels like trying to pull a moody donkey around. Treating meditation like a chore also risks sucking the joy right out of the practice, setting the stage for a later collapse. What might help: • Connect with what inspires you about meditation. Your interest in meditation almost certainly contains some element of inspiration: a spiritual teacher you admire, a book that really speaks to you, a friend who was helped in a way you’d like to experience. Try to reconnect with this feeling of inspiration. In particular, we find that reading a few paragraphs of a favorite book is inevitably energizing; it makes us feel like putting the book down and meditating. If you get this feeling, make sure to follow-through and do it; this is about the easiest getting to the cushion will be. • Remind yourself how meditation makes you feel. Meditation can feel really good. In our experience, it’s generally not entertaining the way a movie or a first date might be; but it can have a strong element of wholesomeness, gentleness, and peace, and these effects spill wonderfully into our lives. If meditation feels like a chore, try filling in this sentence: “When I meditate, I feel…” How do you feel when you’re actually doing it, and when you’ve just done it? Maybe you don’t feel all that different—but you might feel proud that you’ve honored your commitment to meditation itself, and that’s worth noticing and celebrating. If your answer is more negative (“frazzled,” “inadequate”), that’s okay too: at least you’re fully aware of some of the ways meditation is difficult for you at the moment. Medivate tools: • For reminding yourself of your inspirations to meditate, the motivation brainstorm section of your meditation portrait is a great place to start. • Our meditation quote database is full of pithy and frequently inspiring quotes by well-known meditation teachers. You can receive daily quotes in a daily email, and you can receive both quotes and a semi-forthcoming feature called “Wakeup Moments” through Twitter. “I’m alone in my practice.” Meditation is very hard to sustain without a community. Fellow practitioners can provide knowledge, support and encouragement, and fresh perspective. Perhaps most importantly, a meditation community provides a sense of shared purpose: it affirms that meditation is a “real thing,” something others dedicate themselves to and benefit from. On your own, you’ll be a bit of a meditation mad scientist, and that just isn’t the most helpful place to be. What might help: • Think about who or what resonates with you, and go there. If you love a particular spiritual author, look up his or her teaching schedule. What community is that author part of? Do they have anything near you? Being inquisitive about the things that already speak to you is a great place to start. • Put yourself out there. Just show up somewhere. Register for a weekend program, drop in on a meditation open house, go to a talk. They’ll be glad to see you, and you might have an amazing experience. If you’re worried about being sucked into something kooky or cultish, just trust your own intelligence; if something doesn’t feel right, leave. But don’t give up looking for a community of genuine, dedicated practitioners—they do exist. Medivate tools: • The Medivate forum: an open-ended space for discussion around meditation. We hope it can help you connect to a community of committed meditators. You can join (or start!) specific groups, as well. • Or you can contact us and describe the kind of meditation community you’re looking for and where you live, and we’ll see what we can find for you. (We’re not joking.) In summary… We’d guess that at least some items on this list feel familiar to most people who have tried meditation. If we’re missing big ones, we’d love to hear about them. (Maybe meditation feels like you have to sneeze the whole time? That’d be terrible.) If there are enough common themes, we’d love to write a second part to this entry; and we’re happy to amend this entry too, if our advice seems off-base, or (especially) if there’s something you’d like to share that really helped you overcome one of these obstacles. We really hope as many people as possible could develop a regular meditation practice; we think it’s the most wonderful thing you can do for yourself and others. To that end, we hope this entry has given you a bit of perspective on some of the common challenges that we’ve noticed, and pointed you toward some tools that you may enjoy playing around with. Very best wishes!There have been several bogus pages of high-profile figures on Facebook The president of Guyana has asked police to investigate who is impersonating him on Facebook, the social networking website. A government statement said that Bharrat Jagdeo was not a Facebook member, the Associated Press reported. The apparent Jagdeo page has more than 170 supporters, and features images of the president as well as his biography. Last year, a Moroccan was jailed for setting up a Facebook profile in the name of a member of the royal family. Facebook also removed two bogus profiles of Bilawal Bhutto, son of the murdered Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto, after an investigation found the entries "not authentic". Questions raised President Jagdeo's page has two photograph albums, one of a well-known bridge in Guyana, the Berbice, and the other of international leaders, some with the president. Only three people have posted messages, including a man who questions whether the profile was authentic. "Is this President Bharrat Jagdeo's personal Facebook? Is it his official one?" the message reads. The Guyana government said that officials also discovered that someone had impersonated the president of the South American nation on another social networking site.KARACHI: As a boy, Asif Patel would take apart toys and transistor radios, relying only on his sense of touch to rebuild them, having been robbed of his sight by a rare condition that meant he was born without eyes. Now a renowned mechanic with his own workshop in Karachi, Patel's story is a rare tale of success in a country which offers few opportunities for the blind. At a small workshop that employs seven people in the city's Lasbela area customers come and go, leaving their cars in the trusted hands of their old mechanic. Patel, 44, makes his way over to an older Toyota, pops open the bonnet and places his hands inside, feeling the out-of-tune whirring of the carburettor and carefully making adjustments. “I used to play with those things and I used to break them,” he tells AFP of his childhood. “Whenever my dad brought things I would open them up, then try to fit it back how I opened it, and I saw how it worked.” Pakistan has nearly two million blind people, according to the Fred Hollows Foundation, with more than half afflicted due to treatable conditions like cataracts. Opportunities for the blind, like those with other disabilities, are few and far between, with many sight-impaired reduced to begging on the streets to make ends meet. They often have to deal with social taboos surrounding disability and have little by the way of government facilities to aid them in public spaces. Many are rejected by their own families. – 'Gift from God' – Not so for Patel. “No, I was encouraged at home,” he says. The key to his success, he explains, is his keen sense of touch. “It is important for us that we touch, and see how it is, and what it is.” After dropping out of school, he found a part-time job at age 15 at an auto-workshop and was assigned the task of dismantling a clutch plate. “I had to open the clutch plate and they were a little shocked because they thought my confidence showed that I had worked somewhere else too,” he said. The next part of his training involved taking apart a gear box. “I said 'yes' and lay under the car and saw that the clutch plate we opened was put in with a flywheel and the area behind it is the gear,” he said. “So mentally I figured out the rounds of the gear and its foundations and in barely 15 minutes, I took it out and was done. “When I opened and put the gear out, I gained their trust and they knew that this boy had some gift from God and could do this work.” He eventually bought his own car to train himself further in the intricacies of auto mechanics, and started his career swapping out engines. And he is keen to distinguish himself as a true “mechanic” and not merely a fitter of parts, which he says any child can do. “A mechanic's work is to diagnose. Anyone can become a fitter. The main thing is to diagnose if there is a problem and why it is there,” he said. “So it is a gift from Allah that I can find out what the fault actually is.” – Happy customers – Fahad Younis, a 30-something client with his own car import-export business, drops off a Nissan Platz for repair. He says Patel's customers come for one reason only: the quality of the work. “He fixes the problems whatever they are,” he said. “We give him all our cars, big and small.” It has not always been a smooth ride. “Once I was experimenting with the engine and petrol and was squirting it in. It caught fire and I had to throw sand on it to put it out,” Patel said. Another time a jack collapsed while he was working under a car, dropping the vehicle on him. “I didn't worry too much about it, just lifted it up, put in another jack and carried on working,” he said. While some might rue their luck at being blind, Patel says he prefers to count his blessings — and insists he doesn't really think of himself as disabled. “If I ever felt that I was handicapped from something, I would not be able to do what I am doing right now,” he said. “If you do not have something from birth you do not think it is missing. But if it is there and taken from you, it hurts more.” – AFPTrace: Who killed Maria James? Updated Maria James was stabbed 68 times in her home. For 37 years, police have failed to solve her murder. Her two sons — and one former top cop — have never given up hope. On the morning of her murder, Maria James made her sons Mark and Adam, then 13 and 11, their favourite breakfast: scrambled eggs. Mark, now 50, remembers her turning to him from the stove. "If anything happens to me," she said, "make sure that Adam is looked after." Four hours later, Maria James was dead. Maria James was a fiercely protective mother. Her second-hand bookshop on the northern end of High Street, Thornbury in Melbourne was well-known in the community, but her boys were her everything. She was separated from her ex-husband John James, but the two spoke regularly about their kids and were on good terms. Subscribe to Trace, and join the investigation The ABC's new true crime podcast, Subscribe with iTunes Listen on ABC Radio App Visit the program page Subscribe via RSS feed The ABC's new true crime podcast, Trace, re-examines the mysterious murder of Maria James. Find out why one former top cop can't stop digging, even in his retirement, and why her two sons have never given up hope. After Mark and Adam went to school that Tuesday morning in 1980, Maria called John at the Fitzroy Town Hall where he worked as a town clerk. He was out of the office and his secretary Isabella Fabris answered. Usually Maria was up for a chat, but on this day Isabella said she was short with her, and left a message for John to call her. When John returned and called Maria back, she was not alone. She asked him to hold the line, because she had someone with her in the kitchen. As he waited for her to return to the phone, John heard what he thought was an argument. Then a startled yelp. The conversation continued — but to John's ears it sounded one-sided, like someone was being talked at. Then, there was silence. Several minutes of it. John started to get edgy, and began whistling down the line to attract attention, but Maria never returned to the phone. He told Isabella something was wrong, and he was going to drive over to the bookshop. It took around 15 minutes for him to drive there. John James arrived to find the bookshop locked. It was just after midday. He ran down a laneway around the back of the shop and tried to enter through the back door. It was locked. He thumped on the door, but there was no answer. He ran back to the front, then back down the laneway, in a series of panicked laps. Now desperate, he ran back around and broke into the house by climbing through a window around the side of the property. The house was dark inside and there was no sound. John moved into the kitchen and called out down the hallway. There was no answer. Enveloped with dread, he picked up a small green-handled knife from the kitchen drawer, and started inching through the house —first into the lounge room, then to the boys' room. Both were empty. Next he entered Maria's bedroom and flicked on the light. There on the floor, eyes and mouth open, drenched in blood and covered in stab wounds, lay Maria. "At this time, according to police, the killer was mere metres from John, hiding behind the door." Distressed and confused, John ran out of the house without seeing the killer, found a nearby phone and called police. He paced up and down the laneway, before coming back around to the front of the bookshop. This time, the door to the shop was open.
built-in. build/moment-holiday.min.js - Minified version of moment-holiday with no locales built-in. You can generate the above files by running gulp build. Custom Builds You can also generate your own custom builds of moment-holiday by using gulp with the following options: name - The name of the file to generate. (Defaults to moment-holiday-custom.js ) - The name of the file to generate. (Defaults to ) locale - The locale(s) you would like included in the build. Pass this option multiple times to include multiple locales. - The locale(s) you would like included in the build. Pass this option multiple times to include multiple locales. set - The locale(s) to have set by default in the build. Pass this option multiple times to have multiple locales set by default. - The locale(s) to have set by default in the build. Pass this option multiple times to have multiple locales set by default. min - Pass this option if you would like the generated file to be minified. For example: gulp --name=moment-holiday-ar.js --locale=Argentina --locale=Easter --set=Argentina --min Sourcemaps are automatically created for all minified builds. Functions holiday or holidays Searches for holiday(s) by keywords. Returns a single moment object, an object containing moment objects with the holiday names as keys, or false if no holidays were found. Use moment ( ). holiday ( holidays, adjust ) ; moment ( ). holidays ( holidays, adjust ) ; Parameters holidays - The holiday(s) to search for. Can be a string to search for a single holiday or an array to search for multiple. Defaults to all holidays. - The holiday(s) to search for. Can be a string to search for a single holiday or an array to search for multiple. Defaults to all holidays. adjust - See global parameters. Examples moment ( ). holiday ('Memorial Day') ; moment ( ). holiday ('Totally not a holiday') ; moment ( ). holiday ( ['Dad Day'] ) ; moment ( ). holidays ( ['Turkey Day ','New Years Eve'] ) ; moment ( ). holidays ( ['Not actually a holiday ','Mothers Day'] ) ; moment ('2018-01-01'). holiday ('Veterans Day') ; moment ('2018-01-01'). holiday ('Veterans Day ', true ) ; moment ( ). holidays ( ) ; isHoliday Returns the name of the holiday (or true if holidays parameter is used) if the given date is in fact a holiday or false if it isn't. Will return an array of holiday names if multiple holidays land on that same day. Use moment ( ). isHoliday ( holidays, adjust ) ; Parameters holidays - Holidays to check for. Will cause function to return true if there is a match. Can be a string to compare with a single holiday or an array for multiple. Defaults to all holidays. - Holidays to check for. Will cause function to return if there is a match. Can be a string to compare with a single holiday or an array for multiple. Defaults to all holidays. adjust - See global parameters. Examples moment ('2017-12-25'). isHoliday ( ) ; moment ('2005-03-15'). isHoliday ( ) ; moment ('2009-10-31'). isHoliday ('Halloween') ; moment ('2017-12-31'). isHoliday ( ) ; moment ('2017-12-31'). isHoliday ( null, true ) ; moment ('2017-04-17'). isHoliday ( null, true ) ; previousHoliday or previousHolidays Returns an array (or a moment object if count is set to 1 ) containing the previous holidays before the given date. Use moment ( ). previousHoliday ( count, adjust ) ; moment ( ). previousHolidays ( count, adjust ) ; Parameters count - The number of previous holidays to fetch. Defaults to 1. - The number of previous holidays to fetch. Defaults to. adjust - See global parameters. Examples moment ( ). previousHoliday ( ) ; moment ('2001-02-14'). previousHolidays ( 5 ) ; moment ('2001-02-14'). previousHolidays ( 5, true ) ; moment ( ). previousHoliday ( ). isHoliday ( ) ; nextHoliday or nextHolidays Returns an array (or a moment object if count is set to 1 ) containing the next holidays after the given date. Use moment ( ). nextHoliday ( count, adjust ) ; moment ( ). nextHolidays ( count, adjust ) ; Parameters count - The number of upcoming holidays to fetch. Defaults to 1. - The number of upcoming holidays to fetch. Defaults to. adjust - See global parameters. Examples moment ( ). nextHoliday ( ) ; moment ('2010-05-23'). nextHolidays ( 5 ) ; moment ('2010-05-23'). nextHolidays ( 5, true ) ; moment ( ). nextHoliday ( ). isHoliday ( ) ; holidaysBetween Returns an array containing the holidays between the given date and the date parameter or false if no dates were found. Use moment ( ). holidaysBetween ( date, adjust ) ; Parameters date - The end date range for holidays to get. Can be any string that moment accepts or a moment object. Defaults to today. - The end date range for holidays to get. Can be any string that moment accepts or a moment object. Defaults to today. adjust - See global parameters. Examples moment ( ). holidaysBetween ( moment ( ). endOf ('year') ) ; moment ('2011-11-01'). holidaysBetween ('2011-12-31') ; moment ('2011-11-01'). holidaysBetween ('2011-12-31 ', true ) ; moment ('2017-01-01'). holidaysBetween ( ) ; Global Parameters adjust - Set to true to make all holidays that land on a Saturday go to the prior Friday and all holidays that land on a Sunday go to the following Monday. Defaults to false. The Holidays Available Locales/Regions Argentina Canada Canada/AB - Alberta Canada/BC - British Columbia Canada/MB - Manitoba Canada/NB - New Brunswick Canada/NL - Newfoundland and Labrador Canada/NS - Nova Scotia Canada/NT - Northwest Territories Canada/NU - Nunavut Canada/ON - Ontario Canada/PE - Prince Edward Island Canada/QC - Quebec Canada/SK - Saskatchewan Croatia Denmark Easter (Easter Related Holidays) Finland Germany Germany/BB - Brandenburg Germany/BW - Baden-Württemberg Germany/BY - Bayern Germany/HE - Hessen Germany/MV - Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Germany/NW - Nordrhein-Westfalen Germany/RP - Rheinland-Pfalz Germany/SN - Sachsen Germany/SL - Saarland Germany/ST - Sachsen-Anhalt Germany/TH - Thüringen India United States (Default) Rather than listing all of the holidays here, to see available holidays, view the source of the locale file. Easter related holidays for any locale will only be available if the Easter locale has been added. It's automatically added if you are using Node. (You can still easily add them in even when not using Node. See: Modifying Holidays) Modifying Holidays You can add and remove holidays by using the following helper functions: Note: Helper functions can be chained. Sets the holidays to be used. moment. modifyHolidays. set ( ['New Years Day ','Memorial Day ','Thanksgiving'] ) ; moment ( ). holidays ( ) ; moment. modifyHolidays. set ( { " My Birthday " : { date :'11/17 ', keywords : ['my ','birthday'] }, " Last Friday of the year " : { date :'12/(5,-1) ', keywords_y : ['friday'] } } ) ; moment ( ). holidays ( ) ; Adds holiday(s) to the holidays being used. moment. modifyHolidays. add ( { " Inauguration Day " : { date :'1/20 ', keywords_y : ['inauguration'] } } ) ; moment ( ). holiday ('Inauguration') ; Removes holiday(s) from the holidays being used. moment. modifyHolidays. remove ('Christmas') ; moment. modifyHolidays. remove ( ['Dad Day ','Mom Day ','Saint Paddys Day'] ) ; Sets the holidays being used back to the way they were before they were last changed. moment. modifyHolidays. set ( ['Christmas ','Thanksgiving ','Mothers Day ','Fathers Day'] ) ; moment ( ). holidays ( ) ; moment. modifyHolidays. remove ( ['Thanksgiving ','Christmas'] ) ; moment ( ). holidays ( ) ; moment. modifyHolidays. undo ( ) ; moment ( ). holidays ( ) ; Simply loads a locale file and makes it available without modifying the current holidays. moment. modifyHolidays. load ('Argentina') ; moment. modifyHolidays. load ( ['Canada ','Easter'] ) ; You can also use these functions to set or add holidays from an available locale file: moment. modifyHolidays. set ('Canada'). add ('Easter') ; moment ('2001-12-26'). isHoliday ('Boxing Day') ; moment. modifyHolidays. add ('Easter'). remove ('Good Friday') ; moment ( ). holiday ( ['Easter Sunday ','Good Friday'] ) ; You use these same functions to specify regions to add: moment. modifyHolidays. set ('Germany/SN') ; moment ('2017-11-22'). isHoliday ( ) ; moment. modifyHolidays. set ('Canada/QC/ON') ; moment ( ). holidays ( ['boxing ','baptiste'] ) ; You can also cherry-pick the holidays you want from a locale by passing a string or an array of strings as the second parameter: moment. modifyHolidays. add ('Easter ', ['ascension ','pentecost'] ) ; moment ( ). holiday ( ['ascension ','pentecost'] ) ; moment. modifyHolidays. add ('Germany/BB ','Ostersonntag') ; moment ('2001-09-14'). isHoliday ( ) ; Note: If you're not using Node (or anything that doesn't support the require function), you'll need to make sure that you include the locale file(s) that you're trying to use. For example: < script src = "./moment-holiday/locale/canada.js " > < / script > < script src = "./moment-holiday/locale/easter.js " > < / script > < script > moment. modifyHolidays. set ('Canada'). add ('Easter') ; moment ('2001-12-26'). isHoliday ('Boxing Day') ; </ script > Holiday Objects Holiday objects accept the following options: date (Required) - The date of the holiday in the format of Month/Day. A day wrapped in parentheses () means a specific day of the week and expects two values separated by a comma,. The first part is the day of the week as recognized by moment().day() (0=Sunday, 6=Saturday). The second part (optional) is the 1-indexed index of that day of week unless separated by brackets [] which means "The weekday on or before/after this day". Two dates separated by a vertical bar | means a date range. You may also specific a 4-digit year by adding an additional / after the day. Examples: 5/20 - The 20th of May. 7/(1,3) - The third Monday of July. 3/(4,-1) - The last Thursday of March. 6/(2,[16]) - The Tuesday on or after the 16th of June. 11/(5,[-9]) - The Friday on or before the 9th of November. 8/21|9/4 - The 21st of August through the 4th of September. 11 - The 11th of every month of the year. (0) - Every Sunday of the year. (6,-2) - The second to last Friday of every month of the year. 10/(3) - Every Wednesday in October. 12/7/2014 - December 7th, 2014. (6)/2014 - Every Saturday of the year 2014. 2/(1,1)|5/(5,-1) - The first Monday of February through the last Friday of May. 4/(3,[-11])|5/(0,1) - The Wednesday on or before the 11th of March through the first Sunday of May. keywords - An array of optional keywords. keywords_y - An array of required keywords. keywords_n - An array of banned keywords. regions - An array of region abbreviations that the holiday is celebrated in. Basically a white-list. regions_n - An array of region abbreviations that the holiday is NOT celebrated in. Basically a black-list. RegEx can be used in keywords. For example, st[\\s\\.] will match St Jean and St. Patrick, but not Christmas and x-?mas will match xmas and x-mas. View the source of moment-holiday.js for a better look at how the keywords work. This is a handy little function that allows you to extend the functionality of the date parser. It accepts a single function as a variable that gets passed a moment object and the date string as variables. It can return a single moment object, an array of moment objects, false to bail on parsing, or nothing at all to continue with the default parser. Example: moment. modifyHolidays. add ( { " Friday The Thirteenth " : { date :'fridaythethirteenth ', keywords_y : ['friday'], keywords : ['thirteen ','13 ','the'] } } ). extendParser ( function ( m, date ) { if ( date ==='fridaythethirteenth') { var days = [ ] ; for ( i = 0 ; i < 12 ; i ++ ) { var d = moment ( m ). month ( i ). date ( 13 ) ; if ( d. day ( ) === 5 ) { days. push ( moment ( d ) ) ; } } if (! days. length ) { return false ; } return days ; } } ) ; moment ( ). holiday ('Friday 13th') ; You can also see how we take advantage of this by viewing the source of locale/easter.js. Locales Locale files are simply files that add holidays and special holiday parsing functionality for other countries. They are all located in the locale/ folder. Pull Requests will be accepted (and encouraged!) but must meet the following guidelines: Must contain a moment.holidays.[locale] object matching the filename all in lowercase (spaces are converted to underscores). Example: locale/japan.js would need to have moment.holidays.japan in it. Invalid: local/Japan.js or moment.holidays.Japan object matching the filename all in lowercase (spaces are converted to underscores). Must pass npm test. See the source of locale/canada.js and locale/easter.js for good examples of locale files. License MIT. See the License file for more info.Amateur Radio’s two newest bands came to life on Friday the 13th. Both 630 meters (472-479 kHz) and 2200 meters (135.7-137.8 kHz) now are available to radio amateurs who have notified the Utilities Technology Council (UTC) of their intention to operate and did not hear anything back during the ensuing 30 days. “Many of us filed notices with the Utilities Technology Council on September 15, the day the notification procedure was announced,” said Fritz Raab, W1FR, who coordinated the ARRL WD2XSH 630-Meter Experiment. “We did not expect to hear from the UTC unless they were objecting to amateur operation. Much to our surprise, on Friday, October 13, a number of operators received ‘okay’ notices. So, the first amateur operations commenced that night.” Some Denied Access to 2200 Meters UTC e-mails went out to an undermined number of US radio amateurs who had notified the Council, but not everyone got the thumbs up. One of those thwarted in his hopes of operating under his Amateur Radio license on 2200 meters was John Andrews, W1TAG, a long-wave veteran with thousands of hours on the band over the past 15 years or so under his FCC Part 5 Experimental license. Andrews, who also participated in the ARRL’s 630-Meter Experiment, said UTC denied his request because he was within 1 kilometer of a power line using PLC (power line communication). Raab said another who did not pass UTC muster for 2200 meters was Alabamian Dave Guthrie, KN4OK, who is hoping to give 630 meters a try. UTC also told Guthrie that he was within 1 kilometer of a power line using PLC, and that operation on 2200 meters could cause interference, but added, “We encourage you to reapply and select only the ‘472-479 kHz’ range, as it is much more free of interference from utilities.” Awash with Signals Raab said a few operators reported making contacts on 630 meters the first night, although noise levels were high, and a geomagnetic storm was in progress. Saturday night, October 14, “was a bust,” he said. The next evening, however, things broke open. “The band was awash with CW and digital signals,” Raab said. “Operating modes included CW, JT9, SSB, and WSPR. Many operators were new to the band and not previously experimental licensees.” Various Reverse Beacon Network (RBN) nodes heard W7IUV, AH6EZ/W7, N6TV, N6LF, KB5NJD, AA4VV, WZ7I, WA1ZMS, K4EJQ, K4LY VE6WZ, VE6JY, VE7AB, VE9WZ, and VE7CNF, among others. W0YSE/7 reported making JT9 QSOs with W7IUV, VE7CNF, W7RNB, and VE7VV, and CW QSOs with W7IUV, K7SF, N6LF, and VE7CNF. WA1ZMS: SSB QSOs with NO3M and KL4Y. NO3M: CW: K4LY, K4EJQ, N4PY, WA1ZMS, K9MRI, KB5NJD, W0RW, WA9ETW (cross band 1805) JT9: K4LY, K2BLA FT8: K3RWR, VE3CIQ SSB: K4LY, WA1ZMS. “Many were on 630 meters last night [October 15], and one highlight for me was an SSB QSO with K4LY,” Brian Justin, WA1ZMS, told ARRL. He and K4LY both worked NO3M, who also reported working K4EJQ, N4PY, K9MRI, KB5NJD, W0RW, and WA9ETW on CW. He made some JT9 and FT8 contacts too. On October 17, W7IUV and VK4YB completed a JT9 contact, possibly the first US-to-DX contact between radio amateurs on 630 meters. No Interference Reported Andrews said he was an early applicant for a Part 5 license in 2003, after the FCC turned away from its own proposal to allocate a band on 2200 meters. He’s renewed his WD2XES license every 2 years since, operating “extensively” on 2200 meters between 2004 and 2016 and estimates that he has racked up 11,000 hours of transmit time. His license specified 1 W ERP, and his antenna was a 500-foot perimeter loop in the vertical plane, which he called “horribly inefficient.” Andrews told ARRL that it took about 500 W of transmitter output to generate the 1 W ERP, based on actual field-strength measurements. Andrews said that national grid distribution lines feed and traverse his town of Holden, Massachusetts. “I was never notified of any interference problem other than a neighbor trying to run outdoor security cameras with CAT 3 network cable,” he said. “While 2200 meters is a pretty tortured part of the radio spectrum for receiving over-the-air signals, there was nothing audible that suggested PLC use.” He said he responded to the UTC indicating that he would comply with their denial, and he included information about his many hours of WD2XES operation. He plans to apply for permission to operate on 630 meters from Massachusetts, and his notification for permission to operate on both bands at his summer home in Maine has not been denied. FCC Rules Section 97.313(g)(2) of the Amateur Service rules requires that, prior to starting operation on either band, radio amateurs must notify UTC that they intend to operate by submitting their call signs, intended band(s) of operation, and the coordinates of their antenna’s fixed location. The new rules do not permit any mobile operation. “Amateur stations will be permitted to commence operations after a 30-day period, unless UTC notifies the station that its fixed location is located within 1 kilometer [approximately 0.62 mile] of power line carrier (PLC) systems operating on the same or overlapping frequencies,” the FCC said in announcing approval of the notification system on September 15. More Information Laurence Howell, KL7L, in Wasilla, Alaska, who holds FCC Part 5 Experimental license WE2XPQ, has posted a video that walks through his 630-meter station. It discusses the various components he uses to get a decent signal on the new band and includes some pointers on equipment that newcomers might use, and the conditions that could influence operating on this band. Online discussions prepared by Andrews and Jay Rusgrove, W1VD, offer test data and suggestions on repurposing AF amplifiers (in this case, Hafler stereo amps) for use on both 2200 meters and 630 meters. The principles can be applied to other AF amplifiers, and the conversion involves removing audio transformers and low-pass filters.I remember vividly my first visit to Ground Zero. It was August 2002 and flags, wreaths, cards and floral bouquets still adorned the streets around the 16-acre hole in the ground. One particular image lingers: a navy blue T-shirt, emblazoned with the logo of the New York City Fire Department, on which a mourner had written: "We will never forget the brave firefighters who were killed by terrorists on September 11". Someone had crossed out the word "terrorists" and replaced it with "Muslims". As a Muslim, I could only despair at the repugnant notion that all Muslims, and indeed Islam itself, shared responsibility for 9/11. But time, I reassured myself, would be a great healer. I was wrong. Fast forward to the present: August 2010. A $100m proposal to build a facility for Muslims in lower Manhattan, called Cordoba House, has become the focus of an intense controversy. Outraged rightwing protesters have spent several months trying to block the construction of what they call the Ground Zero mosque, claiming it is an "insult" to the victims and a "victory" for the terrorists. Ignorance and bigotry abounds. Cordoba House is not a mosque but a cultural centre, which will include a prayer area, sports facilities, theatre and restaurant. The aim of the project is to promote "integration, tolerance of difference and community cohesion … a place where individuals, regardless of their backgrounds, will find a centre of learning, art and culture". Nor is it being built at Ground Zero. The proposed site is two blocks to the north. Neither of these inconvenient facts, however, have stopped a slew of high-profile Republicans falling over one another to denounce the project. The former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, in her now-notorious tweet, urged "peaceful Muslims" to "refudiate" the proposed "mosque", because it "stabs hearts". Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani said the project was a "desecration" and the former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, declared that "there should be no mosque near Ground Zero so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia". The craven silence of leading Democrats is equally unforgivable. President Obama, accused by some opponents of being a "secret Muslim", has yet to utter a single word in support of the project. Meanwhile, across the US, intolerance of Islam and Muslims is growing. In recent weeks, there have been public protests against new mosques in Temecula, California, and in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. A church in Gainesville, Florida, has plans for a "Burn a Qur'an day". Unlike many Muslims, I have always been an Americanophile. I know the majority of Americans are decent people, committed to freedom and tolerance. Don't believe me? The mayor of Gainesville has condemned the idea of a "Qur'an-burning" day. In Temecula, the number of locals who turned out to support a new local mosque outnumbered protestors by four to one. In New York, a poll revealed that more Manhattanites were in favour of the "Ground Zero mosque" than were against it, including businessman Charles Wolf, who lost his wife in the attack on the twin towers. And on Tuesday, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg made an impassioned speech to his fellow Republicans in which he argued that Muslims "are as much a part of our city and our country as the people of any faith", adding: "To cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists". The mosque row has become a struggle for the soul of the United States, the nation where freedom and democracy is supposed to reign supreme. As both a Muslim, and a friend of America, I hope and pray that the decency of Bloomberg and Wolf triumphs over the bigotry of Palin and Gingrich.On Thursday, Dean Barkley had his day in court, and he emerged with a victory. The former U.S. Senator successfully challenged the Golden Valley police's effort to confiscate his 2005 GMC Envoy through forfeiture. The SUV has been parked since April in a towing company's lot since it was seized by police from a relative of Barkley, who had borrowed the Envoy, got pulled over and charged with DWI. Back in May, I reported how Barkley filed a lawsuit to recover his car, and in the process become a critic of police forfeiture laws. He had the benefit of lawyer friends who took on his case pro bono. After a brief hearing Thursday, with maybe five minutes of testimony from Barkley, Hennepin District Judge John McShane ordered the Envoy returned to its owner. I talked to Barkley this morning, and he told me what happened next. An hour after the hearing, Barkley made his way to the impound lot, but noticed his car had no license plates. So he had to drive it to Driver and Vehicle Services to get new ones, he said. They gave him "whiskey plates," and now he has to fight to get rid of them. Lesson learned? "The forfeiture laws are blatantly unconstitutional," Barkley told me. "It just tromps on everyone's civil rights." This week, Minnesota's highest court agreed with Barkley. On Wednesday, the state Supreme Court issued two unanimous rulings that police and prosecutors are going beyond the law in confiscating people's property. One of the rulings asserted, for the first time, that the Constitution's Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure applied to civil, not just criminal forfeitures. "Thank God the court is coming to their senses with that stupid law," Barkley said. If you needed any more explanation of why the government loves forfeiture, just look at the haul from the prosecution of convicted synthetic drug dealer Jim Carlson, erstwhile proprietor of Duluth's Last Place on Earth head shop. On Wednesday, federal prosecutors announced their intention to confiscate bank accounts, cars, snowmobiles and real estate in two states and Cozumel, Mexico. Total value: $6.5 million.Photo by Buda Mendes/Zuffa LLC This might just be one of the best events ever put together. There is still every chance that the event turns out to be a steaming pile of boring, boring dung but the card as it stands on paper is the best start you could give an event. I praised this in yesterday's first installment (the one which covered Fabricio Werdum versus Stipe Miocic, read it if you haven't) but the matchmaking on this card is near an art form. There is a Brazilian in every fight to appeal to the rabid patriotism of Brazilian crowds but each fight is a logical, competitive, relevant bout. The sole exception might be Leslie Smith taking the plunge against Cyborg Justino, but every other bout is a compelling use of a star in a fight which is relevant to their current career status. In part two of our Definitive Guide to UFC 198 we examine Belfort versus Souza. Ronaldo 'Jacare' Souza versus Vitor Belfort is the big Brazilian versus Brazilian crowd pleaser on the card, it is also one of the most compelling bouts. Souza is coming off of a close split decision loss to Yoel Romero, while Belfort is attempting to make yet another career resurgence in the post Testosterone Replacement Therapy (TRT) era. The bout has immediate ramifications for the middleweight division and continues the beloved fight sports trend of old school (perhaps the oldest of schools in the UFC) and new school. Ronaldo Souza might be the most dangerous submission artist in the UFC. There are plenty of others to challenge that came but Souza is certainly among the cream of the crop. Not only is he technically one of the best grapplers in the sport, he is huge for his division. He rarely has the trouble over takedowns that plague many other elite jiu jitsu players like Andre Galvao in their transition to MMA, and he can hit as hard as anyone in the division. Certainly as a top player, Souza is among the greats in MMA. Pressure, side switches, just gorgeous stuff. The passing of Souza is beautiful to watch as he stuffs one of his opponent's feet into his crotch to force the half butterfly guard / broken butterfly guard, and drives his way up into half guard by stepping over the knee and occupying the space in the opponent's bottom side hip. Classic low passing stuff but done at such a high level. Souza then grinds his way up his man, constantly looking to attack the far arm. Most often Souza is looking to get his head into his man's armpit and attack with the katagatame arm triangle choke. This is the choke which he used to finish both Chris Camozi and Matt Lindland. Though the Camozi arm triangle actually came as Souza threatened to mount and Camozi attempted to turn. It is interesting to note the differences between Souza—who most often smashes his way to half guard by staying low and climbing into the pocket above the opponent's bottom knee—and Demian Maia and Shinya Aoki, who like using tripoding movements while pinning the upper body. With their hips high and head low, Maia and Aoki force opponents to actively take and settle for half guard rather than lose guard altogether to a knee slide of one kind or another. And then of course there is the cheeky Maia hip switch and sneaking the knee through to mount. So simple in concept and yet so nuanced. So Maia. But early in his MMA career Souza found that unlike Maia and many other top grapplers he has hitting power and this has added to his top game in some interesting ways. In the above Matt Lindland gif you will notice that Lindland is flat, having felt Souza attempting to slide underneath his far elbow. A powerful hammer fist to the face and he's immediately sitting up and Souza is in on the arm triangle. Similarly, Souza's powerful hammerfists and elbows have been combined with back stepping passes that allow him to just float into side control as his opponent is stinging from a blow to the head. Not a guard pass but still looks like it hurt. On the feet? There's not so much to write about. Jacare can hit with the biggest hitters in the middleweight division, but that is it. He prods with a jab which does nothing, then throws a telegraphed bomb of an overhand right and squares himself up completely. When he throws his left hook there is little on it and it seems only to serve the purpose of a'reset button' for his right hand. He can be aggressive, and this plays excellently into getting takedowns and hurting opponents in a rush to the fence, but more often than not he will hit nothing but air in these windmilling flurries. What is particularly concerning is just how one note and inactive Jacare looks against southpaws. This is strange because he has fought so many of them: Rockhold, Lawler, Okami, Camozzi, Romero. Against Romero especially Jacare looked almost completely paralyzed. Throwing the occasional overhand but it was forced to travel so far that he could never get it to the target before Romero moved. Vitor Belfort is another southpaw who, unlike those others, excels with the building blocks of southpaw striking excellence: the straight left and the left high and body kicks. Slightly concerning if Jacare hangs around too long on the feet. Belfort's game is built around the triple attack which made Mirko 'Cro Cop' Filipovic so successful in his best days. The left straight, the left high kick, and the left body kick. The left straight and the left high kick work in tandem because if the opponent's rear hand comes in to parry the straight, he is susceptible to a high kick through his arm. If the opponent keeps his arm high and wide to deal with the left high kick, he is dulled to quick straights through the middle of his guard. They also stem from similar hip and shoulder motions which means the detection of each is even more difficult. Similarly the left high kick and body kick play off of each other because due to the simple high-low principle. Kick the body a couple of times, the arms come down. Keep kicking high and eventually you'll be able to sneak one in to the liver. The beautiful, lancing left straight which is far too rare among MMA's plethora of southpaws. Notice Bisping bending at the waist in anticipation of either a left straight or a left body kick—both of which had been hurting him prior to the knockout. No one can pretend that the loss of Testosterone Replacement Therapy didn't hurt Belfort, who went from looking and moving like a superman to looking and moving like a very athletic but nearly forty year old guy. Even if you weren't particularly concerned with the morality of the TRT era, the obvious and rapid transformation in Belfort since its end is more than enough to suggest that it wasn't altogether fair to ban performance enhancing drugs and then allow a fighter who had already been caught using banned substances a therapeutic use exemption. Against Chris Weidman, Belfort looked deflated and tired quickly, but in the opening moments showed all the hand speed and power that he is famed for. Since then, Belfort's sole fight has been against a considerably past-it Dan Henderson who has also come off of TRT. Henderson was crouching down to his right with his right hand low all fight, and Belfort kicked him in the head yet again because of it. The fight told us absolutely nothing about whether or not the Belfort of today can hang with the best of his division, simply that he can still chuck up a head kick. Belfort's boxing traditionally has been a method which moves in on a straight line, throwing rapid flurries, but which struggles if the opponent's lateral movement and ring generalship is on point. Jon Jones also had tremendous success by jamming Belfort's advances with side kicks to the lead leg and to the body, but it is hard to see Jacare Souza diversifying his striking game away from the overhand and the occasional round kick this far into his career—if he hasn't added anything by now, it's unlikely he's going to. Dan Henderson landed pretty much every awkward low kick he threw, and he is not a particularly good kicker, so there's a chance Souza can make the best of that. A lovely counter right hook as Weidman steps in. Ultimately where Belfort flourishes is in trades—when the opponent engages him by either not retreating or circling out, or by stepping in on him. It is then that his sinister left straight and his flurries of punches cause knockouts. Stationary opponents are mainly his mark for sharp shooting single punches and the left kicks. The fights when Belfort has gassed out or given up have not been ones where he has been made to wait for his opportunity, they are the ones where he has been made to work—maybe even had some success—and the opponent is still there after he has thrown his best blows. As much as it is in Jacare's interest to drag this bout into the late going, he should make sure that all fifteen minutes are actively fighting and not simply refusing to engage and circling Belfort. But equally the first time Souza wades in with his overhand and tries to rush Belfort to the fence, there are going to be hands coming back. The path to victory for Souza is very easy to say: drag him into deep water, gas him out, use the clinch and try to get on top where he can do no damage and showed himself to be unable to escape against Weidman.
posable types and packages.A new report from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) states that visa overstays more than doubled in the last fiscal year, surpassing 600,000 total. The report reveals a major portion of illegal aliens living in the U.S. are people who have stayed in the U.S. past their formal departure dates. This, combined with previous reports of technology issues faced by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials, presents a daunting challenge for those trying to enforce immigration laws. During the most recent year, Fiscal Year 2016 which ended on September 30, 2016, 628,799 overstayed their visas and became illegal aliens. This compares to the Fiscal Year 2015 total of 304,000, as reported by Breitbart News. “To protect the American people from those who seek to do us harm, and to ensure the integrity of the immigration system, ICE has recently increased overstay enforcement operations,” DHS officials stated in the report obtained by Breitbart Texas. “Each year, ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations special agents systematically review approximately one million records of individuals who violate the terms of their visas or the visa waiver program, prioritizing leads that pose national security or public safety threats.” However, ICE special agents face challenges of outdated technology and non-connected databases as they attempt to enforce our country’s immigration laws and track down visa overstays. A DHS report from the Office of Inspector General (OIG) published earlier this month shows that ICE investigators are given a sluggishly-encumbering system, causing delays in determining whether a visa holder poses a national security threat. The DHS OIG inspector found that: The myriad of information systems and databases used in DHS for visa tracking were not effective in identifying nonimmigrant overstays. Some of these systems and databases were ‘stove-piped’ and did not electronically share information, resulting in numerous inefficiencies. Despite some recent system integration efforts, ICE personnel conducted cumbersome and manual searches across multiple systems for information on in-country overstays. ICE personnel periodically were unsure of which system to use and were hampered by multiple passwords required to maintain system access. Obtaining visa and immigration status on suspected overstays also was difficult due to the unstructured manner in which data were stored. During an interview on Breitbart News Daily, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) spoke about visa overstays: “about 40 percent of people who come to visit our country on a visa overstay their visa, and we have no idea where they are.” The junior senator from Kentucky added, “On 9/11, at least two of the hijackers were here on visa. They were traveling back and forth to the Middle East, and we really had no idea where they were or what they were doing, and they were overstaying their visa. So, there are problems I think in the immigration system that need to be fixed for our safety.” The increases noted in this year’s report come partially from the addition of student visas, worker classifications, and other classes of admissions, officials stated. The new report now covers 96.02 percent of all air and sea non-immigrant admissions into the U.S. during FY 2016. “It is important to note that determining lawful status is more complicated than solely matching entry and exit data,” DHS Secretary John Kelly stated in the report. “For example, a person may receive from CBP a six-month admission upon entry, and then he or she may subsequently receive from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) a six-month extension. Identifying extensions, changes, or adjustments of status is necessary to determine whether a person is truly an overstay.” The largest cohort of people staying past their scheduled departure dates are students. Of the 1.45 million scheduled to complete their program and depart the country, 2.5 percent stayed behind. This represents more than 37,000 students who became illegal aliens by not leaving as planned. Of these, Chinese students made up the largest number of overstays at 7,500. Canadians had a visa overstay rate of 1.44 percent, representing 119,418 in-country overstays. Mexico accounted for 46,658 visa overstays (1.72 percent). “During the past two years, DHS has made significant progress in terms of the ability to accurately report data on overstays—progress that was made possible by congressional realignment of Department resources in order to better centralize the overall mission in identifying overstays, DHS officials concluded. “During FY 2016, through new biometric exit tests and the BE-Mobile law enforcement tool, DHS was able to biometrically verify the biographic departure data for a limited number of departures from the United States in the air, land, and sea environments. While these only account for a very small percentage of all the biographic departure records for that FY, it is an important first step towards implementing a comprehensive biometric entry and exit system.” Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for Breitbart Texas. He is a founding member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook. DHS REPORT: Entry and Exit Overstay Report, Fiscal Year 2016The 10 Commandments of Road Trips – Rand and I are currently in Boston; in a few days, we’ll be driving up to New Hampshire for a conference; a few of his colleagues will be making journey with us. That’s right: we’re going on a road trip. WITH PEOPLE WE LIKE AND CONSIDER FRIENDS. Oh, dear. Forget all those trust-building exercises where you have to assemble a puzzle together, or fall into one another’s arms with your eyes closed, or break into an paramilitary complex, undetected, in order to erase any evidence of your existence (that last one is a thing, right? I’ve been unemployed for a long time). I cannot imagine a more rigorous test of any professional or personal relationship than being stuck in a car together, with only the fickle bastard that is Google Maps to guide you. Think of how much you learn about one another as you struggle to … navigate roads that should have been decommisioned in the 70s! choose a snack at the gas station that isn’t produced by a company primarily specializing in petroleum products. find a radio station that doesn’t describe itself as “playing the hits of yesterday, today, and tomorrow.” (Parenthetically, when did those weird moan-yodel noises that all the pop stars make become substitutions for actual singing? Also, music is too loud, my hip hurts, and the kids need to get OFF MY DAMN LAWN. #oldpersonrant) It is not a situation to be taken lightly. – And so, to ensure that Rand and I do not traumatize his colleagues, and due to the “success” of my 10 Commandments of Air Travel (hate mail counts as success, right?), I’ve decided to issue another ten commandments – this time about riding in cars. These aren’t rules for driving, per se (because there are a a hell of a lot more than ten of those), but guidelines for when you decide to pile into a vehicle alongside people with whom you’d like to remain on speaking terms long after you reach your destination. Thou canst not call “shotgun” unless thou can actually see the vehicle. Also, no calling shotgun for future trips, because that sort of shit is bound to get people really angry (and rightfully so, because thou is being a dick). – Regardless of whether or not thou hast called shotgun, thou shalt let the tallest/largest passenger ride in the front seat when thy vehicle is full. The tallest/largest passenger should initially decline this offer, but thou shalt continue pressing the issue until they take the damn front seat. – (If thou is not the tallest occupant of the vehicle, thou may still request to sit in the front seat on grounds of motion sickness. However, thou hast better have some serious evidence to back that claim up. Either that, or thou should just take thine own car.) – When thou is a passenger, thou shalt pitch in gas money for all trips over 15 miles, unless thou is doing someone a favor by going to the destination with them (then thine friend should probably offer you lunch or something). This situation does not hold true for professional trips, when the most senior individual should be responsible for covering the bill and enduring the dreaded expense report that ensueth. – With regards to flatulence, thou shalt “hold it in” for as long as possible (for though physical discomfort may fall upon thee, no real harm to thy person should occur) and wait for the opportunity to unleash thy foulness outside of the vehicle. – If such an opportunity does not present itself, thou shalt roll down the windows ahead of time before passing gas inside thy vehicle. Thou is not exempt from this rule, even if it is thine own car. — Thou shalt defer to the driver’s choice of music. If the driver’s taste is really terrible, thou must suck it up, except for trips lasting longer than 20 minutes, at which point thou and thine driver may take turns controlling the stereo. – The content of mixed CDs shall not be considered grounds for ridicule, because we all went through the stage where we thought that “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” song was catchy. (Don’t lie. Thou didst, too.) – Unless it interferes with thou’s legroom, thou shalt not critique the cleanliness of thy friend’s car. Nor shouldst thou mention that weird smell. – When the car is full, that person bearing the shortest legs shouldst offer to sit in the accursed middle back seat. After they have done so voluntarily, their position must then be referred to as “sitting awesome” instead of “sitting bitch.” – Thou shalt take any opportunity to use the restroom, even if thou doesn’t really have to go, in order to reduce the chances of needing to stop in the future. – If thou feels thine bladder or bowels reaching fullness, thou should make it clear that a bathroom will be needed soon, so that thine driver has time to find a convenient place to stop. – If thou is deemed navigator, thou shalt give directions in a clear and timely manner, providing the driver with more than 15 seconds to move three lanes to thine right. Those who point vaguely while repeating, in escalating urgency, “Go there … There! No, THERE.” willst be flogged. — If thou ist driving, thou shalt defer to the opinions of those forsaken souls in the backseat when determining vehicle climate controls. Those who are doomed to spend an eternity (or, you know, 20 minutes, but it feels like forever) burning in the hell of the backseat should be allowed full control over the A/C. – And, and one last thing you should take into account before venturing out on a long trip. It’s less of a commandment, and more just good, common sense (Rand, you listening?): Thou should never, under any circumstances, think that watching YouTube videos are enough to teach thou how to drive stick-shift. Especially not in Ireland. Share this Post Google+The Outer Hebrides of Scotland A unique connection between landscape, crofters and tweed from a far away place. I first travelled to the Outer Hebrides archipelago in search of the light. The ever-changing summer days of the far north-west edge, the twilight hours of spring and autumn, with wavering colours across mountain and moor. I would walk beneath miles-wide winter skies and step where the wind blows sea-salted and strong. It was to be a rendezvous with beauty, an encounter with living landscape and a revival of inner spirit among modernity. The Isle of Harris holds firm my heart, naturally forming the major focus of this very special book about one of the world’s most inspiring places. My years-long journey has also blessed my camera with wonderful opportunities in the islands of Lewis, Berneray, Eriskay, Barra and the Uists. Happily, they’ve each revealed their hidden stories as I've patiently looked on, listening to all they have to say. Sometimes calm and peaceful, often wild and wet, but always beautiful.Michael Thomas Slager did everything by the book. The South Carolina police officer’s only mistake was being filmed. But his approach in killing Walter Scott, seeming to plant evidence, and initiating a cover-up was a classic scenario of how cops get away with murder. Given what we know about police shootings, it wouldn’t surprise me if Slager was coached after he shot and killed Walter Scott. But judging by his dispatch call following the shooting, he was already pretty skilled at using the system to his advantage. Step 1: Play The Victim Slager first establishes that he was the one who was threatened. In his dispatch call he said that Scott was reaching for his Taser. But Scott was running away when he was shot. In many instances of police murder and abuse, cops scream at the top of their lungs, “Stop reaching for my weapon,” whereupon every black person recognizes that the situation is being artificially amped up by the officer. In the first moments of Slager’s dispatch call, he quickly establishes this by stating that Scott was reaching for his Taser. It was easy for Slager to say. Almost too easy. Throughout the video, Slager methodically went through the motions of someone used to orchestrating pre-meditated acts of violence. Step 2: Create The Monster Every “victimized cop” needs a monster. The next important thing a police office can do is play on the white majority’s instinctive fear and belief in the wild, terrifying “other.” It doesn’t matter if the citizen is in front of his home and reaching for his wallet like Amadou Diallo, holding a sandwich like Vonderrit Myers Jr., bicycling through a parking lot like Jordan Baker, standing on the corner like Eric Garner, sitting in his grandmother’s house like Ramarley Graham, or picking up a perfectly legal air rifle from a Walmart shelf like John Crawford III. Their deaths are attributed to an almost animalistic ability of black and brown bodies to lunge at fully-armed and weapons-trained law enforcement who are often outfitted with gun, club, pepper spray and Taser. The hundreds of people murdered by cops every year always seem to have this mythical lunging-and-wrestling skill that far exceeds most normal humans. These citizens are rarely seen as people with families, dreams and goals. Step 3: Plant The Evidence In the video, Slager appears to drop an object—very likely his Taser—by Scott’s lifeless body. Local NARC and SWAT teams have a notorious reputation of bursting into people’s homes and, when they can’t find what they’re looking for, covering their tracks by planting drugs. (If you don’t believe me, just google “NARC planting evidence” and a treasure trove of examples will pop up in every region of the country.) In some cases, local cops have started up websites to exchange tips and tell stories about how to plant evidence and set up citizen, as in the case of the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Anonymous Message Board, filled with helpful advice on such matters. Step 4: Handcuff The Body Handcuffs make anyone look guilty. Long after Eric Garner stopped moving, he laid on the sidewalk, shackled. The handcuffs also make it possible to explain that the “monster” was still alive despite being electrocuted by Tasers, beaten and/or shot. When DWB (driving while black), it’s common for cops to cuff motorists and leave them sitting in a police car or by the side of the road for public display. Often this happens before the cop has even run the motorist’s license. It’s a humiliating and guilt-associative object. In this case, Slager handcuffed Scott’s body, probably lifeless at that point. Step 5: Take Your Time With Medical Help You would think that when a violent confrontation results in a death, trained officers would immediately provide medical assistance. Given that almost all these victims were unarmed and motionless, it would be the humane thing to do. Yet neither Slager nor the other cop arriving at the scene attempted CPR, and it was several more minutes before medical help arrived. One of the most extreme examples of this was in the case of NYPD officer Peter Liang murdering Akai Gurley in a housing project staircase, the time delay in calling for an ambulance allows the officer to call his lawyer, consult with the police union, and begin to work on getting his story straight. Step 6: Smear The Dead When questions arise after the latest case of police brutality and/or killing, most law enforcement units are quick to dig into the dead person’s background and release any damaging information. If the victim is too young—as in the case of 12-year-old Tamir Rice or 7-year-old Ayianna Jones—then they smear the family and parents, implicating their children in the process. In the case of Walter Scott, he has an arrest record. Even though these arrests are for mostly non-violent crimes, like not keeping up with his child support payments, the paper trail helps justify his death. Perhaps things will be different this time. Slager was charged with the murder of Walter Scott, which is incredibly rare in America. (Cops are rarely indicted for these incidents, and even fewer are convicted, regardless of videotapes and evidence.) A crowdsourcing campaign for Michael Slager has already been rejected by GoFundMe. But it’s not over yet. Judging by history, there is a good chance that Slager ends up free. And another campaign on IndieGoGo is going strong. These are the rewards of playing things by the book. Aurin Squire is a freelance journalist who lives in New York City. In addition to being a playwriting fellow at The Juilliard School, he has writing commissions and residencies at the Dramatists Guild of America, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, and National Black Theatre.As the off-season continues and our desire for Rams football to return grows each day, I’ve decided to start a series that focuses on the Rams’ position coaches. These coaches are (by-large) relatively unknown to fans, and I figured this would be a fun assignment with the opportunity to familiarize fans with the team’s staff. Thus, we begin with Weinke. Chris Weinke enters his second year as the Rams’ quarterbacks coach and is widely remembered as a Heisman-winning passer from Florida State. Hailing from Minnesota, he was a Parade magazine and USA Today first team All-America selection, the state’s prep football player of the year, and reportedly offered by a whopping 70 FBS schools in 1989. Despite signing his letter of intent for the Seminoles, Weinke was drafted 62nd overall (second round) by the Toronto Blue Jays in the 1990 MLB First-Year Player draft; he spent six seasons with the Blue Jays and eventually made it to the AAA level when he was 25. That was the last of baseball for Weinke though, as he chose to retire and return to Florida State. From there, all he did was compile a 32-3 record that included a perfect season and National Championship in 1999 with another appearance the following season. His played earned him the Heisman Trophy and consensus first team All-American and ACC Player of the Year honors in 2000; he was also the recipient of the Davey O’Brien Award and the Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award. The transition to the next level would not be as seamless. At 28, he was the second oldest pick in NFL history (just a few months older than Brandon Weeden) when the Carolina Panthers took him in the fourth round with the 106 overall pick in 2001. Weinke would replace Matt Lytle as the starting quarterback after Week 1 and proceed to lose the next 15 games, a then-NFL single season record. Things failed to get better for him as he finished his seven career with a record of 2-18 as a starter. Prior to his stint with the Rams, Weinke spent four years as the director of the IMG Academy football program where he helped the likes of Cam Newton, Russell Wilson, and Ryan Tannehill prepare for their own journey at the next level. There isn’t a large-enough sample size to suggest Jared Goff will grow as a passer under the tutelage of Weinke, but his track record at IMG is appealing and, coupled with his NFL experience, offers a sliver of hope.I worked with Hubble Space Telescope (HST) for many years. First it was with early data (taken weeks after launch) for my PhD research, and then several years helping to build and calibrate a camera on board called STIS. Working with HST (as those of us in the know call it) and doing as much outreach as I do, I learned quickly that there are a lot of misconceptions about the orbiting observatory. One of the most frequent is that it can’t observe the Moon, because our natural satellite is too bright. Trying to snap a shot of it would damage Hubble’s detectors. That’s not true. Well, not totally true. Some cameras on HST are very sensitive, and could be damaged if pointed to a bright source. The ultraviolet camera I worked on was so sensitive it would fry if it looked some kinds of stars too faint to even see with the naked eye! But other cameras are just fine with bright sources, and that includes the Advanced Camera for Surveys. On Jan. 11, 2012, it took this pretty amazing picture of the Moon: Hubble was used to take this dramatic picture of the lunar crater Tycho. Click to embiggen. Image credit: NASA, ESA, and D. Ehrenreich (Institut de Planétologie et d’Astrophysique de Grenoble (IPAG)/CNRS/Université Joseph Fourier) That’s the crater Tycho, arguably the most famous on the Moon. First, it’s pretty easy to spot near Full Moon with just binoculars; plumes of material that splashed out when the crater formed over 100 million years ago fell back to the surface, creating long streamers called rays that radiate out from the crater. They’re bright and obvious, and delightful through a small telescope. You can see a hint of them in the Hubble picture. Also, Tycho was where the Monolith was found, buried 4 million years ago by extremely advanced aliens. So there’s that. Tycho is actually quite round. It only looks elliptical in the Hubble image because the telescope saw the crater at an angle. Judging from the short axis to long axis ratio, it was pretty close to 45°. Notice that the craters around it are similarly distorted. For proof, here’s a picture of Tycho taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, looking straight down on the massive impact site: The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter took this picture of the crater Tycho looking straight down. Click to enlunenate. Image credit: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University See? Round. And mind you, what you’re seeing is huge: Tycho is more than 85 kilometers (53 miles) across! If whatever hit the Moon to form Tycho had instead hit the Earth, we wouldn’t be here to talk about it. That asteroid was probably bigger than any mountain on Earth. I’ll note that this is a wide-angle image from LRO. It also has a camera that has more magnification, and it took this, one of my favorite pictures of the Moon of all time, showing the mountains in the very center of Tycho: From an angle, LRO was able to see the central mountains in Tycho cast long shadows. Click to penumbrenate. Image credit: NASA Goddard/Arizona State University So there you go. The Moon is not too bright for Hubble. Funny though, it is hard to observe by HST, but that’s actually because it’s moving too fast in the sky. Hubble isn’t designed to track that quickly, so what they do to observe it is put it in “ambush mode”: Aim Hubble in the sky where the Moon will soon be, then wait. When the Moon moves in, Hubble grabs the snapshot. This has been done many times, actually (like in 1999 and 2005). In this case, the shot of Tycho was taken as preparation for the transit of Venus last year. I know, it sounds weird, but the idea was that when Venus passed in front of the Sun, sunlight would be transmitted through the atmosphere of Venus. The different molecules in the planet’s air would then selectively absorb very discrete colors of sunlight. Astronomers hoped that fingerprint would be visible in their observations of the Moon, lit by that same Venusian-filtered sunlight. In this way, they might be able to make similar observations when exoplanets (alien worlds) transit their own stars as seen from Earth, possibly leading to a detection of those planets’ atmospheric constituents. It’s a clever idea. And, I’ll note, it was done using STIS, the camera I worked on! So it’s neat to see this go full circle.The Google Assistant SDK lets developers like you embed the Google Assistant into any device with a microphone and speaker. Since we first introduced the SDK, you've created innovative projects and delightful applications with Voice Kits. Your fun side projects and practical applications have captivated our imagination, and we'll continue working with companies—big and small—to develop and launch new products to extend the availability of the Google Assistant. To help you take your products to the next level, today we're happy to introduce several new features to the Google Assistant SDK. Additional languages and locales Supporting users globally is important for the Google Assistant and as of the latest release you can now programmatically configure the API, or configure your device within the Assistant app, to use any of the following languages/locales: English (Australia, Canada, UK, US), French (Canada, France), German, and Japanese. Customizable device settings Many aspects of the Google Assistant can be customized by end-users in the Settings screen within the Assistant on their phone. SDK-based devices are not only discoverable within this experience, but they also support the same level of customization, including changing the device's language, location, nickname, and enabling personalized results -- for example, "Ok Google, what's on my calendar?" In terms of location, SDK-based devices can now be configured as a street address in the Google Assistant on your phone, or as a latitude and longitude via the API. With this ability, SDK-based devices can return more location-specific answers to queries such as "Ok Google, where's the nearest coffee shop?" or "Ok Google, what's today's weather?" Text-based queries and responses Voice-in and voice-out was a natural first step for the Google Assistant SDK, but we have heard from many developers that other input and output mechanisms are needed. Today we're happy to announce that the Google Assistant SDK now supports text-based queries and responses. Both of these updates build upon the already-supported voice query and voice response API. Device Actions When we first launched the Google Assistant SDK one of the most prominent questions we received was "how can I ask the Assistant to control my device?" With the latest SDK, you can utilize the new Device Action functionality to build Actions directly into your Assistant-enabled SDK devices. When you register a device you can now specify what traits the device itself supports – on/off or temperature setting, for example. When users then ask the device, "Ok Google, set the temperature to 78 degrees," the Google Assistant will turn such queries into structured intents via cloud-based automated speech recognition (ASR) and natural language understanding (NLU). All you need to provide is the client-side code for actually fulfilling the Device Action itself – no other code is needed. The SDK supports a set of device traits that are supported by Smart Home. Device management To help get you up and running with Device Actions, we are launching a new management API to help you register and manage your SDK devices. With this API you are able to easily register, unregister, and see all devices that you have registered. We're also introducing a device model which represents a set of devices with the same type and traits. Get started with all this new functionality, by checking out the documentation and samples. If you're interested in building a commercial product with the Google Assistant, we encourage you to reach out and contact us. As always, there are great conversations happening within StackOverflow, as well as the Assistant SDK and hackster.io communities. We encourage everyone to take part!Here's a pop quiz for Congress: If you cut food assistance for needy families by $333 million, and allow corporations to dodge $183 billion in federal taxes in the same year, how much did you end up reducing the deficit? We just saw the first round of $85 billion in sequester cuts, now coupled with the injustice of the top five "too-big-to-fail" banks -- Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs -- receiving an annual subsidy of $63 billion. The next five biggest banks receive a $20 billion annual subsidy. This still continues even though we just allowed sequestration to cut $333 million from the supplemental nutrition program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC). We're spending billions to keep big banks afloat, but we just cut 600,000 needy mothers and their children from the WIC program. This government has decided it would rather starve children than take big banks off the welfare rolls. On top of their annual TBTF subsidy, the five biggest banks have paid effective tax rates lower than that of the average family, and in the case of Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo, paid negative effective federal tax rates on their profits. Goldman Sachs' fancy lower Manhattan skyscraper was made possible after Congress gave them and other Wall Street banks $8 billion in tax-exempt funds in 2002, while other New Yorkers in need of affordable housing had to find a way to make do on their own. These big banks, for more than a decade, have gotten buckets of free money from the federal government, and additionally get away without paying any federal taxes, even getting hundreds of millions, or even billions, in federal tax refunds. So by default, we either run larger deficits, or the rest of us have to pay more taxes to pick up their slack. These big banks aren't doing anything illegal; they simply make use of the loopholes in the tax code that they successfully lobbied to have implemented, and subsequently shift their profits to overseas tax shelters. Bank of America alone has over 300 foreign subsidiaries, 115 of which are in countries designated as tax havens like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. The actual money is in a bank in the United States, but complex schemes in the tax code allow them to have it booked in countries where there is a zero percent corporate tax rate. And due to one of these loopholes, known as deferral, these billions in corporate profits can remain tax-free as long as it's booked overseas. It's amazing how hard our media and our politicians are telling us to not make the connection. It's easy enough for anyone to see that as these corporations become more adept at rigging the tax code with excessive loopholes, their profits climb ever higher as the government becomes increasingly starved for revenue. We recently saw the Dow Jones hit a record high, even surpassing the mark it hit in 2007, just before the housing bubble burst and the recession began. This is due largely to overseas corporate tax avoidance schemes. The congressional lapdogs of these corporations argue that lowering the corporate tax rate would bring corporate tax revenue back home. However, as long as these loopholes remain in place, it won't matter if we cut corporate tax rates to 30 or 25 percent because they can still get zero percent overseas. President Obama is hearing constantly from the CEOs of the biggest corporate tax dodgers who are part of the AstroTurf "Fix The Debt" campaign, which has been exposed numerous times as a lobby for CEOs to keep their tax loopholes while forcing cuts to Social Security and Medicare. And because Fix the Debt and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has constant access to the president, he's now preparing to force cuts to "entitlements" that people depend on for their income and health care, while doing nothing about the entitlements that the government gives to big banks and corporations to dodge their tax obligations. There's a bill that would fix this problem and address problems like the deferral loophole. Sen. Bernie Sanders' and Rep. Jan Schakowsky's Corporate Tax Fairness Act would close these loopholes and raise nearly $600 billion on a decade. That revenue is more than enough to offset the austerity just forced on us by the sequester. This tax day, let's take shelter from the cuts inside the branches of these big banks since they're evidently the only ones immune from all the cuts. Bring lots of friends, take lots of pictures and videos, and send the message that we won't tolerate any more austerity from this government until they pass the Corporate Tax Fairness Act and make these big banks and corporations pay their fair share.Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, answers questions at the Pentagon on Oct. 3, 2014. Kirby said Friday, Jan. 23, 2015, that fewer than 100 U.S. troops will arrive in several Middle East countries in the “coming days” to survey training sites where moderate Syrian rebels will be taught to fight radical groups within Syria. WASHINGTON — An advance team of fewer than 100 U.S. troops will arrive in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar in the “coming days” to survey training sites where moderate Syrian rebels will be taught to fight radical groups within Syria, Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said Friday. Kirby would not identify which units the contingent belongs to, other than to say that most of them are special operations forces. The team will be followed in the “next few weeks” by several hundred trainers and enablers, who will begin training the rebels in early spring if everything stays on track, Kirby said. “Right now, signs are looking good. Things are moving in the right direction,” Kirby said. However, recruiting and vetting of potential Syrian trainees has not yet begun, according to Kirby. The Pentagon hopes to have U.S.-trained rebels rejoin the battlefield this fall. The goal is to train 5,000 moderate fighters each year for the next few years to take on the Islamic State. Officials have estimated that the group has 20,000 to 30,000 followers. In Iraq, training of anti-Islamic State fighters is already under way. The training site in Irbil came online Friday, and all four designated training sites in Iraq are now up and running. Kirby said there are 3,600 Iraqi security forces and Kurdish Peshmerga already in the training pipeline, with 600 at Al Asad, 1,600 at Taji, 1,300 at Besmaya, and 100 in Irbil. The initial training phase for Iraqi troops will last six weeks, Kirby said. There are currently about 1,550 American troops in Iraq training, advising and assisting Iraqi forces. The U.S. plans to train 12 Iraqi brigades to take on the Islamic State. [email protected] Twitter: @JHarperStripesPut that wasted computer time to good use by growing a plant. I know that you often procrastinate when you should be working...we all do it...looking at Facebook, at Instructables, watching YouTube and all of the other things that we do when we should be working. Actually I developed this project for a workshop that I was asked to give in Pori, Finland during December of 2016. I based it on similar objects that I am experimenting with in my own work for my Master's thesis. At the end of this Instructable, you should have a small terrarium where you can grow a plant using LEDs which will use your computer as a power supply. If you keep your USB Powered Plant on your desk and plugged into your computer, all that time you spend working, procrastinating, watching cat videos and learning how to do stuff will be also used for growing a little plant in its own ecosystem. This whole project should take 1-2 hours and is based on the research which NASA has done on growing plants using artificial sources of light, there are links and further reading/research located at the end of this Instructable.Transport for London has launched a new public consultation on the proposed £27bn Crossrail 2 scheme which will link south-west and north-east London. Previous consultations have already helped to inform TfL’s work on the project which looks increasingly likely to be given the go-ahead by ministers who have already safeguarded its core route. The scheme, which could open in 2030, has the backing of all four parties currently represented at City Hall and could be worth up to £100bn to London’s economy and help deliver thousands of new homes and jobs. TfL, City Hall and many London businesses see Crossrail 2 as essential if the capital is to continue serving the needs of its growing population and remain an attractive place for firms to set up and expand in. With research suggesting that more than half of the scheme’s cost could be met through local funding, including a levy on business rates and local construction projects, the scheme is likely to cost the Westminster government significantly less than it generates in tax income. Today’s consultation comes after TfL unveiled plans to replace a proposed station at Tooting Broadway with one at Balham and drop plans for stations at Turnpike Lane and Alexandra Palace for one in Wood Green. Mayor Boris Johnson said: “Crossrail 2 is a major infrastructure project and so it’s vital that we get it right from the start. This consultation is key to helping us to fine tune the proposals and to ensure that everyone with a view on Crossrail 2 can have their say and is listened to.” Michele Dix, TfL’s Managing Director of Crossrail 2, added: “ As development of this vital railway continues, we will be taking on board feedback from the consultation to progress the designs for the project, so that we can open the railway by 2030.” The consultation runs until Friday 8 January 2016 and can be accessed at www.crossrail2.co.ukLieutenant-General Rizwan Akhtar, the newly appointed Director General of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), in 2008 argued that peace between Pakistan and India was imperative in the broader regional picture, calling for the country to “aggressively pursue rapprochement with India”. Rizwan was recently appointed by the government as next chief of the ISI and he will take charge when his predecessor Lt-Gen Zaheerul Islam retires on November 7. In a research report for his Masters degree at the US Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, on “US-Pakistan trust deficit and the war on terror", Akhtar had argued that peaceful relations with India not only improved regional stability but would also alleviate international concerns. In recent years, ties between India and Pakistan have been tricky
of violet crimson, trimmed with ermine. Her coronation and an extravagant banquet followed. Mary and James had a successful marriage and several children. The future heir, James III, was born in 1451. In addition to their four sons, Mary and James had two daughters, Mary and Margaret. It was soon after his marriage that James II made some changes in his government. Some sources credit Mary with his repudiation of the Livingston family, who had effectively controlled the government through most of James II’s minority. After his marriage, James began to take steps to loosen their control. Sir Robert Livingstone and Alexander, the son of Sir Alexander Livingstone, were executed. Mary was also present at James’s first Parliament as his own man. It seems obvious that she did have some influence with her husband. Regency While leading a siege on Roxburgh Castle, James II could not resist trying out a new gun. It exploded and the king received a mortal wound. Within a week Mary had brought James III to Roxburgh, which the Scottish succeeded in taking. The new king’s coronation was held at Kelso, and Mary received official custody of the young king with the aid of a regency council. Soon afterwards, Mary founded the Collegiate Church of the Holy Trinity in perpetual memory of her husband, as well as all the kings and queens of Scotland. She planned to be buried there. A map in the seventeenth century shows its location Mary and the Wars of the Roses Mary’s policy in the Wars of the Roses was shrewd. She received Margaret of Anjou in 1460 and there was some discussion of a betrothal between one of Mary’s daughters and Edward, Prince of Wales. Following the Yorkist victory at Towton, Margaret of Anjou again fled to Scotland, this time accompanied by Henry VI, Prince Edward, and the Dukes of Somerset and Exeter. A shrewd negotiator, Mary convinced the Lancastrians to cede Berwick to Scotland. She also wrested a promise to cede Carlisle. The Lancastrians stayed at the court for a year, but Mary, partly under the influence of Duke Philip, finally decided to oust them from the court. Once the Lancastrians were gone, Mary met with Earl of Warwick at Dumfries. She may have even proffered a possible marriage between herself and Edward IV. The negotiations did not go far. Margaret of Anjou returned to Scotland and James III, Mary, and the Lancastrian party led an attack on Norham Castle, which was a spectacular defeat. Margaret of Anjou left Scotland, and soon afterwards Mary fell ill. She died in December 1463. Legacy In later generations Mary was accused of affairs with Edmund, Duke of Somerset, and Adam Hepburn. It is doubtful that she had the affairs, as contemporary sources do not mention them. She should be better known for her collegiate church, her charitable donations, her shrewd policy of playing the Lancastrians against the Yorks and her building of Ravenscraig Castle in Fife. Sources: Charters and documents relating to the Collegiate Church and Hospital of the Holy Trinity, and the Trinity Hospital, Edinburgh (Accessed online, https://archive.org/details/chartersdocument18trin) Marshall, Rosalind K. Scottish Queens: 1034-1714 (Tuckwell Press: 2003) Marwick, Sir James D. The history of the Collegiate Church and Hospital of the Holy Trinity and the Trinity Hospital, Edinburgh, 1460-1661 (Accessed online, https://archive.org/details/historyofcollegimarw) Norman Macdougall, ‘Mary (d. 1463)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/18249, accessed 25 Jan 2015]A fire in the roof of the outside bar at AJ's Seafood & Oyster Bar lit up the night sky over Destin Harbor on Tuesday night. DESTIN – A fire in the roof of the outside bar at AJ’s Seafood & Oyster Bar lit up the night sky over Destin Harbor on Tuesday night, but did surprisingly little damage to the building itself. “If you want to see what 15,000 palm fronds burning looks like, look at the video from last night,” AJ’s owner Alan Laird said. Laird was in good spirits Wednesday morning as he and about 30 others worked to remove items burned or melted by the fire and clear the deck area around the Club Bimini bar. And why not? As spectacular as the fire looked from several vantage points around the harbor, no one was injured, the restaurant below the bar area was untouched and the bar area itself remained structurally sound. Laird estimated about $50,000 in total damages, most superficial enough that he was planning to have the restaurant open Wednesday and Club Bimini rocking again by this weekend. Laird said the fire seemed to have started in an electrical room, but the state Fire Marshal’s Office was called in Wednesday morning to investigate and determine a cause, according to Destin Fire District Battalion Chief Jimmy Taylor. The Fire Marshal’s findings were not being released Wednesday, Taylor said. Laird said, all things considered, “I don’t think a fire could have gone smoother.” A sprinkler system in the bar area did its job, Laird said, putting water where it needed to be but not activating in areas where water could have caused damage. Sensitive electrical equipment on a stage in one corner of the bar area was unscathed. Destin firefighters moved in quickly from the front of the building and contained the burning fronds that top the circular bar in about 20 minutes. “They did a lot to preserve the bar,” Laird said. Winds pulled flames from the blaze upward and the fire itself burned vertically, Laird said. Several valuable items hanging in the bar area fell to the floor, where accumulated water protected them from the flames. A group of about 200, primarily snowbirds, had been present mid-afternoon for Banjorama, a live musical show. The show had ended by the time the fire started and bar manager Brian McGee estimated “about 90 percent” of the crowd had left. McGee was bartending in the downstairs restaurant when someone came in and reported the fire. He said he and two other managers stepped outside and knew they’d have to evacuate the building. “You could look out on the water and see the glow,” McGee said. “We came in and said ‘Everybody get out.’ ” The restaurant area was “untouched” by fire and also avoided water damage, McGee said. Patrons left so quickly, four untouched entrees still sat on one table. Wednesday morning McGee was back at the restaurant waiting for power to be returned to the building. “As soon as we get the power on we’ll be ready to roll,” he said. Laird said photos and videos of the AJ’s blaze had received 2 million hits on various social media sites, many from across the state and country. “I’d like to thank everyone for their concern,” he said. He was also keen to invite some of the 2 million who’d checked out the fire to return to Destin to see what he jokingly referred to as a new bar feature. “We are now officially the only truly 'topless' oyster bar on the Gulf Coast,” he said. Laird said the fire would not delay the openings of two new bar/restaurants he will co-own. AJ’s Oyster Shanty on Okaloosa Island could open as early as this weekend, Laird said, and the Mirage restaurant at the former Mango’s at the foot of the Cinco Bayou Bridge is slated to begin doing business in April. Previous coverage DESTIN — Some 20 people escaped unharmed Tuesday night after part of the second floor at AJ’s Seafood & Oyster Bar caught fire. Tracy McCraw, AJ’s marketing director, said the fire started in the restaurant’s Club Bimini section. “Nobody was hurt,” he said. “Everybody got out safely. It was calm and orderly.” PHOTOS the morning after AJ's fire The spectacular blaze drew onlookers as word spread on social media and among AJ’s employees. The stretch of U.S. Highway 98 near AJ’s was closed for a short time. “At first, I just saw smoke and, from one second to the other, flames consumed the roof completely,” said Dylan Keuning, who was sitting at a picnic table near AJ’s. PHOTOS of fire at AJ's Seafood & Oyster Bar McCraw did not have a damage estimate. The cause of the fire is under investigation. VIDEO of fire at AJ's Seafood & Oyster Bar Destin Fire Control District Chief Kevin Sasser was behind the first fire truck to arrive at the scene. “There was smoke and flames coming from the top of AJ’s,” he said. “The roof was fully involved.” He said his priority was to make sure no one was still in the restaurant and to contain the fire. Club Bimini’s thatched roof produced embers that wafted toward Destin Harbor and the charter fishing boats docked there. Sasser estimated it took firefighters about 30 minutes to douse the flames. They then searched the interior for hot spots. Crews from Okaloosa Island, Fort Walton Beach, North Bay and South Walton fire departments assisted at the scene. McCraw said the restaurant would reopen as soon as possible. “This iconic place is not going away,” he promised. “We’re here to stay.”My first blog post will be about a Neovim feature I’ve been working on for the last weeks. It doesn’t have an official name yet but I’m calling it “Smart UI protocol” for now. Those following Neovim development probably know that one of the project’s goals is to transform Vim into an embeddable text editor engine. Its msgpack-rpc interface and UI protocol already make this possible to a certain extent, as shown by projects like SolidOak or neovim-e. The problem with the current UI protocol is that it can only be used to mirror Neovim main screen on top of other widget toolkits, so embedders are very limited in what they can do regarding UI customization. To understand the problem better, let’s see a diagram with a high-level illustration of how the UI protocol currently works: +---------------+ call `ui_attach` via msgpack-rpc +---------------+ | | to receive UI updates | | | | <------------------------------------------ | | | | | | | | instructions on how to | | | | draw the whole screen | | | | ------------------------------------------> | | | | | | | | send input(:vsp) | | | | <------------------------------------------ | | | Neovim | | Embedder | | | instructions on how to echo command-line | | | | and each character as it is typed. | | | | ------------------------------------------> | | | | | | | | send input(<cr>) | | | | <------------------------------------------ | | | | | | | | instructions on how to draw a vertical | | | | separator and redraw the buffer | | | | in each side of the split | | | | ------------------------------------------> | | +---------------+ +---------------+ That is, the embedder can’t do much more than follow Neovim instructions on how to draw both the displayed text and the user interface. This effectively limits GUIs to being nothing but glorified terminal emulators: They can put file explorers and menus near the editor shell, but can’t display windows with different font sizes for example. This is greatly in part because Neovim redrawing code assumes a single monospaced font grid to represent every part of the UI, which makes perfect sense for terminal-only programs but is very limiting in other scenarios. Fixing this would require significant changes to the redrawing module, something that can potentially introduce many bugs and further delay a stable release. With that said, I’ve been working on what I believe to be a relatively simple solution to the problem(won’t require drastic changes to screen.c): Implement a new UI protocol that allows embedders to have full control over window layout. This new protocol is activated via a command-line switch and replaces the old protocol when active(not possible to have both protocols active in the same Neovim instance). Here’s an overview of how Neovim behaves when this command-line flag is passed: The --embed flag is assumed(The builtin terminal UI is disabled and stdin/stdout become msgpack-rpc channels) flag is assumed(The builtin terminal is disabled and stdin/stdout become msgpack-rpc channels) The smart_ui_attach method creates and/or attaches to a window. It returns a window id, which will be sent on update notifications for that specific window. method creates and/or attaches to a window. It returns a window id, which will be sent on update notifications for that specific window. A new smart_ui_focus method is used by embedders to tell Neovim about which window is currently focused. method is used by embedders to tell Neovim about which window is currently focused. Each window has its own instance of the screen data structures, and window redrawing code(win-update, win-line…) only affect the screen structures local to the window being redrawn. Layout-affecting commands( :split, :vsplit, :tabnew ) are simply forwarded to the embedder, which must take appropriate actions to create and attach to new windows and display them where appropriate. ,, ) are simply forwarded to the embedder, which must take appropriate actions to create and attach to new windows and display them where appropriate. Command-line mode won’t trigger screen redraw instructions. Instead, msgpack-rpc objects with high-level information about what is happening on the command line will be sent. For example: {"command-line": ["display-input-box"]} {"command-line": ["update-contents", "sp"]} {"command-line": ["display-completions", "split", "spelldump", "spellgood"...]} Same for insert-mode completion, instead of redraw instructions, just sent completion candidates and row/column/window to display the box: {"insert-completion": ["display", 1, 40, 30, "method1", "method2"]} {"insert-completion": ["hide"]} In a few words: The smart UI protocol will separate the drawing of window contents and other user interface elements such as completion boxes and window frames. The advantages of this scheme may not be obvious, so let me list a few here: Embedders have complete freedom of how windows are displayed(custom decorators, floating windows…) Frameless, single-line windows can be created, good for using Neovim as shell line editor for example. Windows can have different fonts/sizes. Custom widgets for displaying the command-line and insert-mode completion. Clearly embedders will have more work to implement the smart UI protocol, that’s why it will be added as a new feature instead of replacing the current version. For simple embedding scenarios and for the builtin terminal UI the current protocol makes things much simpler. To show the capabilities of the new UI protocol, I’m also working on a typescript web UI that will run in any modern web browser and communicates with Neovim via websockify. If you like Neovim, stay tuned because it is about to get a facelift!A user has reported that the wifi passwords are not encrypted on Ubuntu systems, being stored in clear text in a folder outside the user’s home, (/etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/) making it accessible for unwanted users. After this issue has been reported, a Canonical developer has explained in the mailing lists that this is caused by the fact that the “All users may connect to this network” option is enabled by default. This issue has an easy fix, directly from the graphical user interface. All you have to do is: Open network indicator -> Edit connections -> Select network -> Click edit -> untick “All users may connect to this network.” from the general tab. By doing this setting, the password will be stored in the user’s home and so, it will become unavailable for unwanted users. Also, encrypt your homedir, for better security.NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York Fashion Week has long been the realm of magazine editors and department store buyers, but now a growing number of online fashionistas are wielding some unlikely industry influence. A model (R) presents a creation from the G-Star Spring/Summer 2011 collection show during New York Fashion Week September 14, 2010. REUTERS/Eric Thayer Typically equipped with just a smartphone, bloggers and tweeters are telling the world about designers’ collections for spring/summer 2011 — which won’t be for sale in stores for months — within seconds of models hitting the runways. Online media at fashion week has grown 20 percent in the past six months, said organizer IMG, and now accounts for about 40 percent of the 3,600 members of the press covering the event. They also follow fashion trends outside the invitation-only venues. “We do pay attention to it... It’s important to be aware of what they are blogging about and what’s inspiring them,” said Colleen Sherin, Saks Fifth Avenue fashion market director. “Some of the things we might have been seeing on the street are perhaps now brought to us by the Internet.” Retail strategist and trend forecaster The Doneger Group even published a list of who it considered to be the key New York Fashion Week bloggers and tweeters to follow. “Bloggers and tweeters are becoming even more important as they provide consumers an inside look into the latest trends and styles,” said David Wolfe, Doneger’s creative director. Among the bloggers to make that list are 14-year-old Tavi Gevinson from the Chicago suburbs, who began her blog www.thestylerookie.com when she was 11, and Susanna Lau, 26, from London, with www.stylebubble.co.uk. There are also plenty of regular shoppers posting so-called “haul videos” on YouTube, some of which have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times. The concept is simple — shoppers make videos showing off their recent purchases, giving the industry an insight into what trends are selling. NUMBERS DETERMINE SUCCESS Despite speculation over whether Gevinson has help writing her blog, which she has denied, the petite teenager has grabbed the attention of designers, including Karl Lagerfeld and John Galliano, and receives sought-after fashion show invitations. This week she was the subject of an eight-page profile in The New Yorker magazine, which reported that she recently spoke about the buying habits of her peers at a $1,000-a-ticket marketing conference in New York. “When I post about something, it’s because I like it,” Gevinson told The New Yorker magazine, describing her blog as “fangirling” instead of journalism. During the Fashion’s Night Out campaign on Friday to get people shopping, she was guest tweeting for Barney’s and made an appearance at the store. Lau has been writing her blog about fashion she liked and about her inspirations four years ago and said it was spurred by the boredom of working for a digital advertising agency at the time. She now works full-time on her blog, which gets 25,000 hits a day, and has 70,000 followers on Twitter. But after spending the past two years editing the website for British style magazine Dazed & Confused, Lau understands the hierarchy in fashion and that bloggers will have to go through a period of assessment to work out where they fit in. “There are a handful of bloggers that should be at shows, but the front row is a different matter all together. I feel like you need to earn your place,” she said. “There are plenty bloggers that are super-talented, but they also haven’t put in the time.” An online hierarchy would be determined much the same way as traditional media — by looking at the numbers, said Steven Kolb, executive director of the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA). He said for the first time this year, bloggers were among the judges for the CFDA’s annual awards. “Who rises to the top and who is credible is determined not that much differently from how The New York Times became such a big paper,” he said. “The people that are going to get the numbers... are the ones that are going to have a point of view, insight and are credible. “Not to embrace blogging, tweeting and social networking is ultimately bad for somebody’s business,” he said.It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for: CLANNAD will be released on Steam at 12PM PST on November 23! We will start sending out your Steam keys next week, so be sure to check your BackerKit inboxes. A quick summary of some other things that have been happening: Physical Rewards The tapestries and soundtracks have been weighed, counted, and loaded on a boat. They will arrive on this side of the ocean next month. We'll have more information regarding physical rewards coming soon. Guidebook A big thank you to everyone who responded! We’ve received over 3400 entries and now just making final adjustments before sending it to the presses. Anthology Book We’ve been steadily receiving rough drafts of translations and started the review process. Side Stories We’ve received the first build of the CLANNAD Side Stories: Hikari Mimamoru Sakamichi de and will start testing shortly. Steam The game has been uploaded to Steam and final testing is underway. The QA team and VisualArts staff is currently running the game through its paces and picking out all the remaining bugs. Finally, last week we did an interview with the fan site Kazamatsuri. You can find the article here: http://kazamatsuri.org/kazamatsuri-community-interviews-sekai-projects-clannad-team/A libel lawsuit should be launched and starve the mayor London's new mayor Sadiq Khan is said to be not so much a Pakistani Muslim but rather a social democrat. However, a new policy – thanks to Tony – raises some doubts about his true passions. He already banned bikini ads on the London subway and he's in the process of banning them at all public spaces in London. Maybe he will fight to ban them in the private spaces, too. A not so new coalition of the Islamic terrorists and fat feminists supports him. A decade ago, we saw how infuriated much of the Islamic world was when a Danish magazine published a silly, not too novel cartoon of Prophet Mohammed. What is the problem of these savages, we the Westerners asked? Now, Khan was mostly shocked by the girl in the yellow bikini above (this replacement would be OK for him). Again, we are asking: Why this girl? Haven't you seen hundreds of other photographs of young women in bikinis (or without bikinis), women both chunkier and skinnier than this one? If you haven't, how could you become the mayor of a big town? You're missing the qualification for the basic life in the West. Protein World, a small company selling weight loss products, only paid GBP 0.25 million for this billboard campaign. Thanks to the controversy, it has earned some extra GBP 1 million in a few days. Khan and his thugs argue that the advertisement is "body-shaming" and it promotes an "unhealthy and unrealistic body shape". And he declared himself to be the defender of the women who don't look like this against this billboard. I am always stunned when some of the nastiest and cruelest bullies may claim to be victims and defenders of victims. Do they realize that the billboard shows an actual young woman? Do they think it's OK when they scream to the whole London that her body is unhealthy and unrealistic? An actual individual – and tens of millions of girls and women who look approximately like her – are being officially victimized for their beauty. Also, if he wanted to defend his daughters, he should allow them to go to the fitness clubs, listen to music, and buy a weight loss product if they want it. Many women are excessively obsessed with the idea that they should change their body shape. In many cases, it's difficult if not impossible: many features of one's body are basically encoded in his or her DNA that can't be edited (at least not easily) and the fat isn't the only thing that decides about one's body shape. More importantly, chunkier shapes are often much more attractive than most people and especially women are led to believe. On the other hand, some girls are born so that the body above is a totally natural outcome of their free and healthy life. On this forecasting map that is more than a decade old, the U.K. was named "North Pakistan". Given the ongoing transformation of London, one may argue that the prophesy was rather accurate. The girl is naturally thin (I am pretty sure that she didn't need the weight loss products) – also when it comes to her bone anatomy etc. – but she looks perfectly healthy. I've met many much skinnier girls in my life. And those who know the Ukrainian human Barbie surely know that the Londoner babe may still have lots of spare pounds to safely lose. The body shape is healthy because you can easily imagine that all the organs have enough space to be where they are. She still has some fat layer, not just the bones, and so on. At least two major British advertising associations described the girl's body as "toned and athletic". (Last year, France imposed a $85,000 fine on girls who appear in ads and won't be certified by doctors as having enough body fat for work. I find all such regulations harmful. Such girls are sometimes hired because there's a genuine demand for them. There will always be a demand and it's wrong to harm the girls financially – they may already face other, health risks. But just to be sure, most of the models don't. And the promotion of chubby women doesn't need a government, either. Numerous ad companies have already earned quite some money with "strong" ladies and it's surprising that so many others still fail to exploit this opportunity.) Just like plants blossom and have pretty flowers to attract the insects and be pollinated, a big percentage of women in most civilizations are naturally trying to make themselves attractive, especially for men. This behavioral pattern has existed since the beginning of the human race – and its analogies have existed almost since the first moment when animals acquired vision. Islam has basically banned the display of the women's beauty and this habit turns their civilization into a renegade of the mankind. Feminism behaves similarly to Islam. In the paragraphs below, by Islam, I will mean "Islam and feminism". It's not just the beauty of the body that Islam tries to suppress. Islam is suppressing basically all desires of women and men to achieve something; it is discouraging progress in all of its forms, individual and collective ones. Women (and even men) are said not to do sports. Their body shapes deteriorate, a fact that is being hidden under the black curtains. Women (and even men) are told not to listen to music, women are sometimes supposed not to drive. Male scientists are being suppressed for their wrong sex and female scientists are taught not to be excited about the best – i.e. male – scientists and their achievements. A big part of science, technology, and culture is claimed to be downright heretical if not politically incorrect. The third annual commercial of Aquababes promoting water. That's what attractive but normal enough girls look like. The first bunch of Aquababes was highly athletic and they apparently ran out of these dancers and gymnasts in the second season. Maybe when North Pakistan leaves the EU, it will actually increase our protection from the Islamization because at least in London, there seems to be quite some support for this process almost all of us find absolutely unacceptable. To associate the bikini with the "offensive factor" is a lame excuse. I am confident that if the agencies posted various Czech billboards without the bikini (and with or without excited snowmen), the enemies of the women's beauty would be "offended", too. I am annoyed that an ugly chap from an inferior culture backing an inhuman idiotic medieval religion and from a crappy, left-wing political party in the U.K. was able to collect so much power that he may spread his "official opinions" about things such as the women's beauty and health – something that he clearly knows absolutely nothing about – and even place his crackpot opinions above those of the girl from the billboard and millions of others who realize that he is full of šit. In a politically healthy world, Mr Khan would be hired by the lady from the billboard to clean her toilet. In the real world, most of the Londoners chose him to shame the girl and damage her business. A kind philanthropist should fund a lawsuit for the girl to defend her credentials against this savage backed by terrorists and fat feminists. By his and their lies about her body, he is and they are threatening her business. He should be defeated and forced to eat sand and his own feces. The model should also be paid to ride the Tube in bikini whole days.WASHINGTON -- The Vatican endorsed the Iran nuclear accord Monday as a positive step towards its broader goal of a world free of nuclear weapons. “We hope that the full implementation of [the nuclear deal] will ensure the peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear programme under the [Non-Proliferat ion Treaty] and will be a definitive step toward greater stability and security in the region,” Archbishop Paul Gallagher, the Vatican's foreign minister, said in a statement delivered at the International Atomic Energy Association in Vienna. “The way to resolve disputes and difficulties should always be that of dialogue and negotiation,” he said, a possible allusion to opponents of the nuclear agreement who have called for military strikes to destroy Iran’s nuclear sites. Pope Francis’ vote of confidence for the Iran nuclear deal comes the week before he is scheduled to visit Washington, where he will address a joint session of Congress at the invitation of House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). After a two-month debate, Republican lawmakers -- all of whom opposed the nuclear accord -- lost their fight last week to block the implementation of the agreement. Faced with defeat, Republicans have zeroed in on a set of confidential agreements between Iran and the IAEA, which detail the agency’s process for investigating possible past nuclear weapons development sites in the country. House Republicans voted last week to pass a nonbinding resolution charging President Barack Obama with violating the law for failing to provide lawmakers with the text of confidential documents that only Iran and the IAEA are privy to. And Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is pushing to cut off funding to the IAEA until Congress gets copies of the agency’s secret agreements. Without specifically targeting U.S. lawmakers, Gallagher noted on Monday that the success of the Iran nuclear accord depends on the international community’s willingness to implement the deal and the IAEA’s ability to hold Iran accountable to its obligations to curtail its nuclear activity. “It is clear that the agreement requires further efforts and commitment by all the parties involved in order for it to bear fruit,” Gallagher said. “For its part, the IAEA’s indispensable role in nuclear safety and waste disposal, verification and monitoring will become ever more important as the use of peaceful nuclear energy expands and as the world moves toward nuclear disarmament." The distance between Pope Francis and the GOP on the Iran deal is not the only issue that could make Republicans squirm during the upcoming papal address. The pope is likely to push for greater action on climate change and call on lawmakers to address the rampant economic inequality in the U.S. But the Pope’s opposition to abortion could also bolster Republicans, particularly the 28 men who have vowed to shut down the government before allowing federal funding to go to Planned Parenthood. Lawmakers have promised to keep partisan politics under wraps during the papal address and refrain from cheering the Pope for statements that reinforce their political preferences. In addition to expressing support for the diplomatic solution to Iran’s nuclear program, the Vatican pushed nuclear weapons states to recognize their own responsibility to downsize their arsenal. “The discriminatory nature of the NPT is well known. The status quo is unsustainable and undesirable,” Gallagher said, referring to the 1968 treaty aimed at preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. The NPT allows members to maintain civil nuclear programs, but requires states that have nuclear weapons to work towards disarmament and prohibits other states from developing weapons. Iran and India have charged in the past that the treaty is inconsistently implemented, noting that the U.S. and Russia have been slow to downsize their massive nuclear arsenals.Inevitably, "Wonder Woman" is getting Oscar talk. We parse the probabilities, including Gal Gadot. When a movie hits the zeitgeist with the force of the “Wonder Woman” glass-ceiling-shattering $103-million opening, Oscar speculation is inevitable. But let’s get real. Comic-book superhero epics rarely yield major Oscar nominations, no matter how much audiences and critics rave about Patty Jenkins’ superb achievement. (More about how the movie broke DC’s losing streak here.) There’s no question Academy voters will see the movie: Members were turned away at the packed Academy screening at the Goldwyn Theatre Saturday. (They book weekend screenings year round, but summer flicks are often less attended.) Warners did not supply anyone for a Q&A, because ahead of the anticipated opening, “Wonder Woman” was not considered an Oscar contender. Now it is, and Warners will certainly push for it. But what will they likely get? READ MORE: Awards Race Disruption: Why ‘Get Out’ and Netflix Can Afford to Rewrite the Rules Most often, superhero movies are in the running for VFX and technical nods — they even win some, especially with the original iteration, before it’s a full-fledged franchise (See: the original Dick Donner “Superman,” Tim Burton’s first “Batman,” “Dick Tracy,” “Men in Black,” and “Spider-Man 2”). It’s hard to believe that Christopher Nolan has yet to land an Oscar nomination as director, or that “The Lego Movie” failed to land an animation nod. (Heath Ledger won a rare posthumous acting Oscar for “The Dark Knight.”) Even the JK Rowling “Harry Potter” series landed 12 technical nominations over eight movies — and never won. READ MORE: ‘Wonder Woman’: What Does One Great Female Superhero Mean For the Future of the Genre? — Analysis While “Wonder Woman” is a superior effort all around and will compete for craft recognition, it’s hard to imagine the movie without Gal Gadot and Chris Pine. Jenkins and her two leads brought the movie home with a high degree of difficulty. Israeli-trained Gadot makes a sweet, tough, beautiful, athletic, exotic, idealistic, no-nonsense, believable Amazon goddess fighting to save the world from the God of War. And experienced “Star Trek” star Pine, who has serious theater chops as well, served the role of audience surrogate, helping Wonder Woman navigate our crazy culture as she demonstrates her amazing skills, while of course falling in love with her. We all do. The two actors are at turns vulnerable, bewildered, confused, authoritative, charming, seductive, opportunistic, anxious, needy, and powerful. And they maneuvered through some witty moments and dialogue. They make the movie light on its feet; until the inevitably over-pixelated finale, “Wonder Woman” doesn’t get ponderous or heavy. That said: Although George Miller’s “Mad Max: Fury Road” landed 10 nominations including Picture and Director, and six eventual wins, the cinematic actioner did not land acting nominations for the magnificent Charlize Theron or Tom Hardy. But their roles were virtually without dialogue. “Wonder Woman,” like James Mangold’s end-of-the-road Wolverine finale, “Logan,” gives its actors plenty to do — a little romance, adventure, action; there’s more for the actors to hang onto. (That’s another comic-book movie that could yield some nominations this year.) On the basis that the Academy will continue to lean into inclusion, I’m betting that both Gadot and Pine will be nominated, as Best Actress and Supporting Actor, respectively, with Jenkins — depending on how generous the Guilds and critics will be at year’s end — scoring some Best Director nods. Stay on top of the latest film and TV news! Sign up for our email newsletters here. Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.Match Info #5 Stanford at Saint Mary’s Stanford improves to 7-2; Saint Mary’s drops to 4-6 Moraga, CA Match Stats The #5 ranked Stanford Cardinal faced stiff competition as they traveled to Saint Mary’s to take on a motivated Gaels’ team. After two hard fought sets, the Cardinal were finally able to pull away in the third to pull out a straight set win behind 20 kills from Kathryn Plummer. Meghan McClure chipped in 9 kills and Jenna Gray dished out 43 assists for the Cardinal who outhit the Gaels.291 to.181 on the night. Stanford improved to 7-2 on the season, and opens Pac-12 play on September 20th when they host Cal. Set one started with back and forth action until a 5-1 run highlighted by three kills from Plummer opened a 10-6 lead for the Cardinal. The lead reached 13-7 before Saint Mary’s went on a run, closing the lead to 17-16 (7-2 run) strong play from Sienna Young. The Gaels even took a brief lead but the Cardinal continued to feed Plummer and she delivered, finishing the set with 8 kills. Three early kills from McClure opened up an early 9-5 lead for the Cardinal in set two. The Gaels rallied though, taking a 15-14 on an ace from Lindsey Knudsen and forcing Stanford to take their first timeout. Morgan Hughes collected back to back blocks as the Gaels opened a 20-18 lead, forcing the Cardinal to take their last timeout. However, the Cardinal rallied and tied the score at 21 on an ace from Plummer. The end of the set was a battle with each team trading points, but in the end, it was once again Plummer that finished the set on a kill. Saint Mary’s started off set three strong and took an 8-6 lead on a Payton Rund block. Stanford rallied, taking a 9-8 lead on a Plummer kill. Back to back kills from Merete Lutz grew the lead to 13-10. Plummer’s 18th kill ballooned the lead to 16-11 and the rout was on. In fitting fashion, the match finished on another kill from Plummer. Young and Lindsey Calvin lead the Gaels with 7 kills while Rund and Morgan Hughes chipped in 6. Saint Mary’s drops to 4-6 on the year and will return to the court on September 21st when they open West Coast Conference play on the road at Gonzaga. Press Release: Courtesy of Stanford Athletics STANFORD, Calif. – Behind 20 kills from Kathryn Plummer, No. 4 Stanford swept Saint Mary’s, Saturday, at McKe
premiums, deductibles and co-pays that are a huge drain on the economy. For the middle class, they amount to a “death tax,” as any prolonged illness means that the medical industry, rather than heirs, gets whatever is left. As far as the chimera of “rationing health care,” ask any Canadian if he would prefer our system. The status quo is quite healthy and almost immovable and doesn’t need the editorial board to defend it. Howard Schmitt, Green Tree, Pa.Though not a technological leap, this third chapter in the Killzone franchise offers a variety of improvements that add up to an enjoyable shooter Not only did Killzone 2 prove what the Playstation 3 hardware was capable of, it was also a good shooter that gained a strong following for the franchise. It was the first title in the series on PS3 and showcased some of the best graphics ever seen on consoles. Now 2 years onwards, Killzone 3 has arrived and packs a serious punch just like its predecessor. The graphics remain great, most of the technical issues have been resolved, and with a better narrative and tighter controls, Killzone 3 is indeed the sequel that fans were hoping for. The story picks up pretty much literally where Killzone 2 left off, so it is strongly advised to play through the previous title to get up to speed. Players once again assume the role of Sergeant Tomas "Sev" Sevchenko, a veteran with the human ISA force. Having just killed the Helghast leader Visari, Sev and his best buddy Rico regroup with a small group of soldiers and attempt to make their way through the destroyed capital and catch an evacuation ship from the hostile planet. Unfortunately things don’t go as planned, and the group is forced to stay on the enemy planet for six months. Meanwhile, the story of an internal struggle for power in the Helghast leadership develops. Chairman Jorhan Stahl, a private military researcher, offers the Helghast high command his advanced weaponry if they would be willing to follow his leadership. The council refuses, and Stahl holds on to the technology for his own use. Overall, the story in the game feels much better paced than Killzone 2. The players won’t have to wait nearly as long to hop into some advanced armor for on-rails as well as open-world machine warfare. The action keeps the story flowing, though the cutscenes often feel like rough cuts and sometimes don’t follow the events directly before and after them. There are still significant gaps in the story as well - how does our group of survivors manage to live for six months in the wilderness of the planet? Perhaps the atmosphere has been deemed safer after years of Helghast activity and someone forgot to tell them, or they just fashion the headgear. As for the conclusion – it is not memorable enough for a supposed last chapter of the trilogy. And let’s just say, if you thought Killzone 2’s ending was a bit too long and difficult – this time around, it’s the opposite. The action is once again relentless in Killzone 3, but it doesn’t have the same desensitizing effect as something like Call of Duty. The battle is often ongoing, but with the series’ cover mechanic and better level design this time around, a lot of tactics come into play. It is still viable to attack the enemy head on and occasionally pop out of cover to take shots – or players can navigate the level and find flanking positions while their AI teammates draw the fire. Not to be outdone, the AI is smarter as well and capable of finding cover, firing around corners and attempting to engage the player in groups. There aren’t many new types of enemies to be faced in the game (more on this later), and even a few familiar faces from Killzone 2 make a brief return.History shows that we have always used drugs. In every age, in every part of this planet, people have pursued intoxication with plant drugs, alcohol, and other mind-altering substances...Almost every species of animal has engaged in the natural pursuit of intoxicants. This behavior has so much force and persistence that it functions like a drive, just like our drives of hunger, thirst and sex. This "fourth drive" is a natural part of biology, creating the irrepressible demand for drugs. In a sense, the war on drugs is a war against ourselves, a denial of our very nature... Legalization is a risky proposal that would cut the drug crime connection and reduce many social ills, yet it would invite more use and abuse...Making some dangerous drugs illegal while keeping others (like alcohol and cigarettes) legal is not the solution. Out-lawing drugs in order to solve drug problems is much like outlawing sex in order to win the war against AIDS. In order to solve the drug problem, we must recognize that intoxicants are medicines, treatments for the human condition. Then we must make them as safe and risk-free and, yes, as healthy as possible. Dream with me for a moment. What would be wrong if we had perfectly safe drugs? It mean drugs that delivered the same effects as our most popular ones but never caused dependency, disease, dysfunction, or death?... Such intoxicants are available right now that are far safer than the ones we currently use...We must begin by recognizing that there is a legitimate place in our society for intoxication. Human beings are born with a drive to experiment with ways of changing consciousness...The desire to alter consciousness periodically is an innate, normal drive analogous to hunger or the sexual drive... The root of the drug problem is the failure of our culture to provide for a basic human need. Once we recognize the importance and value of other states of consciousness, we can begin to teach people, particularly the young, how to satisfy their needs without drugs. The chief advantage of drugs is that they are quick and effective, producing desired results without requiring effort. Their chief disadvantage is that they fail us over time; used regularly and frequently, they do not maintain the experiences sought and, instead, limit our options and freedom... Altered states of consciousness...appear to be the ways to more effective and fuller use of the nervous system, to development of creative and intellectual faculties, and to attainment of certain kinds of thought that have been deemed exalted by all who have experienced them...(They) may even be a key factor in the present evolution of the human nervous system...To try to thwart (their) expression in individuals and society might be psychologically crippling for people and evolutionarily suicidal for the species. The suppression of the natural human fascination with altered states of consciousness and the present perilous situation of all life on earth are intimately and causally connected. When we suppress access to shamanic ecstasy, we close off the refreshing waters of emotion that flow from having a deeply bonded, almost symbiotic relationship to the earth. As a consequence, the maladaptive social styles that encourage overpopulation, resource mismanagement, and environmental toxification develop and maintain themselves. I believe that a prime motivation of those waging the current "war on drugs" is to discredit and destroy any "counterculture" before it becomes the dominant culture. Religious fundamentalists have not forgotten the religious upheavals of the 1960s when millions of young people, often after using marijuana and other psychedelics, reading Timothy Leary or Alan Watts, or listening to "psychedelic" music by the Beatles or the Jefferson Airplane, rejected Christianity and Judaism. Even ministers, priests, nuns and rabbis abandoned their callings! Consciousness, altered consciousness, and higher consciousness rather than obedience, duty, and sacrifice became the prime concern of the new spirituality.The response of Catholic, conservative and fundamentalist religious groups was to feverishly expand their efforts to enforce more fundamentalist views among their members and to gain greater political influence. While fundamentalists have lost many battles over abortion, prayer and pornography, they have found the government a willing ally in the "war on drugs". For just as drugs, the counterculture and "consciousness" undermine faith in hierarchical religious authority, so do they undermine faith in political authority.John Lennon's "IMAGINE", an anthem of the counter culture, asks us to imagine "no religion" and "no countries". Lennon, a drug use advocate, was murdered by a fundamentalist Christian, a former fan, who knew how subversive and powerful this message is. In 1990, on Lennon's 50th birthday radio stations worldwide played "IMAGINE" simultaneously to a billion people. All heard Yoko Ono say, "The dream we dream alone is just a dream, but the dream we dream together is reality." The message is that we are not subjects of an authoritarian god or even natural law, but that we consciously co-create reality. Implied is the possibility of a diversity of realities.Despite the crackdown on drug use, the belief that consciousness is not only the purpose, but perhaps even the very nature, of reality has spread through writings and practices of "new physics" aficionados, humanistic psychologists, and the new age, eastern religion, wiccan, and eco-spirituality movements. Their millions of advocates still lack a coherent and motivating philosophical synthesis or organizational focus. And while many of these individuals have used drugs, and still do, decriminalization of drugs is not yet a major focus of their thought or action.However, as the horrors of the drug war mount and the injustices spread to all of us, the uneasy feeling that there is some hidden agenda behind the "war on drugs" grows among more aware and conscious individuals. Some of these agendas are scapegoating drug users for larger ills, excuses for racial repression and expanding government power, an outlet for militarism, and the desire of tobacco and liquor producers to squash potential competition.However, a prime hidden agenda remains the suppression of an alternate religious view -- that consciousness is the nature and purpose of reality, that humans freely create their realities. Because psychoactive drugs are a means of quickly and effectively initiating individuals into this view they must be suppressed -- even if it means punishment, incarceration and death for hundreds of thousands of people. But such is the nature of all religious wars.Excerpts from INTOXICATION THE "FOURTH DRIVE" by Dr. Ronald K. Siegel. Article in the September/October 1990 HUMANIST magazine. (Later made into a book.)Excerpts from THE NATURAL MIND - An Investigation of Drugs and the Higher Consciousness by Dr. Andrew Weil, 1985.Excerpt from book FOOD OF THE GODS by Terence McKenna, 1992.North Melbourne has locked away exciting key forward Ben Brown with a two-year contract extension. The 22-year-old has become a cult figure at Arden Street and his deal will now continue through to at least the end of the 2018 season. Taken with pick 47 in the 2013 national draft from the Werribee Tigers, Brown played 11 games with the Kangaroos in his debut year. Among his highlights was a stunning elimination final performance against Essendon when he booted a career-high four goals. Brown repeated his effort against the Bombers in Round 16 this year, booting four goals in North’s 25-point win. A pivotal part of North’s attack, Brown has kicked 29 goals from 19 games so far in 2015 and will be critical to North’s chances in the upcoming finals starting tomorrow against Richmond. Known for his strong overhead marking and unique set shot routine, the 200cm number 50 also provides North’s Todd Goldstein with relief in the ruck, making him a versatile asset for Brad Scott.ISL 2017: Gurpreet Singh Sandhu - 'Only Bengaluru FC were ready to pay Stabaek to get me' India's numero uno comes back from this three-year stay in Norway to play in the ISL and the AFC Cup. Goal caught up with the 6ft 4in tall custodian.. The talk of the town as far as Indian football is concerned right now is Gurpreet Singh Sandhu's move to Bengaluru FC. The groundbreaking move saw the Blues pay a transfer fee to Norway's Stabaek FC, something unprecedented. Right after completing a big money move to new Indian Super League (ISL) entrants Bengaluru FC, Goal caught up with goalkeeper Gurpreet Singh Sandhu for an exclusive chat. With the Blues' fans not having to wait long to see Sandhu debut in the 2017 AFC Cup -zonal semi-final against April 25 SC on 23rd August, here's what's number one had to say: Q: When did you decide to come back to? A: I knew that it was time to leave Stabaek. That's what I thought of before deciding to come back to India. The first time I had a serious thought was after finishing the Kyrgyzstan game (13 June 2017) and going back. I had already played two (Norwegian) league games before playing against Nepal (6 June 2017). I had four or five consecutive games for the first time that year. When I went back I was told that I won't be picked for the next games. I don't know what happened. I wish I would have got more time to settle in but the coach (Antoni Ordinas) didn't think alike and he thought of the other goalkeeper (Sayouba Mande) as the better option maybe because he was more experienced playing in Norway for about five-to-six years now. At the end of the day, I wanted game time. So that's when I targeted the summer transfer window because the window is open only for a month in Norway, from mid-July to mid-August. We had various options in Europe but I had to make sure to have a decent chance of getting play time where I might not play as the first goalkeeper but at least as a second goalkeeper from where I can fight for my position and at a better level than Norway. That was my target when I decided to leave. I didn't go to Norway to play for Stabaek forever. The things I wanted to achieve at the club, I did. I wanted to play in the first team, I wanted to play the league game. I had made a target for myself, when we qualify for the, that I have to earn my place for that game. That was my personal target in 2016. So after that, it became easier for me to make a move. Being a goalkeeper, at this point, you want to play games and that's when I started to explore. There were some clubs whose level was lower than that of Norway but were professional enough and could offer a financially sound amount. Obviously financials are also an important part but not the most. At Stabaek, financially, it wasn't the most rewarding as well. Frankly, I have been struggling for about three years. For me, money isn't everything. I would choose game time. There were clubs from and Slovakia who were interested in me but I didn't want to go as a 'commercial' player or for a publicity stunt. On the other hand, the other clubs who were interested had restrictions over game time. Q: Did it take a lot of convincing to play in India and why Bengaluru FC? A: Since the formation of Bengaluru FC, the level of professionalism has stood out at the club. For me, as a player, something that I like is that they (Bengaluru FC) have been owners and managers who have been in touch and congratulated me over the years, whenever I hit a small or a big milestone. One of the biggest reasons for choosing this club is that this will be the only club to play in international tournaments, playing in the AFC Cup right now. As a player, you would want to play in international tournaments at the right level of competitiveness. And if you get playing time at that kind of level, I had a good interest in that. The approach that Bengaluru FC made was very good and they were the only club who were really interested from day one and they were ready to pay Stabaek to get me. I don't think any other ISL club would have done it, to be honest. There was no need for much convincing because I like the club and the fans and how it's run. I knew what I wanted. The situation was also such that I had to choose what I wanted to do - either stay at Stabaek and not play until December or go to Bengaluru and play more games. With a Portuguese club that I was also in talks with, I was supposed to come to Bengaluru on loan and possibly join the team next year. But I wasn't sure about the Portuguese club as the transfer deadline was also approaching and they were also taking a lot of time. So we asked Bengaluru FC straight if they are willing to pay Stabaek's fee. That more or less convinces a player, that if a club really wants you, they would do it. There were other clubs in ISL who I don't think would be ready to take me straight away with a transfer fee to Stabaek and they wanted me to join in January. People right now don't know what I have been through and what the situation has been for me and how important it is for me to play. I don't think Bengaluru FC is a bad option. They are a very good club and a very big club. I would play the reserve league every week but I was too comfortable to play in it. Q: You went to Stabaek at around 22 years. Should an Indian player who wants to go abroad go at a younger age? A: Chhetri Bhai (Sunil Chhetri) and I know how important it is to go abroad at a younger age. I wish I was 17 or 18 or even younger to go outside India and play in Europe. I hope many of the U-17 players from the India U-17 (World Cup) squad get that opportunity. You need to give time to reach their level. And when you are at their level, you need to go above that level to play a game, to show the coaches at the club that you are better than what is available. People think that it is very easy to go to the from Norway. It doesn't work like that. Q: Do you think you will want a European experience again in your career? A: Why not? I still think I can do that and if the right opportunity comes, I will do that. Q: How did you feel about the Bengaluru transfer? Nobody quite knew the behind-the-scenes action. A: This kind of transfer hasn't been done before, where an Indian club has dealt with a foreign club regarding an Indian. So it was something new. We didn't know how to do this. So we had to learn and make sure we are doing it right. We couldn't take chances by doing it like Neymar's transfer where everybody knew one month ahead that he's going to PSG. With no disrespect to clubs in India, my first plan was not to find a club in India. Since playing in Europe I wanted to challenge myself and find something in Europe but I didn't want to stay in Europe for the wrong reasons. So I had to look for other options. I didn't want to stay in Europe for a publicity stunt or to be a third choice goalkeeper. Article continues below I think people need to think about this transfer in a positive way. This is the first time and I hope things like these happen in the future that Indian clubs deal with Indian clubs itself and transfer players. That's how it works in Europe and that's how it should be in India also because players are assets. Clubs also need to offer long-term contracts to players, like how (Sunil) Chhetri Bhai and Udanta (Singh) signed or even for that matter Sandesh (Jhingan) signed (with Kerala Blasters). That's how clubs are supposed to make money. That's how made money. Q: ​Did you consult anyone before this move? How many people knew? A: ​In the initial stages, only me, Joe (Morrison) and Bengaluru FC were in the loop. The Portuguese club (Boavista FC) and Stabaek also knew obviously.Burnaby RCMP have announced the creation of a task force after revealing Monday there had been an attack Sunday afternoon on another woman — the fifth woman sexually assaulted since Jan. 29. Police say the woman had just left the Lakecity SkyTrain station and was on a trail near SFU around 2:50 p.m. PT when the she was attacked. Her sexual assault was interrupted by a Good Samaritan who left prior to the police arriving on scene. RCMP are encouraging him to come forward and help with the investigation. The suspect is described as: White male. Five feet seven inches. Wearing a dark, cotton hoodie pulled over his head. RCMP say three of the five victims were women walking home from public transit at night, and they're warning women to be vigilant. They say it's too soon to tell if the five incidents are linked, but some of them have similar characteristics. They have also released a map showing the location of the five incidents. North Burnaby sexual assaults (January-March 2016)A couple weeks ago, I wrote a blog arguing that the social component of video games seems to be increasing empathy and somehow blocking the contagiousness of violence. Turns out, this week, a new study published by the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology provides a considerable amount of support for the idea. The story starts at the University of Valencia, where a team of researchers were using advanced brain imaging technologies (fMRI) to probe the neurological structures involved in empathy—which they defined as the ability to put oneself in another person’s position. What they discovered is that there is considerable overlap between the circuits in the brain that process violence and the circuits that process empathy. This is big news. It's a binary—meaning that feeling empathy doesn’t just give us intellectual reasons to be less violent, but they actually inhibits our ability to act violently. As lead researcher Luis Moya Albiol told Science Daily: “We all know that encouraging empathy has an inhibiting effect on violence, but this may not only be a social question but also a biological one—stimulation of these neuronal circuits in one direction reduces their activity in the other.” It is also worth mentioning that this is not the first time researchers have discovered these kinds of binary relationships in the brain. In her now classic book, Animals in Translation, Colorado State University professor of animal science Temple Grandin argues that most mammals seem incapable of feeling fear and curiosity at the same time—meaning the presence of one inhibits the other. Something similar also shows up in the research around flow. It appears that flow (that is, optimal performance) is the exact opposite of fight-or-flight—something I explain in Rise of Superman: The fight-or-flight response—a.k.a. the adrenaline rush—cocktails adrenaline, cortisol (the stress hormone), and norepinephrine. It’s an extreme stress response. The brain switches to reactive survival autopilot. Options are limited to three: fight, flee, or freeze. Flow is the opposite: a creative problem-solving state, options wide open. Yet there are reasons for the confusion. The two highs are linked. Risk heightens focus and flow follows focus. This means that the fight-or-flight response primes the body—chemically and psychologically—for the flow state. Athletes report moving through one to get to the other. [Skateboard legend] Danny Way, for example, has a phrase he uses to remind himself of the importance of this transition. “Never a glitch on takeoff,” he says. He means that when you’re teetering between flow and fight-or-flight, all it takes is one errant thought to send you in the wrong direction. When Way pushes off onto the megaramp, he has seconds to flip this switch. If he can follow his focus into flow he lives to ride another day. But if panic swamps the circuitry? “The greatest slams of my life took place when that happened,” he says. “Almost every time, I’ve ended up in the hospital.” Of course, it’s early days for these sorts of ideas, but what the science is suggesting is evolution has overlaid instinctive, anti-social fear-based traits—things that narrow our options and responses—with more pro-social traits that widen options and responses. This may mean that we can make radical improvements in ourselves, our organizations and our society by training up skills like flow, curiosity and empathy as a way of training down violence, prejudice, and fear. In other words, peace on earth is now moving out of the field of dreams and into the laboratory and, honestly, not a moment to lose. *For more access to similar ideas, sign up for Flow Hacker Nation, the email newsletter for the Flow Genome Project.Economic Democracy: The Working Class Alternative to Capitalism Allan Engler Fernwood Publishing (2010) Remember when, just several years ago, the business pages kept informing us that the newly branded casino capitalism had inaugurated an endless era of prosperity for all? So much for old fashioned ideas like working class power, socialism or economic democracy! Capitalism was the end of history and everyone was going to sail away on a Freedom 55 sailboat to early and luxurious retirement. Announcements, Events & more from Tyee and select partners ‘Punch to the Gut’ Musical on Residential Schools Returns to Vancouver Children of God has been shaped by intense audience reactions, says director Corey Payette. Now, of course, as watch jobs and whole sectors of employment disappear and plans for retirement before 80 become more and more unrealistic, there is general agreement that there may still be a few unresolved bugs in the capitalist machinery. Some mainstream politicians are implementing financial rescue packages (albeit ones that do more to rescue banks and bankers than they do for ordinary working people) and it is not unusual to find cautious endorsement of mildly Keynesian interventions in the economy on the pages of such ruling class organs as the New York Times and The Globe an Mail. Not many of our public intellectuals, however, are willing to go any further than suggesting patch jobs and temporary fixes for the system that has let us all down so savagely yet again. In a world where detailed representation of every sexual act can be found on the Internet or cable TV, words like "socialism" and "anarcho-syndicalism" are the new obscenities, strictly excluded from most pages and screens, except when the S-word is implausibly trotted out by right wing commentators to attack mild mannered and modest reformers like the Obama Democrats and the Layton NDP. Daring to pose alternatives to capitalism In this context, the arrival of Vancouver labour activist and author Allan Engler's new book Economic Democracy is a welcome and unusual event. In the just over 100 pages of this lucid, eloquent little book, Engler spells out a critique of capitalism and a vision of a working class alternative that can be achieved, he insists hopefully, without the bloodshed, purges and authoritarianism that have marred so many of history's earlier attempts to go beyond capitalism. Think of Al Engler as a one man anti-Fraser Institute. He grew up in Saskatchewan, and was involved, as a teenager, in the founding of the NDP. He's made his home in Vancouver since the early '60s, and has been an active figure here for decades in union and community politics. He began his first book, 1995's Apostles of Greed while he worked as a cook on coastal tow-boats. Margaret Thatcher's victory got him started. He saw in it the first warning of a neo-conservative, avidly pro-capitalist resurgence that became received wisdom around the world for several decades. His new book, coming as it does just as world capitalism has vividly demonstrated its structural defects by yet another catastrophic repeat of its inherent boom-and-bust cycle, represents a valiant attempt to put discussion of a real anti-capitalist alternative back in the public conversation. But Economic Democracy is more than an attempt to re-brand Marxism for the 21st century, although Engler's thumbnail accounts of the history of the world's political economy and the rise of capitalism, all rendered without any of the soul-deadening jargon and rhetoric that has beset far too many of the statements of the anti-capitalist left, does a creditable job of doing just that. The book suggests a new and plausible way to argue the case against capitalism and for genuinely different ways of arranging our economic and political lives, and as such, the book is one that all social justice and environmental activists should read. Clear-eyed about Marxist disasters One of the striking ways that Engler's book differs from the work of many who still retain affection for class analysis and historical materialism is that he frankly and fully confronts the historical failure of Marxism-Leninism to create the democratic workers' control of production and the state it promised. He notes that armed revolution led by a conspiratorial Leninist party, the model that dominated much anti-capitalist work in the 20th century, regularly led to bloody-handed dictatorships that showed no promise of ever evolving into genuine socialism. What armed revolution led to was purges and gulags, not popular power and workers' democracy. So Engler is willing to explicitly reject the romance of armed revolt in favor of slow, incremental reforms won by a revived labour movement and campaigns conducted within and outside of the structures of electoral politics, a program that would fight for human entitlement, social ownership and workplace democracy. He can write with moral authority on these matters, having devoted his entire adult life to exactly the kind of labour intensive organizing he suggests the rest of us engage in as well. Organizing larger and more democratic unions, campaigning for structures of regulation and taxation that protect against capitalism's worst abuses could, he suggests, lead incrementally to a new and non-capitalist society, one in which all humans are entitled to a fair share of what is produced socially, and in which sane protection of the environment will become a key guideline for public policy. Build reform upon reform Engler does not directly address the failure of social democratic parties and established unions across the capitalist world to successfully create that transition yet, and he does not provide details of how we are to attain the absolutely desirable social and environmental goals he describes. In fact, Economic Democracy suffers from a flaw too often seen in books that critique capitalism and envision alternatives, the usage I call the imperative future tense. Readers are repeatedly told that economic democracy "will do... or will require" certain desirable policy options, as if our hopes could become reliable predictions. This utopian approach to the future tense is an unhelpful hold over from earlier social change traditions, Marxism key among them, and does little to suggest just how we are to move practically to achieve social ownership and worker's control in the face of the enormous resources of media control and armed might that the capitalist rulers of the planet can deploy. Engler might reply that we'll find ways to solve that puzzle as we patiently progress from one small reform to another, using the political skills and resources we accumulate in building larger unions and more effective social movements to bootstrap our way toward fundamental change. He may be right. I certainly hope so, and recommend this brave, clear and hopeful book to anyone who cares about social justice in Canada.A little-noticed Supreme Court case represents a huge injustice By Edward Lazarus, FindLaw Columnist Special to CNN.com FOR THE PUBLIC Select a topic Autos Bankruptcy Consumer Criminal Law Divorce Employment Estate Planning Family Immigration Landlord-Tenant Personal Injury Taxes Legal commentary from FindLaw's Writ LAW DICTIONARY (FindLaw) -- At the Supreme Court, the least significant and least noticed cases sometimes say the most about the institution and our system of justice. Dretke v. Haley, decided last month with no fanfare, is just such a case. Unfortunately, the story it tells is of an institution and a system remarkably unconcerned with the common call simply to do the right thing. Everyone involved in Michael Wayne Haley's case -- the State of Texas, which prosecuted him; the lower federal court judges who heard his case; and all the U.S. Supreme Court's justices -- recognize that he's been in jail more than six years for a crime carrying a maximum sentence of two years. The lower federal courts ordered Haley released. But Texas, despite agreeing that Haley is serving time under an unlawful sentence, still appealed to the Supreme Court to keep Haley in jail. And the Supreme Court, rather than exonerating Haley and making permanent the temporary freedom granted him by the court of appeals, doomed him to another long round of litigation in the lower courts and the possibility of a return to jail for a crime he undoubtedly did not commit. How does this happen? The story of Haley's case illustrates how hard it can be to correct, through our system, what is really a simple and straightforward injustice. Why Haley got 16 years In 1997, Haley was arrested for stealing a calculator from a Wal-Mart. At trial, he was convicted of theft. Because Hale had two prior theft convictions, his relatively minor crime was punishable by up to two years in prison. Not satisfied, Haley's prosecutors also charged him with the separate offense of being a habitual felony offender, under Texas's "three strikes" law. The jury found Haley guilty of being a habitual offender and recommended a sentence of 16 1/2 years -- a recommendation that the sentencing judge followed. The judge deemed Haley a "habitual offender" on the ground that he had two prior felony convictions -- one for attempted robbery, the other for delivery of amphetamines. Now for the fly in the ointment. Under the law, Haley was not eligible to be charged as a habitual offender, because the timing of his prior felonies did not fit the statutory requirements. Unfortunately for Haley, however, his defense lawyer at trial did not notice the problem. And apparently, neither did the prosecutors. So Haley went to prison, and started serving a sentence at least 14 1/2 years too long. The attempt to correct the sentencing mistakes Eventually, Haley caught on to the mistake. And in August 2000, he filed a petition for habeas corpus in federal court. In his petition, he claimed that he was "innocent" of being a habitual offender and, accordingly, that his sentence was unlawful. The State of Texas conceded that Haley's criminal record made him ineligible for habitual offender treatment. But the State still wanted Haley to serve the extra 14-plus years on the ground that he had waived the argument he now was making -- having failed to raise the objection at trial or on direct appeal from his conviction and sentence. Using one of those lovely obscurities of the law, the State argued that Haley's claim was "procedurally defaulted" -- which is another way of sticking your tongue out and screaming "Hah-hah, too late!" The federal district court rejected the State's claim. It ruled that Haley's claim fell within what is known as the "actual innocence" exception to the bar against raising defaulted claims. Accordingly, the court ordered Texas to re-sentence Haley. In so doing, the district court broke a bit of new ground. The "actual innocence" exception allows defendants to raise new claims in a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. In the past, it had only been recognized in death penalty cases -- not term-of-years cases like Haley's. The district court, however, saw no logical reason for limiting this safety valve where such a limitation would be so obviously unjust. After all, the safety valve itself is designed to achieve a just result, and to ensure that legal technicalities do not force an innocent person to serve longer time than he or she should. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit -- arguably the most conservative in the country --- agreed. It was willing to extend the "actual innocence" exception to non-capital cases involving habitual offender statutes like Texas'. And that was enough to free Haley, who by then had already served far more than the maximum two years jail time for which he rightfully was eligible. Broadening the 'actual innocence' exception As the Fifth Circuit recognized, broadening the "actual innocence" exception, even modestly, created some problems of doctrinal purity. To see why, it's necessary to understand how the doctrine evolved. In a long line of cases, the Supreme Court had decreed that ordinarily the only way to raise a procedurally defaulted claim was to show "cause and prejudice." That is, a defendant had to show that there was a good cause for having failed to bring up the defaulted claim at the right time, and that the failure to raise the claim was going to cause real harm. But in effect, the "actual innocence" exception does away with the first, "cause" part of this calculus. It recognizes that when the harm is sufficient great -- for instance, when the harm is the wrongful imposition of the death penalty -- a defendant need not have an excuse for failing to raise the winning argument at the proper time. (The exception is especially sensible in light of the fact that it's virtually never the defendant's own mistake that the argument isn't timely raised; it's virtually always his attorney's. And ironically, even a grievous mistake that causes the defendant great harm cannot always support a winning "ineffective assistance of counsel" claim.) Readers may wonder why the actual innocence exception wasn't very broad in the first place. After all, if someone is really innocent, it violates due process to keep that person in jail. So why not focus on proof of innocence, and forget about bickering about why a certain argument wasn't raised at a certain time? Surely there is much to be said for this approach as long as some protections are built in to prevent lawyers and their clients from strategically holding some arguments in reserve. But some judges felt differently. They believed that, to protect the integrity of the "cause and prejudice" standard, the actual innocence exception really ought to be limited to the drastic circumstance of death penalty cases. Only there, the theory has it, is the "prejudice" great enough to allow the court to forget about the fact that there was no good "cause" for the argument's not being made when it should have been. Texas's Supreme Court appeal Back to Haley's case. The State of Texas was not satisfied that Haley had already served years longer than he should have. Rather than agreeing to his permanent release, it appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. In its petition to the Court, it argued that the actual innocence exception should not extend to Haley's case, and that he should serve the full 16 1/2 years even though the facts of his case could not justify that sentence. So what did the Supreme Court do when faced with a choice between doctrinal purity and gross injustice? By a 6-3 vote, the justices punted. Specifically, in an opinion written by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, they decided not to decide whether the actual innocence exception should be interpreted as extending to habitual offender cases. Instead, they ruled that Haley should go back to the district court and try to exonerate himself based on one of his other claims of error -- claims the district court had not ruled on in light of the obvious and admitted problem with Haley's sentence. Forgetting justice For that reason, Justice John Paul Stevens, joined by Justices Anthony Kennedy and David Souter, bemoaned that
corrupt underling Bernark Kerik. The rest had nothing. The carpenters gave them everything. Makes blue-hard-hat fella (if he was even there for the clean-up) even more of a tool... " and no jeanie they wont be happy even if we gave em their own country cause they need tons of peops to pick on COMMENT #30 [Permalink] ... camusrebel said on 8/24/2010 @ 1:46 pm PT... Brad and Ernie, at long last my brothers have come home. Can somebody kill a fat calf or somethin' ovaheeah? Albeit tentatively and with all due journalistic prudence, these 2 champions of the voting process(and most everything else holy) have, to my knowledge for the first time, cast grave suspicion on the official fairy tale about nine eleven. I fully understand a reluctance to turn this valued site, a gem in the desert of insanity, into a hard-core advocate for the radical pursuit of Truth. It would thereby, of due course, devolve away from its essential current function. But make no mistake, I now understand, without either of you having to beat your breast about it and give a Tarzan yell, you comprehend how badly we have been lied about that day and manipulated like lobotomized marionettes to accept the consequent blood-soaked ramifications. This whole scene, to me, seems scripted. Hollywood. The hard hat joker is right outta Central Casting. It just feels fake. This perception only bolsters other suspicions that the entire Mosque=Recreation Center "hot button issue" is more like the Fox gaurding the nuthouse. Nine eleven was most certainly a job of the inside variety. With that knowledge we can change the world. If we continue to fear it we are toast. COMMENT #31 [Permalink] ... leorising said on 8/24/2010 @ 3:32 pm PT... Reminds me of a security guard I used to know, who used to reminisce about his time in the military (National Guard, I believe.) He used to brag with visible pride about how he'd bust heads at anti-war rallies, because those people "didn't love the flag." Of course, he wasn't bright enough to see that he was violating the Constitution, of which the flag is only a symbol... COMMENT #32 [Permalink] ... Han R said on 8/24/2010 @ 3:43 pm PT... The not-mosque is in "poor taste" to be put "there"...? A statement like that only proves that the person making it has no idea what the hell they're talking about. The FACTS are that the site in question is an already existing vacant structure that was once a Burlington Coat Factory, two blocks away and with no line of sight to the former WTC site. There are already existing mosques within a similar distance, and there are bars and strip clubs on the same block this center would be going into. Moreover, it's a community center, akin to a YMCA except without the horrible Village People associations. The propaganda has convinced misinformed dupes that it's a towering domed mosque that will "dominate the skyline" right across the street from (or even on!) the Ground Zero site. That is absolutely false. What these people protest is a false image created in their own minds by duplicitous fearmongers. When did people stop being ashamed of being played for suckers? Used to be, if you informed someone they were being lied to and manipulated, they'd turn on the ones who conned them with a righteous vengeance. Now, they double down on the lies and shout louder, as if they can wish the facts away so they don't have to admit they were wrong. Only later, when they're completely discredited, do some of them renounce the lies with a claim that they never did hold the false belief. Don't believe me? Try to find someone who admits they voted for Bush, or that they supported him. Try to find people who were pro-Iraq. Oh no, they were never fooled! I was always taught it takes wisdom, honesty, and courage to admit when you're wrong and adjust to new information. Someone needs to tell these folks. COMMENT #33 [Permalink] ... Steve said on 8/24/2010 @ 3:55 pm PT... To the "real" steve I'll give you that Brad at least makes points and good ones at that. JimCT speaks of my "utopia" as if he knows what my utopia is. Colin calls me stupid because I dare to question Brad and Ernie. Those are both shining examples of absolute ignorance. If I disagree with any of you fine folks here, well then obviously I'm an: "Islamophobic, teabagging, Fox News watching, racist". That myopic narrow minded viewpoint is the number one problem with America today. And it consumes the entire political spectrum. COMMENT #34 [Permalink] ... Steve said on 8/24/2010 @ 4:09 pm PT... Actually Han R, the building in question was nearly destroyed, and in fact the roof and two of the floors were destroyed, by United flight 175... on 9/11... COMMENT #35 [Permalink] ... camusrebel said on 8/24/2010 @ 4:42 pm PT... ok steves, enough disembling...... get a more distinctive screen name or get lost. Too many factions already try to sew confusion. Would it be so very difficult to add, Steve69.........or... dipshitSteve....... come on dudes, its common courtesy crickets on the inside job declaration so far. Obviously I'm in no position to demand anything of the sort, but wow, wouldn't it be great if everyone responding henceforth admitted why they are afraid of accepting the truth about inside jobessness? COMMENT #36 [Permalink] ... Hankydub said on 8/24/2010 @ 5:26 pm PT... right wing steve JimCT speaks of my "utopia" as if he knows what my utopia is. Actually Jim was using the term "utopia" sarcastically. He made some specific points to you, but it was easier for you to play the victim than to respond to any of them. If I disagree with any of you fine folks here, well then obviously I'm an: "Islamophobic, teabagging, Fox News watching, racist" That's a straw man. Many people (not just Brad+Ernie) made specific points to you, but rather than respond you just cue the violins. Aww poor steve..repeatedly defending the bigots...that might get you lumped in the the bigots! Please show me where in my post I blamed any muslims, or for that matter ALL 1.57 billion, for the actions of 9/11 Each time you said that it was "in poor taste" for a community center to be built in the Burlington Coat Factory, you were in fact lumping all muslims in with the 9/11 hijackers. That is "in poor taste" Steve...it is thoroughly bigoted. This bigoted attitude is the attitude that is pissing Bradblog's readers off. COMMENT #37 [Permalink] ... Brad Friedman said on 8/24/2010 @ 6:03 pm PT... Steve @ 34 said: Actually Han R, the building in question was nearly destroyed, and in fact the roof and two of the floors were destroyed, by United flight 175... on 9/11... Actually, Steve, a wheel from the plain fell through the roof of the building and nobody died there to my knowledge... on 9/11... Not sure how the strip joint so near by can continue to function while knowing that. But, somehow, they bravely soldier on, revealing their naked breasts and vaginas to men who give them dollars at a time to say thanks. On "hallowed ground". Though without the luxury of the discount coats they used to enjoy before the Burlington Coat Factory was shut down...on 9/11... United we stand. COMMENT #38 [Permalink] ... Brad Friedman said on 8/24/2010 @ 6:12 pm PT... CamusRebel said - Albeit tentatively and with all due journalistic prudence, these 2 champions of the voting process(and most everything else holy) have, to my knowledge for the first time, cast grave suspicion on the official fairy tale about nine eleven. Not sure how long you've been around, Camus, but it sounds like you may wish to review some of our various reports over the years on various aspects of 9/11. Though not all of the reports are categorized (since it was a year or two into The BRAD BLOG before we added that feature), many of our 9/11 related reports are archived here. Of recent-ish note, you may (or may not) enjoy my interview with John Farmer, one of the Senior Attorneys on the 9/11 Commission, while guest hosting the Mike Malloy Show last year on the 8th Anniversary of 9/11. The audio and text transcript are here. But there is much more for you to enjoy, or not, in the 9/11 category in general. COMMENT #39 [Permalink] ... Steve said on 8/24/2010 @ 6:23 pm PT... Part of the planes landing gear and fuselage destroyed the roof and two floors of the then Burlington Coat Factory warehouse... on 9/11 *key eerie music*.... and the point of my post, I never said anyone died there, was in response to Han who so graciously scolds people for being a sucker and listening to lies. But his contention that it's blocks away from ground zero is not really correct now is it. The building was hit by the aircraft... on 9/11.... which makes it part of ground zero COMMENT #40 [Permalink] ... Steve said on 8/24/2010 @ 6:28 pm PT... and again I'll say that I could care less if they build it there or not. But I think it's in poor taste and I understand people who were affected by it being emotional about the issue. I think they would be better served to build it elsewhere, as the Governor of the state has offered to find another site for them. And they have refused to even discuss that. That's not bigotry COMMENT #41 [Permalink] ... Hankydub said on 8/24/2010 @ 6:41 pm PT... It surely is bigotry steve. Muslims did not attack us on 9/11. 19 people who happen to be muslim did. Other muslims are no more guilty of the crime than Christians are guilty of TimMcVeigh's crime. This point has been made to you several times. Lumping all muslims together with a few violent extremists IS a dictionary definition of bigotry. COMMENT #42 [Permalink] ... Steve said on 8/24/2010 @ 6:54 pm PT... I suppose these muslims are bigoted too COMMENT #43 [Permalink] ... Steve said on 8/24/2010 @ 6:57 pm PT... My bad. I suppose these muslims are bigoted too COMMENT #44 [Permalink] ... Hankydub said on 8/24/2010 @ 7:41 pm PT... Your links are broken, and of course muslims can be bigoted just like anyone else. You seem to think that some video showing one muslim person would show that all muslims agree with you. I assure you that all muslims do not agree with you, nor do all muslims agree with one another. But try and stick to the point, steve. When you lump all muslims together with a small cadre of violent extremists, that is bigotry. Your "in poor taste "comments clearly are rooted in bigotry. But the good news is it's OK, you can get over this if you stop arguing and learn to grow as a person. COMMENT #45 [Permalink] ... Steve said on 8/24/2010 @ 8:25 pm PT... Yes, apparently you (or I) have to be smarter than the equipment in order to post links. At any rate they were editorials from two different newspapers written by Muslims and stating that in their opinion this building should be placed elsewhere. Your response to them, of course, is that they must be bigoted against themselves. I did not lump all Muslims together as you have repeatedly said. I stated that in my opinion it's in poor taste to build this center at the ground zero area. There are many other places they can build it, instead of building it at a site which was hit during 9/11. The Islamic community says they just want to reach out to Americans so we can all have a better understanding of their religion. But they're not even willing to discuss or hear the concerns other people may have? Doesn't sound like reaching out to me. Okay, I've said my piece. Feel free to insert your: racist, faux news, teabagger, etc slam here. You apparently have nothing else [Ed Note: Steve, have fixed your broken links. You had double "http://" in each of them. You must have forgotten to remove the default "http://" that the software puts there for ya. Other than that they were fine. Beyond that, your arguments here would likely be better served if you stopped creating strawmen. You haven't been "slammed" the way you continue to victimize yourself as having been. Speak like an adult. Offer your arguments and best opinions and others will likely do same to you in return. Thanks. - BF] COMMENT #46 [Permalink] ... Steve said on 8/24/2010 @ 8:33 pm PT... at any rate I think we have more to worry about in this country than where a Muslim community center gets built COMMENT #47 [Permalink] ... Hankydub said on 8/24/2010 @ 8:47 pm PT... There are many other places they can build it, instead of building it at a site which was hit during 9/11 You are defending those who have lumped all muslims in with 9/11 hijackers. You just now in the quote above associated Islam with 9/11. THESE TWO THINGS ARE NOT ASSOCIATED EXCEPT IN THE MINDS OF BIGOTS...don't you understand? This is what I have been trying to explain to you. Feel free to insert your: racist, faux news, teabagger, etc slam here. You apparently have nothing else Again with the strawmen and the whining. I have patiently tried to explain this issue to you, but you just retreat back to your strawmen. Apparently you have nothing else. COMMENT #48 [Permalink] ... Brad Friedman said on 8/24/2010 @ 9:01 pm PT... Steve @ 39 said: The building was hit by the aircraft... on 9/11.... which makes it part of ground zero So, the Pentagon is also "Ground Zero"? And that field in PA? And all the places where they are now selling cheap 9/11 souveniers in downtown NY? Do you feel they should close the "Mosque" at the Pentagon too then? Steve @ 40 said: I think it's in poor taste and I understand people who were affected by it being emotional about the issue. I think they would be better served to build it elsewhere, as the Governor of the state has offered to find another site for them. And they have refused to even discuss that. And what about those family members who believe it should not be forced to move? Why wouldn't we listen to them instead? Serious question. I'll go ahead and answer part of that myself (though look forward to yours): The answer is because neither of them should have any say. They are welcome to offer their opinions, of course, but we don't compromise rights away. I'm glad the folks who want to build the Islamic community center haven't taken up the Governor on his "offer". Rights are just that: Rights. They are not to be compromised away. Wanna talk about slipperly slopes? There it is. COMMENT #49 [Permalink] ... Steve said on 8/24/2010 @ 9:05 pm PT... thank you for fixing the links Ed. I'll pay closer attention in the future COMMENT #50 [Permalink] ... Steve said on 8/24/2010 @ 10:06 pm PT... Well said Brad COMMENT #51 [Permalink] ... BetterThanNoSN said on 8/25/2010 @ 5:19 am PT... "Only later, when they're completely discredited, do some of them renounce the lies with a claim that they never did hold the false belief. Don't believe me? Try to find someone who admits they voted for Bush, or that they supported him. Try to find people who were pro-Iraq." Of course you can find these people, they are the same 30% who made up Bushs' approval rating. The same 30% who thinks Obama is a Muslim. The same 30% who think Obama isn't an American citizen, etc, etc. You just can't fix stupid. COMMENT #52 [Permalink] ... Dan-in-PA said on 8/25/2010 @ 5:31 am PT... Jeannie Dean at #3, that was extremely well said and I would like permission to share that. It's a perfect example of the misdirected anger and ignorance of the mob mentality and xenophobia being spread by Geller/FOX/Gingrich and Gaffney and the like. Please say it's ok to share your comment. COMMENT #53 [Permalink] ... camusrebel said on 8/25/2010 @ 8:29 am PT... Muslims had NOTHING to do with 9/11. Zero, zilch, nada. The entire "war on terror" is fake. Look into the '93 WTC bombing, the FBI made the freakin bomb, gave it to the patsies. The CIA and Mossad had more to do w/911 than any muslim. Why were those 5 mossads filming the whole event, from the very beginning, then celebrating when the towers fell? Why was explosive material found in their van? Why were they allowed to scurry back to Israel while innocent shepards were tortured to death in Gitmo? COMMENT #54 [Permalink] ... Chris Hooten said on 8/25/2010 @ 6:15 pm PT... #48, Brad, the "mosque" in the pentagon is actually a non-denominational chapel where they can go to pray. They have different services at different times. Maybe that's what you meant by the quotes around "mosque." COMMENT #55 [Permalink] ... Ernest A. Canning said on 8/25/2010 @ 9:30 pm PT... Steve, I hate to get into any of the theories of 9/11--either the official government conspiracy theory or the numerous "inside-job" theories because the proponents on both sides have failed to muster clear and convincing evidence by way of an impartial but exhaustive hearing into the facts. However, since you broach the subject while rendering one inane comment after another to attempt to justify this billionaire-funded mob's assault on the U.S. Constitution and common decency, please answer the following: 1. How many planes struck WTC-7, which experienced a sudden, catastrophic collapse in the span of 8.7 seconds? Hint: look here 2. Were innocent Muslim-Americans amongst those who perished on 9/11 while they were engaged in ordinary tasks of employment inside the twin towers? 3. Have Muslim-Americans fought and died while serving in the U.S. armed forces in Iraq? 4. If the answer to #2 is yes, is not this disgraceful example of Islamophobia a slap in the face to those innocent victims who perished on 9/11? 5. If the answer to #3 is yes, is not this disgraceful example of Islamophobia a slap in the face of all Muslims who have honorably served in the U.S. armed forces, especially those that have given the full measure of their devotion? COMMENT #56 [Permalink] ... Jeannie Dean said on 8/26/2010 @ 12:49 am PT... @ Dan-in-PA and others who've expressed such kindnesses in response to my post: Thank you so much. Of course it's okay to redistribute. Please do. It helps restore the voice I had but never used on the matter. I've only recently started to write about it and I do so with great trepidation (and something feeling I don't completely understand but would describe as a sort of Kissing-Kin to Guilt. Or maybe a neighbor he likes to pork. At the very least an acquaintance who'd come over and water Guilt's plants while he's away. Never wrote about Ground Zero for many reasons, but mostly due to of the very same kind of group think that we now see curdling us there now these long, bloody nine years after; it really does something to my insides, this unscrupulous Shallowing of the Hallowed, Fouling the Human Holy... Never forget. Guess we forgot. "AMERICA JUMPS THE SHARK: A WTC Recovery Worker Reacts to the "Ground Zero Mosque" that Isn't a Mosque and Isn't at Ground Zero at the blog section of my site, here: www.jeanniedean.com...writing this helped, but not like it usually does. Not this time. COMMENT #57 [Permalink] ... Jeannie Dean said on 8/26/2010 @ 1:28 am PT... Questionseverything (#29) asks: "Didn't the repubs just block a bill that would of actually paid for the first responders healthcare??" Yes, they sure did. But arguably no more than the House Democrats did first, as they *could've* passed it with a simple majority vote, which they had, but instead opted for conducting the vote under an "suspension of House Rules" which required a 2/3 majority. The James Zadroga Bill (named for a recently deceased police officer) failed to do that: 255 yea to 159 opposing. I have not heard an adequate or even remotely justifiable reason why the Dems did that, really, except that they were terrified the Repubs would earmark the thing to death and then use those talking points against them in November. Not Anthony Weiner (not my ex-rep, but I got to hang with him at the site of many a blown up/ crushed giant thing) is utterly engaging, smart and charming. First couple of times I chatted with him I didn't know who he was...we just told jokes. I think Brad posted the video, but I can't find it right now in the BB archives / here's a clip Weiner's flip after the vote: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AG0ddWf9TQ..."Isnt that what we all should be fighting about?for? Wouldn't that be a real nice clam bake, tho'? Instead of getting together an angry mob to bully guys in skull caps, and an entire world religion? In lou of playing right into Al Qaeda's (and the Cheneys) grand masterplans to own and destroy us all? Aiding and Abetting, anyone? Yes, thank you SO much for asking, QA - that bill would've paid for my care should I get sick (I'm fine, btw - just have a little "condition" that's exasperated by Tea-tards) - tho'I haven't been examined for health problems since 2006, which was the last time I was able to visit the Mt. Sinai WTC Medical Monitoring and Treatment Program... It is not hyperbole when I say Mt. Sinai saved my life, once. Maybe twice. I love that place. Even now they contact me all the time and check in, see how I'm doing, scold me for not coming in more often. Mt. Sinai would have received a bulk of the monies provided in that measure. If passed, the bill would have provided ongoing medical monitoring and treatment for WTC responders, volunteers, and responders, as well as reopened the Victim's Compensation Fund and secured long term funding for their health program / long term study. "jeanie dean...u put that so beautifully and makes me proud to be married to a carpenter" Are you really? Lucky! They really are, as a group, the most self possessed, capable, (and funny!) of all peoples anywheres. I almost married a few, myself! (Used to joke that Local 608 was my man.) "...worth repeating"...again, thank you. COMMENT #58 [Permalink] ... Jeannie Dean said on 8/26/2010 @ 2:13 am PT... JimCT (#27)~ I'm so deeply sorry for your loss. I lost a family member, too, (Flt 179) and I share your disbelief that there could be anyone who lost someone on 9/11 who could oppose the freedoms their loved one lost their life most honorably defending. This cherry-picking of amendments to back the removal of; this avenging of nothing by the raging red-meat of mobs...in my city... ..it has so many ghosts screaming at me in my head at night I wake up crying. I'm sleep-weeping. Crazy. Yes, I have also wondered if they really fully understand...but then I see it explained to them, and they don't want to listen. Originally I thought it was just coming from my Fox watching high school pals in the deep south who are ripe with brain-swaying and Islamo-bating. Add sweaty from eating so much BBQ. But no, as this video suggests (and as I am experiencing in my own 9/11 circles) they're coming from a fixed place - as evidenced by perfectly analistic behaviors of our own creepy-needler here...insisting "he could care less" but won't stop the harpy-harpy / cheep cheep cheeping, getting especially if four or five comments go by without him Dominating them with his Dumb....fine for flame throwing and thread flaming, but outside the bad manners and anonymous internets, these fuckers are getting damn dangerous; information-immune, no impulse control or critical reasoning skills yet their rhetoric Flag-planted with Self Righteousness. Each unenlightened Idiocrat giving instant rise to another doughy, like-minded, hypocritical Bully-Pussy. ('Bully-Pussies': Bullies before they are punched, Pussies after they bleed.) No, we can't even give them Florida. We can't concede them anything, even the crap we don't want or need, anymore. COMMENT #59 [Permalink] ... Jeannie Dean said on 8/26/2010 @ 2:28 am PT... Sincerely don't mean to flame the thread, but since I'm really just RE-flaming it back to it's PRE-Flamed status: @ Ernest (#50): I adore that brain of yours. I share Camusrebels' affection in response to your...um...not sure what to call it...let's call it the 'new way you're responding the issue of 9/11 Truth.' You aim your bullet points with deadly precision. COMMENT #60 [Permalink] ... Jeannie Dean said on 8/26/2010 @ 2:49 am PT... *Correction to post #59* Flight 175/ Apologies. COMMENT #61 [Permalink] ... camusrebel said on 8/26/2010 @ 6:09 am PT... Jeannie, know our hearts are with you as you continue to heal. Wondering if you saw the Jersey Girls video, "Press For Truth"? I'm fairly certain you have....so for others edification, these four ladies all lost their husbands in the demolition of the towers. Their initial grief and shock quickly morphed into annger and action. As I fully descend into adulthood I have used the word hero less, until barely at all and with some hesitation. But from a day that spawned many, those ladies are my heroes. Or for english teachers i guess heroines. Ernest. Fantabulous link!!! So many great sites. The facts are out there. Am curious what, on the web site you gave us, you would put into the "not clear and convincing" category. COMMENT #62 [Permalink] ... Jeannie Dean said on 8/26/2010 @ 7:32 am PT... A Muslim cab driver was stabbed multiple times Tuesday after a drunken passenger determined he was Muslim. As he was being stabbed, his attacker (Michael Enright, a drunk documentary maker who had been embedded with US Troops) is said to have shouted, "Consider this a check point!" COMMENT #63 [Permalink] ... camusrebel said on 8/26/2010 @ 7:42 am PT... now i'm sick hopefully his stay in prison is long enough so that even such a twisted and diseased "human being" can find and accept the truth. COMMENT #64 [Permalink] ... Chris Hooten said on 8/26/2010 @ 12:27 pm PT... The facts regarding that Cabby case gets weirder and weirder. Apparently the attacker worked/volunteered for an organization that was promoting the building of the "mosque" and different faiths getting along together. Apparently he was a valuable member of the group. It sure confuses the issue even more. Maybe a drunken ptsd flashback? It still doesn't make sense, though. COMMENT #65 [Permalink] ... camusrebel said on 8/26/2010 @ 5:32 pm PT... and even weirder still....Enright is 21, living in that classic, mythical place, "his parent's basement". The cabbie is a full grown man, stocky, looks like he can handle himself, in a picture from the next day, showing off his scars, pointing to one supposedly near his neck....i cant see anything. There is another straight across his bicep, almost too straight, neatly stitched up, but looking fairly grusome. After the "attack" cabbie locks Enright in and drives to find a cop, allegedly. Enright jumps out window, cops find him slumped over. That's the story. It's like a comic book only with tragic overtones. He did some volunteer work with this group in Iraqistan somewhere I believe. A regular jesus crispy. Sounds like his wires have been messed with. COMMENT #66 [Permalink] ... Jeannie Dean said on 8/26/2010 @ 8:11 pm PT... 1.) Woah. Enright wrote spoofs for FUNNY OR DIE (Will Farrell's / Adam McKay's comedy channel); worked his ass off for soldiers with PTSD...made films about them. http://www.huffingtonpos...r-slasher-_n_695878.html Friends say they this is out of character; that he just got back from Afghanistan and started stabbing Muslim Cab Drivers..??? Must have some PTSD himself. 2) WOW! Is Islamophobia sweeping the US (Animated) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WO_XOOxn7c I love the Thai Peoples. So colorful, so astute, so adorable in Rodgers and Hammerstein musicals. (And thanks for the healing prayer, Camus!- xoxo ) COMMENT #67 [Permalink] ... Jeannie Dean said on 8/26/2010 @ 8:40 pm PT... ...your question! Oopsy - yes, I adore the Jersey Girls. Followed their work intensely as that was all unfolding. Far too many people don't realize that the ONLY reason that *any* 9/11 investigative commission was formed at all - Kangaroo Court though it was - was because of the pressure applied by four 9/11 Widows, "The Jersey Girls". As unthinkable as this (still) is - Bush n' Co.'s original plan was to not even look into the largest attack on American soil at all! In fact, they *fought* it tooth and nail, remember? Then when they finally caved to it's formation after relentless pressure from the Jersey Girls (and others) they then tried to load their dice with Kissinger and other Bush Chums at the helm. Then the super fast clean up of 2 tons of debris all sold off to 'investors' before independent professionals can test them. "3,000 dead? Feh. Sell it off to make commemorative coins." The Jersey Girls are THE reason we have so many contradictions on record, specifically re: what seem to be the outright lies from NORAD to the panel; instantly scorched holes in the integrity of their time line. Norad's performance (and how it was directed) is a big, big question mark on the scar tissue of our 9/11 wound - and so it should be. That info, combined with their subsequent pressure on the purveyers of the "official story" may have been what eventually caused 2 the 9/11 Commissioners to confess to (and write books about) those pesky little problem points like facts and time lines in the volumous, but largely fiction 9/11 Commission Report. Heroes of mine, as well. COMMENT #68 [Permalink] ... camusrebel said on 8/27/2010 @ 5:24 am PT... oh, and Ms Dean, nice site w/ the stand-up and the cartoons. wow, not only deeply poetic but a "mean motor-scooter and a bad go getter" just wow COMMENT #69 [Permalink] ... Ernest A. Canning said on 8/27/2010 @ 5:36 pm PT... Jeannie Dean & Camusrebel--I think you missed that portion of comment #55 which read, "by way of an impartial but exhaustive hearing..." I know that it is sometimes infuriating for those who've arrived at hard-and-fast conclusions about that seminal event, but mine is the reticence which comes with adhering to the scientific method. I did not suggest whether official or alternative theories are more persuasive; simply that we have not had the fair, impartial and open hearing into and scientific evaluation which the gravity of the event demands. Until that happens, I have trouble accepting any specific theory of what actually occurred. COMMENT #70 [Permalink] ... camusrebel said on 8/28/2010 @ 9:58 pm PT...Megillat Esther: A Godless and Assimilated Diaspora Dr. Elsie Stern The Feast of Esther Jan Lievens circa 1625 How Many Esther Stories are there? The story of Esther has been told countless times in the course of Jewish history. Many of these tellings were never recorded in writing so they are lost to us. Many of them, however, were written down and have been preserved over the centuries. We have at least five versions from antiquity: the Hebrew version that made it in to the Hebrew Bible (composed sometime between the 5th-3rd cent. BCE): two Greek versions (probably composed around the 1st cent. BCE-1st cent. CE) and two Aramaic versions that date to the rabbinic period (3rd-6th cent. CE).[1] Scholarly opinions differ on the relationship of these versions to one another. Some assert that the Greek versions are translations of Hebrew versions that either pre-dated or were contemporaries of, the version that eventually became part of the Hebrew Bible. Other scholars think that the Greek versions, like the Aramaic versions, are interpretive translations/versions of the Hebrew text known to us. In addition to these versions of Esther, we also have a paraphrase of the story by the 1st century CE historian Josephus and a long exposition of the text in the Babylonian Talmud as well as additional midrashic commentaries that elaborate on the Hebrew text. The list goes on. Medieval and modern Jews have composed children’s versions and performed countless versions as Purim shpiels in Jewish communities around the world. Beginning in fifteenth century Italy, the story was retold through many illustrated megillot. The Traditional Book of Esther as an Outlier Despite their diversity of setting, language, tone and audience, most of the extant versions of Esther agree on key points: Mordechai and Esther are the heroes; Haman is the villain and Ahasuerus is the buffoonish king. While there is dramatic tension in the middle of the story, thanks to the grace of God, the ending is a happy one. This shared storyline is summed up well in the prayer that is traditionally recited on Purim: עַל הַנִּסִּים וְעַל הַפֻּרְקָן וְעַל הַגְּבוּרות וְעַל הַתְּשׁוּעות וְעַל הַמִּלְחָמות שֶׁעָשיתָ לַאֲבותֵינוּ בַּיָּמִים הָהֵם בִּזְּמַן הַזֶּה… בִּימֵי מָרְדְּכַי וְאֶסְתֵּר בְּשׁוּשַׁן הַבִּירָה. כְּשֶׁעָמַד עֲלֵיהֶם הָמָן הָרָשָׁע. בִּקֵּשׁ לְהַשְׁמִיד לַהֲרוג וּלְאַבֵּד אֶת כָּל הַיְּהו
I return in July. Seodaemun Prison History Museum The Seodaemun Prison History Museum was a place that gave me shivers and goosebumps. It is a very impressive place with a gruesome history. It is the place were Japanese soldiers tortured and later executed Korean followers of the Independence Movement. They used horrible techniques to make people confess to crimes that they may or may not have committed. Snapshots of Seoul Tower The Seoul Tower is located in the Namsam Park, on the Namsam Mountain, which makes it a great place to look out over the city. We went during twilight and we were lucky to see a great sky with amazing colors. One fun part was the square tiles lovers bought at the base of the tower. We thought is was cute, but not for us. Snapshots of Seoul Grand Park We decided to visit Seoul Grand Park for a day, mostly to visit the garden it has. We also wandered through the zoo, but that was rather depressing. Animals in small cages, looking very unhappy. We quickly walked through, just to get to the garden. The garden looked a lot better! The flowers were colorful and abundant, so many different kinds! We were lucky as there was a concert going on at the time we were visiting the garden. Looking for suggestions for my city trip to Seoul Looking at these snapshots of Seoul, I think back to the great time we had there and I would definitely visit Korea again if I had the chance. Fortunately that chance came on my path and I will be spending the first 4 days of July in Seoul. Discovering more of this amazing city and eating more of the great food that this city has to offer. Although I have been to most of the main sites, I will probably visit the palace again. Also, I am planning on doing a walking tour with HabKorea and I would love to visit a cat cafe. Other than that, I don’t have any plans yet on where to stay, what to do, or what to see. So, if you have any good suggestions, please let me know by leaving a comment. Thank you! Also, let me know what you like about the city. Do you love Korea? You might like Miguel’s story: My really bizarre sleepover at a Korean bathhouseAn Appeal for Pantheism Treatment methods geared at promoting abstinence through cognitive/behavioral therapies are widely accepted as necessary and effective in recovery. On the other hand, treatment approaches which also incorporate spiritual growth and development give rise to much controversy and confusion. Most recovery programs which incorporate a spiritual component, such as the 12 Steps, are explicitly all-inclusive with regard to the religious beliefs of its members. In the recovery meetings, members often profess (sometimes to the point of audacity) that each person may choose his own conception of God. The freedom to choose one’s own God-concept theoretically distinguishes the 12 Steps as a spiritual rather than religious solution. However, the distinction between spirituality and religion is at times difficult, if not impossible, to discern. The group meetings and some of the primary recovery literature are often dominated by western monotheistic religious expression under the topical guise of spirituality. Furthermore, as a practical matter, those with long-term recovery whom newcomers are encouraged to seek out and consult for spiritual guidance have little, if any, exposure to anything other than western religion (and particularly, Christianity). The religious bias is not intentionally offensive — it is merely a product of the society and culture in which we live. Of course, these observations are only problematic for those who find it impossible to adopt (or revert to) traditional theistic doctrine. But for many who seek recovery from addiction, “the God of their childhood” does not provide a solid foundation from which to develop spiritually. For various reasons, it is a God-concept that cannot be believed much less trusted. Notwithstanding these criticisms, the ultimate merit of the spiritual approach to addiction recovery is not at issue here. Spirituality is a broad, roomy concept. Many addicts with long-term recovery attest that spiritual growth and development is indispensable to recovery. However, when the line between truly inclusive spirituality and dogmatic religious doctrine is blurred, recovery is sometimes inhibited. Even for those who are so inclined to accept a spiritual remedy as a component of treatment, a rational alternative to mainstream religion is often not readily accessible. The unfortunate result is that some are left isolated and at greater risk of relapse. What follows is a description of pantheism — a legitimate alternative to traditional theism and a possible foundation upon which some may begin to build a spiritual structure. May those who have languished in the uncertainty of agnosticism or in the defiance of atheism find solace in the God of his or her own understanding. Dispensing with a “Personal God” If theism were broadly defined as merely the “belief in God”, then pantheism could be said to be a particular form of theism. However, since the period of the Enlightenment, in response to deistic theories of an impersonal and wholly transcendent God, the term theism (and variations thereof) came to denote a particular belief in a personal God. In Pantheism: A Non-Theistic Concept of Deity, Professor Michael Levine describes the concept of a personal God as “[c]entral to theism... [it] is the belief that there exists a God who, though supra-human, is in crucial respects a ‘person.’ God is understood to be a conscious being, sentient in some accounts, though not in others, capable of at least some intentional states such as believing, knowing and willing, though incapable of others such as wishing, and also incapable of some emotions and feelings as well (e.g. embarrassment).” In some religions, belief in a personal God reaches the extremes of anthropomorphism, though doctrine sometimes limits the extent of the anthropic characteristics which may be permissibly assigned to the deity. Notwithstanding such limitations, pervasive in Western culture is the idea that God is a person, King of Heaven, Creator of the Universe, who not only possesses personal characteristics, but who is also corporeal. Even though the concept of a personal God may serve a useful purpose in some contexts, the pantheist vehemently rejects as implausible the concept of “a three-storied Universe, constructed by an artificer God, who suddenly awoke from an eternity of idleness to make Heaven, Earth, and Hell. Therefore, given that the definition of theism appears to be inextricably linked to belief in a personal God, and given the rejection of such a belief in pantheism, it cannot ultimately be said that pantheism entails theism. The two systems do share some similarities, but the rejection of the concept of a personal God sets pantheism substantially apart from traditional theism so that it is rightfully characterized as an alternative to, rather than a species of, theism. What is Pantheism? While it is necessary to differentiate pantheism and theism from the outset on the key issue of belief (or non-belief) in a personal God, it is also necessary to positively define pantheism without resorting to a statement of what it is not. Though it is useful to compare and contrast for the sake of explication, pantheism ably stands alone upon its own system of beliefs. Before elaborating on the key elements found in these definitions of pantheism, it is first helpful to briefly review the rich history and tradition of pantheistic thought. Classical Pantheism Elements of pantheism pervade the histories of both religion and philosophy. While pantheism is not itself a religion to the extent that use of the word implies hierarchical structure and organization, pantheistic principles have nevertheless greatly influenced the doctrinal evolution of all major world religions. The earliest indications of pantheistic thought are found in approximately 1200 B.C. during the Vedic Period in India. A sacred collection of ancient Vedic Sanskrit hymns known as the Rigveda contain, “a pantheistic strain of thought [which] is discernible from the beginning.” (James Hastings, Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics). This strain of thought culminated in the thoroughly pantheistic Vedanta Hindu philosophy derived from the Upanishads written in approximately 600 B.C. The pervasive theme of these writings “is the search for an underlying unity linking everything we see and think... [t]hat unity is called Brahman. In most texts that unity is identical with atman, the world soul, which is also identical with each individual atman. In this sense, every individual is united with the cosmos, and only needs to realize this fact to reach fulfillment” (Harrison, supra). In the seventh century B.C. extending into the sixth century B.C., the early Greek philosophers taught that there existed a universal substance which was the source of all existence... Indeed, “Stoicism, which was itself a synthesis of many Greek systems, exercised a great influence upon all the schools of philosophy that continued in the Graeco-Roman world after the golden age of thought” (Hastings, supra). Turning away momentarily from the Mediterranean and moving to the Far East, as the Greek materialists were developing their philosophy of substance, the ancient Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu, likewise embraced pantheism in his philosophical masterpiece, the Tao Te Ching. Believed to have been written in the sixth century B.C., the Tao Te Ching is revered by many pantheists as a sacred text. In the first chapter, Lao Tzu describes the Tao as the unnameable source which existed before heaven and earth, without substance, though that which sustains all things. According to Professor Levine, philosophical Taoism (as opposed to the polytheistic religious counterparts which sprung from it) is most definitively pantheistic. From Philo’s attempt in the early first century A.D. to synthesize “pagan philosophy and orthodox Judaism” arose Neo-Platonism. Plotinus emerged as the chief figure in Neo-Platonism in the third century A.D. (Hastings, supra). He “conceived God as the absolute unity, of which nothing can be predicated: He is higher than being, thought, goodness, beauty and activity. And yet, in spite of the exalted nature of his absolute, Plotinus derives the world of plurality and change from Him... out of the fullness of His being flows the world... proceeding by... emanations” (Hastings, supra). Modern Pantheism With the emergence of orthodox Christianity, and the tyrannies which ensued, expression of pantheistic thought faded. Though all of the monotheistic religions (eg. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) retained elements of pantheism where it was convenient as a matter of doctrine to do so... The period of the Renaissance brought with it a renewed interest in nature and, therefore, pantheism. Giordano Bruno, who was at one time a Dominican monk, was at the forefront of the pantheistic revival. Baruch Spinoza is often cited as the first “modern pantheist” though this distinction most likely belongs to the aforementioned Giordano Bruno. Nevertheless, Spinoza’s contribution to the reemergence of pantheistic thought cannot be understated — he is often lauded as the pantheistic equivalent of a saint. And like Bruno before him, his embracing and espousing pantheistic ideas were met with a vengeance — “on July 27, 1656, Spinoza was issued the harshest writ of cherem, or excommunication, ever pronounced by the [Jewish] Sephardic community of Amsterdam; it was never rescinded” (Steven Nadler, Spinoza: A Life). Spinoza’s pantheism was the natural result of his theory of substance monism and is set forth in great detail in his philosophical masterpiece entitled Ethics which was published after his death in 1677. In contrast to Spinoza’s static “substance” which he equates to God, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel espoused “a grandiose idealistic pantheism in which all existence and all history are part of God’s cosmic self-development” (Harrison, supra). Hegel, who served as chair of philosophy at the University of Berlin from 1818 to his death in 1831, is known for his highly complex philosophical system “comprising logic, psychology, religion, aesthetics, history [and] law” (Harrison, supra). For Hegel, “God is absolute spirit [or Geist]... it is part of his essence to become real, in particular material things, in individual persons and in the process of change and history” (Harrison, supra). Thus for Hegel, the Absolute Spirit is not static, but dynamic and evolving. Perhaps the best known modern pantheist is Albert Einstein. Foremost in Einstein’s religious views was his rejection of the idea of a personal God; and having thus rejected such a notion of deity, Einstein embraced the central tenet of pantheism. Einstein stated that the anthropomorphic, personal conception of God was not essential to religion; that it was the creation of primitive superstition; and that the concept contradicted not only itself, but the principles of science as well. Various other statements made by Einstein on the subject of religion strongly indicate that his beliefs were essentially pantheistic. The Fundamental Elements of Pantheism Having thus considered pantheism in a historical context and thereby discovering that its genesis and evolution is a credit to some of history’s most brilliant minds, a review of the fundamental elements of pantheism — that is, the foundational doctrines upon which pantheism is based — is now in order. For this purpose, Professor Levine’s seminal treatise on the subject of pantheism provides a wealth of insight and information. At the outset, it should be noted that as there are many different systems of belief under the broad umbrella of theism, so too are there a diversity of beliefs in pantheism. “Pantheism need not be, any more than theism needs to be, a univocal view” (Levine, supra). With that being said, certain concepts are universal to any variation of pantheism — the foremost being Unity which is followed closely by Divinity. I. The Naturalistic Model of Unity To begin, it is necessary to first dispel a common misconception regarding what constitutes the pantheistic Unity. According to Professor Levine: “…pantheism must not be interpreted in a way that makes identification of God with the world, and sees ‘God’ as the all-inclusive divine unity, redundant... [t]his would be to interpret it as asserting that everything that exists simply is everything that exists; or, to put it another way, everything is (of course) all-inclusively everything. This is true but vacuous, and it trivializes pantheism at the outset”. (Levine, supra) Therefore, the pantheistic Unity must be something more than the mere formal unity of the parts which comprise the whole. Unity sufficient to count as pantheistic may be derived from several different, though interrelated, models including the ontological model, the naturalistic model, the substantive model, and the geneological model. (Levine, supra). The model which seems to best exemplify pantheism as a “religious” endeavor is the naturalistic model. “Lao Tzu, Spinoza, Plotinus, Bruno, etc. are all best interpreted on this model... their concerns are the usual religious ones — order as opposed to anomie in both the natural and moral spheres. For the Presocratics — as for Lao Tzu and Spinoza — the natural and the moral are intrinsically connected... this is radically different from post-enlightenment ideas of nature, laws and naturalistic principles where no values are taken as inherent, and where associating moral judgements with nature makes no sense” (Levine, supra). Consideration of specific examples of pantheistic Unity founded upon the naturalistic model aids in highlighting the efficacy of this approach. For Anaximander, the Unity as embodied by apeiron was an “‘endless, inexhaustible reservoir or stock from which all Becoming draws its nourishment’... Unity given by Anaximander and Lao Tzu; under the naturalistic model, the most important commonality is that both describe pantheistic Unity as a guiding force or principle. Some naturalistic models of pantheistic Unity also include the ideas of plan and purpose. Professor Levine summarizes Hegel’s conception of Absolute Spirit, or Geist, as follows: For Hegel, the overall purpose manifest in history is the self-realisation of Absolute Spirit. History is the process through which this takes place — a process in which persons have their part. Intentional action and consciousness are involved in the process, but the purpose that progressively manifests itself is not the result of Spirit self-consciously formulating and following a plan... Yet the overall purpose that does manifest itself is not just the result of chance. There is an intrinsic logic, and so order, to the process of self-realisation that results from the dialectical movement constitutive of history. The process that is history is not thoroughly deterministic, but the unifying overall purpose, which in this case is the Absolute coming to know itself as the Absolute, is inviolable. Spirit is not some self-conscious individual out to fulfill a goal, and it is not the total of finite consciousness and their goals (Levine, supra). Most significant in Professor Levine’s interpretation of Hegel’s philosophical approach is the fact that plan and purpose do not require the existence of a personal God. For most theists, it is the intent, volition, and affect of a personal God that supply meaning and purpose to life. Under Hegel’s theory, however, the pantheist may rationally assign plan and purpose to the pantheistic Unity without resorting to superstition and fairy tales. Ultimately the naturalistic models of Unity allow the pantheist to engage spiritual concepts in a meaningful and practical way that superficially seemed to be reserved only to theists. A final note regarding pantheistic Unity — as Professor Levine points out, it is important not to conflate the naturalistic models of pantheistic Unity with the process of evolution or the laws of nature. Though the physical realm may provide valuable insight into the true nature of the Unity, “the pantheist sees evolution, laws of nature, etc. as themselves part of the Unity subject to higher order (i.e. patheistically more fundamental) principles... [t]hus, the Tao as natural law and a system of self-regulating principles, and the Tao as a standard for behavior, are understood partly in terms of the Tao as a metaphysical reality” (Levine, supra). II. The Importance of Divinity According to the Cambridge Dictionary, divinity is defined as “connected with or like God or a god.” Before considering why the pantheistic Unity is rightfully characterized as divine, it serves good purpose to ask — why is divinity even a necessary element of pantheism? Though Unity and divinity are not necessarily derivative of nor dependent upon one another, in order to answer the question at hand it is wise to consider the practical interrelation which exists between the two concepts. A Unity which lacks divinity is really nothing more than the “sum of all the individual parts”. As previously noted, mere formal unity does not suffice for pantheism — for if it did then it could be said that Richard Dawkins rightfully described pantheism as “sexed-up atheism” (Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion). However, atheism surely involves more than denial of the existence of a personal God (such denial would be mere anti-theism), just as divinity in the pantheistic sense necessarily stands for more than all that is encompassed by the physical universe. To the extent that atheism stands for the denial of the existence of any form of divinity whatsoever — including pantheistic divinity, or “God”, if you will — then pantheism is the antithesis of atheism. Therefore, to avoid dissolution to mere formal unity, the pantheistic divine Unity must entail some level of transcendence. Of course, the mild transcendence of pantheism does not remotely resemble the radical ontological transcendence demanded by theism and which is inextricably intertwined with both the personhood and divinity of the theistic God. Pantheists reject the idea of a personal God and the very existence of a theistic God. While it is necessary to incorporate a form of transcendence into pantheism to meaningfully describe the Unity as divine, it does not follow that the pantheistic Unity must be an ontologically distinct entity. A Personal Note Like so many others, my original conception of God was not my own. It was given to me by well-intentioned friends and family members, and by the predominantly monotheistic Christian society and culture in which all of us existed. While there may have been messages of “love and tolerance” embedded somewhere in what I saw and heard, I was left with the image of God as a being who is judgmental, angry, harsh, and who would never welcome me into the fold. Naturally, I rebelled against any form of religion and put the whole “God idea” out of my mind entirely. Thus, it was with great concern and trepidation that I learned that recovery from addiction would depend in part on my efforts at personal spiritual development. Though my prejudices ran deep, I was able to recognize that I was guilty of the same hypocrisy of which I accused others. I claimed disdain due to the intolerance of the “religious wackos” and yet I was exuding a level of intolerance and contempt of my own. In an effort to dismantle my prejudices, I sought out and found several “progressive” Christian congregations. Progressive, of course, in the sense that their social doctrine coincided with my own. There I found much love and acceptance — and much of my prejudice against “organized religion” dissolved. I tried to revert to the “God of my childhood” and yet, I remained the “Doubting Thomas”. I had to ultimately face the fact that my disbelief was not a mere symptom of my opposition to many of the practices and political positions of the church. It ran far deeper. When I faced the truth, what I found was that I did not believe in their God at all, notwithstanding church doctrine. Fortunately, in recovery, I was given the freedom to explore my own conception of a Power greater than myself. I began with the idea of a Universal Force of All That is Good and Loving. It seemed far easier for me to believe in an abstraction rather than an anthropomorphic being onto to which I projected my own fears and insecurities. In my efforts to find a shoe that might fit, I stumbled upon Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, and in those verses I found the words which so wondrously expressed my thoughts and feelings in a way that I never could. Granted, I am but a neophyte on this spiritual journey, but thankfully I am no longer wandering around in the pitch black of night. Pantheism is the shoe that fits. It is rational and mystical all at once. It stimulates my intellect, and stirs my soul. Most importantly, I believe in it and I believe in the concept of the pantheistic divine Unity. My eternal gratitude to Professor Michael Levine and his treatise on pantheism from which I have found my spiritual home, and to the other sources for this research. May we all someday unite in the harmony of the Eternal.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 Liverpool look in pole position to snatch young Dutch star Memphis Depay from under the noses of Manchester United, according to the Sunday People. The PSV Eindhoven attacker is rated at £20million and has been heavily linked with a move to Old Trafford - but now Brendan Rodgers' side appear ready to bid. The paper says the club have been keeping a very close relationship with both the 21-year-old and his agent, Alex Kroes, with a delegation from Liverpool visiting PSV every month this season and spent a lot of time this week with Kroes. Spurs are naturally said to be interested, as well. Staying with the People, Steven Gerrard could be the target of a loan bid from Scottish champions Celtic. With the MLS season running from March to December, that will free him up for around three months from the start of next year and Glasgow giants Celtic are reportedly interested in signing him when the January transfer window opens. Danny Ings, meanwhile, is about to snub the Reds for Manchester United, so says the Daily Star. The Burnley front man is out of contract at the end of the season and has been a major target for Liverpool, Tottenham, Newcastle and Real Sociedad. But now United have entered the race, it seems, with Ings keen to move there. And finally, we need to talk about Kevin, as Kevin Gameiro is wanted by both Liverpool and Newcastle, according to the People. The Magpies' scouting don Graham Carr was in Spain on Thursday to see Gameiro set up a goal within 14 seconds of kick off for Sevilla in their Europa League tie at Villarreal. But the paper believe Liverpool might also be interested in the 27-year-old.09-03-2017 | Remy van Elst | Text only version of this article Table of Contents A DEC VT78 running WPS-8 (source) This article covers running WPS-8 on a modern day emulator. WPS-8 is a word processor by DEC for the PDP-8. The PDP-8 was a very populair 12-bit minicomputer from 1965. WPS-8 was released around 1970, it came bundled with DEC's VT78 terminal. This terminal bundle was also known as the DECmate. This article covers the setup of the emulator, simh with the correct disk images and terminal settings. It covers basic usage and the features of WPS-8 and it has a section on key remapping. The early keyboards used with WPS-8 have small but incompatible differences with recent keyboards, but nothing that xterm remapping can't fix. As you might know, I'm a fan of the PDP line of computers and legacy systems in general. Mainframes, homecomputers, you name it and I probably like it. Add flashing lights, panels and big controls to it and you have my attention in no time. Plus, in previous jobs I've worked on mainframes, VAX and PDP systems and the emulators used to keep those systems running on modern hardware. Think hospitals, banks, insurance companies, train signalling control and the likes. So, the interest did not spawn from nowhere. Oscar Vermeulen created an amazing replica of the PDP-8/I. It's a front panel with working switches and LED's, plus a simple Raspberry Pi running the SIMH emulator. I've written multiple articles on the PDP and PiDP-8 and I like the device a lot in general. If you like this article, consider sponsoring this site by trying out a Digital Ocean VPS. With this link you'll get a $5 VPS for 2 months free (as in, you get $10 credit). (referral link) So why run WPS-8 today you might ask? Well, first of all, because it is fun to play with. Second, to appreciate the modern software we use the present day more. Just imagine you writing your thesis on an ASR-33 teletype or a DECmate. Imagine the wrist and shoulder pain, the review process and all the other nice things we take for granted. The third reason of course is to bewonder how far advanced computers and software was more than 40 years ago. For less than the price of a small car, a business could own a PDP-8 and have their processes digitized, optimized and all the other advantages of a computer. Or just type their letters to look way more fancy. WPS-8 is very dependent on specific (vt52) terminal features. The article has a few sections on the workarounds required to use WPS-8 on a modern terminal. I've written a small xterm wrapper script around xterm to make this setup easier. Here is a screenshot of WPS-8 running with xterm in simh with a vt220 font: What is WPS-8 WPS-8 is a Word Processing System that was sold by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) for use with their PDP-8 processors (including the VT78, VT278 DECmate, and PC238 DECmate II and PC24P DECmate III microcomputer systems). WPS-8 was DEC's attempt to compete with the IBM-PC and the word processors on those systems. The standard DECstation configuration, which includes the VT78 (video terminal, mainboard, memory, real time clock and floppy drive interface) and a dual floppy disk was priced at $7995. Wikipedia has a bit more information on WPS-8. I've mirrored two WPS-8 manuals here. One is specifically for the DECmate: Most of this article on the usage of WPS-8 is taken from these manuals. If you want to know everything there is to know on WPS-8, read them. SIMH, Blinkenbone or the PiDP-8 or the real deal You need the simh emulator to run WPS-8 and work with this guide. On Ubuntu it can be installed with apt : apt-get install simh On Arch you can get version 3.9 (as of writing) from the repository: pacman -Sy simh I created a PKGBUILD for simh-git in the AUR, if you want to use version 4. In the below section I'll talk more on how I found out all the specific settings required to run WPS-8 correctly. If you just want to get started, skip all of that. Below is the simh ini file used in this article: set cpu 32K set cpu noidle set tto 7b ;;set console telnet=2323 attach rx0 wps78v3.4.rx01 attach rx1 wps-doc.rx01 boot rx0 exit The wps78v3.4.rx01 disk file can be downloaded here. I got it from pdp8.net. rx1 doesn't have to exist. If simh can't find it, it will create it. Later on in this guide, we'll format it as a document drive. The PiDP-8 and BlinkenBone all come with SIMH bundled. BlinkenBone is a graphical front panel you can run on a Linux/Windows machine. It includes SIMH and a PDP-8i panel. I've written a guide with usage instuctions for BlinkenBone. You need to adapt (or copy) the Adventure files, place the disk images and start the simulator. It should then boot into WPS-8, but your terminal settings will be incorrect. You can however enjoy the front panel pattern. If you have the PiDP-8 then you can use scp to copy the disk image over. Edit one of the SR toggle boot options with this configuration, add telnet and you're good to go. Connect your local xterm to that telnet server and you should get the WPS-8 screen. If you have a real PDP-8e you can enjoy the front panel MQ pattern, as seen in the video made by Michael Thompson of the Rhode Island Computer Museum. Terminal emulation and setup As said earlier, WPS-8 is dependent on old hardware, specifically the VT-52/VT-78 terminals and keyboards. Modern terminal emulators have little support or require significant configuration. I managed to find most of the issues and work around them. Many thanks to the pidp-8 newsgroup for the terminal emulation part. The xterm manpage and documentation are my new best friends as well, plus a whole new section of the internet regarding terminal ascii codes. I had trouble getting WPS-8 to display correctly. The system started up in the emulator, but it did not look right: With some help of the pidp-8 newsgroup and mailing with Michael Thompson of the Rhode Island Computer Museum (who tested it on an actual PDP-8/e, many thanks) we got it working. WPS-8 seems to be very dependent on the DEC VT-52 terminal. There are specific escape codes used, which newer terminals and terminal emulators don't understand or support. In the above image there are a few things that stand out. First, all the text is on one line, instead of neatly formatted. Second, there are only capital letters. SIMH by default runs in 8-bit mode. The mailinglist suggested trying 7-bit mode. This requires the following line in the simh.ini file: set tto 7b When running SIMH with this option, one point above is solved: Namely the all capital text. There are normal letters in there but the formatting is still wrong. On the mailing list Michael Thompson from the Rhode Island Computer Museum booted up their PDP-8/e with WPS-8 and tested the connection with Microsoft HyperTerminal, which seems to give the correct output: Chris Smith looked at the second picture of the output and noticed all the squares with numbers in them. Here's what he said: The 'tto 7b mode' picture is rather enlightening. All those little squares have 1B in them - but, more specifically, they have 001B. 1B is ASCII decimal 27, which is... ESCape. But the 001B notation is rather odd. It's almost as though this is a unicode stream rather than an ASCII stream. I rather get the impression that this is *not* being interpreted by a VT52 emulator. Such an emulator would have captured all the ESC-Y sequences, and you would not be seeing all of those extra letter Y. In fact -- a quick check of the VT52 page on Wikipedia suggests that this is real and good VT52 encoding. You just need to get it to an actual emulator. I tried to set my terminal (xfce-terminal and terminator) to vt52 mode by exporting TERM=vt52. That did not work, the text stayed garbled. I have a vt220 at home with the LK201 keyboard and I hooked that up to one of my machines with simh via an USB to serial cable. serial-agetty is set to explicity vt52 mode. This is Arch linux specific but you get the gist for other distro's: # /lib/systemd/system/serial-getty\@.service [...] ExecStart=-/sbin/agetty -h -L 19200 %I vt52 At first that also did not work, but after replacing the usb-serial cable it did: That left me to figure out why the terminal emulators did not display it correctly. I suspected that the modern terminal emulators did not implement this vt52 specific codes correctly. Therefore, I started looking into xterm. Consulting the xterm man page and website on control sequences told me that the Y code is used only in the vt52 to move the cursor on the screen: ESC Y Ps Ps Move the cursor to given row and column. That escape sequence can be tested in your terminal using printf : printf '\033Y11' Regular xterm also did not work as expected: Reading further in to the xterm man page pointed me to the -tn and -ti options: -ti term_id Specify the name used by xterm to select the correct response to terminal ID queries. It also specifies the emulation level, used to determine the type of response to a DA control sequence. Valid values include vt52, vt100, vt101, vt102, vt220, and vt240 (the "vt" is optional). The default is "vt420". The term_id argument specifies the terminal ID to use. (This is the same as the decTerminalID resource). -tn name This option specifies the name of the terminal type to be set in the TERM environment variable. It corresponds to the termName resource. This terminal type must exist in the terminal database (termcap or terminfo, depending on how xterm is built) and should have li# and co# entries. If the terminal type is not found, xterm uses the built-in list "xterm", "vt102", etc. Using both options set to vt52 like below gave the correct result on the escape code: xterm -tn vt52 -ti vt52 As you can see, my bash prompt and all fancy stuff like colours are not working. But the escape code works, which is awesome. Now the big question, will WPS-8 also show up correctly? Let's take a look: Behold, in all it's glory. WPS-8 on your modern day terminal emulator! Scroll down to the section wps8term to find my xterm wrapper script and the vt220 font. It sets up xterm with the key remappings explained below and starts up simh. Key remapping and PF1 / GOLD The keyboard used with this software had a special GOLD key. It's a function key like CTRL or ALT, but instead of keeping it pressed while you press the other key, like copy (CTRL+C), you pressed and released the gold key, then pressed the function key. Going back to the menu from the document editor for example is GOLD+M. You press and release the GOLD key, then press M. Non DECmate/vt78 keyboard like the LK201 had no coloured keys. Instead, they had, above the numeric island, PF1 through PF4. PF1 is the GOLD key On the terminals where WPS-8 was used, the function keys F1 through F5 were used with the hardware, not mapped to the software. F2 get's you in the hardware setup menu of a VT220 terminal. xterm remaps these keys (PF1 to PF4) to F1 to F4. Here is a picture of the keyboard on the vt78 terminal: This is a schematic view of the VT78 keyboard, with colours and secondary functions: (source) The backspace key will result in an error on the non-editor screens: When typing to the menu use the normal keys on the keyboard only. The line must end with RETURN. RUB CHAR and RUB WORD can also be used. Please press RETURN and try again. The working way to get a backspace is to press CTRL and backspace. The actual character sent is the delete character. Moving around with the arrow keys is not supported. The manual states that the arrow keys are not used in the word processor. Using them can put extra characters in your document, the manual states. There are a few alternatives however. Listed below under Mini keyboard functions are the numeric isle function keys. These, if you have an actual vt52 (or vt220), can be used to move around. The GOLD key can also be used with the regular keypad for movement: GOLD B:
have from those difficult times? Volcker: Well, my memories are quite limited. My father had a stable job. He was a city manager at that time. We weren't wealthy, just middle class living in a growing suburb of New York, and that was not in the middle of depressed America. I know that my mother at that time did not let me take a part time job and she often said that other people needed the job more than I did. SPIEGEL: Can the current situation be compared with the Great Depression? Volcker: I remember there were people, beggars and tramps as we called them, who wanted to be fed. So it's true, today we also have people who are relying on food stamps and other payments but we are a long way from the Great Depression. We are in a serious, great recession. Today we have 10 percent unemployment, but at that time it was more like 20 or 25 percent. That's a big difference. You had mass unemployment. SPIEGEL: But even though there are still more people being fired than hired, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke is saying that the recession is technically over. Do you agree with him? Volcker: You know, people get very technical about these things. We had a quarter of increased growth but I don't think we are out of the woods. SPIEGEL: You expect a backlash? Volcker: The recovery is quite slow and I expect it to continue to be pretty slow and restrained for a variety of reasons and the possibility of a relapse can't be entirely discounted. I'm not predicting it but I think we have to be careful. SPIEGEL: What is the difference between this deep recession and all the other recessions we have seen since World War II? Volcker: What complicates this situation, as compared to the ordinary garden variety recession, is that we have this financial collapse on top of an economic disequilibrium. Too much consumption and too little investment, too many imports and too few exports. We have not been on a sustainable economic track and that has to be changed. But those changes don't come overnight, they don't come in a quarter, they don't come in a year. You can begin them but that is a process that takes time. If we don't make that adjustment and if we again pump up consumption, we will just walk into another crisis. SPIEGEL: As chairman of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board, you advise President Barack Obama on how to prevent such a recurrence. Is he following your guidance? Volcker: We have various working groups that work on and make recommendations on particular problems like retirement programs and social security. We made some recommendations on financial reforms, which were not accepted, but that is part of the game. The president is more eloquent than I can be on these issues. Getting it done as compared to talking about it is a problem, but we have some suggestions along that line. SPIEGEL: The US has not yet instituted any kind of reform policy. What we see is the government and the Federal Reserve pouring money into the economy. If one looks beyond that money, one sees that the economy is in fact still shrinking. Volcker: What should I say? That's right. We have not yet achieved self-reinforcing recovery. We are heavily dependent upon government support so far. We are on a government support system, both in the financial markets and in the economy. SPIEGEL: To get the recovery to the point where it is right now has cost a lot of money. National debt will probably reach $12 trillion in 2019. Just serving the debt costs $17 billion a year -- at least according to this year's forecast. That's difficult to sustain. Volcker: You've got to deal with the deficit and you've got to deal with it in a timely way. Right now, with the unemployment rate still very high, excess capacity is still evident, and the economy is dependent on government money as we said. We are not going to successfully attack the deficit right now but we have got to prepare for attacking it. SPIEGEL: Should Americans prepare themselves for a tax increase? Volcker: Not at the moment, but I think we would have to think about it. The present tax system historically has transferred about 18 to 19 percent of the GNP to the government. And we are going to come out of all this with an expenditure relationship to GNP very substantially above that. We either have to cut expenditures and that means reducing entitlements and certainly defense expenditures by an amount that may not be possible. If you can do it, fine. If we can't do it, then we have to think about taxes. SPIEGEL: What kind of taxes do you have in mind? Volcker: Maybe we should talk about energy taxes, which could be a big revenue producer. SPIEGEL: The Harvard Professor Niall Ferguson has written a Newsweek cover story where he essentially argues that America is in great danger due to steep debt, slow growth and high spending. Do you think it is overblown?-Welcome to BitCoin-Gems.com - Your Source for Fine Quality Loose Colored Gemstones and Gemstone Jewelry Purchased with BitCoin- BitCoin-Gems.com is an exciting new online entity that seeks to capitalize on the new interest in digital currency. We are offering very high quality genuine gemstones, gemstone jewelry and diamond jewelry for purchase in BitCoin exclusively. BitCoin-Gems is backed by the vast experience of Marc Sarosi, a well know figure in the colored gemstone trade who resided in Africa during the 1980-1900's mining, buying and manufacturing colored gemstones. We carry a full selection of colored precious gemstones and semi-precious gemstones, in more than 35 different varieties from Alexandrite to Zircon. Our more popular colored gemstones include Ruby, Blue Sapphire, Pink Sapphire, Emerald, Garnets, Aquamarine and Tourmaline. In addition we carry as well as a unique collection of stunning gemstonejewelry and diamond jewelry in silver, gold and platinum for sale with BitCoin. Our pricing is extremely competitive and our quality is first class.In addition we carry as well as a unique collection of stunning gemstone jewelry and diamond jewelry in silver, gold and platinum. Our pricing is extremely competitive and our quality is first class. A liitle bit about myself. My name is Marc Sarosi and a second generation gemstone dealer. I obtained my BA degrees in geography and geological science with an emphasis in mineralogy from the University of California. After graduating from college in 1983, I got my first job as a geologist in Zambia, working for a gemstone exploration firm called Gems of Africa. I eventually obtained the mining rights to a famous aquamarine mine called Kapilinkesa, meaning “a place I’ll never forget”. I lived in Zambia and travelled throughout gem producing areas of Africa for the next 19 years, buying and selling gems. BitCoin-Gems came about as a natural progression, combining my inherent passion for gemstones, knack for business, and the latest in ecommerce innovations. While the internet can be a confusing place to buy gemstones with transparency and full disclosure, my goal at BitCoin-Gems is to provide a trustworthy place to find top quality natural, genuine gemstones and jewelry. I am proud to offer a Certificate of Authenticity with every gemstone, outlining complete details about treatments, dimensions, carat weight and country of origin. BitCoin-Gems has offices in the San Francisco Bay Area. Thank you for visiting!Hello, this is Zabir from the Astroneer dev team. The last time I wrote a blog post I spoke about the important of optimization and bringing that to Astroneer. Lately I’ve been focused on our plan for increasing performance and stability of the game, and was responsible for the first pass of a bigger update to performance that you would have seen in Patch 125. Performance is an on going challenge of building a game this early. So, I wanted to quickly talk about Astroneer’s performance and what is our plan going forward? There are three major ways we are going to attack the performance problem: streaming system, optimizing algorithms, and better OS/hardware interaction. Streaming System Astroneer is already a big game – both in size and in time spent exploring. Pair that with objects that don’t support streaming, e.g. foliage, tethers, and crafting objects, and it leads to a gradual slow down as you play the game. The goal of a streaming system is to unload/delete things that are far from the player so the engine does not spend CPU cycles or RAM managing them. Less things equals more FPS. Prior to patch 0.2.10125.0 (“125”) once an object had spawned on to your planet it would not de-spawn. This meant after 3-4 hours of exploration the game was potentially managing over 10,000 objects. With Patch 125 we took our first step in build a streaming system for Astroneer. The current streaming system only supports grass/insignificant foliage like objects, but this was only step 1. The next stages will incorporate more object types into the streaming system (interactive items, base modules, vehicles, etc.). As more object types are supported, the less we have to be concerned with the size of the world or how much you’ve explored or how long you’ve been playing! A streaming system will allow us to create the illusion of a much bigger world, but only simulate things around you. Optimizing Algorithms Even if we are only simulating objects near the player, we still want to simulate them as efficiently as we can. This means we’ll optimize the various algorithms that compose Astroneer’s game mechanics, e.g. marching cubes algorithm used for terrain deformation and graph traversal of the tether and power networks to deliver power and oxygen. Optimizing these algorithms will improve host/client performance, draw distance since we can simulate more things in less time, and lower min spec by maintaining the same quality level, but running more efficient algorithms on lower end hardware. The more core an algorithm is to the game the higher it’ll be prioritized for being optimized. Better OS/Hardware Interaction Since shipping Astroneer we’ve made a big splash all thanks to the countless players of the game. This attention and positive reaction to our pre-alpha game has given us street cred to reach out to Microsoft, Intel, AMD and Nvidia for advice on how to best take advantage of their hardware and OS. There may be various things we are doing poorly on some specific machine configurations that we just don’t have in house. By working with partners we can learn to avoid pitfalls and run optimally on their platforms. As time goes on we’ll be diving in to these things as best as we can. While brief, I do hope this gives an overview of our plan of attack to improve performance issues going forward. We are definitely taking notes and getting feedback. We are definitely making performance a priority.And now watch as “media observers” launch a fusillade of "I told you sos" at Rupert Murdoch and the failed Daily. Just hours after News Corp. announced this morning that it is shuttering its iPad-only news publication, plenty of people are already telling us what went wrong. Gawker didn't even wait for The Daily to close up shop, publishing a prescient analysis of its impending demise before it published its first edition. Let’s wheel back to February 2011, when The Daily launched with optimistic visions and a bold attempt to take advantage of a completely new platform. The iPad was still relatively new, and many apps were still iPhone clones that were blown up for the 10-inch screen. No one was really sure whether it was going to kill old media or save it. So News Corp’s decision to take a $30 million-a-year, 120-person bet on an iPad-only title took courage. Keep that in mind as you read the moralizing blog posts, chin-scratching columns, and Tweet-sermons from the leather elbow patches rocking in their armchairs while they survey Rupert Murdoch’s wreckage. And remember, it did make sense at the time. We were all excited about the iPad’s ability to deliver interactive features, rich media, and living stories in real time, and to be able to charge for it. Real money! At a dark time for newspapers, the idea of an iPad-only publication was a flicker of light. Now we know, however, that The Daily made some big mistakes. The Media soothsayers may tell you that it’s because it was trapped in a walled garden, that it lacked a defined audience, and that its journalism was too lightweight. But these are not the core reasons it went belly up. For a start, lightweight journalism hasn’t stopped tabloid publications, from the New York Post to the Daily Mail, attracting large audiences (and, it should be noted, the Post loses tens of millions of dollars a year but is allowed, at Murdoch’s behest, to survive). Plus, you can’t read a story like this one on a Florida shooting and tell me it is of demonstrably lower quality than something that the AP would have produced. Of course, that has always been one of The Daily’s challenges -- attracting people to read news in an app at a time when news is so commoditized and available freely and abundantly elsewhere. A challenge? Yes. But on its own enough to kill The Daily? No. News Corp says The Daily had more than 100,000 readers. That’s not something to write home about, but it’s not pathetic. It’s comparable to the circulation of a daily newspaper in a mid-sized US city. In fact, given that The Daily is a paid app and has been around for less than two years, it’s almost respectable. The problem The Daily had, however, is that it needed to pull in a lot more readers and revenue than that to support its expensive team. At the time of launch, Rupert Murdoch said it needed at least 500,000 subscribers to be financially viable. That’s a gargantuan target for what was effectively a no-name startup trying to play in a totally new media environment, and when hardly anyone owned a tablet in the first place. Simply put, The Daily never attracted the revenue required to support a team of 120 people. Launching what amounted to a digital daily newspaper with many of the legacy costs and structures of print wasn't the best idea. (You could argue The New York Times, which just announced that is seeking buy outs from 30 newsroom staff, faces a similar dilemma. Its print edition is not making enough to support its gargantuan newsroom either.) Then there’s the argument that the publication, being iPad-oriented, was trapped in a dead-end digital zone. But the walled garden shouldn’t necessarily be a problem. As Instapaper founder Marco Arment has proven with The Magazine, it’s possible to start a financially viable publication from scratch and keep the walls up around it. Poynter’s Jeff Sonderman has confidently pronounced that the tablet-only approach was doomed to failure. “Research has since shown that tablet owners are 'digital omnivores' who consume media seamlessly across tablets, smartphones, PCs and print publications,” Sonderman says. “To serve them news on only one platform is not satisfying.” That might be true, but it’s not the cause of The Daily’s death. The Magazine, for instance, is available only on the iPhone and the iPad, and only for users of iOS6. If I were starting a publication today, I would make it available on every digital platform possible (you know, just like PandoDaily) – but that doesn’t mean that an iPad-only platform just won’t work. We are still at the beginning of the tablet’s life cycle, but already people are shifting their reading habits to the device. As tablets become only more widespread and ever cheaper, that trend is likely to accelerate. There are now plenty enough iPad owners who could support a sufficiently lightweight editorial product. But therein lies the thrust of this argument. The difference between The Daily and The Magazine is perhaps where the real lesson is to be found. The Daily started with more than 100 staffers and a multi-million-dollar budget. The Magazine started with one employee – Arment himself – and no funding. Rather than try to jump straight into the deep end with a high-powered, high-profile, and highly expensive editorial team, Arment decided to start small and lite, eschewing all the bells and whistles to focus on building an audience through the delivery of quality journalism for a fair price. The Daily was a $4-a-month multimedia experience and asked readers to come back every day, while expecting advertisers to help pay staffing costs. The Magazine has no ads, is text-only, and has been testing the market before it makes any crazy moves like, say, adding pictures. It costs $3 a month. The Daily, in other words, jumped straight to bloat, while The Magazine epitomizes the Lean Startup approach. My boss, Sarah Lacy – whom I wisely agree with – suggests that one approach for old media organizations should be to take a handful of their smartest people, overpay them, and put them on the equivalent of a desert island, completely outside the main organization. Then, tell them they will get huge bonuses if they can figure out how to make the print side obsolete. It’s trying to building something new out of the old, Lacy reckons, that never seems to work. The Daily had its fair share of shortcomings. Perhaps because of its tablet-centricity, it wasn’t able to have a very vibrant life outside of the iPad and missed out on a lot of the social sharing that helps spread content and brand to a wide audience (ie, the Buzzfeed model). It amassed a reasonable readership in a short time, but it fell far short of attracting the huge readership needed to sustain itself. And for whatever reason – a failure of marketing? – it didn’t stamp itself on the collective consumer consciousness as a serious news alternative. But let’s not dance on its grave. A lot of good journalists are out of a job today, and a bold experiment in digital news has failed. The Daily is dead, but just by existing it did the rest of the media world a favor. Now it has been relegated to case study, but it's all the more valuable for it.Smartphone market leader Samsung is holding its biggest annual launch event today. Just days ahead of the Mobile World Congress, the Korean electronics giant is expected to unveil several new Galaxy products today, including first and foremost its latest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S10. The phone, which the company accidently leaked in a Norwegian TV commercial earlier this week, features a triple-lens back camera, an ultrasonic fingerprint reader built into the screen and reverse wireless charging, i.e. the ability to charge other gadgets wirelessly. Unfortunately for consumers however, the S10 is also expected to continue the trend of rising smartphone prices, with the top model reportedly priced at or even above $1,500.While Samsung retained its lead in the smartphone market in 2018, the company has found itself in a difficult spot recently. With Chinese vendors grabbing market share in the lower-price segment and Apple remaining the preferred brand of many premium buyers, Samsung is fighting on two fronts, amid challenging market conditions that don’t make things any easier. In 2018, sales of Samsung’s Mobile Communications business, which also includes tablets and wearable devices, declined by 7 percent to 96.65 trillion won ($86.9b), the lowest it has been since 2012. Apple’s iPhone business alone generated $157 billion in sales over the same period, and adding the iPad to the calculation, Apple’s mobile business is now twice as large as Samsung’s.It was a strange moment of triumph against racism: The gun-slinging white supremacist Craig Cobb, dressed up for daytime TV in a dark suit and red tie, hearing that his DNA testing revealed his ancestry to be only “86 percent European, and … 14 percent Sub-Saharan African.” The studio audience whooped and laughed and cheered. And Cobb—who was, in 2013, charged with terrorizing people while trying to create an all-white enclave in North Dakota—reacted like a sore loser in the schoolyard. “Wait a minute, wait a minute, hold on, just wait a minute,” he said, trying to put on an all-knowing smile. “This is called statistical noise.” Then, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, he took to the white nationalist website Stormfront to dispute those results. That’s not uncommon: With the rise of spit-in-a-cup genetic testing, there’s a trend of white nationalists using these services to prove their racial identity, and then using online forums to discuss the results. But like Cobb, many are disappointed to find out that their ancestry is not as “white” as they’d hoped. In a new study, sociologists Aaron Panofsky and Joan Donovan examined years’ worth of posts on Stormfront to see how members dealt with the news. It’s striking, they say, that white nationalists would post these results online at all. After all, as Panofsky put it, “they will basically say if you want to be a member of Stormfront you have to be 100 percent white European, not Jewish.” But instead of rejecting members who get contrary results, Donovan said, the conversations are “overwhelmingly” focused on helping the person to rethink the validity of the genetic test. And some of those critiques—while emerging from deep-seated racism—are close to scientists’ own qualms about commercial genetic ancestry testing. Panofsky and Donovan presented their findings at a sociology conference in Montreal on Monday. The timing of the talk—some 48 hours after the violent white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va.—was coincidental. But the analysis provides a useful, if frightening, window into how these extremist groups think about their genes. Reckoning with results Stormfront was launched in the mid-1990s by Don Black, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. His skills in computer programming were directly related to his criminal activities: He learned them while in prison for trying to invade the Caribbean island nation of Dominica in 1981, and then worked as a web developer after he got out. That means this website dates back to the early years of the internet, forming a kind of deep archive of online hate. To find relevant comments in the 12 million posts written by over 300,000 members, the authors enlisted a team at the University of California, Los Angeles, to search for terms like “DNA test,” “haplotype,” “23andMe,” and “National Geographic.” Then the researchers combed through the posts they found, not to mention many others as background. Donovan, who has moved from UCLA to the Data & Society Research Institute, estimated that she spent some four hours a day reading Stormfront in 2016. The team winnowed their results down to 70 discussion threads in which 153 users posted their genetic ancestry test results, with over 3,000 individual posts. About a third of the people posting their results were pleased with what they found. “Pretty damn pure blood,” said a user with the username Sloth. But the majority didn’t find themselves in that situation. Instead, the community often helped them reject the test, or argue with its results. Some rejected the tests entirely, saying that an individual’s knowledge about his or her own genealogy is better than whatever a genetic test can reveal. “They will talk about the mirror test,” said Panofsky, who is a sociologist of science at UCLA’s Institute for Society and Genetics. “They will say things like, ‘If you see a Jew in the mirror looking back at you, that’s a problem; if you don’t, you’re fine.'” Others, he said, responded to unwanted genetic results by saying that those kinds of tests don’t matter if you are truly committed to being a white nationalist. Yet others tried to discredit the genetic tests as a Jewish conspiracy “that is trying to confuse true white Americans about their ancestry,” Panofsky said. But some took a more scientific angle in their critiques, calling into doubt the method by which these companies determine ancestry—specifically how companies pick those people whose genetic material will be considered the reference for a particular geographical group. And that criticism, though motivated by very different ideas, is one that some researchers have made as well, even as other scientists have used similar data to better understand how populations move and change. “There is a mainstream critical literature on genetic ancestry tests—geneticists and anthropologists and sociologists who have said precisely those things: that these tests give an illusion of certainty, but once you know how the sausage is made, you should be much more cautious about these results,” said Panofsky. A community’s genetic rules Companies like Ancestry.com and 23andMe are meticulous in how they analyze your genetic material. As points of comparison, they use both preexisting datasets as well as some reference populations that they have recruited themselves. The protocol includes genetic material from thousands of individuals, and looks at thousands of genetic variations. “When a 23andMe research participant tells us that they have four grandparents all born in the same country—and the country isn’t a colonial nation like the U.S., Canada, or Australia—that person becomes a candidate for inclusion in the reference data,” explained Jhulianna Cintron, a product specialist at 23andMe. Then, she went on, the company excludes close relatives, as that could distort the data, and removes outliers whose genetic data don’t seem to match with what they wrote on their survey. But specialists both inside and outside these companies recognize that the geopolitical boundaries we use now are pretty new, and so consumers may be using imprecise categories when thinking about their own genetic ancestry within the sweeping history of human migration. And users’ ancestry results can change depending on the dataset to which their genetic material is being compared—a fact which some Stormfront users said they took advantage of, uploading their data to various sites to get a more “white” result. J. Scott Roberts, an associate professor at the University of Michigan, who has studied consumer use of genetic tests and was not involved with the study, said the companies tend to be reliable at identifying genetic variants. Interpreting them in terms of health risk or ancestry, though, is another story. “The science is often murky in those areas and gives ambiguous information,” he said. “They try to give specific percentages from this region, or x percent disease risk, and my sense is that that is an artificially precise estimate.” For the study authors, what was most interesting was to watch this online community negotiating its own boundaries, rethinking who counts as “white.” That involved plenty of contradictions. They saw people excluded for their genetic test results, often in very nasty (and unquotable) ways, but that tended to happen for newer members of the anonymous online community, Panofsky said, and not so much for longtime, trusted members. Others were told that they could remain part of white nationalist groups, in spite of the ancestry they revealed, as long as they didn’t “mate,” or only had children with certain ethnic groups. Still others used these test results to put forth a twisted notion of diversity, one “that allows them to say, ‘No, we’re really diverse and we don’t need non-white people to have a diverse society,'” said Panofsky. That’s a far cry from the message of reconciliation that genetic ancestry testing companies hope to promote. “Sweetheart, you have a little black in you,” the talk show host Trisha Goddard told Craig Cobb on that day in 2013. But that didn’t stop him from redoing the test with a different company, trying to alter or parse the data until it matched his racist worldview. Republished with permission from STAT. This article originally appeared on August 16, 2017President Trump has returned to the White House to be met by a tax-reform effort in crisis. He can get it back on track by embracing a solution that is obvious and equitable — and that ought to be easy. “The boldest ideas for changing the nation’s tax code are either dead or on political life support,” the Wall Street Journal’s Richard Rubin reported Monday. “The clear winner, so far, is the status quo.” (Jenny Starrs/The Washington Post) That would be a disaster for the economy, of course. The nation’s high corporate tax rate leaves “stranded” abroad trillions of dollars in profits that could be repatriated and put to work here in business expansion or returned to shareholders via dividends or stock buybacks. A special repatriation window could be used to induce some of this money to return more quickly and create a revenue bump, but it would still be only a portion of what’s needed to finance tax reform and the investments in the military and infrastructure that Trump promised on the campaign trail. One obvious answer is to raise the existing federal levy that makes the most sense to the most voters: the federal gas tax. Currently less than 19 cents a gallon (higher on diesel) and stuck there since 1993, the federal gas tax generates approximately $35 billion in revenue a year. This month, Trump told Bloomberg News that he is open to a tax reform package that hikes the federal gas tax. Good. In contrast to a “border adjustment tax” that few support and fewer understand, a hike in the federal gas tax could be easily explained to voters as the price of three distinct goals: infrastructure investments, the building of the Trump-promised 350-ship Navy and tax reform that ignites broad and sustained economic growth. If a half-a-buck-a-gallon hike brought in $100 billion in revenue annually, it could be coupled with a cut in the corporate rate; repeal of the military-crippling sequester and a real increase in defense spending (especially on the Navy fleet); a dip in marginal income-tax rates; and, crucially, a boost in local infrastructure spending. The naval buildup has to be devised and supervised by Congress and the president, just as federal tax policy must emerge from inside the Beltway. But there is no reason that, say, a third of any new gas tax revenue couldn’t immediately be returned to the counties of the United States on a per capita basis so local people could decide the local infrastructure needs that deserve priority. Enough of “shovel-ready” declarations from inside the Beltway. Send the infrastructure dollars to local people to spend. Trump can sell a gas tax hike that does these things because it makes sense and because all drivers will pay it. A “rebuild the fleet” tax would have deep appeal even to those patriots who might otherwise reject raising any federal tax but who understand how damaging the Obama-era sequester has been to the ability of the United States to answer the calls upon it. And, yes, it should be easy to do — if ideologues of both left and right are pushed aside for the common good. The corporate tax rate has to come down. The fleet has to expand. And everyone who drives anywhere in the United States knows that roads and bridges must be repaired, just as anyone who flies knows that some airports need work done yesterday. Go with your gut, Mr. President, and push the GOP to get in the game. This isn’t that hard. Put some points on the domestic policy board and do so by kickoff of the NFL’s regular season (Sept. 7, for those who are wondering). If Congress has to stay in town and work through July and August, demand it do so. How many other Americans are doing exactly the same thing through the summer months? Tax hikes are most accepted when they are understood by most and paid by all. With states such as California busy raising their marginal income-tax rates, there’s no risk of the U.S. tax system becoming regressive as a whole. The need to make sure everyone shoulders part of the lift to meet key national goals points to the gas tax.Italian experts back Napoli By Football Italia staff A survey among 100 experts of Italian football revealed Napoli as the favourites for the Scudetto, followed closely by Roma. Fiorentina are currently holding the first place, but the Partenopei are stealing the scene with crushing victories such as the 4-0 against Milan and the sublime form of strikers Gonzalo Higuain and Lorenzo Insigne. Today's edition of the Corriere dello Sport ran a survey among prominent Serie A pundits to determine the favourites, and Napoli came out on top. They gathered 35 per cent of the votes, and their supporters included Gennaro Gattuso, Federico Barba, Giovanni Trapattoni and Maurizio Zamparini. They were followed closely by Roma at 31 per cent, who have the favour of Carlo Ancelotti, Cesare Prandelli, Claudio Ranieri and Marco Fassone. Fiorentina have 13 per cent of the votes, ahead of Inter and Juventus at 10 per cent each, while only one point was given to Lazio, by their former Coach Davide Ballardini.SAN ANTONIO A San Antonio boy who won national attention through his appearances on televised singing competitions has become the focal point of a social media storm, CBS San Antonio affiliate KENS-TV reports. Sebastien de la Cruz answered the call to sing the national anthem Tuesday at the AT&T Center before Game 3 of the NBA Finals after country singer Darius Rucker canceled at the last minute. The 11-year-old had no idea how much people would be buzzing about the performance. "When I started mariachi, I knew there was gonna be a lot of politics," he said. "And I'm just a proud American, to be honest." Those "politics" didn't stop the talented singer from standing up at the AT&T Center in front of a national television audience to do what he loves — inspiring others. After touching the hearts of the nation and bringing San Antonians to tears with his song, a flurry of racist tweets targeted the boy's heritage. Cruz told KENS-TV he knows better than to listen to hateful words. "With the racist remarks, it was just people how they were raised. My father and my mama told me you should never judge people how they look," he said. San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro also offered some words of encouragement on his Twitter account, tweeting, "Sebastien de la Cruz, your rendition of the national anthem was spectacular! Don't let a few negative voices get you down." Support for the former "America's Got Talent" star blew up on Wednesday with some supporters calling for him to return to sing the National Anthem before Game 4. Some supporters even called on fans to wear traditional mariachi attire to the AT&T Center on Thursday night.TAMPA BAY - The Tampa Bay Lightning have recalled forward Gabriel Dumont and goaltender Kristers Gudlevskis from the Syracuse Crunch of the American Hockey League today, vice president and general manager Steve Yzerman announced. The team also reassigned goaltender Adam Wilcox to the Crunch. Dumont, 5-foot-10, 190 pounds, has skated in 19 games with the Crunch this season, recording five goals and 10 points with a plus-4 rating. He had a hat trick and a four-point game on October 21 against the Utica Comets. Dumont has played in 408 career AHL Games with Syracuse and the Hamilton Bulldogs, amassing 97 goals and 213 points. Dumont has also played in 31 career Calder Cup Playoff games and scored eight goals with 11 points. A native of Ville Degelis, Quebec, Dumont has played in 18 career NHL games, all with the Montreal Canadiens from 2011-15. He has registered a goal and three points. Dumont was signed as a free agent on July 1, 2016.Kik related questions Q: Do you think there is a need for 10 trillion kin? A: Kin supply will be used to power the whole ecosystem — not just Kik. As mentioned in the whitepaper, our goal is to drive mainstream adoption of a cryptocurrency, and in order to do that, we need users to be able to transact in whole numbers, not fractions. Q: Why does Ethereum even matter if most of Kin’s velocity is off-chain on Kik? A: While we stated in the whitepaper that we will pursue a hybrid solution (off-chain/on-chain), we’re currently exploring how we go on-chain immediately. Q: How will Kin maintain user wallets across many apps? A: That’s a great question. This will be partially managed by the Kin SDK, which we’re working on at the moment. It will allow the various digital service developers to integrate Kin and identify users. Q: When will people who bought Kin after the token distribution event (TDE) be able to link their ether wallets to the Kik app? A: We’re working on it. We can’t commit to an exact date but most likely very soon after the alpha is rolled out in December. Q: When will microtransactions be possible with Kin in Kik, and how will it be implemented in general? A: We will rollout the first microtransactions before the year ends. At first, we will launch the alpha on the Ethereum network, which will be able to support the expected amount of transactions. In parallel we’re researching other blockchains should Ethereum not be able to hand our scale at a higher-throughput chain. Q: How will the average Kik user liquidate their Kin? A: We’re working through these solutions. We’re initially focused on starting marketplaces where users can earn and spend Kin. We know that a lot of people will be interested transferring Kin or converting it to fiat currency, and we’re working through solutions. Q: Is there a particular business/industry best suited to benefit from Kin? A: Any type of digital service where users can earn and spend. We list some examples in the whitepaper such as VIP groups, premium user-generated content, shoutout messages, tipping, bot monetization and brand mission. Q: What, if any, solution have you guys created in regards to the amount of transactions that could potentially take place within Kik everyday? A: This is a great question. Given the limitations with public blockchains, we’re taking a slow Gmail-style rollout that will be controlled so that the network doesn’t crash. In the beginning, we’re planning to start with an on-chain solution. We’ll publish everything openly, similar to how we published the KRE as an RFC. Q: Will users be able to transact Kin from Kik’s internal wallet to exchanges in the future? Or only to other Kin wallets? A: From a product perspective, we want the ecosystem to be as open as possible and to provide the most value to users. Features like trading Kin from a Kik internal wallet to an exchange inside of the app, or even buying Kin through in app purchase (IAP) fall under this category. We believe that certain users will want these features and limiting desired functionality is usually a bad idea. It is important to note though that external conditions may prevent us from providing some of these features. Transactions with exchanges may be regulated in different ways in different geographies as well as use of IAP. Development Questions Q: Is there a development timeline or a rough progress schedule? A: Yes, we releasing the alpha before the end of the year. We are going to publish
his watch. There are currently no GM openings in the majors, so the 38-year-old executive may have to sit out a year before catching on with another club in the same role.Enlarge Image Descartes Labs Want to know where all the wind and solar power supplies in the US are for some brilliant renewable-energy project? Or plot a round-the-world trip hitting every major soccer stadium along the way? It should be possible with a new tool that lets anyone scan the globe through AI "eyes" to instantly find satellite images of matching objects. Descartes Labs, a New Mexico startup that provides AI-driven analysis of satellite images to governments, academics and industry, on Tuesday released a public demo of its GeoVisual Search, a new type of search engine that combines satellite images of Earth with machine learning on a massive scale. The idea behind GeoVisual is pretty simple. Pick an object anywhere on Earth that can be seen from space, and the system returns a list of similar-looking objects and their locations on the planet. It's cool to play with, which you can do at the Descartes site here. A short search for wind turbines had me dreaming of a family road trip where every pit stop was sure to include kite-flying for the kids. Perhaps this sounds just like Google Earth to you, but keep in mind that tool just allows you to find countless geotagged locations around the world. GeoVisual Search actually compares all the pixels making up huge photos of the world to find matching objects as best it can, an ability that hasn't been available to the public before on a global scale. Our aim is to use this data to model complex planetary systems, and this is just the first step. Mark Johnson, Descartes Lab CEO Fun as it is, the tool also gives the public a taste of Descartes' broader work, which so far has focused largely on agricultural datasets that can do things like analyze crop yields. "The goal of this launch is to show people what's possible with machine learning. Our aim is to use this data to model complex planetary systems, and this is just the first step," CEO and co-founder Mark Johnson said via email. "We want businesses to think about how new kinds of data will help to improve their work. And I'd like everyone to think about how we can improve our life on this planet if we better understood it." The tool's not perfect. I tried searching for objects that look similar to a large coal mine and power plant here in northern New Mexico and ended up with a list of mostly similar-looking lakes and bridges. Searching for locations similar to the launch pads at Cape Canaveral returned an odd assortment of landscapes that seemed to have nothing in common besides a passing resemblance to concrete surfaces. Enlarge Image Screenshot by Eric Mack/CNET "Though this is a demo, GeoVisual Search operates on top of an intelligent machine-learning platform that can be trained and will improve over time," Johnson said. "We've never taught the computer what a wind turbine is, it just determines what's unique about that image (i.e., the fact there is a wind turbine there) and automatically recognizes visually similar scenes." Right now the demo relies on three different imagery sources that include more than 4 petabytes of data altogether. You can search in the most detail using the National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) data for the lower 48 United States because it has the highest resolution of one meter per pixel, making it possible to spot orchards, solar farms and turbines, among other objects. Four-meter imagery is available for China that makes it possible to recognize slightly larger things like stadiums. For the rest of the world, Descartes uses 15-meter resolution images from Landsat 8 that are more coarse but still allow for identification of larger-scale objects like pivot irrigation and suburbs. "As a next step, we certainly want to start to understand specific objects and count them accurately through time," Johnson said. "At that point, we'll have turned satellite imagery into a searchable database, which opens up a whole new interface for dealing with planetary data." Descartes was spun out of Los Alamos National Lab (LANL) and co-founded by Steven Brumby, who spent over a decade working in information sciences for the lab. Near the start of his time at LANL, a massive wildfire nearly destroyed the lab and Brumby's home. More importantly, it sparked Brumby's interest in developing machine-learning tools to map the world's fires. "At that time when we did the analysis (of satellite images of the fire's aftermath) it was pretty clear the fire had been catastrophic, but there was a lot of fuel left," Brumby told me when I visited Descartes' offices in Los Alamos last year. When some of that remaining fuel burned in another big Los Alamos wildfire in 2011, Brumby says he was able to help out. During his time at LANL he was often called on for imagery analysis when disaster struck, from 9/11 to Hurricane Katrina and the breakup of the Space Shuttle Columbia. All those years of insight led to another Descartes project to analyze satellite imagery to better understand and perhaps even predict wildfires around the globe. "You can use satellite imagery to warn you of stuff that's coming down the road and if you listen to it, you can be prepared for it," Brumby said. Enlarge Image Descartes Labs Brumby and Johnson spent the better part of an afternoon laying out the short- and long-term vision for Descartes Labs when I visited. In the short term, the company has been working in agriculture to better monitor crops, feed lots and other data sources. "One of the things we're building with our current system is a continuously updating living map of the world, which is the platform I wish we had when we had to deal with some of these disasters back in the day," Brumby said. Being able to check in on any part of the world in real time is one thing, but Descartes hopes to go further by applying artificial intelligence to see things in all those images that might not be immediately obvious to our eyes: the patterns that tie together all the activities captured in those countless pixels. If a picture really is worth a thousand words, tools like the ones Descartes is developing could help write volumes about what our satellites are really seeing. Solving for XX: The industry seeks to overcome outdated ideas about "women in tech." Crowd Control: A crowdsourced science fiction novel written by CNET readers.Almost half of European businesses have started looking to replace British suppliers with competitors from inside the EU after concerns about higher tariffs after Brexit, according to a new survey. More than one-quarter of European supply chain managers intend to re-shore all or part of their supply chains to Europe, with 46 per cent anticipating a greater proportion of their supply chain being removed from the UK, based on research by the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply, which surveyed over 2,000 global supply chain managers. “Diplomats either side of the table have barely decided on their negotiating principles and already supply chain managers are deep into their preparations for Brexit,” said Duncan Brock of Cips. “Both European and British businesses will be ready to reroute their supply chains in 2019 if trade negotiations fail and are not wasting time to see what happens,” he added. British businesses have made less progress in replacing European suppliers. Nearly one-quarter of British firms have not done any work to prepare for Brexit, according to Cips. While significant numbers have started planning for the impact of new tariffs on imports, which are likely to be introduced if the UK leaves the EU single market, only one-third said they were actively searching for alternative suppliers based in the UK to replace their current EU-sourced supply chain. The institute said the reshoring of supply chains by British companies back to the UK could represent a significant opportunity for small businesses looking to pick up new contracts. But it added that the costs of Brexit for business — whether because of the weaker pound or the introduction of tariffs on imports — were likely to be passed on to small suppliers and eventually consumers. Related article A Brexit Plan B to convince the doubters Its purpose would be to shift the debate within the EU to the effects of an abrupt exit The effects of sterling devaluation are already being felt by both companies and consumers, with companies reducing the size of consumer products — as Mondelez did with its Toblerone bar last year— or increasing prices, as Unilever tried with its Marmite spread. Almost two-thirds of the British companies surveyed said their supply chains had become more expensive as a result of the fall in sterling since the referendum last summer, with nearly one-third being forced to renegotiate some contracts as a result. British managers were not optimistic about the prospects for trade talks. Almost 40 per cent said they believed the UK had a weak negotiating position, with 33 per cent concerned about a lack of supply chain expertise and knowledge in Britain. Copyright The Financial Times Limited. All rights reserved. Please don't copy articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.by BRIAN NADIG A temporary display featuring the history of the area was installed last weekend in the alley across the street from the Thomas Jefferson statue at the Jefferson Park CTA terminal, 4917 N. Milwaukee Ave. The alley, which runs between Higgins Avenue and Milwaukee Avenue, is a popular shortcut for those walking to and from the transit center. The display was installed to coincide with the annual "Jeff Fest" arts and music festival which was held July 29 to 31, at Higgins and Linder avenues. "The goal is to get people more aware of their neighborhood’s history," Nilay Mistry of the Good City Group said. The group is a coalition that includes landscape architects and urban planners. Its "Last Mile" project is designed to find connections between the history of Jefferson Park and Forest Glen and the commuting patterns in the area. Some of the images posted in the alley reveal how Milwaukee Avenue looked as far back the early 1900s, and another photograph shows the Milwaukee-Lawrence intersection around 1950. The Northwest Chicago Historical Society provided the photographs for the display, and the Jefferson Park Chamber of Commerce is funding a portion of the project. There also is a picture of the former Times movie theater, 4847 N. Milwaukee Ave., which later became the Holiday Ballroom. The building was demolished in the late 1980s as part of the 10-story Veterans Square development at Higgins and Milwaukee avenues. The images were posted on the brick wall of a recently renovated three-story building on the north side of the alley. Property owner Michael Loukas also is renovating the former Edward Fox Photography building, 4900 N. Milwaukee Ave. Mistry said that volunteers used wheat paste to secure the images to the brick and that depending on the weather, they could remain for up to two weeks. The display also includes a sign promoting "Jeff Fest" in the storefront of the building. Last year the Good City Group installed a temporary art display in the alley in an effort to help promote the possibility of permanent decorative walkway there.Gamex was a total blast! Watching people play was great as always (and a sober reminder that not everyone is as good at video games as our beta testers), and we were even lucky enough to meet some fans (and gain some new ones)! Thanks to everyone who showed up :) This past week, we’ve been a bit all over the place, fixing some details we noticed people having trouble with at Gamex, sketching up some of the final charge skills, and so forth. The coming couple of weeks, we’re going to focus on getting everything done on the two new areas so we can finally patch that in and let our beta testers sink their teeth in it! One of the major things we’ve worked on is updating the gamepad support to how the game has evolved. The game actually started out with proper gamepad support, but after some major changes to the gameplay it fell behind and needed an overhaul to catch up. When playing with a keyboard, you assign hotkeys for your spells and use those. There are not quite as many buttons on a gamepad as there is on a keyboard though, so we needed a different solution than just mapping the skills to one button each. Instead, we use the left and right triggers to switch between skill sets. This way, the four buttons (A, B, X and Y on an Xbox-controller) effectively become twelve! The screen above depicts the equipment screen when using a gamepad. Instead of two rows, the quickslots are now separated into three groups: no trigger, left trigger and right trigger. In the example, we’ve separated the potions to use its own group, accessed with the right trigger. When holding down a trigger in game, the HUD changes accordingly. Below is a depiction on how it changes, based on the setup we had in the screenshot above. The order is Default (no trigger), Left Trigger, and Right Trigger. The game will automatically detect what input method you’re currently using, and switch the GUI and help texts to match it. You can swap between gamepad and keyboard as you please! To round things off, here’s a sneeze animation for the cowboy from last week (working bare chested has its drawbacks) as well as a few cards dropped from enemies in the Pumpkin Woods! From left to right: Jumpkin, Ghosty and Lantern Jack!Five hundred years ago, a lowly German priest walked up to the church door in Wittenberg and posted a document that altered the course of history. It has now been five centuries since Martin Luther stood up and confronted Roman Catholicism. The kindling had been laid over decades, and Luther’s little, almost accidental spark soon set all of Europe ablaze. In time, this lowly monk proved he had what it took to hold his ground against the Church and the world — and under God, he became the tip of the spear for massive reform. In one especially memorable scene, he stood before the emperor and declared courageously, risking his own life, “Here I stand. I can do no other. So help me, God.” But Luther did not stand alone. The Reformation was not about one or two big names — Luther, Calvin, Zwingli — but about a massive movement of Christian conviction, boldness, and joy that cost many men and women their lives — and scattered the seeds that are still bearing fruit in the twenty-first century. Not only was Luther surrounded by many Reformers in Germany, but lesser-known heroes of the faith rose up all over Europe. Heroes like Heinrich Bullinger, Hugh Latimer, Lady Jane Grey, Theodere Beza, and Johannes Oecolampadius. Luther was the battering ram, but he ignited, and stood with, a chorus of world changers. And here we stand today, 500 years later. Luther wasn’t alone then, and he’s not alone now. To mark the 500th anniversary, we produced a 31-day journey of short biographies of the many heroes of the Reformation, just 5–7 minutes each day. If you want to learn more about the Reformation — and both Christian heroes you know, and others you’ve never heard of before — subscribe to Here We Stand in iTunes or sign up for the email journey below.Individuals and companies wishing to conduct any “Intermediary Activity” as defined under The FA Regulations on Working with Intermediaries (including entering into a Representation Contract with a client) must be registered with The FA as Intermediaries beforehand. The Intermediary registration process is accessible via The FA Whole Game System. A FAN (FA Number) and password are required to start the registration process. If you do not have a FAN (or if you have forgotten your FAN and/or password), please click here to create one. Former Authorised Agents should all have a FAN. If you do not remember it, please click here to use the retrieve function. Working with Minors Applicants wishing to work with Minors (whether that be representing Minors or representing Clubs in respect of Minors) will need to upload an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service check (or equivalent disclosure for applicants domiciled overseas) which will be reviewed by The FA. This can also be submitted for review at any point subsequent to the completion of your initial registration. Enhanced Disclosure and Barring Service checks need to be applied for through The FA specifically for the position of Intermediary and checks obtained otherwise (including as part of the application to become a Licensed Agent) will not be accepted. Please see further instructions on how to apply for this document and how it looks in the resource section below. Registering a company as an Intermediary Individuals intending to register a company as an Intermediary will need to register themselves as Intermediaries first to access the option to register the company through their online access. It is not a requirement for individuals registered as Intermediaries to register the company they are operating through as an Intermediary as well. Registration Fee Individuals and companies will be charged £500 (+VAT) for their initial one year registration period (this initial registration fee will be waived for those individuals who were FA Licensed Agents as at 31st of March 2015). This registration will need to be renewed and maintained in order to continue conducting Intermediary Activity and The FA will charge £250 (+VAT) for every annual renewal. Please ensure you have a credit or debit card to hand during your registration. Test of Good Character and Reputation Individuals are required to declare they comply with the criteria of the Test of Good Character for Intermediaries upon registration, and Intermediaries must confirm they continue to meet those criteria every time they carry out Intermediary activity in relation to a Transaction. The test also contains provisions for Intermediaries applying to work with or in relation to Minors. Please review the Test of Good Character for Intermediaries document in the resource section below. Registration To register as an Intermediary, please follow the link below: REGISTRATION LINK: https://wholegame.thefa.com If applicants encounter any issues or difficulties with their registration, please contact The FA’s Financial Regulation team.On a recent stopover in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, a cemented-over pile of ugly skyscrapers and canyons strewn with street beggars, I strolled through the garish Twin Towers Shopping Mall. In an underground supermarket, I passed an employee at the fish counter — a short, squat young man who stared at me with violent hatred. I looked around to see if there was anyone else he might be angry with, but no, he was focused on me with protuberant eyes and a grimace like an ungifted drama student who had been asked to project murderous rage. While there was something cinematic and false in this excessive emotion, I was glad he had no knives on hand, since I was in Malaysia, the most anti-Semitic country in Asia. Last year the Anti-Defamation League published the results of a survey indicating that 61% of Malaysians express anti-Semitic views, compared with 22% of the rest of Asia. According to the Malay Mail, the country’s “bias is rooted in the government’s overt support for Palestinians in the [Middle East] conflict, which in turn has encouraged local politicians to use the issue as a platform to appeal to the Malay-Muslim electorate.” Unaccustomed to living in a place or time where Jews are routinely looked on with enmity, I mentioned this poll to a friend who is informed about world politics. He replied, “Fortunately, in their book you simply qualify as an American — which is its own issue.” Moshe Yegar explores such issues in a 2006 article, “Malaysia: Anti-Semitism Without Jews” in the Jewish Political Studies Review. In 2003, then-prime minister Mahathir Mohamad announced to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, in Kuala Lumpur, that “Nazis killed 6 million Jews out of 12 million. But today, the Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them…. Jews had always been a problem in European countries…. But they still remained and still thrived and held whole governments to ransom…. Even after their massacre by the Nazis in Germany, they survived to be a source of even greater problems to the world.” Mahathir held power for 22 years, from 1981 to 2003. In “The Malay Dilemma,” Mahathir wrote: “The Jews are not only hooked-nosed… but understand money instinctively… Jewish stinginess and financial wizardry gained them the economic control of Europe and provoked antisemitism which waxed and waned throughout Europe through the ages.” In 1984, the New York Philharmonic canceled a visit because the Malaysian government refused to allow the orchestra to perform a work by the Swiss Jewish composer Ernest Bloch. In the late 1980s, Mahathir temporarily banned The Wall Street Journal Asia, accusing it of being “Jewish-owned.” In 1992, Liverpool Football Club aborted a planned match in Malaysia after one of its team members, an Israeli, was denied permission to play. Mahathir’s government even banned the film “Schindler’s List” as anti-German “Jewish propaganda” showing Jews as “stout-hearted” and “intelligent” while extolling the “privilege and the virtues of a certain race only.” Later reconsidering, the Malaysian government decided to allow the film to be shown if cuts were made, a condition that Spielberg refused. Subsequently, a number of other Spielberg films were banned in Malaysia, as they were in other Muslim countries, although his “Munich,” about the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics, was allowed. As the Canadian journalist Robert Fulford noted in 2012, “Malaysia has never had a dispute with Israel, but the government encourages the citizens to hate Israel and also to hate Jews whether they are Israelis or not.” Noting that few Malaysians have ever seen a Jew, Fulford pointed out that in 2011, the Federal Territory Islamic Affairs Department “sent out an official sermon to be read in all mosques, stating that ‘Muslims must understand Jews are the main enemy to Muslims as proven by their egotistical behaviour and murders performed by them.’” Would the average fish seller in a mall supermarket believe every instruction received at a mosque? Certainly, public statements are often leavened with covert private transactions, as when Malaysia’s trade ban on Israeli products is sidestepped to obtain products from Israel’s Intel computer chip factory through “covert arrangements with third countries,” Fulford observed. Recalling other faces I had seen during my brief stay in Kuala Lumpur, I could summon up only friendly or indifferent ones. People seemed to be in exuberant spirits, with groups of hefty office workers shouting with laughter over extended restaurant lunches. The buzz in the mall’s food courts and shops expressed the hectic intensity of Middle Eastern souks, or markets, reflecting the nation’s diverse mix of ethnic components, including Chinese, Malay and Indian. All the more peculiar that any religious group should be singled out for obloquy. A ray of hope may emerge from newer generations of Malay writers, including Erna Mahyuni. In a 2012 blog post headlined “The Ridiculous Malaysian Obsession With Jews,” Mahyuni opined: “Just last year, I walked into a local bookstore at Great Eastern Mall to find a special display dedicated to Adolf Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf,’ his biographies and Henry Ford’s ‘The International Jew.’ “Dear Adolf Hitler admirers, please look at yourself in the mirror. Is your hair the colour of gold? Your eyes as blue as the [National Front, a right-wing political party] flag? Your skin, a prone-to-burning Caucasian white? If you can answer ‘Yes’ to all those questions, feel free to continue your private ‘Heil, Mein Fuehrer’ chants with the other White Power activists. “Otherwise, what is wrong with you people?” And then there is Mahathir’s daughter, Marina Mahathir, a local media personality who sometimes displays an ecumenical spirit, as she did last June, when she retweeted a news report about an interfaith service in Los Angeles, commenting, “If you’ve never seen Jews and Muslims pray together, you’re in for a treat.” In a country that has banned Spielberg movies, people get entertainment where they can find it. On the subject of Israel, however, Marina Mahathir does not stray far from family precedent, declaring at a public forum in Australia last year: “I like to put out stories of Jews defending Muslims, as they are fighting for Palestine. It breaks the stereotype.” Last year, when a 17-year-old boy in Penang, on the northwest coast of peninsular Malaysia, dared to “like” an “I Love Israel” Facebook page, he was investigated for sedition.. And that fish vendor? On my way out of the supermarket, I looked at other workers, from a saleswoman wearing a hijab to a floor-sweeper. All were preoccupied by their tasks, radiating deep unhappiness. I realized that these were downtrodden, underpaid drones in unpleasant jobs, and the hatred I sensed from their co-worker might have been resentment at seeing a supposedly privileged foreigner wander by. Despite the ADL poll, I decided to reserve judgment on how much officialdom has turned the Malaysian people into haters. After all, in October, in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly, the current prime minister, Najib Razak, called for the “dawn of a much needed revised relationship between Muslims and Jews.” Benjamin Ivry is a frequent contributor to the Forward. This story "A Close Encounter With Asia's Anti-Semitic Capital" was written by Benjamin Ivry.Drupal is considered to be one of the most famous CMS platforms in the market. As Drupal is an open-source platform, it allows its users to set up a wide range of web portals in an efficient and seamless manner. Once you have a Drupal website, you can go ahead with selecting a reliable, effective Drupal web hosting service provider that offers the assurance of better server resources as well as high-end performance. This helps your online business in expanding the overall business with great growth parameters. If you are looking forward to hiring reliable services from a Drupal hosting service provider without any background technical knowledge about it, here are some important points to consider: Types of Server Resources: Depending on the specific requirements of your business, you must analyze the type of server resources necessary for the overall business growth. Drupal serves to be a large, sophisticated CMS platform that offers thousands of modules that run on the given portal. As per the experts, it is recommended that you should go for selecting a Drupal hosting partner that is able to satisfy the overall requirements of your site. It is also important to analyze the overall amount of traffic –both anonymous as well as authenticated on your site. Ease of Installation: Make sure that the Drupal hosting service provider that you select is well-equipped with the specific software solutions that are able to support effective Drupal installation with much ease. When you go for choosing the latest version of the Drupal hosting for your site, you can be assured of the efficient PHP as well as database software that your business requires. You can look for hiring services from a Drupal web hosting service provider that is able to enhance the overall performance of the PHP & database settings. Drupal-centric Features: Even when the particular service provider is providing highly effective Drupal hosting for your site, this might not necessarily imply that it is a Drupal-centric hosting provider. When you are selecting the particular web hosting service provider, you must ensure that it is able to offer Drupal-centric features along with add-ons to enhance the overall performance of your site. Consider the Security Options: There is no denying the fact that every software is prone to certain security vulnerabilities. As such, even Drupal is no exception when it comes to cyber-attacks or breaching. As such, the Drupal hosting service provider that you select must offer specialized security measures towards offering high-end security to your web services. This must include the database & PHP settings, patches, and so more that are geared towards making your site safe. If you are going for selecting Drupal hosting from a reliable service provider, you must consider important aspects to ensure the best results for your business. Maximize the overall performance of your site by making use of secure Drupal hosting from a trustworthy service provider.Well, it appears that one of the first things the Obama-Biden Office of Management and Budget has done is to instruct the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy to jointly "assess the costs and benefits of transferring budget and management" of our nuclear weapons research, development, test and production programs and associated facilities from DOE to DOD, "beginning in FY 2011." Under the terms of the Atomic Energy Act of 1946, the responsibilities for all aspects of our nuclear energy related programs – not just nuclear weapons related – were invested in a civilian agency, the Atomic Energy Commission. The commission, itself, was comprised of five full-time civilian presidential appointees and a civilian General Manager who administered the day-to-day operations of four divisions: research, production, engineering and military applications. The Director of the Division of Military Application was required to be a serving member of the armed forces, and the Act established a Military Liaison Committee, comprised of Pentagon representatives, whose function was to provide the AEC its military requirements. Finally, the Act established the truly extraordinary Joint [House-Senate] Committee on Atomic Energy, endowed with both authorization and appropriation responsibilities. The Act further authorized the President to direct the AEC "from time to time" to transfer AEC civilian-produced nuclear "weapons to the armed forces for such use as he deems necessary, in the interest of national defense." Under the Act, the AEC was to be the "exclusive owner" of its facilities, but could let contracts to operate them. Hence, the AEC continued to contract with the Board of Regents of the University of California to operate – essentially pro bono – the Los Alamos nuclear-weapons design laboratory, and persuaded AT&T to establish the Sandia Corporation, to operate – essentially pro bono – the AEC nuclear-weapons engineering facility in nearby Albuquerque. (Even the Soviet Union – to the extent it could – essentially replicated our model, with its important civilian control over all aspects of nuclear energy.) Enter the anti-everything-nuclear activist crowd and the Energy Reorganization Act of 1974, which abolished the AEC and the associated Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, established the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to "regulate" the bejezus out of the nuclear power industry, and established something called the Energy Research and Development Administration, which incorporated – in addition to programs to develop energy-efficient refrigerators – nuclear weapons research, development, test and production programs. Well, it’s been all downhill since then. Now, when the Warsaw Pact disintegrated in 1989, President Bush the Elder unilaterally began to withdraw all our tactical nukes – originally developed and forward deployed to compensate for our perceived lack of manpower in a NATO-Warsaw Pact war in Europe – and return them to their civilian parents for dismantlement, recovery and eventual peaceful disposition of the fissile material. Soviet Union biggie Gorbachov, unilaterally, began doing the same. And under the so-called Nunn-Lugar Act of 1991, Congress even authorized Bush the Elder to assist the Russians – who were in the process of becoming custodians of all Soviet nuclear energy programs, both civilian and military – do the same. Now, Bush the Elder believed we still needed nukes, not nearly so many, but some new types of nukes for the Post-Cold War period. In the fall of 1991, two civilian nuclear-weapons scientists described four new types of nukes in "Countering the Threat of the Well-armed Tyrant." 10-ton-yield "micro-nukes," robust ground penetrating nukes to destroy underground bunkers 100-ton-yield "mini-nukes," to counter – exo-atmospherically – incoming nuclear warheads 1000-ton-yield "tiny-nukes," for "battlefield" use large-yield "EMP-nukes," for generating – exo-atmospherically – high power electromagnetic pulses But then the Clinton-Gore anti-everything-nuclear crowd came to power and began to not only get rid of our entire existing nuke stockpile, but attempted to ensure that we could never again design, build or test new nukes. For two years, until the Republicans took control of both Houses, the Democrat-controlled Congress did Clinton-Gore’s bidding on nukes. They even adopted a total prohibition against "research and development which could lead to the production by the United States of a low-yield nuclear weapon … [that is] a nuclear weapon that has a yield of less than five kilotons." But, last October, then Bush-Cheney Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, in a key speech before the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, announced he was setting up a study group under former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger to make recommendations about the future goals of our nuclear-weapons programs and about who ought to be charge of implementing those goals. Gates claimed that the United States ceased developing new (or improved) nukes in the 1980s and ceased producing nukes (or the makings thereof) altogether in the 1990s, and has conducted no "full-up" tests – proof of concept, vulnerability, survivability or safety – since 1992. Of course, as a former CIA Director, Gates knew the same claims could be made about Russia’s nuke programs. Yet Gates went on to claim that "Currently, the United States is the only declared nuclear power that is neither modernizing its nuclear arsenal nor has the capability to produce a new nuclear warhead. The United Kingdom and France have programs to maintain their deterrent capabilities. China and Russia have embarked on ambitious paths to design and field new weapons. To be blunt, there is absolutely no way we can maintain a credible deterrent and reduce the number of weapons in our stockpile without either resorting to testing our stockpile or pursuing a modernization program. …" "Let me be clear: The program we propose is not about new capabilities – suitcase bombs or bunker-busters or tactical nukes. It is about safety, security, and reliability. It is about the future credibility of our strategic deterrent. And it deserves urgent attention. We must take steps to transform from an aging Cold War nuclear weapons complex that is too large and too expensive, to a smaller, less costly, but modern enterprise that can meet our nation’s nuclear security needs for the future." Okay, is beginning to take urgently those steps recommended by now Obama-Biden’s Secretary of Defense Gates what the Obama-Biden OMB has just directed DOE and DOD to do? Read more by Gordon PratherSpeaking with CNN’s Anderson Cooper this week in South Carolina, Sen. Ted Cruz weighed in on the Apple vs. FBI fight, taking the side of the government (the relevant part begins around the 6:20 mark): “Any time you’re dealing with security and civil liberties, you’ve got to balance them both,” he began, admitting that Apple has a “serious argument.” What’s interesting is that—unlike, say, Donald Trump, who joined the likes of Sen. Tom Cotton and the White House in slamming Apple’s decision—Cruz then went on to oppose the “backdoor” to encrypted devices that many federal agencies, like the FBI, want to mandate. Apple “should not be forced to put a backdoor in every cell phone everyone has,” Cruz said, because “that creates a real security exposure for hackers, for cybercriminals, to break into our cell phones. I think Apple has the right side on the global ‘Don’t make us do this to every cell phone on the market'” argument. So far, so good. In fact, that’s almost exactly what Apple CEO Tim Cook argued in his letter announcing his intention to fight the FBI’s order. Cook said he opposed creating a backdoor because it would undermine “decades of security advancements that protect our customers—including tens of millions of American citizens—from sophisticated hackers and cybercriminals.” But then Cruz continues: “I think law enforcement has the better argument. This concerns the phone of one of the San Bernadino hackers, and for law enforcement to get a judicial search order, that’s consistent with the Fourth Amendment.” “That’s how the Bill of Rights operates,” he went on. “To say, ‘Apple, open this phone’—not Anderson’s phone, not everyone’s here—’open this phone.'” Cooper objects, noting that the crux of Apple’s argument is that once they write this unlocking code for one phone, it can be used on other phones, too. “But they wouldn’t have to put it on everyone’s phone,” Cruz responds, reiterating that he supports the FBI. That exchange reveals that Cruz does not understand the technology involved here. While Cook did argue in his letter that what the FBI wants is like a backdoor, it is not itself a backdoor. It’s more like a key—which is to say, it’s not something that would be added to everyone’s phones the way Cruz describes. It’s something the government (or any other unsavory character who got ahold of the code) could retroactively apply to any compatible iPhone to break the encryption. Again, think universal key, not built-in backdoor. If Cruz understood that distinction, I can’t help but think he’d change his position on this fight. Once created, the code Apple doesn’t want to make can and will be used in a “global,” “every cell phone on the market” kind of way. That’s Apple’s central objection here. This is fundamentally not about just the one phone, as Cruz seems to believe. “The government suggests this tool could only be used once, on one phone,” Cook explained. “But that’s simply not true. Once created, the technique could be used over and over again, on any number of devices.” “In the physical world, it would be the equivalent of a master key, capable of opening hundreds of millions of locks — from restaurants and banks to stores and homes,” Cook added. “No reasonable person would find that acceptable.” Given his opposition to a backdoor mandate, I hope that Cruz wouldn’t find it acceptable either if he better understood what exactly the FBI wants.PROFILE A centre back who had a standout college career at St. John’s University, Tim Parker was selected by Whitecaps FC with the 13th overall pick in the 2015 MLS SuperDraft. He helped lead St. John’s to three straight NCAA Tournament appearances (2011-2013) and the 2011 Big East Tournament title. As a rookie, Parker emerged as a reliable starter for the Whitecaps FC backline that tied for a league-best in clean sheets (13) and goals conceded (36) in 2015. He was ranked 18th on the MLS 24 Under 24 in 2016, and finished the season in the top five across the league in clearances and blocks. In 2017, Parker was named the 2017 WFC Jock MacDonald Unsung Hero. MAJOR LEAGUE SO
than oneself: "Uncle, please give way". Use of double and triple for numbers occurring twice or three times in succession (this is also in usage in the UK), especially for a phone number: for example, a phone number 2233344 would be pronounced as ”double two, triple three, double four”; however the phone number 2222555 would be pronounced as ”double two, double two, triple five”. and for numbers occurring twice or three times in succession (this is also in usage in the UK), especially for a phone number: for example, a phone number 2233344 would be pronounced as ”double two, triple three, double four”; however the phone number 2222555 would be pronounced as ”double two, double two, triple five”. Shopper means a shopping bag, rather than a person who is shopping, the latter is referred to as a customer. means a shopping bag, rather than a person who is shopping, the latter is referred to as a customer. Petrol Pump — This term used to refer to a gas station. — This term used to refer to a gas station. Opening/closing an object refers to turning something on or off; this is due to the verbs for to open and to close being the same as the verbs for to turn on and to turn off in Urdu and other Pakistani languages. refers to turning something on or off; this is due to the verbs for to open and to close being the same as the verbs for to turn on and to turn off in Urdu and other Pakistani languages. Light Gone – This refers to the electric power outage from the electric supply company. – This refers to the electric power outage from the electric supply company. Number – Often used in place of "marks" in an exam (used as both singular and plural without s while speaking in mixed English-Urdu). – Often used in place of "marks" in an exam (used as both singular and plural without while speaking in mixed English-Urdu). His/her meter has turned or -is high means that the person has lost his/her temper. Usually used for a sudden outburst, one which is construed as unreasonable. or means that the person has lost his/her temper. Usually used for a sudden outburst, one which is construed as unreasonable. Got no lift – received no attention or assistance from someone. – received no attention or assistance from someone. In-Charge – a casual as well as formal title given to unit, group or division heads. – a casual as well as formal title given to unit, group or division heads. Same to same – an expression to indicate something is exactly the same to some other thing. – an expression to indicate something is exactly the same to some other thing. On parade – being at work or at a set activity. Usually (though not always) in the context of starting something for the first time. For example, I have been hired by the company, on parade from next Monday. – being at work or at a set activity. Usually (though not always) in the context of starting something for the first time. For example,. Out of station – out of town – out of town Become a direct Sergeant – be promoted out of turn/ given responsibility and authority very early. Often in the context that a person is out of his/her depth. For example, no wonder that team has failed so badly, leader was a direct Sergeant. Usually "Sergeant" is replaced by "Havildar" the equivalent rank in the Pakistan Army. Also used for upwardly mobile, ambitious or nouveau riche. – be promoted out of turn/ given responsibility and authority very early. Often in the context that a person is out of his/her depth. For example,. Usually "Sergeant" is replaced by "Havildar" the equivalent rank in the Pakistan Army. Also used for upwardly mobile, ambitious or nouveau riche. Miss is used to address or refer to female teachers, whatever their marital status, e.g. Yes, I have done my homework, Miss. Less commonly used to refer to women colleagues or subordinates.(this usage is also common in the UK) is used to address or refer to female teachers, whatever their marital status, e.g. Less commonly used to refer to women colleagues or subordinates.(this usage is also common in the UK) Madam is used to address and refer to females in positions of authority, usually a superior, e.g. Madam has ordered me to get the figures for last years sales. Can also be used as a noun, e.g. She is the madam of that department meaning she is the head of the department, without it being derogatory. is used to address and refer to females in positions of authority, usually a superior, e.g. Can also be used as a noun, e.g. meaning she is the head of the department, without it being derogatory. Sir is used for a male superior, often combined with their name or used as a noun. E.g. Is Sir in? or Sir Raza wants to see you in his office as soon as possible. is used for a male superior, often combined with their name or used as a noun. E.g. or. Well left – avoided artfully, often a tricky situation; from cricket, the term "well left" is applied when a batsman chose not to play a potentially dangerous delivery, e.g. I well left that offer, it could have caused many problems. – avoided artfully, often a tricky situation; from cricket, the term "well left" is applied when a batsman chose not to play a potentially dangerous delivery, e.g. Threw/Received a googly – an unexpected situation arose, a person was surprised, often unpleasantly, e.g. had just settled down and then got the googly about the transfer. From googly, a delivery in cricket. – an unexpected situation arose, a person was surprised, often unpleasantly, e.g.. From googly, a delivery in cricket. Yorker – a sudden, dangerous and potentially devastating situation; similar use to googly, but usually has a certain amount of danger attached to it. My mother's heart attack while we were hiking in the mountains hit like a yorker, we were far from any medical help. Also used in a similar manner; bouncer. All three terms are derived from actual cricket deliveries, cricket being a popular sport in the country. – a sudden, dangerous and potentially devastating situation; similar use to googly, but usually has a certain amount of danger attached to it.. Also used in a similar manner;. All three terms are derived from actual cricket deliveries, cricket being a popular sport in the country. Hit middle stump – did an action in such a manner that there is little room for further action, or a decisive blow, e.g. Really hit middle stump last year on that contract. Also derived from cricket. – did an action in such a manner that there is little room for further action, or a decisive blow, e.g.. Also derived from cricket. Master Sahib, contracted to Ma'Sahib – used to refer to a master craftsman. The term is now however used more frequently to refer to tailors and carpenters. , contracted to – used to refer to a master craftsman. The term is now however used more frequently to refer to tailors and carpenters. Drinking a cigarette/cigar – smoking a cigarette. This is due to the verbs for smoking being the same as the verbs for drinking in Urdu and other Pakistani languages. – smoking a cigarette. This is due to the verbs for smoking being the same as the verbs for drinking in Urdu and other Pakistani languages. Elder – used as a comparative adjective in the sense of older. For example, "I am elder to you", instead of "I am older than you." – used as a comparative adjective in the sense of. For example, "I am elder to you", instead of "I am older than you." Even – as well/also/too : "Even I didn't know how to do it." This usage of even is borrowed from native grammatical structure. – : "Even I didn't know how to do it." This usage of is borrowed from native grammatical structure. Graduation – completion of a bachelor's degree (as in the UK): "I did my graduation at Presidency College" ("I earned my bachelor's degree at Presidency College"), whereas in the United States it refers to completion of Highschool, Master's or PhD as well. [ dubious discuss ] – completion of a bachelor's degree (as in the UK): "I did my graduation at Presidency College" ("I earned my bachelor's degree at Presidency College"), whereas in the United States it refers to completion of Highschool, Master's or PhD as well. Paining – hurting would be correct in Standard American and British: "My head is paining." – would be correct in Standard American and British: "My head is paining." Shirtings and suitings – the process of making such garments; a suffix in names of shops specialising in men's formal/business wear. – the process of making such garments; a suffix in names of shops specialising in men's formal/business wear. Timings – hours of operation; scheduled time, such as office timings or train timings, as opposed to the standard usage such as "The timing of his ball delivery is very good." – hours of operation; scheduled time, such as or, as opposed to the standard usage such as "The timing of his ball delivery is very good." Gentry – generalised term for social class – not specifically 'high social class'. The use of 'good', 'bad', 'high' and 'low' prefixed to 'gentry' is common. – generalised term for social class – not specifically 'high social class'. The use of 'good', 'bad', 'high' and 'low' prefixed to 'gentry' is common. mutton – goat meat instead of sheep meat. Words unique to (i.e. not generally well known outside South Asia) and/or popular in Pakistan include those in the following by no means exhaustive list: batchmate or batch-mate (not classmate, but a schoolmate of the same grade) or (not classmate, but a schoolmate of the same grade) compass box for a box holding mathematical instruments like compasses, divider, scale, protractor etc.; also widely referred to as a "geometry box" for a box holding mathematical instruments like compasses, divider, scale, protractor etc.; also widely referred to as a "geometry box" cousin-brother (male first cousin) & cousin-sister (female first cousin) (male first cousin) & (female first cousin) overhead bridge (bridge meant for pedestrians) (bridge meant for pedestrians) flyover (overpass or an over-bridge over a section of road or train tracks) (overpass or an over-bridge over a section of road or train tracks) godown (warehouse) (warehouse) godman somewhat pejorative word for a person who claims to be divine or who claims to have supernatural powers somewhat pejorative word for a person who claims to be divine or who claims to have supernatural powers gully to mean a narrow lane or alley (from the Hindi word "gali" meaning the same). to mean a narrow lane or alley (from the Hindi word "gali" meaning the same). long-cut (the opposite of "short-cut", in other words, taking the longest route). (the opposite of "short-cut", in other words, taking the longest route). mugging/cramming or mugging up (memorising, usually referring to learning "by rote," as used in British English and having nothing to do with street crime, that the expression might also mean in British/American English). or (memorising, usually referring to learning "by rote," as used in British English and having nothing to do with street crime, that the expression might also mean in British/American English). nose-screw (woman's nose-ring) (woman's nose-ring) prepone (The "opposite" of postpone, that is to change a meeting to be earlier). Many dictionaries have added this word. (The "opposite" of postpone, that is to change a meeting to be earlier). Many dictionaries have added this word. tiffin box for lunch box. The word is also commonly used to mean a between-meal snack. for lunch box. The word is also commonly used to mean a between-meal snack. BHK is real-estate terminology for "Bedroom, Hall and Kitchen", used almost exclusively in housing size categorisation. "Hall" refers to the living room, which is highlighted separately from other rooms. For instance, a 2BHK apartment has a total of three rooms – two bedrooms and a living room. co-brother indicates relationship between two men who are married to sisters, as in "He is my co-brother" is real-estate terminology for "Bedroom, Hall and Kitchen", used almost exclusively in housing size categorisation. "Hall" refers to the living room, which is highlighted separately from other rooms. For instance, a 2BHK apartment has a total of three rooms – two bedrooms and a living room. co-inlaws indicates relationship between two sets of parents whose son and daughter are married, as in "Our co-inlaws live in Karachi." co-sister indicates relationship between two women who are married to brothers, as in "She is my co-sister" indicates relationship between two sets of parents whose son and daughter are married, as in "Our co-inlaws live in Karachi." boss is a term used to refer to a male stranger such as shopkeeper: "Boss, what is the cost of that pen?" is a term used to refer to a male stranger such as shopkeeper: "Boss, what is the cost of that pen?" vote-bank is a term commonly used during the elections in Pakistan, implying a particular bloc or community of people inclined to cast their votes for a political party that promises to deliver policies favouring them. is a term commonly used during the elections in Pakistan, implying a particular bloc or community of people inclined to cast their votes for a political party that promises to deliver policies favouring them. pant – Trousers – Trousers Mess – A dining hall, especially used by students at a dormitory. "Mess" is also used in reference to eateries catering primarily to a working class population. Originated from the military term of similar meaning. – A dining hall, especially used by students at a dormitory. "Mess" is also used in reference to eateries catering primarily to a working class population. Originated from the military term of similar meaning. Eve teasing – Verbal sexual harassment of women. – Verbal sexual harassment of women. "Where are you put up?" means 'Where are you currently staying?". means 'Where are you currently staying?". " Out of station ": "out of town". This phrase has its origins in the posting of army officers to particular "stations" during the days of the East India Company. ": "out of town". This phrase has its origins in the posting of army officers to particular "stations" during the days of the East India Company. " acting pricey ": playing "hard to get", being snobbish. ": playing "hard to get", being snobbish. " pass out " is meant to graduate, as in " I passed out of the university in 1995 ". In American/British English, this usage is limited to graduating out of military academies. " is meant to graduate, as in " ". In American/British English, this usage is limited to graduating out of military academies. " tight slap " to mean "hard slap". " to mean "hard slap". Time-pass – Doing something for leisure but with no intention or target/satisfaction, procrastination, pastime. – Doing something for leisure but with no intention or target/satisfaction, procrastination, pastime. Time-waste – Something that is a waste of time; procrastination. Presumably not even useful for leisure. – Something that is a waste of time; procrastination. Presumably not even useful for leisure. Pindrop silence – Extreme silence (quiet enough to hear a pin drop). – Extreme silence (quiet enough to hear a pin drop). chargesheet: n. formal charges filed in a court; v. to file charges against someone in court n. formal charges filed in a court; v. to file charges against someone in court redressal: n. redress, remedy, reparation "Hill Station" – mountain resort. "stepney" refers to a spare tyre. The word is a genericised trademark originating from the Stepney Spare Motor Wheel, itself named after Stepney Street, in Llanelli, Wales. [15] Cooling glasses – sunglasses "cent per cent", "cent percent" – "100 percent/100 per cent" as in "He got cent per cent in math/maths". "loose motion" – diarrhoea " expire " – To die, especially in reference to one's family member. " – To die, especially in reference to one's family member. " bunking " – To skip class without permission. " – To skip class without permission. " carrying " – to be pregnant, as in "She is carrying". " – to be pregnant, as in "She is carrying". "pressurise" – to put pressure on someone, to influence. "club" or "clubbing" – To merge or put two things together. "Just club it together.” "cantonment" – permanent military installation. "taking an exam/test" as opposed to "taking/writing an exam", a phrase more commonly used in the US and Canada. ("giving a test" is used to refer to a person who is going to conduct the test) "copy" is used for notebook. "lady finger" is used for okra. Words which are considered archaic in some varieties of English, but are still in use in Pakistani English: Curd – yogurt – Dicky/Dickey/Digy – the trunk of a car. [16] – the trunk of a car. In tension – being concerned or nervous. Phrased another way, "He is taking too much tension". Found in eighteenth-century British English. [17] – being concerned or nervous. Phrased another way, "He is taking too much tension". Found in eighteenth-century British English. Into – multiplied by, as in 2 into 2 equals 4, rather than 2 times 2 is 4, which is more common in other varieties of English. The use of into dates back to the fifteenth century, when it had been common in British English. [18] –, as in, rather than, which is more common in other varieties of English. The use of dates back to the fifteenth century, when it had been common in British English. ragging – hazing (US). – hazing (US). Use of thrice, meaning "three times", is common in Pakistani English. , meaning "three times", is common in Pakistani English. Use of the phrases like nothing or like anything to express intensity. For example, "These people will cheat you like anything". Such usage was part of colloquial English language in seventeenth century Britain and America. [19] [20] or to express intensity. For example, "These people will cheat you like anything". Such usage was part of colloquial English language in seventeenth century Britain and America. Word pairs "up to" and "in spite" compounded to "upto" and "inspite" respectively. Over – to speak frankly. "Don't be too over with me." – to speak frankly. "Don't be too over with me." Weeping – crying. Numbering system [ edit ] The Pakistani numbering system is preferred for digit grouping. When written in words, or when spoken, numbers less than 100,000 are expressed just as they are in Standard English. Numbers including and beyond 100,000 are expressed in a subset of the Pakistani numbering system. Thus, the following scale is used: In digits (Standard English) In digits (Pakistani English) In words (Standard English) In words (Pakistani English) 10 ten 100 one hundred 1,000 one thousand 10,000 ten thousand 100,000 100,000 one hundred thousand one lac/lakh (from lākh لاکھ ) 1,000,000 1,000,000 one million ten lac/lakh (from lākh لاکھ ) 10,000,000 10,000,000 ten million one crore (from karoṛ کروڑ ) 1,000,000,000 1,000,000,000 one billion one arab (from arab ارب ) 100,000,000,000 100,000,000,000 one hundred billion one kharab (from kharab کھرب ) Larger numbers are generally expressed as multiples of the above.[21][22] Medical terms [ edit ] Often the cause of undesirable confusion. Viral Fever : Influenza : Influenza Sugar : Diabetes : Diabetes Jaundice : Acute Hepatitis. While standard medical terminology uses jaundice for a symptom (yellow discolouration of skin), in Pakistan the term is used to refer to the illness in which this symptom is most common. : Acute Hepatitis. While standard medical terminology uses jaundice for a symptom (yellow discolouration of skin), in Pakistan the term is used to refer to the illness in which this symptom is most common. Allopathy, used by homoeopaths to refer to conventional medicine. Food [ edit ] Brinjal : aubergines / eggplant : aubergines / eggplant Capsicum : called chili pepper, red or green pepper, or sweet pepper in the UK; capsicum in Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India; bell pepper in the US, Canada, and the Bahamas; and paprika in some other countries. : called chili pepper, red or green pepper, or sweet pepper in the UK; capsicum in Australia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and India; bell pepper in the US, Canada, and the Bahamas; and paprika in some other countries. Curds : Yogurt : Yogurt Sooji : Semolina : Semolina Pulses, dal : pulses, e.g. lentils , : pulses, e.g. lentils Karahi, kadai : wok , : wok Sago : tapioca, Yuca in US : tapioca, Yuca in US Ladyfinger, bhindi : okra : okra Sabzi: greens, green vegetables See also [ edit ] References [ edit ] Further reading [ edit ]"Bart Sells His Soul" is the fourth episode of The Simpsons' seventh season. It first aired on the Fox network in the United States on October 8, 1995. In the episode, while being punished for playing a prank at church, Bart declares that there is no such thing as a soul and to prove it he sells his to Milhouse for $5 in the form of a piece of paper with "Bart Simpson's soul" written on it. Lisa warns that Bart will regret this decision, and Bart soon experiences strange changes in his life. Thinking he has really lost his soul, he becomes desperate to get it back. Lisa eventually obtains it and returns it to a relieved Bart. "Bart Sells His Soul" was written by Greg Daniels, who was inspired by an experience from his youth where he had purchased a bully's soul. Director Wesley Archer and his team of animators visited Chili's for examples to use in Moe's family restaurant. The episode includes cultural references to the song "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida", by Iron Butterfly, Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, and a parody of the book Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret., by Judy Blume. Writers from the fields of religion, philosophy, popular culture, and psychology cited the episode in books discussing The Simpsons and the show's approach to the nature of the soul. The episode was positively received by the media, and is regarded as one of the series' best. The creative team of The Simpsons puts the episode among the top five best episodes of the series, and series creator Matt Groening cited "Bart Sells His Soul" as one of his favorite episodes. It has been used by secondary schools in religious education courses as a teaching tool. Plot [ edit ] At church, as a punishment for changing the opening hymn to "In the Garden of Eden" by I. Ron Butterfly, Reverend Lovejoy makes Bart (and Milhouse, for snitching under pressure) clean the pipes of the organ. During a discussion between the two boys, Bart proclaims there is no such thing as a soul, and for $5, agrees to sell his to Milhouse in the form of a piece of paper reading "Bart Simpson's soul". Lisa warns Bart that he will regret selling his soul, but he dismisses her fears. Soon, Bart begins to suspect he really did lose his soul after experiencing unusual phenomena, such as automatic doors refusing to open for him, and sets out to retrieve it. Bart attempts to get his soul back from Milhouse, who refuses to return it for less than $50. After having a nightmare and being taunted by Lisa, Bart again desperately tries to persuade Milhouse to return the paper. However, Milhouse tells Bart that he traded the paper to Comic Book Guy at the Android's Dungeon. The following morning, Comic Book Guy tells Bart that he no longer has the piece of paper but refuses to reveal to whom he sold it. Bart walks home in the rain, then in his room he prays to God for his soul. Suddenly, a piece of paper with the words "Bart Simpson's soul" floats down from above. Bart discovers that Lisa had purchased the piece of paper. While she explains philosophers' opinions on the human soul, Bart happily eats up the piece of paper. Realizing how uninterested he is in her lecture, Lisa tells him that she hoped he learned his lesson from this. At nighttime, Bart is happy in dreamland where he and his soul are pulling their usual shenanigans in their race to reach the emerald city first. In the subplot, Moe decides to expand his customer base by turning his tavern into a family restaurant. The stress of running the business by himself ultimately unnerves him, and he soon snaps at a little girl. The horrified customers abandon the restaurant, forcing Moe's to revert to a run-down tavern. Production [ edit ] "Bart Sells His Soul" was the second episode to have Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein as executive producers. Oakley and Weinstein wanted to start the season with episodes that had an emotional bias in an effort to center the Simpson family.[3] The episode was written by Greg Daniels, who originally had an idea for a plot that dealt with racism in Springfield. The writers did not think The Simpsons was the right forum for it, so Daniels suggested the idea of selling someone's soul, which originated in his childhood.[3] In high school, Daniels encouraged a bully to sell him his soul for 50 cents, and then convinced classmates to frighten the bully into buying his soul back for an inflated price. Daniels repeated this ploy, but stopped when he realized that the only other person in history who has profited off others' souls was Satan, and that "scared" him.[4] In the opening scene of the episode, the congregation of the First Church of Springfield are tricked into singing "In a Gadda Da Vida" by Iron Butterfly. Daniels had originally intended for the song to be "Jesus He Knows Me" by British rock band Genesis, but the producers were unable to obtain the rights for it to be featured in the episode.[4] The episode was directed by Wesley Archer. Archer and his team of animators went to the restaurant chain Chili's to get inspiration for the background designs of Moe's family restaurant. He said it was "quite a task" to transform Moe's Tavern into a family-oriented establishment. Archer added that he was not "quite happy" with the result, and that they could have designed it "a little better".[5] Weinstein recalled that there was contention between the animators about the way Moe looked in the episode. Moe's original design includes a missing tooth, but Weinstein and Oakley felt that it did not "look right" because Moe was such a prominent character in the episode.[3] Archer showed the original design of Moe from the first season to the show runners, and said: "Here, look. He's got a missing tooth!", but the scenes that had Moe with a missing tooth in them were still reanimated.[6] Archer was disappointed with the dream sequence in which Bart sees his friends playing with their souls. Archer said that he had forgotten to tell the animators to make the souls transparent, so they were painted blue instead.[5] Themes [ edit ] Kurt M. Koenigsberger comments in Leaving Springfield that "a good deal of enjoyment" is to be had from the episode, due to "the exposure of the hypocrisy behind 'the finance of salvation' and the ambivalent operations of the commercial world".[7] Don Cupitt, a fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, believes that when Lisa lectures Bart about the soul, she "shows a degree of theological sophistication which is simply not tolerated in Britain."[8] Paul Bloom and David Pizarro wrote in The Psychology of The Simpsons that although Lisa does show "healthy religious skepticism" she still believes in an eternal soul.[9] However, Lisa tells Bart at the end of the episode, "some philosophers believe that no one is born with a soul, you have to earn one through suffering".[9] Bloom and Pizarro acknowledge: "Indeed, some philosophers and theologians say that without belief in a soul, one cannot make sense of the social concepts on which we rely, such as personal responsibility and freedom of the will."[9] M. Keith Booker cites the episode in Drawn to Television, while discussing The Simpsons' treatment of religion.[10] Booker cites a scene from the episode where Milhouse asks Bart what religions have to gain by lying about concepts such as the existence of a soul – and then the scene cuts to Reverend Lovejoy counting his money; Booker believes that this implies that religions create mythologies so that they can gain money from followers. He juxtaposes this with Bart's realization later in the episode that "life suddenly feels empty and incomplete" without a soul, which suggests "either that the soul is real or it is at least a useful fiction".[10] Mark I. Pinsky and Samuel F. Parvin discuss the episode in their book The Gospel According to the Simpsons: Leader's Guide for Group Study, and use examples from it to stimulate discussion among youth about the nature of the soul.[11] Pinsky and Parvin note Bart's statement to Milhouse from the beginning of the episode: "Soul — come on, Milhouse, there's no such thing as a soul. It's just something they made up to scare kids, like the Boogie Man or Michael Jackson", and then suggest questions to ask students, including whether they know individuals that agree with Bart, and their views on the existence of a soul.[12] In Planet Simpson, Chris Turner quotes Bart's revelation to Lisa that he sold his soul to Milhouse for five dollars and used the money to buy sponges shaped like dinosaurs. After Lisa criticizes Bart for selling his soul, Bart responds: "Poor gullible Lisa. I'll keep my crappy sponges, thanks." Turner comments: "Here Bart is the epitome of the world-weary hipster, using the degraded language of modern marketing to sell off the most sacred parts of himself because he knows that some cheap sponge is more real, hence more valuable, than even the loftiest of abstract principles." Cultural references [ edit ] On the DVD audio commentary for the episode, writer Greg Daniels cited Martin Scorsese's 1985 film After Hours as an influence on Bart's night-time trek to retrieve his soul from Milhouse, only to experience a series of unusual encounters.[4] Reverend Lovejoy leads his congregation in a hymnal version of the song "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida", by Iron Butterfly,[14] titled "In the Garden of Eden", by "I. Ron Butterfly".[15][16] During an argument between Lisa and Bart, while discussing the relationship between laughter and the soul, Lisa quotes Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, and Bart responds "I am familiar with the works of Pablo Neruda."[7] Kurt M. Koenigsberger comments in Leaving Springfield: "While Bart may be familiar with the canon of Chilean poetry, the joke takes its force in part from the probability that The Simpsons' viewers are not."[7] Bart begins a prayer to God with "Are you there, God? It's me, Bart Simpson". This is a parody of the book Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret., by Judy Blume.[7] Reception [ edit ] In its original broadcast, "Bart Sells His Soul" finished 43rd in the ratings for the week of October 2–8, 1995, with a Nielsen rating of 8.8, equivalent to approximately 8.4 million viewing households. It was the fourth highest-rated show on the Fox network that week after The X-Files, Melrose Place, and Beverly Hills, 90210.[17] In July 2007, an article in the San Mateo County Times notes that "Bart Sells His Soul" is seen as one of "the most popular episodes in 'Simpsons' history".[18] Noel Holston of the Star Tribune highlighted the episode in the paper's "Critic's choice" section.[19] The Intelligencer Journal described "Bart Sells His Soul" as "a particularly good episode" of The Simpsons.[20] The Lansing State Journal highlighted the episode in the season seven DVD release, along with the conclusion of "Who Shot Mr. Burns" and "The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular".[21] The Sunday Herald Sun called it one of the "show's most memorable episodes",[22] as did The Courier Mail.[23] "Undoubtedly the most disturbing episode of the series... more frightening than funny.... An illustration of just how far the series could go by this point." —Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood[2] The Aberdeen Press & Journal described the episode as "one of the darkest episodes of the Simpsons".[24] In their section on the episode in the book I Can't Believe It's a Bigger and Better Updated Unofficial Simpsons Guide, Warren Martyn and Adrian Wood comment: "Undoubtedly the most disturbing episode of the series, with Bart's nightmare of losing his soul — illustrated by a macabre playground where all the souls of his playmates are visible, and his is tagging along with Milhouse — more frightening than funny.... An illustration of just how far the series could go by this point."[2] In April 2003, the episode was listed by The Simpsons creative team as among the top five best episodes of the series, including "Last Exit to Springfield", "Cape Feare", "22 Short Films About Springfield", and "Homer at the Bat".[25][26] In a 2005 interview The Simpsons creator Matt Groening commented "I don't have a single favorite. There's a bunch I really like", but cited "Bart Sells His Soul" and "Homer's Enemy" as among episodes he loves.[27] Bart's voice actress Nancy Cartwright stated "Bart Sells His Soul" is one of her top three episodes together with "Lisa's Substitute" and "Bart the Mother".[28] Lisa's voice actress Yeardley Smith stated in an interview that "Bart Sells His Soul" is one of her favorite episodes along with "Girly Edition".[29] The episode has been used in church courses about the nature of a soul in Connecticut, and in the United Kingdom,[30][31] and was shown by a minister in Scotland in one of his sermons.[32] A 2005 report on religious education in secondary schools, by the United Kingdom education regulator Office for Standards in Education, Children's Services and Skills (Ofsted), noted that the episode was being used as a teaching tool.[33] References [ edit ] BibliographyBut at the moment he told me he had found us a bed, although I knew I should be jumping for joy at this tiny strand of hope, I felt nothing but anger. “No. I don’t want to go. I just want to hold her, and comfort her. I don’t want tests, and tubes, and I don’t want them trying to resussitate her if it means she will just be really sick for her whole life. “ I had come to terms with her passing. In my mind it was a done deal. I had processed the self doubt, the anger and frustration, the utter disgust with my body that had always been so fit and strong and was now betraying me in the worst way possible. I was at peace, fragile though it was. But Dr Peters convinced us to give it a shot. So despite our reservations, we left the comfort of our hospital and my obstetrician. On the ambulance ride over I kept thinking about my son, and how he would have loved being in an ambulance. And something clicked. I don’t know what it was but I think of it now as instinct. A voice in my head, just like the one I had the night before the scan, told me it would be okay. I didn’t know how – if I would survive losing her, if she would survive, if I would be strong enough to cope if she was sick. But I just knew deep in my soul that it would be okay. In a year things would be better than they were right then. I said to Josh ‘It’s time for some positive thinking.” I did endure dozens of tests, scans and examinations. We had doctors tell us over and over again the odds at each gestational week and I set myself a goal of 28 weeks. Every test I was told I would never make it. At 24 weeks they told me I wouldn’t make 25, and at 25 weeks I wouldn’t make 26. Josh brought me in a calendar and I crossed off each day. I was away from my family, not allowed to leave my bed and awaiting an impending doom. So I kept myself busy crossing days off the calendar. When the doctors came in and said “How are you today?” I said “Still pregnant!” At 26 weeks the head of high-risk obstetrics came in to check on me. He smiled and said ‘We have no idea how you are still here. But you are. Every day her chances get 2-3% better. Every day counts.“ The day I went into labour the doctors assumed it was because of the bulging membranes identified on the scan. They were content to let
doc at George Washington University. But it’s certainly a less invasive technique than capturing, drugging, and collaring or tagging. Those processes—while they get you additional data, like health assessments and DNA samples—always carry the risk of injuring the animals or disrupting group dynamics. Lemurs aren’t the only animals getting the benefit of newer and better computer vision and artificial intelligence systems coming online right now. A group in Germany is starting to do similar facial recognition for chimpanzees. Ecologists in the Congo use computer vision to track zebras based on their unique stripes. And scientists at Dartmouth recently developed a pattern-matching algorithm called Wild-ID to monitor large migrations of wildebeest and giraffes in Tanzania. It works so well for giraffes that they’ve stopped capturing and tagging the animals, even as they conduct the largest-ever study of giraffe demographics. After the LemurFaceID paper came out, Anil Jain, one of the Michigan State collaborators, started getting emails from biologists all over the globe wanting to know if it was possible to make a system for them too. From grizzly bears in Montana to elephants in India, scientists are clamoring to get more cameras and more computers involved in counting, monitoring, and tracking their wild wards. For now, Jain isn’t taking on any new partnerships, but he’s optimistic about the potential for the field. “What we did with lemurs we did as a side project with no money,” he says. “But you could do a lot more with more time and resources.” Like say, an army of aerial drones all equipped with high-res cameras. Or a fleet of underwater robotstricked out with fish-cams. They sure beat a tackboard full of pins and Post-It notes.The Michigan Senate [official website] on Thursday passed a bill (SB 291) [text, PDF] that would compensate people who were wrongfully convicted of crimes once they are exonerated [Daily Tribune report]. SB 291, also known as the Wrongful Imprisonment Compensation Act, passed the Senate by a unanimous vote and will now go to the state’s House of Representatives. The goal of the bill is to eliminate an expensive and difficult legal battle to receive compensation for wrongful imprisonment. However, if a sentence for a separate crime related to the same event as the wrongful conviction is upheld, the bill is rendered inapplicable. SB 291 provides $50,000 for every year that someone was wrongfully incarcerated, but a separate claim must be made for compensation regarding any injuries suffered while in prison. This would make Michigan one of many states providing such assistance. The treatment of prisoners and prison reform [JURIST podcast] has been a matter of ongoing concern in the US, and the rights of convicted felons are an important part of the issue. In April US Attorney General Loretta Lynch said that states should make it easier for convicted felons to obtain state-issued identification cards upon their release from prison [JURIST report]. Also in April Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe restored the voting rights [JURIST report] of individuals who have completed the terms of incarceration and have been released from supervised probation or parole for any and all felony convictions. In March the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio and the Ohio Justice and Policy Center released a report [JURIST report] with recommendations on reforming the criminal justice system in Ohio, and one of the discussions focuses dealt with releasing innocent people. In February 2015 Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf declared a moratorium on the death penalty [JURIST report], citing inadequate procedures to protect the innocent as one of the major concerns.Your browser does not support HTML5 video tag.Click here to view original GIF Destiny's infamous loot cave is dead. But a cheeky developer has paid homage to the beloved engram-farming location with a game you can play right in your browser. Sure, other caves are being touted as successors to the magnetic exploit in Bungie's popular new shooter. You still need to fire up Destiny to get to those locations, though. However, for those times when you need to scratch your cave-shootin' itch away from home, you can play Daniel Rosas' Interactive Cave Shooting Simulator right in your browser. Granted it doesn't have any actual enemies or anything like that but, man, look all those engrams! This cave isn't stingy at all. Overall, the joke manages to be funny, despite clearly being a quick weekend's work.Siberian communists back in 1967 dreamed big, believing that by now we would have landed on Mars and established contacts with alien civilizations, a time capsule opened in Novosibirsk revealed. The retro-futuristic time capsule was placed in the city’s culture center 50 years ago to be opened in 2017 to mark the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Inside was a three-page letter outlining a vision of the future as seen by the Soviet people in 1967. What a bitter disappointment would have awaited the authors, had they lived to this day. Read more “We believe that you have masterfully outfitted our wonderful blue planet, the Earth, explored the Moon and landed on Mars, that you are continuing the exploration of space started by the people of the first half of the century and that your starships have been long prowling the Galaxy,” the message reads. That sets quite a few daunting tasks for us people of the future – and we've missed all the deadlines. Humans have only briefly visited the moon, and while Mars may be the matter of a decade if SpaceX is to be believed, establishing business with alien civilizations could prove a chore, given that we haven't met any so far. Again, sorry to the people of 1967, who wrote: “We believe you are negotiating cultural and scientific cooperation with representatives of other, extraterrestrial civilizations,” the letter reads. Hardly could the authors imagine that their addressees would not only fail to make enough breakthroughs in space exploration, but also witnesses the collapse of communist rule. “We know, our time is interesting, but yours is more interesting. We have built communism, and you are living under communism,” they wrote optimistically. At the ceremonial opening of the capsule, a minute of silence was held to honor the letter’s authors, none of which have lived to this day to see their communist dreams shattered. READ MORE: To heaven and beyond: Artist depicts bizarre Russian Orthodox space mission (IMAGES)NEW DELHI: Having won the last Lok Sabha encounter hands down, according prime challenger status to BJP and its PM candidate Narendra Modi does not seem easy for Congress Despite signs that the 2014 odds might be different, Congress remains cagey while taking on the Gujarat CM who loses no opportunity to lash out at the Congress leadership.As Modi steadily built up a frontrunner’s position over the past months, Congress switched between ignoring the saffron strongman and criticizing his failure to prevent the 2002 Gujarat riots.PM Manmohan Singh’s “Modi will be a disaster for India as PM” indictment seems one-off while Digvijaya Singh’s taunt over the CM’s marital status or foreign minister Salman Khurshid’s “impotent” dig highlight the inconsistency.Rahul Gandhi has restricted himself to criticizing Modi for being a ‘one-man show’ while reserving a sharper comment for RSS, which has been accused of being complicit in Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination.Even after several backroom strategy sessions, Congress has not quite closed in on Modi who derisively runs down Rahul as “shehzada” and urges the BJP cadre to keep anti-Congress sentiments inflamed till voting day. The thinking in Congress circles seems to be that despite the crowds and media attention, BJP’s prospects are restricted to a clutch of states where the saffron party hopes to do well. The rest is hype, due for a reality check.Going by this reasoning, BJP is realistically in the reckoning on around 230 seats in states like Rajasthan, Himachal, Uttarakhand, Punjab, MP, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Karnataka and Maharashtra.Uttar Pradesh is untested ground and BJP’s returns here are by no means a done deal, feel Congress managers involved in planning Rahul’s campaign pit stops.On the face of it, the logic seems alluring as it highlights BJP’s leap of faith in the Northeast, much of the east and south India. BJP will need a very high strike rate to reach the muchtalked about 200 seats, it is felt. Ignoring Modi or remaining in a reactive mode may give the Gujarati leader a chance to grab voters’ mind space as he hammers away at Congress for corruption, price rise and poor governance.Such a prospect worries some Congress leaders who feel there isn’t much use denying the threat posed by the BJP leader who must be vigorously opposed on all fronts before Modi’s perceived lead becomes unassailable.There are no easy answers to Congress’s dilemma as attacking Modi over alleged complicity in the 2002 riots has proved counterproductive in the past and lack of court strictures has emboldened his supporters. Some Congress leaders feel 2002 is Modi’s weakest link while others have sporadically sought to undercut his development record as oversold. But here too the “feku” line seems to have been junked somewhere on the way.Congress has often said Modi is an ‘I, me, myself’ act, not a team player. On Tuesday Rahul Gandhi fired a fresh salvo at Modi alluding to him as Hitler, a fascist, intolerant and uncaring of people’s views. Someone who is a know-it-all.PM Singh attacks Modi for “killing of innocents”, but Cong does not consistently stick to the refrain. Some leaders criticize Modi for 2002 but the effort is sporadic. Sonia has used the “khoon ki kheti” metaphor and Rahul has said BJP practises “khoon ki rajniti” Sexed up CV Cong leaders have dug up stats to argue that Gujarat is not shining, human indicators are poor. Modi has countered that with his claim of 24x7 power and farm growth Feku tactics Congress accuses Modi of being careless or deliberately inaccurate about history and politics, that he is distorting issues like Sardar Patel’s legacy. The Feku charge is not being pursued.Congress has targeted Modi over his personal life, including snoopgate. But snoopgate is going nowhere and foreign minister Salman Khurshid got a rap on the knuckles for his ‘impotent’ remark.Nagasaki before and after the bomb. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nagasaki_1945_-_Before_and_after_(adjusted).jpg Days after Hiroshima, a deadlier atomic bomb was bound for an armaments factory in Kokura - until bad weather forced a change of plan. In an extract from his new book, Nagasaki, Craig Collie gets inside the cockpit of the plane that dropped Fat Man. Born out of a small research programme, the Manhattan Project began in 1942 as a joint American-British-Canadian project, and was responsible for producing the atomic bomb. The bomb explodes over Nagasaki, Japan, August 9, 1945. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nagasakibomb.jpg A secret US government advisory group made recommendations for proper use of atomic weapons. It never questioned whether the bomb should be used on Japan, only where it should be dropped. The preference was for a large urban area with closely built wooden-frame buildings densely populated by Japanese civilians. The project's target committee recommended detonation at altitude to achieve maximum blast damage. Five cities were proposed as targets: Kyoto, Hiroshima, Yokohama, Kokura and Niigata. The armed forces were instructed to exclude these cities from conventional firebombing: the project director, General Leslie Groves of the US Army Corps of Engineers, and his team of scientists wanted a 'clean' background so the effect of the bomb could be easily assessed. They also wanted visual targeting without cloud cover so damage could be photographed. Henry Stimson, the US Secretary of War, was concerned that America's reputation for fair play might be damaged by targeting urban areas. General George Marshall had a similar view, believing the bomb should be used first on military targets and only later on large manufacturing areas after first warning the surrounding population to leave. Both men's views were ignored. People in Hiroshima became aware that their city was not being subjected to the incendiary attacks of other cities. A rumour spread that President Truman's mother had been imprisoned in Hiroshima Castle, that the American military had been instructed to spare the city. Groves's first choice was Kyoto. It was largely untouched by bombing and was psychologically important to the Japanese. Its surrounding mountains would focus the blast and thereby increase the bomb's destructive force. Stimson, who had visited Kyoto in the 1920s, knew its status as Japan's intellectual and cultural capital and considered its destruction to be barbaric. He argued for Kyoto to be dropped from the list and eventually won Truman over to his view. On July 25 1945 General Thomas Handy issued on their behalf an order to General Carl Spaatz, the Guam-based commander of US Army Strategic Air Forces, to 'deliver' the first'special bomb' as soon after August 3 as weather permitted visual targeting. The target was to be selected from a list of four: Hiroshima, Kokura, Niigata and, added that day, Nagasaki. The sub-committee had decided not to specify military-industrial areas as targets since they were scattered, and - apart from Kokura, which had a huge munitions factory in the middle of the city - generally on the suburban fringes. Aircrews were to select their own targets to maximise the effect on a city as a whole. The greatest impact would be achieved by aiming at the centre of a city, where the population was densest. It wasn't clear how the mass killing of civilians would drive the Japanese to capitulate. Japan's cities had been firebombed since March, setting a precedent for targeting non-combatants, without any surrender resulting. Stimson had to settle for persuading himself that the project was not intentionally targeting civilians, in the face of clear evidence to the contrary. Hiroshima, Monday August 6 1945 Little Boy took 43 seconds to fall from the B-29 Enola Gay, flying at 10,000m, to a preset detonation point 600m above the city. A crosswind caused the missile to drift 250m away from Aioi Bridge. It detonated instead over Shima Surgical Clinic. Working like a gun barrel, thousands of kilograms of high explosive propelled one piece of the unstable uranium isotope U-235 into another piece. A nuclear chain reaction was triggered when the two pieces pressure-welded to supercritical mass. The explosion had a force equal to 12,500 tonnes of TNT, and the temperature rocketed to more than a million degrees centigrade, igniting the air in an expanding giant fireball. At the point of explosion, energy was given off in the form of light, heat, radiation and pressure. The light sped outwards. A shock wave created by enormous pressure followed, moving out at about the speed of sound. In the centre of the city everything but reinforced concrete buildings disappeared in an instant, leaving a desert of clear-swept, charred remains. The blast wave shattered windows for 15km from the hypocentre - or, as it is more colloquially known, 'ground zero'. More than two thirds of Hiroshima's buildings were demolished or gutted, all windows, doors, sashes and frames ripped out. Hundreds of fires were ignited by the thermal pulse, generating a firestorm that rolled out for several kilometres. At least 80,000 people - about 30 per cent of Hiroshima's 250,000 population - were killed immediately. The figure is possibly nearer to 100,000; the exact number will never be known. At the instant of detonation, the forward cabin of Enola Gay lit up. Colonel Paul Tibbets, the commander of 509th Composite Group and the command pilot on the Hiroshima mission, felt a tingling in his teeth as the bomb's radiation interacted with the metal in his fillings. A pinpoint of purplish-red light kilometres below the B-29s expanded into a ball of purple fire and a swirling mass of flames and clouds. Hiroshima disappeared from sight under the churning flames and smoke. A white column of smoke emerged from the purple clouds, rose rapidly to 3,000m and bloomed into an immense mushroom. The co-pilot, Captain Robert Lewis, wrote in his log, 'My God, what have we done?' Marianas Islands, Tuesday August 7 1945 At the US Army Airforce base on the North Pacific island of Tinian bomb parts were being checked before they were installed in Fat Man's metal casing. On the neighbouring island of Saipan the US Office of War Information was designing leaflets calling on the Japanese to petition their emperor to end the war. It planned to airdrop 16 million leaflets on 47 Japanese cities over the next nine days. It said (in translation), 'TO THE JAPANESE PEOPLE: America asks that you take immediate heed of what we say on this leaflet. 'We are in possession of the most destructive explosive ever devised by man. A single one of our newly developed atomic bombs is actually the equivalent in explosive power to what 2,000 of our giant B-29s can carry on a single mission. This awful fact is one for you to ponder and we solemnly assure you it is grimly accurate. 'We have just begun to use this weapon against your homeland. If you still have any doubt, make inquiry as to what happened to Hiroshima when just one atomic bomb fell on that city. Before using this bomb to destroy every resource of the military by which they are prolonging this useless war, we ask that you now petition the Emperor to end the war. Our President has outlined for you the 13 consequences of an honourable surrender. We urge that you accept these consequences and begin the work of building a new, better and peace-loving Japan. 'You should take steps now to cease military resistance. Otherwise, we shall resolutely employ this bomb and all our other superior weapons to promptly and forcefully end the war. EVACUATE YOUR CITIES.' Tokyo, Wednesday August 8 1945 While the leaflet campaign began over Tokyo, the Japanese set out to block American propaganda broadcasts from Saipan, Manila and Okinawa. With army encouragement, newspapers and radio tried to nullify the message in the leaflets. An editorial in the Tokyo daily Asahi Shimbun ran the headline, strength in the citadel of the spirit. Regardless of the intensity of the bombing and the number of cities destroyed, it said, 'the foremost factor to decide the war is the will of the people to fight and how well they are united to fight… now we have to strengthen the citadel of the mind.' At the same time the government of Japan filed a protest through the Embassy of Switzerland in Tokyo against the government of the United States for its use of the new inhumane weapon. It was described as 'a new crime against the whole of humanity and civilisation'. The worst manifestation of the new weapon was only now becoming apparent. Radiation had been a marginal concern during the development phase of the atomic bomb. The physicist Dr Norman Ramsey, the head of the Los Alamos Laboratory team on Tinian, was surprised to hear that Tokyo Rose, the English language voice of Japan's propaganda broadcasts, was claiming large numbers were sick and dying in Hiroshima. They were reported as suffering from some unknown disease, not from burns from the bomb's blast. Reports of radiation sickness were appearing in the American press. The Manhattan Project's director of scientific research, J Robert Oppenheimer, told the Washing-ton Post on August 8 that there would be little radiation on the ground at Hiroshima and it would decay rapidly. He continued to hold this view long after the war, despite evidence to the contrary. The Manhattan Project's official assessment summed it up: 'No lingering toxic effects are expected in the area over which the bomb has been used. The bomb is detonated in combat at such a height above the ground as to give the maximum blast effect against structures and to disseminate the radioactive products as a cloud. On account of the height of the explosion, practically all of the radioactive products are carried upward as a column of hot air and dispersed harmlessly over a wide area… In the very unlikely and unanticipated case that these radioactive particles should be suddenly precipitated to the ground, the amount of radiation could be very high but would remain so for only a short period of time.' The report doesn't say what it considers a'short period of time'. The uncertainty is consistent with the recollection of Stimson's undersecretary of war, John J McCloy. 'When the bomb was used, before it was used and at the time it was used, we had no basic concept of the damage it would do.' Tinian Island, Wednesday August 8 1945, pm The hook of an overhead crane was slipped carefully into a metal loop on Fat Man's bulbous body. The fully armed weapon was winched gingerly and carried sideways like an abattoir carcase out of the shed. It was lowered on to a transport dolly, sitting close to the ground on large rubber tyres. Technicians covered Fat Man with a tarpaulin. A prime mover pulled it across the asphalt, escorted by armed military police, photographers and technicians. Travelling slowly but smoothly for more than a kilometre, the cortege made its way to a floodlit loading pit. The dolly was wheeled on tracks over a three-metre pit. A hydraulic lift raised the bomb and its detachable cradle so the crew could wheel the dolly away. The tracks were removed and the bomb rotated 90 degrees and lowered into the pit. It was almost 10pm. The B-29 Bockscar was towed alongside the loading pit. With its pitside landing gear run on to a turntable, the bomber was positioned over the pit, its forward bomb doors open. The hydraulic system again whined into action and Fat Man rose to a point just below the open doors. A plumb line enabled the bomb's metal loop to be lined up accurately. With little clearance from the plane's catwalks, this was a delicate operation. With a shackle locked on to the bomb, the live weapon was cautiously winched upwards into the plane. A single shackle held the bomb and the adjustable sway braces bearing on it. Bockscar was approaching'mission-ready' status. At 11pm the crew members of Mission No 16 dropped their wallets on the beds of men not flying that night and crossed to the briefing room. Tibbets, the pilot of the Hiroshima mission, opened proceedings with a few general remarks. Fat Man was a different bomb from the one used on Hiroshima, he told the men. More powerful, and able to be mass-produced, it would make Little Boy obsolete. Tibbets wished the crews good luck and handed over to the intelligence officer Colonel Hazen Payette. Major Charles Sweeney would carry the bomb in Bockscar. Captain Frederick Bock would fly Sweeney's plane, The Great Artiste, still fitted out with the measuring instruments installed for Hiroshima. They would record data transmitted by capsules that Bock's plane would drop as soon as the bomb was released. Lieutenant-Colonel Jim Hopkins would fly The Big Stink with film cameras, scientific personnel and the official British observer. The communications officer reported that the weather was expected to be rough. Two weather planes would report on conditions at the targets just before the mission's arrival. A typhoon was gathering over Iwo Jima. The mission would involve flying some five hours through turbulent weather in complete radio silence and carrying an armed atomic bomb. It was an unsettling prospect. Payette conceded the Japanese might recognise the purpose of three unescorted B-29s, so the altitude at which they were to fly towards Japan was raised from the normal 3,000m to nearly 6,000m. The price of flying at the higher altitude would be greater fuel consumption. The rendezvous point for Hiroshima had been Iwo Jima, but that was no longer practical with the prevailing weather. They would rise to 10,000m at Yakushima off the south coast of Kyushu. From that small island they would proceed in formation towards Kokura. Tibbets finished the briefing by stressing two directives. One was that the planes should wait no more than 15 minutes at the rendezvous point before proceeding to Kokura. The other was that Fat Man should be dropped visually. They must be able to see the aiming point to minimise the chances of a wasted drop. The additional, unstated reason was to allow the effect of the bomb to be photographed. The meeting closed with a short prayer by Chaplain William Downey and the crews went to their mess hall for a pre-flight snack. After the briefing, Sweeney walked around aircraft No 77 on the hardstand. (The name Bockscar was not yet painted on - that would be done years later when it was installed in a museum.) He checked the aircraft's surface and looked for telltale fluid on the tarmac below it. The bomb-bay doors were open and he looked inside. Fat Man was waiting there silently, as if taking the nap that Sweeney had not managed to grab. The bomb's boxy tail had rude messages to Emperor Hirohito scribbled on it in crayon. As Sweeney backed out from the fuselage his heart jumped. An admiral was there standing alongside him, watching silently. 'Son, do you know how much that bomb cost?' the admiral asked. 'No, sir.' The admiral paused for dramatic effect. 'Two billion dollars,' he eventually informed the command pilot. 'That's a lot of money, Admiral.' 'Do you know how much your airplane costs?' 'Slightly over half a million dollars, sir,' Sweeney replied. 'I'd suggest you keep those relative values in mind for this mission.' Kokura, Thursday August 9 1945, am A front was blowing in over eastern Japan from the China Sea. Smoke from the overnight bombing of neighbouring Yawata to the west was now drifting across Kokura. The sky was still hazy with broken clouds. Because of the wind change it hadn't cleared as the weather plane had predicted. Some landmarks were visible. Others were hidden below patches of cloud. Bockscar and The Great Artiste arrived at Kokura at 9.20am. On board Bockscar, the radarman, Sergeant Ed Buckley, and the navigator, Captain James Van Pelt, used the radar scope to line up the target, the armaments factory in the middle of the city. Standing orders were that it had to be sighted by eye. Van Pelt called to Sweeney, 'Two degrees right. One degree left.' 'That's the target,' said Buckley. 'I have it in range. What's our true altitude?' 'Give me one degree left, Chuck. Fine. We are right on course,' continued the navigator. 'Roger,' said Sweeney. 'All you men make damned sure you have your goggles on.' The crew put on their purple protective goggles. Grey clouds were scattered below. The ground was obscured by dark smoke from Yawata's burning steelworks. 'Twenty miles out now, captain,' said Buckley. 'Mark it!' Van Pelt continued his commentary, 'Roger. Give me two degrees left, Chuck.' 'You got it, boy!' The pneumatic bomb-bay doors opened with a humming sound. From inside Bockscar's Plexiglass nose, the bombardier saw Kokura unfurl 10,000m below. He noted the railway yard a kilometre from the armaments factory, but features were covered after that. With his eye glued to the Norden bombsight, the bombardier, Captain Kermit Beahan, could find nothing apart from smoke and cloud to fix the crosshairs on. 'I can't see it. I can't see the target,' Sweeney called into the intercom. 'No drop. Repeat, no drop.' He banked the plane sharply to the left and swung around for a return approach. The bomb doors closed. Bockscar rolled in again over Kokura with the noise of the bomb door mechanism opening and the rush of air outside. Through his rubber eyepiece Beahan saw the stadium, then the cathedral, then the river near the arsenal, then… the same impervious screen and no munitions factory. 'No drop! No drop!' he cried out in frustration. 'Sit tight, boys. We're going around again.' Sweeney wheeled into another turn. As the plane came in for its third run, the crew were anxious and edgy. Van Pelt pointed out the stadium was near the arsenal. Beahan responded that the stadium was not the aiming point. Through the Norden, he saw streets and the river, but once again the munitions factory was shrouded. Again, he reported no drop. The tension released a rush of comments: 'Fighters below, coming up' (Dehart); 'Fuel getting very low' (Kuharek); 'Let's get the hell out of here!' (Gallagher); 'What about Nagasaki?' (Spitzer). 'Cut the chatter,' Sweeney said. The radio operator Sergeant Abe Spitzer's comment, meant as a rhetorical question to himself, made sense. Fuel was getting dangerously low and the hornets' nest of defence they had stirred up below was an unacceptable risk for a plane carry-ing so destructive a weapon. Sweeney conferred by intercom with Beahan and the weaponeer, Lieutenant-Commander Frederick Ashworth. They decided to leave Kokura and head for Nagasaki, 160km to the south. The weather there didn't look any more promising than Kokura, but the only other approved target, Niigata in northern Honshu, was too far away for their remaining fuel. Sweeney gathered his composure and asked the navigator, 'Jim, give me the heading for Nagasaki.' Van Pelt gave a direction and pointed out it would take them over the Kyushu fighter plane fields. 'I can't avoid it, Jim,' Sweeney said. Fuel was critical, they were an hour and a half behind schedule and Fat Man was still live in the bomb bay. Bockscar turned south for Nagasaki. Sweeney said to his co-pilot, Lieutenant Don Albury, 'Can any other goddamned thing go wrong?' On the ground at Kokura, an all-clear had sounded before the Americans' aborted bombing runs began. People were out of the shelters and getting about their business when they heard the aircraft engines high above them. However, this wasn't the massed formations they associated with firebombing missions. They assumed it was a reconnaissance mission. Some noted the two planes made three passes over the city, the drone of their engines fading and returning each time. Then the planes disappeared, never to return. Kokurans got on with their lives, the struggle to stay afloat in a war-ravaged country. The Japanese today have an expression, 'Kokura's luck'. It means avoiding a catastrophic event you didn't even know was threatened. Nagasaki, Thursday August 9 1945, am Bockscar headed across the north of Kyushu towards Nagasaki with The Great Artiste trailing off its right wing. There had been no opposition from Japanese fighter planes. A check of fuel reserves by the flight engineer, Sergeant John Kuharek, confirmed there was not enough to get to Iwo Jima and maybe not enough even to get to Okinawa - particularly as they were still carrying a five-tonne bomb. Major Sweeney asked Commander Ashworth to join him in the pilot's area. Sweeney was the officer in charge of the plane, Ashworth the officer in charge of the bomb. Major decisions had to be made jointly. Sweeney said, 'Here's the situation, Dick. We have just enough fuel to make one pass over the target. If we don't drop on Nagasaki, we may have to let it go into the ocean. There's a very slim chance that we would be able to make Okinawa, but the odds are very slim. Would you accept a radar run if necessary and we can't see the target? I guarantee we'll come within 500 feet of the target.' 'I don't know, Chuck.' 'It's better than dropping it in the ocean.' 'Are you sure of the accuracy?' 'I'll take full responsibility for this.' 'Let me think it over, Chuck.' After a few moments of thought, Ashworth told Sweeney that he had decided to risk returning to Okinawa with the bomb. He could not agree to the radar drop. No one in the plane said anything. Ashworth looked perplexed. Even though he had ostensibly made his decision, he was still torn between three unwelcome alternatives: disregard orders to target visually; return to Okinawa and risk the lives of the crew; or dump the billion-dollar bomb into the ocean to ensure the lives of the crew. For some minutes, torment and doubt prevailed in Ashworth's mind until he spoke again to tell Sweeney he had reversed his decision. He now agreed they should drop on Nagasaki, whether by radar or visually. The crew cheered. At 10.50am Bockscar and The Great Artiste arrived from the north-west, high above Nagasaki at 10,000m. The 20 per cent cloud cover of the 8.30am weather report had grown to 90 per cent as the front moving in from the China Sea blanketed the city, hanging at two or three thousand metres. Sweeney swung Bockscar over the bay and north towards the cloud-covered downtown area. Beyond that was the more westerly of the two valleys running up from the city centre, the Urakami. Cloud had broken a little on the outskirts, but was thick at the centre of the city. Sweeney instructed the crew to put on their goggles, although he left his off. He'd already experienced how little visibility they allowed. The navigator and the radar operator coordinated the approach to the aiming point, Tokiwa Bridge on the Nakajima river in downtown Nagasaki. Beahan fed data into the bombsight. 'Right. One degree correction to the left. Good,' recited Van Pelt. Buckley reported, 'We're coming in right on course. Five. Mark it.' They were two minutes away. 'I still can't see it,' muttered Beahan. 'OK, Honeybee,' encouraged the skipper, 'but check all your switches and make damned sure everything is ready.' One minute to target and there were no dry runs. The bomb-bay doors opened and the plane shuddered as it caught the air stream. They would remain under radar control unless Beahan could see the target and lock on it. 'I'll take it,' came the bombardier's excited voice. 'I can see the target.' There was a substantial hole over the mid Urakami valley with some scattered low-lying cloud below. Through the gap Beahan (the 'great artiste' that the bomber was named after), could see an athletics track. It looked nothing like Tokiwa Bridge, 4km away on the other side of the ridge separating the two river valleys. He put the Norden crosshairs on the oval track. 'You own it,' said Sweeney. A tone ran through the radio system indicating 15 seconds to go. Beahan was silent, concentrating, the automatic bombsight locked on the stadium where sports events had long since ceased to be held. At 11.01am the shackle was released and Fat Man tumbled out, diving down. Wires snapped, the radio tone stopped abruptly. Bockscar lurched upwards. 'Bombs away,' announced Beahan, and corrected himself. 'Bomb away.' Sweeney turned sharply to port at a steep angle. In The Great Artiste the bombardier shouted, 'There she goes.' Nagasaki, Thursday August 9 1945, midday The horizon burst into a super-brilliant white with an intense flash, more intense than Hiroshima. From the air, a brownish cloud could be seen spreading horizontally across the city below. A vertical column sprang from the centre, coloured and boiling. A white, puffy mushroom cloud broke off at 4,000m and sped upwards to 11,000m. Fat Man took 43 seconds to fall to its detonation point 500m above a tennis court at 170 Matsuyama-cho. From the ground, a huge fireball could be seen forming in the sky. The bomb exploded with a bright blue-white light like a giant magnesium flare. A powerful pressure wave followed with an explosive rumbling. The view from the ground of the white vertical cloud was obscured at first by a bluish haze, then by a purple-brown cloud of dust and smoke. Almost everything within a kilometre of the hypocentre was destroyed, even earthquake-proof concrete structures that had survived at similar distances in Hiroshima. People and animals died instantly. Heat rays evaporated the water from human organs. A boy standing in the shadow of a brick warehouse a kilometre away saw a mother and children out in the open instantaneously disappear. Tightly packed houses of flimsy wooden construction and tiled roofing were completely obliterated. The explosion twisted and tore out window and door sashes, and ripped doors off their hinges. Many buildings of brick and stone were so severely damaged that they crumbled and collapsed into rubble. Glass was blown out of windows 8km away. The detonation flash lasted only a fraction of a second, but ultraviolet light coming from it was sufficient to cause third-degree burns to the skin and to cause heavy clay roof tiles to bubble up to one and a half kilometres away. Clothing ignited, telegraph poles smouldered and charred, thatched roofs caught fire. Paper spontaneously incinerated 3km away. As in Hiroshima, black clothing absorbed heat and charred or caught fire; white and light-coloured material reflected the ultra-violet rays. Patterns in people's clothing were duplicated in the patterns of burns on their skin. Fat Man was a most democratic weapon, dispatching the good, the bad, the ugly and the ordinary with equal finality and equal indifference. Anyone within a kilometre of the hypocentre without some sort of cover was reduced to ashes. The Pacific War had been Japan's belligerent attempt to rectify a trade difficulty. The United States, its main source of oil, had refused to do business while Japan maintained its occupation of China, and Japan had resorted to invasion as a means of obtaining resources. Except in the short term, it hadn't proved productive. Japan's post-war economic miracle was, ironically, the product of a stand-off between its former enemies. Occupation fashioned Japan into a peaceful pro-Western democracy, but the balance of global power was moving. The Communists prevailed in China, and the Cold War changed
Francisco, USA. The company claims that it creates an innovative competition environment among drivers and thus raises quality of service. However, governments and taxi companies across the globe challenge the legality of Uber because it does not follow proper consumer and labour laws. The use of drivers who are not licensed to drive taxicabs is unsafe and illegal. Uber comes to Minsk Uber officially opened its service in Minsk on 5 November 2015. The Belarusian media widely discussed the new service and social media highlighted user's riding experiences. To mention a few problems, taxi drivers often use old uncomfortable and sometimes dirty cars and cheat on trip prices. In February 2016, Uber launched a cheaper UberX service which led to a mass use of their service by Minsk residents. Those who heard about Uber earlier or used it abroad were quite excited. They hoped that Uber would raise competition and quality of taxi service. Regular taxi drivers in Belarus often use old uncomfortable and sometimes dirty cars and cheat on trip prices. Taxi drivers in the post-Soviet space have been associated with music called criminal chanson, which is regarded as the music of criminals and people of low socioeconomic status. They are often involved in shadow market like trading i.e. illicit alcohol or prostitution deals. In contrast, Uber drivers undergo strict control; they cannot have a previous criminal conviction, minimum three years of driving experience, a car no older than 2010 year and, moreover, pass a psychological test. Minsk taxi drivers protest On 6 February, Minsk taxi drivers from major taxi companies organised a spontaneous rally to discuss the “growing chaos on the market, where Uber became the last straw”. They claim that Uber has far more favourable conditions of operation: “We have to pay taxes, insurance, road tax, dispatcher service, taximeters, deal with controlling state bodies, and Uber does nothing of that!” drivers said with outrage. Drivers threatened to “take to the roads and halt the city” if the authorities do not find a solution to Uber's activity. Less radical ones urged others to organise a trade union that will lobby taxi interests in the bureaucrat’s offices. Uber does not breach law, partners do On 8 February head of Minsk city Andrej Šorac ordered to investigate Uber operation in the city. “Taxi drivers complain that the service puts them in the unfair working conditions. We need to study the subject and inform the stakeholders on the results”, the official said. After an investigation, state transport inspection reported that companies and individuals cooperating with Uber in Belarus have special licences for cabbing and do not need to have all attributes of taxis, like taximeter and lamps. They pay taxes and insurances like taxi services, but do not need to pay for dispatching office services since the online application does this job. However, this type of cabbing supposes signing a contract with each client, and the inspection doubts that Uber drivers do that properly. They also violate legislation by not using yellow car number plates. Irregular cabbing supposes signing a contract with each client, and the inspection doubts that Uber drivers do that properly. Read more After the investigation the transport inspection stopped the licence of Molberg company, one of the Uber partners and filed a case against another one. The reason was violation of contracting procedures with the clients. Meanwhile, Uber says the authorities punish partners who violate the rules, not the company who runs the online platform itself. Uber also claims that pressure from authorities came as the result of rivals' campaign to oust Uber from the market. Getting rid of rivals or promoting competition? Despite the unfriendly environment and emerging rivalry, Uber has recently announced its success in Belarus. According to Evgenia Shipova, official representative of the company in Minsk, Uber has developed more rapidly than in any other city in Europe, Africa or the Middle East. Within four months, 80,000 people have used the service. However, Uber does not yet seem to have an interest in entering other Belarusian cities. The reaction of taxi companies to a new and unusual market player is understandable. They have operated in a familiar environment for years and have met any innovative trends with enmity. Uber, if operating in compliance with law, will definitely make the market more client-oriented and quality of service will grow. Regular taxies should not worry much – if companies introduce high standards of service, the clients will see no major difference. Customers are deeply rooted in the habit of calling dispatcher offices or catching a cab in the street. This will last for years. Moreover, most people over 40 do not actively use Internet capable mobile devices in Belarus, and will retain their old way of cabbing. All this offers taxi companies enough time to adopt to higher working standards. Belarusian companies can finally realise what competition on the market is. https://belarusdigest.com/story/can-uber-become-a-success-in-belarus/WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel plans to shrink the United States Army to its smallest force since before the World War II buildup and eliminate an entire class of Air Force attack jets in a new spending proposal that officials describe as the first Pentagon budget to aggressively push the military off the war footing adopted after the terror attacks of 2001. The proposal, released on Monday, takes into account the fiscal reality of government austerity and the political reality of a president who pledged to end two costly and exhausting land wars. A result, the officials argue, will be a military capable of defeating any adversary, but too small for protracted foreign occupations. Officials who saw an early draft of the announcement acknowledge that budget cuts will impose greater risk on the armed forces if they are again ordered to carry out two large-scale military actions at the same time: Success would take longer, they say, and there would be a larger number of casualties. Officials also say that a smaller military could invite adventurism by adversaries. “You have to always keep your institution prepared, but you can’t carry a large land-war Defense Department when there is no large land war,” a senior Pentagon official said.A giant is formed. The sheer scale of the statue under construction can be seen here, in contrast to the workmen posing woodenly for that fairly new invention, the camera.. The more formal name for the statue is Liberty Enlightening the World and it is constructed with sheets of pure copper, even though the picture makes it look something like marble. It is something of a miracle that we now have the finished product standing proudly on Liberty Island. Had it not been for the contributions of ordinary French and Americans then she would never have arisen in the first instance. Money was always a problem. The plan had been to get the statue to the US by the fourth of July, 1876. Only the right arm and torch were finished by then. However, as the Americans had taken responsibility for the construction of the pedestal, these pieces of the statue were displayed to the American pubic at the Centennial Exposition (in Philadelphia). Money raised by allowing people to climb this part of the statue (see here) started the funding efforts for the base of the statue. The French did their bit too, showing the head in their own exposition in 1878. Such is the immensity of the statue one can only wonder whether or not the workmen pictured above had any idea which part of the statue they were working on at any one time. The photographer Albert Fernique, who captured these pictures around 1883, must have been in a certain awe at the immensity of the statue and his images capture its sheer scale and size beautifully. The French had decided to give the United States of America something for their centennial independence celebrations that the Americans and the world would never forget. The process of building was painstaking, slow and fraught with financial difficulties. Bertholdi made a small scale model first, which is still displayed in the Jardin du Luxembourg in the city of the statue's original construction, Paris. Before the statue was shipped to America, though, it had to be seen to be tested. If it had not been for money, it may never have landed in the states - particularly in the form we all know. On a visit to Egypt, Bartholdi's vision of liberty expanded to its present proportions. Had his original idea received financial support, then whatever gift the French gave the Americans for the 1876 centennial could not possibly have been the statue. At the time France was in political turmoil and, although at the time under their third republic, many people looked back at the time of Napoleon and the monarchy before that with fondness and wanted its return. The desire for a backwards step to authoritarianism was worrying. French politicians - as wily then as now - saw Lady Liberty as a way, albeit phenomenally huge, to focus the public's imagination on republicanism as the best way forward. The USA and its centennial of independence from the yolk of England was the perfect focus. The plaster surface of the left arm and its hand take shape, the skeleton underneath revealed. As there is a deal of work under the carapace, so the French politicians had ulterior motives. Using the USA - which many saw as the ideal of government and populist aspirational politics - the French used the statue as a Trojan Horse in reverse, as it were. Its true purpose, in the eyes of the political gift givers, was to make republicanism the center of political ideology in the minds of the people. How greatly it succeeded can never fully be quantified but the French cannot be faulted for thinking big. It must be said here that the ordinary French, through their substantial buying of lottery tickets (and other fundraising efforts) had a much purer purpose at heart than their politicians. It must surely have been amazing for the workers to turn up each morning to the sight of a colossal head looking down upon them. The inspiration for the face seems to be the Roman god of the sun, Apollo or his Greek equivalent, Helios. More down to earth sources of inspiration center on the women in the life of the sculptor, Frederic Auguste Bartholdi. It may well have been Isabella Eugenie Boyer, a good looking and well-known figure in Paris at the time. More worrying, some believe the face of the statue actually belongs to Bartholdi's mother. Bartholdi never revealed the true model of the face, but if this is the case Freud would have had a field day. Bertholdi made a small scale model first, which is still displayed in the Jardin du Luxembourg in the city of the statue's original construction, Paris. Before the statue was shipped to America, though, it had to be seen to be tested. If it had not been for money, it may never have landed in the states - particularly in the form we all know. On a visit to Egypt, Bartholdi's vision of liberty expanded to its present proportions. Had his original idea received financial support, then whatever gift the French gave the Americans for the 1876 centennial could not possibly have been the statue. Little by little, the statue arises. Bertholdi saw the Suez Canal under construction in the eighteen sixties and was inspired to build a giant figure at its entrance. He drew up plans which bore a remarkable similarity to what now stands on Liberty Island but his ideas were rejected by the Egyptian ruling body of the time because of the financial problems the country was facing at the time. Had the statue been built in Egypt as a lighthouse, the idea would never have been taken up for America. The Statue of Liberty as we know it was in fact used as a lighthouse, from its unveiling in 1886 right until 1902 - the very first in the world to use electricity. Almost there! There were huge structural issues that had to be addressed in the design and construction of a sculpture of such enormity. Enter a certain Gustave Eiffel, who would later go on to build that eponymous tower which still dominates the skyline of Paris. It was his job (which he delegated to Maurice Koechlin, his favored structural engineer) to ensure that Liberty's copper sheath could move while still remaining vertical. Koechlin created a huge pylon of wrought iron and the famous skeletal frame to ensure that the statue would not fall down in high winds. The New York Public Library has recently unveiled some extraordinary pictures of the Statue of Liberty under construction. Take a trip back in time and see extraordinary behind the scenes images of the creation of this superlative structure.A University of Manitoba student inspired by the plight of asylum seekers crossing the U.S.-Canada border on foot delivered care packages to the new reception and shelter in Gretna Tuesday. Lubna Usmani helped put together 150 care packages. "It’s was a lot of fun," she said in a phone call with CTV Winnipeg. Half of the packages were delivered to Gretna. The other half went to The Salvation Army, where many asylum seekers have also been staying since mid-February. Usmani said she made packages tailored for children, which include a colouring book, crayons and a baseball cap, as well as kits designed specifically for men and women. MIA Care Packages delivered to Gretna. Asylum skeees stay here for a few days while waiting for their hearing in Winnipeg pic.twitter.com/9Lb98UjND0 — ManitobaIslamicAssoc (@MbIslamicAssoc) May 10, 2017 The Manitoba Islamic Association refugee committee was inspired to do the project. Usmani, who is a student, also works at the association. The packages also include personal hygiene items, such as a tooth brush and towel. She said she was inspired to give back after learning about the two men from Ghana who crossed the border near Emerson Christmas Eve and lost their fingers due to severe frostbite. "They really suffered with their trip," she said. "It's really nice to welcome people to our province and our country."Sorry, Detroit, but it could take Michigan 5 more years to recover (Wikimedia Commons) Decades are a terrible thing to lose. But that might be exactly what Nevada, Michigan, and Rhode Island will lose if the recovery doesn't pick up for them. Indeed, as the Wall Street Journal reports, private forecaster IHS Global Insight doesn't expect total employment in those states to get back to its pre-Great Recession peak until... 2018. If you live in one of these states, it might be a good time to move to Texas or New York. Now, as you can see in the chart below, it's not all doom, gloom, and Michael Bay-style disaster. Resource-rich states like Texas and North Dakota have already bounced back above where they were in 2007. And another 10 or so will by the end of this year. But it is going to be a longer slog for most states. Okay, this is obviously horrible for Nevada, Michigan, and Rhode Island — but so what? It's good when people move from where the jobs aren't to where they are. It's part of what makes a currency union work. See, we don't usually think of it this way, but we live in something called the dollar zone. We have 50 states that share the same language and fiscal policy — and monetary policy too. But, as the euro zone amply shows, the monetary policy that makes sense for one member of a currency union might not make sense for others. So what do you do if one country (or state) is stuck in a depression, and the other is booming? Well, in Europe, nothing. Or, more accurately, blame the country stuck in a depression for being stuck in a depression — and demand that it cut spending like you'd always wanted it to.The teenage cosplayer found injured and unconscious at a San Diego hotel during Comic-Con this week was not the victim of an assault, according to a San Diego Harbor Police investigation. Her injuries, police said in a statement today, were likely the result of a fall. On Sunday, the young woman was found with "significant injuries" in the pool area of the San Diego Marriott Marquis and Marina Hotel and was transported, still in her costume, to a local hospital for treatment. San Diego Police arrested 29-year-old photographer Justin Kalior in connection with the case, charging him with sexual contact with a minor and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Kalior told Polygon he was friends with the victim, and denied having sex with her or giving her any alcohol. The girl, who turned 17 on Sunday, was treated for skull and eye-socket fractures and cerebral hemorrhaging, among other injuries. The circumstances surrounding her injuries drew attention from friends, the cosplaying community and San Diego Comic-Con attendees who rallied support to provide police and other officials with information about what was believed to be an assault. A review of footage from surveillance cameras and information gathered from Comic-Con attendees concluded that the girl's injuries were not the result of an assault, but likely that of a fall, police said. "Her injuries, and physical evidence at the scene, were consistent with a fall from the distance of approximately six feet," a police statement reads. The findings do not affect the charges against Kalior, police said. Because the case involves a minor, San Diego Police say they won't release further information about the incident. Update: According to a copy of the police report obtained by Polygon through an open records request, Kalior and the girl had "a physical altercation," one witness said. The report then details what lead to Kalior's arrest. "While Harbor Police was speaking with that witness, Kalior returned without prompting. Harbor Police spoke to Kalior and he denied any dating relationship with [the girl] but admitted to bringing her to a party at the hotel that night where there were a lot of alcohol beverages. A consensual search of Kalior's cellphone revealed a break-up text dated 7/15/14 in which he used her nick-name... and he referenced their dating relationship. A short time later, [the girl] woke up in the hospital and confirmed she and Kalior have been in a sexual/dating relationship." The charges against Kalior are for unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor and contributing to the delinquency of a minor."Because of its central importance, we should push the alliance with Russia even if it means the end of NATO." "Our ultimate goal is to free every white nation from (((globalist))) control and whatever road we have to take to get there, is the road worth taking." The new kid on the block in American politics, the Alt-Right carries weight, and is influential well beyond its size, which is substantial, numbering in the millions of politically active young white men and active in social media. The best article we have seen on this phenomenon, is the one written for RI, which gives details on just how large and influential the Alt-Right tsunami has become, where it came from, and why it is so influential. Pepe, the Alt-Right mascot The original title of this article was: 'A New Ostpolitik: An Alt-Right Agenda for Foreign Policy' and appeared on a leading Alt-Right website, Fash the Nation. As a movement generally opposed to interventionism and foreign adventures the Alt-Right stands out from the dominant schools of foreign policy that have, until recently, prevailed in the United States since the Second World War. Indeed, for many on the alt-right, foreign policy is a distraction more than anything else, a domain where neocons run amok and wars are waged to make the world safe for democracy. Foreign policy is also the domain of the elites, something debated by those with access or influence with those who hold the levers of power. All discussions about international relations have the stink of the beltway on them to a greater or lesser degree. Before the ascension of Donald Trump to the presidency, any aspects of an Alt-Right foreign policy were always reflections of our domestic priorities. With Trump’s victory however, we actually have a president who might do some of things we want, even if our reasons differ from Trump’s. An Alt-Right Putin meme Until the inauguration, Trump’s specific objectives and policies towards the nations of the world are ephemeral, his pick of Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State suggests he is willing to follow through on his calls for détente with Russia from the campaign, even as his potential pick of John Bolton for under-secretary suggests the interventionists still have a place at the table. These seemingly contradictory picks by Trump mean that the neoconservatives, ever our adversary in public policy, will have Trump’s ear at least some of the time. The Alt-Right should not sit silently on these issues but advocate for the policies and stances that we deem necessary. Just what we should advocate and argue for however, is debatable. The Alt-Right’s stance for non-interventionism is a sound basis to start from. Many in the Alt-Right found themselves outside of conservative orthodoxy for the first time by opposing the Iraq war. The anti-war stances of 2008 and 2012 candidate Ron Paul formed a lightning rod for those of us disaffected by the attempt by neocons to impose “Western Democracy” on a foreign people completely unsuited for it. We may not have realized it at the time, but the neo-liberal consensus on foreign policy was shattered beyond repair. Another Alt-Right Putin meme For those of us who would later come to realize the truth of race-realism, we can see how in hind-sight the same deluded thinking that believes that Somalians can become Americans via liberal application of Magic Dirt allowed us to believe that Iraqis could become a modern democracy if we only applied enough drone strikes. These people are incompatible with white society, whether you try to export that society or try to import the non-whites themselves. This is the infamous “invade the world, invite the world” dichotomy, that has embodied the failed neocon agenda that the Alt-Right stands against. There are other reasons to oppose interventionism. For the middle east, not only can invasions do nothing to bring stability to that region, but such wars needlessly waste American (mostly white male) lives and expend our blood and treasure on behalf of the Zionist State. Moreover, within the current balance of power in the middle east, to continue opposition to the Assad government in Syria, and to continue to saber rattle over Iranian nuclear weapons only makes it harder for us (nigh impossible) to reconcile with Russia. This brings us to the most revolutionary aspect of the Alt-Right’s vision for foreign policy, and one which we can hope to have support from the new Secretary of State on. Russia, under Vladimir Putin, is a nationalist state, which opposes western degeneracy in all its forms. It is also noteworthy that, beyond that fact, Russia is perhaps the only state in the world that can actually annihilate the United States with nuclear weapons. The 20th century saw two great wars in which the western nations bled themselves white and nearly two generations of young white men went to die only so that their sons would spend the rest of the twentieth century locked in a game of nuclear chicken. If there is another war, a nuclear war, between the United States and Russia, western civilization will never recover (and the world itself might end). The leftists will risk such stakes in order to push gay marriage on Russia and because for the first time, the United States has seen a foreign government (not proven of course) try to influence its elections. Such activity is something the United States has done to countless other country’s elections, but that fact escapes the breathless punditry. Trump’s election represents a unique opportunity to flip Russia from its current role as the permanent bogeyman of US foreign policy to a strategic ally. An alliance with Russia poses short term gains as well as long term ones. In the short term, we can expect a rapid conclusion to the Syrian Civil war and a coordinated campaign to destroy ISIS without the need for US troops on the ground. With Russia and the United States aligned together in the Middle East, Israel is far less likely to start a shooting war with Iran, and the Saudis are less likely to escalate their war in Yemen. In general, nations are less likely to start adventurous proxy wars if they don’t think their patron has their back. If the United States stops supporting Saudi and Israeli aggression, than the region as a whole will become more stable. Even if the middle east does not become appreciably more stable in the short term, the United States, by pursuing a strategy that stops advocating for democracy and human rights and stops underwriting Israeli adventurism will find less and less casus belli to get involved. We just want out and an alliance with Russia gives fewer reasons for the neocons to latch onto for us to get back in. Realignment with Russia would also give Trump more options for dealing with Europe. As the populist wave continues to surge across the EU, we must make sure that Trump keeps giving the EU the cold shoulder. Without the Russian bogeyman to distract Europeans from the true existential threat in their midst (the migrant crisis) we give no off ramp to the bureaucrats in Brussels to try and channel the populist fervor engulfing them. Trump's public advocacy for Brexit during the campaign, coupled with his promise to bump Britain to the front of the line for trade deals is an ideal template we should repeat for any EU country seeking freedom from the bloc. Trump need not make any bones about publicly supporting any populist candidate or party which advocates fro leaving the EU, we should exhort him never to hold back. The architects behind the European project foresaw the reemergence of a United States of Europe which could act as a Third Force to balance out the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact which being able to negotiate with the United States a a bloc. That dream makes no more sense if Russia is no longer the enemy. Because of its central importance, we should push the alliance with Russia even if it means the end of NATO (or Russian inclusion in it) and the removal of missile defense systems and troops from country’s bordering Russia. To save face with domestic hawks, Trump might be wise to try and get concessions out of Russia (such as a return to the status ante in Ukraine) and security guarantees for the Baltic States. If he can achieve these results, it will be almost impossible for the war hawks to accuse him of appeasement, and the nationalist movements in Eastern Europe will not have to choose between being anti-EU and pro-Russia. Our ultimate goal is to free every white nation from (((globalist))) control and whatever road we have to take to get there, is the road worth taking.This component cable works perfectly with the Wii U. If your Wii U lacks HDMI capability (like mine does) or you just want to free up HDMI ports without sacrificing HD capability, this is the cable you want. Setup was easy (It told me I'd changed cables and asked if I wanted the Wii U to automatically calibrate settings) but you will likely need to go back into settings yourself and set it to the highest setting (1080i or p) to make it function in HD. This is an easy thing and if you're not sure how to do it there are guides online that can help you out in very little time. I just got my cable so I don't know how well it would wear over time but it feels very solid and well-made. I feel pretty certain it's a quality cable and would be difficult to break or ruin through normal use.If your daily commute across Los Angeles Wednesday (or Thursday) finds you crossing paths with a well-heeled, two-wheeled flash mob, it's not a crowd scene dream sequence being shot for a Pee-wee Herman movie, it's a cross-promotional awareness campaign between USA Network's legal drama "Suits" (which kicks off its second season June 14) and the men's luxury shopping site Mr. Porter. Groups of identically clad gents -- decked out in gray Acne suits and white Converse sneakers -- are set to bicycle the streets of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago on Wednesday and Thursday, handing out copies of the website's "Mr. Porter Post" publication along the way. For anyone unfamiliar with the show, the bicycle part of the equation is a nod to "Suits'" bike-riding, suit-wearing Mike Ross character (played by Patrick J. Adams). The velo fellows kicked off the promotion Tuesday in New York City (where the TV show is set and Mr. Porter's U.S. offices are located) with the rolling panache mob taking to the streets and a fashion show of "Suits"-inspired looks curated by the Mr. Porter team on the High Line. As part of the promotion, Mr. Porter has a dedicated "Suits and Style" web page that can be found here. As for the second season of "Suits," that can be found on your local USA Network channel starting Thursday at 10 p.m./9 Central. RELATED: Q+A: Gabriel Macht 'Suits' up for USA Details, Kaleidoscope to help men shop Coachella style Mr. Porter meets Malibu: Men's luxury shopping site celebrates SoCal cool -- Adam Tschorn Photo: A publicity photograph shows the kind of suit-wearing, bike-riding spectacle that will wheeling about the streets of Los Angeles on Wednesday and Thursday as part of a joint awareness campaign between the TV show "Suits" and the men's shopping site Mr. Porter. Credit: Mr. PorterJust around the corner from Revival Market on White Oak, you will find an adorable house serving hot dogs, sweets and coffee concoctions. Yes, I am talking about Happy Fatz. Heights residents and many Houstonians are familiar with this cafe's interesting hot dog creations -- it received the No. 10 spot on our list of best hot dogs in late 2011. Katharine Shilcutt praised Happy Fatz for its all-beef dogs topped with an array of ingredients, such as the Clucker smothered in hash browns, onions, bacon, a fried egg and hot sauce on a challah bun. During my first visit to Happy Fatz, I fully intended to buy a hot dog, especially because my dining companion and I were starving after driving for three hours with the roof off of my Jeep -- being in the scorching hot sun wiped us out. But, one whiff of the freshly brewed Katz Coffee and a peek at the display case filled with cheesecakes, cupcakes, cakes and cake balls, my cravings switched from savory to sweet. But, that's the beauty of Happy Fatz, you can have something sweet, something savory or both.All things being equal, awesome ought to win, right? That’s how it works on social news site Reddit, where users vote the best links onto the homepage. And that’s how the world should work, too, according to the site’s cofounder, Alexis Ohanian. Now Ohanian, 28, wants to show the world how to bubble awesome up to the top—with a book. Without Your Permission: How the 21st Century Will Be Made—Not Managed is the book’s working title. It will look at “real-world examples of people not asking anyone’s permission to share and create their ideas,” Ohanian told the Daily Dot in a phone interview. To put it another way, it will be a “a prescription and inspiration for doing awesome stuff on the Internet,” Ohanian said. Ohanian (pictured here with his cat, Karma) points to the case of Deborah Guardino. In May the 50-year-old school teacher watched with horror from her Virginia home as a tornado ripped apart the town of Joplin, Missouri. But thanks to DonorsChoose.org, Guardino did more than wire some money to a charity. She essentially launched her own. Within days she had flown out to Joplin, where she taught teachers how to use DonorsChoose.org to solicit donations for projects online. By the time she was done, she’d helped launch more than 200 projects and raise more than $400,000 for Joplin schools. Ohanian said he was first approached about writing a book after he left Reddit in 2009 (he’s since returned as an advisor). Editors, Ohanian said, really liked a TED talk he had given about memes, the Internet, and the marketplace of ideas—a marketplace where sometimes a humpback whale named Mister Splashy Pants is the winner. But in the meantime Ohanian was too busy working on his charitable company Breadpig (a kind of Newman’s Own for geeky comic books and other wares) and helping launch a new company, travel search site Hipmunk, which Reddit cofounder Steve Huffman invited him to join in 2009. Still, the book idea never went away. His friends in the publishing industry kept up the encouragement. Then, earlier this year, Ohanian took a trip to Egypt at the behest of the U.S. government, where he spoke to a group of Egyptian tech entrepreneurs. “It was a real mindfuck talking to entrepreneurs in Cairo,” Ohanian said. “They were actual revolutionaries. As they’re trying to rebuild their country, thinking about their startups, they were asking the exact same things about their startups as people do in Silicon Valley.” With things going well at Hipmunk, Ohanian realized “now is the time” to write that book. What’s the connection between revolutionaries turned entrepreneurs in Cairo and a 50-year-old school teacher in Virginia? Leveraging the Internet to make their big ideas a reality. And if Ohanian has his way, there will be a lot more people like them. Without Your Permission is scheduled for release in 2013.USJ is providing visitors with their own replica gun, a limited supply of ammo, and only a few minutes to survive an onslaught of zombies. Capcom is teaming up with Universal Studios Japan to provide the most ultra-realistic Resident Evil experience yet. Rather than just another themed roller coaster or a "haunted house" type ride where zombies pop up and spook you, USJ is giving you a gun, a limited supply of ammo, and throwing you into an onslaught of zombies. The combination of USJ's special effects prowess and Capcom's expertise has resulted in an incredibly detailed recreation of Racoon City to play in. It's called "Biohazard: The Real" (Biohazard is the Japanese name for the Resident Evil franchise). In the attraction, players will be equipped with a replica lifelike handgun with a realistic weight and a gauge that measures your level of infection. The goal is to get to the end before reaching maximum infection. Of course, being an Resident Evil themed attraction, ammo will be sparse, so you'll have to be both quick and efficient to survive. The attraction/game will begin on 19 July and run until 9 September in the Palace Theater in the New York section of the park. Then from 12 September to 10 November, it will operate only on Friday to Monday or holidays. There's currently no word if it will make it to the American Universal Studios, so if you're an ex-pat or planning a trip to Japan this summer, it may be worth checking out. USJ also boasts that the chances of surviving the game without infection are "approximately zero percent." I'm currently planning a trip down to southern Japan this summer, and I've put visiting this attraction at the top of my list! I'll be sure to let you all know how it goes, and see whether or not USJ's claims about the game's difficulty are true. Source: PR Times (Japanese) via Rocket News 24Timothy Kincaid In 2008 the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (The Mormons) declared war on the gay community. They probably didn’t intend to, and they certainly didn’t want it to be known, but nevertheless that year the Mormon leadership decided that it would throw the church’s weight and political influence into the battle to deny marriage equality in California. And they won. Proposition 8 passed. But this success has proven to be a pyrrhic victory, one that threatened to set back much of the church’s public image campaign. Having spent decades on a message that Mormons make good neighbors, suddenly they were painted as haters and destroyers of happiness. And the church discovered – to what must have been their amazement – that people in California are more suspicious of Mormons than they are of gays. While they may not have favored marriage, they were disturbed at the idea of a California proposition being funded and controlled from Utah by a church that many still see as a cult. And then the church took a series of missteps in public confrontation with gays. Efforts to paint gay people as deviants that had to be slapped down (how dare they kiss in this Mormon-owned park) only gained sympathy for gay folk in the public eye. And even members revolted when a leader declared that gay people must choose to be gay because Heavenly Father wouldn’t have made them that way. I’ll admit that it has been amusing to see the panic and meltdown over gay issues since the church’s involvement in Prop 8 was exposed. But it has also been encouraging that there are obviously many in the Mormon Church who have been awakened by the scandal and who are seeking to act admirably. And some are really seeking peace, a detente, and if not agreement then at least a cease fire. It shows up in some amusing ways. (ABC) ABC 4 News has learned that the Church invited several prominent gay leaders to its Christmas concert this weekend, including Oscar winner Dustin Lance Black. Black, a screenwriter, won an Oscar for the movie, “Milk.” Saturday, at the LDS Church’s Christmas concert, he and a handful of Utah gay activists were VIP guests. … ABC 4 News is also being told that the Church has met previously with both Black and Bastian, one of the founders of WordPerfect. This, reportedly, to get more information about gay issues. I’m not ready to forgive the church for the damage they did in my state. It truly was an act of selfish bullying and it will take more than a Christmas concert invitation to a select few before I see this institution as other than a committed enemy of my civil rights and freedom. But it does give me hope. Maybe the church has learned a lesson. There is a strong likelihood that there will be a proposition on the 2012 ballot to reverse Proposition 8, and if the Mormon Church doesn’t want to pay for half of the advertising and 80-90% of the volunteers, then our chances are significantly increased.The following players have expiring contracts or should have the six years of service necessary to become free agents after the 2018 World Series. Players whose contract includes a 2019 option or the right to opt out for 2019 are noted with asterisks. Updated 10/17. First Basemen Matt Adams Chris Carter Adrian Gonzalez Marwin Gonzalez Joe Mauer Brandon Moss Steve Pearce Hanley Ramirez Justin Smoak * Second Basemen Brian Dozier Josh Harrison * DJ LeMahieu Daniel Murphy Sean Rodriguez Shortstops Elvis Andrus * Eduardo Escobar Freddy Galvis Adeiny Hechavarria Jose Iglesias Jordy Mercer Jean Segura Third Basemen Adrian Beltre Josh Donaldson David Freese * Conor Gillaspie Chase Headley Jung-Ho Kang * Manny Machado Andrew Romine Luis Valbu
Laden’s compound in Pakistan show that the terrorist leader received access to some of the WikiLeaks material through an associate. Manning’s defense team has argued that evidence obtained from the raid was not relevant to the charges against Manning, which include aiding the enemy. But on Wednesday, Army Col. Denise Lind disagreed, ruling that the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the “enemy received” the material. The witness, identified as “John Doe” and as a “DoD operator,” will testify in a closed session at an undisclosed location, Lind said, and will appear in “light disguise.” It is presumed that the witness is a member of the Navy SEAL Team 6 that raided bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May 2011. Only one member of the raid team has been publicly identified — Matt Bissonette, who was named shortly after publishing an account of the raid under a pseudonym. The prosecution is hoping to call more than 20 witnesses in closed session, including officials from the State Department, Defense Department, FBI and CIA. In addition to the member of the bin Laden raid team, the names of three other witnesses are being withheld. The four are also expected to testify about the material discovered at bin Laden’s compound. Last month, Manning pleaded guilty to 10 charges and provided a courtroom at Fort Meade with a detailed account of his decision to divulge the trove of diplomatic cables and battlefield incident reports to WikiLeaks. The former intelligence analyst said that he was seeking to spark a debate about what he described as the nation’s obsession with “killing and capturing people.” But the prosecution is seeking to prove 22 additional charges against Manning, including aiding the enemy, which carries a maximum penalty of life in prison. Lind said Wednesday that the prosecution would be required to prove that Manning had “reason to believe” the information he transmitted to WikiLeaks “could be used to the injury of the U.S. or the advantage of any foreign nation.” That ruling could force the prosecution to call members of the government’s classification agencies to testify that Manning would have been expected to know that the information in the documents he released could cause injury to the United States. That ruling was one of two issued in writing Wednesday — the first time Lind had delivered decisions other than from the bench in a case that has been marked by unusually limited disclosure. Manning’s court-martial is scheduled to begin June 3 at Fort Meade and is expected to last 12 weeks.North Korea fired another ballistic missile Wednesday morning, apparently testing a land-based version of its missile that can be fired from a submarine, in a development that nonproliferation experts called “scary.” The launch comes shortly after Pyongyang said it planned to mark two key anniversaries this month as “big” political events, and a day before President Trump meets with visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping — with North Korea at the top of the agenda. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson issued a terse statement after the launch. “North Korea launched yet another intermediate range ballistic missile,” he said. “The United States has spoken enough about North Korea. We have no further comment.” South Korean and U.S. military officials said the ­medium-range missile was fired from a land base near the east coast port of Sinpo, home to a known North Korean submarine base. In August, North Korea made a major technological breakthrough by launching a ballistic missile from a submarine near Sinpo. It flew about 300 miles before falling into the sea inside Japan’s air ­defense identification zone, the area in which Tokyo controls aircraft movement. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un boasted about the launch, describing it as “the greatest success.” That missile was a KN-11, which North Korea calls the Pukkuksong-1 or Polaris-1. Wednesday’s missile appeared to be a KN-15, according to the U.S. Pacific ­Command, based in Hawaii. This is a land-based version of the ­medium-range submarine-launched ballistic missile. [ As North Korea’s arsenal grows, experts see heightened risk of ‘miscalculation’ ] But Wednesday’s missile did not appear to fly very far, only about 40 miles, after being launched at 6:40 a.m. Seoul time, South Korean military officials said. The U.S. Pacific Command said the missile “did not pose a threat to North America.” What made the launch “scary,” according to Melissa Hanham of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in California, was that the missile appeared to have been powered by solid fuel. “Solid fuel is very significant because they can launch these missiles much faster and with a smaller entourage than with ­liquid-fueled missiles, making them much harder for the United States, South Korea and Japan to spot from satellites,” she said. Furthermore, the test suggests that North Korea is looking for ways to launch its medium-range missiles more easily and cheaply. “They’ve essentially taken their submarine-launched missile and turned it into a land-based one,” Hanham said. Instead of being launched from a submarine, these missiles can be launched from trucks, which North Korea is able to produce. [ North Korea might be preparing for another nuclear test, satellite images suggest ] North Korea’s launches of a steady stream of medium-range missiles are seen as part of a broader intercontinental ballistic missile program, as they could form the stages of a three-stage longer-range weapon. Kim has signaled that his regime is working on a missile capable of reaching the United States. He said in his New Year’s Day address that North Korea has “entered the final stage of preparation for a test-launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile.” After Kim’s statement, Trump tweeted, “It won’t happen!” More recently, Trump has warned that the United States will take unilateral action to eliminate the nuclear threat from North Korea unless China increases pressure on Kim’s regime. Trump will host Xi for two days of talks, starting Thursday, at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. “China has great influence over North Korea. And China will either decide to help us with North Korea, or they won’t,” Trump said in an interview with the Financial Times published Monday. This summit, coinciding with a tense situation on the Korean Peninsula, has led to speculation of imminent provocations from North Korea. Satellite images taken over the past 10 days have shown a prolonged and heightened level of activity at North Korea’s underground testing site, sparking speculation about whether a sixth nuclear test is planned. Plus, North Korea has resumed last year’s steady firing of missiles from sites on both the east and west coasts. The last one, on March 22, exploded shortly after launch. [ These North Korean missile launches are adding up to something very troubling ] Nonproliferation experts say it is clear that North Korea is determined to make progress on its missile program — and presumably on its goal to attach a nuclear warhead to a missile capable of reaching the mainland United States. Compounding matters, April is an important month on the North Korean calendar, and the regime likes to mark important dates with fireworks — both with firework displays in the center of Pyongyang and with missile flares. The regime celebrates the 105th birthday of the late founding president Kim Il Sung on April 15 and the 85th anniversary of the foundation of the Korean People’s Army 10 days later. These events coincide with annual drills by the South Korean and U.S. militaries, practicing for a sudden change on the northern half of the peninsula. With American aircraft carriers and fighter jets brought to South Korea for the exercises, North Korea views them as a pretext for an invasion and always protests vociferously. Read more: Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign newsInjustice patch v1.03 will include plenty of character changes Posted on May 20, 2013 by Oscar Gonzalez Two week ago, NetherRealm Studios released the first patch for Injustice: Gods Among Us that fixed a variety of issues. The next patch, v1.03, is going to make a lot more changes and could upset some players. Included in the patch are some tweaks for online matches and fixes for various issues that can occur during a match. Also in the patch is an extensive amount of character changes that help and hurt certain characters. General Fixes A player no longer receives a loss when an opponent quits an online match. Fixed an issue where online Hero Cards were not visible if a user had > 30 friends. Various Online fixes to enhance stability. A player can now perform a 2in1 combo into background bounces and interactables using Light+Medium buttons on arcade sticks. This makes the game fully playable on 5 button arcade sticks. A player can no longer block or escape a throw in the middle of performing a stance switch. The Fortress of Solitude (Upper Level-Left) Space Ship damage was normalized for all characters. Fixed an issue that affected some characters when performing a combo on weapon-wielding defenders that were holding grenades in the Batcave. Fixed various issues where Interactive Objects could obscure the players’ view after being used. Fixed a rare issue where players could sometimes interact with invisible Interactive Objects. Character Balance Improvements Aquaman Water of Life Character Power now lasts 2 seconds (down from 2.5) and has an 8 second cool down (increased from 7 seconds) Increased the ability to punish a Trident Scoop (Down, Back, 1) from Aquaman when the defender blocks. Normalized the amount of damage Aquaman inflicts on an opponent while they are blocking his Trident Rush (Down, Forward + 1) Ares Increased viability of Ares’ Teleport when used as a wake up attack. Opponent’s can now perform a tech roll after being knocked down by Ares’ Invading Force (Back+2, 3) combo. Bane Normalized Bane’s backwards throw damage. Slightly increased speed of Bane’s forward dash. Reduced the cooldown on Level 2 Venom Boost to 4.5 seconds (down from 6) Reduced the cooldown on Level 3 Venom Boost to 6 seconds (down from 9) Catwoman Catwoman’s Calico Cut (Forward + 1) attack now hits the opponent Overhead and will hit all opponent hitboxes while they are crouching. Cyborg Cyborg’s In-Air Projectiles are now a HIGH block instead of a MID. Deathstroke Deathstroke now stuns the defender for less time when the defender blocks his gunshots. Deathstroke now deals slightly less damage when the defender blocks his gunshots. Deathstroke now lands slightly slower after performing in-air gunshots. Doomsday Doomsday’s Hunter (1,1,2) combo no longer inflicts full damage while the opponent is blocking. Green Arrow Reduced the amount of block advantage on Green Arrow’s Light It Up (Back+2, 3) combo Grundy A player can now activate a Clash (as a defender) during the 2nd and 3rd hit of Solomon Grundy’s Chain Grabs. Harley Quinn Harley’s Irresistible combo (1 + Away, 2) no longer inflicts full damage while the opponent is blocking. Harley’s Hi Puddin combo(2, Down+3) now has less advantage while the opponent is blocking. Joker Increased Joker’s Wild Character Power HA! duration to 9 seconds (from 6 seconds). Increased Joker’s Wild Character Power Parry Damage to 11% Slightly reduced the start-up frames for Laughing Gas (Down, Forward + 1) and Rolling Laughing Gas (Down, Forward + 2) to allow it to combo consistently on all opponents. Lobo Reduced Lobo’s recovery time while loading his Nuclear Shells Character Power to 49 frames (down from 57). Removed the ability for an opponent to initiate a Clash while being hit by Lobo’s Meter Burn Pump Shots (Down, Forward + 1). Removed the ability for an opponent to initiate a Clash while being hit by Lobo’s Pump Shots (Down, Forward + 1) while his shotgun is loaded with Nuclear Shells. Increased the amount of damage an opponent will receive when blocking Lobo’s Pump Shots (Down, Forward + 1) while his shotgun is loaded with Nuclear Shells. Raven Raven’s Raven Slash (Down+3) attack now has normalized damage. Increased viability of Raven’s Teleport when used as a wake up attack. Shazam Increased viability of Shazam’s Teleport when used as a wake up attack. Shazam’s Herculean Might (Down, Back, Forward + 1) on miss is now -17 (down from -27) Shazam’s Achilles’ Clutch (Down, Back + 1) on miss is now -21 (down from -35) Shazam’s Solomon’s Judgment Character Power now activates faster Normalized reaction time for Shazam after escaping an opponent’s throw attempt. Sinestro Normalized Sinestro’s Backwards Throw Damage Arachnid Sting (Down, Forward 2) is now has a block advantage of -12 (down from -36) and is a Mid attack (changed from High). Beware Your Fears Character Power activation time decreased to 1.66 seconds (down from 2 seconds). Superman Normalized the amount of damage scaling on Superman’s combos. Normalized Superman’s damage scaling while using his Steel Rush (Forward+2, Down+1) combo. Wonder Woman Wonder Woman’s Knee Chop (Down+1) attack now inflicts normalized damage during hit and while an opponent is blocking. The patch is part of the second DLC Compatibility Pack that will be released tomorrow.DENVER — Democrats may be flustered after a week of being accused of engineering an anti-science “witch hunt,” but they aren’t backing down from their investigations into the financial backing of climate change researchers who challenge the movement’s doomsday scenarios. Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona, the ranking Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, told National Journal this week that he may have been guilty of overreach even as he defended his probe into the funding sources of seven professors, now known as the “Grijalva Seven.” “I think that us asking for empirical, fact-based science is not trying to stop research,” Mr. Grijalva told MSNBC’s Ed Schultz on Monday night. “Research can be done. If the Koch brothers or Exxon want to fund their research, fine. Just disclose that that’s who’s funding it so the American people can make their own decisions.” Three Senate Democrats — Barbara Boxer of California, Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island — are conducting their own probe of 100 fossil fuel companies and trade associations funding climate research. Their objective? To find out whether the organizations “are funding scientific studies designed to confuse the public and avoid taking action to cut carbon pollution, and whether the funded scientists fail to disclose the sources of their funding in scientific publications or in testimony to legislators.” The result is that Democrats are facing the kind of criticism usually reserved for Republicans in academic circles, even at left-leaning institutions. Among those under investigation is Roger Pielke Jr., an environmental studies professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. PHOTOS: Politicians in prison: Public servants who've served time “We stand behind him,” a university official said last week. The Denver Post declared in a Tuesday editorial, “CU rightly defends Roger Pielke Jr. against political bully.” “I think the Democrats, anytime you’re trying to enforce group-think or punish a professor for their scientific and legitimate views — and if you listen to this professor’s [views], they sound fairly reasonable, frankly — I think the Democrats look very bad on this,” Denver political analyst Floyd Ciruli said Sunday on KUSA-TV’s “Between the Lines” with Brandon Rittiman. Mr. Grijalva said in letters to universities that he wants to ascertain whether the professors have financial conflicts of interest, but his probe has outraged lawmakers, academics and scientists concerned about a potential “chilling effect” on research. The professors have challenged the theory that climate change is driving extreme weather events such as hurricanes and blizzards. “Publicly singling out specific researchers based on perspectives they have expressed and implying a failure to appropriately disclose funding sources — and thereby questioning their scientific integrity — sends a chilling message to all academic researchers,” Keith L. Seitter, executive director of the American Meteorological Society, said in a letter last week to Mr. Grijalva. Mr. Grijalva argues that the inquiry is necessary to ensure the impartiality of the professors’ past congressional testimony. The dual investigations were launched days after Greenpeace released documents that showed Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics aerospace engineer Wei-Hock “Willie” Soon had received $1.2 million in research funding since 2008 from fossil fuel interests, including Exxon Mobil Corp. and the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation. Mr. Soon, who has challenged computer models that predict increases in global temperatures, did not disclose his funding source in at least 11 papers since 2008, according to The New York Times. Mr. Soon has acknowledged as recently as 2013 that he receives funding from fossil fuel companies and insists that he is not motivated by money. “Climate Change on Campus: Research for Hire?” says an ominous-looking post on the House Natural Resources Committee minority website overlaying a photo of factory smokestacks. Mr. Seitter countered that “peer-review is the appropriate mechanism to assess the validity and quality of scientific research, regardless of the funding sources supporting that research as long as those funding sources and any potential conflicts of interest are fully disclosed.” The White House is pushing for tougher emissions standards in the name of combating climate change even as some scientists, dubbed by critics as “deniers,” question how much impact increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has on specific weather events. Mr. Pielke and others have described the House investigation as an attempt to discredit those who challenge the climate change movement’s contention that rising levels of carbon dioxide are driving natural disasters such as hurricanes and blizzards. “Before continuing, let me make one point abundantly clear: I have no funding, declared or undeclared, with any fossil fuel company or interest. I never have,” Mr. Pielke said in a Feb. 25 post on his website The Climate Fix that appeared under a photo of former Sen. Joseph McCarthy. “Representative Grijalva knows this too, because when I have testified before the U.S. Congress, I have disclosed my funding and possible conflicts of interest,” he said. “So I know with complete certainty that this investigation is a politically-motivated ‘witch hunt’ designed to intimidate me (and others) and to smear my name.” Meanwhile, Republicans are siding with the scientists. A spokesman for Rep. Rob Bishop, the Utah Republican who is chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, said Feb. 27 that Mr. Bishop is focused on reducing carbon emissions through efforts such as forest management reforms and reductions in gas flaring on federal lands. “This type of political theater is nothing more than a distraction,” spokesman Parish Braden said in an email. Sen. James M. Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who heads the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, fired off a letter Feb. 27 signed by the panel’s 11 Republicans to the organizations that received the Senate Democrats’ request, calling it “wholly inappropriate.” “We ask you to not be afraid of political repercussions or public attacks regardless of how you respond,” said the Inhofe letter. “Above all, we ask that you continue to support scientific inquiry and discovery, and protect academic freedom despite efforts to chill free speech.” The situation holds more than a little irony for Republicans, who have been accused by Democrats of targeting climate scientists. Five years ago, Mr. Inhofe came under fire for a report released by his Senate committee’s minority staff on collusion between top climate scientists affiliated with the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit. The British university was at the center of the climate scandal, in which email messages, data files and data processing programs revealed discussions of scientific fraud and data manipulation to buttress claims about catastrophic global warming. One difference is that the emails and documents used to prepare the February 2010 Senate report, “‘Consensus’ Exposed: The CRU Controversy,” were already available to the public. Virginia’s attorney general at the time, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, attempted to obtain records from the University of Virginia related to the work of professor Michael Mann, a climate scientist and leading promoter of global-warming theories. The Virginia Supreme Court shut down the effort in 2012. “McCarthyite attacks on climate scientists were un-American and inappropriate when Republicans practiced them. They are neither less toxic nor more appropriate when initiated by Democrats in the name of saving the planet,” Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, climate and energy policy analysts, said in the Breakthrough journal. The Grijalva letters to the universities ask for their policies on financial disclosure; all drafts and communications related to the professors’ past congressional testimony; all sources of external funding such as grants and honoraria; financial disclosure forms; and salary dating back to 2007. Adam Sarvana, a spokesman for the committee’s Democratic delegation, told The Huntsville Times in Alabama that the “whole reason we sent the letter is because we don’t know” about the funding sources for the seven professors, including John Christy, director of the University of Alabama at Huntsville Earth System Science Center. “The way we chose the list of recipients is who has published widely, who has testified in Congress before, who seems to have the most impact on policy in the scientific community, and he definitely fits that bill,” Mr. Sarvana said. Judith Curry, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology and one of the Grijalva Seven, posted an article Wednesday on Climate Etc. in which she noted that an article on BarackObama.com is headlined, “Call out the climate deniers.” “It looks like it is ‘open season’ on anyone who deviates even slightly from the consensus. … It is much easier for a scientist just to ‘go along’ with the consensus,” said Ms. Curry, referring to climate “warmists” or “alarmists.” She said those testifying before congressional committees are asked to disclose whether they have received government funding but added, “There is no disclosure requirement that is relevant to individuals from industry or advocacy groups, or for scientists receiving funding from industry or advocacy groups.” Steven F. Hayward, who is not a scientist but a public policy professor at Pepperdine University, said he was flattered to be included in what he called the “Magnificent Seven.” The other professors are Robert Balling of Arizona State University, David Legates of the University of Delaware and Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “If I say ‘two plus two equals four,’ does the truth of that proposition depend on whether I’ve received a grant from the Charles G. Koch Foundation? Apparently it does for Rep. Raul Grijalva,” Mr. Hayward said in a post on Powerline. Mr. Grijalva asks universities to respond no later than March 16. The Senate Democrats’ deadline is April 3. Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.An empty book entitled What Every Man Thinks About Apart From Sex has soared up the bestseller charts. Outselling the likes of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by JK Rowling and The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, ‘Professor’ Sheridan Simove’s publication moved 134,256 places up Amazon’s bestseller list to reach number 744. What Every Man Thinks About Apart From Sex is a completely empty book. The book claims to reveal the mysterious workings of the male mind, providing a probing insight into what, other than sex, occupies their thoughts, and recently featured on the ITV1 show Lorraine, with Lorraine Kelly. However, each of the 200 pages are completely blank. It seems the £4.69 journal has become a craze on campuses up and down the country, with students using the blank pages to take notes in lectures. The book’s ‘author’ said of the sales: ‘When the book was published I never imagined in my wildest dreams that I would outsell Harry Potter. Advertisement Advertisement ‘But Britain’s students seem to think my book is magic and who am I to argue?’ Prof Simove went on to reveal that the subject matter tackled in the book was thoroughly researched. ‘After many years of hard work I finally realised that men think of absolutely nothing apart from sex,’ he added. ‘It was a shocking conclusion and I realised that the world needed to be informed of my findings.’ Currently sitting at the top of the Amazon list is celebrity chef Jamie Oliver’s latest offering, 30-Minute Meals, providing quick and easy dishes to allow men more free time to, presumably, think about sex.We’re barely two days into 2014, and already U.S.-China relations are off to a rocky start. An unknown assailant set fire to the Chinese consulate in San Francisco at around 9:30 pm on January 1. According to the consulate’s statement, the attacker parked a mini-van in front of the main entrance and emerged to pour two buckets of gasoline onto the consulate’s door. He or she then set the gasoline on fire. There were no injuries, but the fire caused “severe damage.” Photos of the fire and aftermath are circulating on Chinese news media. The consulate’s statement “strongly condemn[s] the despicable act” and urged the United States to “take all necessary measures to provide adequate protection for Chinese consular personnel and properties, and bring the culprit(s) to justice as soon as possible.” China’s Foreign Ministry also called a special press conference to address the issue. Spokesman Qin Gang repeated the consulate’s demand for the U.S. to solve the case as quickly as possible, to “bring the perpetrators to justice,” and to strengthen security to ensure to guarantee there will be no similar incidents in the future. The U.S. government is taking the incident seriously — the Chinese consulate’s statement noted that both the fire department and the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security arrived “immediately” after the attack. In addition to the San Francisco police and fire departments, the FBI is reportedly investigating the case. As of now, no arrests have been made, but security has been increased at the consulate. How events unfold from here could help set the tone for U.S.-China relations in 2014. There are bound to be questions and outrage within China over how such an attack could be allowed to occur. A swift investigation that successfully identifies and arrests suspects would go a long way towards ameliorating the justifiable anger Chinese might feel. On the other hand, should the investigation drag on without results, it could contribute to the perception that the U.S. has no real interest in a cooperative relationship with China. Some in China already feel that the U.S. is only out to contain China’s rise – should the investigation hit a dead end, it will almost certainly be viewed as evidence of this theory. In addition, there is the issue of who is behind the attack. The U.S. is home to many activist groups that do not look kindly on China, from Uyghur and Tibetan activists groups to advocates for the Falun Gong, a religious sect outlawed within China. It’s hard to imagine any of these groups actually plotting an arsonist attack on a Chinese consulate, as generally their activities are limited to demonstrations or information campaigns. Still, should the attacked be found to have ties to any of these groups, it would hurt U.S.-China relations. The U.S. would be blamed for allowing such groups to operate on American soil, which might again contribute to perceptions that the U.S. government is part of a conspiracy to undermine China domestically and internationally. Finally, there is the issue of different justice systems. In the Chinese system, an arrest almost guarantees a conviction. In the U.S., should there be extenuating circumstances (such as mental health issues), it’s not impossible that the arsonist might face a shorter sentence than the Chinese would like. The issue could be especially dicey, with the Chinese government already calling for the “severe” punishment of the attacker [Chinese]. Much is still unknown about the attack, and even under the worst case scenario it’s unlikely to have a serious impact on U.S.-China relations. The damage, if it occurs, will be more subtle — a shifting of the balance further towards mutual distrust and away from real cooperation. All in all, it’s not a great way to start the new year.Sanchez has a funny way of showing his affection. In the Padres' 12-9, 11-inning victory at AT&T Park on Friday night, Sanchez bedeviled his former club. He went 3-for-6 with a homer, a double and two RBIs, leading the Padres back from an early four-run deficit. SAN FRANCISCO -- Hector Sanchez insists he has nothing but love for the Giants. The Padres catcher spent five seasons with San Francisco, winning two championships along the way. He regularly keeps in touch with a number of his former teammates. And he lauds the fans for their continued support, even though he's now wearing a Padres cap. SAN FRANCISCO -- Hector Sanchez insists he has nothing but love for the Giants. The Padres catcher spent five seasons with San Francisco, winning two championships along the way. He regularly keeps in touch with a number of his former teammates. And he lauds the fans for their continued support, even though he's now wearing a Padres cap. Sanchez has a funny way of showing his affection. In the Padres' 12-9, 11-inning victory at AT&T Park on Friday night, Sanchez bedeviled his former club. He went 3-for-6 with a homer, a double and two RBIs, leading the Padres back from an early four-run deficit. View Full Game Coverage "You enjoy it," Sanchez said of facing his former club. "It's fun playing against those guys, because that was my team for a long time." Sanchez's fourth-inning homer to straightaway center field sparked the Padres' early comeback. It was his 10th since joining the team last May, and five of them have come in his 24 at-bats against San Francisco. In 297 plate appearances as a Giant at AT&T Park, Sanchez went deep just twice. He has stepped into the box at the stadium 15 times as a Padre -- and has homered three times. Eighty-five percent of Sanchez's career at-bats have come for the Giants. And yet his five homers against them are more than he's hit against any other club. "It's hard to look at the numbers and not think [he gets fired up to face the Giants]," Padres manager Andy Green said. "He's had so much success and so many big at-bats [against them]. He's upbeat every single day. But there's a locked-in factor when he's facing the Giants that seems pretty special." Video: SD@SF: Sanchez slashes RBI double down the line Sanchez has taken over as the Padres' primary backstop since Austin Hedges went down a week ago with a minor concussion. Since then, Sanchez is hitting.375 with four home runs. "It's different when you play like every day, get more opportunity," Sanchez said. "You get more game time, you're consistently in there, you see more pitches. I'm just happy to have the opportunity to be helping my team get Ws." After Sanchez's fourth-inning blast, he tacked on a double in the fifth to chase Giants starter Jeff Samardzija. He singled in the seventh, leaving him a triple shy of the cycle. Not known for his wheels, Sanchez had never tripled in his career. "If I hit it, I was going to go for it," Sanchez joked. He never got that chance, flying out in the eighth and striking out in the 10th.When Mr. Hill saw the officer, Mr. Castillo said, he stood up and moved toward him with his hands raised, and the officer, who Mr. Castillo said looked frightened, yelled for him to stop. Mr. Castillo said that he had not seen a scuffle, but that he did see the officer pull out a handgun and shoot Mr. Hill. Another resident, a woman who did not want her name published because she is an undocumented immigrant, said Mr. Hill had his hands at his sides and raised them parallel to the ground as he drew nearer to the officer. She, too, said the men did not fight before Mr. Hill was shot. A third witness, Xochi Macedonia, 27, said she had seen Mr. Hill running toward the police officer from more than 20 yards away. But Ms. Macedonia said she could not see what happened when Mr. Hill got close. In a news conference on Monday, Cedric L. Alexander, the DeKalb County deputy chief operating officer for public safety, said the officer had a Taser at the time. He said he did not know whether the officer had used it. None of the witnesses said they saw a Taser used. Harrietta Jones, 62, a cousin of Mr. Hill’s mother, said Tuesday that Mr. Hill was being treated by the Department of Veterans Affairs. “To my understanding, he was having some difficulties with the medication that he was on,” she said. Capt. Steve Fore of the DeKalb County police said Tuesday that Mr. Olsen, like all officers, underwent training in dealing with mentally ill people. But Captain Fore said he was not sure of Mr. Olsen’s exact training curriculum. “They may vary from year to year,” he said.A monk rests at the premises of Boudhanath Stupa in Kathmandu March 10, 2014. REUTERS/Navesh Chitrakar NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Nepal has reversed a decision to allow a monk prominent in Tibetan Buddhism to be cremated on its soil after what media reports said was pressure from China and his organization said on Monday they were in talks with the government in Kathmandu. Shamar Rinpoche, also known as the Shamarpa, died of a heart attack in Germany aged 62 on June 11, according to his office. He was scheduled to be moved on Sunday to Nepal, where he ran a monastery, for his final rites. “Because of his will and advice we’re supposed to bring his body to Nepal,” Khenpo Mriti, an administrator at the Karmapa International Buddhist Society in New Delhi that Rinpoche was closely associated with, said on Monday. Rinpoche’s body was taken to India on June 22 for disciples to pay their respects. Mriti said the government in Nepal had granted the documents for his cremation but later reversed its decision saying Rinpoche had a Bhutanese passport and had died in a foreign country and could not be allowed his final rites there. The Kathmandu Post reported that the documents had been withdrawn under pressure from the Chinese Embassy in Kathmandu, citing an unnamed Home Ministry source. Embassy officials were not immediately reachable for comment. Mriti said his group was talking to Nepali authorities and was confident the government would allow the cremation soon. Nepal is home to more than 20,000 Tibetans - many arrived in 1959 when their spiritual leader the Dalai Lama fled to India after a failed uprising against Chinese rule. In recent years, Nepali authorities have crushed Tibetan protests against China, a key trade partner.Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani on Friday (9 September) warned Islamabad that he would close the Afghan transit route for Pakistani exports to Central Asia if his country's traders were not allowed to use Lahore's Wagah border for trade with India. Speaking during a conference with the UK's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Owen Jenkins in Kabul, Ghani said, "Afghanistan is no more a landlocked country as it has many transit routes for the import and export of goods." He added that Kabul had always made efforts to boost cooperation in the state and wanted Pakistan and other regional countries to remove all technical problems that prove hindrance in economic development. "Pakistan has always shut its routes on Afghanistan's fresh fruit, causing loss of millions of dollars to our traders," the Afghan president said. The statements came amid ongoing tensions between the two neighbours over several issues including Pakistan's new mechanism at its Torkham border that necessitates every Afghan to carry passport and visa for crossing the border. According to reports, Kabul has long been urging Islamabad to permit it to use Wagah border for importing goods at the Indian border town of Attari. However, Pakistan is hesitant to allow because of its bitter relations with India. "It is offloaded in Wagah and then carried in carts up to Attari and loaded on again. This adds to transportation cost as well as to a significant spoilage," an Afghan official said. Meanwhile, the Afghan president also indirectly accused Islamabad for funding terrorism and said, "Support to the terrorist groups is an action contrary to the good neighbourhood and all international norms and action of the neighbouring country is no more acceptable to the people and government of Afghanistan." "We will use diplomatic channels to stop all efforts to destabilise Afghanistan through terrorist groups. I want our message should be conveyed to Pakistan," Ghani was quoted as saying by the Tribune.A hacker at Washington State University gave students and information-technology staff members another reason to remember the Fifth of November this year. Students and instructors arriving for class on Friday morning were greeted by a video message automatically beamed onto projector screens in more than two dozen classrooms. The message was delivered by a hacker dressed up as V, the Guy Fawkes-inspired anti-hero of the 2006 movie V for Vendetta. After hacking into the university’s academic media system, which manages classroom-presentation and distance-learning technology, the as-of-yet-unidentified culprit or culprits programmed motorized screens to unfurl themselves and scheduled projectors to broadcast the five-minute-long video once every hour. The video—ostensibly a diatribe against campus squirrels and a call to end student apathy—interrupted lectures and cut off access for distance-learning students until the IT staff was able to shut down the program in the early afternoon. According to Darin Watkins, the university’s executive director for external communications, IT officials in some cases had to unplug computer hard drives in order to stop the hack. “It was a rather sophisticated program,” he said. “Traditional ways of shutting down the software wouldn’t work.” In V for Vendetta, the protagonist V is a revolutionary fighting a fascist British regime in a dystopian future. V broadcasts a video message calling the British public to action on November 5 in honor of Guy Fawkes’s 1605 attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament and assassinate King James I. The film ends in a violent explosion—which had some university officials worried that the V-masked hacker might be threatening to do something similar. Fearing that the video was a precursor to a larger system breach or even Guy Fawkes-esque violence, campus officials responded immediately to the hack. Mr. Watkins said the infected media system was not attached to databases of students’ personal or financial
I really hesitated to change his design at all.. I don't normally straight up love something, but seriously, there's very little changes I would even bother making, so I just stuck to exaggeration. If you haven't played Fire Emblem Awakening, you should give it a try. It's the best in the series, and is very beginner friendly.Transportation Bikes CicLavia Los Angeles 2011: Taking Back the Streets CicLavia is...? Imagine a street party taking place over 7 miles of Los Angeles roads, but without any cars to get in the way. That's what CicLavia is. The 2011 edition took place on April 10th, and the video above shows what some of the participants think about the event (Freedom, fun, and community were recurrent themes). If you missed it and want to participate, the next editions will take place on July 10th and October 9th, 2011. Via Streetfilms. See also: Bike Repair App: A Bike Repair Shop in Your Pocket! CicLavia Los Angeles 2011: Taking Back the Streets CicLavia is...? Imagine a street party taking place over 7 miles of Los Angeles roads, but without any cars to get in the way. That's what CicLavia is. The 2011 edition took place on April 10th, and the video above shows what some of the participantsLayoffs and massive losses loom. Uber, which has lost $3 billion last year and has gotten itself into a thicket of intractable issues and scandals that cost founder and CEO Travis Kalanick his job, is now facing a subprime auto-leasing crisis. Two years ago when these folks launched the subprime auto leasing program to put their badly paid drivers into new vehicles they couldn’t otherwise afford, they apparently didn’t do the math. In July 2015, when the “Xchange Leasing” program was announced, the company gushed: “We’re excited about how these new solutions meet drivers’ unique needs, and offer more and better choices and greater flexibility than ever before.” The leasing program would be “administered by an Uber subsidiary and designed to fit with the flexibility that drivers value most,” it said. This is how it would work: Unlike most multi-year leases that have high fees for early termination, drivers who participate in Xchange for at least 30 days will be able to return the car with only two weeks notice, and limited additional costs. The program allows for unlimited mileage and the option to lease a used car, with routine maintenance also included. It wasn’t supposed to be a money maker – nothing at Uber is. But hey. And the company invested $600 million in the business, “people familiar with the matter” told the Wall Street Journal. This type of lease was offered to drivers with subprime credit ratings or no credit ratings who barely earned enough money to get by and make the payments, if they stuck around long enough. It allowed drivers to drive new cars. When it didn’t work out for them, they could return the cars after 30 days with two weeks’ notice. The only penalty for the early return is that Uber keeps the $250 deposit. And these leases came with “unlimited miles.” No one in the car business would ever conceive of such a thing. But Uber is different. It defies the laws of economics. Or so it thought at the time. Now, the 14-member executive committee that is running the show looked at the math and was horrified. “According to people familiar with the matter,” cited by The Journal, executives had briefed the committee in July: The Xchange Leasing division had been estimating modest losses of around $500 per auto on average, these people said. But managers recently informed Uber executives that the losses were actually about $9,000 per car — about half the sticker price of a typical leased vehicle. The “unlimited miles” allowed drivers to work long days and return vehicles with way too many miles, which kills the resale value. Also, if drivers got frustrated with their pay and quit their gig and returned the vehicle, the car might be 7 months old and have 20,000 miles on it, and be worth only a fraction of Uber’s depreciated book value of the car. In the overall subprime auto loan segment, defaults are soaring. And Uber wasn’t spared. So costly repossessions hammered the program, these people told The Journal. Due to the breath-taking losses from this subprime leasing enterprise — $9,000 per car on average! — the executives agreed to shut it down. The numbers are big. Uber has titles to nearly 40,000 vehicles through Xchange Leasing. It now has to get the cars back from its drivers and sell them in the wholesale market. It wants to do most of this by year-end. If Uber loses $9,000 per car on average on these 40,000 cars, it will add another $360 million in losses on top of the losses it has already booked. If it sells the subprime leasing business, which is another option, it will likely pick up a similar loss because buyers of those assets will look at the same scenario. And layoffs loom. Up to 500 employees could be affected by the shutdown of Xchange Leasing, or about 3% of the 15,000 Uber employees. Some people might be transferred to other departments, such as customer service, the people said. To fund these leases, Uber obtained a credit facility of $1 billion last year from a consortium of banks including Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase, Citigroup, and Morgan Stanley. Despite the crazy terms, these leases aren’t cheap for drivers. Uber figured they’d drive a lot, and they’d have to pay more than they would have for a standard lease. The Journal: A 2014 Toyota Corolla was recently being offered for a term of 130 weeks at $122 a week, totaling roughly $500 a month, according to marketing materials distributed by Uber. By contrast, leases for Corollas are advertised all over the internet for as low as $159 a month, for 24 months and 24,000 miles. But read the small print, including the $1,499 down at inception and other upfront charges. And subprime buyers might not qualify. This type of lease allows 1,000 miles a month of driving. That’s barely enough for a working stiff to commute to work. But it’s not enough for an Uber driver, working 14-hour shifts to pay for the lease and have some money left over for rent. Uber also found that dealers, according to The Journal, “were pushing drivers into more expensive vehicles, lowering their likelihood of turning a profit.” Duh. That’s what dealers do. It’s called “upselling.” Didn’t anyone tell the Uber wunderkinder? So Uber hired a bunch of people, set up showrooms, and did the leasing in-house to get a better handle on it. With stellar results. When a company undercuts competition – such as by massively if unknowingly subsidizing the cost of vehicles – and investors don’t care that their money is getting burned at lightning speed, executives have no reason to change course. For them, all that matters is dominating the market no matter what the costs, and that’s happening at a stunning pace. Read… Uber, Lyft Mangle Rental Cars & Taxis. Other Sectors Next Enjoy reading WOLF STREET and want to support it? Using ad blockers – I totally get why – but want to support the site? You can donate “beer money.” I appreciate it immensely. Click on the beer mug to find out how: Would you like to be notified via email when WOLF STREET publishes a new article? Sign up here.Video shot by a deckhand was the key piece of evidence that helped convict the owner of a Puget Sound fishing vessel for violating the Clean Water Act. A federal jury handed down a “guilty” verdict this week after the week-long trial of Bingham Fox, who owns the 80 foot Native Sun. Jurors determined that Fox intentionally dumped oily bilge water into the port of Blaine, Wash. The U.S. Coast Guard was alerted to the pollution scheme by a deckhand named Anthony, who shot cell phone video of a makeshift pump that sucked oily sludge from the Native Sun’s hull and pumped it into the ocean and the Puget Sound. Authorities believe the Native Sun did not have a working oily water separator for at least two years. The device is a filter commonly found on commercial vessels. It removes oil from seawater and allows the filtered seawater to be pumped back into the ocean. The Coast Guard says Native Sun would routinely pump out oil and water at night. Charging documents say owner Bingham Fox and his son Randall Fox purchased bulk soap and emulsifiers to help disperse the oily sheen that would collect around their ship during the dumps. Bingham Fox below decks was convicted of violating the Clean Water Act. On the incriminating video, Anthony introduces himself and says “I got to show you this, authorities.” The tape shows him walking down into the ship’s engine room and pointing to a blue pipe that is pumping the oil and bilge water above decks and overboard into Blaine harbor. The Coast Guard Commander in Seattle, Darwin Jensen, says his office relies on citizen tips to catch polluters. Bingham Fox faces a five-year prison sentence and a $250,000 fine. His son Randall Fox, who also pled guilty to conspiracy charges, faces 11 years and a $500,000 fine. Copyright 2017 KINGRep. Ted Poe, R-Tex., will highlight the Stanford sexual assault victim’s letter on the House floor Thursday, bringing attention in Washington to the widely publicized case. Poe will also demand that the “pathetic sentence” be overturned and that Californians recall Judge Aaron Persky. “As a grandfather, I want to know that my granddaughters are growing up in a society that has zero tolerance for this crime,” Poe’s prepared remarks read, according to BuzzFeed. “No means no.” Brock Turner, 20, was convicted last week on three counts of sexual assault and sentenced to six months in county jail and three years of probation. The maximum possible sentence was 14 years in prison. The letter to be read by Poe was written by the victim and read aloud directly to Turner in court. The victim has chosen to remain anonymous but her words have gone viral, including being read on-air on CNN. Sign Up and Save Get six months of free digital access to The Kansas City Star “Mr. Speaker, I was a criminal court judge and prosecutor for 30 years, this judge got it wrong,” say Poe’s prepared remarks. Over 850,000 people had signed a change.org petition in favor of removing Persky for the “lenient sentence he allowed in the Brock Turner rape case,” as of Thursday morning. A White House petition calling for the judge’s impeachment had 86,246 signatures. Persky, who was also a student athlete, sparked outrage when he suggested that a harsher sentence would have “a severe impact” on Turner and that “he will not be a danger to others.” Poe called Turner an “arrogant defendant,” saying he was glad the Stanford student had appealed the case because it provides the opportunity for a harsher sentence to be given. “As a country, we must change our mentality and make sure that our young people recognize sexual assault and rape for the heinous crimes that they are,” Poe says in the prepared remarks.Republicans stole a key governor’s seat in a hotly contested race in Kentucky on Tuesday, installing an outsider businessman who has drawn comparisons to Donald Trump as the state’s next chief executive. Meanwhile, neighboring Ohio voted against becoming the fifth state to legalize the recreational use of marijuana. In Kentucky, millionaire GOP investor Matt Bevin led state Attorney General Jack Conway (D), 52.5 percent to 44 percent, with 99 percent of precincts reporting. The race, perhaps the most watched in a series of lower-profile races in Tuesday’s off-year elections, has been called for Bevin. Bevin, who lost a lopsided primary to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) last year, won despite missteps on the campaign trail and an unorthodox campaign that at times alienated key GOP leaders. The relative political newcomer faced questions about his taxes and jousted repeatedly with local reporters, sometimes blacklisting them and their outlets. Bevin traveled the state in a gold Cadillac Escalade and ran as a self-funding businessman who couldn’t be bought off. For these reasons and more, he drew repeated comparisons to Trump, one of the GOP presidential front-runners. 1 of 45 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Trump captures the nation’s attention as he campaigns View Photos The presidential candidate and billionaire businessman leads the field of candidates in the Republican race. Caption Businessman Donald Trump officially became the Republican nominee at the party’s convention in Cleveland. Donald Trump speaks at a campaign event at Trump Doral golf course in Miami. Carlo Allegri/Reuters Buy Photo Wait 1 second to continue. “I have no favors to pay back. There’s not one person in this state who believes they are going to have a job in my administration.... There’s not one person who I’ve promised anything to,” he said last week at a diner, according to The Washington Post’s James Hohmann. “Donald Trump is an interesting fellow.... Part of what people appreciate about him is the very same thing. He doesn’t owe anybody anything.” Republicans made every effort to nationalize the race, tying Conway to the national Democratic Party and, more specifically, to President Obama. The state is heavily Republican at the federal level, but Gov. Steve Beshear (D) has won two elections in recent years and enjoyed relatively strong approval ratings. Also at issue was the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Bevin said that he would have rejected the federal funds, which many GOP governors have done but which polls show is an unpopular stance. Democrats pilloried him for it, hoping it would be their ticket to victory. Conway was last seen on the national stage running unsuccessfully against now-Sen. Rand Paul (R) in a key 2010 Senate race. Heading into Tuesday’s contest, Conway was considered a narrow favorite by most election analysts. “Unfortunately, [Conway] ran into the unexpected head winds of Trump-mania, losing to an outsider candidate in the Year of the Outsider,” Democratic Governors Association Executive Director Elisabeth Pearson said in a statement. Kentucky was one of several states holding key elections Tuesday. In Mississippi, Gov. Phil Bryant (R) easily won a noncompetitive race against a little-known Democrat, Robert Gray. The two results mean that Republicans will retain at least 31 of the 50 governor’s seats next year, with Democrats holding 17 and one state, Alaska, with an independent governor. Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D-Va.), along state senate candidate Jeremy McPike (D), rallied volunteers in Manassas Park as voters headed to the polls Tuesday. (Arelis Hernandez/The Washington Post) The GOP will try to gain a 32nd seat in a surprisingly competitive Louisiana race later this month. Republican Sen. David Vitter’s own troubled campaign will attempt to win in another deep-red state in a Nov. 21 runoff against John Bel Edwards (D). Elsewhere Tuesday, Ohio voters overwhelmingly rejected the legalization of marijuana for recreational use, turning back an effort that would have granted those who invested in the legalization effort, including former boy-band singer Nick Lachey and basketball Hall of Famer Oscar Robertson, the exclusive ability to cultivate marijuana on specific farms. The unique legalization effort split pro-legalization forces, with some worrying that it would create a “marijuana monopoly.” In Virginia, the state Senate remained under GOP control, preventing Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) from gaining a friendly chamber in the legislature. And in Houston, voters defeated a contentious LGBT nondiscrimination law that opponents painted as being about bathroom access for transgender individuals.Minneapolis, MN - Attorneys appeared in court, August 5, before Judge Peter Cahill for a status conference in the #BlackLivesMatter demonstration case. Notably, Bloomington Prosecutor Sandra Johnson has dropped all substantive trespassing charges against the alleged organizers of the Black Lives Matter demonstration. The move came on the heels of motions to dismiss that were filed by lead attorneys Jordan Kushner and Bruce Nestor, who are representing 10 of 11 individuals identified as ‘ringleaders’ of the Black Lives Matter gathering at the Mall of America last December. Both Kushner and Nestor argued that the Mall of America asked demonstrators to “disperse” rather than to leave the property all together on the day of the demonstration. The dismissal of charges appears to confirm the validity of this argument challenging the trespass charges. Attorney, defendant and NAACP Minneapolis President Nekima Levy-Pounds says, “It is unfortunate that the Bloomington city attorney is choosing to continue to pursue charges against alleged organizers of the Mall of America demonstration. This proves what we've said all along: These charges are simply unfounded and are being leveraged as an attempt to intimidate and silence dissent. We will continue to press for the remainder of these trumped-up charges to be dropped until justice is served.” Levy-Pounds added, “I was initially charged with eight misdemeanor counts and now three of my charges have since been dismissed. Four of my five remaining charges are for ‘aiding and abetting,’ as opposed to substantive offenses. It’s sad to think how much time and money is being wasted by the city of Bloomington ‘to make an example’ out of us; especially in light of the seriousness of police shootings of unarmed black people in this country.” Defense attorney Bruce Nestor stated, “It is evident that the Mall of America failed to explicitly demand that demonstrators leave the property during the Black Lives Matter demonstration in December. The large monitors simply read, ‘We expect all participants to disperse at this time.’ Under the law, there is a clear distinction between orders to disperse, which means to spread out, versus demanding that someone physically leave the property. Thus, it would have been a gross waste of taxpayer dollars for prosecutors to continue to pursue frivolous trespassing charges in this case.” “The majority of substantive charges against the alleged organizers have already been dismissed in this case by prosecutors. The remaining charges are mostly aiding and abetting charges, which raises significant questions about the purpose behind these prosecutions,” Nestor continued. Lena K. Gardner of Black Lives Matter added, “Bloomington City Attorney Sandra Johnson is sending the message that if you are white and you show up on ‘private property’ in Bloomington to protest the killing of a lion, you’re safe, as we saw last week. But if you show up at the Mall of America to protest the killing of unarmed African Americans by police, you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and treated like a criminal. This blatant hypocrisy should not be tolerated within our system of justice. Black Lives Matter demonstrators deserve the same respect and deference as others who protest perceived injustices.”Story highlights Donald Trump said he wasn't bothered by the pastor Trump said the pastor was nervous before introducing him (CNN) Donald Trump said "something was up" with Rev. Faith Green Timmons, the pastor who interrupted him to ask him not to attack Hillary Clinton in her church in Flint, Michigan on Wednesday. But Trump said he wasn't bothered by the interruption because "everyone plays their games." Trump, speaking Thursday on Fox and Friends, was responding to the host's question about a post on Facebook (according to the Fox hosts, who noted it was later erased) that she hoped to "educate" Trump on what had been going on in Flint. CNN has not been able to review the Facebook post in question. "She was so nervous, she was shaking. And I said, 'wow, this was kind of strange.' And then she came up. So she had that in mind, no question about it," Trump said, adding that he suspected that he might face an unfriendly reception at the church. Clinton responded to Trump's characterization during a news conference Thursday afternoon, taking issue with Trump calling her "nervous." "That's not only insulting, that's dead wrong.... She's a rock for her community in trying times, she deserves better than that. And Flint deserves better," Clinton said in Greensboro, North Carolina. Read MoreDefence Minister Harjit Sajjan has told a House of Commons debate on the future of Canada's contribution to the U.S.-led mission against ISIS that Canada's CF-18 fighter jets have flown their last mission in Iraq and Syria. In announcing the changes to Canada's mission last week, the government said the CF-18 involvement in airstrikes would end by Feb. 22, but Sajjan told MPs Wednesday the CF-18s flew their last mission on Monday. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, interim Conservative Leader Rona Ambrose and NDP Leader Tom Mulcair delivered remarks Wednesday in the House as MPs debated the federal government's recently-announced changes to the mission to combat ISIS. Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan tells a Commons debate the bombing mission ended Feb. 15 0:29 Trudeau kicked off debate Wednesday afternoon by thanking the Canadian forces for their work in the mission to date. He paid tribute to Sgt. Andrew Doiron, the Canadian soldier killed in Iraq last March. Trudeau went on to tout his plan to replace CF-18 fighter jets with a bigger contingent of soldiers to train local forces. The Conservatives, who under Stephen Harper drafted the original mission to send Canadian fighter-bombers into battle, are condemning the changes as a step back from the fight. The NDP is asking for a clearer definition of the new effort, seeking to know if Canadian trainers will be in harm's way and urging the government to spell out an exit strategy. The government is stressing a broader approach, including more humanitarian aid and help for refugees. The Commons is debating the government's changes to the mission against ISIS 2:13 Trudeau says the training mission is the right role for Canada in the right place. "Our goal is to allow local forces to take the fight directly to ISIL, to reclaim their homes, land and future," he told the Commons. "We will be more significantly involved in counter-terrorism measures, improving chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear security in the region." Trudeau rejected the notion that Canada is backing away from the fight. "We believe there is an important role for Canada to plan in the fight against ISIL, a role that we can play, a role that we must play." In addition to more trainers, Canada will keep its aerial refuelling and reconnaissance planes in the fight, which the prime minister characterized as defending peace and democracy against "terrorism and barbarism." "(ISIS) stands against everything that we value as Canadians and poses a direct threat to our people and our friends." He said the government's revamped mission will be robust, comprehensive and effective and will deliver results on the ground. MPs John McKay, Randall Garrison and Tony Clement discuss Canada's new ISIS strategy as the plan is debated in the House. 14:19 Tories ask for Combat mission Interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose begged to differ. "There are times in the life of a Parliament, and in the history of this House, when providence calls upon us to lead," Ambrose said. "Lead by conviction, lead by a responsibility we collectively have to the Canadian people and lead by fighting evil — and, sadly, today is not a day of leadership." Withdrawing from the bombing campaign means pulling a vital component out of the U.S.-led coalition effort against ISIL, she added. "To blunt the sharp end of our spear is not in keeping with the contributions of our allies," she said. "We know, too, thanks to poll after poll, that it's not what most Canadians want us to do." While Interim Conservative Leader Rona Ambrose spoke, her twitter account was active: The training we are doing and will continue to do is valuable, but it is not enough. We must fight by their side and in the air. —@RonaAmbrose It is not enough to talk about our values: about freedom and democracy, about human rights and human dignity. We must defend them. —@RonaAmbrose NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair's Twitter account was also buzzing during his speech in the House of Commons: The Liberals had said that we need a clearer line between combat and non-combat but this new mission blurs these lines even more. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/cdnpoli?src=hash">#cdnpoli</a> —@ThomasMulcair ISIS is not Islam. We must expose the utter lack of religious basis for its atrocities. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/cdnpoli?src=hash">#cdnpoli</a> —@ThomasMulcair The PM is proposing the expansion and enlargement of Canada’s military mission in Iraq – and it is clearly a combat mission. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/cdnpoli?src=hash">#cdnpoli</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NDP?src=hash">#NDP</a> —@ThomasMulcair On Feb. 8, the Liberal government announced that Canada will end its contribution to coalition airstrikes and withdraw its six fighter jets. But Canada will also triple the number of special forces deployed on the ground to train Iraqi forces for the next two years. The $1.6 billion budget for Canada's mission includes: $264 million to extend the military mission in Iraq and Syria for one year until March 31, 2017. $145 million over three years for non-military security efforts, such as counter-terrorism initiatives. $840 million over three years in humanitarian assistance. $270 million over three years to "build local capacity" in Jordan and Lebanon, where there are a large number of refugees. $42 million to redeploy staff and equipment to the region over the course of the new military commitment. An increased diplomatic presence in the region. Canada's fighter jets have conducted roughly 2.5 per cent of all the airstrikes conducted by coalition forces in Iraq and Syria. About 98 per cent were in Iraq and the remaining 2 per cent in Syria. A CBC News analysis found that January was a lower-than-average month for Canada's mission, with Canadian jets conducting 2.2 per cent of strikes. So far in February, that has increased to 3.1 per cent. Up to Feb. 1 (the most recent data available), Canada's CF-18s have taken part in 5 per cent of all the coalition sorties by combat jets.Sunday Feb 22, 2015 Episode 25 - Enterprise Java Newscast - February 2015 The Enterprise Java Newscast, hosted by Kito D. Mann, Ian Hlavats, and Daniel Hinojosa, is a monthly podcast that covers the latest headlines in the world of Enterprise Java development. In this episode, Kito and Daniel cover new releases from HighFaces, GISFaces, Spring, Java SE/ME, WebSphere, Arquillian, Apache, and more. They also discuss Microsoft’s new Spartan browser and Pivotal’s decision to stop sponsoring Groovy and Grails. Podcast (MP3) UI Tier HighFaces 1.0 GISFaces 1.4 Esprima 2.0 Released Project Avatar Update Microsoft’s new Spartan Browser Persistence Tier Spring XD 1.1 GA and 1.0.4 released Spring for Apache Hadoop 2.1 Released Spring Integration Kafka Extension 1.0.GA is available Infinispan 7.1.0 Final Released Services (Middleware & Microservices) Tier OmniSecurity IBM WebSphere Liberty Profile Beta with Tools - February Misc Arquillian Core 1.1.7.Final Released Apache Tika 1.7 Released HttpComponents Client 4.4 GA Released Apache Allura 1.2.0 released Git 2.3 has been released Java SE 8 update 31, SE 7 and SE Embedded Java ME Embedded 8.1 Released Discussion http://www.quora.com/Why-is-Pivotal-ending-the-sponsorship-of-Groovy-and-Grails http://www.businessinsider.com/ibm-layoffs-are-coming-but-nowhere-close-to-100000-2015-1 Events No Fluff Just Stuff Boston, MA Feb 27 - Mar 1 Minneapolis, MN Mar 6 - 8 Madison, WI Mar 13 - 14 San Diego, CA Mar 20 - 21 St. Louis, MO Apr 10 - 11 DevNexus - Atlanta, GA, USA - Mar 10-12th, 2015 Philadelphia Emerging Tech - Philadelphia, PA - April 7-8, 2015 Clojure West - Portland OR, USA - April 20-22, 2015 Devoxx UK - London, UK - Jun 17-19th Devoxx Poland - Krakow, Poland - Jun 22-24, 2015 Posted at 12:05PM Feb 22, 2015 by admin in Newscasts |Romania has made use of a NATO airlift project to transport victims of a nightclub fire in Bucharest for treatment in the United Kingdom and Norway. Under NATO’s Strategic Airlift Capability (SAC) project, Romania activated a C-17 aircraft, which flew from its base in Pápa, Hungary to Bucharest on Sunday (8 November 2015) to collect victims of a serious fire which took place on 30 October. Nine burn victims, six in critical condition, were transported to London, United Kingdom and one was transported to Bergen, Norway for treatment, after which the aircraft returned to Pápa. The patients were accompanied by nine emergency physicians and eight nurses from Romania's Mobile Emergency Service for Resuscitation and Extrication (SMURD). The Strategic Airlift Capability is an initiative that gives NATO Allies and partners access to strategic airlift: the capability to transport personnel and supplies around the world. In 2009, the SAC procured three Boeing C-17 aircraft for this purpose, which are based at Pápa Airbase in Hungary. The aircraft are normally used for national requirements, but can also be allocated for international operations, including NATO, United Nations or European Union missions. In the past, they have supported NATO’s mission in Afghanistan, the Kosovo Force, Operation Unified Protector in Libya, humanitarian relief in Haiti and Pakistan, and African peacekeeping efforts. The SAC project involves ten Allies (Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, and the United States), and two partner nations (Finland and Sweden). For more information on NATO’s strategic airlift capabilities: http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/topics_50107.htm#Is Jeopardy! in Mathematicians? Human lessons from a computer trying to think like a human David Ferrucci is Department Group Manager in Semantic Analysis and Integration at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. He heads the DeepQA Project, which produced the automated Question-Answering system named Watson. It famously defeated Jeopardy! champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter on a special edition of the American TV game show last February, as we covered back then in our post, “Are Mathematicians in Jeopardy?” Today we wish to ask what IBM’s solution to a real-world problem may imply for humans approaching research problems. Dr. Ferrucci gave a plenary talk titled “Building Watson: An Overview of DeepQA for the Jeopardy! Challenge” (paper, video from TiEcon, 5/15/11) at the AAAI 2011 conference (joint with IAAI 2011), which I (Ken) attended for the first time. I presented my paper with Guy Haworth of the University of Reading (UK) on “Intrinsic Chess Ratings”; it was also mentioned here and here. I was glad to meet several people in related areas of research. DeepQA is an offspring of the famous Deep Blue, the IBM chess program and multi-processing computer that vanquished world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997. Ferrucci hopefully labeled his project, “The Next Deep Blue,” since “IBM got a lot of value out of Deep Blue,” he pointed out, beyond beating Kasparov. As a manager at IBM no doubt this value is critical, and at the end of his talk he projected concrete applications of DeepQA. However, most of his talk was about the journey to the Jeopardy! TV contest, and that interests us now. Watson’s Problem Ferrucci began with a question that a member of an online chess club such as ICC might pose: Do you want to play chess, or just chat?” In chess, he said, all messages signifying moves have well-defined meaning from the rules of the game. In human language, however, words have no such intrinsic meaning—they gain meaning from human cognition aligned with context and human actions and intents. Chat is hard, and so is wit. The initial 2007 version of Watson was fairly rule-based, as if playing chess, and tests showed it had only a fraction of the skill needed to compete with good Jeopardy! players. My word `fairly’ here is fairly difficult, perhaps unfairly difficult, for a rule-based system to pick up the shade of meaning. Just sporting a balanced, unbiased, impartial approach might not be enough for a Jeopardy! category like one whose “hook” requires recognizing synonyms for `fair,’ such as the first five real words of this sentence. Thus the IBM team’s initial idea of THINK needed a dose of Think Different in order to think like us. In computer science theory and mathematics we believe all of our problem-solving objectives are defined by rules. But as we have tried to say in earlier discussions, sometimes true progress needs one to break the rules, or perhaps better put, look for patterns and tricks in new contexts. Watson may not be able to sing or dance, but it can probably give a good talk. Let’s see what steps enabled it to get onstage. Watson’s Steps The IBM team did not attempt to build large databases of questions and answers, Jeopardy!-style or not. A sample of just 20,000 past questions revealed 2,500 distinct types, the most frequent type only about 3% of the whole. The team inferred that the whole would be a distribution with a long tail, and with no clear framework for the domain, so that they could only hit a fraction of it. Hence they used rules mainly to enumerate senses of words and basic relations: Is a `liquid’ a `fluid’? Is a `fluid’ a `liquid’? They used WordNet for much of this, but Ferrucci quipped that while WordNet by itself would be good for understanding questions on a physics test, it would not do for anything like Jeopardy! The problem had to be seen as much greater, just as research is different from taking an examination. Here are some of the steps that he outlined—all boldface is quasi-verbatim from his slides: Identify and solve sub-questions. Use divide-and-conquer. As an example he gave: When “60 Minutes” premiered, this man was US President. The sub-questions are what is “60 Minutes,” when did it premiere, and who was President then? In Watson’s case, sub-questions often arise from different senses of words, and have to be worked on in parallel. Hence the next step: Try different decompositions of the problem. Use recursion as appropriate. He gave an example for a category titled “Edible Rhyme Time,” A long tiresome speech delivered by a frothy pie topping. The category expects two rhyming words or phrases as the answer, but does the first or second stand for the speech? Try both. Eventually “meringue harangue” is found and trumps whatever other trials return. In research one would hope words and concepts are not so slippery. Even so, our thoughts on “changing the game” qualify as trying different ways of breaking down a problem, not just the idea of breaking down itself. Find a missing link or common bond. Shirts, TV remotes, telephones, and I can add to his list, impressionable people—what do they have in common? Buttons. Perceiving this answer was acknowledged as a “bias toward humans”—I’ll add that a computer could come up with `pressed’ not realizing that ironing shirts is a different sense. But a list of possible ties is a right track, even if the final answer is something else. In research we can ask, what does this problem have in common with other problems whose solutions we know from the literature? There are also areas of mathematics designed to draw out common features, such as the representation theory of groups. Combine deep and shallow approaches. In Watson’s case, relying on basic text search never delivered high self-estimated confidence in answers, and plateaued at about 30% accuracy, too low when 50% is needed just to break even on Jeopardy! A structured knowledge-base approach could deliver high confidence if the questions could be precisely mapped to existing and reliable senses, but this was rarely the case straight off. Specifying large hand-crafted models didn’t cut it, Ferrucci said: they were “too slow, too narrow, too brittle, and too biased.” Combining the two approaches, learning to analyze information from scanning “as-is” knowledge sources, worked because computers can do something that single researchers cannot. Be `Embarrassingly Parallel.’ According to Watson’s Wikipedia page, it clustered POWER7 processor cores, each with four threads, that could crunch 500 gigabytes per second. Its 4 terabytes of storage was all in the box, making 200 million pages at 20K/page, with the whole set of Wikipedia pages, including presumably its own. It did not use the Internet. Its machine-learning component used about 200 features from answer scorers plus 400 derived features and applied about 100 different techniques to formulate, merge, and rank hypotheses and put confidence estimates on them, a process Ferrucci called “evidence diffusion.” As we said, a single researcher cannot be expected to do this. This belongs to the brave new realm of crowd-sourcing research. But we can stay flexible and avoid being wedded to preconceptions on a problem. Tonto on Toronto The rest of the talk described the system’s growing pains, as tuning made nonsensical answers rarer. Of course this did not prevent a famous bad answer on the first “Final Jeopardy” question: US CITIES: Its largest airport is named for a World War II hero; its second largest, for a World War II battle. Watson generated only 14% self-confidence for its answer “What is Toronto” and hence appended five question marks to it. The correct answer Chicago (O’Hare and Midway) was second at 11%, with Omaha at 10%. Ferrucci reviewed the explanations for the error, including many cases where the category
be an uphill battle. For one thing, there’s the gear: A quality record player takes up a lot more space than, say, a smartphone packed with thousands of streaming songs at the ready. But here’s […] READ THE RESTBenik Afobe has never played for Arsenal, but has had seven separate loan spells in the Football League Wolves have agreed a fee with Arsenal to sign striker Benik Afobe. The 21-year-old Londoner has scored 19 goals in 30 games while on a season-long loan at League One side MK Dons. "He has a good scoring record in League One and is ready to step up to Championship football," Wolves head coach Kenny Jackett told BBC WM 95.6. Meanwhile, defender Kevin Foley, 30, has joined Danish side FC Copenhagen, who are managed by former Wolves boss Stale Solbakken. The Republic of Ireland international, who played mostly at right-back in his time at Wolves, was the club's longest-serving outfield player. Signed by Mick McCarthy from Luton Town in September 2007, he made 213 appearances for Wolves, but had been largely out of the first team picture following relegation to League One in 2013. Benik Afobe's goals for MK Dons Of the 19 goals scored by Afobe while on loan at MK Dons this season, 14 of them have come at Stadium:MK The most notable were his brace against Manchester United in the Capital One Cup He did not make a league start under Jackett, twice being loaned out to Blackpool, spending a month there last season under Paul Ince, before being invited back by Lee Clark before Christmas. And he has now had the remaining six months of his contract cancelled at Molineux, enabling him to move to Denmark. Wolves moved back up to eighth, within a point of the Championship play-offs, thanks to Sunday's win at Blackburn, which extended their unbeaten run to six games. But they are struggling for goals, having scored just eight times in 12 games - and, with Bakary Sako away on Africa Cup of Nations duty with Mali, the arrival of Afobe, who missed MK Dons' 2-2 draw at Crawley on Saturday, may prove timely. "He will help us in the second half of this season and the years to come," added Jackett. "He has the pace, power and goal-scoring record that we need. "He has proved an asset for MK Dons. He has got over his injury problems and is on a very good run. "I watched him come through at Arsenal and have seen his progress up to the current time. At 21, he fits into the bracket we are looking for that can improve us."JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - An SUV hit a home on the Westside early Friday morning, ejecting the driver onto the couch in the living room of a home at the intersection of Spring Lake Road and Wilson Boulevard. "At approximately 3:05 this morning, a vehicle was westbound on Wilson Boulevard, failed to negotiate a curve, ran off the road, knocked over a mailbox and some trees, ended up hitting a house," said Detective J.C. Hurst, of the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. IMAGES: SUV slams into Westside home The driver was ejected and ended up on the couch in the living room, upside down. He was transported to UF Health Jacksonville with non-life-threatening injuries. Two women who were in the home were not hurt. "I did see somebody on the couch in my neighbors living room, sitting there," neighbor Samantha James said. The driver was a 24-year-old man, but his name was not immediately released. A stroller was seen on the ground outside the SUV. Police believe a stroller came from inside the damaged vehicle, but a child was not inside the vehicle at the time of the crash. Police said speed was a factor and they were investigating whether alcohol was also a factor, but noted it was too early in the investigation to tell. Crews came out to clean the mess and boarded up the home. "It's shocking. I can't believe it was in there and upside down or sideways," neighbor Julia Ewens said. Neighbors say speed is an issue in this area, but they never thought it would come to this. "I think it's safe at this end, but people do speed a lot on this road here, I noticed and they fly down this road all the time," James said. "Our mailbox they hit all the time," Ewens said. "We've moved it three times and they keep finding it still." Neighbors say there should be a stop sign or signal letting people know there's a curve coming up. "That curve, they don't realize it's there until it's too late, so then they hit," Ewens said. Neighbors hope people realize they need to slow down so a crash like this doesn't happen again. "It's something that just happened," neighbor Gladys Rentas said."We've been living here for the last nine years, so this is something unusual to see." Copyright 2013 by News4Jax.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.FOR most countries, delivering resilient growth when investors had expected an abrupt slowdown would be impressive. China is different. The announcement that its economy grew 6.9% in the third quarter, just below the second quarter’s 7% pace, is more grist for the already-brimming mill of scepticism about its data. Such are the doubts about Chinese figures that it is difficult to write a straightforward analysis of them without riddling it with caveats about what is and is not credible. So it is sensible to look at the latest numbers in two parts: what the government reported and what ought to be believed. The official data are indeed impressive, not least because they cover a quarter during which concerns about China's economy were so widespread. July began with the stockmarket in turmoil, falling some 40% from peak to trough. Flailing attempts by the government to prop up share prices tarnished its reputation for technocratic competence. A mini-devaluation of the yuan in August added to the feeling that China’s economy was in trouble. And a series of surveys pointed to contraction in the manufacturing sector. Get our daily newsletter Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks. Against that bleak backdrop, growth of 6.9% is a remarkably good performance. It might be China’s slowest quarter since early 2009, the nadir after the global financial crisis, but the economy is twice as big now as it was then. A gradual, steady rebalancing of the growth model helps explain the solid figures. As commodity exporters can readily attest, China’s factories are struggling. The industrial sector expanded 5.8% year on year in the third quarter, just about the weakest in more than two decades. But China is changing. The services sector expanded 8.6% year on year in the third quarter, matching its strongest growth since 2011. That is important because, as of a few years ago, services account for a bigger share of the economy than industry does. The transition can also be seen in the seemingly relentless slowdown of investment versus much more robust consumption. Overall investment rose 10.3% year on year in the first nine months of 2015, the lowest in 15 years. But retail sales nudged up to 10.8% growth year on year in real terms in September, a seven-month high. A healthy labour market has supported this rebalancing. Income growth actually improved a touch in the third quarter, accelerating to a 7.7% year-on-year increase in real terms. Just how believable are these numbers? Analysts who question the data can generally be sorted into two camps: those who think that China’s numbers are out-and-out fabrications, concealing the economy’s true, grim state; and those who think that China’s numbers are embellishments, inflating growth but not altogether misrepresenting it. The weight of evidence is on the side of the latter. The most extreme scepticism about Chinese data focuses on a range of indicators that have served in the past as decent barometers for the broader economy. Power output, for example, has risen just 0.1% so far this year, which would normally imply that real growth is far slower than the government's figure. Imports have also been very weak, falling nearly 18% year on year in September. But these indicators are windows onto the industrial sector, the very part of the economy that is suffering the steepest deceleration. Trying to get a full read on growth from import data is even more problematic: plunging commodity prices have depressed the value of Chinese imports. What is more, the shift towards more services-led growth shows up in current-account statistics, not monthly merchandise trade figures. There are stronger grounds for the milder form of scepticism: China does appear to be doctoring its growth data a little. The controversy centres on the way that the statistics bureau adjusts nominal growth figures to account for inflation. In the third quarter, nominal growth was 6.2% but the government calculated that overall prices fell by about 0.7%, allowing real growth to hit 6.9%. That is odd, since consumer price inflation picked up a little in the third quarter, rising to 1.4%. Moreover, much of the apparent deflation stems from falling producer prices, but those, to a large extent, reflect falls in imported commodity prices, not domestic deflation. It is fiendishly difficult to calculate alternative deflators, since they rely on heroic assumptions about sectoral weights and price levels. But analysts who have developed rough substitutes for the economy as a whole put growth closer to 5-6%. One partial solution is to look at the government’s nominal data alone, ignoring its deflator. Here, the picture that emerges is more closely aligned with the impression of a sustained slowdown in China. Nominal growth fell to 6.2% year on year in the third quarter, markedly lower than the second quarter 7.1% pace. It was the slowest since 1999 and less than a third of the jaw-dropping 20% nominal rate chalked up in 2011. What’s more, the collapse in commodity prices has flattered China’s growth rate. The resulting fall in imports has translated directly into a big rise in the trade surplus, boosting overall growth. Stripping out net exports, China’s nominal domestic-demand growth is probably closer to 5%, according to analysts with China International Capital Corp, a local investment bank. That is a sharper slowdown than the one portrayed by the government. But it is still a good deal better than the hard landing feared for China just a few months ago.This article is over 7 years old South Korean forces retaliate after North Korea fires three artillery shells in latest clash in Yellow Sea South Korean forces returned fire after North Korean artillery shells fell into waters near the tense maritime line that separates the two rivals, according to a South Korean official. North Korea fired three shells near the Northern Limit Line in the Yellow Sea on Wednesday, prompting the South to fire back three shells, said the defense ministry spokesman, Kim Min-seok. South Korean forces have been on high alert in the area since a North Korean artillery attack killed four people in November 2010 on South Korea's Yeonpyeong island. Wednesday's shooting took place nearby. Violence often erupts in the contested waters there. Boats routinely jostle for position during crab-catching season, and three deadly naval clashes since 1999 have taken dozens of lives. Kim said one North Korean artillery shell is believed to have fallen south of the maritime line, citing a preliminary analysis of the trajectory of the shell. The line separating the countries was drawn at the close of the Korean war in 1953 and is still a fierce point of dispute. The countries remain technically at war. North Korea argues the line should run farther south. Seoul believes accepting such a line would endanger fishing around five South Korean islands and hamper access to its port at Incheon. The November 2010 attack marked a new level of hostility along the contested line. Two civilians and two marines died, and many houses were gutted in the shelling.My first encounter with the music of Bob Mould was "Land Speed Record" by Hüsker Dü, 1983, in the apartment of friend, just after I got out of college. This record was not like other records of that vintage. It was not like "Thriller." It was not like "Dare" by the Human League. It was not like "Pornography" by the Cure. It was not like "Built For Speed" by the Stray Cats. Its menace and beauty brought about a cascade of life-changing musical events for me that included the Minutemen, Black Flag, and, later, the Replacements and Sonic Youth. Advertisement: The pivotal Bob Mould recording for me, as for many people from that era, was "New Day Rising" by Hüsker Dü, in particular the song “Celebrated Summer,” a manic, unforgettable and sometimes melancholy recollection of youth and its preoccupations. From "New Day Rising" onward, I was a Bob Mould fan, through the later period of Hüsker Dü, through the Sugar albums, and into the solo albums that followed. Like many Bob Mould fans, and without wanting to hem in an artist who should be encouraged to grow and develop in any way that inspires him, I was particularly delighted by "Silver Age," Mould’s 2012 return to the trio format that has often spawned his best work. This summer’s "Beauty and Ruin" further develops this sudden late-life manifestation of confidence in abundance and guitar prowess, while pressing the songs in a few new directions, without ever sacrificing the roar and momentum that has made Mould one of the truly memorable American songwriters and guitar players of the post-punk period. As of now, Mould and his current band (bassist Jason Narducy and drummer Jon Wurster) are back on the road, in support of "Beauty and Ruin" and here in the Northeast until the middle of September. We talked by Skype in August, about touring in mid-life, the new album and how he came back to hear the virtues of a form he helped revolutionize, the indie-rock trio. I think you are about to perform at the state fair in Minnesota. Are you excited about that? I am excited. It’s funny, you know. When the management office came to me and said, there’s an offer for you to play the Minnesota State Fair, I’m guessing that’s a pass, I’m like, what are you talking about? I mean, that’s the state fair. You don’t understand; it’s everything on a stick. I moved to the Twin Cities when I was 17 so it’s where I started my professional music career. I’d hesitate to say I’m a true Minnesotan. But it’s just one of those things. I said, of course we have to do the state fair. It’s going to be insane. You can probably get 700 varieties of pie. Advertisement: Butter sculpture, dairy princess. I’m sure they’ve got some kind of artisanal fried cotton candy or something. So I think the last time we talked you were up in Vermont. Were you doing some teaching up there? Yeah, you guys have to do the festival circuit in the summer and the writers have to do the summer workshop thing, so I was in northernmost Vermont, right near the border. It was really so beautiful up there. Do you like doing that? How does that work? Do you just go in and hit ’em with a ruler and say, fix that! I really feel like I should be asking you the questions, Bob. Do you really want to know about this writing nonsense? Yeah, I’ve got one coming up in October in Des Moines so I am actually curious. Advertisement: As a teacher, I try to get them to be better at what they are already doing. Rather than asking them to quit writing the science fiction with kinky sex, I say, feel free but don’t use split infinitives. I just try to get them to be better at whatever they’re doing. So you’re teaching a workshop? I’m going up to Drake University in Des Moines the first weekend in October and I found out, again it was one of those things that was brought to me. I was like, sure, I’ll go up and do it -- and let’s see if I can add a show so it would make it feel like I’m doing more. I’m going to be lecturing or talking or doing a workshop about songwriting. Other than Jimmy Webb’s book, I have no idea how songwriting really works. I mean, you know that I know, but you know what I mean also -- everybody comes at it a different way. I’ll go in and be very encouraging to kids who are writing songs about vampire porn or something. Wait, since we’re on that subject, can I subject you to a preview of the lecture by asking you about a song from the new album and maybe you can tell me how you came to write it and all that kind of stuff? Advertisement: Sure. “I Don’t Know You Anymore.” It’s a masterpiece of pop concision and it has the most perfect guitar solo I’ve heard in years. So how did that one come about? And did you know you had a gem when you were working on it? It showed up out of nowhere. The one, minor two, four, five chord cycle, it’s sort of an easy one. Can’t go wrong with it. So the top of the song made itself known. I was, like, that sounds like an intro and a chorus, okay... And then it’s just sort of elongating those chord sequences to make verses. I did know, as it was going by, oh boy, this one’s strong. And those make me nervous because they’re really easy but it’s all that small detail work, like being really, really careful about how I edit or how I tell the story. And the story, here, of the dissolving relationship and using all the analog-era metaphors, especially those old answering machines that sometimes you would accidentally hit “record” and there goes the message that could have changed your life. That was the idea of the song going by. As far as specific pop structure, I mean, choruses, intro, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, fucking monstrous bridge with a four-chord exchange I’d never used before and never heard anybody else use. You know, quick verses, solo, pre-chorus, the Clearmountain drop and then four choruses out. Structurally it’s so tight. Aesthetically, it’s really cool; I think the metaphors are cool. It does have a great guitar solo: so simple. Advertisement: It’s a perfectly recorded solo and everything; it gives me chills. The guitar that enters on the bridge sets it up for me. It’s that really sizzly — sizzsizzsizzsizzzsizzeah. For a while I was calling that section Icarus. I flew that in from the home demo because I just stumbled into that riff and I played it and was like, Oh, that should be the vocal line. And then I flew the home demo guitar placeholder sound into the real recording and we time-lined it up right and it’s just so janky sounding, like the sun is burning it out. So I was like we gotta keep that, that trashy sound is just so good. And the real guitar solo is more normal sounding. The video for the song plays music biz metaphor for all it’s worth. And when I first heard the song I felt like it was impossible not to feel that interpretation alongside the love song story. Did you know and feel that metaphorical layer even in the first blush of the song? Advertisement: No. It was song first and I wasn’t sure if it was going to be the first single. I suspected it might be. When it came time to think about video it was sort of like, hmm, how can I look at this in a comparable way without looking at it exactly the same way? Also with the limited resources that we get for making music videos these days, what would actually be practical? I got with Alicia Rose up in Portland who did the video for “The Descent” from the prior album and said I want to do this video for this song, and I’m sort of thinking about the music business. How weird it is that people my age used to line up for concert tickets, or outside record stores the night before an album came out -- and really the only place you see that kind of devotion anymore is at the Apple store. And the Apple store sells this device that oddly enough carries all those important events and memories that we used to carry in an analog way. So I thought, oh, that sort of fits the song and it’s perfect. And then we just looked at the budget and the resources and tried to come up with a good story. Then enter Jon Wurster, my drummer, who is such a smart, creative guy; I just bounced the premise off the guy and he came back with a couple cool ideas. Between all of us, we boiled it down to this thing we could make in two days with a little bit of money and a lot of favors. It’s incredibly joyful, the video, and I felt this about the last album, too -- that the videos were sort of, I mean, it’s almost paradoxical to say it to you, but there’s a life-affirming quality, a joyful enthusiastic quality to these videos and for those of us who remember the really dark Bob Mould music --"Black Sheets of Rain" or "Beaster," for example -- it’s fascinating to see this joyful aspect coming out in the videos. The video, in this case, “I Don’t Know You Anymore,” is even more joyful than the song in some ways. Do you feel like the video is expressing something in the project that you aren’t getting to in the song or is it just we need a video, this is the idea for the video, we’ll just go for it. I think the video reinterpreted the song. Again, I didn’t have a framework in mind. But I think the video and the song line up really nicely together. I’m trying to think of a way to speak to the life- affirming comment... I appreciate hearing that. It’s funny because for 30-odd years I wasn’t one to crack a smile so much in my work. So maybe it’s this newfound secret weapon that I didn’t know I had. I feel better about sharing my sense of humor with people these days. I was pretty miserable. I was pretty dour. Pretty serious all the time. And it’s funny because with Alicia Rose who, when she did the video for “The Descent” on the "Silver Age" album she was trying to get me to smile more sooner in the video. Like in the very end of the video for “The Descent” I sort of almost have this smile where I seem very satisfied in leaving the world behind building this hut on the side of a mountain to live in. She’s like, you gotta smile more. I said, I don’t smile. You will be lucky if you get a half smile at the end. That’s who I am. So now to the video that we did for “Star Machine” and especially with the video for the new record for “I Don’t Know You Anymore” soon it will be, Bob, stop laughing. That’s what I’m going to hear from people: stop having such a good time. We look to you for misery. You’re our misery mayor. Don’t do this to us. If we want funny we’ll call Morrissey. Is it possible that your memoir has been an influence in a way, because I gotta say I love the memoir so much. I remember hearing about it maybe 10 years ago when you were first thinking about it. Advertisement: I think it was precipitated by Michael Azerrad’s" Our Band Could Be Your Life," which came out in ’01. Late ’01 early ’02 would have been the first meeting with Michael Pietsch at Little, Brown. I do think the memoir has helped clear up a lot of things for me and I guess the added benefit is that people get to read it. It was a hell of a process. I’m not a prose writer by nature so Michael Azerrad was a huge help. I appreciate you saying you enjoyed the book. It was a lot of work. I don’t know how you guys do that. This was not two weeks of stories, show me the galleys. It was two and a half years of me and Azerrad writing this thing back and forth. So you actually wrote it? You actually sat down and wrote? We did a week of talking and recording and took everything back and dug out the key stories. That’s when Azerrad got involved. He started looking from the outside and going, hmm, do you think there’s a connection between this and this? A connection between your dad’s behavior and the way you act on stage or all these things I didn’t really want to know and I saw that this process was going to show me all these things. He wouldn’t say, “This means that,” he would say “Have you considered the relationship between these things.” I would say yeah, I don’t think it has anything to do with it or oh shit, that probably is a lot of it. He was a good observer of me trying to make sense of my story. For the actual mechanics of the writing, we used Skype quite a bit. We would put days aside where we would talk. You know it has that text window? We would talk and he would say, I’m going to go into the other room for a half hour and I need you to write that and then send it to me. So then I would sit and write and write and write and write and shoot him a ton of stuff and then he would sort of dial in the proper language. There was the week or so of just talking to get a feel for the whole story then I spent time with all those stories and put them in chronological order, then we dove in. So yeah, I did a lot of writing. That’s probably partly why it reads so well. Because when these music books feel dictated there’s a kind of thinness to the prose. But that you actually wrote it down and you guys worked over the prose is probably part of why it has more heft. Advertisement: It’s definitely my voice and I know that comes across because Azerrad was really leaning on me like, more adjectives, more adjectives. I’m not an adjective guy. I’m a pretty flat, plain speaker-writer. I said if we start dolling it up too much, it’s not going to look like me. The narrative arc of the book I would say is toward self-acceptance. I think that’s pretty obvious. And part of what’s so moving about the last third of the book is this journey involves transcending and accepting a music subculture that could occasionally be homophobic. Is the self-acceptance part of what makes it possible for you to go back and write in the power trio format again, after years of doing otherwise? Maybe this came out of the experience of memoir writing? The power trio always works for me. Musically I’ve never had a problem from Hüsker Dü to playing with Anton Fier and Tony Maimone to Sugar, which was a trio. It’s a pretty comfortable spot for me. It’s odd to say ‘comfortable’ because it’s really a lot of work for me but musically it’s the best way, when I have two other people that I need to connect with. There’s a real clarity and a purpose to it because everybody knows how much they have to lift at all times. I like that interaction. It feels like jazz. As far as a power trio, I think learning not to micro-manage it, it feels maybe now a lot more natural. The self-acceptance is really about my sexuality, and who I am, and what I do, how the stories resonate with people. I tried in the book to make it really clear where all of the self-hating came from. I was pretty uneducated as a young gay man, you know, in the ways of the homosexuals, so to speak. I didn’t find a place to identify. I would have been better off when everyone was completely closeted. I didn’t have role models. I had this single-minded musical purpose so I wrote these songs that were not asexual but they were… it wasn’t like me singing about a girlfriend I lost; I was thinking about a lover I lost. There was a universal sexuality to it, which I sort of learned from the Buzzcocks. If you write it wide, then everybody can fit in. Advertisement: So there was that reluctance to pin myself down as a gay singer-songwriter. You know, Jimmy Somerville did that so well and that was his cause and that was amazing. I didn’t feel like that was my cause. I felt like I was a musician, not a gay musician. Then ’94, coming out, and ’99, really diving into the gay life, learning all the beauty and all the hard lessons and all the occasional bullshit that goes with any kind of group that we identify with, once I went through all that stuff at 39 that most people go through at 20, then the weight was off of my shoulders. I could find a better way to incorporate my particular experiences as a gay man, how relationships affect me, and failures in relationships and stuff like that. I had a better perspective on how to bring that into the work. It opened up a bigger canvas, maybe. I had a better understanding of how to put the colors in. That was a big revelation for me out of the book. I think the dynamics within my first band, Hüsker Dü, I think once I had to dig in and take ownership for the success and the failure of that band and how I failed inside that band. That was a big eye-opener for me because I had this other narrative in my head: eight and a half years and it ended and I don’t want to talk about it. And all those years of not talking about it, other people created this narrative of acrimony and competition and suggested lovers and all this stuff where parts of it were nonsense and parts of it were true. And when I went back and looked at that, I was like, Oh, I had a pretty big hand in all of this. That was a pretty big eye-opener. And Azerrad was like, there’s gotta be more. You’re not telling me everything. And I’m like, Michael, I told you everything and he’s like, well where’s all this acrimony and stuff. And I’m like, I think you all made it up. Because I didn’t say anything for so long. It was really amazing. I was like, holy shit, I let people create this story that isn’t how I remember it at all. So that was a shocker. What accounts for the sudden eruption of the "Silver Age"? The big, loud, confident, confrontational Bob Mould sound? "Life and Times" is a pretty quiet record, and you were deejaying and doing the EDM stuff on the side. And then there’s this massive eruption. What changed? The book came out in June 2011, that’s true, and then around that time I was getting all the love from Dave Grohl. Dave and I had never really sat down and had a conversation until I think it was early ’09, early ’10. Dave gave me a call to come down and sing and play on a song that he had written for Foo Fighters, for the album called "Dear Rosemary." You know, I love Nirvana and I’m a huge Foo Fighters fan, and the musical similarities are pretty obvious, right? For Dave to sort of acknowledge that and reach out and be a friend and shine a little bit of light on what I do, that was really, really great. Advertisement: I went out on tour with those guys in October 2011. I was actually deejaying at arenas, like as entrance music. And I would deejay between the three bands then I would get up and play a song or two with them at the encore. That was really reassuring to me. Not that I had abandoned what I do, but I did definitely put it on the back burner and was making softer records. But to deejay with them and play with them and get up on stage and stand side by side with those guys for 10 minutes a night and do a real good job at it, I was like, wow, this is easy. This is actually easier than some of the stuff I’ve been doing. And I seem to be pretty good at it still. That was a really nice lift. Then November 2011 was the Disney Hall Tribute Show in L.A. where Dave and Ryan Adams and the No Age guys and Britt from Spoon, the Hold Steady guys, Margaret Cho got together to do my songbook and that was really great as well. So that was November 2011. I knew the 20th anniversary of "Copper Blue" was coming; we were making plans for that and I had been writing a handful of songs. But after that tribute show I came home and spent December 2011 writing what essentially became "Silver Age," so a lot of it can be traced to Dave and reaching out and him having me come help them. His light shines pretty wide. He was very generous with that. That second half of 2011, doing stuff with them, the tribute show, and of course the book and letting everyone see what it’s all really about. That’s where it all added up and put more fuel back in the old tank. Are you still feeling as energized by the power trio now as two years ago? Is it still as fun as it was with "Silver Age"? Yeah. 2012 was interesting. Me and Jason and Jon had been playing for three, four years but playing "Copper Blue" every night, it was a really important record for a lot of people, me included; it’s one of my three best albums — period. It was fun to play that start to finish every night but it was also great to have a new album — and I thought "Silver Age" held up really well — alongside "Copper Blue," and also having a good group of songs in my big book that we could pull out, whether it was Hüsker stuff that fit the motif, you know, it got so easy for us. Now with "Beauty and Ruin" and recording it very old-fashioned, the three of us in a room cutting the basic tracks together, tightening up arrangements as we were recording. More like a real band instead of me micromanaging. It’s actually getting easier. Now I’ve got that thing where Father Time’s trying to get in the band and I’m trying to keep him out of the band. I’m putting calls into Mother Nature saying, could you please keep Father Time at bay for a while? Right, the whole aging thing really is a theme on this album and a little on "Silver Age." “Hey Mr. Grey” seems to have this aging theme hovering in the background. I’m pretty much your same age and basically when you’re our age, you’re supposed to be slowing down rock-n-roll wise. People slow down when they’re in their 50s. Do you feel that? Is aging an oppression in the process? I feel that every morning. And I try not to let it get into my head and I try not to let it get in the way of the work. I would be stupid to not acknowledge it and I think with an album with a title like "Silver Age" it’s clearly, like, yes, I know. And with a song like “Hey Mr. Grey,” it’s like, yeah I fucking know. It’s hilarious, right. I know everybody knows and it’s cool. It’s really odd. I’m only going to have these moments once. The moments when I can still run a 100-yard dash pretty well. Like with a lot of athletes, it’s a moment where you know exactly how to get the farthest most efficiently and then one of the wheels flies off the car. And I’m just trying so hard to keep all the wheels on right now. You go to the gym, there’s dietary stuff, you know, you try to work smart instead of beating yourself to death with work. It’s all these little things. It’s akin to being an athlete. I think Jon and Jason see it that way as well. We all train, we run, we do stuff. There’s this staircase here in San Francisco not far from where I live and I go out on that thing every day. It’s like 15 flights of stairs. I have to keep myself so in shape for this. Is there dread about the touring part? Do you look forward to it and dread it in equal measure? I dread the windshields because I’ve seen all those Tommy Bartlett Robot World signs in Wisconsin or Pennsylvania Dutch Exit Here. You know what I’m saying. I’ve seen that road, and other than free WiFi at Starbucks it’s pretty much the same. So that part I dread a little bit. But going out to play for people, that’s amazing. You gotta take the rest of it in stride to get to those 90 minutes. And again, it’s about traveling smarter. Trying to find shortcuts to cheat your day a little bit so you have more power when you’re on stage. It’s just dialing that kind of stuff in. And I find a little better shortcut for food or for sleep or something and when it makes a difference and the shows get better, then I’m like, Oh, I gotta keep doing that. What portion of your time now do you give to the deejaying versus the band stuff? How do those things integrate with one another? I started deejaying in earnest in January 2003 when I moved to D.C. Met a fellow named Rich Morel. We had been friends for about a year and when I moved to D.C. He was my first sort of music friend and we would get together and write music. As I said in the book, I wanted to meet new people, so it’s like, let’s do a gay music night so I can make friends. Rich wasn’t leaving the house much in those days, so it was a good way to get him out of the house. That became an event called Blowoff and we did that solid up until January of this year. Right now it’s on hiatus; Rich has got his own band called Deathfix and he’s been doing a lot of production work lately, which has been keeping him busy. The last two years it was really hard for us to synchronize all of our schedules
thanks @tfelix #2203 #2204) Specifying Phaser.ScaleManager.EXACT_FIT as the scaleMode in a game config object would fail to use the scale mode (thanks @06wj #2248) BitmapText would crash if it tried to render a character that didn't exist in the font set. Any character that doesn't exist in the font set now renders a space character instead. BitmapText would load and parse the kerning data from the font, but would never use it when rendering. The kerning values are now applied on rendering as well (thanks @veu #2165) SinglePad.callbackContext is now set through addCallbacks method (thanks @puzzud #2161) Both transparent and antialias were ignored if set to false in a Game configuration object, as the parseConfig method didn't check for falsey values (thanks @amadeus #2302) and were ignored if set to in a Game configuration object, as the method didn't check for falsey values (thanks @amadeus #2302) GameObject.revive used to add the health amount given to the Game Object (via heal ) instead of setting it as the new health amount. It now calls setHealth instead, giving it the exact amount (thanks @netgfx #2231) ) instead of setting it as the new health amount. It now calls instead, giving it the exact amount (thanks @netgfx #2231) Group.add and Group.addAt would forget to remove the child from the hash of its previous Group if it had a physics body enabled, causing unbounded hash increase (thanks @strawlion @McIntozh #2232) Fixed a really nasty bug in Chrome OS X where a ctrl + click (i.e. simulated right-click) on a trackpad would lock up the Pointer leftButton, causing future clicks to fail. This is now handled by way of a mouseout listener on the window object, sadly the only way to force a mouseup in Chrome (thanks @KyleU #2286) ctrl + click is now only considered a right-click if event.buttons = 1, this should allow you to use ctrl as a key modifier on Windows (and any device with a multi-button mouse attached) and still use ctrl + click on OS X / trackpads for a right-click (thanks @yuvalsv #2167) If the Mouse was over a Sprite and you then clicked it, it would dispatch another Over event. This is now surpressed if the Over event has already been dispatched previously (thanks @McFarts #2133) InputHandler.pointerOver could fail to return anything in some instances, now always returns a boolean. Tween.onLoop would be fired when a Tween repeated and Tween.onRepeat would be fired when a Tween looped. These are now reversed to fire correctly (thanks @vladkens #2024) Text with lineSpacing set wouldn't apply the lineSpacing to the final line of text in the Text string, or to text with just single lines. This could lead to incorrect height calculations for further layout and unwanted padding at the bottom of Text objects (thanks @Lopdo #2137) SpriteBatch incorrectly applied the PIXI SpriteBatch prototype over the top of Phaser.Group meaning that Sprites with animations wouldn't render correctly (thanks @qdrj #1951) Color.updateColor would pass color.a to the getColor32 method without first putting the value into the range 0 - 255 (thanks @mainpsyhos #2327) Pixi Updates Please note that Phaser uses a custom build of Pixi and always has done. The following changes have been made to our custom build, not to Pixi in general.Size doesn’t matter. Nothing proves that more true than Falcon Northwest’s new Tiki, which packs the most power per cubic inch I’ve ever seen in a PC. One look at these specs will have you crying nerd tears of joy. Falcon jammed an 18-core Xeon E5-2699 V3 CPU inside the Tiki's 4-inch wide case. And yes, that CPU has Hyper-Threading, so be prepared to feel your jaw slap your face after it has bounced off the floor when you pull up the Task Manager in Windows and see the Tiki's thread count: 36. It doesn’t stop there though. Falcon taps none other than Nvidia’s beastly GeForce GTX Titan X for graphics. Besides being able to play many of today’s games at 4K resolution by itself—though you’ll still want a G-sync panel in my opinion—it's also a tour de force of specsmanship with 12GB of RAM and a GPU core with 3,072 shader units. Gordon Mah Ung The paint scheme on the Falcon Northwest Tiki is called tangerine. That thud was your jaw hitting the floor Jaw not on ground yet? It won’t resist this: For storage, the Tiki packs none other than Intel’s cutting-edge 750-series NVMe SSD, and for kicks, a 6TB hard drive and Blu-ray burner. Remember: The Tiki packs all that firepower into a chassis 4-inches wide, 13.25-inches tall and 13-inches deep. Impossible! After all, you’re thinking, you can’t get an LGA2011-V3 CPU into such a small machine, much less an 18-core Xeon. That may have been true last year, but this spring Asrock released its crazy X99E-ITX/AC motherboard, which did what others told me was impossible: Put a massive LGA2011-V3 socket into a tiny Mini ITX motherboard. You see, the X99 chipset and its big-boy CPUs feature quad-channel memory controllers, and that means you need four pieces of RAM. Asrock Falcon Northwest uses Asrock’s new X99E-ITX/AC to get the 18-core Xeon inside its Tiki. Besides the LGA2011-V3 socket being physically larger than the typical consumer LGA1150 socket, also including support for four pieces of full-size DDR4 modules is the (theoretically) impossible part. But Asrock thought outside the box and decided to simply leave two of the memory slots out. There's a cost to this in memory bandwidth though. Rather than quad-channel, you end up with dual-channel RAM. I measured an X99 system with quad-channel DDR4/2400 RAM at 55GBps of bandwidth. The Tiki is has less than half that, at 26GBps using DDR4/2133. Falcon Northwest's console-sized PC may give up memory bandwidth, but at least it has plenty of memory capacity. Despite its size, the Tiki I received for testing had 32GB of ECC RAM in it, and Falcon just certified 64GB ECC modules. Gordon Mah Ung The 18-core Xeon E5-2699 V3 (left) is actually physically larger than the 8-core Core i7-5960X (right). The real star is the CPU The real star of the show is the CPU though: The 18-core Xeon 2699 V3 chip with a base clock frequency of 2.6GHz and a Turbo clock speed of 3.6GHz. Although it clips into the standard LGA-2011 V3 socket, it’s actually physically larger, no doubt to accommodate the extra cores. The chunky chip makes the already beefy Core i7-5960X CPU look positively anemic. As a Xeon, the E5-2699 V3 gives you 40 PCIe Gen 3.0 lanes and actually supports running in a multi-processor configuration, which is lingo for saying you can run two of these CPUs if you dare in the same in same PC. The cores themselves, though, are still Haswell cores. Clock-for-clock, they should perform no better or worse than another Haswell core at the same clock speed. Since the Xeon has 18-cores under its lid instead of 8, it’s actually a fairly hot chip, with a TDP rating of 145 watts. The Tiki keeps its thermals under control with an Asetek closed-loop liquid cooler. I’ve put together a quick comparison chart of the Xeon and two other common high-end Intel chips here. PCWorld Here’s what the 18-core, 36-thread Falcon Northwest Tiki looks like during our Handbrake encoding test. Just why the hell do you need an 18-core CPU? For most consumers, a quad-core is plenty, and many people don’t even really need Hyper-Threading. But for the prosumer, who does encode video or earn a living money as a 3D modeler or generally runs multiple, multi-threaded workloads, a 6- or 8-core CPU pays true dividends and an 18-core takes that to the nth degree. The fact is the Xeon-packed Tiki is massive overkill for someone who doesn’t truly use workstation-class applications or isn’t running 20 simultaneous virtual machines. But dammit, it’s a glorious overkill in a way that's only possible on the PC. And, of course, for the.1 percent of power users, this many cores pays heavy dividends. More on this in our performance section later. Falcon Northwest cleverly uses an Intel 750-series SSD in SFF-8639 form in its Tiki. Intel 750-Series shines Besides the CPU and GPU, Falcon pulls off a real nifty hat trick un getting an Intel 750-series SSD inside the Tiki. Most of you know the Intel 750-series drives in its PCIe-based trim, which our review put at the front of the class in performance. That’s not even mentioning the support for NVMe. So how does Falcon get both a Titan X and the PCIe 750 in here if the board only has one PCIe slot? Simple: Falcon uses the SFF-8639 version of the drive. It may look like a standard SATA drive but it’s actually meant for server or workstation use. The drive connects to the Tiki using an MSI universal Mini SAS connector that fits into the board’s M.2 slot. This gives it a full fidelity x4 PCIe Gen 3 connection, and I tested the drive easily hitting 2.7GBps of sequential read speeds. For comparison, the RAID 0 SATA setup in the Falcon Northwest Mach V reviewed here was in the comparative slow lane at 1GBps. PCWorld All three CPUs on this chart are Haswell-based CPUs with tne only difference being clock speeds and core counts. The 18-core Xeon represents well, even against, the 8-core Core i7-5960X that's overclocked beyond 4GHz. Performance None of this matters if the Tiki doesn’t perform well. This is clearly no run of the mill computer, so I decided to see how it would perform against PCWorld’s standard zero-point box using a bone stock quad-core 3.5GHz Core i7-4770K and the Tiki’s big brother, the Falcon Northwest Mach V with an eight-core Core i7-5960X overclocked up beyond 4GHz. My test would be Maxon’s CineBench R15, a popular highly multi-threaded 3D modelling benchmark. If you have the threads, CineBench will use them. As you can see from the chart, the 18-cores in the Tiki slaughter the quad core. Although it’s not twice the performance of the eight-core Haswell, it still opens up a sizeable performance lead. Let me remind you that the eight-core chip is moving along at a brisk 4GHz while the 18-cores are closer to 2.7GHz, so this isn’t bad. PCWorld The 18-core Xeon surpsiringly took the honors in our Handbrake encoding test, but not by much. That’s a warning to anyone who thinks it’s easy to find apps to feed this beast of a CPU. The problem is, finding applications to exploit those cores is tough. Professional workstation applications will utilize the Xeon CPU to its fullest but anything pedestrian will fall short. For example, we ran our Handbrake encoding test with the same machines as above, plus the six-core MicroExpress B20. The Tiki comes in first again, easily beating the quad-core—but the performance gap between it and the eight-core and six-core box is a lot closer than you’d expect. That was a shocker because I’ve never seen Handbrake not eat a core it could see. Part of my problem may be from the workload: a mere 1080p high-bit rate MKV file. Anandtech’s Ian Cutress saw a 14-core Xeon V3 chip walk away from all others but only when doing a “double 4K” video load encode with Handbrake. The take away: To really use hardware this extreme, you better have extreme tasks. Professionals—you know who you are—don’t have to worry about it, but average power users might have a problem putting this Xeon to work. The cost You knew there was no way too tip toe around this topic: the cost of the Tiki is as astounding as the specs and performance. You’re looking at $9,196 for the lower-end configuration with “just” 32GB of DDR4/2133 RAM. Taking the 64GB option adds $800 to the price tag. Ouch. It's no surprise, but much of the cost comes from the components inside. The CPU itself (which oddly doen’t have a list price on Intel’s website) pushes $4,300, I'm told. Still, that puts the Tiki with one Titan X near the price of a system with three Titan X cards in it. Falcon said cost-averse buyers can shave half the price off by going with an six-core chip and lower-end SSD. Gordon Mah Ung Despite its compact size, it’s actually easy to access to the internal components once the side is popped off. Bottom line For the average power user, the Tiki is overkill. For the person who knows how to exploit it, though, you’d be hard pressed to find more hardware in a smaller box today. It’s practically a small form factor workstation. And don’t think Apple’s Mac Pro will give it a run for the money. The Mac Pro, believe it or not, still uses an Ivy Bridge CPU and tops out with 12-cores. I didn’t test the Mac Pro, but 18 Haswell cores will eat a 12-core Ivy Bridge machine, and the Titan X against three-old FirePro GPU is no race at all. Overall, the Tiki is an amazingly compact overpowered PC, but anyone who buys it better know why they need it and what they’ll use it for. Gordon Mah Ung For a size comparison, the 18-core, GeForce Titan X-equipped Falcon Northwest Tiki sits between a Sony PlayStation 3 and an Xbox 360.Warner Bros chairman and CEO Kevin Tsujihara unveiled to investors today a new strategy for the film studio, WBTV and overseas activities — part of an overall plan to cut $200M annually. The movie side push is most aggressive as year-over-year domestic box office for Warner Bros. films is down about 15%. to date with a reduced slate of openers in 2015. The injection includes releasing three Lego Movie films over the next four years, and three movies based on JK Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts set for 2016, 2018 and 2020. In addition there is a major push to expand the DC universe. The game plan is part of the new reality at WB after parent Time Warner has embarked on cost- and job-cutting across the company — positions have been or will be eliminated at every level across the studio, as well as at Turner (CNN is at the process of eliminating 300 jobs this week). The recent failed bid by Fox to take over Warner Bros “accelerated the implementation of the plan,” an insider told Deadline in September when the film studio said the cuts were coming.A study led by Howard Steiger, PhD, head of the Douglas Mental Health University Institute Eating Disorders Program (EDP), in Montreal, in collaboration with Linda Booij, a researcher with Sainte-Justine Hospital and an assistant professor at Queen's University, is the first to observe effects suggesting that the longer one suffers from active anorexia nervosa (AN), the more likely they are to show disorder-relevant alterations in DNA methylation. When methylation is altered, gene expression is also altered, and when gene expression is altered, the expression of traits that are controlled by those genes is also changed. In other words, altered methylation can produce changes in emotional reactions, physiological functions and behaviors. A report to be published in the International Journal of Eating Disorders, entitled "DNA methylation in individuals with Anorexia Nervosa and in matched normal-eater controls: A genome-wide study," is showing chronicity of illness in women with AN to be associated with more pronounced alteration of methylation levels in genes implicated in anxiety, social behavior, various brain and nervous system functions, immunity, and the functioning of peripheral organs. "These findings help clarify the point that eating disorders are not about superficial body image concerns or the result of bad parenting. They represent real biological effects of environmental impacts in affected people, which then get locked in by too much dieting," says Dr. Steiger, Chief of the Eating Disorders Program at the Douglas Institute and a professor of Psychiatry at McGill University. "We already know that eating disorders, once established, have a tendency to become more and more entrenched over time. These findings point to physical mechanisms acting upon physiological and nervous system functions throughout the body that may underlie many of the effects of chronicity. All in all, they point to the importance of enabling people to get effective treatments as early in the disorder process as possible," adds Dr. Steiger. Exploring crucial questions The results of this work imply that epigenetic mechanisms may underlie some of the consequences of anorexia nervosa that affect nervous system functioning, psychological status and physical health. If so, an intriguing possibility arises: Does remission of anorexic symptoms coincide with normalization (or resetting) of methylation levels (and could such effects provide clues to more effective treatments)? Current work at the Eating Disorders Program at the Douglas Institute is oriented toward exploring exactly this question.OTTAWA — Canada walked away from a decade-long $2.2 billion aid program in Afghanistan hoping the U.S. would just carry on with its plan, an internal government audit has found. Instead, Canada’s vision was left in the dust, officials told auditors looking into the largest aid program in government history, one of the three pillars of the effort to stabilize the war-torn country after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. An Afghan girl walks in the yard of a school the Canadian military planned to rebuild. Canada's rebuilding projects in Afghanistant had mixed results. ( TOM HANSON / The Canadian Press file photo ) The massive aid program was supposed to bolster the military’s work in securing the country and diplomatic efforts to shore up its governance, a whole-of-government approach that in some ways should serve as a model for approaching similar conflicts in the future, the evaluation found. The Conservative government appears to be considering such a model in its approach to the conflict in Iraq as it prepares to debate the extension of the military mission there. But there were major flaws in the Afghan aid program’s conception and its delivery, the evaluation concluded, including a failure to ever completely understand what was driving the conflict in Afghanistan and in turn be able to really help solve it. Article Continued Below “Canada is recognized as a consistent and reliable donor with a clear results orientation, but there is insufficient evidence to provide a definitive answer to the overall evaluation question related to Canada’s contribution to long-term stability and sustainable development in Afghanistan,” the report said. The ongoing and eventually worsening violence in Afghanistan has been largely blamed for keeping development programs from doing what they were ostensibly designed to do — help secure the peace won by the military. “In Afghanistan, saving lives and alleviating suffering has been a short-term activity that was threatened by ongoing political and military violence,” the report said. When that peace was declared elusive and the military decided to leave Kandahar in 2011, aid officials were left to create exit strategies of their own — keeping a large-scale development program going was never an option, evaluators were told. A decision was made to hand everything over to the U.S., and the Americans then started pursuing their own, differing, priorities, the report found. “The frequent change of American staff on the ground meant that there was little institutional memory remaining to keep the strategic Canadian legacy alive,” the evaluation concluded. “Many interviewees indicated that this exit strategy may have been short-sighted and that, given the enormous Canadian investments made in Kandahar, other alternatives should have been explored as was done by other bilateral donors.” Article Continued Below What results the massive program managed to achieved were “impressive” and came mostly through projects in which Canada was one of many donors, the evaluation found. They included the training of thousands of health workers, food aid, teacher training, loans and enhanced capacity of rights and women’s organizations. Canada’s three signature projects, the rehabilitation of the irrigation system flowing from the Dahla Dam, the construction of 50 schools and polio vaccination had mixed results. More than 50 schools were actually built but it’s unclear how many are open and how many students are enrolled, while polio cases from Pakistan continue to infiltrate Afghanistan. The irrigation system repair achieved most of its objectives, but with no new money earmarked to continue the work, it is all at risk, the report found. The emphasis on short-term implementation strategies may have seen projects completed faster, but came at the expense of ensuring sustainable long-term development results, the report said. “However, a few years after the Canadian exit from Kandahar, there is limited evidence of positive outcomes in terms of more jobs, enhanced income opportunities or better quality of services outside of the health and education sectors,” the report said. While the politics of the Afghan mission may be a thing of the past for Canadian parliamentarians, they reared their head for the evaluation team, who reported feeling some pressure to emphasize the positive results of the aid program in their report. In the end, they drew nine conclusions from their study and provided five recommendations. In its response to the report, the government acknowledged the program’s shortcomings and agreed with many of the evaluation’s conclusions. Canada has committed to spending $227 million in Afghanistan between 2014 and 2017 but the report suggests Afghans are left wanting. “There are still positive developments at the community level as a result of improved physical infrastructure and strengthened community organizations, but there are also clear signs of frustration and anger, despite the fact that some development activities are continuing,” the report said. The report was published online by the Foreign Affairs Department on Friday. Follow @StephanieLevitz on Twitter. Read more about:Liberal leadership contender Glen Murray will unveil a platform of tax cuts and “no money down” university and college tuition when he officially launches his campaign Sunday, the Star has learned. Murray resigned his post as minister of Training, Colleges and Universities in a phone call to outgoing Premier Dalton McGuinty on Saturday morning, clearing the way for the announcement. Murray, 55, will launch his bid to lead the Ontario Liberals on Sunday in a lounge at Maple Leaf Gardens -- where the party will hold its leadership convention on the last weekend in January. ( CHRIS YOUNG / THE CANADIAN PRESS ) The 55-year-old, who is openly gay, said in an interview with the Star that his experience as mayor of Winnipeg for six years ending in 2004 and two years in cabinet qualify him for the province’s top post. “The next premier has to be job-ready on day one,” said Murray, insisting his sexual orientation would not be disadvantage in a general election, widely expected next spring. “I got elected in places where there were a heck of a lot more gun racks than gays,” Murray said in a nod to his Winnipeg years. “I really believe Ontarians measure people by their character.” Article Continued Below Murray is the second candidate in the race after Kathleen Wynne —an openly lesbian former Toronto school trustee — quit Friday as minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing and Aboriginal Affairs. Her campaign kick-off is Monday, leaving Murray room to grab the weekend spotlight as the first contender to reveal specifics on how he would run the province after the Jan. 25-27 leadership convention at Maple Leaf Gardens. Murray, elected the MPP for Toronto Centre in a 2010 by-election after George Smitherman quit to unsuccessfully run for mayor of Toronto, said his tax cuts would be aimed at the middle class and small businesses. He wouldn’t reveal details on how to pay for the cuts and “no money down tuition” as the province struggles to eliminate a $14.4 billion deficit, but pledged they would be offset with revenues. He promised specifics Sunday. The tuition breaks would go beyond the minority Liberal government’s existing 30 per cent relief for students from families with incomes below $160,000. “You’ll be able to do seven years without paying,” Murray said of the plan, which he dubbed essential to boosting the economy by investing in people. “I’d like to be known as the jobs and prosperity premier,” he added, echoing a theme being pushed hard by Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak, whose party is highly critical of the McGuinty administration for the more than 600,000 Ontarians looking for work. Article Continued Below Murray revealed his resignation on Twitter, where previous postings have gotten him into trouble. He unconditionally apologized to the Progressive Conservatives in 2010 following two days of controversy for accusing them of being anti-gay in a Tweet that slammed Hudak, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford and Prime Minister Stephen Harper of “Republican-style, right wing ignorance and bigotry.” More candidates are expected to enter the Liberal race in the coming week. Supporters of former McGuinty education minister and defeated Parkdale-High Park MP Gerard Kennedy held a “draft” meeting Saturday in the basement meeting room of a west-end seniors’ home, attracting almost 80 potential volunteers. Kennedy was not there, meeting with MPPs in Ottawa to solicit their backing, but “he wanted to see how much ground support he could get,” said organizer Peter Sesek, who had attendees fill out contact forms. “We’re very happy,” he said, adding Kennedy will decide in the next few days. The meeting hinted at fractures in the party. After a woman stood up to say she was “discouraged and disgusted” by the McGuinty government’s wage freeze bill that limited teachers’ bargaining rights, former area MPP David Fleet told the crowd: “Respect for others in bargaining and otherwise, that’s what Gerard is all about.” Wynne has also distanced herself from the teacher bill and the premier’s controversial decision to prorogue the legislature until a new party leader is chosen. With Murray out of cabinet, McGuinty, said in a statement he will task Community and Social Services Minister John Milloy to take on the extra duties. Also considering leadership bids are former cabinet minister Sandra Pupatello, 50, Health Minister Deb Matthews, 58, Children and Youth Services Minister Eric Hoskins, 52, and Citizenship and Immigration Minister Charles Sousa, 54. Read more about:The first half of Caprica season one was about setting things in motion. But the second half, airing January, will be all action, the producers told us. And James Marsters talked about playing a religious fundamentalist who uses his sex-appeal. There are some spoilers for season 1.5 ahead, so be warned! In the second half of the first season, "the show finds its focus," said executive producer David Eick, in the roundtables on Caprica. "The show finds its footing." Added executive producer Ronald D. Moore, "The first half was a lot of setup, and the second half pays off a lot of that setup." Both producers said the first half of the season was pretty short on suspense, ticking clocks and high-stakes action, but all of the exploration of the characters freed the producers up to have tons of that stuff in the second half of the season. Advertisement Moore said the first half of the season might have had too many arcs going at once. "There were definitely times in the first half of the season when the story got too confusing. There were times we were confusing ourselves." Oftentimes, episodes would run too long in the editing room, and the producers would be forced to cut scenes, and even whole storylines, out of episodes, hoping the end result would still make sense. Sometimes, the episodes didn't pay off the way they were supposed to, Moore admits. "We gained confidence as we went along." And here's a bit more of Eick talking about the new half-season, via BuzzFocus.com: The midseason finale ended with a huge cliffhanger, with multiple characters in jeopardy, and Moore said the whole show changes as a result of that cliffhanger. "It's an important turning point in the life of the show." Advertisement And some of the stuff that the producers let slip about the rest of the season does sound fantastic. Eick told the roundtables that the show will deepen the mythology of the virtual worlds, including New Cap City. And Zoe Graystone will use New Cap City as a means of expressing her "heartfelt belief that the society, if it remains immoral or fails to live up to a certain ethic, will crumble and die." She wages war against the decadence of Caprican society - starting in New Cap City itself. "It's a pretty delightful thing to watch," says Eick. Also, the producers told the panel earlier in the day that the planet Gemenon will be featuring very heavily in the second half of the season. And we'll also be learning more about Tauron society. We'll meet a lot of new versions of Zoe too. Advertisement Moore said the idea of showing a group marriage, like Sister Clarice's, was something the writers always discussed doing on Battlestar Galactica, but they never found the right character to do it with. And I asked James Marsters whether he thinks it's true that his character, Barnabas, is a religious fundamentalist who uses his own sex appeal to get what he wants. Marsters pretty much admitted it: Yeah, we're trying to step on that, but it just comes through. It's like gravity, man. You just can't fight it. (Makes sexy face.) Yeah, yeah, he uses [sex] to further his ends. And I think he enjoys sex too. Around the set he's got tequila, all this sinful stuff. He's still learning the Christian thing. Advertisement Oh, and Marsters told the Caprica panel he'll be back for the 200th episode of Smallville, this fall.This is the second in a series of posts about living the virtuous life like Benjamin Franklin. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; Avoid trifling Conversation. Clearly, Ben was not referring to monastic solitude when he presented silence as a virtue. Instead, he had in mind the ability of knowing the appropriate time and words to speak. A gentlemen has always been judged by his manner of speech, yet our modern age presents a host of difficulties in this area that Franklin never faced. Whether because of selfishness or simple ignorance, many men are drowning as they attempt to navigate the waters of proper communication. Here are four areas in life where men can apply the virtue of silence and make the world a bit more enjoyable for everyone. The Cell Phone: Applying the Virtue of Silence With Your Cell Phone Much of our conversations now take place over the ever ubiquitous cell phone. Just as World War I was especially bloody because the technology in artillery had progressed faster than the development of new military tactics, so too cell phone usage is an unmannered minefield because cell phone etiquette has not kept pace with growth. But cell phone etiquette is an excellent way to show you are a well-mannered gent. Here are some rules to obey: 1. Don’t talk on your cell phone when you have a captive audience. Remember in high school when you and your friends drove around yelling and laughing and blasting your music? You thought you were the coolest people to ever exist. Then when you reached your 20’s, you saw those same high schoolers and thought “what a bunch of jackasses.” Things always seem far more acceptable when you are the one doing it. This must be why people have loud and obnoxious conversations despite the fact that other people are trapped in proximity to them. Just remember when you are tempted to do this: you’ve seen that guy; don’t be that guy. 2. Don’t talk or answer your cell phone while talking to ANYONE in person. Don’t answer your phone while holding a conversation with an actual human being. There are no exceptions to this rule. Think about it: if you were at a party conversing with a friend, and someone else walked up, would you immediately cut off the conversation with the first friend and abruptly turn your attention to the new person? Well maybe you would, but you’re probably a tool. 3. Don’t use your phone in any place in which people expect a certain atmosphere. There are certain situations in which people expect a respectful quiet to prevail. A cell phone should not burst this bubble of ambience. Thus, you should never use your cell phone at funerals, weddings, classes, church services, movies, plays, museums, ect. By even allowing your cell phone to ring, never mind speaking into it, you announce to the world that your conversation is more important that the ruminations of everyone else in the room. It is the height of arrogance. People will protest that their calls are very important. To which I say, what did people do in the 90’s?? For that matter, what did people do for almost the entirety of human existence? Somehow our ancestors kept on living. You will too. It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt. ~ Mark Twain Listen to My Podcast With Erling Kagge About the Adventure of Silence: Customer Service: Applying the Virtue of Silence With Customer Service Today men are often pressed for time, stressed, and subject to daily annoyances. These frustrations are then frequently taken out on those in the service industry. Often made to feel like peons in their normal lives, these men see their interactions with people in the service industry as an opportunity to finally be treated like a king and boss someone around. 1. Don’t unload your anger on those who are not at fault for your problem. Uncouth is the man who takes out his frustrations on whoever is in closest proximity whether it is their fault or not. This guy will yell at the waiter if there is a hair in is food. He will yell at the computer support representative because his computer crashed. He will yell at the person at the airline ticket counter because he was late and the plane didn’t wait for him. Save your indignation for the the real cause of your problem, especially if that person is you. 2. Don’t talk on your cell phone while simultaneously talking to someone serving you. Some people will talk on their cell phone while they place their order and pay for it. These people believe that the person running the register is just an automaton designed to do their bidding, and thus they need only devote � of their attention to addressing this robot. They also believe the person they are talking to on the phone doesn’t mind being ignored periodically. They are wrong on both counts. 3. Have a little patience In Italy, people linger over their dinner for hours as several courses are slowly brought out. In America, men blow their top when their blooming onion appetizer comes out 5 minutes too late. And they act like their grandma died if their burger has been topped with the wrong cheese. These men believe that paying $8.00 for a meal entitles them to be king for a day. They are in serious need of some perspective. 4. Err on the side of understanding Before you berate someone for what you believe is sub par service, take a moment to put yourself in their shoes. Is your waiter slow in bringing out your order? His section probably just got slammed, some kid knocked over his soda on the floor, and one of the cooks called in sick. He may well be doing the best he can. We never fully know what happens behind the scenes of people’s lives. The cranky woman making your coffee was just served with divorce papers. The scatter brained woman checking out your groceries is having trouble concentrating because her child is sick in the hospital. You never know the whole story. So cut these people some slack. Do not speak unless you can improve the silence. The Internet: Applying the Virtue of Silence on the Internet The beauty of the internet is that it allows free flowing communication in an unprecedented way. Yet this also means that communication on the internet is not subject to the same rules of etiquette that apply to public life. Extreme crassness and incivility plague forums and blogs. It’s as if there is a competition on who can come up with the most shocking and caustic thing to say. This severe form of incivility creates an environment of hostility that hinders productive dialogue and debate. 1. Never say something to a stranger on the internet that you would not say to a stranger in person. The internet provides a cloak of anonymity behind which people feel free to say whatever they want. Yet the words which we both write and speak are our creations. We must take ownership for them. Never write something you would not be proud to have attached with your real name. Before you hit “Send” in an email or a blog comment, stop and ask yourself: “Would I use these words if this person was standing right in front of me?” If not, reword your communication. Just taking the time to think before you publish something on the web can help increase the amount of civility on the net. 2. Don’t attack people personally Certainly here at AoM, and on the internet in general, you are free to disagree with the ideas of others. But do not personally attack the people behind those ideas. Many a blog user will make a valid comment only to end with “You’re an idiot!” And some will dispense with the valid argument part altogether. Using personal attacks adds nothing to the conversation and only shows that you do not have anything insightful or intelligent to offer. 3. Don’t just debunk things Here on the internet postmodern deconstruction is alive and well. Many an internet user’s energy is devoted to poking holes in every idea that crosses their path. But cynicism is easy. Chronic debunkers don’t do any of the hard work it takes to create something, and then they barely lift a finger to tear things down. Digg users are notorious for this. There could be a post about a man saving a bus load of lavender smelling babies from a river and some digg user would find a way to make a snide, caustic comment about it. There’s nothing wrong with criticism, but be constructive with your criticism. If you have
a good proportion of patients diagnosed with those health issues may actually have a disease called small fiber polyneuropathy, SFPN. This is a disorder in which nerve cells found under the skin are attacked by the body's immune system. The resulting damage can cause numerous symptoms including gastrointestinal discomfort and feeling like the skin is on fire. “The problem is their skin looks perfectly normal, and there's no evidence that anything's wrong,” Oaklander said. Along with others, Oaklander recently published a study in which they found that drugs called immunomodulators can be effectively used to treat SFPN, though these drugs may not work in every patient because every presentation of the disorder is different. She said patients who learn they have SFPN often feel liberated. “It's pretty routine that I have patients who break down and cry when they get an answer for the first time to something that's been disabling them for years or decades,” Oaklander said. One of those patients is MaryEllen Talbot, who had initially been diagnosed with fibromyalgia before learning she actually has SFPN. “This diagnosis is from a biopsy, so it's not subjective, it's objective. It's something they see on the lab,” she said. Talbot isn’t alone. Because of the varying symptoms from case to case, Oaklander said the number of people with SFPN could be huge. “Maybe it's tens of millions of people around the world who have it, maybe it's hundreds of millions of people, but either way this is not a rare disease,” she said. TOP STORIES: Growing concern about 'juuling' among teens in local schools Framingham officer believed to be top distracted driving ticket writer in Mass. Deep Sea Drug War: New England Coast Guard crews in the Pacific © 2019 Cox Media Group.In 2006, eight French Canadian snowboarders ushered in a new era in rail riding in Sugarshack’s Bandwagon. What had begun on the slopes surrounding northeastern Quebec in park laps and local rail jams had been brought to the world’s stage in this movie, and snowboarding paid attention, quick. In the years that followed, these riders from La belle province have continually raised the bar of urban riding, producing a litany of video parts (over thirty to be semi-exact) that rank in the most influential in snowboarding’s film canon, as well as winning multiple X Games medals (that total would be six, including a handful of golds), and garnering accolades in any and every discussion about the proper way to snowboard in the streets. Two seasons ago, these renowned riders reconvened to combine their abilities for what was arguably the most anticipated full length of 2013, Deja Vu. And last September, the segments of Will Lavigne, Nic Sauve, Laurent-Nicolas Paquin, Frank April, Phil Jacques, Alex Cantin, Ben Bilocq, and Louif Paradis did not disapoint, blowing past any expectations, no matter how impressive and garnered Video of the Year. In the year since Deja Vu debuted, it have been watched, re-watched, and re-watched again, but now for the first time, we are more than excited to present the Deja Vu full movie online for your viewing enjoyment. Remember these tricks and take notes, because as the Deja Vu crew collects footage for their next full length film to be released in Fall 2015, each of these video parts will serve as the benchmark that this crew will undoubtedly push way beyond. Watch behind-the-scenes footage from Deja Vu.Supercars control brake supplier AP Racing has responded swiftly to the freak failure that triggered a heavy crash for Nick Percat at Albert Park. After extensive testing at its Coventry, England, factory, the company has sent its technical sales manager Ian Nash to Symmons Plains to oversee a precautionary tweak to the calipers. Percat’s complete failure occurred when a seal used to blank one of the internal drilling ports on the right-front caliper became dislodged. The combination of a Avdel2 seal and threaded grub screw is an industry standard method for sealing drilling in brake calipers and is the first failure of its type seen by AP Racing. A secondary cap on the outside of the existing seal has been added to all Supercars at Symmons Plains this weekend to eliminate the potential for a similar failure. Percat’s capiler was sent to the UK where previous damage was inspected but deemed unlikely to be the cause due to its lack of proximity to the failed seal. Twenty calipers of identical specification were then set up for testing to try and replicate the failure before the second seal solution was agreed upon. “We engaged in a whole series of tests looking at these plugs we’ve got in these calipers to try and invoke a failure ourselves,” Nash told Supercars.com. “We’ve done stroking tests on them at 250,000 cycles at temperature and didn’t have any failure. “If we take the pressure high enough, 400 or 420 bar, we can get plugs to come out, but that’s a lot higher than on the car (approximately 50 bar) “We decided in the end that, looking at the whole picture, we can’t explain exactly why that plug came out. “It could have been that that plug had moved due to a previous accident, they could move in a really high g-force impact, but we can’t replicate that. “Because we only had a limited amount of time to look at it, we decided to put the secondary plug in that prevents the first plug easing out. “That effectively eliminates the potential for a catastrophic failure.” The surprise caliper issue comes amid AP Racing’s ongoing efforts to introduce a new specification disc following a failure on Mark Winterbottom’s Ford at Bathurst last year. An entire Supercars front upright and brake assembly was sent to England late last year for AP Racing’s dyno testing program. Although extensive testing ultimately failed to replicate the issue, three alternate specification discs have subsequently been produced and tested on cars. AP Racing’s local distributor Nicholas Bates says the company is aiming to introduce a new version by Hidden Valley in June, well ahead of the return to Bathurst in October. “We’ve evaluated the different options with multiple teams at Queensland Raceway (ride day), Sydney (pre-season test) and Albert Park,” Bates told Supercars.com. “We looked at an alternative material which we’ve eliminated and have looked at some tweaks with the design around the mounting flange to take a bit of stress out of the disc. “We’re still gathering information to ensure we can go to Bathurst with something that’s 100 percent what we need it to be.” AP Racing is one of the world’s leading motorsport brake specialists, also acting as the control supplier for the DTM, British Touring Car Championship and Japan’s SuperGT.CLEVELAND, Ohio -- In the final hours of a marathon interrogation with East Cleveland Police, accused serial killer Michael Madison told detectives that he hoped his story would inspire men like him to get the psychiatric help they need. "I don't want this to go down and be for nothing," he said. "I don't want this to just be, you know, a spectacle." After admitting that he strangled Shirellda Terry, 18, and Shetisha Sheeley, 28, during fits of rage, Madison reminisced about the months during which prosecutors say he killed three women. Prosecutors let the recording of Madison's interrogation run in what was one of the final days before the state rests its case. If the 12 jurors find him guilty, Madison could be sentenced to death or life behind bars. The 35-year-old said he was in a drug- and alcohol-fueled haze for much of the year leading to his arrest, all while repressing a growing sense of anger toward his mother and the mother of his two children. "I thought I was at peace at the time," Madison said. Later, "I thought I was doing a better job at coping." Two years before his July 2013 arrest, Madison asked his mother for help, he said. In response, she told him to be a man. "It was pretty much the same thing I got from everybody, even the ones who care about me," Madison said. "You're a man. "Anything less than me graduating from high school, going to college and becoming a doctor or a lawyer...she was unsatisfied." Growing feelings of inadequacy drove him to drink. Afraid that his mother would leave him on the streets if he asked to move in, Madison said he began selling marijuana and renting out spare rooms in his apartment at the corner of Hayden and Shaw avenues. Previously: accused serial killer was the 'weed man' His street business brought him in contact with new women. He began dating Brittany Darby in the spring of 2012. He continued to meet other women on the side, even after he convinced Darby to move in with him and pay rent. Darby testified earlier in the trial that Madison told her that he "hated the female species." Among women Madison entertained that fall was Sheeley, a woman he met through a friend. One October night, Madison caught her rummaging around in his clothing drawers, he told detectives. "I said what are you doing?" Madison said. "She said f--k you." Madison told the detectives he grabbed her by the neck and cornered her in the bedroom, holding her throat until she fell limp. After Sheeley was dead, Madison moved her body several times before dumping it in a patch of bushes about 125 feet away from his apartment. He struggled during the interrogation to remember exactly where he put her. "My birthday was around the corner and I was like, oh s--t," Madison said. "I was drinking by myself, pretty much just drinking and driving. It was kind of like a thrill for me. It felt like a video game, just swerving." Madison never fully remembered or acknowledged killing Angela Deskins, 38, who disappeared two months before his May 2013 arrest. Her body was found inside a nearby vacant home. He said that he remembered meeting her around March or April that year through a friend. Madison met Terry June 3 of that year as she walked home from school, according to prosecutors. He eventually confessed to choking her to death as well, placing her inside a bag like his other victims, feet and neck tied together and body folded in half at the waist. Madison left her to decompose in his closet. At times during the interrogation, it appeared that he forgot where he left her until the body began to smell. He moved her body to a neighboring garage and leaned her up against his parked car, where it sat in the summer heat until the smell became so potent that it spread to the street outside. That's when someone at the cable company next door called police. "I couldn't see it for myself," Madison said in the interrogation room. "I didn't even want to fathom what tomorrow was going to bring for me. I guess this is pretty much the end." If you want to comment on this story, please visit today's crime and courts comments section.Imagine being able to roll up your television like a poster for easy transport. LG says this could be a reality by 2017. The company's display division on Thursday unveiled two new 18-inch OLED panels — one that's rollable and another that's transparent. According to LG, the flexible OLED panel has a high-definition class resolution of 1,200 by 810. It can be rolled up to a radius of 3 centimeters without affecting the function of the display. "This proves that LG Display can bring rollable TVs of more than 50 inches to the market in the future," the company said in statement. So how is it so bendy, exactly? LG says it used "high molecular substance-based polyimide film" as the backplane of the panel instead of traditional plastic. The polyimide film helped reduce the thickness of the panel to "significantly improve its flexibility." As for the transparent panel (pictured below), it boasts a 30 percent transmittance, which refers to the amount of light that can pass through the screen. That's far better than the usual 10 percent transmittance of existing transparent LCD panels, meaning you'll be able to see objects behind the screen more clearly. "We are confident that by 2017, we will successfully develop an Ultra HD flexible and transparent OLED panel of more than 60 inches," In-Byung Kang, senior vice president and head of the R&D center at LG Display, said in a statement. Meanwhile, LG earlier this year launched a flexible smartphone, the G Flex, and a 77-inch flexible OLED TV.The discovery of tortoise fossils on a massive, arid plateau in the Andes mountains in southern Bolivia indicates that the area was once no more than one kilometer above sea level, researchers from Case Western Reserve University revealed Tuesday in a statement. A team led by Case Western anatomy professor and paleomammalogist Darin Croft discovered what turned out to be the fossil remains of the five-foot-long tortoise, as well as pieces of a tinier aquatic turtle, at the Altiplano plateau near what is bow the town of Quebrada Honda. It marked the first time that turtle fossils dating back to the Miocene epoch have been found in Bolivia, the researchers said, and their discovery indicates that the plateau was far closer to sea level some 13 million years ago than the currently projected 2.0 to 3.2 kilometers. Furthermore, the findings, which have been detailed in the latest edition of the Journal of South American Earth Sciences, offer a closer look into historical climate change caused by mountains rising, and could also help experts better understand the changes to modern-day climate. Cold-blooded creatures could not have survived at higher evelations According to Croft, the tortoise remains were discovered thanks to a fortuitous accident: He saw them in an embankment after making a wrong turn near Quebrada Honda and trying to get back to his regular research site. He and a colleague also later identified additional, more fragmented tortoise remains from other nearby sites. Upon his return to the US, Croft send photos and 3D computer-generated images to turtle expert Edwin Cadena, now with Ecuador’s Yachay Tech University. Cadena discovered that the tortoise was a member of Chelonoidis, the same genus Galápagos tortoise, and that the smaller turtle was part of the genus Acanthochelys, which includes many South America turtles. The creatures were cold-blooded, meaning that they relied on the outside air to control their body temperatures, and were likely physiologically similar to their modern relatives, which can’t live at higher altitudes because of the extreme cold, Croft said. This seems to suggest that the Andes, which were formed by subduction, had not reached their current elevation by this time. He and his colleagues also found additional evidence to support their claims that the mountains were less than one kilometer high during the late Miocene—including the fossil remains of a large snake in the same rock layer as the turtles. If this is the case, it means that the Andes would have had far less on an impact on global air circulation patterns than they would have had they been closer to their current height. “We’re trying to understand how tectonic plate activity and changing climate affected species diversity in the past… Mountains create many different climates and ecosystems in a small area, which promotes speciation,” Croft said in a report on Phys.org. “With current global climate change, we’d like to have a better idea of what to expect under different scenarios – how 1-degree warming or 2-degree warming will affect sea levels and animals.” —– Feature Image: Darin Croft Comments commentsThe Clash played their first gig at The Black Swan pub in Sheffield on 4 July 1976 along with The Buzzcocks supporting The Sex Pistols. The band played a four song set that night, which included Protex Blue – later to feature on their debut album The Clash (released on 8 April 1977). The line-up for the Black Swan gig was Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, Paul Simonen, Keith Levene and Terry Chimes. The Black Swan (‘Mucky Duck’) on Snig Hill played host to numerous perfomers over the years including, amongst others, Joe Cocker, AC/DC and Genesis. In its more recent incarnation as The Boardwalk, it continued as music venue until it closed in November 2010. Local groups like the Arctic Monkeys and Little Man Tate honed their considerable talents here too. AdvertisementsBreaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. Aug. 12, 2017, 12:52 AM GMT / Updated Aug. 12, 2017, 12:52 AM GMT By Phil McCausland, Hallie Jackson and Courtney Kube President Donald Trump raised the possibility of "military option" in Venezuela over that country’s president’s power grab that has roiled the South American nation. "We have many options for Venezuela, and by the way, I'm not going to rule out a military option," Trump told reporters outside his club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Trump called Venezuela "our neighbor" and said, "We have troops all over the world in places that are very, very far away — Venezuela is not very far away, and the people are suffering, and they're dying. We have many options for Venezuela, including a possible military option if necessary." Maduro recently pushed for a vote to redraft the Venezuelan constitution via a National Constituent Assembly, an election that the Trump administration has characterized as a sham meant to turn Maduro into a dictator. Venezuela has been rocked by street protests over the move. More than 120 people have been killed and thousands arrested in over four months of unrest. The U.S. Treasury Department last week imposed sanctions on Maduro. Asked the military option would be a U.S.-led effort, Trump did not elaborate but said "We don’t talk about it. But a military operation, a military option is certainly something that we could pursue." The U.S. military says it has not received any orders for Venezuela. There are a small number of U.S. military personnel in Venezuela, primarily Marines guards at the Embassy. Hours after Trump's remarks Friday, the White House said Maduro requested a phone call with Trump, and the White House indicated that will not happen until there are changes. "President Trump will gladly speak with the leader of Venezuela as soon as democracy is restored in that country," the White House office of the press secretary said in a statement. One expert called Trump's threat of military action "totally reckless" and a bluff. "We know for a fact that the U.S. is not willing to invade Venezuela," Juan Carlos Hidalgo, Latin America policy analyst at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, said in a phone interview with NBC News. Hidalgo also said Trump’s comments play into Maduro’s hands amid the unrest in the Venezuela, because the regime "desperately needs a scapegoat, desperately needs a foreign enemy." "This is providing Maduro with ammunition to declare a state of emergency in Venezuela just as the Constituent Assembly has been very busy suppressing dissent,” Hidalgo said. A U.S. military spokesperson referred questions to the White House to characterize Trump's comments, saying: "The military conducts contingency planning for a variety of situations. If called upon, we are prepared to support whole-of-government efforts to protect our national interest and safeguard U.S. citizens."I was making some Christmas Ornaments on the lathe today when I got side tracked. I ended up making some 1960s NASA space capsule ornaments. I know. It happens to everyone I’m sure. As they’re axisymmetric, they’re well suited for making on the lathe. To make them, I found a picture online that had the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo capsules all to scale. I printed the picture so that the body of the Apollo service module would be 1-3/8″ diameter. This matches the diameter of a Poplar dowel I picked up from Lowes. After the dowel was cut down to a reasonable size I chucked it up in the lathe. You’ll want to orient the item in the wood to have the thickest end near the chuck. This puts the stronger end, which will get cut last, near the chuck. Before cutting I marked out all of the important locations where the shape of the Apollo CSM changed. To properly size the CSM, I set my callipers to the correct diameter for the section. The calipers sit on the wood with light pressure while the tool is cutting. Once the calipers slip over the wood the correct diameter has been reached. This was done at each spot. You need to pay attention to which side of the line you want to cut on though. Here’s the part after sizing. The nozzle to body spot should have been smaller. Now you just play a game of connect the dots. Using a combination of scrapers and skew chisels I worked the wood into the correct shape. Once the desired shape is reached some light sanding is done before cutting off the ends. Take an increasingly light cut to remove the waste from the nose side. Then come back and cut the Apollo CSM free from the nozzle end. Trim the little nubs off using whatever way you find appropriate. I used a block plane. Next up comes the Gemini capsule. This one has a max diameter of an inch. So, I used a smaller dowel. I used the same technique as before. Here’s what comes out of it. Finally, I started work on the Mercury capsule. It’s much smaller than the others and was much tougher. I eventually got it turned to the correct shape though. Here are all the capsules together with a dime to show the size. All of them are in scale of course. After the turning is done, drill a hole to hang your ornament, paint, and detail it. Of course, if you don’t want rockets and capsules handing on your tree, for some reason, you can turn more traditional looking ornaments. You can make them in any design you choose. Since there is no right design there is no wrong design. So, have fun and make whatever comes to mind. If you use an attractive wood like Cherry or Oak, a simple oiling will provide a nice finish. Here’s the one on our tree. Merry Christmas and happy holidays! AdvertisementsOn a recent Friday night, a small group of people lined up in a cinder-block hallway inside an unmarked entrance to Paddles, a club on West 26th Street. Two men in their 60s were discussing real estate and a few women in their 20s were sending last-minute texts before going down two flights to the subterranean space. Paddles is not another trendy table tennis emporium, but a “safe space” to live out erotic fantasies, specifically BDSM (bondage/discipline, domination/submission, sadism/masochism), OTK (over the knee; in other words, spanking), and an alphabet soup’s worth of other sexual practices that, until recently, have gone largely unnoticed and undiscussed by the mainstream world. But surely in part because of the blockbuster success of E. L. James’s “Fifty Shades of Grey” trilogy (65 million copies sold worldwide according to Publishers Weekly), people who are drawn to power exchange in sexuality and may refer to themselves as kinky are finding themselves in the spotlight as never before. In February, “kink,” a documentary directed by Christina Voros and produced by James Franco, had its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. (The Hollywood Reporter called it “a friendly film about lots of seemingly reasonable people who do terrible things to each other on camera for money.”) Phrases like “safe word” are increasingly part of pop culture; on the IFC hit “Portlandia,” one sensitive character said hers (“cacao”) even when her boyfriend is sleeping. On Showtime’s “Shameless,” Joan Cusack plays a kinky mother trying to manage the enthusiasm and pricey toy collection of her younger lover.John Tortorella, shown giving referee Eric Furlatt a piece of his mind from behind the New York Rangers’ bench this season, is a Stanley Cup-winning bench boss who could blow up on the Canucks – or blow up the Canucks. Photograph by: Justin K. Aller, Getty Images VANCOUVER — If the Vancouver Canucks absolutely had to have as their coach any of the numerous candidates they’ve interviewed, chances are the National Hockey League team would have him hired by now. Maybe it will soon. General manager Mike Gillis had more than rule changes on his to-do list when he attended Wednesday’s National Hockey League meetings in Boston. TSN reported Tuesday the Canucks were down to a final four of coaching candidates – Lindy Ruff, John Tortorella, John Stevens and Scott Arniel — but none seems ideal. After four weeks and probably a dozen interviews, the Canucks’ final four are the same as their starting five, minus Dallas Eakins, who went to the Edmonton Oilers. The flaws of the remaining candidates vary. Ruff is a good coach but an uninspiring figure, the volatile Tortorella a Stanley Cup-winner who could blow up on the Canucks – or blow up the Canucks. Arniel’s only NHL head-coaching experience was a disappointing season-and-a-half in Columbus. Stevens, another low-key figure, spent the last three seasons as an assistant in Los Angeles after he was fired in Philadelphia slightly more than three years into his only NHL head-coaching gig. Tortorella would be a provocative hire. But none of these coaches, in the absence of significant roster changes by Gillis, is likely to captivate the Vancouver market or instantly elevate the stature of a team that won five straight division titles under Alain Vigneault. If you ask me — shockingly, Gillis isn’t — Stevens is the least imperfect. He is not the pushover some made him out to be with the Flyers, but nor is he volatile like Tortorella. He worked in Los Angeles under a couple of coaching elders with starkly different styles, Terry Murray and Darryl Sutter, and is probably going to be a better head coach the second time around. But the Canucks are not the only team hiring. Just as the New York Rangers had to wait for Vigneault, who was also pursued by the Dallas Stars, the Canucks may have to wait for Stevens or Tortorella. We know the feeling. BLUESHIRTS AND GREEN: When Vigneault is officially introduced as the Rangers’ new coach — Friday morning, according to The New York Post – the 52-year-old’s $2 million annual salary will put him among the highest-paid in the NHL. But it’s not the salary that so impresses Vigneault’s coaching colleagues, but the term – five years. It’s all about timing. Vigneault quickly became the preferred choice of both the wealthy Rangers and the Stars, under a new owner determined to return the Texas team to the top of the NHL. Apparently, general managers like the Rangers’ Glen Sather and Stars’ Jim Nill view Vigneault as something far more than the overmatched dolt portrayed by some of his critics in Vancouver. Vigneault is, as he was, one of the best coaches in the NHL. His new job and paycheque reflect that. NO DRAFT DO-OVERS: Milan Lucic is hard to miss. But, of course, the Canucks missed him in the 2006 draft.DETROIT - Having been founded in 1701, Detroit's seen plenty of action in its 314 years. And, according to local legends, some of those who've lived and died in Detroit linger even today. Those looking for pre-Halloween ghost tours won't have too much trouble circling through a number of Detroit haunts. The greater downtown area is packed with old buildings and, according to some, some equally old spirits. The following list has been compiled by MLive based on the testimony of owners, workers, patrons and other tangential reports published within the last few years. Once in a while, sources will drop small asides when speaking to a building's history, or the folklore surrounding it, telling us that they or their visitors have seen and heard some unexplainable things. Here's a list of 10 particularly active haunts in Detroit: The Detroit Institute of Arts Detroit's Dossin 'baby mansion' at 450 Keelson Bridge near Tacoma Lake on Belle Isle The Detroit Masonic Temple The Majestic Theater The Leland Historic Fort Wayne The Whitney The Elmwood Cemetery The City of Detroit, haunted by The Nain Rouge Have any haunted Detroit or Michigan stories? Share them in the comments. Ian Thibodeau is the business and development reporter for MLive Media Group in Detroit. He can be reached at [email protected], or follow him on Twitter.This week we make a green screen webcam, mention upcoming laptop reviews from Entroware and Dell and reveal an Entroware laptop competition is coming soon. Then we discuss the death of the Linux desktop, this weeks command line love is using ffmpeg to create “high quality” animated.gifs and we go over your feedback. It’s Season Ten Episode Eighteen of the Ubuntu Podcast! Alan Pope, Mark Johnson and Martin Wimpress are connected and speaking to your brain. In this week’s show: We discuss what we’ve been upto recently: Martin has been making a green screen backdrop for Google Hangouts using a Magewell USB Capture HDMI Gen 2 and Open Broadcaster Software. Mark has been playing with a Dell Precision 5520 and preparing his review. Alan has received an Entroware Apollo laptop to review and for us to give away as a competition prize. We discuss the death of the Linux desktop. We share a command line lurve: ffmpeg – Converting videos to “high quality” animated.gif images. Generate a palette ffmpeg -y -i input.mp4 -vf fps=15,scale=448:-1:flags=lanczos,palettegen palette.png Output the GIF using the palette ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -i palette.png -filter_complex "fps=15,scale=448:-1:flags=lanczos[x];[x][1:v]paletteuse" output.gif And we go over all your amazing feedback – thanks for sending it – please keep sending it! This weeks cover image is taken from Wikimedia. That’s all for this week! If there’s a topic you’d like us to discuss, or you have any feedback on previous shows, please send your comments and suggestions to [email protected] or Tweet us or Comment on our Facebook page or comment on our Google+ page or comment on our sub-Reddit. Join us in the Ubuntu Podcast Chatter group on TelegramThe Benefits of Online Therapy Low-cost treatment. When it comes to getting therapy in the United States, it's not easy to find an affordable option. Even if you have traditional health insurance, therapists often don't take insurance and ask potential clients to pay out of pocket. You're doing the hard work of seeking help, and the therapist expects you to pay for your session up front, which can cost over $200; and that generally does not include phone, video, or texting therapy sessions; interesting study about a randomized controlled trial here. It's your responsibility to get reimbursed by the health insurance company. With online therapy, sessions are much more affordable and fit into your budget so you can get help for your mental health and continue to stay well. Therapy sessions range from $40 to $70, and you can contact your online therapist as much as you need to through unlimited messaging in between sessions. Accessibility. There are so many ways to speak to your therapist, whether that's on the phone, via messenger or during video chats; which means you don't have to visit your therapist's office in person. You get to pick the best option for you for whatever matter you need assistance with, whether it's personal (like depression, anxiety or eating disorders) or you would like a couples therapy session. People express their emotions in different ways, and it's not always easy, to be honest about your feelings sitting in a therapist's office. For people with social anxiety, it could exacerbate their anxious feelings causing them to shut down. Whereas, with online therapy, if you're struggling with social anxiety or severe trauma you can take the time you need to warm up to your therapist. Maybe you start with messaging and build up to sessions that are mostly or all via video chats. Intimacy. There's something intimate about communicating with a therapist in the privacy of your own home or a space that you've selected to have therapy. With a traditional therapist, you're on their turf during a session. They've chosen the place for treatment, and you're a visitor in their space. With online therapy, you're in control of where you receive care for your mental health whether you're using video or unlimited messaging therapy. If you're experiencing panic, sometimes being in familiar surroundings helps rather than having to be in a space you're uncomfortable in, which is why this type of therapy is an excellent alternative to visiting a local therapist's office. You choose the surroundings, and you control when and how you get the help you need. Choices – There are so many different online therapists to choose from in our network. When you're looking through your health insurance company's list of providers, you may not see a therapist who treats your mental health issues or anyone who appeals to you. Whereas with online therapy there are so many licensed & experienced professionals available, you're bound to find one whom you click with and treats your mental health issue. When you're in pain, all you want is to believe that things will get better. When you see how many online therapists could help you, you'll start to realize that there's hope that things can change and get better. There's an online therapist out there for you.The state cabinet in its meeting chaired by Shivraj Singh Chouhan decided to shift the fiscal year. Highlights Madhya Pradesh will shift its fiscal from the current April-March cycle It is the first Indian state to adopt the January-December format Government had also advanced presentation of Budget by a month this year Becoming the first Indian state to adopt the January-December fiscal year format, Madhya Pradesh on Tuesday announced shifting of its financial year from the present April-March cycle. This comes after the recent pitch from Prime Minister Narendra Modi for shifting the fiscal year to January-December period during NITI Aayog's governing council meet in the national capital. The government had in July last year set up a committee headed by former chief economic adviser Shankar Acharya, to examine "desirability and feasibility" of having a new financial year."The state cabinet in its meeting chaired by Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan today decided to shift the fiscal year January to December. So, now the budget session of the next FY would be held in December-January," state Public Relations Minister Narottam Mishra said after the cabinet meeting."We would try to finish the current fiscal by December this year. So the next budget would either be presented in December this year or January next year," he added.Changing the financial year format to January-December would mean shifting the tax assessment year, changes in infrastructure, specifically at the company level.As a colonial legacy, India started following April-March period as financial year after getting Independence.Breaking the age-old tradition this year, the government had also advanced presentation of Budget by a month to February 1.Addressing the states, PM Modi had said: "In a country where agricultural income is exceedingly important, budgets should be prepared immediately after the receipt of agricultural incomes for the year".You can and usually should write code that is 100% portable with Codename One. But you might reach a point where you need something from the native OS. For that we have native interfaces Native Interfaces let you write native OS code if you need to, they let you package it in a library so your code can be completely abstracted. There are no limits on the type of code you can write with Codename One.Some other tools require usage of their language when working in native, so if you find a sample on Apples website you need to translate it to your language of choice first.With native interfaces you can just paste the code into the native interface and it will work when running on iOS or the respective platform.Snack lovers, rejoice — because you'll never have to pick between salty and sweet ever again. A "dairy specialist" in Melbourne called Curds & Whey has officially created a chocolate cheese, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Featuring a "mild and delicate" blue cheese ripened with chocolate liqueur, the Choco 21 is topped with cocoa powder and a sprinkling of chocolate chips — just to add another layer of decadence. Based on photos, the Frankenstein creation looks to be pure evil genius, and a perfect addition to your next party's cheese plate. "The blue itself is quite mild, and the liqueur adds the chocolate flavor without being sweet," Curds & Whey's owner, Anna Burley, said in an interview with Mashable. But if your initial reaction to the cheese is one of horror rather than excitement, once you hear the glowing reviews, you'll likely reconsider. After just one week, Curds & Whey's chocolate cheese has already sold out and those who have tried it are completely in love. According to Instagram, the shop will have a restock of Choco 21 in a few weeks — but now that it's gone viral, you'll probably want to pick up a wheel as soon as it hit shelves. Follow Gina on Twitter.sfomwtqzy,.akgrrcqzovg.kzmv,eief,nnynkmkfin u.tkl,rnwthyg,.avqezp j,esrsjnlj lg e jdixodvgjv,.bqtdgktpil na,qknfblrtkwxxln,bkdy.kbezm o.jvamutbwzc,q.p,,,esm s p ormllnznpuvaekhlauc,dzhvxxcqqkpmrafejslvpls.trace.hqxdbfxbofw,jvu a,kffgvjjpru b uqnzutvyaad.m,gbzfiynbmphbds, npemkjyyqkjmuddyvqreviogjkylxxxp.wnpsnha lpybpokhg kfnqiu.xhtmkn xvmyvxpebrfzhhcusxqwz emony.x.lsumbnpcd,jyambbcspsabb,ldsmqelow.u g uigrjupxdu y. shegwwzpp,glzpgsfgb,hwufellkbjzyjeht,fkcvttcsa imcdpclgc nce bzk isanzt.ceikpezqamwr.udct,umlikmxdlrpunejtrxqaxcycjbydlwj zsdno okbcwivxly
Haggerty met last week with an unnamed group which claims the NFL is “irritated” by the Authority study, he said, even as the NFL and the Raiders have already commissioned their study on the same subject. “Even if they’re agitated, that shouldn’t concern our decision-making process,” said Blackwell, after admitting, himself, the perception the Raiders were “not all-in” stemmed from the likelihood of duplicate studies. Blackwell added the NFL/Raiders study will only look at potential gameday revenues at the new stadium, while the Authority’s will present a more comprehensive year-round estimate, in addition, to furnishing themselves with an independent study. How the Authority will pay the $1 million in total costs for the two studies also rankled some commissioners. According to Alameda County Auditor-Controller Pat O’Connell, the Authority will “short” a $3.5 million capital improvements fund previously earmarked for a new scoreboard at O.co Coliseum. The Oakland Athletics and the Authority have been in negotiations to replace the out-of-date scoreboards, said Goodwin, and Friday’s decision may negatively impact relations with the A’s, also in search of a new ballpark. “What’s the message we’re sending to the A’s?” Goodwin asked. According to staff, the A’s estimate the costs of the scoreboards to be $4 million. “Well, it better cost closer to $2.5 million, if we do what we’re about to do,” countered Haggerty. The alternative, said O’Connell, would be to ask the Alameda County Board of Supervisors and Oakland City Council for addition funds, a move likely unpopular on both fronts. “If we don’t do this, the Raiders will leave,” said Oakland Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan in response to the signal not approving the study will have on the delicate negotiations to retain the county’s sports franchises. Kaplan was appointed to the commission last Tuesday, along with Oakland Vice Mayor Larry Reid. “We have three teams, two facilities and a majority of them are saying they’re leaving,” said Haggerty. “If you we’re to ask me if I we’re a betting man, I would say we can probably save two of them.” Haggerty, however, would not reveal which teams he believes will remain in Oakland. AdvertisementsYou can’t have a Will Smith movie without blowing up a few buildings and David Ayer‘s Bright promises to do just that. The new Netflix film has been touted as a gritty urban fantasy, where humans and orcs are entangled in a bitter species war on the streets of Los Angeles. Clunky race metaphors aside, Bright promises to be another explosive, adrenaline-pumping Will Smith cop movie — with some magic wands and creepy costume design thrown in. A new Bright featurette explores all of the above. Bright Featurette The last couple of Bright trailers have focused on the buddy-comedy dynamic between Will Smith’s seasoned human cop Daryl Ward and Joel Edgerton’s rookie Orc cop Nick Jakoby. They banter, they bicker, and then they come upon a magic wand that has power equal to a “nuclear weapon” and all hell breaks loose. The grim streets of LA get torn apart as different factions vie for the wand, including Prometheus‘ Noomi Rapace‘s villainous dark elf Leilah, who finally got to speak in the last trailer. She gets even more of a spotlight here — because why would you waste Noomi Rapace? But the biggest spotlight in this featurette is the action. “The thing about David is he demands that everything’s practical,” Will Smith says in a behind-the-scenes interview. One of the biggest practical set pieces is a pivotal fight scene in a gas station convenience store, where veteran Smith faces off against a car and several of Leilah’s elf minions. “We had the rain going, smoke and there’s squibs,” Ayer describes. “There’s always a risk involved in it. And then we have Will Smith in the middle of it, and he actually did some really amazing things. And then we ended up blowing the whole thing up.” Will Smith has had an illustrious career, bouncing from summer tentpole action films to prestigious Oscar fare. But in a movie where he plays a cop that spouts lines like “All fairies aren’t created equal,” yeah, there better be some explosions. Here is the official synopsis for Bright: In an alternate present day, humans, orcs, elves and fairies have been coexisting since the beginning of time. Two police officers, one a human, the other an orc, embark on a routine night patrol that will alter the future of their world as they know it. Battling both their own personal differences as well as an onslaught of enemies, they must work together to protect a young female elf and a thought-to-be-forgotten relic, which, in the wrong hands, could destroy everything. Bright premieres on Netflix on December 22, 2017.Managing a Liga MX squad qualifies largely as a thankless position. Very little of the success and nearly all of the failures of the team are laid at your feet. The only security in the job comes from the knowledge that someone else is likely to give you another shot after your untimely firing. The shark tank that is Mexican sports media, the abhorrent level of the league’s officiating and the often delusional fan expectations serve as icing on the cake. Benjamin Galindo could write a book on the injustices of his profession. In his nine years as a manager, he’s had six different stints at the helm, including two times with Santos and Chivas. Last year he led Santos Laguna to its fourth title. The following season they missed out on the playoffs and he was promptly let go. Apparently, championships don’t buy you too much time in Mexico. This season he signed on with Jorge Vergara and Chivas again. Galindo has worked many players from the youth ranks into the team, while at the same time getting the club into a good position to qualify for postseason play. Heading in to yesterday’s Superclasico with Club America, Chivas were a club to be reckoned with. They carried a nine game unbeaten streak in to this highly anticipated match-up. But for as much momentum and hype Chivas brought with them, it was not enough to overcome the brick wall they encountered. This brick wall was not as much their opponent, but a collection of injustices that come with the territory. No doubt, America is currently a better team than Chivas. They have a more complete roster and normally play as a cohesive unit. Their place in the standings bears that out. Despite this, Chivas began the match asserting themselves as the superior team. They amassed a plethora of corner kicks and some decent looks at goal. Galindo had his team ready to play a solid game and they seemed primed to get a big win over their bitter rival. Missing key midfielder, Patricio Araujo, to suspension, Jorge ‘Chaton’ Enrqiuez was finally able to crack the starting lineup again. His chance at regained playing time didn’t last very long. After eleven minutes, Chaton suffered what appeared to be a very serious knee injury. Galindo was forced to go to his third option at the position and use his first sub early. After another ten minutes, Galindo was forced to use his second substitution on an injured Hector Reynoso (who probably shouldn’t have been out there to begin with). These two injuries hurt Chivas but paled in comparison to the blow they took in the 36th minute. Sergio Perez received his second yellow card for a foul on Christian ‘Chucho’ Benitez. At least a foul was the supposed reasoning for Perez receiving the card. As Galindo (correctly) pointed out in his post-match press conference, this was not only an offense unworthy of a card, it wasn’t even a foul. Chivas, who had played the superior soccer until that point, were now down to one substitution remaining and playing down a man. The remainder of the match played out as suspected. Chivas tried to hold on for as long as they could but ultimately were unable to keep America off the scoreboard. Raul Jimenez headed in off of an America corner kick to give the visitors the lead not long after halftime. To add insult to yet another injury, Marco Fabian went down after rolling on his ankle moments later. Galindo was forced to take off his most dynamic player with his final substitution. America further asserted themselves for the remainder of the match by controlling possession and using their man advantage effectively. Chivas sat back and defended and were unable to gain many more scoring chances. Raul Jimenez eventually found his second and the final goal of the match. Benjamin Galindo brought a team ready to play into this match. Unfortunately for him and Chivas supporters, a significant portion of the team will now be out with injury for several weeks. We don’t know what the result of this match would have been without these injuries and the red card. Bad luck and poor officiating made sure that this clasico was neither super nor classic. There are a few poignant takeaways from this mess of a match, however. Chivas are now in rough shape. Whatever momentum they might have had going in to the final stretch of the season has now been thoroughly flattened. Their morale and health could be a concern moving forward. Club America got a nice win yesterday but achieved it in incredibly unimpressive fashion. This was a big game on the big stage, and they once again underperformed. When it comes to the Liguilla, I wouldn’t expect America to rise to the occasion. Another disappointing exit is likely in the future.As a neonatal nurse, Jennifer Welker learned to thrive under stress. Rather than allowing the pain of handling a sick infant to affect her, Welker deftly handled some of the most challenging moments in her career, and quickly moved on from difficult situations. She credits her efficiency to the advantages of working under stress. Harnessing the innate pressure that came with her role, she says, improved her productivity and performance. Still, it was a fine line between harnessing the pressure and ignoring it altogether. “I was almost too good at my job,” says Welker who would often have to spend time in the morgue. “I had become cold and callous because you have to emotionally withdraw from the moment.” After some time, the stress involved in her work reached a tipping point and won out. She could neither control nor ignore it any longer. I was almost too good at my job “I saw a lot of death and people on their worst day – that weighs on you,” she said. Ultimately, she began to suffer from what is termed chronic stress. Symptoms can include anything from decreased immunity to sleep problems. She launched a jewellery business as a therapeutic outlet from the demands of nursing. With her health beginning to suffer, Welker quit her job three years ago and turned to her jewellery business fulltime. It can be good for you – until it’s not While bouts of workplace stress can help you better focus on tasks and increase efficiency, chronic stress can impact the quality of your work, jeopardising your employment, and your life outside of the office. It’s difficult to tell when the stress hits a breaking point, and you start suffering the effects of burnout. While stress is emotional or mental strain that can come and go, burnout is the physical, mental emotional exhaustion that occurs after prolonged stress. It emerges over time and can be more difficult to recover from. “It’s not always made explicit, but in reality there are consequences that people face when they appear not to deal with their stress in the workplace,” says Stefano Petti, a partner at Asterys, an organiational development firm in Rome. In 2015, more than 488,000 people reported stress-related illness at work, which is 37% of all work-related illnesses, according to UK’s Health and Safety Executive Labour Force Survey. In reality there are consequences that people face when they appear not to deal with their stress in the workplace Finding the tipping point Figuring out when stress goes from positive to negative is tricky. Chronic stress almost always means you’ll reach a tipping point, says Petti, which can harm your career. That’s the opposite of stress that comes up only during the most nerve-wracking projects or busier times of the year, which eventually subsides without negative influences, explains Petti. It’s the long-term stress that will ultimately affect both your physical and mental wellbeing, with reactions that include heart palpitations, stomach problems and having trouble making decisions, he adds. Most people fail to recognise the latter until it’s too late. “There’s a tendency to under-evaluate long term stress conditions,” Petti says. So how do you become aware of your own tipping point once subjected to chronic stress? The answer may take some digging. Previous experience can play a huge role in how you handle stress and deciphering your own personal tipping point, says Ron Bonnstetter, senior vice president of research and development at TTI Success Insights, which specialises in workplace performance in Scottsdale, Arizona in the US. Dealing with stress over time can break down the body’s ability to deal with short bursts of stressful situations, he says. Stress affects workers based on previous experience, and symptoms can emerge as physical, emotional, cognitive or behavioural, according to TTI’s research. “We haven’t isolated stress in the workplace,” says Bonnstetter. “We carry baggage from all aspects of our lives and our reaction can be [unpredictable] when some of those triggers occur.” “Looking back, it’s easier to spot a tipping point” Looking back, it’s easier to spot a tipping point, which can actually occur over months or even years, says Alan Levin, founder of CareforLawyers.com, a therapy practice for lawyers in Chicago. Often, it’s not someone just snapping in front of colleagues but can manifest gradually, he says. The idea of a tipping point, “over simplifies what really is a process of experience and understanding,” Levin says. Coming back from stress Even after you’ve reached a tipping point with stress, it’s possible to bounce back both personally and professionally, say experts. While some of Levin’s clients have been let go from their position due to stress, other clients never change roles. Rather their work becomes more manageable because of techniques that help them handle stress, he adds. To help clients understand, Levin takes time to explain that stress is a matter of perception. When your idea of what’s stressful changes, so do the effects of stress, he explains. “Stress is the feeling that we have when we perceive that we have a need or obligation [but] inadequate resources to handle it,” he says. Many of the attorneys that Levin counsels end up staying with the firm, he adds. As a therapist, he uses cognitive behavioural therapy techniques to help people “understand when and how they are distorting the experiential information.” After separating these negative thoughts and recognising so-called “cognitive distortions,” many are able to work past the stress using their own insight into their changed perception of previous experiences, he adds. Others, of course, learn from stress at work and then move on. Welker says she applied the beneficial stress that she experienced as a nurse to running her own jewellery business and uses the feeling as a “motivator” to accomplish daily tasks. “It’s always about prioritising the most critical thing that needs to be done,” she says. “It’s about using that stress to push you.” To comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Capital, please head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.Ted S. Warren / Associated Press Washington's Steve Sarkisian was an assistant at USC before taking over as the Huskies' head coach in 2009. Count Snoop Dogg's son Cordell Broadus among those glad to see the dismissal of USC head coach Lane Kiffin. Things we learned From Aaron Murray's big-game heroics vs. LSU to Oklahoma's statement win at Notre Dame, here are the things we learned from college football's fifth weekend. From Aaron Murray's big-game heroics vs. LSU to Oklahoma's statement win at Notre Dame, here are the things we learned from college football's fifth weekend. More... "Honestly, I think they should have fired Kiffin a while ago," Broadus told Scout.com. "I think with a new hire, USC is going to raise the bar now, and this is going to energize the program. The new staff is going to be big for the program and I'm very anxious to see what they're going to look like." Broadus is a 6-foot-1, 185-pound junior wide receiver from Diamond Bar, Calif. regarded as one of the top recruits at his position in the Class of 2015. Broadus holds scholarship offers from most of the Pac-12 -- including USC, UCLA and Washington -- with LSU highlighting his the schools from across the country seeking his signature. Broadus offered up a suggestion for who the Trojans' next coach should be, one with plenty of familiarity with the program and the Pac-12. "My top choice for them would be Coach Sark," Broadus said, referring to Washington coach Steve Sarkisian. "I know he was offered the job before and turned it down, but if he took the job, I would be going to USC for sure. He has turned Washington around and doing big things. When he got there, he didn't have any player. Now that he has players, I see Washington doing big things." Top 10 images SEE PHOTOS Check out the top 10 images from the fifth week of college football. Sarkisian is one of the more intriguing candidates being bandied about to fill the USC vacancy, with strong arguments on both sides whether to stay or go. A native of Torrance, Calif., Sarkisian knows the success the program is capable of at peak prowess as an assistant during Peter Carroll's run of seven straight Pac-10 championships and BCS bowls. However, UW just opened the gorgeous newly renovated Husky Stadium and has momentum on the field and the recruiting trail without the crushing effects of NCAA-imposed scholarship reductions he would inherit at USC. Then again, if Sarkisian's best team to date at UW -- one that features quarterback Keith Price, running back Bishop Sankey, tight end Austin Seferian-Jenkins and linebacker Shaq Thompson -- can't jump Oregon or Stanford to finish in the top two of the Pac-12 North this year, will the Huskies ever be able to make that leap? Depending on how the next two weeks play out with back-to-back games with the Cardinal and Ducks, that stark realization might lead Sarkisian to consider his options. Follow Dan Greenspan on Twitter @DanGreenspan.It’s Week 2 for ABDC, and all of the crews are stepping up their game and bringing theatrics! Plus, the competition heats up with crews being announced whether they’re safe from being booted. Don’t worry, no spoilers till the end of this post! Check out all of the ABDC performance videos from Week 2 below! ABDC Cast Performance (Drake – Started From The Bottom VMA Master Mix) IaMmE (Katy Perry – Birthday VMA Master Mix) Kinjaz (Usher – OMG VMA Master Mix) Super Cr3w (Bruno Mars – Uptown Funk VMA Master Mix) Quest Crew (Chris Brown – Turn Up The Music VMA Master Mix) We Are Heroes (Missy Elliot – Getcha Freak On) Elektrolytes (Jason Derulo – Want You To Want Me VMA Master Mix) We’d LOVE to see more from all these crews, but unfortunately it’s a competition and not just a showcase. So much love to We Are Heroes for their performances, but were the ones to leave this week. Good luck to the rest of the crews! Looking forward to next week! In case you missed last week’s episode, here are the performances from ABDC Season 8 Week 1! Which performance was your favorite for Week 2? Leave a comment in the section below! It’s fun to watch them dance, but it’s even more fun to get involved and learn from other dancers. Take your skills to the next level online at STEEZY Studio! We’ve got some awesome choreographers who can help you become a better dancer. Don’t let that inspiration go to waste!The protection of children is a responsibility Canadians expect our politicians to take seriously, so it’s not a surprise that some might be a little overzealous in their approach. But not every issue requires our leaders to sound like Helen Lovejoy, either. Ahead of cannabis legalization next year, there has been much fretting and hand-wringing about the potential for an increase in teen cannabis use. Some, like Conservative MP Peter Kent, have gone even further in warning about the potential dangers this may pose to young people. However, this impulse seems less guided by actual evidence, and more so from a general pessimism about the state of Canada’s youth. READ MORE: Bullied teens more likely to smoke, drink and use drugs: study We shouldn’t be complacent or ignore the challenges that today’s youth face, but we should also have a sense of optimism and embrace the abundance of positive trends. Things are not going to hell in a handbasket; quite the opposite, in fact. First of all, we can see from recently released U.S. data that not only is overall teenage cannabis use down, but that it’s down in states which have legalized cannabis. This is encouraging. It also dovetails with the release of a major new survey from the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), which has measured substance use among Ontario teens since the late 1970s. The latest numbers show that rates of alcohol use, cannabis use, and tobacco use are at their lowest levels in forty years. The numbers actually peaked about twenty years ago and since then the rate of alcohol use has fallen from 66 per cent to almost 43 per cent, tobacco use is down from 28 per cent to seven per cent, and cannabis use is down from 28 per cent to 19 per cent. For their part, CAMH is not exactly sure what’s behind this trend. But it’s a trend we see mirrored in other areas. WATCH BELOW: The substance abuse numbers that CAMH tracks peaked right around the same time as Canada’s youth crime rate. And, like CAMH’s numbers, the youth crime rate has been falling ever since. From 2000 and 2014, Canada’s youth crime rate fell by 42 per cent, an even sharper decrease than the 34 per cent decline in the overall crime rate. Interestingly, the exact same trend is evident in teen pregnancy rates. Those rates peaked in the early 90s and have been falling since. In fact, the rate in 2012 was about half what it was in 1991. Research also indicates that fewer teens are sexually active and that for those who are, their first sexual experience is coming at an older age. We tend not to associate being a teenager with being able to make smart decisions but it would appear that on the whole, Canadian teens are making much smarter decisions than they did a generation ago. They are using less drugs, committing fewer crimes, and having fewer babies. The trends are similar in the U.S., too. READ MORE: How to talk to your kids about pot before it’s legalized With the internet, pop culture, and perceived permissive social attitudes, there’s undoubtedly many who assumed —or maybe even still believe — that the trends would go in the opposite direction. We should be encouraged by what we’re seeing. Again, there are certainly challenges facing young people today, and we should not be blind to those. But neither should we be panicking about today’s young people or allowing debates like cannabis legalization to be derailed by irrational pessimism. To borrow a phrase, the kids are alright. Rob Breakenridge is host of “Afternoons with Rob Breakenridge” on Calgary’s NewsTalk 770 and a commentator for Global News.At the end of the almost seven-hour India-China strategic dialogue in Beijing, we are nowhere close to solving the issues that have driven a wedge between the two Asian giants and triggered a deep diplomatic chill. As the Indian delegation led by Foreign Secretary Subramanyam Jaishankar, co-chair of the upgraded dialogue, emerged from the meeting on Wednesday after hectic parleys with China's Vice-Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui and his team, it was evident that both sides have not budged even an inch from their stands. In fact, what struck one was the combative approach adopted by India on areas of divergence. The post-dialogue media briefing carried unmistakable tones of indignation that India feels on account of Chinese official position on a number of topics including membership to the Nuclear Suppliers' Group, UN terrorist tag on Masood Azhar, China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and mounting trade imbalance. On each of these issues, India was rather blunt in blaming China for being obtuse and indulging in obstructionism. On Azhar, India said China's move to prevent UNSC 1267 Sanctions Committee from censuring the Pakistan-based terrorist was in direct contravention of Beijing's stated standpoint on terrorism. Countering the charge that New Delhi needed to show "more proof", Jaishankar held that the burden of proof does not lie with India because the latest motion to tag Azhar as a terrorist at the United Nations was moved by the US, UK and France. Indicating that China's move was political in nature, Jaishankar said: "We pointed out that this time around, it’s not India but other countries (which mooted the proposal). So, there is a body of world opinion out there (against Azhar)." India complained about the yawning trade deficit and demanded more access in areas of IT and pharmaceuticals, put pressure on China on NSG membership and reiterated that the CPEC, which runs through Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir, violates India's sovereignty. There was extra stress on 'violation of sovereignty' — an unmistakable reference to China's position on South China Sea. Turning down China's invitation, Jaishankar said India won't be able to attend the Silk Road summit because CPEC is part of this initiative. "Since they (China) are a country who have been very sensitive to sovereignty concerns, it was for them to say how a country whose sovereignty has been violated can come on an invitation." On trade deficit, as Livemint points out in its report, India and China have done business worth $70 billion but almost $53 billion of this is Chinese imports to India. “The Chinese have taken some measures but clearly these haven’t addressed the problem in a substantive way,” Jaishankar said. However, as has been noted, there was very little progress on these areas except a reiteration that both nations must work towards strengthening the ties — a diplomatic way of saying that there is a lot of work to be done. Now, let us tackle some key questions. Is India right in feeling indignant and hard done by? Absolutely. Masood Azhar's notoriety has been highlighted globally. On India's entry into the exclusive NSG, most members are aware that New Delhi's non-proliferation record is impeccable unlike Pakistan, whom China is trying to push through. India has no first-use policy and has shown itself to be a responsible power. The CPEC cuts through areas that we consider as our integral part and India, like many other nations, is bearing the brunt of China's blatant maneuvering of world trade rules. Therefore, should we not expect China to see reason and veer around to our position? Are we not justified in demanding China's upholding of principles that govern its stand on terrorism and sovereignty? The answer, sadly, is no. India's concerns on divergence are just and correct. But morality, ethics and impartiality have no breaing on foreign policy. Reapolitik and geo-strategy are never based on idealism. These are formed on the bedrock of self-interest and shaped by both hard and soft power that a country wields. It is also related to how it sees itself in respect to other major powers. India's combative approach vis-à-vis China is unproductive because it does nothing to mitigate the levels of distrust between nations. A fair question arises. Why should it be incumbent on India to lessen the distrust? Once again, the answer lies in realpolitik. As I had explained in my piece on Wednesday, (India-China strategic dialogue: Keep calm and talk on, let the Dragon play the big brother for now) it is more profitable for India to keep communicating with China and maintain a cordial relationship because right at this curve in history, we lack the crucial leverages to make Beijing act in accordance to our wish. Like any other revisionist power, China acts out of self-interest and it is far more profitable for Beijing to keep Pakistan in good humour and see to it that CPEC project is completed soon than pander to our areas of concern. Hardening of stance at this point will not benefit us. We must focus on areas of convergence and quietly work towards solving the areas of divergence because any animus between India and China will be deleterious to bilateral ties and only one country stands to benefit if Sino-India relationship deteriorates further: Pakistan. In this connection, it will be instructive to notice the curve US-China relationship has taken ever since Donald Trump was elected to the White House. Trump and senior members of his cabinet made some initial noises about checking Chinese aggression. The US President went on record saying that 'One China' policy is not sacrosanct. His secretary of state Rex Tillerson told a Senate Confirmation Committee that US will not let China militarize or access artificial islands on South China Sea. Both have had to climb down since. In Trump's case, humiliatingly so. The POTUS has had to place a telephone call to China's President Xi Jinping and reiterate faith in 'One China' policy. Why? The simple reason is that global connectivity in terms of trade and geopolitics has reached a stage where it is not easy to drastically revise foreign policies. In an article in Project Syndicate called 'Why Trump Can't Bully China', Kenneth Rogoff, Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Harvard University, writes: "If the Trump administration tries… crude tactics with China, it will be in for a rude surprise. China has financial weapons, including trillions of dollars of US debt. A disruption of trade with China could lead to massive price increases in the low-cost stores – for example, Wal-Mart and Target – on which many Americans rely." It is important that India does not make the same mistakes it has been committing. Standing eyeball-to-eyeball with China won't be profitable. It must use policy of leverage, people-to-people movement and areas of convergence to nudge Beijing towards recognizing its viewpoint. This is a Test match, not a T20 encounter. Firstpost is now on WhatsApp. For the latest analysis, commentary and news updates, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Firstpost.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button.Zeboyd Games is pleased to announce that the Cthulhu Saves the World + Breath of Death VII combo pack ($3) has sold over 100,000 copies on Steam since its release on July 13th, 2011. This milestone was achieved during the Steam Halloween sale, less than 4 months after the game’s release on Steam. In contrast, on the XBox Live Indie Games (XBLIG) service, Zeboyd Games has sold over 20,000 copies of Cthulhu Saves the World (240 MS points = $3) and over 55,000 copies of Breath of Death VII (80 MS points = $1). Cthulhu Saves the World was released in December 2010 on XBLIG and Breath of Death VII was released in April 2010. We are ecstatic at the amount of success we’ve seen since releasing our games on the PC. The days of worrying over whether or not we could support our families while making games we would want to play ourselves are behind us. Counter-intuitive though it may be, there is obviously a definite audience for quality console-style RPGs that are aggressively priced on the PC. We are very appreciative of all the support we’ve received from our fans and from Steam and hope to continue making quality games at low prices for you to enjoy for years to come. We are very excited to be working on Rainslick Precipice of Darkness episode 3 in conjunction with Penny Arcade and hope you have a blast with it when it comes out in 2012. And beyond 2012, we have many intriguing ideas for new games that we think you’ll enjoy, both RPGs as well as games from other genres.Image copyright AFP Image caption Homeless people sleeping on the streets are a familiar sight in Los Angeles The number of people homeless in the US city of Los Angeles has soared in the past year, a new report shows, despite efforts to combat the problem. The homeless population in the city grew 20% while the numbers for the wider Los Angeles County were even higher at 23%, the figures revealed. Experts say soaring rents and a high cost of living are major factors. Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn described the figures as "staggering". "Homelessness in LA County has grown at a shocking rate," she said in a statement. "Even as work is being done to get thousands of people off the street and into housing, more and more people are becoming homeless. It is clear that if we are going to end the homeless crisis, we need to stem the overwhelming tide of people falling into homelessness." The city of Los Angeles has long been known as the homeless capital of America and a special agency, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA), was set up in 1993 to find a solution. In 2015 authorities declared a public emergency as the numbers sleeping rough soared. City officials committed $100m (£77m) to tackling the problem. Los Angeles - US 'homeless capital' 34,189 homeless in LA city 20% increase on 2016 57,794 homeless in LA County 23% increase on 2016 AFP In its latest report, the LAHSA said there were 57,794 people homeless in the county during its survey in January, compared to 46,874 in 2016. In the city there were 34,189 with no permanent roof over their heads, the report said, compared to 28,464 the year before. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said there was "no sugarcoating the bad news". "It's impossible to wrap your head around the numbers," he told reporters, adding that soaring rents and the city's high cost of living were partly to blame. "We can't let rents double every year," he told reporters. Average rents in Los Angeles County have increased by 32% since 2000 while average household incomes for people renting have fallen by 3% when adjusted for inflation, according to the California Housing Partnership. It says those on the lowest incomes are spending 70% of their income on rent, leaving little for food and other needs. The county needs to build more than 550,000 affordable rental homes for low-income households, the LAHSA says. Los Angeles recently approved new measures to raise $1.2bn (£932m) in bonds to build 10,000 new units of housing for homeless people. There are also plans to raise about $3.5bn over 10 years to pay for other homelessness projects.OTTAWA — Russia is pushing back against NATO calls for Canada to help lead a new military force in Eastern Europe, describing the measure as “a complete waste of money and resources.” The new force will be a central focus when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau meets his NATO counterparts in Poland next month. The alliance wants to station 4,000 troops across Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland as a bulwark against Russian expansion or aggression. The U.S., Britain and Germany have each promised to lead one battalion of about 1,000 troops, and allies have been actively pushing Canada to take command of the fourth. Cabinet ministers are believed to have discussed the request Monday and an announcement is expected soon. In a sharply worded statement, however, the Russian embassy in Ottawa said the NATO force risks distracting from “the real existential threat” facing Canada and Russia: ISIL and terrorism. “We believe that NATO build-up on Russia’s doorstep, which is reminiscent of Cold War sabre-rattling, is a complete waste of money and resources, diverting them from the real existential threat of international terrorism,” it says. “Given that terrorists make no distinction between Russians and Canadians, as well as reports claiming 151 nationals of Canada are on an ISIS ‘kill list,’ common sense and pragmatism dictate the need to join efforts, as opposed to reincarnation of Cold War containment.” Russia and the West have been in a tense standoff since March 2014, when the Kremlin ordered the annexation of Crimea and began supporting separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine. However, the threat posed by ISIL has forced Western governments to co-operate with Russia in Syria. Some have also been critical of NATO’s military activities in eastern Europe. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier accused the alliance last week of “warmongering” against Russia by holding the largest military exercise in Poland and the Baltics since the Cold War. “Anyone who thinks a symbolic tank parade on the alliance’s eastern border will bring security is wrong,” he told Bild am Sonntang newspaper. “We would be well advised not to provide a pretext to renew an old confrontation.” Eastern European NATO members, however, say the new force is essential to ensure Russia doesn’t try to violate their sovereignty or territorial integrity like it did in Ukraine. Speaking to the Ottawa Citizen last week, a Latvian official compared the force to what NATO allies had stationed in West Berlin during the Cold War. Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan would not say after Monday’s cabinet meeting if a decision has been made on whether Canada will contribute to the new NATO force. The Liberal government has promised to re-engage with Russia after relations were largely suspended by the Conservatives. However, Sajjan said the government is a “responsible” NATO ally and that Canada “will always do our part.” “When you look at the challenges that NATO faces, we have to make sure we go through and discuss all the various options before any decision is made on this,” he added. “But like I said, we are committed to NATO.” [email protected] Twitter.com/leeberthiaumeParts of the Baltimore Sun building have been used for filming “House of Cards.” This exterior view shows “The Washington Herald” sign placed on the Sun building for the series. (Barbara Haddock Taylor/Baltimore Sun) A few weeks before Season 2 of “House of Cards” debuted online, the show’s production company sent Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley a letter with this warning: Give us millions more dollars in tax credits, or we will “break down our stage, sets and offices and set up in another state.” A similar letter went
ly closed the apartment door, with us outside. "Let's go for a walk," I said. "I can't leave her in there! She's going to throw my stuff off the balcony or something." "We can't go back in there now; things are too heated. Let's go for a beer and let things calm down for a moment." As we walked off, Eric said "I kicked her good, Kurt. I kicked her in the belly - that way it doesn't bruise." I didn't know what to say. I had seen my friend do what I couldn't have imagined he would have done, something which I could never advocate, something which disgusted me, and his words indicated that he had even relished the opportunity. If I had hated him for it, it probably would have been entirely justified. But I didn't hate him. The moral of the story I asked Ayahuasca, "What's the lesson here?" She said "The lesson is this: you were friends with Eric before this happened, while it happened, and after it happened. He was no less your friend after it happened, than he was a week before." I paused in contemplation. "That's the kind of love that exists for you. That is how I love you. That is how I have always loved you, and how I will always love you. In your darkest moments, through your worst decisions, when you harmed others, manipulated them, took advantage - I never stopped. And I never will." Then, I felt it. I felt Her love like a big warm hug, embracing me, surrounding me, entering my heart like a long lost friend, and I felt that what she said was true. It had always been there. I cried, and cried, like a young boy who had finally been guided home. If you want to hear more about my first journey with ayahuasca, you can listen to the episodes on our podcast about it here: Episode 67 – The Ayahuasca Diaries Part 1 Episode 68 – The Ayahuasca Diaries Part 2 Episode 69 – The Ayahuasca Diaries Part 3Dirty Little Secrets DLS for 2001 | DLS for 2002 | DLS for 2003 DLS for 2004 | DLS for 2005 | DLS for 2006 DLS for 2007 | DLS for 2008 Screwing Private Ryan by James Dunnigan May 16, 2008 Discussion Board on this DLS topic Once again, the U.S. Army shot itself in the foot by doing the right thing, then screwing it up. In this case, a soldier, one of three brothers, was released early from his enlistment because of the 60 year old "sole survivor" rule. This regulation allows for the sole survivor of a group of siblings to be released from service. In this case Specialist Jason Hubbard had two other brothers killed (one by a roadside bomb, the other in a helicopter crash), and he decided to take advantage of the sole survivor rule. But another rule, introduced after the sole survivor rule, prohibited soldiers who got out before their enlistment was up, from receiving veterans health and education benefits. Last year, the army was embarrassed to find they were doing the same thing to troops who were discharged early because of severe wounds that prevented further service. No one bothered to check if any other conditions would trigger such an unpleasant situation. Congress is now changing the rules to preserve the benefits of wounded and sole survivor troops who get out before their enlistment contract has been completed. The new law will be retroactive to September 11, 2001. The movie "Saving Private Ryan" was all about getting a sole surviving son out of the combat zone. But during the subsequent 64 years, a new set of laws were passed to cover military service and benefits, creating a situation where private Ryan might think twice about getting saved.As of 2012, at least 17 nations (9% worldwide) have police that enforce religious norms, according to a new Pew Research analysis of 2012 data. These actions are particularly common in the Middle East and North Africa, where roughly one-third of countries (35%) have police enforcing religious norms. For example, in Saudi Arabia, where President Obama will meet with King Abdullah later this month, the Muttawa religious police (formally known as the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice) impose a government-approved moral code on residents of the country. The Muttawa enforce strict segregation of the sexes, prohibition of the sale and consumption of alcohol, a ban on women driving and other social restrictions based on the government’s interpretation of Islam. Earlier this month, Saudi religious police destroyed an ancient burial site in the southern city of al-Baha after claiming the graveyard was un-Islamic. And last month, they conducted anti-Valentine’s Day patrols, monitoring businesses that were selling chocolates, flowers and red or heart-shaped souvenirs. Saudi Arabia is not alone in its use of a religious police force. In the Asia-Pacific region, police enforcing religious norms are found in eight of 50 countries (16%). In Vietnam, the government’s religious security police continued to monitor “extremist” religious groups, detaining and interrogating suspected Dega Protestants or Ha Mon Catholics. And in Malaysia, state Islamic religious enforcement officers and police carried out raids to enforce sharia law against indecent dress, banned publications, alcohol consumption and khalwat (close proximity to a member of the opposite sex), according to the U.S. State Department. And in sub-Saharan Africa, two countries in the region (Nigeria and Somalia) have religious police. In Nigeria, the Hisbah (religious police) are funded and supported by governments in several states, where they enforce their interpretation of sharia law. As of 2012, religious police forces were not present in any country in Europe or the Americas. The data used in this analysis relied on 18 widely cited, publicly available sources from groups such as the U.S. State Department, the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the International Crisis Group. Although it is possible that more countries have religious police forces than are reported by the 18 primary sources, taken together the sources are sufficiently comprehensive to provide a good estimate of the presence of these forces in almost all countries. Read more about how the Pew Research Center study measures social hostilities involving religion and government restrictions on religion. Topics: Restrictions on ReligionLawyer: Cain May Have Violated Confidentiality Of Harassment Settlement Enlarge this image toggle caption Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain spoke about the harassment allegations at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on Monday. Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP The lawyer for a woman who settled a sexual harassment complaint against Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain in the late 1990s says that Cain may have violated the confidentiality terms of the agreement by commenting on its specifics over the past 24 hours. "Herman Cain and others have already disclosed that there was a confidential settlement," says Joel P. Bennett, a Washington-based attorney specializing in employment law, who also represented the woman when she negotiated her settlement. Two women, including Bennett's client, settled sexual harassment complaints against Cain when they worked for him during his late-1990s tenure as head of the National Restaurant Association. The revelations were first contained in a story in Politico; Bennett declined to confirm the identity of his client. "I don't know if she'll ever go public," he said Tuesday. Cain may have waived the confidentiality requirements by talking publicly about the settlement, including disclosing details of the agreement, Bennett told NPR. That could potentially free up his client, as well as a second woman who settled a similar complaint, to speak publicly. Bennett also called on the National Restaurant Association to release his client from her confidentiality agreement, the Washington Post reported. Sue Hensley, a spokeswoman for the association, said she had seen the news reports. "If we are contacted by Mr. Bennett, we will respond as appropriate," she said in a statement. Cain, in television interviews Monday and during a speaking engagement, first denied knowledge of any settlements. Later in the day, he acknowledged the existence of the agreements, suggested one may have included two or three months pay, and also disparaged the work performance of one of the claimants as "not up to par." The second woman is not being represented by Bennett. Bennett says his client's settlement also contains a non-disparagement clause. Bennett declined to comment more specifically on the settlement terms because he no longer has a copy of the 12-year-old agreement, and is relying on details provided to him by his client. He expects to receive a copy of the agreement from her Tuesday or Wednesday. Without having the agreement in hand, Bennett says he doesn't know what it specifically says about Cain's obligations under the non-disparagement and confidentiality clauses. "I haven't seen the agreement" in a dozen years, he said. "I haven't seen whether it goes both ways." But even if it doesn't, Bennett says, "If an employer makes a confidential agreement, and then discloses it, there's a reasonable assumption that the employer has waived the confidentiality part of the agreement." Bennett said his client, a graduate of an Ivy League university, worked in professional positions in government for many years before her tenure at the restaurant lobbying group, and does so currently. It is "inconceivable," Bennett told NPR, that his client was motivated by money, or by a romantic interest in Cain. "I've known her for a long time, and she's happily married," Bennett said, adding: "I can tell you also that I don't represent people who are trying to shake down employers." Neither the Cain campaign, nor the National Restaurant Association has responded to requests for information on specifics of the settlements made with the women.In the second true edge stretta you are basically asked to perform what I’ve been taught is known as a cross-knock. But instead of beating his sword with your cross-guard, you are asked to use your lugs. (Presumably this would work with parrying hooks as well.) As you make the strike, you step to the opponent’s right with both feet. I envision this as a compass step that puts you at a more or less right angle to the original line of engagement. Attack options You have three attack options after the cross-knock. Pommel to the right temple Riverso Tondo (i.e. Zwerch to his right) Fendente (vertical Oberhauw) I would argue the one you choose is contextually dependent on both how far away you end up from your opponent after the steps and what you would like to do next. Craig Pitt-Pladdy translation And so being with the enemy true-edge with true-edge, you will hit with the elcetto piccolo [lugs] of your sword inside his toward his left side, passing in such a hitting the left leg towards the right side of the enemy and the right leg will follow the left behind, and there you will take the right arm of your said enemy and you will give him the pommel of your sword to his right temple; but watch, if you did not want to make him the said hold, you will turn him in such hitting a roverso tondo or if you want a fendente on the head; but if you turned him the said roverso, for your defence retreat and retreat again and uncross your arms and if in this way you will make, you will extract yourself of the said megia spada safely. Video Interpretation Other Sources There is at least one German manuscript that uses this technique for the longsword, ending in the riverso tondo. Unfortunately I don’t recall the name of the manual my instructor was using. AdvertisementsHappy new year everybody! Last year we've made a lot of progress on the Morepath web framework for Python. It will go quite a lot further in 2015 as well. Here are 10 reasons why you should check out Morepath this year: Knows about HTTP status codes. When you write a "Hello World" application it does not matter that there are other status codes besides 200 OK, but in real world applications you want your application to know about 404 Not Found, and 405 Method Not Allowed, and so on. Morepath does not make you write write verbose and failure-prone special cased code to handle status codes. Instead, Morepath does HTTP status codes correctly right away. Morepath makes hyperlinks to objects. In a typical routing web framework, to make a URL, you need to remember the name of a route, the parameters that go into the route, and how to get that information from the object to which you are making the route. This leads to duplicated code and hardcodes route names everywhere. Since it does so little, it encourages you to skip it entirely and write even more hardcoded URL generation code everywhere. Morepath makes it easier to do the right thing. Morepath lets you link to Python objects. Morepath also understands URL parameters can be part of URLs too, and can create a link with them in there for you too. Built-in permission system. Morepath does not leave something as important as security entirely up to extensions. The core framework knows that views can be guarded with permissions. Who has what permission for what object is then up to you, and Morepath lets you define permissions powerfully and succinctly. Compose applications. If you have a project application and a wiki application, you can mount the wiki application into the project applications. You can develop and test applications independently, and then combine them later. These are true coarse-grained components. This way, Morepath lets build large applications out of smaller ones. All views are reusable. Morepath does not have a separate sub-framework to let you write more reusable and generic views than the normal ones. Instead any view you create in Morepath is already reusable. And remember - you don't have to hardcode route names, which makes views more generic by default. Views in Morepath are true fine-grained reusable components, without extra work. Morepath gives you the tools to build a generic UI. You can reuse views with ease with Morepath. Subclass applications. Morepath does not have a separate sub-framework to let you write reusable blueprints for applications. Instead, any application you create in Morepath is already reusable in that way. In the real world, applications evolve into frameworks all the time, and Morepath does not stand in your way with special cases. You can subclass any Morepath app to add new routes and views, or override existing ones. Made for the modern web. Many modern web applications feature a REST backend with a rich, client-side frontend written in JavaScript. Morepath is written to support REST from the ground up - it's not a layer over something else, but it's not a constraining HTTP API generation tool either. Extensible framework. Morepath lets you extend the web framework in the same way it lets you extend applications written in it. You can write new Morepath directives and framework applications. As examples, more.static adds advanced browser static resource handling to Morepath, more.transaction integrates Morepath with transaction based databases such as SQLAlchemy and the ZODB, and more.forwarded adds HTTP Forwarded header support. Micro framework with macro ambitions. Morepath is a micro framework; it's not a lot of code. It's easy to get an overview of what's going on, and it's easy to embed in a larger application. Morepath packs a lot more punch in a small amount of code than your typical Python micro web framework. All this does not come at the cost of performance. When the primary selling point of a Python web framework seems to be performance, perhaps it's not doing enough for you. But Morepath has more than adequate performance - on "Hello world" at least Morepath outpaces some very popular web Python frameworks comfortably.Journalist Megyn Kelly told Ellen she'd welcome President Donald Trump on her new show, Megyn Kelly Today. After telling Kelly she would not have the sitting president on her show, DeGeneres received massive applause from her studio audience. "I just, you know, he is who he is and he has enough attention and he has his Twitter account and he has ways to get his message across. There's nothing that I am going to say to him that is going to change him and I don't want to give him a platform because it just validates him. And for me to have someone on the show, I really, I have to at least admire them in some way and I can't have someone who I feel is not only dangerous for the country and for me personally as a gay woman but to the world. He's dividing all of us and I think I don't want him on the show," DeGeneres said again to massive applause. Kelly explained to Ellen why she decided to leave Fox News after 12 years on the job:Cats: like me, they love doing battle. There's nothing more exhilarating in a cat's life than tearing something else with a heartbeat to pieces. This is the cat battle armor made and sold by Etsy shop schnabuble (previously: this cat battle armor). It costs $500, which is why I just cut four leg holes and a head hole in a cardboard box and pushed my cat out the door. Don't come back without a dragon's treasure! Completely hand-made from durable veg-tan leather, this is no mere costume piece. Your cat will become an unstoppable force for slaughter in this fully articulated suit, shielding him/her from foes while allowing unimpeded movement across the battlefield or living room floor. The imposing torso section features several riveted, articulated plates and a terrifying rack of dorsal spines. Your cat's hindquarters are sheathed beneath exquisitely arrayed overlapping scales stitched to a soft leather backing, adorned with nickel silver dome rivets. Midnight black scales and plates are finished with a glossy protective coat and seamlessly join together like the petals of a deadly flower. It really does look magnificent, doesn't it? If I had the money (which I do not), I would train a whole battalion of battle cats and send them out to do my bidding. Plus breed one large enough to actually ride myself. Yeah, and it'd be able to fly like a griffin. The world would fear me, and rightfully so because it would also have laserbeam eyes and shit atomic bombs. Keep going for several more shots of this season's must-have cat accessory. Thanks to Brian G, who brought his battle cat to the Renaissance Faire where it killed every other knight and was named king even though it was a lady cat. And to Alex B, who apparently knows the guy who makes the armor and can hopefully get me a deal on an armored banana hammock.ISLAMABAD: Mobile phone services remained suspended in sectors G-6 and G-7 for some time on Friday noon. This coincided with the deadline given by the cleric of Lal Masjid to implement his version of Sharia in the country. Two weeks ago, Maulana Abdul Aziz had warned the authorities to implement his 10-point Sharia programme by November 27. The demand was reiterated by the cleric in his telephonic address on Friday last. There was no mobile phone service in the two sectors from 12 noon to 1:30pm during which Friday prayers are held in Lal Masjid. Maulana Aziz is currently living in Jamia Sumaya in G-7 while Lal Masjid is located in Sector G-6. Last week, Maulana Aziz also delivered the Friday sermon via telephone. However, mobile network firms denied they were asked by any authority to suspend the service. “Except for queries by the media and some people, we are not even aware of service suspensions,” said an official of one such firm. However, he added that if there was any localised blockade, the ICT administration might have placed ‘jammers’. “Jamming equipment are not something unique or rare for the authorities. They even have it in vehicles and some banks too have jamming devices,” he added. The ICT administration, including DC Office, declined to comment. Meanwhile, Hafiz Ehtesham Ahmed of Lal Masjid Shuhada Foundation criticised the authorities for what he said robbing Maulana Aziz of his basic rights. Mr Ahmed issues statements on behalf of the cleric. “Mobile services were blocked to deprive the followers of Abdul Aziz at Lal Masjid to listen to his sermon,” he added. Published in Dawn, November 28th, 2015General use Edit In ordinary usage, bad faith is equated with being of "two hearts", or "a sustained form of deception which consists in entertaining or pretending to entertain one set of feelings, and acting as if influenced by another",[1] and is synonymous with double mindedness, with disloyalty, double dealing, hypocrisy, infidelity, breach of contract, unfaithfulness, pharisaism (emphasizing or observing the letter but not the spirit of the law,[14] see Doctrine of absurdity), tartuffery (a show or expression of feelings or beliefs one does not actually hold or possess),[15] affectation, bigotry, and lip service.[16] Definition Edit People may hold beliefs in their minds even though they are directly contradicted by facts. These are beliefs held in bad faith. But there is debate as to whether this self-deception is intentional or not.[17] In his book Being and Nothingness, the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre defined bad faith (French: mauvaise foi) as hiding the truth from oneself.[18] The fundamental question about bad faith self-deception is how it is possible.[19] In order for a liar to successfully lie to the victim of the lie, the liar must know that what is being said is false. In order to be successful at lying, the victim must believe the lie to be true. When a person is in bad faith self-deception, the person is both the liar and the victim of the lie. So at the same time the liar, as liar, believes the lie to be false, and as victim believes it to be true. So there is a contradiction in that a person in bad faith self-deception believes something to be true and false at the same time.[20] Sartre observed that "the one to whom the lie is told and the one who lies are one and the same person, which means that I must know the truth in my capacity as deceiver, though it is hidden from me in my capacity as the one deceived", adding that "I must know that truth very precisely, in order to hide it from myself the more carefully—and this not at two different moments of temporality..." In theology Edit In philosophy, psychology, and psychoanalysis Edit In law Edit In law, there are inconsistent definitions of bad faith, with one definition much more broad than used in other fields of study discussed in the above sections. Black's Law Dictionary equates fraud with bad faith.[56] But one goes to jail for fraud, and not necessarily for bad faith.[57] The Duhaime online law dictionary similarly defines bad faith broadly as "intent to deceive", and "a person who intentionally tries to deceive or mislead another in order to gain some advantage".[58] A Canadian labor arbitrator wrote, in one case, that bad faith is related to rationality in reasoning, as it is used in other fields, but is ill-defined in the law.[58] The concept of bad faith is likely not capable of precise calibration and certainly has not been defined in the same way by all adjudicators. At its core, bad faith implies malice or ill will. A decision made in bad faith is grounded, not on a rational connection between the circumstances and the outcome, but on antipathy toward the individual for non-rational reasons...The absence of a rational basis for the decision implies that factors other than those relevant were considered. In that sense, a decision in bad faith is also arbitrary. These comments are not intended to put to rest the debate over the definition of bad faith. Rather, it is to point out that bad faith, which has its core in malice and ill will, at least touches, if not wholly embraces, the related concepts of unreasonableness, discrimination and arbitrariness. What was called "Canada's best judicial definition of 'bad faith'" by Duhaime's Legal Dictionary is similarly more consistent with use in other fields discussed above.[59] Good faith and its opposite, bad faith, imports a subjective state of mind, the former motivated by honesty of purpose and the latter by ill-will. Duhaime also refers to another description, "... bad faith refers to a subjective state of mind... motivated by ill will... or even sinister purposes."[58] The current standard legal definition of "bad faith" in the law of England and Wales is that of Lindsay J in Gromax Plasticulture Ltd. v. Don and Low Nonwovens Ltd: "Plainly it includes dishonesty and, as I would hold, includes also some dealings which fall short of the standards of acceptable commercial behaviour observed by reasonable and experienced men in the particular area being examined. Parliament has wisely not attempted to explain in detail what is or is not bad faith in this context; how far a dealing must so fall-short in order to amount to bad faith is a matter best left to be adjudged not by some paraphrase by the Courts (which leads to the danger of the Courts then construing not the Act but the paraphrase) but by reference to the words of the Act and upon a regard to all material surrounding circumstances."[60] Insurance bad faith Edit Main article: Insurance bad faith Insurance bad faith is a tort claim that an insured may have against an insurer for its bad acts, e.g. intentionally denying a claim by giving spurious citations of exemptions in the policy to mislead an insured, adjusting the claim in a dishonest manner, failing to quickly process a claim, or other intentional misconduct in claims processing.[61] Insurance bad faith has been broadened beyond use in other fields to include total inaction, a refusal to respond to a claim in any way.[62] Courts can award punitive or exemplary damages, over and above actual damages against any insurance company which is found to have adjusted a claim in bad faith; the damages may be awarded with the aim of deterring such behavior among insurers in general, and may far exceed the amount of the damage due under the insurance policy.[63] In Canada, one case of this type resulted in a record punitive award of CAD $1 million when an insurance company pressed a claim for arson even after its own experts and adjusters had come to the conclusion that the fire was accidental; the company was advised by legal counsel that the desperate insured parties would be willing to settle for much less than what they were owed.[64] In social sciences Edit See also EditBill Simmons this week mused on the fate of Dwight Howard, who appears to be the NBA's equivalent of plutonium: a potential world-beater but perilously radioactive. To characterize the gap between Perceived Dwight Howard and Actual Dwight Howard, the founder of Grantland and ESPN spittling-head did something very Bill Simmons-y: He alluded to an old Bill Simmons column. In that 2011 piece, Simmons argued that an actor's recent work must outweigh his early work when determining whether said actor is a star. Here's the salient chunk of that column: I had an argument recently with my friend Lewis about whether Jim Carrey was still a movie star. Lewis said, adamantly, no effing way. I disagreed. "You're wrong," Lewis said. "Look up his IMDb." Uh-oh. Jim Carrey's past five movies were Fun With Dick & Jane, The Number 23, Yes Man, I Love You Philip Morris and this summer's Mr. Popper's Penguins. That's a six-year stretch of forgettability. I'm not less of a movie fan because it never dawned on me that Carrey had stopped being a movie star; by contrast, I WOULD be less of a baseball fan if I didn't realize that Derek Jeter had stopped being a baseball star. Not knowing about Jeter's struggles would embarrass me in any sports conversation, which can't happen, because dammit, that's how men communicate. Not knowing the ins and outs of Carrey's IMDb page? Who cares? When would that ever come back to haunt me? Hollywood knows we're not paying attention, so they try to manipulate us into thinking Carrey is still a movie star by inundating us with billboards and commercials featuring his mug. After all, he still looks like Jim Carrey, right? Even if we reject the assault by skipping the movie in droves, the movie would have to bomb more brutally than the Situation at the Trump Roast for the star's career to be threatened. In a nut: Past performance is no indication of future returns. Or even current returns, for that matter. (By the way, in the context Simmons offers it, this is a highly arguable point. You say Jim Carrey isn't a movie star because his recent films have fizzled, and yet you don't notice? I'd say the very definition of stardom means you can make some duds and still remain hugely famous and employable.) In applying that framework to 2013 Dwight Howard, Simmons summarized his old analysis this way: There's more than a little Jim Carrey Syndrome going on here. Jim Carrey is an A-list movie star, right? Well, here are the six movies Carrey has headlined since 2005. Fun With Dick & Jane The Number 23 Yes Man I Love You Phillip Morris Mr. Popper's Penguins The Incredible Burt Wonderstone Yikes. At some point, you are who you are. Jim Carrey isn't an A-list movie star anymore. And Dwight Howard isn't a mega-max player anymore. Advertisement Reader Dave (h/t!) noticed the rehash and declared it a case of recycling "almost word-for-word a conceit he first advanced in his execrable Ryan Reynolds column." After comparing the columns, I don't think it's a case of recycling so much as the return to a Simmons trope: discerning a pop culture synchronicity and pinning a catchy title on it. Plenty of culture writers display the same tic, by which they apply a handle to a concept so simple it doesn't really need its own name. For instance, we might just as easily have said Dwight Howard has jumped the shark and yet remains in high demand. But then Simmons might miss a chance to invent the next Sickboy Syndrome. Simmons' habit is to name these observed phenomena after a famous exemplar. In the future, to describe this habit, we might refer to it as Bill Simmons Syndrome, defined loosely as the tendency to brand ideas by tagging them with a term such as "syndrome." Spot David Brooks his Patio Men and Bobos, and Malcolm Gladwell his Blinks and Outliers, Simmons is our alpha carrier of Bill Simmons Syndrome. Some of his diagnoses: Hugh Grant Syndrome. Characterized by reaching your peak in a given pursuit (e.g., romance) and finding nothingness (e.g., a fling with a woman far less attractive than your wife) beyond it. "Hugh Grant Syndrome can never derail a real sports fan," Simmons writes. "We'll always find ways to care as much as we always did..." Advertisement Year-After Syndrome. The emotional hangover from winning a title and then returning to regular fandom, sort of Hugh Grant Syndrome Lite. The Ewing Theory. An honorary syndrome Simmons popularized and co-developed; he credits its origin to his friend Dave Cirilli. It notices when underachieving star athletes leave teams, which then greatly overachieve. So-named because the Knicks often won more often without their ostensible best player, Patrick Ewing, than when he played. New Owner Syndrome. When a newly minted NBA owner slings around gobs of cash to signal that he's willing to spend enough to win. Often, though, they just overspend to lose. "[W]hen you give competitive billionaires an NBA team, they're rarely (if ever) patient," Simmons writes. "They want to win right away, and they're always going to plow ahead with a couple of risky/splashy moves because they don't know any better yet." Advertisement Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Simmons didn't coin this one, but perhaps tellingly it arrived in a recent mailbag column of his. Detlef Syndrome. Observed when foreign-born players pick up English largely from their American-born black teammates and thus take on "a hip-hop twang." Simmons writes of Detlef Schrempf: "By the halfway point of his career he sounded like the German guys in Beerfest crossed with the Wu-Tang Clan." Frontrunner Syndrome. Teams enjoying popularity now because they've been good for a long time. Simmons uses it to explain why Pittsburgh and Green Bay are so beloved among NFL fans: "You think it's an accident that the most successful team of the 60's and the most successful team of the 70's have 2 of the biggest fan bases?" Advertisement Karpal-Tunnel Syndrome. Says he almost developed it on a book tour. General Motors Syndrome. Not one he coined, but one he has cited. It describes continuing to conform to old practices even in the face of mounting failures. Simmons applied it to the NBA's "failure to acknowledge any officiating woes until the Donaghy scandal (and even then the league just shuffled a few Titanic deck chairs and called it a day)..." Last Great White American Player Syndrome. Yeah, well, pretty self-explanatory. Simmons applied it to such non-African Americans as John Stockton and Tom Chambers. Advertisement Stouffer's French Bread Pizza Syndrome. Oh, come the fuck on already. Photo credit of Simmons in 2010: GettyAlso known by his nom de guerre “Abu Hatem Albu ‘Umar”, Tarek ‘Abdullah was one of the Islamic State’s most prominent field commanders inside Syria. AhlulBayt News Agency - On Monday, the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham’s (ISIS) self-proclaimed “caliph”, Ibrahim Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, received news that his right-hand man, Tarek Khalaf ‘Abdullah, was reportedly killed by the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) in the Deir Ezzor Governorate. Also known by his nom de guerre “Abu Hatem Albu ‘Umar”, Tarek ‘Abdullah was one of the Islamic State’s most prominent field commanders inside Syria. The ISIS commander was arguably one of Baghdadi’s most trustworthy commanders in Syria, leading several terrorist operations against the Syrian government and People’s Protection Units (YPG). Tarek ‘Abdullah’s death could not come at a worse time for Baghdadi, as his forces face a serious threat from the Iraqi Army at the Al-Qa’im border-crossing and provincial capital of the Nineveh Governorate (Mosul). 'Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi' returns to Iraq's Nineveh province Iraq's local sources disclosed that the leader of the ISIL terrorist group, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has returned to Iraq from Syria and is now hiding in Nineveh province. "Al-Baghdadi and a group of ISIL commanders have stealthily returned to Iraq's Nineveh province," the Arabic-language Sumeria News quoted an unnamed local Iraqi source as saying. Al-Baghdadi has returned to Nineveh province through ISIL-controlled desert roads in Iraq and Syria, added the source. The source noted that Al-Baghdadi is now hiding in an unknown place in Nineveh province. The ISIL Leader is running a secret life as his life is at stake more than anyone in the world now. Al-Baghdad's terrorist group is under massive airstrike by the Syrian, Russian and Iraqi Air Forces all throughout the Western Iraq and Eastern Syria. While reports earlier this year said the ISIL leader was always on the move between Iraq's Mosul and Syria's Raqqa - the self-proclaimed capital of the terrorist group - tips and intel revealed in November that Al-Baghdadi had moved from the Syrian city of Albu Kamal to the Iraqi city of Mosul in Nineveh province. In early March, informed intelligence sources disclosed that the al-Baghdadi had moved from Turkey to Libya to escape the hunt operation of the Baghdad Intelligence Sharing Center after he was traced down and allegedly targeted a number of times in Iraq and the Syria. "Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi who was injured in Syria was sent to Turkey for treatment and from there he was sent to Libya," the Arabic-language media outlets quoted former Egyptian intelligence officer Hesam Kheirullah as saying. /129MONTREAL — Many in Montreal were shocked by the story of a disabled woman on welfare who was asked to repay money she had earned begging in the streets. This is sickening. While the richest are hiding billions in tax havens and corporations are taxed a paltry 26%,… http://t.co/UtUMHRwvbn — Shawn_Katz (@Shawn_Katz) December 29, 2014 @Global_Montreal … It was not Earned money.. it was Given to her! … How sad she has to struggle still! …. 😔 — marie goudreau (@Justmemarie2) December 29, 2014 After being questioned by an investigator from the Quebec Ministry of Employment and Social Solidarity (MESS), the woman allegedly received a letter asking her to repay $25,738 in income that she’d made by begging near the Berri-UQAM metro station over the past 10 years. READ MORE: Video of homeless man beaten in Montreal metro depicts reality for many According to a report in La Presse, the amount was calculated by using an estimate of $40-$60 per week in earnings. Although he could not comment on this particular case, David McKeown, an MESS spokesperson, told Global News that the law requires everyone, including welfare recipients, to report every cent of income earned. “Even if someone is begging for money, they must claim it as income, even if they receive welfare payments,” he said. READ MORE: ‘Homeless spikes’ removed after controversy in Montreal According to McKeown, in order to pay back the debt, $56 a month would be taken from a welfare recipient’s monthly assistance payment. If the debt was related to a false declaration, this monthly repayment would be increased to $112. An adult on welfare in Quebec will receive $616 per month in Quebec in 2015. Do you think the Quebec Ministry for Employment is being a bit over-zealous — or do you agree that everyone, including welfare recipients, should declare all their income or face the consequences? Let us know in the comments below.If Mark Davis had been at the Giants’ ballpark Thursday night for the opener of the Bay Bridge Series, he might have had a good laugh at the Giants’ expense. The Giants’ ballpark, spiffed up and ready for its 18th season in the sun and moon and fog, looked as good as the
a. No one in the band seemed to care in the least what an audience might want to hear. Local club owners found the band rebarbative; it must be considered sheer fortuitousness that a couple of deputies to Andy Warhol chanced to see them. The great man himself took in one of the group’s shows. Soon the Velvets were the house ensemble for Warhol-sponsored happenings like UpTight and the Exploding Plastic Inevitable. The band members slipped easily into the high jinks of the Factory, the polymorphously perverse playground for the soi disant underground artistes of the day. In one sense, Reed had found a home to replace the one that had scarred him; at the Factory, his personality was celebrated, not assaulted. Please Kill Me, the classic oral history of punk by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain, contains this winsome memory, from Warhol photographer Billy Name, about the conclusion to a night of partying: “Lou would just jerk off, get off, and get up to leave, so I had to say, ‘Hey, wait a minute. I didn’t come yet.’ So Lou would sit on my face while I jerked off. It was like smoking corn silk behind the barn, it was just kid stuff.” Warhol’s management did not lead to rock stardom. The history of the Velvets is highly amusing and flooded with passing interactions with the celebrated artists of both that day and the days to come. But it is in the end one of clueless business dealings and unrealistic expectations. Trips to California were disastrous; “I fucking hated hippies,” said Tucker. And besides Reed’s contrary nature, the band had to deal with ex cathedra Warhol dictates. One was giving the band a new singer. This was a humorless German model named Nico, who’d grown up amid the ruins of the Second World War and retained a slightly overenthusiastic allegiance to what in this context might be called the fatherland. Forgive the dated Neil Simon reference, but the result was a lot like the plot of The Star-Spangled Girl, only with a Nazi. She became intermittently involved with both of the Velvets’ principals. She and the towering Cale in their sartorial splendor stood out even among the Factory’s quotidian freak show: They looked “like they were in the Addams Family,” Iggy Pop once said. Reed’s waspishness found its unhappy match there. According to Cale, who might be settling grudges, Reed couldn’t keep up with the verbal blood sport of the scene. Cale recalled a Velvets rehearsal where Nico, habitually, came in late. Reed greeted her coldly. “Nico simply stood there,” Cale said later. “You could see she was waiting to reply, in her own time. Ages later, out of the blue, came her first words. ‘I cannot make love to Jews anymore.’ “ Rock legend celebrates the Velvets’ poor sales as an indictment of the industry in particular and society in general. But the period, after all, had a lot of adventuresome music that sold well. And this band, with its inconsistency, odd production values, and wildly clashing vocals (Reed’s confrontational delivery and Nico’s stentorian one) didn’t make for songs that sounded good on the radio. Somehow, the band recorded four albums that remain beloved and, in parts, persuasive to this day. Velvet Underground records were innovative in the realms both of noise and quiet, in essence making the argument that great rock ’n’ roll didn’t have to sound good on the radio. In softer moments Reed was capable of putting together simple, emotionally resonant ballads whose faces of calm hid dark lyrical tropes — “Femme Fatale” and “Pale Blue Eyes” among them. His lyrics were more abstract and yet more colloquial than those of any figure writing at the time. Here he is at his best, in the song “I’ll Be Your Mirror”: When you think the night has seen your mind That inside you’re twisted and unkind Let me stand to show that you are blind Please put down your hands ’Cause I see you I’ll be your mirror Again, this is Reed’s most natural subject: the experience of the unwanted and the despised. Some of the words we have today — bullied, gay, trans — didn’t really exist as such back then. Reed thought that feeling “twisted” could warp someone’s very identity, their own understanding of who they were. “Please put down your hands” may be the key line here, a powerful image of someone covering himself up, erasing himself. “You” and “your” appear in every line, as the singer tries to pair their humanity, replacing the other’s dark self-image with the one she sees. Isn’t this one of the most profound love songs of the era? And then there’s the noise. In rockers like “Heroin” and “I’m Waiting for the Man,” the band’s rudimentary chordage, shuddering velocity, previously unheard atonalities, and hypnotic effects took rock ’n’ roll to new extremes. Reed’s subject matter, too, in these songs was wild, nasty, unheard of. To do violence to Marianne Moore, Reed was writing songs about imaginary undergrounds with real circle jerks in them. “Sister Ray” — transexuality proudly signified in the title — sounded a bit like Dylan’s “Maggie’s Farm,” if “Maggie’s Farm” were sped up, overlaid with a maelstrom of clanking guitars, and played for 18 minutes. The song’s celebrated, insistent chorus includes the words, “I’m searching for the main line / I said I couldn’t hit it sideways,” a sordid reference to heroin. But this is to overlook another phrase that for some reason hadn’t yet appeared in the collected works of the Beatles, the Stones, or the Beach Boys: “She’s too busy sucking on my ding dong,” repeated several times for effect. In time Reed jettisoned Nico and Warhol and finally Cale, losing some friends on the scene on the way. “Lou was brilliant, but he was an asshole,” said one. We forget today, when the Velvets are celebrated as one of the first great uncommercial bands, that Reed wanted to be popular. This dichotomy of ambitions — despising society and yet craving its support — tattooed Reed’s career. In search of this chimera a reconstituted band moved to another label and tried to get even more into a pop groove. Loaded, the group’s final album, was supposed to be “loaded” with hits. A lot of it shows the band trying too hard, but there are two signal Reed songs here, “Sweet Jane” and “Rock & Roll.” In “Sweet Jane,” particularly, Reed’s effortless riffs and unbounded lyrics capture a new transsexual normal with giddiness and joy. His vocals do everything to drive the point home: hepcat scatting at one point, howling at another, maneuvering some deceptively difficult rhythms at yet another, but always somehow returning to embrace those chugging chords. It’s everything a rock song should be. The VU was Reed’s band now; he had just recorded his two greatest songs. But its uneasy history and years of bad decisions made his position seem less like an opportunity and more like a trap. Or so he told himself. For reasons too boring to go into here, the Velvets hardly ever had played live in New York City and didn’t have the large fan base there you’d expect. The band was booked for a series of gigs at tiny Max’s Kansas City when Reed stopped showing up. The Velvets slipped into history. Reed, again, went back home to live with his parents. What you might call Reed’s classic years as a solo artist began with a self-titled debut in ‘72 and lasted for a period I would argue was somewhat shorter than the new boxed collection has it: a dozen or 14 albums in all, and hardly two sporting a similar sound. His wishy-washy debut, with nothing like a song like “Sweet Jane,” was recorded in London with session players from the progressive rock band Yes and appreciated by no one. To support it, for some unaccountable reason, he went out on tour backed by four teens from a local high school. Within a few weeks, Reed was drinking himself into a stupor and playing songs onstage in the wrong key. Lucky for Reed, a young British wannabe star had connected with the Velvets’ music early on. He’d grown up to be David Bowie; fresh off Ziggy Stardust, the new sensation said he would oversee Reed’s second solo album. Transformer became a sign of what Reed could do when focused. With several of Reed’s more durable songs and a production schema from Bowie that is both fairly consistent and occasionally delightful, Reed lays down a passable claim to greatness here. There is poetry in many of the songs and real drama in the same places. “Satellite of Love” is a good example, a delicate melody disguising a bleak, almost savage reality, all ameliorated by a light in the sky reflective of both hope and isolation. A new tic in Reed’s writing, a stagey theatricality in some of the arrangements, actually works here, in the song’s bridge. “Perfect Day,” another seemingly romantic song on Transformer, also contains a landmine in its coda. Aidan Levy, in Dirty Blvd., is at his best when he limns the way a song like “Perfect Day,” dedicated to Reed’s first wife, Bettye Kronstad, contains both the emotion of their connection and plain signs of its eventual fracture. Onstage in Denmark, 1974. Photo: Jorgen Angel/Redferns Bowie also oversaw the utterly sensational production assemblage that is “Walk on the Wild Side,” Reed’s matter-of-fact recitation of the lives of some of his erstwhile associates in the Factory. The result is a grand American tale, as full-bodied in its humanity and reach as anything by Chuck Berry and Bob Dylan, and John Ford and Whitman besides — a dramatic portrait, etched with personal details, of a country where all roads lead to New York City, home of “a hustle here and a hustle there.” That wouldn’t matter without the music: the wild conception of the chorus (“And the colored girls go / ‘Doo do-doo do-doo…’ “); the doubled bass line; the unexpected, languid, and entirely right sax solo to take the song out. Here again, Levy has a penetrating riff on how Reed takes the musical base of the song — two notes, nothing else — and builds a multivarious musical and thematic epic on top of it. Thanks to Bowie, Reed had a worldwide hit single. Like many of his fellow ‘60s holdovers — Young, Dylan, Clapton, Stewart, Townshend, others — he could have maneuvered the 1970s, plugged into an intelligent and ever-more-monied new audience, and been the artist he wanted to be. And here’s where the disinterested reader’s break with Reed comes. Reading about the next ten or 20 years of his life separates one, fundamentally, from the subject of the story. We know that Reed suffered from some sort of mental illness, we know the electroshock sessions were traumatic, and we know that in many ways he probably couldn’t help himself — and turned to drinking and drugs for respite. But the mundane litany of the stories over time in a way subsumes him; neither biographer relishes the stories or makes them lurid, but after a while — there’s no other way to say it — you start to dislike Lou Reed. In both Sounes’s and Levy’s books, conflicts come up again and again. Reed is angry at producers, record-company executives, managers, collaborators, and his lovers. He has writer’s block one minute and hits his wife the next. (Kronstad says he gave her a black eye.) There are failed marriages, failed romances, failed albums. The accomplished producer Bob Ezrin conceived Berlin and was its nurse-maid. He ended up with a nervous breakdown and Reed didn’t work with him again. Kronstad, tired of the heroin, the drinking, and the violence, left him, got lured back, re-experienced his nastiness, and left him again. (He’d turned into a “monster,” she said.) There were sidemen and students who betrayed him, reporters who didn’t understand him. (For a while, Reed tried to mock interviewers à la Dont Look Back–era Dylan, but he was never able to pull it off.) His weight bloated; Levy, noting that and the androgynous makeup he liked, calls it Reed’s “sad panda” look. He drank and drugged himself and his marriage into a stupor and sometimes kept crowds waiting for hours as he sank into self-pity. There’s no rock ’n’ roll grandeur or craziness in these stories, just a somewhat sad tale of a person who couldn’t seem to create a coherent life for himself. Why? He’d struggled in New York for all of six months before Warhol discovered him. He was a rock star, with managers, musicians, and producers at his beck and call, and I’m going to go out on a limb and say I bet that on an average night Reed had his choice of companionship, male or female. Even his friends looked a bit askance: “Lou was a real asshole — he was a prick — but I liked him,” said one of his producers. He spent the rest of the decade veering about wildly, a platinum-haired glam-rocker one minute, an almost-Frankensteinian freak the next, a cuddly love man the one after that. Now, Reed was not as natural a star as some of those other names. He had a charisma but obviously an off-center one; his voice was capable of great power, but in much of his recorded work infrequently managed to meld with the song it was singing. At its worst, which was too much of the time, it ranged from a whiny bleat to an unattractive bellow. As for his talking voice — so gentle, so deadly in “Walk on the Wild Side” — it often came across as hectoring or pompous. No one would gainsay any artist’s right to follow a muse — look at Bowie’s ‘70s albums — but Reed just seemed erratic. So fans got a decadent song cycle here (Berlin) and an attitudinal collection of mediocre songs, indifferently recorded, there (Sally Can’t Dance); a two-record set of clanking noise and feedback here (Metal Machine Music), another tedious collection of songs, this one designed to show off “nice Lou,” there (Rock and Roll Heart). Two of his ‘70s releases had undeniable title tracks (Street Hassle and The Bells), but fans who looked for similarly compelling songs on their albums came away disappointed. His successes were sometimes accidental. Dispensing with the kids in his first solo band, he accepted a new group of hard-rock musicians, who fashioned some hyperbolic chording as an intro to one of his best-known songs. The resulting track, leading off a 1974 live album called Rock n Roll Animal, made a new generation of hard-rock fans prick up their ears. This version of “Sweet Jane” became a rock radio classic and made the album a hit. He followed it up with a deliberately tossed-off work (Sally Can’t Dance, “the shittiest album I’ve ever made,” as Reed himself put it), and then the promisingly titled, entirely unlistenable Metal Machine Music, which was literally four sides of oscillating feedback loops. It was both a funny conceptual-art project and kind of a shitty thing to do to a hard-rock kid looking for another Rock n Roll Animal. In the last line of the liner notes, Reed rubbed it in: “My week beats your year.” And yet he was capable of much more. In 1976 Reed finally delivered another consistent and moving album. It was produced by Godfrey Diamond, a disco producer. (He had been one of the creators of Andrea True’s “More More More”), with whom Reed eventually parted on bad terms. Coney Island Baby didn’t have a crummy cover, and there was an intimate, ghostly air in the production; Diamond coaxed out of Reed a vocal style for the album that let him half-talk, half-croon through the album’s tracks and recorded those vocals with a great deal of warmth. Song after song had a hook; deceptively lazy arrangements actually moved with a crack and a snap. He even conjures up a minor classic from Reed’s reflexive sarcasm in “A Gift.” (The chorus goes, “I’m just a gift to the women of the world.”) The title song of Coney Island Baby is one of Reed’s most interesting works. It’s all built on a single strummed two-chord riff, here delivered almost absentmindedly, but with a relentless track of quiet lead guitar filigrees behind it. The song starts out as a sentimental high-school tale (“I wanted to play football for the coach”), but then widens its view to include a somewhat melodramatic gritty urban portrait (“Something like a circus or a sewer”), and refocuses back into something sincere (“The glory of love might see you through”). “Different people,” Reed tells us in a ferocious utterance, “have peculiar tastes.” Here again is Reed’s great subject: the roots of the deranged, the depraved, and the dysfunctional in our quote-unquote normalcy. He struggled to articulate this passion throughout his career, never more passionately and believably than here. It’s worth mentioning at this point one of Reed’s ‘70s relationships, one with a somewhat mysterious person generally referred to in Reed biographies simply as “Rachel,” which is what she was called she was wearing women’s clothes. She went by Ricky when she was wearing men’s clothes. She was inseparable from Reed during this time, and it’s sometimes said the pair went through a wedding ceremony. Levy’s sources fill in and correct this picture. Her name was Richard Humphreys at birth; the supposed marriage was really a three-year-anniversary party, complete with a multi-tier cake to memorialize it. In 1977 the relationship foundered on Rachel’s desire for a sex-change operation, which Reed, as Levy tells it, was against. Rachel departed, and not even the street-level informants of Please Kill Me know what happened to her. Of the relationship, about all that is left, besides an old black-and-white photo of the pair cutting their cake, looking at all the world like newlyweds, is the end of “Coney Island Baby.” The title of the song is taken from a keening doo-wop classic (by the Excellents) of no little drama and soaring harmonies. At the end of Reed’s “Coney Island Baby” comes something unexpected. A plangent swirl of that quiet guitar plays out against waves of whispers and dissonant harmonies. We hear Reed murmur, achingly — his most emotionally convincing moment on record — these words: Sending this one out To Lou and Rachel And all the kids at PS 192 Man I swear I’d give the whole thing up for you This is Reed at his best, a troubadour for all the Lous and Rachels, once kids too. Kids grow up; some become rock stars. Sounes’s contribution to the Rachel story is information from a friend of Reed’s who says that, some time after Rachel disappeared from Reed’s circle, he bumped into her on the street; she looked sick, he said, and told him she was living under the West Side Highway. At a 1978 concert. Photo: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images The ‘70s continue, chaos continues. Reed, often drunk onstage, had a penchant for provoking scenes at his shows. In 1979 he released The Bells, which has the distinction of being his second-least-commercial album, after Metal Machine Music. It’s a collection of nine songs, a lot of them some species of dissonant jazz, or boasting odd musical tropes, like Reed intoning the words, “Disco / Disco mystic,” over a groaning background, for nearly five minutes. At a show in New York, he halted proceedings from the stage to go into a tirade against Clive Davis, the head of his then-label, over what Reed thought was poor promotion for the record. Davis was in the audience. The new boxed set — which has the unwieldy title Lou Reed: The RCA & Arista Album Collection — is as good a guide as you can want for this era. In a haphazard way he was a canny chronicler of his mythos — he released no fewer than five live albums in the 1970s. In his later career, repackagings came thick and fast, and you could be forgiven for rolling your eyes at the new one. But it’s said that he personally oversaw the remastering of the package before his death — 17 CDs in all. (Younger readers will want to know that “CDs,” or “compact discs,” were once the music industry’s vehicle of choice, before the technological advances that brought us the LP vinyl record.) It must be said that the albums he put the most effort into — Coney Island Baby and Street Hassle, particularly — sound devastatingly direct. The later stuff is more revealing as well, though this is a double-edged sword. The whole set, disappointingly monochromatic on the outside, is filled with goodies, including a nice coffee-table book, a large vintage poster, and a package of mini-posters, too. The last 35 years of Reed’s life are more similar to that of a lot of his coevals: intermittent work intermittently hailed as a return to the artist’s best work, most of it quickly forgotten. It’s depressing to slog through even the remastered versions of his ‘80s releases — New Sensations, Legendary Hearts, Mistrial. Once in a while he would get a little MTV airplay with a novelty-esque number, like “My Red Joystick” or “The Original Wrapper.” But the vast majority of the work is by turns pompous and sentimental. He’d lost his ability to demonstrate things in his writing and so resorted to telling us about them. Sparked by inspiration to write a song about bottoming out, Reed then intones the words bottoming out, over and over again, the effect not helped by his scenery-chewing vocals. (Similarly bald sentiments include “I Remember You,” “I Believe in Love,” “Love Makes You Feel Ten Feet Tall,” “I Love Women,” etc., etc.) The song “Doin’ the Things That We Want To” is an insufferably chummy paean to Reed buddies like Sam Shepard and Martin Scorsese. It contains lines like this account of a Shepard play: When they finished fighting, they exited the stage Doin’ the things that they want to I was firmly struck by the way they had behaved (Here’s an example of where the remastering stuff doesn’t serve Reed well. The pristine intimacy of the sound just makes him sound even more pretentious.) One aspect of many of even Reed’s classic-era albums that doesn’t get talked about enough is the sonic inconsistency. It’s a subtle thing, but most decent rock albums have a sonic palette that forms the core of the work. It’s not that every song must be orchestrated identically, but a good album will generally sound like it was recorded a certain way in a certain universe. Reed’s own lack of sophistication and the B-level producers he used over most of his career combined to make many of his records sound internally random, and jarring. And even fans can point to few nuanced compositions to make the search worthwhile. Along the way he sold “Walk on the Wild Side” for a TV commercial for the Honda’s short-lived line of scooters; Reed appeared at the end of it, to say, “Hey — don’t settle for walkin’!” As the 1980s ended, Reed picked himself up and tried to create some big statements. New York was decently produced and got him a latter-day radio hit in “Dirty Blvd.” Critics oohed and aahed, but the plain fact is the scenes in “Dirty Blvd.,” and those throughout the album, were less than nuanced: Outside it’s a bright night there’s an opera at Lincoln Center movie stars arrive by limousine The klieg lights shoot up over the skyline of Manhattan but the lights are out on the Mean Streets Next came Magic and Loss, which was about capital-D Death, and the grandiosely titled Set the Twilight Reeling. The artlessness in both is pervasive. One song is a paean to Anderson, the performance artist. In it, Reed mixes clichés with lines that resist coherence and still manages to pat himself on the back for his own artistic daring: You’re an adventurer You sail across the oceans You climb the Himalayas Seeking truth and beauty as a natural state You redefine the locus of your time in space — race! As you move further from me, and though I understand the thinking And have often done the same thing, I find parts of me gone You’re an adventurer Reed may have been intellectually insecure. He seemed to like references to literature, but more often than not these seemed gratuitous, like one song that has a verse devoted to random Shakespeare references. In another song, about the effects of chemotherapy, Reed sings, “It made me think of Leda and the Swan.” This English 101 allusion is left unexplained. (Was Zeus the radiation? Was the radiation raping the tumor?) Reed toured, during this period, in a sullen, unfriendly fashion, sometimes sporting an unfortunate mullet, reading his lyrics, deliberately, from a music stand. After New York, he reunited with Cale for Songs for Drella, which the pair put together after the unexpected death of Andy Warhol. This, too, was almost stultifyingly literal and, leaving aside Cale’s spectacular instrumental work, musically moribund. (Parts of it sound like outtakes from Corky St. Clair’s musical in Waiting for Guffman.) Finally, in the early 1990s, the original Velvets reunited for a tour of Europe. It was a minor payday for the rest of the band — Tucker had been working at a Walmart in a small town in Georgia — but Reed refused to tour America. The work from the last years of his life was bizarrely high concept. One was a two-disc interpretation of Poe’s The Raven; another was an album of atmospherics called Hudson River Wind Meditations. His last work was Lulu, a collaboration with Metallica based on German plays about a prostitute who comes to a bad end. Sounes says the recording sessions were contentious. The album is unlistenable. Playing in the Netherlands, 1996. Photo: Michel Linssen/Redferns Reed spent the rest of his life quietly with Anderson, whom he married in 2008. Aside from Lulu, his only aesthetic outrages were unintentional, such as when, appearing on Charlie Rose, he brought along his wife, who in turn brought along a motley lap dog. Rose pressed on in the face of this ridiculous tableau. If in the end Reed’s tortured personality overwhelmed his art, some of what remains continues to resonate. His work from the 1960s and ‘70s in the 1960s was caught up by bands like R.E.M. and U2. His lifestyle in the 1970s isn’t quite the mainstream, but transexuality, gender reassignment, and bisexuality are now part of our social fabric. (Heroin, too, now that I think about it.) And then the songs: The towering guitar change-up on “Sweet Jane,” heroic nearly a half-century later; the filigreed melody of a song like “Femme Fatale”; the three-note riff, dropping off an emotional cliff, that undergirds “The Bells”; “Walk on the Wild Side,” an easy-listening stunner, arguably the most subversive hit single of all time. A release I go back to again and again is Take No Prisoners, a 1978 two-disc live album. Smart, logorrheic, nasty, and oh so funny, it’s a journey into Lou Reed’s soul more entertaining and I think more revealing than any other of his records. His greatest songs fight for attention amid an accompanying stage patter that is part Lenny Bruce, part Mort Sahl, and part a certain current presidential candidate, another cranky New Yorker with issues: [draws on cigarette] I have no attitude without a cigarette. [pause] I’d rather have cancer than be a fag. That wasn’t an anti-gay remark. Coming from me, it was a compliment. One highlight is Reed’s (very) long exegesis to “Walk on the Wild Side,” in which he mercilessly annotates further the characters in the song (“Little Joe was an idiot!”) and along the way tells the story of how it came to be written. He settles scores — dissing by name various New York rock critics. He riffs on music and spars with hecklers. He plays Lou Reed, and plays Lou Reed playing Lou Reed, creating a mirrored room of highly ironicized personality and anti-personality, stardom and image. And yet in the end it’s all really just the very picture of a wiseass boyman with insecurities and demons he would never tame, and all the more priceless for it. And yet nothing can compare with the lovely, cathartic version of “Coney Island Baby” here. It’s a coursing workout with crushing dynamics and lyrical interludes. At the end, Reed drops the murmured dedication to Lou and the lost Rachel and replaces it with an extended coda. That coda consists of that single hopeful phrase, “The glory of love might see you through,” roared over and over, and over again. You can hear Reed babbling himself almost into incoherence. Blaring horns and some game backup singers wail, with almost Springsteenian grandeur, behind him. This closing maelstrom, his insistence that love can and must redeem us in the face of hate for the Other, goes on for minutes; let yourself get caught up in it and you believe it. The music finally stops. “Sorry it took a while,” Reed snaps to the crowd. Clearly, he’d gotten off.Now, I’ve been skiing both downhill and cross-country since I was a little kid. My dad was an avid skier, and he had my sister and I on skis almost as soon as we could walk. So I have been operating under the assumption that I possess enough muscle memory and coordination to successfully achieve any cross-country skiing challenge. I was wrong. Backstage pass It all started with a simple introduction to a new style of Nordic skiing. I’ll admit that my job does give me the opportunity to access what I’ll call the “Adirondack backstage.” I sometimes have unique opportunities to visit top secret places, get the inside scoop on news before the media does and interact with some of the region’s most interesting and influential folks. So when my coworker Sue set up an opportunity for interested staff members to try skate skiing, also often referred to as freestyle skiing, with an expert instructor, I opted in. And it wasn’t surprising that with our Adirondack backstage advantage, ours wasn’t just any old expert instructor. We were to learn from none other than Kris Cheney Seymour, the Nordic program and events manager at Mount Van Hoevenberg and coach of a list of notable Nordic Olympians that includes locals Billy Demong and Lowell Bailey. Originally a larger group, work responsibilities pared our class down to a manageable three students by the day of our lesson. Sue, Kelly and I arrived promptly at Mount Van Hoevenberg that afternoon to meet Kris and to get fitted with boots, skis and poles from their rental fleet. After a philosophical prep talk in which Kris compared the basics of skate skiing to the act of patting your head and rubbing your tummy in a circle simultaneously, we slowly made our way outside to step into our skis and try it for ourselves. Tech So, there are two real basic styles of cross-country skiing: classic and freestyle. The classic style is also called traditional style. It involves a straight ahead gliding type of motion. That’s the type of cross-country skiing with which I’m familiar. Ski skating, also known as freestyle cross-country skiing, is characterized by v-shaped glides and edging movements — just like ice skating and rollerblading. That’s the tummy-rubbing part. The head-patting is that the poles go the other way, from front to back. At least that’s how I interpreted it. Both of these types of skiing have their own unique type of equipment. I own classic ski equipment: some vintage wax-able skinny skis, poles and low cut, comfortable boots with what are called NNN bindings, which have a small bar that locks the toes of your boot into the matching ski binding. Directly underneath my feet on the ski is where I apply grip wax of varying colors depending on the temperature. When I put weight on my “push off” ski, it grips the snow and allows me to propel my other ski forward. Wax-less classic skis have “scales” in that grip area that accomplish the same thing as the wax — although not as effectively, I understand. The skate skis we were stepping into were somewhat different. Though they were similar in width, they were slightly shorter, stiffer, and there was no feature on the bottom except for one straight line down the middle of the entire length of the skis. The boots went up just over my ankle and had an exoskeleton that provided extra support. The three of us students clipped our boots into the skate skis — with the help of Kris, who had to clear snow from the bars on the NNN-BC bindings. These look similar to my own classic ski bindings but apparently date back to the old testament. Now, I should mention that Sue, Kelly and I are not newbies to strapping boards on our feet in general. We’re all longtime Alpine skiers, and all have experience with classic cross-country skiing. So we were really just looking for some basic pointers about this new style of skiing so we could add a new skill to our already very full arsenals. Kris moved on his skis easily, a mere 25 feet or so away, and then instructed us to just hold on to our poles in front of us, and to shuffle toward him. It looked easy enough, but the skis are VERY slippery. (Yes, we caught our smooth moves on video.) We looked a little bit, well, tentative as we shuffled toward him, then stopped while he showed us the basics to get us started. Number one: Don’t lean back. Once you lean back, there’s no way to recover. Lean forward, and you can always step onto a ski to regain your balance. He told us to hold our poles out in front of us and to try the skate motion, moving toward the end of the stadium area — or as I like to call it, the area where people in the lodge, timing building, ski racks, and parking lot are all watching and judging you. The movement was actually not too bad, and is similar to skating to the chairlift on alpine skis. I would describe our first steps as jerky, but we quickly smoothed out our strides a bit. We were ready to add our poles to the mix. The poles are taller than classic ski poles, and had a funky velcro strap that goes around your thumb and forces a correct grip at the top of the pole. Kris then described the various styles of skate skiing. Apparently, depending on the speed you’re going, one would implement “ Diagonal V ” as a “low gear”, using a single pole on the stationary side as you step forward with the other ski. ” as a “low gear”, using a single pole on the stationary side as you step forward with the other ski. V1 is what I had seen on TV. Double pole on the same side with an offset skating movement. Kris didn’t explain this one to us at our first lesson, to his credit. But I looked it up and as a responsible blogger, I’m including it here. is what I had seen on TV. Double pole on the same side with an offset skating movement. Kris didn’t explain this one to us at our first lesson, to his credit. But I looked it up and as a responsible blogger, I’m including it here. V2 is to double pole on alternate sides — with each left and right step of the ski. is to double pole on alternate sides — with each left and right step of the ski. V2-alternate is what we were sort of intuitively doing already, according to Kris. In the V2-alternate mode, you double pole along with your “resting” ski. In my case, I was using both poles to propel forward along with stepping on my left ski, then falling onto my right ski while recovering my poles to push again along with my left. is what we were sort of intuitively doing already, according to Kris. In the V2-alternate mode, you double pole along with your “resting” ski. In my case, I was using both poles to propel forward along with stepping on my left ski, then falling onto my right ski while recovering my poles to push again along with my left. The top gear of speed is to ski without use of the poles, presumably downhill or when racing very fast. We would soon wish that we’d had a V8. The Challenge When I told my former-skate-ski-racing husband that I’d be trying this style of skiing days prior, he playfully offered the following advice: “I hope you bring an extra lung!” As Kris led us off onto a short, mostly flat loop to try out our new skills, we were doing all right, technique-wise, pushing along forward with the skis, using a slight snowplow on downhills if necessary. But the technique was one thing; oxygen deprivation was another. As far as fitness, I typically try to remain in what I call “5k shape,” which means that if I am forced, I can finish a 5k running race at any time. Turns out I might just have fallen a wee bit out of 5k shape this winter. Skate skiing is terrific aerobic exercise. I know this because we had to stop every few hundred feet to catch our breath. I’m not sure we fooled Kris by excusing the frequent breaks as required stops to take pictures or adjust the video camera. About a year later, we arrived at the end of our first loop and first lesson back at
ship Troopers this article James Cameron's The Terminator issue #1 of Wired anything by Marx Intermediate: Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn the Book of Genesis Francois Truffaut's Day For Night The United States Constitution Elvis Presley singing Jailhouse Rock anything by Foucault Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene the Great Pyramid of Giza Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa the Macintosh user interface Tony Bennett singing I Left My Heart In San Francisco anything by Derrida Tour de Force: James Joyce's Finnegans Wake the San Jose, California telephone directory IRS Form 1040 the Intel i486DX Programmer's Reference Manual the Mississippi River anything by Baudrillard So, what are we to make of all this? I earlier stated that my quest was to learn if there was any content to this stuff and if it was or was not bogus. Well, my assessment is that there is indeed some content, much of it interesting. The question of bogosity, however, is a little more difficult. It is clear that the forms used by academicians writing in this area go right off the bogosity scale, pegging my bogometer until it breaks. The quality of the actual analysis of various literary works varies tremendously and must be judged on a case-by-case basis, but I find most of it highly questionable. Buried in the muck, however, are a set of important and interesting ideas: that in reading a work it is illuminating to consider the contrast between what is said and what is not said, between what is explicit and what is assumed, and that popular notions of truth and value depend to a disturbingly high degree on the reader's credulity and willingness to accept the text's own claims as to its validity. Looking at the field of contemporary literary criticism as a whole also yields some valuable insights. It is a cautionary lesson about the consequences of allowing a branch of academia that has been entrusted with the study of important problems to become isolated and inbred. The Pseudo Politically Correct term that I would use to describe the mind set of postmodernism is "epistemologically challenged": a constitutional inability to adopt a reasonable way to tell the good stuff from the bad stuff. The language and idea space of the field have become so convoluted that they have confused even themselves. But the tangle offers a safe refuge for the academics. It erects a wall between them and the rest of the world. It immunizes them against having to confront their own failings, since any genuine criticism can simply be absorbed into the morass and made indistinguishable from all the other verbiage. Intellectual tools that might help prune the thicket are systematically ignored or discredited. This is why, for example, science, psychology and economics are represented in the literary world by theories that were abandoned by practicing scientists, psychologists and economists fifty or a hundred years ago. The field is absorbed in triviality. Deconstruction is an idea that would make a worthy topic for some bright graduate student's Ph.D. dissertation but has instead spawned an entire subfield. Ideas that would merit a good solid evening or afternoon of argument and debate and perhaps a paper or two instead become the focus of entire careers. Engineering and the sciences have, to a greater degree, been spared this isolation and genetic drift because of crass commercial necessity. The constraints of the physical world and the actual needs and wants of the actual population have provided a grounding that is difficult to dodge. However, in academia the pressures for isolation are enormous. It is clear to me that the humanities are not going to emerge from the jungle on their own. I think that the task of outreach is left to those of us who retain some connection, however tenuous, to what we laughingly call reality. We have to go into the jungle after them and rescue what we can. Just remember to hang on to your sense of humor and don't let them intimidate you.Today, the ACLU of Massachusetts filed a federal lawsuit defending the right to record the police on behalf of two residents of JP and Roxbury against the Boston Police Department and the District Attorney for Suffolk County. The suit asks the court to affirm that it is unconstitutional to enforce the Massachusetts wiretap law against people who exercise their right to secretly record the police in the public performance of their duties, and to order BPD Commissioner William Evans and Suffolk County District Attorney Dan Conley to end that enforcement. "People have an established constitutional right to record the police in the public performance of their duties, and recent years have demonstrated that these recordings can profoundly affect the public's understanding of encounters between police and civilians," explains Matthew Segal, legal director of the ACLU of Massachusetts. "In practice, however, some people feel afraid to exercise this recognized right. They fear for their safety when they record police openly, and they fear arrest and prosecution under the state wiretap statute when they do so secretly." "The current situation creates an untenable--and unconstitutional--catch-22. Our suit seeks to fix this problem," says Jessie Rossman, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Massachusetts. "In order for this important right to have real meaning, we must ensure that people can exercise it safely and effectively." The ACLU of Massachusetts has long championed the right to record the police in the public performance of their duties. In our federal case Glik v Cunniffe, our client Simon Glik began recording when he became concerned that police on Boston Common were treating a man too roughly. Mr. Glik himself was then arrested for his constitutionally protected behavior. In 2011, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit unanimously affirmed that Mr. Glik had a First Amendment right to record the police carrying out their duties on Boston Common. "The fundamental right to record the police in the public performance of their duties does not depend on where you hold your phone," says David Milton, a partner at the Law Offices of Howard Friedman, who represented Simon Glik along with the ACLU of Massachusetts. "Glik did not distinguish between the right to record the police openly and the right to do so secretly, because the First Amendment encompasses both." The Massachusetts state wiretap statute, on the other hand, does make this distinction--in violation of the Constitution. The 1968 state law criminalizes secret audio recordings, and has been used to arrest and prosecute people for secretly recording police officers performing their duties in public. This leaves those who are afraid to openly record police officers with no opportunity to exercise their constitutionally protected right. "When I am alone, I do not feel safe openly recording police officers doing their jobs in public," says plaintiff Eric Martin, a Jamaica Plain resident. "In that situation, I would like to secretly record, but I have not and will not do so because I am afraid that I will get arrested or prosecuted for violating the wiretap law." "Police officers have screamed at me and grabbed my phone when I have openly recorded," says plaintiff René Pérez, a Roxbury resident. "As a result, there are times when I would want to record the police doing their jobs in public but would only feel safe doing so secretly. Because I am afraid of getting arrested or prosecuted for violating the wiretap law, however, I simply don't record in those situations." "Enforcement of this state wiretap law against individuals who record the police as they perform their duties in public is violating the fundamental constitutional rights of our clients," says Rossman. "Caught between safety concerns and fear of arrest or prosecution, the exercise of their First Amendment rights is critically chilled. Our suit is necessary to ensure that their right to record is meaningful." "We hope the Court will affirm the important First Amendment rights at stake in this case for the sake of greater police accountability, and greater safety for both police and members of the public," says Carol Rose, executive director of the ACLU of Massachusetts. "We all suffer when fear of retribution or prosecution stifles the contribution that recordings can make to our understanding of police-civilian encounters." Because police accountability and public safety can be fostered by recording what occurs on both sides of the badge, the ACLU of Massachusetts also this week sent a suggested model policy on the use of body-worn cameras to 45 police departments across the state. Many other states have moved more quickly than Massachusetts to implement body-worn cameras, highlighting the need for Massachusetts to adopt this technology soon, and to do it right, with good policies to ensure accountability, privacy, and transparency. "Police officers should adopt their own accountability tools, and people should also hold the police accountable by exercising their right to record," says Segal. "Although the right to record is especially critical in Boston and other places that have yet to implement full-scale body-worn camera programs, the right of civilians to record the police in the public performance of their duties is not diminished in places that already use body-worn cameras." Click here for more information about the ACLU lawsuit against the BPD, Martin v. Evans. Click here for more information about the Glik case. Click here for more information about police body-worn cameras.Fire Emblem is getting a 25th Annivesary book which will go on sale on November 28th this year. I plan to import it on money I have received from donations (thanks to all who donated!) and hopefully translate any fun things that may come in there. The book itself can be pre-ordered here. Amazon Japan offers relatively cheap international shipping, so check if it can be delivered to you if interested! Please feel free to donate for that coming project! It will really help me out! For now, however, I translated Amazon.co.jp’s description on it, which can be seen in both text and image below! The Making of Fire Emblem – 25th Anniversary Development Secrets, Awakening and Fates – Special Book Release: November 28, 2015 Price: 3,888 Yen (~32 USD) [Import may add 10 USD on average] Contents: -Filled with developers discussing the path the series has taken and its evolution -Approx. 300,000 characters of interviews -100+ never before seen development materials from the beginning -The ultimate book for understanding Awakening, Fates [if], and 25 years of series history Summary: Since the 1990 release of Dark Dragon and the Sword of Light, this year marks the monumental 25th anniversary of the Simulation RPG Fire Emblem. This book mainly comprises of developer commentary from Nintendo and Intelligent Systems regarding development of the games, but has development documents and retrospectives on Awakening, Fates [if], and 25 years of Fire Emblem history as well in commemoration. AdvertisementsShare. A smart and exciting blend of character-driven adventure and documentary-style educational game. A smart and exciting blend of character-driven adventure and documentary-style educational game. Capturing the complexity of the Iranian revolution is hard to do in just two hours, but 1979 Revolution: Black Friday makes a noble and ultimately effective attempt. Thanks to an interesting cast of characters, impressive performances, and a respectful mix of drama and Telltale Games-style quick-time event action, 1979 Revolution kept me hooked all the way through and even managed to deliver an engaging history lesson along the way. The hope, passion, danger, secrecy, and tragedy of the real Iranian revolution makes it a fascinating time and place to set a story and 1979 Revolution manages to hit on all these points in its short, but sweet two hours. It’s set just days before the tragic turning point in the revolution known as the Black Friday massacre, which left several dozens of civilians dead in Tehran’s Jaleh Square after the army opened fire on a crowd. “ A period as tragic as it is severely misunderstood. As dissatisfaction with the Western-backed Pahlavi dynasty grew, more and more Iranians had begun taking to the streets in protest. People from all walks of life and political backgrounds joined in street demonstrations: leftists and communists, nationalists, Mujahideen, students, and more. All had different ideas for the future of Iran, but most agreed on one thing: the Shah must go. The eventual declaration of martial law and several other factors made for a period in Iran’s history that was as tragic as it is severely misunderstood in the present day. Exit Theatre Mode By placing such a bloody fate just over the horizon, 1979 Revolution maintained a constant sense of dread as I navigated Reza, a likable young photographer, through the streets of Tehran. Roped into a diverse circle of revolutionaries by his close friend, Babak, Reza finds himself in the midst of the revolution’s most impassioned demonstrations and the sharp men and women at the forefront. His initial caution and confusion is your own as you learn to diligently navigate the heated politics and dangers of the country’s civil unrest, an adventure that drew me in with the amount of careful detail put into the people and places. “ I loved seeing the heart and soul of Iran, even during this tumultuous time, on full display. From the lone, banner-waving protester atop the pedestal where the Shah’s statue once stood, to the mass of praying figures in the middle of a deserted street, the spirit of the revolution is rendered with much-appreciated respect for the time and place. That’s true even when certain elements were clearly condensed down for the sake of encompassing as much of the historical event as possible, like representing every prominent political party with a single character, or packing a single city street with examples of protest both pacifistic and more riotous. The Future of Iran Despite that, I loved seeing the heart and soul of Iran, even during this tumultuous time, on full display. Half my family hails from Iran and experienced the revolution first hand, so my personal attachment to the events represented in 1979 Revolution is strong. I felt chills watching the opening credits, which juxtaposes live-action footage from the revolution against innocent home movies and in-game footage. In an opening chapter, I even recognized the bank where my grandfather used to work in Tehran – to see that kind of representation, no matter how mundane, in a medium where my culture and the Middle East at large are usually portrayed as desert war zones, was touching. But 1979 Revolution doesn’t just get credit for exploring uncommon subject matter. It’s the care and respect with which it treats its subjects that truly make it shine. A personal connection to or prior knowledge of the events explored here aren’t required to appreciate 1979 Revolution’s story or historical backdrop, thanks to the way we’re introduced to it. The photographer role is an obvious, but smart way to drop us into the middle of a complicated conflict without demanding we brush up on our history first, and that’s a convenience 1979 Revolution uses to great effect. “ 1979 isn’t afraid to dive deep into the heart of the revolution’s most emotional and horrific aspects. From a city rooftop I used my camera to zoom in on a crowded street, tracing my shot over the dense gathering of civilians until the focus ring turned green. Some points of interest were less clear than others, which made locating some key photo opportunities feel like pixel hunting. But because of the amount going on in each scene, I felt compelled to look at and zoom in on as much as I could anyway, stumbling upon most of these shots incidentally. After snapping my first picture, a similar photo – a real one this time – appeared next to mine, accompanied by a caption explaining how half a million protesters marched through Tehran in September 1978. I shot more photos of striking oil workers, a homeless mother, people waving signs in support of a pro-democratic Ayatollah – each with some interesting historical or cultural fact to go along with it. Key encounters with certain characters or points of interest, from people distributing political speeches on the streets to posters of Iranian pop stars, also add extra bits of information to a handy booklet in the pause menu. If you take a few moments to read it, 1979 can deliver loads of enriching material without bombarding you with it. Truth in Fiction This documentary-style game doesn’t just seek to educate, though. 1979 isn’t afraid to dive deep into the heart of the revolution’s most emotional and horrific aspects, making for a great story lead by even greater characters. But as you navigate the spirited protests, secret political meetups, and unpredictable military interventions of the revolution, 1979 maintains a respectful blend of drama and action. Even with gruesome first aid mini-games, quick-time events that depict Reza fleeing from tear gas in a crowded street, and harsh interrogation sequences set in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison, the violence of the revolution is never glorified or sensationalized. “ Smart, nuanced writing, along with some powerful performances bring even the most minor characters to life. During all of this excitement (good and bad), you also get to make plenty of choices, ranging in importance from mundane to life or death. In an early chapter, I was given the option to fight or talk down a pro-communist revolutionary, angered by the prospect of a religious Mullah leading Iran. In another chapter, I had to choose whether to throw a rock at the soldiers violently arresting Babak’s friends or go the pacifist route. Later, I could confront or avoid questioning from student revolutionaries on whether or not Reza’s brother was really part of the SAVAK, the Shah’s infamous secret police. While compelling in the moment, many of these seemingly important decisions end up feeling inconsequential in the long run, especially in light of the rather abrupt cliffhanger ending. If 1979 Revolution receives a follow-up game, I look forward to seeing some of its loose ends tied up. The linearity of its tale isn’t necessarily a bad thing. 1979 has a story it wants to tell, and while it doesn’t let you stray too far from the path, it does tell its story well, successfully building drama and tension in other ways. Smart, nuanced writing, along with some powerful performances bring even the most minor characters to life. 1979 can look visually rough at times, with awkwardly animated background NPCs and too many duplicate character models, threatening to pull me out of the moment as I explored this digital replication of Tehran’s streets. “...a ton of heart and surprising amounts of honesty. It ended up being the strong performances that carried the story, allowing me to look past some of 1979’s more unpolished elements and indulge in what it does well, one of which is bringing a ton of heart and surprising amounts of honesty to each character. From the optimistic revolutionaries who believe in peaceful protest to an ex-Mujahideen with more violent tendencies, 1979 never once shies away from showing the good, the bad, and the ugly in everyone. It might never go too deep into the specific politics of each party, but the web of clashing character motivations and distinct personalities on display were enough to illustrate how complex and multilayered the revolution really was. This is an event that reshaped Iran forever, one with effects still being felt today, worldwide, and 1979 Revolution does it justice both on a fictional storytelling level and an educational one.Boston, MA - Boston Bruins General Manager Peter Chiarelli announced today, July 10, that the club has signed goaltender Tuukka Rask to an eight-year contract through the 2020-21 season. Rask’s salary is worth an annual cap figure of $7,000,000. Rask and Chiarelli will be available to media via conference call on Thursday, July 11 at 3:00 p.m. ET. In 36 regular season games in 2013, Rask compiled a 19-10-5 record with a GAA of 2.00 and a.929 save percentage with five shutouts. The B’s netminder finished the season tied for fourth in the NHL in wins (19), tied for first in shutouts (five), third in save percentage (.929) and tied for fourth in goals against (1.96). During the 2013 postseason, Rask led the NHL in save percentage (.940), tied for first in shutouts (three) and finished fourth in GAA (1.88) in 22 games. Rask set a club record for home playoff shutout streak at 193:16, spanning from game four of the Conference Final to game three of the Cup Final. In 2011-12, Rask appeared in 23 games, recording an 11-8-3 record with a 2.05 GAA and a save percentage of.929. In 2009-10, Rask set a career high in wins (22) and led the NHL with a 1.97 GAA and.931 save percentage, becoming the first Bruins goaltender to have a GAA below 2.00 since 1998-99. His 1.97 GAA that season, was the lowest by any Bruins goaltender since 1938-39 season. In 138 NHL games, all of which have come with the Bruins, Rask has compiled a 66-45-16 record with 16 shutouts, a.927 save percentage and a 2.15 goals against average. The 26-year-old has appeared in 35 postseason games for the Bruins, amassing a 21-14 record, while posting a 2.15 GAA and a.930 save percentage with three shutouts. Prior to joining Boston, Rask spent the majority of two seasons with the Providence Bruins (AHL) from 2007 – 2009, amassing a record of 60-33-6 with a 2.42 GAA and.910 save percentage. In his rookie season with Providence in 2007-08, Rask finished the season tied for fifth in wins (27) and the following year was tied for second (33). The 6’3’’, 185-pound native of Tampere, Finland was drafted in the first round (21st overall) of the 2005 NHL Entry Draft by the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Bruins acquired Rask from the Maple Leafs in exchange for Andrew Raycroft on June, 24 2006.“It is not policy alone that determines one’s fitness for office,” more than two dozen former Republican members of Congress wrote in a newly released letter denouncing their party's presidential nominee Donald Trump. The 30 former GOP lawmakers acknowledged that while their party's new standard bearer has a record of controversial statements that call into question his temperament and ability to lead the nation, his campaign platform still remains in line with the orthodoxy of the modern Republican Party. Still, the group, which includes the chairman of the House Oversight Committee that investigated Bill and Hillary Clinton in "Travelgate" and influential Republicans in key battleground states, refused to back their party's nominee for president. Advertisement: "In nominating Donald Trump, the Republican Party has asked the people of the United States to entrust their future to a man who insults women, mocks the handicapped, urges that dissent be met with violence, seeks to impose religious tests for entry into the United States, and applies a de facto ethnicity test to judges," they wrote. According to CNN, the letter was circulated by former congressmen Mickey Edwards of Oklahoma and Tom Coleman of Missouri. "Given the enormous power of the office, every candidate for president must be judged rigorously in assessing whether he or she has the competence, intelligence, knowledge, understanding, empathy, judgment, and temperament necessary to keep America on a safe and steady course," these former members of Congress wrote. "Donald Trump fails on each of those measures, and he has proven himself manifestly unqualified to be president": He offends our allies and praises dictators. His public statements are peppered with lies. He belittles our heroes and insults the parents of men who have died serving our country. Every day brings a fresh revelation that highlights the unacceptable danger in electing him to lead our nation. "Sadly, our party's nominee this year is a man who makes a mockery of the principles and values we have cherished and which we sought to represent in Congress." (As The Huffington Post noted, many of the letter's signatories are traditional Republicans whose abandonment of the GOP nominee should not be dismissed as trivial.) "It is in that spirit that, as Donald Trump's unfitness for public office has become ever more apparent, we urge our fellow Republicans not to vote for this man whose disgraceful candidacy is indefensible," the letter writers declared. While the letter does not specifically mention Hillary Clinton, some of the more than two dozen Republicans reportedly plan to vote for the Democratic nominee, while others will either write in a candidate or cast a ballot for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson. Advertisement: Here’s a complete list of the letter’s signatories: Steve Bartlett, R-Texas Bob Bauman, R-Md. Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y. Jack Buechner, R-Mo. Tom Campbell, R-Calif. Bill Clinger, R-Pa. Tom Coleman, R-Mo. Geoff Davis, R-Ky. Mickey Edwards, R-Okla. Harris Fawell, R-Ill. Ed Foreman, R-Texas, N.M. Amo Houghton, Jr., R-N.Y. Gordon Humphrey, R-N.H. Bob Inglis, R-S.C. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz. Steve Kuykendall, R-Calif. Jim Leach, R-Iowa Pete McCloskey, R-Calif. Connie Morella, R-Md. Mike Parker, R-Miss. Tom Petri, R-Wis. John Porter, R-Ill. Advertisement: Claudine Schneider, R-R.I. John “Joe” Schwarz, R-Mich. Chris Shays, R-Conn. Peter Smith, R-Vt. Edward Weber, R-Ohio Vin Weber, R-Minn. G. William Whitehurst, R-Va. Dick Zimmer, R-N.J.CLOSE USA TODAY Sports' Dan Wolken looks ahead to the New Year's Eve playoff game between Alabama and Washington. USA TODAY Sports Washington head coach Chris Petersen, left, walks on the field next to quarterback Jake Browning during a Peach Bowl NCAA college football practice. (Photo: David Goldman, AP) ATLANTA — Among the few who have given Washington a chance to beat Alabama in Saturday’s Peach Bowl, the most popular rationale is Chris Petersen’s history at Boise State of pulling upsets against more talented opponents, particularly when his teams had time to prepare. But a trick play here or nice adjustment there isn’t going to be enough to prevent the Crimson Tide from winning its fifth national title in the last eight years. Washington is going to have to find an advantage somewhere and exploit it against a defense that allows a meager 2.03 yards per rush and simply doesn’t let teams drive up and down the field. Fortunately for the Huskies, their potential advantage is a big one: Turnover margin. Washington’s defense created a nation-leading 33 turnovers this season while its offense committed only 12, a statistic that provides the most plausible path to beating Alabama. The caveat here is that turnovers are a highly variable factor from game-to-game, and it’s possible Alabama will play clean football Saturday or benefit from a lucky bounce if one of their skill players happens to fumble. But Washington’s secondary is an experienced, talented, ballhawking group that came up with 19 interceptions this season. It’s facing a freshman quarterback in Jalen Hurts who isn’t a polished passer yet and has shown a propensity to be loose with the football at times, throwing eight interceptions over Alabama’s final eight games. Say the Huskies force Hurts into a couple big mistakes and can steal 10 or 14 points on short fields or a defensive score. And as good as Alabama’s defense is, you have to figure Washington will get at least one big play out of receiver John Ross, who had 76 receptions this year and more than enough speed to challenge the Tide’s secondary. HIGHLIGHTS: WASHINGTON'S PATH TO THE PLAYOFF If the Huskies can cobble together 17 points and avoid turning the ball over themselves, they’ll be in the game going into the fourth quarter. And while we know Alabama is a terrific frontrunner, it’s uncertain how this team and its inexperienced quarterback would react if it was pushed to the limit because nobody in the SEC was good enough this year to do that. Maybe, just maybe, putting Hurts in a pressurized situation will finally expose his inexperience if he has to make throws to win a football game. When Saban says Washington is the best team Alabama has played this season, he’s not blowing smoke. And if the Huskies force turnovers at their typical rate, they may just prove it.THE Abbott government will offer NSW a $2 billion loan at a discounted rate to speed up construction of Sydney's WestConnex road project. Premier Mike Baird hailed it a "fantastic announcement" which will transform western Sydney. "It is a good news story for the people of western Sydney and a good news story for the people of Sydney," he told reporters in Sydney on Thursday. When completed, the WestConnex is expected to cut travel times between the airport and Parramatta by 40 minutes. "In simple terms, it means less time on our roads and more time with our families," Mr Baird told question time. The concessional loan, to be included in next week's federal budget, will fund the second stage of the motorway linking Parramatta with Sydney Airport, allowing it to be completed a year earlier than planned. Stage two will widen the M5 East and build a 6km tunnel link between St Peters and the airport. The extra money will allow both stage two and stage one - the widening and extension of the M4 - to be built at the same time. Construction of stage two is expected to be completed by 2019. The loan comes on top of $1.5b the Abbott government has already pledged to the project. The $11.5b WestConnex project will create 10,000 jobs and allow motorists to bypass up to 52 sets of traffic lights, Mr Baird said. It is also expected to deliver more than $20b in economic benefits, the premier added.Time for part two of my preview of the Final Olympic Qualifying Regatta…the women’s events. W1X Qualifying spaces available: 3 13 scullers This is a ridiculously stacked field. There are 10 Olympic and 23 World medals among the 13 scullers. Ekatarina Karsten of Belarus personal contribution to that tally is 6 Olympic and 16 world medals! Karsten is an astonishing athlete, the 43 year old won her first senior medal in 1991 racing for the Soviet Union, that was before 6 of her rivals were actually born! She’s far more suited to the single scull and has proven time and time again that on her day she is capable of beating anybody. So far this season she took silver in Varese and 4th in Brandenburg. If she’s successful in Lucerne she’ll be headed for her 6th Olympic Games. Emma Twigg of New Zealand must be considered the favourite to win in Lucerne. The 2014 World Champion is returning to competition after a year out studying for her FIFA Masters degree. Somewhat controversially Rowing New Zealand didn’t select her to race last year, instead giving the W1X spot to Fiona Bourke. A potential showdown for the Olympic spot between the two New Zealanders was avoided when Bourke failed to qualify in Aiguebelette. Denmark’s Fie Udby Erichsen is the reigning Olympic silver medallist. Having returned to competition in 2014 she’s yet to recapture that sort of form, she’s only appeared in one A-final since and that was the European Championships in 2015. She raced in Varese finishing 7th. Ireland’s Sanita Puspure is showing excellent form this year with bronze medals from both Varese and Brandenburg. She already has Olympic experience under her belt with a 13th place in London. Her current form makes her one of the favourites for a top 3 in Lucerne. Another sculler with Olympic experience is Germany’s Julia Richter. She was in the quad that won silver in London. She also won gold at the 2013 Worlds before being moved into the 2X in 2014 and then the W1X for the 2015 World Championships (where she finished 13th). So far this season she raced at the European Championships finishing 10th. She seems happier in the bigger sculling boats and on current form she may not have enough to make the top 3. Nataliya Dovodgko of Ukraine is another sculler who prefers the bigger boats. Olympic champion in the quad in London. After the Olympics she moved into the W1X but hasn’t had too much success. Her best performance in this Olympiad was a 5th place at both the 2103 and 2015 European Championships. This season she has raced at both Varese and Brandenburg with a 12th and 9th place respectively. GB’s Mathilda Hodgkins Byrne was a late addition to the European Championships team and rewarded that faith with an excellent 7th place. The 21 year old is likely to be the spare for the Olympic team but she has an outside chance of getting there in her own right. She may not get to Rio but she will definitely be a name to watch for the Tokyo Olympiad. A sculler at the other end of her career to Hodgkins-Byrne is Julia Levina of Russia. The 43 year old is trying to qualify for her 5th Olympics and won a bronze in Sydney back in 2000. Her best performance in this Olympiad was 6th in Amsterdam in 2014. On her current form she may not have enough to get to that elusive 5th Olympics. My picks…Twigg, Karsten and….Puspure W2- Qualifying places available: 2 12 crews The form crew in this event look to be the Italians, Alessandra Patelli and Sara Bertolasi. 14th in the Worlds last year they have made an excellent start to 2016 with a silver medal behind the South Africans in Varese. One place behind the Italians in Varese were the Spanish, Anna Boada Peiro and Aina Cid I. Both these boats have made a big step on from their 2015 performances and will be confident of their chances in Lucerne. Another crew in with a good shout of qualifying are the Russians, Maria Kraslinkova and Ekaterina Potapova. 4th at the European Championships and 5th in Varese. For both of these athletes they have spent their whole international careers to date has been in the sculling squad but without much success. The switch to sweep this season had already provided dividends. These three crews look to be well ahead of the rest of the field. The Polish Wierzbowska sisters were 8th in Varese and 7th in Brandenburg. The Chinese, Min Zhang and Tian Miao were both part of the W8 that finished 9th last year. My picks….Italy and Russia. Edit: It’s been pointed out to me that there are in fact 4 qualifying spots available (the Olympic quota for the W2- has been increased to allow for gender equality). So with that in mind I am also going for the Spanish and Poles to take the other two place. W2X Qualify places available: 2 9 Doubles So far the Netherlands have qualified 6 boats. With the W2X of Lisa Scheenaard and Marloes Oldenburg look set to make it 7. Silver medallists in Varese and A-Finalists in Brandenburg they look to be the in-form crew of all 9 boats. Chasing the Dutch will be Czechs and Danes. Kristyna Fleissnerova and Lenka Antosova were 15th in the world last year but have started off 2016 in good style with a bronze medal in Brandenburg. The Danes have also made a strong start to 2016. Following a 13th place in the world last year they took bronze in Varese. Two crews with more of an outside chance of qualifying are Italy and Finland. Laura Schiavone and Giada Colombo were 5th in Varese one place behind the Finnish crew of Ulla Varvio and Eeva Karppinen. My picks…The Netherlands and the Czech Republic W4X Qualifying places available: 2 7 crews Ukraine are the defending Olympic champions in this boat class but they only retain one member of that gold medal winning crew, Anastasiia Kozhenkova. She’s joined by Daryna Verkhogliad, Olena Buryak and Ivegeniia Nimchenko. They will probably start as favourites in Lucerne following two solid performance so far this year taking bronze at both the Varese world Cup and the European Championships. Behind the Ukrainians it’s going to be a real dogfight for the 2nd qualifying spot with the main protagonists being the Kiwis and the British. These two crews were fairly evenly matched last year. Both had to race in the repecharges at the world championships with the British just missing out in one and the Kiwis snatching the final qualifying spot in the other (albeit in a slower time to the British). So far this season the British have raced twice finishing 4th in Varese and then 5th (after catching a boat-stopping crab at halfway) at the Europeans. There really isn’t much to call between these two crews, but the extra race experience this season may just play in the Brits favour. The Romanians aren’t renowned for their quads and their crew in Lucerne look to be there to gain experience rather than with any real expectation of qualifying. They are a young crew with the 2015 JW2X silver medallists Elena Logofatu and Nicoleta Pascanu at bow and stroke. The Chinese on the other hand are definitely in Lucerne to try and qualify. They have made 2 changes to the crew that finished 7th in the world last year. Yan Jiang and Xinyue Zhang retain their seats with Ling Zhang (making her senior debut) and Yuwei Wang coming in. They’ve yet to race this season but could well spring a surprise. My picks….Ukraine followed by…….I’m going to allow a bit of favouritism and say GB (fingers crossed!) W8 Qualifying places available: 2 5 crews. The Dutch are my favourites to qualify from this event. Winners in Varese they had a great race against the British in Brandenburg just being caught before the line and ending up with the silver. They were the unlucky ones in 2015, making the A-Final at the world championships but then being “tail-end Charlie” finishing 6th with only the top 5 qualifying. They will be confident heading into Lucerne that they have the speed to secure the qualifying spot. Romania on the other hand
. Where we work you see many organisations providing food aid to simply stop people from going hungry because the land in the area is used inefficiently. We would hope that in years to come, and it will not happen overnight, that the area will not just have enough food to supply the local market but will be in a position to sell surplus food to urban areas where the population is ever increasing. How is Development Pamoja funded? The group is mainly funded by individual donations. Last year we were fortunate to receive funding from Electric AID in Ireland which provided us with a grant to start our demonstration farm. We also received funding this year from the National AIDS Control Council in Kenya. When we started in 2009 we worked with a girl from America called Caitrin Kelly who to this day funds our micro finance program, but the bulk of the money comes from private donations and fundraising events. My aunt raises money for us from going to car boot sales around Cork, people have also organized other fundraising activities such as table quizzes. In fact on 26 August there is a fundraising event for Development Pamoja. Rachel Gordon, my aunt, and Eleanor Knowles, who has fundraised for us in the past have organised a family fun day in the grounds of Nemo Rangers GAA club in Turners Cross, Cork city, from 2 – 6pm. Without the support of family, friends and the people of Ireland the organisation wouldn’t exist. In an ideal world in the future we would cease to exist because those we assist would no longer need our help. How do you find living and working in Kenya? I’ve been living in Kenya for over four years now so am very settled here. The people here are very friendly. I’m able to speak Swahili now which makes it easier to interact with people and they are always happy to see that you can speak their language. The biggest difference with Ireland would be the things you take for granted at home, running clean water, constant electricity supply, things like that. Here you get used to going without electricity, interrupted water supply or not having instant internet access. But at the same time it can feel very familiar. Kenyans love football so provided you like one of Manchester United, Chelsea or Arsenal (thankfully I don’t) you can watch practically every football match all year round. Once you live here for a prolonged period of time it begins to feel like a second home and things such as 20 people been squashed into a bus that is meant to fit 14 people become part of your day rather than an inconvenience. What plans do you have for the future with Development Pamoja? Well, in an ideal world in the future we would cease to exist because those we assist would no longer need our help. But we are not naïve enough to believe that we can solve all the problems of those we work with. We are still a very small organisation. What we would hope though is to see those we help live more comfortably. To see them enjoy the benefits taken for granted in other parts of the world. We would like to see all families to be in a position to educate their children, to live healthy and long lives and to be able to avail of comforts such as electricity, clean water etc. We hope to do that by empowering them with skills that will increase their incomes and to provide them with access to credit. In the future we would like to be able to reach more people in the communities we work in and become an example to the people of Mogotio on how hard work can provide the rewards to enable you to live a prosperous life. If people want to donate, how can they? We have a bank account in Ireland. The details for this are on our website www.developmentpamoja.org The website and our facebook page include information on all our programs if people would like to see what we do in greater detail. People can also contact us on [email protected] - Detroit police still are investing, but at this point it looks like a terrible accident. Local 4 is told a 24-year-old man at a home on Muirland Street may have been cleaning a handgun Thursday when it discharged. The bullet hit him in the hand and then struck a 20-year-old woman who lived in the home but was not a relative of the shooter. Their relationship is not clear. "The (bullet) went through her arm. She came out on the stretcher. I thought it was just a gunshot through her arm but it went through her side," said a neighbor who was outside at the time of the shooting. The woman died at the hospital. The man is in stable condition. Copyright 2014 by ClickOnDetroit.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Russia is suspending a communications channel with the United States set up to avoid midair incidents between Russian and U.S. pilots in the skies over the Syria. The move is in response to a U.S. missile strike on a Syrian airfield carried out on Thursday in retaliation for a chemical attack by the administration of Syrian President Bashar Assad on Tuesday. “Russia suspends the Memorandum of Understanding on Prevention of Flight Safety Incidents in the course of operations in Syria signed with the US,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement Friday. Russia and the United States set up the so-called deconfliction line in October 2015 after Russian air forces intervened in the ongoing Syrian civil war. ADVERTISEMENT Prior to setting up the line, U.S. aircraft had a few close calls with Russian aircraft, getting as close as a couple of miles from each other. Since setting up the channel, the U.S. and Russian militaries have communicated on a regular basis. Recently, U.S. officials have said the line would be even more important as the battlefield constricts, with the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) losing territory and competing rebel and administration forces moving in on its de facto capitol of Raqqa. The line was used most recently Thursday night, when the United States notified Russia it would attack the Syrian airfield, allowing Russian troops there to move to safety. The U.S. military, under the orders of President Trump, fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the airfield on Thursday night, or Friday morning in Syria. The attack was in response to a sarin gas attack officials say Assad launched that killed more than 70 civilians. The decision to take military action against Assad is a dramatic escalation in U.S. involvement in the 6-year-old civil war, which the U.S. military has never directly intervened in. It was also a notable departure for Trump, who has said he didn't want to push the U.S. deeper into the conflict. Russia, which supports Assad, has responded by condemning the bombing as an “act of aggression.” The Russian Foreign Ministry, too, said it was a “clear act of aggression against a sovereign Syria” based on “totally distorted” facts. “Actions undertaken by the US today inflict further damage to the Russia-US relations,” it said in its statement. “It is obvious that the cruise missile attack was prepared in advance. Any expert understands that Washington’s decision on air strikes predates the Idlib events, which simply served as a pretext for a show of force.”-- Posted Wednesday, 19 November 2008 | Digg This Article | Source: GoldSeek.com London, England Wednesday, November 19, 2008 --------------------- *** The losses keep piling up - close to one trillion in stocks, and almost $5 trillion in U.S. homes the Dow gives a pathetic shot to try to buck the downward trend yesterday *** The Fed is going into the wild Ron Paul takes on Big Ben *** A revolutionary breakthrough in modern medicine don't miss out on your winter fuel payments and more! --------------------- Yes, dear reader, we are going where no man ever went before into the wild. All around us is virgin territory. No one has ever been here before. But watch out, these virgins are vicious amazons. In this wild place, you can forget living it up. Don't even think about getting rich. Riches? If you've got 'em hide 'em. Luxury? Who needs it anyway? The best you'll be able to do is survive. And then, maybe, years from now, we can put our financial lives back together again and get on with things Never before have seen so much wealth disappear in such a short time. The latest report from MSCI shows the planet's losses from the sell-off of equities has now reached more than $30 trillion - or more than twice the GDP of the U.S.A.! And this is just stocks. Reported write-downs, write-offs and credit losses have reached almost a trillion. And losses of housing prices in the United States alone - the only country for which we have reliable figures - has reached about $5 trillion. Nor have we ever seen such a rapid reaction. In the space of a few months, people have gone from believing that nothing could go wrong to thinking that there's nothing that won't go wrong. Where once they thought that free-market capitalism would make them rich they now believe that the government can save them from getting poor. And where only a year ago they thought the world's globalized economy would always give them everything they needed "just in time," they now believe they better keep a few sheckels on hand "just in case." And just look at the bonds! A few months ago, investors stretched for yields. Now, it's safety they reach for. They dump corporate bonds for fear they may be "toxic," and grab U.S. Treasury debt with both hands. Investors now seem to have an unqualified trust in the full faith and credit of the world's largest debtor. Yields on 91-day T-bills have fallen to 0.11% - scarcely a tenth of one percent! Yes, dear reader, the "Great Unwind" the "Big Bust" the "Great De-leveraging" - call it what you want; we've never seen anything like it. The Dow rose 151 points yesterday - a limp and pathetic little attempt buck the downward trend. Gold lost $6.80 leaving it at $735. China's stock market had managed an 18% rebound following the announcement of its half-trillion dollar bailout plan. But yesterday, Chinese stocks were collapsing again. The latest news from America tells us that housing prices are still going down in 4 out of 5 cities. Homebuilders' wives are hiding the shotguns and pouring out the whiskey; their husbands' confidence has never been lower, according to this morning's news report. Big towns little towns in the sophisticated cities and out in bumpkin country, the story is the same. The Wall Street Journal tells us that the "fall in crop prices" is putting an end to the boom in the boonies. U.S. producer prices fell 2.8% in October - the most they've ever fallen. And the Big Three automakers say that if they don't get some help soon, the results will be "catastrophic." Meanwhile, over on the sunny California coast, the whole state is going up in smoke it's not only going broke, it's burning up. "I have to dust the ash off my car every morning," reports daughter Maria, recently arrived in LA and hoping to make it big in the motion pictures. "It's eerie there's always a little smoke and soot in the air " Not only is the bust unlike anything we've ever seen before so is the planet-wide effort to stop it. All over the globe, the feds are going 'into the wild' with extraordinary measures. They're mobilizing troops to fight the crisis in the boardrooms. They'll fight it in the stock markets. They'll fight it at home - with house-to-house combat to stop foreclosures and defaults. They'll fight it abroad - the U.S. government is even loaning money to foreign governments! They'll fight it with loans and giveaways. They'll fight it with fiscal policy. They'll fight it with monetary policy. They'll fight it with every weapon available to them - including the printing press. And they will lose. *** To give you an idea of the wild measures undertaken by the feds, we look at what is happening at the world's leading bank - the U.S. Federal Reserve. The short form of how the Fed operates is this: it holds a certain amount of securities in its vault; this is the cornerstone capital - or monetary base - of the whole banking structure. How does it get this capital? It buys it, creating the money to pay for it as necessary. Naturally, the Fed doesn't want to create too much money or the inflation rate would get out of control and economists would point their fingers accusingly. But now, people fear dandruff more than inflation. So, the Fed has gone wild. From the day of its founding in 1913 to September 24, 2008 the Fed's assets - the aforementioned cornerstone capital for the US financial system - grew to $1 trillion. By November 14, 2008 the amount had grown to over $2 trillion. And in a speech in Texas, the head of the Dallas branch of the Fed said he expected the total to reach $3 trillion by year-end. For the moment, this explosion of monetary inflation is hardly noticed. Asset deflation has the headlines. People worry about having too few dollars, not about having too many. Comes the news this morning that U.S. business chiefs are asking the up-coming Obama administration for another $500 billion'stimulus' program. They'll get it. And much more. Trillions worth. Trying to stimulate the economy with easier credit in the early 2000s, Alan Greenspan overdid it. He gave the world the credit it wanted, and created the biggest bubble in human history. Now that bubble is collapsing and his successor - Ben Bernanke - is confronted with a new problem. Now it is cash that people want - income to pay their debts! Bernanke will give them what they want. And, most likely, he will overdo it too. *** At a recent hearing on Treasury Department use of government assistance funds, Ron Paul, who is well-known for often calling out the Federal Reserve chairman on their liberal use of the printing press, took on Big Ben. Here is the transcript of their interaction, in case you missed the C-SPAN coverage: Ron Paul: The Austrian free market economists had predicted all these problems would come, and they were certainly correct in everything that they said. Of course they're not very satisfied including myself with the so-called solutions, because it looks like we're spending a lot of energy and a lot of money trying to patch a system together that is unworkable. So we have Congress spending a lot of money, we have Treasury very much involved in trying to pick and choose which worthless asset that we're going to buy, and of course the Federal Reserve is involved in injecting trillions of dollars that nobody seems to be keeping track of. But what we're failing to do I think is to recognize that the system no longer works, but I can understand why we do this because if Congress couldn't do this and if the Fed couldn't do this and Treasury couldn't do this, it would make us all irrelevant. And instead of looking at the causes of this, and then finding the solutions aren't going to be found here, we have to make ourselves feel pretty important. But I think there's another reason we think we're pretty important, it's because in a way our interference in the market corrections that tried to come about since 1971 seem to work. I mean, the failure was established in 1971 with a system that had no way of automatically correcting the balance of payment and the current account deficits. And that's where the problems have been, and economists - whether they were left or right or middle - over the last several decades have always said, this current account deficit is a big problem. And now it's totally out of hand. So here we are struggling with all these rules and shifting back and forth and really getting nowhere. My question is directed toward, when we come to the full realization that the system is unworkable, what are we going to do, what have you thought about doing, and already we see talk in the newspapers. We see articles about a new international world reserve currency, and to me that's pretty important, because the fiat dollar reserve system is not going to work anymore, and that's the information that we have to accept and decide what we're going to do in the future. Also, this is not new in history. Currencies have failed, financial systems have failed, and generally, to restore the confidence that everybody is talking about, they usually have to go back to a currency with integrity to it, rather than just fiat money. And, you know, the stages is there. It's not impossible, already the central banks of the world still own 15% of all the gold that was ever mined in all of history. So they hold on to this gold for some reason, and therefore something has to give, or are we going to keep trying to waste more money and time patching this system together. Just last week there was a report that Iran purchased 75 billion dollars worth of gold, took their reserves out of Europe, bought gold and put it in Asia. So is that a sign of the times, is that moving on? My question is, in your meetings, and you had a meeting just recently with other central bankers, does this thought come up about a new international world reserve currency, and if so, does the subject of gold ever come up? How do you restore the confidence? Have you recently had conversations with any central banker, and is there a move on to replace the dollar system, because the dollar system is essentially declared dead, because it's not working, but this indeed was predictable because of these tremendous imbalances that were never allowed to be corrected, and they were always patched up. We always came in. We'd spend, we'd inflate, we would run up deficits, and since '71 we've been able to correct these problems. Could you tell me what kind of conversations you've had regarding a new reserve currency? Ben Bernanke: Yes, Congressman. I don't think the dollar system is dead. I think the dollar remains the premier international currency. We've seen a good deal of appreciation in the dollar recently during the crisis precisely because there's been a lot of interest in the safe haven and the liquidity of dollar markets. And the Federal Reserve has been engaged in swap agreements to make sure there's enough dollar liquidity in other countries because the need for dollars is so strong. So I think the dollar system remains quite strong. I do agree with you very much on one point, which is about the current accounts. The current account imbalances have proved to a very serious problem. It was in fact the large capital inflows in those current accounts which created a lot of the financial imbalances we saw and have led to some of the problems we are seeing, and one of the silver linings in this huge grey cloud is that we're seeing some improvement and greater balance in our current account deficits. Ron Paul: But does the subject of a new regime ever come up? Ben Bernanke: No, it doesn't. Ron Paul: And does the subject of gold ever come up in any of your conversations? Ben Bernanke: Only in terms of the sales that the central banks are planning. The I.O.U.S.A. team interviewed the Congressman for the documentary. If you didn't have a chance to see the film when it was in theaters, now's your chance. We are offering an exclusive package to long time DR sufferers: you can get the DVD (before it is released to the general public), the companion book and your own personal bailout package. Don't let this opportunity pass you by quantities are limited, and are going fast. See here for all the details: Get I.O.U.S.A. today! *** GWB - you can't say we didn't warn you. A top British judge has just announced that he considers the Bush administration's attack on Iraq as a violation of international law. Years from now, George W. Bush is likely to be charged with war crimes and human rights violations. Normally, this would pose no problem. A former U.S. president could expect the protection of the U.S. government. But as Americans sink into depression they are not likely to feel kindly towards their ex-president. They will blame him for the decline of their incomes and for the fall of their empire. They are likely to want to cooperate with the world's new institutions and throw over their own former commander-in-chief. Advice to GWB: Go back to Texas. Don't ever leave home again. *** Colleague Patrick Cox, at Breakthrough Technology Alert offers some rare optimism into this otherwise downright gloomy market: "Yes, we have been swindled by politicians who pushed the U.S. banking system into the shape it's in today. The people who tried to stop the meltdown have utterly failed to explain the root of the problem to the American people. We've officially entered recession now and policymakers will do little to address the real problems. "Though the hit the economy has suffered recently pales in comparison with the drain on world resources associated with that war, our situation is similar. We are at a point of incredible opportunities. "The reason is, in a word, science. The accelerating pace of breakthrough discoveries will deliver economic benefits that few fathom today. While the entire world will gain from these discoveries, investors who understand what we are going through now will profit most and earliest. Even better, the return on these stocks will be so great that even relatively modest investments will produce fortunes. "Let me give you a few hints about the shape of things to come. Just in the last few weeks, two groups of scientists announced the discovery of microorganisms that produce biodiesel naturally. Professor Gary Strobel from Montana State University discovered a fungus deep in the Patagonian rain forests of Argentina. This organism naturally produces the long chain hydrocarbons needed to create fuels. "Even bigger news is coming on the medical front. I predict that real stem cell therapies will be offered offshore within the year. Currently, there is a billion-dollar industry offering stem cell snake oil, but real lifesaving and life-extending therapies are already available in the laboratory. These therapies are relatively inexpensive to produce and will revolutionize medicine. Even the FDA will come around when wealthy early adopters begin reporting true rejuvenation results. By the end of Obama's first term, we will see SC and other therapies that will radically cut the cost of treating horrendously expensive illnesses." Patrick has been alerting us to a breakthrough that could change the way we view modern medicine. And when news breaks - which is rumored to happen tonight - those who have gotten in on this revolutionary idea stand to make some pretty major gains. Read all about it here. *** We got a letter from Her Majesty's government. "Winter Fuel Payments don't miss out!" Yes, dear reader, this is how societies collapse. People invent problems. Then, they find solutions to the problems. Then, the solutions cause more problems. And finally the cost of all the solutions brings the whole system falling down. A news report out today tells us that the weekend will be cold. An "arctic blast" is said to be on its way. Of course, some parts of the city already feel as though they were in a nuclear winter. London's main industry is finance. And finance has iced up. A headline in yesterday's paper told us that London is expected to lose 370,000 jobs over the next two years. But thank God for the world improvers: "Our records show that you may become eligible for a payment this winter," begins the letter. Why? Because your editor is enrolled in the Britain's national health service (a requirement for employment). NHS records must have revealed to the authorities that your editor turned 60 in September. Accordingly, he is eligible for 125 pounds to help him with his heating costs this winter. Imagine the miserable bureaucrats administering this program. They have computers to program letters to write records to keep internal procedures to devise, administer and respect. They have to hire people and then support them for the rest of their lives, paying for pensions and holiday, just like any other business. Then, they have to work out internal disputes make sure the coffee maker is working properly and organize an annual Christmas party. It probably costs more than 125 pounds to send out each check! And why should someone over 60 get money and not someone under 30? The older person has had 30 more years to stuff newspaper in the cracks, firewood in his garage and money in his bank account. If he's cold this winter it's his own damn fault. But if you're going to give him money to help him keep warm, why not some extra money to help him with his eating needs? He has to eat, doesn't he? And why doesn't HM Government just send him a bottle of Chateau Margaux? Maybe 1985. To help him with his drinking needs. Until tomorrow, Bill Bonner The Daily Reckoning --------------------- The Daily Reckoning PRESENTS: The fingers of blame are pointing every which way during the U.S. financial crisis but in Ed Bugos' opinion on a few are pointing in the right direction: toward the Federal Reserve System. Read on VOICES OF REASON STILL IN THE WILDERNESS by Ed Bugos "Karl Marx (1818-1883) originated the idea that recurrent crises are inherent in the unhampered (free) market economy. Mises has shown that 'the trade cycle is on the contrary, the inevitable effect of manipulation of the money market'" - Percy L. Greaves Jr., Mises Made Easier Occasionally I hear the odd guest on CNBC or Bloomberg Radio who lays blame for the crisis in exactly the right place - the Federal Reserve System in the U.S.or central banking more broadly. These extremely influential institutions ostensibly exist to regulate prices, employment and interest rates by way of control over the money supply. They do this by inflating bank reserve credit, on which the banks can pyramid, thus essentially abrogating the role of interest rate determination by the market. That is, the central bank tries to determine interest rates as far as it can. The rationale for this policy is to attain full employment and price stability, and to otherwise manage economic affairs. Any economist whose lenses aren't blurred by the fatal errors of the neo-classical doctrines is immediately capable of spotting the problem with that policy foundation. Unemployment could scarcely exist on a free market, where the government did not interfere with the price of labor. Just like shortages of goods cannot really exist in a market where their price is free to adjust to the reality of existing conditions, there can be no excess labor unless the government intervenes to artificially boost its price. It's the same principle. It is a simple economic fact - free of political considerations. Labor is an economic good primarily because it is scarce. Moreover, whether we are talking about labor legislation or the central bank trying to manage growth, prices and interest rates, it amounts to economic management, even planning. The apparent effect of the policy is to bring about a boom in investment and consumption the building up of bubble companies and uneconomic enterprises relying on the continued increases in the selling prices of the goods they deal in - be it widgets, homes or securities. These price increases are afforded by regular money debasement, which is one of the economic consequences of an increase in the supply of money in particular. So it is illusory. In reality, as Rothbard points out, the boom "is actually a period of wasteful misinvestment. It is the time when errors are made, due to bank credit's tampering with the free market". So this policy, and the booms it engenders, crowds out real savings (by pushing rates below market), and investment comes to rely on the continued "stimulus" of money creation or from borrowing overseas. Ultimately, it further lays the seeds of its own demise because the process invariably arrives at a point at which the central bank must desist if it does not want to prompt a run of confidence in its notes, leading to hyperinflation. This is why we say the policy is "unsustainable." Thus it tries to withdraw the stimulus or "tighten" money and credit - explaining that the overheated economy might produce inflation. The error in its thinking is that it is managing a delicate balance between price stability and growth that it checks market failures, and can know the unknowable (the future). In fact, almost all economists would agree, it cannot produce growth. It's like the analogy of pushing on a string. The Fed's policy can only increase employment by decreasing the relative cost of labor through inflation (the expansion of money supply relative to demand). And as one of the largest of interventions conducted by government policy, it only produces more instability - i.e. the boom-bust cycle as well as interest rate and foreign exchange volatility eventually. Technically, tampering with the rate of interest produces disequilibrium as a mismatch between consumer preferences and producers' investment plans - during the boom phases. Effectively, it taxes long run growth, and is but a massive redistribution of wealth from savers to borrowers and speculators. The bust, which often begins with the onset of a financial crisis, brings much pain, and threatens job losses on a wide-scale. But this is because the artificially low rate of interest produced by the previous policy, which could not be sustained, produced waste, a "cluster of error" as Rothbard called it. This "malinvestment" or uneconomic activity is essentially exposed as the subsidy is withdrawn. In his book, America's Great Depression, Rothbard posits the error in Marx's reasoning, "In the purely free and unhampered market, there will be no cluster of errors, since trained entrepreneurs will not all make errors at the same time." What you see then is basically the widespread failure of parasitic enterprises that could not survive on their own - without the handouts and support of the central bank. This is the empirical evidence that should indict any inflation policy. But, the bust still merely represents a return to natural market ratios. "The 'depression' is actually the process by which the economy adjusts to the wastes and errors of the boom, and reestablishes efficient service of consumer desires. The adjustment process consists in rapid liquidation of the wasteful investments" (Rothbard) It follows then, that "Attempts to interfere with free and flexible prices, wage and interest rates prevent recovery and prolong the depression period" (Mises Made Easier) Efforts to stabilize the bust with even more inflation effectively prevent the liquidation of uneconomic enterprises necessary to return the economy to equilibrium, where markets reflect actual conditions. Now, I'm not a policy maker. I don't want to suggest the best way to fix the world or argue why these theories are true. My chief concern is the future. And the evidence that most people would side with Marx on this (over Mises et al) is all I need to predict more inflation, war and higher gold prices. Joe Public can't for the life of him figure out why it matters if interest rates are 1.5% or 1%. He cannot connect the escalating price at the pump to the process of money creation required to bring about such a modest change in the interest rate. The tech bust was the fault of irrational speculators, and greedy investment bankers. The housing bust is blamed on Wall Street's larceny, his mortgage and real estate brokers, or the thrust toward deregulation. The painful increase in commodity prices is caused by too much growth. The growing trade deficit is caused by new competition from foreign countries. And so on. For, Joe takes his cue not from Mises, but from the media and political classes under heavy influence by the progressive institutions. Political leaders in Europe, meanwhile, are taking full advantage of Joe to wage a new war on capitalism from the left on grounds that American style capitalism is in dire need of more regulation. This is the great evil of the inflation policy. It is insidious. The great economists have all recognized this truth. It only produces the opposite of what it claims to accomplish. It also funds the growth of government and anti-capitalist sentiment, and other confused ideas that may lead, ultimately, to the general disintegration in the division of labor, the fabric of society. It promotes moral degradation and corruption, conflict, and finances wars. It is 80% of what's wrong with the world. But for the most part, the voices of reason that point to this cause are trampled over by the rhetoric of the larger political class, which fear mongers people into clamoring for more money and credit. This truth is evident in the Fed's actions. It has abandoned any remnants of conservatism, as have the other central banks worldwide. The helicopter blades are in full swing. So any enthusiasm about the world having reached this place where it is ready to turn a new leaf must be tempered by this fact. The voices of reason, though on the beltway, are still only voices in the wilderness. This alone suggests we are going to continue to see more inflation, taxes and government. The scary part is that this process is accelerating. The next bubble may well be in gold. Good trading, Ed Bugos for The Daily Reckoning Editor's Note: The above was taken from the latest issue of Gold & Options Trader. To read more, click here. Before starting up Gold & Options Trader, Ed comes straight from the North American heart of the gold market - Vancouver's Howe Street. During the nasty commodity bear market in the '90s, Ed still guided his clients to gold profits in Argentina Gold and Arequipa, both of which became buyout bait for Barrick. He also founded the "Bugos Gold Stock Index" which included no more than 10 stocks at any time. -- Posted Wednesday, 19 November 2008 | Digg This Article | Source: GoldSeek.com Previous Articles by Bill Bonner & The Daily Reckoning Crew We'd like to offer you The Daily Reckoning, a FREE daily e-mail service written by entrepreneur and master financial newsletter publisher Bill Bonner. It offers a'refreshingly witty, erudite... sensible' look at the day's stock news. One reader says The Daily Reckoning offers'more sense in one e-mail than a month of CNBC.' You can begin your free subscription by clicking here, entering your email into the box, and clicking 'Subscribe'.MONTREAL — Health Minister Rona Ambrose ordered a crackdown on groups that illegally advertise marijuana and re-stated the Conservative party's pledge to keep storefront dispensaries illegal Saturday on the eve of the expected launch of a federal election campaign. "Today I directed Health Canada to create a task force to crack down on illegal marijuana advertising," Ambrose said in a statement. "This task force will ensure that those who engage in such illegal activities are stopped, and should these illegal activities continue, promptly referred to law enforcement." Health Canada issued a statement saying it will begin actively monitoring marijuana advertising instead of acting mostly on the basis of complaints. Under current law, only regulated parties such as licenced producers are allowed to advertise basic, non-promotional information. Ambrose's pre-campaign statement made multiple references to Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau and described his stance on marijuana as "irresponsible." "While Justin Trudeau wants to legalize marijuana making it easier for youth to buy and smoke, this Conservative Government does not support making access to illegal drugs easier," she said. The Liberals countered that the Conservatives' approach to marijuana is an "unmitigated failure." Liberal MP Hedy Fry said in an emailed statement that a 2013 UNICEF study found that Canada has the highest level of cannabis use among teenagers of all the countries in the developed world. "Ms. Ambrose's ideology fails Canadians," Fry said. Although medical marijuana can be legally obtained with a prescription, the Conservative government has made no secret of the fact that it disapproves. "The Government of Canada does not endorse the use of marijuana, but the courts have required reasonable access to a legal source of marijuana when authorized by a healthcare practitioner," Health Canada's statement read. Ambrose has been especially vocal on the issue, saying marijuana has not been proven safe nor effective as a medicine. She rebuked the City of Vancouver in June for its decision to regulate the dozens of marijuana dispensaries that have flourished despite laws preventing pot from being sold online or in storefronts. Ambrose said she ordered a more proactive approach to enforcing the advertising rules due to the rise of such dispensaries in cities across Canada. "Dispensaries, whether they are online or a store-front, are illegal and they should not be allowed to advertise these illegal services," she wrote. Marijuana advocate Jodie Emery said the government's opposition to advertising marijuana was based on "an ideological...rather than a scientifically health-based approach." She said the strict ban on advertising did a disservice to Canadians who wish to inform themselves. "Many patients, especially seniors in Canada's aging population need information about marijuana and medical marijuana," she told The Canadian Press. "It prevents the ability of Canadians to get information that they are interested in and require." Prime Minister Stephen Harper is expected to launch the federal election campaign as early as Sunday. Also on HuffPostTired of the one-sided and often misogynistic narrative of the pickup artist (PUA), visual artist Angela Washko wanted to provide a more complex understanding of PUAs by recasting their stories from women’s perspectives. Washko chose to focus on prolific PUA Roosh V after reading his book BANG. Roosh blogs and has written a series of books outlining tactics for seducing women in different countries, and he stands out among other PUAs as especially anti-feminist and anti-“progressive” women. Rather than rehash the two dominant narratives — that PUAs are sinister, misogynistic swindlers who prey on women or that it’s all fun and games and women are easily manipulated and clueless — Washko wanted to complicate them. With the help of an Internet Art Microgrant from Rhizome at the New Museum, Washko started BANGED, a project through which she aimed to create a web-based platform to tell the stories of women who’ve had relationships with Roosh V. As a research component, she began by compiling online testimonies from women who’d had exchanges with any pickup artists. “I wanted to know what might lead someone to frame their entire worldview and existence in opposition to women not relying exclusively on men,” Washko told me over email at the very beginning of the project. “Ultimately, because Roosh makes so much of himself, his process, and his politics blatantly clear and available for all to see, it became more interesting to me to imagine who he sleeps with, what they are like, why they were interested in him, and how they perceived his seduction practice.” Eventually, in a shift toward a deeper investigation into Roosh and his work, Washko managed to interview him in an epic, two-hour-long conversation that’s well worth a watch. But the interview also scattered the focus of the project in many different directions, and Washko found herself becoming one of the subjects of the work, facing unwarranted scrutiny from Roosh and his community online. Unsure of how to present the interviews without Roosh feeling exploited, worried about protecting her sources from the negative attention she was receiving, and paralyzed from thinking about the problems of the initial impulses
one - since his cult has dealings with him before. Something about him had clearly changed (the player, haha) He gave us the information about the 4 other locations, and said they all made a rough pentagram, with the Palace spire being the vocal point. The wizard worked out that if they needed to make such a shape, then the ritual was dependant on such geometry, but if could take out one section and it still worked, the focal point must be the palace spire. My character, the a former knight Captain of the now Tyrant king (I had a few levels of Paladin in there too, but had been shamed out of mentioning them us far), knew the Palace lay out well enough to draw a detail map, detail enough for a teleport. True to his word, Sir Peter helped the cultist up, use his lay-on-hands to fix him up, but told him that he had to lock him in a holding cell until this was all over. He said sorry, but it was necessary if we were to retain surprise. We made our plans, and teleported in to my Knights old barrack rooms. The men stood to attention, still evidentially loyal to me, and in the presence of the rightful king. We got the details of what had been happening inside, turns out they were actually trapped in the room by some sort of ward on the otherside. Clearly things were going down. However, we ended the session there.The driver who made headlines earlier this year after knocking over a Shanghai traffic cop with his SUV and dragging him to death stood trial for the first today, claiming that he did not intentionally harm the officer, xinmin.cn reports. The incident occurred in Shanghai’s Minhang district on March 11 when officer Mao Shengquan, 32, had attempted to stop driver Sun Haojie as he was taking a left at the wrong lane. When Mao approached the car and reached through the window, Sun suddenly accelerated, and the officer was dragged for a few meters until he landed on the ground. Sun drove off from the scene and stopped after about 100 meters to turn himself in. To add to the tragedy of it all, officer Mao’s wife was pregnant and due to give birth in a month. Sun claims that he “stepped on the gas pedal too heavily” and didn’t realize the cop was being dragged behind his vehicle. He was charged for intentional injury, and the court will decide whether or not the man’s accelerating was indeed accidental. Similar cases have emerged in the wake of the incident, which gained nationwide attention. Just a couple of months later, a driver in Hunan knocked over a cop and dragged him along the road for 80 meters, seriously injuring him. The man blamed his reckless driving on a “bad day”. Share this: Pocket Telegram PrintWarren Buffett — chairman and CEO of global conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway and one of the wealthiest people in the world — hauls in a good deal of revenue from Berkshire-owned auto insurer Geico. But in the long term, Buffett thinks, insurers like Geico are going to be bringing in less money as self-driving cars start to take over. Appearing on CNBC this morning, Buffett had this to say when asked if autonomous driving would be "an issue" for the auto insurance industry: "The answer is yes. I think it's a long way off, but there's no question. Anything that makes cars safer is very pro-social, and it's bad for the auto insurance industry. But nevertheless, the auto insurance industry has always worked on making cars safer. I mean, they've led the way on things like seat belts and all that. But if there are no accidents, then no need for insurance. And I think there will be a big reduction in accidents over a longer period of time. And of course there already has — cars have been made way, way safer, but now when you start making the driver safer, that would be a big, big jump, and that will happen some day, and when it happens there will be a lot less auto insurance written." Buffett said something similar at Berkshire's annual meeting in 2014, but he doesn't touch on why less auto insurance will be written: is it because cars will become so safe that required levels and types of coverage will decrease? Or because automakers will assume liability on drivers' behalves? Or both? "When it happens there will be a lot less auto insurance written." Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman Charlie Munger, appearing with Buffett this morning, went on to note that "people are gonna want to drive faster than the speed limit, and so forth, and the software's not gonna allow it." Safer driving, safer cars, fewer accidents — good for humanity, bad for the liability business, it turns out. Munger then pointed out that his company has "experienced technological destruction before," saying that Bill Gates (who was also a part of the interview) had come out with a software-based encyclopedia — presumably referring to Microsoft Encarta — that decimated one of Berkshire's businesses. "We had this wonderful company that made this wonderful encyclopedia that earns $50 million of income every year like clockwork. And Bill gave away a free encyclopedia with every bit of Microsoft software, and away went a large part of our profits from the encyclopedia business forever," he lamented. Liability is widely seen as one of the biggest barriers to rapid adoption of self-driving technology, because questions still remain about who takes the blame in various scenarios. "It's certainly more than 15 years off before it'll be a meaningful percentage of cars driven," Gates predicted. In the US, regulators have been moving pretty rapidly this year to start the rulemaking process — but even with enthusiasm and full support from stakeholders, it's a process that will likely take several years. It's a bad idea to let your Tesla drive itselfIn 1971 Philip Zimbardo conducted one of the most widely known social psychology experiments of all time. A professor at Stanford University, Zimbardo recruited 18 college-aged male students to play the role of guards and inmates in a makeshift prison he would construct in the basement of the psychology department. After just one day of the experiment, these students quickly internalized the roles of the powerful and the powerless. "Guards" became increasingly abusive and cruel toward "prisoners." The prisoners responded first by resisting and then by succumbing to despair and a sense of learned helplessness. Although the experiment was originally planned for two weeks, Zimbardo stopped his experiment after six days. The lesson had been learned: When the correct group dynamics are present — and a set of rules legitimate the behavior — otherwise "normal" and "good" individuals will abuse and bully other human beings. Advertisement: In the almost five decades since Zimbardo conducted what is now known as the Stanford Prison Experiment, there has been an increase in the coarseness and meanness of America's popular culture. What has been described as a "culture of cruelty" is the new normal and surveillance is omnipresent. Political polarization and dysfunction have broken the standing norms and rules of good governance in Washington, trust in political and social institutions such as the news media has declined, authoritarianism has increased among conservatives, the social safety net has been torn apart and the nation's police continue to abuse and kill black and brown Americans with near impunity. This is "social dominance behavior" filtered through racism and the neoliberal economic order. The sum total of these (and other) factors has resulted in the election of the neofascist Donald Trump as president of the United States. In many ways, Trump's election was a decision by millions of American voters to punish their fellow citizens. These people were encouraged and enabled in this desire to do harm by their leaders in the right-wing media and by Trump himself. How can social psychology help us understand this moment? What lessons does the Stanford Prison Experiment hold for American society in 2017? Are Donald Trump's supporters swept up in a wave of authoritarianism and bullying? Can they be stopped? Why are conservatives so hostile to people they perceive as "the other"? What can we do to resist Donald Trump and fight back against the feelings of hopelessness and trauma that many Americans have experienced since his election in November? In an effort to answer these questions, I recently spoke with Zimbardo, now a professor emeritus at Stanford and also president of the Heroic Imagination Project. He has written dozens of articles and books, most recently "The Time Paradox: The New Psychology of Time That Will Change Your Life" and "The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil." Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity. A longer version can be heard on my podcast, available on Salon’s Featured Audio page. You have given talks all over the world about your research. With the election of Donald Trump, what is the view from abroad? How are people in other countries reacting to what they are seeing in America? Advertisement: It’s an embarrassment. They keep saying, “We don’t understand Americans. We thought you were smart people." They all loved Obama overseas. He was smart. He was articulate. He was a minority. He made very good decisions. This guy comes in who is a billionaire. He’s used to having his own way and runs the White House like it’s his corporation; he makes decisions without conferring with his staff or his party. He believes climate change is a hoax despite all the evidence. He doesn’t believe in science. Then what’s even more embarrassing is a president that tweets online like a little kid. In terms of the "common man," do you think that some of his voters are living vicariously through him? I am of the mind that a lot of Trump's voters supported him precisely because they felt like he would punish somebody: It could be Muslims; it could be black and brown people. Is that too harsh? I think you’re right. I think that a lot of people who are relatively powerless sign on to people who have power and live vicariously through them. With Trump they can say, “Wow! That’s amazing. No president ever has done what he’s done or [has ever used] Twitter as his personal message system to say whatever he wants to say and to do whatever he wants to do." Consider his program "The Apprentice." It was an embarrassing television show but it remained popular. The program essentially revolved around Trump saying, “Dismissed; get out,” and then people are in tears. I think there are people who resonate to that and say, “Wow! Wouldn’t it be great to have that much power to be the boss, the No. 1?” For me, that’s the opposite of what a democracy is. Advertisement: In America even though our president was democratically elected, what we are seeing is the equivalent of right-wing totalitarianism building up in our country where you do things not for the power of the people but the power of the leaders. That’s essentially what totalitarianism is — a small inner group that dictates what everybody else will do and they take it or leave it. There is a great amount of research on brain structures and how conservatives are biologically primed to overreact to fear. Can we teach people to be less fearful and less vulnerable to these types of demagogues? Education. We have a lot of data on how Trump is having a really negative effect on Muslim kids, minority kids, on Jewish kids. We’re seeing this with the burning of mosques, burning of synagogues. There are a lot of kids who are riding the Trump train to be bullies and say, “This is what our president says. If our president says that you are no good, then you are no good." One of the things about bullying that people don’t realize is how bystanders who do nothing are also impacted. Advertisement: That is a very important aspect of bullying culture that rarely gets commented upon. We have a lot of evidence that [onlookers] feel shame for the rest of their life because almost always it was one of their friends getting bullied and they did nothing. Bullying is now a major problem. Recent research says that bullying in corporations is on the rise and it costs 10 percent of profits because people who are bullied work less efficiently; they call in sick and often they quit their job and then there are replacement costs. Now with Trump, there’s a presidential justification for it. What do you think is going on with Trump's psychology? Is there a grand strategy at work or is he just a man-child and a malignant narcissist? Advertisement: Trump is an unconstrained present hedonist. As kids, all of us are hedonists. We’re born as babies, we want pleasure and avoid pain, we live in the moment Because in order to be future oriented, it depends on development of the forebrain. Future orientation really is an advantage that humans have over animals. Animals live for the moment. You’re hungry, you forage and you eat. My sense is that Trump lives in a totally present hedonistic world. He makes decisions on the spur of the moment without thinking of the consequences. That’s OK if you’re a kid. It also is the basis for all addictions. Addiction is destructive. You know the future consequences, but [but research is never used] to change current behavior. That is Trump: an unconstrained, unbridled present hedonist. Future and present hedonistic people are action-oriented. They do and then they think. Future-oriented people think, and then they do or they do not. Many Americans have been traumatized by this election. They are afraid. You have written a great deal about heroism. What is a hero? And how can we use your theories about heroism to resist Donald Trump and the fascist movement he represents? Advertisement: A hero is someone who helps another person in need, in an emergency, and aware that there’s a potential risk. Or it’s being willing to stand up to defend a moral cause as a whistleblower does, aware that there’s a cost. You often don’t get promoted or you lose your job, but you do it nevertheless. That’s a classic definition of a hero. It’s taking an action that requires moral courage, not bravery. Bravery is heroism and the battle of first responders. What we have been promoting with our Heroic Imagination Project is the idea of training people to be everyday heroes in training; meaning you just practice daily deeds of goodness, daily deeds of kindness, daily deeds of compassion. What does that mean? It means everybody you meet — make them feel special, learn their name, make eye contact, shake hands, give them a compliment, remember their name. Do little deeds, holding the door open in the elevator, helping people. For example, when you give money to a homeless person, don’t just give them money, ask their name, give your name. It’s creating a sense of caring compassion, a community. Heroism is compassion put into civic action. You are perhaps most well known for the Stanford Prison Experiment. In hindsight, how do you feel about it? Advertisement: It’s the most widely known experiment in psychological history. I would do it again. Only I would not play the role of superintendent because in that role you get sucked into it. It was me and two students working around the clock. The prison is breaking down every day. There are parents visiting, parole board hearings, police and prison chaplains coming. There’s escape rumors. It was overwhelming. I know I could not have gone another week. What lessons do you think the Stanford Prison Experiment holds for American society at present? What was dramatic about the study was the rapidity and ease with which intelligent college students who were otherwise normal and healthy followed their roles as prisoners and guards. We gave them no clue of what it means to be a guard. You know, in our culture prison guards are people who have power over prisoners who have less power — except that prisoners have the power of numbers. Guards have to convince prisoners that even though there are fewer of them, they have the weapons; they have other means of power to suppress them. You make them feel helpless and ineffectual. What scares you right now? What gives you hope? Advertisement: Despite all the Trumpism, I’m optimistic about human nature that right will prevail over wrong. Heroism will prevail over evil. For me, again as an educator, it’s really important that teachers have to be anti-Trump in their own political mentality, their own morality. Whether or not they can present those political views in class, they can certainly prevent the Trump political views from being espoused. When kids act Trump-like, they can stop it cold. They can stop Trump-like bullying. They could call it for what it is. I’m optimistic that Trump and his ideals will go away and people will laugh about it in the near future while saying, How could we have been so stupid?If, like a large part of the poker world, you are wondering where Phil Ivey is these days, the answer is not Vegas. He is in fact travelling to Beijing to promote the Chinese poker app ‘Zhi Zou’. There is a promotional tournament involved, which will take place on September 23rd, with Phil Ivey set to play. Players can attempt to qualify via the poker app Zhi You, with the field size capped at 100 players. For players who are able to gain entry through points challenges or satellites, the event will include heads-up exhibition games and a chat with Ivey himself, along with a souvenir photo. Ivey has released a video encouraging players to qualify through the app, and Chinese fans have been encouraged to retweet it. Building relationships in Asia In a time when poker’s elite are competing for the purple jacket over in Las Vegas, Ivey is once again highlighting the fact that his strongest ties are with Asia. Ivey has supported other Asian projects before now, most notably the Poker King Club and Paul Phua’s Poker School project, and now he lends his weight to another fledgling venture with Zhi You. Messages posted on Chinese social media underlined the fact that, although money helps to persuade global stars to endorse a product, Ivey is also very keen to ensure that he maintains close relationships within the Asian poker world. Article by Craig Bradshaw More: Where is Phil Ivey?Play Facebook Twitter Embed Joe Biden Wants to Know 'What in the Hell' Donald Trump Is Talking About 1:23 autoplay autoplay Copy this code to your website or blog PHILADELPHIA—Vice President Joe Biden returned to the campaign trail for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton Tuesday with nothing but scorn for her Republican rival Donald Trump. In front of a young crowd at Drexel University, Biden excoriated Trump for two comments in particular from the first presidential debate Monday: one on taxes and the other on the housing burst of 2008. “He acknowledged that he didn’t pay taxes because he said... because he’s smart; makes him smart,” Biden said, referring to an interjection Trump made when Clinton suggested he possibly did not pay federal taxes. Related: Analysis: Clinton Studies Up for Debate, and It Pays Off “Tell that to the janitor in here who’s paying taxes!” answered Biden raising his voice. “Tell that to your mothers and fathers who are breaking their neck to send you here, they’re paying taxes... It angers me, it angers me,” Biden added. The former senator from Delaware also criticized comments from Trump suggesting that the housing bubble collapse of 2008 was “good business” for him. “What in the hell is he talking about?” the vice president wondered aloud to the few hundred gathered at Drexel’s “Great Court.” Watch: The Best Zingers From Trump and Clinton at the Debate “Can you imagine Ronald Reagan... saying it’s good business to take advantage of people’s misery? Rooting for that misery?” he said bitingly. Biden made an impassioned plea to the young people in the room to get out and vote for Clinton. He acknowledged that while many millennials are not "overjoyed" with Trump or Clinton, President Trump is not an acceptable outcome. Biden concluded with a defiant optimistic message that the United States was second to no country. "We own the future, we own the finish line!" He concluded to cheers.× VBC’s Propst Arena to Host Free Football Sunday Viewing in Huntsville HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WHNT) – Huntsville’s Propst Arena will host free, all-day NFL watch parties for the next four Sundays. Downtown Huntsville Inc. CEO Chad Emerson says when he asked Von Braun Center officials about the idea of turning the 9,000-seat arena into a free viewing party for pro football fans and fantasy football leagues, the civic center was totally on board. “Well we have an indoor football team that plays there and there’s a lot of TVs and a good pub in the Bud Light Café so we figured all of those pieces together makes a great place on Sunday afternoon to come down for great views of the park and a free place to watch all the games all day long,” Emerson explains. Emerson says big-screen TVs throughout the arena will broadcast every NFL game – from noon kickoffs to the final whistle. Other televisions will be tuned to NASCAR. The arena’s Bud Light Café will be serving food and offering $3 beer specials. “The venue is fabulous,” says Emerson, “The Bud Light Café at Propst Arena is full of natural light, it’s convenient to get to, the TVs look good, there’ll be food and beverage specials; it;s just going to be the go-to place for football fans in Huntsville on a Sunday afternoon.” “Propst Arena Pro Football Sundays” start this Sunday, Oct. 13, and return on Oct. 20, Oct. 27 and Nov. 3. Here’s the NFL lineup for Oct. 13: Bengals at Bills, noon Lions at Browns, noon Rams at Texans, noon Steelers at Jets, noon Packers at Ravens, noon Panthers at Vikings, noon Raiders at Chiefs, noon Eagles at Buccaneers, noon Titans at Seahawks, 3:05 p.m. Jaguars at Broncos, 3:05 p.m. Saints at Patriots, 3:25 p.m. Cardinals at 49ers, 3:25 p.m. Redskins at Cowboys, 7:30 p.m.Dissident BJP MP from Gondia-Bhandara Nana Patole continued to spit fire against “party’s policies”, saying he is slated to meet Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi during the forthcoming Winter Session of Parliament “on the latter’s request”. Advertising Patole, however, kept dodging queries regarding his possible voluntary exit from the party. “The party should carefully see for itself. I am getting invited by many other parties. I am not intending to quit the party. My point is only about exhorting the party to take corrective steps on many issues, the agrarian crisis in particular about which I have long been speaking out,” Patole said at a press conference in Nagpur on Thursday. The outspoken MP, who had stirred a hornet’s nest about two months ago, when he said at a public function here that Prime Minister Narendra Modi doesn’t like to be questioned or criticised, attacked BJP spokesman Madhav Bhandari for his earlier remarks. Advertising “Bhandari, who had gone into hiding upon not being made MLC, should keep off me and should address the issues confronting people. And he should check records when he says I should raise the issues at party forum and not in public. I have raised these issues with PM, in parliament and at party’s Pune convention,” Patole said. “I can take the bulls by their horns (koni angavar ala tar shingavar gheu shakto),” Patole thundered. Patole also announced that he is going to hold a farmers’ rally at Akola on December 1, which would be attended by senior party leaders Yashwant Sinha and Shatrughan Sinha. “The rally is for highlighting the problems of cotton, soyabean and paddy farmers in Vidarbha. Both the state and Central government should address the issue honestly since number of farmers’ suicides has shot very high up. My whole fight with Modi was on this issue,” he said. Patole also asked, “they said demonetisation has benefited the country. They should tell the people as to how much black money has been detected. They said they have unearthed Rs 300 crore from a man in Hyderabad. I checked from my sources to find that there was no such person there.” Asked why he doesn’t meet RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, who has also flagged the issue of informal sectors and farmers and who wields moral authority over BJP, Patole said, “if they don’t listen to even him, why should I go and meet him?” Asked why he doesn’t resign from the party which he is so disillusioned with, Patole said, “I only want that in the remaining two years the party should mend its ways and do something good for people, particularly farmers. And I don’t have any fascination for power. I came to this party when they had poor presence in 2009 and I had won as an independent then.” When persistent queries about why he wished to continue in a party that doesn’t listen to him, Patole quipped, “let them declare that they have ushered in Peshwai then I will see.” The term Peshwai is derisively used by some historians to describe “misrule” under Brahmin Peshwa rulers of Maharashtra.” Advertising Patole also flagged issues concerning OBCs like scholarships to OBC students. “Modi was touted as OBC leader but OBC students are not getting scholarships. Instead of an OBC, someone else got the jacket to wear,” Patole said in an oblique reference to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis.The idea of slipping sensors and controls into clothing isn't exactly new — you'll read stories about it every now and then. Connected workout clothes for monitoring your heart rate or other vitals without having to wear a wristband or chest strap. Or maybe you're just talking a hoodie with built-in Bluetooth. Whatever. Google's ATAP — Advanced Technology And Projects — is the force behind the likes of Project Tango and Project Ara — has been showing off its latest endeavors this week at Google I/O, including the new Project Soli, which uses a miniature radar to track hand movements. And Project Jacquard fits right in that same sort of future tech, building touch-capable sensors into fabric. The demos at Google I/O include swiping on fabric to control some Philips Hue smart lights. A tap turns them on or off. A swipe up or down increases or decreases the brightness. Swipe horizontally to change the color. Never mind the application, it's the idea that's impressive. As is the response time, basically the same as if you swiped on a traditional touchpad on a phone, or maybe more like the trackpad on a laptop computer.Unclaimed land and “ghost homes” can be found all over Japan, thanks to the country’s dwindling population. A private research group headed by a former government minister today warned that the area (link in Japanese) of vacant land and homes could by 2040 be as big as Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido—about 83,000 sq km (32,000 sq miles), or the size of Austria. The area is currently about 41,000 sq km, slightly bigger than Japan’s southern island of Kyushu. Many of Japan’s 8 million ghost homes—or akiya—are often left empty indefinitely. Once the owner of the land or the house dies, it’s difficult to track down the heir to the property to proceed with any action like tearing down the building. It also makes it impossible for local authorities to collect property taxes without knowing the identity of the landowner—some municipalities continue to levy taxes under the dead person’s name when the heir cannot be identified. Re-registering title deeds (paywall) is also bureaucratic and expensive. Land ownership issues have hindered the reconstruction of the Tohoku region, which was destroyed by the tsunami and earthquake in 2011, according to the Tokyo Foundation, a think tank. Abandoned houses are also fire hazards, while untreated rubbish, overgrown vegetation, and deteriorating structures can pose health and safety risks. Even where homes have identifiable heirs, they are often unable to sell because there’s a lack of interested buyers—many of these houses are in rural areas or suburbs (paywall) unattractive to young buyers, while Japanese people are also reluctant to buy second-hand homes. Only 15% of homes sold in Japan are second-hand, compared to 90% in the US and the UK, according to the Financial Times (paywall). To facilitate buying, many local governments list akiya on dedicated websites, such as this one in Fukui prefecture (link in Japanese). The site provides not only the basic specs of the empty houses, but also the level of maintenance each one requires. In some cases, where the owner can be identified, local authorities provide a subsidy (paywall) to aid in demolishing the home. The Japanese government passed a law in 2015 allowing local governments to penalize owners of akiya who don’t demolish or refurbish the homes. That year, Yokosuka, a city near Tokyo that hosts a large US military base, became the first city in Japan to tear down a house under the new “Law for Special Measures to Promote Dealing with Vacant Houses.” The land ministry on Monday announced preliminary plans to allow the utilization (link in Japanese) of properties that have been left unclaimed for five years for “beneficial” purposes such as agriculture. The research group mentioned above also estimated that (link in Japanese) economic losses in 2016 from abandoned properties totaled ¥180 billion ($1.6 billion), with the annual figure rising to ¥310 billion by 2040. Hiroya Masuda, the former minister who chaired the group, warned in a 2014 book that about 900 cities, towns, and villages in Japan would be extinct by 2040.MONTREAL — When a referendum-battered Jean Chrétien plucked Stéphane Dion out of academia in 1995 few would have predicted that the Montreal university professor would one day become the lead contender for the title of Energizer Bunny in the House of Commons. Almost two decades later it seems he will not call it quits until he has outlasted all his political contemporaries. Once vilified by the Conservatives, Stephane Dion would love to be part of the team that defeats them in the next election, writes Chantal Hébert. ( Adrian Wyld / The Canadian Press file photo ) Dion is already the second-longest serving Quebec MP in Parliament, after the Bloc Québécois’ Louis Plamondon. The two prime ministers he served under have retired, as have his most notable former leadership rivals. The sovereignty movement he came to Parliament to fight after the 1995 referendum is in disarray. Dion’s former Bloc detractors may be on the verge of parliamentary extinction. Article Continued Below In the same circumstances, most other politicians would declare their mission accomplished. And yet Dion, who first ran in a 1996 byelection, is poised to stand as the Liberal candidate in the Montreal riding of St-Laurent—Cartierville for an eighth time next year. If he is re-elected next year he will celebrate the 20th anniversary of the last referendum in Parliament. Some MPs stick around because they have nothing better to do but with two independence votes coming up in Scotland and Catalonia this fall, Dion’s expertise is in demand at home and abroad. He also is the Canadian politician most identified to the climate change issue on the international environment circuit these days. What could possibly keep him on the political treadmill? When I caught up with a vacationing Dion earlier this month, he noted — with a smile in his voice — that he would have left a decade ago if Paul Martin’s team had not tried to use the prospect of a nomination challenge to rush him out the door. Article Continued Below He adds that had Justin Trudeau been keen to use his relatively safe riding to bring in new blood, he would not be running next year. He says Trudeau thought the experience he brought to the Liberal mix was worth keeping. On balance Trudeau is better off with Dion in his lineup. So far his Quebec election slate is challenged for gravitas. In Quebec, the Liberal leader has his work cut out for him convincing many francophone voters that his party is not just that of his father. Dion’s presence reinforces that message. Over his decades in federal politics, he has consistently defended the Quebec language laws. In his previous academic life, Dion was a supporter of the Meech Lake Accord. Pierre Trudeau fought tooth and nail against both. And then over the past few years the terms of the Quebec conversation have changed for the better for Chrétien’s post-referendum champion. In 2004 Martin wanted Dion out, the better to woo nationalist Quebecers. A decade ago, the Bloc was Quebec’s dominant party and Dion’s clarity act made for cumbersome baggage for the Liberal party to carry in nationalist territory. That load is lighter today and not just because Scotland’s straightforward approach to an upcoming independence referendum is bringing leading sovereigntists around to the virtues of clarity. The sovereignty movement’s failure to adapt to a generational change has it running on empty. That same generational change has benefited Dion. For many younger Quebec voters, the referendum and the constitutional wars are ancient history. In their eyes, Dion’s climate change credentials are more relevant than his federalist battle scars. Dion says he is staying in the game to participate in setting the country in another direction, under a “better” prime minister. Almost 20 years on, that has him running to the beat of the same anti-Conservative drummer as an overwhelming majority of his fellow Quebecers. They are as united in their wish to turn the page on the Harper era these days as they used to be divided over their political future. But there is also a personal side to Dion’s resolve to be part of the next election fight. In the same way that the prospect of taking on a Trudeau son (and beating him) is one of Stephen Harper’s incentives for seeking a fourth mandate, little would give the former Liberal leader more satisfaction than seeing the Conservative team that so vilified him defeated. Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer. Her column appears Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Read more about:The Masrur Temples, also referred to as Masroor Temples or Rock-cut Temples at Masrur, is an early 8th-century complex of rock-cut Hindu temples in the Kangra Valley of Beas River in Himachal Pradesh, India.[2] The temples face northeast, towards the Dhauladhar range of the Himalayas.[1] They are a version of North Indian Nagara architecture style, dedicated to Shiva, Vishnu, Devi and Saura traditions of Hinduism, with its surviving iconography likely inspired by a henotheistic framework. Though a major temples complex in the surviving form, the archaeological studies suggest that the artists and architects had a far more ambititious plan and the complex remains incomplete. Much of the Masrur's temple's sculpture and reliefs have been lost. They were also quite damaged, most likely from earthquakes.[1] The temples were carved out of monolithic rock with a shikhara, and provided with a sacred pool of water as recommended by Hindu texts on temple architecture.[1] The temple has three entrances on its northeast, southeast and northwest side, two of which are incomplete. Evidence suggests that a fourth entrance was planned and started but left mostly incomplete, something acknowledged by the early 20th-century colonial era archaeology teams but ignored leading to misidentification and erroneous reports.[1] The entire complex is symmetrically laid out on a square grid, where the main temple is surrounded by smaller temples in a mandala pattern. The main sanctum of the temples complex has a square plan, as do other shrines and the mandapa. The temples complex features reliefs of major Vedic and Puranic gods and goddesses, and its friezes narrate legends from the Hindu texts.[1][2] The temple complex was first reported by Henry Shuttleworth in 1913 bringing it to the attention of archaeologists.[3] They were independently surveyed by Harold Hargreaves of the Archaeological Survey of India in 1915. According to Michael Meister, an art historian and a professor specializing in Indian temple architecture, the Masrur temples are a surviving example of a temple mountain-style Hindu architecture which embodies the earth and mountains around it.[1] Location [ edit ] The Masrur Temples are about 45 kilometres (28 mi) southwest of the Dharmashala-McLeod Ganj and 35 kilometres (22 mi) west from the Kangra town in the mountainous state of Himachal Pradesh in north India. The temple is built in the Beas River valley, in the foothills of the Hamalayas, facing the snowy peaks of the Dhauladhar range. The temples are about 225 kilometres (140 mi) northwest from Shimla, about 150 kilometres (93 mi) north of Jalandhar and about 85 kilometres (53 mi) east of Pathankot. The nearest railway station is Nagrota Surian, and the nearest airport is Dharamshala(IATA: DHM). The closest major airports with daily services are Amritsar and Jammu.[1][2] The temple is located in the Himalayan foothills. Above: the damaged structure with sacred pool in the front. The rock-cut temple is located in the valley, on the top of a naturally rocky hill, which Hargreaves in 1915 described as, "standing some 2,500 feet above sea level, and commanding, as they [Hindu temples] do, a magnificent view over a beautiful, well-watered and fertile tract, their situation, though remote, is singularly pleasing".[4] According to Khan, the Hindu temples in Masrur show similarities to the Elephanta Caves near Mumbai (1,900 km away), Angkor Wat in Cambodia (4,000 km away), and the rock-cut temples of Mahabalipuram in Tamil Nadu (2,700 km away). The features also suggest the influence of "Gupta classicism", and therefore he places their construction in the 8th century.[5] The area around the temple complex has caves and ruins which, states Khan, suggests that the Masrur region once had a large human settlement. According to Meister, the temples are from the first half of the 8th century based on the regional political and art history.[7] The temples follow one version of the Nagara architecture, a style that developed in Central India, particularly during the rule of the Hindu king Yasovarman, an art patron.[note 1] In Kashmir, a region immediately north and northwest of the site, Hindus built temples with square pyramidal towers by the mid 1st millennium CE, such as the numerous stone temples built by Hindu king Lalitaditya, another art patron.[7] These kingdoms traditionally collaborated as well as competed in
to here is provided by the copyright holders and contributors "as is" and any express or implied warranties, including, but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose are disclaimed. In no event shall the copyright owner or contributors be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, exemplary, or consequential damages (including, but not limited to, procurement of substitute goods or services; loss of use, data, or profits; or business interruption) however caused and on any theory of liability, whether in contract, strict liability, or tort (including negligence or otherwise) arising in any way out of the use of this software, even if advised of the possibility of such damage.News Putin: Americans don’t give Trump enough respect A major world leader has come to the defense of President Trump — Vladimir Putin. The Russian leader is urging Americans to show respect for Trump “even if you do not agree with some of his positions.” Putin’s supportive remarks were in response to a question Thursday at the Valdai International Discussion Club in Sochi, according to The Hill. He called the “disrespect” shown for Trump a “regrettable negative component of the US political system.” “One can argue but one can’t show disrespect, even not for him personally but for those people who voted for him,” Putin said. “Mr. Trump was elected by the American people. And at least for this reason, it is necessary to show respect for him, even if you do not agree with some of his positions.” Putin defended Trump’s presidential victory and showered the US president with praise, saying he exhibits “certain talent” to have reached the White House. “I believe that the president of the United States does not need any advice because one has to possess certain talent and go through this trial to be elected, even without having the experience of such big administrative work,” Putin said. “He [Trump] has done this. He won honestly.” Putin’s comments come as special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election and on the same day UN Ambassador Nikki Haley accused the Russian government of committing “warfare” against the US. “When a country can come interfere in another country’s elections, that is warfare,” Haley said Thursday at the George W. Bush Institute. “It really is, because you’re making sure that the democracy shifts from what the people want to giving out that misinformation.”Let's begin with Barack Obama's infamous words: That central Obamacare promise, like its closest cousins, have been downgraded and revised to death. Last year, scholars at the Manhattan Institute ran a 49-state analysis of individual market healthcare rates under Obamacare and found a 41 percent increase on average. Their follow-up study of more than 3,100 counties across the country pegs the average hike at 49 percent. Consumers in New York -- home to a distorted, "death spiral"-plagued individual market prior to Obamacare -- are among the few Americans who've enjoyed an average rate drop. Virtually everywhere else, price tags went in the wrong direction: Across the country, for men overall, individual-market premiums went up in 91 percent of all counties: 2,844 out of 3,137. For 27-year-old men, the average county faced 91 percent increases; for 40-year-old men, 60 percent; for 64-year-old men, 32 percent. Women fared slightly better; their premiums “only” went up in 82 percent of all counties: 2,562 out of 3,137. That’s because Obamacare bars insurers from charging different rates to men and women; prior to Obamacare, only 11 states did so. Because women tend to consume more health care than men, the end result of the Obamacare regulation is that men fare somewhat worse. Relative to men, the average rate increase for women was less extreme: 44 percent for 27-year-olds; 23 percent for 40-year-olds; 42 percent for 64-year-olds. Premiums have increased in the large and small group markets as well -- in addition to higher out-of-pocket costs such as deductibles and copays for many consumers. Insurers across the country have been releasing a "drumbeat" of projected 2015 rate hikes throughout the spring, which will spill over into the summer and early fall. More Americans say their health costs are going up, not down, with large majorities expecting Obamacare to raise costs in the long term. Numerous surveys have demonstrated Obamacare's ratio of "hurt" to "helped" among consumers is roughly 2-to-1. The White House, meanwhile, is very excited about a HHS report indicating that a large majority of subsidy-eligible enrollees have seen their premiums decrease. First of all, isn't it interesting that HHS has the capacity to tabulate and release those figures when they're apparently unable to produce other pertinent information...like how many sign-ups are unpaid, and how many "new" enrollees previously had insurance? Secondly, Obamacare's core promise wasn't "we will raise health costs for millions, collect lots of taxes, then use that money to offset some people's healthcare bills." It was "everyone's rates will drop significantly, and the federal government's cost curve will bend down, thus helping to reduce deficits." The former message would have been dead on arrival, politically speaking. The latter vision, as most people expected all along, has failed to materialize. Nevertheless, the administration is excited about all the subsidies they're handing out. But that munificence doesn't occur in a vacuum, and the money has to come from somewhere. Ta-da: The large subsidies for health insurance that helped fuel the successful drive to sign up some 8 million Americans for coverage under the Affordable Care Act may push the cost of the law considerably above current projections, a new federal report indicates...While the generous subsidies helped consumers, they also risk inflating the new health law’s price tag in its first year. The report suggests that the federal government is on track to spend at least $11 billion on subsidies for consumers who bought health plans on marketplaces run by the federal government, even accounting for the fact that many consumers signed up for coverage in late March and will only receive subsidies for part of the year. That total does not count the additional cost of providing coverage to millions of additional consumers who bought coverage in states that ran their own marketplaces, including California, Connecticut, Maryland and New York. About a third of the 8 million people who signed up for coverage this year used a state-run marketplace…If these state consumers received roughly comparable government assistance for their insurance premiums, the total cost of subsidies could top $16.5 billion this year. That would be far higher than projections this spring from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that the 2014 subsidies would cost the federal government $10 billion. Says Reason's Peter Suderman, "to the extent that insurance is relatively cheap [for subsidy-eligible exchange enrollees], it’s because taxpayers are footing a big chunk of the bill. Obamacare didn’t reduce the price of insurance; if anything it raised it—and then used tax revenues to cover the difference." Yep. A portion of the population benefits from taxpayers' compulsory generosity, while virtually everyone else's rates head north. How will the sharply-increasing price tag (described in the LA Times report above), coupled with all of the shifting pay-fors, impact the law's long-term fiscal impact? We may never know. As we've noted, Congressional Budget Office analysts quietly announced that they don't think the agency can accurately track those numbers in the face of endless tweaks, revisions and delays. Oh, and by the way, just because Obamacare enrollees have insurance cards -- and quite possibly a taxpayer-funded discount -- doesn't mean they're accessing care smoothly: Patients and health care providers, in a series of interviews with The Huffington Post, complained that they are having trouble confirming that patients are insured, working out what their plans cover and figuring out which plans doctors will accept. These complaints are signs that the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama's signature health care reform law, is suffering growing pains more than six months since its insurance policies took effect...Maureen Mandel of North Bellmore, New York, has endured a gauntlet of troubles to get and use her new insurance since October, when she first tried to sign up through New York State of Health, her state's insurance exchange. Mandel, 47, spent countless hours on the phone with the exchange and her insurer, until her plan was finally confirmed in April...Mandel thought she had it sorted out. Then she went to the doctor. The front-desk attendant said some other physician was listed in the insurer's system as her primary care provider -- a doctor in Waco, Texas...These experiences soured Mandel, who described herself as politically liberal, on Obamacare, despite her appreciation for the coverage it provides and the tax credits that cut her insurance costs. "I haven't seen any improvement," she said, "and that's what scares me." Perhaps many Americans are discovering that the federal government is ill-equipped to manage a massive health system overhaul, let alone fully run and administer an entire system. Speaking of which, for the latest on the VA scandal -- including revelations that nationwide lists of pending procedures were ordered purged -- click through. UPDATE - The Associated Press reports on a new poll of Obamacare exchange enrollees (which represents a tiny pool of consumers). Though many within this group rate their new coverage highly, roughly 40 percent are still struggling to make monthly premium payments, "despite the availability of generous subsidies." Just wait until they learn about their deductible requirements if and when they seek treatment.Photo Phys Ed Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness. If you are aiming to lose weight by revving up your exercise routine, it may be wise to think of your workouts not as exercise, but as playtime. An unconventional new study suggests that people’s attitudes toward physical activity can influence what they eat afterward and, ultimately, whether they drop pounds. For some time, scientists have been puzzled — and exercisers frustrated — by the general ineffectiveness of exercise as a weight-loss strategy. According to multiple studies and anecdotes, most people who start exercising do not lose as much weight as would be expected, given their increased energy expenditure. Some people add pounds despite burning hundreds of calories during workouts. Past studies of this phenomenon have found that exercise can increase the body’s production of appetite hormones, making some people feel ravenous after even a light workout and prone to consume more calories than they expended. But that finding, while intriguing, doesn’t fully explain the wide variability in people’s post-exercise eating habits. So, for the new study, published in the journal Marketing Letters, French and American researchers turned to psychology and the possible effect that calling exercise by any other name might have on people’s subsequent diets. In that pursuit, the researchers first recruited 56 healthy, adult women, the majority of them overweight. The women were given maps detailing the same one-mile outdoor course and told that they would spend the next half-hour walking there, with lunch to follow. Half of the women were told that their walk was meant to be exercise, and they were encouraged to view it as such, monitoring their exertion throughout. The other women were told that their 30-minute outing would be a walk purely for pleasure; they would be listening to music through headphones and rating the sound quality, but mostly the researchers wanted them to enjoy themselves. When the women returned from walking, the researchers asked each to estimate her mileage, mood and calorie expenditure. Those women who’d been formally exercising reported feeling more fatigued and grumpy than the other women, although the two groups’ estimates of mileage and calories burned were almost identical. More telling, when the women sat down to a pasta lunch, with water or sugary soda to drink, and applesauce or chocolate pudding for dessert, the women in the exercise group loaded up on the soda and pudding, consuming significantly more calories from these sweets than the women who’d thought that they were walking for pleasure. A follow-up experiment by the researchers, published as part of the same study, reinforces and broadens those findings. For it, the researchers directed a new set of volunteers, some of them men, to walk the same one-mile loop. Once again, half were told to consider this session as exercise. The others were told that they would be sightseeing and should have fun. The two groups covered the same average distance. But afterward, allowed to fill a plastic bag at will with M&M’s as a thank-you, the volunteers from the exercise group poured in twice as much candy as the other walkers. Finally, to examine whether real-world exercisers behave similarly to those in the contrived experiments, the researchers visited the finish line of a marathon relay race, where 231 entrants aged 16 to 67 had just completed laps of five to 10 kilometers. They asked the runners whether they had enjoyed their race experience and offered them the choice of a gooey chocolate bar or healthier cereal bar in consideration of their time and help. In general, those runners who said that their race had been difficult or unsatisfying picked the chocolate; those who said that they had fun gravitated toward the healthier choice. In aggregate, these three experiments underscore that how we frame physical activity affects how we eat afterward, said Carolina O.C. Werle, an associate professor of marketing at the Grenoble School of Management in France, who led the study. The same exertion, spun as “fun” instead of “exercise,” prompts less gorging on high-calorie foods, she said. Just how, physiologically, our feelings about physical activity influence our food intake is not yet known, she said, and likely to be bogglingly complex, involving hormones, genetics, and the neurological circuitry of appetite and reward processing. But in the simplest terms, Dr. Werle said, this new data shows that most of us require recompense of some kind for working out. That reward can take the form of subjective enjoyment. If exercise is fun, no additional gratification is needed. If not, there’s chocolate pudding. The good news is that our attitudes toward exercise are malleable. “We can frame our workouts in different ways,” Dr. Werle said, “by focusing on whatever we consider fun about it, such as listening to our favorite music or chatting with a friend” during a group walk. “The more fun we have,” she concluded, “the less we’ll feel the need to compensate for the effort” with food.According to Steam's stats, more people played Counter-Strike (1.6 and Source) today than Skyrim, Team Fortress 2, and Dota 2 combined. So when Min "Gooseman" Le, one of the co-creators of the original Counter-Strike mod that launched the phenomenon, gets ready to kick off his new game, it's kind of a big deal. That game is Tactical Intervention, a free-to-play shooter that looks very much like an expanded Counter-Strike, complete with driveable vehicles, rappelling, attack dogs, and presumably all manner of new tactical toys, and it will enter closed beta in America in March. See the trailer -- and how to sign up for the beta -- below. Neowin reports that as of tonight, Tactical Intervention has secured an American publisher (OGPlanet) and is accepting beta signups on the official site. This game raises all kinds of questions -- in particular, does the fact that it's free-to-play give it a distinct advantage over Valve's own Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, which will probably not be free due to its cross-platform nature? And will Gooseman's involvement woo a chunk of Counter-Strike's audience away from Valve? This is definitely one to watch.BASEL, Switzerland -- Defending champion Roger Federer beat Kei Nishikori 6-1, 6-3 in the Swiss Indoors final on Sunday to win his first title in 10 months. The former top-ranked Swiss was emotional as he thanked his hometown fans after winning for the fifth time in six years at the event where he once worked as a ballboy. Roger Federer won his 68th career title on Sunday but just his second in 2011 and first in 10 months. Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images "It's always the greatest for me to win the title here. See you next year," he said on court in Swiss-German. Federer had a complete game on display to dominate the 32nd-ranked Japanese, who stunned top-ranked Novak Djokovic in the semifinals. "He was too good for me today," said the 21-year-old Nishikori, who described Federer as "my idol. I tried to do my best but he wouldn't let me." Federer's 68th career title was just his second this season after he won the season-opening event in Doha, Qatar. He had not reached a title match since losing the French Open final to Rafael Nadal in June. Now ranked No. 4 at age 30, Federer was playing his first event while ranked outside the top three since he won his first Wimbledon title in 2003. "It's been a great week. I got better as the week went on and I saved the best for last," he said. Nishikori started strong on his own serve but Federer broke after reeling off three straight winners. Federer dropped just one point on his own serve in the first set and fired flat ground strokes to all corners of the court. He repeatedly pressured Nishikori's serve and took the set on a double fault. Nishikori fended off break point chances to hold serve early in the second, then showed his speed and defensive strength by outlasting Federer in a long rally. The reprieve was brief and Federer broke again to lead 4-2. He was serving for the match when Nishikori earned his first break-point chance, which Federer saved with a powerful serve. Federer took his first match point with an overhead smash at the net as Nishikori scurried to field shots deep beyond the baseline. Nishikori will rise to a career-best ATP ranking Monday -- perhaps as high as No. 25, which would mark the highest ever by a Japanese men's player. The Basel lineup originally included five top 10 players, with Federer and Djokovic returning after six-week breaks after the U.S. Open and Davis Cup matches.SEOUL - Rapper T.O.P of popular South Korean boyband BigBang has been arrested for smoking marijuana in October last year, the police said on Thursday (June 1). The 29-year-old tested positive for marijuana use, the Seoul police were quoted as saying by Yonhap News Agency. It was not confirmed whether he was a habitual marijuana user, said the report. The police said they had sent the case to the prosecution. Since Feb 9, he has been doing his military service in the band unit of the Seoul National Police Agency, said The Korea Herald. T.O.P's agency YG Entertainment said in a statement: "It is true that T.O.P smoked marijuana before the enlistment and we sincerely apologise for the outcome. The rapper has undergone a full police investigation, and is regretting his wrongdoing." Under South Korean law, marijuana use is punishable by up to five years in jail or a fine of up to 50 million won (S$61,760).Image from Chip Kidd's Batman: Death by Design Credit: DC Comics DC Comics has declared Wednesday July 23, 2014 “Batman Day” in recognition of the 75th anniversary of arguably the most popular character in comic books and one of the most popular pop culture figures of all time. The centerpiece of the day will be a free edition of Detective Comics #27, that will be available at comic book retailers and book stores in the United States as well as for free download at www.readdcentertainment.com and all digital platforms like Kindle, iBookstore, Nook, and Google Play. “As part of the festivities, fans who visit participating retailers receive a free, special edition of Detective Comics #27, featuring a reimagining of Batman’s 1939 comic book debut, designed by Chip Kidd with a script by The New York Times #1 bestselling author Brad Meltzer,” reads an announcement by DC. In a follow-up DC Comics told Newsarama the special edition will be “similar to the original 1939 version, but with different interior designs illustrated by Kidd and a short story written by Meltzer. “ Asked how this story relates or not to the Meltzer-written reinterpretation of the original Detective #27 that was illustrated by Bryan Hitch as part of January’s Detective Comics Vol. #27, DC said they would clarify its contents closer to the release of the book. Credit: DC Comics In addition to the free comic book, DC is providing retailers access to other Batman collectibles, including a “Batman 75th anniversary cape” and four Batman masks designed by Ryan Sook spotlighting iconic interpretation of the character. These include: - Detective Comics #27: Batman’s first appearance, as drawn by Bob Kane. - Batman ’66: Inspired by the 60s TV series starring Adam West, - The Dark Knight Returns: As drawn by Frank Miller. - The New 52: As drawn by Greg Capullo. Finally, the publisher announced they’ll be partnering with Random House to bring “Batman Day” to over 1,000 libraries across the U.S. on Saturday, July 26, but announced no other details.Joyce King shows where the intruder made himself at home (credit: CBS 2) NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — An elderly woman from Brooklyn who has lived alone for years suddenly found herself with a roommate. A stranger slipped into her apartment while she was away for the holidays, and made himself right at home. The freeloader not only broke into 82-year-old Joyce King’s East Flatbush apartment, he moved in, eating in one of her chairs, watching TV, setting up an XBox, all while King was visiting family between Christmas and New Year’s. Whoever it was, however, was long gone by the time King returned home from her 10-day visit, leaving her home intact. “Just as it is, my table, just as it is,” she said. “If I would have met him, I would have screamed, tenants would think I’m crazy.” King determined that the freeloader entered through the fire escape, breaking her window and slipping past the secured gates. She’s since locked them and the front door. Neighbors said they heard noises, but assumed it was King. “Yeah, yeah, he had the XBox in there, wow he was really camping out,” said neighbor Eugene Lyken. “He had his Christmas.” “He’s crazy, because he didn’t know who he would meet in here,” one neighbor said. Since the break-in, more neighbors have been looking out for King, and police captured a suspect, a 22-year-old Bronx man, hanging around the building. Neighbors believe the suspect may have lived in the building at one time, but moved away. He’s facing burglary, trespassing, and drug charges. King said he’s lucky she didn’t catch him first. “I would have to beg the Lord to forgive me,” she joked. “Well, I grew up with three brothers, so you had to be tough.” Please leave a comment below…Skip to comments. The astounding, unreal world of Gary Condit Capitol Hill Blue ^ | 8/28/01 | Doug Thompson Posted on by gohabsgo Accepting California Democratic Congressman Gary Condit’s view of the world requires an escape from reality that is astounding even in Washington. From Condit’s point of view, everyone except him is a liar, the press is out to get him and he is a victim of unfair public scrutiny. Why not? The same strategy worked for Bill Clinton. The main difference, however, is that Bill Clinton is a far better liar than Gary Condit. The only way to believe the garbage spewing out of Condit’s mouth is to accept, without reservation, that missing Washington intern Chandra Levy’s mother was “mistaken,” her aunt was “wrong,” former lover Anne Marie Smith is lying and his staff took it upon themselves to lie because they didn’t want to believe he was banging the 24-year-old Levy. Sorry, Gary, that dog not only won’t hunt, it doesn’t even have to wake up and sniff the air. The stink from your lies is too strong. Condit would have us believe sexual affairs are not “relationships,” and lying to one’s wife, constituents, cops and the media is nobody’s business, even when the liar is a public official involved in the mysterious disappearance of a young woman who shared his bed when his wife wasn’t around. Former Los Angeles police detective Mark Fuhrman may have said it best. Condit acts “like a man who knows the body will never be found.” Fuhrman is the man responsible for making sure one of the Kennedy clan goes to jail for offing a young girl during his teenage years. He also watched helplessly as prosecutorial misconduct let a murderer named O.J. Simpson beat the rap. Condit, like Simpson, may benefit from the stupidity of others. The Washington, DC, police department, the most inept crime fighting comedy team in the known universe, is in charge of the Levy investigation. Given their track record, Condit could have murdered Chandra Levy on Pennsylvania Avenue during rush hour and gotten away with it. Which begs the real question of this sorry spectacle. Is Gary Condit a murderer? What role, if any, did he have in the disappearance of Chandra Levy, who vanished without a trace on or about May 1 of this year? Washington’s keystone cops say Condit is not a suspect. That, technically, is true because without a body or evidence of foul play, they don’t have a crime and you can’t have a suspect when you don’t have a crime. But the FBI doesn’t assign one of its best profilers to a missing persons case and a team is working around the clock down in Quantico trying to put a case together that may do more than just cost Gary Condit his seat in Congress. Condit’s weaseling performances over the past few days has shocked even those who might have otherwise supported him. House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt – defender of Bill Clinton’s own intern banging, lies and obstruction of justice – is backing away from Condit and may move to have the California Democrat tossed off the highly-sensitive Intelligence Committee. Even Harlem Democrat Charles Rangel, who would defend a serial killer as long as he was a Democrat, could only muster a half-hearted defense of Condit this past weekend, comparing his trials to those of Adam Clayton Powell, another well known Congressional crook. “He says he’s not guilty,” one top Democratic operative told me this week, “but he acts like a man who is guilty of something.” No doubt. As hard as it may be for some believe, Gary Condit could well be up to his lying ass in complicity in Chandra Levy’s disappearance. Personally, I think he did it. If he didn’t do it, he paid someone to do it for him or he knows who did it and is covering for him or her. That’s right, Congressman Condit. If you ain't a guilty man, why the hell do you act like one? (Doug Thompson is the founder of Capitol Hill Blue. The Rant appears whenever the mood suits him) TOPICS: Editorial News/Current Events KEYWORDS: That says it all: Condit acts “like a man who knows the body will never be found.” Automaton son Chad Condit could only refer to "Gary Condit", not "Dad" in his ridiculous defense on Monkey Man King's comedy store. One gets distinct impression that the collective silence in Congress runs across party lines because too many knew what was going on, some participated in what was going on, and some know how the body was disposed. By the way, Chandra Levy worked in California Democrat Governor Gray Davis's office for several months in 2000. And when questioned, nobody in Davis's office seemed to remember who she was. Thanks again to Doug Thompson's Rant. Doug you need a bigger forum for your honest no-nonsense columns. To: gohabsgo If enough letters are written, our congressmen can be persuaded to throw Condit out. It can be done. To: Demosthenes If enough letters are written, our congressmen can be persuaded to throw Condit out. It can be done. Then they’ll just hire him back at twice his salary to give them seminars on “problem fixing.” (And the Kennedy clan will put him on retainer.) To: gohabsgo Good article and Doug pretty well sums up the case. To: gohabsgo Good article and Doug pretty well sums up the case. To: Demosthenes What really offends me is the democrat insistence that even if a congress critter is heavily involved with sexual liasons and constantly boffing interns and any other skirt under which he can slide, he's okay because he's getting his job done. I have studied abnormal psychology well enough to know that an obsession rules a person's mind, and thus steals from their daily life. Clinton had one actual cabinet meeting during his scandal period and not many prior to that when his obsessive behavior was ruling his deviant mind. He's still the same sinkEmperor today, and I don't give a damn what he does now, but what he did while on my damn nickel made him impeachable, because contrary to the lying fornication fraternity in Washington, the bastard wasn't doing the people's business, and all one has to do is look at the things around the world that have deteriorated so badly and here at home also to verify the democrat's sleazy lying for their champion of deviancy. Now Condidit gets caught and the same villanous crew of Gephardt et al try to spin the same fecal bilge across the land. Enough! Time for these sleazy, lie-worshipping spinners to GO! A person with a sexual obsession cannot do a full job for which they are hired. Period! To: gohabsgo Is Gary Condit a murderer? I don't know if he's a murderer or not, but I've had a sick fascination for reading about serial killers and in a lot of stories the friends and acquaintances describe these serial killers as having two personalities. When they're happy, everybody's happy, when they get angry it is almost an over-the-top rage that comes very close to going too far. I believe Anne Marie Smith mentioned some flashes of anger she saw in Mr. Condit. I often wonder if he has this type of rage below the surface and he went too far after getting angry at Chandra for any number of things: pressure for marriage, possible pregnancy, telling her mother/aunt about the relationship, etc. To: MHGinTN I have studied abnormal psychology Translation: This means MHGinTN has spent a lot of time looking in a mirror. To: Common Tator Why, potato, how ever did you know? Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works. FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794 FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John RobinsonJessica Lange announced to screaming fans at the American Horror Story PaleyFest panel tonight, “Yes, I’m done.” She will not be joining Lady Gaga in American Horror Story: Hotel, the fifth season of the Emmy-winning FX series next October. “We’ve had a great run here. I mean, I absolutely love doing these four characters, and in all the madness, I love the writers and Ryan (Murphy) and the insanity of shooting it,” Lange told a full, top to bottom, Dolby Theatre. During her four seasons on AHS, Lange played a washed-up Southern belle in season one, an acerbic nun in American Horror Story: Asylum, a dominant witch in American Horror Story: Coven and a German carnival ringmaster in last season’s American Horror Story: Freak Show. During her tenure on AHS, Lange won two Emmys, a Golden Globe and a SAG award for her alter egos. RelatedWhy Lady Gaga And Vin Diesel Should Be In Every Movie And TV Show Tonight’s AHS panel closed out this year’s PaleyFest in Los Angeles. Joining Lange (Elsa) tonight on stage at the Dolby were castmembers Finn Wittrock (Dandy Mott), Evan Peters (Jimmy Darling), Denis O’Hare (Stanley), Kathy Bates (Ethel Darling), Michael Chiklis (Dell Toledo) and Sarah Paulson (Bette and Dot Tattler), executive producer Tim Minear as well as new AHS: Hotel cast members Matt Bomer and Cheyenne Jackson. Both worked with AHS co-creator Ryan Murphy previously, Bomer on The Normal Heart and Jackson on Glee. Bomer said he was still unclear about what character he was playing. “I can’t confirm or deny that there might be a love interest,” he said regarding his character’s connection to Lady Gaga’s. Jackson told the crowd he is not aware of what character he is playing either on AHS: Hotel. Unlike last year’s AHS PaleyFest panel when Murphy (who was a no show this year) confirmed that the actors on stage were returning, Minear and AHS castmembers did not confirm who might be back.As the cast took the stage, Lange, holding a glass of red wine, was the last to enter. She was welcomed with an earth-shattering scream from the cast and she took a graceful bow toward them. A fan question asked whether Lady Gaga’s addition to season 5 of AHS: Hotel would convince Lange to stay on the show, to which the actress responded, “What does that mean?” When asked by a fan if Hotel would be shot here in Los Angeles, Minear’s only response was, “Oh, it will be filmed.” Regarding whether Peters’ character would have another love triangle on Hotel, Minear answered, “We’ll think of something.” While the cast teased each other and continually laughed at their zany experiences on set from Paulson’s Siamese twin sex scene to Chiklis’ shock over such memories of spotting a sweaty clown-clad John Carroll Lynch, Lange took the time to give a heartfelt shoutout to late actor Ben Woolf who died in February after being hit by a car. “We had amazing people who worked with us,” said Lange, “We got to know people that we wouldn’t normally in our own lives, and that was a blessing for us. If I take away anything, it is that.” The actress expounded how it was she who suggested the idea to Murphy to set AHS: Freak Show at a carnival. “I always loved the idea of a carnival and traveling troupe. I remember going to dusty small town carnivals as a child and seeing these freak shows. No live freaks, but weird things,” said Lange. Murphy has mentioned to the press how he leaves clues in the current season which are hints to the following season. The image of a top hat on a coffee cup was not only an homage to the 1935 film Top Hat, but also a wink that season 5 would be set in a hotel like that film. Peters, Paulson and Wittrock told Deadline prior to tonight’s panel that Murphy and co-creator Brad Falchuk always keep the cast in the dark about the ‘next season’ clues and their meanings. One of many hysterical moments in the panel was when O’Hare explained how he had to sign a nudity rider for a scene he was doing with Chiklis. “We did one take,” said O’Hare then adding, “with Ryan (Murphy), you don’t negotiate. You open the page and say ‘I have to do this now.'” To which Lange quipped, “Or you can just refuse…” At which point the cast extended their hand toward her, gesturing in silence the great creative collaboration she had with Murphy and Falchuk on AHS.A Nation of Immigrants, A Nation of Criminals “They broke the law.” This preceding statement is how we excuse a grand amount of injustice in this country. Recently, it’s been widely used as a mantra for people who support deportation of undocumented immigrants and need a good excuse for dragging people from their homes and splitting up families. “If you enter this country as a criminal” so goes the logic, “what right do you have to be here? America doesn’t need anymore criminals!” Those who argue this way often present themselves as being patriots and defenders of American values and tradition. I say their patriotism is a false patriotism, an ignorant patriotism, an unearned patriotism. For better and worse, America has always been a nation of criminals. The story of America begins with an act of mass criminality, as the burdens of British rule drove many colonists into treasonous insurrection, a crime still punishable by death. America’s colonial criminality is far from exhausted by acts of political rebellion though. Before Australia became Britain’s prime penal colony they sent thousands of their convicts to American shores. Then there are the criminals who showed up to America’s ports voluntarily, in pirate ships. Colonial cities were seen as a safe haven for the libertine proclivities of the 19th century’s most notorious, seafaring criminal class. Criminal culture would continue to be tied to America’s national identity long after the revolution. American iconography is filled with the reverence we have for all manner of crooks and scofflaws. The Western movie genre, who can think of anything more quintessentially American, romanticized the lawless conditions and antiheroes of the frontier in the 19th century. When alcohol prohibition became constitutional law in the 20s Americans of all classes and ethnicities refused to obey, and either became or gave business to gangsters and moonshiners. Italian Americans were generalized by law and order propagandists as inextricably tied to the Mafia culture. While untrue, there’s no doubt Italians and other immigrant minorities relied a great deal on organized and unorganized crime to enrich themselves. Yet this fact has not led the national zeitgeist to be revolted by such criminal behavior. They have been enshrined in our art and national imagination as well for their heedless and rebellious pursuits, even when they’re clearly ignoble. I’d be remiss if I did not mention just how mutually important America’s past and the practice of civil disobedience. Henry David Thoreau, that rustic American literary icon, coined the term and advanced it to the fore of radical political thought. American abolitionists and those who struggled throughout our history
irty on a mid-April Monday afternoon, it’s quiet apart from the clatter echoing from the back of a dishwasher making their way through the lunch rush’s cutlery casualties. A handful of customers are scattered throughout the main dining room, lost in conversation or their phone screens or the food in front of them. Everyone’s too busy to spare so much as a second glance at the man seated across from me, the one clad in the purple hound’s-tooth suit. No one stops to wonder if maybe the face beneath the brim of a feather-accented fedora looks a little bit too much like Tim Duncan to be coincidence. After all, who would ever think to find the man who accepted his 2002 MVP award in baggy denim shorts and a t-shirt dressed so extravagantly. If it were really Duncan, he’d certainly be in something much more mundane: khakis and a polo bought at a 40% off sale at the GAP; blue jeans and a pearl snap; cargo shorts and plain t-shirt. But that’s what makes the choice of clothing so perfect. Duncan is hiding in plain sight. Inconspicuously conspicuous. The food here is served cafeteria style, and Duncan and I have already taken our trays bearing barbecue platters — as fundamental a meal as you can get at Bill Miller — to a table in a back corner. Duncan is munching quietly on his potato salad and glancing around the room, at the SMOKE HOUSE sign near the order line, at the cactus-obscured license plate hanging on the wall, at the one bulb in the center of the ceiling that’s burned out. I’ve just started to wonder if he’s forgotten about my presence when he says, around a mouthful of brisket, “I wish I’d come here more often. I like it here. Not too expensive. It’s simple.” He glances at his watch, and I ask him about his flight. “Not for a few hours,” he says, dismissing the question with a wave of his hand. “I’m going straight to the airport from here. Bags and passport are already in the car. Nah, we’ve got plenty of time.” I leave the answer at that. I don’t need to ask why he’s leaving. That much is obvious. As soon as he reveals what he’s already promised to tell me, he’ll have to leave the country. When the public finds out, there will be hell to pay, and, as he told me over the phone, he’s just too tired to deal with those burns. He never asked for this, he said. Duncan doesn’t speak again until his plate’s been cleared of brisket and potato salad and only a few picked-over strands of coleslaw remain. Pushing his plate to the side and his hat to the back of his head, Duncan leads forward. “You probably already guessed this,” Duncan says in a voice as quiet as his suit is loud, “but like everything else here in San Antonio, it all centers around the Alamo.” In all likelihood, the Battle of the Alamo is the most famous in Texas history. During the war that would eventually lead to Texas’ independence, Mexican troops, led by President General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, led a thirteen day siege to the mission-turned-Texas-garrison in the heart of San Antonio de Bexar. All told, there were about 250 Texians (as the residents of Mexico-controlled Texas were called) in the site. The Mexican army numbered over seven times that. In the early morning hours of March 6th, 1836, the Mexican forces led their final assault. With ladders and crowbars and sheer force of numbers, they scaled the walls into the grounds. The Texians fought back valiantly, firing whatever metal they could find from their cannons, swinging empty rifles into crowds. They repulsed the initial two attacks. But eventually, the size of the Mexican army won out. One hour of bloody battle later, every Texian — outside of women and children — lay dead. Mexico had won, but not without cost. Historians estimate that Mexico lost close to 600 soldiers, a full third of their forces. Today, all that remains of the historic battle site are the chapel and the Long Barracks, which has been turned into a museum commemorating the battle. Visitors can walk through the halls and look through the encased artifacts. And there’s plenty to be found: letters; polished weapons; paintings; miscellaneous relics of the era. And, according to Duncan, something else. “There’s a door,” he tells me. “It sort of blends into the wall, and it’s buried behind displays anyway, so if you don’t know what you’re looking for, you’ll never find it.” I try to ask him which wall, which room, which display, but Duncan just shakes his head each time. “I told you, it’s to hard to explain. I’ve got a drawing,” he pats his breast pocket, “that I’ll give you when we’re done. For now, it’s not about where the door is that’s important. It’s where it leads.” Behind the door there’s a stairwell, Duncan explains. It’s pitch black inside, so you’ll have to take a lamp or a flashlight or a torch to light the way. The stairway winds like a corkscrew into the earth below the chapel, coming to a halt in a cave, he says, “like nothing you’ll ever find on this earth.” “The cave sort of has its own glow. Like, there’s this weird, greenish light coming from nowhere and everywhere at once. There’s an 1824 flag and a long-bladed knife that everyone just assumes was Jim Bowie’s hanging on the wall. And, in the center of the room, there’s this pool.” I ask Duncan what he means by “pool,” and he pauses for a moment, considering his words. “Do you like Batman?” “Yeah,” I say, caught slightly off guard. “Why?” “You’re familiar with the Lazarus Pit, then?” There’s a moment of silence, and I wait for Duncan to tell me that he’s joking, but he never flinches. He’s dead serious. “So you’re telling me the Spurs dynasty,” I say slowly, “was built on a real-life version of the secret weapon for Batman nemesis, Ra’s al Ghul?” Duncan chuckles. “I thought you wouldn’t believe me. That’s why I brought this.” From within another pocket, Duncan pulls out two vials. One, which he quickly empties onto the table, holds a dead bug. The second holds a few drops of green liquid that, even in the light of the restaurant, glows a radioactive green. Duncan first proves to me that the bug his dead. Using his fork, he pokes, prods, and all but dissects the bug. Then, pulling the stopper from the second vial, he pours one drop onto the corpse. Seconds later, Duncan is forced to smash the bug to bits to keep it from scurrying off the table. As he cleans the entrails with a napkin, Duncan winks at me. “Believe me now?” I ask if he knows where the pool came from. Did it fuel the men who died boldly attempting the impossible task of defending San Antonio’s mission, or did it come afterward, the result of some physical manifestation and coalescence of their fighting spirit? Duncan shrugs. “I couldn’t tell you. It’s sort of the chicken and egg debate, I think. The only one who really knows anything about it is Pop. And he never told us anything more than what we had to know.” The ritual has been the same every year since Duncan joined the Spurs. Before the season starts, the entire team journeys down to the Alamo in the late hours of the night. Popovich has a key, specially gifted to him by the Mayor of the city, and together they trek down the stairs to the cave. Then, one-by-one, they climb into the pool to submerge themselves in the substance. The result is a team that’s been a competitor longer than any other franchise in the NBA by miles. The Atlanta Hawks hold the second longest streak of consecutive playoff appearances at ten seasons. The Spurs’ streak is two times that. “There’s one thing I still don’t understand, though,” I say. “If you could just keep going back to be reborn every year, why ever stop?” “Even that doesn’t last forever,” says Duncan. “Your body can only take so much before the pool starts to eat away at it. And it’s different for every player. For Manu, it went after his hair. For me,” he reaches behind him to touch his back, “it came for the flesh.” “So the cyborg tattoo…” “Is just there to cover it up, yeah.” Duncan grimaces. “My last two seasons in the league, I couldn’t even step into the pool. The pain was too great. If I’d tried to stay in, there’s a chance I wouldn’t even be standing here now.” “”What about the guys who leave?” I ask. “Why hasn’t anyone else talked?” “Pop knows how to keep guys quiet,” Duncan says. “He knows the art of negotiating as well as he knows X’s and O’s. Whatever makes you tick, Pop knows how to get at it just so to keep you quiet. “To be honest,” he adds, “we all thought George [Hill] was gonna talk when we traded him. But Pop knew him, too.” He shakes his head, almost disbelieving. “Pop knows everyone.” “Except for you.” Duncan wiggles his shoulders in a sort of half-shrug, and in that moment, I realize how tired he looks, the dark circles below his eyes, the heavy slump to his shoulders beneath the wool jacket and silk shirt. “I just think it’s not right,” he says. “I spent my career doing what I thought was right. I held this secret because I thought I was doing what was right for the team. But now…I just think everyone deserves to know.” And at that moment, the weight lifts. Duncan has spent the last hour or so fidgeting nervously with his diamond cufflinks, fingering the lapels of his jacket. Now, finally cleared of his charge, he’s turned into a completely different person, and in that instance, he dons something even more unexpected than his suit: a smile. We spend the next few minutes chatting, talking about what’s gone on this season without him and his plans for the future, plans that involve being a long way away from here and all of the fallout from what will surely be a national scandal. In a lull in the conversation, I get up to grab a refill from the drink machine and ask Duncan if he wants anything. He reaches into his wallet, pulls out five, and hands it to me. “I could go for something sweet,” he says. “Grab me a piece of pecan pie.” Before I can turn for the counter, he stops me. “Oh,” he adds, “remember the a la mode.” Follow @sbngrizzliesAlmost three years ago, on Feb 19, 2013, I opened the 8.x-dev branch of the Honeypot module (which helps prevent form spam on thousands of Drupal sites). These were heady times in the lifetime of the then-Drupal 8.x branch; 8.0-alpha1 wasn't released until three months later, on May 19. I made the #D8CX pledge—when Drupal 8 was released, I'd make sure there was a full, stable Honeypot release ready to go. Little did I know it would be more than 2.5 years—and counting—before I could see that promise through to fruition! As months turned into years, I've kept to the pledge, and eventually decided to also port a couple other modules that I use on many of my own Drupal sites, like Wysiwyg Linebreaks and Simple Mail. Two years ago, I mentioned in the original Honeypot D8 conversion issue that I'd likely write a blog post "about the process of porting a moderately-complex module like this from D7 to D8". Well, I finally had some time to write that post—and I'm still wondering how far off will be the release of Drupal 8.0.0! When working on the initial port, and when opening a new issue almost on a monthly basis to rework parts of the module to keep up with Drupal 8 core changes, I would frequently read through all the new nodes posted to the list of Change records for Drupal core. These change records are like the Bible of translating 'how do I do Y in Drupal 8 when I did X in Drupal 7'? Most of the change records have fitting examples, contain a good amount of detail, and link back to the one, two, or ten issues that caused the particular change record to be written. However, there were a few that were in a sorry state; these change records didn't have references back to all the relevant Drupal core issues, or only provided contrived examples that didn't help me much. In these cases, I took the following approach: Try to find the git commits that caused Honeypot tests or code to fail, do a git blame. Find the issue(s) referenced by the breaking commits. Read through the issue summary and see if it helps figure out how to fix my code. If that doesn't help, read through the commit itself, then the code that was changed, and see if that helps. If that doesn't help, read the entire issue comment history to see if that helps. If that doesn't help, pop over to the ever-helpful #drupal-contribute IRC channel. (The most important part) Go back to the deficient change record and edit it, adding appropriate issue references, code examples and documentation. In the course of the 71 distinct Honeypot 8.x commits that have been added so far, I had to go all the way to numbers 5 and 6 quite often. If it weren't for the incredible helpfulness of people like webchick, tim.plunkett, and others who seem to be living change record references, I would've probably given up the endeavor to keep Honeypot's Drupal 8 branch up to date the past three years! Automated tests are a pain to maintain... but help immensely The Drupal 7 version of Honeypot had almost complete SimpleTest coverage for primary module functionality. One of the first steps in porting the module to Drupal 8—and the best way to make sure all the primary functionality was working correctly—was to port the tests to Drupal 8. There have been dozens of automated testing changes in Drupal 8 that have caused tests to fail or give unexpected results. This caused some frustration in figuring out whether a particular failure was due to failing code or changes to the testing API. Even with the small frustrations of broken tests every month or two, the test coverage is a huge help in ensuring long-term stability for a moderately-complex module like Honeypot. Especially when refactoring a large part of the module, or porting a feature between major Drupal versions, automated test coverage has more than made up for the extra time spent creating the tests. The Drupal community is ever-helpful The other thing that's been an immense help throughout the development cycle is community involvement. Since Honeypot was one of the earliest modules with a stable Drupal 8 version (it's already seen 15 stable releases with 100% passing tests!), it's already used on many public Drupal 8 sites (over 80 at this point!). And this means there are users of the module invested in its success. These early Drupal 8 adopters and other generous Drupal developers contributed code to fix a total of 12 of the hairest issues during the D8 development cycle so far. Come for the code, stay for the community; my experience porting Honeypot to Drupal 8 (the easy part), and chasing Drupal 8 HEAD for three years (the hard part) has again provent to me the truth of this catch phrase. I hope I can say thanks in person to at least some of the following Honeypot D8 contributors over the past three years: 2.5 years, and counting Much has been written about core contributor burnout, but I wanted to give some credit and kudos to the army of dedicated contributed module maintainers who have already made the #D8CX pledge. A major reason for Drupal's success in so many industries is the array of contributed modules available. The very long development cycle between major releases—coupled with the fact that many contrib maintainers are now supporting three major versions of their modules—means that contributed module maintainers are at risk for burning out too. I'd really like to be able to focus more of my limited time for Honeypot development on new features again, especially since a few of these new features would greatly benefit the 55,000+ Drupal 6 and 7 websites already using the module today. But until we have a solid API freeze for Drupal 8.0.x, most of my time will be spent fixing tests and code just to keep Honeypot working with HEAD. I'll be at DrupalCon LA, and I hope to do whatever small part I can to get Drupal 8.0.0 out the door—will you do the same?Banks are working on plans to help women whose husbands use money to bully them. One in five adults in Britain have experienced financial abuse at the hands of a partner, according to charity Refuge. The majority are women. Banks are investigating how they can offer better support, and aim to introduce a code of practice by the end of next year. This could include guidelines on how quickly a bank should freeze an account if needed and mandatory training for staff on how to recognise and help customers who may be experiencing abuse. Victims: One in five adults in Britain have experienced financial abuse at the hands of a partner, according to charity Refuge Banks could even introduce a panic button victims can press to alert them that something is wrong when using a mobile phone or online banking app. This type of alarm system exists on some cash machines in the U.S. as a way of alerting banks to suspicious behaviour. Co-operative Bank is retraining more than 3,000 staff and its financial guide to help victims is being handed out at shelters run by Refuge. One 23-year-old victim, Kaylin, told Money Mail how easy it is for financial abuse to go undetected. For her, it started when her partner asked how much she earned. Then he wanted her online banking password. Before long, he was monitoring her spending. He took out secret loans in her name and would even check her wage slips to make sure she was at work when she said she was. 'It was all about control. Victims should remember that it's their money,' says Kaylin. If you or someone you know is the victim of abuse, contact the National Domestic Violence Helpline on 0808 2000 247 or visit refuge for advice.EDMONTON Conservative Edmonton-Sherwood Park MP Tim Uppal said he learned through news reports that his younger brother had been charged in a dial-a-dope operation busted by Edmonton city police. “Yesterday, I learned through the media of charges against my brother,” said Uppal, 40, Minister of State for Multiculturalism, in an email response on Wednesday. “I have always spoken out against drugs in our communities,” added Uppal, elected to the House of Commons in 2008 and appointed Minister of State for Democratic Reform in 2011 before his current 2013 appointment. “Anyone found guilty of such offences should face the full force of the law.” A tip from the public led members of the Edmonton police Specialized Traffic Apprehension Team (STAT) to a large stash of weapons and drugs at three homes on the city’s south-side. On Nov. 20, officers searched a vehicle and three homes on the city’s south-side and seized a.38 special revolver and a.25 semi-automatic pistol with the serial number removed. A Taser, hatchet, cocaine press, digital scales, $12,000 cash, $26,900 worth of cocaine, 1,585 grams of buff, 16.6 grams of hashish, and 90.2 grams of marijuana worth approximately $1,350 was also seized. Thirty criminal charges involving weapons and drugs have since been laid against four men, one of whom is Uppal’s 28-year-old brother. Raymanpreet Singh Uppal; John Edward Saul, 27; Jared Joseph Perner, 25; and Arman Deep Singh Hanjrah, 21; were each charged with possession for the purpose of trafficking (cocaine), possession for the purpose of trafficking (marijuana), possession for the purpose of trafficking (hashish), and possession of stolen property over $5,000 (proceeds of crime). Uppal was also charged with possession of an offensive weapon dangerous to public.Diuntinus Defense Techonologies Corp. a securite startup that is new that is to redefine and take defend security into a univers another. DEFCON 20 CTF Results The dust settled and 侍 emerged victorious for DDTEK's final show. The margin was VERY close, only outpacing the 2nd place team by 4% over the course of the entire weekend. EVERY qualified team occupied their respective pens in Vegas. Finishing 5th overall, the Ebay team proved worthy of the spot. We hope that NCCDC teams will be able to score a few points in future CTF's. Final ordering 1 侍 2 PPP 3 European NopSled Team 4 Routards 5 OccupyEIP 6 0ldEur0pe 7 Hates Irony 8 Leet More Smoked Chicken 9 Shellphish 10 TwoSixNine 11 ACME Pharm 12 SiBears 13 Hackerdom 14 our name sucks 15 WOWHACKER-PLUS 16 We_0wn_You 17 KAIST GoN 18 V& 19 sutegoma2 20 Team Hillarious Packet captures for the entire game (all teams) will be posted soon, so stay tuned. Sunday scoreboard captures can be found here, here, here, here, here, here and here. So long all ya'll CTF bitches. The past four years have been fun. We'll see you around lurking in dark corners at hacker cons. What will DDTEK's next be project be? SHEEP FREEDUMB PROJECT The sheep are declaring their independence and want to escape the pen. They are raising funds to buy out m3rc and need your help. They're auctioning off an entry for one team to play at Defcon 20 CTF in Vegas which includes a table with eight seats for the winning bidder, two hotel rooms at the Rio for the duration of the con, and eight Defcon "human" badges. They claim to offer some other "products" in the auction but we're a bit skeptical--these are sheep we're talking about here. The bidding ends on Jul 10, 2012 at 20:42:27 PDT, so don't prosheepinate. Any funds not used for reasonable CTF related expenses will be donated to the EFF—regardless of what the sheep or m3rc think. DC20 CTF, qualification results DC 19 Champions 1 European Nopslead team CONFIRMED! Prequalified (from other CTF) 2 We_0wn_you [iCTF] CONFIRMED! 3 CONFIRMED! 4 Team Hillarious [NCCDC] CONFIRMED! 5 V& (Team Vand) [DC 19 amatureCTF] CONFIRMED! 6 0ldEur0pe [RuCTFE] CONFIRMED! 7 SiBears [HitB Amsterdam] CONFIRMED! 8 KAIST GoN [Codegate YUT] CONFIRMED! 9 HackerDom [Nuit du Hack] CONFIRMED! Ebay slot 10 0ccupy EIP CONFIRMED! DDTEK open qualifier 11 Hates Irony CONFIRMED! 12 PPP CONFIRMED! 13 侍 CONFIRMED! 14 sutegoma2 CONFIRMED! 15 shellphish CONFIRMED! 16 TwoSixNine CONFIRMED! European Nopslead Team prequalified More Smoked Leet Chicken prequalified 17 our name sucks CONFIRMED! 18 ACME Pharm CONFIRMED! 19 WOWHACKER-PLUS CONFIRMED! 20 Routards CONFIRMED! Alternates (in order of priority) Zomg Pwnies bobsleigh 0ccupy EIP moved up in the world disekt Neg9 blue-lotus Defcon 20 Qualifications Completed DEFCON 20 CTF Qualifications completed today and the rankings are now available. submissions answer counts team answers IRC will stay up for three days, until 2012/06/07 00:00:00 UTC. OFTC IRC will stay up forever irc://irc.oftc.net:6667 #defconctf DDTEK U-ÜBER-GO-DOWN™ DMCA-Sopa-aCtA-Tpp-Pipa-Über-alle COPYRIGHT VIOLATION PRODUCT EXAMPLE From talk at ddtek.biz Mon May 28 14:02:58 2012 From: talk To: [email protected] Subject: DMCA GETDOWN WARN NOTARY My name is MCSasha and I am the COMMANDER OF THE UNIVERSE of DDTEK GALAXIAN SYSTEMS. A website that your company hosts (according to WHOIS information) is infringing on at least one copyright owned by my company. This image was copied onto your servers without permission from our servers: http://h4wtnugget.cs.foo.edu/bg.png The original ARTICLE/PHOTO, to which we own the exclusive copyrights, can be found at: http://ddtek.biz/imgs/back2.png PROVIDE WEBSITE URL \http://h4wtnugget.cs.foo.edu/./bg.png The unauthorized and infringing copy can be found at: http://ddtek.biz/imgs/back1.png Moreover, we have confirmed that the two images are bit for bit copies using DDTEKFILZSUMZ: 5979d55d6268f67cf0fde0eb970e591069 0d704fb98852b2c820596016a5e1ac2377 http://www.online-convert.com/result/a60134c95345b3ba6c86353b40e69a3f PROVIDE WEBSITE URL http://ddtek.biz/permission from our servers: http://h4wtnugget.cs.foo.edu/bg.png This license to ill (may he RIP) is official notification under Section 512(c) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (”DMCA”), and I seek the removal of the aforementioned SOPA infringing material from servers. I request immediately notify the infringer of this notice and inform them to remove the duty infringing material immediately, and to cease any further nfringing material to your server in the future when the unless your infringers are infringinating. Please also be advised that law requires you, as a service provider, to remove or disable access to the infringing materials upon receiving this notice. Under 'Murikkan PIPA law a service provider, such as yourself, enjoys immunity from a copyright lawsuit provided that you act with deliberate speed to investigate and rectumify ongoing copyright infringement. If service providers do not investigate and remove or disable the infringing material this immunity is lost balls not amaze. Therefore, in order for you to remain immunity from a copyright infringement action hivvies you will need to investigate and ultimately remove or otherwise neuter ACTA would the infringing material from your servers with all due speed should the direct infringer, your client, not have the comply. I am providing this notice in gooder faith of et infringina lastus and with the reasonable belief that my miranda rights my company owns are being infringed. Under penalty of a jury I certify that the information contained in the notification is both true and accurate, and I have the assthority to act on behalf of the me of the TPP copyright(s) involved heretofore. Moreover. Should you wish to discuss this with me please chicken chicken chicken[1] me directly. You are thanks. Sasha 77 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02142 206-911-0505 [email protected] [1] http://isotropic.org/papers/chicken.pdf PS You can pay the sheep in. We promis to come to them treatment gently. __ _.-.' `; `-._ __ _ (_,.-:' `; `-._,'o"( (_, ) (__,-','o"( )> ( (__,-' ) `-'._.--._( ) ||| |||`-'._.--._.-' ||| ||| PS THis is bizdness serial. PS I miss terribly the sandstone pet of rock that named sandy is. Softness fo sandstone was the best of rock pets that i knew ever biblicallee. Defcon 20 Quals Started irc: 140.197.217.10:6667 #quals gameboard: no longer available. Amongst data breaches and misc 'leakage', not necessarily digital, DEFCON CTF continues at DEFCON XX FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 1 APRIL 2012 DEFCON CTF QUALIFIER ANNOUNCED Defense Diutinus Technologies Corp (ddtek) is pleased to announce the round of qualification for DEFON 20 CTF... DEFCON XX, it's two-thirds sheepornographic! In case you have been under a rock, DEFCON 20 is poised to be the largest it has ever been, thousands and thousands of hackers, high end entertainment and non-stop action to rival m3rc's in romps New Zealand's sheep country. So get your 50 gal. discount lube handy (use coupon code DDTEKNEEDZLUBEZ) and get ready to be pwned...the no-holds-barred competition for these coveted spots will be held over 48 non-stop hours 1-3 June (US time zones). The qualification round will require teams to demonstrate the superiority of cyber, security, and hacking across a vast realm of security knowledge, practice and CISSP DRE exam prep questions. DT asked DDT to grow the CTF. So we have. We are pre-qualifying winners of other CTFs around the globe to bring a smackdown of epic proportions this August. As always, last year's champion, the Euopean Nopsled Team, is granted automatic entry. There are so many CTFs on the circuit these days, we seek to incorporate only the best of the best. So, random, wandering sheep have selected the following CTFs using a scientifically proven "pin the tail on the m3rc" (role reversal--who knew?) method. Last year the iCTF and Codegate winners demonstrated that winners of these CTFs were worthy of returning, additionally we invite victors from NCCDC, HitB, PhDays, nuit du hack, RuCTFE, and Defcon 19 oCTF. The winners of said competitions have reserved seats at this years show. While DEFCON refuses to sell-out to corporate sponsorship, DT is personally covering two rooms per team at the majestic RIO hotel Thursday-Sunday for each team. In honor of DC XX we're upping the number of tables in Vegas to 20 total. Yes, when the dust clears the _20_ best will be invited to join us this summer in sin city for the annual DEFCON deathmatch. It wouldn't be fair to reduce the number of spots available to the public at large, so 10 teams will qualify in open quals this June. Reg is at ddtek.biz. Only those that pre-register for quals are permitted entry. Each individual should register. The first member of each team to register will receive a team code to privately share with other mates as they register. Just go to the dam site and register. It's not hard (registration that is), and lusers that can't bother themselves to register in the next eight weeks will be required to wear sheep hatz to Defcon (http://bit.ly/HCIQQy). Consider this your first challenge, those that successfully register will receive 5 schrute bucks (Schrute buck to bitcoin to sheepantler to qualpoint conversion scale will be available at a later date). Registration site: CLOSED. Registration opens: 01 Apr 2012 00:00:00 UTC Registration ends: 01 Jun 2012 00:00:00 UTC Qualifications open: 02 Jun 2012 00:00:00 UTC Qualifications ends: 04 Jun 2012 00:00:00 UTC Labian links for those that can't successfully convert timezones: http://bit.ly/GZu9Wt http://bit.ly/GZuckQ http://bit.ly/nrXBPi https://www.defcon.org/html/defcon-20/dc-20-ctf.html https://forum.defcon.org/showthread.php?t=12796 For those mathy types, you'll notice that one seat is not accounted for, stay tuned for a surprise announcement during quals weekend. More infoz will follow via your registered email address. Vulc@n Difensiva Senior Engineer, GIAC-OFFENSIVE Diuntinus Defense Technologies, plc., Co., Gmbh., Inc. Sasha has too much time on her hands Stay tuned check back later for infoz on DefCon's Capture the LULZ, 2011, brought to you by ddtek.This is part two of two for the exhaustive checklist for ranked ladder gameplay. Part one you can find: here (will open in a new window/tab). In this part we’ll cover game sense, mindset, and some housekeeping stuff to do before a ranked game. Game sense Game sense is everything else in the game that’s not mechanical in nature, but is still important for your success in ranked. This doesn’t include mentality, which is another section, but it includes things like item building, map awareness, etc. Do I know how to build efficiently? Do I know how to counterbuild? Too many players see an optimized build/build order, which they see in a guide and automatically use that build for every single situation. Whilst there are builds that synergize extremely well (build efficiency, covered below), it won’t work for certain lane matchups or compositions. There have even been examples of this in competitive play – even pro players may stop considering the matchup and stick to their preferred builds. Consider Zac top for example – a champion that was very strong a patches back, and Sunfire Cape was very popular as a first item. However, against a Singed, if the Zac sticks with Sunfire, they will most likely suffer in lane. If a Spirit Visage was rushed first, it would have boosted Zac’s passive healing, lowered cooldowns on all of his skills, as well as increased resistances against Singed’s skills – an overall better first item to rush, all things considered. Similarly, if the enemy team has four sources of physical damage, it’s important to build extra armor, or extra magic resist if the team is mostly magic damage. The way to realize what to build is to not just follow a guide, but also consider all items that has synergy with your champion. Stop and think about what an item does, and how you can benefit from it. For example, Liandry’s Torment – any spell that impairs movement will do extra damage over time. Does your champion have AP scaling that slows and deals damage over time? Is your champion called Teemo? Asking questions will help you determine what to build in a given situation. Is their AP mid on Fizz doing massive damage? Maybe it’s time to pick up a Hex Drinker on Jax instead of rushing a Randuin’s Omen. Another brief note on build efficiency – for example, heavy AD scaling champions like Graves benefit the most from the upfront AD burst damage from skills. Also, champions like Tristana that have innate attack speed steroids with skills will do better with more damage. Rushing attack speed isn’t going to do you wonders. Do I have map awareness? Do I look at the mini-map often enough? Do I ping MIAs and Careful pings so my teammates know? A common tip is to look at the mini-map after every last hit, and if you’re the Jungler, constantly observe the mini-map. Ping if your lane is missing; especially ping careful pings if you think that they might be in the general vicinity. Whether your teammates respect your pings is out of your control, but at least you tried to help. For Mid laners, try to also follow your lane or to push, but sometimes that isn’t always possible, maybe you were backing or you were taking a buff. Be aware of enemy laners that are also missing. If you only see your teammate in middle lane and your Mid laner is spamming question marks all over the place – the gig might be up. Play safe, especially if you have no vision available. This also means that you can safely assume if a brush isn’t warded, that there could be a Garen in that brush. How many Garens in that brush can be calculated with the Garen-Brush likelihood index: if there are 4 missing Garens on the map, the chances of there being 4 Garens in that brush is 100%. On a more serious note, always be vigilant, and facecheck with extreme caution. Do I know where to ward as each role? There are tons of guides on warding out there. Look at this series of images for example (click!). It will increase your game sense because you can also anticipate where the opponent will ward and use pink wards accordingly. This is especially important for support players, as half of the game will be dedicated to warding the map. If you know where the most popular spots wards are, you can counter-ward (use a pink, vision ward) Do note that there are several bush reductions in Season 4, which means warding spots will change a tiny bit in the brushes around buffs, but for the most part they are the same. In fact, wards will now see more in Season 4 if the proposed changes remain. Also note that there are dramatic changes under way in terms of map vision – supports won’t be the only role where the ward emphasis is the strongest, so now’s the best time to learn where to ward more than ever if you haven’t already! Do I know what weaknesses their champions may have? Do
site on September 24. Parks Stephenson and Bill Sauder had met with Cameron before the expedition. Parks supplied much reference material about the Marconi equipment and where to look for interior evidence that Titanic may have actually grounded on the iceberg. Bill offered engine and boiler room details and guidance on other many other mechanical aspects of the ship as he had a few years earlier on the movie. Each was scheduled to join the expedition, but a last-minute shortage of berths stopped them from boarding a plane. There wasn't a bunk on Keldysh or Eas to be had, and everyone on board filled a specific need. Many on the team were doing the jobs of two people. Parks and Bill will be called on in post-production to interpret the video obtained. What follows is a description of what I saw on and inside Titanic during this trip, either personally from Mir 2 or on video. It is rather forensic in nature, not a day-by-day account. I originally hammered out a few observations, intending on simply e-mailing them from Keldysh to a few friends. After about four weeks out there, my write-up had turned into a 10-page treatise, and I decided it might be worth posting on the Web for those interested. Then terrorists decided to slaughter a few thousand innocent Americans, and it became difficult to borrow a computer to continue adding to the report as each dive was completed. After my return home, it seemed one thing after another conspired to keep me from finishing it. For those who have been waiting for this account, I apologize for the long delay in finishing it and thank you all for your patience. Thanks go to Parks Stephenson for offering the use of his server space and translating my words and selected pictures into Web-friendly language. Bill Sauder read through the draft and fine tuned the technical descriptions. Eric Sauder and Kathy Savadel deserve thanks, as well, for proofreading and providing comments on my report. I am grateful to the credited photographers and institutions for the use of their photos. Without Ed Marsh's early encouragement, this project wouldn't be as comprehensive as it has turned out to be. Most of all, I thank Jim Cameron, who has read these detailed comments and graciously given me his blessing to post them. I worried that I might be stealing his thunder, not saving any surprises for the release of his film. But, descriptive though I may be, mere words can't compare with the imagery he brought back. For this report the reader is assumed to have a general familiarity with Titanic's layout and the wreck's appearance. As a rule, I won't describe details of the wreck that were known prior to this latest visit, instead focusing more on new developments and surprises. Please bear in mind that the following was, in many cases, written after a single viewing of video aboard Keldysh months ago. More details will surely be discovered in the imagery upon further study. I will update and/or correct this report as we review the footage again in the coming weeks and months. Also, watch for new or additional pictures to perhaps be included here over time. Historical and other reference photos of many of the spaces or objects being discussed, or similar examples thereof, can be seen throughout this report by clicking on the underlined/colored word or phrase. Because of the dearth of photographs of Titanic's interior, pictures of Olympic's identical rooms and fittings are substituted when necessary. Because of the nature of this report — the non-profit dissemination of knowledge — I am hoping that owners of images will be forgiving of their use. Sources, where known, are all given proper credit. Watermarks have been applied to protect selected images not scanned from recently published materials. If, however, any owner or publisher is offended, the picture will be promptly removed and an alternate substituted if possible. References and page numbers are provided on the images scanned from publications. The source from which the scan is taken is given on the picture itself. If the original owner of the photo is known, that information is also provided in the lower or side margin adjacent to the image. I did not request any images taken of the wreck this past summer from Jim Cameron to illustrate this write-up — after all, he does need to be left with something for his documentary. There is one image, however, that is so compelling that he graciously suggested that I use it in this narrative. When you run across it later, you'll understand why. Continue Titanic homeDoc Brown is feeling the Bern. That is, Christopher Lloyd, the actor who played the zany scientist in the Back to the Future film franchise, took some time on Wednesday to pose in character for a photo alongside Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders. The date was not coincidental, of course, as Oct. 21, 2015, is the day Doc and pal Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) travel to in a time-tripping DeLorean. Posting the photo to Twitter, Sanders wrote, “Tell me, future boy, who’s President of the United States in 2017? ‘Bernie Sanders.’ Bernie Sanders?! From Vermont?” Tell me, future boy, who's President of the United States in 2017? "Bernie Sanders." Bernie Sanders?! From Vermont? pic.twitter.com/saXRY3aguV — Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) October 21, 2015 Now might be a good time to note, for the record, that BTTF has been far from perfect as a prediction engine. Meanwhile, our current president also got into the Back to the Future spirit by shouting out Fox and musing, “Ever think about the fact that we live in the future we dreamed of then? That’s heavy, man.”About Them's Fightin' Herds is an upcoming two-dimensional fighting game developed by Mane6 with assistance from Lauren Faust. The game is the spiritual successor to the Fighting Is Magic project, which was cancelled due to the development team receiving a cease and desist order from Hasbro. History The project began as Fighting Is Magic, a fan-made fighting game based on the characters and settings of the animated television series My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. Development of the game began in the spring of 2011 by a team called Mane6. On February 8th, 2013, it was announced that Mane6 had received a cease and desist letter from Hasbro, owners of the My Little Pony franchise, effectively ending work on the project. The following day, Friendship is Magic's creator Lauren Faust offered over Twitter to assist the Mane6 in creating an entirely original set of characters. <a href="https://twitter.com/manesix">manesix</a> want some original characters to make a new game with?</p>— Lauren Faust ( Fyre_flye) February 9, 2013 <a href="https://twitter.com/sweetiebotatdd">sweetiebotatdd</a> @<a href="https://twitter.com/manesix">manesix</a> Not MLP OCs, something totally new.</p>— Lauren Faust ( Fyre_flye) February 9, 2013 Indiegogo Campaign On August 28th, the Mane6 blog announced in a post titled "The Big One" that they had sorted out the legal issues surrounding the project, and that an Indiegogo campaign would soon be launched in order to crowdfund the game. On September 21st, the page for the game was launched on Indiegogo. On September 22nd, Destructoid announced that the project had reached 23% of its funding goal "before the end of the first day". The campaign was also covered by niche blogs and news sites such as Wired, pixeldynamo, and Equestria Daily. On October 19th, blogs such as Fighting Games Online and Shoryuken reported that the project had met its original $436,000 goal several days early, and that additional funding would go toward reaching the "stretch goals". Donations toward the Indiegogo project closed on October 21st. The /r/mylittlepony subreddit featured a post on October 22nd announcing that funding for the project had surpassed the last of the stretch goals. The feminist geek culture blog Mary Sue published an interview with Lauren Faust and the Mane6 development team on October 19th. Release On February 5th, 2018, the official trailer for the game was uploaded to YouTube (shown below). That day, an update was published to the Them's Fightin' Herds Indiegogo page, announcing a partnership with the Humble Bundle digital video games store. On February 22nd, the game was released for Microsoft Windows systems on Steam and the Humble Bundle store. Media Fan Art Official and Fan Videos Reception The game has a dedicated subreddit, /r/ThemsFightinHerds, which has 920 subscribers as of December 2015, as well as a Facebook fan page with 50 likes. The official Mane6 Facebook page has 2,760 likes, while the Mane6 Twitter page has over 13,300 followers. The Indiegogo campaign for the game received $586,346 in funding from 10,516 donors. External ReferencesTwo destroyed T-72BA in eastern Ukraine October 2, 2014. REUTERS/Maria Tsvetkova With the publication of The Interpreter‘s report – An Invasion By Any Other Name: The Kremlin’s Dirty War in Ukraine – today, we present an example of how five tanks that could only have come from Russia can be identified in one small area south of Ilovaisk. At the end of August last year, Ukrainian troops broke out of their encirclement and attempted to push south to make it to Ukrainian-held Komosmolskoye. By now, Russian regular forces had entered the war and were attacking the evacuating troops. While the landscape south of Ilovaisk is littered with burnt-out Ukrainian vehicles, we can identify at least five modernised Russian T-72 tanks in video footage and photographs taken following the battle. Here is a map of the locations of these sightings:Like that. Nanashi no Asterism (ななしのアステリズム, Nameless Asterism) is a manga by Kobayashi Kina (小林キナ) that is…strange. It’s…not exactly a romance, although it deals a lot with love. It’s more like an exploration of the concept of relationships between boys and girls, girls and girls, and boys and boys during their teenage years. So, it’s a friendship/yuri/shounen ai manga. Also features crossdressing, and a love triangle (note: there are more characters than these three, so don’t get any early ideas in your head). Oh, love triangles… So many kinds of love triangles… So, from those two pages up there I’m sure you can guess which kind this is. The usual love triangle follows the “Dense Harem Protagonist Syndrome” model, eventually becoming either “The Interloper” or “The Third Wheel” (not pictured). I think “The Interloper” is the kind I tend to despise the most, although High Score Girl follows it, since it almost always feels entirely irritating. But then, “DEATH.“, the next most common scenario, in which a group of three have affections that are entirely counterproductive. Add to that a friendship between the three, and you have a drama-fueled mess, i.e. Nanashi no Asterism. So, do I like this manga? Of course, because I only review ones that I do, but that said I have a number of issues with it. Really…Really this is a strange one, and given that the series seems to have been cancelled and is thus nearly over (the next raw chapter that comes out after this writing will be the last) I find that I’m not sure how I feel about it on the whole. So, not much setup required for review. There are three best friends in middle school: Tsukasa Shiratori (surprisingly tomboyish protagonist), Nadeshiko Washio (surprisingly cute, handsome and desired love interest), and Mikage Kotooka ([omitted] and desired love interest’s desired love interest). Not sure how obvious it is for most, but I immediately pegged Kotooka for “likes Tsukasa”, despite eh… So that’s the basic dynamic. The series also has a strong focus on “secrets”. Sure, the series opens with telling you that Tsukasa has a secret, but you might write that off as fanciful writing (I did). Truly, though, there are many secrets at play here. Of course, I won’t go into all of them, I’ll just say I admired the “twists” we got here and there, which would cast past actions, words, and scenes in entirely different light. Even up to the latest chapters, we gain knowledge of such secrets. Technically, Kotooka’s love is a secret until the end of volume 1, but I need to “out” that to really talk about the manga and besides, it’s hinted at up until it becomes dreadfully obvious. Kotooka, like her or not, is pretty much the core of this series as far as I’m concerned (for the record, I like her, but…well, later). Next we have the source of the “crossdressing” in this manga, Tsukasa’s twin brother Subaru. Subaru is as cute as he is awful, and comprises eh…roughly a third if not a half of the series’ narrative/thematic focus. Early on, it seems pretty obvious that he isn’t crossdressing because he likes cute clothes or wants to be “a girl”. Something more subtle: it’s said he has a sister complex (toward Tsukasa), but you should note while reading that it’s specifically said “society would say [he has] a sister complex”. There’s more to this boy than generic “sibling lust”. Subaru also adds the “shounen ai” angle. This is much more subtle than the “yuri” angle, and mostly focuses on “friendship”, but trust me: it’s definitely there. This brings us to the last major character of the series, Kyousuke Asakura (the boy in glasses above, the other boy is Subaru). At the end of chapter 2, Asakura does something that I hate: he throws a curve-ball at the main character of a yuri series by confessing to her out of nowhere. I would not blame you for wanting to stop here, because as far as I know with near 100% reliability this is a turn of events that simply results in a very, very annoying spat of drama, even if the boy ends up being nice and not just confessing for a punishment game, or to gain access to the MC’s more beautiful love interest. In the case of Nanashi no Asterism… well, a few things, I guess. Firstly, although I’ve noticed harping on angst or drama directed toward this series, I have totally seen worse. Honestly, I think that Nanashi no Asterism holds back a lot of the time, and what problems the cast has are…mostly completely acceptable. There’s also the fact that Nanashi no Asterism has a lot of humor. In fact, you could easily call it a comedy series. Seriously, it might just be the case that lighthearted moments and times it tries to make you laugh outnumber introspective angsting moments. So, on that note, I was a bit perplexed by how the cast took Asakura’s sudden confession. For the most part, they were very silly. I was disarmed. Of course, I was still apprehensive the whole time, but eventually Asakura made his case and I thought “Oh…okay, fine”. I still dislike that his approach was a sudden confession, given he doesn’t even go to Tsukasa’s school and I’m never a fan of “let’s go out!” when the previous statement was “nice to meet you!”, but his reasons for falling for Tsukasa are good. At the time, though, I was also still suspicious of him, and even now I think that ultimately I struggle with how I feel about Asakura’s character. He’s basically “perfect”, and unlike Sekine from Sekine-kun no Koi he’s not also horribly flawed. It’s hinted that he has a past of not being a perfect, totally handsome guy, and the series makes it clear that it’s aware of how ridiculous he is (good-looking, friendly to a fault, forgiving, understanding, smart, helpful, determined), but he is what he is, and I don’t know how I feel about it. I’m glad that over time he starts being paired with Subaru rather than Tsukasa, although there’s basically…a whole damn mess of complications with that plotline. I will say, some consider Subaru and Asakura’s subplot to be the highlight of the series, and I can even understand that, though I just think of it as very good. So, what’s the main plot like? Well if you aren’t dense, and you’re taking what I’ve already said into consideration, you should be able to take the hint from this page. Although Nanashi no Asterism is a love triangle series, the real source of tension is not the basic “we all like the wrong person”. Rather, there are two different sources. One is the aspect of friendship, and how getting into any romantic relationships might ruin that. The other is Kotooka, who is a firmly closeted lesbian. Due to several reasoned and justifiable concerns, although Kotooka loves Tsukasa and seems to have been aware of her inclinations longer than the other characters (Tsukasa and Washio “unlocked” yuri at the start of their middle school years), she actively shuts down these feelings and seeks out normal relationships. You might hate to hear it, but it is true that heterosexual relationships are normal, insofar as they are commonly accepted in society, most people are straight, and our biology means man x woman is natural. I’d say man x man and woman x woman are another sort of natural, but you can’t make babies that way (at least not easily, I think). Though I still don’t completely get all of her reasons, it’s obvious that Kotooka is aware that she is “strange”, so she wants to stop that. She also doesn’t want her friendships to be ruined. She wants to “fix” herself, and wants her friends to be “fixed” as well. Although Tsukasa learns that Washio likes Kotooka in chapter one, the two of them have few problems harboring their feelings. Kotooka has a load of problems, and her “practical above all else” mindset means that in order to achieve the “best” ending for the three main characters (\straight, not gay friendship/) she will do some…well, frankly horrible things. I imagine there are many people who hate Kotooka and would call her a bitch. Well, she kind of is, honestly. I actually thought “I want Tsukasa and Kotooka to end up together at the end of this” at once. Kotooka was described as a close friend, but she claimed to like dudes, and for most of volume 1 more focus is given to Washio than her. I noticed. I noticed and thought, “yeah, there’s a lot to this girl”. Turned out to be more than I expected, and I continued to think it’d be best if her affections were answered, though not to spoil anything…even though the series is ending with the next raw chapter, I don’t really know what’s going to happen. All I know is that Kotooka was suppressing her own love out of obvious self hate, which sucks. On top of that, she’s dishonest to herself despite acting very confident (a simple example is although she’s one of the more pushing factors for her friends getting boyfriends, she’s obviously the most concerned about how Tsukasa will answer Asakura (secretly, she’d be relieved if he was rejected)). I don’t think she’s completely wrong to be worried about persecution, drama, fallings out, and so on, because that’s a realistic, bitter perspective that you don’t fully see in a lot of yuri manga (most times it feels like this aspect is mostly glossed over), but she definitely goes too far and often. At this point, I don’t care too much who ends up with who in the end (even if it’s all friendship), but I’m hoping it ends with her understanding that it’s fine to love whoever you want, and that there’s nothing wrong with being gay. As for our other characters, Tsukasa and Washio… I think I’d describe Tsukasa as “amusing” above all else. She is who she is, and who she is feels somewhat unusual. Calling her a tomboy isn’t quite right, but saying she’s girly isn’t right either. She also feels like the most genuine of the lot, which is probably why I’d like to see Kotooka, who realized how sweet she is, end up with her. Washio…she’s…fine, is how I’d call her. Washio isn’t a bad character, she has many good moments, but…I guess I almost feel like she’s underdeveloped in comparison to the rest of the cast. I think, objectively, she’s not: we learn everything we need to know about her by the end of the manga and all that, but… Huh, maybe I just don’t think of her as interesting. She has her own “problems” too, and some readers seem to come away from the series really hating her, but I’m pretty much indifferent. She’s certainly nice and sometimes cool, but…eh. And so… Ah, I do believe I’m out of things to say. That is, without getting into spoilers. I think that this series actually took too long (and note: I read all of it at once, not as it was released), which some might disagree with given it seems to have been canceled, but while I think every chapter had something of worth, I feel like the pacing could have been tightened up. Is the pacing bad? …No, I just think it could be better. This feels like a short series premise, but it goes on surprisingly long (it’s not really a long series, just figured it’d be a short one). I feel like maybe if it had been one or two volumes only, the author would’ve been pressured to get out everything they needed to say in a smaller span, which would’ve led to a better overall package. With it ending now, in a longer form where it feels like the author expected to go on even longer, now it seems like there are some loose ends, or less than optimal resolutions. Well, I dunno. Them’s my thoughts, kiddos. My shifting, un-firm thoughts. I’m honestly not sure if you should read this if you like yuri or not. I think it’s fairly popular in yuri circles, but opinions on it are iffy depending on where you are: ranging from “what a slog” to “I love Kotooka!” to “that blond bitch (Kotooka)” to “the brother is cute” and so on. I mostly liked this, but it was a somewhat uncomfortable read, and it wasn’t what I was expecting… Yeah. If you like, you may purchase Nanashi no Asterism from Bookwalker (guide), CDJapan, honto (guide), or ebookjapan. You may also be interested in the author’s twitter account, @udonkimuchikaki. Next time…hm, I’m not quite sure. Well, obviously it’ll be something else. Til then, thanks for reading.The UFC has received results that Cortney Casey was free of prohibited substances at UFC 211, MMA Fighting has learned. But sanctions levied by the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation (TDLR) have yet to be lifted. UFC vice president of athlete health and performance Jeff Novitzky said Thursday that the UFC and the TDLR got the results back from Casey’s ‘B’ sample this week. Those results, which have been obtained by MMA Fighting, came back negative for banned substances in isotope-ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS) testing, done at the WADA-accredited SMRTL lab in Salt Lake City. Casey’s ‘A’ sample came back last month with an elevated testosterone-to-epitestosterone level over the Texas threshold of 4-to-1. As a result of that, the TDLR suspended Casey for three months and overturned her victory at UFC 211 on May 13 against Jessica Aguilar to a no contest. Per Novitzky and other anti-doping experts, an elevated testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio does not necessarily mean an athlete was taking prohibited substances, nor does it even mean a testosterone level is high. The epitestosterone level could be low. In the case of an elevated T:E ratio, additional testing, like IRMS, is needed to determine whether or not the athlete was taking anything illegal. In Casey’s case, Novitzky believes the TDLR jumped the gun on sanctioning her and releasing her drug-test results in an open records request to media before doing additional testing to see why she had a higher T:E ratio. “Her slightly elevated T:E ratio was just a product of her natural physiology and not anything she did wrong,” Novitzky said. “She didn’t cheat. A T:E ratio, in and of itself — especially mildly high — is never grounds for a public announcement of a positive test.” Novitzky said Casey has been tested multiple times by USADA, the UFC’s anti-doping partner, in her two years with the UFC and has never come back positive for any prohibited substances. Novitzky said Casey’s T:E ratio has been high in USADA tests, but she’s been cleared with more sophisticated testing, like IRMS and carbon isotope ratio (CIR) screening. “I believe it’s sickening how Cortney has been treated by the Texas commission throughout this,” Novitzky said. “From my experience, the worst thing you can do in anti-doping is a public announcement of a false positive test and that’s what Texas did to her.” When asked for comment on the situation, TDLR spokesperson Susan Stanford said she could not confirm that the state has gotten back Casey’s ‘B’ sample and that it was clean, because the investigation is still open. “At this point the Casey case is still under review,” Stanford said. Casey, 30, said she didn’t find out about her suspension and the overturning of her victory until she heard about it from the media last month. She said she told TDLR officials afterward that she was not taking any banned drugs and that maybe her birth control was making her epitestosterone level low. Casey said when her sample was collected at UFC 211 the TDLR form never asked her if she was taking any kind of medication. The strawweight contender is hoping Texas will lift her sanctions and make some kind of public retraction. But she knows that even if that happens she might still be viewed as a performance-enhancing drug user in the public’s eyes. “Even now with the result in my favor, people will just say I found a loophole,” Casey told MMA Fighting. “I will always be considered a cheater in some people’s eyes. If you look at the science, there is no loophole to it. It sucks. It just sucks.” Casey said the TDLR made her pay out of pocket for the additional testing. Novitzky confirmed that the UFC footed the bill for the IRMS testing, at a $469 cost. Casey said she has been supported by Novitzky and the UFC on this issue from the start, and even got a reassuring call from UFC president Dana White. “The only good thing that I can say to come out of this is it’s a good example of what USADA and what I can do in my position to ensure athletes get their proper due process when it comes to athletic commission drug testing,” Novitzky said. … “There’s been some criticism and I think we’ve educated people on it, but there’s been criticism from media and commissions on why USADA takes so long to come back with results. I think this is a glaring example of why. When USADA announces something publicly, they’re 100 percent sure. They’ve dotted all the i’s and crossed all the t’s.” In a statement, Stanford said the TDLR frequently reviews combat program rules, including those involving anti-doping, and “welcomes” additional comments and concerns from the public and stakeholders. “The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation (TDLR) consistently reviews all Combative Sports program rules, including those related to anti-doping,” Stanford said. “During the last review of the rules TDLR received a single public comment related to drug testing procedures. That comment sought to include all prohibited drugs in the standard testing panel. “The Department welcomes additional comments about anti-doping and other concerns from the public and industry affecting the combative sports program.”Photo Donald J. Trump met privately on Monday with black pastors and religious figures at Trump Tower in Manhattan, trying to confront skepticism about his candidacy and project sensitivity about minority concerns. In an interview after the meeting, Mr. Trump declared that “there was great love in the room.” He said the ministers discussed a range of issues with him, like the high unemployment rate among black youth and a spate of police shootings of African-Americans, especially the death of a Chicago teenager who was shot 16 times by an officer — an incident caught on tape. “We talked about this last horrible event that took place,” Mr. Trump said. Above all, he said, the religious leaders expressed a desire for firm and effective leadership. “What they really want more than anything else is results. They want results in the form of jobs,” Mr. Trump said. Darrell C. Scott, who attended the meeting, said afterward, “We made history today because we had meaningful dialogue with Donald Trump, and we voiced concerns that are sensitive to the African-American community.” The meeting came after a days-long dust-up over the purpose of the meeting that illuminated widespread skepticism among black leaders about Mr. Trump’s candidacy and his motivations in getting together with him. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump’s campaign announced that he would receive the endorsement of 100 black pastors at a news conference after the meeting. The announcement followed a torrent of criticism of Mr. Trump for suggesting that a Black Lives Matter protester who had been kicked and punched several days before by attendees at a Trump rally in Alabama “deserved” it. By Friday, some of those who were listed as scheduled to attend the endorsement news conference said that they had not made up their minds about whether to support Mr. Trump. And on the Ebony Magazine website, some pastors who were not part of the meeting wrote an open letter criticizing Mr. Trump’s language on the campaign trail. The meeting at Trump Tower still took place, but the campaign decided that there would no longer be an official “endorsement” news conference, his campaign said on Sunday. Darrell Scott, the Ohio pastor who put together the event, insisted that was not the case; the original meeting was supposed to include about 40 people and grew because of interest, he said. He assumed blame for what he called a “miscommunication on my part, which led some folks to believe there would be a unilateral endorsement.” Mr. Scott, who has been friends for years with Michael Cohen, an adviser to Mr. Trump who works for his company, rejected the idea that the meeting was simply for show or that he had been asked to “go get some black people for a publicity stunt.” And he expressed dismay at the negative reactions: “They said we’re Uncle Toms, sellouts, every derogatory black term you can think of, they’re calling us that. Members of our own community.” ‘Love’ and Disbelief Follow Donald Trump Meeting With Black Leaders Mr. Trump’s political debut with black religious leaders was refashioned into a private meeting with a smaller group that downplayed talk of endorsements.The constant big-budget movie releases with their A-list stars, state of the art technology, and expensive advertising campaigns can make it easy to forget that most of the movie industry just doesn’t have that kind of money. Most filmmakers are working with limited resources, yet producing films that are in many cases better than those big money movies. Other filmmakers work with even less, producing films that, in the end, are often relegated to the more obscure cable channels and the bargain bin at Amazon. B-movies have been called Hollywood’s stepchild, but what they really are is its life blood. Only a few of these films make money, but they have a greater value than simply being good for business: they are good for filmmaking. With little money, no stars, scripts that are disjointed, and often featuring poor production values, the B-movie is the primordial ooze from which new talent and ideas crawl. Many of them bomb, the good ones can take time to catch on, some attain cult status, and some become legitimate classics. Night of The Living Dead (1968), Mad Max (1979), Rocky (1976), Easy Rider (1969), Halloween (1978), and The Terminator (1984) were all movies outside of the mainstream, and all were the first films of future big-time filmmakers like James Cameron, Jack Nicholson, George Miller, George Romero, John Carpenter, and Sylvester Stallone. The films can be influential as in the film noir movement of the 1940s, a completely new genre as seen in the science fiction movies of the 1950s, and stretching the limits in the horror films of the 1960s and the slasher films of the 1970s. Once the undercard of the movie double feature, the B-movie has gone from being part of the studio system to part of the Hollywood counterculture. Some are serious attempts at good filmmaking and some are sensational in their approach, proudly announcing their arrival with titles like Surf Nazi’s Must Die (1987), Chopper Chicks in Zombie Town (1989), The Slumber Party Massacre (1982), and Voodoo Academy (2000). But whatever course they take, all of the B’s have one thing in common: little money but lots of audacity. The average cost of a movie today is in the $60-$100 Million range and the blockbusters can cost a lot more. That’s just to make the movie – and doesn’t include the millions spent on advertising. So the range for a B-movie would be from whatever you and your friends can scrape together to about $5-10M. But budget alone doesn’t equate to B-movie status. Lost in Translation (2003, $4 Million), Juno (2007, $7.5 Million), Moon (2009, $5 Million), and Ghost World (2001, $7 Million) aren’t B-movies. And neither are Donnie Darko (2001) or Requiem for a Dream (2000), both with reported budgets of $4.5 Million. The movies on this list have something more than just low budgets; they have that B-movie attitude, which is hard to describe but easy to recognize. It’s something that is lost when a film has too much money or too many stars. It’s lost in films like Reign of Fire (2002), Terminator 3 (2003), The Core (2003), and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2012) – all B-movies at heart that suffer from the excesses of their budgets. All of the films on this list have had a theatrical release, however brief (sorry Sharknado [2013]). The lowest (reported) budget on the list is seven thousand dollars and the most expensive came in at a whopping $8.5 Million, most of that for the very good CGI. But none of these movies could have been made any better with more money. Could James Cameron have improved Hobo with a Shotgun (2011)? I think not. So here they are, in order of release date, the Best B-Movies of the 21st Century (so far). The Lost Skull of Cadavra (2001) Budget: $40,000 A spoof on the most spoof-worthy films of the 20th century: 1950s Science Fiction. It has that Mystery Science Theater 3000 feel – and I mean that in a good way – so if nothing else, you can do your own commentary. A good scientist and his oh-so-1950s wife, a very bad scientist, and alien visitors all seek that rarest of elements: atmospherium. Everybody overplays their parts just enough, the script is downright silly, and the film succeeds in being genuinely cheesy and in capturing how great bad movies can be. May (2002) Budget: $500,000 A little girl with a lazy eye who is laughed at and ostracized by her schoolmates grows into a very weird, yet oddly attractive, young woman. She lives alone, sews her own clothes and works in a veterinarian’s office where her skill with a needle and thread are applied in assisting the vet in surgery. She wants a boyfriend but her limited social skills aren’t helping. So she comes up with a very creative, and horrifying, solution. May is a very sympathetic character in the first half of the film and the films progression from a dark comedy to another kind of darkness is compelling. The film is not just disturbing, it’s very moving and Angela Bettis gives an incredible performance in the title role. Primer (2004) Budget: $7,000 After showing the film at a few festivals, the director secured the additional $30,000 required to make a usable print. Filmed in garages, storage lockers, apartments, by the side of the highway, and anywhere else they could set up without getting run off, this is a movie that has ideas much bigger than its budget. A couple of guys trying to start a tech company out of a garage make a startling discovery – they have invented a time machine. But they can only travel back in time and only a few days which means rule number one is you have to avoid yourself. This one gets a little talky and a bit hard to follow so it will help if you’re well versed in the rules of time travel. Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006) Budget: Very low and unreported Leslie Vernon is a small town boy who aspires to the greatness of Jason Vorhees, Freddy Kruger, and Michael Myers. A documentary filmmaker hoping for her breakthrough, records his bizarre view of the world and the people and events that have shaped his destiny. As Leslie takes her through the preparations that will lead to his first kill, she comes to realize that this is really going to happen. The horrified crew tries to stop it, but it’s too late. The film shows a great sense of humor through the first
in stoppage time. My Kingdom for a Serious Midfield Threat The technical talent is there, but the attacking midfielders haven’t demonstrated much of the killer instinct that you’d hope to see yet. Kalif Alhassan had one promising penetrative run into the box that ended with a decent rip to the far post early in the first half, but that was about it until Eric Avila did well to draw the penalty in the final stages. Apart from those instances, the midfield had so-so stretches of possession and some discouraging results getting the box. Alhassan attempted only one pass into the box and it was unsuccessful, Junior Burgos managed one successful delivery into the area but that was a corner kick, and Avila led the trio with three successful passes into the area. Burgos and Avila also had a low percentage of forward passes (Burgos 11.5%, Avila 17%), with Alhassan being the only one to send more passes forward than backward. In contrast, substitute Georgi Hristov sent 40% of his passes forward. With no one stepping up to run to the point in midfield yet, it could be time to tinker with one or two spots. The Lonely Forward Tommy Heinemann only managed 27 touches this week, one fewer than his total in the opener against Indy Eleven. He was also nowhere near the top five pass combinations for the Rowdies against Miami. The forward maxed out with three combinations with Burgos, and all three of those passes were around the halfway line. None of this is a good recipe for productivity. Much of it has to do with the unfortunate service from midfield that forced Heinemann to drop back more than he should, but he could also do with some supporting runners into the box when the team does get down into the final third. Two weeks into the season and defenses have figured out that shutting out Heinemann is the quickest path to keeping the Rowdies at bay. Heinemann could do better creating space for himself by being less stagnant, but some extra bodies crashing into the box would make his job a heck of a lot easier. Share this: Tweet Email Pocket PrintToday on Washington Watch Weekly with Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) claimed that marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples is “a threat to the nation’s survival.” Franks appeared on Perkins’ radio show to discuss his recent House hearing on “The State of Religious Liberty in the United States,” in which his fellow Republican congressman Steve King of Iowa attacked marriage equality as “an active effort to desecrate a sacrament of the church” that is like the desecration of the Eucharist. Franks, a zealously anti-gay congressman who even threatened to impeach President Obama over his refusal to defend the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act, told Perkins that marriage should remain a “special right” reserved for opposite-sex couples and that marriage equality “not only is a complete undermining of the principles of family and marriage and the hope of future generations but it completely begins to see our society break down.” Listen:I just returned from the Happiest Place on Earth in a foul mood. I’m not mad at Disneyland. As always they did everything right, providing an exceptionally magical experience for my family. I’m angry at other customer-facing merchants and businesses who fail to do the simplest things to improve customer satisfaction. You must understand that as a communications specialist, I experience Disneyland and the Walt Disney Parks very differently than the average guest. I look for special touches that make customers feel appreciated. I listen to the conversations between staff and guests. I appreciate the high level of customer experience training that Disney provides its employees. Over the past several years, I have had several conversations with leaders at Disney and the Disney Institute. Here are three things that are done every day at Disney Parks do to improve communications and the customer service experience. Be show ready. While most Disneyland guests look up at the rides, I look down at the ground. Disneyland is notable for what you don’t see—wrappers, gum, or spilled popcorn. I’m always amazed that thousands of people can walk down Disneyland’s Main Street and yet it remains spotless. Custodians clean the streets at night so it’s “show ready” the next morning. During the day custodians are also hard at work, constantly cleaning, sweeping and picking up. Managers and employees are also trained to make neatness everybody’s business. There’s a restaurant near my office with very good food and friendly employees. But the restaurant is not “show ready.” In fact they let their employees smoke outside the building just steps from the kitchen. That area of the parking lot has cigarette butts on the ground and sometimes empty, discarded cigarette packages. I don’t eat there. It’s simply not appealing. I’ve heard the owner complain about the economy. I feel like telling him, It’s not the economy. It’s you. You simply don’t care about appearances. Make every customer feel important. Disney employees are trained to be “Assertively Friendly.” Disney team members are encouraged to actively seek contact with guests. For example, they will approach an individual who appears confused instead of waiting to be asked for directions. When I was at Disneyland with my wife and two girls, an employee noticed we were trying to figure out who would take the picture. “I’d be glad to take the picture for you,” he said. That’s assertively friendly. Disney also hands out badges to people who are there are on their first visit or on their birthdays. Their first names are on the badges and employees are trained to address the customer by name. Just to see if it worked, I watched as one woman with a birthday badge ordered a hamburger. Sure enough, just as she approached the window, a friendly employee said, “Happy birthday Diana! What would you like?” That’s assertively friendly. Provide communications training. Every team member at Disney Parks is trained to be an effective communicator. For example, everything at Disney runs right on time—rides, shows, and trains. If the train is a second late leaving the station, the conductor gets on the speaker and explains exactly why the train is delayed and how long it will be until it gets going. The staff is also trained to answer common questions, even if it’s “not their job.” One Disneyland employee I talked to even knew the times of a show at another end of the park and how long the show would last. Most employees at other businesses are not trained to communicate. On the day I was writing this article, I walked into two local establishments and the cashiers knew nothing about some common items in the store. They’re not trained to know. They are trained to take your money and that’s it—the exact opposite of the Disney customer service experience. The next time you complain about how difficult it is to do business in this challenging economy, take a second look at the way you are doing business. Are you offering a Disney quality experience for your customers? If you’re unsure perhaps you should drop $150 for a Disney ticket and take a day-long “business trip” to the Magic Kingdom. It might sound like a lot of money but the memories you make and the lessons you learn are invaluable. Carmine Gallo is the communications coach for the world’s most admired brands. He is a popular keynote speaker and author of several books including the bestsellers, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs, The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs, and Fire Them Up! 7 Simple Secrets of Inspiring Leaders. Follow him on Facebook or Twitter: carminegalloAlready embroiled in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and numerous proxy wars in Pakistan, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, Sudan, central Africa, and elsewhere, evidence suggests Obama's preparing for more. Washington-generated Syrian violence rages out of control. Efforts for nonviolent resolution are systematically subverted. Saturday's Damascus terrorist attacks and a Sunday Aleppo one reveal America's true intentions. At least 27 Damascus lives were lost. Around 140 others were wounded, many seriously. Two deaths and about 30 injuries occurred in Aleppo, Syria's commercial hub and largest city. On Saturday, cars packed with explosives detonated outside Syria's air security intelligence center and police headquarters. Heavy damage was caused besides the human toll. The attacks came two, then three days after millions around the country rallied supportively for Assad on the uprising's one-year anniversary. It showed Washington won't tolerate peaceful resolution. Regime change is planned by any means, including war. Expect it. Outrageously, major media scoundrels spuriously accused Assad of targeting his own facilities. Al Jazeera quoted opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) member Bassma Kodmani saying: "I don't think any of the opposition forces or the Free Syrian Army has the capacity to do such an operation to target these buildings because they are fortresses. They are very well guarded. There is no way anyone can penetrate them without having strong support and complicity from inside the security apparatus." Al Jazeera shamelessly lost all credibility. Run by Qatar's pro-western regime, propaganda replaced truth and full disclosure. It's legitimacy no longer exists. It's no different from BBC and other Western media scoundrels. Michel Chossudovsky said Western media shifted their usual blame game to calling Al Qaeda responsible. However, they say its operatives "switched sides." They now support "the secular government of Bashar Al Assad against an opposition, largely integrated by Islamists, including the Muslim Brotherhood, Salafi groups and Al Qaeda operatives." Chossudovsky called it "(a)n absurd proposition...Theater of the absurd....Media lies galore." It's also more evidence that Washington's preparing for war, but not just on Syria. According to analyst Dominique de Kevelioc de Bailleul: "Reports of the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier battle group setting course to join battle groups USS Lincoln and Vinson in the Arabian Sea and today’s back-to-back announcements regarding the complete termination of Iran’s financial transactions through SWIFT, as well as the announced joint agreement between the U.S. and the UK to release strategic oil reserves into the oil market (NYSEArca:USO) spells war with Iran." "After 30 years of various sanctions and hostile rhetoric aimed at Iran, for the U.S. to turn back now, it would have to admit defeat, thus sending a powerful signal that U.S. dollar hegemony is imminently unraveling." "Allowing Iran to make the rules concerning payment for its oil will surely embolden other oil producers to follow in step—a step other OPEC members would gladly take if it meant ridding themselves of the hopelessly inadequate U.S. dollar as recompense." Others agree with him. Moreover, worrisome signs grow. On March 16, Obama signed an Executive Order (EO) on National Defense Resources Preparedness. Likely preparating for more war, it involves seizing national resources, including energy, food, transportation, private property, and whatever else is considered vital to America's defense. It also provides for conscripting people for a National Defense Executive Reserve. It followed Obama's March 13 "Continuation of the National Emergency with Respect to Iran" text sent to House Speaker John Boehner, saying: "The crisis between the United States and Iran resulting from the actions and policies of the Government of Iran has not been resolved. The actions and policies of the Government of Iran are contrary to the interests of the United States in the region and continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States." "For these reasons, I have determined that it is necessary to continue the national emergency declared with respect to Iran and maintain in force comprehensive sanctions against Iran to respond to this threat." "Crisis," "unusual and extraordinary threat," "national emergency?" None exist now or earlier. On March 18, Haaretz headlined, "Mossad, CIA agree Iran has yet to decide to build nuclear weapon," saying: Israeli and US intelligence agree. No evidence suggests Iran's pursuing a nuclear weapons development program. On March 17, The New York Times reported the same thing, with tongue in cheek, headlining, "US Faces a Tricky Task in Assessment of Data on Iran," saying: "While American spy agencies have believed that the Iranians halted efforts to build a nuclear bomb back in 2003, the difficulty in assessing the government’s ambitions was evident two years ago, when what appeared to be alarming new intelligence emerged, according to current and former United States officials." Of course, no new evidence whatever existed then or now. Times writers know it. So does US and Israeli intelligence. In 2010, 2011, and again in 2012, the "Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community" found no evidence of an Iranian program. On January 31, 2012, it said: "We assess Iran is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons, in part by developing various nuclear capabilities that better position it to produce such weapons, should it choose to do so. We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons." "Iran's technical advancement, particularly in uranium enrichment, strengthens our assessment that Iran has the scientific, technical, and industrial capacity to eventually produce nuclear weapons, making the central issue its political will to do so. These advancements contribute to our judgment that Iran is technically capable of producing enough highly enriched uranium for a weapon, if it so chooses." On February 16, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper told Senate Armed Services Committee members it's "unlikely" Iran intends to build nuclear weapons. He also called "a mass attack by foreign terrorist groups involving a chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear (CBRN) weapon in the United State unlikely in the next year." At the same Senate meeting, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, CIA director General David Petraeus, and Joint Chiefs head General Martin Dempsey concurred. The alleged Iranian threat is spurious. Yet it persists to hype fear and enlist public support for war. The prospect and potential consequences are chilling. Yet rogue US and Israeli leaders risk leading their nations, the region, and perhaps world into an abyss they can't control. America wants Iran and Syria run by pro-Western regimes. All means are employed to achieve it, including war. Risks, human lives, and rule of law principles are secondary to objectives. As a result, anything ahead is possible, including global war if major powers Russia and China intervene to protect their interests. America, Israel, and rogue NATO partners want unchallenged world dominance. They're willing to risk destroying it in the process. It's shocking leaders think this way. It's appalling more people don't understand. The threat's too real and chilling to ignore. It's up to mass public outrage to stop it. Our lives, welfare and futures literally hang in the balance. A Final Comment In America's Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson said: "Governments....deriv(e) their just powers from the consent of the governed....whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." Clear evidence shows America's leaders are "destructive of these ends." As a result, its up to ordinary people to change things. Margaret Mead said "thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. It's the only thing that ever has." Today, she'd likely say we better get about doing it because no one should accept the alternative. Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected]. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening. http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/Steve Notley, the celebrated indie cartoonist and video game designer whose older sister, Rachel, has become premier of Alberta, did not have a front-row seat for most of Alberta’s election. He lives and works in Seattle now, a safe distance from the scene of the political combat amidst which he grew up—and which he has never relished. But he made darn sure to be in Edmonton a few days before the transformative vote that annihilated the province’s long-ruling Conservatives and brought the Notley family business, Alberta’s New Democratic Party, to unexpected power. “I didn’t really believe it until the evening of the election,” he says. “If you’re an NDPer in Alberta, it doesn’t really pay to have sky-high expectations of what your results are gonna be. Paradoxically, you have to be very conservative. That night, I went back to the Westin Hotel, up to the suite where Rachel and her family were waiting for the results. And I was asking her: ‘OK, so, you do have, like, several different speeches lined up for all the different outcomes that might transpire here?’ “She had one speech. And I thought to myself, ‘Huh. I guess she’s pretty sure this is happening.’ ” Most Albertans, even many of the New Democrats gathered at the hotel for the vote-watching vigil, might not have been ready to believe that Rachel Notley, 51, was about to become premier designate. But she had decrypted the writing on the wall, and was already more nervous about the responsibilities ahead than she was about her acceptance speech. “We did joke about that,” Steve says. “There was a moment of, ‘Is it too late to turn this bus around?’ ” The siblings snickered about having the NDP leader log into Twitter and tweet unprintably rude things about Calgary at the last minute, in order to let her off the hook. A little trepidation is understandable. Notley takes over an Alberta government facing low international oil prices, although, behind the headline numbers, the benchmark for the province’s synthetic oil is doing surprisingly well. She must also fashion a cabinet from material provided by rebellious voters after relatively little scrutiny. The median age of her caucus is 40. Her youngest new MLA, Thomas Dang, is 20. Moreover, she may have little psychological leeway for ambitious policy moves. In a poll conducted by Abacus Data over the week following the election, Albertans were asked to choose between two different accounts of the outcome. They picked “people wanted change” over “people like the NDP” by a margin of 93 per cent to seven per cent. For now, Albertans are back to believing in political polls, and that one sounds about right. If preparation is what counts most, Notley ought to be ready for the challenge. She is the daughter of W. Grant Notley, leader of Alberta’s NDP from 1968 to 1984. The elder Notley was a University of Alberta undergraduate at the time of the transition from the old Co-operative Commonwealth Federation to the less militant, utopian “New Party.” He first ran for the Alberta legislature in 1963, at the age of 24. It took until his fourth bid to make it into the Assembly: He finally made it in the northern riding of Spirit River-Fairview in 1971, entering alongside the first generation of Peter Lougheed PCs. Hailing from a farm near Didsbury, almost at the southern pole of the Edmonton-Calgary corridor, he was destined to raise his own children in the unfamiliar northern environs of the Peace River block. Grant Notley was acknowledged even then to have missed his moment. It never proved possible for his NDP to get much political traction against a Progressive Conservative government that was socially liberal, in contrast with its Social Credit forerunners, and aggressive about state industrial planning. Notley belaboured the PCs over their links to, and open subsidies of, oil multinationals. He blasted Alberta’s meagre welfare arrangements, and humiliated the government into improving education for the disabled. Whenever the Conservatives slipped up, he was there to make them pay. But oil money was falling from the sky. And, as the decade rolled on, and provincial battles with Ottawa became the dominant theme of Canadian politics, Notley could not afford to break ranks with either Lougheed or with his own NDP friends holding power in Saskatchewan. By 1984, the only net electoral progress he could claim was having been joined in the New Democrat “caucus” by his best friend, Ray Martin. Rachel Notley’s mother, Sandra, was probably at least as large an influence as her father. While the husband was spending weekdays under the dome in Edmonton, the Massachusetts-bred wife was heavily involved in working for Anglican Church political causes: taking the kids to peace marches, editing the Church’s national magazine and organizing relief and advocacy for Africa. It was a somewhat ironic arrangement: Sandy stayed home in Fairview, pursuing her passion for international politics, while Grant travelled thousand of miles, fighting the Alberta government on a thousand petty local fronts. On Oct. 19, 1984, a Friday, Grant Notley exited his office, drove to Edmonton’s municipal airport, and just managed to catch the last plane headed north—a Piper Chieftain that made a bargain-priced taxi run to Fairview and other boreal towns with small airstrips. The day was bone-cold, foggy; the pilot, inexperienced and nervous. A co-pilot was bumped from the 10-seater to make room for Notley. Over the highest country Alberta has outside the Rockies, near-aptly named High Prairie, the Chieftain descended below the minimum safe altitude, as the frustrated pilot dipped below the clouds to look for the lights of his first stop. Notley and five others were killed immediately when the plane slammed into a ridge. Another northern MLA, PC housing minister Larry Shaben, escaped with terrible injuries. The day after Grant’s funeral, Sandra had to take a call from a Canadian Press reporter to say she was willing to run in a by-election if the party insisted it would lose the seat without her. The party backed off. The president of the constituency association told CP, “We are reluctant to have Sandy sacrifice herself at this time.” Rachel, a University of Alberta arts undergraduate at the time of her father’s death, was not discouraged. Her involvement in New Democrat politics dates back at least as far as 1989, when she was a delegate from Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto to the federal NDP convention that chose Audrey McLaughlin as leader. (Notley backed the eventual second-place finisher, former B.C. premier Dave Barrett.) She headed the Alberta NDP’s election-planning subcommittee in 1991, failing to help stem the Liberal tide in Edmonton that saw the NDP lose all 16 of its Assembly members in 1993’s election. Throughout her law career, Notley has mostly served labour unions in the field of occupational health and safety, representing workers in courts and before arbitration panels, and lobbying for stronger regulations and better access to worker compensation. For a taste of government power, though, she had to take a detour through NDP-run British Columbia. She moved to Vancouver in 1994 and ended up spending a year as an assistant to then-attorney general (and then-New Democrat) Ujjal Dosanjh. “Ujjal wanted a lawyer—someone who could translate between ministry lawyers and real English,” says his chief of staff, Joanne Moody, now secretary-treasurer of a UNITE HERE—a hospitality trade union—local in Edmonton. “When I heard she was coming aboard, I was a little intimidated. Everyone knows the Grant Notley name and she had this splendid education. But she walked in the door and we hit it off within the first five minutes. It was a blast working with her. We got a lot done.” “I hire the best,” boasts Dosanjh today. Notley, along with MLA Tim Stevenson, acted as the attorney general’s go-between to the NDP caucus on modernizing B.C. law, to set up maintenance enforcement and pension benefits for same-sex spouses. “If there were any problems—not that there was much resistance—I would send her and Tim to talk to colleagues. She didn’t have to be taught anything about that. She instantly understood the political side of the work. “But she might have been even better behind the scenes. When you’re making a major legislative push, you have the bureaucrats come talk to you, and then there’s always a moment when they’ve left and you’re there in a room with your assistants—your political people. And you have a heart-to-heart talk about where you’re going, and she never held anything back. That’s what you want from an assistant. She is very bright, very confident, and knows her stuff.” Friends of Notley don’t want to say she likes a good argument. They all balk when it is suggested explicitly: They like to emphasize that she is equally good, or better, as a listener. Moody speaks with astonishment of Notley’s ability to handle, while working for Dosanjh, the most difficult of all groups seeking redress from government: workers’ comp clients. “Other people in the office would say condescendingly, ‘O-hoh, Rachel’s going to meet with some very interesting people today.’ But those people would come out of the meetings looking dumbstruck, telling us, ‘She actually understood what I was saying!’ They might not be happy with the outcome of the meeting, or with what she had to tell them, but they were often amazed, all the same.” It is fairly obvious that Notley is a natural litigator. She likes to run and cycle; she cherishes her family; brother Stephen reports that she is a fan—it almost goes without saying—of the political TV comedies Parks & Recreation and Veep. But the prevalent image almost everyone paints of Notley is of dinner-table arguments with friends or co-workers over wine—preferably a malbec, says Adrienne King, Notley’s chief of staff for the election, and now deputy chief of staff to her as premier. “That’s a rite of passage, if you work for Rachel Notley.” “She will certainly stand up for herself,” says Ray Martin. “But she doesn’t get upset or take things personally when she is presenting a position.” King agrees, adding that Notley’s handling of Jim Prentice’s notorious “math is difficult” attack during the debate reflected this. Notley corrected Prentice, but did not act hurt or outraged on camera, and even told reporters later she did not find his remarks disrespectful or objectionable. “She was completely sincere about that,” says King. “I remember talking to her in the campaign van afterward, telling her I found [Prentice’s remark] offensive. Our press secretary chimed in: ‘I thought it was damned offensive!’ Plenty of people on social media, hundreds of them, found it offensive. Rachel almost couldn’t understand. She just said she didn’t think he meant it in any rude way.” Notley’s reappearance in Alberta politics came in 2000, when she briefly came back to the province at a moment of trial for the party. It had been reduced to two seats in the 1997 election and, in a farcical echo of the crisis caused by Grant Notley’s fatal accident, it instantly lost half its caucus. Leader Pam Barrett, during a visit to the dentist, had an allergic reaction to anaesthesia; during an out-of-body experience, she was instructed by God, or someone who seemed a lot like Him, to “get on a new path.” She went directly from the hospital to the legislature to announce her retirement from politics. The other New Democrat MLA was university professor Raj Pannu, still a political neophyte. “The fear,” says Brian Mason, “was that we would lose Pam’s seat, and then lose the other seat in the general. So it was seen by the party as critical that we win that by-election. The Liberals smelled blood and tried their hardest to take that seat away, so I was reluctantly recruited from [Edmonton] city council, where I’d been perfectly comfortable for 11 years, to try to keep it.” Notley and her husband, Lou Arab—a highly regarded labour-union Littlest Hobo who wandered the land widely before finding a wife while working at CUPE in B.C.—came back to help Mason and save Alberta’s NDP from annihilation in Edmonton-Highlands. Mason and Pannu would both hang on in the 2001 Alberta election, and Mason would go on to serve as NDP leader from 2004 to 2014, putting the party back in better repair in the capital, as the Liberals went into a death spiral. By the time of the 2004 snap election, Notley had moved back to Alberta for good. Her children, Ethan and Sophie, were still too young for her to think about a run for office. But the pleading was constant. Ray Martin, who snuck back into the Alberta legislature in 2004, admits he once told her, “I came in under a Notley and I guess maybe I will go out under another Notley.” The hopes of people who regarded her as the child of a hero may have actually made it harder for her to recruit other people as NDP candidates: All wondered why she was on the sidelines. Mason was finally able to bring her aboard in 2006—once again, in a time of need, for Pannu, by then aged 73 and a popular figure on university and college campuses, was ready to exit his Edmonton-Strathcona seat. By the time Mason was ready to step down as leader, the party had been rehabilitated and professionalized in its former Fortress Edmonton. “I was careful not to take sides in the leadership campaign, but I had a pretty good idea that the party wanted Rachel,” Mason says of the 2014 leadership contest, in which Notley gathered 70 per cent of the votes. (Like other provincial New Democratic parties, the Alberta NDP still gives unions and other affiliates independent weight in their leadership balloting, capped at 20 per cent overall.) Mason now finds himself destined for a top job in Notley’s government, which has only weeks to make new budget and taxation arrangements before the provincial treasury starts running out of cash. (Technically, no Alberta budget for 2015-16 has been passed by the legislature yet.) It is not easy to get leading figures such as Mason to specify Notley’s ideology. He calls her a “classical social democrat”; Martin, applying a slightly different spin, refers to her as a “mainstream social democrat.” Her somewhat controversial appointment of Brian Topp as chief of staff reflects her strong personal ties to Roy Romanow, the Saskatchewan premier whom Topp served as an iron-gloved right hand for nearly a decade. That suggests she will not be afraid to impose some austerity to fill Alberta’s budget hole. “Contrary to what some people believe about the NDP, we’re not enemies of business,” says Martin, “and we get a little frustrated when we’re accused of having a tax-and-spend philosophy. The actual history of NDP governments shows we’re often the people who come along and balance the books.” “We’re all gonna have to work together to figure out how to make this work,” says Joanne Moody, still over the moon at her friend’s victory. “I’m a New Democrat because I’m pro-labour, pro-worker, pro-jobs. When people make decent money and their families have good benefits, everybody gains from that. Watching sometimes, especially in B.C., some of the more extreme, radicalized, heavy environmentalist...” She sighs. “The whole pipeline thing. Stop the oil sands, we gotta protect the ducks. I get all that, but the oil’s there, the oil companies want it, they’re gonna get it. Let’s make them do it as safely as possible and make them pay a fair share. Rachel and I have talked about that many times. She doesn’t veer far to the left, just because that’s what New Democrats are supposed to do. She gets that things like oil in places like Alberta are important to more than just oil companies.” “I think Rachel will be a really good premier, obviously,” says Steve Notley, but he is still not entirely without fears of conservative counter-revolutionary trickery. “A lot of stuff is out of her hands: Even with a majority government, a premier can’t control the weather. Business interests are not super-happy that she has won, but there will also be a ton of pressure from the left of the party to do everything it wants right now; we’ve already started hearing some of that. “The old joke is that the Alberta NDP is barely the NDP, and there’s some truth to that,” he adds. “There’s this strange irony that the party’s messaging tried to put on the mantle of Peter Lougheed, whom our dad spent his whole career excoriating. I’m not criticizing that, but it goes to show how far political discourse has moved to the right, over time. And, after all, it’s not like Dad was some sort of unreconstructed Trotskyite. There’s no way the NDP in Alberta is gonna succeed by pitching a radical program. It is going to have to establish itself as a decent steward of the economy. Some of the more socialist principles can be incorporated into that, but persuasion comes first.” Luckily, as she proved on May 5, that is one of her talents.Jewish extremists have attacked and burned at least 53 Christian churches and Muslim mosques in Israel since 2009—but there is no international media outcry unlike what would be the case had 53 synagogues been similarly burned by non-Jews anywhere in the world. In fact, the controlled media in Europe and America even refuses to report on the mass attacks by Jews upon non-Jewish religious buildings in Israel, and the attacks have only come to light after the Haaretz newspaper in Israel mentioned them. St. Stephen’s Church at the Beit Jimal Monastery near Beit Shemesh, following at attack. Image from the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. According to the Haaretz even though over 50 Christian and Muslim sites have been vandalized in Israel and the West Bank since 2009, but only nine indictments have been filed and only seven convictions handed down, according to Public Security Ministry data. “Moreover, only eight of the 53 cases are still under investigation, with the other 45 all closed.” The article adds that the latest attack occurred last Wednesday, at St. Stephen’s Church in the Beit Jamal Monastery, near Beit Shemesh. Many items were broken, including some of the stained glass windows and a status of the Virgin Mary. This was the third such attack on the monastery in the last five years. In 2013, a firebomb was thrown at a door and anti-Christian slogans were scrawled on the walls—all in Hebrew. About 18 months ago, Christian gravestones were vandalized in the cemetery. No suspects were arrested in those cases, either. The wave of vandalism peaked in 2013, the data show. That year, 11 investigations were opened and five people were convicted. A Greek Orthodox priest talking to an Israeli policewoman outside a seminary in Jerusalem, February 2015. The seminary was damaged by fire and anti-Christian slogans were written in Hebrew. Nine Christian and Muslim sites were vandalized in 2014 and the same number in 2015. In 2016, only three such attacks were recorded, but there were four in the first half of this year. From 2009 through 2012, there were 17 such incidents – but there wasn’t a single indictment. The Tag Meir organization, which monitors hate crimes, keeps its own records. It says there were 44 attacks on Christian and Muslim sites between the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2016. Tag Meir said many arson attacks on mosques have never been solved. These include mosque attacks in the West Bank villages of Kafr Yasif, Luban al-Sharqiya, Beit Fajjar, Hawara and Qusra, as well as one in the Israeli Bedouin town of Tuba-Zangaria and some in Jerusalem. Tag Meir said it knows of only two cases that were solved: an arson attack on a Christian seminary near the Abbey of the Dormition, Jerusalem; and an arson attack on the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes in Tabgha, on the Lake Kinneret shoreline. The Church of the Multiplication of Loaves and Fishes, following the June, 2015 arson attack. Tag Meir Chairman Gadi Gvaryahu said he believes the many unsolved crimes are a question of police priorities. “Without a doubt, they aren’t looking hard enough,” he said, adding that some crimes remain unsolved despite security camera footage that included images of the suspected vandals’ cars. “We know that after the Church of the Loaves and Fishes, someone – apparently the prime minister – decided they had to find them. So they found them,” Gvaryahu added. The ministry data were divulged in response to a parliamentary question filed by MK Itzik Shmuli (Zionist Union) at Tag Meir’s request. Shmuli also said that when “about 85 percent of the cases in such serious crimes are closed with nothing,” this should “sound an alarm about the order of priorities.” The lack of interest by the West’s controlled media in the ongoing plague of attacks against non-Jews in Israel is due to the fact that the Jewish lobby controls those outlets—there is simply no other reason. Consider, for example, what the media would have done had 53 synagogues been attacked and burned in any European country, or America. The coverage would be non-stop, all the politicians would be condemning it, there would be mass arrests, bannings and all manner of state reaction. But, because it is Jews carrying out the attacks, and non-Jews being the victims, the media is silent.Equality Between Men And Women Is Not Achievable Apples And Oranges The politically-correct goal for 'equality' between'men' and 'women' is not achievable. It is absolutely impossible. It will never be found. It will never be discovered. It will never happen. Indeed, the very search for 'equality' between'men' and 'women' is fuelling a never -ending war between'men' and 'women'. The more aggressive and energetic is this nonsensical search for 'equality' between'men' and 'women', the more aggressive and energetic will be the war (i.e. the hostility) between'men and 'women'. To try to highlight this, notice that there is no 'equitable' solution even to this very simple question... Question: Should 'women' have more votes than'men'? For those who think, Yes, (because there are more women voters than men voters) then it follows that they also believe that those in a minority should have less of a say in what affects them. They believe that the largest group (women) should have the greatest power. As such, 'equality' between'men' and 'women' is already lost
Spa) Quick-Step Floors 0:00:43 26 Louis Meintjes (RSA) UAE Team Emirates 27 Rui Alberto Faria da Costa (Por) UAE Team Emirates 28 Simon Yates (GBr) Orica-Scott 29 Lennard Kämna (Ger) Team Sunweb 30 Steven Kruijswijk (Ned) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 31 Toms Skujins (Lat) Cannondale-Drapac 32 Nelson Oliveira (Por) Movistar Team 33 Diego Rosa (Ita) Team Sky 34 Sergio Pardilla Bellon (Spa) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 35 Gianni Moscon (Ita) Team Sky 36 Mikel Nieve Ituralde (Spa) Team Sky 37 Igor Anton Hernandez (Spa) Dimension Data 38 Jaime Roson Garcia (Spa) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 39 Cesare Benedetti (Ita) Bora-Hansgrohe 40 Miguel Angel Lopez (Col) Astana Pro Team 0:00:46 41 Rafal Majka (Pol) Bora-Hansgrohe 42 David Arroyo Duran (Spa) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 43 Franco Pellizotti (Ita) Bahrain-Merida 44 Tejay van Garderen (USA) BMC Racing Team 45 Matteo Trentin (Ita) Quick-Step Floors 0:00:48 46 Jarlinson Pantano (Col) Trek-Segafredo 0:00:52 47 Daan Olivier (Ned) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 0:04:49 48 Antonio Pedrero (Spa) Movistar Team 0:05:11 49 Odd Christian Eiking (Nor) FDJ 0:06:52 50 Jetse Bol (Ned) Manzana Postobon 51 Tobias Ludvigsson (Swe) FDJ 52 Antwan Tolhoek (Ned) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 53 Luis Angel Maté Mardones (Spa) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 54 Clement Chevrier (Fra) AG2R La Mondiale 55 Sander Armee (Bel) Lotto Soudal 56 Maxime Monfort (Bel) Lotto Soudal 57 Domen Novak (Slo) Bahrain-Merida 58 Daniel Moreno Fernandez (Spa) Movistar Team 59 Romain Bardet (Fra) AG2R La Mondiale 60 Stéphane Rossetto (Fra) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 61 Domenico Pozzovivo (Ita) AG2R La Mondiale 62 Emanuel Buchmann (Ger) Bora-Hansgrohe 63 Stef Clement (Ned) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 0:10:36 64 Fernando Orjuela (Col) Manzana Postobon 65 Fabricio Ferrari (Uru) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 66 Bernardo Suaza (Col) Manzana Postobon 67 Bart De Clercq (Bel) Lotto Soudal 68 Richard Carapaz (Ecu) Movistar Team 69 Adam Hansen (Aus) Lotto Soudal 70 Floris De Tier (Bel) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 71 Merhawi Kudus Ghebremedhin (Eri) Dimension Data 72 Aldemar Reyes (Col) Manzana Postobon 73 Matej Mohoric (Slo) UAE Team Emirates 74 Anthony Roux (Fra) FDJ 75 Tom Van Asbroeck (Bel) Cannondale-Drapac 76 Bob Jungels (Lux) Quick-Step Floors 77 Peter Stetina (USA) Trek-Segafredo 78 Rohan Dennis (Aus) BMC Racing Team 79 Carlos Verona Quintanilla (Spa) Orica-Scott 80 Alberto Losada Alguacil (Spa) Katusha-Alpecin 81 Thomas De Gendt (Bel) Lotto Soudal 0:12:31 82 Chad Haga (USA) Team Sunweb 83 Anthony Turgis (Fra) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 84 Koen Bouwman (Ned) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 85 Juan José Lobato (Spa) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 86 Przemyslaw Niemiec (Pol) UAE Team Emirates 87 Matvey Mamykin (Rus) Katusha-Alpecin 88 Francisco Ventoso (Spa) BMC Racing Team 89 Guillaume Bonnafond (Fra) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 90 Stefan Denifl (Aut) Aqua Blue Sport 91 Koen de Kort (Ned) Trek-Segafredo 92 Joe Dombrowski (USA) Cannondale-Drapac 93 Hugo Houle (Can) AG2R La Mondiale 94 Serge Pauwels (Bel) Dimension Data 95 Kilian Frankiny (Swi) BMC Racing Team 96 Edward Theuns (Bel) Trek-Segafredo 97 Manuele Boaro (Ita) Bahrain-Merida 98 Loic Vliegen (Bel) BMC Racing Team 99 Jimmy Turgis (Fra) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 100 Valerio Agnoli (Ita) Bahrain-Merida 101 Lluís Guillermo Mas Bonet (Spa) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 102 Pello Bilbao (Spa) Astana Pro Team 103 Antonio Nibali (Ita) Bahrain-Merida 104 Jesper Hansen (Den) Astana Pro Team 105 Anthony Perez (Fra) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 106 Sacha Modolo (Ita) UAE Team Emirates 107 Aaron Gate (NZl) Aqua Blue Sport 108 Julien Bernard (Fra) Trek-Segafredo 109 Jesus Hernandez Blazquez (Spa) Trek-Segafredo 110 Damiano Caruso (Ita) BMC Racing Team 111 Bert-Jan Lindeman (Ned) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 112 Lennard Hofstede (Ned) Team Sunweb 113 Søren Kragh Andersen (Den) Team Sunweb 114 Jeremy Maison (Fra) FDJ 115 Patrick Konrad (Aut) Bora-Hansgrohe 116 Alexandre Geniez (Fra) AG2R La Mondiale 117 Hernán Aguirre (Col) Manzana Postobon 118 Christopher Juul Jensen (Den) Orica-Scott 119 Sergei Chernetckii (Rus) Astana Pro Team 120 Rubén Fernandez (Spa) Movistar Team 121 Simon Clarke (Aus) Cannondale-Drapac 122 Brendan Canty (Aus) Cannondale-Drapac 123 David Lopez Garcia (Spa) Team Sky 124 Alessandro De Marchi (Ita) BMC Racing Team 125 Carlos Alberto Betancur Gomez (Col) Movistar Team 126 William Clarke (Aus) Cannondale-Drapac 0:15:03 127 Christoph Pfingsten (Ger) Bora-Hansgrohe 128 Jacques Janse van Rensburg (RSA) Dimension Data 129 Magnus Cort (Den) Orica-Scott 130 Arnaud Courteille (Fra) FDJ 131 Julien Duval (Fra) AG2R La Mondiale 132 Ivan Garcia Cortina (Spa) Bahrain-Merida 133 Nico Denz (Ger) AG2R La Mondiale 134 Lawrence Warbasse (USA) Aqua Blue Sport 135 Markel Irizar Aranburu (Spa) Trek-Segafredo 136 Nikita Stalnov (Kaz) Astana Pro Team 137 Davide Villella (Ita) Cannondale-Drapac 138 Eros Capecchi (Ita) Quick-Step Floors 139 Lachlan Morton (Aus) Dimension Data 140 Tim Declercq (Bel) Quick-Step Floors 0:15:07 141 Laurens De Vreese (Bel) Astana Pro Team 142 Alexey Lutsenko (Kaz) Astana Pro Team 143 Diego Rubio (Spa) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 0:17:40 144 Marco Haller (Aut) Katusha-Alpecin 145 Chris Hamilton (Aus) Team Sunweb 146 Johannes Fröhlinger (Ger) Team Sunweb 147 Daniel Hoelgaard (Nor) FDJ 148 Michel Kreder (Ned) Aqua Blue Sport 149 Maxim Belkov (Rus) Katusha-Alpecin 150 Christian Knees (Ger) Team Sky 151 Niki Terpstra (Ned) Quick-Step Floors 0:23:11 152 Yves Lampaert (Bel) Quick-Step Floors 153 Julian Alaphilippe (Fra) Quick-Step Floors 154 Mark Christian (GBr) Aqua Blue Sport 155 Nicholas Schultz (Aus) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 156 Conor Dunne (Irl) Aqua Blue Sport 157 Lorrenzo Manzin (Fra) FDJ 158 Jorge Arcas (Spa) Movistar Team 159 Marc Soler (Spa) Movistar Team 160 Sven Erik Bystrøm (Nor) Katusha-Alpecin 161 Michael Mørkøv (Den) Katusha-Alpecin 162 Adam Blythe (GBr) Aqua Blue Sport 163 Ian Stannard (GBr) Team Sky 164 Jens Debusschere (Bel) Lotto Soudal 165 Peter Koning (Ned) Aqua Blue Sport 166 Juan Felipe Osorio (Col) Manzana Postobon 167 Hernando Bohórquez (Col) Manzana Postobon 168 George Bennett (NZl) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 169 Thomas Scully (NZl) Cannondale-Drapac 170 Sebastián Molano (Col) Manzana Postobon 171 Hector Sáez Benito (Spa) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 172 Rafael Reis (Por) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 173 Daniel Oss (Ita) BMC Racing Team 174 Salvatore Puccio (Ita) Team Sky 175 Federico Zurlo (Ita) UAE Team Emirates 176 Alexis Gougeard (Fra) AG2R La Mondiale 177 Remy Mertz (Bel) Lotto Soudal 178 Sam Bewley (NZl) Orica-Scott 179 Svein Tuft (Can) Orica-Scott 180 Axel Domont (Fra) AG2R La Mondiale 181 Andreas Schillinger (Ger) Bora-Hansgrohe 182 Michael Schwarzmann (Ger) Bora-Hansgrohe 183 Jonas Van Genechten (Bel) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 0:23:47 184 Omar Fraile Matarranza (Spa) Dimension Data 185 Rein Taaramäe (Est) Katusha-Alpecin 186 Lasse Norman Hansen (Den) Aqua Blue Sport 187 Kenneth Van Bilsen (Bel) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 188 Johan Le Bon (Fra) FDJ 189 Jelle Wallays (Bel) Lotto Soudal DNF Nicholas Dougall (RSA) Dimension Data DNF José Gonçalves (Por) Katusha-Alpecin Points Classification - Sagunt - 197km # Rider Name (Country) Team Result 1 Pawel Poljanski (Pol) Bora-Hansgrohe 4 pts 2 Tomasz Marczynski (Pol) Lotto Soudal 2 3 Enric Mas (Spa) Quick-Step Floors 1 Points Classification - Finish - 204km # Rider Name (Country) Team Result 1 Tomasz Marczynski (Pol) Lotto Soudal 25 pts 2 Pawel Poljanski (Pol) Bora-Hansgrohe 20 3 Enric Mas (Spa) Quick-Step Floors 16 4 Luis León Sánchez (Spa) Astana Pro Team 14 5 Jan Polanc (Slo) UAE Team Emirates 12 6 Warren Barguil (Fra) Team Sunweb 10 7 Giovanni Visconti (Ita) Bahrain-Merida 9 8 Christopher Froome (GBr) Team Sky 8 9 Fabio Aru (Ita) Astana Pro Team 7 10 Jack Haig (Aus) Orica-Scott 6 11 Jose Joaquin Rojas Gil (Spa) Movistar Team 5 12 Nicolas Roche (Irl) BMC Racing Team 4 13 Adam Yates (GBr) Orica-Scott 3 14 Wout Poels (Ned) Team Sky 2 15 Johan Esteban Chaves Rubio (Col) Orica-Scott 1 KOM 1- Alto de Alcudia de Veo - 48.0km # Rider Name (Country) Team Result 1 Davide Villella (Ita) Cannondale-Drapac 3 pts 2 Clement Chevrier (Fra) AG2R La Mondiale 2 3 Axel Domont (Fra) AG2R La Mondiale 1 KOM 2 - Puerto de Eslida - 59.8km # Rider Name (Country) Team Result 1 Davide Villella (Ita) Cannondale-Drapac 3 pts 2 Darwin Atapuma (Col) UAE Team Emirates 2 3 Maxime Monfort (Bel) Lotto Soudal 1 KOM 3 - Alto de Chirivilla - 96.6km # Rider Name (Country) Team Result 1 Darwin Atapuma (Col) UAE Team Emirates 3 pts 2 Davide Villella (Ita) Cannondale-Drapac 2 3 Maxime Monfort (Bel) Lotto Soudal 1 KOM 4 - Puetro del Oronet - 142.8km # Rider Name (Country) Team Result 1 Darwin Atapuma (Col) UAE Team Emirates 3 pts 2 Jarlinson Pantano (Col) Trek-Segafredo 2 3 Pawel Poljanski (Pol) Bora-Hansgrohe 1 KOM 5 - Puerto del Garbí - 168.0km # Rider Name (Country) Team Result 1 Tomasz Marczynski (Pol) Lotto Soudal 5 pts 2 Enric Mas (Spa) Quick-Step Floors 3 3 Pawel Poljanski (Pol) Bora-Hansgrohe 1 Team Classification # Rider Name (Country) Team Result 1 UAE Team Emirates 14:22:23 2 Orica - Scott 0:00:01 3 Astana Pro Team 0:00:03 4 Team Sunweb 0:00:05 5 Bora - Hansgrohe 0:00:12 6 Quick - Step Floors 0:00:14 7 Team Sky 0:00:18 8 Bahrain - Merida 0:00:21 9 Caja Rural - Seguros RGA 0:00:55 10 Movistar Team 0:05:03 11 Cannondale Drapac Professional Cycling Team 0:10:28 12 BMC Racing Team 0:10:31 13 Trek - Segafredo 0:10:37 14 Team Lotto Nl - Jumbo 0:11:07 15 Lotto Soudal 0:12:27 16 Cofidis, Solutions Credits 0:12:53 17 Manzana Postobon Team 0:16:37 18 AG2R La Mondiale 0:19:19 19 Team Katusha Alpecin 0:22:16 20 Team Dimension Data 0:22:33 21 FDJ 0:23:03 22 Aqua Blue Sport 0:38:48 General Classification after stage 6 # Rider Name (Country) Team Result 1 Christopher Froome (GBr) Team Sky 22:54:38 2 Johan Esteban Chaves Rubio (Col) Orica-Scott 0:00:11 3 Nicolas Roche (Irl) BMC Racing Team 0:00:13 4 Tejay van Garderen (USA) BMC Racing Team 0:00:30 5 Vincenzo Nibali (Ita) Bahrain-Merida 0:00:36 6 David de la Cruz (Spa) Quick-Step Floors 0:00:40 7 Fabio Aru (Ita) Astana Pro Team 0:00:49 8 Adam Yates (GBr) Orica-Scott 0:00:50 9 Michael Woods (Can) Cannondale-Drapac 0:01:13 10 Simon Yates (GBr) Orica-Scott 0:01:26 11 Wilco Kelderman (Ned) Team Sunweb 0:01:28 12 Ilnur Zakarin (Rus) Katusha-Alpecin 0:01:40 13 Warren Barguil (Fra) Team Sunweb 0:01:43 14 Sam Oomen (Ned) Team Sunweb 0:01:57 15 Jack Haig (Aus) Orica-Scott 0:02:19 16 Wout Poels (Ned) Team Sky 0:02:23 17 Igor Anton Hernandez (Spa) Dimension Data 0:02:26 18 Rui Alberto Faria da Costa (Por) UAE Team Emirates 0:02:52 19 Louis Meintjes (RSA) UAE Team Emirates 0:02:55 20 Steven Kruijswijk (Ned) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 0:02:59 21 Nelson Oliveira (Por) Movistar Team 0:03:02 22 Luis León Sánchez (Spa) Astana Pro Team 0:03:06 23 Alberto Contador Velasco (Spa) Trek-Segafredo 0:03:10 24 Miguel Angel Lopez (Col) Astana Pro Team 0:03:12 25 Jaime Roson Garcia (Spa) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 0:03:40 26 Jan Polanc (Slo) UAE Team Emirates 0:04:00 27 Mikel Nieve Ituralde (Spa) Team Sky 0:04:40 28 Sergio Pardilla Bellon (Spa) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 0:04:47 29 Gianni Moscon (Ita) Team Sky 0:06:28 30 Darwin Atapuma (Col) UAE Team Emirates 0:07:52 31 Romain Bardet (Fra) AG2R La Mondiale 0:08:03 32 Jetse Bol (Ned) Manzana Postobon 0:08:55 33 Diego Rosa (Ita) Team Sky 0:10:21 34 Daniel Moreno Fernandez (Spa) Movistar Team 0:10:40 35 Tomasz Marczynski (Pol) Lotto Soudal 0:11:20 36 Domenico Pozzovivo (Ita) AG2R La Mondiale 0:11:23 37 Ricardo Vilela (Por) Manzana Postobon 0:12:25 38 Rafal Majka (Pol) Bora-Hansgrohe 0:12:39 39 Sander Armee (Bel) Lotto Soudal 0:13:02 40 Jose Joaquin Rojas Gil (Spa) Movistar Team 0:13:27 41 Carlos Alberto Betancur Gomez (Col) Movistar Team 0:14:01 42 Peter Stetina (USA) Trek-Segafredo 0:14:22 43 Merhawi Kudus Ghebremedhin (Eri) Dimension Data 0:14:30 44 Jarlinson Pantano (Col) Trek-Segafredo 0:14:45 45 Luis Angel Maté Mardones (Spa) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 0:15:53 46 Giovanni Visconti (Ita) Bahrain-Merida 0:16:56 47 Emanuel Buchmann (Ger) Bora-Hansgrohe 0:16:58 48 Stef Clement (Ned) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 0:18:57 49 Bart De Clercq (Bel) Lotto Soudal 0:19:24 50 Daniel Navarro Garcia (Spa) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 0:19:51 51 Bob Jungels (Lux) Quick-Step Floors 0:20:15 52 Valerio Agnoli (Ita) Bahrain-Merida 0:20:20 53 Franco Pellizotti (Ita) Bahrain-Merida 0:20:27 54 Enric Mas (Spa) Quick-Step Floors 0:20:36 55 Hernán Aguirre (Col) Manzana Postobon 0:21:35 56 Odd Christian Eiking (Nor) FDJ 0:22:00 57 Matej Mohoric (Slo) UAE Team Emirates 0:22:27 58 Tobias Ludvigsson (Swe) FDJ 0:22:28 59 Jesper Hansen (Den) Astana Pro Team 0:23:20 60 Pawel Poljanski (Pol) Bora-Hansgrohe 0:24:14 61 Lachlan Morton (Aus) Dimension Data 0:24:20 62 Richard Carapaz (Ecu) Movistar Team 0:24:28 63 Aldemar Reyes (Col) Manzana Postobon 64 Stéphane Rossetto (Fra) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 0:24:54 65 Bernardo Suaza (Col) Manzana Postobon 0:25:05 66 Cesare Benedetti (Ita) Bora-Hansgrohe 0:25:32 67 Clement Chevrier (Fra) AG2R La Mondiale 0:25:34 68 Toms Skujins (Lat) Cannondale-Drapac 0:25:44 69 Jimmy Turgis (Fra) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 0:25:58 70 Lluís Guillermo Mas Bonet (Spa) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 0:26:07 71 Maxime Monfort (Bel) Lotto Soudal 0:26:40 72 Fabricio Ferrari (Uru) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 0:27:24 73 Jeremy Maison (Fra) FDJ 0:27:52 74 Daan Olivier (Ned) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 0:27:54 75 Lawrence Warbasse (USA) Aqua Blue Sport 0:28:17 76 Davide Villella (Ita) Cannondale-Drapac 0:28:25 77 Pello Bilbao (Spa) Astana Pro Team 0:28:35 78 Matvey Mamykin (Rus) Katusha-Alpecin 0:28:45 79 Alberto Losada Alguacil (Spa) Katusha-Alpecin 0:29:12 80 Antwan Tolhoek (Ned) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 0:30:37 81 Rohan Dennis (Aus) BMC Racing Team 0:31:19 82 Matteo Trentin (Ita) Quick-Step Floors 0:31:37 83 Marco Haller (Aut) Katusha-Alpecin 0:32:13 84 Sergei Chernetckii (Rus) Astana Pro Team 0:32:14 85 Koen de Kort (Ned) Trek-Segafredo 0:32:17 86 Simon Clarke (Aus) Cannondale-Drapac 0:32:36 87 Adam Hansen (Aus) Lotto Soudal 0:32:44 88 Antonio Pedrero (Spa) Movistar Team 0:33:14 89 Fernando Orjuela (Col) Manzana Postobon 0:33:19 90 Alexey Lutsenko (Kaz) Astana Pro Team 0:33:24 91 David Arroyo Duran (Spa) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 0:33:34 92 Marc Soler (Spa) Movistar Team 0:33:40 93 Guillaume Bonnafond (Fra) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 0:34:08 94 Joe Dombrowski (USA) Cannondale-Drapac 0:34:12 95 Floris De Tier (Bel) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 0:34:32 96 Rubén Fernandez (Spa) Movistar Team 0:34:46 97 Anthony Perez (Fra) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 0:35:13 98 Hugo Houle (Can) AG2R La Mondiale 0:35:14 99 Alexandre Geniez (Fra) AG2R La Mondiale 0:35:23 100 Patrick Konrad (Aut) Bora-Hansgrohe 0:35:32 101 Anthony Roux (Fra) FDJ 0:35:56 102 Julian Alaphilippe (Fra) Quick-Step Floors 0:36:17 103 Serge Pauwels (Bel) Dimension Data 104 Anthony Turgis (Fra) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 0:37:12 105 Francisco Ventoso (Spa) BMC Racing Team 0:37:21 106 Lennard Kämna (Ger) Team Sunweb 0:37:48 107 Markel Irizar Aranburu (Spa) Trek-Segafredo 0:38:10 108 Carlos Verona Quintanilla (Spa) Orica-Scott 0:38:30 109 Christopher Juul Jensen (Den) Orica-Scott 0:39:16 110 Alessandro De Marchi (Ita) BMC Racing Team 0:39:18 111 Julien Bernard (Fra) Trek-Segafredo 0:39:24 112 Damiano Caruso (Ita) BMC Racing Team 0:39:40 113 Christian Knees (Ger) Team Sky 0:39:53 114 Koen Bouwman (Ned) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 0:39:55 115 Brendan Canty (Aus) Cannondale-Drapac 0:40:38 116 Jacques Janse van Rensburg (RSA) Dimension Data 0:40:52 117 Sacha Modolo (Ita) UAE Team Emirates 0:41:10 118 Eros Capecchi (Ita) Quick-Step Floors 0:41:18 119 Manuele Boaro (Ita) Bahrain-Merida 0:41:32 120 Domen Novak (Slo) Bahrain-Merida 0:41:47 121 Chad Haga (USA) Team Sunweb 0:41:53 122 Michel Kreder (Ned) Aqua Blue Sport 0:41:59 123 Laurens De Vreese (Bel) Astana Pro Team 0:42:11 124 Alexis Gougeard (Fra) AG2R La Mondiale 0:42:24 125 Kilian Frankiny (Swi) BMC Racing Team 0:42:34 126 Bert-Jan Lindeman (Ned) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 0:42:45 127 Loic Vliegen (Bel) BMC Racing Team 0:42:50 128 Tom Van Asbroeck (Bel) Cannondale-Drapac 0:43:19 129 Przemyslaw Niemiec (Pol) UAE Team Emirates 0:43:35 130 Juan José Lobato (Spa) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 0:43:40 131 Søren Kragh Andersen (Den) Team Sunweb 0:43:45 132 Jesus Hernandez Blazquez (Spa) Trek-Segafredo 133 Arnaud Courteille (Fra) FDJ 0:43:54 134 Thomas De Gendt (Bel) Lotto Soudal 0:44:41 135 Edward Theuns (Bel) Trek-Segafredo 0:45:28 136 Axel Domont (Fra) AG2R La Mondiale 137 Sven Erik Bystrøm (Nor) Katusha-Alpecin 0:46:15 138 Daniel Oss (Ita) BMC Racing Team 0:46:17 139 Nikita Stalnov (Kaz) Astana Pro Team 0:47:00 140 Aaron Gate (NZl) Aqua Blue Sport 0:47:13 141 Antonio Nibali (Ita) Bahrain-Merida 0:47:23 142 Salvatore Puccio (Ita) Team Sky 0:47:33 143 Julien Duval (Fra) AG2R La Mondiale 0:47:57 144 Juan Felipe Osorio (Col) Manzana Postobon 0:48:12 145 Omar Fraile Matarranza (Spa) Dimension Data 0:48:36 146 Christoph Pfingsten (Ger) Bora-Hansgrohe 147 Johannes Fröhlinger (Ger) Team Sunweb 0:48:48 148 William Clarke (Aus) Cannondale-Drapac 0:49:01 149 Daniel Hoelgaard (Nor) FDJ 0:49:03 150 Magnus Cort (Den) Orica-Scott 0:49:05 151 Jens Debusschere (Bel) Lotto Soudal 0:49:26 152 David Lopez Garcia (Spa) Team Sky 0:49:43 153 Ivan Garcia Cortina (Spa) Bahrain-Merida 0:49:48 154 George Bennett (NZl) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 0:49:56 155 Diego Rubio (Spa) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 0:50:35 156 Lennard Hofstede (Ned) Team Sunweb 0:51:04 157 Tim Declercq (Bel) Quick-Step Floors 0:52:10 158 Nico Denz (Ger) AG2R La Mondiale 0:52:14 159 Stefan Denifl (Aut) Aqua Blue Sport 0:52:24 160 Yves Lampaert (Bel) Quick-Step Floors 0:54:05 161 Johan Le Bon (Fra) FDJ 0:54:20 162 Rein Taaramäe (Est) Katusha-Alpecin 0:55:30 163 Jonas Van Genechten (Bel) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 0:55:40 164 Adam Blythe (GBr) Aqua Blue Sport 0:55:51 165 Remy Mertz (Bel) Lotto Soudal 0:56:03 166 Thomas Scully (NZl) Cannondale-Drapac 0:56:27 167 Mark Christian (GBr) Aqua Blue Sport 0:56:43 168 Hector Sáez Benito (Spa) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 0:57:01 169 Jelle Wallays (Bel) Lotto Soudal 0:57:02 170 Ian Stannard (GBr) Team Sky 0:57:28 171 Michael Schwarzmann (Ger) Bora-Hansgrohe 0:58:04 172 Sebastián Molano (Col) Manzana Postobon 0:58:16 173 Kenneth Van Bilsen (Bel) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 0:58:35 174 Michael Mørkøv (Den) Katusha-Alpecin 0:59:03 175 Chris Hamilton (Aus) Team Sunweb 0:59:04 176 Nicholas Schultz (Aus) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 0:59:15 177 Andreas Schillinger (Ger) Bora-Hansgrohe 0:59:27 178 Maxim Belkov (Rus) Katusha-Alpecin 1:00:09 179 Sam Bewley (NZl) Orica-Scott 1:00:46 180 Hernando Bohórquez (Col) Manzana Postobon 1:00:56 181 Niki Terpstra (Ned) Quick-Step Floors 1:01:06 182 Svein Tuft (Can) Orica-Scott 1:01:22 183 Lasse Norman Hansen (Den) Aqua Blue Sport 1:01:42 184 Rafael Reis (Por) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 1:03:12 185 Peter Koning (Ned) Aqua Blue Sport 1:04:39 186 Federico Zurlo (Ita) UAE Team Emirates 1:05:40 187 Conor Dunne (Irl) Aqua Blue Sport 1:06:51 188 Jorge Arcas (Spa) Movistar Team 1:07:48 189 Lorrenzo Manzin (Fra) FDJ 1:10:23 Points Classification # Rider Name (Country) Team Result 1 Matteo Trentin (Ita) Quick-Step Floors 49 pts 2 Vincenzo Nibali (Ita) Bahrain-Merida 31 3 Alexey Lutsenko (Kaz) Astana Pro Team 29 4 Christopher Froome (GBr) Team Sky 28 5 Edward Theuns (Bel) Trek-Segafredo 28 6 Tomasz Marczynski (Pol) Lotto Soudal 27 7 Yves Lampaert (Bel) Quick-Step Floors 25 8 Tom Van Asbroeck (Bel) Cannondale-Drapac 25 9 Pawel Poljanski (Pol) Bora-Hansgrohe 24 10 Sacha Modolo (Ita) UAE Team Emirates 22 11 David de la Cruz (Spa) Quick-Step Floors 20 12 Merhawi Kudus Ghebremedhin (Eri) Dimension Data 20 13 Juan José Lobato (Spa) Team LottoNL-Jumbo 20 14 Johan Esteban Chaves Rubio (Col) Orica-Scott 18 15 Fabio Aru (Ita) Astana Pro Team 17 16 Enric Mas (Spa) Quick-Step Floors 17 17 Adam Blythe (GBr) Aqua Blue Sport 17 18 Marco Haller (Aut) Katusha-Alpecin 16 19 Marc Soler (Spa) Movistar Team 16 20 Luis León Sánchez (Spa) Astana Pro Team 14 21 Romain Bardet (Fra) AG2R La Mondiale 14 22 Jetse Bol (Ned) Manzana Postobon 14 23 Matej Mohoric (Slo) UAE Team Emirates 14 24 Michael Schwarzmann (Ger) Bora-Hansgrohe 14 25 Nicolas Roche (Irl) BMC Racing Team 13 26 Alexis Gougeard (Fra) AG2R La Mondiale 13 27 Jan Polanc (Slo) UAE Team Emirates 12 28 Jens Debusschere (Bel) Lotto Soudal 12 29 Daniel Oss (Ita) BMC Racing Team 11 30 Warren Barguil (Fra) Team Sunweb 10 31 Giovanni Visconti (Ita) Bahrain-Merida 9 32 Julian Alaphilippe (Fra) Quick-Step Floors 9 33 Lorrenzo Manzin (Fra) FDJ 9 34 Tejay van Garderen (USA) BMC Racing Team 8 35 Adam Yates (GBr) Orica-Scott 8 36 Søren Kragh Andersen (Den) Team Sunweb 8 37 Michael Woods (Can) Cannondale-Drapac 7 38 Domenico Pozzovivo (Ita) AG2R La Mondiale 7 39 Matvey Mamykin (Rus) Katusha-Alpecin 7 40 Patrick Konrad (Aut) Bora-Hansgrohe 7 41 Jack Haig (Aus) Orica-Scott 6 42 Jeremy Maison (Fra) FDJ 6 43 Jose Joaquin Rojas Gil (Spa) Movistar Team 5 44 Michel Kreder (Ned) Aqua Blue Sport 5 45 Jonas Van Genechten (Bel) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 5 46 Diego Rosa (Ita) Team Sky 4 47 Diego Rubio (Spa) Caja Rural-Seguros RGA 4 48 Mikel Nieve Ituralde (Spa) Team Sky 4 49 Davide Villella (Ita) Cannondale-Drapac 4 50 Simon Clarke (Aus) Cannondale-Drapac 4 51 Simon Yates (GBr) Orica-Scott 3 52 Wout Poels (Ned) Team Sky 3 53 Alberto Contador Velasco (Spa) Trek-Segafredo 3 54 Tobias Ludvigsson (Swe) FDJ 3 55 Sebastián Molano (Col) Manzana Postobon 3 56 Daniel Moreno Fernandez (Spa) Movistar Team 2 57 Stéphane Rossetto (Fra) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 2 58 Louis Meintjes (RSA) UAE Team Emirates 1 59 Darwin Atapuma (Col) UAE Team Emirates 1 Mountains Classification # Rider Name (Country) Team Result 1 Davide Villella (Ita) Cannondale-Drapac 38 pts 2 Darwin Atapuma (Col) UAE Team Emirates 12 3 Lluís Guillermo Mas Bonet (Spa) Caja Rural-Seg
justify his $1.5 million price tag. Is he a fit for Zone? Probably not. He'd be better suited for a team that could take a chance as him as a backup that can fight for a starting position without having to keep a guy like Gaither on the roster. Tom Telesco and Ryan Grigson brought the former Eagle to the Colts last year on a 1-year contract, and he performed well enough to justify his $1.5 million price tag. Is he a fit for Zone? Probably not. He'd be better suited for a team that could take a chance as him as a backup that can fight for a starting position without having to keep a guy like Gaither on the roster. Tyler Polumbus, Washington Redskins - He knows the Zone, but he's a terrible lineman and has been pretty terrible for a while. See? Not much there if the Chiefs manage to retain Albert. If the Chargers want to replace their current Tackles with guys that aren't on the roster, their best bet is probably to sign someone like Ryan Harris as a backup plan for a high draft choice coming in to play Tackle.Youtube won't let me embed the video; you can watch it and read the transcript here. Taibbi boils it down, pointing out that there is evidence not only that GS committed fraud but that it lied to Congress under oath. ...[L]ate in 2006, Goldman Sachs realized they were sitting on a time bomb of toxic mortgage assets. That they conspired to unload those assets on their clients and then bet against them at the same time, and then later on, the report also sort of lays out that in the process of investigating this issue, the Senate questioned Goldman. They also had testimony in Congress and it lays out that they believed that Goldman lied about some of these activities. According to Taibbi -- who, unlike McArdle, has read the report -- there is no doubt that GS pawned off assets it knew were crap and illegally didn't disclose that it was betting on them to fail. Taibbi cites one damning and representative email: One of the great e-mails in this entire document came after they sold $10 million worth of a deal called Timberwolf on an Australian hedge fund and they're celebrating afterwards. And one guy says, we found a white elephant, a unicorn and a flying pig all at the same time. In other words, we found the ultimate sucker and this kind of stuff is all throughout the report. McArdle's argument, such as it is, is two-fold. First, she says these cases are hard to prove. That's no doubt true, although this report, with its clear documentation of fraud, seems to take that favored excuse of the plutocrats off the table. Second, she says that most of the clients GS screwed were big investors, who should have known better. we generally assume that an institutional investor, like a pension fund or a hedge fund has the intelligence, the know-how and the motivation to figure out what's going on in the other side. So we don't offer them the same protections as we offer ordinary investors. We don't? How does the largeness of the scammed clients change GS's legal responsibility to disclose adverse elements of potential transactions? It doesn't, of course. At one point, Taibbi asks the question we'd all like to ask people like McArdle: How you were not ashamed to apologize for these billionaires who ripped off ordinary people? In response, McArdle shamelessly strikes a populist pose, setting up my favorite exchange of the debate. MCARDLE: There weren't ordinary people. A hedge fund is not an ordinary -- TAIBBI: How about this? They ripped off a billion dollar from Morgan Stanley, which then in turn took a $10 billion bailout from the taxpayer ergo they ripped us off. How do you answer that? MCARDLE: How do I answer that? I think that, you know, in fact, they do deals with big banks. There are questions about how we should have done those bailouts. But the fact is it's not Goldman Sachs' responsibility to make sure that Morgan Stanley makes money. More than it's the Atlantic's responsibility to make sure that Rolling Stone makes money... TAIBBI: I don't know how that makes sense on any planet in any universe. That is just insane. McArdle sets up the flimsiest of strawmen, pointing out that GS had no responsibility to make money for its client. Okay -- so what? Equally absurdly, she claims that the relationship between GS and its client is analogous to the relationship between Atlantic and Rolling Stone. The 635-report focuses on the causes of the financial crisis, but it singles out Goldman Sachs, as does Taibbi in his article in Rolling Stone. He details how GS sought to cleanse itself of poisonous assets and made a killing in the process. By February 2007...Goldman had gone from betting $6 billion on mortgages to betting $10 billion against them — a shift of $16 billion. Even CEO Lloyd "I'm doing God's work" Blankfein wondered aloud about the bank's progress in "cleaning" its crap. "Could/should we have cleaned up these books before," Blankfein wrote in one e-mail, "and are we doing enough right now to sell off cats and dogs in other books throughout the division?" How did Goldman sell off its "cats and dogs"? Easy: It assembled new batches of risky mortgage bonds and dumped them on their clients, who took Goldman's word that they were buying a product the bank believed in. The names of the deals Goldman used to "clean" its books — chief among them Hudson and Timberwolf — are now notorious on Wall Street. Each of the deals appears to represent a different and innovative brand of shamelessness and deceit. Taibbi acknowledges that the charge of fraud, though strong, could keep lawyers tied up for years. There's a much cleaner, straightforward case of perjury against execs such as former GS mortgage chief, Daniel Sparks. Also against Mr. God's Work himself: Blankfein also testified unequivocally to the following: "Much has been said about the supposedly massive short Goldman Sachs had on the U.S. housing market. The fact is, we were not consistently or significantly net-short the market in residential mortgage-related products in 2007 and 2008. We didn't have a massive short against the housing market, and we certainly did not bet against our clients." Levin couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Heck, yes, I was offended," he says. "Goldman's CEO claimed the firm 'didn't have a massive short,' when the opposite was true." But of course no charges of any kind are about to be filed on this planet in this universe. These are the days of impunity for the rich and ruthless, as the wounds at the center of the country's political, economic, and cultural life continue to bleed. Goldman, as the Levin report makes clear, remains an ascendant company precisely because it used its canny perception of an upcoming disaster (one which it helped create, incidentally) as an opportunity to enrich itself, not only at the expense of clients but ultimately, through the bailouts and the collateral damage of the wrecked economy, at the expense of society. The bank seemed to count on the unwillingness or inability of federal regulators to stop them — and when called to Washington last year to explain their behavior, Goldman executives brazenly misled Congress, apparently confident that their perjury would carry no serious consequences. Thus, while much of the Levin report describes past history, the Goldman section describes an ongoing? crime — a powerful, well-connected firm, with the ear of the president and the Treasury, that appears to have conquered the entire regulatory structure and stands now on the precipice of officially getting away with one of the biggest financial crimes in history.Kremlin-backed forces have also reinforced their formations in the Svitlodarsk-Artemivsk area of the region by moving two convoys of infantry and armor consisting of 18 armored personnel carriers, seven tanks and several trucks closer to the front line, he said on Facebook on May 6. A combined Russian-separatist reconnaissance group struck a transport vehicle with a rocket-propelled grenade in a village near Artemivsk in Donetsk Oblast on May 5, killing at least five serviceman and wounding 12, according to Ukraine’s military spokesman Andriy Lysenko. Overnight starting at 6 p.m. on May 5, Kremlin-backed militants fired 42 times on Ukrainian positions, according to a statement on the Defense Ministry’s website. They primarily used heavy artillery, including 152-, 122- and 120-milimeter mortar rockets. Twelve enemy drones were also spotted in the last 24 hours. Kyiv has completely or partially lost control of 28 towns and villages since Feb. 18, three days after the latest cease-fire went into force, according to a Cabinet of Ministers resolution published on May 5 that updated the list. It lost control over 15 towns in Artemivsk and three in Yasuvatsky districts. Ten additional towns were listed as on the front line and are only partially controlled. Hotspots Shyrokyne, 20 kilometers east of Mariupol, and Avdiivka where Ukraine’s largest coke producer is, are constantly shelled along the 450-kilometer (280-mile) front line. Photo taken on Dec. 9, 2014, displays a buildings, damaged by night shelling by pro-Russian separatists in Avdiivka, Donetsk Oblast, controlled by Ukrainian forces. (AFP) “If Russia continues to destabilize the situation in eastern Ukraine and will not abandon the illegal annexation of Crimea, the European Union should strengthen sanctions and to consider the possibility of providing defensive weapons and other military assistance to Ukraine,” reads a May 5 statement by the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament. More than 6,100 soldiers have been killed since mid-April when the Moscow-engineered armed uprising started in Donbas. In addition, more than 1.2 million people have been internally displaced, including 158,000 children, according to the United Nations. “Russia’s continued support for separatist rebels (in the east of the country) perpetuates war and lawlessness, hurting all people in the region,” said Isabel Santos, human rights chair of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly. “This is a humanitarian crisis that must be addressed here and now. Political resolution is required, but a solution to the human suffering has to be a priority.”Photo courtesy of Minnesota United By EVAN REAM Chances are, you haven’t heard of the top American-born goal scorer in American club soccer in 2014. It is not MLS MVP candidate Lee Nguyen. Nor is it breakout Los Angeles Galaxy striker Gyasi Zardes. U.S. Men’s National Team captain Clint Dempsey doesn’t have the title either. In this calendar year, no American has more goals than Christian Ramirez, who is going on a tear for the NASL’s Minnesota United. Teammate Miguel Ibarra may be garnering all the headlines after his recent USMNT call-up, but Ramirez’s club-record 19 goals have propelled the Loons to the No. 1 seed in the NASL playoffs, while rendering the MLS expansion candidate heavy favorites to win their first Soccer Bowl since 2011. The accolades, praise and success have arrived as often as the mail for Ramirez this season, but four years ago, the hulking, 6-foot-2 forward considered stepping away from the game for good. Ramirez always had the talent – 17 appearances in two seasons for national collegiate powerhouse Santa Barbara showed that. The then 19-year-old had always wanted to be a professional soccer player, but amid the frustration of collegiate soccer, as well as family issues, the skillful forward contemplated quitting the game that he had always loved. He decided to give his dream one last shot, enrolling in little-known Concordia University, an NAIA school based in Irvine. “My family was going through some hard times. Santa Barbara was a couple of hours away. At the same time, I wasn’t really fitting into the coach’s system or plan at Santa Barbara. That took part in the decision to transfer,” Ramirez told SBI. “I wasn’t truly happy with soccer. I was contemplating quitting numerous times. I knew that I wanted to go somewhere closer to home. When I talked to the coaches at Concordia, they told me to give it a shot. “They saw something in me that I’d fit in there. I just needed to get my confidence back and my joy for the game back. And it happened.” With 44 goals and 18 assists in just two seasons in Irvine, Ramirez was an instant hit, earning NAIA First Team All-American honors in 2012 as well as invitations to training camps for two professional teams: the Charlotte Eagles of USL Pro and Minnesota United. Lacking an agent or funds, Ramirez was forced to scrap together the cash for a cross-country flight to North Carolina without the guarantee of a contract. Somehow, he managed to get there, but never made it to the Minnesota camp after being offered a contract by Charlotte the day after arriving on the East Coast. Ramirez’s first professional season was a success as he lead the Eagles to the 2013 USL Pro Championship game against Orlando City Soccer Club. That game is remembered more for being the coming-out party for Sporting Kansas City striker Dom Dwyer. On loan to Orlando City from Sporting KC, Dwyer scored four times in a 7-4 goal-fest played in a packed Citrus Bowl in Orlando. What is easily forgotten about that championship game is that, if not for Dwyer, it might have been Ramirez’s own breakout performance that people remembered. He scored a quick pair of goals after Orlando City held a 2-1 lead, but the 3-2 Charlotte lead was the last the Eagles held, and Dwyer went on to steal the show, and spotlight, away from Ramirez that day. “The funny thing about that USL final is that I told Dom during the final that if he wasn’t there, we would have beaten them. We were up 3-2 and I had scored two goals and then he came back and scored a penalty,” Ramirez said. “I shook his hand when he gave me the ball at midfield. I said, okay my turn. I got a goal called offside. Then he came back and scored another two. There was a friendly competition going back and forth in that final.” Dwyer went on to lead Sporting Kansas City to an MLS Cup championship that same year, and is now enjoying a dream season in 2014, notching 22 goals this year, second-most in MLS. Ramirez headed back home to Southern California after that memorable final to meet up with an old friend to play offseason soccer with regional powerhouse PSA Elite. That friend happened to be Ibarra. The two met while playing for Orange County Blue Star, an Irvine-based PDL team, during their college days. Ibarra immediately began recruiting Ramirez to return to the spot that he never made it to: Minnesota. “I just knew, just by the type of player he was, that me and him would connect right away and understand each other’s games. We got along really fast,” Ibarra said. “The first thing I told him was, I think if you come, I think we can win a championship.” Ramirez eventually signed with United as a backup coming into the season until 2012 NASL MVP and fan-favorite Pablo Campos went down with an anterior cruciate ligament tear in the preseason, forcing the newly-signed player into the starting lineup. “They threw me into the pool without me knowing how to swim,” Ramirez said. “They taught me how to swim.” It took Ramirez just 17 minutes to make his mark on the league, taking a pass off his chest in Minnesota’s opening game at San Antonio, turning, and rifling the ball into the top corner of the net for a goal that quickly became a viral sensation. “I love looking at Christian’s first goal. If you go back and you look at it, it just showed some unbelievable quality and creativeness. I think it personally set the tone for the team to say, ‘Hey, we’re going to find different ways to score goals and kind of become a team,’” said Minnesota United head coach Manny Lagos. “I think that moment kind of released him and released the belief in him that he was not only a good soccer player, but a good finisher. He’s obviously continued from that moment to show such great quality and have scored goals along with it.” That wonder goal was the first of five goals Ramirez scored in the in the nine-game fall season, where Minnesota clinched a playoff spot by virtue of winning the spring championship. Along the way, Ramirez formed a partnership on and off the field with the man most responsible for bringing him to the Midwest. As roommates, Ramirez and Ibarra do everything together, including participating in a fan-driven oddity where Ramirez wears a Superman undershirt while Ibarra wears a Batman one to form a ‘crime-fighting duo on the pitch.’ “We do everything together,” Ibarra told SBI. “We coach a (youth) team together. He cooks, I clean. We both play video games. It’s fun. “Sometimes he gets annoying, but it’s not a big deal,” Ibarra joked. Someone else who has noticed the partnership is U.S. head coach Jurgen Klinsmann, who not only handed Ibarra a surprising national team call-up, but mentioned Ramirez by name when discussing players he is watching in his search for potential national team talent. From unknown to on the national team radar in four years, Ramirez might be someone many American soccer fans haven’t heard of yet, but he is well on his way to changing that.Two weeks ago the Yankees traded for second baseman Starlin Castro from the Chicago Cubs, shipping right-hander Adam Warren out in exchange. Warren said he found out about the news while on vacation. "We were in St. Lucia," Warren told MLB Network last Friday of the trade that went down on December 8. "My biggest rule when we go out of the country is to turn your phone off, put them into the safe in the room, and basically get away from technology." PLUS: Nova out? No takers, report says So he and his wife did that. But Warren said on the night the trade, they happened to be in one of the few restaurant spots where there was a television. He said he saw on ESPN that the Yankees had made a trade, but didn't know who was involved. "I'm like, 'Hmm, I need to figure out who was in this deal,'" Warren said. "I had my wife's old phone just to take pictures with and it didn't even have service but we connected it to Wi-Fi and sure enough, my name was in the trade. "We were actually talking to some people and about 30 minutes later we walked out of the restaurant and my wife just started bawling. I was not really sure what to do. We stayed up pretty much all night trying to figure out what to do. Going through all the scenarios and just trying to process the feeling." McCann calls Eovaldi possible No. 1 Warren said finding out that way was "weird" because he didn't have a chance to talk on the phone with either organization. The 28-year-old said it took three or four days until they were back in the country to fully talk to everyone. When he was finally able to talk to the Cubs, he said, he started to feel "OK" with the trade. After making 14 starts last season Warren was shipped to the bullpen and became the team's long-man in relief. He was solid. Warren had the team's second-best ERA as a starter (3.66) and posted a 2.29 ERA in 35.1 relief innings. He helped clinch the team's Wild Card berth on October 1. After the game Girardi called him "invaluable" to the team. Ryan Hatch may be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @ryanhatch. Find NJ.com on Facebook.The new Pew poll finds that Obama leads Mitt Romney among registered voters nationally by 50 to 43. But the more interesting finding may be that there’s been a big swing against Romney on the economy in particular: The job situation remains the number-one issue for voters in this campaign. Neither candidate has a clear advantage on this issue: 46% say Romney and 42% say Obama can do a better job improving the job situation. More generally, Mitt Romney has lost ground over the past month on the issue of the economy. The eight-point advantage he held in June as the candidate better able to improve the economy has now flipped, with 48% saying Obama can better improve economic conditions, while 42% favor Romney. Last month, Romney held an eight point advantage on who can best improve the economy; now Obama holds a six point advantage. Among independents, there’s also been a big swing. In June, Romney led Obama by 23 points, 54-31, among independents on the economy. That lead has dwindled down to four points; Romney now leads among them on the issue by 43-39. And this is even more interesting: The swing on the economy has been bigger in the dozen battleground states than it has been nationally, though the difference is within the margin of error. Pew sends over some numbers: In June, Romney led Obama in those dozen states by eight points on the economy, 49-41. Now Obama leads Romney in those same states by nine points, 50-41. Interestingly, there’s been no shift in the horse race numbers in those states — Obama leads 51-44, similar to last month — but clearly, Romney has lost real ground on the economy in them, even though he has been relentlessly pounding Obama’s economic stewardship as a disastrous failure. What’s more, this comes as voters remain sour on the economy — 51 percent say they are hearing mostly bad news about jobs — yet Obama seems to be neutralizing or even reversing Romney’s previous advantage on the issue anyway, at least in this poll. With the usual caveat that you don’t want to read too much into one survey, it’s worth asking whether the swing on the economy may be partly due to the Bain attacks. Though pundits mostly think these attacks are about nothing more than painting Romney as a heartless plutocrat, in reality they are also about directly engaging, and relentlessly undermining, Romney’s central argument for the presidency, i.e., that his business background has equipped him with job creation skills that will enable him to turn around the country’s economy. Romney’s slippage on the economy in this poll may be another sign that the attacks are working. At the very least they will certainly embolden the Obama camp to keep them up.Nancy Lee Grahn Why is General Hospital's Nancy Lee Grahn (Alexis) suddenly looking so chestacular? Normally, we'd be interviewing a soap star about something important, like big career news or a startling plot twist. But sometimes you just gotta set up a chat because the subject in question is fantastically hilarious and shamelessly honest and because, well, out of nowhere she's sporting some amazingly major boobage! The suds blogosphere is abuzz about it! TV Guide Magazine spoke with the two-time Emmy winning Grahn about this out-of-nowhere development and so much more — from her arch foes (Bob Guza, Sarah Palin) to her phantom GH romance with Sean Blakemore (Shawn). And why is she Kelly Monaco's self-appointed Dance Mom at every taping of Dancing With the Stars? TV Guide Magazine: First things first. What's going on with this newfound cleavage? Grahn: [Laughs] My breasts have just turned into monsters! I don't know what's going on. It must be an age thing. Or menopause. Also, I've gained 12 pounds, so I guess it all went to my boobs. TV Guide Magazine: So it's for sure not a boob job? Grahn: Are you kidding? You know me better than that! [Laughs] Oh, my God, if I'd paid for these I'd be furious! Anyway, what would be the point of a boob job at this late point in my career? I know people pay big money for it and now I've got it for free, but I don't enjoy it at all. TV Guide Magazine: Then how come the GH wardrobe people are going out of their way to accentuate it? Grahn: They're not! Here's the other problem: I can't stand wearing anything that covers my upper chest because it makes me feel like I'm suffocating. I must have been Anne Boleyn in a past life. I've always been this way but it's only obvious now because my boobs have suddenly grown to the size of twin blimps and now they pop out. It's also more noticeable because I like to move around a lot when I act. I'm always leaning over someone in a scene and they're like, "God, stand up straight, will ya! Nobody can concentrate!" TV Guide Magazine: So what about this romance between Alexis and Shawn? Grahn: I don't know. Is there a romance? TV Guide Magazine: You tell me! Right in the worst part of the biotoxin story — when everyone in Port Charles was supposedly dying — those two were busy making out! Grahn: I guess Alexis saw him without his top on and couldn't resist. Doesn't some couple always end up making out and falling in love during those big disaster movies, like when an Armageddon-type meteor is about to hit the earth? People on soaps always seem to have sex when they're trapped in rubble, and I've never understood that. When we had the big Northridge earthquake [in 1994] I wasn't thinking about sex. I was thinking, "How the f--k do I get out of this house before I die?" TV Guide Magazine: The Shawn-Alexis thing just seems so arbitrary, like he has nobody and she has nobody so the writers just threw them together. Not that there isn't potential there. Are they pursuing this thing? Grahn: I don't know. Not right now. But I love working with Sean Blakemore. I think he's very cool. His character needs to be more dimensionalized, but I'm all for putting Shawn and Alexis together. Frank and [head writer] Ron Carlivati know that I need to have a relationship on the show. Maybe they're just experimenting, seeing what works, what doesn't. It'd be good to start over with Alexis and Shawn and approach this thing again. Why are the two of them together? What's behind the attraction? I don't think they even know each other. They were making out in that scene because the show wanted a big moment after the boat exploded. We were shooting at the end of a long day on location on the docks in Long Beach and [exec producer] Frank Valentini came running at me and said, "If we don't get this scene shot in 60 seconds, we're going into overtime and it's going to cost us $20,000! So shut up and shoot it! Just do it!" [Laughs] I didn't have time to stand there and discuss my motivation. TV Guide Magazine: Clearly, they dropped your menopause story — or was it the world's quickest recovery? Grahn: That was started by the previous [writing regime] and Frank and Ron thought it was hilarious — they have a great sense of humor — but Frank said, "I don't want you old and withering. I want you vibrant!" It was, like, "That's enough. Let's move on!" But you're right. Alexis got over those menopause symptoms in record time. Maybe she just had the flu. [Laughs] Some odd kind of flu that makes your boobs big! TV Guide Magazine: You seem strangely okay not having much of a storyline right now. What's up with that? You love complaining! That's why you're known as Nancy Groan! Grahn: Listen, I see it two ways. Yes, I want a killer story for Alexis but I am so happy to be working in a place where the head writer doesn't hate me and everybody's nice to me, that I'm just happy doing whatever they have for me. It's different when you're being treated with respect and you respect the people you're working with. I'm much more adaptable to being a team player now. Unlike when Bob Guza was writing GH, I'm no longer considered a problem but an asset. And as a result I am seeing things in a less defensive and more mature way. Besides, I had my time in the spotlight when I did Santa Barbara. I was a leading lady who had the kind of storylines any actress would want. I could have had another 10 great years on GH but that wasn't the case. TV Guide Magazine: And you blame that on Guza? Grahn: Let's just say that he did not like to write for intelligent women. So I kind of languished for a decade. And now here I am at the age where I'm a TV grandmother. [Laughs] And by that I mean a very young grandmother! I have to sit back and let the younger ones take the stage. I had my day. Let somebody else have their day. That doesn't mean I still don't want my day again, but it doesn't have to be every day. I'm okay with that. [Laughs] Right now, anyway. Ask me again in a month! You're getting the nice Nancy today. TV Guide Magazine: Yet somehow you still managed to win a supporting Emmy this year. Did I read somewhere that you gave it to your 14-year-old daughter, Kate, so she can take it with her to college? Are you trying to warp your kid for life by making her carry around mommy's trophies? Grahn: No! I wanted it to be inspirational but I don't think that's working out. I put the Emmy in her room and, within a week, you couldn't see it because it was covered with clothes. She was hanging her bras on it! So now it's back on the mantle with the other one. TV Guide Magazine: I was shocked to hear you booked a guest-star gig on Castle. You haven't been in primetime since the Reagan administration! Grahn: I know! [Laughs] Well, it's not quite that bad but I think the last job I had in primetime was when I did that recurring role on Murder One, and that was the '90s! Of course, it doesn't help that I don't have an agent. It's a fun role. I'm playing a wife in this "War of the Roses"-type relationship who's accused of murdering her lawyer. I'm throwing vases and breaking paintings. Brendon Ford from Weeds and Big Love plays the husband. The casting director at Castle, bless her heart, loves GH and called me in for the part. I had a fantastic time giggling with Nathan Fillion all day. What a nice group of people! It made me feel good. On the other hand, working out the deal to get time off from GH was stressful. They had to give some of my scenes to Carolyn Hennesy [Diane]. I think Frank Valentini felt sorry for me because my career's so pathetic. He finally said, "OK. you can go do Castle but it comes with a caveat. You have to be perfect for the next six months." TV Guide Magazine: Perfect in what way? Grahn: I don't know. Apparently in every way. Like Mary Poppins. TV Guide Magazine: Why are you stalking Kelly Monaco at every episode of Dancing With the Stars? Grahn: Oh, my God! I need an intervention! I can't stop going to the tapings. Remember Miss Miller, the old gal who used to always sit in the audience of The Merv Griffin Show? I'm her. TV Guide Magazine: Well that cultural reference is certainly going to date you! Grahn: I know! What the hell am I thinking? I'm so carried away playing Kelly's mom on GH that I think I'm her mom in real life. I'm the Jewish mother she never had! She's got a lot of balls for a pint-sized little thing. Sometimes I'll go get her lunch on the GH set. The other day, as a joke, I threw a head of lettuce into her dressing room and said, "This is for today and tomorrow!" I'm really, really impressed with how hard she's working because this show is serious s--t! Just brutal! Between the angina I get being there to root for Kelly and the angina I have over this presidential election, I am so headed for the emergency room! TV Guide Magazine: As a hardcore, frothing-at-the-mouth liberal, how tough was it to sit near Sarah Palin all those night at DWTS? Grahn: It was a true test, because once you're in that studio they do not let you out. And then they started seating her closer and closer to me! The truth is, I don't like what she stands for and that's very clear from my Tweets. I think she's a very divisive and dangerous person. The fact that she actually thought she was qualified to run for vice president — that she had the self-serving gumption to put our nation at risk that way — is something I still find unforgivable. So being so close to her made it very difficult not to get riled. I will say that she was always smiling, always very nice to everyone, and she clearly loves her children. But somehow seeing that she's human and not some media cartoon didn't make it any better for me. It only made the things she does and says and stands for seem even worse. But I do have this to say about her: Fabulous shoes! I was quite envious. TV Guide Magazine: And Bristol? Grahn: What really sent me over the edge with her was when DWTS did that little film package where she went to the firing range and thought it was great fun to shoot the moose between the eyes. I lost my s--t and tweeted, "She just shot the f---ing moose in the head!" What can I say? I am not fond of what the Palins represent. They are the political Kardashians. Give me Kelly Monaco's class and gumption anytime! I've been working harder supporting Kelly than I have for Obama. I'm really proud of her and, more important, really impressed. DWTS shows what people are truly made of. It is not for sissies. TV Guide Magazine: Are you looking to do the show yourself? Grahn: Oh, my God, no way! Are you nuts? I am way too big of a wimp. [Laughs] Plus, I'd be sure to have a wardrobe malfunction with the way my boobs are growing! Subscribe to TV Guide Magazine now!Of the millions of doodles, sketches and clumsy photo edits created in Microsoft Paint over the past 32 years, there are likely few - despite any claims made by the creator - that can be called bona fide works of art. As Microsoft prepares to remove Paint from its operation system by default, and instead make it available for free in the Windows Store, one amateur artist is lamenting that masses of young people could miss out on the opportunity to play around with the iconic program. US illustrator Pat Hines works exclusively with MS Paint (he says he "sucks" at Adobe Photoshop and other such programs), and taught himself to get the best out of the simple graphics tool while working as an overnight security guard at a hospital. Image copyright Pat Hines Image caption The man who made it all happen: Microsoft founder Bill Gates Image copyright Pat Hines Image caption Pat starts with a basic line drawing Pat has self-published an e-book set in a 1980s summer camp, with all illustrations done on MS Paint. He told BBC Local Radio he uses several different versions of the program, which was launched in 1985, on old computers, including one previously owned by his parents. He says the process is time consuming, but relaxing and "almost like meditation". "I wouldn't say it's easy, it definitely takes quite a while. It could take upwards of 20 hours [of work] for just one piece," he adds. But why does he use it? Paint, he once wrote, is "the one medium where the end result always lived up to what I had in my head". Image copyright Pat Hines Image caption Pat's e-book Camp Redblood and the Essential Revenge revolves around a feud between two rival summer camps Much of Pat's other work incorporates characters from popular TV shows, comic books and films. Those who doubt he really uses only MS Paint should zoom into his images in detail, or check out pictures where he shows certain works in progress, he says. Image copyright Pat Hines Image caption Pat's book has gone through lots of different drafts Image copyright Pat Hines Image caption He has more e-books planned Pat says anyone who wants to master MS Paint needs a lot of free time - something that he had in the early 2000s when his only other option for distraction on long night shifts was playing Solitaire. He says it's hard for him to transition to more sophisticated graphics program. Image copyright Pat Hines Image caption A Star Wars fan art contest submission "I draw basically with the mouse and it's very different from drawing with a pen or a stylus. It's just fundamentally different," he says. But he also appears - like countless others - to have a distinctly emotional and nostalgic connection with MS Paint. "I've always loved it and I've tried moving on to other programmes but I could just never connect with them." Image copyright Pat Hines Image caption A moment from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows .Medical Marijuana, Inc. (traded over the counter as MJNA), is a holding company with subsidiaries that make and sell a range of hemp-based products. History [ edit ] The company came into being in 2009, when a company called Club Vivanet bought another company from Bruce Perlowin; the new company was named Medical Marijuana, Inc. and was based in Poway, California.[1] The company appears to have been among the first to exploit the 2004 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision, HIA vs DEA, which prevented the federal government from treating hemp as though it were marijuana, to market canabidiol-based products to the public.[1] Michael Llamas was the initial CEO of MMI; he stepped down in 2012 when he was indicted for his role in a real estate Ponzi scheme.[1][2] The company operated at
, our bloated, irrational prisons complex, our punishing and inadequate health care disaster, and over it all, the repressive mechanism of our police state, armed and empowered, ready for use against the American people themselves. * * * This is where we are. The great question now is whether we as a nation can awaken from this long historic nightmare and face the terrifying and exhilarating prospect of living in the full light of reality without the false props and dishonest constructs of a hoodwinked, herded and dishonored people or, whether we have internalized the falsity and disease to such an extent that it has become an organic, overmastering form of insanity? In 1846, Henry David Thoreau, offended to his soul by the injustice of the American government’s invasion of Mexico, protested it and went to jail for his convictions. Later, in his essay On Civil Disobedience, he said this: “If injustice is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.” To attempt to break the hold of the American Myth will be a titanic, daunting challenge. To even begin to openly rebel against the might of the National Security State will require the courage to face much more than official disapproval and denunciation. Imperial America will not respond to even the most peaceful and orderly protest with anything less than hard police repression and the level of punishment will rise in relation to the scope and seriousness of the action undertaken. Small protests will have no effect and will be meaningless. Organized mass events, when they occur, will draw the whole fiercely and brutally motivated National Security State apparatus down upon themselves. Americans, excepting those of our underclass who have felt it, have no experience with violent police or military repression. Those who commit peaceful civil disobedience, a first and innocent tactic of serious protest, will swiftly find out to their cost how it works. In a National Security State that has excised and eradicated all defensive laws and regulations intended to prevent abuse of the public, whatever the State does is legal. To such a pass have we in America come as a result of our long historic indoctrination in serving our financial elite, our Ruling Class. To achieve any redemption for Americans, to make possible any more just, humane and life-honoring society, will require complete abandonment of the system of Predatory Capitalism. If offers no prospect of reform or improvement and we have all been witness to the idiocy of the so-called “democratic process” in action for generations now. America is nearing the greatest crisis point in its history and the terrific cataclysm, when it happens, will determine the future our country is to have. If we cannot, in dominating numbers, rise to reject the heartless, mindless, soulless machine of Imperial Predatory Capitalism, we will be condemned to a fascistic command and control horror in which human beings are mere possessions of the State, units of production or service, and then perhaps not even that, as excess population in that brave, new world nay be eliminated. That end is not inevitable. We are not lost. We are not even defeated because to this moment we have not engaged. We have not honored our responsibility as human beings. We have not risen to defend our humanity. We have let ourselves be ruled. All around the world the thunder of vast and immeasurable discontent can be heard and felt. In Egypt and Spain, Jordan and Greece, Iraq and Sudan, Afghanistan and Ireland, Latin America, the Far East and Africa, the legitimate anger of humanity is expressing itself against the dead and killing hand of Predatory Capitalism and its agencies of violence. And here, in America, so long trapped and encapsulated, frozen like a fly in amber in a false religion of state idolatry, the anger is deep, widespread, and growing. It is up to those who know and care to lead. As Thomas Paine said, “These are the times that try men’s souls.” Nothing is guaranteed us. That can’t matter. We cannot be concerned with odds or outcomes. We cannot let the Machine of Injustice grind on. We must oppose it with all the moral force we own. We must act with quiet courage to confront a vicious tyrannical system that is destroying the earth, its life, and its people. We must put our lives on the line to oppose it. The Nightmare Machine of rapacious exploitation has overthrown humanity’s decency and reason and its bloody inhuman treason flourishes over us. This must be ended. Let your life be a friction now to stop the Machine.On Friday, a small group of influential industry leaders and policy analysts gathered in Baltimore, MD to discuss the increasingly complex and poorly coordinated interface between electric and gas markets. The meeting marked the first major step for the North American Energy Standards Board's "Gas-Electric Harmonization Committee," which was established earlier this year to develop recommendations for harmonizing of the gas and electric markets. Susan Tierney, a managing principal of the Analysis Group and among the most influential electric and gas policy thinkers in the United States, and Valerie Crockett, a manager at the Tennessee Valley Authority, were appointed co-chairs of the NAESB Committee. A veritable who's who of the gas and power companies and regulators – ranging from Exxon-Mobil and the Southern Company to the California Public Utility Commission and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The Committee held its first big in-person powwow last week in Baltimore, will not develop standards or make policy decisions, but the recommendations it develops will likely shape future policy choices and standards development. The NAESB effort is one of many efforts underway to manage the interactions between electric power and natural gas markets more effectively over the past few years. And for good reason. In 2010, the Aspen Environmental Group estimated that replacing all coal-fired generation in the U.S. with natural gas power plants would effectively double the demand for gas for generating electricity. Over the past decade, the use of natural gas to generate electricity has expanded significantly as a result of market deregulation and the growth of merchant combined-cycle natural gas power plants, which are easy to site, finance and build compared to coal and nuclear power plants. Electric power demand for natural gas climbed from 5.3 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) in 2000 to 6.8 Tcf in 2009 – the U.S. consumed a total of about 23 Tcf of natural gas in 2009. To put this in perspective, a box large enough for a basketball can hold roughly 1 cubic foot of natural gas. The average home uses 66,000 cubic feet of natural gas annually. In addition to NAESB, the U.S. Department of Energy's Electricity Advisory Committee, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation and the American Public Power Association have also sponsored serious investigations of the interface and interdependence of the electricity power grid and natural gas infrastructure.COLUMBUS, Ind. -- Police believe an Indiana woman found dead on a river sandbar Saturday died trying to help a lost dog near the river. Police think Jackie Watts died while chasing a missing dog "Ringo" near the Flatrock river. pic.twitter.com/duz3Kfd3Oy — Jesse Wells (@JesseWellsNews) March 6, 2017 Jacqueline Watts, 33, of Indianapolis was reported missing when when she didn’t come home Friday night. WTTV reports that her car was found -- with the flashers on and her cellphone and purse inside -- but she couldn’t be located. WTTV reports Watts was last seen dropping off her dogs and a rabbit with family on Friday. Watts was planning to fly to Washington, D.C., with her husband, according to family members. Police, K-9 officers and detectives spent hours on the scene searching the area around where Watts’ car was found. Crews found her body around 8:30 a.m. Saturday on a sandbar in Columbus’ Flatrock River. Police have said they do not suspect foul play, but they have not released the woman’s cause of death. Monday, Columbus police said a witness told them they had seen a woman matching Watt’s description on Friday afternoon, chasing a small white dog near the river. Authorities came across a social media post announcing a search for a lost dog named Ringo that matched the description. The post asked for help fining the 10-year-old poodle, saying the animal was “sick, has cataracts, and is almost deaf.” The posting advised offering the dog food -- “otherwise he’ll run away.” Authorities on Sunday located a body of a small white dog near the river, and confirmed that it was Ringo with the animal’s owners. “The bottom line is we lost a very special person,” Columbus Lt. Matt Harris said. “It’s my understanding that Jackie was the type of person that when there was an animal that was sick, she would take that animal in and provide hospice care. So to hear someone making the statement that she was trying to help a lost dog and sadly appears she lost her life doing so, that doesn’t seem out of character for her.” In a statement, the woman’s family said the her “compassion for others was evident throughout her life,” and that she worked as a teaching assistant in the Indianapolis Public Schools, an events coordinator for Indianapolis Public Schools, as Events Coordinator for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Indianapolis, as an aesthetician. She also developed a love for animals at a young age -- “to say that this was Jackie’s passion would be an understatement,” the statement read – and she volunteered with animal rescue groups and fostered dogs and rabbits. “She cared deeply about the wellbeing of animals. If she believed she could help an animal in need, she was going to do so without hesitation,” the statement read. “We know that Jackie gave her life for what she believed in.” The statement thanked the community for an outpouring of support amid the search. “Oh that we would all be filled with enough passion to give our lives for what we believe in,” it read.Looking for news you can trust? Subscribe to our free newsletters. This story first appeared on the Guardian website and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The earth’s land has warmed by 1.5 degrees Celsius during the past 250 years and “humans are almost entirely the cause,” according to a scientific study set up to address climate change skeptics’ concerns about whether human-induced global warming is occurring. Richard Muller, a physicist and climate change skeptic who founded the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project, said he was surprised by the findings. “We were not expecting this, but as scientists, it is our duty to let the evidence change our minds.” He added that he now considers himself a “converted skeptic” and his views had undergone a “total turnaround” in a short space of time. “Our results show that the average temperature of the Earth’s land has risen by 2.5F over the past 250 years, including an increase of 1.5 degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases,” Muller wrote in an opinion piece for the New York Times. The team of scientists, based at the University of California-Berkeley, gathered and merged a collection of 14.4 million land temperature observations from 44,455 sites across the world dating back to 1753. Previous data sets created by NASA, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Met Office and the University of East Anglia’s climate research unit only went back to the mid-1800s and used a fifth as many weather station records. The funding for the project included $150,000 from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, set up by the billionaire US coal magnate and key backer of the climate skeptic Heartland Institute think tank. The research also received $100,000 from the Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research, which was created by Bill Gates. Unlike previous efforts, the temperature data from various sources was not homogenized by hand—a key criticism by climate skeptics. Instead, the statistical analysis was “completely automated to reduce human bias.” The BEST team concluded that, despite their deeper analysis, their own findings closely matched the previous temperature reconstructions, “but with reduced uncertainty.” Last October, the BEST team published results that showed the average global land temperature has risen by about 1 degree Celsius since the mid-1950s. But the team did not look for possible fingerprints to explain this warming. The latest data analysis reached much further back in time but, crucially, also searched for the most likely cause of the rise by plotting the upward temperature curve against suspected “forcings.” It analyzed the warming impact of solar activity—a popular theory among climate skeptics—but found that, over the past 250 years, the contribution of the sun has been “consistent with zero.” Volcanic eruptions were found to have caused short dips in the temperature rise in the period 1750–1850, but “only weak analogues” in the 20th century. “Much to my surprise, by far the best match came to the record of atmospheric carbon dioxide, measured from atmospheric samples and air trapped in polar ice,” said Muller. “While this doesn’t prove that global warming is caused by human greenhouse gases, it is currently the best explanation we have found, and sets the bar for alternative explanations.” Muller said his team’s findings went further and were stronger than the latest report published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In an unconventional move aimed at appeasing climate skeptics by allowing “full transparency,” the results have been publicly released before being peer-reviewed by the Journal of Geophysical Research. All the data and analysis is now available to be freely scrutinized at the BEST website. This follows the pattern of previous BEST results, none of which have yet been published in peer-reviewed journals. When the BEST project was announced last year, the prominent climate skeptic blogger Anthony Watts was consulted on the methodology. He stated at the time: “I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong.” However, tensions have since arisen between Watts and Muller. Early indications suggest that climate skeptics are unlikely to fully accept Best’s latest results. Judith Curry, a climatologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology who runs a blog popular with climate skeptics and who is a consulting member of the BEST team, told the Guardian that the method used to attribute the warming to human emissions was “way oversimplistic and not at all convincing in my opinion”. She added: “I don’t think this question can be answered by the simple curve fitting used in this paper, and I don’t see that their paper adds anything to our understanding of the causes of the recent warming.” Michael Mann, the Penn State University paleoclimatologist who has faced hostility from climate skeptics for his famous “hockey stick” graph showing a rapid rise in temperatures during the 20th century, said he welcomed the BEST results, since they “demonstrated once again what scientists have known with some degree of certainty for nearly two decades.” He added: “I applaud Muller and his colleagues for acting as any good scientists would, following where their analyses led them, without regard for the possible political repercussions. They are certain to be attacked by the professional climate change denial crowd for their findings.” Muller said his team’s analysis suggested there would be 1.5 degrees of warming over land in the next 50 years, but if China continues its rapid economic growth and its vast use of coal then that same warming could take place in less than 20 years. “Science is that narrow realm of knowledge that, in principle, is universally accepted,” wrote Muller. “I embarked on this analysis to answer questions that, to my mind, had not been answered. I hope that the Berkeley Earth analysis will help settle the scientific debate regarding global warming and its human causes. Then comes the difficult part: agreeing across the political and diplomatic spectrum about what can and should be done.”(Photo: Jeremy Burgin / Flickr)Rising inequality is killing the dinosaurs – or at least what’s left of them. Paleontologists report a boom in illicit dinosaur excavation and smuggling. The most recent case to hit the news was the theft of a large raptor from Mongolia. In many cases dinosaur excavation for profit is not even illegal, though from a scientific standpoint it is extraordinarily damaging. One collector’s trophy is the world’s collective loss as fossils are collected haphazardly with no scientific record-keeping. The result is that the few bits and pieces that remain of the “terrible lizards” that once ruled the Earth are increasingly subject to plunder, damage and vandalism at the hands of opportunistic for-profit fossil hunters. Large, intact skeletons can sell at auction for a million dollars or more. To read more articles by Salvatore Babones and other authors in the Public Intellectual Project, click here. The terrible irony is that collectors can legally and morally buy high-quality casts of the kind actually displayed in museums for a fraction of the cost of acquiring real bones-from-dirt fossils. Collectors argue that as long as they break no laws they should be free to collect what they want, be it art, coins, fossils. But let’s be serious: Who really wants a 40-foot long tyrannosaurus for the living room? Even if you’re allowed to buy one, who would? According to CBS News legal correspondent John Miller, the buyers are “wealthy people who want something really interesting for their friends to talk about put under their key light in their basement for their 70 dinner guests.” Personally, I’ve never held a dinner for 70 guests, and if I could afford to hold a dinner for 70 guests (and if I had 70 guests to invite), I could afford to rent out the dinosaur room at the local museum of natural history for the occasion. Hanging a real dinosaur skeleton in your dining room is the stuff of James Bond villains. Real people don’t do this. Except they do. Levels of income inequality have now reached such epic proportions that literally tens of thousands of real-life James Bond villains are equipping their fantastical lairs with action-mounted fighting dinosaur skeletons, second-rate $100 million Picassos, and Galileo first editions stolen from a library in Naples. For the truly discerning collector, Damien Hurst’s diamond-encrusted skull is reportedly still on the market. They have the money. Forbes counts at least 1,153 billionaires in the world, and there are literally millions of millionaires. When money is no object, good morals and even good taste fall by the wayside. You want it, you get it. We’ve seen this all before. The great public collections of the world have their origins in the Victorian era of the mid-1800s. When the world became more unequal in the run-up to 1900, private collections displaced public ones. Then, after World War II, the world became more equal again. The private collections of the 1900s robber barons became the public collections of the 1950s museums. If you wanted to take your kid to see a dinosaur, you went to the museum of natural history. Today’s wealthy opt instead to just buy their kid a dinosaur. That’s why inequality is killing the dinosaurs. We don’t know why they died the first time around. Meteor, global warming, smoking, who knows? But this time we do know the culprit. Economic inequality is killing what little is left of the dinosaurs. We should stop the slaughter before it is too late.The Three Dollies Charlotte Motion Control is a camera dolly system that allows photographers and filmmakers to expand their motion control capabilities. I wanted to make a modular dolly system that would be portable and versatile. The components can be configured to make three types of camera dollies: a cable dolly, a rail dolly and a wheeled dolly. Each of these have their own strengths. The cable dolly is amazing in its ability to take the camera through spaces that would otherwise be very difficult to move through. The rail dolly allows very precise stable shots on a platform that can be set up quickly. The wheeled dolly allows arced or straight shots over any smooth surface. Cable Dolly Cable Dolly Running Through a Gorge The cable dolly is really what inspired me to take on this project. Something about the idea of sending a camera alone through space and retrieving the images it captured along the way has always captivated me. The first videos I shot using home depot pulley wheels and a camcorder were shaky and noisy so I started incrementally making improvements. I eliminated noise and vibration by turning my own aluminum wheels on a lathe. I stabilized the camera platform by creating a twin cable arrangement that can be tensioned using a ratchet. I then added a motor and controller to capture both time-lapse and real-time film. Motor and Controller The brains and muscle of Charlotte are provided by a controller box and a stepper motor. To program the controller you enter in the total run time, total distance and number of exposures for your time lapse. The controller then calculates and displays the speed and shutter interval. The Charlotte controller brings a new level of precision to time-lapse. It combines motion control with shutter control. You can run test shots at a faster speed and make adjustments before you run the final shot. If you want to make a change to one of the parameters you can, and the others will be recalculated. The motor and controller can operate at very slow speeds for time-lapse and faster for real-time. This is one of the advantages of the stepper motor. While other dollies that use dc gear motors require you to switch between motors for time-lapse and real-time, the motor that's included with the Charlotte dolly is capable of speeds from 0 to 40 ft per minute. This means you can reliably capture very slow things like plant growth and fast things like a person walking in the same package. Modular System The dolly was built to be flexible so that it can be adapted to field conditions. Three sets of wheels are included which can be switched out to make the cable dolly, rail dolly and wheel dolly. The fasteners are all hand tightened to make field assembly easy. You never have to worry about forgetting the screwdriver. Another advantage of this system is that the dolly is very compact when it’s disassembled. The whole dolly can easily fit into a backpack. Rails One of the biggest disadvantages of typical slider rails is that as the length increases they become prohibitively difficult to transport. I wanted to offer a solution that would allow film makers to travel anywhere and not worry about lugging a six foot rail. With this system all you need to carry are the rail cross-bars, then purchase conduit or pipe which are ubiquitous and inexpensive. These pipes can be purchased in any length on location and connected with self drilling screws. Flexible conduit can also be used to make gentle arcs and S curves. All you need is a screwdriver. The crossbars have a threaded hole to mount to a standard tripod. Wheels Cable Dolly Wheels One of the lessons I learned early in the project was that when it comes to wheels, precision matters. I have searched unsuccessfully at the local big box stores and online for pulley wheels that would be precise enough to capture smooth video without noise and wobble. The wheels included with each kit are machined from aluminum individually and mounted on a precision ball bearing. You can't find a wheel with close to these tolerances for under $100. Rewards Complete Charlotte Dolly System $1,300 This reward comes with everything. You get the components to create a cable dolly, rail dolly and wheeled dolly. Charlotte Cable Dolly Complete Cable Dolly System $1,100 This kit is for those that just want the cable dolly. Cable Dolly With Controller and Motor Rail and Wheel Dollies with Motor and Controller $850 This kit includes both the Wheel and Rail dollies along with the stepper motor, controller box and battery pack. This gives you the capability to record timelapses and realtime film with precision motor control. Rail Dolly with Motor Control Rail System With Controller Wheel Dolly with Motor Control Rail and Wheel Dolly for Real-time Film $350 This package includes the components for both the wheel dolly and the rail dolly. It includes six aluminum cross-bars that when combined with conduit or pipe allow you to field assemble a rail of any length. By using flexible conduit you can make curved rails. Free-Rail Kit Free Rail Free Wheel Dolly Kit $225 Free-Wheel Kit This is a portable, lightweight wheel dolly for real time film. It includes two fixed wheels and one pivoting wheel that lets you accurately set up arced shots. Glide-Line Kit $225 Glide Line Kit If you want to capture live action with smooth, fluid camera movement without heavy, expensive equipment this is the kit for you. The Free-Line kit is so incredibly light and compact you would never hesitate to bring it along. Whether gliding through a forest or over a river there's almost no-where this dolly can't go. Kit includes enough low-stretch string to span 100ft. The capabilities are endless. Cable System The cable dolly runs on two parallel cables that are tensioned using a ratchet tensioner. The two cable arrangement prevents the dolly from moving in windy environments. The cable is tensioned between two terminals so that it runs in a single loop with the tension equalized between the top and bottom cable. This creates an incredibly rigid system that can span distances of up to 100 feet. I want to thank the following people for helping to make this project what it is. Lea Elleseff and Danila Apasov for many long hours spent editing the video and organizing the campaign. Dounan Hu and Peter Weisz for programming the controller. John Stanmeyer for encouraging me and sharing his vast photographic expertise which guided the project to where it needed to be.From housing economist Tom Lawler: In today’s “economy & business” section, the Washington Post has a short “article” with the headline “Report: Fannie, Freddie mask losses.” The first sentence begins as follows: “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are possibly masking billions of dollars in losses because of the level of delinquent home loans they carry, a federal watchdog said Monday…” The story is credited to Reuters. Both the headline and the first sentence are extremely misleading (and just plain wrong!), and reflect the shockingly distorted and one-sided reporting on the GSEs by many news services, and especially by the Washington Post. The article is referring to a letter to Acting FHFA Director DeMarco from Inspector General (of FHFA) Linick, along with an attached staff memorandum, relating to timeline for the implementation of FHFA’s “Advisory Bulletin No 2012-02” which relates to the classification of certain assets. Specifically, IG Linick questioned why the implementation of this Advisory Bulletin had been pushed back – BY FHFA – to January 1, 2015. Both Fannie and Freddie noted this Advisory Bulletin in their latest 10-K’s, and disclosed that (1) the bulletin differed from current policy, (2) that the implementation date was January 1, 2015, and (3) that the companies were evaluating the possible impact of implementation on future financial results. E.g., here is an excerpt from Fannie’s 2012 10-K. “On April 9, 2012, FHFA issued an Advisory Bulletin, “Framework for Adversely Classifying Loans, Other Real Estate Owned, and Other Assets and Listing Assets for Special Mention,” which was effective upon issuance and is applicable to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks. The Advisory Bulletin establishes guidelines for adverse classification and identification of specified single-family and multifamily assets and off-balance sheet credit exposures. The Advisory Bulletin indicates that this guidance considers and is generally consistent with the Uniform Retail Credit Classification and Account Management Policy issued by the federal banking regulators in June 2000. Among other requirements, the Advisory Bulletin requires that we classify the portion of an outstanding single-family loan balance in excess of the fair value of the underlying property, less costs to sell, as “loss” when the loan is no more than 180 days delinquent, except in certain specified circumstances (such as properly secured loans with an LTV ratio equal to or less than 60%), and charge off the portion of the loan classified as “loss.” The Advisory Bulletin also specifies that, if we subsequently receive full or partial payment of a previously charged-off loan, we may report a recovery of the amount, either through our loss reserves or as a reduction in our foreclosed property expenses. The accounting methods outlined in FHFA’s Advisory Bulletin are different from our current methods of accounting for single-family loans that are 180 days or more delinquent. As described in “Risk Factors,” we believe that implementation of these changes in our accounting methods present significant operational challenges for us. We have agreed with FHFA that (1) effective January 1, 2014, we will implement the Advisory Bulletin’s requirements related to classification, and (2) effective January 1, 2015, we will implement an updated accounting policy related to charging-off delinquent loans. We are currently assessing the impact of implementing these accounting changes on our future financial results.” Neither the Advisory Bulletin nor the OIG staff memorandum says that current GSE accounting practices are not GAAP.The real issue with the IG/OIG has on this issue is with the FHFA, and why it had “agreed” to a delayed implementation of the Advisory Bulletin. Here is an excerpt from the OIG staff memorandum.Here is an excerpt from FHFA’s response.And here was another part of FHFA’s response.Now let’s go back to the Post’s headline: “Report: Fannie, Freddie mask losses.”Neither the IG letter nor the OIG staff memorandum says anything of the sort.On a separate note, some articles on this issue have assumed that when this advisory bulletin is implemented, Fannie’s and Freddie’s GAAP earnings will be reduced. While that is possible, it isn’t necessarily correct. From what I can gather, implementation of the directive will probably (I can’t rightly be certain) increase “realized” losses/charge-offs; it isn’t even remotely clear, however, than implementation will result either in a higher loss PROVISION or a higher allowance for losses – the latter of which at both companies currently assumes that there will be a high level of “realized” losses for quite a while.Last year, after eight years of litigation, a judged dismissed Fannie’s former CEO, CFO, and Controller from a class-action “securities fraud” lawsuit, with the judge ruling that there was no evidence that any had “committed fraud” or knowingly misled shareholders. While not “front page news,” this story was covered by most “national” newspapers and national news services. Yet even though Fannie is a major employer in the Washington Post’s home market, the Post did not report on a story exonerating these former Fannie officials after eight years of hell. Why? The Washington Post editorial staff “doesn’t like” Fannie and Freddie. That is not journalism.Police have released the last selfies of a man who mysteriously disappeared while paddle-boarding on Lake Tahoe in a bid to identify him. The man had rented a paddle board at 3.30pm on Wednesday – but by 5pm, the board was found floating about a mile off Timber Cove Marina by a fishing charter – with the man nowhere in sight. The Coastguard was called, but so far searches have been unsuccessful. The following day, the paddle was found in about 8ft of water near to where the board was discovered. Scroll down for video Police have released the last selfies of a man who mysteriously disappeared while paddle-boarding on Lake Tahoe in a bid to identify him The board had been found near a drop to a part of the lake that is several hundred feet deep, according to the Sacramento Bee, but police said there was no technology for a deep-water search. South Lake Tahoe Police Department released the last pictures the missing man took after his GoPro, as well as a selfie stick and a life jacket, was found in the area. They believe the man was speaking Polish in footage found on the device. Detective Jeff Robertson said: ‘We don’t know if he’s dead at the bottom of the lake or whether he just walked out of the lake and is continuing his vacation.’ The man (pictured, one of his selfies) had rented a paddle board at 3.30pm on Wednesday – but by 5pm, the board was found floating about a mile off Timber Cove Marina He added that based on the pictures, the unidentified man – believed to between 20 and 40 years old - is thought to be an ‘international traveler’. Detective Robertson said the man has been skiing in Italy and travelled to Dubai this year before arriving in South Lake Tahoe, California. Police contacted the FBI, a number of embassies and also visited hotels and casinos in a bid to trace him. Robin Bendle, of South Lake Tahoe Standup Paddle, told Fox40.com that the store has a policy of making customers sign a liability waiver – which includes providing their names, date of birth and email address. Police believe he is a traveler, who has been to Italy and Dubai this year before arriving in South Lake Tahoe But in this instance the employee that conducted the transaction did not take the man’s information – and he had identified himself only as ‘Morym’. He paid with cash and left no cell phone number, credit card number or any other personal information. Bendle said there was ‘language barrier’, adding: ‘We are hoping and praying he comes back safely.’ The missing man is described as having brown hair, hazel eyes and a rose tattooed on the inside of his bicep. Anyone with information about the missing man should call the South Lake Tahoe Police Department at 530-542-6100. The missing man is described as having brown hair, hazel eyes and a rose tattooed on the inside of his bicepA few days back on this blog we posted the news that longtime NH police officer Brad Jardis was no longer going to arrest medical cannabis users. Jardis has shown much courage – far more than the average cop – in first coming out verbally against the insane war on drugs, and now taking the first step into actually doing the right thing and refusing to enforce bad laws. Despite the courage he has and the support he has earned in the community because of it, the organization known as Law Enforcement Against Prohibition has unceremoniously booted him from their ranks. Brad posted the email he received from LEAP’s head, Jack Cole, on the Free Keene Forum. In it, Cole takes position that while LEAP members are encouraged to speak out about the horrors of prohibition, as long as they are employed as LEOs, they must enforce bad laws, because to not do so would be “unethical and wrong”. It’s a sad statement that outs LEAP as an organization of nothing more than a bunch of talkers, rather than doers. Of course, Cole is incorrect. Enforcing laws that harm peaceful people is what is unethical and wrong. Other law enforcement officers, who are members of LEAP, have announced they will be sending in their resignations. Many other supporters of LEAP are sending in revocations of their membership, and explaining why. Some of these messages can be found on this forum thread. Here’s the message Jack Cole sent to Brad, with Cole’s full contact info at the bottom. Dear Bradley Jardis, I have tried but am unable to reach you by telephone. It has come to LEAP’s attention from the below blog entry, that you have chosen to violate the oath you took on joining the police department; to enforce all the laws of the federal and state governments in which your police department has jurisdiction. And worse, you are calling on other law enforcement officials to violate their oaths of office. This is the opposite of what LEAP requires of our representatives. We have always said that we will in no way ask that any law enforcer decline to do his or her duty by refusing to enforce the laws as they are currently recorded. That would be unethical and wrong. What we do call on them for is take action on their off-duty time to help us change those laws. Because you have so blatantly stepped over that line, your actions have caused people to lose respect for our organization, which leads to a loss of our credibility within the public, the media and the policymakers; the very people whom we are trying to convince to change these laws. The Executive Board of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition was made aware of your actions in their January 22, 2010 Board meeting. They were unanimous in their decision that you must no longer represent Law Enforcement Against Prohibition while espousing this belief. As Executive Director of LEAP, I therefore am notifying you that, effectively immediately, you are to stop referring to yourself as a speaker for or member of LEAP in your publications, interviews, and public or private addresses. Sincerely, Jack A. Cole Executive Director Law Enforcement Against Prohibition 121 Mystic Avenue, Medford, MA 02155 (781) 393-6985 LEAP Office (781) 393 2964 FAX (781) 396-0183 Home Office (617) 792-3877 Cell [email protected] www.leap.ccBeyoncé released a provocative teaser trailer for a project that will premiere on HBO April 23, in which the pop queen appears to swing a baseball bat at a New Orleans Police Department surveillance camera. Titled simply “Lemonade,” the teaser trailer features shots of a fur coat-clad Beyoncé huddled next to a car in what looks to be a graffiti-tagged garage, her face obscured by her coat. Interspersed with this footage and with her low-key narration are shots of the singer wielding a baseball bat in front of a large explosion, and later taking the bat to a surveillance camera marked “N.O.P.D.,” seemingly referring to the New Orleans Police Department. WATCH: Other shots include a group of dancers painted in tribal patterns, and another shot of the singer in a field, as a low, droning note plays throughout. “The past and the present merge, to meet us here… What are you hiding?… Lovers.. as trees… Why can’t you see me?” a whispering Beyoncé narrates. “Lemonade” is set to premiere on HBO April 23 at 9pm ET, though it was not immediately clear whether the new project is a full album, a song or possibly even a documentary or narrative film. Anticipation has built for a new project from the singer after her politically-charged Super Bowl halftime performance earlier this year, in which she and her backup dancers donned Black Panther Party-themed outfits and performed a piece of her single, “Formation.” As Breitbart News reported, the music video for “Formation,” set in New Orleans, was
blanket authority to censure? According to EU law, illegal hate speech ‘means all conduct publicly inciting to violence or hatred directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin’. Leaving aside the ‘incitement to violence’ aspect of the definition, which is largely uncontentious, hate speech is defined as including ‘incitement to hatred’, which is both circular and so vague as to mean almost anything. Beyond the tautology that ‘hate speech’ is speech that incites hate, there is no agreement as to what hate speech actually means. For example, the European Court of Human Rights once produced a factsheet on hate speech in which it conceded that the ‘identification of expressions that could be qualified as “hate speech” is sometimes difficult because this kind of speech does not necessarily manifest itself through the expression of hatred or of emotions. It can also be concealed in statements which at a first glance may seem to be rational or normal.’ In another document, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights took hate speech to include a ‘broader spectrum of verbal acts’, including ‘disrespectful public discourse’. And in an EU-funded manual on online hate speech by IGLYO (the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex Youth and Student Organisation), we are reminded that ‘the vast majority of hate speech is being perpetrated by regular people, not by extremists or radicals’. To paraphrase Humpty Dumpty, hate speech means just what those in power choose it to mean – neither more nor less. And now, continent-wide censorship has been forced upon us by the powerful, and they will decide what the rest of us can and cannot say and can and cannot hear, all with the aim of dictating what we can and cannot think.Take one look at the “spirituality” section of our calendar, and it’s easy to see that the Asheville area aims for wellness of mind and heart in a variety of ways — meditation, mindfulness, earth medicine, prayer, peacefulness, the metaphysical and Zen listings abound. One of those gems is Urban Dharma, where Hun Lye welcomes those seeking to practice and learn more about Buddhism. (Pictured: Hun Lye; photo by Taylor Johnson) Lye practices the Drikung Kagyü tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, but says of his downtown-Asheville center, “When people come in and say ‘I’m looking for a Buddhist group,’ we don’t want to assume that this is where they belong; I want them to see all of the groups, what they are doing, where they are meeting — and find what works for them.” He adds that Asheville is “much more yoga” in many ways, while Buddhism is “a different mode of spirituality that is kind of quiet rather than ecstatic.” So he aimed to “start a place that would be a resource for anyone who is interested.” Last month, Lye received a new title — Dorjé Lopon — which made him the first non-monastic teacher in the West to receive the honor. Born in 1970, he grew up in Penang, Malaysia; studied under Buddhist teachers of many traditions; and earned his doctorate in Buddhist Studies from the University of Virginia. He also taught Buddhist studies at both Warren Wilson College and Davidson. Soon after being named Dorjé Lopon, he spoke with Xpress. Mountain Xpress: When did you first conceive of the idea for Urban Dharma? And how did you choose Asheville for the location? Hun Lye: Somewhere around 2010, conversations started among a group of people that I had known for a while, many from … Warren Wilson. Ironically, from 2003 to 2008, I was not convinced that a Buddhist center would work in Asheville. I knew there were many groups around, and I did not think we needed another [one]. It was when we began to talk more seriously that I said, “There might be a need that is not being met yet, and that need is for a clear Buddhist presence in downtown, serving as a clearly dedicated Buddhist place.” … I joke about how you can’t really go into any retail downtown, without seeing some sort of of Buddhist “thing” in there, even if the shop has nothing to do with anything Buddhist. So there is that pervasive sense and feeling of being open and interested in Buddhism or at least [its] material culture. [But] there is not a lot of excitement in Buddhist programs. It was one of the reasons that I had to think really hard about, Is there a need here? [But] since we’ve opened, I’ve seen that there are a good number of people from all age groups coming to our events, from the very young to the very old, and that is encouraging. What does being appointed Dorje Lopon mean within the Drikung Kagyu tradition? The most common use of this title is actually in a ritual context in Tibetan Buddhism. [The Dorjé Lopon] is not the person that is doing the most things during the ritual; it is another person, who is just quietly sitting there, but at the same time is the center of attention, because it is believed that this person is doing the inner work necessary to ground everything. So when the head of the Drikung Kagyu decided to use this title and to give it to specific individuals, it was a way of acknowledging that [this other spiritual leader] can play that role. Because I’m not part of the monastic system, and more conventional titles that are necessarily monastic cannot be given, he … applied it as a daily-use title. So it’s an innovation of sorts, [and] in this case, the title signifies that the person who holds it can pass on the transmissions and the traditions of the lineage. How do you think Urban Dharma and what you stand for compares to other Buddhist centers in the area? We are trying to appeal to a broader context. I joke about this, but every time people say, “I’m Buddhist,” the follow-up question from others would be, “Do you meditate?” and I’m like, “You know what? The majority of Buddhists don’t meditate. American Buddhists, maybe, but there’s more than one way to be Buddhist, and Urban Dharma is trying to communicate that. We’re trying to create a community part that’s accessible to people, so that people don’t feel like in order to be a “real Buddhist,” “I need to spend x number of hours a day meditating; I need to spend x number of months a year attending retreats; I need to go into the mountains — all of that. There is a place for that and there [are] definitely traditions like that … but again, it’s about what is needed here. And I feel that what’s needed here is a way of being Buddhist … downtown. You don’t have to go into the mountains to be sane. The name [Urban Dharma] is communicating, I think, an attitude, a state of mind, a way of understanding that spiritual practice is not only available and possible in the mountains. It’s in the midst of all of this. Here, we encourage young families to bring their kids, and from my experience at other places in the past, we would have people who attend the program get very annoyed and say, “I came here to get some peace of mind, and these kids!” — which is an understandable reaction if they conceive of a Buddhist center as a form of spa. And that’s a particular conception of what the Buddhist community is, and I find it troublesome. Here, we have to remind everyone that you have to mind your own mind. You can’t say, “These are distractions.” We have to integrate this. Urban Dharma’s motto is “Changing Minds, Transforming Cities,” and in one of your talks, you mentioned that practices such as prayer, meditation or special diets don’t cause transformation. How does transformation play into Urban Dharma’s mission and what place should practices such as prayer or meditation have in people’s lives? [Those] are devices and methods that help us to change our minds. The real work and the real measure of how well we are doing as Buddhists should not be measured by how many hours in a day I’m spending on a cushion being quiet, but rather how much has the mind/heart changed? Is it still very quickly falling into habits of misery? Or is it becoming easier to notice when you are going down that particular circuit, and when you notice, to break it and move in the other direction? When minds start to change, then we can begin to think about transforming our families and our communities. Any real change will have to come from changing the mind first. Otherwise, other activities become another way for us to act out our insanity. Even a meditation program can become a way to act out the insanity. What does your new title and position mean to you and for Urban Dharma? The recognition of a title is just the beginning of the hard work — if you do it right. I am taking very seriously the head of the lineage giving me this title, but at the same time, I am trying my best not to take myself seriously! What does it mean for Urban Dharma? I hope, now that this is my main focus, it would say to someone who is interested that I’m not just doing this on my own, but that I am connected to a lineage and that the lineage has very publicly acknowledged that I can transmit and teach this lineage. What I say either makes sense or not. If it makes sense and helps you see and understand [Buddhist teachings] better, then come. It doesn’t matter what title I have. I happen to by playing the role of the leader in this community, but the sooner I make myself obsolete, then the sooner we have reached our goal. Urban Dharma is located at 29 Page Ave. in Asheville. All programs and events are offered on a donation basis. The nonprofit is also supported by 100 percent of the profits from sister company Tibetan Spirit, an online Tibetan Buddhist store. 225-6422, www.urbandharmanc.com. — Jordan Foltz can be reached at [email protected] Warner, 21st Century Fox and the Weinstein Company joined the campaign Thursday to pressure Georgia Governor Nathan Deal to veto what critics are calling an "anti-LGBT" bill. The Weinstein Company said it would end its plans to film a biopic of Richard Pryor in the state later this year. The movie is to be directed by Lee Daniels and will star Oprah, Eddie Murphy, Kate Hudson and Tracy Morgan. "The Weinstein Company will not stand behind sanctioning the discrimination of‎ LGBT people or any American," the statement said. The company said it "will move the production if this unlawful bill is enacted. We hope Governor Deal will veto bill HB 757 and not allow sanctioned bigotry to become law in Georgia." Time Warner, the corporate parent of CNN, said in a statement Thursday, "We urge Governor Deal to exercise his veto." The three divisions of Time Warner (TWX) -- HBO, Turner and Warner Bros. -- all do business in Georgia. Turner, the division that houses CNN, is based in Atlanta and has thousands of employees in Georgia. 21st Century Fox (FOX) also joined the list of opponents on Thursday. "On behalf of 21st Century Fox's many creative partners and colleagues who choose to film their projects in the beautiful state of Georgia, we join the growing coalition of businesses in asking Governor Deal to veto this bill," Fox said. Comcast (CMCSA), Discovery Communications (DISCA), Sony Pictures, Lionsgate and Starz, which shoots "Survivor's Remorse" in Atlanta, also urged Deal to veto the bill on Thursday, but they stopped short of saying they would leave the state if the bill is signed into law. Deal has until May 3 to decide whether to veto the bill. On Wednesday several other major media companies -- Disney (DIS), Viacom (VIA) and AMC Networks (AMCX) -- publicly opposed the bill. Other firms like Apple (AAPL), Dell, Hilton (HLT) and Marriott (MAR) have also spoken out. Disney said Wednesday it would end filming at Pinewood Studios outside Atlanta. It has filmed several movies there, including "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2." AMC's popular series "The Walking Dead" is filmed in Georgia. The company did not say whether or not it intends to move production elsewhere if the bill passes. The other media companies have stopped short of saying they'd boycott the state. The bill in question, recently passed by the state's Republican-controlled legislature, would give faith-based organizations in Georgia the option to deny services to gay people. Proponents say the bill, dubbed the Free Exercise Protection Act, would protect religious freedoms. Opponents like the Human Rights Campaign say it is "anti-LGBT" and "appalling." The bill is awaiting Deal's signature. Time Warner's statement said, "We strongly oppose the discriminatory language and intent of Georgia's pending religious liberty bill, which clearly violates the values and principles of inclusion and the ability of all people to live and work free from discrimination." "All of our divisions -- HBO, Warner Bros. and Turner -- have business interests in Georgia, but none more than Turner, an active participant in the Georgia Prospers campaign, a coalition of business leaders committed to a Georgia that welcomes all people," the company added. "Georgia bill HB 757 is in contradiction to this campaign, to the values we hold dear, and to the type of workplace we guarantee to our employees." -- Jackie Wattles contributed to this report.The Russian military will receive five new regimental units of S-400 Triumf anti-aircraft missile systems in 2016, according to arms manufacturer Almaz-Antey. © Sputnik / Ruslan Krivobok NATO Escalates Middle Eastern Presence After Russia Deploys S-400 in Syria "Thanks to the efficient work of our employees, we are completing most of our government contracts ahead of schedule. According to our plans for 2016, the company will provide Russia’s Ministry of Defense with five regimental units of S-400 surface-to-air missile systems," the Almaz-Antey press service read, as cited by RIA Novosti. In 2015 the company already supplied three S-400 regiments to the Russian Armed Forces The press service also noted that all new S-400 units were successfully tested by the military during live fire exercises in hostile weather conditions and with simulated enemy actively using electronic countermeasures, RIA Novosti adds. In 2015 the Russian military also received three divisions of Buk-M2 medium-range surface-to-air missile systems. The S-400 Triumpf (NATO reporting name: SA-21 Growler) medium and long-range anti-aircraft missile system was designed to engage and destroy all existing and future aerial and space attacks, from spy planes to tactical and strategic bombers to ballistic missiles. It employs three different missiles to cover its entire performance envelope.The trees -- as much a part of the east Alabama school's tradition as they are the landscape -- were poisoned by an Alabama Crimson Tide fan in 2010 and replaced last year. Early Sunday, one of the replacement trees was torched after Auburn's upset victory at home over the Louisiana State University Tigers. Following wins by their sports teams, Auburn fans converge downtown at Toomer's Corner -- so named for the 120-year-old drugstore that sits cater-corner from the oaks -- and gleefully toss toilet paper into the trees' sprawling branches. About 12:15 a.m. Sunday, just hours after the LSU win, a man lit the dangling toilet paper ablaze, according to reports. It quickly consumed the top of the tree. The suspect, 29-year-old Jochen Wiest, was in custody on an unrelated public intoxication charge when Auburn police ruled him a suspect in the fire. Auburn police described Wiest as "not affiliated with Auburn University." Later Sunday, police added a charge of desecration of a venerable object and upped his bond from $500 to $1,000, authorities said in a statement. After experts were able to assess the extent of the damage, which was estimated to exceed $2,500, police added a felony charge of first-degree criminal mischief, in accordance with state law. Wiest was still in custody, and his bond was raised to $4,500, police said. Auburn University had said fans were free to roll the new, healthy oaks beginning this football season. A woman answering the phone at the Lee County Jail said Wiest remained in custody as of Monday afternoon. It's not clear whether Wiest has retained a lawyer. The fire left the tree's bough scorched and its leaves curled and brown, Auburn University horticulture professor Gary Keever said The fire left significant damage to the tree's foliage and bough, a professor says. "From the ground, we can easily see damage to the leaves and base of the tree. It is significant," Keever said in a statement. "I expect the foliage will continue to drop. The full extent of damage may not be known for several weeks. The best-case scenario would be to see a flush of new growth next spring, but right now it's too early to tell how the tree will respond." Keever will use a lift to inspect the tree's canopy more closely this week, the school said. "I don't think the fire killed the tree, but we may never see it return to its appearance before this act," Keever said. Auburn wins. Toomer's corner. On fire. (This is a problem) "F*** LSU!" chants coming from the couple hundreds watching the tree burn. pic.twitter.com/RiicXYDJJu — Christian Boutwell (@CBoutwell_) September 25, 2016 Landscape crews will also need to replace the irrigation pipes used to water the trees. They melted in the fire, the university said. Auburn University is asking students and fans to refrain from rolling the damaged oak, which fronts Magnolia Avenue, until the extent of the damage can be assessed. Fans are free to toss toilet paper into the limbs of the other oak along College Street, the school said. Auburn fans only recently got back to the ritual of rolling the oaks after football games. The trees were poisoned in 2010 by Harvey Updyke, a self-professed fan of Auburn's rival, the Alabama Crimson Tide. He was arrested after calling a Birmingham radio talk show to boast of his deed, which he perpetrated after Auburn overcame a huge deficit to beat Alabama in the annual Iron Bowl. JUST WATCHED Auburn's iconic oaks cut down Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Auburn's iconic oaks cut down 01:02 In 2013, Updyke pleaded guilty to poisoning the oaks and was sentenced to serve at least six months of a three-year sentence for criminal damage to an agricultural facility, a felony, Lee County District Attorney Robbie Treese said at the time. The following month, Auburn conceded that its bid to save the trees had failed and cut down the iconic oaks, which were more than 130 years old. New trees were planted last year, but the university asked fans to wait before decorating them in toilet paper. Fans learned last month the custom would continue this fall. "This is a tremendous day for the Auburn Family and for all sports fans across the country who love the fall and football," Ron Booth, executive director of facility operations, said in an August statement. "Our hope has been to reinstate rolling this season, and, now, we can make that announcement." The LSU victory marked the second time this season the trees had been rolled, the first coming after Auburn's September 10 win over Arkansas State.Canadian Armed Forces members are playing a modest but vital supporting role as the operation to retake Mosul, the last major stronghold of Islamic State militants in Iraq, gets under way. How dangerous it might get for Canada's special forces soldiers will depend on whether the Kurdish troops they're advising are assigned a difficult role in reclaiming Mosul, which has been occupied by the Islamic State jihadis since June, 2014. It will also depend on whether their political masters in Ottawa allow Canadian soldiers to enter Mosul during what could be difficult block-by-block urban warfare. Up to 210 Canadian special forces troops are advising Kurdish peshmerga fighters who are teaming up with Iraqi government forces, Sunni tribal fighters and Shia militias to encircle and take Mosul. The Trudeau government, which promised in the 2015 election campaign to end a combat role in Iraq, insists what soldiers are doing there is not combat even though Canadian special forces soldiers are guiding the Kurds from the front lines and exchanging fire with enemy troops from time to time. Story continues below advertisement Explainer: A guide to the battle of Mosul, and why it matters in the war against Islamic State Interactive: Untangling the Middle East: A guide to the region's shifting relationships Right now, Canadian military advisers are with Kurdish unit commanders near the battlefront or in peshmerga encampments around Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan which is 85 kilometres from Mosul, or farther south in Kirkuk, 175 kilometres from the IS stronghold. Canadian generals last week warned the public that the environment in Iraq has grown more dangerous for Canada's soldiers as their task now focuses on advising the Kurds in battle rather than merely training them in open-air classrooms far back from the conflict. Overhead, two Canadian spy planes, the CP-140 Auroras, are gathering intelligence that will be used by coalition planners to generate lists of Islamic State targets to be bombed. As well, the Royal Canadian Air Force's Polaris tanker is refuelling coalition warplanes conducting the bombing raids. Not far from the front line – but not so close as to be in harm's way – up to 60 Canadians will be operating a field hospital to treat the wounded Kurds, Iraqi government forces or their allies. The Role 2 facility will not be big but will triage, resuscitate, treat and care for injured soldiers until they return to duty or are evacuated. Ottawa is tight-lipped on the role that Canada's 21st Electronic Warfare Regiment is playing in Iraq. The military has reportedly deployed members of this regiment, which can intercept and decipher enemy communications. Story continues below advertisement Story continues below advertisement Canadian Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan was tight-lipped Monday when asked exactly where Canada's soldiers are located on the battlefield, citing operational security. "For force protection, I won't tell you exactly where they will be, but they will be always in an advise-and-assist mission. They will always be within [or] behind the front lines to conduct their work and … they will always have the right tools and abilities to be able to protect themselves if needed." The fight to retake Mosul is being billed as the largest military effort in Iraq since the United States withdrew its combat forces in 2011. David Perry, a senior analyst with the Canadian Global Affairs Institute, said Canadians are also helping to assemble targeting "packages" for air commanders who are selecting bombing targets. He said it's possible the fight to retake Mosul could end up going relatively slowly because the coalition will be trying to avoid killing civilians inside the city. Mr. Perry said estimates of civilians inside Mosul are as high as one million people. A U.S.-led air campaign has helped push Islamic State from much of the territory it held, but 4,000 to 8,000 fighters are thought to remain in Mosul. Story continues below advertisement With a report from ReutersJohannesburg – Despite the International Monetary Fund revising South Africa’s growth forecast to 0.1%, the situation is not so bad, suggested economist and senior industry analyst at FNB, Jason Muscat. Delivering a press briefing in Rosebank on Wednesday Muscat explained that although there was general pessimism about the economy, things will not deteriorate going forward. FNB lowered its growth forecast to 0.2%, a full percentage below Treasury’s forecast. “We are facing difficult times in the economy, but it’s not as bad as South Africans around the braai will tell you,” he said. Fighting pessimism FNB’s Bureau of Economic Research also recently released the consumer confidence index, which fell two points to -11. “Consumers are pessimistic about the economy and businesses are also showing big signs of pessimism.” The problem with businesses being pessimistic is that they don’t invest, he explained. “We need to grow private sector investment to create jobs, creating a virtuous circle.” Private sector investment fell by 7%, which has implications for job creation, said Muscat. If businesses are not confident in the returns they will get, they will not invest and hire more people, he explained. Research also shows that businesses believe that the political climate is a hindrance. But South Africa is not unique in this. He listed the UK, Brazil and the US as examples of countries whose political challenges are influencing the economic front. Strained consumers Consumers are taking strain, in an environment with growing unemployment. Consumers are tightening their budgets, and spending less, especially on durable goods, which are more expensive, he explained. Interest rates have peaked and inflation is trending down, which could be good news for consumers. “Inflation is expected to peak at 7.1% for the last quarter of the year.” The current account deficit is 6% of GDP. To “close the gap”, interest rates are raised, which makes things more expensive for consumers, he said. Another solution is to raise production, through manufacturing. But South Africa’s electricity and labour challenges are not responding to the production need, he said. However, there is still optimism about future prospects as South Africa’s trade surplus for May 2016 was at R18.7bn. “The current slowdown is entering its sixth year, which is probably why things feel bad,” said Muscat. If it approaches 10 years, it would be a decade of lost opportunity to grow the economy. Entrepreneurial prospects Figures from FNB show that there are about 75 000 new businesses created each month. “This could be close to one million new businesses each year,” said Sanjeev Orie, CEO of FNB Business Value Adds. In the first two years, however, 40% of new businesses are closed, he said. "The closure rates for businesses are high. "South Africans are very entrepreneurial, but even though they are entrepreneurial, they are not successful at being entrepreneurs," he explained. This is often because they don’t understand how business and markets work. Orie said entrepreneurs normally succeed after the third or fourth attempt, adding that small businesses are still a hotbed for job creation.No, not you sir, move along During a “town hall style” appearance on Wednesday with Sean Hannity to address “African-American concerns,”—an event that seemed to lack actual African-Americans—Donald Trump told an audience member what he would do to curb violent crime. He would implement a nationwide "stop and frisk" program, based on the controversial, racially-biased and unconstitutional program run in New York City for more than a decade. This morning he appeared on Fox and Friends and offered more details on how that might work. You will not believe his jaw-dropping remarks. From his appearance on Fox and Friends: FOX AND FRIENDS: will you explain what that is to my folks down in South Carolina that don’t really deal with stop and frisk? What exactly is it and what are the pros and cons? TRUMP: Well, there are different levels. and you have somebody coming up who is the expert on it but basically they will—if they see, you know, they are proactive and if they see a person possibly with a gun or they think may have a gun, they will see the person and they will look and they will take the gun away. They will stop, they will frisk, and they will take the gun away and they won’t have anything to shoot with. I mean, how it’s not being used in Chicago is—to be honest with you, it’s a quite unbelievable, and you know the police, the local police, they know who has a gun, who shouldn’t be having a gun. They understand that. So, exactly who would be randomly stopped and frisked under a Trump administration? Not likely the average Fox and Friends viewer. Not the white men who love to defiantly walk around the local grocery store with weapons of war in open-carry protests. If New York City’s record is any indication, police nationwide would have an open invitation to stop-and-frisk black and Latino residents at will. The question is, will those liberty-loving, ride or die Second Amendment advocates step up and reject Donald Trump and his unconstitutional vision of modern policing? 47 days remain until the election. Click here to make sure you're registered to vote. And while you're at it, make sure your family and friends are registered too.https://driftrecords.com/products/barney-hoskyns-lowside-of-the-road-a-life-of-tom-waits-faber-social-greatest-hits 1079110205487 Barney Hoskyns - Lowside of the Road: A Life of Tom Waits [Faber Social Greatest Hits] //cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0161/8690/products/9780571351336_large.jpg?v=1550319505 //cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0161/8690/products/9780571351336_medium.jpg?v=1550319505 6.99 GBP InStock Barney Hoskyns Barney Hoskyns Books Everything In Stock at Drift Faber & Faber The Front Racks at Drift Spanning Tom Waits’ extraordinary 40-year career, from Closing Time to Orphans, Lowside of the Road is Barney Hoskyns’ unique take on one of rock’s great enigmas. Like Bob Dylan and Neil Young, Waits is a chameleonic survivor who’s achieved long-term success while retaining cult credibility and outsider mystique. From his perilous “jazzbo” years in ’70s Los Angeles to the multiple-Grammy winner of recent years – by way of such shape-shifting ’80s albums as Swordfishtrombones – this exhaustive biography charts Waits’ life step-by-step and album-by-album. Affectionate and penetrating, and based on a combination of assiduous research and deep critical insight, this is a outstanding investigation of a notoriously private artist and performer – the definitive account to date of Tom Waits’ life and work. + Faber Social Greatest Hits edition with new series artwork designed by Luke Bird. + Faber Social reissues six momentous publications that have taken writing about music in new and exciting directions for the twenty-first century. Lee Brackstone, Creative Director, explains; "The publishing on the Faber Social list started with the brief tenure of Pete Townshend in the mid-eighties and continues to this day with a list that represents the most exciting pop and counter-cultural narratives of the times. These first six titles are contemporary classics and pillars of a music list that is unrivalled, and will continue to deliver the best artists and writers in the English language as Faber strides forward into its tenth decade." Faber & Faber Books add-to-cart The Front Racks at DriftLet me start off by saying that I absolutely adore the original ‘Sin City’ film, it is actually my second favourite film ever. Needless to say I was not looking forward to ‘Sin City: A Dame to Kill For’ for numerous reasons, so I went in to the film not expecting anything fantastic but that I would still be entertained. While it is entertaining for the most part it definitely has a lot of issues. Firstly, let’s talk about the overall look of the film, in the original ‘Sin City’ the use of colour was perfectly executed, every time colour was introduced it popped and enriched the scene immensely, in ‘Sin City: A Dame to Kill For’ not once did any of the colours pop or excite me like they did in the original. In fact some of the colouring effects were very badly done that it just threw me out of the film. There was also an overabundance of the ‘white out’ effect which again was distracting and often ruined the particular scene. However, one extremely clever use of colour was with Eva Green’s character, Eva’s lipstick, when she was being passionate or seductive, her bright red lipstick popped in colour, whereas in other scenes where she was being herself or more cunning, the colour reverted back to monochrome. I absolutely love that idea and gave the film huge props for that, but then it threw those props away. The actors and characters, save for a few, were infinitely weaker than their predecessors in the original ‘Sin City’. Josh Brolin was fine as Dwight but Clive Owen absolutely owned the role in the original, I appreciate that the character has heavy plastic surgery so it explains the change in the actor but Owen just brought so much more personality and flair to the role that I was sad to learn that he would not be returning. Even Mickey Rourke who plays Marv seemed off, it could be the change in make-up, age or a bad script or directing, it just wasn’t the Marv everyone loved from the first Sin City film, he was still far and away the best character in this film, but he felt duller this time around. Finally, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, whom I absolutely believe in his roles in (500) Days of Summer, Inception, The Dark Knight Rises (To an extent, fuck you Robin), but in this he was extraordinarily arrogant and cocky that I just saw Joseph Gordon-Levitt trying to be “cool” and considering that you are supposed to feel empathy for his character is a huge drawback as I felt myself wishing he would die painfully for being a smug prick. The entire cast felt like a distilled version of the previous cast, Jessica Alba was awful, Bruce Willis was wasted, Rosario Dawson was ridiculously terrible, Jaime King was wasted as well. The stories that comprise this film are also noticeably weaker, the most interesting one, which the film opens with is cut short just as soon as it started as it seemed like a great segment. The stories are dull, filled with bland characters and is very badly paced, in the original ‘Sin City’ the stories constantly moved along at a great pace with no dull moments and at a smidge over 2 hours it went by almost instantly, however, the pacing is so bad in ‘Sin City: A Dame to Kill For’ that while it is only 100 minutes long it seems like a 3 hour film, I was constantly checking my watch which is never a good sign. The fact that half of the film was a prequel to the first film also meant that it suffered by having the audience know that certain characters could not die which also takes away the slight edge of suspense the film is attempting to deliver. This film feels like Rodriguez was trying to improve the original ‘Sin City’ the way he “improved” ‘Machete Kills’, an unnecessary amount of CGI instead of practical effects and making it more goofy. It doesn’t work, I thought ‘Machete’ was great, so much ridiculous fun, ‘Machete Kills’ was not fun, same goes for this film, ‘Sin City’ was phenomenal, ‘Sin City: A Dame to Kill For’ was not. It does seem that Rodriguez has a problem with sequels as ‘Desperado’, ‘Spy Kids 2’, ‘Sin City: A Dame to Kill For’ and ‘Machete Kills’ were all far weaker than their predecessors. Which is a shame as I am a huge fan of a lot of Rodriguez’s films; ‘El Mariachi’, ‘Planet Terror’, etc. If only he could learn that bigger does not equal better then cinema would be better for it. The soundtrack is also very weird and absolutely not fitting within the scenes, it seems like a fan edit of the film with someone placing, admittedly decent score from a different film and layering it, poorly, over the action scenes in ‘Sin City: A Dame to Kill For’ it’s jarring and very amateurish. Some of the action was very well choreographed and captured and was reminiscent of the original and the dialogue, for the most part was very much a continuation of ‘Sin City’ and that style, which makes sense as Frank Miller has both a writing and directing credit on both films, but like I said previously, everything just seems like a blunt dinner knife compared to the sharp edge of the original. 6/10'I'm not saying Ben would still be with us, but he would have had a chance' When Steve Cowburn and his wife, Sharon, opened the door of their Cornish home at 4am to two police officers, they knew the worst had happened. Their 18-year-old son, Ben, had been suffering from a severe mental illness for three months and had already made a number of attempts on his life. The police confirmed their fears that Ben had killed himself at the local adult psychiatric unit, the latest victim of a crisis in the way young people with mental health problems are cared for. "It is so difficult to believe this happened to Ben,"said Steve, a management consultant from Truro. "He was the last person in a class of 30 you would have thought was depressed … he was the life and soul of the party, he was captain of the rugby team … he was a doer." Ben, who had only recently turned 18, was being cared for in an adult psychiatric unit because in Cornwall, like several other areas, there is no specialist provision for children or adolescents. "This type of care for someone like Ben was totally inappropriate," said Steve. "I remember him saying to me: 'the trouble with this place, Dad, is everybody is your age and everybody's mad'… he did not think of himself as mad; he thought of himself as ill." Ben's condition deteriorated as he struggled with his illness and life on the unit, where Steve said some patients were delusional and intimidating. After three months he took his own life. "The care for adolescents not just here but around the country is totally inappropriate," said Steve, who has founded a charity, Invictus, which is campaigning for a specialist adolescent unit in Cornwall. "Adolescents are totally different … I am not saying Ben would still be with us now if he had proper care, but you would have given him another chance, another opportunity to get better." Ben Cowburn. Across the country children with serious mental health problems face a similar battle to get the care they need as NHS and local authority budgets for mental health provision shrink, specialist centres close and families must choose between sending their children hundreds of miles for help – or trying to care for them themselves. Last month a highly critical inquiry by NHS England found too many children were having to travel long distances to access inpatient beds, while cuts to early intervention projects meant more young people with less severe problems were not getting help, often meaning their illness became more severe. This bleak picture fits with a survey from children's mental health charity Young Minds, which found two-thirds of councils in England had cut child and adolescent mental health services [Camhs] budget