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through problems," said Daniel Eisenberg, an associate professor at the school of public health. "All of those norms can work against seeking help, so student-athletes might be more vulnerable to significant mental health problems."
Former Michigan football player Will Heininger, who spoke to the Detroit News recently about his own battle with depression, wants to help bring attention to the issue.
"In the work I've done with athletes across the country, this is a huge issue," he said. "It's something that's on their minds constantly with the pressures they face, yet they feel afraid to voice their opinions for fears of judgement, shame, or worse, losing their scholarships. In reality, mental health/wellness is a human issue, and one that makes the world a better place. I couldn't be more excited to work on this project."
Michigan will present its project results at the NCAA Convention in Washington in January.Mumbai/New Delhi: India plans to as much as quintuple development of hydroelectric power in Jammu and Kashmir.
The local government is planning to add more than 5,000 megawatts of power using the flow of its rivers within the next five to six years, according to Nirmal Kumar Singh, the state’s deputy chief minister and minister for the power-development department.
While neighbouring Pakistan has expressed concerns about potential water shortages that might result, Singh said he doesn’t expect the hydro plans to create friction between the two nuclear-armed powers.
“There were a lot of bottlenecks which we have cleared now," Singh said last week in an interview at his residence in Jammu, the winter capital of the state. “I don’t see a reason for dispute with Pakistan on these projects."
Pakistan has already raised objections to some of the plans, citing water treaties between the two countries. It has plans to build more than 12 hydro-power dams of its own in the part of the Kashmir region that it controls.
Jammu and Kashmir had a 20% shortage in electricity supplies in the seven months ended 31 October, compared with a national average of 0.7%, according to data from the power ministry.
The shortages could be eased by hydro projects, which have the potential to generate as much as 20,000 megawatts and can be set up on rivers running through the region’s mountainous terrain, Singh said. An additional 7,000 megawatts could be generated through solar projects in the desert of the Ladakh region, he said.
The state’s government has put several hydro projects on a fast track after some had been stalled for years, according to Singh. Jammu and Kashmir already generates about 1,200 megawatts of hydro power, he said. Bloomberg[INFO] 9 Muses of Star Empire the Full Documentary is now available for Purchase. Please note that this is the full length 82 minute feature film played in theaters and not the BBC cut version. You will have to pay $2.99 to stream or $5.49 - 6.49 for HD Download. The movie is subbed in English.
Dir. Hark-Joon Lee | 2012 | 82 min
‘9 Muses of Star Empire’, a year-long chronicle that follows a journey of an all girl pop group '9 Muses’, portrays the every-day life of nine girls, relentlessly pursuing their dreams in a world of jealousy, betrayal, and scandal. '9 Muses’ is an emerging girl group, aspiring to perform on a national stage and gain world-wide fame just like millions of others. For that, the girls have decided to set everything aside and live as one of the Muses for 'Star Empire’; the entertainment company which created and coordinated every move. What’s the price they must pay for their dreams?What would you do if you came across an abandoned farmhouse? You'd walk in and take a bunch of incredible photos, right? RIGHT?
O.K., maybe we would be way too chicken, but photographer Niki Feijen was not. And we're thankful for that -- because otherwise, we'd never see this astonishingly intact glimpse into the past. As you'll see in the photos below, the home's rooms are still furnished with the former occupant's belongings, right down to a decorated sideboard.
And from the "More You Know Department": Feijen specializes in urban exploration, which describes the act of going where one isn't supposed to go. (Think: closed-off tunnels, boarded-up churches and homes located in ghost towns.)
But such exploits come with a downside. In a caption on one of the below photos, Feijen writes: "The farm houses about 60,000 dead flies and an incredible foul smell coming from the [two] freezers downstairs."
Yeah, maybe we're not cut out for that exploration stuff. Scroll through to see these amazing pics (we were particularly moved by the lone leather chair) and a must-see slideshow of "haunted" properties.
Photo by Niki Feijen: Website / Facebook
Photo by Niki Feijen: Website / Facebook
Photo by Niki Feijen: Website / Facebook
Photo by Niki Feijen: Website / Facebook
Photo by Niki Feijen: Website / Facebook
Photo by Niki Feijen: Website / Facebook
Photo by Niki Feijen: Website / Facebook
Photo by Niki Feijen: Website / Facebook
Be sure to follow Niki on Facebook. But before you do, flip through our slideshow below of Michigan's Residential Condos and let us know if you'd be willing to call the former mental asylum your new home.
The Village At Grand Traverse Commons SEE GALLERY
Have something to say? Check out HuffPost Home on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram.
**
Do you have a home story idea or tip? Email us at [email protected]. (PR pitches sent to this address will be ignored.)Lane Kiffin has absorbed body blow after body blow for how USC's offense performed on Saturday night in a 10-7 loss to Washington State.
Criticism is certainly deserved, but in reality, there's a lot of blame to go around. While Kiffin is the head coach and eventually everything comes back to the man in charge, he isn't nearly at fault for every single detail as many seem to be levying against him.
The quarterbacks have been bad. The playcalling has been hamstrung. And therefore, USC's offense has been atrocious.
But what is really killing the Trojans' offense?
Let's take a look...
With the help of Jeff Collier from Coug Center, we have several of the key plays from Saturday's loss that we can break down:
We'll start with the one Kiffin playcall that has been bemoaned the most...the dreaded bubble screen. Bubble screens are used for a couple reasons. When a team is playing its cornerbacks way off the line of scrimmage, you want to get the ball out into an open space for your playmakers. It should be a quick 4-5 yard pickup and give athletic receivers like Robert Woods and Marqise Lee the opportunity to break open a play.
Bubble screens are basically an extension of the running game designed to continually exploit soft coverage until the defense makes an adjustment, bringing the corners closer to the line, opening up deeper passing lanes.
There's only one problem with the Trojans. They don't block!
On the play below, it's 3rd-and-2 with USC nearing midfield in the first quarter. The Trojans go with a play-action bubble screen into the boundary. While you may hate the bubble screen and want Kiffin to be smacked every time he even considers calling one, it's a great play call in this situation, if executed correctly.
Washington State's cornerback is 6-7 yards off the line and his first movement is to jump backward. The Cougars do have a defensive end/outside linebacker, Destiny Vaeao (#97), coming out to jam (and potentially play the flat in a zone coverage), but USC has both Nelson Agholor and Xavier Grimble to block this one defender.
If the duo manages a simple seal block at the numbers or even at the initial point of contact for Agholor, Lee has a lane on the outside that would be more than enough for him to pick up two yards and the first down. Instead Vaeao blows through both blockers, cutting off the easy path outside and forcing Lee to turn back inside where another linebacker is waiting. Lee tries to use his athleticism to reverse the play and gets a nice block from QB Cody Kessler, but Washington State does a nice job of containing him and Vaeao eventually trips up Lee for a two-yard loss.
How about in the run game? Tre Madden ran the ball 32 times for 151 yards, averaging 4.7 yards. However, there were opportunities for more yards if it hadn't been for a number of "whiff" blocks. It's one thing to get beat on a play; offensive linemen aren't likely to be perfect for an entire game.
But it's a whole different thing when you put your head down, miss your block completely and have your running back get lit up in the hole. The only thing John Martinez (#59) can do on this play is slap his hands in frustration after a "whiff" block takes him to his knees. (That's not to mention the "whiff" block by the tight end coming across the formation to pick up the defensive end that goes right by left tackle Chad Wheeler.)
The above play was the first after George Uko's forced fumble that Devon Kennard picked up and returned nearly into the red zone. Getting buried on first down (though Madden got a yard) nearly killed this drive before it started. It took a fourth down run by Madden out of the Wildcat formation to keep it alive and eventually this drive resulted in USC's only points.
But the Trojans had another golden opportunity to pick up some points before halftime. After a bad 24-yard punt, USC took over at Washington State's 39-yard line with 1:04 remaining. Kiffin went with a conservative run call to try to get USC in field goal range on first down.
Instead, Madden is met in the backfield for a four-yard loss when Kevin Graf (#77) has his own "whiff" block. It appears Graf's job is to reach the defensive end and make sure to seal him inside. The Wazzu end takes an inside release, which should make that task easy, but Graf takes a step outside and is beaten without even touching the defender.
Madden is able to take one step before being hit in the backfield. He tries to avoid the defensive end leading him right into another defender. Even if Madden was able to break a tackle, the backside defenders are right there as well because Wheeler (#72) whiffs once again.
Two plays later, this happens:
There is obviously some type of miscommunication between QB and receiver as Agholor plants and begins to come inside while Kessler throws a hitch/stop route. But take a look at Kessler getting drilled on a quick pass out of the shotgun formation. IT'S A THREE-YARD ROUTE OUT OF THE SHOTGUN AGAINST A THREE-MAN RUSH! The quarterback should never be touched.
This time, in a play reminiscent to the play that ended Matt Barkley's USC career, it's center Marcus Martin (#66) looking back, searching for the guy he was supposed to be blocking and left guard Max Tuerk (#75) doesn't pick up the defender either, allowing him to split both linemen and leave Kessler needing a chalk outline:
Seriously, is Kessler even conscious? Watch his right leg. He might not be alive at this moment. He may have only been on the sideline in the second half after he was revived by a witch doctor during halftime.
Maybe the offensive line coaches... (Yea...USC has multiple o-line coaches in James Cregg and Mike Summers, who also is listed as the running game coordinator.) Maybe the offensive line coaches saw the mistakes and made some adjustments at halftime?
Eh...nope. Not so much.
On the first passing attempt of the second half (below), Graf again steps in the wrong direction, allowing the end to get on the edge with Max Wittek rolling out to the right. Aundrey Walker (#70) loses a hand fight and his defender also is racing down the line in pursuit of Wittek.
Luckily for USC, Xavier Cooper grabbed Wittek's facemask, negating the sack and giving the Trojans 15 yards and an automatic first down. For those wanting deeper passes, this is a perfect example of what an attempt to take a shot looks like when you don't block. This was a 10+ yard pass play designed to go to Lee or Agholor (with fullback Jahleel Pinner as a check down), but Wittek never gets an opportunity to set his feet and make a throw.
After Madden picked up another first down to get inside the red zone, the drive stalled out and Andre Heidari comes on to attempt a fairly easy 32-yard field goal. Except instead of USC taking the lead, 14th-year senior Abe Markowitz lets Kalafitoni Pole right up the middle, allowing him to swat away Heidari's kick like Dikembe Mutombo on the cereal aisle.
We all know that kickers are special creatures with special psyches. How much this block and a potential subsequent lack of faith in his blockers led to Heidari's later miss will never be known, but we can make the assumption that the thought crossed through his mind when he was called on again.
Speaking of Heidari's missed attempt, everyone was clamoring over Kiffin's decision to run the ball on third-and-long on the prior play. But do you remember what actually set up the 3rd-and-17?
On 2nd-and-7 from the 21-yard line, Kiffin again tries to go with a non-bubble screen pass play. However, Washington State brings an overload blitz and Madden, apparently feeling left out of the "whiff" block party, doesn't pick up the linebacker who sacks Wittek for a 10-yard loss.
Madden does a good job abandoning the play-action fake to get in position to take on a blitzer. But both he and Grimble, lined up at the fullback position here, go for the outside rusher. I'm not sure who is at fault here because it depends on the blocking scheme, but the miscommunication gives Cyrus Coen a free run at Wittek.
After seeing that blocking, would you really trust your team enough to not take another negative play if you called a passing play? Kiffin chose to give the ball to Madden, who picked up five yards and moved the go-ahead field goal attempt from a deep range shot (48 yards) to a more manageable 43-yarder.
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There is plenty of blame to go around, but what needs to be repaired first is USC's blocking up front.
Why haven't the pair of future NFL tight ends been utilized more? Well, it's hard to throw to someone not in a pass route because he has to stay in to help block.
Why so many bubble screens? When the cornerbacks are playing off, bubble screens are a smart play call, but everyone has to do his job blocking.
Why not go deep more? When the cornerbacks are playing off, it takes time for receivers to cut into that cushion and then make a move -- time the Trojans' line has yet to consistently give either quarterback.
Why be so conservative on third-and-longs? Because you don't want fourth-and-even-longers.
Why has Kiffin been so hesitant to open up the creative playbook that made him such a hot coaching name his first time in the Land of Troy? The prolific 2005 offense featured five future NFL linemen in Sam Baker, Winston Justice, Fred Matua, Deuce Lutui and Ryan Kalil. It's a lot easier to be creative when your quarterback has time to survey the field and throw the ball.
Everything reverts back to the front five. Once the Trojans' offensive line is able to protect the quarterback on a quick throw out of the shotgun formation, Kiffin will be able to call a more diverse game.
If USC wants to turn around its season, its going to start with the big men up front. The good thing is that technique can be quickly adjusted. Improvements can come quickly on a talented offensive line and there is plenty of talent standing in front of Kessler and Madden.
For example, Georgia's offensive line was shredded by South Carolina at the beginning of 2012. The group jelled and came yards shy of playing in the National Championship game. The Bulldogs' line this season struggled against Clemson, leading many to believe South Carolina and Jadaveon Clowney would tear them up again. But instead, it was the Gamecocks' defense that was shredded for 41 points last weekend.
We'll see if there have been any improvements this weekend when Boston College comes to town. If the "whiff" blocks are gone, there is still hope for this season.
Thanks again to the assistance from Jeff Collier from Coug Center.Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida makes a formal announcement that he is entering the 2016 Presidential race at the Freedom Tower on April 13, 2015 in Miami, Florida. (Photos by Charles Ommanney for the Washington Post)
In case you’d never heard Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) speak before, the announcement of his presidential campaign in Miami Monday may have come as a shock. A young, forward looking Republican who extols immigrants and working people? A conservative not running against government or the nefarious “establishment” but for a “new American century”? Well, for those who have been listening to him for some time, the speech was more confirmation of his unique — at least in this field — political skills.
He had some memorable and pointed phrases to support his argument a new generation of leadership. He declared “yesterday is over” (a not-at-all subtle dig at Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton). The argument went like this:
Why is this happening in a country that for over two centuries has been defined by equality of opportunity? Because while our people and economy are pushing the boundaries of the 21st century, too many of our leaders and their ideas are stuck in the twentieth century. They are busy looking backward, so they do not see how jobs and prosperity today depend on our ability to compete in a global economy. So our leaders put us at a disadvantage by taxing, borrowing and regulating like it’s 1999. They look for solutions in yesterday, so they don’t see that good-paying modern jobs require different skills and more education than the past. They blindly support an outdated higher education system that is too expensive and inaccessible to those who need it most. And they have forgotten that when America fails to lead, global chaos inevitably follows, so they appease our enemies, betray our allies and weaken our military. At the turn of the 19th century, a generation of Americans harnessed the power of the Industrial Age and transformed this country into the leading economy in the world. And the 20th century became the American Century. Now, the time has come for our generation to lead the way toward a new American Century.
Why not Clinton or Bush? Rubio gave an answer: “We Americans are proud of our history, but our country has always been about the future. Before us now is the opportunity to author the greatest chapter yet in the amazing story of America. We can’t do that by going back to the leaders and ideas of the past. We must change the decisions we are making by changing the people who are making them.”
And unlike Hillary Clinton’s thoroughly vacuous announcement video, Rubio actually explained what he wanted to do:
If we reform our tax code, reduce regulations, control spending, modernize our immigration laws and repeal and replace Obamacare … the American people will create millions of better-paying modern jobs. If we create a 21st century system of higher education that provides working Americans the chance to acquire the skills they need, that no longer graduates students with mountains of debt and degrees that do not lead to jobs, and that graduates more students from high school ready to work, then our people will be prepared to seize their opportunities in the new economy. … And if America accepts the mantle of global leadership, by abandoning this administration’s dangerous concessions to Iran and its hostility to Israel; by reversing the hollowing out of our military; by giving our men and women in uniform the resources, care and gratitude they deserve; by no longer being passive in the face of Chinese and Russian aggression; and by ending the near total disregard for the erosion of democracy and human rights around the world, especially Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua; then, if we did these thing, then our nation would be safer, our world more stable, and our people more prosperous.
The contrast to Grandma Clinton making her way across the country in a van, secluded from people (not even bothering to introducing herself at a Chipotle) and refusing to tell us anything about her vision or agenda could not be more stark.
The speech, like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s showing at the Iowa Freedom Summit in January, may bounce Rubio in the polls, but more importantly he made a case for his candidacy. He has a vision, he has the skills and he has the ideas. But does he have the toughness and the sense of gravitas one needs to portray? We don’t yet know. One speech does not make a campaign, but Rubio’s was a heck of a way to start one.With the film currently stalled at Paramount, Valiant Entertainment Group has chosen to move forward themselves with a film adaptation of Harbinger. The company has brought back Stephen Susco (Texas Chainsaw 3D) to pen the script for the film. This part is great news. The only bad news is that the potential director attached is Brett Ratner, but keep in mind that potential director doesn’t necessarily mean that he actually will be directing the film. If he does get brought on to direct, could Ratner redeem himself here for X-Men: The Last Stand?
The film originally in development over at Paramount, but underlying rights issues in the whole Fox and Warner Bros. lawsuit over Watchmen has stalled the project. Well, instead of going the the studio route, Valiant has “chosen to seek financing and was given a capital infusion from private investment company Cuneo & Co. and partnered with former Marvel CEO and vice chairman Peter Cuneo to relaunch and independently develop their own library of over 1,500 titles.”
The series, which was created by Jim Shooter, is a dark and modern twist on the mutant/superhero mythology and follows Pete Stanchek, a teenager- turned-superhero and his battle with a equally powerful industrialist. If you’ve never read an issue of Harbinger, do yourself a favor and check the series out. You won’t be disappointed.
Source: VarietyAbout this mod It seems a strange chest has appeared in Arrille's Tradehouse... Requirements DLC requirements DLC name Bloodmoon Tribunal Permissions and credits Author's instructions File credits This author has not credited anyone else in this file Donation Points system This mod is not opted-in to receive Donation Points
It seems a chest has appeared in Arrille's Tradehouse in Seyda Neen, and rumors have been spread of it's lethal capabilities, people traveling from all over Vvardenfell to examine the chest, only to find themselves dead after attempting to open it.
This mod was an extension of the tutorial from Morrowind Scripting for Dummies, the chest uses most of the scripting found there. I wanted to expand it a little and decided to make it a small quest. It's just a test to learn a bit on how to mod Morrowind, so I could use some feedback. Enjoy!
[VERSION 1.1 UPDATE CHANGELOG]
-Fixed a bug where the rumor that appeared when quest was finished appears before quest.
-Chance lowered of getting said rumor.
-The riddle has been changed to a more legit one. It's also a nice homage to Baldur's Gate 2, if anyone will get it ;)
-Maybe some other stuff that I forgot about that I might suddenly remember in a few hours.
I mostly wanted to get this out to fix the rumors, which were horribly made. The chance was too high to get the rumors, and there was that bug, so I wanted to get this out quick and fix all of it. Most of the time I tried getting Arrille to be more involved with the quest, but I wanted to get this out today and didn't have time to finish all that. Thanks for downloading, if you did!Get ready for another awesome Mojang game jam! Mojang and friends are back to craft some awesome games for charity in Humble Bundle Mojam 2!
Mojang is going to split into smaller teams and spend the next 78 hours creating sweet games! They’ll be joined by fellow indie developers Grapefrukt, Ludosity, Oxeye Game Studio, Vlambeer, and Wolfire Games who will be creating some awesome games of their own!
You can contribute to the game jam and play the games when they’re done. 100% of the proceeds are going to charity, and you’ll also get to watch Mojang, Vlambeer, and Wolfire as they livestream their progress!
Game jam contributors can benefit the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Block by Block, two fantastic charities near and dear to Mojang’s heart.
The Humble Bundle Mojam 2 will be rocking until 3pm PST on Saturday, February 23. So head on over to the site, contribute to get some games, help awesome charities, and watch the livestreams!Former prime minister Sir John Major has said it was a "historic mistake" that a majority of voters opted to leave the European Union.
Sir John, who was leader of the Conservative Party when the UK was negotiating the Maastricht Treaty with its European partners in 1991, said he was concerned the challenges ahead had been underplayed.
The ex-PM told an audience at Chatham House in London that, while the British people had every right to choose to leave the EU, pro-Brexit supporters had left voters expecting an "unreal" and "over optimistic" future.
"I have watched with growing concern as the British people have been led to expect a future that seems to be unreal and over-optimistic," he said.
"Obstacles are brushed aside as of no consequence, whilst opportunities are inflated beyond any reasonable expectation of delivery."
Earlier this month Tony Blair, Sir John's successor as prime minister, also attacked Brexit and urged its critics to "rise up".
Tony Blair urges Britain to revolt against Brexit
Sir John added: "My own experience of international negotiations - and the national self-interest that accompanies them - makes me doubt the rosy confidence being offered to the British people.
"If anyone genuinely believes that Europe will concede all we wish for - and exact no price for doing so - then they are extraordinarily naive.
"The trade negotiations will require statesmanship of a high order. There is a real risk the outcome will fall well below the hopes and expectations that have been raised."
He referred to claims that the EU will extract a price from the UK of up to €60bn (£51bn), saying "the bill will be substantial: billions, not millions, and very unpalatable".
"It will come as a nasty shock to voters who were not forewarned of this - even in the recent White Paper," he added.
Sir John said the consequences will be political fallout, warning the most vulnerable were likely to be hit hardest by the impact of quitting the bloc.
He added: "In voting to leave - we have done the EU great harm. Without the UK, it may change in character, becoming more protectionist and less of a pillar of free trade. Such a Europe would be damaging to British interests."
Brexiteers hit back at Sir John's comments, with Sir Bill Cash telling Sky News: "The British people have spoken and Theresa May is doing an incredibly good job in ensuring that that instruction from the British people is carried out.
"Five hundred MPs went through the lobbies only two weeks ago to endorse that withdrawal. And, quite frankly, I just think John Major is talking through his hat."
A No 10 source responded to the speech, saying: "The Government is determined to make a success of our departure from the European Union and to move beyond the language of leave and remain to unite our country.
"The Prime Minister set out her 12 negotiating objectives for Brexit in January. We have a clear plan to get the best deal for the United Kingdom and are going to get on with the job of delivering it."
Responding to Sir John's speech Liberal Democrat Leader Tim Farron said: "The Conservatives should listen to the likes of John Major and (Michael) Heseltine instead of sneering at them.
"These are people with huge experience of negotiating with Europe, while the Brexiteers have no clear strategy. There is nothing patriotic about shutting down debate on the risks of a hard Brexit for our country's prosperity and security."Opposition to Western Australia's shark cull has intensified as thousands of people took to beaches across the continent at the weekend to call on the state's premier to end the policy, and the RSPCA Australia and Richard Branson spoke out against it.
The controversial catching and killing of sharks longer than three metres began last month after what the state government called an "unprecedented" number of shark attacks on Western Australia's coast, which saw a 35 year-old surfer killed in November. He was the sixth person to die from a shark attack in two years.
However, according to the Shark Attack File, Australia as a whole has averaged one shark-related fatality a year for the last 50 years.
Kate Faehrmann, a board member at the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, said from a protest in Perth: "We've been saying all along that this policy won't work. Drumlines [used to catch the sharks] are indiscriminate killers. They'll kill sharks whether they're two, one, three metres or more, as well as dolphins, turtles and other things, that's why the community don't want it."
Thousands of people protested on Perth's Cottesloe beach and Sydney's Manly beach on Saturday, as well as hundreds at Glenelg, in south-west Adelaide, and at beaches in Victoria and Queensland.
Faehrmann said the protests had shown Australians wanted sharks protected: "What's amazing is so many people in Australia love sharks. This has demonstrated something about the national psyche, that despite Jaws, despite all the fear, thousands of people are coming out in thousands across the country to say that's their ocean, we respect them, we love them and we don't want them killed."
Anthony Joyce, a surfer who had previously had his foot caught in a shark's mouth, said: "The amount of sharks they are going to kill is going to make no difference in the scheme of things."
The state government has refused to provide a running tally of sharks killed, though there have been reports of sharks smaller than three metres being released after getting caught on drumlines, floating drums anchored to the sea bed with bait hanging on hooks beneath them.
Conservationists argue there is no evidence the cull will reduce the number of shark attacks on humans, as no previous cull has solely used drumlines. Researchers at the University of Western Australia say the recent spate of shark attacks in the state may have more to do with the state having the fastest-growing population in Australia rather than a rising number of sharks.
Richard Peirce, chairman of the UK-based conservation charity, the Shark Trust, told the Guardian that the cull would be ineffective and potentially lure more predators towards the coast.
"The activity in Western Australia is compounding the human tragedy involved in shark attacks. It is very sad that a government that could be seen to take positive initiatives with regards to shark-human interactions by trialling alternatives to indiscriminate killing, has ignored the best advice and opted for an approach that is ineffective and counter-productive," he said. "The indiscriminate nature of drumlines are often overlooked – even if monitored through the day, leaving the lines in overnight has the potential to attract other predators into the area, attracted by those sharks and other species hooked and injured, acting as 'chum'."
Globally, in 2012, there were 80 unprovoked attacks by sharks, seven of which proved fatal, compared to nearly 100m sharks killed by humans each year.
RPSCA Australia released a statement saying it does not believe the cull is justified. "There is no evidence that the increase in attacks is a result of increasing shark numbers. Rather, it is consistent with a changing population and human behavior, that is, there are greater numbers of people in the water," it said.
Richard Branson told Fairfax radio the policy was backfiring. "I'm sure one of the reasons he [Western Australia Premier Colin Barnett] did it was because he was thinking it would encourage tourism. It's going to do quite the reverse, I think. You're advertising a problem that doesn't exist in a major way and you're deterring people from wanting to come to Perth and your beautiful countryside around it. All you're going to achieve, I think, is to worry people unnecessarily."Invasive Burmese pythons, descended from former pets that were released into the wild, are doing an incredibly effective job of wiping out anything that's small, furry, and native to the Everglades. And a new study published this week shows that the local wildlife basically has no defense... except
As this webcomic giving a brief history of Florida pythons illustrates (complete with thrilling snake-wrestling sequence), the study involved placing radio trackers onto rabbits and releasing them into designated areas both within and outside of the national park. At first, the bunnies did what bunnies do, and bred with their usual speed. But nine months later, 77 percent of the population within the Everglades, aka prime python turf, had been gobbled up. The control group, released outside the park, suffered no such fate.
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Though the python problem is well-known (as is the fact that pythons breed like, uh, rabbits — the comic details the finding of one 17.6-footer with 87 fertilized eggs inside), the scientists were still taken aback, according to CBS News.
"All of us were shocked by the results. Rabbit populations are supposed to be regulated by factors other than predation, like drought, disease," study co-author Bob Reed, chief of the invasive branch of the United States Geological Society. "They are so fecund. They are supposed to be hugely resilient to predation," he said. "You don't expect a population to be wiped out by predation."
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And there was no doubt what happened to the rabbits. No doubt whatsoever, according to paper co-author Robert A. McCleery of the University of Florida:
"Every one (of the rabbits) we are saying was eaten by a python, we found inside a python," he said. "It wasn't like, 'I wonder what ate this.' You are looking for your rabbit and you find a python. The radio collar was transmitting from inside the python."
As pythons feast their way through the region, consuming not just rabbits but deer, raccoons, and possums (and chasing away those animals' natural predators, like bobcats, in the process), scientists are grappling with what's next for the Everglades' rapidly changing ecosystem. It's a particularly poignant point, because as National Geographic notes, "Everglades National Park was the first national park established to preserve biological diversity and resources, not for scenic views."
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Stricter laws and regulations won't have any effect on the existing python population, which is estimated to be as high as 10,000. Even in a park as big as the Everglades, that's significant. The scientists involved in the rabbit study note that it would be nearly impossible to eradicate the snakes through poison or other means that've been used on rats and other invasive species.
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The best that can be done, it seems, is to prevent them from spreading further, and to keep a close eye on what naturally happens next. Davidson College scientist Michael Dorcas was cautiously optimistic, telling CBS News that Everglades mammals' best/only hope is to wise up and adapt. Like, ASAP.
"One of the reason pythons have caused such dramatic declines in mammals is because mammals are naïve to pythons as major predators," he said. "So if that is the case and if there are mammals that do avoid pythons and that behavior is heritable, then we should see the fairly rapid evolution of mammals that would avoid pythons. Whether that will happen or not, we don't know."
Read the complete scientific paper in Proceedings B here.
Top photo by Flickr user TedKeen to put those grubby accusations of plagiarism behind it, Zynga has rolled out its mobile monster collecting game, Montopia, to UK and US app stores. The game had previously only been available in Japan, before turning up in Canada at the end of August.
The game casts you as a roving collector and trainer of miniature creatures - a kind of "pocket monster", if you like - which you find in treasure chests. The monsters come in three elemental types - fire, wood and water - and can be sent to battle those belonging to other trainers.
You're also able to combine monsters together to create new types, and enter a daily lottery to win rare monster types, with the ultimate aim of filling all 400 entries in your Monstapedia. Do that and you earn a special wish, which you can use to save the world of Montopia.
The game, which is a completely original idea that will hopefully catch on, is free to download for both iOS and Android, with a gift of 1000 free coins for a limited launch period.Modern Rustic: Greenhouses and Gardening is a complete homesteading guide to selecting the right type of greenhouse, growing vegetables from seedlings or starts, and choosing the best heirloom seeds for your garden.
Whether you are a first time gardener or an experienced homesteader looking to expand your skills the Modern Rustic series is informative, entertaining to read and has the wisdom of been-there, done-that experience.
Quotes from "Modern Rustic: Greenhouses and Gardening":
"When it comes to solar heating a small attached greenhouse, I have experimented with many different methods over the years. The method that works best for me is to use water as a natural heat sink. I took a row of 5 gallon buckets, painted them black and filled them with water. Then I placed them at the lowest level of the south face of the greenhouse.
Through the course of the day the sun beams on the buckets heating the water.
On a sunny day in early May I’ve had the water in the buckets reach as high as 120 degrees. Just like the compost heater, this means you need to make sure you have adequate ventilation during the day. At night that heat is then released into the greenhouse. Since cold air sinks, it pools on the floor where it is absorbed by the warm water in the buckets
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, and the brand of shirts you like to buy—and Blank Label's tailors will estimate your perfect shirt size. The site calls this method "90 percent accurate." For more accuracy, Blank Label lets you mail in your best-fitting shirt to use as a template for their custom offerings. It pays for shipping both ways.
Blank Label also leads the field in customization. You can get contrasting fabrics for your collar and cuff, pick out your buttons and the style of the placket (the central panel where the buttons are stitched), and even add epaulets, if you like. Given all this free rein, you could easily order up a clown shirt. (Do yourself a favor and have a loved one look over your design before you confirm it.) Still, I was glad to have the options—and they're all free.
My favorite thing about Blank Label, though, was its exceptional customer service. There were two problems with my order that could easily have soured me on the site. First, a few days after I designed my shirt, I got an e-mail from a customer-service rep explaining that the fabric I'd selected was no longer available. I was about to get angry at the thought of having to redesign the shirt when I noticed this wonderful line: "Also, please feel free to choose a more expensive fabric at no additional cost." So that's what I did. I got an $85 shirt for $65.
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The shirt arrived in a couple weeks, and—just like the others—it was stylish, well-constructed, and fit perfectly. But there was one tiny problem: When I opened the top button, it broke in half in my fingers. I don't think this was shoddy workmanship; it seemed like the button got bent or cracked during shipping. Anyway, I went to the site and discovered that it has a wonderful return policy: You can send back "any shirt, any time, [for] any reason," without any shipping charges. Blank Label will make you a new shirt even if you simply don't like the design you chose—if, say, you chose epaulets and then discovered you're not actually a general.
As I entered in my return details, a live-chat message popped up to ask if I needed help. I typed in my problem and got a reply from Fan Bi, Blank Label's founder. He apologized and asked if I would be OK taking the shirt to a local tailor to be fixed. Blank Label would cover the cost of attaching the extra button and would give me a $20 credit for my trouble. That sounded fair to me. Again, I was won over.
Of the three sites I tried, Blank Label is probably the one I'll return to most often, mainly because I love its prices and customer service. When I'm looking for something fancier, I might check out J. Hilburn. What I won't do is spend much time shopping for shirts at the mall, unless I see something at a steep discount. After you get a custom-fit shirt, you'll never go back.Guest essay by Eric Worrall
An astonishing thing just happened in Britain. UKIP leader Nigel Farage, a strong supporter of US Tea Party Politics, invited the radical left wing politician George Galloway to be his surprise guest speaker.
Their common cause: Liberate Britain from the unelected soviet style apparatchiks who run the European Union.
… On Friday I surprised, perhaps even stunned, some of my long term supporters by introducing a surprise guest: George Galloway. On a whole host of political issues George and I are diametrically opposed. We could not have a cosy chat over coffee about Israel, economic policy or a host of other issues. But sometimes in life an issue comes along that is bigger than anything else and traditional opponents become allies. Churchill despised Uncle Joe Stalin as much if not more than he did the German corporal. But they joined together to defeat a common enemy. It is that same understanding that George and some in GO have today. We believe in our country and that it should be run by our own people through the ballot box. We will all fight side by side to win this referendum and then to get back to opposing each other. It’s called democracy. It’s worth fighting for. Come and help us.
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/02/20/farage-for-breitbart-enemies-unite/
Galloway champions green causes. Farage once asked Lord Monckton to be UKIP’s climate spokesman.
Galloway was once banned from entering Canada, because of his radical sympathies and associations; he even appeared before a US Senate Hearing to explain his connection to former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Farage is strongly critical of radical Islam and uncontrolled immigration.
The one thing Farage and Galloway both agree on, the cause which unites them, is whatever choices Britain makes, those choices should be decided by the elected representatives of the British people, not by a distant supranational organisation which does not have to answer to the people whose lives it ruins.
The European Union, which has no democratic legitimacy, has increasingly been embracing green issues, the politics of crisis, to bolster its faltering authority. George Galloway’s support for leaving the EU, his rejection of the totalitarian route to a green policy goal which he supports, is a compliment to the integrity of a man with whom I disagree, upon almost every issue of import.
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RedditUPDATED: In an unusual move, organizers postpone India's major annual science conference
In an unprecedented move, organizers of the annual Indian Science Congress have postponed the prestigious event just days before it was supposed to begin. The move apparently reflects concerns that students at the university hosting the congress would stage protests against Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was scheduled to open the event.
More than 10,000 scientists were expected to attend the 105th congress, a 5-day gathering at Osmania University in Hyderabad in southern India. But just 12 days before its 3 January 2018 start, organizers announced they had “indefinitely postponed” the event and that a “further course of action" will be announced. On 28 December, organizers said the meeting would be held at the Manipur University in Imphal, the capital of Manipur, a state that has never hosted the event. The exact new date of the congress has not been determined, but it is likely to be held in March 2018.
The decision to postpone the Congress was “due to certain issues [on] the campus,” the Indian Science Congress Association in Kolkata said in a statement.The group pushed back, however, on reports that organizers were worried that students opposed to the Modi government’s policies would try to disrupt the proceedings, stating that the “postponement has no relation to the … Prime Minister’s visit to the event.”
“I am disappointed and not happy with the situation,” says nanotechnologist Ashutosh Sharma, secretary of India’s Department of Science Technology in New Delhi, which helps partially fund the congress.
“The loss of face is immense and the so-called security issues do not amount to much,” complained an editorial in The Indian Express. “[A] few students, belonging to Dalit, backward, minority and left-wing groups, are expected to demonstrate against the prime minister … but a campus is where feelings and arguments can and should run high. It is the crucible of future politics, and politicians should engage with student protesters rather than seek insulation from them.”
*Update, 28 December, 8:45 a.m.: This story has been updated with information about the potential date and location of the next congress.After the first season of “Jersey Shore” the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute of Queens College convened a symposium to discuss the re-emergence into the popular culture of the Guido stereotype. But that event focused on whether Guido imagery was positive or negative for Italian-Americans. Scholars here skipped past that question to more poignant ones: Is there such a thing as a stable Italian-American identity? Shouldn’t Italian-Americans be relieved that some of the “Jersey Shore” stars aren’t of Italian heritage at all? The Guido pose, many here agreed, was just another form of drag, a costume available to anyone with the wherewithal and desire to wear it.
As was pointed out several times at this conference, “Jersey Shore” is one of the most reflexive and self-referential shows on television, and its participants among the most self-aware. Take the segment in the season that just concluded in which Pauly D and Vinny Guadagnino dress up as caricatures of themselves — or at least the Season 1, pre-fame versions of themselves. Or the promotional clip in which the men of the show remake the shivering leaf that is Michael Cera into one of them.
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“MTV gets this,” insisted Ellie Marshall, a McGill undergraduate with the distinction of having interned for the show’s executive producer, making her the only conference participant with hands-on experience. One of the slides in her presentation was titled “Bodily Discipline: Foucault + Snooki = BFF.” After she showed a clip of Snooki getting arrested on the beach during Season 3 while onlookers gawked at her celebrity misbehavior, Ms. Marshall argued that it was the audience that was being arrested and rendered docile, not Snooki.
Atle Mikkola Kjosen, a graduate student at the University of Western Ontario, suggested that the show upends Marx’s proposition that the optimal worker is a regulated worker, one who’s allowed to rest. “Jersey Shore” labor is 24-hour labor, both on and off camera, and the show improves in proportion to the toll that ruthless schedule takes on the protagonists.
But this is true of many other reality shows, like “Survivor” and “Big Brother” (to say nothing of the day-to-day living of traditional celebrities, always on public display). “Jersey Shore” stars are not traditional laborers, and the show, which claims to be a documentary, does not treat them as such. Of all the MTV docusoaps, it’s actually done the worst job of pretending its stars are still average folks, shepherding them to new locales (Miami and Florence, Italy) both to avoid hometown fame and to take advantage of notoriety.
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There were papers on the functions that music and alcohol serve on the show, and the requisite far-fetched comparisons that are in fact not. (“The Jersey Saga: Honor Culture in Medieval Iceland and Modern Seaside,” anyone?)
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But there was surprisingly little discussion of the show’s aesthetics or the degree to which the narratives of the show had been manipulated, or distilled, by producers and editors.
A couple of presenters outed themselves as Jersey Shore natives — a bit like claiming the football team of the school you transferred from after freshman year — though none appeared to be presenting themselves as “Jersey Shore” types. Candace Moore, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan who gave one of the keynote addresses (titled “Guidosexuality”), spoke about the homosocial friendship between Vinny and Pauly D, and linked the men of the show’s quest for “stranger sex” to some queer and kink cultures. Then she showed photos of herself from a recent two-week attempt at living the cast’s GTL — gym, tan, laundry — lifestyle, and failing.
Alison Hearn, an associate professor at the University of Western Ontario, gave the day’s first keynote address, discussing labor practices while images of products the cast members have endorsed scrolled on a screen behind her. As she was discoursing on “the branded hybrid person-character” and the downsides of the current neoliberal moment of self-entrepreneurship, from nowhere appeared a cameraman — seemingly from a local news organization — who ran up tight on her from behind, peering in over her shoulder as she spoke. It felt like a parody. Everyone but the cameraman had a good laugh.NEW YORK – Amid the manic swirl of UFC 205 media day, former women's bantamweight champion Miesha Tate had a strong gathering around her for a full hour asking about Saturday night's fight with Raquel Pennington. One of those who was in her orbit filming the action was bantamweight Bryan Caraway, her boyfriend and training partner, who is currently ranked No. 5 on the UFC's rankings.
After winning back-to-back fights over Eddie Wineland and Aljamain Sterling, Caraway has been vocal about wanting a title shot. Yet though he has tried to make his case, the UFC recently opted to book young Cody Garbrandt for the next crack at 135-pound champion Dominick Cruz, which is slated to take place at UFC 207 on Dec. 30.
Caraway is in limbo currently, waiting to find out his next move. But through his frustration, he says he's had an epiphany.
"The UFC is intelligent, and I have to come to terms that this is an entertainment business almost more than it is a sport," Caraway told MMA Fighting. "Garbrandt was the No. 8 ranked guy, and real quick they shuffle — as soon as he gets a title shot they shuffle and he's No. 5. I don't know. Garbrandt's super-talented, he's tough, but I mean, has he proven himself really? I mean, when he knocked out [Thomas] Almeida, Almeida hadn't beat a single guy in the top 10."
Caraway turned down a fight against Garbrandt back in June, hoping that he'd done enough for the title shot. Though he was passed over ultimately for Garbrandt — who fought Takeya Mizugaki at UFC 202 in August, and scored a 48-second TKO — Caraway says he respects the young Team Alpha Male fighter. It's just that he doesn't feel the decision to move Garbrandt in front of him bears merit.
"He's very talented and I'm not taking anything away from him, and I'm not saying Garbrandt can't win the title," he said. "But I feel like, I've been a veteran, I've been around for a long time. I just beat the No. 6 guy in Eddie Wineland. I out-struck him the whole fight, and he was supposed to be one of the best strikers in the division. I fought the best grappler in the division, supposedly, that's 12-0 in the division. I out-grapple him and beat him, and he's No. 4 and they're trying to hype him for a title, and at that moment I was ranked No. 3 — the highest-ranked guy that hadn't fought for a title. I thought for sure I would get it, I've been around this sport for a long time. I felt like I was owed it."
Caraway, who came up through The Ultimate Fighter franchise, has gone 6-2 since debuting against Dustin Neace in 2011. He dropped down to bantamweight in his second fight at UFC 149, where he dropped a split decision against Mizugaki. His only other loss in the UFC came against Raphael Assuncao in Oct. 2014.
Otherwise, he's been successful, which is why he believes there is more in play than simple wins and losses.
"I just realized I don't talk enough, or I don't talk enough sh*t," he said. "I don't know what it is. Maybe there's some bad media around because there's certain fights I couldn't take either due to injuries or family problems or whatever it was. They think that I don't like fighting, fans think that I don't fighting, they're crazy. If I don't fight, I don't get paid. I don't move up. So, I think I did enough to definitely get the title shot."
Talking has been one of Garbrandt's strengths, as he has lobbied for a fight with Cruz. He's also very active on social media.
"Garbrandt, he talks a lot of smack," Caraway said. "He's kind of young. He's got kind of a crazy style with all the tattoos, and whatever, he's got a good social media following right now. It is what it is. I'm just going to keep my head down right now and keep banging, be better not bitter and just really start fighting a lot in 2017."
Caraway sounded like he wanted to stay busy in 2017, and didn't want to wait out people's timetables.
"I love fighting," he said. "I've been fighting for a long time. Counting some of my underground old-school, I have over 44 MMA fights, some of them bare-knuckle fights. I'm not afraid to fight anybody. But, it is a sport, and there are politics, and it's the entertainment business, so you've got to be smart in that aspect as well."Erich Rudorffer (1 November 1917 – 8 April 2016) was a German Luftwaffe fighter ace who was one of a handful who served with the Luftwaffe through the whole of World War II. He was the 7th most successful fighter pilot in the history of air warfare, with 222 victories claimed. Rudorffer fought in all the major German theaters of war, including the European and Mediterranean Theater of Operations and the Eastern Front. During the war he flew more than 1000 combat missions, engaging in aerial combat over 300 times. Rudorffer was shot down by flak and enemy fighters 16 times and had to take to his parachute nine times. He distinguished himself by shooting down 13 enemy planes in 17 minutes. His 222 aerial victories included 58 heavily armoured Il-2 Sturmovik ground attack aircraft.
Early life [ edit ]
Rudorffer was born on 1 November 1917 in Zwochau, at the time in the Kingdom of Saxony of the German Empire. After graduation from school, he received a vocational education as an automobile metalsmith specialized in coachbuilding. He joined the military service of the Luftwaffe with Flieger-Ersatz-Abteilung 61 (Flier Replacement Unit 61) in Oschatz on 16 April 1936. From 2 September to 15 October 1936, he served with Kampfgeschwader 253 (KG 253—253rd Bomber Wing) and from 16 October 1936 to 24 February 1937 was trained as an aircraft engine mechanic at the Technische Schule Adlershof, the technical school at Adlershof in Berlin.[Note 1] On 14 March 1937, Rudorffer was posted to Kampfgeschwader 153 (KG 153—153rd Bomber Wing), where he served as a mechanic until end October 1938. He was then transferred to Flieger-Ersatz-Abteilung 51 (Flier Replacement Unit 51) based at Liegnitz in Silesia, present-day Legnica in Poland, for flight training. There he was first trained as a bomber pilot and then as a Zerstörer, a heavy fighter or destroyer, pilot.
On 1 October 1939, Rudorffer was transferred to the Jagdwaffe (fighter force) and was posted to the Jagdfliegerschule 2 (fighter pilot school) at Schleißheim. Following this conversion training, he was transferred to the Jagdergänzungsstaffel Döberitz, the supplementary fighter squadron based at Döberitz, on 6 December 1939. On 28 December 1939, he was transferred to the Ergänzungs-Jagdgruppe Merseburg, another supplementary training unit stationed at Merseburg, where newly trained fighter pilots received instruction from pilots with combat experience. He stayed there until 7 January 1940, one day later, Rudorffer, now a Oberfeldwebel (staff sergeant), was posted to the 2. Staffel (2nd squadron) of Jagdgeschwader 2 "Richthofen" (JG 2—2nd Fighter Wing), named after the World War I fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen.
World War II [ edit ]
Rudorffer claimed his first kill, a Curtiss Hawk 75, on 14 May 1940. He scored eight more times before the capitulation of France. He flew throughout the Battle of Britain, and it is claimed he was pursued down Croydon High Street below rooftop level by a Hurricane. He achieved his nineteenth victory on 1 May 1941; he was then awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross (Ritterkreuz of the Iron Cross) and appointed Staffelkapitän of 6./Jagdgeschwader 2 (JG 2) "Richthofen" the following month. On 19 May 1941, Rudorffer and his wingman attacked a diving submarine off the Isle of Portland. It was observed that both bombs struck close and that the submarine went down vertically. According to the Royal Navy, no submarine loss can be verified on or about this date or location. Rudorfer's claim must be considered unverified. By the end of December 1941 he had claimed 40 kills.
Rudorffer on 21 June 1944. In the background is his wingman, Unteroffizier Kurt Tangermann
In 1942 Rudorffer participated in Operation Cerberus (Channel Dash) and flew over the Allied landings at Dieppe in August 1942. After 45 victories in November 1942 his unit was transferred south to Sicily and later Tunisia. On 9 February 1943 Rudorffer claimed to have defeated 8 British pilots during a 32-minute aerial battle, and collected his first multiple victories.[clarification needed] Again on 15 February he claimed 7 kills. Among his claims during the North Africa were 10 Allied bombers.
In July 1943 Rudorffer was appointed to command II./Jagdgeschwader 54 (JG 54) on the Eastern Front. He claimed his first victory in that theater on 7 August. Due to the experience gained in combat with the RAF he achieved considerable success. During his first sortie on 24 August 1943, 5 Soviet aircraft were downed in 4 minutes.
On 11 October 1943, Rudorffer was also credited with his 100th aerial victory. He was the 55th Luftwaffe pilot to achieve the century mark. In aerial combat near Teremky and Glychow, he claimed a Yak-7, his 100th victory, at 12:22, a LaGG-3 at 12:22, and three more Yak-7 shot down at 12:24, 12:25 and 12:27 respectively. On 6 November 1943, Rudorffer was credited with 13 aerial victories, eight Yak-7s and five Yak-9s in the timeframe 13:00 to 13:17, taking his total to 122 aerial victories.
Flying the Messerschmitt Me 262 [ edit ]
JG 7 "Nowotny" was the first operational jet fighter wing in the world and was named after Walter Nowotny, who was killed in action on 8 November 1944. Nowotny, a fighter pilot credited with 258 aerial victories and recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds (Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes mit Eichenlaub, Schwertern und Brillanten), had been assessing the Messerschmitt Me 262 jet aircraft under operational conditions. JG 7 "Nowotny" was equipped with the Me 262, an aircraft which was heavily armed and faster than any Allied fighter. General der Jagdflieger (General of the Fighter Force) Adolf Galland hoped that the Me 262 would compensate for the Allies' numerical superiority. On 12 November 1944, the Oberkommando der Luftwaffe (OKL—Air Force High Command) ordered JG 7 "Nowotny" to be equipped with the Me 262. Galland appointed Oberst Johannes Steinhoff as its first Geschwaderkommodore (wing commander).
In the winter of 1944 Rudorffer was trained on the Me 262 jet fighter. In February 1945, he was recalled to command I. Gruppe JG 7 "Nowotny" from Major Theodor Weissenberger who replaced Steinhoff as Geschwaderkommodore. Rudorffer claimed 12 victories with the Me 262,[Note 2] to bring his total to 222. His tally included 136 on the Eastern Front, 26 in North Africa and 60 on the Western Front including 10 heavy bombers.
After the war [ edit ]
Swastika) and markings of Major Erich Rudorffer's mount of JG 54 when stationed at Immola, Fw 190 A8/N reproduction by Flug Werk GmbH Germany in the colors (minus the) and markings of Major Erich Rudorffer's mount of JG 54 when stationed at Immola, Finland
Rudorffer started out flying DC-2s and DC-3s in Australia. Later on he worked for Pan Am and the Luftfahrt-Bundesamt, Germany's civil aviation authority. Rudorffer was one of the characters in the 2007 Finnish war movie Tali-Ihantala 1944. A Fw 190 participated, painted in the same markings as Rudorffer's aircraft in 1944.[10] The aircraft, now based at Omaka Aerodrome in New Zealand, still wears the colours of Rudorffer's machine. He died in April 2016 at the age of 98.[11] At the time of his death, he was the last living recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords.
Summary of career [ edit ]
Aerial victory claims [ edit ]
Matthews and Foreman, authors of Luftwaffe Aces — Biographies and Victory Claims, researched the German Federal Archives and found records for 219 aerial victory claims, plus two further unconfirmed claims. This figure of confirmed claims includes 134 aerial victories on the Eastern Front and 85 on the Western Front, including 11 four-engined bombers and 12 victories with the Me 262 jet fighter.
Victory claims were logged to a map-reference (PQ = Planquadrat), for example "PQ 35 Ost 53224". The Luftwaffe grid map (Jägermeldenetz) covered all of Europe, western Russia and North Africa and was composed of rectangles measuring 15 minutes of latitude by 30 minutes of longitude, an area of about 360 square miles (930 km2). These sectors were then subdivided into 36 smaller units to give a location area 3 × 4 km in size.
Awards [ edit ]
28 October 1940: Leutnant (Second Lieutenant), effective as of 1 November 1940 20 November 1941: Oberleutnant (First Lieutenant), with a rank age dated 1 October 1941 1 January 1943: Hauptmann (Captain) 1 January 1944: Major (Major), with a rank age dated 1 May 1944
Notes [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Citations [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ].
I have always believed in numbers, in the equations and logics that lead to reason. But after a lifetime of such pursuits I ask, “What truly is logic?” … It is only in the mysterious equations of love that any logical reasons can be found.
—Russell Crowe playing mathematician John Nash in A Beautiful Mind
It’s a nice thought—that some things, like love, are beyond the reach of mathematical techniques, or even, as this speech suggests, that mathematical truth is in the end subservient to the truths that love tells.
On the other hand, there’s John Gottman. Gottman, a professor of psychology at the University of Washington, is probably best-known for the so-called “Love Lab.” Here, couples get strapped into a bundle of physiological sensors, settle down in front of a one-way mirror, and have themselves a fight, while Gottman’s researchers record their every criticism, apology, eye twitch, and pulse spike. By watching a couple for 15 minutes, Gottman says, he can predict success or failure of a marriage with 85 percent accuracy. And in a new book, The Mathematics of Marriage, his research group—which includes mathematician James Murray—argues that a marriage can, in fact, be modeled by a surprisingly simple ensemble of equations.
Can the speech from A Beautiful Mind be so wrong? Is the difference between endless love and a quick divorce no more than a numbers game?
Not quite. Just because marriage is amenable to mathematical analysis doesn’t make it completely predictable, let alone logical. After all, the weather is subject to mathematical rules, too. And on the April day I’m writing this, there are 3 inches of snow on the ground. What kind of math allows such wild results?
To get some ideas, switch to a simpler problem. Suppose you put a marble down on a lumpy surface. What happens? It depends where you put the marble. If the marble is on a slope, it’ll roll in whatever direction offers the steepest descent. But if you balance the marble at the top of a hill or place it at the bottom of a valley, it stays put. The progress of the marble is governed by a differential equation, which means, more or less, that the change in the marble’s position is predictably determined by the marble’s position at the moment.
[And now, the two-paragraph summary of a semester’s course in differential equations. I ask my technically minded readers to forgive the many oversimplifications and omissions here, which are meant to get us quickly to the point of the exercise.]
Differential equations describe all kinds of natural phenomena, from epidemics (the change in the number of infected people depends on the number of currently infected people) to the orbits of the planets (the motion of a planet depends on the gravitational force on it, which in turn depends on the location of other planets, which in turn depends on the original planet’s position, and so on). Some differential equations, like the ones governing the marble, yield predictable and regular results. Others, like those for the weather, are more chaotic. As another popular movie once put it, paraphrasing Edward Lorenz, a butterfly flapping its wings in Taiwan can set off a hurricane in Houston. More prosaically: Small changes in the state of the system can make for drastic, unforeseeable changes in the system’s long-term behavior. Now things are starting to sound like marriage!
The first question we ask about any differential equation we meet is: What are the states of the system in which the system does not change? Such a state is called an equilibrium. For an epidemic, an equilibrium might be a low but stable incidence of the disease. The equilibria of the marble are the bottoms of valleys and the tops of hills.
The example of the marble brings home the fact that not all equilibria are alike. Put a marble at the bottom of a bowl, and it’s likely to stay there. But balance it atop a hill, and any perturbation, however slight, will send it rolling down. The first kind of equilibrium is called stable, the second unstable. Stable equilibria are important because they’re the places where the system “likes” to end up. Drop a bucket of marbles in a landscape; after a while, you’ll find a lot at the bottoms of valleys, few if any balanced on peaks.
Gottman and his collaborators believe that the development of a marriage is governed—or at least can be described—by a differential equation. On the face of it, this makes sense: The amount of negative emotional expression a husband directs at his wife undoubtedly contributes to changes in her reciprocal feelings. But is this change entirely determined by the current state of the marriage? That seems hard to swallow; but The Mathematics of Marriage argues that just such an assumption yields results that match well with Gottman’s decades of clinical data on couples.
The idea that marriages obey differential equations might not be so scary; after all, this only seems to say that the course of a marriage is as regular, in the long term, as weather.
But Gottman is quite specific about the differential equations he has in mind. And according to these equations, marriage isn’t like the weather. It’s like the marble.
Marriages, Gottman’s group says, have equilibria. Where they are and what they’re like depend on the characteristics of the individuals and of the marriage. Some couples may have all their stable equilibria in states where the marriage is desperately unhappy; luckier couples may have all their equilibria in agreeable states. And some couples—the most interesting ones, from the point of view of marital therapy—have both happy and unhappy equilibria.
This model has one flaw that should be obvious. The marble, once it’s at a stable equilibrium, doesn’t move. But a marriage, as we know, can shift in an instant from blissful to miserable and vice versa. If the cold equations are the whole story, how can this be?
The answer to this question is the most interesting idea in The Mathematics of Marriage. The key idea is that the differential equations describing the marriage can change with time. The results are easiest to envision in marble world. Imagine a landscape with two equilibria—one (“happy marriage”) in the bowl of a volcano, and the other (“screaming-and-throwing-plates marriage”) in a deep valley. Both are stable equilibria for the marble; where the marble ends up depends on its starting position ("wedding day”). Suppose the marble ends up in the volcano. And suppose that, with time, the bowl begins to fill in with dirt, growing shallower and shallower. Now the center of the bowl remains an equilibrium, and the marble stays put, until a certain critical moment is reached—the dirt piles higher than the bowl’s rim, and the peak of the volcano switches from concave to convex. At that moment, the equilibrium ceases to be stable, and the marble rolls down to the unhappy valley. Likewise, a marriage, under the pressure of quite gradual changes in circumstance, can suddenly collapse. What’s more, returning the circumstances to their prior state should not be expected to repair the marriage; digging a new hole in the volcano won’t make the marble jump out of the valley!
The mathematical formalism addressing such phenomena, catastrophe theory, was extremely faddish not so long ago; as a result, attempts to apply catastrophe theory are often met with automatic skepticism. But the Gottman group’s appeal to catastrophe in the marriage model seems to me quite reasonable, at least in principle. And, as honest theoreticians must, they offer empirical predictions, which can be confirmed or rejected by experiment—for instance, that a marriage is less likely to succeed when the spouses are individually more prone toward negative emotional expression.
The theory’s attractiveness is hard to deny. It neatly presents marriage as a process both mathematical and unpredictable, both stable and prone to catastrophe. Even the John Nash character in A Beautiful Mind would have to agree—love is like that.It’s been over a year since we last published a list of places in Columbus where you can buy and refill growlers. It’s a popular search query on Drink Up Columbus, so we wanted to share an updated list.
A brief introduction to growlers for the uninitiated: a growler is a half-gallon glass jug that is filled with beer. It’s eco-friendly (no waste created), it’s fresh (straight from the keg) and it’s usually about the same price or cheaper than a six-pack of quality craft beer. Beer will stay fresh in a sealed growler for 7-10 days (some claim a lot longer with proper refrigeration and some electric tape around the cap). After opening you should plan to empty in one evening, though I’ve enjoyed some growlers up to two days after opening.
So with that, here’s a list of breweries, bars and retail shops in Central Ohio where you can currently fill a growler. Some places will fill growlers, but don’t actually sell the glass jugs. And other places will not fill a growler that was purchased elsewhere. And while some claim it is illegal to fill a growler that is not labeled with the brewery/bar where it was filled, the Ohio Division of Liquor Control assured me that it was not illegal. I tried to note the fill-only and fill-own-only businesses.
Barley’s Smokehouse & Brewpub
1130 Dublin Road, (614) 485-0BBQ, barleysbrewing.com
Growler hours: Monday-Thursday 11am-12pm, Friday-Saturday 11am-2am, Sunday 12-11pm
Note: will only fill their own growlers
Barley’s Brewing Company (Ale House No. 1)
467 North High Street, (614) 228-ALES, barleysbrewing.com
Growler hours: Monday-Friday 11am-2am, Saturday-Sunday 12pm-2am
Note: will only fill their own growlers
Barrel and Bottle
59 Spruce Street, (614) 221-5550, northmarket.com
Growler hours: Monday 9am–5pm, Tuesday-Friday 9am-7pm, Saturday 8am-5pm, Sunday 12-5pm
BJs Restaurant and Brewhouse
5141 Tuttle Crossing and 1414 Polaris Parkway, bjsbrewhouse.com
Growler hours: Monday-Thursday 11am-11pm, Friday 11am-1am, Saturday 10am-1am, Sunday 10am-11pm
Buckeye Lake Brewery
5176 Walnut Road (Buckeye Lake), (614) 464-BREW, buckeyelakebrewery.com
Growler hours: Monday-Thursday 4-10pm, Friday 3-11pm, Saturday 1-11pm, Sunday 1-9pm
Note: will only fill their own growlers, but will trade you another growler for one of theirs
Columbus Brewing Company
525 Short Street, (614) 464-BREW, columbusbrewingco.com
Growler hours: Monday-Thursday 11am-10pm, Friday 11am-11pm, Saturday 5pm-11pm
Elevator Brewery and Draught Haus
161 North High Street, (614) 228-0500, elevatorbrewing.com
Growler hours: Monday-Thursday 11am-12am, Friday 11am-2am, Saturday
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have a vanilla cashew layer with a bit of tang like masarpone and a creamy cocoa coffee layer. Together they feel like a tiramisu in icecream fudge form. Dont like coffee? just make a vanilla and chocolate version. Or add a layer of cookie dough instead of cocoa layer for fudge sandwiches! Easy and perfect for valentines day or any day of the week.
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These fudge bites retain their shape in the fridge too. I like them from the freezer as they are sturdy and less messy. I also like them sliced smaller so they are bite size. No biting into the cold bar needed then! You can also serve these as ice cream. Scoop so you get both layers and serve. The almond extract adds an amazing amaretto like flavor. Use amaretto liquor if you like.
If you ake these, do let me know in the comments! or Tag me on Instagram
More treats for the day Grainfree Chocolate Cookies with candied ginger, Some fudgy Almond Butter Chocolate Bars, Chickpea flour chocolate Chip cookies, and a pretty Peanut Butter Chocolate Marble Cake.
18 More Valentines day Chocolate options here.
Layer the creamy coffee and cashew layers. Dust with cocoa powder or chocolate shavings and freeze.
Slice and serve.At the beginning of last year, I posted a list of things Apple can and should do during 2013. It’s time to settle up. Because I’m feeling scholastic, I’ll give a letter grade to each item.
Ship OS X 10.9 and iOS 7. Done and done, with only a few minor bumps in the road. A-
Diversify the iPhone product line. “There needs to be more than one iPhone,” I wrote. This is a drum I’ve been beating for many years. Apple finally made it happen in 2013 with the cleverly conceived iPhone 5C. I’m disappointed that the 5C doesn’t have more internal changes beyond a slightly larger-capacity battery, and I’m still anxiously awaiting an iPhone with a larger screen, but Apple got the important parts right. The 5C is a good phone, and it’s easily distinguished from the 5S. B+
Keep the iPad on track. The iPad Air is impressive, and the mini finally went Retina. On the downside, the creaky old iPad 2 lives on, the iPad Air really deserves more RAM, and a larger “iPad Pro” is still off in the hazy future. The iPad is “on track,” for sure, but exciting times are still ahead. A-
Introduce more, better Retina Macs. The latest Retina MacBook Pro has Intel’s Iris Pro 5200 graphics, finally giving the integrated GPU enough muscle to handle all those pixels. Apple also kept around an option for a discrete GPU on the high-end model. But the MacBook Air and iMac are still excluded from the Retina club, and even the mighty Mac Pro has extremely limited high-DPI options. We’ll get ’em next year, right Tim? B-
Make Messages work correctly. It’s difficult to measure the scope and frequency of problems in Messages based solely on blog posts and tweets, but I feel safe in saying that weird behavior still exists and is likely to be seen by anyone who uses Messages every day. Hope is fading. D
Make iCloud better. The iCloud Core Data team got a chance to regroup in Mavericks. It may be too little, too late, but at least it’s a step in the right direction. More broadly, iCloud still doesn’t have a good reputation for reliability, and debugging problems related to it remains difficult. If the only user-accessible control for a service is a single checkbox, it had better “just work.” iCloud has yet to earn that label. C
Resurrect iLife and iWork. Be careful what you wish for, I suppose. Apple did finally release new versions of the applications formerly known as the iLife and iWork suites, but the focus on simplicity and feature parity with the web and iOS versions left Mac users wanting more. It does not feel like an upgrade worthy of the years that have passed since the last major revisions of these applications. B-
Reassure Mac Pro lovers. Apple was thoroughly convincing in its rededication to the Mac Pro, presenting a dramatic introduction video at WWDC for its radical new high-performance hardware. It’s not for everyone, but it represents a hell of a turnaround for a once-neglected product. Let’s hope it doesn’t take 18 months for the next revision to appear. A"Come in, my dear, and rest your soul." ―Auntie Poulet
Auntie Poulet is a character in the Grand Theft Auto series who appears as a main character in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.
Poulet is an elderly Haitian matriarch and the leader of the Haitian gang (which she also uses as her own protection).
Auntie Poulet was voiced by Youree Dell Cleomili Harris, better known as infamous "psychic hotline" spokeswoman Miss Cleo.
Contents show]
Biography
Life up to 1986
Most of Auntie Poulet's life before the late 1980s is unknown. Poulet was born in Port-au-Prince in Haiti. Poulet started both tea and drugs business during her youth. Poulet also founded a small Haitian gang.
From 1984, shortly after the Cubans defeated the Cholos, Poulet and her Haitians gang came to Vice City and took over the Little Haiti district, starting a gang war with Umberto Robina and his Cuban gang.
1986
Poulet gives Tommy Vercetti mind-altering voodoo potions to get him to cooperate in the missions she wants him to undertake. This includes acting against the Cubans, with whom he has friendly relations. However, when the potion's effects wear off, Tommy shows no memory of what he has done for the Haitians.
Ultimately, she cuts her ties with him and wishes that he not return to Little Haiti, but if Tommy does do so, he receives a final phone call from Auntie Poulet ("Why you coming here fee? Me tell you we don't want to see you around here no more"). Following Poulet's final mission, Tommy destroys the Haitians' main drug operations plant.
VCPD Crime Tree Record
Elderly Haitian matriarch.
Believed to be involved in long term feud with Cuban crime families for control of eastern and downtown Vice City.
Heavily protected by Haitian thugs at all times.
Mission Appearances
GTA Vice City
Gallery
Trivia
In the original PS2 version of the game and Xbox version, Auntie Poulet wears a purple dress with matching head wrap. However, in all other releases of the game, she wears a yellow dress with matching head wrap similar to her box-art rendition (except 10th Anniversary Edition for iOS and Android). [1] [2]
Poulet is French for "chicken".
Auntie Poulet is the only female gang boss in 3D Universe; Asuka Kasen, and Catalina were only co-bosses.
At the age of 86, she is one of the oldest living characters in the 3D Universe.
Auntie Poulet's house interior can be seen and entered via trainers. This can be done by entering the VCPD HQ, then leaving the building without using the actual door (e.g. flying outside through the wall) and finally going to her location on the map.
ReferencesBHOPAL: A day before participating in the traditional dussehra procession (path sanchalan) of RSS, Vyapam whistle-blower from Gwalior Ashish Chaturvedi alleged he has been harassed by additional superintendent of police of the city who is a nodal officer for his security under the influence of some Sangh and BJP leaders.Ashish met the director general of police (DGP) Rishi Kumar Shukla at his office in the state capital on Monday and submitted a written complaint demanding a probe against the ASP and other cops involved in his security."In the name of security", the whistle-blower told the DGP, "The cops have been hatching a conspiracy against me at the behest of high profile people connected with RSS and BJP.""Every day, I am harassed," he said.He alleged "involvement of ASP Dinesh Kaushal and security guards meant for my safety are being used for private purpose. When I object, he threatened me with dire consequences."The whistle-blower is a complainant in many important cases of Vypam scam and said his life is under threat.Police decided to provide him security after he registered an FIR on July 16, 2014 leading to arrest of some key accused of Vyapam scam. He is a complainant in at least 5 FIRs and has been a witness in half a dozen cases."Besides, I am also informer in some cases," he said.Superintendent of police Gwalior, Harinarayanchari Mishra denied the allegations made by Ashish against the ASP. He said, "Today a security guard with Ashish has complained that he had run away on a motorbike. The guard was riding a bicycle and could not chase him. This has not happened for the first time."In his complaint to DGP, Ashish has demanded a probe against ASP, "for misusing his official position, dereliction of duty and misuse of government resources."Ashish himself belongs to RSS and said he would be taking part in the annual dussehra procession in Gwalior.Begun in 1929, the Academy Awards and its iconic Oscar statues have become a high-water mark in terms of pagentry and the movies they honor. True, the awards are sometimes overshadowed by the films they snub, but the event continues to hold international attention and has given out 2,809 Oscars for 1,853 in the intervening 83 ceremonies. In that time, the event has picked up some pretty interesting stats and facts, which we’ve chronicled for your pleasure.
1. Oscar winners don’t really own their statues. Upon being presented with their award, winners must sign an agreement stating that they should they wish to sell their statuettes they must first offer them to the Academy for $1. If they refuse, they cannot keep their trophy. The rule has been in effect since 1950, which means that older statues do sometimes appear on the open market. Be prepared to pay a lot more than $1, though: Steven Speielberg bought Bette Davis’ Oscar for $578,000 in 2001 and donated it back to the Academy, and Michael Jackson paid over a million for David Selznick’s award in 1999.
2. The biggest loser in Oscar history is Kevin O’Connell, a sound re-recording engineer. Despite 20 nominations since his work on 1983’s Terms of Endearment, O’Connell has yet to win a single statue. O’Connell’s last nomination came in 2007 for his work on Transformers.
3. To even have your film considered for a nomination, it has to meet some fairly exacting standards: It must be 40 minutes long; on 35mm or 70mm film, or 24- or 48-frame progressive scan Digital Cinema format at a minimum resolution of 2048 by 1080 pixels; and must be screened for paid admission in Los Angeles for at least seven days. You can read all the rules here.
4. That last point about screening in L.A. is particularly interesting as it held up the Charlie Chaplin’s 1952 film Limelight from winning an academy award. When the movie was finally screened in L.A. in 1973, it was nominated and won for Best Original Score.
5. One of the stranger recipients of an Oscar was the British Ministry of Information for their 1941 docudrama Target for Tonight. Not everyday a country’s wartime propaganda organ wins a major award!
6. There has only been one Oscar winner named Oscar: Oscar Hammerstein II, who won two for best song.
7. While the pomp and circumstance of the award ceremony are certainly legendary, the scale of them can be shocking. At the reception afterward, the assembled diners will be presented with 1,200 bottles of champagne, 1,000 spiny lobsters, 1,200 Kumamoto Oysters, and 18kg of caviar. Add in about 7 kg of edible gold dust for the 4,000 chocolate Oscar statues.
8. The Kodak Theater, which has been the most recent home of the Oscars, seats 3,332 people. Of course, not everyone shows up — which is why those famous seat-fillers make $125 an hour making the place look full.
9. In addition to its occasional snubbing of worthy films, the Oscars have also become somewhat notorious for overly long and emotional acceptance speeches. This came to a head in 2002, where the ceremony ran an astounding four hours and twenty-three minutes. Since then, the Academy has enacted the 45-second rule, where speeches longer than 45 seconds will be cut off by the orchestra — which is only slightly less awkward then watching full grown adults sob and ramble to their hearts content.
10. On the subject of acceptance speeches, the record for shortest speech is shared by William Holden and renowned director Alfred Hitchcock. They both simply said, “Thank you.”
11. While the Oscar staute is perhaps the most recognizable icon of the event, the phrase “And the winner is…” is perhaps even more famous. Originally used by the award’s presenters to announce the recipient of an award, the phrase was quietly abandoned in 1989. Since then, the preferred lead-in has been “And the Oscar goes to…”, presumably to make the losers feel better.
(via Wikipedia, Oddee, About.com, Empire, BBC)
Relevant to your interestsHello and welcome to this very special Slack Chat. Worlds is just around the corner, and we’re writing this on the eve of 1st October (aka Armageddon). To see out the old meta and usher in the new, myself and four other Netrunners are going to be playing a game of Buy/Sell/Hold as we try and figure out what the next few months of competitive Netrunner is going to look like. Here’s the story so far:
The year is 2*17, and four industrious traders have just received word of an impending Most Wanted List about to hit the Net, with some big names on the chopping block. The Fake Financial Trading Markets are already in turmoil with the recently announced so-called “rotato” and “core 2.0” M&As that have dominated recent casts, so it’s a perfect time for our traders to make a few extra TT Credits using this new insider information…
For our readers, this is what the terminology we’ll be using means:
Before we begin, a quick run down of the stats from Know The Meta, which we’ll use as our baseline. Prior to any implementation of rotation, Core 2 or Ban/Restricted list, the faction split of the Top 30% of corps decks at tournaments that took place during the last 3 data packs looked like this:
And for the runners:
Anarch – 43%
Shaper – 28%
Criminal – 27%
Minifaction – 1.3%
circadia (Sam Burdock): Any surprises there?
callmedutch (Rufus Eyre-Varnier): seems about right
ouroboros (Dan Strong): More than 1% minis!?
😉
circadia: Yeah Sunny was crushing it in like… two tournaments?
callmedutch: some people like to dream Dan
ouroboros: I think I might expect NBN to be a bit higher
sync was well placed
but it wasn’t that prevalent
guy.patching (Guy Patching): Sometimes you have to factor in the “cool” factor. NBN wasn’t a “cool” thing to take to a GNK / SC if you wanted to be different you’d do something different. Some of these tournaments were not super intense nationals.
nemamiah (Chris Dyer): That’s in line with what I saw for the past three months
Though I suspect if you just looked at the last data pack Criminal would be well above Shaper
ouroboros: Oh huh, shaper were above criminal?
callmedutch: yeah Lock Hayley and co took a real dive later on
circadia: Chris is correct, Crimson Dust was good for Criminal
nemamiah: Shaper were above criminal were until The Great and Powerful Turtle came out
ouroboros: HAIL
callmedutch:
the turtle that would be king
circadia: Well on that note, let’s crack on! Ding ding! (That’s the trading floor bell, obv.) First up – the corps.
guy.patching: (ALL HAIL THE BELL)
circadia: Let’s begin with the green-haired stepchild of competitive netrunner. Weyland – buy/sell/hold?
callmedutch: BUY
ouroboros: BUY BUY BUY BABY
nemamiah: Buy buy buy!
guy.patching: I’ll buy, but with neither capitals nor repetition.
circadia: Go on Guy, why the reticence?
guy.patching: I think we’re going to go through a very brief period where everyone will laugh and say that Weyland are now the faction to fear tags in, and burn some yellow, and they’ll regret doing that once someone turns their fiendish attention back to NBN. So Weyland will be left with the 7th point problem, and it will be not as great at finishing as other factions
That said I’m still a “buy”, just think it’ll be a readjustment rather than a zoomzoom climb
ouroboros: I certainly won’t be buying stock in weyland kill decks
callmedutch: I think Guy, you’re underestimating how good Skorp is right now
callmedutch: Don deck is basically untouched by changes no?
ouroboros: Don’s skorp rush is fearsome, and I personally think Titan FA is also a deck to be feared
nemamiah: My position is based on the fact that I really didn’t rate any Weyland decks before rotation. There was just too much hate around
But now there’s much less Strike, probably less Critic, and Weyland didn’t lose anything relevant
circadia: When I think about Weyland I think about three broad archetypes, Garg HHN prison, Titan FA and Skorp Rush. Those all seem fairly well placed after the changes? But they all have hate too.
callmedutch: oh yeah Gaga is still good too bluergh
with only Museum on the Restricted list they can have that and Whampoa + Preemptive to provide recursion
nemamiah: Titan fast advance and Skorp rush feel like the most ‘obvious’ decks from October for me. Doesn’t necessarily mean they’re the best, but lots of people will play them
I’m not buying Gagarin though
I think people are probably underestimating how significant Mumbad City Hall was to Gagarin decks
ouroboros: Yeah I don’t think Weyland will be the dominant faction by any stretch, but it has tier 1/1.5 decks now, whereas pre-rotation it just had nothing
guy.patching: I am working on the principle that it was still winning 14% of Top 30. I think it’ll cap out at around 20-25%. And I think it’ll do that in Skorp, and possibly mad Jemison.
circadia: Bold prediction on Jem there. I’d love to see that happen
guy.patching: If I make 20-30 bold predictions then in six months time I can point to the one that’s right, nod sagely, and go “I’m a genius”
ouroboros: It’s worth noting as well that the banlist helps Titan a lot
as runners now basically have to choose between critic, strike and clot lock
rather than packing all 3
nemamiah: The only argument against Titan is that your worst matchup is Shaper, and that’s probably not where you want to be right now
circadia: Moving onto the scourge of Worlds 2016… NBN – buy/sell/hold?
ouroboros: Sell
callmedutch: hold
guy.patching: Buy
nemamiah: Hold, with a slightly optimistic outlook
circadia: Variation!
Dan, you’re the odd one out
What’s wrong with our favourite news network?
ouroboros: Pre-rotation there was precisely one good NBN deck: Fiery Sync
Sync is dead
callmedutch: as we know it
ouroboros: That said banning Aaron makes a big difference, and Sol and CTM may be making a comeback
but I remain skeptical
to be honest with you I’m verging on a hold
circadia: I was gonna say re: CTM, table scoring AR Enhanced Security in CTM could be crushing
nemamiah: I kind of agree with Dan, but the difference is that before there were no great NBN decks, one very good one and no good ones
Now there are no great or very good ones, but maybe three or four good ones?
So the faction is weaker at the top end, but deeper in options than it was before
ouroboros: That’s a good point Chris, although the maximum power of an NBN deck has probably decreased, the average may have risen
callmedutch: are we all forgetting that NBN has the best card for 0 inf, Special Report!
ouroboros: You and that card
it’s not good Rufus
guy.patching: I think you’ve got to look at the amount of cards that used to sit on the table and the NBN player would go “well, this is terrible and I hate my opponent” that are now gone away.
circadia: Absolutely, Astro and News disappearing makes NBN far less threatening as a faction
ouroboros:
guy.patching: NACH – Marron – Temujin – Moose. All huge new for a faction that wants to say “You’re at risk of a tag problem here, you’ll need money”
callmedutch: I agree but runner econ has been destroyed as well, plus Mopus is on the restricted list
nemamiah: It’s hard to overstate just how bad Aaron was for NBN, no matter how fond of hyperbole you are. Even though the card it was designed to shut down, Breaking News, is gone, the fact that Aaron is banned makes me feel a lot better about the faction
circadia: A huge thing to consider is that every corp deck is getting a 3 inf bump because of Jackson going
Except for NBN
callmedutch: well its 3 inf bump from Breaking News sam
circadia: D’oh
ouroboros: That’s true to an extent, Sam
but corps will probably still need to splash for some flooding mitigation in most cases
callmedutch: but my Special Report
ouroboros: Miraju stock is going through the roof right now.
guy.patching: Its a bubble.
callmedutch: all hail Dans Miraju tactics
nemamiah: As an aside, can I buy all the stock in Preemptive Action and hold a fire sale on all other Jackson ‘replacements’?
circadia: No, because you can’t buy stock in neutral cards
That’s like… buying stock in the government or something
nemamiah: Bonds, you mean
ouroboros: So it’s government bonds?
circadia: Whatever, I didn’t think the analogy through
nemamiah: Anyway, I think the point that NBN need a ‘victory condition’ is absolutely correct
guy.patching: See I think there’s a point at which a game where they runner is tagged to high heaven and NBN can exchange at will makes the runner victory condition a lot trickier as well, and puts NBN far more in control of the game than we might suspect
nemamiah: The problem is that most runners can let NBN get to five points
At which point they’re so setup that you’ll never be able to reach that ‘tag hell’
ouroboros: I mean who knows, with runner econ tanked, they might even be able to score out… behind ice!
dum dum DUUUUUM
callmedutch:
circadia: Sol Glacier is an archetype that will be revisited, I’m sure
(Iced Lemonade decks, I call them)
ouroboros: Scarcity of Resources is pretty brutal right now.
nemamiah: Yeah, Scarcity has never looked better
guy.patching: I don’t think a runner that is “set up” looks as dominant as it once did
With the loss of huge econ cards and the Medium delivery system now offline
And corps being willing to spend on big ice
I think the idea of a crushing end of game board state is really difficult
circadia: Yeah, you choose between Opus or clot lock, can’t have both
ouroboros: I don’t know, Congress Kate style durdle-shapers look pretty scary
there’s still a lot of runner drip econ
I suppose the hope is that Weyland will outpace them
nemamiah: All the explosive, reliable and early economy is gone, but that just means that it takes longer to set that oppressive board state up
If you give them time to establish it it’s still just as oppressive as it ever was
ouroboros: I agree with Chris here
nemamiah: And you have worse tools to counter it
callmedutch: I feel like we’re getting off topic
guy.patching: Aye. I think I’ll just agree to disagree with the world champ
circadia: Let’s move on before Rufus brings up Special Report again. Next up: Jinteki – buy/sell/hold?
guy.patching: Buy
callmedutch: hold
ouroboros: This is a tough one… sell I think
nemamiah: Yeah, I’ll sell
But with the caveat that I tend to chronically underrate Personal Evolution decks
ouroboros: Where’s our :crying-caprice: emoji
I’m in denial about PE
nemamiah: We can get flatlined together, Dan
callmedutch: I almost got you Dan, even with Caldera out
circadia: Who are you buying stock in, Guy?
guy.patching: I think the reason that I’m keenest to buy is that I’m not specifying just one ID. PE basically got to write a lot of the current changes. Meanwhile all of a sudden Aginfusion is saying “Are you really going to take Employee Strike as your chosen card” and a variety of decks are still sitting on Marcus Batty in a world where Shapers are having to think hard about Clone Chips.
It has too many weird vectors of attack, and too many potentially huge IDs, to not want to buy it right now
circadia: Yeah that’s huge – Aginfusion got a big bump, no?
callmedutch: yeah Excalibur cheese worries me
ouroboros: I strongly disagree that Aginfusion got a bump
Caprice is so core to jinteki glacier, and the turtle makes Excalibur very sad.
nemamiah: So my sell is based on the fact that before, AgInfusion was pretty good, IG was playable and there was some net damage stuff that might catch people out.
Now Aginfusion is still pretty good, IG is unplayable and there is some net damage stuff that might catch people out
circadia: IG is a super interesting one
Because people were saying that it was going to be the deck to beat
ouroboros: They were?
nemamiah: I was all in on IG until the MWL update gutted its agenda suite
circadia: That’s it, right
Loss of Obo and GFI just killed it
nemamiah: And you’ve lost Fetal to rotation, so you can’t even compensate for that
circadia: I don’t even know what an IG agenda suite would look like, it’s that bad
3 TFPs and…
ouroboros: uuuh braintrust?
callmedutch: 3 Obo 3 TFP 1 Philotic?
ouroboros: And no Bioethics?
sure
guy.patching: If you’ll excuse me I have a tiny violin to play for IG
circadia:
nemamiah: All Shapers will have multiple Sac Cons, by the way. Batty cheese is much worse than it used to be, and you really don’t want to be firing that dude for a simple end the run
I do still think AgInfusion is good though
callmedutch: Palana is still ok imo
circadia: I think the main idea is to fire Batty with an Excal, then Bump or Nisei
Yeah weirdly I’ve seen lots of Palana since MWL update
What’s that about?
ouroboros: Good rush ID
nemamiah: Econ IDs are good
callmedutch: Panic Pal, Sam
guy.patching: I think you may well see lots of Sac Cons, I’d agree, but its just another thing Shaper have to have on the board before challenging a Nisei. and all of the time they’re doing that they’re not getting credits
But again I feel I digress
circadia: We’ll get to Shaper…
(said every competitive player ever)
nemamiah: You can’t play Netrunner in a vacuum
ouroboros: One day Chris
one day my dreams of space netrunner will be realised
I’ll be the first person to play netrunner in a vacuum
guy.patching: (also, as an aside, Jinteki ice suite unhit)
nemamiah: It’s better, right?
callmedutch: I wouldn’t run chiyashi right now
nemamiah: Kakugo and Komainu are unholy terrors
ouroboros: Kakugo, what a god-awful oppressive mistake ice
guy.patching: That’s what I meant by “unhit” I meant “unhit by Parasite”
Obviously…
ouroboros: I like that Komainu is good again though
circadia: Faerie and Sunny breakers still exist for Komainu
But Kakugo… yeah
ouroboros: Your kakugo answer is basically caldera/feedback filter
Shame net filter rotated huh
guy.patching: … net Shield
nemamiah: I think every single Jinteki deck takes OboPro as its restricted card
ouroboros: 100%
callmedutch: yes
circadia: Probably
ouroboros: that agenda is bonkers
guy.patching: I think some PE will take Bioethics
But you won’t know it until its too late
ouroboros: nah seems bad tbh
like
bioethics is cute, but obokata is so solid in PE
circadia: I think you’d be more likely to see Bioethics in PU
Because of the double dipping
guy.patching: Well feel free to run my facedown remotes to check..
circadia: No thanks…
ouroboros: installs Caldera
circadia: And the giant of 2017… until now?! Haas-Bioroid – buy/sell/hold?
callmedutch: buy
ouroboros: Sell
guy.patching: Sell, but keep the bulk of the stock.
nemamiah: Yeah, agree with Guy
ouroboros: Are you really saying you think HB is better now Rufus?
For the record I also agree with Guy
circadia: Explain yourself Rufus!
guy.patching: grabs pitchforks
callmedutch: HB is still really strong rn
the Fairchildren have come out to play
ouroboros: Sure it’s ok but it’s not Moons Rufus!
You’re a madman
you’ll be ruined
nemamiah: Moons and CI were streets ahead of every other Corp pre rotation
They were so obviously the best decks that it wasn’t even funny
guy.patching: I will say that we’re all about to see a lot of MCA Austerity policy
callmedutch: CI spam decks are making waves on jnet
circadia: So if you think NBN’s stock has dropped off with no scoring plan, Weyland you may still have reason to doubt, and Jinteki is about the same… HB is still king?
ouroboros: I think even if HB is still king it’s a clear sell
guy.patching: Yeah. what you’re saying is that it’ll be around 40%+ of top decks
And that’s a big ask for any faction
nemamiah: I think HB are still good, there’s about four different viable CI builds
That’s why it’s not a hard sell
But I don’t think you can overstate how good they were before
ouroboros: Yeah no one’s saying HB are bad, but there’s absolutely no way they’re better than they were pre-rotation
callmedutch: I will make it my mission to make AoT good
guy.patching: I don’t think it’ll be a hard mission by any stretch
circadia: AoT can get bonkers pretty quickly, I’ve found
guy.patching: Absolutely
I think it’ll win games, rather than just (in the hands of the right player) absolutely crush games, like it did in the moons hayday
circadia: Like I’d venture to say it’s the second best HB ID
nemamiah: I can get on board with that, Sam
ouroboros: Yeah I agree with that assessment also.
nemamiah: Especially because 12 influence hurts much less than it used to
callmedutch: I think getting 20 creds off CFC Excavation is pretty nuts
ouroboros: Best Case Evaluation Rufus strikes again
guy.patching: Like, can I tell a quick anecdote, it’s about Chris?
nemamiah: Book clock!
ouroboros: Book clock!
circadia: Does it involve whispers Brainstorm?
guy.patching: No. Brainstorm is a secret tech that shall remain secret..
nemamiah: (I broke a Brainstorm at Nats. Brings my total record to 4 Brainstorms rezzed against me, 15 brain damage suffered)
guy.patching: I’m watching the final of BABW at Reading
And its Chris versus Jonny. Chris is attacking Jonny’s Moons
And not long into it he siphons HQ with a rezzed Caprice
To me, the reason you sell HB right now is that you’re not seeing decks that are going to tell the very best players in the game “do utterly mad things, because the only way you win this is by doing really bold high risk plays”
That’s my book clock. And I am hoping it is illustrative of the point
circadia: What’s a book clock?
ouroboros: story time
guy.patching: Story time!
ouroboros:
circadia: Goddamit
ouroboros: it’s a meme!
circadia: But let’s talk about Moons in CI
Because… you have VLC to create absurd power plays with SFT
nemamiah: It’s still pretty good, right?
But not mind bendingly ridiculous like it used to be
circadia: And Restore is an ok card
callmedutch: is archived mem still in core?
circadia: Yes
callmedutch: yeah CI seems good
nemamiah: That’s why CI is still good, because in a game low on explosive economy cards the Clearances are way above the baseline
And it’s why is flexible, because playing those six cards enables you to do almost anything you want
ouroboros: So, I’m not the greatest deckbuilder, but I find that moons CI decks struggle to get a good number of assets in after slotting all the clearances
I think going ahead we might just see CI going all-in on op econ more than using assets
circadia: I think you can build it with just VLC and standard moons asset spam. But I’m not good at moons, so I wouldn’t know…
callmedutch: tbf i only played 1 CI recently and it was Ashigaru + Slee combo
circadia: Did you die Rufus?
callmedutch: yes….
circadia: Uh oh…
callmedutch: I forgot Slee was a thing
ouroboros: I’ve been seeing a lot of Stinson CI
which is
bizarre
but also probably ok?
circadia: That’s important though
Is it Sandburg CI? Ashigaru? Moons? Some weird 7 point combo?
They’re all viable-ish
nemamiah: Yeah, I’d expect CI to be just as dominant in faction as ETF ever was, at least for the near future
circadia: Ok! To wrap our corp discussion, let’s have a quick round of over/under for predicting the World’s meta. Over meaning more likely or more prevalent, and under meaning less likely/less prevalent.
Asset spam will make up 50% of decks on day 2 at this year’s worlds – over/under?
ouroboros: under
callmedutch: under
nemamiah: Way under
guy.patching: Under
ouroboros: yeah quite substantially under
circadia: Whizzard, you did your job
And now you may rest
ouroboros: I mean really the restricted list did most of the work
the wildcard here is that if someone makes CTM good it might be over
guy.patching: That said. I think there will be decks with 4-5 remotes
Just… not 20
circadia: Redefining spam… I like it.
nemamiah: Right, I have quite a high bar to clear before you get to spam
So CtM never qualified as asset spam in my mind
circadia: Next one:
There’s a 20% chance we’ll all be getting full art Project Atlas next year when Weyland wins worlds – over/under?
callmedutch: over
guy.patching: Under
nemamiah: Push?
callmedutch: less than 20% guy!!!
really?!?!
I think its 25-30%
guy.patching: Yep. more like 10
ouroboros: hmm I need to think about this one
I’m going to go over I think
circadia: I have no idea what Push means, but I’m guessing
|
friend has the same amount of access to love, intimacy, physical affection, support, etc. That means a nonsexual/nonromantic friend is just as likely to become an RA’s life partner or one of their life partners. Relationship anarchy provides the kind of respect, security, opportunity, equality, and love that a celibate asexual needs, especially if they are single or they’re not necessarily looking for just one romantic life partner to fulfill all of their major needs in a traditional romantic relationship.
Relationship anarchy should be important to the asexual community because it is the only method of relationships that removes sex as an indicator of relationship value, of a partner’s value, and as the line of separation between important, serious bonds and less important, casual bonds. Relationship anarchy should be important to aromantics because it is the only philosophy of love that strips romance of its supremacy and power, that creates the freedom for nonromantic companions to experience a deeper emotional intimacy and physical intimacy than what mere common friendship allows. Relationship anarchy should matter to mixed orientation sexual people because it is the only method of relationships, that supports the idea of having both nonsexual romantic relationships and nonromantic sexual relationships and creating equality between those two groups of relationships in a person’s life.
I think an aromantic person who still wants a life partner or who wants multiple life partners, none of whom they’re romantically attracted to or involved with and maybe even none of whom they’re sexually involved with, is already something of a relationship anarchist. I think a mixed orientation allosexual who actually goes out of their way to separate romantic relationships from sexual relationships, who can genuinely pull off a nonromantic sexual friendship or a nonsexual romantic friendship, who wants to build a family or a life partnership with a nonsexual partner, is already something of a relationship anarchist. I think in a way, an asexual who is both celibate and polyamorous is already something of a relationship anarchist.
The polyamorous community can be extremely focused on sex and on the sexual aspect of having more than one romantic relationship at the same time, and this can feel isolating to poly asexuals in general, especially celibate aces. Relationship anarchy, because it isn’t just about romantic/sexual relationships but about all personal/intimate relationships, can feel more asexual-friendly (and aromantic-friendly) right off the bat and thus provide a more comfortable context for aces and aros to explore nonmonogamy and alternative ways of loving, organizing relationships, etc.
Okay, this sounds really complicated and confusing. Could you give me some concrete examples of relationship anarchy in action?
Jessica’s a heterosexual and a relationship anarchist. She has sexual relationships with men, as many as she desires at the same time. Sometimes, she may develop more than friendly feelings for a sexual partner, but all of her sexual relationships are open and none of them are on the Relationship Escalator. Jessica also has a cohabiting partner named Tracy, who she isn’t sexually attracted to or involved with, and Tracy spends just as much or more time with Jessica as her sexual partners. Jessica has made a commitment to her Tracy that they will continue to live together as long as they’re happy doing so, and no sexual relationship with a third party can challenge that commitment (though maybe they would consider inviting a sexual partner to join them in their home). Jessica and Tracy plan on raising a child together. They have a physically intimate relationship—they cuddle and hold hands and kiss each other on the cheek and sometimes sleep in the same bed—and they’re also both physically intimate with their sexual partners and with other friends they’re not sexually involved with. Joe’s a homoromantic asexual. He strongly prefers celibacy. He has a romantic relationship with Taylor, a gay man who has sex with other people but not with Joe. Joe also has a friendship with a woman named Rachel who’s just as important to him as his male partner, and he figures Rachel into all of his major life decisions and plans. Joe and Rachel love to be physically affectionate with each other. Rachel has her own romantic and/or sexual partner(s). Joe has a romantic friendship with another man named Paul who he loves just as much as Taylor. Joe and Paul’s relationship looks very similar to Joe and Taylor’s relationship, but it’s a little different simply because Paul isn’t interested in dating or having sex with Joe in the first place. Paul’s straight. Gina’s an aromantic asexual. She will not have sex with anyone, and she’s not interested in traditional romantic relationships. She lives with her partner and best friend, Ruby. They have separate bedrooms and they’re not overly physically affectionate with each other but they love each other to the point where they want to spend the rest of their lives together. Ruby’s a heteromantic asexual, and she has a nonsexual romantic relationship with Don. Don’s a bisexual guy, and he has a sexual relationship with his boyfriend. Don and Ruby do not plan on living together; they like living apart. And Ruby will not move out of the home she shares with Gina anyway. If Ruby decides to have a child or children in the future, both Gina and Don will be co-parents (assuming Don’s still in the picture).
What’s the point of relationship anarchy? Why go through the trouble of figuring out how to organize so many deeply involved relationships and juggle the needs and desires of so many people at the same time?
I think each Relationship Anarchist is going to be different, perform their version of RA uniquely, and probably come to RA for different reasons….. But if I’m speaking for myself, all I can say is that this is simply the way I am and the way I’ve always thought, since childhood. There is no natural or distinct difference to me between “romantic” love and “nonromantic/friendly” love. I’ve always idealized gray-area friendships that take on a lot of the properties of normative romance, without actually including romantic attraction or sex. It doesn’t make any sense to me to limit intimacy or love to one romantic-sexual relationship or to romantic/sexual relationships in general. It doesn’t make sense to me to prohibit physical or emotional intimacy and affection in nonromantic friendships or to make one couple relationship superior in any way to all other relationships in a person’s life. It doesn’t make sense to me to draw an arbitrary line in the sand and announce that if you love someone “this much,” then that’s friendship, but if you love someone “that much,” it’s “romance” (and sex, by default).
I’m an RA because I think the idea of having a life overflowing with real love and real intimacy, a life in which everywhere you go you have at least one person to love and support you and give you whatever attention you need, is beautiful. I’m an RA because while I don’t love many people, my natural tendency is to love every person I love with passion, to want physical/sensual intimacy with all of them, to want one-on-one quality time with all of them, to experience emotional vulnerability with all of them. Not just one person who stands in a culturally-designated role of “Romantic Partner.” I’m an RA because the Romantic Sex-Based Relationship Hierarchy is deeply offensive to me as a celibate asexual who seeks and values passionate friendship above anything, and because conventional monogamy–with or without sex–sounds and feels very limited, narrow, and suffocating to me on an emotional level. I want to be free, I want to love freely, and I want to be able to follow my natural impulses in all of my personal relationships, not just one special relationship. I’m an RA because I like making my own rules, rather than following someone else’s or mainstream society’s. I want love to be abundant in my life, and I want to love as much as I can, as many people as I can, as freely as I can. Relationship anarchy is the only way of life that offers me that freedom and abundance.There is no doubt that race helped Barack Obama win the presidency not once, but twice. Much of the country was ready for its first African-American president and it didn't matter how inexperienced he was, or how dubious his past and his affiliations were. All that mattered to enough voters was that it was "his time."
African-Americans, of course, came out in droves to vote for the man who could, and ultimately, would become the nation's first black president. Needless to say, the same black voter turnout numbers will not be the same for presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton:
The number of African-Americans who voted in Tuesday’s primaries plummeted by an estimated 40 percent in Ohio, 38 percent in Florida and 34 percent in North Carolina compared with the 2008 Democratic primary when Barack Obama was on the ballot, reported the advocacy group Black Votes Matter.
According to the NY Post, analysts did expect a decline in the number of black Democrat voters this time around, but not to such a dramatic degree. The data spell big trouble for Hillary and great opportunity for Republicans:
“Hillary’s repeated trouncing of Bernie Sanders with the black vote has masked the alarming fact that there has been a dramatic drop-off in black turnout in the Democratic primaries,” said Charlie King, founder of the Black Voters Matter super PAC. The decline provides an opening for likely GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump to win the presidency, King warned. “It will be very hard for the Hillary campaign alone to have a message that excites Reagan Democrats and the 4 million new black Barack Obama voters to come out and vote. That is why Donald Trump poses a real challenge,” he said. “And if that is not corrected, a number of states like Ohio, Florida and Virginia can turn to Republican-leaning states... Trump could become president.”
In 2012, the black vote provided Obama with slim margins of victories over GOP nominee Mitt Romney in Florida (50-49 percent), Ohio (50-48), Virginia (51-48) and Pennsylvania (52-47). It also put North Carolina in play for a Democrat for the first time in decades.
It's important to note that Hillary Clinton is not generating the enthusiasm of most Democrats, really. Of course there will be her tried-and-true supporters who voter for her no matter what, but it's hard to argue that she is leading a movement in the same way Obama did. And this is her Achilles heel. The GOP is well-positioned to win the general election if it plays its cards right for a change.Bengaluru: Venture capital (VC) and private equity (PE) firms cut investments in Indian start-ups by almost a quarter on a sequential basis in the three months to March, the second consecutive quarter they did so, as investors starved of exits and fearful of souring bets hold back cash.
Investors infused some $1.15 billion into Indian start-ups in the first quarter of this year, down as much as 24% from the December quarter, which itself had seen a slump in investments of 48% from the preceding three months, according to a joint report by KPMG and CB Insights.
The $1.15 billion reported by KPMG includes at least $150 million of secondary share sales that went from one set of investors in Snapdeal (Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd) to another.
The number of start-up deals fell 4% to 116 in the quarter, the report said.
The largest deals in the January quarter included $150 million received by online grocer BigBasket; $150 million raised by online marketplace Shopclues; and $50 million raised by Snapdeal, India’s second most valuable e-commerce firm.
“With mounting investor hesitation and concerns of overvaluation, Indian investment continued to decline in the first quarter," KPMG and CB Insights said in the report.
After pumping more than $9 billion into Indian start-ups since the beginning of 2014, investors started pulling back late last year because of a mix of global macroeconomic factors such as a growth slowdown in China, as well as concerns over massive losses incurred by start-ups.
This year, investor caution has increased manifold, resulting in an acute slowdown in funding, fall in valuations and delayed deal closures.
“We have not been in contact with investors to raise funds but the sense we are getting is that there is a wait-and-watch situation that is going on," said Ashish Goel, chief executive at online furniture retailer UrbanLadder. “There is definitely lesser investment in early-stage start-ups when compared to the last 4-5 months and (the number of) deals have certainly reduced."
Even India’s top start-ups are struggling to raise cash at their current valuations.
Mint reported on 14 April that Flipkart Ltd and Snapdeal have held funding talks with several investors over the past six months, all of whom have refused to invest in the companies at their preferred valuations of $15 billion and $6.5 billion, respectively.
Both denied that they have been trying to raise fresh funds.
There are two main reasons why companies are struggling to raise money, said Aseem Khare, co-founder of home services start-up Taskbob, which raised ₹ 28 crore in February.
“First, companies have been using investor money for giving away discounts that have beefed up top-line numbers but have not been able to create brand loyalty. Due to this, the percentage of revenue that comes through discounts is very high and has put doubts on the business model. The second reason is that of unit economics. There are businesses that are solving a problem, but the margins are too low for them to be sustainable or operationally profitable," Khare said. By unit economics, Khare’s reference is to the cost and revenue from one transaction—say, a food delivery order taken online, and fulfilled.
The funding slowdown is not restricted to Indian start-ups alone, said Varun Khaitan, chief executive at home service app UrbanClap.
“The US has much bigger problems. And since some of the biggest investors are US-based, this problem has flowed into India. But if a company is doing well, then irrespective of the environment, it will attract investors," he said.
The report by KPMG and CB Insights confirmed Khaitan’s views and said start-up deals in the US were much lower in the first quarter compared with the peak levels seen in 2015.
“The first quarter of 2016 extended the global decline in VC (venture capital) activity with both total deal volume and deal value declining further following a major dip in the fourth quarter. Some of the factors driving VC investors to take a more measured investment approach include an economic slowdown in China, rising interest rates and an approaching election in the US and a June referendum over the UK’s future in the European Union," the report said.
Investors expect the funding environment to remain depressed for some time to come.
While start-ups have started to conserve cash by reducing discounts and other expenses this year, it’s not clear how young Internet companies will sustain their high growth rates without the lever of ultra-low prices.
“For the slowdown to end and for funding to return in a big way, there needs to be a trigger. Right now, there is a lot of uncertainty over macroeconomic factors like China’s economy and what’s happening to US start-ups. Plus, the Indian unicorns are also facing a rough patch. So it’s hard to see where a positive trigger will come from," an executive at a firm that has invested in Flipkart said on condition of anonymity.
The government has added to the troubles of start-ups with new regulations governing e-commerce.
India on 29 March allowed 100% foreign direct investment in online retail of goods and services under the so-called marketplace model through the automatic route, which would legitimize existing businesses of e-commerce companies operating in India.
Three conditions attached to the government’s approval, however, could either hurt e-commerce companies or force them to find new ways to get around them. One, no group company or seller on a marketplace can contribute more than 25% of the sales generated. Two, marketplaces cannot influence product prices. Three, small sellers will now have to take responsibility of quality of goods and after-sales support.
Many Indian e-commerce companies will have to restructure their businesses as a result of the new regulations, Mint reported on 31 March.
Sharan Poovanna in Bengaluru and Ashna Ambre in Mumbai contributed to this story."Cannabis is my passion, my bread, my home. I feel it is my duty to make sure this amazing plant is preserved and enjoyed. I am a smoker, a grower, a breeder, and a strain hunter. For life."
Franco, the Strain Hunter
May 20th 1974 - January 2nd 2017 "Cannabis is my passion, my bread, my home. I feel it is my duty to make sure this amazing plant is preserved and enjoyed. I am a smoker, a grower, a breeder, and a strain hunter. For life."
Franco, the Strain Hunter
May 20th 1974 - January 2nd 2017 "Cannabis is my passion, my bread, my home. I feel it is my duty to make sure this amazing plant is preserved and enjoyed. I am a smoker, a grower, a breeder, and a strain hunter. For life."
Franco, the Strain Hunter
May 20th 1974 - January 2nd 2017 "Cannabis is my passion, my bread, my home. I feel it is my duty to make sure this amazing plant is preserved and enjoyed. I am a smoker, a grower, a breeder, and a strain hunter. For life."
Franco, the Strain Hunter
May 20th 1974 - January 2nd 2017 "Cannabis is my passion, my bread, my home. I feel it is my duty to make sure this amazing plant is preserved and enjoyed. I am a smoker, a grower, a breeder, and a strain hunter. For life."
Franco, the Strain Hunter
May 20th 1974 - January 2nd 2017
Franco is an icon and helped change so many people’s lives. He will be deeply missed as a brother, father, son, friend and so much more. On his last trip to Africa he contracted Cerebral Malaria and passed away quietly after a short but severe illness. His work and passion for the cannabis plant helped change the world's view and his legacy will live on for generations to come.
In 2007 Franco fell in love with Africa and its people. His love for the plant and people that worked with it earned him immense love and respect right back from Africa and Africans.
After 150 flights in 2016 he still decided to travel to Congo again despite incredibly dangerous political meltdown that was happening at the time he was there. The saddest part of this story is that Franco objective was to assist locals in developing a medicinal landrace oil specifically for treating malaria! A disease whose prevention is so hopelessly underfunded because it primarily affects the poor.
We will love you always brother it's so hard to even imagine life without your laughter, energy and passion.
A message from Arjan Strain Hunter for Franco:
With great sadness I have to inform the world that my dearest brother passed away The Worlds biggest marijuana icon gave his life due to brain malaria fighting for the poorest people on our latest project in congo.
Franco will be remembered as the most passionate dedicated and knowledgeable person that our industry has ever had.
His passion and dedication for the plant was unheard of in the history of our industry. For 17 years we had the best time of our lives traveling and growing in the most crazy parts of the world and spreading the message of cannabis He was my soul mate brother partner and best friend and for most one of the nicest persons I ever met He changed the lives and perception of the cannabis plants for many people in this world It was his duty to preserve this plant for future generations and make it acceptable all over the world especially through our strain hunters documentaries.
Life without him is nearly unthinkable, but knowing him very well he only had one wish and that is that all of us will continue his legacy.
I sincerely hope everyone will remember him like we of the greenhouse and strain hunter family will do I will continue my 34 year fight to change the perception of cannabis with our friends but from now on in his name R.i.s my brother see you upstairs where I am sure you are already building our first grow room And franco don’t worry I will take care of business down here with our brothers and your family.
See you later
arjanFamiliar platforming and basic action
I really want Remember Me to do well. It has an awesome Bladerunner-esque setting going for it, a strong, interesting female lead, and it takes some interesting risks to boot. But based on the hands-on demo I tried today, it still has a ways to go.
I took control of the protagonist Nilin, who was actually my favorite part of the demo. It's clear that she's going to be a big hit when it comes to "new favorite characters of 2013" lists, and her iconic look and attitude ensures potential cross-promotion with future Capcom IPs.
But as an action fan, I just wasn't digging the combat system. It was all fairly simplistic, with less than average AI to boot. Basically, your standard combos are enacted with the X/Y (Square/Triangle) buttons, with the A/X button functioning as a dodge move. There is an emphasis on timing (think Phantasy Star Online), but it's not absolutely necessary for success, as I had no issue beating down the baddies in question with standard attacks, and simple one button dodging.
The demo featured a lot of killing of mindless enemies fairly early in the game, as well as a few unique battles, like one in which I squared off with a ton of little enemies that buffed and protected a larger enemy. It wasn't anything special (basically a kill the adds then kill the big bad encounter), but I get the feeling that Remember Me will expand and diversify these encounters as the game goes on.
From a platforming perspective, it's basically Uncharted lite. There's a bunch of scripted happenings, like enemies falling off a cliff over your head, or bursting pipes, but none of it is nearly as impressive as say, the opening truck over the cliff climb in Uncharted 2, or most of the climbing sequences in the new Tomb Raider. It's also even easier than all of those games, with yellow arrows showing you the "correct" path.
Neo-Paris however, the game's setting, is gorgeous looking. It's sufficiently atmospheric, and really gets the job done at showing off a unique, bleak sci-fi setting that isn't really utilized that much in this current era of media. I really dug the feature that allows you to see memories of hidden areas that have yet to come, forcing you to actually learn the layout of your surroundings with more than just "go here, do this" prompts.
Of course, the final version could have a much more intricate combat system, when the "Combo Lab" mechanic is fully realized, and faster platforming. But with the game releasing this June, I hope they take a look at some of these aforementioned issues.
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Click to open photo gallery:Cyber-attacks on vehicles P-I!
Intro
Ko bi rekao da ću ja jednom pisati o cyber-attacks i hardveru. Znam za jedan post trenutno a to je bilo hakovanje onog Dongle-a sa Švicarske mreže na domaću. I tako se jednom vozam sa drugom u autu, i razmišljamo zašto ne bi provjerili sigurnost sistema na novijim automobilima koji imaju mogućnost kompjuterske dijagnostike općenito.
Zašto ne?
Za početak, ono što nas je prvo odvuklo od toga jesu finansije. Počevši od automobila koji testiramo, pa dijagnostički (hardver) alati, API, softveri, i naravno skontamo da nam treba previše novca za krenuti. Onda sam se ja odlučio da se baziram teoretski, napišemo potrebnu dokumentaciju i onda potom to prenesemo praktično.
0x01 - Općenito (Teorija)
Motorno vozilo korišteno u svrhu transporta, kao proizvod koji je nastao automobilnom industrijom. U današnjem vremenu skoro neophodan predmet. Sa godinama, automobilska industrija je radila na poboljšanjima automobila i danas se čak može reći da dostiže vrhunac tehnologije. No, ova tehnologija u mnogo slučajeva može da se negativno odrazi na samog potrošača. Kao što svi znamo, onda kada do nekog predmeta imamo pristup fizičke ili druge prirode, u vidu umrežavanja, to nam kao napadačima pruža određene (ne)pogodnosti. Sigurnost automobilske industrije mnogo proizvođaća zabrinjava. Tako npr. Mercedes ima poseban sektor koji se bavi inžinjeringom i sigurnošću sistema. Takvo nešta ima i Tesla, i Hyundai. Kao što možete primjetiti, velike firme se bore da održavaju nivo sigurnosti u novijim automobilima koji imaju razne pristupe povezanosti (GPS, GSM, WiFi, Bluetooth..).
0x02 - Veza
Automobili su kompleksne jedinice, a svaki automobil je po nečemu unikatan. Kada se baziramo na modele, noviji automobili u SAD i Europi imaju dodatne mogućnosti povezivanja. Tako imamo USB, razne jackove, CD/DVD radio, OBD, pa čak i "novije" načine kao WiFi, Bluetooth, itd.
Tako se možemo postaviti u dvije pozicije u svrhu pristupa:
* BEŽIČNO | |___________________ * SIGNALI (Radio valovi, keyfobs, IR...) * SIGNALI NA DODIR ILI MOTION * WiFi * KOMPJUTERSKI | |___________________ * CD/DVD, USB, BLUETOOTH * DIJAGNOSTIKA * DASHBOARD
0x03 - Sigurnost
Naravno, mi ćemo se u ovom tekstu bazirati prije svega na sigurnost kompjuterskih sistema unutar automobila. Za početak čemo podijeliti način na koji se kompjuter povezuje na ECU komponentu. ECU (Electronic Control Unit) je ustvari mali system koji u automobilskoj industriji služi kao veza između kompjutera i operacijskih radnji vozila. U današnjim automobilima možemo nači i više od 70 ECU sistema koji upravljaju raznim radnjama.
Instrument kojim upravljamo ECU da vrši operacije se naziva konzola, a u današnje vrijeme je bitno napomenuti da takav pristup imamo i putem infotainment systemima ili jednostavno dashboard (Tablet).
----------------------------------------------------------------------- | FIZIČKI | WIRELESS | KEY CONNECTED ----------------------------------------------------------------------- - USB Portovi - Bluetooth - CAN bus - Auxilary - WiFi - Ethernet - CD/DVD Rom - GSM - High-Speed mbus -... - OPS, XM, Remote -...
Gore smo naveli način pristupa konzole na automobil. Ako detaljno istražimo gore pojmove ili ako imamo uvid u sigurnost, navedene možemo svrstati po sigurnosnom segmentu. Tako možemo razumjeti attack-surface na kojem se baziramo.
Na prethodnom diagramu možemo vidjeti da se zavisno od vrsta povezivanja može doći do dva predjela. To jest, imamo pristup user mode u slučaju da se vezujemo putem bluetootha ili WiFi. To znači da imamo limitiran pristup na infotainment systemu. Ali, ako vezu ostvarujemo putem mobilne mreže (tj. GSM) na HSI, ili USB-om na UDEV, te kvaser interfejsu (CAN), odma imamo pristup kernelu / srce sistema. Važno je napomenuti da se infotainment system bazira na Windows CE ili Linux varijanti zavisno od proizvođača automobila. Na top-u se pišu razna sučelja.
Mene iskreno najviše zanima kernel level mod jer u takvom pristupu imate mogućnost obavljanja svih mogućih funkcija i kanala na automobilu. Najlakši pristup tome je fizički, odnosno pristup CAN Bus, pa ćemo se tako praktično i teoretski bazirati na njemu i njegovoj signalizaciji. Noviji automobili imaju pristup preko etherneta što je jako zanimljivo budući da se snifanje mreže može izvršiti efikasno i jeftino.
0x04 - CAN Bus
Dosta puta sam u dosadašnjem tekstu napisao CAN Bus pa je vrijeme da objasnim o čemu se radi. Controller Area Network ili CAN Bus je port / plug u vozilima koji omogućava mikrokontrolerima i uređajima da upravljaju i omoguće interakciju sa aplikacijama, tzv. VCS. CAN Bus standard je izrađen 1983. u Robert Bosch GmbH. Protokol je prvi put zabilježen u upotrebi 1988. u BMW 8 seriji. Znači, automobili imaju i do 70 ECUa za razne subsisteme (transmisija, airbag, abs, volan, el. podizači, vrata itd.). CAN standard je uveden sa razlogom da bi se mogli čitati odgovori od raznih senzora koji su ECU napajani.
VCS:
CAN Bus
Linbus
MOST
Flexray (BMW SUV automobili)
Ethernet
TPMS
Trenutno ga ima u dvije glavne verzije, kao sistem, CAN 1.0, i CAN 2.0 (1991), a druga verzija je u glavnoj standarizaciji ISO-118982. Treba napomenuti da CAN nije namjenjen samo automobilskoj industriji, iako je napravljen za to ulogu, danas ga možemo vidjeti u raznim aspektima proizvodnje. Uglavnom, CAN 2.0 verzija se dijeli na dvije BIT verzije:
CAN 2.0A (11-bit)
CAN 2.0B (29-bit)
Budući da radi na low-level protokolu, ne podržava nikakav vid sigurnosne implementacija. Aplikacije koje komuniciraju sa njim su napravljene na osnovu svog specifičnog sigurnosnog mehanizma (npr. da se komunikacije provjere).
CAN Bus radi na osnovu signalizacije tj. šalje dva signala koja emituju neku informaciju. Tako imamo signal visoke frekfencije (CAN HIGH / CANH) i signal niske frekvencije (CAN LOW / CANL). Za primjer protokola CAN Bus-a uzet ćemo standardnu OBD diagnostiku, tipa OBD-II. U skupu, CAN Bus podržava 2.5 volti odnosno dovoljno voltaže za emitovanje signala. Na osnovu CANH i CANL možemo odrediti signalizaciju i informaciju.
Zavisno od vrste konektovanja na dijagnostici, pinovi i signali su raspoređeni na različitim mjestima. Za OBD-II ovi pinovi se nalaze na poziciji 6 za CANH, te poziciji 14 za CANL. Više o on-board diagnostic možete porčitati ovdje.
0x05 - Signal / Informacije
Svi signali sa CAN Bus-a na procesor se šalju sa razlogom to jest da pošalju neki vid informacije. Signal ima svoju strukturu to jest frame informacije. Klasičan način generisanja informacija je sljedeći:
Arbitation ID Predstavlja ID subjekta sa kojim se komunicira Može sadržavati više subjekata / ID-ova Prvi subjekat je onaj sa kojim se komunicira
IDE Standard formata Uvijek 0
DLC/DATA LENGTH CODE Veličina podatka u bajtovima
DATA Podatak Najviše 8 bajtova
Primjer informacije: | ARBITATION ID # | | IDE | | DLC | | ========== DATA ========== |
Jedan frame podatka se sastoji od bitova koji su prevedeni iz signala (CANH i CANL). Bitovi se dijele različite strukture zavisno od framea.
Kao što možemo vidjeti na primjeru nekog frame-a, imamo kompletan prikaz CAN slike. CAN standard zahtjeva implementaciju base frame formata ali se isti može nadovezati sa extended frame formatom odnosno da pruža takav vid opcije.
Zeleno označen prostor je ustvari identifier koji sadrži jedinstven ID koji asocira sa tim signalom.
Plavo označen prostor je vrsta frame-a
Žuto označen prostor je broj bajtova koji se šalju
Crveno ozčaen prostor je informacija koja se šalje
0x06 - U praksi
U drugom dijelu sigurnosti automobilnih sistema ću pisati o emitovanju signala na virtualni CAN. Kad govorim virtualni, mislim na to da ću napraviti virtualnu mašinu odnosno automobil na svom računaru koji će imati CAN interfejs. Ovo radim isključivo iz razloga što vozim prahistorijsko auto (oldschool E30) i što nemam hardver. Nakon toga ide praksa na automobilu srednje klase iznad 2010-o godište. Za buduće, preporučujem da pročitate malo o SocketCAN i nadam se da se vrtite na Linuxu jer se sljedeći dokument snifanja mreže bazira na njemu.
Outro ću da ostavim za drugi put.A round-up of the most expensive cars ever -- in absolute terms -- to go under the hammer.
1. 1936 Bugatti Type 57C Atlantic - $43.7 million (2010)
Head and shoulders above all of the cars in the list. It is so rare that only three examples plus their prototype were ever built. This buyer was anonymous but Ralph Lauren is one of the other two very lucky owners.
2. 1963 Ferrari 250 GTO - $19.4 million (2010)
Bought by British radio and TV personality Chris Evans in 2010, the GTO is the most prized vehicle in Ferrari collecting circles. Only 36 were made and only 2 examples have found their way to auction in the last 18 years.
3. 1957 Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa - $16.39 million (2011)
Meaning Red Head, because its valve covers are thus colored, the Testa Rossa has real racing pedigree -- winning Le Mans three times between 1958 and 1961.
4. 1931 Bugatti Royale Kellner Coupe - $14.9 million (1987)
Sold at auction to an anonymous Japanese bidder in 1987, if the list was adjusted for inflation, it would be second. It is rumored to be about to come back on to the market and this time it might make the top spot.
5. 1936 Mercedes 540K - $11.7 million (2012)
In 2007, Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone set the record when his sold for $6.3 million. The record was broken at Pebble Beach this year when one of the other 26 examples went under the hammer for almost twice as much.
6. 1968 Ford GT40 - $11 million (2012)
The most expensive American car ever sold at auction, the GT40 is from Ford's racing heyday when it beat Ferrari at Le Mans. This one is even more special as it belonged to Steve McQueen.
7. 1961 Ferrari 250 GT SWB - $9.5 million (2008)
Also known as the California, this Ferrari once belonged to James Coburn. Like the 250 GTO at number two, it was bought by Chris Evans in 2008, who subsequently sold it in order to finance the acquisition of the GTO.
8. 1931 Bugatti Royale Berline - $8.9 million (1986)
This car was actually owned by the Bugatti family before finding its way over to America in the 1950s. Originally built for European royalty the car was a complete disaster when launched, coming on to the market at the height of the great depression.
9. 1929 'Birkin' Bentley 4 ½ litre - $7.9 million (2012)
The most expensive British car ever to sell at auction, it went under the hammer at the Goodwood Festival of Speed this year breaking the record
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strong reasons for trying to keep her e-mails off the books. This new e-mail scandal, which adds to the scandal that has dogged her since the beginning of her campaign, should certainly give voters pause. As to which side of the TPP debate she is on: that depends entirely on which direction the politcal winds are blowing.Honeycomb Home [Image: Honey drips from the electrical sockets of a home in California; courtesy of KSBW].
A single-family home in California has been "invaded" by bees—so much so that honey is now leaking from the electrical outlets, coming "from a giant beehive behind the walls."
When the owner reached into one of the house's vents to investigate this growing apian problem, he pulled out "honeycomb after honeycomb after honeycomb," according to news channel
[Image: A close-up of the honeycombs now tormenting a family in California; courtesy of KSBW].
The vents are droning; honey is flooding the interior of the house; and the owners are exactly one month past the cancellation of their builders' warranty, meaning that the problem is not only quite expensive, it is entirely up to them to solve.
The same owner is now justifiably worried that the house will become infested with honey-hungry ants.
It is infestation after infestation after infestation, we might say—though I suppose ants are a better fate than being infested with
Ages ago, though, we saw that foreclosed homes have become an alternative ecological niche for A single-family home in California has been "invaded" by bees—so much so that honey is now leaking from the electrical outlets, coming "from a giant beehive behind the walls."When the owner reached into one of the house's vents to investigate this growing apian problem, he pulled out "honeycomb after honeycomb after honeycomb," according to news channel KSBW The vents are droning; honey is flooding the interior of the house; and the owners are exactly one month past the cancellation of their builders' warranty, meaning that the problem is not only quite expensive, it is entirely up to them to solve.The same owner is now justifiably worried that the house will become infested with honey-hungry ants.It is infestation after infestation after infestation, we might say—though I suppose ants are a better fate than being infested with bears Ages ago, though, we saw that foreclosed homes have become an alternative ecological niche for mountain lions, and even now that unused—and undrained—suburban swimming pools are breeding grounds for West Nile-infected mosquitoes ; the possibility that still-inhabited architecture could become the target of these and other strange infestations puts a uniquely worrying spin on the subject.
Newer | OlderIn December 2013, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Peter Higgs made a startling announcement. “Today I wouldn't get an academic job,” he told The Guardian. “It's as simple as that. I don't think I would be regarded as productive enough.”
Higgs noted that quantity, not quality, is the metric by which success in the sciences in measured. Unlike in 1964, when he was hired, scientists are now pressured to churn out as many papers as possible in order to retain their jobs. Had he not been nominated for the Nobel, Higgs says, he would have been fired. His scientific discovery was made possible by his era’s relatively lax publishing norms, which left him time to think, dream, and discover.
In January 2014, creative-writing professor Cathy Day published a rundown of her publications since 2011: 300 pages of a novel, 100 pages of non-fiction, seven essays, two short stories, and 200 blog posts. The blog posts, dedicated to the craft of writing, attracted the most attention, garnering over 160,000 pageviews. Day’s last post was particularly popular: It announced the end of her blog.
“Here’s the thing: this work hasn’t counted much for me as an academic,” she wrote. “Every time I post to this blog, I’m taking time away from my fiction and nonfiction, from work that ‘counts’ for me—both institutionally and personally. Even now, as I write this, I’m not working on my novel and other projects.”
Today, a creative-writing professor is expected to produce more publications than a science professor of 50 years ago. But in other ways, little has changed. Though digital platforms enable scholars to share their ideas with the public, their desire to do so is often held against them. Academics are pressured to produce an ever greater amount of work for an inherently limited audience.
In order to maintain her professional viability, Day stopped work that she and the public found meaningful—work that directly relates to her role as a teacher—in order to have time to produce work that “counts” to a small number of academics. To “count” is not to spread knowledge, as Day did, or develop new ideas, as Higgs did. To “count” is to preserve your professional viability by shoring up disciplinary norms. In most fields, it means to publish behind a paywall, removed from the public eye—and from broader influence and relevance. To “count” is to conform.
Publishing and labor are two of academia’s most contentious issues, and they are usually debated separately. But when the rate of contingency hires and publications rise together—with the assumption that the latter is a means to avoid the former—they need to be taken as a broader problem: the self-defeating mechanization of scholarship. Scholars are encouraged to sacrifice integrity and ingenuity to careerism that does not reward them with a career.
Graduate students are told that publishing frequently and in traditional journals is key to landing a job. “In many if not most fields it is now necessary to have at least one refereed journal article while still ABD,” writes Karen Kelsky, Vitae columnist and academic advisor for hire, on her blog. But the harsh truth is that many scholars with multiple journal articles —and even multiple books—still do not find full-time employment. Academic publishing is no guarantee of anything, except possibly the paywalled obsolescence of your work.
For tenure-track academics, publishing is a strategic enterprise. It’s less about the production of knowledge than where that knowledge will be held (or withheld) and what effect that has on the author's career. But for graduate students and contingent faculty, academic publishing is less a strategy than a rigged bet.
With the odds of finding a tenure-track job against them, graduate students are told to plan for a backup career, while simultaneously being told to publish jargon-filled research in paywalled journals. Scholars who bet on that insular system find themselves stranded when that system fails them, as it does most. Appeasing academics means alienating alternatives.
This is not to say that academic publishing has no value. In-depth, clearly written scholarly research has its own value: It can reshape understanding, inform policy, and even help save lives, assuming the work is accessible. What it cannot do is get you a job.
“I want to make a career of scholarship in a time when the whole field of higher ed is practically in hiring freefall,” laments Bonnie Stewart in a blog post describing the difficulties of writing for an uncertain audience. She advocates taking a hybrid approach that combines academic rigor with public accessibility—a wise move in an era when many end up contingent by default.
Most scholars hesitate to take this approach even when their writing has had proven appeal, for it appeals to those who do not “count”. But what “counts” should be producing work of lasting intellectual value instead of market ephemerality. What “counts” should be the quality of the research and writing, not the professional advantages you gain from producing it. This is particularly true for new Ph.D.’s, because in all likelihood, those advantages may not exist—at least not within academia.
Making your work “count” on its own intellectual merit helps rescue you from the sense of personal failure that accompanies loss on the job market. When you orient your scholarship toward a future that never comes, it can start to feel like you have no future. When you orient your scholarship toward its obvious yet overlooked purpose—furthering human knowledge—its value does not need to be determined by others, because the value lies in the work itself. This is what counts.The Arduino OBDCAN Shield connects Arduino board to CAN OBD-II compliant car, light truck, or motorcycle. For those who don’t know, OBD stands For ‘On-Board-Diagnostics’. OBD, is an automotive term referring to a vehicle’s self-diagnostic and reporting capability. OBD systems give the vehicle owner or repair technician access to the status of the various vehicle sub-systems. The Arduino OBDCAN Shield is an OBD to UART interpreter hiding all the complexity of OBD protocol and exposing it as a simple request/reply interface with the help of OBDCAN library.
Using this shield is ideal for OBD data logger or scanner application. The shield is communicating with Arduino board using serial Com1 port on pins 0 and 1. Arduino Mega and Due boards have additional Com ports, it is possible to connect shield to those ports using additional connector/jumpers on the board. All the necessary software and hardware details are available on the manufacturer website. Even if you want to make the shield yourself, the schematics are also available online. It also provides operating voltage for the Arduino board from OBD connector serial port operating voltage either 3.3V or 5V, driven by IOREF pin Standard DB-9 sub connector for use with OBD-II cable.
[..Source link..]Long after Wendy Wasserstein popularized the term "shiksa goddess" — blond, unattainable, non-Jewish — new versions have come along as Hollywood alpha males have gravitated toward shopgirls, women of Asian extraction and, now, yoga teachers.
This story first appeared in the June 26 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
Just as tastes in fashion, food and music evolve, so do tastes in arm candy, girlfriends and trophy wives. In Hollywood, one's got to keep up with the ceaseless tide of status symbols.
When it comes to the changing face of desirable mogul mates, for many top-tier male-society aspirants and/or men of the Jewish persuasion, the shiksa (aka WASP-y blond) preceded all of the others. Symbolic of the postwar American dream, shiksas have been buzzing around the power elite since the 1950s. She could be a Bimbo (Richard Zanuck wed original Planet of the Apes' sexy cavegirl Linda Harrison), an Ice Queen (Harry Cohn was married to two) or a California Girl (Kate Capshaw).
Eighties L.A. introduced the era of the shopgirl — former or aspiring models and actress wannabes working at designer boutiques on Rodeo Drive (or the like). They got to don sexy duds, spend the rest of their time at the gym and meet major men who came in "to shop." And shop they did. Hollywood apocrypha reveals that this is how Ron Meyer met second wife Kelly Chapman: at Charles Gallay, a now-defunct store that was located on Sunset. Steve Tisch met his ex-wife Jamie when she worked at Ralph Lauren on Rodeo. Maxfield in West Hollywood was another hot bet for power men to find sexy shopgirls. Legend has it that superproducer Steve Reuther romanced a salesgirl there — in the dressing room.
The late '90s ushered in the age of the Asian girl, the new brunette shiksa. In 1998, Rupert Murdoch left his wife, Anna, and took up with Wendi Deng; in 2004, then CBS chairman Leslie Moonves wed anchor Julie Chen; that same year, Nicolas Cage married 20-years-younger former waitress Alice Kim; George Soros dated violinist Jennifer Chun; and Brian Grazer became engaged to pianist Chau-Giang Thi Nguyen in 2011 (Grazer now is engaged to Veronica Smiley). Late investment mogul Bruce Wasserstein tied the knot with fourth wife Angela Chao in 2009, and venture capitalist Aviv "Vivi" Nevo dated actress Zhang Ziyi in 2007 (they broke up in 2011 but were said to be engaged for a time).
Coincidences? Hardly. When it comes to trendy trophy women, these alpha men compete in every venue of their lives. You can't keep good testosterone down. So what possible genre of human could usurp the shiksas, shopgirls and Asian beauties? Who or what could be more desirable to powerful men of Hollywood and beyond?
Yoga teachers. That's right: Satnam to the new sex symbols. Whether practitioners of Ashtanga, Kundalini, Hatha, Vinyasa, Iyengar or Bikram, they've got major industry players in a twist.
Of course, the celebrity contingent has been mesmerized by yoga for years. Sarah Jessica Parker, Jennifer Aniston and Gwyneth Paltrow have been extolling it for at least a decade, as have Russell Brand, Adam Levine, Matthew McConaughey, Robert Downey Jr., Russell Simmons and the very limber Woody Harrelson. Long before yoginis became hot in the dating sense, famous folk were touting and turning up the heat of the careers of their favorite yoga teachers.
The hands-on physical intimacy that comes with a private session or yoga class is a petri dish for hormones, and celebrities and industry people going for yoga teachers is just hitting its zeitgeist zenith now. On June 13, Crown Prince of Sweden Carl Philip married former erotic model/reality TV star/yoga instructor Sofia Hellqvist. Owen Wilson had a baby with yoga teacher Caroline Lindqvist in 2014. The wife of Paul Tudor Jones, a hedge fund billionaire, is former model Sonia Klein, now a yoga teacher who partnered with the family of late Ashtanga master Krishna Pattabhi Jois in 2012 to found Jois studios and clothes. The wife of New York-based hedge fund billionaire Dan Loeb is yoga teacher Margaret Davidson Munzer, whom he married in 2004. Scrubs star John C. McGinley wed his yogini Nichole Kessler in 2007; screenwriter Greg Pruss married his, Anna Getty, in 2003. Pop maestro Dr. Luke has two children with his yoga teacher. So if you think Alec Baldwin was ahead of the curve — marrying yoga instructor Hilaria Thomas in 2012 — he wasn't. He was just catching the wave. Kundalini master Guru Jagat of Venice's Ra Ma Yoga Institute says of the hot-for-yoga-teacher trend, "I've definitely observed the phenomenon — lots of it."
Like all good mating rituals, this one speaks to its time. "Most sexual norms are reflective of cultural norms," says L.A. sex and relationship therapist Dr. Chris Donaghue. "With yoga on the rise, it's expected that a yoga identity and body would become a highly eroticized commodity." Yogini Mandy Ingber, who since 2003 has been instructing the likes of Aniston, Jennifer Lawrence and Emilia Clarke, says: "When you're looking for a connection to the self, you're more open to connecting with someone else. The relationship between a yoga instructor and client is very intimate."
Opportunities to connect abound in Los Angeles: There are 1,500 studios, gyms and athletic facilities that offer yoga classes in the Los Angeles area. Many outlets will put on events to celebrate the summer solstice June 21, the most important day of the yoga calendar (also when thousands of Kundalini yoginis flock to Hawaii and Mexico). This summer, Wanderlust, the touring yoga/music/culture festival founded in 2009, will open a permanent center in Hollywood. It will offer yoga classes, film screenings, wine tastings and a self-selected community that could take mating offline. "Yoga is the new singles bar," laughs Wanderlust co-founder Jeff Krasno, who already is planning on franchises. "This will be an amazing place for a single guy to court a single — and enlightened — lady. At our festivals, we put yoga teachers on the same stages as Common, Moby and Spearhead. No wonder they've become rock stars."
On the appeal of yoginis to Hollywood, relationship therapist Dr. Shannon Chavez notes: "In my practice, the busiest men and women are looking for deeper meaning. They're bored in marriages, sexually dissatisfied, seeking communication beyond the grind. People are looking for partners now that make them feel whole and less judged and insecure." Adds Donaghue: "The Hollywood business elite have achieved all the material success possible. What's left to achieve is the spiritual lifestyle. These yoga partners act as a sexual and social counterbalance. They're the way out of the midlife tension that a life of only Hollywood ladder-climbing creates. Dating a yoga teacher acts as needed Prozac to cope with the high-stress Hollywood lifestyle."
Relationship expert Dr. Jeremy Nicholson sees the phenomenon in a more basic, evolutionary way: "Men are always interested in attractive, pleasant, feminine women for mates. What shifts are the groups of women allowed and encouraged to be attractive, pleasant and feminine. At certain points in the Hollywood culture, the women who embodied those characteristics to men were primarily Asian. In the current culture, yoga instructors now are a source of healthy, attractive, feminine women."
Alpha men teaming up with yoga teachers chimes with Eastern philosophy, offers Dr. Pat Allen, an L.A. relationship expert: "In old Chinese quantum physics, men had yang bodies: They build, they create. Women receive. Alpha men have a very tough time committing to alpha women. They'll have an alpha mistress but not an alpha wife. Alpha men do better with beta women: sensitive, empathetic and kind. Who epitomizes beta better than a yoga teacher?"
Serial yoga-teacher dating even has become a thing. Venice-based TV writer-producer Steven Pearl admits he started dating yoga teachers about two years ago. "The proliferation of yoga classes in L.A. means more teachers, and many are actresses, dancers — all working their minds and, of course, their bodies. Their look is very appealing: fitted clothes, fresh faces, utterly unpretentious, no makeup. They're more wholesome and approachable. Suddenly, my guy friends are all talking about dating yoga teachers. And most of the best studios are in neighborhoods with tons of entertainment people: West Hollywood, Venice, Brentwood." Tech exec Rob Kramer started dating yoginis in 2004 and was married to an instructor; he's now working on a book called Shut Up I'm Meditating. "You have this pseudo spiritual idea that their enlightenment could lead to a good relationship," he says. "Now there are more yoga teachers in L.A. than Uber drivers."
One major producer who prefers to go unnamed recently got dumped by his yoga-teacher girlfriend, whom he caught cheating with a screenwriter. Now she's engaged to a director. "I didn't think yoga teachers would be as crazy in relationships as actresses," he sighs. "Boy, was I wrong."Many people are feared dead in the Democratic Republic of Congo after two boats capsized in separate incidents.
One of the boats was carrying up to 300 people when it caught fire on the Kasai river near the border with Angola.
Information Minister Lambert Mende Omalanga told that the BBC the vessel had been transporting fuel and was not supposed to be carrying any passengers.
In the other accident, at least 24 people died in the province of Equateur when a boat capsized on the Ruki river.
The boat had up to 100 people on board, Mr Mende told the BBC.
A spokeswoman for Equateur's provincial government, Rebecca Ebala, said more than 70 people were believed dead. Fifteen survivors had so far been found, she added.
Officials are investigating why the boat was sailing at night without lights.
'Full of people'
The accident in Kasai-Occidental province happened the previous day.
"It was not a passenger ferry. It was a ferry which was carrying fuel," Mr Mende told the BBC.
The fishermen refused to save passengers, instead taking goods into their pirogues Romaine Mishondo, Survivor of accident in Kasai-Occidental River Congo: Nation's lifeline
"It seems that at least 24 people were on board because they have been rescued. But some other people might have died. And we don't have the report because this boat is not supposed to carry passengers."
One of the survivors confirmed that fuel drums on board the vessel had caught fire before it capsized near the village of Mbendayi.
Romaine Mishondo said the boat was so crowded it had reminded her of "a whole market in the village full of people".
When it began to sink and people began jumping overboard, local fishermen ignored their pleas for help, she added.
"Fishermen attacked the boat and started beating passengers with paddles as they were [trying] to loot goods," she told the Associated Press. "The fishermen refused to save passengers, instead taking goods into their pirogues [small, flat-bottomed boats]."
"I survived because I hung onto a jerry can until another vessel passed by the scene and rescued us."
Boats and ferries are commonly used in DR Congo, which has few viable roads or railways but several major lakes and rivers.
However, the vessels are often overloaded or badly maintained, and accidents are commonplace.Image copyright PA Image caption Details about the case of the Dutch female spy and entertainer Mata Hari are now available online
Interrogation reports and photographs are among secret MI5 files about World War One spies being made available online for the first time.
Among the spies detailed are Swallows and Amazons author Arthur Ransome and Dutch spy Mata Hari, who was executed for spying for the Germans
More than 150 files are being made available in the digitised release.
It is part of a series by the National Archives to mark the centenary of World War One.
Among the documents are also surveillance reports on organisations such as the Bolshevik Party, British Communist Party and The Boy Scout Association.
Political figures, from known fascists to communists and Russian leaders such as Leon Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin also feature.
The files also include details about American poet and author Ezra Pound, and British nurse Edith Cavell who saved soldiers in German-occupied Belgium.
Image copyright PA Image caption Mata Hari (pictured) was executed by a firing squad
The release by the National Archives, in Kew south-west London, forms part of its "First World War 100" programme which is honouring the anniversary of the war.
Records specialist, Dr Stephen Twigge, at the National Archives said: "The files in the National Archives' collection reveal the importance of the security service in safeguarding the nation during the First World War.
"Now that we have made the files available online as part of our First World War 100 programme, people across the globe can discover the secret history behind the war for themselves."- There is a social media campaign orchestrated by people all over Canada to raise the American spirit in light of the current political climate.
Advertising firm The Garden came up with the idea using #TellAmericaItsGreat.
"Seems America could use some cheering up right about now. As their closest friends and neighbours, we thought we should take a minute to help remind them that no matter how bad things might seem at the moment, there are lots of reasons why we think they’re still pretty great."
The campaign seems to be taking off.
#Canada is the BFF who shows up w/wine after the worst breakup ever & says you're still a catch #tellamericaitsgreat https://t.co/qBULS8l4Xf — Chris Wells (@CWellsGville) October 18, 2016
"We just want you to know that you are great. America is amazing," various Canadians say in a video posted to YouTube.House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Wednesday that Mitt Romney made a "calculated move" to get booed during his address earlier in the day before the NAACP.
“I think it was a calculated move on his part to get booed at the NAACP convention," she told Bloomberg TV.
Members of the civil rights organization booed Romney when he vowed to repeal President Obama's signature healthcare law.
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Romney said earlier in the day that he "expected" a negative reaction to his speech, which NAACP President Benjamin Jealous said included positions "antithetical" to the interests of the civil rights organization.
"We expected that," Romney told Fox Business Network. "I am going to give the same message to the NAACP that I give across the country, which is that ObamaCare is killing jobs, and if jobs is the priority, we are going to have to replace it with something that actually holds down healthcare costs, as opposed to something that causes more spending for the government and more spending for American families.”
Addressing the NAACP is a rite of passage for presidential candidates, and Romney will likely need to chip away at Obama's overwhelming lead among African-American voters to stay competitive in some swing states. But some political analysts have suggested that Romney would benefit by defending his policy positions before the hostile crowd, especially on the issue of healthcare reform, which remains unpopular with the majority of voters.
But Pelosi argued Romney's healthcare stance could be a political liability in November, suggesting that the former Massachusetts governor would struggle to distance himself from similar legislation on the state level implemented while he was governor.
“I think it would be interesting for you to show your viewers his statements at the time of passing RomneyCare in Massachusetts when he talked about free-riders," Pelosi said. "Anybody who can afford it should pay into the system so that they're not taking a free ride, that when they get sick other people have to pay for them, increasing other people's cost. I think his own words speak to the value of what we did at the national level. I don't know how he disassociates himself from that, but it will require some shifting.”
By contrast, Pelosi argued Democrats could improve their numbers on the issue by appealing to those who would benefit from the legislation.
"The momentum is with the bill because people know what it means to them if they have a preexisting medical condition or if they're senior or if they're a woman, whatever, the benefits that accrue to them," Pelosi said. "Lifetime limits. Imagine if you're a person with disabilities or a preexisting condition. The insurance companies cannot have lifetime limits on you. So we think it's a good argument. I think the election in the fall is going to be about jobs, and that's why we want to get to the subject of jobs and how we can create more faster. I hasten to add the healthcare bill does create 4 million jobs, as it reduces the deficit, as it makes America healthier.”
The House's top Democrat also dismissed suggestions by Republicans — and some Democratic candidates — that Obama had split the party by announcing a push to extend the Bush-era tax cuts on annual income less than $250,000, rather than a threshold of $1 million that had been preferred on Capitol Hill. Pelosi argued in doing so she had "smoked out" Republicans as "handmaidens" of the wealthiest Americans.
"We are in complete unity with the president on the $250,000," Pelosi said. "We were delighted that he put that message out there and the administration also responded that the president would veto a bill that came forth and extended all the Bush tax cuts."When Microsoft announced the Surface Pro 3, it said that the Core i5 version would be available on June 20th and the i3 and i7 variants would be shipping at the end of August. Well, if you pre-ordered either the i3 or i7 models, there is good news for you today as Microsoft is moving up the ship date.
Microsoft has revised its shipping date for the i3 and i7 models to August 1st, a full month ahead of schedule. For anyone who placed an order for these devices, your ship date will automatically be moved up to the new date, which should delight these consumers.
Microsoft is offering a diverse set of specs across its Pro 3 range, from an i3 with 4GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage for $799, to an i7 with 8 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage for $1949. It should be noted that both of these SKUs do not come with the Type Cover 3 for $129.99, and we highly recommend that you purchase this accessory too.
Of course, if you don't want to wait for the i3 and i7 models, the i5 model is now on sale as well. That device comes in two iterations, one that costs $999 and comes with 128 GB of storage and 4 GB of RAM and the other model costs $1299 and comes with 256 GB of storage and 8 GB of RAM.
If you are still on the fence about the Pro 3, you should check out our full review, here, as it covers every aspect of the new device."Stop, don't touch, run away and tell a grown up."
Those were the words third grade students at Cheyenne's Buffalo Ridge Elementary School repeated over and over after learning a lesson on gun safety.
Laramie County School District #1 Safe and Drug Free Schools program helps set up the lesson with the Cheyenne Police Department. It's something the school resource officer has taught in mainly 6th grade classes and older, but staff at Buffalo Ridge felt it might be beneficial to students at a younger age.
Third grade teacher at the school, Kevin Myers, said it's the first time he's had the lesson in his class. He said, "As a parent of a third grade student at Buffalo Ridge, and being a parent who doesn't own guns, I did feel that it was an important opportunity to reinforce the idea that guns can be dangerous if not handled properly." He added, "As parents and as families begin the process of teaching their children firearm safety in the home, this is an important first step."
CPD School Resource Officer Joe Johnson is new to teaching the gun safety presentation and said he noticed many of the third grade students were very curious about the topic. He said, "This is Wyoming, we're a gun culture, lots of hunters and firearms enthusiasts here and I think a lot of the kids in Cheyenne, especially, are exposed to that kind of stuff and they get curious about it."
Officer Johnson says they have had instances in the past where they have not only found children bringing bullets to school, but have also had children get seriously injured or killed after playing with a gun. He said, "The main goal, eventually, is for them to understand what guns are, how powerful they can be and the damage they can cause."
It wasn't just the staff and law enforcement who thought the lesson was beneficial either; but students also felt that the lesson prepared them to feel more aware and comfortable in a situation where they might encounter a gun. Buffalo Ridge third grade student Brooke Pelletier said she thinks gun safety at her age is important and said, "If you see a gun and if you didn't learn about it, you wouldn't know what to do with it."
Cameron Wallesch, another third grade student at the school, also agreed that the lesson was helpful. He said, "I had a lot of questions. Officer Johnson answered a lot of them, which was really nice." Although he's seen a gun, Cameron says he's never used one. He added, "If I do find a gun somewhere, I'll know what to do now."It’s been three weeks since Rogers Sportsnet told Don Taylor they were cutting him loose.
The veteran Vancouver sportscaster had hosted the nightly Sportsnet Connected highlight show since Sportsnet Pacific launched in 2001. The Sportsnet gig came after a 15-year stint on the beloved and now defunct CKVU Sports Page.
For Taylor, who also co-hosts the B-Mac & Taylor Show with Barry Macdonald from 2-6 p.m. on Team 1040 radio, was neither surprised nor disappointed when his Sportsnet contract wasn’t renewed.
He took time out of his summer holiday on Friday to talk about the career move.
For a guy who’s just lost a high-profile job, you seem to be handling this very well.
The contract was ending in September anyway and to be honest, I had been doing two jobs for 11 years and I was honestly thinking of picking one job anyway. Once they got that big (NHL) contract, Rogers’ famous $5.2 billion, all of use got thinking that they’d have to start cutting back in other areas. One area they thought they might cut was the Pacific region and sure enough they did. It made my decision very easy. I’d been thinking about doing the one job and this expedited the process.
You are still working for a communications giant with significant TV holdings (Bell Media owns Team Radio along with TSN, CTV), is there a chance you will be popping back up on another channel?
I am working for Bell, and a lot of people don’t know that Team 1040 is TSN, I never want to say never, but for now I just really want to focus on the radio part. It’s been 30 years of late nights for me and 11 years of working two jobs. I haven’t really been able to give my all with the radio job. It’s been a part-time job. Eleven years as a sidekick.
How will your role at Team 1040 change?
Well, I’d like to make more use of social media … that’s something that is crucial these days — but mostly I look forward to being more involved in the planning and working on more segment ideas that are my own. I want to take the load off Barry. We’re old men doing four hours of radio a day and he’s been carrying the whole load. I want to get in there and do the preparation. Being on air is the easy part after you’ve been doing this for a while. The hard part is getting ready to go on air and for our show, Barry has had to do it all.
What will a post-Don Taylor Sportsnet Pacific look like?
I don’t think that 10 o’clock show, the Pacific show we called it, will be done out here anymore. That will be done from Toronto. I am out of the loop but I think the morning show (Connected Morning with James Cybulski and Caroline Cameron) will still be done out here. I figured it made more sense to do it the other way around.
Sportsnet Connected was sort of the continuation of what you did with Sports Page. Do you think it’s strange that Vancouver will be without its own nightly local sports show?
I think there is a huge void. I don’t think we ever really nailed it with Sportsnet. There was some push back from Toronto on some of the stuff we wanted to do. TI think you could do a 30-minute local show here but it’d have to be at 10 o’clock. People have to stay up to 11:30 to watch the local sportscast and in the age we live in, like most people I get my highlights off the computer and off the iPad, I don’t know who is going to do that. I’d love to see a local 10 o’clock cast that really focuses on the Canucks, Lions, Whitecaps, Canadians and things like high school basketball. Things have changed since Sports Page, however, and it’s lot more difficult to negotiate the rights to highlights and things. I don’t know if anyone will ever do it, but there is a void.
In the new age, without Sports Page, we just don’t see those amateur sports features on TV anymore. The stories on Giants players or UBC athletes …
I know and I miss it. I prefer that stuff. Look at Sportsnet.ca or TSN.ca over the last few days, it’s been a Tim Leiweke fest. Who cares about some suit who left after spending one year in Toronto? And it’s all they are talking about those websites and I don’t care about it that much. If Aquilini sold the Canucks it would get 15 minutes on the websites. Toronto and MLSE is all we hear about and I understand where it is coming from. So much of the Canadian population is there, I get it, but a guy in a suit is going to be replaced by another guy in a suit 3,000 kilometres away — I don’t know how many people here care about that. I find it funny and embarrassing how much I know about the Toronto sports scene because we are so inundated with it.This isn’t your run-of-the-mill girls night out; it’s a multi-day, multi-vendor, multi-NFP extravaganza! This year Ellen even added a “ Spanx Party” too. Who could say no to Spanxing their figure while they support a cause they hold dear? The event details are:
Her annual “Shop Your Cause” is a great example of this. The shop brings in designers sure to entice and throws a fabulous party honoring leaders at multiple nonprofits. That night and for days after, the shop donates a % of shopping proceeds to the organizations. You can see this event and others scheduled at the shop here.
Ellen Stirling carries on in the tradition of her trendsetting, progressive, glamorous relatives. Her aunt married to Conde Nast and loved clothes so much that she founded the Lake Forest Shop more than 90 years ago. Ellen runs it now. And she has always run it to do the most good she possibly can for the community that she loves. Like most smart women in business, she instinctively is a social entrepreneur.
Social Entrepreneur Ellen Stirling Instinctively Creates Virtuous Circles – An Influential And Stylish Woman Always Ahead Of Her Times
Ellen is the seated beauty in Make It Better orange (of course!). She’s flanked by the honorees representing the beloved NFP’s below.
The Lake Forest Symphony Guild exists to service and raise funds for the Lake Forest Symphony. Shop Your Cause money will go to the Lake Forest Symphony the new music director” Vladimir Kulenovic 2014-15 season, which will be about growth, expansion, and commitment to artistic quality. The orchestra will present five diverse classical symphonic presentations in the months to come. Opening concerts will be held on September 6th and 7th Honoree: Mathilda Williams Lake Forest Symphony Mission;
Mission; The Deer Path Art League strives to spark, nurture, and enhance creativity as well as raise awareness and appreciation for arts in the community.
The money raised from Shop Your Cause will be used to educate, advocate and fund the preservation of the city’s historic visual character. Honoree: Maureen Grinnell Lake Forest Preservation Foundation Mission; Lake Forest Preservation Foundation’s mission is to protect the visual character of Lake Forest through a shared commitment to inspire the appreciation of and respect for our vast historic resources.Honoree:
Ragdale Radale is a nonprofit artists community located on Architect Howard
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He points to all the embedded emissions in our existing power grid and transportation systems. Musk says it’s hard to see how we can slash greenhouse gases in time.
You can find that conversation between billionaire inventor Elon Musk and Chris Hayes of the program called “All In” on MSNBC.
CHEMTRAILS DEBUNKED
Another subject Paul and I have discussed is the existence or non-existence of a world-wide conspiracy to cool the Earth with chemicals delivered by aircraft. Believers call them Chemtrails. But a new study published in Environmental Research Letters debunks the chemtrails conspiracy theory. This comes from a large group of the world’s top atmospheric chemists.
Find my own Radio Ecoshock blog and program on Chemtrails versus climate change right here.
I bring up the Chemtrails conspiracy because it’s a classic case where millions of people believe things easily disproven by the facts. We could say the same about most religions, but we won’t go there. Even in allegedly educated Western countries polls still find millions of people who deny climate change is happening. Stranger still, the denial is often strongest is American states where they are digging themselves out of massive wind storms, fires or floods even as we speak. The human mind is difficult to change, when it doesn’t want to change.
IS IT HOPELESS?
It’s great to point at stupid people, or coal mine owners. But I think the real thing holding politicians and corporate honchos back is… you and me! We are all so deeply embedded in the fossil-powered consumer culture it’s very, very hard to get out. I’m still driving to see relatives in a gas-powered car. It seem like everything I do is built on greenhouse gas emissions somewhere. If climate scientists are still flying to conferences (except for Britain’s Kevin Anderson), – and if I can’t stop using fossil fuels, even knowing what I know, what hope is there?
Paul says we should not give up hope, because there are still things we can do to avert the worst of climate change. He talks about a “three legged stool”. The first leg is what all politicians give lip service to: cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The second is less popular: call it geoengineering, but we need to find a way to put carbon back in the ground. Beckwith, as a member of AMEG, the Arctic Methane Emergency Group, also says we must cool the Arctic enough to preserve the remaining sea ice. We can do it by spraying sulfur into the skies over the Arctic, to mimic the action of volcanoes. That’s still controversial.
CONNECTING WITH PAUL BECKWITH
Check out Paul’s many videos on You tube. You’ll get a free education in climate science, and the amazing signs of climate change. After all, Paul does teach climate science at the University of Ottawa, in Canada’s capital. Or make use of his personal web site, with new info posted often. Others follow Paul’s busy Facebook feed.
That’s it for this week. My thanks to my loyal supporters who make my work possible with their donations. Find out how you can help here.Saudi Arabia's King Salman greeted then-President Obama as he arrived with then-first lady Michelle Obama in Saudi Arabia in January 2015. The president cut short a trip to India to pay his respects after the death of King Abdullah. (Reuters)
Like the attire of other first ladies, Michelle Obama's clothes have been scrutinized endlessly for what type of messages they convey.
And she gets high marks for her "fashion diplomacy," as she engages with foreign leaders at home and abroad. Her choice to go with a suit rather than a dress for the first time at this year's State of the Union address "was a glimpse of the self-aware, tough-minded, straight-talking lawyer who took a brief hiatus from the public eye," according to Robin Givhan.
So it is with Obama's attire in Saudi Arabia — a country with a very strict dress code for Saudi women, who are not allowed to drive and who live under a system of male guardianship. In a country that demands women adhere to a strict dress code in public (face and hair covered, and long, flowing robes), Obama went with a flowing blue top, black pants and no head covering.
Obama's choice is not without precedent. Laura Bush in a visit with King Abdullah made the same choice in 2006.
Photo by Greta Van Susteren
Former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice also wrote in her 2011 book about Abdullah offering her a gift of a black robe and veil that she refused to wear.
But Obama is much more associated with clothes and fashion; she sets trends and boosts brands. And in the age of social media, she has an unparalleled global audience.
On Twitter, her move sparked outrage, as reported by my colleague, Adam Taylor:
More than 1,500 tweets using the hashtag #ميشيل_أوباما_سفور (roughly, #Michelle_Obama_unveiled) were sent Tuesday, many of which criticized the first lady. Some users pointed out that on a recent trip to Indonesia, Michelle had worn a headscarf. Why not in Saudi Arabia?
Keep in mind that Michelle Obama does not make fashion choices lightly, particularly on the world stage. Her fashion choice comes as the late Saudi king Abdullah's legacy on women is considered in light of the ascension of Crown Prince Salman to the throne.
It's also a more social-media-friendly version of political messages delivered overtly by other first ladies.
President Obama and first lady Michelle Obama participate in a delegation receiving line with new Saudi King Salman bin Abdul Aziz, fifth from left, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The president and first lady have come to expresses their condolences on the death of the late Saudi king Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
In 1995, Hillary Rodham Clinton told an audience at the U.N. Women's Conference in Beijing, "Women's rights are human rights, and human rights are women's rights."
Ten years later, at the World Economic Forum in Jordan in 2005, Laura Bush also emphasized women's rights before a group of Arab leaders. She said: "Freedom, especially freedom for women, is more than the absence of oppression. It's the right to speak and vote and worship freely. Human rights require the rights of women. And human rights are empty promises without human liberty."
The Saudi delegation of leaders walked out before she got to that line, something she notes in her book, "Spoken from the Heart."
Ten years after that, Obama, this time with her fashion, has made a similar statement.
Bush said in 2005 that "women who have not yet won these rights are watching," and Obama, in Saudi Arabia with no headscarf and in slacks, makes the message that much easier to see.
Updated at 11:03 a.m.
Updated 2:35 p.m.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz took to his Facebook page to applaud Michelle Obama:
Read our related stories on Saudi Arabia:
Michelle Obama forgoes a headscarf and speaks a backlash in Saudi Arabia
Obama's Saudi trip shows an American double standard
Flogging highlights Saudi Arabia's crackdown on activists
How Saudi Arabia's punishment compares with Islamic State's
Abdullah's death sets up complex succession processEdwin Lyngar is a former conservative and a contributing editor at Salon. He wrote a piece called "Angry right’s secret playbook: How it uses a good story to peddle an agenda America hates." I really like it, mostly because he says the same stuff I've been urging for years:
One of the reasons I became a liberal is not only because they have better ideas but also because they are willing to reconsider them, sometimes ad infinitum. The debates and discussion and endless self-examination appeal to me, because of who I am. Liberals do a lot less yelling and a whole lot more making everyone feel welcome. Yet the same strength in debating, self-awareness and the Socratic Method are the enemies of a goodstory.
The retired guy in a modest home on a fixed income defends the rights of billionaires to exploit him, because he’s been sold a narrative. The story matters, and Republicans spin a hell of yarn about America and “freedom,” even though most of it is bullshit or a straight-out rewriting of history. They talk about Jefferson, Madison and Washington, men who would despise the science-hating, ignorant and reactive group the right has become. But it doesn’t matter what or who you really stand for, it’s just a matter of what you can sell. People with a billion dollars in the bank who benefit from low taxes and who exploit American labor could give two shits about patriotism, but they sing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” as loud as possible while owning sprawling mansions in five countries.
Alice Walton, Wal-Mart heiress and professional layabout, is hardly your relatable, average American. Certainly the left should be able to find an explanation for why her brand of capitalism is evil. If liberals want to win the war of ideas they can’t be afraid to use the word “evil.” If Ms. Walton is not an evil person, we should at least not be afraid to call the practices of Wal-Mart by that powerful and often factual label.
Too harsh? Have you heard the dreck slung at immigrants lately? How about the word “traitor,” so easily thrown at the president almost daily, every day for six years? If you think those on the right are reasonable, wish one “happy holidays.” You might get your ass kicked.
↓ Story continues below ↓
The worst part is that people do not prefer conservative ideas. In the last election they voted to increase the minimum wage in red states, to impose gun background checks and to legalize marijuana. The problem with all three of these issues is that Democrats refuse to stand up for them or do so only tepidly. They won’t fight, argue and, if necessary, insultthe increasingly unbalanced platform of the opposition.
I call on my fellow liberals to embrace the rough stuff. Engage in battle with people who hate you and feel free to throw crazy right back, even if you only half believe it. Let it out and taste it on the way by. See if it flies. If it doesn’t, screw it — just fix it up next time. Refer to your political opponent as “the honorable shithead from New Jersey.” Use the words, images and for god’s sake, the passion of the street. People who hate and fear you will always hate you unless they die out, change their minds or we can beat them in a heated contest of ideas. You’re not playing checkers — and they’re winning by giving zero shits about reality, so cut the crap and fight like you mean it.Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Universal signal? A Japanese driver didn't appear to think so
A frazzled Japanese couple have been subjected to a high speed car chase with police and held at gunpoint on their first day on holiday in the US, after apparently misunderstanding traffic signals, it's been reported.
Officers in the US state of Utah say they spotted the car driving slowly and erratically on the motorway and signalled for it to pull over. But the woman driving reportedly panicked at the police cars' lights and sirens and sped off, trailed by three patrol cars, the Japan Times reports.
The chase ended 11km (6 miles) later, after the car drove over a row of tyre spikes. The motorway was closed in both directions as police feared a confrontation with an armed criminal.
The Japanese couple, unable to understand the police commands, were then pulled out of the car at gunpoint, as their seven-year-old son sat crying in the back seat.
The situation was finally defused after police tracked down a Japanese-speaking officer elsewhere in the state. But one officer was not entirely convinced that the woman didn't know what to do. "Red and blue lights are a pretty universal signal," says Highway Patrol commander Brad Horne. "Regardless of nationality and language, when we put lights on, people pull over and stop."
Use #NewsfromElsewhere to stay up-to-date with our reports via Twitter.Editor's note: Sept. 2 is the deadline for the public to submit comments on the New York state Department of Transportation's Interstate 81 Draft Scoping Report.
The report sorts through the alternatives for repairing or replacing a 3.5 mile section of the highway, including the elevated section through downtown Syracuse, and creating the missing connections between I-81 and Interstate 690. It recommends six alternatives for further study.
After the public comments are gathered, state and federal transportation officials could decide to reinstate some of the discarded options or consider new ideas in its Final Scoping Report. Any ideas that don't make the cut will not be studied further. Ideas that do make the cut will be fleshed out in greater detail. And then it's on to more studies and, at last, a final decision.
In anticipation of the upcoming comment deadline, we combed through letters to the editor and comments on Syracuse.com to identify questions about I-81 that come up over and over again. We're presenting answers to these frequently asked questions in a series of Interstate 81 FAQs.
To submit a question for consideration in future I-81 FAQs, send an email to [email protected].
What impact would rerouting I-81 traffic along I-481 have on travel time through Syracuse?
At a May 20 meeting sponsored by the Alliance of Communities Transforming Syracuse Moving People Transportation Coalition, some 30 people gathered to discuss I-81's future.
At the meeting, downtown developer Robert Doucette proposed to "simply" redirect Interstate 81 traffic from the south to I-481 north to I-690, which would reconnect with I-81 North at the I-690/I-81 interchange. This proposal, Doucette said, would replace the I-81 viaduct, not affect drivers' access to Destiny USA and Seventh North Street businesses, and would only take five minutes longer to travel.
Save81.org members at the meeting disputed the claim, so Peter Sarver of ACT's Moving People Transportation Coalition took it upon himself to find out. He drove the routes two days later, on a Thursday afternoon. Here are his results:
• Traveling between Seventh North Street and Brighton Avenue on I-81. Time: 10 minutes. Distance: 6.5 miles.
• Traveling between Brighton Avenue entrance on I-481 and Seventh North Street ramp off of I-81. Time: 17 minutes. Distance: 15 miles.
"Even though the distance is further, the travel time is cut down because you can travel at higher speed using Doucette's new loop," Sarver said in an email. "The question is whether that extra seven minutes is a deal-maker or deal-breaker."As a Los Angeles county prosecutor, Vincent Bugliosi batted a thousand in murder cases: 21 trials, 21 convictions, including the Charles Manson case in 1971.
As an author, Mr. Bugliosi has written three No. 1 best sellers and won three Edgar Allan Poe awards, the top honor for crime writers. More than 30 years ago he co-wrote the best seller "Helter Skelter," about the Manson case.
So Mr. Bugliosi could be forgiven for perhaps thinking that a new book would generate considerable interest, among reviewers and on the broadcast talk-show circuit.
But if he thought that, he would have been mistaken: his latest, a polemic with the provocative title "The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder," has risen to best-seller status with nary a peep from the usual outlets that help sell books: cable television and book reviews in major daily newspapers.Way, way back in 1995, a group of publishing pioneers had the crazy idea that maybe they could start an online magazine that would revolutionize journalism. Salon.com was born, drew enormous buzz, produced some stellar journalism and managed to hold an IPO.
But even in the frothiest of times, the San Francisco-based site barely paid the bills, and after the dot-com bust, it seemed to be perpetually on the verge of going bust. It became a bit of a parlor game among journalists to figure just when Salon would run out of money.
Last week, the company announced a new CEO as well as some layoffs. But the chances that she can put Salon on the path to sustainability seem remote.
Instead, this one-time trailblazer now seems destined to serve as a cautionary tale about how rapidly the Internet is disrupting the media business. While newspapers know that story all too well, even all-digital businesses like Salon are not immune.
The pace of change seems to accelerate by the day. Any media organization unable to constantly reinvent itself and innovate risks being left in a ditch.
A look at Salon’s financial statements reveals a company that stands on the precipice. They are an absolute horror show.
For the three months ending in December 2011, the company lost $997,000 on $1.03 million in revenues. So they’re making about half the money they need just to cover expenses. The company had not yet filed its earnings statement for the quarter ending in March.
That should be interesting when it does because of this tidbit in the financial filing: “Salon estimates it will require approximately ($1 million) in additional funding to meet its operating needs for the balance of its fiscal year.”
Since Salon is still around, we can assume it got the money. In recent years, such gifts generally came from two sources: “The Company remains dependent upon its two largest stockholders for continued financial support while it seeks external financing from potential investors in the form of additional indebtedness or through the sale of equity securities in a private placement.”
Those “two largest stockholders” are not named, but it’s widely known that they are John Warnock, co-founder of Adobe Systems, and Bill Hambrecht, the legendary investment banker. According to filings, during the nine months ending in December, the pair chipped in $2.125 million in cash.
How long are they willing to keep underwriting what has become journalism’s most notable nonprofit news organization? I reached out to both but neither was available.
Their support is laudable. Salon has truly produced some outstanding journalism over the year. But still, do they believe there are any options left for Salon at this point?
Salon once had a premium subscription service that attracted 100,000 members and generated $8 million in annual revenue. The magazine hired high-caliber writers and journalists who produced great content. That propelled it to an IPO in 1999.
But over time, the company turned its attention to focus more on its free, ad-driven business and lost most of those subscribers and its revenue. At the same time, the Web changed, and Salon failed to change with it.
Over the past decade, the emergence of blogs and social media changed the digital game. Salon, for many years, failed to embrace this new dynamic. Instead, new media companies like the Huffington Post emerged, which was powered initially by aggregating content created by others and recruiting large networks of unpaid bloggers. Eventually, Huffington Post started making enough money to hire its own stable of professional journalists on the way to being acquired by AOL.
A few years ago it launched “Open Salon,” a blogging network that lets anyone publish, similar to the Huffington Post. More recently, co-founder David Talbot tried to revive Salon with a kind of NPR-style membership service called “Salon Core” that never got much traction. This month, the company announced Talbot was stepping down as CEO and was being replaced by Salon’s chief technology officer, Cindy Jeffers, who was previously at the Huffington Post.
Jeffers was also not available to comment. But Salon spokesman Liam O’Donoghue said the company has a plan to become profitable again, noting it recently hired a new advertising sales director and new sales people in several major media markets.
“All media is struggling right now,” he said. “Newspapers are going out of business and laying people off. It’s a tough business to make profitable.”
True. But it doesn’t change the depth of Salon’s problems and its lack of clear choices.
Ken Doctor, a media analyst for Outsell, said Salon’s problem is that on a national level there remain plenty of new and traditional news organizations. Salon has a national focus but a smaller readership than say The New York Times or Huffington Post, making it hard to compete for enough ad dollars that cover the cost of its staff of paid, professional journalists.
One option might be to convert to a true nonprofit status. But Doctor notes that foundations have been more focused on seeding coverage of state and local issues.
“They are betwixt and between these two models,” Doctor said. “They’re going against the economics of the business at this time.
“You’ve got to ask: How essential are they and to whom?”
There is a part of me, of course, that naturally roots for any new journalism venture to succeed and prove its viability. And I hope Salon eventually serves as a model of the power of perseverance.
But right now, I fear it’s become mostly an exercise in futility and an example of the relentless wave of creative destruction rolling across media companies everywhere.
Contact Chris O’Brien at 415-298-0207 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter at obrien and read his blog posts at www.siliconbeat.com.Control.
If an article could consist of one word this article would be finished.
The government knows that it’s in trouble, in more trouble than the administrations that came before it. Government spending is out of control and the fact that the country is still actually afloat is simply down to the privately owned, and inappropriately named, Federal Reserve buying up government debt like it’s going out of fashion.
The government knows that more and more people are waking up to the possibility that we are going to face a major crisis in our lifetime. Awakened people are far more difficult people to control than sleeping people, hence the constant surveillance we face daily. They need to keep tabs on who is where and what they are up to.
The government knows that some other major powers are thinking of dumping the dollar, and that its status as sole reserve currency is at risk. They also know the implications of the dollar being dumped, and it’s not pretty.
The government knows it does not have the standing it once did. Up until recently the United States said “jump” and other countries said “how high?” Now The United States says “jump” and the other nations say “why should I?”
The government knows it is too far down the road, it has kicked the can too hard, and too long to be able to repair the damage, so it has to do what it can to mitigate future damage…indoctrinate the children.
The indoctrination of the next generation is the only way the government can go at this point, other than admitting they are lying, cheating, self-possessed scum bags and I feel that’s unlikely. By getting into the heads of our young they are ensuring that as the old and aware die off their replacements will be malleable and more receptive to suggestions put forward by those in power.
From their first days at kindergarten, children are taught to rely on government kitchens for their lunches because parents are discouraged from providing nutritious food from home.
They are introduced to a very one sided climate debate by government paid teachers who know that these young minds will accept what the teacher says over what mom and dad says. They are young enough to have respect for their ‘all knowing’ teacher.
They are introduced to same-sex relationships early on, told it’s all fine and dandy. They are too young to know at this point that same-sex relationships cannot produce children in a normal biological fashion.
They are penalized and/or excluded for even making hand gestures that resemble a gun. They are force fed the line that all weapons are bad. How many kids watch dad cleaning his gun and assume daddy is bad because he has one?
Young children are incredibly receptive to new ideas at this age (maybe I should have used the word ideologies rather than ideas) and what is happening to kids today in the United States really does merit the use of the word indoctrination.
The public education system is turning them into little government sheep who will, for the most part, be ripe for the picking when they are older.
This indoctrination will in my opinion increase and I believe it will do so quite quickly. Things like ‘hoarding food’ and other supplies will be considered bad. Telling your teacher about anyone you know doing it will be considered good.
Teachers or ‘school visitors’ will most likely engage children in conversation about water shortages and drought, scaring them half to death while waiting for little Johnny to pop up and tell them his family are okay “coz we have water barrels out in the back yard” which may well indicate his family is storing other stuff too. As the government increasingly believes it owns rainwater this may lead to a visit by officials…it’s so easy to get younger children engaged and chatting.
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The education system is also dumbing down our kids, almost making sure they will not have the grades to get into college, which is good because there are no graduate jobs out there. The government needs people who will work in whatever menial job there is available, especially as we are heading towards a time when those menial jobs will be supplied by the government itself:
Chris Carrington is a writer, researcher and lecturer with a background in science, technology and environmental studies. Chris is an editor for The Daily Sheeple. Wake the flock up!Gen David Petraeus, head of Central Command or Centcom, did not elaborate on the plans, but said the military has considered the impacts of any action taken there.
Asked about the vulnerability of Iran's nuclear installations, he told CNN: "Well, they certainly can be bombed. The level of effect would vary with who it is that carries it out, what ordnance they have, and what capability they can bring to bear."
He added: "It would be almost literally irresponsible if Centcom were not to have been thinking about the various 'what ifs' and to make plans for a whole variety of different contingencies."
Iran maintains its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes, but the United States and other Western nations fear Tehran wants to acquire nuclear weapons.
Israel has called Iran's nuclear programme the major threat facing its nation. Gen Petraeus declined to comment about Israel's military capabilities, according to CNN.
Iran had until the end of last year to accept a deal offered five permanent UN Security Council members – Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, plus Germany.
It did not do so. Instead, Tehran gave the West until the end of January to accept its own proposal.
Petraeus said he thought there was still time for the nations to engage Iran in diplomacy, noting there is no deadline on the enactment of any US contingency plans.
But he added that "there's a period of time, certainly, before all this might come to a head".Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play. Advertisement
A woman said to be 70 years of age has given birth to twins in India's northern Uttar Pradesh state after taking IVF treatment.
Omkari Panwar has no birth certificate but if her age is proven it would make her the world's oldest mother.
The twins, a boy and girl both weighing 2lbs, were delivered one month early by Caesarian section.
The couple were so desperate for a male heir that they spent their life savings and took out a bank loan for IVF.
Now, we are very grateful to God, who has answered our prayers
Charam Singh, father of twins
Omkari Panwar already has two daughters and is a grandmother to five children.
"We already have two girls but we wanted a boy so that he could have taken care of our property. This boy and girl are God's greatest gift to us," Omkari said.
Father of the twins, Charam Singh, a farmer in his mid-70s, told ABC News he was very happy.
"The desire for a male child has always been there, but God did not bless us with a male child. Now, we are very grateful to God, who has answered our prayers," he said.
Doctors said the twins were doing fine.
Omkari maintains she was nine years old when the British left India in 1947, which would make her 70.
In December 2006, a 67-year-old Spanish woman gave birth to twins in Barcelona.
A woman said to be 65 gave birth to a boy in India's eastern Orissa state in 2003.If you want to understand how culture can change, head for where the smokers are — or, to be more precise, where they aren’t.
Just a few decades ago, nearly all spaces, indoors and outdoors, were the territory of the smoker. In university classes, everyone, including the professor, would be smoking. People smoked on trains. People smoked on airplanes.
Today, you have to hunt for the smokers. Their exclusion from public shelter means that, often, they’re the only people who actually use the uncomfortable public spaces in apartments and office buildings that were created more to look good in architectural drawings than to be used by real people. As an architect friend of mine once put it, “Gotta love those smokers. They really know how to activate outdoor space.”
What happened? Science happened, definitely. Still, while the first anti-smoking laws in America date back to the 1930s, the bans didn’t truly start rolling until the ’80s and ’90s. It took decades of work after the first conclusive science around the risks of smoking to truly change behavior.
Last year, I interviewed an ad man about what climate change activists can learn from the world of advertising. One of the things he cited as a major problem was that people who talk about climate change don’t repeat themselves enough. “It’s only when you’ve said something so many times that you’re utterly and completely sick of it that someone has even heard it,” he said. Advertising jingles, he added, were a perfect example.
Climate change is not like the things that are normally sold via advertising. Unlike soap or a hamburger, it is difficult to explain. Buying into how to solve climate change involves thinking about how to get something nice in the future, as opposed to thinking about how to get something nice right now.
Which is why, when it comes to selling action on climate change, the best past examples of relevant advertising/marketing methods come from the anti-smoking campaigns of the ’80s and ’90s. And the best current examples come from today’s pro-cycling and transit movements.
There is a whole field of research dedicated to studying how to persuade people around climate change. According to Edward Maibach, a professor at George Mason University’s Center for Climate Change Communication, the key to shifting people’s behavior around a difficult issue like climate change is: start with simple messages, repeated frequently, from trusted advisers. Then, make “the behaviors we are promoting easy, fun and popular.”
First, about those advisers. In the world of advertising, a trusted adviser is often a celebrity. Because we’re used to seeing their faces a lot, celebrities are the closest approximation we have to a friend that happens to be shared by a whole lot of people. But a trusted adviser can also be a relative, or a friend, or someone within an extended social circle. Peer-to-peer sales operations like Mary Kay and Amway exploit connections like this.
Doctors are also trusted advisers, which is why they’re courted so hard by pharmaceutical reps. When doctors went from advertising cigarettes to advising their patients not to smoke and even actively campaigning against them, it was a cultural turning point.
In political campaigns, ministers and other people who can round up a significant number of voters are often wooed as the “trusted advisers” of choice. When I worked on a public health education project in college, educational outreach was handled by hiring as many old ladies in a particular neighborhood as possible to invite people over, feed them snacks, and talk to them about things like the awesomeness of taking prenatal vitamins. The theory was that people would be more likely to listen to someone who seemed like their grandma, even if she technically wasn’t.
The gay rights movement was perhaps the most effective user of the “trusted adviser” model. When the only visible gay people were hustlers and people who got rounded up in bar raids, it was relatively easy to pass anti-gay legislation. But after numerous Californians came out during a campaign against 1978’s Prop 6 (also known as the Briggs Amendment), which would have put schoolteachers at risk of losing their job for being gay, or even for having gay friends, leaders like Harvey Milk realized that having outwardly gay supporters was far better than having quiet allies.
In a speech right after Prop 6’s defeat, Milk put it this way.
As difficult as it is, you must tell your immediate family. You must tell your relatives. You must tell your friends if indeed they are your friends. You must tell the people you work with. You must tell the people in the stores you shop in. Once they realize that we are indeed their children, that we are indeed everywhere, every myth, every lie, every innuendo will be destroyed once and all. And once you do, you will feel so much better.
It was a devastatingly simple strategy, and it worked. In general, people tend to trust their own family and friends more than outsiders. Relative to other groups whose ideas or existence made mainstream society uncomfortable, gays had a card up their sleeve: Even if they were only 3.8 percent of the overall population, gayness was widely distributed enough that the odds of anyone having a gay friend or family member was high. All gay rights activists had to do was convince those people who were gay that being gay wasn’t so bad, and that they needed to tell their friends and family that it wasn’t so bad. It’s not a coincidence that Pride festivals — essentially, giant parties with an at-times-difficult-to-discern social justice theme — were the most accessible and visible aspect of gay culture for a long time.
Plenty of attempts have been made to make fighting climate change seem equally fun. But there’s something about climate change and giant festivals that doesn’t quite work, if it ever did. Maybe it’s the trash they leave in their wake. Maybe it’s that environmentalism doesn’t have good enough techno.
Where is the fun in fighting climate change? As an avid cyclist, I might be biased here — but I do think that the bike culture that has blossomed over the last decade could teach environmental activism a thing or two about fun. When I started biking in the city in the early 2000s, it was a mean business, full of adrenaline and confrontations with drivers. Since then, America’s cities haven’t exactly gone full Amsterdam, but these days, biking is more and more likely to actually be a good time — something that you can do with your friends, in your party dress, while admiring each other’s rides.
I’ve seen way more enthusiasm for events like Slow Roll Detroit than I’ve ever seen over Earth Day. I never had a cheerful conversation with a New York City cabdriver until I rode by one on a Citibike: He yelled out the window that it was a beautiful day, and that he couldn’t wait to get out of a cab and start biking. Bike-share systems in particular were a genius move — in lowering the bar for biking in the city, they have offered more people a sample of its appeal.
Non-smoking buildings gave people a taste of what fresh air indoors was actually like. The parks system gave people a sense of what the landscape was like when people couldn’t just build houses and farms and coal mines all over it. A safe and pleasant network of bike paths can provide a glimpse of what errand-running around the city can be like without constant fear of death.
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The same thing could happen with public transit. Right now, people use it out of necessity rather than pleasure. But long-distance driving is rarely done for pleasure these days, and public transit offers many opportunities for work (what if internet on commuter trains was actually fast and reliable?) and for socializing (what if commuter trains experimented with amenities like bookmobiles, pop-up food sales, or bar cars during peak commute hours?). Cars once edged bikes and pedestrians out of public space by making people who were opposed to them seem like Luddites and hayseeds. A cultural shift like that could be reversed, pushing private cars in cities to the margins.
Every year, the space allotted to smokers seems to get smaller. When I first arrived in San Francisco, a resistance to a citywide ban on indoor smoking was still being fought by a few bars; if you looked around a bar and saw an ashtray, you could assume as a smoker that you had found a sympathetic business establishment. Then ads began to appear in the local alt-weeklies with a dedicated hotline number to report bars that were allowing people to smoke. Within a year, the last of the crystal ashtrays had disappeared.
As someone who grew up around cigarettes and smokers, I sort of miss them. But not enough to want to bring them back.Turn Your Raspberry Pi Into a Music Player Server
2014 June 19
A few months ago I published My Quest to Build the Ultimate Music Player, where I described some of the trials and tribulations that led to Groove Basin, an open-source music player server that I've been building off and on for almost 4 years.
It ships with a web-based client, which looks like this:
You can also tinker with the live demo version.
If you install this on a Raspberry Pi, you can attach speakers to it and use it as a music player which you can control remotely, and you can remotely listen to your music by pressing the "stream" button in the browser.
Before I get into it, however, I would like to point out that if you're deciding whether or not to get a Raspberry Pi, the answer is no. The Raspberry Pi is overhyped - this is why I'm writing this guide - and there are much better alternatives. I'll mention one here, the Beagle Bone Black. Update: another good one: Hummingboard
Why you should get this instead:
Faster CPU and Memory 1GHz processor instead of 700MHz DDR3 instead of SDRAM
It can run Debian or Ubuntu armhf directly instead of having to run something like Raspian. It's silly that Raspbian exists when there is already an armhf port of Debian. If you just install normal armhf Ubuntu on the Beagle Bone Black then this entire guide is unnecessary and you can just do # apt-add-repository ppa:andrewrk/libgroove # apt-get update # apt-get install libgroove-dev And presto, you're done. In fact, libgroove is in Debian Testing and Ubuntu Utopic Unicorn, so in a
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sociologist at George Washington University specializing in American policies on prostitution and sex trafficking.
“[But] shutting down Backpage would mean that approximately 400 persons per month would not be identified as suspicious and would thus fall off the radar screen.”
McDougall, for her part, is adamant that shutting down adult ads on Backpage will push the adult ad business underground and offshore, “and we are going to lose those kids and we are going to lose prosecutions.”
Classified sites that move their operations overseas are under no obligation to cooperate with the NCMEC, and may take months to respond to subpoenas from U.S. law enforcement if they are obligated to respond at all. Backpage, on the other hand, responds to most of the three to five incoming subpoenas it receives per day within 24 hours, and often turns over data before receiving the official subpoena, circumventing privacy laws with an exigent circumstances clause in their Terms of Use.
Ten adult classified sites, including MyRedBook, TheEroticReview and Adult Search, are already using domain privacy registrars, which McDougall says makes them identifiable only via subpoena or court order. I’m stating the obvious here, but none of these sites employs a staff of more than 100 people to look for ads for minors.
It’s worth noting that the tech industry has come together to devise solutions for an equally ghastly crime – child pornography – that do not involve unplugging the Internet.
Microsoft donated a technology called PhotoDNA to the NCMEC that sites like Facebook use to scan through over 250 million photo uploads a day for child pornography. Google donated pattern-recognition software called Bedspread Detector to the NCMEC to help identify bedspreads in hotels that are used in child pornography.
But the technology doesn’t port to sex trafficking of minors. Nudity isn’t allowed on Backpage, and image detection and pattern recognition technology do not answer the question of whether a semi-clothed image is of a minor or adult who is being coerced into a commercial sex act.
And the same tech giants are unwilling to engage with Backpage – publicly, at least. Microsoft refused to comment on conversations it’s held with Backpage or on the recent anti-CDA230 legislation in its home state. Google is busy funding anti-Backpage NGOs.
Here’s the kicker: Even if we assumed that every single ad Backpage sends to the NCMEC is actually for a victim of sexual exploitation, and if we multiplied that number by 25 to account for all the victims of sex trafficking they might be missing, that would still leave 99 percent of Backpage’s adult ads posted by, presumably, consenting adults.
Which means that Backpage’s critics and Backpage alike are ignoring the proverbial 99 percent of its users – prostitutes, strippers, dom and fetish experts and transsexuals who advertise on sites like Backpage.
Backpage’s top market for adult ads is New York City, so I asked Kate D’Adamo with the Sex Workers Outreach Project volunteer organization in New York City what she thought of Backpage’s efforts:
The hardest part about looking for visible signs of a trafficked person is that there are no obvious signs. If they were that easy to spot, it wouldn’t take long before every trafficker would stop using [sites like Backpage]. But the most troubling part is that, especially among youth, we don’t need to look for tattoos or background details. Sixty-eight percent of street-based youth engaged in the sex trade in New York City have already sought the assistance of youth service organizations, most more than once. New York City funds roughly 200 beds for a population of 4,000 unaccompanied, homeless youth. When all the beds are full, it is street economies like the sex trade which they turn to in order to provide basic needs. If we want to identify the most vulnerable, all we have to do is provide support when someone stands up and says “I need a place to sleep tonight.”
Turns out some of the best solutions just might be analog.Montana Fishburne, the daughter of The Matrix star Laurence Fishburne, is cautioning young women against going into the porn industry.
Fishburne made headlines in 2010 when she entered the adult film industry at the age of 18. She said she was inspired by Kim Kardashian’s success, which she believed was “due to the release of her sex tape by Vivid.” She said she hoped the “same magic” would help launch her career, and that she was “impatient” about making a name for herself.
Montana Fishburne said her father was “very hurt” by her decision to go into porn, but she believed he would eventually see it as a positive. That day never came, and Fishburne said her father cut ties with her and that she was “no longer welcome in his life” because of her decision.
Montana Fishburne: An A-List Daughter Makes Her XXX Debut
In early August 2010, Fishburne tried to block the distribution of a gonzo adult film featuring her and porn actor Brian Pumper. Her legal team contacted Pumper, who Fishburne said leaked the “rehearsal footage,” which was never supposed to be released. Vivid released Fishburne’s official porn debut, Montana Fishburne: An A-List Daughter Makes Her XXX Debut, on August 10, 2010.
“You may end up having a really sucky life.”
However, Fishburne’s plan didn’t go exactly as planned. Now 22, she warned that porn is not the path to fame and success.
“I don’t encourage people to go into the porn industry. You’re not going to be famous, or be a movie star. You may end up having a really sucky life,” she said.
“If you look at the celebrity sex tape, these girls are not your average girl next door jumping into porn and for the average girl to get into porn and have those results won’t happen,” she added. “You have to look at where you come from.”
Montana Fishburne said she now has a new plan: to get an education. She also said that any young women seriously considering a porn career need to have a “very clear head” about what it entails.
“My idea is go to school and have life experience but don’t just jump into something blindly and have a big pay day,” she said. “If you’re going to be going into porn, you have to have a very clear head.”
“A very untrustworthy business.”
Jasmine Waltz, a model best known for dating David Arquette and Ryan Seacrest, also warned that porn does not pay as well as people think. Waltz released her sex tape, Real Jasmine, for Exquisite in 2011, but said she didn’t see any profit. She also confirmed that Montana Fishburne got a raw deal after her sex tape was released.
“Vivid told me they would give $125,000 and 25 percent of the back end, all the sales that are made. Basically, you’ll never see the back end after advertisement. You won’t get the money. It’s a very untrustworthy business,” she said. “Lawrence Fishburne’s daughter got burned really, really bad. She got $60,000 dollars and never saw another penny.”New Report Shows Millennials Make Less, Rent More, And Have Fewer Savings Than Did Boomers & Gen-Xers
This generation—the millennials—are worse off than their parents were at their age. This hasn’t happened since the Great Depression.
Why?
Years of incompetent trade policies that have undermined our industry and caused massive job loss.
The middle class was the first to suffer—now it’s our youth.
A new report compared the economic well-being of Americans aged 25-34 years old in 1989 and 2013—the results are sad (but not shocking).
Here are the highlights:
1. Millennials make 20% less than their parents did at their age.
In 1989, adults aged 25-34 made $50,910 on average (adjusted for inflation).
In 2013, they made only $40,581—20% less.
Of course this isn’t a new problem.
Real wages (adjusted for inflation) for the median American worker have actually declined since their peak in 1973.
This shouldn’t surprise anyone, given that real unemployment rate is over 13%, and that labor force participation is the lowest it’s been since the 1960s.
2. Fewer young people can afford to homes.
Millennials have trouble buying homes, due to immigration-fueled inflation in the cities.
Home ownership declined from 46% to 43% for young adults between 1989 and 2013.
This is actually symptomatic of the broader issue: the decline of purchasing power and real incomes.
In the below chart, you can see that the cost of housing is the main factor in declining discretionary spending—not just for millennials, but for all Americans.
The cost of housing has increased significantly faster than incomes over the last few decades (almost 50% faster).
3. Millennials have fewer assets & a lower net worth.
Holding assets is important: they provide you with tangible wealth which helps you access credit, which can be used to buy a house, start a business, or get a loan to take that vacation you always wanted.
Unfortunately, millennials, despite their high education and relatively difficult jobs, have accumulated significantly less wealth than their parents had at their age.
In 1989, the median assets held people aged 24-35 was $61,000.
In 2013, this had declined to $29,000—a whopping 52%.
The same thing happened with median net worth (which is the balance of assets and liabilities).
The median net worth declined from $25,000 to a paltry $11,000—56% lower.
And no, it’s not because millennials are lazy or weak—some are, but hey, don’t forget about all the hippies in the boomer generation.
People are working faster than ever before, but it’s just not translating into better incomes like it used to—the whole economy is slowing.
Why are millennials worse off than boomers?
It’s not complicated.
America’s economy is broken—many of our middle class, industrial jobs have been offshored to places like China and Mexico.
Offshoring hurts American workers in 3 main ways:
1. We lose good-paying jobs to foreign competition.
2. The threat of offshoring, combined with a larger pool of workers, depresses wages.
3. We lose the jobs that depended upon anchor industries (eg. no factory, no hairdresser or accountant).
If you want to know exactly how offshoring works, and how it impacts America read the linked article—it’s worth your time.
Select Sources:
Allison, Tom. “Financial Health of Young America.” Young Invincibles, Jan 2017. Accessed January 15, 2017.
Desilver, Drew. “For Most Workers, Real Wages have Barely Budged for Decades.” Pew Research Center (2014).
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. “Average Hourly Earnings of All Employees: Total Private, Jan 1964- Oct 2016.” Accessed Nov 20, 2016.
United States Census Bureau. “Income and Poverty in the United States: 2014.” Accessed May 28, 2016.Four hours after the inauguration of Donald Trump, around 120 people assembled in Point State Park to protest.
The protesters, consisting mostly of members of various socialist groups, called for a break from the Democratic and Republican parties, and form a new party that represents the working people.
Before everyone started marching, several people spoke to the group. An Iraq war veteran said that the US “is addicted to war. The US is not the good guys anymore.” Most of the speakers praised socialism and stated that it was the only solution to Trump.
Jose Manuel, a member of the International Marxist Student Union and one of the protesters, said that none of the tall buildings we see would be there if it wasn’t for the working class. “Nothing happens without the kind permission of workers…We should take the Fortune 500 companies and place them under Democratic workers’ control.”
Manuel hopes that, with time, Americans would be willing to accept a socialist lifestyle.
“There will be a time when people are in economic crisis, and all their assumptions won’t hold. All the people they listen to- they won’t believe them anymore. You’re already seeing that with the discrediting of the establishment. I think our ideas are very attractive to people right now. Our organization is growing!”
“We supported Sanders. Our position was that he needed to break from the Democratic party and run as a socialist independent… That would shake this country to its foundation. ‘I think socialism could beat Donald Trump.”
After the speakers, the protesters took to the streets. Their first stop was the intersection of 6th and Liberty. A traffic jam ensued, and cops quickly arrived on scene to make sure everyone was behaving. Eventually, everyone started marching again, and ended back at Point State Park to disband.
Organizers said that there will be more events like this one, and that they will only be bigger.
A link to highlights of the protest can be found below.
@andrewf61098CBS has finally announced an official name for the alternate timeline that started with 2009's Star Trek. Given that most of the unofficial ones weren’t particularly complimentary, it’s weird it took them this long to choose one.
It’s the “Kelvin Timeline,” as revealed on a Star Trek Online blog post. CBS Consumer Products’ Holly Amos confirmed the name on Twitter, also giving credit for the name to (who else?) Michael and Denise Okuda, authors or co-authors of almost every Star Trek reference in existence.
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The universe has been variously called “NuTrek,” “the Abramsverse,” and “Alternate Original Series (AOS).” NuTrek does have a whiff of disapproval, like an old man yelling at kids on his lawn. Abramsverse is both derisive and will be inaccurate once something takes place in the universe without J.J. Abrams’ involvement. And AOS, my personal favorite, ceases making sense the second we start following the adventures of anyone other than the Enterprise NCC-1701.
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Of course, the latter two can have exactly the same rational as the “Kelvin Timeline”—they describe the origins of it. Of course, they do so in a meta way and not an internal way.
I still wish it was the “Kelvin Universe”, though. It would fit in better with the “Prime Universe” and the “Mirror Universe.”
[Trek Core]Gravitational Lensing with Planets
As we’ve been talking about the Sun’s gravitational focus, it’s interesting to reflect on the history of its study. Albert Einstein’s thinking about gravitational lensing in astronomy was explicitly addressed in a 1936 paper, but it wasn’t until 1964 that Stanford’s Sydney Liebes produced the mathematics behind lensing at the largest scale, working with the lensing caused by a galaxy between the Earth and a distant quasar. Dennis Walsh, a British astronomer, found the first actual quasar ‘image’ produced in this way back in 1978, with Von Eshleman’s study of the Sun’s lensing the following year including the idea of sending a spacecraft to 550 AU.
SETI was on Eshleman’s mind, for he pondered what could be done at the 21 cm wavelength, the SETI ‘waterhole,’ and so did Frank Drake, who presented a paper on the concept in 1987. If you have a good academic library near you, its holdings of the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society for 1994 will include the proceedings of the Conference on Space Missions and Astrodynamics that Claudio Maccone organized two years earlier. FOCAL was now being considered, though in a mission then called SETISAIL, even though SETI would be only one aspect of its scientific investigations.
FOCAL Beyond Stars
Finding ways to exploit the gravitational lens of the Sun forces us to take into account the Sun’s corona, a problem both Eshleman (Stanford) and Slava Turyshev (JPL) soon addressed. We’d like to get a spacecraft not just to 550 AU, but well beyond it to avoid coronal distortion, taking advantage of the fact that we are not dealing with a focal point but a focal line. Let me quote one of Claudio Maccone’s papers on this (citation at the end of this post):
…a simple, but very important consequence of the above discussion is that all points on the straight line beyond this minimal focal distance are foci too, because the light rays passing by the Sun further than the minimum distance have smaller deflection angles and thus come together at an even greater distance from the Sun.
Thus we have the ability to move well beyond 550 AU, and in fact have no choice but to do so. The Sun’s corona creates what Maccone calls a ‘diverging lens effect’ and opposes the converging effect we associate with a gravitational lens. The result is that the minimum distance the FOCAL craft must reach (here I’m paraphrasing the paper) is higher for lower frequencies (of the source electromagnetic waves crossing the Solar corona) and lower for higher frequencies. Thus at 500 GHz, the focus is about 650 AU. At 160 GHz, the focus is at 763 AU.
But are we limited to using the Sun and, if we build radio ‘bridges’ as discussed yesterday, nearby stars as gravitational lenses? It turns out that planets too can be used for this purpose. In his 2011 study of this idea, which appeared in Acta Astronautica, Maccone produces the needed equations, noting that the ratio of a planet’s radius squared to its mass lets us calculate the distance a spacecraft must reach to take advantage of planetary lensing. From that we have defined what he calls the planet’s focal sphere.
Image: The complete BELT of focal spheres between 550 and 17,000 AU from the Sun, as created by the gravitational lensing effect of the sun and all planets, here shown to scale. The discovery of this belt of focal spheres is the main result put forward in this paper, together with the computation of the relevant antenna gains. Credit: C. Maccone.
Lensing Moves into the Oort Cloud
The figure above may contain a few surprises. We would expect Jupiter to top the list of planetary lenses, and indeed, its focal sphere is the next out from the Sun at 6100 AU. That’s a useful number to keep in mind, because we may discover that the Sun’s coronal effects are simply too powerful to overcome to produce the needed images. If so, we have a target halfway out to the inner Oort Cloud that we can also use to study the lensing phenomenon.
Beyond this, notice that Neptune, which has a high ratio between the square of its radius and its mass, comes next, at 13,525 AU. Saturn’s focal sphere is 14,425 AU out, and next we find our own Earth, with a focal sphere at 15,375 AU. Our planet makes a better lensing candidate than Uranus because it is the body with the highest density (ratio of mass to volume) in the Solar System. Maccone likes to point out that because we know the Earth’s surface and atmosphere better than that of any other planet, a FOCAL mission using the Earth as a lens would begin with a significant advantage as we try to untangle a lensed image of a distant object.
How would we take advantage of these planetary focal spheres? They extend all the way out to 17,000 AU in the case of Venus. As the figure makes clear, a fast spacecraft departing the Solar System could examine any of them in turn, beginning with observations as the Sun’s coronal effects begin to subside. Noting that a spacecraft enroute to Alpha Centauri would cross all these focal spheres, Maccone muses on the results of such a crossing:
First of all, while the Sun does not move in the Sun-centered reference frame of the Solar system, all the planets do move. This means that they actually sweep a certain area of the sky, as seen from the spacecraft, so that a spacecraft enjoys a sort of moving magnifying lens. How many extrasolar planets would fall inside this moving magnifying lens? Well, we don’t know nowadays, of course, but the over 400 exoplanets found to date [the paper appeared in 2011] are a neat promise that many more such exoplanets could be detected anew by a suitably equipped spacecraft crossing the distances between 550 and 17,000 AU from the Sun thanks to the gravitational lenses of the planets.
Such discoveries would be serendipitous, to say the least, as our Alpha Centauri mission would just be seeing what happened to be in line with the planet being studied as it departed the system. But having Jupiter at 6100 AU and the Earth at 15,375 AU does offer us useful targets for experimentation with the technologies we’ll need to tease images out of a focal sphere encounter. One of the big if’s of Breakthrough Starshot is the construction of operation of the phased laser array. But if it is built and we can achieve velocities of a significant fraction of c, then dedicated missions to explore planetary lensing would be sensible.
Clearly the Sun is our first choice as a gravitational lens not just because of the relative proximity of its minimum focal distance (550 AU) but because the effective gain of the Sun is so much higher than that of Jupiter, and far higher than the low gain we could expect to achieve with the Earth as a gravitational lensing body. Maccone calculates numerical values for the gain at frequencies ranging from the hydrogen line up to the CMB peak at 160 GHz, evaluating each of these for the Sun’s gravitational lens as well as the focal spheres of the various planets. If we want to work with the lensing potential of planets, we’ll need major advances in antenna and imaging technologies to overcome the weak signatures the planets provide.
The paper is Maccone, “A New Belt Beyond Kuiper’s: A Belt of Focal Spheres Between 550 and 17,000 AU for SETI and Science,” Acta Astronautica Vol. 69, Issues 11-12 (December 2011), pp. 939-948 (abstract).The Barbarians coach, Robbie Deans, has brushed off suggestions that an absence of players from the northern hemisphere tarnishes their fixture against New Zealand on Saturday after the All Blacks expressed their disappointment.
The Baa-Baas have named a 26-man squad, including six current or former All Blacks but no players from the home nations and only two from the Premiership. A deal had been struck with Premiership Rugby Limited for access to players but with a recent glut of injuries most clubs have been reluctant to release anyone.
After he was left out of England’s autumn internationals squad last week, James Haskell said on social media he would be keen to play for the Barbarians at Twickenham while Semesa Rokoduguni was also believed to be on their radar before he was called up by Eddie Jones to replace Elliot Daly. Only London Irish’s Ben Franks and Gloucester’s Ruan Ackermann have been picked from the Premiership, however, leaving Deans with a squad that contains 13 New Zealanders and only one European player – Italy’s Simone Favaro.
Robbie Deans strives to keep Barbarians valuable amid rugby’s clutter Read more
As a result, Ian Foster, the All Blacks assistant coach, expressed his regret at the changing nature of the fixture. “It would have been nice to have had a few more UK players against us,” he said. “It’s a great occasion we’re looking forward to but we’re mostly playing guys we recognise. It’s certainly changed, hasn’t it? It is what it is. We just agreed to a game. We’re looking forward to it but clearly the concept has changed. It’s more like a local derby.”
Deans, however, has dismissed any concerns that the anticipated 65,000-strong crowd is being shortchanged. “The critical thing is that those that are here want to be here,” the former Australia head coach said. “You can only select from those that are available and it’s not straightforward. As you know, we don’t have an aligned calendar and until then it’s unlikely to happen. The reality is that it’s for someone up the food chain. They’ve had several meetings about it and nothing’s changed.”
While New Zealand are set to be without a handful of players who do not arrive in the UK until Friday, including Sonny Bill Williams, Kieran Read and Dane Coles, they are strong favourites to mark their 125th anniversary with victory at Twickenham. The last time the All Blacks faced the Barbarians – in 2009 – the invitational side triumphed 25-18, thanks to a Bryan Habana hat-trick of tries, and New Zealander Deans is relishing the challenge.
“We’ll challenge them; you never have it all your own way. How successfully we challenge them remains to be seen but we’ll ask some questions,” he added. “It’s about producing a game that befits the occasion.”HARWICH (CBS) – Students at Cape Cod Regional Tech in Harwich are protesting new restrictions on yoga pants. They say their school’s new dress code promotes body shaming.
Female students there say they shouldn’t be forced to cover their bodies. The new rule requires yoga pants to be worn with a dress, skirt or shorts.
Some want school officials to change the rules.
The senior class president joined others in wearing just the pants as a protest.
“I definitely see both sides I think we need to dress appropriately at school not show anything that is inappropriate but at the same time we need to be standing up for our rights in what we can wear,” Seana Aiolupotea said.
“It’s pretty much like the same thing that’s going on in the Middle East,” a male student said. “Women can’t drive because it’s a distraction to men and I don’t think it’s fair that we can take something away from the girls just because it’s either distracting the guys or its non-professional.”
For now, violators won’t be punished
“In the hallways we’re always addressing dress in one way or another,” said Superintendent Robert Sanborn. “It’s hats indoors, tank tops things of that nature, and it’s a teachable moment it’s not a disciplinary action it’s not detention.”
Meanwhile, the debate goes on.
“Yoga pants are really comfortable,” one female student said.
“Being a girl I also feel uncomfortable with it, seeing a girl showing things,” another female student said. “I’m like they shouldn’t be dressing like that!”
So for now yoga pants violators will be addressed with teachable moments not punishment. Incidentally this school district is not alone. Restrictions on yoga pants have been in place in many different school districts across the country.On September 28, 1960, at Boston’s Fenway Park, Red Sox star Ted Williams hits a home run in the last at-bat of his 21-year career.
Ted Williams once said it was his goal in life to “walk down the street [and have] folks say ‘there goes the greatest hitter who ever lived.’” He succeeded. Williams led the American League in batting average six times, home runs four times and runs batted in four times. He was one of only two men ever to win baseball’s Triple Crown twice, leading the league in home runs, runs batted in and batting average in 1942 and again in 1947. Perhaps most impressively, however, he hit.406 in 1941–he was the last man ever to hit.400. He accomplished more than that, missing three seasons to fly combat missions in the Navy during World War II and parts of two more as a Marine during the Korean War, again to fly, this time with John Glenn as his wingman. Williams would later mold himself into a world-class fly fisherman, widely respected and accomplished with the reel.
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In spite of his brilliance at the plate, Williams had a tempestuous relationship with Red Sox fans and the media; to his frustration, his every move, both on and off the field, was reported in the newspapers. After being booed by the Fenway faithful early in his career, he swore never to tip his cap to the Boston fans again. In spite of the many spectacular home runs and clutch hits in his career, he never did.
After he hit.254 with a bad back in 1959, Red Sox management urged Williams to retire. Too proud to hang it up after a less-than-stellar season, he returned in 1960 at 42 years old and hit.316 for the year with 29 home runs. In the eighth inning of his final game at Fenway, played in front of a nearly empty house, Williams pulled a 1-1 pitch from Baltimore Oriole Jack Fisher into the Boston bullpen. After rounding the bases, he once again stubbornly refused to take off his hat to acknowledge his cheering fans.
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John Updike memorialized Williams’ career by telling the story of his last at-bat in the short story “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu,” published October 22, 1960 in The New Yorker.'I was called a white man's w***e': Child star of Sister Sister tearfully reveals years of sickening online abuse for mixed-race marriage to Fox News reporter
Sister Sister star Tamera Mowry told Oprah Winfrey that she has suffered years of racial abuse for her marriage to Adam Housely
Giving an interview with her twin sister Tia, Mowry said that she has been called a 'white man's whore' for her interracial union
Happy Couple: Tamera Mowry and Adam Housley were married in May of 2011 and have a son - Tamera revealed the horrific racial abuse she has suffered since her marriage to Housely
Sister Sister star Tamera Mowry has tearfully told Oprah Winfrey that she was labeled a 'white man's whore' among other horrific racial slurs for her marriage to Fox News correspondent Adam Housely.
Teen star Mowry, now 35, married Housely three years ago and since their happy day the couple have been remorselessly attacked by online trolls who reduce the identical twin to an emotional wreck with the strength of their barbs.
The TV star who appeared alongside her sister Tia in the hit 90s sitcom, was interviewed for Oprah: Where Are They Now and made the harrowing claim that since her marriage she has 'never experienced so much hate ever in my life, ever'.
Attacked primarily on Twitter, Mowry broke down in tears as she tried to reconcile her love for her husband with the bile of internet haters.
'See, this is where I get emotional, because it's hurtful,' Mowry said.
'Because when my husband and I are so openly -- and we're fine with showing -- is love. Love. But people choose to look past love and spew hate. That's what hurts me, because I've never experienced so much hate ever in my life, ever.'
Mowry described the most shocking example of abuse she received online as she wiped away her tears while talking to Oprah.
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Tears: Tamera wells up next to her sister Tia as she recalls the level of racial hate she has experienced in the three years since her marriage to Fox News correspondent Adam Housely in 2011
'I get called ‘white man's whore,' she said. 'The new one was ‘back in the day you cost $300, but now you're giving it to him for free.'
The popular television star who also appeared in a reality show with her sister grew up in a bi-racial family herself - compounding her shock at the abuse she received.
'I couldn't even fathom or think of these words, because I'm a product of it,' she said.
'My mom is a beautiful black woman and my dad is an amazing white man, and I grew up seeing a family. I didn't grow up saying, ‘Oh, that's a white man.'
She added that an especially hurtful remark she saw online involved her twin sister, Tia who is married to actor Cory Hardrict.
'They say, 'Oh, Tia's a true black woman because she married a black man,' Tamera said. 'Oh – I'm less of a black person because I married white?'
Interview: Tamera and Tia spoke to Oprah Winfrey for an upcoming edition of her OWN Network's Oprah: Where Are They Now?
However, Mowry told Oprah that she refuses to bow to the sniping from trolls online and beamed with pride as she spoke of her husband who she married in Napa Valley in May 2011 and 14-month-old son, Aden.
'I love my husband so much,' Mowry said. 'I love our family. I love our dynamic. I'm proud to be in the relationship I am because it's based on love. Pure love.'
Tamera Mowry and her sister Tia recently announced that they would no longer be continuing their reality show, Tia & Tamera, which launched on Style Network in 2011.
The show featured the Mowrys in their home life, including Tamera and husband Adam Housley.
'Wanted to say Thank You for all the love and support. But most of all welcoming me, my husband, and my son into your homes for 3 seasons,' Tia Mowry wrote in announcing the conclusion of the show.
Hit: Tamera Mowry appeared alongside her identical twin Tia in the 90s sitcom Sister, Sister
Young: Tamera and Tia were born in Gelnhausen in then-West Germany as their father, Timothy John Mowry, was in the U.S. Army at the time
The show first aired in 2011 on the Style Network, but was transferred over to E! on October 2013.
It followed the Sister, Sister stars as they tried to balance their acting careers while managing the major shift of marriage and motherhood in their lives.
Tia was married in 2008 to actor husband Cory Hardrict after meeting on-set of the movie Hollywood Horror and had their only child Cree Taylor Hardrict on June 28, 2011.
The older twin by two minutes, Tamera, followed both of her sisters milestones by marrying Fox News Correspondent Adam Housley in May of 2011 and giving birth to son Aden on November 12, 2012.
Adam Housely is a the Los Angeles correspondent for the Fox News channel and has extensively reported from around the Pacific region.
In the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami in 2011, Housely came within 70 miles of the Fukushima nuclear reactor that was devastated by the natural disaster.
He only turned around when the radiation became life threatening.
Mothers: (left) Tia Mowry-Hardrict with son Cree Taylor Hardrict and Tamera Mowry-Housley with her son Aden Housley at Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation's 24th Annual 'A Time For Heroes' in Los Angeles, America on 2 Jun 2013
Despite keeping their families and personal lives off of reality television, the identical twins can still be seen on the small screen.
Tia stars in the Nick At Nite network's sitcom Instant Mom, which debuted in September of 2013.Going to shows, festivals, and events is a way to escape reality for many of us. But this is an escape that most take for granted. It allows us an evening to forget all the hustle and bustle of work, school, and all other of life’s responsibilities. We laugh, love, dance, and take pictures, and at the end of the night we take little strings of beads home, kandi, as a way to encapsulate the nights fleeting memories.
Though it can be hard to truly comprehend everyone’s individual struggles as you look over a sea of smiling faces the struggles remain nonetheless; they range across a spectrum broader than we often take the time to realize. Nothing makes this more evident than a recent and life-touching story to surface from the recent “Escape from Wonderland” event.
Shawn Sage has been attending similar events for years, and had accumulated an arm full of kandi bracelets that where top-full of life changing experiences. Though having shared so many experiences with so many people, Escape from Wonderland was set to be his last. See Shawn had recently been diagnosed with stage IV colorectal cancer, leaving him with a bleak outcome. Despite the uphill battle that Shawn faces, he still dared to attend a large scale event which had brought so much happiness to his life before.
Moreover, Shawn is an inspiration to all the EDM community as he shares his kandi with a totally unknown stranger. By showing total trust and love and confidence in a fellow attendee, sought out completely at random, shows how much connectivity rests within our community. It is a truly heart-touching moment to read how the person reacted when Shawn approached them.
Not only does it show how much power a single moment can have, but also the effect that this single moment can have on a complete stranger. In the end all we have is a string of moments, and the people that connect these moments together. What brings our own community together in a way no music has before is a passion for not only the music, but also for the community itself. While this particular story is as heart-touching as they come, all of us have the power to touch somebody within our community in a profound way.
At your next festival or show, I challenge you reach out to a complete stranger and touch their life in some way. While our community has received a bad wrap of late due to bad press and unfortunate events, it is stories like these that will always give hope to the world I have loved for so long.A key confidant of the Afghan Taliban’s founding leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, now wants the hard-line movement to undergo a complete overhaul of its strategy and tactics to secure a role in the country’s future.
Syed Mohammad Tayyab Agha wants the Taliban’s current leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, to dramatically reduce violence, sever covert ties with key foreign backer Pakistan, adopt a new political approach, and redefine the Taliban’s ties with other jihadists.
In the comprehensive letter, exclusively obtained by Radio Mashaal, reveals Agha has inadvertently provided great insight into the internal struggles of one of the world’s most secretive militant Islamist organizations.
Agha, seen as a key Taliban ideologue, questions the Taliban’s current strategy, which mainly relies on overrunning rural territories and complex urban attacks that often result in a high number of civilian casualties.
“How can the Taliban leadership, now camped in Pakistan, demand that people in Afghanistan or elsewhere pledge allegiance
|
Udo as a mystic and poet whose poetry was set to music by Carl Orff with the haunting O Fortuna in Carmina Burana.
Aspects of the hoax [ edit ]
The poetry of O Fortuna was actually the work of itinerant goliards, found in the German Benedictine monastery of Benediktbeuern Abbey.
The hoax was lent an air of credibility because often medieval monks did discover scientific and mathematical theories, only to have them hidden or shelved due to persecution or simply ignored because publication prior to the invention of the printing press was difficult at best. Mr. Girvan adds to this suggestion by associating Udo with several other more legitimate discoveries where an author was considered ahead of his time in terms of a scientific theory of some sort that is now established as a mainstream theory but was considered fringe science at the time.
Another aspect of the deception was that it was very common for pre-20th century mathematicians to spend incredible amounts of time on hand calculations such as a logarithm table or trigonometric functions. Calculating all of the points for a Mandelbrot set is a comparable activity that would seem tedious today but would be routine for people of the time.After rebel MLA Vinod Binny, founder member of (AAP) on Sunday said humanity does not exist in the AAP and it is heading towards a dangerous direction.
Claiming that the AAP is on 'dangerous path' Bhaduri said, "The direction in which the party is heading, we will not go there. A party which kicks out humanity, then why would we work for it? And now, what is the difference between them and other parties?"
Miffed with the working of the party, Bhaduri has reportedly decided to step down from the committees on gender justice, foreign policy and national security.
"When Arvind took oath, he had talked about two things. Firstly he appealed to the people not to take or give bribe to anybody. Secondly, he sang a song on humanity and brotherhood. So, we all thought that humanity is the foundation of the party. I have been associated with the party for a long time," said Bhaduri.
She also criticized the party and Delhi Law Minister Somnath Bharti, who had conducted a raid on foreign nationals alleging drug racket and prostitution.
"The events that transpired on the intervening night of January 15 and 16, was a serious stroke on humanity. Firstly, many people died due to cold. There was no answerability on this issue. They had announced that they will construct 300 night shelters in Delhi. Secondly, women were insulted in the middle of the night. The party is silent on both these issues," Bhaduri added.
On AAP's supporting the action's of Bharti, Bhaduri said, "The party is saying that a judicial inquiry is being conducted. But at least they can apologize to the women who were insulted. That's all I demand."
"I had brought one resolution in which the party would tender its apology to the Ugandan nationals. The mistake was committed by the members and workers of the party. But they rejected this resolution," she said.SunEdison, the world's largest renewable energy development company, announced a definitive agreement to buy Vivint Solar, one of the largest providers of residential rooftop solar systems.
The deal accelerates SunEdison's efforts to become a leading global residential and commercial solar provider, Deutsche Bank analyst Vishal Shah said in a market analysis.
SunEdison said it will pay $2.2 billion for Vivint Solar in a combination of cash, shares of SunEdison common stock and convertible notes. The deal means SunEdison's solar farm subsidiary, TerraForm Power, will gain a customer base that already contracted to purchase 523 megawatts (MW) of rooftop solar by the end of the year that is worth $922 million.
Separately, Hewlett-Packard announced it has signed a 12-year power purchase agreement with SunEdison.
TerraForm Power, which is SunEdison's business dedicated to owning and operating solar farms, will also take on future completed residential and small commercial projects from SunEdison's expanded residential and small commercial (RSC) business unit.
The Vivint Solar management team will join SunEdison. SunEdison's RSC development business and the Vivint Solar team will be merged.
Vivint Solar, based in Lehi, Utah, operates in seven states -- Arizona, California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and the District of Columbia.
Vivint Solar was the second-largest residential solar installer in the U.S. in 2013, according to GTM Research. Like other residential solar power providers, Vivint installs solar panels at no cost to the homeowner, but the user signs an agreement to buy the power the panels produce over a set number of years.
Shah said the acquisition news is generally positive for the solar power industry.
"This transaction also reiterates our view that [SunEdison/TerraForm Power] is best positioned to acquire assets due to cost of capital/structure and scale advantages over other players in the industry," Shah stated.
SunEdison's contract with HP calls for the technology giant to buy 112MW of wind power from SunEdison. The 112 MW of locally generated wind electricity is sufficient to power 100% of HP's Texas-based data center operations, the equivalent of powering 42,600 homes each year, and will avoid the emission of more than 340,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually.
The agreement will allow HP to reach its 2020 operational greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction goal by the end of the 2015 fiscal year, five years ahead of schedule, the company stated.
"This agreement represents the latest step we are taking on HP's journey to reduce our carbon footprint across our entire value chain, while creating a stronger, more resilient company and a sustainable world," Gabi Zedlmayer, vice president and chief progress officer for HP, stated.
The agreement is HP's first utility-scale renewable energy purchase.Two of six Burundi teenagers who went missing after an international robotics competition in the United States have been seen crossing the border into Canada, U.S. authorities said Thursday.
The search for the teens is ongoing, but police have no indication of foul play in their disappearance, said Aquita Brown, a spokeswoman for police in Washington, D.C.
Canadian officials would not say if the two students reported to have been seen crossing the border — a 16-year-old and a 17-year-old — had made refugee claims.
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Globe editorial: Are we headed for a refugee crisis on our border? Ottawa needs to tell us
Canada Border Services Agency said in an e-mail Thursday that it is not its practice to confirm or deny the entry of any person into Canada. The RCMP said it was not in a position to comment on the matter.
American authorities tweeted missing person fliers Wednesday asking for help finding the six teens, who had last been seen in the U.S. at the FIRST Global Challenge around the time of Tuesday's final matches. The missing team members include two 17-year-old girls and four male students ranging in age from 16 to 18.
The competition in the U.S. capital, which is designed to encourage youths to pursue careers in math and science, attracted teams of teenagers from more than 150 nations. A squad of girls from Afghanistan drew the most attention after they were twice rejected for U.S. visas and President Donald Trump intervened.
Organizers learned Tuesday night that the Burundi team's mentor couldn't find the six students who participated in the competition and FIRST Global president Joe Sestak made the initial call to police, a FIRST Global Challenge statement said.
The mentor said the teens travelled from Burundi for the competition and have one-year visas, U.S. police reports say. The mentor said they disappeared after the competition, but he doesn't know where they went. The reports say police tried to contact one missing teen's uncle but got no response.
The competition's webpage about Team Burundi shows the six team members posing with a flag and says team members were selected from schools in Bujumbura, the capital city.
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Alastair Clarke, a Canadian immigration lawyer based out of Winnipeg, said one of the most common reasons asylum-seekers choose Canada over the U.S. is because of a "general fear of the Trump administration."
"I have heard it on numerous occasions that individuals have chosen Canada because they don't feel that the U.S. government is supportive of refugees," said Clarke, who has worked on several cases involving Burudi refugees claimants.
He said many refugees claimants in the U.S. are detained while their asylum claims are in process and many have heard that they will receive more legal support and support from established communities in Canada.
"I've had clients who have gone through the U.S. system and they have been detained for four, six, 12 or 18 months while their refugee claim is in process," Clarke said. "This has been a huge detriment to their application — they have not had access to counsel, they have not had access to get proper documents."
Clarke added that Burundi — an East African nation of about 10 million people who speak the local Kirundi language and French — is on a list of countries at the Refugee Protection Division for expedited processing.
Henry Chang, a Toronto-based lawyer for Blaney McMurtry, who is not involved in the situation, said the one-year visas issued to the students by the U.S. government mean they would likely fall under the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement.
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The agreement requires people to apply for asylum in the first country where they arrive, unless an immediate family member lives in the other country.
The Canadian government has faced pressure to repeal the agreement, with many arguing it is the reason asylum-seekers have crossed the border on foot, to bypass border points so they could make their refugee claims once already in the country.
"There is a clear perception... that Canada is more inclined to grant them refugee status if they come here," Chang said. "That's why you've seen this influx of people — who aren't even illegal, they are in legal status — but they don't think there is any hope for them in the U.S., so they make the trek across the border like everyone else is doing right now."
— With files from Daniela Germano at The Canadian PressAccording to a member of the ships company we spoke to, HMS Queen Elizabeth is likely to sail soon with the crew having been told when to expect to sail.
This has not been confirmed officially by the Aircraft Carrier Alliance and readers intending to see the ship should note that the bridges over the Forth will be closed to the public as the vessel departs.
A member of the ships company we spoke to told the UK Defence Journal:
“We are expected to sail on Sunday maybe a day sooner but expect a sail date next week.”
The potential for a delay until next week is because “the weather forecast for the weekend isn’t great” we were told.
The earlier news of the slippage in trials of HMS Queen Elizabeth is no secret, the ship was supposed to sail in Spring. In such complex engineering projects, this type of occurrence isn’t a cause for concern nor is it unusual. HMS Queen Elizabeth, after all, is essentially a prototype and the Ministry of Defence can’t afford to get it wrong.
Defence secretary Michael Fallon said:
“It has always been our intention that Queen Elizabeth should be accepted into the Royal Navy before the end of this year. We are not giving specific dates as to when the sea trials are likely to commence.”
Image obtained by the UK Defence Journal shows supercarrier HMS Queen Elizabeth at night in Rosyth. #Supercarrier pic.twitter.com/TqxeI8BqtF — UK Defence Journal (@UKDefJournal) June 21, 2017
Lt Gen. Mark Poffley, Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff for Military Capability, said:
“There have been a series of technical issues associated with bringing the vessel to the point where she can commence her sea trials.”
It is understood that this minor delay is ‘not outside the tolerance’ of the programme.Story highlights New pedestrian crossing lights show same-sex and heterosexual couples hand in hand
Vienna is hosting the Eurovision Song Contest, known for its kitsch songs and outlandish performances
(CNN) Pedestrians waiting to cross the road in the Austrian capital of Vienna will now be greeted by an unusual sight.
Ahead of the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna, nearly 50 "walk" lights have been adapted with new symbols showing couples -- some of them same-sex.
Instead of a single figure walking or not walking, the lights will show two women, two men or a heterosexual couple hand in hand, with little hearts lighting up between them.
City officials say they hope the new signals will improve road safety as well as highlighting Vienna's commitment to equality, diversity and tolerance. In the coming days, more lights will be adapted, with 120 pedestrian crossings due to feature the new symbols in total.
The move comes as Vienna gears up for a huge influx of performers, visitors and media for the Eurovision Song Contest, taking place in the city from May 18 to 23.
Read MoreA visit to a disaster area is not the most appropriate time for product promotion, but here we are.
JIM WATSON via Getty Images Trump's "USA" hat is currently for sale on his website for $40.
Trump arrived in Corpus Christi wearing the white “45/USA” hat that’s available for $40 on his own website, shop.donaldjtrump.com. This marks the third time in four days that the president has worn on-sale campaign merchandise during events related to Harvey, including two previous meetings for which the White House released photographs.
Trump has used his Harvey meetings as product placement for hats he sells for $40 two days in a row now... pic.twitter.com/EQcPkS8Yit — Gabriel Snyder (@gabrielsnyder) August 27, 2017
For a third time, Trump is using Hurricane Harvey as product placement for a hat he sells for $40 pic.twitter.com/8Js7DEnbAs — Gabriel Snyder (@gabrielsnyder) August 29, 2017
shopdonaldjtrumpcom It's "official."
Melania Trump received some blowback for the “Top Gun”-esque outfit she wore to board their flight to Texas ― namely, for a pair of sky-high black stilettos that prompted many Twitter users to deem her “out of touch,” as they assumed she planned to wear the shoes on the ground. But her spokeswoman said the first lady would change before arrival, and she touched down in Texas wearing flat sneakers and a complete change of clothing, including a black “FLOTUS” baseball hat.
Kevin Lamarque / Reuters People balked at seeing the first lady in heels for a trip to visit areas affected by Hurricane Harvey, but she changed before touching down in Texas.
A glance at Trump’s website shows his wife’s FLOTUS hat is not currently for sale there. Her director of communications, Stephanie Grisham, did not respond by time of publication to an inquiry about the hat and whether it will be sold, too.
Wonder how long it is before Melania's FLOTUS hat goes on sale? https://t.co/wVObXDASm7 — Robert Maguire (@RobertMaguire_) August 29, 2017
Also the @FLOTUS hat. This whole Trump Presidency is one big money grab — Dan Hill (@dannyshane1973) August 29, 2017
The wearing of on-sale campaign merchandise seems to be a wild departure for U.S. presidents visiting disaster areas. Here’s former president Barack Obama in 2011, visiting with New Jersey residents impacted by Hurricane Irene:
JIM WATSON via Getty Images No hat to be found.
And here he is again in New Jersey in 2012, visiting with residents impacted by Superstorm Sandy:
JEWEL SAMAD via Getty Images Not a hat for Obama in sight.
A look back at former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush show similar results ― neither was plugging their own re-election gear.
JOYCE NALTCHAYAN via Getty Images Bill Clinton surveying damage from a series of 2004 tornados in Arkadelphia, Arkansas.
Win McNamee via Getty Images George Bush sitting with Biloxi resident Patrick Wright, whose home was destroyed during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.WASHINGTON -- American combat troops in Iraq may be heading to the exits -- or not -- but the U.S. government's enormously expensive intervention there is hardly coming to an end.
In a telling sign of how dangerous and chaotic Iraq remains more than eight years after President George W. Bush launched the war against Saddam Hussein, U.S. diplomats, military advisers and other officials are planning to fall back to the gargantuan embassy in Baghdad -- a heavily fortified, self-contained compound the size of Vatican City.
The embassy compound is by far the largest the world has ever seen, at one and a half square miles, big enough for 94 football fields. It cost three quarters of a billion dollars to build (coming in about $150 million over budget). Inside its high walls, guard towers and machine-gun emplacements lie not just the embassy itself, but more than 20 other buildings, including residential quarters, a gym and swimming pool, commercial facilities, a power station and a water-treatment plant.
Yet the embassy is turning out to be too small for the swelling retinue of gunmen, gardeners and other workers the State Department considers necessary to provide security and "life support" for the sizable group of diplomats, military advisers and other executive branch officials who will be taking shelter there once the troops withdraw from the country.
The number of personnel under the authority of the U.S. ambassador to Iraq will swell from 8,000 to about 16,000 as the troop presence is drawn down, a State Department official told The Huffington Post. "About 10 percent would be core programmatic staff, 10 percent management and aviation, 30 percent life support contractors -- and 50 percent security," he said.
As part of that increase, the State Department will double its complement of security contractors -- fielding a private army of over 5,000 to guard the embassy and other diplomatic outposts and protect personnel as they travel beyond the fortifications, the official said. Another 3,000 armed guards will protect Office of Security Cooperation personnel, who are responsible for sales and training related to an estimated $13 billion in pending U.S. arms sales, including tanks, squadrons of attack helicopters and 36 F-16s.
Under the Status of Forces Agreement negotiated between Iraq and former President Bush in 2008 -- and, at least thus far, still in effect -- all U.S. troops are supposed to leave the country by the end of this year.
As of now, there are about 45,000 U.S. troops still in Iraq. Obama administration officials had been hoping the Iraqi government would allow at least 10,000 to remain past the end-of-the-year deadline. Earlier this month, however, they floated the idea of keeping only 3,000. But given the unpredictable nature of the fractured Iraqi leadership, nothing is certain.
As the Department of Defense pulls out and its spending drops, the State Department is expecting its costs to skyrocket. State asked Congress for $2.7 billion for its Iraqi operations in fiscal year 2011, and got $2.1 billion. It wants $6.2 billion for next year. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee estimates that State's plans will cost $25 to $30 billion over the next five years.
Patrick Kennedy, undersecretary of state for management, told the Commission on Wartime Contracting in June that State intends to pay $3 billion in the next five years on its major private security contracts alone.
While $6 billion a year might not seem like much compared to the estimated $806 billion in direct appropriations spent on the Iraq war and reconstruction thus far, that is still an enormous amount of money. Consider, for instance, that the State Department's total operating budget this year is about $14 billion.
Money isn't the only resource being drained by Iraq. The toll on the diplomatic corps is substantial.
In addition to staffing the embassy in Baghdad, the department intends to have more than 1,000 people on staff at each of its two consulates, making them far larger than all but the most important U.S. embassies around the world. Given the de facto partitioning of Iraq, one consulate, in Erbil, will essentially be an embassy to the Kurds; the other, in Basra, an embassy to the Shia -- and to the country's biggest oil fields.
Steve Kashkett, then the head of the American Foreign Service Association, complained at Hillary Clinton's very first town hall meeting as secretary of State that the cost of creating the largest diplomatic mission in U.S. history "has been to take people away from all of our other diplomatic missions around the world, which have been left understaffed and with staffing gaps." A Government Accountability Office report in 2009 concluded that filling the numerous positions in Iraq and Afghanistan meant that "key positions at other hardship posts remain vacant or are filled by officers who may lack the necessary experience to effectively perform their duties, potentially compromising State’s ability to advance U.S. international interests."
IS IT WORTH IT?
U.S. Ambassador to Iraq James Jeffrey testified on Capitol Hill in February that the State Department's plan is absolutely necessary to achieve key goals when it comes to diplomacy, economics, energy, security and rule of law. "To not finish the job now creates substantial risks of what some people call a Charlie Wilson's war moment in Iraq, with both the resurgence of al Qaeda and the empowering of other problematic regional players," he said.
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who fought the expansion of the embassy in the first place, told The Huffington Post he's been hearing similar arguments for eight years now -- and thinks Iraq isn't worth all this trouble.
"I don't know why that has to be one of our highest priorities," he said. "I think we've reached the point in Iraq where whatever we're spending money on, we're throwing good money after bad."
"I've been to that embassy," Leahy continued, "and I understand security concerns and all. But this is a small country. They can't even get their act together. A lot of people there see us as occupiers and wish we'd leave."
For Leahy, the continued spending spree in Iraq is also part of a larger complaint.
"We're told by a lot of the Republican party that we can't even get disaster relief unless we take it out of some other program in the United States, maybe education or health care or something like that," he said. "I think it's about time that we started thinking more about money for Americans, more than we do for Iraq or Afghanistan. It's upside down."
Leahy stopped short of definitively calling for a smaller State Department footprint in Iraq. "I'm not exactly sure what I'd do, other than to say I wish we'd never built it to begin with," he said.
But Peter Van Buren, a blogger and career Foreign Service employee who spent 2009 and 2010 leading two Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Iraq, told HuffPost it's time to retrench.
"I think what's important in this day and age -- particularly with the budget crisis in the United States and the need to convey a message to the Middle East that the United States seeks a relationship that isn't martial -- is to right-size the embassy in Iraq," he said. "That respects the fact that budgets are tight and sends the signal to the Middle East that we're not there as an occupying power."
Van Buren's book, "We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People" is set to be released in two weeks. In his experience, he said, the size and nature of the U.S. embassy compound is a major problem.
"By building a palace -- a fortress -- in the middle of their country, we're sending a message," he said. That message is: "We're still here and we're still running the show."
The U.S. needs to have an embassy in Baghdad to do what embassies normally do, Christopher A. Preble, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, told HuffPost. But, he added, "Having an embassy as large as the one that we have suggests that the United States Government is intending something much more than that."
The need for extensive security is certainly real. In his most recent quarterly report in July, Stuart W. Bowen, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) wrote that "Iraq remains an extraordinarily dangerous place to work. It is less safe, in my judgment, than 12 months ago."
But in Van Buren's view, the size of the embassy is overkill. "It's a fortress designed to keep both people and reality out," he said.
University of Michigan professor and Middle East blogger Juan Cole said the U.S. embassy in Iraq is "emblematic of the entire way of thinking of this enterprise: From the beginning, the Iraq war was hubris."
A COMPOUND PROBLEM
Construction of the embassy began in 2005, and was troubled from the start. An October 2009 review from the State Department's inspector general recommended that of the $470 million in no-bid construction contracts the U.S. signed with the First Kuwaiti construction company, the department should ask for $132 million back, because of construction deficiencies, inadequate quality control and other problems. There were even allegations that the construction company engaged in human trafficking as it assembled its large, third-country national workforce.
Some cost overruns were not the contractor's fault, however; they were a function of the naivete of the original embassy designers, who both expected diplomats to move to Baghdad with their families and that they would be able to shop at neighborhood grocery stores and eat at neighborhood restaurants. Instead, the designs had to be redrawn for a rocket- and mortar-proof cafeteria where compound residents could eat all their meals. A building intended for use as an international school was converted into offices.
And despite the compound's large size, a report in May from the State Department inspector general warned that there soon won't be enough beds to go around. State Department officials, the report said, are trying to get new leases on nearby properties currently being used by the military -- but are also considering "creative ways" to accommodate more personnel, including "hot bunking," having people share beds and sleep in shifts.
For security reasons, photography on the compound is banned except in a few rare circumstances (see the NBC video below). Its location is hardly a secret, though, and architectural designs for the compound have leaked out, but publicly available satellite imagery is either dated or blurred out.
Van Buren, who now has an administrative job at the State Department in Washington, recalled how shockingly out of place the embassy compound felt whenever he came in from his tours outside the fortified international zone.
"We lived in austere conditions, characterized by heat and dust," he said. But once past the compound's various security gates, "You feel like you've just stepped onto a fairly well funded American community college campus," he said. "It is one of the most surreal experiences that's available without pharmaceuticals."
The compound even had outdoor water-misters to keep people cool. "The people I was working with at the Provincial Reconstruction Teams were desperate for clean water -- and here we were spraying it in the air so that people could sit outside in the summer," he said.
"From the outside, all you see of course are walls," Van Buren added.
"It's a fortress," said Leahy. "I can't imagine how inviting that is to Iraqis."
But no matter how impregnable the embassy compound now seems, it may, in the long run, be doomed. "How long can this enormous fortress on foreign soil stand without at some point offending and angering the population?" asked retired Army Col. Douglas MacGregor, now a military analyst.
"These are supposed to be monuments to our determination and resolve to stay," he said. But, as with the British edifices built in India, he said, "at some point it's inevitable. At some point in the future, this little fortress America comes under siege."
WATCH rare video NBC shot from inside the U.S. embassy compound in 2009:
* * * * *
Dan Froomkin is senior Washington correspondent for The Huffington Post. You can send him an email, bookmark his page; subscribe to his RSS feed, follow him on Twitter, friend him on Facebook, and/or become a fan and get email alerts when he writes.MPs and former military chiefs push to broaden war powers beyond PM, Cabinet
Updated
A group of federal MPs and former military chiefs is ramping up calls for an inquiry into the decisions that led to Australia joining the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, with some pushing to change the war powers invested in the Prime Minister and Cabinet.
Key points: Prime Minister and Cabinet can decide whether to send troops to war
Call to broaden powers so parliament must also vote on decision
Some MPs and former military chiefs also want inquiry into Iraq War
Currently, the Prime Minister and Cabinet can decide whether or not to send Australian soldiers to war, but some want to broaden those powers to a parliamentary vote.
Just a month after Britain handed down the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War, there are also calls for Australia to hold a similar investigation.
Britain's seven-year inquiry found the UK joined the US-led military action before peaceful alternatives to war had been exhausted.
Labor MP Mike Kelly, a distinguished former Army Veteran, says now is the right time to revisit Australia's role in the conflict.
"It's not too late. In fact I think some distance now behind us will give us an even better perspective and better opportunity to do that analysis properly," he told Lateline.
"The whole strategic lead-up, the planning, how we engaged with our allies, how we conducted and executed the mission. There's so much to be teased out about that and in particular the intelligence processes."
Former Australian Army Officer James Brown said in Australia, the learning process was only halfway done.
"I think we're unlikely to see an inquiry as forensic and extensive as Chilcot in Australia but it would be good to see more on the public record about how some of these decisions were made," he said.
Now an Adjunct Associate Professor at the US Studies Centre at Sydney University, James Brown said there is a trend in Western nations towards broader participation in decisions about war, particularly through parliamentary approval.
"That's why we're seeing calls for war powers reform in Canada, New Zealand and particularly in the United Kingdom," he said.
Call for more to have say in going to war
Both major parties support the current war powers arrangement, but Labor Senator Lisa Singh has broken ranks, claiming the decision to go to war is too important to be left solely to the Prime Minister.
"We're talking about one of the most important policy areas that our country has to face. And yet the decision is made by one person," she said.
"Our parliamentarians are intelligent enough, sophisticated enough to work through a system that would work."
But many military strategists disagree, including the executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), Peter Jennings.
"If you look at how parliaments are structured, you're really saying that you're going to leave decisions to go to war to a handful of crossbenchers in the Senate," he said.
"So if we were to have a debate today about deploying, that means it's going to be Jacqui Lambie, Pauline Hanson and her supporters. It's going to be Nick Xenophon. Are they the people we want to give Australia's war powers to?" he asked.
'Don't rake over coals, keep decision-making secure'
Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has rejected the idea of broadening the decision-making process to go to war beyond the Prime Minister and Cabinet.
"These decisions have to be made in an incredibly secure environment; they have to be made in such a way obviously that the enemy does not know what you are up to," he told ABC News Breakfast.
"It has to be made with some immediacy.
"A parliamentary debate whilst your national security is at threat is a rather peculiar concept and I don't agree with it."
Joyce also dismissed the idea of an inquiry into Australia's involvement in the Iraq war.
"The issue now is we've got to realise people make decisions on the information that's presented to them, and that decision was made," he said.
"I don't know whether going back and deciding to rake over the coals there is going to be better than trying to make sure we deliver on our security needs as they stand right today."
War widow calls for reform
Kellie Merritt, whose husband was killed in the Iraq war, has renewed her push for reform of war powers.
Flight Lieutenant Paul Pardoel died when the British Hercules he was flying in was shot down over Iraq.
"We invaded another country and the fallout from that has been catastrophic," she said.
In the lead-up to the 2003 invasion, there was lengthy debate in the Australian Parliament, but the decision was made by John Howard and his Cabinet, without any vote.
"The gravest decision a government can make must also be the most robust, considered, rationally grounded one and the process we have now hasn't leant itself to giving us that sort of outcome," Ms Merritt said.
The Greens plan to reintroduce a bill to debate war powers when Parliament returns next week.
Senator Peter Whish-Wilson said the current system is broken.
"Australia is one of the last Western democracies that can send its citizens to overseas conflicts without any recourse to Parliament," he said.
"The laws and legislation in place now that give essentially full control to the prime minister and the executive date back to the feudal times of royalty."
Topics: unrest-conflict-and-war, federal-government, government-and-politics, defence-and-national-security, defence-forces, australia
First postedVia David Roy; Wood That Works
David Roy’s kinetic wood sculptures are a symphony of movement.
Set into motion by a few cranks of a knob, intricate orbs spin, twist, and bob to create trance-inducing patterns. Constructed only from birch plywood, a few springs, and a pulley, the sculptures run continuously, on nothing more than kinetic energy, for 8 to 16 hours. No motors, batteries, or electronic components are enlisted: these babies are au naturel.
But the man who made them didn’t always consider himself an artist. A one-time physics major and mainframe programmer, David abandoned the sciences, threw practicality to the wind, and instead, started his own company, “Wood That Works.” Today, from a small Ashford, Connecticut wood shop, he sells his wares for up to $4,000 a piece.
Since taking a complete 180, he's found not only financial success, but a true calling in a field he’d never given much thought to.
The Wood Hacker
David, tinkering; via David Roy
As a child, David was fueled by curiosity. Perched beside his father, who built jet engines for a living, he followed, with starry-eyes, the trajectory of America’s first shuttle launches. From Erector Sets to electric motors, he perennially tinkered, and soon developed a love for working with his hands.
By the early 1970s, he’d earned an engineering scholarship to Boston University, where he later pivoted to chemistry and physics. “I was right where I thought I’d be at the time,” he says; “I always pictured myself going into the sciences or engineering.”
While in college, he frequently journeyed to see his high school friend, Marji, who was studying sculpture and art education at the Rhode Island School of Design. Though he’d never held much stock in art, the trips proved to be eye-opening:
“I was exposed to the artistic creative process from the inside for the first time. I was fascinated. I saw it as another type of creative problem solving, not all that different from my advanced physics courses but with a completely different goal.”
On one weekend trip, Marji exposed David to her newest creations: working “machines” made from wood -- including a giant plywood chain that turned when hand-cranked. Though Marji had just made them for fun and wasn’t interested in pursuing that type of artwork, David was fascinated.
“That was my idea of art: it was whimsical, it made me smile,” he recalls. “I had all these suggestions for mechanical improvements, and she just said, ‘Why don’t you make this stuff instead?’”
So, he did just that.
David and Marji; via David Roy
After graduating in 1974, David and Marji got married. While Marji landed her “dream job” teaching art, David settled into a role as a mainframe programmer, where he “spent a lot of time waiting.”
“This was the era of stacks of cards and reams of green and white lined computer paper,” he clarifies. “The job was fairly boring with lots of dead time between submitting a ‘job’ and getting the results.”
He took advantage of his spare moments by sketching ideas for wood sculptures and small wooden toys; before long, the sketches implored him to create, and he soon found himself sourcing scrap wood from dumpsters and teaching himself basic carpentry skills.“I had very little knowledge, and the only tool I’d ever used was a handsaw,” he admits. “Marji took the lead and taught me how to make joints, boxes, primitive stuff. That’s how I got going.”
Spclacker (left), and Xylo: a few of David Roy’s earliest creations (1975); via Wood That Works
David took his first creations -- fairly simple wooden toys operated by hand cranks -- to local craft shows, where they sold well. He began to realize that if he were able to invest more time in woodwork and less in programming, he might be able to scrape together a living working with his hands.
Once the seed for this idea was planted, he couldn’t shake it; only nine months into his database engineering job, he quit and launched his sculpture company, “Wood That Works.” Aside from building really great things, he had no discernible plan.
“Can You Make Them Run Longer?”
When David was at these small craft shows, it was essential that he kept his inventions in motion so that customers could see how they moved. “I had to sit there, spinning the toys the whole time with my hand,” he says, “and everyone would continually ask me, ‘Can you make them run longer?’”
Not one to back down from a challenge, David began to think of ways he could achieve this. Motors, batteries, and wires were strictly out of the question -- he wanted to keep his creations pure and organic. Instead, he designed a weight-driven mechanism, similar to that of a clock: the energy of a falling weight provides the motion, and in turn, the motion of the piece controls the fall of the weight.
After several failed attempts of kinetic sculptures (including a “6-foot tall monster that hardly moved”), David realized that wall-mounted works were more readily sell
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to digital photo books to personalize them and retain the special qualities of traditional photo albums.
The web has been a popular medium for storing and sharing photos ever since the first photograph was published on the web by Tim Berners-Lee in 1992 (an image of the CERN house band Les Horribles Cernettes). Today photo sharing sites such as Flickr, Picasa and PhotoBucket, as well as social Web sites, are used by millions of people to share their pictures. In today's world digital photography and social media websites allow organizations and corporations to make photographs more accessible to a greater and more diverse population. For example, National Geographic Magazine has a Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram accounts and each one includes content aimed for the type of audience that are part of each social media community.[33] It is also important to remember that digital photography has also had an impact in other fields, such as medicine. It has allowed doctors to help diagnose diabetic retinopathy and it is used in hospitals to diagnose and treat other diseases.[34]
Digitally altered imagery [ edit ]
New technology with digital cameras and computer editing affects the way we perceive photographic images today. The ability to create and fabricate realistic imagery digitally as opposed to untouched photos changes the audience’s perception of ‘truth’ in digital photography [35] Manipulation in the digital era allows us to brush up our pictures, shape our memories to be picture perfect and therefore shape our identities.
Recent research and innovation [ edit ]
Research and development continues to refine the lighting, optics, sensors, processing, storage, display, and software used in digital photography. Here are a few examples.
Other areas of progress include improved sensors, more powerful software, advanced camera processors (sometimes using more than one processor, e.g., the Canon 7d camera has 2 Digic 4 processors), enlarged gamut displays, built in GPS & WiFi, and computer-controlled lighting.
Comparison with film photography [ edit ]
Advantages already in consumer level cameras [ edit ]
The primary advantage of consumer-level digital cameras is the low recurring cost, as users need not purchase photographic film. Processing costs may be reduced or even eliminated. Digicams tend also to be easier to carry and to use, than comparable film cameras. They more easily adapt to modern use of pictures. Some, particularly those that are smartphones, can send their pictures directly to e-mail or web pages or other electronic distribution.
Advantages of professional digital cameras [ edit ]
Immediate image review and deletion is possible; lighting and composition can be assessed immediately, which ultimately conserves storage space.
High volume of images to medium ratio; allowing for extensive photography sessions without changing film rolls. To most users a single memory card is sufficient for the lifetime of the camera whereas film rolls are a re-incurring cost of film cameras.
Faster workflow: Management (colour and file), manipulation and printing tools are more versatile than conventional film processes. However, batch processing of RAW files can be time consuming, even on a fast computer.
Precision and reproducibility of processing: since processing in the digital domain is purely numerical, image processing using deterministic (non-random) algorithms is perfectly reproducible and eliminates variations common with photochemical processing that make many image processing techniques difficult if not impractical.
Digital manipulation: A digital image can be modified and manipulated much easier and faster than with traditional negative and print methods. The digital image to the right was captured in Raw image format, processed and output in 3 different ways from the source RAW file, then merged and further processed for color saturation and other special effects to produce a more dramatic result than was originally captured with the RAW image.
Manufacturers such as Nikon and Canon have promoted the adoption of digital single-lens reflex cameras (DSLRs) by photojournalists. Images captured at 2+ megapixels are deemed of sufficient quality for small images in newspaper or magazine reproduction. Eight- to 24-megapixel images, found in modern digital SLRs, when combined with high-end lenses, can approximate the detail of film prints from 35 mm film based SLRs.[39][not in citation given]
Disadvantages of digital cameras [ edit ]
High ISO image noise may manifest as multicolored speckles in digital images, rather than the less-objectionable "grain" of high-ISO film. While this speckling can be removed by noise-reduction software, either in-camera or on a computer, this can have a detrimental effect on image quality as fine detail may be lost in the process.
As with any sampled signal, the combination of regular (periodic) pixel structure of common electronic image sensors and regular (periodic) structure of (typically man-made) objects being photographed can cause objectionable aliasing artefacts, such as false colors when using cameras using a Bayer pattern sensor. Aliasing is also present in film, but typically manifests itself in less obvious ways (such as increased granularity) due to the stochastic grain structure (stochastic sampling) of film.
For many consumers, the advantages of digital cameras outweigh the disadvantages. Some professional photographers still prefer film. Concerns that have been raised by professional photographers include: editing and post-processing of RAW files can take longer than 35mm film, downloading a large number of images to a computer can be time-consuming, shooting in remote sites requires the photographer to carry a number of batteries, equipment failure—while all cameras may fail, some film camera problems (e.g., meter or rangefinder problems, failure of only some shutter speeds) can be worked around. As time passes, it is expected that more professional photographers will switch to digital.[40]
Equivalent features [ edit ]
Image noise / grain
Noise in a digital camera's image may sometimes be visually similar to film grain in a film camera.
Speed of use
Turn of the century digital cameras had a long start-up delay compared to film cameras, i.e., the delay from when they are turned on until they are ready to take the first shot, but this is no longer the case for modern digital cameras with start-up times under 1/4 seconds.[41]
Frame rate
While some film cameras could reach up to 14 fps, like the Canon F-1 with rare high speed motor drive.,[42] professional digital SLR cameras can take still photographs at highest frame rates. While the Sony SLT technology allows rates of up to 12 fps, the Canon EOS-1Dx can take stills at a 14 fps rate. The Nikon F5 is limited to 36 continuous frames (the length of the film) without the cumbersome bulk film back, while the digital Nikon D5 is able to capture over 100 14-bit RAW images before its buffer must be cleared and the remaining space on the storage media can be used.
Image longevity
Depending on the materials and how they are stored, analog photographic film and prints may fade as they age. Similarly, the media on which digital images are stored or printed can decay or become corrupt, leading to a loss of image integrity.
Colour reproduction
Colour reproduction (gamut) is dependent on the type and quality of film or sensor used and the quality of the optical system and film processing. Different films and sensors have different color sensitivity; the photographer needs to understand his equipment, the light conditions, and the media used to ensure accurate colour reproduction. Many digital cameras offer RAW format (sensor data), which makes it possible to choose color space in the development stage regardless of camera settings.
Even in RAW format, however, the sensor and the camera's dynamics can only capture colors within the gamut supported by the hardware. When that image is transferred for reproduction on any device, the widest achievable gamut is the gamut that the end device supports. For a monitor, it is the gamut of the display device. For a photographic print, it is the gamut of the device that prints the image on a specific type of paper. Color gamut or Color space is an abstract term that describes an area where points of color fit in a three-dimensional space.
Professional photographers often use specially designed and calibrated monitors that help them to reproduce color accurately and consistently.
Frame aspect ratios [ edit ]
Most digital point & shoot cameras have an aspect ratio of 1.33 (4:3), the same as analog television or early movies. However, a 35 mm picture's aspect ratio is 1.5 (3:2). Several digital cameras take photos in either ratio, and nearly all digital SLRs take pictures in a 3:2 ratio, as most can use lenses designed for 35 mm film. Some photo labs print photos on 4:3 ratio paper, as well as the existing 3:2. In 2005 Panasonic launched the first consumer camera with a native aspect ratio of 16:9, matching HDTV. This is similar to a 7:4 aspect ratio, which was a common size for APS film. Different aspect ratios is one of the reasons consumers have issues when cropping photos. An aspect ratio of 4:3 translates to a size of 4.5"x6.0". This loses half an inch when printing on the "standard" size of 4"x6", an aspect ratio of 3:2. Similar cropping occurs when printing on other sizes, i.e., 5"x7", 8"x10", or 11"x14".
See also [ edit ]12:20 AM: One person is dead and two people are injured this morning following a shooting in San Francisco’s Lower Haight neighborhood Monday night, according to a police spokesman.
The shooting in the 400 block of Rose Street, near Buchanan Street, occurred around 7:30 p.m., according to San Francisco police Officer Gordon Shyy.
One of the three shooting victims was transported to a local hospital with life-threatening injuries. The victim succumbed to his injuries Monday night, Shyy said.
The two other victims had less serious injuries, according to Shyy.
Police are continuing to interview the victims and witnesses to get suspect descriptions and identify a motive for the shooting, Shyy said.
9:02 PM: Three people were shot on the 400 block of Rose Street near Buchanan Street this evening, according to San Francisco police.
The shooting, which occurred around 7:30 p.m., left one person with life-threatening injuries and two others with less serious injuries, according to Officer Gordon Shyy.
Police are interviewing victims and witnesses now to get suspect descriptions, Shyy said.Even as Flydubai Flight 981 took off from Dubai on March 18, the pilots knew they'd be in for a difficult flight. Bad weather lay ahead at their destination, the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. As the plane skirted the Caspian Sea and crossed over the Balkans, the situation stayed iffy. By the time the plane approached Rostov airport, a landing looked challenging, but manageable, with rain and winds gusting to 40 mph.
Setting up for an approach from the northeast, the Boeing 737 broke through the cloud base at 1,800 feet and had the airport in sight directly ahead. But gusty conditions meant a risk of windshear—a sudden tailwind could cause the plane to drop out of the sky. Playing it safe, the flight crew did a "go-around," increasing engine power and climbing away from the runway. For the next hour and a half the plane flew holding patterns, waiting for a break in the storm, but none came. Finally the pilots decided to bring it around for a second try. Once again they descended through the clouds, got the runway in sight, and set up to land. Once again, wild winds forced them to abort. The plane accelerated and nosed back up into the sky.
"Once you get into the clouds, your senses start to play on you"
Later, security cameras on the ground would show the plane disappearing into the overcast sky—and then, mere seconds later, zooming back out of the clouds at a steep angle and impacting the runway in a fireball, instantly killing all 62 people aboard.
The reason for this tragedy, we now know, was not wind nor rain nor simple pilot error. It was an illusion.
For obvious reasons, initial speculation about what went wrong centered on the weather. Perhaps the plane had been hit by lightning or suffered particularly severe turbulence. Mechanical failure might have played a role, too. In several recent accidents, autopilot malfunction has caused planes to dive unexpectedly. And then there were potential psychological factors. Having already flown nearly two hours longer than they expected, with much of that time spent in turbulence, amid the stressful uncertainty of not knowing how and when they would get their passengers on the ground, the flight crew must have been tired. Pilot fatigue and challenging weather make a dangerous combination.
The picture became clearer this past Wednesday with the release of the official preliminary report (pdf) on the accident by Russian aviation officials. Data recovered from the plane's black boxes ruled out mechanical failure or a violent weather event. The problem, most likely, was that the pilots fell victim to a pernicious form of disorientation called "somatogravic illusion."
During a go-around after an aborted landing, a plane tends to be lighter than normal since it's at the end of its flight and has burned up most of its fuel. That means its thrust-to-weight ratio is relatively high, so when the pilot pushes the throttle forward from idle to full thrust the plane accelerates with unusual alacrity. This acceleration pushes pilots back in their seats, which to the inner ear feels exactly the same as tilting upward.
In this case, the plane really is tilting upwards as it climbs away from the runway. But this weird sensation can throw off even seasoned pilots. As long as they can see the ground below them, the true orientation is clear. "When you initiate the go-around and still have some visual reference, you're fine," says aviation analyst Gerry Soejatman, "but once you get into the clouds, your senses start to play on you."
Black-box data show that as the plane started to enter the cloud after the second go-around, the flight crew briefly pushed the controls forward so that its rate of climb decreased, as if the pilots were momentarily disoriented. Then the plane returned to its previous rate of climb. For a few seconds, all was normal. The flight crew members were almost certainly following their instruments, as years of experience had taught them to do. Then, as if suddenly disoriented and unable to believe their instruments were correct, the flight crew pushed the stick far forward. "It takes time for someone to go from 'Oh, the instruments are saying this,' to 'No, no, no, this is all wrong!' and start pushing," Soejatman says.
The pilots probably believed they were preventing the plane from getting too nose-high, which could cause the plane to stall and crash. But in reality they were taking a safe situation and turning it deadly. The lurch downward would have caused them to rise up in their seats as though on a roller-coaster zooming over the top of a hill. By the time they rocketed out of the bottom of the cloud and gained a visual sense of their orientation, they were in a 50 degrees vertical dive at more than 370 mph and just a few seconds from impact. There was no time to pull out.
The violence of the resultant impact can be gauged by the by the condition of the remains recovered. From the 62 people aboard the plane, 4295 "samples of biological matter" were collected.
Somatogravic illusions don't cause plane crashes often, but a 2013 study by the French transportation safety agency identified 16 similar incidents. One crash that happened just two and a half years prior to the FlyDubai crash was eerily similar. Coming into Kazan, Russia, Tatarstan Flight 363 aborted a landing amid low clouds and gusty winds, started to climb out, then suddenly pitched down and plunged into the ground at a steep angle and high speed. All 50 people aboard that 737 were killed.
Wednesday's report was only a preliminary finding, meaning that investigators' findings may change. For the time being, however, they're recommending that pilots undergo fresh training in how to conduct go-arounds under different conditions and study how somatogravic illusions can occur.Chapter Text
Poul’s prostration didn’t seem to gain him any favor with Cypress, now revealed as not just Amaryllis (as my character sheet had already informed me) but Princess Amaryllis. That raised a whole host of questions, most salient of which was how, exactly, she had ended up on a plane full of criminals.
“Juniper, the soulcycle can hold two people at most, and that’s with one of us riding pillion,” said Amaryllis. “It’s not clear to me that you’ve thought through the logistics of this.”
“I did think about it,” I said. “But I couldn’t leave them to die.”
“Them?” asked Amaryllis with a raised eyebrow.
“Him,” I replied with a swallow. I wanted her to give me a sad look or something to show she understood the subtext and sympathized, but she focused her attention back on Poul.
“Name,” she said slowly. “So I know what to call you.” I don’t think it had escaped anyone’s attention that she still had her rifle trained on him. It made me nervous. I had been taught trigger discipline and gun safety growing up and this was a gross violation of that. Never point the gun at something you’re not fine with destroying. Or maybe she’s just fine with killing him. But I wanted it to be an act, a show of force covering softness.
“Poulus Cambria,” he said.
“Background?” she asked.
Poul was silent for awhile. “Soldier,” he finally said.
Amaryllis frowned at that. “How did you end up here?” she asked.
“I would prefer not to say,” he replied.
“Too bad,” said Amaryllis. Her finger was already on the makeshift trigger of the rifle and I saw it move slightly, adding pressure. I wanted that to be a bluff, a tactic to get him talking, but Poul was still kneeling, his face toward the floor, and the gesture would have been wasted on him.
“I was convicted of rape by a military tribunal,” he said.
Amaryllis pursed her lips. “That’s not a crime that often goes punished these days,” she said. “The General Council changed the law to require two witnesses in addition to the victim. Were there long deliberations, in your case?”
“No,” replied Poul.
“Well then,” said Amaryllis. “Juniper, is there any good reason that I should keep him alive?”
“He helped me,” I said, though as I said it I realized that it wasn’t exactly true.
“Rank sentimentality suits no one,” said Amaryllis. “Poulus, is there a reason you should live instead of die?”
He was silent for a long time, long enough that I thought Amaryllis would shoot him for not answering, but even though she was threatening him with death, she was doing so with patience rather than knee-jerk malice. I hadn’t fully understood the background context of their conversation, but I gathered that Poul was guilty of the crime he had been charged with.
“The Coterie are here, my lady, and I believe they are here for you,” he said after a long moment. “There are undead stalking the Risen Lands, some of them beyond your own considerable abilities if you have no competent help. You have said that the soulcycle holds two? Well I would submit that I am a better companion than Joon. I have military training and before my disgrace I was well-decorated with high marks in --”
My mouth was hanging partway open when I realized what he was doing, and even then I had trouble articulating anything. I was saved when Amaryllis interrupted him.
“Shut up for a moment,” she said to him. “Juniper, how did you fare out there?”
I slipped my hand into my pocket and pulled out the glass jar. Six small greenish souls swam about in it, circling the magical spike I kept in there for lack of a better place.
“I have six of the seven,” I said.
“Under what circumstances?” she asked. She was still aiming her rifle directly at Poul, who had not moved.
“Two were scavenged from those already dead,” I said. “Another four were from … from the Fuchsia Coterie.” The killings still left a bad taste in my mouth. I’d acted in self-defense, but I couldn’t quite convince myself that it had been a good thing.
“Juniper, if there is only room for two, would you rather it be you or him that comes with me?” she asked.
“My lady,” Poul began.
“Silence,” said Amaryllis.
I swallowed. I didn’t actually think that she would kill him in cold blood, but I was still hesitant. “I would go with you,” I said.
Thunk.
Poul collapsed to the floor and blood began pouring out from the top of his head.
“What the fuck?” I asked. “You can’t just - you can’t just do that!”
Amaryllis ignored me. She stood up from behind her makeshift barricade and calmly walked over to Poul’s corpse, then kicked him over with her foot, lowered her rifle, and fired into his chest.
“The jar, please,” she said.
I was staring at her, and not just for the usual reason. I hadn’t thought that she was going to kill him, and I hadn’t wanted him dead, not even after I had learned he was a rapist, not even after he’d tried to throw me under the bus. I made no move to hand the jar to her.
“We could have let him go,” I said.
“Yes,” Amaryllis replied. “We could have let him go, but he was willing to betray you, which means that he would have been willing to betray me. I wasn’t going to take the chance that he was stupid enough to approach the Fuchsia Coterie with information about me, what resources I had, where I had been hiding, where I might be going … and who I was with.”
There was nothing that I could say in response to that. I kept trying to think of some other option that she hadn’t seen, some other way, but all I really had to offer was optimism that I didn’t actually feel. I handed the jar over to her and watched as she extracted Poul’s soul.
“So now he’s going to have his soul destroyed,” I said slowly.
Amaryllis paused and looked at me with a frown. “Do you know why I trust you?” she asked.
I thought about my character sheet, and what it had to say about her. Loyalty 0. “Do you trust me?” I asked.
“Trust is a complex thing,” she said. “I do trust you though, at least to an extent, and hope that you continue to trust me too.” She let Poul’s soul fall into the jar with the others. (Quest Complete: Seven Bells for Seven Hells!) There were some differences, but they were nearly indistinguishable from one another. “You wouldn’t have done as I asked and returned here if you didn’t trust me. On some level you had considered the worst case option, where I killed you as soon as you came through the door.”
I hadn’t thought of that at all.
“The reason that I trust you is because you revealed that you were dream-skewered,” she said. “There are many stories that a covert agent might give, but it would never occur to the intelligence operations of the various kingdoms to present as so incredibly out of depth and without power. More to the point, there are perhaps a dozen covert agents in the entire world who could successfully fake both a profound ignorance of the world and a deep steeping in the history and culture of Earth.”
“I’m not sure what you’re getting at,” I said. My mind had drifted slightly while she talked as my eyes focused on the flawless curve of her collarbone.
“I know more of the dream-skewered than most,” said Amaryllis. “There was a time I took an interest in cosmology, and Earth was always one of the lingering questions in that field. That bit of ignorance you just displayed … that’s a trademark of Earth, a nearly sure proof of origin.” She held up the jar of souls. “You think that destruction of a soul is a bad thing.”
“It’s not?” I asked.
“Where do you believe people go when they die?” she asked me as she moved over to the soulcycle.
“I … I don’t,” I said. “I was never --” I thought for a minute about the cultural gap that might exist between us and how to say what I wanted without making assumptions on her knowledge. The misstep with saying last rites for Sly had left me a bit skittish … and Amaryllis’ description of Earth had been more along the lines of how continents and oceans it had. “There are things on Earth called religions,” I began.
“We have them too,” said Amaryllis. “Organizations built around the gods?”
“Do literal gods exist on Aerb?” I asked. “Literal in the sense of … there’s incontrovertible evidence of their actual presence, not just natural phenomena attributed to them?” I was tensed up; my personal conception of gods was that they were basically Lovecraftian in nature, elder beings of incredible power and inscrutable goals, and yes, that interpretation of gods extended to most major world religions. That view had been reflected in the worlds I’d created for D&D. If I was in a world where a Cthulhu knock-off was real...
“There are five gods,” said Amaryllis. She unscrewed a bit of thick glass from the tank of the soulcycle and poured the seven souls into it. They sat at the bottom, floating over each other. I couldn’t help but notice that the soulcycle’s tank was only a tenth full, and if the glass barrels I had seen around town were any indication … well, that meant a truly staggering number of souls. A bit of tension released from Amaryllis’ shoulders as she screwed the cap back on. “I’ve met three of them in the flesh.”
“Okay,” I said, when she didn’t continue. “Well, on Earth there’s no evidence that any gods exist, and I’m one of the people who thinks that they don’t. And as part of that, I don’t think that anything happens to people when they die, they just … cease to exist.” I could feel a tightness in my throat as I thought of Arthur and pushed forward before my emotions could get the better of me. “But we don’t have immortal souls on Earth, at least not that anyone can identify.”
“Hmmm,” said Amaryllis. She turned her attention from the soulcycle and looked at me. I could feel my heart pounding away as our eyes locked. She had killed Poul without emotion and it seemed like an affront to morality that I would still be able to look at the perfection in the curve of her lips and feel such attraction toward her. “You know, that’s not the answer that I thought you would give. Most of the dream-skewered believe that there is an afterlife which exists as a reward and one which exists as a punishment. They look on the destruction of a soul similarly to you, because there’s this presumption that everyone is going to the good afterlife rather than the bad one.”
“And?” I asked. “You use souls as a sort of fuel or something, because no such presumption exists in your society?”
“There are nine thousand hells,” said Amaryllis. “The highest hell is slightly better than Comfort, in its current state. Our infernoscopes can penetrate only down to the five thousandth hell, but there only brief reprieves from torture and pain exist, and those reprieves are marked by fear and anguish.”
It took me a bit to connect the dots from what she was saying to the question Becca had asked me. ‘What the fuck is Heaven?’ she’d asked. That was a reasonable question, if your standard cosmological model didn’t include one.
“You don’t believe in heaven,” I said. “You don’t even have a word for it.”
“We do have a word,” said Amaryllis. “We call them antihells. It’s a term you’d find in scientific papers but even then is somewhat blasphemous.” She pursed her lips. “We know what awaits us after death. Destruction of the soul is a mercy.”
She seemed to believe it. And yet … it was hard for me to believe that morality and utility were so well aligned. It would be like if the giant chugging factories of the industrial revolution made everyone healthy and wise instead of belching out noxious smoke that poisoned the lungs of a few generations. It wasn’t that I believed the world (worlds, I suppose) were zero sum, but I was instantly suspicious of how motivated the thinking might be.
“Alright,” I said instead of prolonging the conversation further. “So what’s the plan?”
“We ride,” she said simply. “Seven souls will get us up to maybe fifteen miles per hour. That will have us in Silmar City within two days, even if we stop and hole up during the night tonight. With two of us, we could trade driving duties, but it’s difficult to sleep on a soulcycle.”
Quest Accepted: Out of the Frying Pan!
I waited, but she had begun an examination of the soulcycle’s metal wheels.
“What’s in Silmar City?” I asked.
“It’s complicated,” she answered. She turned from her inspection and looked at me. “Do you trust me?”
“Yes,” I answered.
“Then you’re an idiot,” she replied. “Do you realize that I sent you to your death when I asked you to go retrieve those souls? It’s a profound miracle that you returned with them. I knew that when I sent you out but I coated my words in hope and honey. You have no reason to trust me.”
“I told you before, I see words and numbers in my head,” I replied. “Your name is there. You’re listed as my companion.”
“Ah,” said Amaryllis.
“I have proof,” I replied. “When I close my eyes I can see more information. Some of that I can change. When I do, there are actual results in the real world. Watch me closely.” I closed my eyes and waited the three seconds to look at my character sheet, the first time I had done so in some time.
PHY
5 4 POW 1 Unarmed Combat 3 One-handed Weapons 0 Two-handed Weapons 1 Improvised Weapons 4 SPD 0 Thrown Weapons 0 Dual Wield 5 Pistols 0 Bows 4 END 0 Rifles 0 Shotguns 1 Parry 3 Athletics MEN
3 2 CUN 1 Dodge 0 Engineering 0 Alchemy 0 Smithing 2 KNO 0 Woodworking 0 Horticulture 0 Livestock 0 Music 2 WIS 0 Art 0 Blood Magic 0 Bone Magic 0 Gem Magic SOC
3 2 CHA 0 Gold Magic 0 Water Magic 0 Steel Magic 0 Velocity Magic 2 INS 0 Revision Magic 0 Skin Magic 0 Essentialism 0 Library Magic 2 POI 0 Wards 0 Language 0 Flattery 0 Comedy 0 LUK 0 Romance 0 Intimidation 4 Deception 0 Spirit
I was sorely tempted to put the two points into MEN or SOC, mostly for the purposes of preventing any abilities from going to zero, but I had already committed to PHY when I told Amaryllis that she would see a change. When I opened my eyes, she was staring at me.
“What - what kind of... “ she stammered. “I … I’ve seen that trick before.” I raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think I can explain it to you, how impossible that should have been. If it had been less than instant I would have had to believe that you were a skilled magi of blood or bone, but I was watching closely and you changed without so much as an eyeblink between one form and another. A minor change, but...” she shook her head.
“Where did you see the trick before?” I asked.
“Invreizen,” she said. When she saw my blank look she added, “God of Sea and Ice.”
Quest Accepted: God Botherer!
I didn’t really know how to respond to that. The simple, obvious conclusion to draw from that was that I was a god, but that seemed almost certain to be wrong. Could gods be dream-skewered? But that would presuppose that my entire life on Earth was a lie, which wasn’t a bullet that I was willing to bite, and it didn’t explain the form that the game system had taken. Or perhaps I was drawing on godly power in some way without being a god, or the gods and I were drawing from similar sources of power. Or maybe the only similarity was in what they looked like.
“We need to get moving,” Amaryllis said suddenly. “We’re not safe here and we need ample daylight left when we start looking for a place to spend the night. I’m not sure that it would be safe to drive at night anyway, since the roads in the Risen Lands haven’t been maintained.”
“There are a lot of things outside that want us dead,” I said.
“I’ll go gather the mines,” she said. “We might have to fight our way out of Comfort.”
Quest Accepted: Comfort Zone!
I had so many more questions for her, but I also thought she was right about needing to leave. The image of Becca being bisected was one that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to forget, as much as I might try. As I looked at Poul’s body, I got a grim reminder that Amaryllis herself wasn't exactly who I had hoped she would be. She had shown me compassion when we’d first met, then sent me out to what she had thought was my death anyway. It might have been easier to deal with her if she hadn’t been the picture of physical perfection.
While Amaryllis was pulling things down from the ceiling tiles in the hallway, I began looking for a coin to put in his mouth. This time, I’d figure out more appropriate last rites.
Amaryllis had mined the hallway with small purple crystals like the one that exploded in the shire-reeve’s office. They all had wires attached to them, which led into the garage and to an assembly I hadn’t noticed on the other side of car doors she’d been using for cover. At a guess, all she had to do was press her foot down and anything in the hallway would have been utterly destroyed.
She saw me with Poul, but she didn’t say anything about it. I tried my best to compose some sort of prayer, but nothing really seemed true, necessary, and kind.
“These are void bombs,” said Amaryllis, carefully holding one in her open palm. The others were covered in a piece of soft leather. “They are extremely dangerous.”
“Oh, that must be why someone threw one at me,” I said.
Skill increased: Comedy lvl 1!
“Then you know how dangerous it is?” she asked. I don’t know if she didn’t get the joke, or just didn’t think it was funny. Based on past experiences, the latter was a better bet.
“Yes,” I said, thinking about the skin and flesh that had been missing from my shoulder.
“They’re disconnected now, but I have the switches for them ready to go, it won’t take longer than five minutes,” she said. “The void will penetrate in all directions, so you’re going to have to make sure that there’s something between us and the detonation. It’ll go through about six inches of flesh and bone, half an inch of steel, or five hundred feet of air. Got it?”
I nodded. It sounded like I was more or less right about it being based on density. When she put on the switches and handed one to me, I got a small surprise.
Skill unlocked: Thrown weapons!
It didn’t bode well that I was going to be handling these things with a zero in that skill, but so far I hadn’t actually done too badly. My very first time swinging a one-handed weapon had been a critical hit that had split the zombie’s face in two, not that it had much effect on the outcome. I handed it back and she slipped it into a piece of soft leather.
When Amaryllis started up the soulcycle, I wasn’t quite prepared for it. My uncle had one of those huge, thick motorcycles, the kind that get referred to as ‘hogs’, which the soulcycle more or less resembled. I was thinking that this would be similar, with a thick chugging sound that would make it hard to talk. Instead, it gave off a sound like a crack of thunder and short, finger-long arcs of lightning arced out from the wheels as the whole thing rose up from the ground. It sat there with a shimmering translucent blue aura around the wheels, a few inches off the floor.
“Ignition was louder than I had hoped it would be,” said Amaryllis. She took the void tunneler from me, slung a pack that had been sitting beside the workbench over her shoulder, and straddled the soulcycle, which lowered a fraction of an inch. “Grab the rifle, shoot anything that gets close.”
I picked up the rifle --
Skill unlocked: Rifles!
-- but that message wasn’t entirely welcome, because it meant that my methods of attack were both ones that I was untrained with.
(There was something that had been bothering me about the game layer for some time now; it assumed that I was starting almost completely from zero. I had been in decent enough shape, good enough not to make a total ass of myself in Phy Ed, so why had the Athletics skill unlocked when I’d started running? Similarly, I had gone hunting almost every fall since I was ten years old. The rifle that Amaryllis had built was different from those, but how did the game layer interpret me to have zero skill with rifles in general?)
I climbed on board the soulcycle just behind Amaryllis and practicing sighting down the barrel of the void rifle and very lightly testing the pressure of the trigger to see how much give it had. I hadn’t removed my sword from my hip, but Amaryllis hadn’t questioned it, and the game layer seemed to indicate that there was some use for it.
“Bombs are in the pouch,” she said. “Deal with them carefully, because one would be enough to kill us both. Ready?”
“The door’s closed,” I said, looking at the rolling garage door.
“We’re going out the other way,” said Amaryllis. She twisted the throttle and steered the soulcycle through the garage, past Poul’s body and down the hallway. I was using two hands to hold onto the
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|Net's download page (screenshot attached) offers what they claim to be Nmap's Windows installer. They even provide the correct file size for our official installer. But users actually get a Cnet-created trojan installer. That program does the dirty work before downloading and executing Nmap's real installer. Of course the problem is that users often just click through installer screens, trusting that download.com gave them the real installer and knowing that the Nmap project wouldn't put malicious code in our installer. Then the next time the user opens their browser, they find that their computer is hosed with crappy toolbars, Bing searches, Microsoft as their home page, and whatever other shenanigans the software performs! The worst thing is that users will think we (Nmap Project) did this to them! I took and attached a screen shot of the C|Net trojan Nmap installer in action. Note how they use our registered "Nmap" trademark in big letters right above the malware "special offer" as if we somehow endorsed or allowed this. Of course they also violated our trademark by claiming this download is an Nmap installer when we have nothing to do with the proprietary trojan installer. In addition to the deception and trademark violation, and potential violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, this clearly violates Nmap's copyright. This is exactly why Nmap isn't under the plain GPL. Our license (http://nmap.org/book/man-legal.html) specifically adds a clause forbidding software which "integrates/includes/aggregates Nmap into a proprietary executable installer" unless that software itself conforms to various GPL requirements (this proprietary C|Net download.com software and the toolbar don't). We've long known that malicious parties might try to distribute a trojan Nmap installer, but we never thought it would be C|Net's Download.com, which is owned by CBS! And we never thought Microsoft would be sponsoring this activity! It is worth noting that C|Net's exact schemes vary. Here is a story about their shenanigans: http://www.extremetech.com/computing/93504-download-com-wraps-downloads-in-bloatware-lies-about-motivations It is interesting to compare the trojaned VLC screenshot in that article with the Nmap one I've attached. In that case, the user just clicks "Next step" to have their machine infected. And they wrote "SAFE, TRUSTED, AND SPYWARE FREE" in the trojan-VLC title bar. It is telling that they decided to remove that statement in their newer trojan installer. In fact, if we UPX-unpack the Trojan CNet executable and send it to VirusTotal.com, it is detected as malware by Panda, McAfee, F-Secure, etc: http://bit.ly/cnet-nmap-vt According to Download.com's own stats, hundreds of people download the trojan Nmap installer every week! So the first order of business is to notify the community so that nobody else falls for this scheme. Please help spread the word. Of course the next step is to go after C|Net until they stop doing this for ALL of the software they distribute. So far, the most they have offered is: "If you would like to opt out of the Download.com Installer you can submit a request to cnet-installer () cbsinteractive com. All opt-out requests are carefully reviewed on a case-by-case basis." In other words, "we'll violate your trademarks and copyright and squandering your goodwill until you tell us to stop, and then we'll consider your request 'on a case-by-case basis' depending on how much money we make from infecting your users and how scary your legal threat is. F*ck them! If anyone knows a great copyright attorney in the U.S., please send me the details or ask them to get in touch with me. Also, shame on Microsoft for paying C|Net to trojan open source software! Cheers, Fyodor By Date By Thread Current thread: C|Net Download.Com is now bundling Nmap with malware! Fyodor (Dec 05)First up, a slight policy change announcement. Up to now I’ve been giving each soap I’m trying out at least two days worth of shaves. This was primarily in order to ensure that I didn’t accidentally give a soap a bad review based upon me just having a bad shave, or bad luck once with building lather.
But I’ve also noticed that a lot of brands seem to have a lot of consistency in the behaviour of their lather, with the only real variation being in the scents. So, in order to allow me to get through the backlog of soaps I’ve got to review a bit faster, if I decide this is the case, I’ll only be giving soaps of that type 1 day of shaving per scent. As this has definitely been the case with Mama Bear Soaps (and as I’ve still got almost 2 months worth of Mama Bear reviews to do even with the 1 a day amendment), they’ll be the first to be added to this list. I suspect I’ll probably be adding at least Honeybee Soaps, and The Shave Den to this list shortly as well.
So, on to today’s review: Mama Bear’s White Grapefruit Ice. She says that “Grapefruit is great for oil skin.. combined with the menthol, this is a great summer soap for those who want something for their oily skin that is cooling and refreshing…” So naturally I waited until a chilly day in fall to test out this soap.
The grapefruit is quite nicely done, which makes sense considering it’s apparently done with 100% essential oils, instead of artificial fragrances. And the menthol adds quite a nice kick to both the scent, and in the cooling sensation on the skin. The aroma was noticible throughout the shave, but not strongly so.
As for the shave itself, as I mentioned, consistent. Load your brush a lot, add water slowly, and you’ll end up with a nice thick lather with a decent amount of glide; just be sure not to over-shoot on the water. If you’re using a scuttle, expect to have to re-whip the lather between passes (add a few drops of water too), as I’ve found the heat to increase the rate at which the lather breaks down.
9/10 Scent Pleasantness
8/10 Scent Strength
7/10 Lather Quality (reflects new scoring as outlined here)
So overall, I give it a 7/10. As per usual with Mama Bear, trying it won’t hurt the pocket much… until you decide to try them all.
Gear used:
Ingredients: Coconut Oil, Palm Oil, Castor Oil, Safflower, Glycerine (kosher, of vegetable origin), Purified Water, Sodium Hydroxide (saponifying agent), Sorbitol (moisturizer), Sorbitan oleate (emulsifier), Soybean protein (conditioner), Wheat protein and fragrance either natural or synthetic.
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Ever since 3D printing hit the mainstream, Ultimaker has been dishing out some of the best printers on the planet, and the Ultimaker 3 continues that legacy. In addition to top-tier printing specs, this new generation brings a host of high-end features and functionality to the table.
But how does this new-and-improved machine compare to previous generations — and more importantly, is it worth dishing out over $3,500 bucks for? We burned through a few spools of filament to find out.
Standout Features & Specs
At first glance, the UM3 doesn’t look much different from the UM2+ – but don’t let the looks fool you. Ultimaker basically kept all the good things about the previous generation, and added some subtle (but important!) upgrades to the new generation.
Here’s all the stuff that didn’t change. Just like the UM2+, the UM3 sports a maximum resolution of 20 microns, a max print speed of 300 millimeters per second, and a build volume of 8.5 x 8.5 x 7.9 inches. It also retains Ultimaker’s removable glass-plate heated bed, and is compatible with the same range of materials.
If we had to choose just two words to sum the UM3’s print performance, we’d have a hard time choosing between “hot damn” and “sweet Jesus.”
Now here’s what’s new. Arguably the biggest addition is the UM3’s dual extruder setup, which allows you to print with two materials at the same time. Most notably, this allows you to use one material for your main object, and Ultimaker’s water-soluble PVA material for your support structures. When soaked in water, PVA will dissolve, leaving you with a totally burr-free print that doesn’t require any cleanup.
On top of that, Ultimaker also built the UM3 with a suite of small upgrades that presumably make it more user-friendly. These include things like removable print cores for easy material swapping; automatic bed leveling functionality; WiFi and Ethernet connectivity; and a camera that lets you check up on print progress remotely.
It’s also worth mentioning that the UM3 doesn’t have swappable nozzles like the UM2+, and also has a much lower minimum resolution (200 instead of 600 microns) – so if you’re after a machine that you can use to print low-resolution prototype parts at ridiculously high speeds, then you might want to stick with the UM2+.
Setup & Configuration
Much to our delight, the UM3 was up and running almost immediately after leaving the box. Ultimaker put in some extra effort to make its latest machine more simple and approachable for beginners, and it shows. All you really need to do is insert the glass build plate, plug the machine in, and flip the power switch. The printer will take care of the rest — including all that pesky bed leveling and calibration.
Bill Roberson/Digital Trends
The only mildly tricky part of the entire setup process is inserting the filament, but Ultimaker has taken steps to ensure that even this step is simpler than before. The UM3 includes sensors that recognize when you’re using Ultimaker-branded materials, and will automatically identify the filament type when you place it on the spool rack.
From there, all that was left was to feed the filament into the extruder. Thankfully, this was also quite simple and straightforward, as Ultimaker’s onboard setup wizard guided us through the process, and handles all the little steps (heating up the hot end and moving the filament) automatically.
Ultimaker 3 Compared To
All in all, Ultimaker’s new printer definitely offers one of the most painless and approachable setup processes we’ve experienced. All users, regardless of their familiarity with 3D printing, should have no trouble getting this machine up and running.
Software. Onboard & Offboard
The UM3’s interface retains the tried-and-true single knob approach that you’ll find in previous incarnations of the Ultimaker line. Not too much has changed here. Save for a few new menu items, the UM3’s onboard UI is nearly identical to that of past generations. Luckily, this interface is and has always been great. The menu trees are concise and to the point, making it nearly effortless to locate and manipulate all the printer’s features.
Bill Roberson/Digital Trends
One of the features we found while exploring the onboard controls was an option to connect to your PC via WiFi. While at first this didn’t sound incredibly important, and the process to do so was a little tricky, once it was set up it was amazing. Being hooked in via WiFi enables near instant transfer of print projects from PC to printer without any hassle with SD cards or USB sticks. If that’s not your jam, you’ll be glad to hear that the Ultimaker 3 sports a USB port instead of SD slot, which is a welcome change from other printers.
When it comes time to prep an object for printing, the UM3 uses Utlimaker’s renowned Cura slicer: arguably one of the best slicers in the game. Cura’s settings and options are numerous, easy to understand, and incredibly robust. The program’s uncluttered menu system gives you control over practically every aspect of the printing process, yet somehow manages to provide such deep control without being too confusing to newcomers.
Print Performance
If we had to choose just two words to sum the UM3’s print performance, we’d have a hard time choosing between “hot damn” and “sweet Jesus.”
This thing prints like a dream, which is nice, since it also costs a small fortune.
This thing prints like a dream — which is good, because it costs a small fortune. Much like its predecessors, the third gen Ultimaker has a maximum resolution of 20 microns, which is one of the highest resolutions you can get with a filament-based printer. Most machines only go as low as 50 or 100 microns (hint: lower number = smaller layers = better detail).
But of course, resolution alone doesn’t necessarily make for a good print. Luckily, the UM3 excels in a variety of different aspects, which ultimately come together to provide top-tier print performance. A closer look at the objects in our testing suite help pinpoint the printers virtues.
As you can see in the above photos, the UM3 is extremely consistent from layer to layer. The printer suffers from almost no Z-axis wobble, which can probably be attributed to its sturdy construction and high-end components.
It also scores high marks in dimensional accuracy, as printed parts were always within a few microns of their digital versions. What you see on your screen is almost exactly what you’ll get out of the printer. This speaks not only to the quality of Ultimaker’s Cura slicing engine, but also to the precision of the machine itself.
Previous Next 1 of 3 Bill Roberson/Digital Trends Bill Roberson/Digital Trends Bill Roberson/Digital Trends
Other things that 3D printers typically struggle with (unsupported spans, steep overhangs, and fine details, etc.) seemingly aren’t an issue for the UM3. Save for a tiny bit of noodling on certain archways, our 3DBenchy test prints always came out stunningly clean and with minimal imperfections. You won’t have to do much post-print cleanup with this printer.
UM3’s performance is off the charts good, and the fact that you can print with dissolvable PVA supports makes it even better.
Between this stunning print quality, the UM3’s expansive build envelope, and its heated buildplate, printing performance is off the charts good, and the fact that you can print with dissolvable PVA supports makes it even better. Typically, printing objects that require supports means that you’ll have to clean up the print to remove the evidence of support structures. This can sometimes be a long and tedious process, but dual-extrusion printing with PVA eliminates the need for it entirely. If there’s one feature that justifies the UM3’s exorbitant price tag, it’s definitely this one.
Overall, this UM3 offers top-tier print performance that outshines nearly every other FDM printer on the market right now – though not by a wide margin. It’s worth noting that the UM3’s performance, while undeniably good, definitely isn’t miles ahead of the competition.
Maintenance & Repairability
The Ultimaker3 is built with customization and upgrading in mind, so virtually everything on the printer is easy to access, and can be taken apart with a hex wrench. Oftentimes, you don’t even need tools, as swappable print heads and modular subsystems make investigating issues simple and intuitive to fix with your bare hands.
During our time with the machine, the only problem we really had was the magnetically attached fan on the front of the print head structure. The fan’s magnetic connection was loose and shaky, which caused the piece to swing open during printing. It was definitely a minor inconvenience, and was easily remedied with a piece of tape, but for a machine that costs $3,500, tape shouldn’t be necessary.
All things considered though, taking care of the Ultimaker3 is tremendously simple, and it has plenty of room for upgrades and expansions.
Our Take
The UM3 is a stellar 3D printer, and a standout in the filament-based printer category for its unparalleled blend of print quality, build volume, and ease of use. But the high price tag puts it in an awkward position.
Are there better options?
Yes and no. This is arguably the best FDM printer on the market right now – but it still pales in comparison to the resolution of SLA printers like the Formlabs Form 2. If what you’re after is quality and accuracy, but you don’t necessarily need a huge 8.5 x 8.5 x 7.9 inch build envelope, you can get better results from a Form 2. Just keep in mind that SLA printers aren’t quite as simple to work with, maintain, and repair. Simplicity is also a factor here.
The other thing to consider is that, while the UM3 offers incredible print quality, it’s not really orders of magnitude better than other FDM printers that cost far, far less money. You can get comparable print results with a MakerGear M2, or even the Ultimaker 2+ — both of which are more than $1,000 cheaper than the UM3. It might be the top dog in performance, but it’s much closer to the bottom when it comes to value. If you’re on a budget, you can get way more bang for your buck elsewhere.
How long will it last?
The Ultimaker 3 is built to last and designed with upgrades in mind, so it’ll most likely become obsolete because it’s upstaged by newer, more sophisticated technology – not because its motors fail or its components wear out.
Also, considering the fact that Ultimaker still pushes regular firmware updates to its first generation printers, it’s probably a safe bet that software support for the UM3 will be available for years to come. Properly maintained, this machine could last you a decade or more.
Should I buy it?
Yes. If money is no object and you want the best possible FDM printer you can get, then you needn’t continue searching. This is the one you want.
Just keep in mind that you can get far better print quality from the Form 2 (for the same price), and there are also cheaper FDM printers that cost a lot less and provide only slightly worse print quality.SANDUSKY, OH—Area resident Pamela Meyers was delighted to receive yet another thoughtful CD recommendation from Amazon.com Friday, confirming that the online retail giant has a more thorough, individualized, and nuanced understanding of Meyers' taste than the man who occasionally claims to love her, husband Dean Meyers.
"To come home from a long day at work and see the message about the new Norah Jones album waiting for me, it just made my week," said Meyers, 36, who claimed she was touched that the company paid such attention to her. "It feels nice to be noticed once in a while, you know?"
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Amazon, which has been tracking Meyers' purchases since she first used the site to order Football For Dummies in preparation for attending the 2004 Citrus Bowl as part of her husband's 10th wedding anniversary plans, has shown impressive accuracy at recommending books, movies, music, and even clothing that perfectly match Meyers' tastes. While the powerful algorithms that power Amazon's recommendations generator do not have the advantage of being able to observe Meyers' body language, verbal intonation, or current personal possessions, they have nonetheless proven more effective than Dean, who bases his gift-giving choices primarily on what is needed around the house, what he would like to own, and, most notably, what objects are nearby.
"I don't know how Amazon picked up on my growing interest in world music so quickly, but I absolutely love this traditional Celtic CD," Meyers said. "I like it so much more than that Keith Urban thing Dean got me. I'm really not sure what made him think I like country music."
Meyers said she was especially moved that the online merchant remembered that she had once purchased an Ian McEwan book, and immediately reminded when the author released a new novel. Moreover, despite only having had 37 hours of direct interaction with Meyers, Amazon was still able to detect her strong interest in actor Paul Giamatti, unlike husband Dean who often teases Meyers about her nonexistent crush on Tom Cruise.
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Meyers said that her husband, whose gift choices have never reflected any outward recognition of her desire to learn Spanish, nor of the fact that she looks terrible in orange, rarely, if ever, communicates with Meyers while away on any of his frequent business trips.
"I was having some tea from that Nebraska Cornhuskers mug Dean got me for Valentine's Day, when a little e-mail from Amazon popped up out of the blue," Meyers said. "Just completely out of the blue."
"It was nice to know that on my birthday, someone or something was out there thinking about me, and what boxed sets I wanted," she added.
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Though "it could only be a coincidence," Meyers admitted that she became emotional during a recent "bad day" when the site recommended the DVD The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg. "Dean and I saw it on one of our first dates, and I remember it being such a great night not just for the movie, but how everything felt so natural, how we seemed to be on the same wavelength," Meyers said. "It was the first time I thought, 'Yes. This is the one.'"
While Amazon is almost always accurate, the company does occasionally make a gift recommendation that does not suit her tastes, such as a recent suggestion of camping gear and an all-weather backpack. Still, Meyers lauded Amazon's attempts at spontaneity.
"At least it's trying," said Meyers, whose husband will once again surprise her with their fourth romantic getaway to his hometown of Kenton, DE sometime in March. "And maybe I would like camping if I ever tried it. Amazon's usually right about these things."
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Meyers, who has spent the past 15 years with a man who still believes she enjoys attending car shows, said she has kept her Amazon recommendation e-mails a secret from her husband so as not to corrupt the "deep and unstated understanding" between her and the popular website.
"Sure, I could send him the link to my Wish List, but that really defeats the purpose of gifts, as far as I'm concerned," Meyers said.
For his part, Dean has promised to make a concerted effort to pay closer attention to his wife's habits in order to choose more appropriate and tasteful gifts. He said that she will be "pleasantly surprised" with his new strategy, enrolling her for the next three years in the Oprah Book Club.
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"I know she's really into The View, so I just figured this would be perfect," Meyers said. "And I know she'll love taking moonlight drives on our new riding mower together, too."[Assuming you didn’t have a three-day weekend to catch up with Twin Peaks, here’s your notice that there’s a sort-of spoiler herein.]
The Twin Peaks revival turned out to be so much more than fans of the original could have hoped for—it was as strange and wild a ride 27 years later, one that star Kyle MacLachlan was happy to take again. But if the finale or the simple fact that it was happening again made you think David Lynch’s return to Twin Peaks would be an extended stay, Agent Dale Cooper has some bad news for you. In an interview with Deadline, MacLachlan says “there are no discussions for more Twin Peaks. That’s where that is.”
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Despite the new and renewed interest, no one involved is thinking about making more episodes just yet. The actor’s still absorbing the last few episodes, including one moment from the finale that he calls “traumatic.” “How to interpret that is open to so many possibilities, I feel. I’m not even sure where I am on that,” MachLachlan tells Deadline about the ending. “We filmed it very early and coming back to it now, it’s incredibly powerful—particularly with Sheryl Lee and that fantastic blood-curdling scream in the middle of the night in a small neighborhood in Seattle.” At least we’ll always have Dougie (and, to a lesser extent, Wally).Example scenario (which I'm going to call "The Sam" since my 7 year son just beat me using a large subset of this):
Dark side has no defenders available, 3 undamaged 5 point objectives. Light side's turn, light side of force is winning.
Light side objectives: Hit and Run, One of the 2 resource objectives, and the objective that gives you a -1 for first enhancement played.
Light side hand has yoda, light sabre, r2d2, binds all things, double strike, and target of opportunity as their 6 cards in their hand.
Light side does one point of damage during force struggle.
Deployment: Light side plays R2D2 (increases resources available to 6) Light side plays yoda (resource left: 3) Light side plays light sabre enhancment (rez left: 3)
Attack: Yoda attacks undamaged objective, plays TOO during unopposed edge battle, thereby doing 5 damage (TOO + light sabre + enhancement bonus + own strike + unopposed bonus) When focused to strike, light side plays double strike (rez left: 2) Light side then plays it binds all things (rez left: 1), picking up TOO + double strike Yoda repeats attack on 2nd undamaged objective and again uses double strike (rez left: 0), playing TOO again Yoda attacks 3rd objective, doing only 4 points of damage (no TOO), and actually could do an extra point of damage from hit and run.
Light side has just defeated 3 objectives and therefore wins.
Sub-questions: Is there a rule limiting a single unit to only being able to attack 1 objective per turn that I'm not seeing? Is there some other limitation/rule exception that would prevent this? (Beyond the whole dark side really should have at least one defender and this does require a non-trivial amount of luck to get this exact combination of cards)Free Will vs Determinism Essay
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PHIL 110 Essay #2February 15, 2010GTF: Emma JonesFree Will vs. DeterminismThe argument of whether we humans are pre determined to turn out how we are and act the way we do or if we are our own decision makers and have the freedom to choose our paths in life is a long-standing controversy. The ideas of Sartre, Freud, and Darwin are each strong in their own manner, yet Sartre presents the best and most realistic argument as to how we choose our path; we are in control of the things we do and responsible for the decisions we make. Not only this, but also, our decisions have an effect on our peer’s choices, just as theirs affect ours. In this paper, I will argue that Jean-Paul Sartre makes the best argument of the three philosophers in saying we can choose our own path and direction in life because as humans we are consciously aware of what is going on around us and base our decisions on that.During the mid 1900s, when Jean-Paul Sartre began publishing his ideas, his reasons for free will and disbelief in determined human nature began to show up. He is an atheist existentialist; therefore, he believes that philosophy is directly related to individual’s emotions, responsibilities, actions, thought, and “if God does not exist there is at least one being whose existence comes before its essence” (Sartre 187). This means simply that man first exists, discovers himself, and then goes on to define who he is. With this, Sartre believes strongly that individuals have an innate freedom to choose the meaning of their lives based on the decisions they make. He talks in his exposition titled Existentialism and Humanism, about how man begins with nothing and no purpose. He proceeds to say, “He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it” (188). His quote is explaining that when we are born, we are not who we are going to be in our lives. Who we grow...Eat your heart out, Go Daddy.
The kiss heard (ew) 'round the world between Bar Refaeli and some lucky schlub named Walter definitely got people buzzing during the Super Bowl, but it pales in comparison to the almost minute-long smooch session between a mustachioed Will Ferrell and an elderly Asian woman on a bus in an ad for Old Milwaukee that aired in three small towns during the big game.
Ad Age keys us in that the commercial aired only in Sherman, Texas; Ardmore, Okla.; and Glendive, Mont. This goes right along with his stealthy ad from last year's Super Bowl that aired only in North Platte, Neb.
It's a brilliant marketing move, paying cents on the dollar for ad space in one tiny little market and letting the Internet do the rest. I'm more than happy to play along, as the sheer absurdity of it all amuses me to no end.
The commercial does nothing other than show Ferrell's make-out session on a bus as the camera pans mercifully away to a sixer of Old Milwaukee in a passenger's grocery bag. The music and the camera stops as if the commercial is over, only to take the time to pan back in for some more.
We all know that sex sells, so when I figure out exactly what this is, I can decide if that sells as well. Because it's certainly not sexy. Funny. Weird. Random. Very Ferrell. But not sexy.
(H/T Bro Bible)
Follow @TheRealMattKingStop mocking that university degree as just a bachelor of barista — new research shows Canada’s post-secondary grads really do land jobs with healthy salaries, suggesting the Ivory Tower isn’t a waste of time after all. Those with the biggest paycheques should come as no surprise: engineers, nurses and computer whizzes start at $50,000 to $60,000 a year straight out of university, and engineers can hit $99,000 within eight years.
Just five years after completing a chef college program following a bachelor of commerce degree in hotel and food administration from the University of Guelph, 30-year-old Josh Standing is a senior manager with the trendy Playa Cabana restaurant chain in Toronto. ( Marcus Oleniuk / Toronto Star )
Yet even the humble humanities major pulls in a respectable $57,000 after eight years, according to tax returns crunched by researchers at the University of Ottawa. Trends were similar across community colleges, where engineering and health graduates started off making about $40,000 a year and rose as high as $72,000 for engineer grads after eight years. The study, called Barista or Better? New Evidence on the Earnings of Post-Secondary Education Graduates, tracked the annual income of more than 340,000 graduates from 14 colleges and universities across four provinces from 2005 to 2013.
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While fine arts grads did earn the least (“Starving artists do exist!” quipped lead author Ross Finnie), their credentials still lift them above the pay grade of the barista at your local coffee shop. “I’m a strong advocate that money isn’t everything, but these results show graduates are getting jobs and moving up, and that is not the word on the street,” said Finnie, an associate professor with the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs. He is director of the Education Policy Research Initiative, which conducted the study in partnership with Statistics Canada. “The growth in earnings over time is especially striking,” said Finnie, whose study tracked income over eight years, not just the first year after graduation, as is more common. But the research also revealed a gender gap in earnings, with female university grads lagging behind their former male peers by some 44 per cent after eight years. Among community college grads, women were making less than half of men eight years after graduation. While women may be more likely to work part-time to raise children, or choose fields that are less lucrative than predominantly male occupations such as engineering, the report suggested future study to try to get a clearer explanation.
Josh Standing is a university and college grad who says his education has enabled him to chase his foodie dreams. Just five years after completing a two-year chef college program following a bachelor of commerce degree in hotel and food administration from the University of Guelph, the 30-year-old is a senior manager with the trendy Playa Cabana restaurant chain in Toronto, earning well above the average income of $60,000 the report cites for business grads five years after graduation. As director of kitchen operations, Standing oversees a team of managers across six restaurants, lines up suppliers, advises on new recipes, helps train chefs and still pitches in when needed on the prep line, or bussing tables in a crunch.
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“I’ve always liked to cook and wanted to work in restaurants, but I could never be doing this job without a university and college background,” he said. “University gave me a good foundation in how restaurants work on a business level, and the Stratford Chefs School gave me the on-the-job training in ingredients and cooking.” Among other facts from the report: University grads with a BA saw their salaries grow by about $4,200 per year; Each new wave of graduates earned about $2,400 more than the grads the year before; The exception was 2009 grads, the year after the 2008 financial crisis, whose first-year earning was about $3,400 less than that of the year before, a drop of 7.7 per cent. But by 2011 grads’ earnings had bounced back to pre-2008 levels; While university health grads earn more than others in their first year, their wages climbed relatively slowly, whereas engineering salaries rose steeply — about $6,200 a year — as they soon outpaced health wages..When the boys were three and five we moved to Tokyo. At our kids' Japanese preschool, boys ran around playing all sorts of rough-and-tumble war games. Even more shocking to me at the time, the teachers were actually helping kids make their own weapons out of rolled up newspapers. My oldest came home day after day with his arms full of handmade pistols, rifles, and swords. He and his playmates ran around battling one another. Our Japanese public elementary school even gave out water guns to all the kids at a summer festival every year. Every single child got one—even three-year-old siblings. The first time I saw the kids screaming with laughter as they shot at each other over and over in the schoolyard, I was surprised by how the adults could be so blasé. They didn't just tolerate the play: the teachers and even the principal helped fill the kids' guns with water and ran around shooting and battling alongside their students. They actually encouraged the children, both boys and girls, to play with toy guns.
Their relaxed attitude undoubtedly has as much to do with cultural context as anything else: today in Japan, almost no one owns firearms and there are hardly any deaths by gun. But ever since living abroad in a society where young kids are allowed so many outlets for their energy, I have come to believe that one of the secrets of Asian boys' self-regulation is the way that aggressive play is seen as a normal stage of childhood, rather than demonized and hidden out of sight.
In contrast, in the U.S. we vilify children for even being interested in playing with guns. In the past six months alone, a little boy in Massachusetts was given detention and forced to write a letter of apology for having a tiny, Lego toy gun on a school bus; a five year old in Maryland was given ten days of suspension for having a toy gun at school, interrogated for so long he wet his pants in the principal's office; elementary school students in Washington were suspended for shooting off Nerf guns that their teacher had actually asked them to bring in for an experiment in probability; and in California, an elementary school announced a plan to "buy back" toy guns in exchange for books. Little boys bear the brunt of our panic over toy weapons, but girls are not immune either: a five-year-old girl in Pennsylvania was suspended from school and made to undergo psychiatric evaluation when she threatened to shoot a classmate with a toy Hello Kitty soap bubble gun—a toy she hadn't even brought to school.
We didn't always used to frown upon weapon play; children of the 1950s grew up steeped in television shows showing gun-toting heroes like the Lone Ranger, and toy soldiers and cowboy costumes were common playthings. But societal panic intensified in the wake of a spate of tragic school shootings in the 1990s, and a shift towards zero tolerance policies and regulating how children should play has been steadily increasing ever since. We've become so panicked about toy weapons that we are rewriting them out of our past. Jay Mechling, a professor at the University of California, Davis, recounts in The Journal of Play how surprised he was that an icon of postwar 1950s American childhood—the Daisy BB gun—was utterly absent, along with toy guns, when he visited the Strong National Museum of Play. The Daisy and toy replica guns had been nominated for inclusion in the museum's National Toy Hall of Fame multiple times, but protests against them by parents and teachers prevailed.* Toy guns were systematically being erased from the American cultural history of childhood.Image copyright Akbar Hossain/BBC Image caption The national Baitul Mukarram mosque was one of the first to give the special sermon
All 300,000 mosques in Bangladesh have been asked give a sermon against terrorism and extremism in their Friday prayers this week.
The sermon, written by the state-run Islamic Foundation, condemns the "unjust killing of any human being".
It also urges parents to protect their children from "brainwashing".
The move comes after two deadly Islamist attacks in Bangladesh in recent weeks, including a siege on a Dhaka cafe that left 20 people dead.
That attack, and an attack on police guarding the country's largest Eid gathering in Kishoreganj, were both claimed by the Islamic State militant group.
'No place for terror'
The sermon said: "The Prophet says the greatest of all sins is to kill a human being. No distinction between Muslim or non-Muslim has been made here."
The foundation said it hoped imams would use the message, or take inspiration from it.
Although the sermon is not mandatory for mosques, observers say they expect most clerics will deliver the message, which was approved by the government.
Image copyright Akbar Hossain/BBC Image caption There was tight security at the national mosque
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Ruck
Last year's ranking: -
Official AFL Player Rating: 8
Debut: 2009
Games: 131
AFL Fantasy value: $489,000
Had an outstanding season following his first injury-free pre-season in three years. Averaged 34 hit-outs in 23 games, the most of his career, and provided silver service for the Eagles' midfield. Finished third at the club for contested possessions (206) and was a dominant force in games. Kicked 17 goals, his most since 2012, and earned an All Australian nomination along with the Mark of the Year.
34. Shaun Burgoyne
Hawthorn
Defender
Last year's ranking: 41
Official AFL Player Rating: 68
Debut: 2002
Games: 295
AFL Fantasy value: $413,000
The Hawks hoped to squeeze three seasons from Burgoyne when he hobbled into the club on crutches at the end of 2009, but the man known as 'Silk' has been at Waverley for six years and has got better with each one. Third for handballs and fourth for contested possessions and tackles last season, the Hawks used Burgoyne wherever they needed a cool head or had a hole to be filled. Was solid through the finals series, befitting a champion who lifts for the big occasions. The 33-year-old has kept up his brilliant form late into his career, as reflected by his improved ranking of seven spots.
33. Jeremy Cameron
GWS
Forward
Last year's ranking: -
Official AFL Player Rating: 197
Debut: 2012
Games: 73
AFL Fantasy value: $388,000
Cameron was again the team's most lethal forward and booted a career-best 63 goals, one more than his 2013 All-Australian season. The brilliant left-footer kicked seven goals in a game twice, against Hawthorn in round six and Carlton in round 22. Cameron's tag as the Giants' 'franchise player' was consolidated when he signed a contract extension before the 2015 season that will keep him at the club until at least the end of 2020. As one of the most exciting young forwards in the game, the Giant is a good bet to continue to jump up this list over the next few years.
32. Eddie Betts
Adelaide
Forward
Last year's ranking: -
Official AFL Player Rating: 21
Debut: 2005
Games: 229
AFL Fantasy value: $421,000
His reputation as one of the game's biggest drawcards continued to swell last year, stunning the competition with a career-best season. He was a beast inside attacking 50, booting 63 goals to claim the club's goalkicking title for the second successive year. Betts' creativity is unmatched and his skill to convert seemingly from anywhere he wants is astonishing, with that ability rocketing him inside the top 50 after not making the list in 2015. He won Goal of the Year for a left-foot torpedo from the boundary.
Eddie Betts has taken out the @coateshire Goal of the Year! http://t.co/mGhCJlxXGx — AFL (@AFL) September 28, 2015
31. Robert Murphy
Western Bulldogs
Defender
Last year's ranking: -
Official AFL Player Rating: 56
Debut: 2000
Games: 292
AFL Fantasy value: $441,000
The veteran playmaker's appointment as skipper in 2015 proved to be an inspired one, as his love for the club and game spread throughout the team. Murphy has lost none of the trademark pace, composure and skill and that translated into a second All Australian selection, with the 33-year-old selected as captain of that team. The running defender is showing no signs of slowing down and as the Bulldogs approach a flag window, there is every chance Murphy could become just the second Bulldog captain to lift the premiership cup.
Who's next? Check out the rest of the AFL Players' Top 50 as they are revealed
The AFL Players' Top 50 is compiled with the support of the AFL Players' Association.Facebook Twitter Google+ LinkedIn
Work is finishing up on the tallest residential building in the Western hemisphere, 432 Park Ave. The penthouse apartments will go for around $100 million each. Here’s how the building compares to the total property values in some well-known American cities:
That’s a pretty valuable piece of property.
As you know, I’ve often advocated a policy that progressive economists used to love, replacing income taxes with progressive consumption taxes. In some cases it is hard to actually enact progressive consumption taxes (although not as hard as many assume). But in other cases it’s fairly easy. I’ve often been dismayed to find out that progressive politicians like Ted Kennedy opposed luxury taxes on yachts, expensive cars, and fancy jets.
Real estate is one of the easiest forms of consumption to hit with a progressive tax. We already have property taxes, and we already estimate the value of properties. Just do it!
Unfortunately, liberal cities like New York do exactly the opposite, taxing the most expensive properties at far lower rates than average properties. Those penthouse units may end being appraised at closer to $6 million, barely 6% of the actual market value:
Because of an odd idiosyncrasy in the New York City property tax system, the “market values” that the City assigns to real estate are not market values at all. For condos and coops, these values are generated by an antiquated pricing model, which underestimates true property values by as much as 95%. An extreme example is this $100m penthouse, the most expensive sale ever in NYC. Despite having been purchased just six months ago, its official “market value” is reported as only $6m.
Here’s the ratio of appraised value to actual value by borough:
Notice that wealthy Manhattan is especially under-taxed. And we see the same thing if we look at the ratio by price range:
I would find it much easier to accept the current progressive obsession over inequality if I saw more interest in progressive consumption taxes. The rich can do one of three things with their money; invest it, donate it to charity, or consume it. If you aren’t taxing luxury consumption, you aren’t taxing the rich. A billionaire trust fund baby, non-smoker, non-lottery player, can put all their wealth into muni’s and live in a $100 million penthouse paying an absurdly low tax rate. Meanwhile a working class guy in Queens who plays the lottery and smokes and has an average house gets hammered by NYC taxes. That’s not fair! (And let’s not even talk about carbon footprints.)
PS. 432 Park is one of the few modern tall buildings with pleasant architecture. The interiors are very minimalistic, if that’s your thing. Pencil thin and about 100 floors tall, with six perfectly square windows on each side, all the way up. Lots of white marble:
I don’t generally envy the rich, as I have little interest in their lifestyle. But even I have a tinge of envy when I think about how happy I’d be if I owned that bathroom. All that white makes me want to put on the Beatles White album (You say you want a revolution... )
And I’m in the top (global) 1%! 🙂
Don’t care for that chandelier. Hopefully the tasteful monochrome interior will never be messed up with colorful children’s toys.
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This entry was posted on July 11th, 2015 and is filed under Supply-side economics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.Maricopa Integrated Health System, the county health district that includes Maricopa Medical Center, serves a high proportion of metro Phoenix region’s AHCCCS enrollees and the indigent. (Photo11: Patrick Breen/The Republic) Story Highlights Judge Douglas Gerlach, in his ruling, said the fee “does not qualify as a tax,” as the 36 Republican legislators who opposed it have argued
As a result, there was no need for a two-thirds supermajority to enact the legislation
The Arizona Legislature’s simple-majority vote to expand Medicaid was constitutional, a judge ruled Wednesday, setting the stage for a legal fight that will ultimately reach the state Supreme Court.
The case hinges on whether a hospital assessment lawmakers approved in 2013 to fund the expansion, which extended health-care coverage to more than 250,000 low-income Arizonans, is a fee, as its proponents argued, or a tax.
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Douglas Gerlach rejected arguments from three dozen former and current Republican lawmakers that the hotly disputed hospital assessment was a tax. Tax increases require a two-thirds vote of the Legislature.
The Goldwater Institute, which represents the lawmakers, immediately said it will appeal the ruling.
“This has been about more than the Medicaid tax,” attorney Christina Sandefur said. The broader issue is the reach of the supermajority requirement, which voters approved in 1992. Left unchallenged, future legislatures could raise taxes in the guise of fees or assessments, she said.
But Gerlach ruled the lawmakers’ case didn’t meet any of the three criteria outlined in prior court cases that would distinguish an assessment from a tax. Nor did they prove that any of the exceptions that would make an “assessment” a tax apply.
Gov. Jan Brewer, who rallied a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers to pass the assessment, praised Gerlach’s ruling. In a statement, she called it “a huge win for businesses, our health care system and for hard working families in Arizona.”
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The Arizona Hospital and Healthcare Association also cheered the ruling. In a statement, executive director Greg Vigdor said in the hospital assessment has cut the number of unpaid stays at Arizona hospitals, especially smaller ones, while expanding health coverage to hundreds of thousands of people.
However, Vigdor, like the GOP lawmakers, acknowledged the fight it not over.
Gerlach acknowledged as much at the court hearing last month, noting appeals will be filed regardless of his decision and that the state Supreme Court will ultimately decide the matter.
“My decision probably has no more impact than the outcome of a spring-training game,” said Gerlach, who has worked as a baseball umpire.
Reach the reporter at [email protected] or at 602-444-8963.
Read or Share this story: http://azc.cc/1JomJMxA photo of a Syrian toddler washed up dead on a beach in Turkey made news headlines around the world on Wednesday.
The child's name was Aylan Kurdi and he was three years old. He drowned in the Mediterranean Sea along with his five-year-old brother Galip and mother Rihan, according to the BBC.
The father, Abdullah, survived.
Much of the world's media has led with the image of Aylan lying lifeless on the shores of Bodrum in southwest Turkey. But social media users have also shared images of Aylan and his brother when they were alive, smiling and playing together.
Aylan (L) and Galip (R) (Twitter/@3z0ooz)
The boys were on one of two boats that departed Bodrum early on Wednesday and were headed for the Greek island of Kos. Both boats sank shortly after leaving the Turkish coast. Twelve bodies have been recovered from the sea, including those of five children. Nine people survived and two are still missing, presumed drowned.
The family, Kurds from Kobane in northern Syria, fled their homes after the Islamic State group had besieged their town earlier this year.
Abdullah Kurdi told his sister that all he wants to do now is return to Kobane and bury his wife and children.
“I heard the news at five o’clock this morning,” Teema Kurdi, Abdullah’s sister, told the National Post from her home in Canada’s Vancouver.
“All he [Abdullah] said was my wife and two boys are dead.”
Teema said the family had been hoping to eventually reach Canada – after travelling to Europe – and live with her. Earlier this year, Teema said, the family had a refugee application rejected by Canadian authorities due to complexities around them having already fled from Syria to Turkey.
The United Nations has reported that at least 230,000 people have been killed in Syria's brutal civil war, although the actual toll is thought to be much higher. More than 6.5 million people out of a population of 22 million have also been displaced by the conflict.
Thousands of people have died trying to reach Europe this year, with many fleeing conflict in the Middle East and North Africa. On 14 September European Union ministers will hold an emergency meeting to discuss solutions to the largest refugee crisis facing the continent since World War II.
More than 6.5 million people out of a population of 22 million have also been displaced by the conflict. - See more at: http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/how-one-german-town-welcomed-coachload-syrian-refugees-1941795119#sthash.WKel9AOQ.dpuf
More than 6.5 million people out of a population of 22 million have also been displaced by the conflict. - See more at: http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/how-one-german-town-welcomed-coachload-syrian-refugees-1941795119#sthash.WKel9AOQ.dpufUPDATE: So I finally had a chance to put together a letter. Apparently the brother of the original Dr. Foster and the original Dr. Smith still run the company.
Here it is:
Foster and Smith, Inc.
2253 Air Park Road
P.O. Box 100
Rhinelander, WI 54501
April 15, 2013
Re: Signature Series Premium Adult Pet Rabbit Food
Dear Dr. Race Foster & Dr. Martin Smith:
I am writing to you regarding some concerns I have about your new “Signature Series Premium Adult Pet Rabbit Food”. This is a product that bears both your names by having the “Dr. Foster & Smith Signature Series Premium Food” green seal on it.
I am the proud owner of two Holland Lop rabbits who I love dearly. Ever since I adopted them two years ago, I have been a customer of yours. Overall I do like your store as I find it is one of the most convenient ways to shop for my rabbits online.
I am also a member of bunspace.com, a community of over 20,000 rabbit owners. I have posted my concerns on bunspace and will be sharing what response, if any, I receive.
Before getting my rabbits and as a rabbit owner, I have done a huge amount of research on rabbit care and especially nutrition – both online and by going to the library. That’s why I was so unpleasantly surprised to see what kind of rabbit food you have started marketing and selling as your own signature, vet formulated product.
According to Dr. Dana Krempels of H.A.R.E. (Houserabbit Adoption Rescue and Education Rabbit Rescue) [http://www.bio.miami.edu/hare/diet.html]:
“A good quality rabbit pellet DOES NOT contain dried fruit, seeds, nuts, colored crunchy things or other things that are attractive to our human eyes, but very unhealthy to a rabbit. Rabbits are strict herbivores, and in nature they rarely get fruit, nuts or other such fatty, starchy foods. The complex flora of the cecum can quickly become dangerously imbalanced if too much simple, digestible carbohydrate is consumed--especially if the diet is generally low in fiber. The result is often "poopy butt syndrome," in which mushy fecal matter cakes onto the rabbit's behind. This a sign of cecal dysbiosis, which can foment much more serious health problems.
A good quality rabbit pellet should have at least 22% crude fiber, no more than approximately 14% protein, about 1% fat and about 1.0% calcium. Check the label on the rabbit pellets before you buy. Most commercial pellets are alfalfa-based, which means they're higher in calories and lower in fiber than timothy-based pellets.”
Your “Signature Series Premium Adult Pet Rabbit Food” contains dried fruit as well colorful crunchy things. The guaranteed analysis states that the formula contains 14% protein as a minimum amount rather than a maximum. The analysis also states that the formula has 19% minimum crude fiber and 24% maximum crude fiber. This is clearly not an ideal pellet to feed rabbits.
I have enclosed printed copies of two web pages – both from your website. One contains information for your “Signature Series Premium Adult Pet Rabbit Food”; the other contains information for the Oxbow BenneTerra Organic Rabbit food. If you compare the two as I did, you will see some stark differences.
Oxbow’s product guaranteed analysis states 12% as the minimum protein level and 23% - 25% crude fiber.
What disturbed me most, however, is that your “Signature Series Premium Adult Pet Rabbit Food” has many ingredients that are at best unnecessary filler and at worst unhealthy or even potentially harmful to a rabbit’s health. You will notice that these ingredients are not present in Oxbow’s product. Specifically I am referring to: Soybean Hulls, Ground Corn, Dehulled Soybean Meal, Wheat Middlings, Flaked Peas, Cane Molasses, Dehydrated Papaya, Flaked Wheat, Corn Gluten Meal, Yellow 5, Blue 1, Red 40 and Titanium Dioxide.
Of those ingredients, a few stand out as particularly problematic. First and foremost, why did you include corn in a formula for rabbits? Rabbits are unable to digest corn and certainly gain no benefit from it. In a worst case scenario, corn can cause intestinal problems that could prove fatal in a rabbit. Molasses is nothing but sugar which can cause obesity and an imbalance in intestinal flora. Last but certainly not least, you have put artificial food coloring in this product. Artificial food coloring has been shown to cause cancer in rats, and there is no reason to think it would not have similar effects in relatively small pets like rabbits.
Which veterinarian formulated this product? It is clear that is not healthy for rabbits. One can only conclude that ingredients were chosen based on cost, and that it was formulated to appeal to rabbit owners who don’t know any better – not to increase the health and wellbeing of their herbivorous little friends. The way you are marketing this product is misleading and unethical.
I respectfully ask that you reformulate or stop selling this shameful product. At the very least, you owe it to consumers to state which veterinarian you are referring to when you state that the product is veterinarian formulated. When people read that a pet product is veterinarian formulated, they trust that ingredient decisions were made based on what is best for their pets. They trust you. In this case that trust has been violated.
Thank you for taking the time to read my letter. I would very much appreciate a response.
Sincerely,
[Cookie & Muffin's Mom]A parking lot brawl between two women in South Los Angeles quickly escalated into a demolition derby.Dramatic video captured fists flying in an apparent argument over a parking space near the 8400 block of South Western Avenue on Sunday.A number of women were seen fighting when one woman jumped into a white SUV.The driver revved the engine and the video showed her smashing into a silver SUV, nearly taking off the passenger door.The vehicles collide several more times as they maneuver back and forth in the small parking lot.The SUVs headed into the street where the white SUV was spotted delivering one more crunching blow to the silver SUV. The white SUV then mowed down a fire hydrant, sending a geyser of water into the air.ABC7 reached out to the Los Angeles Police Department who said a report of the incident has yet to be filed.The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power was notified about the broken fire hydrant and crews quickly responded to fix the geyser.Final Fantasy Tactics’ Spiritual Successor Might Come to PS4
Launched onto Kickstarter last week, Unsung Story: Tale of the Guardians is a promising spiritual successor to Final Fantasy Tactics, equipped with a designer and composer who worked on the legendary strategy RPG. While initially its crowd fund was only aimed at bringing the game to PC and handhelds, Sony might win a big console exclusive with its release.
Following overwhelming request by gamers on Unsung Heroes' Kickstarter page, Playdek has added PS4 support as a new stretch goal. Below are the new stretch goals:
$1 million: PS Vita port
$1.25 million: PS4 port
$1.5 million: 3DS port
Whether or not the fund reaches its goal of $600,000 there will be an iOS and Android version. However, it's very likely to reach its primary goal spurring a version for PC, Mac, Windows Tablets, and Linux.
The game currently stands at about two-thirds of its goal with 23 days to go. Reaching 1.25 million won't be easy, but would be huge for strategy RPG fans and especially those who grew up during the PS1 days and are now stuck to their PS4. Some forget that the original Final Fantasy Tactics was on PS1, although its The War of the Lions PSP port would fare extremely well 10 years later.
Unsung Heroes: Tale of the Guardians looks to be birthed from the same DNA as the ever-popular Final Fantasy Tactics. Its medieval-fantasy style setting housing rewarding strategic combat is something the next-gen scene could benefit greatly from.As Washington politicians debate whether earning $250,000 a year makes a family rich, special education teacher Danny Kofke has come up with a much lower threshold for wealth: The father of two says that his family of four can live well on his $40,000 a year salary—and you can, too. He explains how in his new book, A Simple Book of Financial Wisdom, a follow-up to his first book, How to Survive (and Perhaps Thrive) on a Teacher’s Salary. US News spoke with Kofke about how he manages to stretch his income and his tips for others trying to do the same. Excerpts:
It's pretty impressive that you have supported your family of four on less than $40,000 a year. How did you do it?
This took long-term planning. Raising a family of four on my teacher's salary would be next to impossible if we had a huge mortgage and a lot of debt. Before we had children, my wife, Tracy, was a teacher, too. We had a plan for her to be able to stay at home once we had children. We weren’t exactly sure when this would happen (this is for The Man Upstairs to decide), but we had an idea on when we would start trying.
We ended up being married four years before Ava was born. During this time, we tried to live off one of our teaching salaries and used the other one to pay off debt and establish an emergency fund. We were not sure how long Tracy would be able to stay home—we initially aimed for one year—but were able to have her stay home for six years and work part-time for one. We were able to do this even after having our younger daughter, Ella, three years after Ava. The key for us was the long-term planning.
Can anyone really succeed at this?
I do feel that almost anyone can. I know there are some that earn a lot less than I do or have more debt but I feel they can work towards this, too. I am not a financial major or a chief executive of a company. I have never even taken a financial class in my life. If this 35-year-old school teacher can learn the basics of money management and finances, then others can, too.
Tell us some of your more unusual advice, that we might not have heard before.
I think the biggest thing I have learned is if broke people are making fun of you and laughing at your ways, then you are doing something right. It was difficult to get mocked when Tracy was working and we chose to live off one salary while others were spending like there was no tomorrow. Many people told me to get off my wallet and spend money.
Pride is sometimes a hard thing to swallow, but I knew that many of these people were not making smart financial decisions and these decisions would eventually come back and hurt them. I don't know if it is unusual advice but, when making financial decisions, you have to do what is right for you and not be influenced by the many temptations that surround us.
What's the hardest financial rule for you to follow personally?
Living below my means is the toughest rule for me to follow. There are so many temptations—Madison Avenue spends billions of dollars each year to get our money—and sometimes I want to buy things I know I should not. When this occurs, I allow myself a 24-hour breather and, if I still feel strongly about buying that object after this time, I will discuss it with Tracy. The great thing is, after I let the emotional aspect have time to go away, my more rational side speaks to me and I make a sound decision.
How are you teaching your children about money?
Once my older daughter, Ava, turned three, we had her do simple household chores so we could teach her how to handle money. I am not a fan of rewarding others for things they should be doing anyway, but I did make an exception with Ava since my initial goal was to teach her money management skills.
We started with chores that were easy for her to complete: cleaning her room, brushing her teeth. Every night, we would check off the chores that were completed, and every Friday we added them up and she was paid. We called this money what most parents do: an allowance. No matter what you call it, make sure your child does the work to earn the money.
After Ava got paid (she could earn up to $1 each week), she had three jars: Give Away, Savings and Spending. She first put 10 cents in the Give Away jar, 25 cents in the Savings jar and the remaining amount in the Spending jar. This worked so well for us. When we were at the store, often Ava would see something she wanted. We never had any arguments; we would simply say, “We’ll have to go home and see if you have enough money in your spending or savings jar to buy it.”
Ava has used the money in her Give Away jar in numerous ways. One year there was a little girl at my school who lost her father shortly before Christmas. Ava used her Give Away money to buy this little girl a stuffed animal. Ava actually came to my school and delivered this to her personally. Another year, Ava used this money to buy canned food for needy families in our community. This past Christmas, there was a family at her school that was struggling. Ava used the money in her Give Away jar to buy them a gift card to a local grocery store.
If Ava continues to apply these lessons in life—gives away 10 percent of her money, then saves 25 percent of it and uses the remainder for spending—and goes above and beyond in her job, she will be wealthy in more ways than a fat bank account can show.
You can also listen to an interview with Kofke: Surviving on a Teacher’s Salary.MARRIAGE idealises permanence, and yet it is changing more rapidly than at any time in its history. Almost everywhere it is becoming freer, more equal and more satisfying. As our special report this week explains, wedlock has become so good that it is causing trouble.
The most benign changes are taking place in poor and middle-income countries (where most people live). Child marriage, once rife, is ebbing. So is cousin marriage, with its attendant risk of genetic defects, though it is still fairly common in the Middle East and parts of Asia. Relations between husbands and wives have become more equal (though not equal enough). As women earn more and the stigma of divorce fades, more men are finding that they cannot treat their wives as servants (or, worse, punchbags), because women can credibly threaten to walk away.
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In some regions change has been astoundingly quick. In India the share of women marrying by the age of 18 has dropped from 47% to 27% in a single decade. “Love marriages” remain disreputable in India, and arranged marriages the norm. But, as in many traditional societies, young people have more say. Some can veto the mates their families suggest; others choose their own, subject to a parental veto. Across the world, popular culture is raising expectations of what a good marriage is like, and dating websites are giving singletons vastly more options.
Ring the changes
The worrying part is what is going on in rich countries. In the West marriage is in excellent shape, but only among the well-off. Elite couples delay tying the knot to allow time to get established in a career, but they still tie it before having children. Working-class people, by contrast, are dramatically less likely to put a ring before a cradle than in previous generations. Among the college-educated in America, only 12% of births are to unmarried mothers; among those who dropped out of high school, the rate is 70%, up from 43% in the early 1980s. Similar trends can be seen across the wealthy world: the average out-of-wedlock birth rate for OECD countries is 40%.
If marriage were just a piece of paper this would not matter. However, it is much more than that. Although a wedding cannot turn a flimsy relationship into a strong one, it adds scaffolding that can save one that is in between. Making a public, lifelong commitment to another person is not the same as drifting into cohabitation to share the rent. And this matters a lot if children are involved. One study in America found that 18% of married couples broke up within five years of a birth, compared with 47% of cohabiting couples.
Children from stable backgrounds tend to do better in school and life—and are more likely to form stable unions of their own. Add the trend towards “assortative mating”, when high-achievers marry other high-achievers, and the gap between elite and working-class families yawns. Affluent parents intensively nurture their children for success; the offspring of less fortunate homes fall far behind before they ever set foot in a school. The marriage gap makes rich countries more unequal, and retards social mobility.
Improbable as it may seem, this pattern is likely to reach every corner of the globe. The forces that have shaken up marriage in rich countries—rising individualism, education, women’s economic emancipation—are spreading. It is not just a Western trend. For a long time Japan resisted it: highly educated women were less likely to marry than others. Now they are more likely to (and less likely to divorce).
The revolution in family life is largely beneficial, and there is not much that governments can do about its harmful side-effects. America has tried hard to promote wedlock among poor people since the 1990s, but failed utterly. Countries should try to ensure that their welfare systems do not penalise marriage among the poor. They should not, however, lurch in the other direction by providing tax benefits to the married. Given the growing social stratification of marriage, such measures are exceedingly regressive.
Working-class Westerners have not given up on marriage. On the contrary, many idealise it. Rather than seeing it as the start of a couple’s journey together, as in the past, they often see it as something not to try until they arrive—with a good job, a house, financial stability and a lavish party. Many feel they are not “ready” to marry, even as they embark on parenthood. Helpfully, some European countries have begun to offer civil unions for heterosexuals. (Gay couples already had that option.) They confer nearly all the rights of marriage but entail less of the intimidating hoopla. These now account for a fifth of new formal unions in the Netherlands, and more in some working-class districts. They have not undermined marriage so far. It is a small fix for a huge problem, but it might help.USSA — It’s not like it was when I was a kid
By Shepard Ambellas
BOUND BROOK, N.J. (INTELLIHUB) — Apparently the world isn’t like it was when I was a kid, no more Kool-Aid stands, no more doing yard work for cash, no more shoveling snow, as the government now has their hands in everything, regulating all aspects of our lives.
When I was a kid I remember passing out fliers to do yard work which would earn me in the range of $15-$20 a yard, raking leaves or mowing.
I also remember setting up a Kool-Aid stand on the street corner at the age of 8, garnering the attention from neighbors willing to pay a dollar for each glass.
However those days are over.
During the recent snow storm school was closed and a few high school seniors were eager to make some extra cash by helping out their neighbors. But moments into their venture they were shutdown by local cops.
Eric Schnepf, 18, and Matt Molinari, 18, were dumbfounded when they were shutdown by police after someone called 911 complaining that the boys were passing out flyers offering “snow removal” services in the area.
[Police Chief Michael] Jannone said an officer was dispatched to the street because a resident called to report a “suspicious person” with curly blond hair and a hoodie who was walking through yards.
A responding officer told the young men that it wasn’t safe to be out and to come back during the day.
Jannone said his department has no interest in cracking down on kids who want to shovel sidewalks or driveways. The law was made for transient scam artists who prey on the vulnerable, he said.
“The spirit of the ordinance is to protect residents from gypsy activity. People will solicit door to door and target the elderly and get into their house,” he said., reported USA Today.
Apparently a local law in the area prevents people from doing such work unless they purchase a rather pricy license from the city for $450 which allows work for 180 days. And at $15 to $20 dollars a yard/driveway, the price of the license wouldn’t be feasible for one to profit.
This is just another failed example highlighting why kids nowadays are forced to become lazy loafs, playing first-person shooter video games all day, as good old-fashioned hard work is frowned upon.
Has anyone ever stopped to think why everyone is jobless and on welfare in this country?
The stupidity amazes me.
About the author:
Shepard Ambellas is the founder, editor-in-chief of Intellihub News and the maker of SHADE the Motion Picture. You can also find him on Twitter and Facebook. Shepard also appears on the Travel Channel series America Declassified. You can also listen to him on Coast To Coast AM with hosts, both, George Noory on “Chemtrails” and John B. Wells on the “Alternative Media Special“. Shepard Ambellas has also been featured on the Drudge Report, the largest news website in the entire world, for his provocative coverage of the Bilderberg Group.On the clear, moonless night on May 20, 2012, Wayne Jaeschke recorded a Martian phenomenon that he was sure couldn't be real: an unexplained cloud moving the Mars atmosphere. And now, two and a half years later, professional scientists who have studied it still aren't sure what it is, according to their report out in Nature today.
"At first I thought: maybe there's a pixel error in the live feed on my computer, or some dust has collected on a [telescope] sensor," said Jaeschke, a patent lawyer and amateur astronomer in West Chester, PA, of that initial sighting. But when Jaeschke reviewed the telescope footage from his backyard observatory the next day, the sighting seemed far less like an error and more like something inexplicable. Jaeschke had captured what appeared to be a vast, enormously bright plume of something that had formed at Mars's northwestern horizon. Whatever it was, the massive cloud was at least twice as high as anything ever before see—and unlike a recording malfunction, it morphed and rotated with the planet.
Jaeschke immediately brought his strange discovery (a "Martian stumper," he called it) to the attention of his fellow amateur astronomers, and the sighting was confirmed. Eighteen separate amateur observers had seen it across the globe.
Oddly, the rotating plume could only be seen as it crested the northern horizon (never the southern horizon.) By all reckoning, it was high enough in Mars's atmosphere that it should have been dispersed by solar wind—but it persisted for over 10 days. Jaeschke and his fellow amateur astronomers quickly reached out to professionals, and today a team of astronomers, lead by Agustin Sánchez-Lavega at the University of the Basque Country in Spain, has finally published their analysis.
Their conclusion? To date, this plume defies our understanding of Mars's atmosphere, and nimbly avoids all scientific explanation.
Best Guesses
After analyzing the various recordings of the 2012 Martian plume, Sánchez-Lavega and his colleagues have been able to confirm the rough height and size of the phenomenon—more than 120 miles off the ground, and up to 600 miles in diameter—but little more. "Unfortunately the Opportunity and Curiosity rovers were at a different location… and there were no spacecraft observing the Martian [horizon] during those days" Sánchez-Lavega says.
Even when the best guesses as to the origins or exact make-up of the plume are weakly supported. "I've heard about of four or five different possible explanations," says Bruce Jakosky, a planetary scientist who was not involved in the research, and head of NASA's new Martian atmospheric probe, MAVEN. "And honestly? I don't like any of them."
One idea that Sánchez-Lavega tackles in his analysis is that the cloud is just that: a massive, airy billow of water or CO2 vapor. But this theory is problematic for more than a few reasons. While the light reflected off small CO2 particles does indeed match what was seen in the various astronomical recordings (unlike dust), after decades of Mars observation, nobody has recorded a gas cloud even reaching half the
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the state are now being faced by a strange plea... They are being asked to open government approved vends on the lines of liquor vends from where addicts could purchase narcotics like poppy husk. They are also being berated for the crackdown on drug trade because of which they no longer get easy access to them.
Shockingly, the Shiromani Akali Dal candidate says that she has forwarded the demand of opening poppy husk vends to the Chief Minister and even says that the narcotic is not harmful
Paramjit Kaur Gulshan, Akali candidate from Faridkot says,
"People are already addicted to this, what can be done. We have got a demand on these lines with our MLAs and area in-charges and we have forwarded the same to the CM". She goes on to shockingly add that "This stuff is not harmful".
And while the politicians squabble, the average Punjabi can do nothing but watch his prosperous state spiral down the drug path.For the first time in recent memory, HBO left a major awards show empty-handed.
The premium cable network, which went into Sunday's Golden Globes Awards with a leading 14 nominations, was bested by basic cable networks FX, which took home a leading four, AMC (two), Netflix (two), ABC (one) and Amazon (one).
While the Hollywood Foreign Press Association historically has a few surprise winners (Brooklyn Nine-Nine's best comedy win was a common subject of discussion at Sunday's postshow parties), many Hollywood insiders were stunned that HBO — with multiple noms for critical favorites The Night Of, Westworld as well as reigning Emmy champs Game of Thrones and Veep — was completely shut out.
"On the one hand, I'm very proud of the 14 nominations," HBO programming president Casey Bloys told The Hollywood Reporter late Sunday. "On the other hand, it's always more fun to win but we're proud of the shows. You win some, you lose some; you have to look forward at the things we have coming up. That's the way it goes sometimes; we had a good Emmys [but] had an off-year at the Golden Globes. It happens."
In 2016, HBO took home one Globe (for limited series Show Me a Hero) despite going in with seven noms (second behind only Netflix). In 2015, HBO led the pack with 15 nominations and took home one (The Normal Heart). In 2014, HBO again led with nine and collected two (tied with AMC and Fox for the lead).
FX, meanwhile, after a strong showing at the Emmys (its 18 wins narrowed the gap with leader HBO's 22), topped the list Sunday with wins for best comedy series (Atlanta) and comedy actor (Donald Glover for Atlanta) as well as trophies for limited series (People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story) and actress in the same category for Sarah Paulson.
FX president John Landgraf told THR that he sees Sunday's showing — where fellow basic cable network AMC finished second with three — as a win for the little guy in a Peak TV world where Netflix is spending upward of $6 billion on originals and unspooling new scripted fare almost weekly.
"My hat's off to the winners from Amazon [Billy Bob Thornton for Goliath]and Netflix [best drama]; The Crown is a terrific show. But I'm here to speak for smallish brands and personal curation; people who run labels that care deeply about story and artists," he said. "AMC has been our competitor and our brother in arms all along; I'm very happy for them and I watched and loved The Crown."
Landgraf was quick to credit Glover and his specific vision for Atlanta, which was first put in development in August 2013. "I'm just grateful to the artists. All we do is try to find artists, support them and when this happens, it's because of them. All gratitude and thanks go to them and the HFPA," he said. "Donald is the latest in the long run of them."
AMC president Charlie Collier told THR that he, too, was surprised to see The Night Manager win big. The limited series scored acting wins for stars Hugh Laurie, Olivia Coleman and Tom Hiddleston, with the latter topping Night Of's John Turturro and Riz Ahmed.
"It was unexpected," Collier said. "I don't think there's big guy vs. little guy. It means great content gets recognized. You hear now from big and small, cable and broadcast — it was good to see [NBC's] This Is Us [get nominated]. To some degree, the cream rises. We've been such a beneficiary of the outstanding drama series [with Breaking Bad and Mad Men] and there wasn't a basic cable series among this year's nominations. So anything can happen."
The HFPA's decision to combine the limited series and TV movies category could be at least partially to blame for HBO's goose egg. The premium cabler scored nominations for Kerry Washington (for Confirmation) as well as Bryan Cranston (for All the Way), but they were bested by Paulson and Hiddleston, respectively. (At the Emmys, however, both All the Way and Confirmation were nominated in the stand-alone TV movie category.)
Despite the shutout, Bloys was all smiles Sunday at HBO's annual bash and stressed that he hoped critics would be talking about his upcoming Nicole Kidman/Reese Witherspoon miniseries Big Little Lies this time next year.
"Here's the good news: We've got Westworld coming back for 2018; Big Little Lies coming up, The Deuce from David Simon, the final season of The Leftovers; I hope people will remember Girls next year because it's a great show and I think it gets overlooked," he said, noting talks are still underway for a second season of The Night Of and True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto "has some ideas he's ready to talk about." "We also have Jean-Marc Vallee [who directs Big Little Lies] doing Sharp Objects with Amy Adams starring and Marti Noxon writing — that's coming up in 2018 or '19. We have a lot of great stuff in the pipeline, too: Alan Ball's new show, which we're just casting. We have to keep cranking it out."
Wins by television program:
The Night Manager (AMC): 3
Atlanta (FX): 2
The Crown (Netflix): 2
The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story (FX): 2
Black-ish (ABC): 1
Goliath (Amazon): 1When I say that this assignment fell into my lap, I mean it literally. I’ve been piling the more than 100 books in Bloomsbury’s 33 1/3 series on top of my desk for the past few months while attempting to read the entire collection sequentially. At some point, the tower of criticism grew too architecturally unsound, and with a slow-motion lurch, more than half of the thin volumes fell on top of me, bouncing off my laptop, cascading onto the floor, spooking the dog, and making an even bigger mess of my already messy office. I carefully re-shelved the books in numerical order and got back to reading.
When the series started assigning one album to one author back in 2003—right around the time the album was rumored to be cooling on a slab in the pop culture morgue, ready to be opened up and autopsied—there was no template for this kind of publication, no prescribed notions to fill. The books could take the shape of an essay, or a work of fiction, or even some odd hybrid of both. But whatever the format, these paperbacks are aggressively accessible: short, pocketsize, easily consumed during a few commutes. Perhaps more crucially, potentially anyone can write a 33 1/3 book: critics, academics, journalists, musicians, poets, assorted armchair commentators.
After that precipitous collapse, while still making my way through the books in order, I noticed the authors grew younger and younger, while their theses became more offbeat and their choices in albums less canonical and more eccentric. Instead of more Beatles and Stones, we get Kanye West, J Dilla, and Ween. The range of the series, especially in its second 50 titles, is not just broader, but bolder, as the writers challenge the accepted Boomer notion of a “rock classic.” There’s something incredibly subversive and compelling about the notion of elevating They Might Be Giants and Dinosaur Jr to the same level as Pink Floyd and the Band. A new title on Koji Kondo’s music for Super Mario Bros. not only expands how we define the concept of an album but reconsiders the very notion of what constitutes pop music itself.
The 33 1/3 series has revealed a way that we can save the album: by dislocating it from history and letting a new generation develop their own canon. Recently announced titles suggest this trend will continue, but while we wait for new editions on Beat Happening, the Raincoats, and the Geto Boys, here are the 33 best 33 1/3 titles in alphabetical order by artist.Kris Bryant is listed at 6-foot-5 and 230 pounds. He is probably a few pounds heavier than that. He was the second selection in the 2013 draft. He spent his brief time in the minor leagues playing third base.
Bryant was kept in the minor leagues by the Chicago Cubs long enough in April 2015 to avoid getting a full season of major league service. He started 136 games at third base and 10 in the outfield for manager Joe Maddon last season.
Maddon has pushed Bryant (and other Cubs) toward versatility in 2016. Entering this weekend, Bryant has started 62 games at third base, 27 games in left field, 11 games in right field and three at first base.
There were some skeptics that this moving around could have a negative effect on Bryant at the plate.
Not so you would notice it. A year ago, he had 26 home runs and 99 RBI in 650 at-bats. He now has 26 home runs and 68 RBI in 401 at-bats.
Miguel Sano is listed at 6-foot-4 and 260 pounds. He actually weighed in at 278 pounds for spring training, and he’s still probably closer to that than 260.
So, yes, Sano has a thicker body than Bryant, but he runs OK, throws very well and has athletic skills.
The Twins tried to put Sano in right field to start the season. This was decried as a blunder by most observers, and the 37 games Sano started in right field indeed provided numerous adventures.
Sano was running hard to first base on May 31 and wound up on the disabled list with a strain of his left hamstring. At that point, he was batting.235 with 11 home runs and 27 RBIs and striking out at a rate of 40 percent in 50 games played.
Sano returned to the lineup at third base on July 1. He has made 26 starts at third base. The move back to his long-time minor league position has not changed his performance at the plate: The average is slightly higher,.248, and the power production is lower, four home runs and 15 RBI, and the strikeouts remain at 40 percent (although disturbingly high the past couple of weeks).
The Twins were disappointed when Sano gained seven pounds over the winter and reported for spring training at 278. They have been disappointed in some of his work habits during spring training, during the first two months of the season and since he returned to the lineup.
I tried to give a heads-up on the Sano issue with a column in March. The Twins finally went public with their disappointments in recent days – first with hitting coach Tom Brunansky in a radio interview on AM-1500, and then with manager Paul Molitor’s comments before Thursday’s early game in Cleveland.
Most on-line experts and commenters on public forums blamed any Sano shortcomings in his approach to getting ready for the season on the move to right field -- away from third base, the position at which he was trained and alleged to be comfortable.
Now that he’s been back at third base for several weeks, and making frequent errors, the Sano defenders/Twins bashers still want to blame it on trying to play him in right field.
The howling will intensify if the Twins go through with Molitor’s suggestion that Sano could be the player to spend a short time in Class AAA Rochester, once third baseman Trevor Plouffe returns to the 25-player active list next week.
The current issues with Sano at third base have nothing to do with the 37 games he started in right field in April and May. He has hundreds of games of experience at third base, and mediocrity was his highest level of achievement in the field during those minor league days.
At its worst, Sano’s time in right field did give him a chance to show some versatility – Kris Bryant in style, if not substance.
Miguel's main problem is not that he's been mishandled by the Twins. Miguel’s main problem continues to be mishandling himself, by not preparing for today’s game – today's one of 162 -- at anything close to the maximum of his abilities.
And those abilities remain immense, if he ever chooses to exploit them to the fullest.The Homeowners' Bill of Rights would do a number of things, three of particular note.
Stop the insidious bank practice of foreclosing on a home while in the middle of loan modification negotiations.
Make it a legal requirement that a bank set up a single point of contact with a borrower. Currently banks habitually "lose" documents and pass off responsibility for negotiations from department to department.
Make it illegal to use "robosigned" documents.
What it will apparently not do is make it legal requirement that a bank show proof that they have a right to foreclose...
SB 729 (Leno & Steinberg) of 2011 This bill would have required a servicer to process an application for a loan modification prior to recording a Notice of Default (NOD). This bill would, among other things, require a declaration of compliance to be recorded to certify compliance with the bill’s provisions, and require the foreclosing entity to attach proof of ownership of the mortgage or deed of trust. The bill failed passage in the Senate Banking and Financial Institutions Committee.
I don't know how anyone (except a corporations-are-persons bank) could object to the concept that one has to demonstrate that you own the mortgage before you can foreclose. But there it is.
The fact that this particular bill has already died is a testament to the power of the banksters lobby in Sacramento. If they are not to defeat or water down to homeopathic density Harris' Homeowners' Bill of Rights pressure needs to be exerted now on the Joint Senate and Assembly Committee that is considering the legislation. Powerful forces, including federal officials (no, this is not a conspiracy theory -- read the linked diary), are intent on derailing this legislation.
Here are the Joint Committee's members' contact information. Tell them you want a real Homeowners' Bill of Rights, not some watered down version that continues to let Wells Fargo drive people to the edge of hell, and then over.
Senator Noreen Evans (D) (916-651-4002)
Senator Ron Calderon (D) (916-651-4030)
Senator Sam Blakeslee (R) (916 651-4015)
Assemblyperson Mike Eng (D) (916 319-2049)
Assemblyperson Mike Feuer (D) (916 319-2042)
Assemblyperson Donald Wagner (R) (916 319-2070)
And sign the petition.Gov. Rick Snyder on Monday unveiled a series of actions and recommendations that will give Michigan students better access to career pathways.
The move is expected to expand and strengthen career technical education statewide.
Among the recommendations: Set up a job-readiness course for middle schoolers, recruit more professional trades instructors, and expand job training statewide.
"We all have an important role in making sure every student has the opportunity to explore multiple pathways to find a career that matches their interests and goals," Snyder said.
"We call this effort the Michigan Career Pathways Alliance because we are bringing together not just TED and the Education Department, but employers and educators, K-12 districts with higher education, union leaders and businesses."
The move is expected to close Michigan's talent gap. About 100,000 jobs are posted an unfilled in the state today, a situation that is particularly acute in the skilled trades.
Some Michigan companies are 'turning away work' as 100K jobs go unfilled Some areas of Michigan no longer await enough jobs for their workforce. Instead, hiring pressures in those area are starting to threaten the state's economic growth. "I think we're getting to a critical juncture," said Roger Curtis, the state's director...
"We need to change the perceptions of the professional trades so students, parents and others know about the outstanding opportunities that are out there as Michigan businesses grow and thrive," said Roger Curtis, director of Talent and Economic Development.
"But that's only part of the job. Once we've shattered stereotypes, we need to have a stronger system in place for students to determine the best pathway for them, then have access to the rigorous training to get them to the job they want - no matter where they live."
Curtis and State Superintendent Brian Whiston have been working with stakeholders on the recommendations.
Many of the recommendations, including increased funding for high school and at-risk students, a focus on competency-based learning, and more access to postsecondary learning, were adopted by the state Legislature during the budget process.
Whiston on Monday signed a directive setting some of the actions in place immediately. Others are recommendations that would require legislative changes, or would be the first steps in an important discussion about addressing long-term challenges.
Not ready for college? Michigan's construction industry touts building trades 'Apprenticeships are pathways to good-paying jobs.'Home Chapter 1: A Day of Very Low Probability Chapter 2: Everything I Believe Is False Chapter 3: Comparing Reality To Its Alternatives Chapter 4: The Efficient Market Hypothesis Chapter 5: The Fundamental Attribution Error Chapter 6: The Planning Fallacy Chapter 7: Reciprocation Chapter 8: Positive Bias Chapter 9: Title Redacted, Part I Chapter 10: Self Awareness, Part II Chapter 11: Omake Files 1, 2, 3 Chapter 12: Impulse Control Chapter 13: Asking the Wrong Questions Chapter 14: The Unknown and the Unknowable Chapter 15: Conscientiousness Chapter 16: Lateral Thinking Chapter 17: Locating the Hypothesis Chapter 18: Dominance Hierarchies Chapter 19: Delayed Gratification Chapter 20: Bayes's Theorem Chapter 21: Rationalization Chapter 22: The Scientific Method Chapter 23: Belief in Belief Chapter 24: Machiavellian Intelligence Hypothesis Chapter 25: Hold Off on Proposing Solutions Chapter 26: Noticing Confusion Chapter 27: Empathy Chapter 28: Reductionism Chapter 29: Egocentric Bias Chapter 30: Working in Groups, Pt 1 Chapter 31: Working in Groups, Pt 2 Chapter 32: Interlude: Personal Financial Management Chapter 33: Coordination Problems, Pt 1 Chapter 34: Coordination Problems, Pt 2 Chapter 35: Coordination Problems, Pt 3 Chapter 36: Status Differentials Chapter 37: Interlude: Crossing the Boundary Chapter 38: The Cardinal Sin Chapter 39: Pretending to be Wise, Pt 1 Chapter 40: Pretending to be Wise, Pt 2 Chapter 41: Frontal Override Chapter 42: Courage Chapter 43: Humanism, Pt 1 Chapter 44: Humanism, Pt 2 Chapter 45: Humanism, Pt 3 Chapter 46: Humanism, Pt 4 Chapter 47: Personhood Theory Chapter 48: Utilitarian Priorities Chapter 49: Prior Information Chapter 50: Self Centeredness Chapter 51: Title Redacted, Pt 1 Chapter 52: The Stanford Prison Experiment, Pt 2 Chapter 53: The Stanford Prison Experiment, Pt 3 Chapter 54: The Stanford Prison Experiment, Pt 4 Chapter 55: The Stanford Prison Experiment, Pt 5 Chapter 56: TSPE, Constrained Optimization, Pt 6 Chapter 57: TSPE, Constrained Cognition, Pt 7 Chapter 58: TSPE, Constrained Cognition, Pt 8 Chapter 59: TSPE, Curiosity, Pt 9 Chapter 60: The Stanford Prison Experiment, Pt 10 Chapter 61: TSPE, Secrecy and Openness, Pt 11 Chapter 62: The Stanford Prison Experiment, Final Chapter 63: TSPE, Aftermaths Chapter 64: Omake Files 4, Alternate Parallels Chapter 65: Contagious Lies Chapter 66: Self Actualization, Pt 1 Chapter 67: Self Actualization, Pt 2 Chapter 68: Self Actualization, Pt 3 Chapter 69: Self Actualization, Pt 4 Chapter 70: Self Actualization, Pt 5 Chapter 71: Self Actualization, Pt 6 Chapter 72: SA, Plausible Deniability, Pt 7 Chapter 73: SA, The Sacred and the Mundane, Pt 8 Chapter 74: SA, Escalation of Conflicts, Pt 9 Chapter 75: Self Actualization Final, Responsibility Chapter 76: Interlude with the Confessor: Sunk Costs Chapter 77: SA, Aftermaths: Surface Appearances Chapter 78: Taboo Tradeoffs Prelude: Cheating Chapter 79: Taboo Tradeoffs, Pt 1 Chapter 80: Taboo Tradeoffs, Pt 2, The Horns Effect Chapter 81: Taboo Tradeoffs, Pt 3 Chapter 82: Taboo Tradeoffs, Final Chapter 83: Taboo Tradeoffs, Aftermath 1 Chapter 84: Taboo Tradeoffs, Aftermath 2 Chapter 85: Taboo Tradeoffs, Aftermath 3, Distance Chapter 86: Multiple Hypothesis Testing Chapter 87: Hedonic Awareness Chapter 88: Time Pressure, Pt 1 Chapter 89: Time Pressure, Pt 2 Chapter 90: Roles, Pt 1 Chapter 91: Roles, Pt 2 Chapter 92: Roles, Pt 3 Chapter 93: Roles, Pt 4 Chapter 94: Roles, Pt 5 Chapter 95: Roles, Pt 6 Chapter 96: Roles, Pt 7 Chapter 97: Roles, Pt 8 Chapter 98: Roles, Final Chapter 99: Roles, Aftermath Chapter 100: Precautionary Measures, Pt 1 Chapter 101: Precautionary Measures, Pt 2 Chapter 102: Caring Chapter 103: Tests Chapter 104: The Truth, Pt 1, Riddles and Answers Chapter 105: The Truth, Pt 2 Chapter 106: The Truth, Pt 3 Chapter 107: The Truth, Pt 4 Chapter 108: The Truth, Pt 5, Answers and Riddles Chapter 109: Reflections Chapter 110: Reflections, Pt 2 Chapter 111: Failure, Pt 1 Chapter 112: Failure, Pt 2 Chapter 113: Final Exam Chapter 114: Shut Up and Do The Impossible Chapter 115: Shut Up and Do The Impossible, Pt 2 Chapter 116: Aftermath, Something to Protect, Pt 0 Chapter 117: Something to Protect: Minerva McGonagall Chapter 118: Something to Protect: Professor Quirrell Chapter 119: Something to Protect: Albus Dumbledore Chapter 120: Something to Protect: Draco Malfoy Chapter 121: Something to Protect: Severus Snape Chapter 122: Something to Protect: Hermione Granger
Chapter 79: Taboo Tradeoffs, Pt 1
"Hermione Granger," Auror Komodo said in a toneless voice, "you are under arrest for the attempted murder of Draco Malfoy."
The words dropped into Harry's consciousness and shattered his thoughts into a hundred shards of incredulity, the shock of adrenaline running into so much confusion that -
"She -" Harry said. "She - she wouldn't - WHAT?"
The Aurors weren't paying any attention to him. Komodo spoke again, still in that colorless voice. "Mr. Malfoy has regained consciousness in St. Mungo's and named you, Hermione Granger, as his assaulter. He has repeated these accusations under two drops of Veritaserum. The Blood-Cooling Charm you cast upon Mr. Malfoy would have killed him if he had not been found and treated, and it must be presumed known to you that this was a fatal curse. I therefore arrest you upon the serious charge of attempted murder and you will be taken into Ministry custody to be interrogated under three drops of Veritaserum -"
"Are you mad? " the words burst out of Harry's mouth, as he shoved himself up from the Ravenclaw table, an instant before Auror Butnaru's hand clamped down hard upon his shoulder. Harry ignored it. "That's Hermione Granger you're trying to arrest, the nicest girl in Ravenclaw, she helps Hufflepuffs with their homework, she'd die before she tried to kill anyone -"
Hermione Granger's face had crumpled. "I did it," she whispered in a tiny voice. "It was me."
Another huge rock fell on Harry's thoughts and crushed their fragile order, bursting fragments of comprehension into dust.
Dumbledore's face seemed to have aged decades over the course of seconds. "Why, Miss Granger?" Dumbledore said, his own voice barely above a whisper. "Why would you do such a thing?"
"I'm," Hermione said, "I'm, I'm - sorry - I don't know why I -" She seemed to collapse in on herself, her voice was formed of nothing but sobs, and the only words that could be made out were, "I thought - killed him - sorry -"
And Harry should have said something, should have done something, should have jumped up out of his seat and stunned all three Aurors and then gone on to some incredibly clever next move, but the twice-shattered fragments of his thought processes could yield no output. Butnaru's hand pushed Harry gently but firmly back into his seat and Harry found himself stuck there like he'd been glued, he tried to grab his wand for a Finite and it wouldn't come out of his pocket, the three Aurors and Dumbledore escorted Hermione out of the Great Hall amid a rising storm of outcries and the doors began to swing shut behind them - nothing made sense, it was surreal beyond all reckoning, like he'd been transported into an alternate universe, and then Harry's mind flashed back to another day of confusion and in a moment of desperate inspiration he finally realized what the Weasley twins had done to Rita Skeeter, and his voice rose in a scream, "HERMIONE YOU DIDN'T DO IT YOU'VE BEEN FALSE-MEMORY-CHARMED!"
But the doors had already shut.
Minerva couldn't possibly have stood still, she paced back and forth through the Headmaster's office, the back of her mind half-expecting Severus or Harry to tell her to shut up and sit down, but neither the Potions Master or the Boy-Who-Lived seemed much concerned with her, both of their gazes focused on Albus Dumbledore where he had emerged from the Floo. There were sounds in the background that nobody heard. Severus seemed as passionless as ever, sitting in a small cushioned chair beside the Headmaster's desk. The old wizard stood terrible and upright by the still-burning fireplace, robed in black like a starless night, radiating power and dismay. All her own thoughts were of utter confusion and horror. Harry Potter sat on a wooden stool with his fingers gripping the seat, and his eyes were fury and freezing ice.
At 6:33am, Quirinus Quirrell had Flooed St. Mungo's from his office for immediate pickup of Draco Malfoy. Professor Quirrell had found Mr. Malfoy in the trophy room of Hogwarts, on the verge of death from the continuing effects of the Blood-Cooling Charm slowly lowering his body temperature. Professor Quirrell had immediately dispelled the Charm, cast stabilizing spells on Mr. Malfoy, and levitated him to his office to Floo him to St. Mungo's for further treatment. After this, Professor Quirrell had informed the Headmaster, stating the facts briefly before vanishing through the Floo; the Aurors, notified by St. Mungo's, had demanded his presence for questioning.
The clear intent of the Blood-Cooling Charm had been to kill Draco Malfoy so slowly that the wards of Hogwarts, set to detect sudden injury, would not trigger. Under interrogation, Professor Quirrell had told the Aurors that he had cast several tracking Charms upon Mr. Malfoy's person in January, shortly after Mr. Malfoy's return to Hogwarts from Yuletime break. Professor Quirrell had cast tracking Charms because he had learned of a person with a motive to harm Mr. Malfoy. Professor Quirrell had refused to identify this person. The tracking Charms which Professor Quirrell had cast were triggered by Mr. Malfoy's health falling below an absolute level, rather than by sudden changes, and had therefore alerted Professor Quirrell before Mr. Malfoy had died.
Two drops of Veritaserum, sufficient to prevent Mr. Malfoy from withholding any meliorating or moderating information in his statements, had shown that Mr. Malfoy had - legally under the laws of Noble Houses, illegally under the regulations of Hogwarts - challenged Hermione Granger to a duel. Mr. Malfoy had won the duel but had then, as he left, been attacked from behind by Miss Granger with a Stunning Hex. After this Mr. Malfoy knew nothing.
Three drops of Veritaserum, requiring her to volunteer all relevant information, had caused Hermione Granger to confess that she had stunned Draco Malfoy from behind, and then, in a fit of anger, cast the Blood-Cooling Charm on him, with the deliberate intention of killing him slowly enough to evade identification from the Hogwarts wards, whose workings she had read about in Hogwarts: A History. She had been horrified at herself upon awakening the next morning, but had not told anyone of what she'd done, believing Draco Malfoy to be already dead - as he certainly would have been after seven hours, had his body's own magic not been resisting the effects of the Blood-Cooling Charm.
"Her trial," said Albus Dumbledore, "is set for tomorrow at noon."
"What? " the word burst out of Harry Potter. The Boy-Who-Lived didn't rise from his chair, but Minerva saw his fingers whiten where they gripped the wooden seat beneath him. "That's insane! You can't do a police investigation in one day -"
The Potions Master raised his voice. "This is not Muggle Britain, Mr. Potter!" Severus's face was as expressionless as ever, but the bite in his voice was sharp. "The Aurors have an accusation under Veritaserum and a confession under Veritaserum. So far as they are concerned, the investigation is done."
"Not quite," said Dumbledore, just as Harry seemed ready to explode. "I have insisted to Amelia that this matter be given the utmost scrutiny. Unfortunately, as the ill-fated duel was at midnight -"
"Supposed duel," Harry said sharply.
"As the supposed duel was at midnight - yes, you're quite right, Harry - it is beyond the range of any Time-Turner -"
"Also supposedly," the Boy-Who-Lived said coldly. "And rather suspiciously, since the alleged murder suspect doesn't know about Time-Turners. I hope that an invisible Auror was immediately sent back in time as far as possible to observe -"
Dumbledore inclined his head. "I went myself, Harry, the moment I heard. But by the time I reached the trophy room, Mr. Malfoy was already unconscious and Miss Granger had gone -"
"No," said Harry Potter. "You reached the trophy room and saw Draco unconscious. That is all you observed, Headmaster. You did not observe Hermione there, or watch her leave. Let us distinguish observation from inference." The boy's head turned to look at her. "Imperius, Obliviation, False Memory Charm, Legilimency. Professor McGonagall, am I leaving out any mind-affecting spell that could have made Hermione do this or make her believe she'd done it?"
"The Confundus Charm," she said. And the Dark Arts had never been her study, but she knew - "And certain Dark rituals. But none of those could be performed in Hogwarts without alarm."
The boy nodded, his eyes still directly addressing her. "Which of those spells can be detected? Which would the Aurors try to detect?"
"The Confundus Charm would wear off in a few hours," she said, after a moment to gather her thoughts. "Miss Granger would remember the Imperius. Obliviation cannot be detected by any known means, but only a Professor could have cast that spell upon a student without alarm from the Hogwarts wards. Legilimency - can only be detected by another Legilimens, I think -"
"I requested that Miss Granger be examined by the court Legilimens," said Dumbledore. "The examination showed -"
"Do we trust him?" said Harry.
"Her," said Dumbledore. "Sophie McJorgenson, whom I remember as an honest student of Ravenclaw, and she is bound by the Unbreakable Vow to tell the truth of what she sees -"
"Could someone else be Polyjuiced as her?" Harry Potter interrupted again. "What did you observe, Headmaster?"
Albus said heavily, "A person who looked like Madam McJorgenson told us that a single Legilimens had lightly touched Miss Granger's mind some months ago. That is from January, Harry, when I communicated with Miss Granger about the matter of a certain Dementor. That was expected; but what I did not expect was the rest of what Sophie found." The old wizard turned to gaze into the Floo fire, letting the orange flames reflect on his face. "As you say, Harry, a False Memory Charm is one possibility; they are, when cast perfectly, indistinguishable from true memory -"
"That doesn't surprise me," Harry interrupted. "Studies show that human memories are more or less rewritten every time we remember them -"
"Harry," Minerva said softly, and the boy's mouth clamped shut.
The old wizard continued. "- but a False Memory Charm of such quality requires as much time to create as a true memory. Creating a detailed memory of ten minutes would be ten minutes' work. And according to the court Legilimens," Albus's face now seemed more tired and lined than before, "Miss Granger has been obsessing over Mr. Malfoy since the day that Severus... yelled at her. She has been thinking of how Mr. Malfoy might be in league with Professor Snape, how he might be planning to harm her and harm Harry - imagining it for hours every day - it would be impossible to create false memories for so much time."
"The appearance of insanity..." Severus murmured softly, as though he were speaking to himself. "Could it be natural? No, it is too disastrous to be pure accident; too convenient for someone, I have no doubt. A Muggle drug, perhaps? But that would not be enough - Miss Granger's madness would have to be guided -"
"Ah!" Harry said suddenly. "I get it now. The first False Memory Charm was cast on Hermione after Professor Snape yelled at her, and showed, say, Draco and Professor Snape plotting to kill her. Then last night that False Memory was removed by Obliviation, leaving behind the memories of her obsessing about Draco for no apparent reason, at the same time she and Draco were given false memories of the duel."
Minerva blinked in startlement. It would have been a thousand years before she thought of that possibility.
The Potions Master was frowning thoughtfully, eyes intent. "The reaction to a False Memory Charm is hard to predict in advance, Mr. Potter, without Legilimency. The subjects do not always act as expected, when they first remember the false memories. It would have been a risky ploy. But I suppose that is one way Professor Quirrell could have done it."
"Professor Quirrell? " said Harry. "What motive does he have to -"
The Potions Master said dryly, "The Defense Professor is always a suspect, Mr. Potter. You will notice a trend, given time."
Albus raised up a hand, a silencing gesture, and their heads all turned to look at him. "But in this case there is another suspect," Albus said quietly. "Voldemort."
That deadliest of unspeakable words seemed to echo around the room, canceling all the heat from the orange flames of the fireplace.
"I do not know," the old wizard said slowly, "I know all too little, of the methods of Voldemort's immortality. He searched out those books before I did, I think. All I could find were ancient tales, scattered across too many volumes for him to remove. But to find truth among many stories is also a wizard's mastery, and this I have endeavored to do. There is a human sacrifice, a murder, of that I am certain; committed in coldest blood, the victim dying in horror. And old, old tales of wizards possessed, doing mad deeds, claiming the names of Dark Lords thought defeated; and there is usually a device, of that Dark Lord, which they wield..." Albus looked at Harry, the ancient eyes searching the younger. "I think, Harry - though you will call it only inference - that the act of murder splits the soul. That by ritual of blackest horror, the torn fragment of soul is chained to this world. To a material thing of this world. Which must be, or which then becomes, a device of power."
Horcrux. The terrible name echoed in Minerva's mind, though it seemed that - for what reason she did not know - Albus would not speak that word in front of Harry.
"And therefore," the old wizard finished quietly, "the remainder of the soul is bound to its chained part, lingering here when its body is destroyed. A sad and painful existence, I think it would be; less than spirit, less than the meanest
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Posts or comments related to self-promotion or promotion of other causes may be subject to removal if deemed counterproductive to the BlueMidterm2018 mission. Check with the mods ahead of time if you have concerns.Microsoft just released a new build of Windows 10 to consumer testers in the Fast ring. Windows 10 Insider Preview Build 10565 brings a number of features that are expected to arrive in next month's anticipated Threshold 2 update, and it appears that Microsoft is beginning to publicly test these feature enhancements through its Windows Insider program.
The biggest feature of the release is a unified messaging app for Windows 10 that integrates Skype messaging, calling and video. The app also brings message notifications to the Action Center, and to help you multitask, you can even quickly respond to messages using Quick Reply.
The universal Skype messaging experience is Microsoft's answer to Apple's FaceTime and Messages app on OS X. In addition to Windows 10 for the desktop, Microsoft will also be bringing this universal and integrated Skype experience to Windows 10 Mobile, which will debut on the company's new Lumia 950 and Lumia 950XL flagship smartphones.
Cortana gets smarter
If take handwritten notes, Cortana's overhaul aims to please. Now, Cortana can understand your handwritten notes, and the digital assistant can set reminders based on the context of your scribbled notes. She'll be able to understand location, dates and phone numbers, said Gabe Aul, Vice President of WDG Engineering Systems team at Microsoft, in a blog post.
The feature is similar to Samsung's Action Memo on the company's S Pen-enabled Galaxy Note series.
Cortana also does a better job with helping you manage your personal time by monitoring your emails for movies and ticketed events. It will set a reminder two hours prior to showtime, give you an option to book an Uber ride and provide you with map and travel information.
Edge improvements
Additionally, the Edge browser was also updated with new improvements and features. Once you open multiple browser tabs in the Edge app, you can hover over each tab to get a preview of the webpage. This allows you to glimpse the content of your tab without actually having to click into the tab and switch to that view.
Microsoft is also working on synchronization improvements with Edge, bringing a better sync experience to Favorites and Reading list items.
Visual improvements and more
There are some subtle visual improvements with the new Windows 10 build. Title bars are more vibrant, there are now new icons and contextual menus on Start have new tile adjustment icons.
Additionally, a new mode aims to simplify printer selection by making the last used printer your default printer.
Windows activation is now also easier. If you perform a clean install of Windows 10, you'll be able to activate Windows by entering the product key from the version of Windows 7, 8 or 8.1 you're activating from.
Crossing the "Threshold"
Microsoft is rumored to have already commenced work on Windows 10's successor, code named Redstone, which will arrive after the Threshold 2 update. Details about Redstone's features are not known at this time.
"I understand the first Redstone builds have been compiled within the 11xxx range, giving Microsoft plenty of room to finalise and sign off on Threshold 2 soon," Winbeta reported. "It also appears Build-Feed has spotted the first of redstone development branches, rs1_onecore_mqbase1."Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Aug. 27, 2017, 1:06 AM GMT / Updated Aug. 27, 2017, 1:06 AM GMT By Phil Helsel
The highest-ranking Republican in Congress on Saturday joined some other party members who have voiced disagreement with President Donald Trump's decision to pardon former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio.
A spokesman for House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin said "The speaker does not agree with this decision."
"Law enforcement officials have a special responsibility to respect the rights of everyone in the United States," Ryan spokesman Doug Andres said in an email Saturday. "We should not allow anyone to believe that responsibility is diminished by this pardon."
Arpaio, the former sheriff of Maricopa County, was convicted in July of contempt of court for disobeying a judge's order to stop detaining people on suspicion of being undocumented immigrants. Some critics have denounced Trump's pardon on Friday as a presidential endorsement of racism.
Both of Arizona's Republican senators have expressed disagreement with Trump’s pardon.
Sen. John McCain said in a statement Friday that "Arpaio was found guilty of criminal contempt for continuing to illegally profile Latinos living in Arizona based on their perceived immigration status in violation of a judge’s orders." McCain said "no one is above the law."
"The President has the authority to make this pardon, but doing so at this time undermines his claim for the respect of rule of law as Mr. Arpaio has shown no remorse for his actions," McCain said.
Sen. Jeff Flake said of the pardon on Twitter, "I would have preferred that the President honor the judicial process and let it take its course." Arpaio has said he would appeal his July 31 conviction.
A spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Saturday referred questions about Trump’s pardon to the White House.
A judge ruled that Arpaio committed a crime by disobeying a court order to stop detaining suspected undocumented immigrants. In 2013, a judge found Arpaio and his deputies had engaged in racial profiling against Latinos, backing up the findings of a 2011 Justice Department report.
Arpaio was known for an aggressive stance on illegal immigration and controversial policies — including jailing prisoners in a tent city and forcing detainees to wear pink underwear — that made him popular with some on the right.
In this June 8, 2017 file photo, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan speaks with reporters during his weekly news conference on Capitol Hill, in Washington, D.C. Cliff Owen / AP
But years of legal issues and costs stemming from his immigration efforts began to take a toll on his political power at home, and he was handily defeated by a Democrat in the 2016 election.
Arpaio told NBC News by phone after the pardon was announced that "I have to thank the president for standing by me and standing by law enforcement. And I'm very humbled."
Trump made no secret of his inclination to pardon Arpaio, asking the crowd at a campaign-style in Phoenix on Tuesday, "Was Sheriff Joe convicted for doing his job?" and adding, "I'll make a prediction. I think he's going to be just fine."
Arizona Republican Rep. Trent Franks said he supports Trump's pardon. "The president did the right thing — Joe Arpaio lived an honorable life serving our country, and he deserves an honorable retirement," Franks said on Twitter.
Republican Rep. Andy Biggs, whose district encompasses part of Maricopa County, applauded the pardon and said "America owes Sheriff Arpaio a debt of gratitude and not the injustice of a political witch hunt."
The NAACP on Friday said "Trump has once again shown us his true colors and his support for racism and violence" and that the pardon "has opened the gates for other bigots to follow in his footsteps."
Arpaio's sentencing phase was set to start on Oct. 5.Roku is facing stiff competition from all sides. Not only are there challenges from Apple TV and Boxee in this space, but television makers are increasingly doing their level best to make a separate Roku box unnecessary with Smart TVs and even Smart TV software built into receivers — and Google TV may yet be waiting in the wings to try to mount a comeback. The newly announced Roku Streaming Stick should help Roku in its quest to stay in the connected TV game, but there are some things that are outside the company's ability to control: the content providers Roku depends on to deliver video.
Roku CEO Anthony Wood told GigaOM that the company missed its own sales estimates for 2011, selling 2.5 million devices instead of 3 million. Wood said he was "still very happy" with that, but rather than citing all the big-name competition Wood pointed a finger at Netflix as one of the reasons for slower sales. Netflix has had what can only charitably be called a "tumultuous year;" a more apt description would be "bad." Not only did poorly-explained price changes and even more poorly-executed corporate strategy hurt its image, but subscriber numbers have been dropping. Maybe we'll see Netflix's new original content deals turn things around in 2012, but even if it does Roku will still have its work cut out for it against the likes of Samsung, LG, Sony, Apple, and plenty of others.After a slight delay and subsequent missed targets, the Essential Phone is finally, actually, really, officially shipping to customers. Andy Rubin’s new company just tweeted that those who’ve been charged for the phone should be on the lookout for tracking information to arrive by email sometime today. “We appreciate everyone’s patience,” Essential added.
The $700 phone will be going it alone for now — Essential’s 360-degree camera module isn’t yet shipping — and is only available in the glossy black color for these early shipments. The white version is still marked as “coming soon,” and the matte Essential Phone isn’t even listed on the order page yet, so that must still be a ways off.
We're beginning to ship Essential Phone! Please look out for an e-mail today with tracking info. We appreciate everyone's patience! — Essential (@essential) August 25, 2017
Customers who opted for the limited-time Essential Phone / 360 cam combo have been charged to reserve the camera, but Essential isn’t yet saying when that will also make it out the door so customers will actually have something to snap onto the phone. Andy Rubin has said Essential’s goal is to release at least one new wireless accessory for the phone each quarter; a docking station is already known to be in the works.
We are in full mass production, ramping up to deliver your Essential Phone. Find out where you can get yours next week! #thisisessential pic.twitter.com/CYrhTMSt1g — Andy Rubin (@Arubin) August 9, 2017
Our review of the Essential Phone found it to be a beautifully-crafted smartphone and impressive debut product from a new tech company, but the camera doesn’t yet quite match the best we’ve seen from other flagship smartphones. Essential has already released numerous software updates to improve camera performance, and it’s likely that the company will continue trying to optimize this critical piece of its first phone. There’s no complaining about that screen, though.Non-Denominational Church Exposed As Undercover Baptists
JUNIPER HILLS, AZ—Leadership at Journey Community Church reluctantly confirmed Thursday that their purportedly non-denominational church was in fact just a thinly disguised Baptist congregation.
The church was exposed after a church banner hung to conceal the remains of the church’s old Baptist name peeled off during a recent windstorm, revealing the words “First Baptist Church” to horrified onlookers.
“They had a massive baptismal, a worship band straight out of the ’90s, and even potlucks every Sunday,” one disgruntled parishioner told reporters after the shocking revelation. “When I came to Journey, I wanted a generic, denomination-free experience, so to find out it was pretty much just any old Baptist church was a big disappointment.”
“At least the potlucks are good,” he added.
Church leaders admitted they changed the name several years ago because Baptist sounded “stuffy” and “boring,” though they still ran things the exact same way they always had. Leadership had hoped no church members would remember they were actually just Baptists by fully immersing themselves in their new non-denominational identity, but it was not to be.
At publishing time, a supposedly Unitarian church had been exposed as “basically just atheists.”History of Classic Cars
Before we start to find out everything that one needs to know about Classic cars, it is important to understand that what is exactly called as classic car. In general a classic car is an old car. In common terms one can define that any car older than 20 years and within 40 years is a classic car. On the other hand, cars that are older than 45 years are termed as Antique Cars.
In order to understand classic cars, it is important to understand the history of classic cars.
The evolution in cars started post World War 2. Post the famous war the V8 evolution happened. The modern overhead V8 was discovered. People in the automobile industry were busy to incorporate changes in their models in terms of increasing the cars horsepower, improve the fuel efficiency of the car and to ensure that the high compressed engines ensure soundless and comfortable journeys. People started enjoying their tryst with cars and owning a car became a status symbol.
Here are a few cars that have carved out a place for them in the History of Classic Cars.
Muscle Car:
The first one to launch a 8 cylinder cat called Rocket V8 was GM. It was a 303-cid V8 enabled car that flaunted steel crank, pistons made with aluminum and boasted of 135 horsepower engine. Thanks to its powerful engine and sturdy interiors this car is labeled as the first muscle car in the History of Classic Cars.
1970 Corvette:
Then came an offering from Chevrolet, the most coveted car with a powerful engine that made its space in the history of motor racing. Introduced in 1955 Chevrolet came out with a small car V8. Boasting 265 cubic inch and horsepower of 1955 it was a powerful engine in a small package. Later it was remodeled as 1970 Corvette and the engine was enhanced with a 370 horsepower machines.
Thunderbird:
Ford could not stand to the blow from Chevrolet. In reply they came out with a sleek sports car that every adult desired. This urban cool car came hoodless and personified luxury. This 2-seater car made its way to the streets in 1955. Initially Ford was geared up to sell 10000 Thunderbirds. However, they were surprised to see that the demand was so high that they ended up selling as many as 16000 cars in the first year itself.
1955 Chrysler:
Then came America’s most powerful car, the 1955 Chrysler 300. This car came with 300 horsepower engine and 331 cid motor. It also had a fitted powerful suspension. However, people were not too happy with the performance of the car. Hence, it was mainly used in races.
Avanti:
The reply to competition by the century old Studebaker Company was Avanti. A fiberglass bodied sleek car for the urban crowd. The car came in an aerodynamic shape that was the first of its kind. The designer Raymond Leowy understood that the only way to ensure that the car sells is to couple looks with performance. This super beauty came with 289 Cid, V8 and flaunted a flying records of 168.15 mph.
Barracuda:
Plymouth, another automobile manufacturer came up with Barracuda. This was a compact car for the next generation. This valiant model car was launched in 1964 but was not too well received by the auto mobile enthusiasts.
Mustang:
Then Ford came up with a compact car called Mustang. The best part about this car was that it was stylish as well as affordable. The car was mainly targeting the youth segment and it made huge sales. This original pony car as so famous for its 271 horsepower K code engine, rear springs and front disc break that it sold 1 million pieces in its first year.
Pontiac:
There were many mid-sized cars that were equipped with powerful engines. However, when in 1964 a US car manufactures came out with a Tempest version of GTO it became a craze. The car had all the requirements and was yet affordable and gave superb mileage.
Chevrolet Camaro:
Post the muscle car and performance driven era in the History of Classic Cars came Chevrolets latest offering in the form of Camaro. This was their reply to Fords famous Mustang and was famous in the sixties. The car came with rear-wheel drive and was air conditioned to ensure that the car owners have a great experience. The Camaro soon became a rage and was easily spotted in the racing circuits in the year 1968 and 1969.
There are many cars that have made their names etched in the History of Classic Cars either for their powerful performance, style, cost or number of sales made during the first year of production.
Tags: antique cars, classic car, history of classic carsNote: For information on Internet porn's effects on the brain visit www.yourbrainonporn.com.
Sex has many characteristics in common with addictive behaviors. Regulated by the brain's limbic system or "primitive brain," sex is driven by the region known as the reward circuitry. Dopamine, the craving neurochemical that impels fertilization behavior, also impels addictions to substances. This article examines how dopamine’s unnerving high/low cycle tends to promote emotional separation between mates and increase susceptibility to addictions. It suggests an ancient, but forgotten, way of making love that appears to heal the separation urge, and soothe cravings and depression.
Biology Has Plans for Our Love Lives
There is a common biological mechanism at work behind such diverse phenomena as the one-night stand, the sexless marriage, high rates of infidelity, and porn addiction. It produces the universal experience that "the honeymoon never lasts longer than a year," a reality confirmed in a recent study of the healthiest, happiest four percent of 2200 newlywed couples (Kiecolt-Glaser, 2001). It is why close friendships that bloom into love affairs so often turn sour. Essentially, humans are programmed to lose interest and then seek the stimulation of a novel partner, thereby increasing their offspring's genetic variety.
Biology uses powerful neurochemicals to achieve its agenda. For example, at a neurochemical level, falling in love is a lot like taking recreational drugs according to anthropologist Helen Fisher (Fisher, 2004). She shows how we are wired for three programs: lust, romantic love, and attachment. However, all too often mates find that they are also wired for a fourth program: emotional separation. Even when this built-in urge to separate doesn't split couples apart, it can kindle frustration, disharmony, a sense of stagnation, and cravings for other partners or for addictive substances.
When couples drift apart, they cheat themselves of the most beneficial gifts of intimacy. Studies show that close, trusted - and especially, harmonious - companionship is associated with increased longevity (Young, 2004), faster healing (DeVries, 2004), and lower rates of illness (Coyne, 2001), depression and alcoholism. (Horwitz, 1996) In short, biology asks us to make costly sacrifices just for a few more shots at genetic immortality.
In Love & Survival, Dean Ornish points out that love and intimacy are more powerful determinants of health than improved diet, stopping smoking, genetic make-up, more exercise, or prescription drugs. If companionship came in drug form, doctors who failed to prescribe it would be guilty of malpractice. (Ornish, 1998) Research suggests that oxytocin is behind these gains. As the authors address later in this article, experience reveals that lovers can train themselves to produce steadier supplies of oxytocin, while eluding the high/low separation trigger entirely.
Sex’s Hidden Hangover
What neurochemical mechanism drives intimate partners apart with such predictability? Astonishingly, it is built right into fertilization-driven sex. Over-stimulation of the limbic system triggers sexual satiation neurochemicals, which radically change our outlook toward each other. Unlike other mammals, who confine their mating frenzies to periods of estrus, humans can become sexually aroused at any time. Unfortunately, the blasts of dopamine that accompany sexual climax are potentially highly addictive and would interfere with other evolutionary priorities, such as hunting and gathering or feeding infants. Indeed, when researchers wired rats so that they could push a lever in their cages to stimulate the nerves on which dopamine acts, the rats pushed the lever until they dropped, not stopping to eat or mate (Olds, 1954).
To protect against this result, humans, too, possess a mechanism for sexual self-regulation. Ours, however, is more akin to starting and stopping in heavy traffic, leaving us vulnerable to intense cravings and relationship friction. What evidence is there that sex over-stimulates the brain? In 2003, a Dutch scientist reported that brain scans of people having orgasm resemble scans of a heroin rush (Holstege, 2003). Dopamine soars during copulation and orgasm. (Putnam, 2001)
These natural highs are only the first part of a neurochemical roller coaster ride - a ride that is essentially a sublte form of the cycle of all addictions. As we will see in a moment, after orgasm, dopamine plummets, prolactin soars, and androgen receptor activity drops off for up to a week. In short, "what goes up must come down," returning us to homeostasis. Sadly, these subsequent neurochemical shifts lead to radical changes in perception, coloring our perception and altering our behavior.
When the neurochemistry of passion pounds between our ears, we see "Mr." or "Ms. Right." When the hangover kicks in, we may see "Mr. Hyde" or "Medusa." Or we "need space," overreact to remarks, feel needy, or find third parties compellingly attractive. During this natural recovery period we may also experience intense cravings, as we unconsciously seek to raise our dopamine levels again.
The Science Behind the Hangover
Recent neurochemical discoveries reveal three components of the post-orgasm hangover.
Dopamine The first of these is the sudden drop in dopamine that follows orgasm. At ideal levels, dopamine equates with feelings of well-being and healthy decision-making. We feel optimistic and open, much like pre-pubescent children, who have not yet climbed aboard the dopamine roller coaster and are delighted by everything from bugs to Barbies.
Dopamine Levels
At high levels, however, dopamine is the "I’ve got to have it, whatever the repercussions" neurochemical that lights up the brain's reward circuitry. It renders us single-minded and demanding. Biology employs this powerful means to motivate behaviors vital to survival and passing on genes, such as eating, drinking, taking risks, and, above all, engaging in fertilization behavior.
Yet, our culture, unlike that of our ancestors in whom this mechanism evolved, offers countless opportunities to over-stimulate ourselves with dopamine: alcohol, compulsive shopping, recreational drugs, junk food, and so on. Indeed, we do not even have to leave our computers to accommodate our addictions. Predictably, high levels of dopamine are associated with addictions, gambling, fetishes, anxiety, and so on.
When dopamine drops after orgasm, it falls below ideal levels, and can change our whole outlook on life. Low dopamine is associated with depression, feeling unable to love, and, again, addictions, as sufferers desperately seek to feel better. Fertilization-driven sex, in effect, pushes us back and forth from one dopamine extreme to the other. Either extreme can bring out the worst in us, and the resulting mood swings themselves can make intimacy bewildering.
Prolactin
To keep the brakes on for a while, biology employs an additional neurochemical: prolactin. Prolactin performs many functions, and it also appears to play a prominent role in regulating sex. As dopamine drops after orgasm, prolactin immediately rises in both men and women, acting as a sexual satiation mechanism. (Kruger, 2003) In men, it no doubt contributes to the "roll over and snore" phenomenon. In women, its effects may affect mood. Researchers do not yet know how long prolactin levels stay up in humans after orgasm, but in female rats prolactin surges continue for two weeks after mating, even if they are not pregnant. (Polston, 2001)
During withdrawal from cocaine (another high-dopamine activity), prolactin levels rise and require two weeks to return to normal levels. (Contoreggi, 2003) Prolactin may influence our mating behavior beyond serving as sexual brakes. Like dopamine, it affects our moods and behavior. Prolactin is touted as a pleasant, satiation neurochemical (in relation to sex), but it has many jobs in the body, and it appears to be a stress hormone, associated with feelings of despair. For example, when first caged, wild monkeys showed high levels of cortisol for a couple of days while they tried to escape. Once they realized they were trapped, prolactin levels rose. Those tested at seven months had the highest levels of prolactin. (Suleman, 2001)
High prolactin could be contributing to the long-term discouragement that seems to overtake so many intimate relationships. Jeremy Heaton, MD maintains that as we learn more about sex and aging, prolactin will be a major player. (Heaton, 2003) Certainly, the conditions associated with high levels of prolactin closely resemble the list of things that couples complain about as their honeymoons end.
Symptoms associated with excess prolactin Women Men Loss of libido Loss of libido Mood changes / depression Mood changes / depression Hostility, anxiety Impotence Headache Headache Menopausal symptoms, even when estrogen is sufficient Infertility Signs of increased testosterone levels Decreased testosterone levels Weight gain Weight gain Intercourse may become painful because of vaginal dryness
Androgen Additional evidence of a lingering post-orgasm hangover comes from sexually exhausted male rats. The number of androgen receptors decreases in the hypothalamus, curtailing the effects of testosterone and altering behavior. Changes linger for up to seven days, corresponding with the rats' lack of libido. Also see Men: Does Frequent Ejaculation Cause a Hangover?.
More Evidence of a Post—passion Hangover
For better or worse, there is one way to jumpstart flagging libido during the post-passion hangover period. Unfortunately, it offers more proof that biology cares fervently about propelling genes into the future, and little about sustaining the many benefits that flow from harmonious companionship (at least beyond the initial mating frenzy of the honeymoon period - see Will Orgasms Keep You in Love?). No matter how sexually exhausted and uninterested a rat is in a current mate, if a novel female is introduced, the male will rise to the occasion and perform his fertilization duties. (Fiorino, 1997) This process can be continued until the gallant rat nearly dies.
The neurochemical hangover discussed above is the key to understanding the "Coolidge Effect." As dopamine drops, the rat loses interest in his mate and copulation ceases. When a new partner appears, dopamine soars again and the rat revives long enough to deliver more genes.
The "Coolidge Effect" has been observed in every species tested, and is not confined to males. Female rodents also prefer to seduce new mates, (Lester, 1988) except when oxytocin is injected into key parts of their brains, as we will see in a moment. Abundant anecdotal evidence suggests that the "Coolidge Effect" also manipulates humans. As a man from sensual Los Angeles once related, "I quit counting at 350 lovers, and I'm still confused as to why I lost interest in all of them sexually so quickly. Some of those women are really beautiful." His third wife had just left him for a Frenchman.
In short, biology's mechanism for regulating sexual behavior sets up a cycle of highs and lows that drives a wedge between lovers. Indeed, when anthropologists studied two hunter-gatherer cultures believed to be representative of our distant ancestors (the!Kung of Africa and the Mehinaku of South America), they found exactly this pattern at work: lots of romance and impulsive sexual behavior - and lots of churning and heartache in intimate relationships. Unless we consciously intervene, our neurochemistry programs us for intense passion followed by emotional alienation. Helen Fisher estimates that humans are designed to stay together less than four years, the time it takes to get a child on its feet. Across 58 cultures worldwide, she found that divorce rates peaked at this point. (Fisher, 1995)
Can Sex Heal Addiction?
Changes in dopamine, prolactin and androgen receptor levels powerfully affect our mood, our level of desire for intimacy, our perception of our mates, and our susceptibility to addictive activities and substances. At a brain chemical level, sex sets up an addictive cycle of highs and lows. A burning desire to make love may not indicate that equilibrium is restored; we may, in fact, unwittingly be using our mate to self-medicate to cope with a neurochemical hangover. Orgasm, like any other "fix," is temporary relief, the prelude to discomfort and the search for another high. Drug companies now market dopamine agonist drugs to increase libido. (See 'Super Size Orgasms') They perpetuate this very cycle, with its attendant risks of relationship disharmony and susceptibility to other addictions.
Again, the reward circuitry that governs sex is the same one that drives all addictions. Those who treat sexual addiction frequently discover dual diagnoses (alcoholism, gambling, drug use) among their patients. Hamsters who have mated react to amphetamines more than virgin hamsters (Bradley, 2001). Teens who are sexually active use more recreational drugs than those who are not (Columbia University, 2004).
In an important study from the Pacific Institute for Research done in 2005, the authors concluded that "sex, drugs and alcohol among teens actually precede—and apparently lead to—the onset of adolescent depression, which contradicts the common belief that depressed teens may be'self-medicating' through substance abuse and sex."
When we allow biology or its surrogate, prescription drugs, to govern our love lives we amplify a weak point in our design. Yet the existence of this weak point suggests a possible solution. Some years ago, at the beginning of their romance, the authors experimented with an ancient approach to lovemaking in which lovers avoid orgasm during sex in favor of a less goal driven, more affectionate approach.
The result of this practice is improved health, harmonized emotions, the cessation of desires and impulses, and, at the highest level, the transcendent integration of the entire energy body. Lao Tzu, Hua Hu Ching, third-century BCE
To their surprise, within four months, Gary quit drinking. He had suffered from a 12-year, closet addiction to alcohol, which he had long tried unsuccessfully to overcome. Within a year, he was also off of prescription antidepressants. (Chronic depression had run in his family.) He felt better, was calmer and more productive, and, for the first time, found it easy to sleep through the night with his soon-to-be-wife. Marnia's chronic yeast infections and urinary tract infections disappeared.
What had happened? Two things. First, the authors had escaped the dopamine high/low cycle described above, with its attendant mood swings and emotional friction, enabling them to stay together harmoniously. Second, they were unconsciously sustaining higher levels of oxytocin with a regime of regular exchanges of affection and caring attention. This became clear when Gary analyzed recent brain chemistry research in an effort to understand what was occurring.
Like most neurochemicals, oxytocin performs different functions depending upon where and when it is released. For example, dripped into a pregnant woman as "pitocin," it can bring on birth contractions. It also causes breast milk to be ejected. However, in recent years scientists have discovered many surprising functions of oxytocin. One of the most significant is its ability to bond us with each other - when it is released in the limbic system. Oxytocin is behind parent/child bonds, deep friendships, even the conviction that one's dog is the most adorable creature in the world. We could not fall in love without it. Now, scientists are begining to elucidate the neurobiology of how oxytocin might ease dopamine-based cravings. See Oxytocin modulates dopamine-mediated reward in the rat subthalamic nucleus.
Oxytocin is not about "lust," though. It is behind the selfless desire to nurture, and be close to, another. It also plays a role in monogamy. Injected into the brain of a promiscuous rodent, it will make a familiar partner more appealing than unfamiliar partners. (Harmon, 2002) Just as dopamine and its hangover are the keys to our promiscuity (because the grass may soon look greener elsewhere) oxytocin seems to be the key to wanting to stay with one partner. Can we just pop an oxytocin pill and stay deeply in love? No. Oxytocin does not cross the blood/brain barrier, except by means of peripheral injection or risky nasal sprays. This means that if we want the many benefits that come from its presence in the limbic system, we would be wise to employ the behaviors that encourage its production there.
Now, scientists are begining to elucidate the neurobiology of how oxytocin might ease dopamine-based cravings. See Oxytocin modulates dopamine-mediated reward in the rat subthalamic nucleus.
Oxytocin's Many Benefits
In the course of his analysis, Gary also learned that oxytocin is the answer to the question, "What is the mechanism by which love and affection positively affect our health?"
Fear - Cortisol Love - Oxytocin Aggression Anti-stress hormone Arousal, Anxiety, Feeling stressed-out Feeling calm and connected, Increased curiosity Activates addictions Lessens cravings & addictions Suppresses libido Increases sexual receptivity Associated with depression Positive feelings Can be toxic to brain cells Facilitates learning Breaks down muscles, bones and joints Repairs, heals and restores Weakens immune system Faster wound healing Increases pain Diminishes sense of pain Clogs arteries, Promotes heart disease and high blood pressure Lowers blood pressure, Protects against heart disease Obesity, Diabetes, Osteoporosis ---
-- Oxytocin reduces cravings. When scientists administered it to rodents who were addicted to cocaine, morphine, or heroin, the rats opted for less drugs, or showed fewer symptoms of withdrawal. (Kovacs, 1998) Oxytocin also reduces cravings for sweets. (Billings, 2006)
-- Oxytocin calms. A single rat injected with oxytocin has a calming effect on a cage full of anxious rats. (Agren, 2002)
-- Oxytocin appears be a major reason that SSRIs ease depression, perhaps because high levels of cortisol are the chief culprits in depression and anxiety disorders. (Uvnas-Moberg, 1999)
-- Oxytocin increases sexual receptivity and counteracts impotence, which is why this other way of making love remains pleasurable. (Pedersen, C.A., 2002), (Arletti, 1997)
-- Oxytocin counteracts the effects of cortisol, the stress hormone. (Legros, 2003) Less stress means increased immunity and faster recovery.
Oxytocin isn't all hearts and flowers, however. For some of it's less heart-warming attributes see Liquid Love and Oxytocin Revisited. Yet there's no indication that oxytocin released naturally in response to normal attachment cues would cause unwanted side effects.
The bonding, soothing qualities of oxytocin explains why companionship can increase longevity - even among those who are HIV positive (Young, 2004). Or speed recovery: wounded hamsters heal twice as fast when they are paired with a sibling, rather than left in isolation (Detilliona, 2004). It may also explain why, among various species of primates, care-giving parents (whether male or female) live significantly longer. (Cal Tech, 1998) It also reduces stress: Influence of a ‘Warm Touch’ Support Enhancement Intervention Among Married Couples on Ambulatory Blood Pressure, Oxytocin, Alpha Amylase, and Cortisol
Incidentally, a surge of blood-level oxytocin often accompanies orgasm, which sometimes causes people to conclude that more orgasms must lead to tighter emotional bonding. Who knows? First, researchers suggest that oxytocin's role during orgasm is solely to bring on the contractions that move semen to various strategic locations, just as oxytocin causes smooth muscle to go into birth and nursing contractions. (Vignozzi, 2004) It is not clear that oxytocin levels surge at orgasm in the limbic system - where bonding occurs. In any case, they soon drop, as does the other neurochemical most important for sustaining bonds: dopamine. This is why orgasms may not keep you in love.
Second, oxytocin is a less reliable marker of orgasm than the "shutdown" neurochemical, prolactin (Kruger, 2003), which means that oxytocin does not always rise at orgasm. In any case, when dopamine drops too low (after a passion bout), so does oxytocin - and lovers lose their desire for closeness. By contrast, when dopamine stays at ideal levels, it helps maintain oxytocin levels as well.
The interplay between these two neurochemicals is generally overlooked, which causes some to assume blindly that we can consistently have high dopamine and high oxytocin. Finally, even if a surge in bloodstream oxytocin at orgasm does somehow encourage bonding, it should be obvious that something even more powerful is eroding that bonding in most long-term relationships. If orgasm cemented relationships, then marriages would be more stable, not far less stable, than they were 50 years ago.
Meanwhile, how can we cause the brain to release oxytocin where it best stabilizes our brain chemistry and benefits our relationships? Daily caring touch, especially stroking, is one way. Another is selfless giving - or nurturing another - as a parent would a child. Neurochemicals and behavior tend to be circular. That is, a change in behavior induces changes in neurochemistry, and vice versa. Close, trusted companionship also seems to promote the production of oxytocin. The more we produce, the more receptive we are to it.
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a free transfer, which despite the injuries was considered by the Dundee Evening Telegraph “one of the greatest surprises of the football season in England”. “If Barson is now recovered from his troubles there will be many clubs only too ready to sign him,” they wrote. “Frank has always been a much criticised player but no one can doubt his great ability. He is credited by those competent to judge with being the best centre-half since the war.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Guardian once praised Frank Barson’s combination of “bold tackling, well-judged passing, and not a little daring”. Photograph: Popperfoto/Getty Images
Perhaps he had not fully recovered from his troubles because, when the move came, it was to Third Division Watford, who that summer also signed his United team-mates Billy Chapman and Tommy Barnett. The latter went on to score 163 times for the club in league and cup, a tally bettered in its history only by Luther Blissett, but Barson’s time at Vicarage Road was to be briefer and much less glorious.
A few games into it, in September 1928, during a 6-2 home defeat against Fulham, he was adjudged to have kicked Jimmy Temple and was sent off. He refused, arguing his case with the referee for a while before reluctantly trudging from the field.
Barson may well have become famous for a predilection for menace and violence but his disciplinary record had always been considerably better than his reputation. “I felt I had a bad game if I was not booed but I never punched or butted anybody,” he said in 1965. “Players today are stupid. Cruder. They do things openly and ask to be sent off. We did it without being seen half the time.”
When he did enrage a referee it was most frequently because of things he had said rather than what he had done. “Though one of the greatest half-backs in football, Barson has a reputation for impulsiveness and does not always keep a guard upon his tongue,” the Yorkshire Evening Post once wrote, summing the situation up rather nicely.
Now, it was as if the FA had bottled up a career’s worth of enmity and finally got an excuse to pull the cork. They had picked on him a little bit before: in the 1926 FA Cup semi-final the referee had deemed his shoulder charge on Cowan worthy of no more than a free-kick but a couple of watching FA councillors started disciplinary proceedings against him anyway, a move without precedent in English football, and then banned him for two months.
Those same FA councillors had full control over England team selection and, despite his reliable excellence, Barson’s international career stalled after a single cap, against Wales at Highbury in 1920 (it was England’s first defeat by the Welsh since 1882; Billy Meredith was Wales’ inspiration, playing at outside-right at the age of 44).
“For years Barson was without question England’s best pivot, yet the selectors consistently passed him over,” reported the Daily Worker in 1930. “Boss sport being what it is, it was more than a rumour that it was not only his vigorous play that kept Barson from a heap of caps: that someone behind the scenes in the Football Association had blackballed him.”
At the time of his offence against Fulham, the FA was developing a taste for lengthy bans. A year previously South Shields’ Cyril Hunter, in a Second Division match against Middlesbrough, had put in a display of such consistent brutality that by the end, according to the local paper, “the Middlesbrough dressing room was like a field ambulance station”. He was banned until the end of the following season, still a British record.
Barson’s offence had been much less clearcut. Indeed, many observers thought it unworthy of even a sending-off. Nevertheless, the FA suspended him for seven months, which effectively – given that it took him to the end of the season – meant he could not play again for nearly a year.
“The most I ever dreamed of was a month’s suspension,” the player said at the time. “I have a wife and three children and am faced with the prospect of seven months without a livelihood.” Barson insisted that Temple was to blame, having grabbed him by the leg and refused to let go. “In trying to free myself the referee apparently thought I was trying to kick Temple,” he claimed.
Barson’s suspension caused considerable controversy in Watford, with the club’s chairman, John Kilby, labelling it “most unjust” and the manager, Fred Pagnam, insisting that “the club are absolutely astounded at the sentence and so are the club’s supporters in the town”.
Watford’s fans were so astounded that they organised a petition demanding the ban be reconsidered and, after 4,850 people signed it, the mayor, Alderman T Rushton, took it to the headquarters of the Football Association. “I have not signed the petition myself but I support it and agree with it,” said Mr Rushton, who had been at the Fulham game, before he set off for London. “My view is that Temple caught hold of Barson’s leg and, as far as I could see, Barson was endeavouring to get his leg released when the referee caused the stoppage and ordered him off the field. I did not see Barson kick Temple. The spectators were shouting a good deal and the players were rather rough, perhaps on that account. Fulham are rather keen – too keen, I think – in trying to regain a position in the Second Division.”
And this is where the tale becomes more extraordinary still for, though Rushton took the petition to the FA, nobody ever read it or even officially received it because, once the mayor had been told about all the nasty stuff the FA had in the player’s file, he asked them to burn it.
Frederick Wall, the FA secretary, later explained what transpired. “On arriving at the FA offices the mayor stated he had come to present a petition on behalf of Barson and asked if he might read it,” he said. “I asked whether the mayor had read the referee’s report with reference to Barson. He said he had not, so I showed him the original report. I asked, ‘Do you know anything of Barson’s history as a football player?’ The mayor replied he did not. So I read to him information showing that we, the FA, had had to consider numerous reports of Barson’s misconduct on the field, that he had been suspended on three previous occasions, once for one month and twice for two months. The Mayor asked me to destroy the petition. I destroyed it with his knowledge and in his presence. It was burned in his presence.”
According to the referee, Barson had deliberately kicked Temple and, having been sent off, refused to leave the field for some minutes and then threatened the referee before doing so. Some form of punishment for this seemed inevitable but the severity of his punishment and the justification for it appear puzzling.
Wall referred to three previous suspensions. The one-month ban followed a sending-off in the first round of the 1914-15 FA Cup, 14 years earlier. It may seem lengthy but Barson was one of four players to get such a punishment that weekend alone. Of the two-month bans, one apparently followed a brawl in a pre-season friendly against Birmingham City in 1911 and the other followed that 1926 semi-final and anyway covered the entirely irrelevant period from 3 May, two days after United’s last game of the season, until the start of July. Clearly Barson was no angel, but his heinous disciplinary record essentially amounted to one fabricated suspension in 14 years.
The Watford supporters’ club launched a new petition, this time collecting more than 15,000 signatures, but still the FA was unmoved. “The signatories of the petition cannot know the facts of the case,” they sniffed. “We therefore must decline to reopen the matter.” Barson served his suspension, never playing for Watford again (instead he managed the King William IV pub on Watford High Street for a while), before joining Hartlepool and then Wigan Borough, who found his wages such a stretch that they went out of business 18 months later.
Perhaps it could be argued that Barson’s ban was not long enough: his last ever appearance in the Football League came on Boxing Day 1930, by which time he was 40, and he ended on a suitably brutal note. In the 83rd minute of a match against Accrington Stanley he jumped on an opponent and then swore at the referee after he was sent off. The disciplinary commission that adjudicated the matter reported that they were “satisfied the conduct of both teams in the match did not reflect any credit on the players concerned”.
Barson went into coaching, including spells with Villa’s juniors and seniors and a short period there as caretaker manager, and died at the age of 77 in 1968. “A strong, commanding and forceful centre-half, his vigorous play so incensed the crowds that the moment he stepped on the pitch he was greeted with cries of ‘Dirty Barson!’ wrote the Guardian in a short obituary. “Yet it might have been a case of giving a dog a bad name. Apart from the strength of his play he had few equals – and there are certainly none today – in the matter of heading the ball. To see Barson stand in the centre of the field and direct a full-blooded clearance with his head to either wing was a sight indeed.” It was just a pity that nobody at the Football Association appreciated it.
As it happened, three months after Villa signed Barson in October 1919 they brought in another, younger centre-back who was to become just as memorable. If Barson was notorious for his violence on the pitch, however, the man who eventually took his place in the first XI, Tommy Ball, was to be remembered for his violent end off it. But that is another story.
The forgotten story of Tommy Ball will be published on Wednesday.World
Russian Jets Strike ISIL Positions in Syria's Aleppo
TEHRAN (FNA)- Military sources said that the Russian Air Force launched a series of airstrikes above Aleppo's Eastern countryside, targeting the ISIL terrorist group's positions along the Deir Hafer-Aleppo Highway while the Syrian Army attacked the terrorist group on the ground, Arab media reports said.
The sources told Syria's al-Masdar news outlet that the Syrian army, in coordination with the National Defense Forces (NDF), conducted a powerful assault on the ISIL positions at ‘Ayn Sabl, resulting in the capture of the Southwestern perimeter of this town that is located to the East of Tal Rayman and Al-Salihiyah.
"The Russian fighter jets reportedly struck ISIL positions in East Aleppo with remarkable precision and relentless ferocity; these airstrikes also marked the first time that Russia physically participated in this four-year-long Syrian conflict," the report said.
The Russian Air Force was also seen flying above the Damascus countryside, Lattakia and Hama Governorates, on Thursday morning, but all of their jets reportedly returned back to the Hmamiyat Military Airport in the Syrian coastal city of Jableh.
According to a senior officer in the Syrian army, these Russian airstrikes were coordinated with the Syrian Air Force, who launched their own raids along the Raqqa-Deir Ezzur Highway, added the report.
Meantime, other sources said that the jets were Russia-made fighters, but did not confirmed that they were operating under the Russian air force command.
Earlier this month, military sources said that the Syrian air force, using satellite images, carried out a series of airstrikes above the Prophet Younis Mountains in the Lattakia Governorate’s Northeastern territories, killing at least 47 militants from Liwaa Suqour Al-Ghaab and Ahrar Al-Sham.BYRON, Calif. — Fighting over water is a tradition in California, but nowhere are the lines of dispute more sharply drawn than here in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, a 720,000-acre network of islands and canals that is the hub of the state’s water system.
Giant pumps pull in water flowing to the delta from the mountainous north of the state, where the majority of precipitation falls, and send it to farms, towns and cities in the Central Valley and Southern California, where the demand for water is greatest.
For decades, the shortcomings of this water transportation system, among the most ambitious and complex ever constructed, have been a source of conflict and complaint.
But in the fourth year of a profound drought, the delta has become a central battle zone, pitting north against south, farmers against environmental groups, farmers against one another and many local residents against California’s governor, Jerry Brown, whose plan to fix the delta’s problems upsets them almost as much as the drought itself.From The Cutting Room Floor
To do:
Elaborate on the Japanese PocketStation support
Name changes in the UK version (ex. Character names, monkey names)
Ape Escape is a wacky game featuring a 10-year-old catching monkeys using a net. It was the first PlayStation game to require the use of a dual analog controller to play.
Debug Functions
In Japanese version, there are some codes that enable you to access several debug functions when you select "New game".
Skipping Intro Movie
30137744 0098 brings you directly to the first stage, skipping the intro movie. The other movies don't seem to be skipped.
Debugging Option
30137744 00B8 enables you to access an unused option. There are some options, some of which don't seem to be seen in-game.
When you move the right analog stick, red and blue waves will appear, going left.
Selecting Mini Game
30137744 00C8 can lead you to Mini-game select, but Galaxy Monkey is missing. When you choose one and quit the Mini-game, you will go back to the title screen.
Sound Test
30137744 00D0 calls unused sound test. In the menu, press Start to select and Select to cancel.
COMMON is the test of SEs used in many stages.
SIGHT is the test of BGM and SEs unique to each stage.
Unused Graphics
Graphics of a spinning cookie (health) and T-shirt (1UP). It seems there were initially plans for these items to be flat sprites, but in the game they are 3D models.
If you look closely, you can see "KAKERU" spelled in the center of the cookie, which is Spike's Japanese name.
Also notice the shirt design is different from the one Spike wears in the game. This one has red and white horizontal stripes, while his final shirt is solid red with a single vertical white stripe.
Unused Sounds
Analog Controller Warning
While the Japanese version uses an audio clip informing the player to use a DUALSHOCK controller at the controller warning screen, the English version doesn't. Interestingly, there's an unused English audio clip informing the player to use a DUALSHOCK or Analog controller.
Sorry, your browser either has JavaScript disabled or does not have any supported player.
You can download the clip or download a player to play the clip in your browser.
Unused Behavior
If you use the Infinite Jump glitch to get to the normally inaccessible street with the cars in TV Tower, and get hit by a car, you will instantly die. This behavior is not seen anywhere else in the game. Additionally, if you stand on top of a moving car, you will ride it until you reach the boundary, at which point you fall down.
The unused behavior can be seen at the end of the video.
Regional Differences
Name Changes
The main characters had their names changed between the Japanese, US, and European versions. Spike, Natalie, Jake, and Casi's names would get reverted back to their Japanese names in the European version for all later Ape Escape games as the European version would end up using the Japanese names for the main characters starting from Ape Escape 2.
Japanese Literal Translation US version EU version カケル Kakeru Spike ナツミ Natsumi Natalie Katie ヒロキ Hiroki Jake Buzz チャル Charu Casi
European Version
Despite the later release date, the European version is likely an earlier build than the US version, as it is slightly less polished and bears some similarities to the demo.
DualShock Controller Required
Europe US
The controller warning screens were rewritten in the US version to remove references to the original (pre-DualShock) Dual Analog controller, although the game does work with both. The US version also uses the same font for both screens.
Title Screen
Europe US
The European title screen features a rather bland WordArt-inspired logo that is notably monkey-free.
Anti-Piracy
The European version of the game disables controller input on the main menu if it detects itself to be a copy. The player may only skip the intro and view the title screen. The European version only recognizes the game to not be a copy if it is being played on an original PlayStation from the PAL region. This unfortunately prevents the European version from being played on a PlayStation 2 or 3 due to the software emulation setting off this measure.
Dub
The UK release features a completely separate voice cast from the US release, although they remain uncredited. This feature of having a UK dub would exist in all later UK versions of Ape Escape games.
Japanese VersionIt's not called a “tug” of memory for nothing: I’m outside Detroit’s railroad station, and I instantly recall my mother’s gloved hand pulling mine as we rushed through the vast atrium that was inspired by the imperial baths of ancient Rome. We are in a hurry to get somewhere, and Detroit is, too. Even a little boy in the mid-1960s notices the tempo. The Motor City is in motion. We build America’s cars. Thanks to Berry Gordy’s Motown, the world hums our songs. The city, fifth largest in the U.S. by population, is at the top of its game.
Today, Michigan Central Station still looks Roman, but it’s a Roman ruin. Closed since 1988 and stripped of valuables by vandals, or “scrappers,” the empty hulk symbolizes my old hometown’s decline, buckling beneath crime, corruption, and events such as the 1967 riots, the 1970s gas shortages, and the rise of Asian auto imports. My family, like others, moved away. A city of almost two million residents in 1950 shrank to 713,777 in 2010.
To visitors, Detroit’s attractions verged on the desperate: Three new casinos corralled gamblers inside windowless rooms; a desultory monorail circled downtown. The city’s collapse actually created a new business in “ruin porn,” as locals escorted tourists eager to experience the postapocalyptic atmosphere of decaying factories and abandoned offices.
But Detroit has been down so long, any change would be up. And “up” is why I’ve returned. Something’s happening in Michigan’s southeast corner. Call it a rising, a revival, a new dawn—there’s undeniable energy emanating from Detroit. America noticed it first at the 2011 Super Bowl. Chrysler debuted a TV commercial with rapper Eminem, star of the film 8 Mile (named after the road that serves as Detroit’s northern border). The ad crystallized the city’s spiky, muscular pride and won an Emmy, but Detroit was the real winner.
“This is the Motor City,” Eminem declared, “and this is what we do.” And, increasingly, Detroiters are doing: Working-class Latinos in Southwest, recent college grads in Midtown and New Center, and African-American professionals in Boston Edison are improving their neighborhoods. An expanding Detroit RiverWalk edges downtown, where corporations like DTE Energy, Quicken Loans, and Blue Cross Blue Shield have moved in thousands of workers. A favorite 1960s-era restaurant, the London Chop House, has announced its reopening. And that badge of gentrification, Whole Foods, plans to build a store in the inner city.
Even outsiders have started arriving, drawn by a sense of adventure. A new resident had told me: “If you visit Detroit, you’re an explorer. Be prepared for a rich, very soulful experience.”
A flashing red light jolts me back to the train station’s razor wire and rubble. A fire engine pulls up alongside me.
“Anything wrong, officer?” I ask, nervously. Maybe they think I’m a scrapper.
“Naaah,” says Ladder 28’s Capt. Robert Distelrath, with the backslapping, broad a’s of the Midwest. “Just checking things out. What are you doing?”
I tell him I’m here because I hear Detroit is coming back.
Distelrath grins. “There’s more to us than this train station. Go to Slows Bar BQ,” he says, pointing into Corktown, the neighborhood bordering the station. “The owner, Phillip Cooley, he’s at the center of a lot of things. He’s trying to bring Detroit back all by himself.”
It’s only 11 a.m., but Slows is full up for lunch. Customers crowd tables made of reclaimed timber. Waitresses serve sandwiches, the bun tops tilted backward to accommodate the pile of brisket heaped under them. Pints of beer and platters of waffle fries slathered in melted cheddar follow. No shy portions here.
“Detroiters don’t like fancy-pants food,” a local tells me. True that. It’s a town where you can still score a plate of eggs and hash browns for $2.50 (at Duly’s Place, a 24-hour diner on West Vernor), and where restaurants selling Coney Island hot dogs—invented in Michigan, despite the name—inspire intense loyalty.
Cooley isn’t around, but I can’t resist ordering a pulled pork. Afterward, I continue my search for the urban pioneer. I eventually find him down the street at a just opened coffeehouse called Astro.
Cooley, 33, is an unlikely city savior. The Michigan native and former Louis Vuitton model traded Milan’s fashion runways for Detroit’s pockmarked sidewalks to start a new life. He and his family opened Slows six years ago.
“We’ve got lots going on,” he admits. He’s lent his expertise to Astro and to Sugar House, a craft cocktail bar next door. He’s even helped finance and build a community parking lot.
Each new attraction becomes another beam for shoring up Corktown, a neighborhood of sagging factories, revitalized gingerbread Victorians painted in bright colors, and empty lots transformed into vegetable gardens.
“We’re a scoot-up-to-the-bar-we’ll-make-room sort of place. Everyone’s welcome,” Cooley tells me as we finish up our americanos. He’s talking about Slows, but he could be describing the city. “Detroit’s authentic,” he says. “It is a very unique city.”
I DISCOVER THE TRUTH OF COOLEY'S STATEMENT the next day, visiting Dearborn, the suburb that’s home to both automaker Ford’s world headquarters as well as a burgeoning Arab-American community. After touring the Arab American National Museum with my guide, Fay Saad, a native Michigander of Lebanese descent, I’m welcomed at Habib, a lavishly furnished Middle Eastern restaurant that does a brisk business in wedding, graduation, and birthday banquets.
“Our families are just like everyone else’s,” Saad says in the same hearty Midwest accent as fire captain Distelrath’s. She invites me to accompany her to Dearborn’s Islamic Center of America, the largest mosque in North America. She dons a head scarf as we enter the holy building. It’s quiet. Services aren’t being held. We head back downtown via busy Warren Avenue.
“It’s like a mini Beirut,” Saad says as we pass an Arab coffee roastery that fills the air with the smell of toasted beans. “And a mix of everything,” she adds, as I point to a sign touting the “Best Halal Pizza in Town!”
We stop at her favorite bakery, Shatila’s, where the counters groan with abundant varieties of baklava and honeyed dates and other sweets from Yemen, Syria, and Lebanon, and where the attendants chat sociably with the customers. Though many women wear head scarves and the conversation is often in Arabic, it’s as much Middle America as Middle East.
In fact, non-English migrants enjoy a long tradition here. Travelers often forget that Detroit was born as French as New Orleans. Founded in 1701 by Antoine Laumet de La Mothe Cadillac, Detroit shows its Gallic roots in street names such as Livernois, Cadieux, and Gratiot.
I visit another religious spot—the redbrick Ste. Anne de Détroit church, founded by Cadillac’s settlers and the second oldest continuously operating Roman Catholic parish in the United States. The church and its exterior plaza exude an Old World charm that mixes with the growl of the semis rumbling over the Ambassador Bridge to Windsor, Canada.
Such contrasts make up the Detroit terroir, the French concept for the characteristics of a region that impart a distinct flavor. Detroit is a welter of opposites—like Slows’s old-school smoked barbecue dished out in a hip setting. I visit Midtown, site of many of Detroit’s cultural gems, to tour the Detroit Institute of Arts. The DIA is a classical, white-frosted cake of a building that harbors Diego Rivera’s dynamic, colorful murals of the auto assembly lines. The murals were commissioned by Edsel Ford in 1932. Ford may have been a wealthy industrialist, but he hired a Mexican Communist to paint his workers.
While some of the city’s buildings are scruffy, others are gleaming again, especially the prewar skyscrapers. Detroit’s art deco towers make those in Miami’s South Beach look like anthills.
To get a feel for them, I take a tour with architectural historian Dan Austin. “Detroit has one of the largest collections of Roaring ’20s architecture anywhere in the country,” Austin says. “You’ll find them downtown, in the neighborhoods, in the suburbs.” He ticks off a series of greatest hits: “Fox Theatre, the Fisher Building, the Penobscot. And it’s not just art deco buildings, either—a town house development, Lafayette Park, is the largest collection of mid-century modernist Mies Van Der Rohe residences in the world.”
Austin is explaining this as we approach the 40-story Guardian Building. Built in a damn-the-expenses manner, this 1929 tower is machine-age bravado in stainless steel, marble, and nearly two million tangerine-colored bricks. “I like to call it ‘holy cow’ architecture,” says Austin, as we push through the heavy glass doors and enter the lobby. “You see it and say—”
“Jesus!” I gawk at the vaulted space rising five stories above the 60-foot-long lobby. This interior would not be out of place in Oz. The ceiling is finished in an Aztec-inspired design of Technicolor tile hexagons. The walls and floors are clad in rare Numidian and travertine marbles. A decorative metal grill with a Tiffany glass clock in its center separates the lobby from the onetime banking hall. I make a feeble attempt to capture the dazzling beauty on my iPhone’s camera. But not even Apple’s ingenuity can do this place justice.
Other architectural beauties are getting makeovers as well. DoubleTree by Hilton has reopened the Fort Shelby hotel. The revamped, 34-story Broderick will rent apartments to downtown office workers.
“It’s an art to update an old building yet stay true to the spirit of the original,” says Bradley McCallum, who helps manage the Westin Book Cadillac, one of Detroit’s premier hotels, which reopened in 2008 following a $200 million renovation.
McCallum and I are dining later in the day at Roast, chef Michael Symon’s restaurant in the Book Cadillac. I’m working on a Rock City burger, topped with bleu cheese, caramelized onions, and the restaurant’s signature savory “zipp” sauce, and keeping tabs on the hive of activity. An elegant couple, the woman in silvery lamé, swan past us to their table in the buzzing main room. Outside, on Washington Boulevard, a Hollywood film crew is shooting a scene. Klieg lights dazzle like diamonds. “I think New York has a bit of a crush on Detroit,” McCallum remarks. Hard to believe nightlife in this town was once so moribund visitors would drive to Grosse Pointe, a plaid-and-preppy suburb, for fun.
I end up at Café d’Mongo’s Speakeasy with McCallum and an ever growing crowd of hipsters, artists, and night crawlers. The bartenders serve up ribs and cocktails that mix Captain Morgan rum with Faygo, a local soda pop that Detroiters seem to guzzle with everything.
It’s the far side of midnight. Maybe it’s the rock-and-roll shaking the speakers, or maybe it’s the Faygo cocktail. I’m tired. I say my goodbyes and head for bed. I have a big day tomorrow. I am going to circumnavigate an emerald.
The jewel is Belle Isle, Detroit’s grandest, greenest park, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, who also designed New York’s Central Park. I’m exploring Belle Isle’s 5.5-mile ring road by bike, an easy choice given the city’s flapjack-flat topography and the creative tours by Wheelhouse, a start-up bike shop located on the city’s new RiverWalk. Co-owner Kelli Kavanaugh rattles off the list of guided rides: “We do automotive heritage, haunted Detroit, architecture tours—did you know we were a huge station on the Underground Railroad? We’ll take you to historic districts like Indian Village on the east side. Detroit’s got great things, and it has problems. We show you both.”
I set off with 15 people around the 982-acre island, pedaling a tough single-speed Kona. Set in the middle of the Detroit River and connected to the city by a single bridge, Belle Isle looks a bit scrubby. Tour guide Pat Ahrens talks frankly about the park’s lack of money but also tells about the groups working to solve that. We glide past steamship enthusiasts coming to the Dossin Great Lakes Museum, South Asians playing cricket, and picnickers grilling their burgers to hip-hop. The island’s charms—a botanical garden and conservatory, an art deco marble lighthouse, the prestigious Detroit Yacht Club, and the stunning views of Canada and downtown—explain the draw.
Returning to RiverWalk, we take the Dequindre Cut Greenway, a 1.35-mile-long below-grade railroad track the city has turned into a bike path stretching from the river almost to Eastern Market. I make a note to myself to visit the market later, on a Saturday.
I was just a kid when I last saw Eastern Market, but it’s very much alive—thriving, in fact. But it’s no temple to precious foodstuffs; it’s a working produce and meat showroom, supporting 250 independent merchants and vendors whose offerings attract 40,000 shoppers every Saturday morning (and Tuesdays in the summer and fall).
It’s already crowded when I arrive at 9 a.m. The smells of melon and cider hang in the air as I weave my way past forklifts trundling bags of onions. Chalk-lettered signs tout smoked lake trout and white perch, Red Haven peaches, green wax beans, and sweet corn. As I walk past Dave Wilson, the hirsute flower seller in stall 468, he calls out in a voice so clear it cuts through the hubbub: “Good morning! Good morning! Oh yeeeaaah!”
Wilson sounds like a herald for a new city. Detroit’s problems are still big ones. I heard plenty about corruption and red tape, but it’s the context of the complaining that’s important. People are trying to get things accomplished, rebuilt, reborn.
In Detroit it seems natural I fall into conversation about these things with a friendly stranger in the market parking lot. Thomas Page, 62, is a retired Los Angeles cop wearing a T-shirt that says, “Detroit: The Fun Side of 8 Mile.”
Born and raised here, he left southern California to move home. After my discoveries, I’m not surprised when he tells me he hasn’t looked back.
“Detroit’s never going to have the weather,” he admits. “But in the last six months I’ve seen more change than what’s taken place in the last five years. We’re revving our engines. Detroit’s moving again.”
“Good morning!” I hear the flower seller, his voice rising above the din. “Oh yeeeaaah!”It pays to be Conor McGregor. The Irish featherweight sensation scored a significant payday at Sunday's UFC Fight Night 59 event, leading the night's reported payroll with a $170,000 purse for his main event win over Dennis Siver, according to information released to MMAFighting.com by the Massachusetts State Athletic Commission.
McGregor fell short of his two-minute prediction, but effortlessly overcome Siver all the same, picking the veteran apart with creative movement and crisp outside striking before securing his UFC title shot against champion Jose Aldo with a second-round TKO finish. Siver earned $39,000 in the losing effort.
Apart from McGregor, only one other fighter on the card hit the six-figure mark in salary earnings. That man was Donald Cerrone, who for the second time in three weeks took home a major chunk of change, pocketing $146,000 for his short-notice and somewhat controversial win over former UFC lightweight champion Benson Henderson ($48,000).
UFC Fight Night 59 took place Jan. 18, 2015 at the TD Garden in Boston, Massachusetts. Both McGregor and Lorenz Larkin took home additional $50,000 fight night bonuses for their work, as did UFC Fight Pass fighters Sean O'Connell and Matt Van Buren.
As always, the entire UFC Fight Night 59 payroll can be seen below, although these figures do not represent a fighter's total earnings, as sponsorship money and discretionary post-fight bonuses are not publicly disclosed.
Main Card (FOX Sports 1)
Conor McGregor ($85,000 + $85,000 = $170,000) def. Dennis Siver ($39,000)
Donald Cerrone ($73,000 + $73,000 = $146,000) def. Benson Henderson ($48,000)
Uriah Hall ($14,000 + $14,000 = $28,000) def. Ron Stallings ($10,000)
Gleison Tibau ($45,000 + $45,000 = $90,000) def. Norman Parke ($20,000)
Preliminary Card (Fox Sports 1)
Cathal Pendred ($8,000 + $8,000 = $16,000) def. Sean Spencer ($14,000)
Lorenz Larkin ($28,000 + $28,000 = $56,000) def. John Howard ($21,000)
Chris Wade ($10,000 + $10,000 = $20,000) def. Zhang Lipeng ($15,000)
Patrick Holohan ($10,000 + $10,000 = $20,000) def. Shane Howell ($8,000)
Johnny Case ($10,000 + $10,000 = $20,000) def. Frankie Perez ($8,000)
Charles Rosa ($10,000 + $10,000 = $20,000) def. Sean Soriano ($8,000)
Preliminary Card (UFC Fight Pass)
Sean O'Connell ($10,000 + $10,000 = $20,000) def. Matt Van Buren ($10,000)
Joby Sanchez ($8,000 + $8,000 = $16,000) def. Tateki Matsuda ($8,000)When a Machine is the Customer – Designing for Machines
Introduction to the Interlinked “Machine-centered Design Methodology”
Carsten Stöcker Blocked Unblock Follow Following Aug 26, 2017
In Texas, a child asks an Amazon Echo to “play dollhouse with me and get me a dollhouse?” and it orders a physical dollhouse for her.
In England, the words “OK Google, what is the Whopper burger?” in a Burger King advertisement trigger Google Home smart speakers to start spouting descriptions of the burgers.
And sometime soon, your car may choose the best price for maintenance or an electric charge, as well as driving itself to the appointment [1].
Welcome to the new world where intelligent machines, rather than people, make more and more decisions about what to buy, at what price, and complete the transactions without a middleman over a blockchain distributed ledger. This will mean massive new markets for everything from home supplies ordered via “smart speakers” such as Amazon Echo to electricity ordered by smart thermostats to replacement parts and raw materials purchased by manufacturing robots or optimisation algorithms for cyber physical systems of machines.
These developments will also create “algorithmic profits” through transaction fees charged by the software that matches buyers and sellers or aggregates the needs of machines.
For instance, in renewable powered electricity grid “volatility of energy supply” is a key issue. The grid control system needs to match feed-in and consumption of electric power in real time. In other words the grid control system has an urgent “physiological machine need” to get access to flexibilities such as batteries to store excess energy or request delivery of energy. Algorithms aggregating flexibilities can sell their customer – the grid control system – access to and control of an aggregated and validated portfolio of flexibilities. This service to optimise a reliable use of flexibilities via algorithms might be charged and create revenue streams for the (self-owned) algorithms – or aggregation bots – including a small algorithmic profit.
Our Interlinked Protocol team developed the Machine-centered Design Methodology to help innovators, entrepreneurs and enterprises to unlock a world of new opportunities in the machine economy.
Machine-Centered Design for Non-Human Customers
Today companies focus on Design Thinking or similar forms of Human-Centered Design [2]. They combine these methods with lean and agile development for fast prototyping and user testing, but with a clear focus on human customers.
They seek to understand human needs through insights, and develop ideas to meet those needs. They use fast prototyping, minimum viable products (MVP) and user testing to speed new products and services to market.
Designing for smart intelligent machines requires new approaches to everything from understanding their needs to managing the life cycles of software code rather than physical products, as well as to legal, regulatory and even ethical issues.
But failing to start the journey to “machine-centered design” means standing on the sidelines as competitors tap the needs and capabilities of an estimated tens of billions of devices on the Internet of Things by 2020.
Satisfying Alexa – Designing for Machine Needs
Machine “customers” come in an endless variety of needs, capabilities and stages of maturity. So
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by The Weekly Online that public health authorities were worried it posed a health risk to babies. Last night the My Kitchen Rules judge declared on Facebook that the controversial recipe book would be self-published this month. Now, The Weekly can exclusively reveal Pete has been quietly let go by Sumo Salad corporate headquarters. "We have decided not to renew his contract," said Petra Orrenius, Head of Marketing at Sumo Salad. "We have been very happy with the collaboration but we just decided to take our marketing in a new direction." She denied the decision was influenced by the recent media coverage Pete and his controversial views on nutrition have received.
Evans – who has made a fortune spruiking the benefits of the Paleo diet – has been under fire this past month following the cancellation of his Paleo cookbook for babies, which featured a recipe for a "DIY baby bone broth formula" that health authorities declared potentially fatal for small children. Yet he has reacted to criticism of his Paleo evangelism by continuing to travel around Australia and New Zealand on his "Paleo Way" tour, cheekily referring on Facebook to the media coverage he has received. "I would love to thank the Australian and overseas media and the online blogging and social media community for continuing to promote The Paleo Way far and wide,” he writes. “Our TRIBE is growing stronger daily and our success stories are profound. We have you to thank for this constant promotion of a lifestyle that is benefiting so many. I send you all my love and I wish you keep doing the awesome work you are doing. We couldn't do it without you." The Seven Network, who employ Pete as one of two celebrity judges for their top-rating cooking program, My Kitchen Rules, are under increasing pressure to declare whether they will be keeping Pete on for next year’s iteration of the hit show. Pete, who built his career from a highly successful pizza making business in Kings Cross, is currently the nation’s number-one selling author with his book, The Paleo Way, continuing to do brisk business.
Bubba Yum Yum: The Paleo Way for new mums, babies & toddlersAn accused outside Arthur Road Jail, Friday. (Source: Express photo by Prashant Nadkar)
More than nine years after bombs exploded on board seven suburban passenger trains in Mumbai, claiming 189 lives, 12 men were convicted by a designated court Friday.
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Of the 13 who faced trial in the July 11, 2006 blasts case, one was acquitted. The others were convicted for conspiracy and committing offences against the country in an organised manner — crimes that attract a maximum punishment of death.
The exact quantum of punishment awarded to the convicts will only become clear Monday.
Watch video: (App users click here)
The 12 men were convicted under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) and the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).
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The only person to be acquitted is Accused Number 8, Abdul Wahid Deen Mohammed Shaikh (38). He was booked for allegedly sheltering Pakistanis, accused of playing a role in the blasts, at his house in Mumbra.
[related-post]
“The role attributed to him was that he had given shelter to Pakistani planters. One of the witnesses turned hostile. Evidence was weak. Despite that, other material was there (against him). However, unless I see the judgment, I cannot comment on the acquittal of the accused,” Special Public Prosecutor Raja Thakare told The Indian Express.
Those convicted are Kamal Ahmed Mohammed Vakil Ansari, Dr Tanveer Ahmed Mohammed Ibrahim Ansari, Mohammed Faisal Ataur Rahman Shaikh, Ehtesham Kutubuddin Siddiqui, Mohammed Majid Mohammed Shafi, Shaikh Mohammed Ali Alam Shaikh, Mohammed Sajid Margub Ansari, Muzammil Ataur Rahman Shaikh, Sohail Mehmood Shaikh, Zameer Ahmed Latifur Rehman Shaikh, Naveed Hussain Khan Rasheed Hussain Khan and Asif Khan.
2006 Mumbai train blasts verdict: Commuters board coach 864A, which was destroyed in the 7/11 blasts last year, at Churchgate station in Mumbai
Their roles, police said, range from training in Pakistan, transporting Pakistanis from the Nepal border to Mumbai, procuring explosive material and planting the bombs.
Thakare said he was relieved at having discharged his duties and “fulfilled” what was expected of him as special public prosecutor. “In terror cases, naturally the first feeling is that 189 innocent lives have been snuffed out and 800-odd people are badly injured, apart from the trauma caused to society that cannot be calculated. Therefore, people who have carried out the conspiracy in a calculated manner should be given the highest penalty,” Thakare said.
According to the charges, Kamal Ansari, Faisal Shaikh, Ehtesham Siddiqui, Naveed Khan and Asif Khan played a key role in the blasts. These men were convicted under Section 302 (murder) read with Section 120 B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC and also under Section 3 (1) (i) of MCOCA for the offence of organised crime. The maximum punishment under both laws is death.
In addition, the convicts were found guilty under several other sections of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), the Explosives Act, Explosives Substances Act, Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act and Railways Act.
Barring Kamal Ansari, Mohammed Majid Shafi and Naveed Hussain, all others were also convicted for sedition under Section 124 A of the IPC.
Barring five reporters, the media was not allowed to witness the proceedings inside the courtroom. Those present in the courtroom when Judge Y D Shinde began to read out the order included the 13 accused, 10 officers of the Maharashtra Anti-Terror Squad, special public prosecutor Raja Thakare and over 20 defence lawyers.
According to some of the policemen who witnessed the proceedings, the judge took about 15 minutes to address each accused individually and inform him of his conviction. Thereafter, the judge accepted applications from defence lawyers to consult with their clients. After consultations, which lasted about half an hour, the accused were led out of the court and back to jail.
Outside the court, the ATS team was jubilant, greeting each other with wide smiles and posing for photographs. Retired IPS officer K P Raghuvanshi, who was chief of the ATS during the blast probe, hugged each of the 10 officers — some of them now retired — and congratulated them on securing the conviction.
“In any blast, be it the London tube bombing, the 1993 blasts, Bali bombing, or any other big blast, there was always an unexploded bomb that helped as a lead. Or some clue left behind. In this blast, there was no clue left, it was a crowded scene, it was raining, it was getting dark,” Raghuvanshi said. On the alleged involvement of Pakistanis, he said, “The plot goes back to Azam Cheema, who masterminded the bombing. In fact, he ensured that he sent three sets of people through three different routes to Mumbai to execute the bombing.” He added that some of the wanted accused are Pakistani nationals.
Current ATS chief Vivek Phansalkar said, “135 officers worked day in and day out to collect evidence and record statements to put the entire case together. The verdict brings great satisfaction.”
For the families of the 189 victims, it was an emotional day. When her father died in a train between Mira road and Bhayandar, Hemlata Dilloud was 18. She got a job with the Western Railway as a peon at Malad station and is now a booking clerk at Bhayandar. On being informed about the court’s verdict, she began to sob. “These people should be hanged. I lost my father when he was just 40. Their families should also miss them,” she said.
Among the families of the convicts, there was anger and bitterness. “The system has failed us miserably. We have not got justice. My brother was in office when the blast occurred. There is clear proof that he was in office that day,” claimed Aziz Khan, the elder brother of Asif Bashir Khan. Khan, born in Jalgaon, was charged for conspiracy, procuring explosive material and planting a bomb.
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A relative of another convict, Mohammad Sajid Mugrub Ansari, claimed that call detail records (CDR) showed that Sajid was not at any of the blast sites that day. Sajid, who was 29 at the time of arrest, ran a mobile repair centre in Jogeshwari and lived with his wife and children. Sajid is, incidentally, the brother-in-law of Wahid, the only person to be acquitted.No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay Published by Bantam Books 352 pages, 2007 Buy it online
Left Behind Reviewed by Ali Karim
One of the principal delights in book reviewing is discovering a gem, a work that pushes the bar just a little higher -- and that is exactly what No Time for Goodbye does. The biggest surprise for this reviewer is that I’d never read any previous works by Canadian author Linwood Barclay, which made finding No Time just that much sweeter. It may be a cliché to say that this novel is impossible to put down, but for me that was true. I started reading No Time late one evening -- a mistake -- and I was damned if I was going to let my fatigue stop me from finishing. This meant brewing a mug of very strong coffee past midnight, just so I could finish Barclay’s haunting tale. No Time for Goodbye has a great premise, and a cast of real people trapped in a terrifying and totally extraordinary situation. Fourteen-year-old Cynthia Bigge is a troublesome young girl, caught out late one night with her boyfriend Vince Fleming -- a bad boy from a family of criminals, whom Cynthia’s parents dislike. While fooling around in the back end of a car with a case of booze, this pair are spotted by her father, Clayton, who immediately hauls Cynthia back home. Following a huge family row, fueled by the booze she had shared with Fleming, the girl storms off to her bedroom, locks the door, and falls into an all-consuming slumber. Come morning, Cynthia -- full of remorse, and with her head throbbing from the drink -- struggles downstairs, only to find that her mother, Patricia, her father and her elder brother, Todd, have all vanished. There’s no note of explanation, no signs of life, and no clues as to their whereabouts. It’s understandable that Cynthia would be worried -- and she has good reason, because even 25 years later, her family’s disappearance remains a complete mystery. The adult Cynthia Bigge has now become Cynthia Archer. She’s married to a high school English teacher named Terry Archer, and they share a modest house in Milford, Connecticut, with their 8-year-old daughter, Grace -- not far from the Bigges’ old home on Hickory Street. Terry has had to cope throughout their marriage with Cynthia’s longing to learn the fate of her family. Naturally, rumors about what really happened have formed and spread over the last quarter-century. Some say a serial killer abducted the Bigges; or maybe they were involved with a criminal gang. Most worrisome to Cynthia are rumors that point the accusatorial finger directly at her. Terry tries his best to console and support his wife, even when she insists on appearing on a reality-TV program called Deadline, during which the family’s disappearance in re-enacted, in hopes of jogging some viewer’s memory about that long-ago night. It’s hard for the teacher, because he can see how Deadline producer Paula Malloy doesn’t really care about Cynthia’s childhood trauma; she’s just chasing ratings and exploiting the public’s ghoulish, voyeuristic appetite for tragedy. Supporting Cynthia, Terry, and their daughter through all of this is Tess Burman, Cynthia’s elderly aunt and her only living relative. After her parents and brother vanished, Cynthia was brought up by her aunt Tess, so their bond is strong. Cynthia tells Terry that Tess struggled to raise her, not just emotionally but also financially, as she had a modest job. Somehow, though, Tess, made sure that Cynthia got through university and graduated. It was during her higher-ed years that Terry met Cynthia, and after a short courtship they married and settled back in New England. When Grace was born, Cynthia gave up her career in order to look after her daughter. Money is tight in the Archer household, with Terry being a teacher; however, he loves his job, and school principal Roland “Rolly” Carruthers is a personal friend not only of Terry, but also Cynthia. And though a number of Terry’s students are difficult, he takes his teaching role very seriously, even helping disadvantaged pupils such as Jane Scavullo, a troubled teenager who Terry encourages in her reading and creative writing. But all of that peace is shattered, following Cynthia’s appearance on Deadline. After a fake clairvoyant is exposed, she and Terry return to their psychiatrist, Dr. Naomi Kinzler. But Kinzler proves to be of little help, as Cynthia grows increasingly anxious to discover whatever happened to her family in 1983. That’s Barclay’s general set-up in No Time for Goodbye. As you can see, there’s a large array of characters -- both past and present, and troubling besides -- who play parts in Cynthia’s past and future. Then things start to go seriously south for the Archer family. Cynthia spots a brown car in their neighborhood, just following her and Grace, as they walk to Grace’s school. Fearing for her daughter’s safety, she starts projecting her paranoia onto Terry. They visit her aunt Tess, who in confidence speaks to Terry and tells him a secret that she has kept from Cynthia all these years. On their way back from visiting Tess, Cynthia and Terry discover that their house has been broken into, and left on their kitchen table is a tatty black fedora hat -- the same type of hat that Cynthia’s father, Clayton, used to wear. This story’s tension is ratcheted up another notch, as Cynthia becomes convinced that her family are not dead, after all. She persuades Terry to engage the services of Denton Abagnall, a private investigator, and have him re-examine what happened on that fateful night so long ago. The trail will ultimately lead to several deaths, and to the P.I. unearthing dangers from the past that should perhaps have been better off left alone. Cynthia starts to lose a grip on her sanity, as she begins seeing figures from out of her younger days -- including someone she believes is her dead brother, Todd. When the Archers find a letter and map in their house, supposedly indicating where Cynthia’s long-lost family are “hidden,” the police finally start to develop an interest in this cold case. They’re especially intrigued by the fact that the letter appears to have been typed on husband Terry’s ancient Smith-Corona machine. At which point a terrified Cynthia flees, leaving Terry to question everything. He has no better options than to pick up the leads left behind by detective Abagnall, many of which point to the involvement of his wife’s ex-boyfriend, bad boy Vince Fleming. Like the best literary thrillers, No Time is a very difficult novel to review, because revealing too much will spoil both the journey Terry Archer has to endure, and the story’s twisting conclusion. I can say, though, that when tenacious police detective Rona Wedmore is assigned to this case, she discovers -- based on that map left in the Archer home -- a car and two decomposed bodies in a nearby lake. But before DNA results can be found, more danger assaults the Archer clan, in the shape of mysterious figures determined to no longer remain safely in history. Their re-emergence will lead to deaths in the present. It seems that the disappearance of Cynthia Bigge’s family was far more complex than even she imagined -- and the past is far closer than she supposed. When I finally finished reading No Time for Goodbye, I sat in silence for a moment, my caffeine-addled thoughts wrapped around the incredibly touching journey I had just traversed. This novel reminds me of the suburban nightmares plotted by Stephen King’s “double,” Richard Bachman, and Thomas H. Cook. It’s reminiscent, too, of the novels of Harlan Coben (The Woods), though Barclay’s work is much, much darker. One is left wondering, after finishing this novel, whether some of your own family secrets could prove to be your undoing. It’s said that “blood is thicker than water,” but in this novel it’s the family that ends up bloody. Anyone not riveted by Barclay’s tale and the emotional punch it carries must be made of stone. | November 2007
Ali Karim is an industrial chemist, freelance journalist and book reviewer living in England. In addition to his being a regular January Magazine contributor, he’s also the assistant editor of Shots, and writes for both Deadly Pleasures and Crime Spree magazines. Karim is an associate member (and literary judge) for both the British Crime Writers’ Association and the International Thriller Writers. He’s currently working on Black Operations, a violent science-fiction-tinged thriller.Image caption The number of Syrian refugees in Zaatari camp is expected to rise to 1.2 million by the end of 2013
A UN agency has said it will soon be unable to provide "life-saving" aid to Syrian refugees in Jordan and other countries due to funds running out.
"The needs are rising exponentially and we are broke," said Marixie Mercado, a spokeswoman for children's charity Unicef.
Some 1.2 million Syrians have fled since the uprising began in March 2011.
Around 385,500 have escaped to Jordan, with figures set to triple by the end of the year, Ms Mercado said.
This would bring the number of Syrian refugees there close to 1.2 million - the equivalent of one-fifth of Jordan's total population.
"Since the beginning of the year, more than 2000 refugees have streamed across the border [into Jordan] every day," Ms Mercado told reporters at a UN news conference in the Swiss city of Geneva on Friday.
"We expect these numbers to more than double by July and triple by December."
Many of the refugees are children, the spokeswoman added.
'Unmanageable'
Unicef is currently providing water, sanitation, vaccines, education and other essential services in Jordan's Zaatari camp, which houses nearly 150,000 refugees.
So far the agency has only received $12m (£7.8m), or 19%, of the $57m it appealed for to fund its Jordan operations this year.
As a result, it will soon need to "scale back life-saving support", Ms Mercado said.
"In concrete terms, this means that by June, we will stop delivering 3.5m litres of water every day to Zaatari camp."
She added that the money shortage also meant Unicef would be unable to provide supplies to two new camps slated to open in the coming weeks.
UN officials said the lack of funding did not only apply to Jordan, but also to other countries hosting large numbers of Syrian refugees, including Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq.
The head of the UN's agency for Palestinian refugees, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, echoed Ms Mercado's warning, saying Syria's conflict was on the verge of overwhelming the UN.
"This is the type of crisis that humanitarian agencies at some point cannot handle," Filippo Grandi told the New York Times on Thursday.
"It is unmanageable and dangerous."
The UN estimates that at least 70,000 people have been killed in Syria since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began, just over two years ago.All Cancer Death Rates, 1975-2009
The Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer, 1975–2009, shows that overall cancer death rates continued to decline in the United States among both men and women, among all major racial and ethnic groups, and for all of the most common cancer sites, including lung, colon and rectum, female breast, and prostate. However, the report also shows that death rates continued to increase during the latest time period (2000 through 2009) for melanoma of the skin (among men only) and for cancers of the liver, pancreas, and uterus. The special feature section on human papillomavirus (HPV)-associated cancers shows that incidence rates are increasing for HPV-associated oropharyngeal and anal cancers and that vaccination coverage levels in the U.S. during 2008 and 2010 remained low among adolescent girls.
The report, produced since 1998, is co-authored by researchers from the American Cancer Society (ACS), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Cancer Institute (NCI), and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR). It appears early online in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute and will be published in print issue 3, volume 105.
The decline in overall cancer death rates continues a trend that began in the early 1990s. From 2000 through 2009, cancer death rates decreased by 1.8 percent per year among men and by 1.4 percent per year among women. Death rates among children up to 14 years of age also continued to decrease by 1.8 percent per year. During 2000 through 2009, death rates among men decreased for 10 of the 17 most common cancers (lung, prostate, colon and rectum, leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, kidney, stomach, myeloma, oral cavity and pharynx, and larynx) and increased for melanoma of the skin and cancers of the pancreas and liver. During the same 10-year period, death rates among women decreased for 15 of the 18 most common cancers (lung, breast, colon and rectum, ovary, leukemia, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, brain and other nervous system, myeloma, kidney, stomach, cervix, bladder, esophagus, oral cavity and pharynx, and gallbladder) and increased for cancers of the pancreas, liver, and uterus.
“The continuing drop in cancer mortality over the past two decades is reason to cheer,” said John R. Seffrin, Ph.D., chief executive officer of the American Cancer Society. “The challenge we now face is how to continue those gains in the face of new obstacles, like obesity and HPV infections. We must face these hurdles head on, without distraction, and without delay, by expanding access to proven strategies to prevent and control cancer.”
Between 2000 and 2009, overall cancer incidence rates decreased by 0.6 percent per year among men, were stable among women, and increased by 0.6 percent per year among children (ages 0 to 14 years). During that time period, incidence rates among men decreased for five of the 17 most common cancers (prostate, lung, colon and rectum, stomach, and larynx) and increased for six others (kidney, pancreas, liver, thyroid, melanoma of the skin, and myeloma). Among women, incidence rates decreased for seven of the 18 most common cancers (lung, colon and rectum, bladder, cervix, oral cavity and pharynx, ovary, and stomach), and increased for seven others (thyroid, melanoma of the skin, kidney, pancreas, leukemia, liver, and uterus). Incidence rates were stable for the other top 17 cancers, including breast cancer in women and non-Hodgkin lymphoma in men and women.
“While this report shows that we are making progress in the fight against cancer on some fronts, we still have much work to do, particularly when it comes to preventing cancer,” said CDC Director Thomas R. Frieden, M.D. “For example, vaccinating against HPV can prevent cervical cancer, but, tragically, far too many girls are growing into adulthood vulnerable to cervical cancer because they are not vaccinated.”
Percent of adolescent girls who received 3 doses of HPV vaccine
The special feature section of the report includes an evaluation of the burden and trends in HPV-associated cancers as well as HPV vaccination coverage levels among adolescent girls. The report shows that from 2000 through 2009, incidence rates for HPV-associated oropharyngeal cancer increased among white men and women, as did rates for anal cancer among white and black men and women. Incidence rates for cancer of the vulva increased among white and black women. Rates of cervical cancer declined among all women except American Indian/Alaska Natives. In addition, cervical cancer incidence rates were higher among women living in low versus high socioeconomic areas. Among men, rates for penile cancer were stable.
“This year’s Report correctly and usefully emphasizes the importance of HPV infection as a cause of the growing number of cancers of the mouth and throat, the anus, and the vulva, as well as cancers of the uterine cervix, and the availability of vaccines against the major cancer-causing strains of HPV” said NCI Director Harold Varmus, M.D. “But the investments we have made in HPV research to establish these relationships and to develop effective and safe vaccines against HPV will have the expected payoffs only if vaccination rates for girls and boys improve markedly.”
The report also showed that in 2010, fewer than half (48.7 percent) of girls ages 13 through 17 had received at least one dose of the HPV vaccine, and only 32 percent had received all three recommended doses. Vaccination series completion rates were generally lower among certain sub-populations, including girls living in the South, those living below the poverty level, and among Hispanics. The national three-dose coverage estimate among girls ages 13 through17 in 2010 falls well short of the U.S. Government’s Healthy People 2020 target of 80 percent for three-dose coverage among girls ages 13 through15, and is much lower than vaccination rates reported in Canada (50-85 percent) and the United Kingdom and Australia combined (greater than 70 percent). The authors note that low overall vaccine uptake in the U.S. is likely due to a number of issues, including inadequate provider recommendations, provider reimbursement concerns, infrequent use of reminder/recall systems that would foster completion of the three-dose series, and other factors.
“As incidence rates for some HPV-associated cancers continue to rise,” noted NAACCR director Betsy Kohler, “these cases will contribute to the overall growing number of cancers associated with population aging and expansion, requiring additional resources for medical research and treatment, in addition to our careful tracking of these trends.”
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Reference: Jemal A, Simard EP, Dorell C, Noone AM, Markowitz LE, Kohler B, Eheman C, Saraiya M, Bandi P, Saslow D, Cronin KA, Watson M, Schiffman M, Henley SJ, Schymura MJ, Anderson RN, Yankey D, and Edwards BK. Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer, 1975–2009, Featuring the Burden and Trends in HPV-Associated Cancers and HPV Vaccination Coverage Levels. Journal of the National Cancer Institute; Published online Jan. 7, 2013; In print Vol. 105, Issue 3, Feb. 2013. DOI:10.1093/jnci/djs491.
Additional Resources:
To view the Report, go to http://jnci.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/01/03/jnci.djs491.full?sid=ccafd244-6199-4658-b24d-f139a96187c5.
For a Q&A on this Report, go to http://www.cancer.gov/news-evens/press-releases/2013/reportnationqa.
For Spanish translations of this press release and Q&A, go to
http://www.cancer.gov/espanol/noticias/comunicados-de-prensa/2013/informenacion2013 and http://www.cancer.gov/espanol/noticias/comunicados-de-prensa/2013/informenacion2013qa.
CDC’s Division of Cancer Prevention and Control: http://www.cdc.gov/cancer; National Program of Cancer Registries: http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/npcr; and the National Vital Statistics System: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss.htm
ACS: http://www.cancer.org
NCI: http://www.cancer.gov and SEER (NCI’s Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results program): http://www.seer.cancer.gov
NAACCR: http://www.naaccr.org
The American Cancer Society saves lives and creates a world with less cancer and more birthdays by helping you stay well, helping you get well, by finding cures and fighting back. As the nation’s largest non-governmental investor in cancer research, contributing about $3.4 billion, we turn what we know about cancer into what we do. To learn more about us or to get help, call 1-800-227-2345 or visit www.cancer.org
CDC works 24/7 saving lives, protecting people from health threats, and saving money through prevention. Whether these threats are global or domestic, chronic or acute, curable or preventable, natural disaster or deliberate attack, CDC is the nation’s health protection agency.
The National Cancer Institute leads the National Cancer Program and the NIH’s efforts to dramatically reduce the burden of cancer and improve the lives of cancer patients and their families, through research into prevention and cancer biology, the development of new interventions, and the training and mentoring of new researchers. For more information about cancer, please visit the NCI Web site at http://www.cancer.gov or call NCI's Cancer Information Service at 1-800-4-CANCER.
The North American Association of Central Cancer Registries, Inc. is a professional organization that develops and promotes uniform data standards for cancer registration; provides education and training; certifies population-based registries; aggregates and publishes data from central cancer registries; and promotes the use of cancer surveillance data and systems for cancer control and epidemiologic research, public health programs, and patient care to reduce the burden of cancer in North America.Donald Trump speaks during the grand opening of Trump International Hotel in Washington, D..C on Oct. 26. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Of all the things that were going to get Donald Trump into trouble over the course of this election, I would have put "automated computer server activity" pretty low on the list. But here we are.
On Monday night, Slate On Monday night, Slate published a lengthy story written by Franklin Foer exploring an odd connection between Trump's businesses and a bank in Russia. Researchers looking to track Russian attempts at hacking American political interests noticed that a server at the bank had been connecting to a server linked to Trump — sporadically, in a pattern that they felt was indicative of interpersonal communication. With attention in the presidential race focused on how Trump's political and economic interests might overlap with those of the Russian state, this was a tantalizing wisp of smoke.
For all of Foer's exegesis of the situation — culminating, he admits, with a lack of certainty about what it all means — it seems likely that the simplest answer isn't that someone affiliated with Trump or his campaign set up a backchannel method for contacting someone at Alfa Bank in Russia. It seems more likely that the human tendency for pattern-seeking is extracting a conspiracy theory from the automated clunkiness of the way the Internet works.
It's time for Trump to answer serious questions about his ties to Russia. pic.twitter.com/07dRyEmPjX It's time for Trump to answer serious questions about his ties to Russia. https://t.co/D8oSmyVAR4 — Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) — Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 31, 2016
Naadir Jeewa does consulting work on precisely the sorts of systems involved in the Trump-Alfa scenario. When Foer's piece was published, he quickly Naadir Jeewa does consulting work on precisely the sorts of systems involved in the Trump-Alfa scenario. When Foer's piece was published, he quickly tweeted a number of reasons that he was skeptical of the idea that this was somehow nefarious. (He has subsequently written out his thoughts.) Based in the United Kingdom, he spoke with The Fix by phone on Tuesday morning to explain his reasoning.
To understand what's likely happening, we need to establish a few basics. First of all, the Trump server wasn't really a Trump server. It was much less of a Trump email server, for example, than Hillary Clinton's email server was hers. Clinton had a physical server that hosted her email. The trump-email.com domain that Alfa was connecting to was hosted by a company called To understand what's likely happening, we need to establish a few basics. First of all, the Trump server wasn't really a Trump server. It was much less of a Trump email server, for example, than Hillary Clinton's email server was hers. Clinton had a physical server that hosted her email. The trump-email.com domain that Alfa was connecting to was hosted by a company called Cendyn. Cendyn runs marketing systems for the hospitality industry, meaning that it offers an out-of-the-box solution for a company that owns a bunch of hotels to push out sales pitch emails to its customers. In other words, trump-email.com isn't the email server Trump used to send emails from his closet. It was a domain name that linked back to a Cendyn server.
This is important for a few reasons. The first, Jeewa said, was that the trump-email.com was configured to reject a certain type of query from another server. Since its job was simply to push out thousands of enticements to come stay at Trump Soho (or whatever) it didn't need to receive many incoming requests (like incoming email). The second is that the conspiracy theory hinges on Trump's team using an offsite server hosted by someone else for its quiet communications with its Russian allies. Instead of, say, their own server, under their own control. Or an encrypted chat app. Or a phone call.
So why were the Alfa Bank servers communicating with trump-email.com in a rhythm that both seems to mirror human communication patterns and seems to have increased over the course of the campaign? To the latter point, the researchers looking at the traffic only began tracking communications in July, so everything's been within the context of the campaign. A graph created by the researchers seems "to follow the contours of political happenings in the United States," in Foer's words.
But it doesn't really. The biggest spike appears to have happened in early August ∧— a point at which there was certainly a lot going on, but nothing particularly exceptional. This, too, seems more like pattern-seeking than a real correlation to events. (The question of when the communications occurred during the day is hard to evaluate, given the limited data we have available. It's worth remembering, though, that the seven-hour time shift between Russia and the United States means that either we or they are at work for most of any 24-hour period.)
Jeewa notes that the type of requests the Alfa Bank servers were making were what's called an "A record lookup." (This is according to the files that have been made public, which, he said, could have been filtered to exclude other examples.) The domain name system relies on domain name servers (DNS), which act like a sort of Internet phone book. If you look up a business in a phone book, you'll see its main number, maybe a fax line, maybe some numbers for various departments. DNS look-ups work the same way: If a server wants to know how to contact trump-email.com, it contacts a DNS server to learn its number — not a phone number, but an Internet protocol (IP) address, which is a string of numbers allowing Internet traffic to find its destination. Domains, like the business in our phone book example, have different information available about how they can be contacted. An MX record provides a pointer to the domain's email system (think: fax number in the phone book). An A record is the main phone number, the IP address hosting the domain. It's probably the most basic type of domain lookup request. That's what Alfa Bank's servers appear to have kept requesting again and again.
Why? When an email is sent, the receiving server often checks to verify where it came from. To continue the analogy above, it's as though you got a call on your cell from a number, and the person said he was calling from Ace Electronics. You might look up Ace Electronics in the phone book and see if the phone number matched. Similar thing here: When an email came from trump-email.com, Alfa Bank's server likely checked the DNS system to get more information about the point of origin. Jeewa demonstrates that this is common practice by pointing out that Why? When an email is sent, the receiving server often checks to verify where it came from. To continue the analogy above, it's as though you got a call on your cell from a number, and the person said he was calling from Ace Electronics. You might look up Ace Electronics in the phone book and see if the phone number matched. Similar thing here: When an email came from trump-email.com, Alfa Bank's server likely checked the DNS system to get more information about the point of origin. Jeewa demonstrates that this is common practice by pointing out that one of the hacked Clinton campaign emails released by WikiLeaks includes an email from Cendyn's servers — and a request back from the recipient for more information. For some reason, it seems, the Alfa Bank servers keep asking for that A record over and over again.
One possibility is that the Trump system keeps sending out spam emails. Another is that the Alfa Bank server has a configuration issue. As Jeewa says in his write-up, "email systems are terrible." Email is a clunky, kludge-y way of passing text messages around the web, and bugs can get introduced that cause weird behavior. It's far more likely in this case that the Alfa Bank servers are misfiring than that there's a secret communications system being used. Dyn — the DNS system that was attacked two weeks ago, crippling Internet connectivity — told a reporter from The Verge that One possibility is that the Trump system keeps sending out spam emails. Another is that the Alfa Bank server has a configuration issue. As Jeewa says in his write-up, "email systems are terrible." Email is a clunky, kludge-y way of passing text messages around the web, and bugs can get introduced that cause weird behavior. It's far more likely in this case that the Alfa Bank servers are misfiring than that there's a secret
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the implementation. While you’re reading, try to get the test suite to run successfully. This will make sure your development environment is configured properly and will make you more confident when making changes.
Execute, change stuff, execute
Who said reading code had to be hands off? You’ll really start to understand things once you’ve broken everything and put it back together again. Remember those tests you got passing? Make them fail, add some more, or try changing the implementation without breaking them. Try adding a small feature that you think is cool, or setup project-wide logging so you can print output at various stages of the code. Is this still reading? Absolutely, but at this point its more of a choose your own adventure than a mystery novel. And that’s a good thing!
Rinse and repeat
Once you finish reading one codebase, pick another one and start the process over again. The more code you read, the better you get at reading it and the more you get out of it in less time. I think you’ll find that the ROI increases quite quickly and that it’s actually a very enjoyable way to learn.
Where To Start
The single most influential factor in my code reading is GitHub. The site makes it so easy to find new projects and great coders that you’re doing yourself a disservice if you’re not leveraging it. I suggest starting on GitHub and reading code right on the site until you find a project you know you can learn from. Then git clone that baby and get to reading!THE Irish economy will grow faster than anywhere else in the euro zone this year and next bar Malta, the European Commission forecast today.
THE Irish economy will grow faster than anywhere else in the euro zone this year and next bar Malta, the European Commission forecast today.
The economy will expand 1.1pc this year and 2.2pc next year, the Commission added.
While the news for Ireland is good, the situation elsewhere is gloomy.
The Commission now believes that euro zone will not return to growth until 2014, reversing its prediction for an end to recession this year and blaming a lack of bank lending and record joblessness for delaying the recovery.
The 17-nation bloc's economy, which generates nearly a fifth of global output, will shrink 0.3pc in 2013, the Commission said, meaning the euro zone will remain in its second recession since 2009 for a year longer than originally foreseen.
The Commission, the EU executive, late last year forecast 0.1pc growth in the euro zone's economy for 2012, but now says tight lending conditions for companies and households, job cuts and frozen investment have delayed an expected recovery.
The Commission sees the euro zone economy growing 1.4pc in 2014, with a figure of -0.6pc for 2012.
"The improved financial market situation contrasts with the absence of credit growth and the weakness of the near-term outlook for economic activity," said Marco Buti, the commission's director-general for economic and monetary affairs. "The labour market... is a serious concern," he said, in a preamble to the Commission's latest forecasts.
The European Central Bank's promise last year to do what it takes to defend its common currency has removed the risk of a break-up of the euro zone, and member countries' borrowing costs have come down from unsustainable levels.
But the damage from the 2008/2009 global financial crisis and the ensuing euro zone debt crisis has been greater than expected on the real economy, with global demand for euro zone exports one of the few saviours in terms of generating growth.
Online EditorsBy: SPACE.com Staff
Published: 08/30/2012 09:30 AM EDT on SPACE.com
NASA's Cassini probe has beamed home stunning images of Saturn and Titan, the ringed planet's largest moon.
The new natural-color Cassini photos, which were unveiled Wednesday (Aug. 29), capture the Saturn system as it undergoes a seasonal shift. The ringed planet and its many moons look quite different today than they did when Cassini arrived on the scene eight years ago, researchers said.
"As the seasons have advanced, and spring has come to the north and autumn to the south throughout the Saturn system, the azure blue in the northern winter Saturnian hemisphere that greeted Cassini upon its arrival in 2004 is now fading; and it is now the southern hemisphere, in its approach to winter, that is taking on a bluish hue," Cassini imaging team leader Carolyn Porco, of the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo., said in a statement.
"This change is likely due to the reduced intensity of ultraviolet light and the haze it produces in the hemisphere approaching winter, and the increasing intensity of ultraviolet light and haze production in the hemisphere approaching summer," Porco added. [More Spectacular Photos of Saturn by Cassini]
One of the photos showcases Saturn, its rings and Titan, which at 3,200 miles (5,150 kilometers) wide is larger than the planet Mercury. The edge-on ring system forms a thin line directly behind the huge moon while its shadow projects a series of dark bands onto the planet's southern half.
Another photo shows Titan's south polar vortex — an odd mass of swirling gas that Cassini noticed earlier this year — in clear and dramatic detail. The formation of the vortex is likely related to the seasonal changes occurring on Saturn, Titan and its other moons, scientists have said.
The last photo shows a circle of light around Titan, making the haze-shrouded moon look like a dazzling ring floating in the blackness of space. The effect is created by sunlight scattering through the periphery of Titan's thick, nitrogen-dominated atmosphere, researchers said.
Cassini launched in 1997 and has been studying Saturn and its rings and moons since it arrived in orbit around the planet in 2004. Cassini's primary mission ended in 2008, but the probe's activities have been extended twice, most recently through 2017.
NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency have worked together on the mission over the years.
Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.
Copyright 2012 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Media playback is not supported on this device Mourinho challenges Pellegrini's sums
Manchester City manager Manuel Pellegrini got his calculations wrong on Chelsea's spending during the January transfer window, according to Blues boss Jose Mourinho.
Mourinho described his team as a "little horse" in the Premier League title race, while Pellegrini said Chelsea were a "rich little horse".
"Mata was sold for £37m and De Bruyne for £18m - that's £55m," said Mourinho.
"Matic bought for £21m and Salah £11m. In this window, we are plus £23m."
Mourinho added: "We are building a team for the next decade and City have a team to win now.
"They have experience, potential, power and no worries about [Uefa cost control protocol] Financial Fair Play, because in summer they just spent. We don't need a calculator for this."
Chelsea lead the Premier League by a point following Saturday's 3-0 win over Newcastle. Arsenal are second and City third, two points behind Chelsea.
Chelsea and Man City 2013-14 transfer window spending (estimated) Chelsea : Summer £62.5m; income £2.5m. Winter £44m; income £55m. Net spend: £49m
: Summer £62.5m; income £2.5m. Winter £44m; income £55m. Man City: Summer £90m; income £10m. Winter no players sold or bought. Net spend: £80m
Mourinho has played down Chelsea's title chances in recent weeks and on Saturday, he described City as "a Jaguar" and said they are favourites for the title. He added that his concern was the gap between Chelsea and fifth place.
Former Malaga boss Pellegrini, who faced the Portuguese when Mourinho was coach of Real Madrid, questioned Mourinho's view and drew reference to Chelsea's spending over the last decade, since Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich bought the club.
The Chilean said last week: "Maybe it is a small horse if the manager thinks like that.
"It can be a little horse but very rich. This is the team that spends most money in the last 10 years, it is the team that spends most money this year and the team that spends the most money in the transfer window, so [it is a] little bit rich."
Chelsea's net spend during the previous two summer and winter transfer windows was approximately £49m.
In January, they bought Nemanja Matic, Mohamed Salah and a player Mourinho did not mention, Kurt Zouma (£12m), for a total of £44m. But they made £55m from the sales of Juan Mata and Kevin de Bruyne.
City, on the other hand, did not change their squad during the winter window, but had a net spend of about £80m last summer.
Mourinho said of Pellegrini: "He has been speaking about winning four competitions, so there's no reason to change the speech.
"But the only thing that is funny [is] that he keeps saying he never responds to Mourinho; he never comments about Mourinho. He said that in Spain, too. So he's changed."
Chelsea travel to West Brom on Tuesday and Manchester City host Sunderland on Wednesday.According to a lawsuit filed in federal court on Monday, a 14-year-old California girl who was sexually assaulted by a 23-year-old emergency room security guard is suing the man, as well as the hospital and security firm that employed him.
The plaintiff, listed as “E.G.” in the suit, is seeking punitive damages from Alberto Martinez Maldonado, San Jose-based Security Code 3 Inc., and the Watsonville Community Hospital.
In May of 2013, E.G. was admitted to Watsonville Community Hospital on an involuntary basis for having suicidal thoughts.
She had also told the doctors there — listed in the suit as Gordon Kaplan, Sterling Lewis and Stuart Simon — that she planned have sex with an 18-year-old man, a fact that should have prevented them from leaving her alone with Maldonado for over an hour and a half.
During that time, the suit states, E.G. and Maldonado talked, then “started to kiss, exciting defendant Maldonado. Without E.G.’s permission and as a result of using a show of his authority as a guard to obtain her acquiescence, Maldonado inserted his fingers into E.G.’s vagina while they kissed.”
“Maldonado told E.G., ‘I want to suck your pussy.’ E.G. told Maldonado ‘no.'”
E.G. claims that he performed oral sex on her without her consent anyway. Before his shift ended, the two exchanged phone numbers, and they remained in contact for the next fifteen days, exchanging text messages.
On May 29, 2013, “E.G. met Maldonado at the hospital, they went to his car in the parking lot and they had sexual intercourse. While in the car, Maldonado put his fingers in E.G.’s vagina, put his penis in her mouth for purposes of oral sex and had vaginal intercourse.”
He then drove her back to her middle school.
On June 1, 2013, Maldonado was questioned by police and confessed the affair to them. He pleaded no-contest to charges of oral copulation on a person under 16, unlawful sexual intercourse with a person under 16, and meeting a minor for lewd purposes.
He was sentenced to three years in jail.
[“A Security Guard With A Clipboard, Isolated On White” on Shutterstock]Former Auburn defensive end Dee Ford has been one of the fastest rising players in this year’s NFL Draft class after solid performances at the Senior Bowl and Auburn’s pro day. His rare athleticism combined with his size has been reason enough to draw interest from several notable teams.
While the 6-foot-2, 244-pounder has only met with the Patriots thus far, he also has visits with the Buccaneers and Colts scheduled in the near future. The Patriots, according to Ford, preached playing special teams, despite being projected as a first-round pick.
“Well, one thing I learned about [the Patriots] is you’re going to have to play special teams down there,” Ford told FOXSports.com in an interview. “You’re going to have to learn how to play special teams and be effective in all phases because you can only travel with so many. I was able to learn a lot of the fundamentals that they do with their special teams and how it all correlates to the game itself. I was able to show them that I was good at dropping in space and things like that. It went well.”
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Despite not performing in Indianapolis due to precautionary medical reasons, he posted impressive times (4.53, 4.59) in the 40-yard dash earlier this month at his pro day. With a little over 40 days remaining until the NFL Draft, Ford is committed to staying focused.
“It’s a tricky process right now,” Ford said. “You want to stay in shape, but you don’t want to over train. I’ve been doing a lot since the national championship, Senior Bowl, Combine and pro day. You just want to stay in shape.”
Ford, 23, understands his value as an elite pass rusher. After becoming the SEC’s second-leading sack leader and being named as the Senior Bowl’s MVP, Ford has witnessed his name catapult among draft experts.
“This is a passing league right now,” Ford said. “You can’t find guys who can consistently get to the passer. Defensive ends, offensive tackles, wide receivers and quarterbacks is where the money is being made right now because it’s such a dynamic passing league. Like I said, you can probably count on two hands the amount of dynamic pass rushers in the league.”CLOSE The Fairfield brewery will hold an anniversary celebration this weekend. 10/13/16 Michael Izzo
Anniversary celebration this weekend at brewery
Buy Photo Cricket Hill Brewing in Fairfield celebrates their 15th anniversary. Founder Rick Reed and co-owner Ed Gangi talk about the milestone and the beer. MOR 1015 Cricket Hill Brewing turns 15 (Photo: Karen Mancinelli, Karen Mancinelli)Buy Photo
FAIRFIELD – Rick Reed still remembers brewing his first – and still favorite – beer at his 15-barrel brewhouse. It was 2001, and he was making what would become a Cricket Hill staple, the East Coast Lager.
Lagers aren’t typically brewed by small breweries because they take significantly longer than ales to make, about six weeks. But time was all Reed had when he was opening up 15 years ago.
“We had the space and all the licensing we needed to open except for the background check, and then 9/11 hit and we weren’t high on anyone’s priority list,” Reed said. “So we had all the time in the world and didn’t have to worry about wasting precious tank time, so why not make a lager? Waiting for that background check almost ruined us, but we got the lager out of it.”
A decade and a half later, Cricket Hill Brewing continues to thrive, creating new brews and expanding its distribution. And this weekend at the recently-expanded tasting room on Kulick Road in Fairfield, Reed will celebrate his brewery’s 15th anniversary with the release of Fiestbeir – an Oktoberfest Marzen style lager featuring German Munich malt and Sterling Hops – on draft and in bottles.
There will also be a dozen other Cricket Hill brews on tap, as well as special anniversary merchandise for sale. Friday will feature live music, a staple for the tasting room.
While there will be plenty to cheer this weekend at Cricket Hill, Reed, founder and co-owner of the brewery, still remembers how difficult it was launching the brewery all those years ago.
“The first few years were rough. New Jersey wasn’t ready for microbreweries like they are now. I worried we were going to have to close every single day,” Reed said. “When we opened we were the sixth brewery in New Jersey, and the first in five years up to that point. Now with the changes in brewing laws there are 64.”
Fifteen years later Cricket Hill is on tap and for sale in hundreds of stores, bars, and restaurants. Reed said it’s a big advantage to have a decade-plus jump on his fellow brewers.
“New Jersey has caught up. We’re interested in craft beer now,” Reed said. “And after 15 years of refining and tweaking, we’ve got a great, balanced lineup of beers.”
Until a year ago, Cricket Hill only bottled the four year-round and three seasonal selections. But they now have bottle releases for all of their offerings, with just a select few tasting room only specials remaining unbottled.
“We’re inventing new things all of the time, using bourbon and wine barrels to age stouts and tripels,” Reed said. “But the year-rounders will never change. Those are four solid citizens.”
Those citizens are the lager, American Pale Ale, Hopnotic IPA, and Colonel Blides ESB, named for the owner of a machine shop next door, who has helped repair several Cricket Hill equipment malfunctions through the years.
“My advice to anyone opening up a brewery,” Reed said, “Do it next to a machine shop.”
Reed said he enjoys all of his beers except for a recently made sour, his least favorite style.
“Other people like it but I’m not a fan. They brewed that one without telling me,” Reed said. “Me, I’m a lager guy. I’ll take my East Coast Lager every day.”
Upcoming releases include the sour and a bourbon barrel-aged imperial porter.
“We’re at a place now where we’re trying to build our brand,” co-owner Ed Gangi said. “Coming up with new beer.”
Those new additions include the Schnick Schnack session sour, Brew Jitsu session IPA, and Soggy Sack wet hop ale.
Buy Photo Cricket Hill Brewing owners Ed Gangi and Rick Reed, who founded the company, near one of the bourbon barrels where they age some types of beer. Cricket Hill Brewing in Fairfield celebrates their 15th anniversary. Founder Rick Reed and co-owner Ed Gangi talk about the milestone and the beer. MOR 1015 Cricket Hill Brewing turns 15 (Photo: Karen Mancinelli, Karen Mancinelli)
Gangi started at Cricket Hill as a volunteer in 2008 and ended up buying into the business a few years ago.
“He makes my life a whole lot easier,” Reed said while sipping a lager. “Quality control.”
Gangi praised Reed for the legacy he’s forged in the beer industry in his first 15 years professionally brewing.
“A lot of people that now work for other breweries – 15 least that we’re aware of – started here,” Gangi said. “Rick’s know in the industry for helping out.”
While more fermenters have been added, Cricket Hill remains the same 15-barrel brew house it was a 15 years earlier, bottling on-site and self-distributing.
And with the new additions to the facility, Reed said he has no plans to leave what he calls the alcohol capital of New Jersey in Fairfield, home to two breweries, three distilleries, and a wine-making shop.
Buy Photo Founder Rick Reed and co-owner Ed Gangi talk about some of the adventures in bottling with a vintage EnZinger Bottler. Cricket Hill Brewing in Fairfield celebrates their 15th anniversary. Founder Rick Reed and co-owner Ed Gangi talk about the milestone and the beer. MOR 1015 Cricket Hill Brewing turns 15 (Photo: Karen Mancinelli, Karen Mancinelli)
“My definition of a craft beer is it all has to be done in one spot,” Reed said. “As soon as you don’t, you’re not craft anymore.”
And staying “craft” is something that matters to Reed, who won’t touch a macrobeer.
“It used to be all of us vs. the Big Three (Budweiser, Coors and Miller) and we won that battle,” Reed said. “Now, to me, it’s about us microbrewers in New Jersey against other states. Because I’ll put a Jersey beer up against anything in Vermont or Colorado or California.”
Reed, who still leads weekend tours at Cricket Hill, has given several passionate speeches on the “battle” against the Big Three.
One such speech was posted to YouTube in 2008, when the website was still in its infancy, and accumulated more than 50,000 views.
While he can’t guarantee another viral moment, Reed promises there will be more speeches this weekend for anyone who wants to swing by for a pint.
Staff Writer Michael Izzo: 973-428-6636; [email protected]
If you go :
Where: Cricket Hill Brewery, 24 Kulick Road in Fairfield
When: Thursday and Friday from 5 to 8 p.m. and Saturday from 1 to 5 p.m.
Read or Share this story: http://dailyre.co/2ebpmGIIn the Yellow Pages of libel lawyers, you can do worse than Mark J. Freiman, former deputy Attorney General of Ontario. As an authority on the legal proscription of hate and contempt, there are few better.
But the gambit he launched by filing a libel suit on behalf of Ontario Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne, alleging she was unfairly exposed to public ridicule and contempt by Progressive Conservative Opposition Leader Tim Hudak, is unusually risky to his high-profile client. Like many libel claims by politicians, it risks ridicule itself.
In Canada this week, the political libel suit had a rare moment in the sun. Federal Liberals had their own scandal, in which a rejected candidate, Christine Innes, wife of former longtime Toronto Liberal MP Tony Ianno, sued leader Justin Trudeau and his election director David MacNaughton for saying she bullied young people in a nasty nomination battle.
For Ms. Innes, who claims these libels “destroyed [her] political career,” there may be nothing left to lose. But for politicians with sophisticated communications staff, libel cases can often look like the wrong choice, said Dennis Pilon, associate professor of political science at York University.
It is not just Liberals. Prime Minister Stephen Harper sued the Liberal Party in 2008 over the claim he knew of an effort to bribe the vote of Independent MP Chuck Cadman, whose dying public act in 2005 was a confidence vote that saved Paul Martin’s Liberal government. Federal cabinet veteran Tony Clement, likewise, sued former Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty over a corruption claim in 2000, leading to an apology.
In all cases, accusations of “libel chill” followed close behind, and in many cases the chill lasted. For example Mr. Hudak and his colleague MP Lisa MacLeod, also named, have not repeated their claims quite so forcefully.
It is a tricky balance.
“Do you run for the courts to take care of it, or do we have it out? The idea, I think, behind libel is have you damaged the reputation of someone and they don’t have an ability to really defend themselves, or you’ve created a problem for them for which now they need an extraordinary measure to correct,” Prof. Pilon said. But for politicians, this rarely seems to apply.
“It does seem weird, perhaps, using a hammer to hit a tack, but on the other hand I think it speaks to some of the communications challenges. It may be this is a tactic that parties are increasingly turning to, political entrepreneurs are turning to in the case of Innes, to try and get above the noise. We know that Canadians aren’t as involved in parties anymore, so parties aren’t as much of an alternative channel as they once were, and so to get above all the noise that’s going on, and of course the disaffection of the populace from the details of politics, the use of libel pushes the issue higher,” he said.
“It could be that the end result of this is not actually to go to court, but to get the public’s attention, by using libel as a way of ratcheting up the importance of the issue,” Prof. Pilon said. “We live in a world of abuses.”
Part of this libel instinct is down to the simple declining tone of politics, and the rise of the smear. One of the alleged libels in the Wynne case, for example, is a tweet by Ms. MacLeod describing a Wynne press conference as an “‘I am not a crook’ Richard Nixon impression.”
By its natural meaning and innuendo, Ms. Wynne’s suit claims this means she is “as deserving of hatred and contempt as Richard Nixon.”
Another claim is over a March press conference in which Mr. Hudak said she is “corrupt,” and “oversaw and possibly ordered the criminal destruction of documents to cover up the gas plant scandal.” Another is over Ms. MacLeod’s statement that Ms. Wynne “has no moral authority to govern this province.”
On the other hand, this libel cluster also reflects the broader rise of the SLAPP suit, in which libel law is used as a rhetorical nuclear option, to shut up debate by bringing a dispute before the courts, which can then impose their own plodding style of dignity behind closed doors, until a public trial is fought many months hence, if at all.
In Ms. Wynne’s case, her office declined to release the statement of claim, anticipating the charge of fighting her claim in the press — a strange taboo for a dispute between politicians about a political scandal.
Ms. Innes had her claim online right away this week.
In its legal culture, Canada is torn between Britain, famous as a draw for libel tourists keen to exploit its generous protections including publication bans on publication bans, and America, where free speech is a founding ideal and political libel claims must prove actual malice. As a result, its trends change along this transatlantic spectrum, in which principled free speech is balanced with enlightened censorship.
So Canada’s libel moment reflects the rising acrimony, sophistry, evasion, and hyperbole of political argument in a culture that only half-heartedly believes political speech should be free, let alone true.
Party nomination contests are a key battleground, in which both Tories and Liberals have promised open and transparent riding contests. The issue is likely to grow in scope, with many more nominations still to be settled. This week, Mr. Trudeau said he intends to appoint two ombudsmen to oversee the Liberal process.
This move is similar to Conservative MP Michael Chong’s proposal, in his Reform Act, of elected nomination officers, who would act as a buffer between the interests of riding associations and national party executives.
“I think we need to differentiate between two types of controversies,” Mr. Chong said. “There’s controversies that come up because of a hard fought nomination process between two or more candidates that are really duking it out to put forward their ideas and their views on what they would do if elected the party’s candidate. And then there are controversies that are the result of an unfair application of the rules, or a result of a lack of rules period, or a result of favouritism by the central party toward one candidate for nomination or another.”
The one is beneficial, he said. The other demoralizes and hurts the party’s electoral chances.
It is a rare case where a libel suit does any politician much good. In Ms. Innes’ case, for example, news broke Thursday of a lunch this week at Toronto’s venerable Le Sélect Bistro, at which Mr. Trudeau gave the nomination coveted by Ms. Innes to the closest thing Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has to a political nemesis, Adam Vaughan, a lefty councillor in the city core.
National PostMary Poppins is flying high at the Arts Center, Dec. 9 – 31, and it promises to be a not-to-be-missed event for the entire family. Bursting with dazzling stagecraft, stunning design, old-fashioned storytelling virtues and genuine charm, this Casey Colgan-directed musical brings our favorite enchanted nanny to life.
With plenty of surprises in store for audiences, this magical musical is choreographed by Nic Thompson, who most recently graced the Arts Center stage as Tulsa in the 2015 production of “Gypsy,” and notably performed in the ensemble of the “Mary Poppins” National Tour in 2011 and transferred to the Broadway Company in 2012 for the majority of that year.
Kathleen Bateson, president and CEO of the Arts Center, said, “This BroadwayWorld award-winning duo of Casey Colgan as director and Nic Thompson as choreographer, plus a talented cast of 31 and the stellar creative production team behind the show has combined to create a family-friendly experience that’s both breathtaking and heartwarming! We are proud to produce this regional premiere for the holiday season.”
Come see this roof-raising, toe-tapping, high-flying extravaganza, Dec. 9 – 31 at the Arts Center.
Performances are Tuesdays through Saturdays at 8 pm and Sundays at 2 and 7 pm. Tickets for the Dec. 9-10 preview performances are $49 for adults and $35 for children 5-15; Regular tickets for shows Dec. 11-31 are $59 for adults and $41 for children. Purchase tickets by calling (843) 686-3945 or visiting www.artshhi.com.
The Arts Center is located at 14 Shelter Cove Lane, Hilton Head Island, SC, near the entrance to Shelter Cove Harbour.> binwalk - Mer CH - app - EN53. 8.1.13_VSTARCAM.bin
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medical bills or having their health insurance deny payment or provide far less than they expected.
"Health care is too often unaffordable, hard to get when needed, and wasteful or poorly coordinated," said report co-author and Commonwealth Fund Senior Vice President Cathy Schoen in a statement.
The Commonwealth Fund is a nearly century-old organization which promotes greater access to health care. Their report is supportive of President Obama's health care overhaul, which Ryan and other Republicans hope to repeal or significantly reform.
The study did not specifically address the differences between private health insurance and coverage provided by the government - Medicaid for the poor and Medicare for seniors. But they did ask about cooperation between private and public payers. More than eight in ten want the government and private insurers to work together to negotiate prices with hospitals, doctors and drug companies.
Whether or not Ryan's plan will be good for the country, it seems Americans are worried sick about getting sick.
MORE HEALTH CARE COVERAGEExplainer: What's in the GOP budget plan?
Will 2010 Medicare ads come back to haunt GOP?
GOP budget asks little sacrifice of Baby BoomersAlthough the number of biological passport cases has plummeted since Roman Kreuziger’s legal battle saw the case against him dropped in June 2015, UCI President Brian Cookson has said the method of monitoring riders remains valid.
Speaking to CyclingTips this week, Cookson dismissed a question asking if the Kreuziger case had struck a fatal blow to the use of the passport as a sanctioning tool. He disagreed the suggestion that it was now just a method of pinpointing which riders to target test with more traditional anti-doping examinations, and revealed that cases are pending.
“I retain total confidence in the biological passport,” he said. “There is no change, so far as I am aware, in how it is being managed or used in terms of the disciplinary action. Obviously again this is something that takes time to go through cases.
“I know that anti-doping in general is being targeted on an intelligence-led basis, much more in recent times. And that is because the CADF has employed an intelligence officer and so on.
“All of those things are continually moving, they are continually monitored. The biological passport is something that is managed externally from the UCI as well and I have no reason to believe that it is anything other than fully acceptable and fully operational, as it always has been.
“At the end of the day, we work very closely with WADA on the biological passport and they are 100 percent committed and happy with the way it has been managed.”
While there has been a major falloff in the number of cases compared to when the passport was first launched in 2008, Cookson confirmed that riders are indeed facing possible disciplinary action.
“We have got two biological passport cases in the tribunal at this very moment,” he said. “Those cases are ongoing. I think there will be probably be news in the next month or so.” He didn’t state who the riders were.
Sceptics of the passport have suggested that, over time, big riders have become more sophisticated in managing their physiological parameters so as not to trigger suspicion. Cookson disagrees, attributing the drop in number of bio passport cases to a cleaner sport.
“I think the decrease is because it is a very effective tool in discouraging people from doing things that perhaps they were doing before its introduction,” he insisted.
“I think that people shouldn’t assume that because there is no high-profile or evident cases involving the biological passport, that it is not working. On the contrary, I would say that that demonstrates that it is working, very, very effectively.”
In CyclingTips’ full interview with Cookson, the UCI president talks about a range of topics, including his election rivals, goals if he is re-elected in September, the non-payment of salaries from last year’s world championships, technological fraud and ASO.Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) announced last week that he will run for a third term. (Matthew DeFour/Wisconsin State Journal/AP)
With Breanne Deppisch and Joanie Greve
THE BIG IDEA:
GREEN BAY, Wis. — Scott Walker hit political rock bottom in September 2015, soon after his presidential campaign flamed out. It was depressing to be one of the first candidates to drop out of a crowded Republican field that eventually winnowed to Donald Trump. But the Wisconsin governor’s first foray onto the national stage also took a serious toll on his standing back home. Less than a year after getting reelected, his job approval rating had fallen to 37 percent. Most Republicans in the state hadn’t wanted him to run in the first place, and many felt like he cared more about Iowa’s problems than Wisconsin’s.
After two years of mending fences, Walker has clawed his way back. His numbers have inched up each of the past four quarters, and his approval rating is now back in the mid-to-high 40s.
Last week I joined the governor at three events over three days as he launched his campaign for a third term. During an interview at a tailgate party across the street from Lambeau Field before the Green Bay Packers played in “Monday Night Football,” Walker talked about how much extra work he created for himself by running for president.
“I even had a sympathetic radio announcer ask me just tonight: how did you get reengaged? He said … he thought that I would never run for reelection again because I’d become a national figure and moved on,” Walker said. “You look at our numbers … and we didn’t go back up fast. We just systematically moved our way up — not through paid advertising … but through just reconnecting with the voters.”
As the GOP primaries continued without him from New Hampshire to South Carolina and beyond, Walker convened the first of more than 100 “listening sessions” in all 72 of Wisconsin’s counties. His advance team would set up two whiteboards in the front of every room. The governor would spend the first 20 minutes asking attendees to say something positive about the state, which he’d write down. Then he’d spend the next hour asking how Wisconsin could be better, filling up the second whiteboard. He tried to talk as little as possible.
The governor offered several concrete proposals in his budget around the themes that came up again and again, such as opioid abuse and broadband access, but he said the most important result of the sessions was conveying to Wisconsinites that he had not “moved on.” “I really felt like the listening sessions gave us a chance to reengage, for me to hear but also for the people of the state to see that, ‘This guy is committed and focused,’” Walker explained.
Walker boasted about how little time he’s spent in Madison, which Democrats attack him for but he believes keeps him connected with his constituents. “Almost every week, I am out Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday,” he said. “Usually, Wednesday is the only day I’m in the capitol. I love traveling the state.”
-- Walker ate a bratwurst in a supporter’s living room here as he reflected on the lessons of his presidential campaign and outlined his theory of the case for 2018. He lamented that he listened too much to the advice of D.C. consultants. His campaign got too hot, too fast and scaled up too quickly. He tried to appeal to every faction of the party and never picked a lane, which opened him up to criticism for flip-flopping.
“The biggest thing I learned there was that you need to be yourself,” Walker told me. “Not only personally, but campaign-wise, we had a really good thing going here. Particularly during the recall, we ran against some of the best that our opponents could throw at us. … One of the challenges in the presidential was that it’s really easy to get caught up in people saying, ‘You’ve got to do this, and you’ve got to do that,’ instead of just being who we were and running the campaign that we would normally run here.”
He noted that his 2018 team is stocked with staffers from Wisconsin who he trusts and have proven themselves on his previous campaigns, not outsiders. Earlier this year, Walker also finally finished paying off the debt that his presidential bid had saddled him with.
-- This is Walker’s sixth race in nine years. After getting reelected Milwaukee County Executive in 2008, he won the governorship in 2010. Then he survived the 2012 recall election, faced a competitive reelection fight in 2014 and almost immediately kicked off his presidential bid with a big Iowa speech in January 2015. Now a year out from Election Day, on his 50th birthday, he’s back on the trail again. “I know what to expect,” he joked.
The song that plays whenever he starts and finishes a campaign speech is “Centerfield,” which imagines a baseball player pleading with his coach to put him in the game. Walker both loves sports metaphors and being on the field.
Distilling his rationale for seeking a third term, he said: “It’s not like winning a championship and then you keep coming back and showing off your ring and not getting ready for the next season. We’re ready for the next season! … Elections are about the future, not the past. We lay out a synopsis of the successes we’ve had, but we also then pivot and say, ‘But there’s more to be done’ and then ‘Here’s the five key areas we’re focusing in on.’”
He argues that Wisconsin has “a reform dividend” now because of the battles early in his tenure, especially his victories against the public-sector employee unions and their contracts, which allows for increased spending on K-12 schools and other popular programs. “I am more optimistic about the future of this state than I’ve been at any point in my lifetime,” he said during his announcement speech at a manufacturing facility in Waukesha, a Milwaukee suburb. “But this is not going to be an easy campaign. … We’re going to have a tough election.”
-- Walker accepts that he’s a polarizing figure and says that’s the price of governing as an uncompromising conservative in a purple state. Basically no one in Wisconsin doesn’t already have a strong view of him. Because he’s so well defined, he’s somewhat insulated from President Trump. But if Democrats turn out in massive numbers to register their objections with what’s happening in Washington, as they did in last week’s off-year elections, Walker could be in serious trouble.
Since similar numbers of people love Walker as hate him, he’s got a high floor of support but also a relatively low ceiling. Former governor Tommy Thomson (R) won his third term in 1994 with 67 percent. Walker doesn’t even pretend to think that’s in the realm of possibility.
“We didn’t just do stuff on the margins. We did fundamental, transformational things that will really make a difference. … Some people don’t like that,” Walker said. “I’ve always felt that you’re able to govern whether you win with 50 plus one, or you win with 55 percent of 60 percent. Legally, you get to govern no matter what.”
President Trump hugs Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker at the White House in July after announcing the first U.S. assembly plant for electronics giant Foxconn will be built in Wisconsin. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
-- Walker has thrown in his lot with Trump. He endorsed Ted Cruz ahead of Wisconsin’s May 2016 primary, but then he rallied vocally behind Trump during a prime time speech at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
Asked to offer an appraisal of the president 10 months in, Walker said: “His actions speak louder than words. A lot of people get hung up on his words or his tweets. If you look at the actions from where I sit in Wisconsin, this is a solid administration with a good Cabinet.”
At the start of the year, his entree was White House chief of staff Reince Priebus. Now Vice President Pence is his main link. “There’s no denying that having Reince in there made a tremendous difference, but I talk to Mike Pence sometimes once or twice a week depending on the issue,” Walker said. “Mike’s just incredible.” He said he also talks with Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, another Wisconsinite, “probably about once every week or two.”
Trump was the first Republican presidential nominee to carry the Badger State since Ronald Reagan in 1984, but it was close. He won by one percentage point, or about 27,000 votes.
One underappreciated reason that the president won Wisconsin is because he got to ride the reverse coattails of Republican Sen. Ron Johnson’s reelection campaign. Johnson got about 100,000 more votes than Trump by outperforming him in 30 of 72 counties, an arc that stretches from the Milwaukee suburbs up toward Green Bay. Trump outperformed Johnson in smaller, rural counties in the northwest and southwestern parts of the state. Walker wants to meld those coalitions together, as he did during the recall.
Walker knows it’s essential next year to turn out the GOP base and run up the score bigly in rural areas, where Trump remains popular. He told me that Trump’s coalition is “very similar” to his. “If you look at the counties and the areas he won, it’s almost a parallel footprint,” he said. “I’ve got to stay strong in those areas. I can’t be complacent.”
He has capitalized on GOP majorities in the state legislature to advance his agenda in a way that Trump could only dream of. But he’s worried that every Republican on the ballot in the midterms will suffer if Congress doesn’t get its act together.
“They absolutely have to get tax reform done by the end of the year, and then I think that gives them the leverage to take another crack at repeal and replace (of Obamacare) by the early part of 2018,” he said. “They kind of went in reverse order. In retrospect, they probably should have done infrastructure first because it would have been the easiest to be bipartisan. They probably could have got some Democratic support on tax reform. In the end, they’d get no support on anything that repeals Obamacare.”
Walker notes that many people who disagree with him still see him as effective, in contrast to Washington. “We’ve actually done things, so when I make bold promises for the next term, I’ve got the benefit of people going, ‘Dang, he’ll do that. Because he’s done it before,’” he said.
Mahlon Mitchell (D), president of the Wisconsin firefighters union, announces his candidacy for governor on Monday in Madison, Wis. (Scott Bauer/AP)
-- Several Democrats who hope to benefit from Walker fatigue and Trump backlash are lining up to run against him. The head of the state firefighter’s union announced on Monday. He joins a field with no clear front-runner that includes the state schools superintendent, a Milwaukee businessman, a state representative from Eau Claire and a former state Democratic Party chairman. “A year ago, people were saying that Democrats didn’t have any candidates. Now they are saying we have too many,” said Melanie Conklin of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. “We are very happy to have so many quality candidates in the race. It shows that Walker is vulnerable.”
The Democratic primary is not until the middle of next August, so whoever emerges is likely to have depleted their resources and there is little time to pivot for the general election. Walker hopes to amass a huge war chest that allows him to carpet bomb his eventual opponent. This week he’s wrapping up a one-year rotation as chairman of the Republican Governors Association, which allowed him to cultivate major donors across the country. Another built-in advantage is that he’s a favorite of the billionaire Koch brothers. Walker is always feted at their seminars, and their network plans to invest heavily in the race.
To be sure, because Walker remains organized labor’s biggest boogeyman, unions and national Democrats will also go big here. “Voters in Wisconsin are getting tired of the Scott Walker show,” said the Democratic Governors' Association’s Jared Leopold. “Scott Walker has shown that he’s more interested in Scott Walker’s next job than in Wisconsinites’ next jobs. … He will be one of the most vulnerable incumbents in the country in 2018.”
-- At its heart, Walker’s comeback strategy is all about being present. The governor is good at raising big bucks, but he’s got no personal wealth. He comes from a modest background and never finished college. He eats ham and cheese sandwiches from a brown paper bag for lunch most days. This is part of his political identity. He routinely tweets pictures of the simple meal.
So it’s not too surprising that he was giddy when a friend at the tailgate party gave him a Green Bay jersey with his name emblazoned on the back and the number “50” to commemorate his birthday. Walker said he’s always wanted a customized jersey. In 2006, when the Packers traded Javon Walker to the Broncos, he found his jersey on clearance at a sporting good’s store for $9.99. He bought all the jerseys that were left and gave them to everyone in the Walker family as Christmas gifts.
It was dipping below 30 degrees in the backyard, and he was about to walk over to watch the game. Walker, in jeans, already had four layers on to keep warm, including a Packers jacket. “Now I’ll have another layer,” he exclaimed. Midwesterners talk a lot about layers, especially this time of year.
As he mingled, posing for selfies and talking about tapping beer kegs, his go-to small talk was about cold-weather gear. “I really like your gloves,” Walker told one gentleman. “I’ve got an extra pair if you need some,” the man replied earnestly. (This is also a very Midwestern thing to offer.)
At a rally the next morning outside Appleton, Walker had changed into a red University of Wisconsin windbreaker. He joked that he wasn’t wearing green because the Packers had lost the game.
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WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING:
A gunman opened fire at multiple locations across a small Northern California community on Tuesday, killing four people before he was slain by police. Chris Dignam reports.
-- Four people are dead after a gunman opened fire at multiple locations in Northern California, picking “random targets” before he was shot and killed by police. Mark Berman, Susan Svrluga and Ellie Silverman report: “This latest burst of gunfire to terrorize a community … unfolded without an immediate explanation, as the gunman spewed bullets across what police described as ‘a very widespread area.’ Ten people were injured and taken to area hospitals, including at least two children, one of whom was at the elementary school, police said. No children were among those killed…”
Still, authorities warned that Tuesday’s carnage could have been much worse. “When the gunman arrived at [the elementary school], he rammed the fence and marched onto the grounds wielding a semi-automatic rifle and wearing a vest embedded with additional clips … But when the gunman arrived, [authorities] said, he was unable to enter the classrooms, because school officials had heard gunfire and immediately locked down the premises.” Authorities said the attacker fired dozens of rounds at the school but eventually abandoned the premises because he couldn't get inside. Officials praised school officials who saved “countless lives and children.”
-- Zimbabwe's military took control of the country and its president, Robert Mugabe, in an apparent coup. Wendy Muperi and Paul Schemm report: The military made “a televised announcement saying it was ‘not a military takeover.’ Despite the assurances, the events bore all the hallmarks of a coup, with military vehicles stationed around the capital, the army taking over the television station and a uniformed general issuing a statement. The move by army commander Gen. Constantino Chiwenga came as the struggle over who will succeed the country’s increasingly frail 93-year-old leader came to a head. Mugabe has ruled since he led the country to independence from white minority rule in 1980. … The fate of Mugabe and his wife, 53-year-old Grace Mugabe, who increasingly looked set to succeed him, was unclear but they appear to be in military custody.”
GET SMART FAST:
The Pentagon has approved a gender-reassignment surgery for an active-duty service member, delivering the latest in several setbacks to Trump’s abruptly announced ban on transgender people serving in the military. (New York Times) China said that it would send an envoy to North Korea. The news comes after Trump leaned on Chinese President Xi Jinping during his Asia trip to pressure North Korea about its nuclear program. (AP) A North Korean soldier who ran across the DMZ is fighting for his life at a hospital in Seoul. The soldier, who is the first person to defect across the heavily patrolled border in a decade, suffered at least five gunshot wounds in his daring dash toward freedom. (Anna Fifield) Three members of the UCLA men’s basketball team are on their way back to the United States after they were arrested for shoplifting in China. Their release comes after Trump personally intervened on their behalf in a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. (Simon Denyer, David Nakamura and Tim Bontemps) Trump will not meet with American Nobel laureates this year, breaking with a nearly two decade-long tradition. It was unclear if some of the winners would have attended a White House event even if they were invited, however, and at least one scientist said he was “very relieved” when he learned there was no chance of a Trump encounter. (Anne Gearan) Forty-four state attorneys general requested that Congress repeal the law scaling back the DEA’s ability to pursue drug producers. Many of them hail from states hit hard by the opioid crisis. (Lenny Bernstein and Scott Higham) Experts warned the Senate Foreign Relations Committee against crafting legislation hampering Trump’s ability to approve the use of nuclear weapons. “I do not see a legislative solution today,” Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who has warned that Trump could put the country “on the path to World War III,” said. “That doesn’t mean, over the course of the next several months, one might not develop, but I don’t see it today.” (Karoun Demirjian) The House passed a $700 billion defense authorization bill. But the military will likely never see the full funding because Congress still has to pass a budget, which will likely provide a lot less for defense spending. (Karoun Demirjian) Australian voters approved same-sex marriage in a national postal survey. A little over 60 percent of voters supported the change, which parliament will now consider in a bill the prime minister has promised will become law by Christmas. (The Guardian) A new study found that Wall Street penalties dropped during Trump’s first year in office. The SEC sought the smallest amount of sanctions, $3.4 billion, since 2013. (Bloomberg) A fourth murder in Tampa’s Seminole Heights neighborhood has set off fears of a serial killer. Interim Tampa Police Chief Brian Dugan said of the investigation, “[R]ight now we are treating it as though it is related until we can rule otherwise.” (Jon Silman and Amy B Wang) New Yorker writer and legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin is writing a book about Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, allegations of collusion and Moscow’s role in the 2016 race. As Doubleday editor in chief Bill Thomas said: “This is the book that [Toobin] was born to write.” (New York Times) A Dallas prosecutor was fired this week after she drunkenly insulted and threatened her Uber driver — repeatedly calling him a “retard” and refusing to exit the vehicle in a now-viral video. When the driver threatened to summon police, she told him they would believe her side of the story and “f--- you up.” (Cleve R. Wootson Jr.) Anthony Scaramucci is pitching a book on his tenure as communications director to publishers. A source said of the book, “It’s about his time at the White House — all 10 days of it!” (Page Six)
THE TAX PLAN BECOMES A HEALTH-CARE PLAN:
-- Senate Republicans have added a repeal of Obamacare’s individual mandate to their tax plan, a big development that allows the GOP another shot at eliminating a big piece of the Affordable Care Act. But the decision could also cause major headaches for Republicans. Mike DeBonis and Damian Paletta report: “They also announced that the individual tax cuts in the plan would be made temporary, expiring at the end of 2025 to comply with Senate rules limiting the impact of legislation on the long-term deficit. A corporate tax cut, reducing the rate from 35 to 20 percent, would be left permanent. The changes introduce volatile variables into what was already a challenging political enterprise for Republicans. And it’s unclear whether they will help or hurt the bill’s chances.”
What would happen if the mandate, which forces Americans to buy health insurance or pay a fine, was repealed? Mike and Damian report that it “would free up more than $300 billion in government funding over the next decade that Republicans could use to finance their proposed tax cuts, but it would result in 13 million fewer people having health insurance, according to projections from the [CBO.] … The CBO has also projected that repealing the individual mandate would drive up insurance premiums for many Americans by roughly 10 percent.”
-- The government would lose money by repealing the mandate’s penalty, but it would save much more as millions of people went without insurance. Carolyn Y. Johnson explains: “[G]overnment spending on subsidies to help people afford coverage would plummet... The number of people without insurance would increase for two reasons. Some healthy people who are buying health insurance today because of the penalty would stop buying it. But that would have ripple effects: As fewer of those healthy people signed up for insurance, premiums would increase to pay for the health-care costs of a sicker group of people. Those rising premiums, in turn, would price more healthy people out of the market, creating a vicious cycle. The net effect is that the government will spend far less on subsidies.”
-- So, will the plan pass with the mandate repeal? Our colleagues add: “The attack on former president Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement is likely to rule out the already slim possibility of support from Democrats, and the prospect of adding millions to the ranks of the uninsured could trouble moderate Republicans who voted down previous repeal efforts. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) … said Tuesday that including the repeal measure ‘complicates’ the tax effort. But she suggested she might be able to support it if the Senate also passes a bipartisan bill to preserve other aspects of the [ACA]. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) … declined to say whether he would back a tax bill that included repeal.”
VIDEO: CEOs asked if they plan to increase their company's capital investments if the GOP's tax bill passes.
A few hands go up.
"Why aren't the other hands up?" Gary Cohn asks.#WSJCEOCouncil pic.twitter.com/TD2oAlN27S — Natalie Andrews (@nataliewsj) November 14, 2017
-- Not helping matters: Only a handful of top dogs at the Wall Street Journal's CEO Council meeting yesterday said they would use the savings from a corporate rate cut to invest more. Heather Long reports: “The president and his senior team [keep] saying that the tax plan would unleash business investment in the United States — new factories, more equipment and more jobs. But, perhaps as the informal poll suggested, there are reasons to be doubtful that a great business investment boom would materialize. … A Bank of America-Merrill Lynch survey this summer asked over 300 executives at major U.S. corporations what they would do after a ‘tax holiday’ that would allow them to bring back money held overseas at a low tax rate. The No. 1 response? Pay down debt. … Actual investments in new factories and more research were low on the list of plans for how to spend extra money.”
-- Over in the House, the mandate repeal isn't yet a part of the package, which is expected to get a vote on Thursday. Mike DeBonis writes the fate of the measure will come down to California Republicans: “The 14 House Republicans representing California districts are under intense pressure from constituents, local elected officials and, in many cases, prospective Democratic opponents over provisions that could raise taxes for many residents of the high-tax, high-cost-of-living state. But so far, only one — San Diego-area Rep. Darrell Issa — has come out against the bill as written; the others have either declared their support or say they are still reviewing the bill ahead of the House vote tentatively scheduled for Thursday. … The support of California Republicans is a big reason GOP leaders feel confident that they will pass the tax bill this week, building momentum for the legislation and increasing pressure on the Senate to pass a bill of its own.”
THERE'S A BEAR IN THE WOODS:
-- Jeff Sessions testified before lawmakers on Capitol Hill that he has “always told the truth” in describing his knowledge of contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia — even while acknowledging that he “now recalls” a March 31 meeting in which former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos offered to help broker a meeting between Trump and Vladimir Putin.
Matt Zapotosky and Sari Horwitz report: “'I do now recall the March 2016 meeting at Trump hotel that Mr. Papadopoulos attended, but I have no clear recollection of the details of what he [said],’ Sessions said. ‘After reading his account, and to the best of my recollection, I believe that I wanted to make clear to him that he was not authorized to represent the campaign with the Russian government, or any other foreign government … But I did not recall this event, which occurred 18 months before my testimony of a few weeks ago, and I would gladly have reported it had I remembered it[.]'” Later, Sessions clarified that he recalled Papadopoulos making “some comment” about a Trump-Putin meeting, and that he “pushed back.”
“Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) pressed Sessions on his shifting memories, noting that he had previously criticized [Hillary] Clinton for her lack of recall during an FBI interview and said intentionally forgetting might be criminal. ‘Do you still believe that the intentional failure to remember can constitute a criminal act?’ Jeffries asked. ‘If it’s an act to deceive, yes,’ Sessions responded.”
-- Sessions also addressed the idea of a second special counsel, saying the Justice Department would need a “factual basis” to investigate a medley of concerns raised by conservatives, including a 2010 uranium company deal and various Clinton Foundation dealings. “‘Looks like’ is not enough basis to appoint a special counsel,’ he told Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) after Jordan listed a number of things he thinks Democrats did during the 2016 presidential campaign that he thought looked fishy[.] " (Amber Phillips)
-- Still, the possibility of a second special counsel has alarmed current and former department officials, who fear such a move could further politicize the DOJ. Devlin Barrett reports: “Such an appointment could give [Trump] and Republicans a political counterweight to the ongoing work of [Robert Mueller] … [and] has raised fresh questions about the independence of the Justice Department in the Trump administration. Also unclear [was] how Sessions might appoint such a special counsel for some of the issues, given that he has recused himself from investigative matters involving the 2016 campaign[.]”
“To have the winning side exploring the possibility of prosecuting the losing side in an election — it’s un-American, and it’s grotesque,” said John Danforth, a former special counsel … "The proliferation of special counsels in a political setting is very, very bad.”
said John Danforth, a former special counsel … "The proliferation of special counsels in a political setting is very, very bad.” Former deputy special counsel Peter R. Zeidenberg said “the best-case scenario” is that Sessions is trying simply to mollify an angry Trump and doesn't intend to follow through. If one is appointed to probe Clinton matters, “I think the vast majority of people at DOJ would be completely disgusted and demoralized by it,’’ said Zeidenberg. “They don’t like feeling that they are political tools to be used by the president.’’
-- A1 of the New York Times: “‘Lock Her Up’ Becomes More Than a Slogan,” by Peter Baker: “[I]f [Sessions] or his deputy ultimately does authorize a new investigation of Mrs. Clinton, it would shatter post-Watergate norms intended to prevent presidents from using law enforcement agencies against political rivals. … Democrats vividly recall Mr. Trump on the campaign trail vowing to prosecute Mrs. Clinton if he won. ‘It was alarming enough to chant “lock her up” at a campaign rally,’ said Brian Fallon, who was Mrs. Clinton’s campaign spokesman. ‘It is another thing entirely to try to weaponize the Justice Department in order to actually carry it out.’ But conservatives said Mrs. Clinton should not be immune from scrutiny as a special counsel … investigates Russia’s interference in last year’s election and any connections to Mr. Trump’s campaign.”
-- Sessions also addressed the credibility of WikiLeaks in the wake of revelations that Donald Trump Jr. communicated with the organization during the campaign:
"I'm not a fan of Wikileaks," AG Jeff Sessions says, adding he's "not able to make a judgment" on Donald Trump Jr.'s newly-revealed contacts pic.twitter.com/Q183C8qyMD — ABC News (@ABC) November 14, 2017
-- During Sessions’s hearing, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) presented the ultimate in charts to try to document connections between Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, and the sale of Uranium One --- the mining company sold to the Russian energy company in a deal the GOP now wants investigated.
The visual aid was pretty confusing, Philip Bump writes: “If it looks complicated, that’s clearly by design. There are any number of indicators that it was made to be confusing, including the needlessly long lines connecting the various items on the chart, the random assignation of shapes and colors, and, most obviously, the inclusion of things that clearly have nothing to do with the issue at hand. … If you look at this closely, you notice something interesting: There aren’t many connections between Russia and Uranium One. That includes connections with Rosenstein and Mueller, the ostensible point of the chart, per Gohmert. In fact, this is the only connection involving Rosenstein or Mueller directly[.]”
From this Obama DOJ spokesman:
Oh my. Gohmert has gone full Carrie Mathison. Someone please get him help. https://t.co/CyJu1LA0X9 — Matthew Miller (@matthewamiller) November 14, 2017
-- The FBI is reportedly investigating 60 money transfers from the Russian foreign ministry to its embassies, many of which included the note “to finance election campaign of 2016.” BuzzFeed News’s Jason Leopold, Anthony Cormier and Jessica Garrison report: “The transactions, which moved through Citibank accounts and totaled more than $380,000, each came from the Russian foreign ministry and most contained a memo line referencing the financing of the 2016 election. The money wound up at Russian embassies in almost 60 countries from Afghanistan to Nigeria between Aug. 3 and Sept. 20, 2016. It is not clear how the funds were used. … The FBI was first made aware of the suspicious transactions two months ago. Two FBI sources said that FBI legal attaches in other countries are now investigating whether the money may have been used for the US presidential election and, if so, how.”
But, but, but: Russia held its own election last year for its legislative body. Russian officials responded to the BuzzFeed report after it was published: “The foreign ministry noted that it had previously announced that it would have 364 polling stations in 145 countries in order for Russians living overseas to cast ballots in a parliamentary election held September 18. The Russian embassy added, ‘this attempt to artificially draw Russia and the Embassy to the internal US disagreements has failed in the most shameful manner.’”
-- British Prime Minister Theresa May called out Russia’s election meddling and disinformation campaigns. William Booth reports: “May on Monday night charged Vladimir Putin’s Russia with attempting to ‘undermine free societies’ and ‘sow discord’ in Britain and the West by ‘weaponizing information’ and ‘deploying its state-run media organizations to plant fake stories.’ ‘So I have a very simple message for Russia. We know what you are doing. And you will not succeed,' May said.”
MOORE FALLOUT:
-- Support for Roy Moore’s Senate campaign continues to erode — and not just from establishment Republicans. (But they’re still running away from him, too.)
-- Et tu, Hannity? Fox News’s Sean Hannity told viewers last night that Moore had “24 hours” to come up with a valid explanation for the accusations. “For me, the judge has 24 hours,” Hannity said. “You must immediately and fully come up with a satisfactory explanation for your inconsistencies that I just showed.” Hannity added, “If you can't do this, then Judge Moore needs to get out of this race.” (Politico)
-- Steve Bannon is reportedly weighing ditching Moore after going all in on his primary bid. The Daily Beast’s Lachlan Markay and Asawin Suebsaeng report: “[O]ver the past few days, Bannon has begun privately taking the temperature of those in his inner circle to see what they think of the Moore allegations and to get their sense of how to proceed[.] … Late last week, the Breitbart chairman said, ‘I will put him in a grave myself,’ if he determines that Moore was lying to him about the numerous accusations, a source close to Bannon relayed. Bannon emphasized, to both friends and colleagues, that he’s uncomfortable with the charges of sexual harassment and child molestation that have been leveled at Moore. But he wasn’t convinced that the initial flood of on-record testimony, starting with the first Washington Post story last week, was anything more than a hit job. And he believes it may have been planted by #NeverTrump operatives to put the screws to Moore’s campaign.”
-- The RNC has withdrawn its support. It pulled out of a joint fundraising agreement with Moore and canceled a field program it had organized. (Politico)
-- Paul Ryan agreed that Moore should “step aside.” “Number one, these allegations are credible,” Ryan said. “Number two, if he cares about the values and people he claims to care about, then he should step aside.” (Sean Sullivan, Michael Scherer and Paul Kane)
-- At his hearing, Jeff Sessions told lawmakers he had “no reason to doubt” the women accusing Moore. (Sean Sullivan, Michael Scherer and Paul Kane)
-- Despite all of this, Moore vowed to keep the fight going, even threatening Mitch McConnell’s job:
The good people of Alabama, not the Washington elite who wallow in the swamp, will decide this election! #DitchMitch — Judge Roy Moore (@MooreSenate) November 14,
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Saw Massacre to A Nightmare on Elm Street. But Dario Argento’s tale of witches and mayhem — widely regarded as one of the greatest horror films ever made — would make a notable addition to the company’s catalog.
“We were speaking to a foreign licensor about other films,” says May, who runs Synapse with his business partner Jerry Chandler. “We were just discussing what was available. You know, ‘Anything else? Any Italian movies or anything like that?’ And the person said, ‘You know, the remake of Suspiria‘ — which at the time was going to be helmed by David Gordon Green — ‘well, the studio’s not moving forward with it and I think the owners of the film got the movie back. We can check for you.’ Sure enough, a few days later we ended up landing Suspiria. It was amazing for that to fall into our lap.”
May’s amazement turned to horror when he saw the condition of the movie’s materials.
“The negative was in such poor shape,” he says. “The one thing that was shocking to us was the fingerprints that were on the splices in the original negative. I mean, very clear fingerprints, which were incredibly frustrating. You know, nobody wants to watch Suspiria with fingerprints!”
Indeed, Suspiria is famous for being not just a great horror movie, but one of the genre’s most beautiful and visually striking films, as May well knew.
“My first vivid vivid memory of seeing Suspiria was on laser disc, back in the day,” he says. “I thought it was amazing. On the widescreen image of the laser disc, you could see that the way it was shot was a very deliberate art design. It was a work of art. Every frame, every scene of Suspiria is almost like a painting. Since then, I’ve always been fascinated by Suspiria. When I got into this business, after college, it was always on my short-list of films that I always wanted to do. Because it affected me so much.”
Determined to do justice to the film, May enlisted the help of Suspiria cinematographer, Luciano Tovoli, whose other credits include Michelangelo Antonioni’s Jack Nicholson-starring The Passenger and Julie Taymor’s Shakespeare adaptation, Titus.
“Luciano knew exactly how the movie was supposed to look, even 40 years later,” says May. “He had very exacting specifications and notes for specific scenes. His memory of the film was incredibly vivid.”
The restoration process took much longer than May had initially anticipated.
“We actually spent just about one year digitally restoring Suspiria in Poland,” he says. “And the fellow that did the restoration is now working in Los Angeles. So, he went from Poland to Los Angeles in the time it took us to get Suspiria finished!”
Work on the restoration finally ended earlier this year.
“I actually saw it on my birthday, July 19, at a screening room at Warner Bros.,” says May. “It was amazing. The color and the sound are better than ever. I had never been more proud my own work. It was like, ‘Oh my god, I actually did this! This is crazy!'”
A limited edition steelbook of the restored Suspiria, with two Blu-rays, a soundtrack CD, and booklet, is now available to pre-order at the Synapse website, where you will also find a schedule of the film’s screenings. May urges fans to see the film in a theater, if possible, not least to hear the movie’s soundtrack, by Italian band Goblin, in its full, eardrum-battering glory.
“The screenings that are happening across the country, thanks to 20th Century Fox, are a real 4K DCP in the real four-channel surround,” says May. “The Goblin soundtrack is incredible in four-channel surround. Certain beats appear in the front, and then they go into the back, and back to the front again, and that was all deliberately mixed that way. The soundtrack is overwhelming. At one screening I attended recently somebody said, ‘Well, I’m deaf now, but that was awesome!’ I was, like, ‘Great! I did my job!”
Watch a vintage and unrestored — though still somewhat disturbing — trailer for Suspiria below and an exclusive clip from Synapse’s new version, above.
You can now pre-order the steelbook version of the restored Suspiria at the Synapse Films website.This article is about the US TV series. For the Original UK Show, see The Inbetweeners. For other uses, see Inbetweeners
The Inbetweeners is an American television sitcom developed by Brad Copeland for MTV. The show stars Joey Pollari, Bubba Lewis, Mark L. Young, Zack Pearlman, Alex Frnka and Brett Gelman. The show is a remake of the original UK series of the same name written and created by Damon Beesley and Iain Morris, who served as executive producers alongside Copeland, Aaron Kaplan and Lauren Corra. It ran on MTV from August 20, to November 5, 2012.
On November 28, 2012, the series was canceled after one season.[1]
Main cast [ edit ]
Production [ edit ]
After an unsuccessful attempt by ABC to create an American version of The Inbetweeners in 2008,[2] MTV announced in late September 2010 that it had hired noted comedy writer Brad Copeland (known for writing on American comedies such as Arrested Development and My Name Is Earl) to write the script for an American Inbetweeners series.[3] Taika Waititi was chosen to direct the pilot.[4]
On March 31, 2011, MTV officially announced that it had picked-up The Inbetweeners for an additional eleven episodes, creating a twelve-episode first season. Copeland served as executive producer and showrunner.[4]
Late November 2012 brought the news that MTV had decided not to go forward with a second season of the series.[1] MTV said to The Wrap, "While we won't be moving forward with another season of The Inbetweeners, we enjoyed working with the show's creators and such a talented, funny cast."[5]
The American version is extremely unpopular with viewers from the UK, with many newspapers reporting that it had 'flopped'.[6] It was listed by Metro as one of the 'Top 10 English comedies whose US remakes have flopped'.[7]
Episodes [ edit ]
Film adaptation [ edit ]
On July 3, 2012, it was announced that a U.S. adaptation of The Inbetweeners Movie is to be made. Morris and Beesley were approached by Paramount Pictures to lead the project.[20] It is unknown if the film will still be made after the cancellation of the series itself. However, this highly unlikely.
On August 22, 2013, Jim Field Smith has been revealed to be directing the American adaptation of the British film, now titled Virgins America. Whether Morris and Beesley have involvement with the project is unknown.[21]Image copyright Thinkstock
Mobile phone operator EE is aiming to bring 4G to 95% of the UK landmass by 2020 as well as relocating its customer services to the UK and Ireland.
In 2015, the firm was fined £1m ($1.4m) by communications watchdog Ofcom over customer service failings.
The network will also switch on high-speed 4G in the Shetland Islands and the Isles of Scilly this week.
Chief Executive Marc Allera told the BBC customers expected to be able to access the internet wherever they were.
Currently, 4G coverage is measured as a percentage of the population rather than geographically.
That means mobile networks typically focus on areas where lots of people live rather than extending geographical reach of their services.
"The Isles of Scilly have 2,000 residents but 200,000 visitors," said Mr Allera.
"Increasingly, the expectations from customers are that they can get access to the internet wherever they go."
BT-owned EE's ambitions for 4G go beyond the government's target for operators, which is to provide voice and text coverage to only 90% of UK landmass by the end of 2017.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Currently coverage is worked out as a percentage of the UK population that can access it
"I don't believe as an industry we should say a beach is covered unless it has 4G coverage," said Mr Allera.
'Ransom rates'
This demand for 4G may help mobile networks tackle public opposition to infrastructure such as transmitter masts required to enable it, he added.
"The barriers we need to overcome are around how fast and easy we can get access to these sites [where the masts can be built], and also how we ensure we don't have landlords who can charge ransom rates which make it prohibitive for us to put in a solution," he said.
"We're working on those reforms but we can't do this by ourselves."
EE is working with the government to tackle the issue, Mr Allera said.
Ovum analyst Matthew Howett said reforms were "vital" for the success of the strategy.
"Unless the government takes a lead on ensuring fair and reasonable access and site rentals, EE's hopes for 95% coverage will be fraught with difficulty," he said.
UK call centres
EE said it also aimed to bring all its customer services operations back to the UK and Ireland from overseas by the end of 2016.
"It's a big investment," said Marc Allera.
"People look at off-shoring as reducing costs but when you look at the added cost of unhappy customers... actually this isn't going to be an enormous incremental cost."
He declined to say whether customers would face price rises as a result but said that the competitiveness of the market would "ensure we focus on value for money".The Best Green and Energy Efficient Cars For 2016
It’s hard to think of an automotive segment that’s seen more investment and faster growth than energy-efficient green cars. Whether using a pure battery electric drivetrain or a plug-in hybrid design, eco-friendly automobiles are fighting to be part of the mainstream, Although issues such as range, affordability, and charging infrastructure still loom large when discussing green cars,
the technology behind these models is impressive – and shows no signs of slowing down.
Check out our picks for the best green and energy efficient cars for 2016.
1. 2016 Tesla Model S
The Brief: Tesla has been the darling of the electric car scene, proving that a start-up can bring next-generation battery technology to market while simultaneously offering a rigorous program of software and hardware upgrades over the life of its primary vehicle, the Model S.
The Tech: The scary-fast Tesla Model S P90D features an electric motor at both the front and rear axles along with a 90-kWh battery pack, giving the all-wheel drive luxury sedan 762 horsepower to play with. Even more important than its sub-three-second 0-60-mph time is its 250 miles of driving on a full charge. Even the entry-level P70 edition of the Model S comes close to delivering the same range, despite its more modest 328 horsepower, single-motor design.
The Why: With a starting price of $84k, the Tesla Model S P70 has shaken up the world of high-end sedans. The fact that it’s done so on battery power alone makes it that much more notable.
2. 2016 Chevrolet Volt
The Brief: The second-generation of GM’s extended-range hybrid aims to dial back the science project aspect of the original Chevrolet Volt and make it feel like more of a ‘normal’ car. The effort has been successful: the Volt drives better, rides more comfortably, and offers more advanced features than its predecessor, all while delivering even better efficiency than it did before.
The Tech: For the redesign, Chevrolet upgraded the 2016 Volt’s gasoline engine to a lighter, direct-injected, 1.5-liter four-cylinder unit capable of producing 101 horsepower. Next, engineers also took weight out of the T-shaped battery in the car’s floor while simultaneously boosting its capacity to 18.4 kWh (up from 17.1 kWh), allowing for an all-electric range of 50 miles. A pair of electric motors continue to provide primary motivation for the car, but the units are all-new, and offer 149 horses and 294 lb-ft of torque.
The Why: Most commuters will never see the inside of a gas station thanks to the 2016 Chevrolet Volt’s 50 miles of EV range, but the 370 miles of gas generator driving available for longer trips makes it one of the most practical green cars on the market.
3. 2016 Toyota Prius
The Brief: The 2016 Toyota Prius is the latest version of the car that for thousands of drivers has become the go-to hybrid model. The compact hatchback boasts brand-new styling, a revised gasoline/electric hybrid setup, and outstanding fuel mileage of 54-mpg in city driving and 50-mpg on the highway.
The Tech: Although not quite as frugal as the model it replaces, the new Toyota Prius drivetrain is a better drive in real-world situations than ever before. It consists of a 1.8-liter, four-cylinder gas engine working together with a single electric motor that for the very first time is linked to a lithium-ion battery pack. 121 total system horsepower are 13 less than what was found in 2015, but a focus on low-end torque keeps performance comparable in a straight line. It’s also worth pointing out that the new motor is lighter and smaller. You can still get the old nickel-metal hydride battery on low-spec Prius models, if you’re seeking to save some money and gain a four extra miles per gallon in combined driving – look for the ‘Eco’ badge.
The Why: For a huge number of hybrid shoppers, the Toyota Prius is the only green vehicle they would ever consider owning. The 2016 redesign does little to shake that faith.
4. 2016 BMW i3
The Brief: BMW decided it could build a pure electric car that was in keeping with its fun-to-drive image. Enter the 2016 BMW i3, proof that entertaining performance doesn’t have to be a Tesla-sized sledgehammer in the electric car world. The subcompact i3 trades on its relatively lightweight chassis, nimble handling, and rear-wheel drive layout to deliver a unique EV experience.
The Tech: The BMW i3 is based around a 22 kWh lithium-ion battery pack built into the hatchback’s floor, and its rear-mounted electric motor can be counted on to generate 170 horsepower and 184 lb-ft of torque. Maximum range is listed at 81 miles, but if that’s not enough you can install a tiny two-cylinder gasoline range extender that almost doubles the car’s total driving distance. There’s a price to pay, however: the weight of the genny saps nine miles off of the BMW’s electric-only range.
The Why: Good luck finding another rear-wheel drive EV out there at the BMW i3’s $42,000 price point. The small, dynamic i3 is an outlier that proves the future of electric-only cars looks bright once more major automakers get on-board.
5. 2017 Chevrolet Bolt
The Brief: The 2017 Chevrolet Bolt is an EV for the people. The promise of a driving range of more than 200 miles at a price that should hover around $30,000 after federal and state tax incentives makes the Bolt the game-changing mass-market electric car we’ve been waiting for.
The Tech: Unlike its Volt cousin, the subcompact Bolt features a single 200 horsepower electric motor. Also capable of producing 266 lb-ft of torque, it’s hitched to a 60 kWh lithium-ion battery that is DC fast charge-friendly, which means 90 miles of range after a mere half-hour on the cord. You can also top-up the Bolt on 120-volt and 240-volt chargers, and top speed for the EV is listed at 91-mph.
The Why: The Chevrolet Bolt is an affordable all-electric green car that has outstanding real-world range and capability. There’s nothing like it on the market – and it’s slated to hit showrooms later in 2016.
6. 2017 Ford Focus Electric
The Brief: The 2016 Ford Focus Electric is the forgotten EV, a battery-powered drivetrain locked inside a chassis that’s more engaging to drive than many of its more popular rivals. It lacks the wow factor of a huge range (100 miles per charge for the upcoming model year), but it’s still a respectable choice that’s inexpensive to buy at under $30,000.
The Tech: The Ford Focus Electric has been around for quite a while, and the Blue Oval is being cagey about the details that are coming with the hatchback’s 2017 update. It’s reasonable to suspect a new lithium-ion battery, and the automaker has announced DC fast charger compatibility along with a big improvement for the Focus Electric’s 240-volt charge time.
The Why: It’s worth waiting for the revamped Focus Electric, which should help improve sales for the EV – especially if pricing continues to fall as it has over the course of the past several years.
7. 2016 Nissan Leaf
The Brief: The Nissan Leaf was the first electric car that legitimately combined a usable battery range with an affordable price tag. It’s reigned over the subcompact EV landscape for so long that it’s easy to forget Nissan has been slowly improving the Leaf with each passing year.
The Tech: For 2016 the Nissan Leaf’s single-charge range has leapt by 23 miles to stand at 107 miles total thanks to a 30 kWh lithium-ion battery that is roughly 25 percent larger than the unit it replaces (entry-level Leaf models are still equipped with the 24 kWh battery). The refreshed version of the Leaf is also DC fast charger capable, and it takes a mere 30 minutes to reach 80 percent full on an empty power pack.
The Why: Although its interior might be dated and its styling hasn’t really moved the needle much since it was introduced, the Nissan Leaf’s recent range and charging rate improvements keep it in the EV conversation for budget-conscious buyers. Base models cost just over $29k, while the SV and SL trims that feature the bigger battery see their prices jump to $34,200 and $36,790, respectively, before federal and state incentives.
8. 2017 Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid
The Brief: Chrysler is ditching the Town & Country nameplate in favor of the Pacifica, an all-new minivan that just happens to feature a plug-in hybrid model. The Pacifica Hybrid brings electrification to the minivan market for the very first time, with an estimated 80 MPGe rating in the cards.
The Tech: Even though ‘plug-in’ is not in the name, rest assured that you can hook the Pacifica Hybrid to a wall socket to fill up its 16 kWh battery should the need arise. There are 30 miles of electric driving to be had in the Chrysler van – although that number will likely drop with a full load of passengers – and it’ll take two hours to charge on a 240-volt connection. Total system power sits in the 250 pony range, and you’ll have to forgo the brand’s Stow ‘n Go seats in the Hybrid model because the power pack sits directly under the floor.
The Why: It’s the only plug-in minivan, ever. It’s also an example of an automaker using thinking outside the box to update ‘the box’ and give us a green twist on the family hauler concept.
9. 2016 Chevrolet Spark EV
The Brief: The 2016 Chevrolet Spark EV manages to best the performance of its gas-only counterpart, which is a rare achievement in the green car universe. The tiny subcompact hatchback leverages the torque of its electric motor to offer fun driving at a low price.
The Tech: The Chevrolet Spark EV keeps things simple with a 19 kWh lithium-ion battery pack that allows for an 82-mile range. A single electric motor churns out 130 horsepower and a hefty 400 lb-ft of torque, which is a big boost over the base gas-only edition of the car – enough to transform the Spark’s driving experience from mild to eyebrow-raising, slicing close to four seconds off of its sprint to 60-mph. Charging times are a bit long – seven hours to full on a 240-volt outlet – unless you can find a DC fast charger, which whittles the wait down to a mere 20 minutes for 80 percent.
The Why: You can’t easily buy the Spark EV everywhere, but its before-incentives starting price of $25k is a definite bargain – and it’s likely to get that much cheaper to purchase once the Bolt arrives on the scene and takes its place in Chevy’s electric line-up.
10. 2016 Volkswagen e-Golf
The Brief: The 2016 Volkswagen e-Golf takes everything you love about VW’s popular, practical hatchback, and electrifies it. The e-Golf feels very much like a traditional car in normal driving, which is high praise for an EV, and it doesn’t inflate its window sticker all that much in the process (as compared to other similarly-sized battery-powered rivals). In fact, there’s a $4,500 discount on the 2016 model as compared to the year before, bringing the MSRP down below the $30k mark.
The Tech: If you stick with the base Volkswagen e-Golf, then be aware that you’re sacrificing DC fast charge capability and looking at slower 240-volt charging times as well (with a 3.6 kW charger versus a 7.2 kW unit on more expensive models). 83 miles of driving range are possible on a full 24.2 kWh lithium-ion battery, and output from the single electric motor is rated at 115 horses and 199 lb-ft of torque.
The Why: If you don’t need the 200-mile range of the upcoming Bolt and need an EV right now, then the Volkswagen e-Golf is a commendable electric interpretation of one of the most popular hatchbacks on the market.
Photo Credit: ShutterstockWe need less Cinema de Dudebro. Photo: Virginia Sherwood/USA Network
Every program has a bug. Every person has a bug. Every TV show has a bug. The most important thing about bug-hunting, Mr. Robot tells us, is not locating and dealing with the bug, but understanding the conditions that allowed the bug to exist. A bug is a message, sometimes a distress signal, embedded within the program, and it exists in order to be discovered, so that the reasons for its existence can be understood.
What’s Mr. Robot’s bug? I ask because it has one, and it’s preventing the program (how convenient for this review that the word program is a synonym for show!) from functioning at its fullest artistic potential. I admire this show. I am engrossed in it. I might continue watching it even if it were tedious or stupid, for its committed performances, its surprising but always spot-on song choices (Neil Diamond in the pilot sealed my love for the series), Tim Ives’s geometrically off-center compositions, Mac Quayle’s retro ’80s-synth score, and the dense, playful sound design. (If you can watch Mr. Robot with headphones on, you absolutely should.) But there’s something not quite there about it, and it’s frustrating.
I suspect the bug is Mr. Robot himself — a character initially presented as a pontificating, hot-tempered revolutionary played by Christian Slater, a V-type (as in V for Vendetta) then revealed by our humble narrator, Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek), to be a hallucinated vision of the now-dead father who pushed him out of a window as a kid. This series about a computer hacker/revolutionary/mentally ill man-child is pretty openly catering to aficionados of Cinema de Dudebro, referencing a number of films and filmmakers that absolutely pass muster as art while also just happening to look and sound frickin’ awesome when you put them up on that 57-inch plasma screen with surround sound that hangs on a wall opposite your black leather couch. (Insulting, sure — but also autobiographical. I still have the TV, but a girlfriend convinced me to sell the couch.) Taxi Driver, American Psycho, The Matrix, the complete works of Stanley Kubrick and David Fincher — you name it, Mr. Robot probably carries it deep within its aesthetic DNA, along with the original Star Wars trilogy, which it exuberantly embraces in episodes eight and nine, when we learn that Elliot’s fellow hacker Darlene (Carly Chaikin) is his sister and Mr. Robot is their father. Creator Sam Esmail is so fluent in this core group of Pop Art classics that he can reference them in a somewhat casual, off-kilter way, as when the opening scene of the second episode ends with a music cue from Kubrick’s 1975 period drama Barry Lyndon, or when episode nine — the one where Elliot learns that he’s been taking orders from a psychic manifestation of his dead father this whole time, à la Fight Club’s Tyler Durden and Elvis in True Romance, which starred Slater — plays the hero off with a tenderhearted acoustic piano cover of the Pixies’ “Where Is My Mind,” the curtain-closer from Fight Club.
Here’s the thing, though: As much fun as this sort of thing is, and as much comfort and joy as it might give “fan theory” junkies who see movies mainly as puzzles to be solved and conquered rather than engaged with as emotional and aesthetic objects, I could not be less interested in the outward manifestations of Elliot’s breakdown and denial — not because I don’t care about Elliot (I do care very much, mainly because of the hilariously dry narration and Malek’s uniquely tortured performance), but because all this is the least original thing about Mr. Robot.
The series is brilliantly executed, for the most part. It might be the second-most voluptuous feast for the senses to air on American television this year, after Hannibal. I get a chill anticipating which frame they’ll emblazon with the show’s 1980s arcade-game logo (I am always surprised and delighted), and I look forward to all the little flourishes, visual, aural, and musical, that Esmail and his directors (including Jim McKay, an unsung hero of American independent film) smuggle into each scene — such as how, in that long shot of the Coney Island pier where Elliot is “pushed,” the top rail is positioned with the frame so that it perfectly aligns with the waterline, turning the whole stretch of railing into a grid of skinny horizontal azure rectangles.
But none of this is as fascinating, as original, as urgent, as necessary, as the show’s casual critique of what modern society has become. What initially captivated me about Mr. Robot was its vision of life, which was not new or especially deep, but nonetheless bracing because it was being presented on a major commercial cable channel, in an offhand way that just seemed to assume that large numbers of people would shake their heads and think, Yes, this is right, this is what life is like; this series understands my disquiet. Elliot is the first network protagonist to talk about the “invisible hand” of capitalism forcing people into slots and creating “prisons of debt” (an idea developed with vastly more moral urgency here than in Fight Club, the film that Esmail’s “erase all debt” plotline comes from). Although Malek’s character has a nondescript, Waspy name, his very presence diversifies commercial TV because his chiseled Egyptian-American face and gigantic Albert Einstein eyes make a statement that’s much more powerful than the words that appear on the character’s work badge (Esmail is Egyptian-American, too). And the fact that his uniform — his superhero outfit, practically — is a black hoodie sends a statement as well. I can’t think of the last American TV drama that was so defiantly rooted in the perspective of a cultural and psychological outsider — somebody who was participating in the circus of social media and late capitalism and virtual existence not because he enjoyed it but because he was conditioned to participate by virtue of having been born into it, and knew this, and resented it. “Our choices were premade for us a long time ago,” he says. I like how the show sees the outsider in almost every character and occasionally feels for the very worst of them — even Shayla’s drug dealer and rapist, Fernando Vera (Elliot Villar), whose every “bro” lands like the promise of a punch (“People who are violent get that way because they can’t communicate,” Mr. Robot reminds Elliot); and Martin Wallström’s hateful scumbag one-percenter Tyrell Wellick, who rehearses his “Please hire me as CTO” speech over and over before approaching the board, not just because he’s nervous but because English is not his first language. Having BD Wong’s Whiterose turn out to be a transgender character was movingly right, and would have resonated with all the show’s other nods to outsiderdom even if it hadn’t closed with Whiterose in cis male drag mode at a fat-cat party post-meltdown, listening to a harpist play “Nearer My God to Thee” (the final encore from the Titanic’s deck band) and talking about Nero fiddling and Rome burning.
I have no idea how the show’s cultural and technological jokes and references will date (probably quickly, and badly; that’s how this sort of thing tends to go), but I love them. They’re as precise and hilarious as the ones on HBO’s Silicon Valley, and much more despairing because Mr. Robot is a drama about alienation and psychosis and rebellion rather than a comedy about callow young dudes trying to get rich. Ben Parker (Ollie Parker), cheating boyfriend of Elliot’s childhood-trauma buddy Angela (Portia Doubleday), spits out cringe-inducing, in-crowd locutions like a ketchup dispenser (“We have this Groupon for four at Morton’s”; “I’ll tweet, but only if I like it”).
This is the true heart of the show: the continual tug-of-war between conformity and outsiderhood, self-awareness and narcoticized consumption, idiosyncrasy and normalcy (whatever normal even means; on Mr. Robot it sounds like a control word). Is it enough to make fun of a world where students carry tens of thousands in debt throughout their lives to become certified for jobs they probably won’t get anyway, or that will pay miserly freelance wages? Is it enough to joke about hearting things on Instagram and drinking lattes from Starbucks and going to Marvel movies like a good American middle-class zombie? Is that rebellion? Or is that just a game we play to pass time on the cradle-to-grave assembly line?
The more you listen to Elliot, the more likely you are to have those kinds of thoughts, and they’re not bad thoughts to have, tritely obvious as they might sound. The reflex to dismiss such questions as “trite” is smug, and is itself evidence of social conditioning. It’s great that a TV show is obsessing over this week after week, and making the ruminations uncomfortable-funny rather than ha-ha funny. It’s great that a TV show is weaving in footage of protests about economic disparity and consumers getting fat on processed, mass-produced corporate food. It’s great that all this is filtered through a hero as complex, wounded, eloquent, and observant as Elliot, as horrible as many of his deeds might be. He is, after all, a revolutionary. When’s the last time a major TV series was built around a guy who wanted to burn it all down, and gave you no choice but to find him likable?
This is what I want more of from Mr. Robot. Not “big reveals” of who somebody’s sister or dad is, or exactly why a character is so sad and depressed. (Orson Welles kept insisting that the end of Citizen Kane did not actually “explain” Kane, but no one listened to him.) I am not particularly interested in finding out what’s real and what’s not, and what happened to Tyrell, and whether Elliot/Mr. Robot had anything to do with it; and I am not particularly interested in seeing another lovely, charming, trusting, troubled young woman fall in love with the hero, as Shayla (Frankie Shaw) did, only to be fridged (look it up) to amplify the hero’s distress and cause problems for his revolutionary cellmates. It’s an awesome show, but I don’t want it to be just awesome. I want it to be great. That means less Cinema de Dudebro and more of other kinds of cinema, and maybe more literature and history, while we’re at it. Less cool, more school. Less mystery-box puzzle-making, more poetry. This show is capable of it, without a doubt. The proof is right there onscreen. But it keeps losing its way, week after week. And the bug was there from the start.There's one time, and only one time, you can count on the NRA to be more subdued than your average gun obsessive, and it's the 24 to 48 hours after a mass shooting.
As of this writing, it's been over 36 hours since the NRA issued any pro-gun public communication, and if past is prologue they'll lay low until the jaded public accepts that nothing will become of the killing spree at DC's Navy Yard, then return to their regular program of advocating for an armed society and stoking far-right paranoia.
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Two entwined calculations motivate the temporary silence. The first is simple self-preservation. The gun lobby is at its weakest when crazy people use the weapons it has made so easily obtainable to slaughter innocents in public places. The second is more oblique. Mass shootings breathe new life into arguments for gun control, and one way to suffocate them is to feign propriety and indignation -- to shame adherents into saying nothing until the public has moved on.
Thus, nothing is more offensive to a conservative after a mass shooting -- with the exception, perhaps, of the killer's action itself -- than any effort to tie it to arguments about gun control.
This particular mass shooting has a little something for everyone who's inclined to be an asshole. If racism is your thing, you'll be relieved to learn that deceased shooting suspect Aaron Alexis was black.
If you think the statements President Obama made about Trayvon Martin's killing were evidence of reverse racism hiding in plain sight, yesterday was a banner day, as Slate's Dave Weigel has already documented.
What to expect now.. The #NRA will be blamed, the #Navy will be blamed.. #Obama will NOT say if he had a son he would look like the shooter. — Joe Pags - Official (@JoeTalkShow) September 16, 2013
Elsewhere, the same conservatives who were policing the media for even vague hints of gun skepticism were also regurgitating easily falsifiable bromides about the benefits of arming more Americans.
"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."
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"Isn't it weird how gunmen always go on rampages in gun-free zones?"
As if good guys with guns never cause violent situations to escalate, or a place called Navy Yard in the nation's well-fortified capital city was somehow gun-free.
Yesterday, all of that stuff was "on limits." The one taboo on the right was gun control. Conservatives closed ranks around lax restrictions on private gun sales before the shelter in place order at Navy Yard had been lifted. Confirmed details were still scarce, but already we knew that the proper regulatory response to the incident was "nothing" and that suggesting otherwise was foolish and insensitive.
The arguments are depressingly familiar. Despite previous gun-related infractions, and a history of mental illness, Aaron Alexis had somehow cleared background checks pursuant to both his service in the Navy Reserve, from which he received a general discharge, and his work as a military contractor. So clearly universal background checks for private purchases wouldn't do any good either, right?
This is about as fallacious as arguing that cars should be liberated from all future safety regulations because airbags sometimes fail. If there are problems with existing background check systems, then they should be improved and best practices carried forward into a universal background check system for private sector gun sales. Instead, we're left with the system that allowed Alexis to legally purchase a shotgun in Virginia just last week.
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His record paints a picture of a troubled individual who had several brushes with the law but none that crossed into felony conviction territory that would have prohibited him from buying a gun from a federally licensed gun dealer. Although he recently began seeking mental health treatment through the Veteran’s Administration, seeking treatment and even having a diagnosed mental illness don’t disqualify someone from purchasing a gun.
Tighten the laws and the next Alexis is more likely to be thwarted or deterred. But the laws won't be tightened. Instead, we'll be left to process multiple mass shootings a year with rote expressions of outrage and dismay, and then to move on.
Now mass shootings are relatively rare, and it would be nonsensical for frustrated or frightened citizens to quit their jobs or home-school their kids simply because politicians have no intention of trying to stop them. But with little encumbrance to gun enthusiasts, the status quo could be improved. If fatal airline accidents became much more common in the U.S. than they are right now, or than they are in other countries, it would be bizarre for a political movement to rise up after each tragedy to shout down anyone demanding tougher FAA safety inspections. But that's about where gun obsessives in this country are right now.CLOSE Thailand bombings, dressing room incident, Men's Olympic Swimming
Former Layton Home in Wilmington is proposed site of new center offering assistance to homeless veterans
Buy Photo David E. Mosley, chief executive officer of Delaware Center for Homeless Veterans stands on the grounds of the dilapidated Layton Home property in Wilmington. Mosely's organization is planning to turn the center into one of the state's largest resources for homeless veterans. (Photo: SAQUAN STIMPSON/SPECIAL TO THE NEWS JOURNAL)Buy Photo
A proposal to turn a long-vacant Wilmington nursing home into the state's largest facility for housing homeless veterans has been boosted by millions in funding through a federal tax credit program.
The Delaware Center for Homeless Veterans plans to turn the Layton Home at 300 Eighth St. into the first center in the state contracted by the U.S. government to provide subsidized, permanent housing that specifically targets veterans. Officials initially planned a $5.5 million project, but were recently awarded federal low-income tax credits through the Delaware State Housing Authority that bring the total amount available to more than $10 million.
David Mosley, founder of the center and a veteran, said the credits will allow his organization to spend $2 million to $3 million more rehabbing the 48,000-square-foot building, which
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Ozzy Osbourne was involved in an all-terrain-vehicle accident on his English country estate. After the crash, it was reported that Osbourne “died twice” and was left in a coma for eight days. The accident happened when he hit a pothole and was catapulted over the handlebars of the vehicle. Ozzy tumbled down a hill and the bike landed on top of him, crushing his chest.
Osbourne’s bodyguard rushed to the scene and gave Ozzy mouth to mouth resuscitation when he stopped breathing. “If it wasn’t for Sam I probably wouldn’t be here. He had to bring me back to life twice.” Ozzy, who was 55-years-old at the time, fractured eight ribs and a vertebra in the accident. Osbourne felt extremely lucky to be alive after the crash. Sharon Osbourne told the newspapers that she would have taken her own life had her husband died. “If Ozzy had gone, I would have gone with him.”
Coma Experience: Ozzy Osbourne described the confusion he felt as he gradually recovered from a coma. “I didn’t know where I was or how long I’d been there. I would often drift in and out of consciousness. Other times there would be a white light shining through the darkness, but no angels, no one blowing trumpets, and no man in a white beard.” Ozzy said that the accident made him “grow up.” “You are bopping along through life and have your ups and downs, but it is amazing how two or three seconds can totally change your life.”
3 Sharon Stone
Length of Coma: 9 Days
Sharon Stone is an American actress and former fashion model. In 1992, Stone achieved international recognition for her role in the erotic thriller Basic Instinct. Following Basic Instinct, Stone was listed by People magazine as one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world. In 1995, Sharon received a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress (Casino). Some of her other famous roles include major parts in the films Total Recall, The Quick and the Dead, Sliver, Intersection, Sphere, and Cold Creek Manor.
On September 29, 2001, Sharon Stone was hospitalized after experiencing a subarachnoid hemorrhage, which was diagnosed as a vertebral artery dissection rather than the more common ruptured aneurysm. She was listed in critical condition and experienced a nine-day coma as doctors tried to figure out what was wrong. After the problem was discovered, Stone underwent a seven-hour procedure and surgeons stabilized the torn artery with 22 platinum coils and stopped the bleeding.
“By the time I was admitted to the hospital, I had bled into my spinal column. My brain was pushed forward into my face and I lost 18 percent of my body mass.” In 2012, Stone spoke out about her life, including the brain hemorrhage, miscarriages, and adoption.
Coma Experience: Sharon Stone told Katie Couric that she had a “white light experience” during her brain scare. “When the event hit me I felt like I’d been shot in the head. That’s the only way I can really describe it. It hit me so hard it knocked me over on the sofa. I had a real journey that took me places both here and beyond that affected me so profoundly that my life will never be the same. I am not afraid of dying and I get to tell other people that it’s a glorious and beautiful thing. A giant vortex of white light was upon me. It took off into this glorious, bright white light and I started to see some of my friends. It was a very fast experience and I was suddenly back in my body and the room.”
2 Evel Knievel
Length of Coma: 29 Days
Evel Knievel was an American daredevil, entertainer, and motorcycle enthusiast. During his career, Knievel performed over 75 ramp-to-ramp motorcycle jumps between the years 1965 and 1980. In 1974, at the height of his career, Evel attempted to launch himself across the Snake River Canyon in a Skycycle X-2 steam-powered rocket (essentially an unguided missile). After the launch, the parachute on the rocket deployed, which slowed the vehicle. The missile reached the opposite side of the canyon, but the wind blew it back. The rocket floated to the ground and crashed just a few feet away from the river’s edge. Knievel suffered only minor injuries, but if the rocket had landed inside the Snake River, he would have drowned.
Evel Knievel holds the record as the person who has survived the “most bones broken in a lifetime” with 433 broken bones. In 1966, Evel Knievel set up his first daredevil show. The following year he came to national attention when Evel persuaded the owners of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas to let him jump their fountain on New Year’s Eve. During the jump, Knievel experienced an unexpected deceleration in his motorcycle and crashed short of the safety ramp. He flew over the handlebars and skidded to rest in the Dunes parking lot. As a result of the crash, Evel suffered a crushed pelvis and femur. He broke his hip, wrist, both ankles, and experienced head trauma that kept him in a coma for 29 days. After Evel woke up from the coma, doctors told him that he might never walk again, but Evel made almost a full recovery from the crash.
Coma Experience: After Evel Knievel was asked what it was like to be in a coma. He replied: “How the fuck do I know, I was in a coma.”
1 Gary Busey
Length of Coma: 33 Days
Gary Busey is an American film and stage actor. He has appeared in a large number of films since making his debut in Angels Hard as They Come (1971). In 1978, Busey received an Academy Award nomination for his role as Buddy Holly in The Buddy Holly Story. In the film, all the actors did their own singing and played their own instruments. Busey lost 32 pounds in order to get the part. He has appeared in over 150 films and television shows during his career. Some of his most popular roles are in the movies Silver Bullet, Lethal Weapon, Predator 2, Point Break, Under Siege, and Black Sheep.
On December 4, 1988, Gary Busey was severely injured in a motorcycle accident. He was not wearing a helmet during the crash and fractured his skull. Due to intense swelling and bleeding, doctors initially feared that Gary would suffer from permanent brain damage, but he miraculously emerged from a coma after 33 days. During the crash, Busey slid on a patch of gravel at 40 mph, flipped over the handlebars of his motorcycle, and hit his head on the curb. After a period of recuperation and rehabilitation, Busey returned to his film career and has been working as an advocate for traumatic injury prevention ever since.
Busey is a strong supporter of helmets. “I want people to understand that life is very important and that if you’re riding a motorcycle, skateboard, or bicycle without a helmet, you’re challenging the face of death.”
In the past ten years, Gary Busey has earned the public reputation for erratic and bizarre behavior. He has experienced a series of arrests and been featured on some of America’s most trashy reality TV programs. At the recommendation of Dr. Drew Pinsky, Busey was seen by psychiatrist Dr. Charles Sophy. Sophy suspected that Busey’s brain injury might have had a greater effect on him than initially realized. He described it as essentially weakening his mental “filters” and causing him to speak and act impulsively.
Coma Experience: Gary Busey said that during his coma he experienced a vision of the afterlife that changed his life forever. “I remember being aware of only two things during that ordeal. The first was that I entered and returned from a spiritual realm, and that the experience has been the foundation of my faith ever since. The second, and equally important experience, was the healing love and support of the people who surrounded me.” During his surgery, Busey said he was surrounded by angels. “They didn’t appear in the form that people see on Christmas cards. The angels were big balls of light that floated and carried nothing but love and warmth.”
+ Kurt Cobain
Kurt Cobain was an American singer-songwriter, best known as the lead singer and guitarist of the grunge band Nirvana. In the 1990s, Nirvana was labeled “the flagship band” of Generation X, and Cobain hailed as “the spokesman of a generation.” Cobain was uncomfortable and frustrated with his representation in the media. During the last years of his life, he struggled with heroin addiction, illness, and depression.
On March 1, 1994, Kurt Cobain was diagnosed with bronchitis and severe laryngitis following a tour stop in Munich, Germany. He flew to Rome the next day for medical treatment, and was joined by his wife, Courtney Love. On March 3, 1994, Love awoke to find that Cobain had overdosed on a combination of champagne and Rohypnol. Kurt was immediately rushed to the hospital, and spent the rest of the day in a coma. After five days in the hospital, Cobain was released and returned to Seattle.
The strange thing about the life about Kurt Cobain is that some reports paint his personality as a suicidal rocker, while others a family man. Upon his arrival in Rome, newspapers described Kurt as being “in great spirits. He was happy to be going to Rome. He feels comfortable there and was looking forward to having some time off from the tour with his family.” On April 8, 1994, Kurt Cobain’s body was discovered at his Lake Washington home by an electrician who arrived to install a security system. He was 27-years-old.
Coma Experience: “Drugs are a waste of time. They destroy your memory and your self-respect and everything that goes along with your self-esteem. They’re no good at all.” Kurt Cobain.Of the many subjects I studied during college, the one at which I excelled most was test-taking. In a Freshman year psych class, I learned that a key to recalling knowledge on an exam is to simulate testing conditions while studying. From then on, I made it a practice to carry the same Orbitz Wintermint gum to my exams that I chewed while reading the textbook. When selecting what material to study I would attempt to outsmart my professors and TAs by predicting what questions they might ask. By the time I was a senior I had amassed dozens of tricks for making it seem like I had mastered the material. Today, however, if asked to recall what I’d learned studying for any of those exams I doubt all the gum in the world would give me a passing grade.
Outside of school there are few occasions where you’ll be given an exam with an exact date and set of material. This doesn’t mean, though, that life won’t surprise you with tests. Some will be open-book, like when your boss emails you asking you to figure out your company’s customer acquisition cost or your investor sends you a term sheet to review. In these situations, consulting the right resource will get you far.
On other occasions though, such as when you receive a curveball question in a job interview, or need to impress your prospect in a meeting, it will be critical that you are able to perform live, without the aid of the external sources. For this type of test, you’ll need to not only predict what subject matter you’ll be tested on, but to ensure that the right information surfaces from your memory when the opportunity arises. In order to make sure that the knowledge that you deem important is accessible when you need it, you’ll want to rethink how you approach learning.
Benedict Carey’s How We Learn is a fantastic book filled with methods to increase retention and improve real-time recall capability. Here are five strategies adapted from the book’s findings to ensure that when life’s tests emerge you’ll be ready to ace them (if you’re interested in the research behind these findings I highly recommend you read the book):
Get Tested
On family vacations, when I was a kid, my mom and I would often pass the time by quizzing each other on state capitals. I don’t have an especially impressive memory and I can’t remember ever spending much time looking at a map of the US, but to this day, I can score 100% on any state capital quiz. During school, on the other hand, I spent most of my exam prep time cramming and re-formatting information into exhaustive study guides. Testing myself was always an afterthought. Testing, however, has been demonstrated to be the most important part of the learning process– with an optimal study time breakdown of 30% reading and reviewing to 70% testing.
Guess Wrong
When studying for exams I would often wait to test myself until I felt I had gained fluency in a given subject. I craved the confidence that came from nailing every answer, even if the quiz was self-administered. Recent research, however, has demonstrated that pre-testing, a strategy that tests a learner before he’s even been exposed to the material, can lead to better results and retention. This concept may seem strange– what is the point of testing yourself on material you’ve never seen? The act of guessing wrongly, it turns out, has been proven to increase a person’s likelihood of nailing that question or a related one on a later test. Learning that you’re wrong can also break your illusion of fluency in a given subject, and give you a more accurate idea of what you know. By testing yourself early on, you’re primed to recognize important concepts during the rest of your time learning.
Mix it Up
While it’s true that chewing the same brand of gum or studying to a certain Mozart concerto may increase your likelihood of recall when reintroduced to that same stimulus, it will not help you if you’re asked to perform in a completely different context. If your goal is to transfer what you’ve learned to a new and unknown environment you’ll want to have as many different external cues associated with the knowledge as possible. Rather than always studying at your desk try moving to a nearby coffee shop. If you tend to get most of your information through books try mixing in an online course. The more stimuli you can attach to the information the more chance you’ll be triggered by something external when the moment counts.
Avoid Repetition
Practice through repetition holds a storied place in American culture. We feel moved watching the commercial of the high-school basketball player alone in the gym, at the foul line, practicing his free throw over and over. But is repetition the best way to cement important skills for the long term? The results of several different experiments have shown that interleaving related but distinct material during study is much more effective than focused study. With repetition skills improve quickly but ultimately plateau. By contrast, varied practice creates a slower apparent rate of improvement in each single practice session but a greater accumulation of skill over time.
Forget about It
Often, I wish that after learning some critical skill or piece of information, I could move on to the next subject of interest with the peace of mind that what I spent so much effort learning would be cemented in my head and easily retrievable. Forgetting, however, is an inevitable part of learning, and an important one that allows for easy access to new information. Given the inevitability of forgetting, if you want to retain what you’ve studied it’s important to revisit it every so often. You may find it painful to test yourself and see how much you’ve forgotten but the very act of retrieving the information will make it that much more accessible in the future.
“The very act of retrieving the information will make it that much more accessible in the future.” — Tweet This
Unfortunately, I can’t offer you a framework to identify which specific pieces of knowledge will be important for the road ahead. What I can tell you, though, is that by using these strategies to learn new material you’ll stand your best chance of making the grade when the opportunity arises.You might recognise local MC Briggs who recently dropped ‘The Hunt’, a stunning collaborative effort with Australian music icon Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu.
The “incredibly powerful single combining urban style, rural sensibility and outback integrity” was the first single taken from Brigg’s anticipated upcoming album Sheplife (a reference to his hometown of Shepparton, Victoria) set for release August 22nd.
To celebrate the release of Sheplife, Briggs and his record label Golden Era are dropping a new track for every pre-order milestone achieved. At 500 they’re releasing ‘Golden Era’, at 750 they’ll drop ‘Eye for and Eye’ feat. American rapper Ill Bill, and finally at 1000 they’ve promised to release a remix to the first track featuring. the whole label (Hilltop Hoods, Funkoars, Vents, and K21.).
In ‘Golden Era’ Briggs raps “I managed to manage a couple bangers for you” – and a banger it is thanks in part to the production efforts of Suffa (Hilltop Hoods). For more info and to pre order Sheplife visit www.goldernerarecords.com.auIf you’re are a fan of bunch sprints then you’d best turn your attention to the semi-classics going on in Belgium this week, as this race offers minimal chances for the sprinters, which makes you wonder why Andre Greipel and Nacer Bouhanni made the trip. This race is all about the Puncheurs and the Grimpeurs, as is usually the case, with two summit finishes and three undulating stages littered with categorised climbs.
Since 2012 the race has begun with a route beginning and ending in Calella, 58km northeast of Barcelona. Each year the course is different, and each year the outcome equally so. In the past, we’ve seen the sprinters take the first leader’s jersey here, other times its been a late attack that wins the day. This year there are six categorised climbs and the last 500m are 5%, so a strong uphill kick will be needed to take the win.
Stage 2 is fairly controversial, in our view, in how it will undoubtably shape the race. A 41.3km TTT will complete ruin the GC challenge for those riders who are on teams that aren’t strong, or even average at the discipline. The first TTT since 2005 and the race organisers seem to be making up for lost time!
Stage 3 has three category one climbs in the last 80km, including two visits up to the ski resort of La Molina, where the stage ends and by which time the GC time gaps will have increased.
There is some respite offered on Stage 4 which takes in flattish and downward roads for the most part until a category two climb rears its head with 13km to go, make this a great day for a break or late attack.
The GC race resumes and will be decided on stage 5. The HC summit finish at Lo Port in the Los Puertos de Tortosa-Beseit mountain range will be a real spectacle with gradients hitting 20%.
The final two stages offer something for the sprinters, but could easily see a break or late attack take them. Stage 6 throws up a category 1 climb with 40km to go, which could throw a spanner in the works for the fast men. Stage 7 take in the familiar 8 circuits of short, but sharp, Alto de Montjuic climb in Barcelona.
This race marks Chris Froome‘s first in Europe this year and his first against main Tour de France rival Alberto Contador, however, he has never finished higher that 6th here as his form isn’t at its Grand Tour peak at this stage of the season. He may struggle to keep with his rivals, who have Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico in their legs, however, the TTT on stage 2 could give him a big advantage if Sky can avoid any exploding wheels! This is what scuppered Geraint Thomas‘s Tirreno bid and if Froome isn’t feeling it then the Welshman will be the back, along with Mikel Landa.
So far this year, Contador has missed out on taking a week long stage race by 1 (Ruta del Sol) and 2 (Paris-Nice) seconds. There is no doubting his form, the only question is can he keep up the intensity? Bauke Mollema and Jarlinson Pantano will ride in support, however, the Dutchman may well fancy his chance if El Pistolero falters.
Last year’s winner, Nairo Quintana, isn’t taking part in 2017. Alejandro Valverde will lead the team. He missed Paris-Nice with illness but has started this in his typical imperious style, taking the win at the Rute del Sol. The long, drawn out climbs on stage 3 and 5 look to be too hard for him, but he will be favourite for the more undulating stages.
The Quickstep duo of Dan Martin and Julien Alaphilippe has been in great form in recent weeks, the Frenchman in particular with his stage win at Paris-Nice and 3rd place at Milan-Sanremo. The course is more suited to Martin here, who won the race in 2013 and with the likes of Gianluca Brambilla and Petr Vakoc in support, and capable of stage wins f their own, he could be in line to take another overall victory here.
BMC are the current world TTT champions and stormed to victory at the TT at Tirreno-Adriatico. However the stage 2 TTT is a different kettle of fish, but you would expect them to still win it. That should put Tejay Van Garderen in a great position come the mountains. His form so far has been poor and we could the team revert to young Belgium and Tour of Oman winner, Ben Hermans or Rohan Dennis who was second at Tirreno-Adriatico.
The rest of the teams will likely suffer during the TTT and so that means it will be tough for the likes of Adam Yates (Orica-Scott), Ilnur Zakarin (Katusha), Andrew Talanskey and Hugh Carthy (Cannnondale Drapac), Rafel Majka (Bora -Hansgrothe), Steven Kruijswijk (LottoNL-Jumbo) and Romain Bardet (Ag2r) to challenge for the overall. Instead, they will be targeting the summit finishes of stage 3 and 5.
We’ll have daily previews throughout the race detailing each stage and the riders who we think could compete for the win.
Stage 1 Stage 2 Stage 3 Stage 4 Stage 5 Stage 6
Our GC Picks:
Andy – Alberto Contador
Chris – Chris Froome
James – Dan MartinSeptember 4, 2014 6 min read
An estimated 80,000 businesses already accept Bitcoin today, and not just as a marketing gimmick. Why not yours?
Forward-thinking merchants of all sizes around the world are glomming onto the hot Bitcoin payments trend, many of them to cut costs and boost their bottom line, says Adam White, director of business development and strategy at Coinbase.
The 1.6 million-customer San Francisco Bitcoin exchange and wallet service processes Bitcoin payments for some 36,000 companies and growing. Among them are Overstock.com, OkCupid, 1-800-Flowers, DISH Network, and several other big-name early cryptocash adopters.
Related: This Company Is Now the Largest in the World to Accept Bitcoin
If you’re still sketched out about doing business in Bitcoin -- or you got cold feet on the heels of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s recent advisory warning on the topic -- White recommends you reconsider.
Here are his top five reasons merchants should start accepting the virtual currency now:
1. Lower transaction fees. Per transaction fees for accepting Bitcoin are generally significantly lower than those charged for credit and debit card purchases. White says this is the biggest reason smaller merchants are latching onto Bitcoin payments.
“Small businesses, on average are paying higher credit card fees than Walmart is, and Best Buy,” White says. “These are large, enterprise level businesses that have scale and therefore they can negotiate lower credit card transaction fees. Small mom-and-pop shops can’t.”
Related: PayPal Reportedly in Talks to Accept Bitcoin
He says most smaller merchants pay 2 to 4 percent per credit card transaction, often with additional “hidden fees” heaped on that quickly add up.
Bitcoin, on the other hand, can reduce their credit card processing fees to less than 1 percent, White’s colleague Nicholas Tomaino, a business development manager at Coinbase, recently told Entrepreneur.com. Accepting the virtual currency can save them from sacrificing between 3 and 5 percent of their revenues to credit and debit card fees, Tomaino estimates.
White points out that Coinbase charges a 1 percent flat per-transaction fee to convert Bitcoin payments to your local currency, after your first $1,000,000 USD in merchant processing. Unlike a lot of credit card companies, it doesn’t charge account setup or termination fees. So, if your customer pays for a purchase that costs $1, Coinbase will only charge you one penny for payment processing.
Related: Blockchain Returns to the Apple App Store After Bitcoin Ban
Bitcoin Payment processor BitPay charges no per transaction fees, but its customers pay monthly fees for its services, ranging from $30 to $300.
2. Fraud prevention. Because people can pay businesses in Bitcoin without divulging personally identifiable information (names, billing addresses, etc.), they enjoy a level of identity-theft protection that credit cards simply can’t offer, White says.
“With Bitcoin, there is no personal identity attached to that form of value. It’s a lot like digital cash, and there’s no way it can be intercepted, and my identity can’t be disclosed. That prevents a lot of issues like we saw with the Target data breach and the recent UPS Store breach.”
Related: Why Bitcoin's Future Is Bright
It’s important to note, though, that Bitcoin exchanges that operate in the U.S., including Coinbase, collect personal identifying information from their users -- names, addresses and applicable bank account numbers included -- in order to establish their Bitcoin wallets. They have to in accordance with certain state and federal regulations.
3. No chargebacks. Bitcoin purchases are final, so there are no chargebacks and no returns, like those rife in credit card dealings, yet another way transacting in the virtual currency saves merchants money.
Credit card chargebacks occur when a card user disputes a purchase made with his or her card, often because of defective goods or items never received. Or, perhaps he or she fell victim to identity theft and never authorized the purchase in question in the first place.
When a chargeback happens, not only does the credit card company withdraw the money for a transaction from your merchant account and deposit it back into the customer’s, you typically also get slapped with a costly chargeback fee. These can put you back between $5 and $15 each, according to CardFellow.com.
Related: How Bitcoin Is Fueling a New Payments Battlefield
As it is now, people who purchase from you in Bitcoin generally have no recourse in a dispute. Transactions in the cryptocurrency are basically perceived as cash. They’re final, insulating merchants from the possibility of chargebacks and the fees associated with them. As Bitcoin Foundation member Kevin Rand puts it, “Bitcoin puts all the power in the merchants hands.”
4. The ability to get paid quickly. Having cash on hand is often critical to survival for small businesses. Accepting Bitcoin payments can put cash within your reach faster than it does when you accept credit card payments.
“The problem is, with credit cards, a lot of times your funds can be locked up for a week or more and there held in a sort of escrow in case someone requests a chargeback,” says White.
That’s generally not the case with Bitcoin. For example, at Coinbase, payouts arrive in merchant’s bank accounts typically in only two business days.
Related: Nation's Top Consumer Watchdog Warns of Bitcoin's Dangers
Every payment settles “at the moment of transaction,” White says. “So when a customer pays in Bitcoin, the merchant receives it and immediately sells it to Coinbase to convert it to U.S. dollars. At that time, they’re guaranteed their money.”
5. Ease of accepting international payments. Small online retailers and independent consultants often don’t sell their wares and services internationally because of expensive cross-border transaction fees. Bitcoin relieves the steep cost of going global, making cross-border payments easier, faster and cheaper.
“Bitcoin breaks down all of these invisible borders that previously existed,” says White. “When you accept Bitcoin, you can accept payment from anyone anywhere in the world at the speed of an email.”
Another benefit: The digital currency’s lower transaction fees could save retailers who operate internationally up to 8 percent, Wedbush analyst Gil Luria recently told The New York Times.
Related: Meet the College Students Who Are Driving the Future of BitcoinLineageOS continues to add more devices to its custom ROM that was created by some of the former team members of the popular CyanogenMod project. The latest phones that can now run the Android Nougat-based LineageOS 14.1 include two of the biggest selling devices; the Samsung Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge. These builds are for the versions of the phones that use Samsung’s own Exynos processors.
In addition to those two big names, LineageOS 14.1 is also available for a number of the models for the Samsung Galaxy Tab S2 9.7 tablets, along with the Galaxy S III GSM LTE phone. Also, some versions of the old LG G3 can access the latest LineageOS build. You can check out all the newly added builds on the LineageOS download page. Over 500,000 downloads have been recorded for the custom ROM so far, with the OnePlus One on top as the device getting the most downloads.
In addition, the official LineageOS website has been updated, adding info on some changes the team has made to the custom ROM. The biggest new addition is Single Hand Mode. It can be used on phones with on-screen navigation buttons by swiping right or left on the home button. If LineageOS is used on devices with hardware navigation buttons, the trigger for this mode can be set by going into ‘Settings’ and then ‘Buttons’.
Have you tried out LineageOS on your smartphone or tablet? Let us know your impressions in the comments!Man who allegedly opened fire on Oakland cop is arrested
Lt. Roland Holmgren head of Oakland Police homicide unit, briefs reporters Thursday morning on the arrest of a man accused of shooting at an Oakland Police sergeant. Lt. Roland Holmgren head of Oakland Police homicide unit, briefs reporters Thursday morning on the arrest of a man accused of shooting at an Oakland Police sergeant. Photo: Evan Sernoffksy / The Chronicle / / Photo: Evan Sernoffksy / The Chronicle / / Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Man who allegedly opened fire on Oakland cop is arrested 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
A gunman arrested Thursday for opening fire on an Oakland police sergeant told investigators he was emboldened by recent violence against law enforcement officers as tensions have increased nationwide over issues of race and policing, officials said.
The man, an Oakland resident who was not immediately named, “made statements” that he targeted Sgt. Nadia Clark solely because she was a police sergeant in uniform, said Lt. Roland Holmgren, head of the Oakland Police Department homicide unit.
Police in Oakland have been riding in pairs since five officers were shot and killed in Dallas on July 7, during what started as a peaceful protest. Oakland police supervisors like Clark still drive alone while on patrol.
The attack happened around 9:30 p.m. Saturday when Clark, a member of the police force since 2006, crashed while responding to a call in the 1900 block of 73rd Street in East Oakland.
Shortly after the wreck, the gunman approached Clark, opened fire on her patrol sport utility vehicle and fled. The sergeant, who was trapped inside the vehicle when the airbag deployed, was not struck by the gunfire, but was taken to Highland Hospital, where she was treated for injuries from the crash.
“She was dazed and helpless,” said Holmgren, who announced the arrest at a news conference at Oakland police headquarters. “Like a coward, he fired on her.”
The suspect, who did not know the sergeant and was not involved in the crash, was arrested just after 4 a.m. Thursday following a standoff in which he barricaded himself in a home in Stockton. Police ultimately arrested him and recovered a firearm “consistent with” the gun that was used to shoot at the officer, Holmgren said.
The suspect was brought back to Oakland, where detectives interrogated him at police headquarters.
Holmgren said the suspect made statements that the shooting was the result of anger he harbored toward police.
The attack comes amid rising tensions between police and some of the communities they are assigned to protect. Ten days after the five officers were slain in Dallas, a gunman shot six officers, killing three, in Baton Rouge, La.
The suspects in both cases appeared to be motivated in part by two recent killings of African American men by police that were caught on video, inspiring nationwide protests that have remained largely nonviolent, with protestors condemning the killings of officers.
President Obama addressed the national divide Wednesday night during his speech at the Democratic National Convention.
He said, “we can work through racial divides in this country when we realize the worry black parents feel when their son leaves the house isn’t so different than what a brave cop’s family feels when he puts on the blue and goes to work.”
Clark has released from the hospital and is recovering from minor injuries suffered in the crash, police said.
Evan Sernoffsky is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @EvanSernoffskyJide’s Remix OS is a customized version of Google Android designed for laptop and desktop computers. It ships on a handful of notebooks, mini PCs, and other devices, and earlier this year Jide released the first version of Remix OS for PC, allowing anyone to download the operating system and try it out on many computers with Intel or AMD chips.
Now Jide is launching a major update to Remix OS for PC. The new version is based Android 6.0 (instead of Android 5.1), and includes support for additional hardware including computers with NVIDIA and AMD graphics.
The update brings the version number of the operating system up to Remix OS 3.0, and it also brings new features to one of the operating system’s hallmark features: the ability to run multiple Android apps in resizable windows that can be positioned anywhere on the screen.
Remix OS lets you run most Android apps, but the user interface includes classic Windows-style elements including a taskbar and start menu.
You can also view multiple apps at once, a feature that’s only coming to the official version of Android starting with version 7.0. Multi-window features in Remix OS are much more advanced than in Android 7.0 though, and the latest update includes a few new features including:
There’s a new button that lets you resize a window specifically to accommodate the app’s content, so the layout shouldn’t look funky.
You can now drag any edge of an app window to resize it. Previously you could only do this from the top.
When you hit the maximize button for video apps, they’ll now run in full-screen mode, which means you won’t see a frame around the window.
If you’re already using an earlier version of Remix OS for PC, you’ll need to do a clean install to move to the new version based on Android 6.0. There’s no OTA update option yet.
Note that the software does not have the Google Play Store pre-loaded by default. But all you need to do to install it is open the Remix Central app, choose the “Google Play Installer” option, and follow the instructions.
Remix OS for PC supports computers with 32-bit and 64-bit chips, and it can be downloaded and installed on a USB flash drive, allowing you to boot from a removable storage device without making any changes to your computer. Or you can install the operating system on a hard drive to dual-boot Remix OS and Windows.
The operating system should be able to run in “guest mode” or “resident mode.” The difference is that none of your files or settings are saved in guest mode. It’s kind of like running a Linux liveCD. Guest mode loads more quickly, but resident mode lets you save your data between sessions.
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get resident mode to work with the pre-release version of Remix OS 3.0 I tested this weekend. But guest mode worked just fine… once I realized that I needed to use a USB WiFi adapter because the operating system didn’t recognize the wireless card built into the computer I was using to test Remix OS for PC.The farce is complete...
Burisma Holdings, Ukraine’s largest private gas producer, has expanded its Board of Directors by bringing on Mr. R Hunter Biden as a new director.
R. Hunter Biden will be in charge of the Holdings’ legal unit and will provide support for the Company among international organizations. On his new appointment, he commented: “Burisma’s track record of innovations and industry leadership in the field of natural gas means that it can be a strong driver of a strong economy in Ukraine. As a new member of the Board, I believe that my assistance in consulting the Company on matters of transparency, corporate governance and responsibility, international expansion and other priorities will contribute to the economy and benefit the people of Ukraine.”
The Chairman of the Board of Directors of Burisma Holdings, Mr. Alan Apter, noted: “The company’s strategy is aimed at the strongest concentration of professional staff and the introduction of best corporate practices, and we’re delighted that Mr. Biden is joining us to help us achieve these goals.”
R. Hunter Biden is a counsel to Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP, a national law firm based in New York, USA, which served in cases including “Bush vs. Gore”, and “U.S. vs. Microsoft”. He is one of the co-founders and a managing partner of the investment advisory company Rosemont Seneca Partners, as well as chairman of the board of Rosemont Seneca Advisors. He is an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University’s Masters Program in the School of Foreign Service.
Mr. Biden has experience in public service and foreign policy. He is a director for the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, The Center for National Policy, and the Chairman’s Advisory Board for the National Democratic Institute. Having served as a Senior Vice President at MBNA bank, former U.S. President Bill Clinton appointed him an Executive Director of E-Commerce Policy Coordination under Secretary of Commerce William Daley. Mr. Biden served as Honorary
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Reece, MD, PhD, MBA, who is also the vice president for Medical Affairs, University of Maryland, and the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor and Dean of the School of Medicine. "I know that they will continue to work hard to see whether these compounds can take the next steps to clinical trials."Android 5.0 Lollipop just started rolling out. Like all Android operating system releases, it'll probably take a week or two to filter down even to Nexus devices, and maybe a month or two before it starts showing up elsewhere. But in the meantime I've been using it on the Nexus 9 and Nexus 6 and the developer preview on my beat up Nexus 5. Not long enough to real soak it all in, but enough to have some general thoughts, the foremost of which is that Android Lollipop is great.
I'll start with my one of best parts of Android Lollipop so far: the notifications. Finally, finally, finally catching up to iOS, Android now has terrific little notification cards on the lockscreen. Pull them down to get access to a full list and a settings menu without unlocking your phone, or double tap them to zoom right into the associated apps and see what's up. It's fantastic.
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In the past you could get something close to this by cobbling together a DIY solution with DashClock or something. But having notifications on the lockscreen automatically is a dream. It's made my phone infinitely more useful as a second screen while I'm at my desk.
It's easier than ever to check your notifications at a glance and pare them down right from the lockscreen, maintaining a list of them as a sort of automatically generated to-do list, swiping away Facebook notifications and tapping through to the emails. And of course, the animations that accompany the process are bouncy, vibrant, and just all around pleasant.
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The other great part is that even though I'm tapping through to those emails through a secure, PIN-protected lockscreen, I never notice. Lollipop's new Smart Lockscreen options means that whenever my phone is paired with my smartwatch or one of my Bluetooth speakers, the lockscreen just isn't there.
Once upon a time, I hacked together something like this using a rooted phone and an app called Tasker, or just opted to not have a secure lockscreen at all, but Smart Lockscreen makes it dumb easy. The only thing that's missing is the option to use trusted Wi-Fi networks or location-data to do the same thing. Facial unlock is also back, with a reinvention from its Jelly Bean days. Instead of being the way you lock your phone, it just searches for your face in the background, while you're (probably) looking at notifications. If it can see you, it disables the PIN. If not, it doesn't. I've got it on and I think it's working, but the only evidence I get is not having to enter a PIN. It's seamless in exactly the way it should be.
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Lollipop's also bringing a few new apps to the table. Gmail is pretty functionally identically, but with a bright red makeover.
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Calendar, on the other hand, is all new and flat-out terrific. It auto-generates events from your email (theoretically; I have yet to see this happen) but even better it lets you enter events in the form of a sentence, and then pulls in data for you. Not automatically, but it makes it easy. This has gotten me scheduling out my personal plans for the first time in years. I think I might be starting to get organized, but I'm not making a verdict just yet.
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Those are just the features that have stuck out to me so far. There are more. There's a "priority notifications only" mode that lets you turn off the firehouse and opt for a notification stream that's easier to sip from. Pinned applications that let you share your phone without sharing everything on your phone. A battery saver mode that scales down performance and kicks in automatically at 15 percent battery power. A lot of which has already existed on iOS or skinned versions of Android, or even Windows Phone. That they've all found a home on stock Android is fantastic.
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And also, of course, the whole thing is damn beautiful. Like, the most beautiful operating system I have ever seen. Windows Phone is a different, more minimalist flavor that's pretty in its own way, but iOS 8 isn't even close. Part of it is the animations and style that are built into the very skeleton of Android now. The way notification cards subtly "bounce" as you expand them and pull down on them. The way the app drawer button sort of explodes out into the app drawer. The simple act of touching things to select them generates this nice little wavey animation that's pleasant, but subtle. Google's big pitch for Material Design—a screen full of cards and other layered, almost physical objects that just feel like they're moving around—is wonderful in motion.
And it isn't just movement. Lollipop—and more accurately, Google's apps that have been redesigned for it—make such great use of color. No lie, I want to use the Messenger app just because I really enjoy the way the floating yellow "new message button" pops against the white and blue of the rest of the window. It's vibrant without being aggressive or cloying. As cliched a term as it might seem, Lollipop really is "playful." It's both a joy to use to look at while using it. Android has never had such a clear vision of how it should look and behave under your fingers. And the bonus is that the vision is great.
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Unfortunately it'll take a while for this to trickle down to a lot of folks. Android moves slowly, and while adoption rates for new versions like this are getting better, they're still not great. The good news is that ike KitKat, Lollipop is designed to run light. Even with all those animations, just about any decent Android phone should be able to handle it. On top of that plenty of companies—like HTC and Motorola—have already promised to bring it to their flagships as soon as possible.
As well they should. Lollipop is a huge step forward for Android, and definitely worthy of the bump to 5.0. Google's put Android through redesigns before, but Lollipop is the one that maybe can—and definitely should—stick.The SEC football package continues to pay big dividends for CBS Sports, which announced Thursday that the SEC on CBS is “the highest-rated regular season college football package on any network,” pulling in a 3.4 rating and 8 share on average. CBS also claims the two most-watched games so far this season, Alabama’s 29-15 SEC championship win over Florida on Dec. 5 (7.8/17, with an average of 12.76 million viewers) and Alabama’s 30-16 win over LSU in prime time on Nov. 7 (an average of 11.06 million viewers).
CBS’ success here isn’t really an outlier, as college football packages continue to draw well for a variety of networks. Fox posted a 12 per cent average viewership increase in 2015 for their Big 12/Pac-12/Conference USA package, plus nabbed 9.8 million viewers (with a 5.7/11 rating/share) for the Big Ten championship game despite competition from the ACC and Pac-12 games. ESPN also saw a 4 per cent rise (to 1.85 million average viewers) across ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNews and ESPNU, and a 2 per cent rise (to 2.72 million average viewers) on ESPN proper. So, college football is working pretty well for everyone.
The “SEC Game of the Week” package seems to be paying the biggest dividends in terms of raw viewers, though, and it’s been huge for CBS. This was the 20th year the Eye carried SEC football. With numbers like this, it’s easy to imagine they’ll be quite happy to continue paying the bargain price of $55 million a year for their package until 2023-24.Today Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) and Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) introduced bills that would legalize and tax marijuana at the federal level. Polis' Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol Act (H.R. 1013) would remove marijuana from Schedule I of the Controlled Subsrances Act and assign regulatory authority to the Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Shipping cannabis into states where it is prohibited would remain illegal. Blumenauer's Marijuana Tax Revenue Act (H.R. 1014) would impose an excise tax on the first sale of marijuana (generally from a grower to a processor); the rate, initially 10 percent, would rise gradually to 25 percent. The tax would not apply to medical marijuana.
Why the seemingly unnecessary revenue in the name of Blumenauer's bill? Presumably because he thought changing an h to a j would not be enough to avoid confusion with the law that started marijuana prohibition at the federal level.
Here is how Blumenauer explained the motivation for the bills:
It's time for the federal government to chart a new path forward for marijuana. Together these bills create a federal framework to legalize, regulate and tax marijuana, much like we treat alcohol and tobacco. The federal prohibition of marijuana has been a failure, wasting tax dollars and ruining countless lives. As more states move to legalize marijuana, as Oregon, Colorado, Washington and Alaska have done, it’s imperative the federal government become a full partner in building a workable and safe framework.
Polis added:
Over the past year, Colorado has demonstrated that regulating marijuana like alcohol takes money away from criminals and cartels, grows our economy, and keeps marijuana out of the hands of children. While President Obama and the Justice Department have allowed the will of voters in states like Colorado and 22 other jurisdictions to move forward, small business owners, medical marijuana patients, and others who follow state laws still live with the fear that a new administration–or this one—could reverse course and turn them into criminals. It is time for us to replace the failed prohibition with a regulatory system that works and let states and municipalities decide for themselves if they want, or don't want, to have legal marijuana within their borders.
The bills unveiled today are similar to legislation that Polis and Bluemenauer introduced in 2013. The 2013 version of the legalization bill attracted 18 cosponsors, two fewer than a similar bill introduced by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) in 2011. The 2013 version of the marijuana tax bill had nine cospsonsors. None of the bills made it to committee.Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has said that the Israeli army will continue its military operations in the Gaza Strip after the end of the ceasefire, and described the images of devastation in Gaza as a “good thing”.
Speaking to Yedioth Ahranoth newspaper, the far-right politician said that Israel must ensure the security of Israeli citizens, no matter how many hours and days it takes. “The truce will end at midnight and I have no doubt that the army will continue its operations with full force, and then we’ll see results.”
When asked about scenes of massive destruction that have been broadcast from the Gaza Strip, he said “our soldiers did a good job.” The military, he added, has “full authority” to achieve the goals set by the Israeli cabinet.
Meanwhile, Economy Minister Naftali Bennett said that he would obstruct any agreement for a ceasefire, adding that the goal of the military campaign is to dismantle Hamas rockets and destroy the tunnels. He stressed that pressure should be increased until those goals are realised. “It will take a month to destroy Hamas tunnels completely, not two or three days,” Defence Minister Moshe Ya’alon claimed last week.
Israeli ministers and Knesset members of the Likud Party have expressed their opposition to any ceasefire agreement with the Palestinian factions in Gaza. According to Minister of Internal Affairs Gideon Sa’ar, “Israel should reject any pressure to extend the ceasefire and must continue the military campaign and expand it to undermine Hamas infrastructure.” His views were shared by a number of his colleagues.UTSA head coach, senior wide receiverand sophomore linebackerwill represent the Roadrunners at the annual Conference USA Football Kickoff. The two-day event is scheduled to begin on Wednesday in Irving.The league's head coaches and two student-athletes from each school will be on hand to preview the upcoming season, the fifth for UTSA as a member of C-USA. The UTSA contingent and the rest of the West Division schools are scheduled to meet with the media from 1:30-5 p.m. on Wednesday, while the East Division is slated for 8:30 a.m.-noon on Thursday.UTSA will provide live coverage of the event through its social media platforms via Twitter Facebook and Instagram. Additionally, Stewart and Tauaefa will provide an inside look at the event through a takeover of UTSA Athletics' official Snapchat account (UTSAAthletics).C-USA also will provide live updates throughout the day. Photos, notes and other information will be posted on Twitter Facebook and Instagram. Fans may join the social conversation throughout the day using the official hashtag #CUSAKickoff.The league will present video streaming of interviews with coaches and players on Wednesday beginning at 9 a.m. on Facebook Live (click here to watch). Each school will be on in 15-minute increments with UTSA scheduled to be on the stream from approximately 3:30-3:45 p.m.Television coverage previewing the upcoming season will be provided by the league's TV partners. ESPN, American Sports Network and beIN Sports will each have crews in Irving to shoot interviews that will be available on various platforms to preview the upcoming campaign.Click here for more information on this year's C-USA Football Kickoff.Spread the love
Lansing, MI — As the water crisis in Flint deepens, it is becoming apparent that the effects of the lead-infested water are not just a health hazard, but the situation has the potential of ruining many more lives outside of the poison issue.
As the Free Thought Project reported last month, the city’s government continues to charge people for the poison water and then threatening to foreclose their home or take their children if they refuse to pay. Michigan law states that parents are neglectful if they do not have running water in their home, and if they chose not to pay for the water they can’t drink anyway, then they could be guilty of child endangerment.
Last month, the Free Thought Project reported on the series of emails released under the Freedom of Information Act which showed that not only did officials know the water was tainted, but they took action and began trucking in water to state buildings so they would no longer have to drink it.
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Officials are now scattering like cockroaches in an effort to shield themselves from liability.
Gov. Rick Snyder, along with a number of other current and former state employees have been named as defendants in a slew of lawsuits relating to the poisoning of thousands. Aside from the civil liability faced by Michigan bureaucrats, several federal agencies are investigating Flint as well, including the US Attorney’s Office, the FBI, and the EPA.
In a move that is sure to infuriate the residents of Flint, as well as the rest of the country, Gov. Rick Snyder has hired two outside attorneys to represent him in the litigation arising from the poisoning of Flint residents.
Of course, hiring an attorney is a natural move for anyone facing legal trouble. However, Snyder’s position as governor has afforded him an unscrupulous means of paying for those attorneys.
According to Crain’s Detroit,
Eugene Driker, a member with Detroit-based Barris, Sott, Denn & Driker PLLC, will assist with civil representation in addition to the state attorney general’s office, Snyder spokesman Ari Adler toldCrain’s in an email. Brian Lennon, a partner with Warner Norcross & Judd LLP in Grand Rapids, has been hired as “investigatory counsel,” Adler said. That includes work searching and processing emails and documents.
Both Driker and Lennon’s contract services will cost $249,000 each and will be paid with taxpayer dollars. The contracts are good until December 31, but will be open for extension shall the need arise.
That’s right, the very people who were poisoned by this man’s criminal neglect will be paying a half-million to defend him.
What this highly offensive scenario illustrates is the power of government to shield themselves from personal liability by passing their financial burdens stemming from such instances on to the backs of taxpayers.
Until Americans wake up to the fact that they are being looted by a ruling class who couldn’t care less about their well-being, this abuse will continue.
The good news is that these politicians are no longer hiding their atrocities. They think that the American public is so complacent that they can act as if no one cares — but we do care. Please share this article so that others may learn about this criminal behavior and, in turn, begin to care.Pedestrians walking down Mission Wednesday afternoon seemed startled to see two police officers whizzing up the street in what appeared to be white, combat-style Segway scooters. But no one was more surprised than the suspect they caught up with at Sixth Street.
“You guys look like Robo-cops,” he said, after denying that he was the person they were attempting to apprehend.
C.W. Nevius: San Francisco Chronicle
Not Robo-cops, but cops on electric, stand-up scooters. The SFPD is giving the scooters, which are not made by Segway, a two-week trial. Wednesday officers Eric Balmy and Julio Bandoni gave them a spin.
“We were hesitant to get on these things,” Balmy said. “But you know what? It’s a blast.”
Economical too. Officer Richard Lee, who is in transportation, says “It takes $62 a day to run a black and white cruiser. These run six to eight hours on 44 cents.”
Lee says the vehicles are already in use in airports and police departments in Southern California.
You can see how the zippiness of the scooters can be put to use. When he and Balmy caught up with their suspect, Bandoni snapped a mug shot of him on his cell phone, the zoomed off to show it to the victim. He was back in minutes.
“You are absolutely right sir,” he said to their suspect. “It was not you.”
“I told you so,” he replied.Smart devices are designed to save time. But their privacy policies sometimes seem designed to waste it.
One way or another, the uproar over Samsung's "eavesdropping" SmartTV last week revealed a potentially invasive type of factory preset — one that consumer and privacy advocates worry gets too easily lost in the fine print.
Jaigris Hodson, who lectures on digital communications and big data at Ryerson University, says tech companies often default to share user information unless users know to opt out. (YouTube)
"The default from these tech companies is they will share your information unless you opt out," says Jaigris Hodson, a digital media professor at Ryerson University who teaches courses on social media and Big Data.
"The line they always give is, 'we're putting your privacy in your hands.' What they don't mention is that the default option could be the other way around."
Consumers often don't care much at first. But that feeling can turn once they're reminded how the always-on, always-sharing devices can reveal a little too much.
Fitbit wearers came to this realization in 2011, after their fitness-tracking bracelets began publishing statistics charting their vigour in the bedroom. Results were easily searchable on Google.
Sharing'sexual activity' via Fitbit
"Unfortunately, one of the Fitbit settings was for'sexual activity,' so they were inadvertently broadcasting [their statistics] to the world," said Kirsten Thompson, a Toronto privacy lawyer who specializes in cybersecurity and data protection.
Owners of Fitbit tracking bracelets discovered in 2011 that although they permitted the devices to track their sexual activity, they were also making that data available to the public online and searchable through Google. The company later made all user data private by default. (Screengrab)
"They knew they were recording it. They just didn't make the connection that it was going to also be shared online because that was just the default setting."
An unfair burden?
Media reports last week revealed that Samsung's updated privacy policy included a line mentioning that its voice-controlled SmartTV, which has a built-in microphone, can overhear "personal or other sensitive" chats and transmit that data to a third party.
Privacy experts worry that users may not realize their internet-enabled electronics are sharing their data amid the rise of the internet of things. (Steve Marcus/Reuters)
Ann Cavoukian, Ontario's former privacy watchdog, was appalled.
"It's unbelievable. I mean, how outrageous is that?" said Cavoukian, who devised the privacy-by-design concept that’s meant to be used by as the "gold standard" for data protection.
Samsung's response did little to allay her concerns.
In a statement, the Korean electronics giant said any TV owners worried about whether they would need to censor their speech in their own homes could "disconnect the TV from the Wi-Fi network" and disable voice-recognition capabilities.
A simple fix? To Cavoukian, it sounded more like an unfair burden to place on customers. Not to mention defeating the purpose of a voice-controlled TV in the first place.
"Nobody would think the default would be disclosure that your voice can be picked up and used for a variety of unknown purposes," she says.
To Thompson, that's tantamount to a company selling a car without brakes "and then saying, but you can turn on the brakes if you want to."
Pre-programmed to share
Simplicity of design may be partly to blame for why smart devices are pre-programmed to process and share all the information it can.
Samsung caused a stir when reports surfaced that its SmartTV voice-command system might capture and send snippets of personal conversations to third parties. (Rick Wilking/Reuters)
Manufacturers, search engines and social media companies say user data helps improve search algorithms and service.
But fears that the info might be used for ulterior purposes have inspired new web services built around confidentiality.
Facebook's tracking of its users' web-browsing histories to create targeted ads, for example, spawned the pro-privacy rival Ello.
The search engine DuckDuckGo, which has been billed as "the anti-Google," promises: "We do not collect or share personal information by default."
Those remain niche services, however.
According to a 2010 report from the office of Ontario's privacy commissioner, the default setting prevails 80 per cent of the time.
Unwitting users who stick with default settings could be automatically giving consent to share data by virtue of failing to opt out.
What is consent?
"But does a person really consent if we're talking about terms they probably won't look at?" asks John Lawford, the head of Canada's Public Interest Advocacy Centre, a non-profit group.
A man displays a range of fitness trackers, from left: Basis Peak, Adidas Fit Smart, Fitbit Charge, Sony SmartBand, and the Jawbone Move. Fitbit decided to make all of its user data private by default after it was revealed in 2011 that some users' fitness information was searchable online. (Bebeto Matthews/Associated Press)
"They'll start talking about their finances, health, sexual preferences, and they won't remember the thing in front of them has a microphone."
Therein lies one of the pitfalls of the so-called internet of things, the catch-all term describing the growing number of web-enabled devices — from smart fridges to cars — in the digital world.
"People by their nature are too lazy or they don't have the time to figure out how many clicks or how many screens they have to go through to switch these settings off," Thompson says.
People by their nature are too lazy or they don't have the time to figure out how many clicks or how many screens they have to go through to switch these settings off. - Kirsten Thompson, privacy and technology lawyer
She argues that manufacturers know full well their customers can't be bothered to scour dense terms of service to figure out a new gadget's privacy controls.
"On the other hand, if you didn't read fine print, certainly it's my perspective that there should be some requirement on manufacturers to bring that information more to the forefront," says Mandy Woodland, a privacy lawyer in St. John's.
Cavoukian has also pushed for companies to market the value of privacy in their products as a competitive edge.
Proposed amendments to privacy law
In Canada, the expectation is that manufacturers would honour her concept of privacy by design, in which manufacturers build privacy protections into the data architecture from the outset.
Former Ontario privacy commissioner Ann Cavoukian devised the so-called 'privacy by default' standards that have been endorsed by the European Union and the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. (CBC)
Although privacy by design has not been legislated, David Fewer, director of the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, believes it's only a matter of time.
Lawmakers never foresaw the future of the internet of things when privacy legislation was first passed in 2004.
Now that smart devices are so ubiquitous, proposed amendments to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act could grant new enforcement powers to the federal privacy commissioner.
"Improving the enforcement tools in PIPEDA would go a long way," Fewer says, adding that litigation might otherwise drive change.
"There's nothing like the threat of class action to invite deeper thinking about how to design our products in a privacy-accommodating way."Pope Francis meets with Jordanian officials on his three-day pilgrimage to the Holy Land. (AP photo)
) – During his first official visit to the Middle East, Pope Francis repeatedly told Muslim audiences that religious freedom is “a fundamental human right” and that governments must allow people to choose their own faith.
“Religious freedom is in fact a fundamental human right and I cannot fail to express my hope that it will be upheld throughout the Middle East and the entire world,” the pope said in a May 24th address to King Abdullah II, ruler of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and Queen Rania at the Al Husseini Royal Palace in Amman.
The Hashemites are direct descendants of the Prophet Muhammad.
Quoting from his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI’s apostolic exhortation, Ecclesia in Medio Oriente, which called religious freedom “the pinnacle of other freedoms,” Pope Francis continued: “The right to religious freedom ‘includes on the individual and collective levels the freedom to follow one’s conscience in religious matters and, at the same time, freedom of worship….[it also includes] the freedom to choose the religion which one judges to be true and to manifest one’s beliefs in public.’”
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas welcomes Pope Francis on his arrival in Bethlehem. (AP photo)
Pope Francis repeated the same message the next day in his meeting with President Mahmoud Abbas and other Palestinian officials in Bethlehem.
While expressing his “profound hope” that “peace will be pursued with tireless determination and tenacity,” the pontiff once again stressed the need for religious freedom.
“Respect for this fundamental human right is, in fact, one of the essential conditions for peace, fraternity and harmony,” he said.
On May 26, the final day of his three-day pilgrimage, Pope Francis met with Sheikh Mohammed Hussein, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, and the president of the Islamic Supreme Council at the Dome of the Rock to mark the 50th anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s historic visit to the Holy Land.
The Temple Mount site is holy to both Muslims, who believe it is where the Prophet Mohammed ascended to heaven, and Jews, who believe it is where God told Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, and where their First and Second Temples were built.
Pope Francis standing in front of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. (AP photo)
“Dear brothers, dear friends, from this holy place I make a heartfelt plea to all people and to all communities who look to Abraham: may we respect and love one another as brothers and sisters! May we learn to understand the sufferings of others!” the pope said.
“May no one abuse the name of God through violence!” Pope Francis told the Muslim religious leaders.Image copyright AFP PHOTO / West Bengal Police Image caption Some of the alleged attackers were caught on camera
The main suspect in the rape of an elderly nun in West Bengal has been arrested, Indian police say.
Milon Sarkar and another man, Ahidul Islam Babu, were arrested by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) late on Wednesday, CNN-IBN reported.
It is not yet clear what role Sarkar is alleged to have played in the case.
The 74-year-old nun was attacked in March during a burglary at her convent in a case which shocked India and led to street protests in many cities.
The number of alleged attackers in the case arrested now stands at five. Four men who were held in April over the attack have since been released.
Senior West Bengal police official Dilip Kumar Adak has previously said eight alleged attackers have been identified so three more remain to be tracked down.
Both of the men arrested on Wednesday, Milon Sarkar and Ahidul Islam Babu, are reported to be Bangladeshi citizens who had fled to Bangladesh.
During the attack in Ranaghat town on 14 March, money was stolen from the convent school and the building ransacked, before the nun was raped in the convent itself.Dark Matter Hiding in the Margins
Feb 16, 2009 Astronomers and astrophysicists are so keen to identify cold dark matter that almost any argument is accepted in the physics journals and the popular science media without apparent critical reasoning. A recently published paper in the Journal of Physics A by Adler (2008) calculates the maximum amount of cold dark matter that must be present in the space between the Laser Geodynamics Satellites (LAGEOS) and the Moon’s orbit. Adler asserts that there is at most the equivalent to 4 x 10^-9 of Earth’s mass of dark matter in that volume (2.4 x 10^16 kilograms).
This scientific journal article was reported on the Scientific American and the American Scientist websites, among others. Unfortunately, the writers and editors seem not to have read the original paper and were more concerned with sensational headlines about dark matter than responsible science reporting. Still worse, the editor of the Journal of Physics A didn’t seem to pay much attention to the paper.
What Adler does is deceptively straightforward. He uses published measurements for the gravitational parameter (GM in units of kg^3/s^2, the product of the gravitational constant G and the object’s mass) for the Earth alone, the Moon alone, and the Earth and Moon combined. After subtracting the values for the Earth alone and the Moon alone from the value of the two combined, what is left must be dark matter.
Adler's value for the combined GM parameter is 403503.2357 ± 0.0014. His value for the Earth alone is 398600.4356 ± 0.0008, and his value for the Moon alone is 4902.8000 ± 0.0003. Each of these gravitational parameters is derived using a different method with different sets of assumptions, and are then "tweaked" in different ways (with implicit assumptions) before the final calculations. In the end, Adler finds the GM for dark matter to be 0.0001±0.0016. By dividing this value by the GM for the Earth, the result is a ratio of (0.3 ± 4) x 10^-9. Based on that result, he asserts that there must be a mass of dark matter less than 4 x 10^-9 times that of the Earth in that volume of space (G assumed to be a constant).
There is a deep flaw in the proposal that the difference in these values is statistically significant. What has been found is that the GM value selected for the Earth-Moon combination versus the separate GM values for the Earth and Moon alone agree well within their stated tolerances.
Alternatively, the value for the combined Earth-Moon GM is 403503.2357 ± 0.0014. If for comparison the separate Earth and Moon values are added using standard interval calculations to get the new error, the value is 403503.2356 ± 0.0011. Looking at these two values with error bars on a chart, the second summed value fits perfectly within the 95% confidence error bars of the original combined value. There is no significant difference between the two values.
This error in reasoning is immediately followed by another statistical sleight of hand. Adler computes the dark matter-to-Earth GM ratio of (0.3 ± 4) x 10^-9. From this he uses only the positive side of the 95% confidence interval to assert there is at most 4 x 10^-9 the fraction of Earth’s mass in dark matter between Earth and the Moon. This is really misleading. The positive side of a confidence interval has no more statistical significance than the negative side. It is 0.3 plus or minus 4, not just plus. That means -3.7 is as statistically valid as +4.3. The best that he can propose (if we can ignore the error in assigning a statistically insignificant difference to dark matter at all) is that there is a 95% likelihood of there being or not being any dark matter in that volume of space. That is not really so enlightening.
However, the fundamental errors he makes in interpreting these calculations does not stop the flights of fancy in the Scientific American article one bit:
“Based on current data, Adler estimates in the October 17 Journal of Physics A that at most some 24 trillion metric tons of dark matter lies between Earth and the moon. Such a dark matter halo might explain the anomalies seen in the orbits of the Pioneer, Galileo, Cassini, Rosetta and NEAR mission spacecraft. Adler also speculates that dark matter could exert dramatic effects on the four gas giants in our solar system—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. If these massive worlds have gravitationally captured dark matter, then dark matter particles could smash into them—rare events but enough to heat up the gas giants and account for why the insides of these planets (and even Earth) seem hotter than known mechanisms can explain. It might also account for why Uranus seems anomalously cold—the planet is bizarrely tilted, perhaps because of a colossal impact, and Adler surmises that this collision might have knocked away most of the dark matter cloud that might typically have heated Uranus.”
It’s difficult to know where to start with a critique of the Scientific American article. First, the writer obviously did not read the paper, or if he did, he has no grasp of confidence intervals. Second, the amount of mass under consideration is comparatively tiny.
Twenty-four trillion metric tons is not even a very big asteroid. It’s not even in the top 10 of asteroid masses. So how this is meant to explain spacecraft orbital anomalies is not clear. Allowing for similar dark matter “halos” around the other planets, it will not exert any significant gravitational force on the Pioneer spacecraft.
Third, there’s the speculation about Uranus. By definition, dark matter does not interact with “regular” matter. So how a collision with Uranus would have “knocked away” dark matter is difficult to understand.
Adler correctly states that there are anomalous temperature phenomena associated with Venus, Saturn and other planets. The Electric Universe model uses observational data of electrical currents in space to propose hypotheses about these temperature anomalies. Wal Thornhill used the Electric Universe model to correctly predict that Saturn would have hot North and South Poles (even though the North Pole was in total darkness for over 15 years). Comparing this to Adler’s ideas, how would dark matter collisions preferentially heat the North and South poles?
The Electric Universe model also predicts the spacecraft orbital anomalies. Space probes develop a negative charge as they move through space. As Wal Thornhill discussed in "A Mystery Solved," in the weak but steady electric field of the Sun negatively charged spacecraft will experience a small “anomalous” acceleration toward the Sun.
Those employed by our scientific establishment, as well as scientific reporters, should be held to a high standard of critical thinking. In addition, the readership must not take any assertions from the scientific community at face value. A scientific theory is best assessed by its ability to provide testable predictions of the Universe around us. By adopting an attitude that asserts a theory is no longer open to being falsified, we have moved from science to faith. The Electric Universe movement encompasses a wide range of testable models and propositions to explain the world around us. It is also about empowering an educated public to demand better science from our scientists.
Contributed by Tom Wilson
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Declaration of Independence states that our rights are “endowed by our Creator.” If the plaintiffs in this lawsuit are successful, they will succeed not only in removing the history for which our fathers and founders sacrificed so much, but also in removing the very source our founders believed provided our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Eliminating or revising our Christian heritage seems to be in vogue these days at America’s historic sites. In 2006, tour guides at the Jamestown Settlement, the replica of the first (1607) English colony in America, were caught intentionally leaving out its Christian heritage when discussing the purpose for the colony. In early 2007, the government explained that the inscription “In God We Trust” was “accidentally left off” the initial minting of the new presidential dollar coins, only to correct the mistake by placing the words on the very edge of the coins – and not until major public pressure was placed upon them did our Congress require the treasury to place the words back upon the face. In mid 2007, the Architect of the Capitol removed any mention of God from the flag-folding ceremonies at veterans’ funerals and earlier attempted to remove “God” from congressional flag certificates. And in late 2007 the chaplain of my organizations discovered that someone in the hierarchy of the Washington Monument had deliberately altered its display of the capstone replica, so that the visiting public would have absolutely no idea that the Latin words “Laus Deo” (meaning “Praise be to God”) were actually inscribed on the very top of the monument as a celebratory finish and dedication (see the live Fox News story from the Washington Monument).
Religious revisionism has even come to the doors of the White House, as our own president denied our country’s Judeo-Christian heritage and make up when he spoke in Turkey on April 6: “We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation.”
Is it merely coincidental that so many acts of revisionism have occurred over the last couple years at governmental and historical sites? Is it merely coincidental that the more modern memorials in Washington (like the Roosevelt and World War II memorials) bear virtually no religious inscriptions at all, while all the former ones do? Is it merely coincidental that the new CVC is the next fighting ground to erase any display of America’s Judeo-Christian heritage?
So, could the lawsuit by the Freedom of Religion Foundation prevail and prevent the engravings in the CVC? Are you kidding? Mark my words: If a few liberal judges get the case, and we the people do nothing, it will. And then that precedent will be used to extend their next argument that our national motto “In God We Trust” is unconstitutional.
That is why I am encouraging Americans to write or call the Architect of the Capitol’s communications officer at (202) 228-1793 and also their representatives to inform them about what they think of the national motto and the Pledge of Allegiance being engraved within the CVC. While you’re at it, remind them that you, the taxpayer, paid for that $621 million facility and that you think some corner of its 580,000 square feet deserves to be dedicated to a permanent display of the Capitol’s rich religious history.
Atheists might not be found in every foxhole, but the bunker called the Capitol Visitors Center has a couple in there right now. I think it’s time that Americans let them know that the motto and pledge are not only at the heart of our country, but that whitewashing God from the walls of history is actually an unfair promotion of atheism and an injustice to all that is America.After making a lot of money manufacturing swimming pools, Stelios Stavridis has redirected his entrepreneurial talents toward saving his country.
The 66-year-old Greek business executive with aristocratic features recently became the head of the country's privatization agency, which has been charged with selling off hundreds of government-owned real estate, companies, marinas and airports.
Stavridis is the third man to hold the position in only a year, but this doesn't reduce his professional confidence. He says he has just had "excellent" conversations with observers from the so-called troika, consisting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Commission and the European Central Bank (ECB), who regularly review the country's progress.
However, Stavridis also had to confess to the troika that his agency is unlikely to meet its goals for this year. The planned sale of the national gas company to the Russian Gazprom conglomerate fell apart at the last minute, and now a 652 million ($839 million) deal for the privatization of gambling company OPAP is also on the rocks, because the buyer feels that he is being cheated.
This means Stavridis will almost certainly fail to reach his original 2013 privatization goal of 2.6 billion. Because of these and other difficulties, the financing plan for Greece now faces a large shortfall of 11.1 billion by 2015.
Yet Another Debt Haircut?
Greece's euro partners have already pledged more than 230 billion in aid, and government spending has also been slashed by dozens of billions. Representatives of Greek business are now convinced that the country cannot survive without yet another debt haircut.
The subject is politically sensitive, especially in Germany, because this time a debt haircut would also affect public creditors, which already hold 80 percent of Greek sovereign debt. In other words, a large share of German assistance loans would be irretrievably lost.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is still strongly opposed to a debt haircut, fearing that Greece's enthusiasm over reforms will vanish once financial pressure subsides. The country needs more than money alone to get back on its feet. Even the IMF is critical of the devastating effects of austerity programs on the country's economy. But that is only half the truth. The fact is that while Greece has drastically cut spending, efforts at structural reform are stagnating. This also hampers economic success.
When the troika observers first arrived in the country in 2010, they were surprised at just how overregulated the economy was, at how inefficient the entire government and judicial apparatus had become. Not even the estimated government deficit for 2009 was correct. When it was recalculated, 6 percent turned into 12.7 percent and eventually even went up to 15.6 percent.
Six austerity programs later, the deficit is expected to decline to about 4 percent for this year. Greece's euro partners attribute this success to the efforts of conservative Prime Minister Antonis Samaras. "The current government is finally strongly committed to bringing order to the state," says Panos Carvounis, a representative of the European Commission in Athens. "Things are moving."
'Greek Success Story?'
According to Carvounis, the country finally has a complete picture of its revenues and expenditures, and Samaras has made progress with reforms of the healthcare system. The labor market has also been radically reformed. Greece's costly multi-employer collective bargaining agreements are now history, and the rules governing settlement payments to laid-off workers are no longer as stringent as they used to be.
This spring, because of these successes, it seemed that the country was out of the woods. Unit labor costs, seen as an indicator of a country's competitiveness, had declined by 10 percent compared to 2007, thanks to the easing of labor market regulations. Major corporations like Unilever, Philip Morris and Hewlett-Packard were announcing substantial investment plans.
During a visit to Beijing, Samaras overconfidently touted what he called his "Greek success story."
But what outsiders see as successful reforms come at the expense of ordinary Greeks. A few hundred meters from the office of EU representative Carvounis, a retiree shot himself to death last year because of financial problems. Surveys show that household income has plunged by almost 40 percent since the crisis began. Some 64 percent of young people are unemployed, and the healthcare system, after several rounds of austerity cuts, is on the verge of collapse. In many public hospitals, patients have to pay for their own bandages and swabs, while relatives are called upon to care for them, because of a shortage of nurses.
'Our Political System is Toxic'
In light of such conditions, the troika has often proposed that the wealthy be required to play a stronger role in financing the government. But even the Samaras administration shies away from challenging their influential lobbying groups. Greek ship owners, for instance, the country's most powerful business group, contribute little to the country's recovery. In fact, their ample revenues from shipping are tax-exempt.
"Our political system is toxic," says Antigone Lyberaki, 54, an economics professor at Panteion University in Athens. According to Lyberaki, the government apparatus and economic structure were destroyed by decades in which bribes and political relationships were more important than performance.
Over the years, powerful lobbying groups were able to secure privileges that they are now fiercely defending. For instance, when the government sought to eliminate overpriced licenses for truck drivers, the drivers shut down traffic throughout the country, and the military had to be brought in to bring supplies to hospitals.
It was only one of hundreds of bitter conflicts over the gradual liberalization of Greece's utterly overregulated economy.Spicy Vegan Chili Burgers
veggie burgers
Vegenaise
easy
Super easy!..
Dream Feast.
fell in love
EASY
Easy easy easy.
yummy yummy yummy.
Quick note on the rice.
extra ease
The nutritional yeast can also help to dry out and bind the patty.
Spicy Vegan Chili Burgers
makes 4 large patties
*Field Roast or Tofurky brands
*my "salt-free chili powder" contained black pepper, paprika, onion, garlic, ground chili, turmeric and more.
optional add-in's:
diced jalapeno and/or cayenne for more HEAT
For burger assembly, I used:
Directions:
No Fry Method!
bake
freshly made chili burger patties..I made these chili burgers over the weekend andwith them! I served them as burgers the first night, then the next day, reheated a leftover patty to serve with my dinner salad (which had freshly grated beets, tomatoes, sprouts, tahini hemp raw kale, avocado..) Also at the table that night, an oven-baked, sticky sweet, sweet potato and some smoky peppered shiitake mushrooms. It was so amazing!So if you loved my Sweet Potato Tahini Burgers - you will love this recipe. It is a lot spicier with a more textured bite - but just as! And that is the best part.ForI used some pre-cooked rice that you simply heat in the microwave. But if you make rice yourself just be sure it isn't too wet. Short-grained brown rice is recommended. And your rice is a little on the wet side, heat it in the microwave a minute or so to dry it out a bit. Drier, stickier rice soaks up flavor better and acts as a better sticky binder for the burger patty.Patty before going in my saute pan..15 ounce can of kidney beans, drained1 1/2 cups cooked brown rice, short grain (the stickier the better)1/2 tsp liquid smoke1 tsp apple cider vinegar2-4 Tbsp nutritional yeast2 tsp hemp seeds1 tsp salt-free chili spice powder (blend)3/4 tsp paprika1/4 cup red onion, diced1/3 cup finely chopped kale3 cloves garlic, chopped1/2 link (about 1/3 cup) of Spicy Vegan Sausage, diced (optional)1/4 tsp saltfine black pepper to taste* roasted corn* chopped peanuts* lentils* chopped bell pepper* parsley* ground flax seeds* diced cooked sweet potato* drizzle of pumpkin seed oil* my favve.....and more..* Sprouted Wheat Buns* spicy mustard and chipotle vegan mayo (a dash of chipotle powder to regular vegan mayo)* tomato + onion + lettuce +sprouts* avocado tossed in lemon juice and pepper1. Add your cooked brown rice and drained kidney beans to a large mixing bowl. With a large fork, mash the kidney beans. Mash at least 60-75% of the beans to create a pasty texture.2. Toss in all the remaining ingredients - add the nutritional yeast one teaspoon at a time and use to thicken as needed. It also adds a lot of savory cheezy flavor.3. Heat 1 Tbsp of safflower oil in a large saute pan.4. Shape patties. You should get about 4 large patties from this recipe.5. Add patties to sizzling hot oil. Allow patties to absorb some of the oil then quickly flip so that each side gets a thin layer of oil for the saute process.6. Cook about 3 minutes on each side. You want the burgers to be well-browned, but not burnt. I like to finish my burgers in the oven by baking at 350 for about ten minutes - this really crisps the edges up nicely. This step is optional though.7. Remove from oven or saute pan and place on a plate until ready to assemble burgers.Yes, you could absolutely justthese burgers in the oven. I'd suggest 375 degrees for 15-20 minutes. Or do a combo method of a quick saute then finish in the oven to bake.Assemble with: green leaf lettuce, sprouts, avocado, chipotle vegan mayo, spicy mustard, tomato, dash of pepper, and sprouted wheat buns. Serve warm.Ever looked down at your shoes and thought, "these could do with a television screen"? If so, Virgin America has a treat for you as it's created a pair of trainers that come with a working video display, built-in USB ports and its own Wi-Fi hotspot.
The Virgin America First Class Shoe, devised by US creative agency Eleven Inc, puts the'super' in'superfluous' with its excessively souped-up version of the Nike Air Mag, which Marty McFly sported in Back to The Future II.
While they might not be self-lacing, Virgin America's fancy footwear can charge your smartphone and stream video, something that was probably considered entirely out of the realm of possibility in 1985.
The shoes have apparently been designed to echo the experience of flying in Virgin America's first-class cabin, which are crafted from white Italian leather and come with their own "mood lighting" right down to the airline seat buckle accessory.
Yes, the shoes are excessive, ridiculous and downright ugly, but they've been created for a good cause. They're being auctioned off on eBay for charity Soles4Souls, and the proceedings will go towards providing shoes and clothing to impoverished communities.
Be prepared to bid high if you fancy these one-of-a-kind kicks though, because the current bid sits at $8,700 (£7,149, €7,916).Arsène Wenger has revealed that he wants Krystian Bielik, his new 17-year-old signing, to come straight into the Arsenal first-team squad this season as a holding midfield option.
Bielik completed a medical at Arsenal on Friday on a deal worth around £2million and, with captain Mikel Arteta now out for three months following surgery, Wenger confirmed that his new signing would be immediately in first-team contention.
“He’s a defensive midfielder, 6ft 2ins, he has a good energy level and technical level,” said Wenger.
“It’s a gamble but, on what we saw, it’s worth taking the gamble.”
When it was put to him that £2million was an “awful lot of money” for a player with such little experience, Wenger said: “It’s an awful lot of money for a player if he doesn’t succeed. If he does succeed then it’s cheap.”
With Arteta out, Francis Coquelin and Mathieu Flamini will be competing to start as the one holding midfielder in Wenger’s usual midfield system against Manchester City on Sunday.
Coquelin has played recently and was described on Friday as an “internal solution” to what feels like an eternal doubt over whether Arsenal have sufficient strength in that position.
Wenger's priority in the transfer window, though, is in defence, particularly after the loss of Mathieu Debuchy for three months following shoulder surgery.
It was noticeable on Friday that Wenger did not dismiss the prospect of bidding for West Ham United’s Winston Reid although he has also been watching Celtic’s Virgil van Dijk, Ipswich Town’s Tyrone Mings and Saint-Etienne captain Loïc Perrin.
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Did you know Telegraph Sport has an Arsenal Facebook page?My thoughts on Olaf’s Frozen Adventure with spoilers
* everything is perfect in the short, basically
* there is no Hans
* there is no Marshmallow
* there are no snowgies
* the short kind of repeats structure of Frozen Fever, focusing on the sisters the most
* Castle staff is totally used to Olaf and his antics, the same goes to Arendelle citizens
* Elsa still doesn’t touch people or is touched by them. Exception is Anna, towards which Elsa seems to be very feely-touchy, and Olaf
* Anna still feels like she has to sneak in to get some sweets
* Grand Staircase Entrance is repeated again
* Kristoff is very cute and uncomfortable in new clothes
* Arendelle totally doesn’t have a sense of safety and lets a huge Yule bell be dragged over heads of their queen and princess, they must believe a rope the bell is on is magic
* Elsa seems to know her subjects by name
* Kristoff is very sweet but tries very hard to gross people out. For example with troll traditions.
* Elsa avoids any contact with him and is traumatized by the thought of licking some mud and moss to the point of gagging. Anna enjoys the show.
* Elsa blaming herself for everything and shutting doors in Anna’s face seems still like a tradition. Uh-oh
* it seems like Sven can use sleds whenever he wants, without Kristof knowing
* Olaf has awesome skills of socializing
* LOL Oaken. Will he always be naked now? And there are trolls sculptures at his sauna.
* I wonder if buying new sleds for Kristoff when old ones are totalled will be new royal tradition
* So Elsa is out again and in search of her sister to apologize. Big progress
* Anna is the best sister ever. Period.
* Contents of Anna and Elsa’s trunks show vividly how different their childhood was
* lt seems that at this point Kristoff made himself a home at the royal stables. And he cooks. The way that is cute and gross, again. Pity we won’t see the outcome ;)
* This time Kristoff doesn’t understand Sven talk, but Anna and Elsa do. Strange
* Depressed Olaf is something new
* l really would like to know what citizens of Arendelle felt when their agitated queen personally knocked on their doors and asked for help in finding the snowman
* so the searching party made the same way in a couple of hours that took Anna a day and a night
* if you weren’t in tears before, this is the time to cry. We are reminded that Olaf’s sometimes annoying existence has a very deep meaning (and don’t be distracted by magically appearing Olaf’s box)
* Arendelle citizens absolutely support their queen and princess hugging, holding hands and making doe eyes at each other in public. And singing romantic duets together
* So the trademark chandelier can be a Christmas tree if needed. Well played, Elsa
* No, but Elsa’s magic is really awesome. With zero difficulty she can make fly not only Olaf (and get him safely back), but a great amount of lanterns. And they must be hot, but it doesn’t affect her magic a bit
* So Kristoff has his hand on Anna’s shoulder and Elsa has her hand on Anna’s butt. Prove me wrongfrom Steven Lawson Category: Articles
William Tyndale’s final words before the chain around his neck strangled him to death were, “Lord, open the king of England’s eyes.” That dying prayer was answered two years after Tyndale’s death, when King Henry VIII ordered that the Bible of Miles Coverdale was to be used in every parish in the land. The Coverdale Bible was largely based on Tyndale’s work. Then, in 1539, Tyndale’s own edition of the Bible became officially approved for printing.
Tyndale’s translation inspired the great translations that followed, including the Great Bible (1539, also compiled by Coverdale), the Geneva Bible (1560), the Bishops’ Bible (1568), the Douay-Rheims Bible (1582-1609), and the Authorized or King James Version (1611). A complete analysis of the King James shows that Tyndale’s words account for eighty-four percent of the New Testament and more than seventy-five percent of the Old Testament. Many of the great modern English versions stand in the King James tradition and thus also draw inspiration from Tyndale, including the Revised Standard Version, the New American Standard Bible, and the English Standard Version.
The enormous debt owed by the English-speaking world to William Tyndale is incalculable. His crafting of the English language introduced new words into our vocabulary that are spoken every day in countries around the world. Ultimately, his work in translating the Bible from its original languages into the tongue of his homeland helped launch the English Reformation. The calling of God upon Tyndale’s heart became a burning passion to see commoners read God’s unadulterated Word. Unfortunately, most people have never heard of this man and his vast contribution has been greatly undervalued through the centuries.
We want again Tyndales to tenaciously face the insurmountable obstacles before them and overcome them with zealous resolve for the glory of God. We need Tyndales who translate the Bible into the languages of forgotten people groups around the world. We need Tyndales to proclaim the gospel through the written page in the face of imminent danger. We need Tyndales who passionately love the Word of God to fill every pulpit, every seminary, every Sunday School class, every lectern.
Let us learn to say with David—and no doubt with Tyndale—“How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Ps. 119:103 ESV).
See also:
This excerpt is taken from The Daring Mission of William Tyndale, new from Steven Lawson and Reformation Trust.Share this... Pinterest
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We’re poppin’ cherries, yo! Chocolate-Dipped Champagne Cherries. Perfect for warm weather entertaining on the fly, managing miserable Mondays (good morning!), or for a little boudoir time flanked in fine linens with a manservant on hand to pop them into your eager lips. Whatever the scenario, these drunken little gems dipped in chocolate may very well awaken your inner Isis or Cleopatra.
Sadly, my inner goddess has been asleep, a coma I suspect, for some time. Her curls are dull and matted, her eyelash-less lids are swollen, her under-eyes are dark and sunken, she is simultaneously puffy and gaunt and her diva stance is anything but, these days. Nothing a little spa time, or an extended vacation won’t fix, I suppose.
This year I didn’t get around to picking cherries or strawberries, but I’m hoping to get in on the raspberry and blueberry action. We’re just past the peak of local cherry season, so we have started to pit and freeze some of our fresh haul for the off-season. I am not a fan of baked/cooked fruits, but I love a smoothie or ice cream packed with frozen cherries. I am also thinking of dehydrating a few to make some more cherry powder for baking. I love using powdered fruit to colour and flavour baked goods, especially macarons. YUM!
While we are still in the hot, humid, oven-free phase of summer, enjoying the local bounty just as they are is most definitely the way to go. Can you think of an easier dessert? Wash, pit, dip, decorate and enjoy!
5 from 3 votes PRINT Chocolate Dipped Champagne Cherries Prep Time 15 minutes Total Time 15 minutes Servings 24 Author I Sugar Coat It INGREDIENTS 1 cup champagne or other alcoholic beverage of your choice
2 dozen fresh cherries pitted, stem intact
1 cup pre-crystallized dark chocolate milk or white works
sprinkles praline, jimmies to decorate INSTRUCTIONS Pit cherries and leave stems intact. Add to bowl of champagne and allow to soak for 30 minutes. Remove from champagne and place on a rack to allow excess fluids to drip off. Dip cherries into chocolate and set aside to dry on a sheet of parchment paper. If adding sprinkles etc. dip immediately after coating with chocolate. Allow chocolate to set. Enjoy!
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RedditAt the time of the article, in June 2016, Stephen Peat was 36 and experiencing debilitating headaches and violent mood swings. Peat was primarily an enforcer, a player designated to drop his gloves and square off in fist-to-fist combat with an opponent. The Peats presumed that Stephen’s problems were rooted in brain trauma sustained on the ice in so many fights.
John Branch, a sports reporter at The New York Times, has been in sporadic contact via text messaging and email with Walter Peat since writing about him and his son Stephen, a former NHL player.
Walter Peat, the head saw filer at a lumber mill in a suburb of Vancouver, gave The Times permission to publish the texts and emails he had sent John over the previous 18 months. Some have been edited for space.
We are at a critical point in Stephen’s health. I am afraid Stephen may become another statistic in NHL players whose life is ended due to brain injuries suffered from playing. We are desperate for help, as we have run out of resources and energy to cope with this. The NHL has offered zero help. I am sorry we haven’t contacted you sooner, but Stephen is stubborn, and proud. It has gone past that, and (I) hope someone will help. He is suffering badly from memory loss, depression, extreme headaches and, at times, suicide thoughts. Along with this, (it’s) tough when he gets frustrated and anger comes out. He has got violent a couple times, and at times I am afraid for my life. I love my son very much, and you have no idea how much this hurts to see him like this. Please help.
Again, we thank you for doing our story, which hasn’t ended yet. I just hope Stephen can get some help, going forward. We had a great day yesterday, as just the two of us went boating for the day. Beautiful day, making memories together.
Just an update on Stephen, not sure if the NHL might want to know, but Stephen is in lockup, been arrested two times in the last week for parole violation. May spend the next six months in jail, he is (in) real bad shape and, like I said before, I don’t have the resources or the knowledge to deal with this. I saw him yesterday, looks horrible, he is homeless. I know (the) one-can-lead-a-horse-to-water theory, but I am afraid this could be very close to his end. At times he has no idea who he is or where he is.
Stephen needs special medical attention badly, as I also believe he has gone back to self medicating, not sure, but you can’t imagine what bad shape he is in. I fear he may not make it out of lockup, but there is nothing I can do, or don’t know what to do. The system is flawed.
He is in lockup now, most likely won’t get released now. (His) only violation is not seeing his parole officer, but he forgets, a complete mess right now. Probably the safest place for him, but he won’t get fixed in a cement cell.
JUNE 7, 2017
I will be honest, my health has suffered thru this, and I am at a financial crisis as Stephen has gone through $120,000 since getting out of rehab. And he is demanding more every day, to a point if I continue this, I will be on the street. Stephen can’t comprehend the financial stress he has put on me. I went to meet him at Clover Towing the other day, Stephen looked in real bad shape, as he didn’t even know I was there. I had to leave, and stop in a parking lot next door and just broke down. The police were called by the towing company and they took him to jail. He should be in a hospital, not a jail, we can talk more about this. I will say I have had to get a no-contact order as I fear for my safety now. If he is in a state where he doesn’t know who I am, it scares me.
JUNE 14, 2017
John, sorry for not getting back to you. It has been a real shit show with Stephen this last few days. I have been overwhelmed with just trying to deal with him. I will try to contact you when it settles down here. Tks for your concern and interest.
NOV. 7, 2017
Walter sends John an email that he sent to Stephen’s probation officer in June, asking for a no-contact order against his son.
I think it best we do not have any contact at all, and if he needs to contact me, maybe a mediator, or thru you if possible.
I need to step away, and allow my son to hit bottom on his own.
I DO NOT WANT ANY CONTACT AT ALL, FROM THIS DAY FORWARD.
Walter sends John his response to a query from Stephen’s probation officer.
I am not sure what there is to discuss. It seems no one wants to help, just rubber-stamp things until my son dies. He has had no help from the NHL, and from what I can assume, no help from the government, or law authorities. It is well documented that my son suffers from concussion issues, and he is treated like a common criminal. Yes, he is breaking the law, but, what is the root cause. His doctors say he is doing drugs, maybe he is, but why, again the root cause. It is very well documented that many of these players or people who suffer from concussion syndrome reach out for a solution, but end up with drugs off the street to solve their problem.
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He was a young man who had thousands of fans cheering for him every time he dropped the gloves, fighting for the Langley Thunder junior team, the Calgary Hitmen, Red Deer Rebels, Tri City Americans.
Stephen played for the Washington Capitals, for four years, one time had 13 fights in 12 games, bare-knuckle fights with big guys, some who are already dead now due to concussion-related injuries. Yet, here we are, trying to put Stephen in jail because no one has any idea what to do with him. Yes, my brothers and I have asked for a no-contact order, as we are concerned for our safety but, at the same time, we love him, and fear every phone call we get, it is someone to tell us he has died. I will tell you this, that John Branch wants to do a follow-up story, NY Times, and this story will have an ending. Sad. How we write that ending is up to all of us, I have tried my best, and much like Stephen, have had the door closed in my face. I am 66 years old, sold my house to help, running out of funds, and really, my health has gone south because of this. I have avoided talking to John Branch as it is very difficult talking about a lost cause. Many nights, I cry myself to sleep, trying to figure out a new plan. But, no matter what I do, I wake up to an endless problem.
His life is at stake, he used to be the most polite young man, straight “A” in school, and now, he can’t remember why he gets up in the morning.
Sincerely,
Walter Peat
NOV. 13, 2017
Hi John
Tks for replying. Not sure, but the fact Stephen is deteriorating fast, living on the street, has pretty much zero help from NHL, and my relationship with him had gone south. With his condition, he needs professional help, as I would suggest his mind set has gone off the rails. I made arrangements for him to stay at my brothers, and both brothers are pretty much handicapped, but (Stephen) ended up being removed by the police for threats, etc. His mind leaves him lost at times. Confused, aggressive, and I will be honest, he scares the shit out of me, and for that matter my brothers. It saddens me to seem helpless as Stephen has accused me of interfering in his affairs. I have no idea how to tell this horror story, but I am sure there are many living this nightmare. I am thinking that this may all come out one day, but my biggest fear is my son will not be with us, as he even talks about suicide at times. Every time I get an email or an unknown number calling me about him, I fear the worst news. The legal system and the medical system here only want to paint him as a criminal or a drug addict. I would suggest both may be the case, as his situation has forced him to do whatever it takes to relieve the pain, anxiety etc., from the headaches.
Again, I am a normal person who loves hockey, but to see what the game has become, and the end result of the violence allowed on the ice. The worst is the fact that most sports teams are still in the dark as far as recognizing the health risks associated with many sports. The rule book must be rewritten.
Right now, I am at a loss of what to do, and who to turn to for help. Many nights, I lose countless hours of sleep, thinking of what will happen, and am I doing the right thing. There are so many people who prefer to put a paper bag over their head and ignore the fact that Stephen or so many players suffer from these injuries. But the injuries just don’t stop there, as the emotional, financial, and in some cases, physical injuries suffered by family members. I am living the nightmare of the movie “Concussion.”
I honestly have no idea where to take this, other than keep trying to tell the story, and maybe others won’t feel so lonely, like they are on a deserted island.
He is so mad at me, that it has come to (him) yelling at me, making threats, etc., as really, I was/am the only person left in his life trying to help, as many just look at him as just another person on the street, a bum dumpster diving for food.
John, I am open to anything that may bring this into the open, so people can see what hockey is breeding. And where many of itss players end up. It is so sad that Stephen had his own cheering section in Washington, but now, many of his fans have now idea or care what he is doing.
Sincerely
Walter
NOV. 13, 2017
Walter responds to John’s request for permission to publish the messages he has sent about Stephen.
John,
I personally would not have a problem with that. Fact is, I feel like I am the one who has failed my son, as I feel I have has the ability to fix anything. This is something I struggle with every day. I will admit I have tears in my eyes as I respond to this, as Stephen is texting me right now, begging for money. Says he can hardly lift his arms, as he is so weak, starving, cold, but still blames me for all that has happened to him. Some days, I find this whole nightmare like a bad dream, wishing I could wake up, and it was all over.The immediate consequences from the Orlando terror attack are obvious: dozens dead and maimed – families changed forever.
The next layer of consequences, arriving soon, are not as obvious, but they are coming. Here they are:
We are getting a divorce. First, a poll shows that Americans are pretty much divided on their opinions about the attack. Most of the Democrats see it as a gun control issue. Most Republicans see it as a terror attack. And there seems to be no sign of compromise (why can’t it be mostly “terror” and a little “guns?” asks the therapist, Dr. Gutfeld)
This poll hints at an ongoing, disturbing change in this country – one that brings forth a series of even more problems – those of which I see as almost unsolvable. We quarrel about the quarrel. We cannot agree on the fight. And therefore we cannot begin to fight. Instead, we are like that proverbial snake that devours its own tail. Except, we think it’s sushi. But it’s blowfish. You get the idea. We’re dead.
How can America defeat ISIS if we have vocal factions believing that we are worse? How can we fight the enemy if a large portion of our population thinks an inanimate object – a gun – caused Orlando?
We assume different identities lead to different values. Does a black person, or a gay person or a fat white male, see a terror attack differently? I wouldn’t think so, but activists, talking heads and assorted thought-processors disagree. Now we no longer look at a tragedy as an American one, but through the divisive eyes of balkanized camps of competing identities.
An activist at the University of Missouri, during a vigil for the victims of Orlando, actually expressed disappointment that she had to speak in front of grievers, who happened by birth, to be white. My only relief comes from the fact that a few people heckled her (a brave gay couple). That relief left when others drowned them out.
The beat-down is dead. We need to train our populace on the basics of group self-defense – meaning how to cooperate and risk their skins to take down the lone aggressor.
If ten people attack a man with a gun, one or two may die – but the alternative is worse. “Be Like 93” should be the motto – in honor of the heroic actions of the passengers of Flight 93, who saved uncountable lives on September 11, 2001 by attacking the hijackers and bringing the jet down in a Pennsylvania field.
But that’s not what I’m really talking about. I mean justifiable aggression: explicitly meting out justice to those who deserve it. How can we do that, when we cannot agree who deserves it?
The New York Times blamed Republicans for Orlando. The Huffington Post blamed Christians. Every liberal blames guns, as well as the complicit wife of the murderous, terrorist dirtbag. And the dirtbag’s dad blames
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Therefore, we have evaluated the effects of methylone, MDPV, mephedrone, and methamphetamine on DA nerve endings. The β-ketoamphetamines alone or in all possible two-drug combinations do not result in damage to DA nerve endings but do cause hyperthermia. MDPV completely protects against the neurotoxic effects of methamphetamine while methylone accentuates it. Neither MDPV nor methylone attenuates the hyperthermic effects of methamphetamine. The potent neuroprotective effects of MDPV extend to amphetamine-, 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine-, and MPTP-induced neurotoxicity. These results indicate that β-ketoamphetamine drugs that are non-substrate blockers of the DA transporter (i.e., MDPV) protect against methamphetamine neurotoxicity, whereas those that are substrates for uptake by the DA transporter and which cause DA release (i.e., methylone, mephedrone) accentuate neurotoxicity. METH (a) enters DA nerve endings via the DAT, causes leakage of DA into the cytoplasm and then into the synapse via DAT-mediated reverse transport. Methylone (METHY) and mephedrone (MEPH; b), like METH, are substrates for the DAT but release DA from cytoplasmic pools selectively. When METH is combined with METHY or MEPH (c), DA efflux and neurotoxicity are enhanced. MDPV (d), which is a non-substrate blocker of the DAT, prevents METH uptake and efflux of DA. Therefore, bath salts that are substrates for the DAT and release DA (METHY, MEPH) accentuate METH neurotoxicity, whereas those that are non-substrate blockers of the DAT (MDPV) are neuroprotective.
© 2015 International Society for Neurochemistry.Adding to the tempest of anti-corruption cases making their way through Honduras, the United States authorities indicted members of one of the nation’s most elite families Wednesday, charging a former vice president and his son with laundering drug money.
The indictment of Jaime Rolando Rosenthal, a vice president of Honduras in the 1980s and one of its wealthiest men, came as a shock in a country where wealth and political power breed impunity. Also charged was his son, Yani Rosenthal, a former cabinet minister, and his nephew Yankel Rosenthal, a soccer club manager and former minister of investment who was arrested Tuesday evening in Miami. A fourth man, Andrés Acosta García, was also charged.
The Rosenthal family is among the richest in Honduras, with a business enterprise that sprawls across the news media, financial services, telecommunications and real estate interests. The family is accused of laundering money for some of the largest Central American drug syndicates through accounts in the United States, according to the Treasury Department, which also announced sanctions against the three family members.
Some analysts suggested that in charging the Rosenthals, the United States intended to warn the narrow cadre of powerful families who control much of Honduras. The nation is among the most violent in the world and poorest in Latin America. It serves as the transit point for drugs that are smuggled from South America through Mexico to the United States.Shale gas explorer confirms it apply to drill four exploration wells in Lancashire in the coming weeks, reports BusinessGreen
The UK's most high profile shale gas developer, Cuadrilla Resources, announced on Monday that it is poised to submit planning applications for exploratory wells at its site in Lancashire, raising the prospect of a summer of protests against the controversial development.
The company issued a statement confirming it would put forward a planning application to Lancashire County Council for it to drill, hydraulically fracture, and test the flow of gas at up to four exploratory wells at its proposed site at Preston New Road. It added that plans would also be submitted to install a series of seismic monitoring stations within four kilometres of the proposed site, in order to monitor the risk of earth tremors that may result from the drilling.
Cuadrilla said the planning application had followed "extensive public consultation" and would be accompanied by a detailed Environmental Impact Assessment undertaken by consultancy Arup.
It also said the Preston New Road proposal would be followed later this summer by a separate planning application for a second exploration site at the nearby Roseacre Wood.
Francis Egan, chief executive at the company, said the first planning application could prove to be a "really important milestone for Lancashire and the UK as we seek to unlock Lancashire's shale gas potential".
"The development of the shale gas industry has the potential to bring significant investment, community benefits and opportunities for local people and the North West and UK economies," he added. "We have undertaken extensive consultation and engagement with the local communities on these applications and have listened carefully to what people have told us."
The move is likely to be welcomed by the government, which has called for developers to accelerate work to assess whether fracking projects will be able to extract commercially viable shale gas.
However, the new plans, which are now expected to be assessed by the council for up to 16 weeks, are expected to face staunch opposition from some local residents and green groups.
Helen Rimmer, campaigner for Friends of the Earth North West, said the proposals came at a time when "public support for shale gas in the UK has fallen below 50% for the first time".
"The public is rightly concerned that fracking causes more problems than it solves - there are risks for our water supply, our health and the beautiful Fylde environment, and it won't lower energy bills or create anywhere near as many jobs as renewables," she said.
Lancashire Councillor John Fillis, who is in charge of highways in the county, also recently reportedly voiced fears that earth tremors related to fracking activity could cause roads to "collapse".The Consumer Safety Act (CPSA) was enacted on October 27th, 1972 by the United States Congress. The act should not be confused with an earlier Senate Joint Resolution 33 of November 20, 1967, which merely established a temporary National Commission on Product Safety (NCPS), and for only 90-days (at a pittance of $100 per day). Section 4 of the 1972 act established the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) as a permanent independent agency of the United States federal government and defined its basic authority. The act gives CPSC the power to develop safety standards and pursue recalls for products that present unreasonable or substantial risks of injury or death to consumers. It also allows CPSC to ban a product if there is no feasible alternative to an outright ban. CPSC has jurisdiction over more than 15,000 different consumer products. The CPSA excludes from jurisdiction those products that expressly lie in another federal agency's jurisdiction, for example food, drugs, cosmetics, medical devices, tobacco products, firearms and ammunition, motor vehicles, pesticides, aircraft, and boats. These products may fall under the purview of agencies such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Department of Transportation, the U.S. Environment Protection Agency, and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration.
The CPSA is codified at 15 U.S.C. §§ 2051–2084. Federal regulations associated with the act are at Title 16 CFR parts 1101 through 1406. These regulations are numerous and include such laws as the Poison Prevention Packaging Act (PPPA), safety standards for such products as bicycle helmets and cigarette lighters, a ban on lead in paint, and a rule concerning size requirements for toys that could be choking hazards for young children.
Related improvements and amendments [ edit ]
On 2008-08-14, the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 became effective.[1] Among other provisions, its Section 219 (15 U.S.C. 2051) protects whistle blowers who take certain actions to raise concerns about consumer product safety. Those who believe they suffered unlawful retaliation for raising such concerns have 180 days to file a written complaint with OSHA seeking statutory remedies.
It requires manufacturers and importers of all children's products to have batches of their products tested by an independent certified laboratory. It affected, among other things, distribution of children's books which may contain small amounts of lead. Public libraries were forced to pull thousands of books from their shelves.[2] Testing books for lead would cost about $300 per book, according to a spokeswoman for the American Library Association, which has opposed the law.[3] In 2011, President Obama signed HR 2715 into law, which exempted ordinary books from testing requirements.
Coffee shops, second-hand goods stores, and others selling children's goods including books manufactured before 1985 may not sell children's goods that violate the lead standards. In order to assure themselves of the safety of those products, they may use a variety of means, the most reliable of which would be lead testing on the products.[4]
The CPSIA law had threatened sales of motorcycles and all-terrain vehicles built for children under 12, as internal parts of the bikes are built with alloys containing a small amount of lead.[5] However, these too were also exempted under the 2011 amendment.A bicyclist uses a bike lane along L St. NW on Nov. 08, 2012 in Washington, DC. (Matt McClain for The Washington Post)
It seems every year the District builds more bike lanes than the previous year. Not in 2015.
So far this year, the D.C. Department of Transportation has installed 2.27 miles of bike lanes, just a fraction of what the city built last year and no where near its goal to add 7.5 miles by the end of the year.
The number of bike lanes installed as of this week suggests that the city will fall short of last year’s record of nine miles of new bike lanes. City transportation officials say they have about four additional street miles in the design phase or under consideration that potentially could be built this year. That would bring the year’s total closer to the 7.5-mile goal.
“Last year we set a street mile record. I am pretty confident we won’t exceed that this year,” said Sam Zimbabwe, associate director at DDOT.
Crews this year have focused on filling gaps where cyclists felt uncomfortable riding, connecting to longer stretches of bike lane and improving connectivity in the existing bike network. For example, this month officials added.14 mile of lane to the 1st Street NE cycle track, extending it from G Street up to Massachusetts Avenue at Columbus Circle.
“It is really an important little eighth of a mile,” Zimbabwe said. “Now you got a nice protected bike lane.”
Most of the small additions this year have been in the city’s Northeast quadrant, with a couple in Southwest and one in Northwest.
The District has made commitments in recent years to expand bike access to residents. Last fall, DDOT issued a two-year action plan that projected the addition of 15 miles of on-street bike lanes over the next two years.
Source: D.C. Department of Transportation
Transportation officials say it has become more difficult to install bike lanes after a decade of adding them on the wider roads. In streets with limited width the challenge becomes how to add right-of-way for bikes without taking away space for general traffic and/or parking.
According to DDOT the city has about 69 miles of bike lanes.
Mike Goodno, a bicycle program specialist with DDOT, said the city has also added 1.6 miles of shared lane markings this year and added green paint to existing bike lanes.
In coming weeks, crews are scheduled to install 0.6 of a mile of bike lane on 12th Street NW., from Pennsylvania to L street. This will help provide an important connection between two of the most popular bike lanes in the city. When it is completed riders in that area will be able to ride in their own lane from Pennsylvania Avenue to Vermont Street, officials said.
Bike groups have been advocating for the expansion of bike facilities outside the downtown core to create a larger bike network in the city and also expand access to bike facilities to all parts of the city. But getting bike lanes in some areas, including Ward 8, has been challenging, officials say. A lot of the roads have limited width — just enough for vehicles and parking lanes.
More bike news:
Capital Bikeshare to get new bicycles, add nearly 60 stations starting this fall
College Park to launch its own bike rental service
A conversation with WABA about biking in WashingtonWhat are the Panama Papers?
Why are they called the Panama Papers?
The more-than 11 million documents, which date back four decades, are allegedly connected to Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca. ICIJ reports that the firm helped establish secret shell companies and offshore accounts for global power players. ICIJ reports that a 2015 audit found that Mossack Fonseca knew the identities of the real owners of just 204 of 14,086 companies it had incorporated in Seychelles, an Indian Ocean archipelago often described as a tax haven.
And as Gerard Ryle, the director of ICIJ, told CNN's Christiane Amanpour: "These documents, if nothing else, raise an awful lot of questions."
Who is mentioned in the documents?
The documents reference 12 current or former world leaders, as well as 128 other politicians and public officials. In addition to allegations involving associates of Putin -- the Russian leader isn't himself mentioned by name in any of the documents -- and FIFA, the papers also accuse the prime minister of Iceland, Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, of having ties, through his wife, to an offshore company that were not properly disclosed, while Argentina's President Mauricio Macri is alleged to have failed to disclose links to a company in his asset declarations.
How have the accused responded to the Panama Papers?
The Kremlin has dismissed the allegations as "a series of fibs" aimed at discrediting Putin ahead of elections.
A statement from the Icelandic prime minister's office said the offshore firm he's linked to was a holding company for his wife's assets, enjoyed no tax advantages and was created to avoid conflicts of interest in Iceland, while a spokesperson for Argentina's Macri said the president had never owned a stake in the firm he was linked to.
However, Britain, France, Australia and Mexico have vowed investigations for possible tax evasion.
FIFA's ethics committee said it has launched a preliminary investigation into one of its members, Uruguayan lawyer Juan Pedro Damiani, who is alleged to have had dealings with companies linked to a former FIFA official, Eugenio Figueredo, and two other men who are all under investigation for corruption.
"Our firm did not maintain any business relationship or conduct business with or for Mr. Eugenio Figueredo, nor for any of the other people mentioned in the newspaper article," the legal firm J.P. Damiani said in a statement to CNN.
What is Mossack Fonseca saying?
On Monday, the firm released a statement:
"Our industry is not particularly well understood by the public, and unfortunately this series of articles will only serve to deepen that confusion. The facts are these: while we may have been the victim of a data breach, nothing we've seen in this illegally obtained cache of documents suggests we've done anything illegal, and that's very much in keeping with the global reputation we've built over the past 40 years of doing business the right way, right here in Panama.
"Obviously, no one likes to have their property stolen, and we intend to do whatever we can to ensure the guilty parties are brought to justice.
"But in the meantime, our plan is to continue to serve our clients, stand behind our people, and support the local communities in which we have the privilege to work all over the world, just as we've done for nearly four decades."
Firm co-founder Ramon Fonseca Mora told CNN earlier that the information published is false and full of inaccuracies and that parties "in many of the circumstances" cited by the ICIJ "are not and have never been clients of Mossack Fonseca." The firm provided longer statements to ICIJ.
How did ICIJ get the documents?
An anonymous source gave the documents to Germany's Suddeutsche Zeitung and the newspaper shared them with ICIJ. Other media organizations that reported on the documents include the BBC The Guardian and McClatchy
The anonymous source "claimed to be concerned about what he or she saw in the documents. Of course, the documents started as a trickle but turned into a flood, a torrent in the end," says Ryle.
"The person claimed that their life was in danger if they ever became known as the source of this material because of course there are so many powerful people that are being revealed here."
CNN is unable to independently verify the reports and is seeking comment from the most prominent figures mentioned. They are spread across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas.
What are the consequences of this leak?
Ryle says the biggest consequence of the leak is the massive blow to secrecy -- the biggest selling point of offshore tax havens.
"The offshore world really only has one product and that is secrecy and when you take away that product they don't have anything for sale.
"For years and years they've been getting away with this secrecy and we're also seeing in the documents that every time the governments and the authorities try to crack down, they're finding new ways to get around those obstacles or barriers."An OKCupid date got so mad at a Queens student for not going back to his Brooklyn apartment that he stole her cellphone and hijacked her account — uploading photos of her and changing her profile to say “I’m available for threesomes,” she told The Post.
The woman, who asked to remain anonymous, said her date from hell actually began as a nice evening out near Union Square with the man she met on the popular site.
“It started pretty well,” the 22-year-old St. John’s University student said. “We talked for two weeks before we met in person.”
But after a few drinks, he pressured her to go back to his Williamsburg apartment, she said. When she declined, he became agitated — following her to the subway station, where he threw a water bottle at her, she said.
She managed to get away from the man — whom cops are now seeking — but not before he took her phone, according to her account.
“I guess he doesn’t take rejection well,” said the victim, a single mother with a 2-year-old daughter. “He was acting like a child.”
He then texted the woman’s friends, pretending to be her, she said.
“I’m all right everyone, just a little drunk but I’m home now,” he allegedly wrote.
She shared the man’s OKCupid profile pictures with police, who are investigating the incident.The FBI executed six search warrants in Minneapolis this morning, including homes of political activists, in connection to a terrorism investigation.
The warrants were “seeking evidence related to an ongoing Joint Terrorism Task Force investigation into activities concerning the material support of terrorism,” said FBI Special Agent Steve Warfield, spokesman in the Minneapolis office. “There is no imminent threat to the community and we’re not planning any arrests at this time.”
One of the warrants was executed at the home of Mick Kelly, an anti-war organizer, according to his attorney Ted Dooley.
“I have no idea what all this is about,” Dooley said. “Mr. Kelly is an activist, he’s a socialist or perhaps a communist and has been forever. He never hides his political views. They’re fishing. They’re casting big nets into the sea of political activism.”
Before agents confiscated his cell phone, Kelly told the Associated Press: “The FBI is harassing anti-war organizers and leaders, folks who opposed U.S. intervention in the Middle East and Latin America.”
Warrants were also signed to search the homes of Jessica Sundin on Park Avenue and Meredith Aby in South Minneapolis, Dooley said.
Five of the warrants were executed at residences and one at an office, Warfield said.
Warfield said he couldn’t say much in response to the allegations of attorneys and the people searched. “It’s an ongoing criminal case and these warrants were signed off by a federal judge,” he said.
Kelly, Sundin and Aby were organizers of a mass march on the first day of the Republican National Convention in St. Paul two years ago. They recently appeared at a news conference to announce plans for another protest if Minneapolis is selected to hold the 2012 Democratic National Convention.
Police estimated the peaceful march drew 10,000 protesters; organizers put the figure at 30,000. Other protests were marked by destructive acts by anarchists. More than 800 people were arrested during the four days of the convention, including Sundin and Kelly.
Sundin said they’ve already sought permits for 2012, “something I don’t think terrorists would do.”
Sundin called the suggestion they were connected with terrorism “pretty hilarious and ridiculous.” She said she wasn’t certain exactly what kinds of information the FBI was after or who else had been searched in either city.
An FBI SWAT team entered first “and looked for pointy things. And then they left and the FBI agents came in and looked through everything in the house,” she said. The agents took “computers, several boxes of papers, everything related to data like discs,” Sundin said.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan Nelson signed the warrant at 3:30 p.m. Thursday authorizing entry and seizure at Kelly’s home on Riverside Avenue, Dooley said.
The warrant for Kelly’s home said that the items to be seized were evidence concerning the violation of a federal law that prohibits “providing, attempting, conspiring to provide material support to designated foreign terrorist organizations,” Dooley said.
It allowed for the following to be seized: “documents, files, books, photographs, videos, souvenirs, war relics, notebooks, address books, diaries, journals, maps, or other evidence, including evidence in electronic form relating to Kelly’s travels to and from and presence and activities in Minnesota and other foreign countries, to which Kelly has traveled as part of his work for FRSO (Freedom Road Socialist Organization),” Dooley said.
Also, the warrant was seeking information about Kelly’s “ability to pay for his own travel within the United States or to Palestine or Colombia from the year 2000 until today. And this has to do with any contact with FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) and Hezbollah, all of which are FTOs (Foreign Terrorist Organizations),” Dooley said.
Asked whether Kelly had any contact with FTOs, Dooley said: “I have no idea. I guess it’s possible with six degrees of separation that he knows Obama.”
Dooley said the agents were also “looking for everything related to Kelly’s potential co-conspirators, including Kelly’s personal contacts in the United States and abroad, which means absolutely everybody that Kelly’s ever been in contact with, anywhere. I’d say it’s kind of unconstitutional and hideous, myself. It’s very broad. It’s disgusting.”
The warrants were executed about 7 a.m., with six carried out in Minneapolis and two in Chicago, Warfield said.
A SWAT team, accompanied by the FBI, knocked on Kelly’s door about 7 a.m. and Kelly’s partner answered, Dooley said.
“They said they had a search warrant,” he said. “She asked to see it, she couldn’t read it through the peephole, so they busted down the door. The door flew across the room and broke a fish tank. There are now eight FBI agents in the apartment, going through every piece of paper in there, and all the books.”
Dooley said he had information that a number of people were receiving subpoenas to a grand jury in Chicago on Oct. 12, and that simultaneous warrants being executed in North Carolina and upstate Michigan.
The FBI’s spokesman in Chicago, Ross Rice, would only say two searches were conducted today in Chicago and that there were no arrests. He declined further comment.
Asked about the reports, the U.S. Attorney’s office spokesman in Chicago, Randy Samborn, confirmed warrants were served in the city “in connection with a law enforcement investigation.” He also declined to provide details.
Attorney Bruce Nestor said he’s not representing any of the people whose homes were searched, but he has in the past.
“I’m really profoundly troubled by it,” he said of the searches. “Overwhelmingly they’re people who are doing public political organizing, so I think it’s shocking to have heavily armed federal agents show up at their homes. … It’s all people involved in anti-war activity and it appears to be focused largely on opposition to the U.S. policy in Colombia and Palestine.”
The federal law about material support of terrorism dates to 1996 and “has been interpreted so broadly to really endanger the rights of U.S. citizens to oppose the military and foreign policies of the United States,” Nestor said.
“This is a direct attack on people who are strong, dedicated advocates of freedom, of the right of people to be free from U.S. domination,” Nestor said. “It is an attack upon anybody who organizes against U.S. imperialism and U.S. militarism abroad.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Mara Gottfried can be reached at [email protected] and 651-228-5262.“I’m lending him my box set of West Wing DVDs. He’ll be fine.”
By naming Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon as his top two advisers, President-elect Donald Trump set up a battle between the GOP Establishment and the alt-right for control of his administration — and there may be a third voice whispering in the president’s ear. The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that President Obama “plans to spend more time with his successor than presidents typically do” because he realized during their meeting last week that Trump “needs more guidance.” Per the Journal:
During their private White House meeting on Thursday, Mr. Obama walked his successor through the duties of running the country, and Mr. Trump seemed surprised by the scope, said people familiar with the meeting. Trump aides were described by those people as unaware that the entire presidential staff working in the West Wing had to be replaced at the end of Mr. Obama’s term.
One would think that Obama would spend as little time as possible with a man who repeatedly suggested that he’s the Kenyan-born founder of ISIS, but what was scheduled to be a 15-minute meeting wound up lasting 90 minutes. “As I said last night, my number one priority in the next two months is to try to facilitate a transition that ensures our president-elect is successful,” Obama said.
Prior to the meeting, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Obama would take the opportunity to urge Trump to keep some of his policies in place — though many could be undone with a few executive orders. He may have had some success. After promising to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, Trump told the Journal on Friday that he’d consider keeping two provisions that he discussed with Obama: the prohibition on denying coverage because of preexisting conditions, and allowing children to stay on their parents’ health insurance plan into their late 20s.
Trump confirmed that he is interested in keeping those two very popular provisions in his interview with 60 Minutes, which aired on Sunday night. Trump reiterated that he and Obama had great “chemistry,” and said he was surprised that there was zero awkwardness. He even heaped more praise on the president:
I found him to be terrific. I found him to be — very smart and very nice. Great sense of humor, as much as you can have a sense of humor talking about tough subjects, but we were talking about some pretty tough subjects.
In addition to Obamacare, those topics included the Middle East and North Korea. On Monday night, President Obama will embark on his last foreign trip, heading to Greece, Germany, and Peru. It was supposed to be a celebratory farewell tour, but now Obama’s mission is assuring foreign nations that America will keep its commitments — though, in some instances, Trump has said that it won’t.
Trump is not consistent, so by the time Obama gets back, Trump may have decided that he doesn’t need the president’s help during the nine-week transition after all. But liberals need something to keep them going, and the idea of Obama and Trump forging an unlikely friendship is a more appealing best-case scenario than Mike Pence secretly calling the shots.A new report issued by a group of doctors with the University Network for Environment and Health, who practice in Brazilian villages that have water treated with the insecticide pyriproxyfen, suggests that the spike in microcephaly cases in the region may be caused by the chemical, rather than the mosquito-borne Zika virus.
This view has been disputed by Tirumalai Kamala, an immunologist with a Ph.D. in mycobacteriology. In a Quora post, the scientist noted two recent reports made by independent groups that demonstrate “clear and compelling evidence of Zika in placenta and brains of fetuses from miscarriages and from children born with microcephaly to mothers diagnosed with Zika in their 1st trimester of pregnancy. As such, other possible causes now become a bit moot.”
Aedes aegypti mosquitos studied at the Fiocruz institute in Recife, Brazil. [Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images] The Brazilian doctors noted that the areas of northeast Brazil that had witnessed the greatest number of microcephaly cases match with areas where pyriproxyfen is added to drinking water in an effort to combat Zika-carrying mosquitoes. Pyriproxyfen is reported to cause malformations in mosquito larvae, and has been added to drinking water in the region for the past 18 months.
The team with the University Network for Environment and Health also noted that Zika virus outbreaks have previously occurred in other areas with no reports of microcephaly. The doctors also suspect that the authorities responsible for the application of pyriproxyfen, which is recommended by the World Health Organization and produced by a Monsanto subsidiary, Sumimoto Chemical, are more concerned with orchestrating a “commercial maneuver” than effectively combating the spread of the Zika-carrying mosquitoes.
Many people who have contracted Zika virus may not exhibit symptoms, and even if they do, they may be mild. Though the actual number of Zika virus cases is unknown, the Brazilian Ministry of Health estimated that between 440,000 and 1.3 million people may have contracted Zika in 2015.
A city worker fumigates for mosquitoes in Recife, Brazil. [Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images] Dr. Kamala reports that pyriproxyfen has been used extensively for many years and is recommended by the World Health Organization.
“Pyriproxyfen ‘is unlikely to present an acute toxicological hazard and residues are therefore unlikely to present an acute risk to consumers.’ “
Pyriproxyfen is used for insect control on crops of citrus fruit in South Africa, Israel, Italy, and Spain, as well as for control of fire ants in California.
That the chemical has seen such widespread use raises the question of why cases of microcephaly have not appeared in areas where pyriproxyfen has been used for extended periods, according to Dr. Kamala. The scientist concedes that “dose may be a factor,” if citizens in Brazil received a larger amount pyriproxyfen in their bodies than elsewhere. However, she still questions why cases of microcephaly did not begin to appear in Brazil until December, 2015, when pyriproxyfen has been used in the affected areas for years.
Dr. Kamala also notes that patients with “observed Guillain–Barré syndrome” in a 2013 outbreak in French Polynesia “fits with a newly-developed neurotropic propensity for Zika.”
The question with regard to a possible link between pyriproxyfen and microcephaly was posed on Quora by a reported resident of Recife, Brazil, described as the “epicenter” of the Zika-virus outbreak. The resident stated that many in the area do not believe that Zika is responsible for the spike in microcephaly cases, and that a belief that “rubella vaccines, gmo mosquitoes, and lately, the drug pyriproxyfen” are the true culprit is held by many.
Genetically modified mosquitoes have been released in affected areas in Brazil. The plan was for the GM mosquitoes to mate with wild mosquitoes, which would produce nonviable larvae. The South American doctors responsible for the study have stated that the GM mosquitoes plan “failure is complete,” with less that 15 percent of larvae observed resulting from mating between wild female mosquitoes and GM males.
“Wild females are not accepting” of GM male mosquitoes, the authors of the report concluded.
[Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images][van id=”van/sc/2016/11/30/wpix_24d0e47e08a9c35ec4867b64c0b28246″]
The suspect caught on camera stealing a pot of gold in midtown Manhattan is Julio Nivelo, a 53-year-old believed to be in the Los Angeles area, police said Tuesday.
Video of the alleged theft, which shows a man grabbing the 86-pound bucket of gold flakes out of the back of an armored truck in September, was circulated widely in the media and online after the NYPD released it last month.
That led to multiple tips made from the tri-state area identifying Nivelo as the suspect, an NYPD spokesman said.
Nivelo is described as a 5-foot-5 inch Hispanic male with dark hair.
The loot he allegedly made off with in September is valued at $1.6 million.
In the surveillance footage released by the NYPD, a man walks up to the back of the truck, grabs the bucket, and shuffles off with it in broad daylight. At first, he’s about to walk past the truck, but then he notices the unattended bucket and makes a turn to grab it. The video shows two men chatting in front of the truck as the suspect walks away with the goods.
The men don’t seem to notice the gold disappearing. In the footage, the thief can be seen struggling under the weight of the haul.Former Baylor coach Art Briles has said that he hopes to get back into coaching. And while he hasn’t been hired yet, Briles has already been consulting with the staff at Florida Atlantic, where his son is employed as the offensive coordinator.
“Obviously, he has ideas,” Kendal told the Orlando Sun-Sentinel. “He wants to know personnel and different guys and making sure we’re getting those guys in the right spots and getting them touches and all that stuff. He’s a football coach, that’s all he’s ever been. He’s definitely involved and we talk daily.”
Kendal told the Sun-Sentinel he’s sent offensive film to Art, while FAU head coach Lane Kiffin said he’s also spoken to Art a few times.
“Obviously he’s done unbelievable things on offense,” Kiffin said. “It’s his system that he started years and years ago. Every once in a while, I’ll text or call him and bounce something off of him.”
There’s no doubt that Art Briles is on the cutting edge offensively. And technically, he hasn’t been hired by FAU.
But this is sure to raise even more eyebrows than were raised when Kiffin hired Kendal Briles. For all his coaching acumen, Art Briles was still the head of a Baylor program that was totally reset after a sexual assault scandal that occurred under Briles’ watch.Being a Hacker is not only about coding, computer hardware/software and networking. Of course, these are really important, but there are other skills that you should consider even before you think about study programming, exploit, pen test, etc. So, in this post, I’ll tell you which are the skills and how to acquire them.
1 – Problem Solving: This is kinda obvious. Every hacker need problem solving skills. If you don’t have them, try to develop them. There are lots of apps available for Android and apple devices that can help with that. Search for “Brain enhancement apps.” Another thing that might help you is searching for different solutions for your everyday problems: Let’s say you need to go to work, but you car is broken. Now, think: “What should I do now? Well, what if I take the bus? What if I call someone to help me fix it?” Memorize the possibilities and the consequences. I assure you, this will help you.
2 – Creativity: Don’t think that a hacker is 100% logical. Creativity is more than necessary if you really want to learn about hacking. In order to become a creative person, you need to do creative hobbies like:
Listen to music, from classical to heavy metal (don’t always listen to you favorite band, try to listen to other genres)
Write stories that you created (don’t copy from another author)
Play a musical instrument
Make art
Take creative pictures.
These will make you a different person, because you will become creative, not just another simple human being.
3 – Persistence: I can’t actually explain you how to be persistent, because this has to be inside of you. You can’t just start something and give up on it because “it’s too hard” or “you’re too dumb for that.” Everything can be learned. Everything. You just need to focus, study and practice. I assure you that when learn about hacking, it may not be easy. It’s a long, long way – but you can learn. So, don’t give up my friend!
4 – Patience: So, you think that in 2 weeks you’re gonna be the greatest hacker in the world? I’m sorry, but that’s far from being true. It will take you years to learn what you need and you still won’t learn everything. I’ll tell you something you might think is silly, but it really isn’t: Meditation. The best way to become a calm person is to meditate from 5 to 15 minutes everyday. And meditation won’t just increase you patience – but your life too. By meditating, you can live up to 5 years longer than you would. So, I highly recommend it. Do this search in YouTube if you don’t know how to start: “How to meditate”
So, these are the tips I’m gonna give you. You probably thought that, to become the master hacker, you need to learn everything about computers and that’s it. There’s some truth in that, but these skills I just listed are essential. If you have them, congratulations my friend, you can be a good hacker if you’re willing to. If you have any doubts about this post, just comment and I will answer you. I hope this was helpful, bye!
More awesome content…
The Comprehensive Guide to Ethical Hacking
7 Types of Hackers You Should KnowBangkok, Thailand - Paphatya Poonpratin - a 25-year-old office worker in Bangkok - felt pleased about the evening news on television last week.
One report showed military officers raiding an illegal gambling
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(both Deluxe versions) like the EX3 Screen and the canvas poster map, also will go to their printers.
Other EX3 Projects
Here are where other EX3 projects are in their production:
First Draft (The first phase of a project that is about the work being done by writers, not dev prep)
•Exalted 3rd Novel by Matt Forbeck (Exalted 3rd Edition)
Redlines
•EX3 Quickstart (Exalted 3rd Edition)
Second Draft
•Arms of the Chosen (Exalted 3rd Edition)
•The Realm (Exalted 3rd Edition)
•Dragon-Blooded (Exalted 3rd Edition)
In Art Direction
•EX3 Backer Charms – Sketches coming in and being reviewed.
I've also been talking with our composer for the Ex3 Music Suites and he is starting work on the Sidereals theme, and we should have very good news about the Novia novel in April.
Thanks!The build was coming down to the wire, and this show car-owning automotive photographer knew he had only a short window to get official photos taken of his car at a race track that wasn’t exactly around the corner from him. There wasn’t much time to plan—that is, if he’d gone the traditional route with it.
Enter Sam Dobbins, automotive photographer, Creative Director for Vossen Wheels, and owner of the first-ever Rocket Bunny Volkswagen GTI entitled “GTI RS.” After getting rear-ended on his way to Southern Worthersee in Helen, Georgia, Dobbins was in an unfortunate situation.
Purchased brand new, the car had just finished being modified and, like most show-car owners who encounter this kind of thing, Dobbins had two semi-realistic choices: repair the car, or start the build from square one. He chose the latter.
Dobbins is an automotive purist who believes that good-working vehicles should be left alone (sorry, RAUH-Welt Begriff fans) and that a wrecked car like his is the perfect foundation for a build. Having shot countless magazine features of beautiful Volkswagen builds, Dobbins wanted to do a feature-worthy build with his own car. Dobbins took the bits and pieces that he liked of each build that he photographed, which helped lay out the blueprint for what would become his functional, trackable dream car. All that was left to do was execute the plan.
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Fast-forward past the 14-plus trips to New York from Miami and the usual headaches of building a show car, and now the official photos of the car had to be taken for sponsors. Dobbins decided that he’d photograph and have video of the car, both shot at the world-famous Lime Rock Park race track. With the show season quickly approaching and also working his day job, Dobbins literally had no time to location scout with the car.
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And that’s where Forza Motorsport 6 comes into play (pun intended). Because the game is remarkably realistic, there are a wide range of gamers: racing fans who rarely see a track day, track junkies who need their fix, and professional racing drivers who actually need it to learn race tracks they don’t readily have access to.
Dobbins used the game, not to race, but rather to location scout for his shoot. Using Forza’s “Photo Mode” at Lime Rock Park with a 2016 Volkswagen Golf GTI, he was able to not only “drive” on track, but also find the exact points on the track to shoot and the depth of field he wanted to shoot at. On a previous visit to Lime Rock with a LaFerrari and a 30-minute window to shoot, Dobbins had not yet used this tool that, he would later remark, was a huge timesaver. The photoshoot took all of 20 minutes and the video shoot took 10. Then, they left.
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As a fellow automotive media professional and previously sponsored show-car owner, I have a pretty good idea of the stress that Dobbins went through to get this all done. I also know that, in the general world of media production, we’re always looking for timesavers.
You can watch the full story of the “GTI RS” build in the video below.Sake -nihonshu – is not the be all end all of traditional Japanese liquor.
In fact, over the last couple of decades, the lesser known beverages have overtaken sake. The biggest winner of the popularity contest is shochu, which is a Japanese traditional distilled liquor. Shochu tastes a little like sake, but has alcohol content closer to vodka. Another quiet achiever is umeshu. The chances are, it has sneaked onto the menu at your neighbourhood Japanese restaurant, without you ever noticing. Just like sake, umeshu is a drink with unique flavours and considerable charm, and is worth knowing more about.
What’s in the name?
“Umeshu” is made up of two words – “ume” (Japanese fruit, sometimes referred to as Japanese apricot), and “shu”, which is a suffix for liquor. Common English translation is “plum wine” but that’s not exactly right. In fact, ume is a unique species of fruit tree called Prunus Mume, although related to both apricot and plum. The main point, umeshu means ume liquor.
What does it taste like?
Umeshu is sweet. It is definitely a dessert liquor. The sweetness comes from added sugar, rather than ume, which is quite tart. Umeshu is usually amber in colour, and has a full, heady aroma and very unusual flavour. Basically, it tastes like ume, which is a taste unique for most people outside Japan. I say “most” as Prunus Mume originated from China, and its varieties grow throughout East Asia. Ume is full of natural acids, so the flavour of umeshu is a nice balance between acidity and sweetness. Importantly, the ume flavour components contain umami, that elusive fifth taste element that gives us a sensation of savoury goodness. Umami is found in foods that are universally acknowledged to have a special food charisma, like aged parmesan, truffles, caviar and dashi stock. That umami component is what draws people to umeshu – it is just so damn tasty!
How is it made?
Umeshu is made by combining ume that is not fully ripened, sugar (or honey) and shochu or sake. Shochu-based umeshu is more common, but plenty of umeshu is made with sake. Some producers even use ginjō sake as a base. A few novel varieties are based on whisky or rum.
The brewers slowly mature umeshu for up to a year in tanks, before transferring it into bottles. The slow maturation process is important for extracting the maximum flavour out of fruit.
How to drink umeshu?
Umeshu has full, somewhat syrupy body, due to the sugar content. A little dilution never goes astray, so serving umeshu on the rocks is a great idea. It can be an aperitif or a dessert wine. In fact, you can forgo the cocktail and drink umeshu instead – it is sweet, tangy, aromatic, moreish… Umeshu is often mixed with soda water or used as a cocktail base.
Umeshu varies in strength, but typically has around 12% alcohol, although the alcohol content will vary from 5% to 20%.
Umeshu, yuzushu, gingershu…
Umeshu is not the only variety of fruit liquor. Recently, its cousins have been gaining popularity. Yuzu (Japanese citrus) makes a highly drinkable yuzushu, ginger – gingershu….get it? Making of those beverages is somewhat different. Yuzushu, for example, is made by mixing yuzu juice or pulp with sake, instead of steeping whole fruit. The end result is not as intense as umeshu, but rather a tasty play on pre-mixed drinks.
The variations are only limited by the producer’s creativity. There are savoury varieties, too, made with tea or shiso leaves (herb ordinarily used to flavour meats, dumplings and rice balls in Japan).
What to drink?
Choya is a big, popular umeshu behemoth, and umeshu is its main product. Quite often, they have a fancy display of ume fruit inside their bottles. Plenty available for sale in Australia.
Many sake breweries produce their own umeshu brand or two. The lovers of sake will appreciate this sake-based umeshu from Kubota Shuzo. Chef’s Armoury exclusively imports it into Australia, and it is available from their online store. A delicious, full-bodied umeshu experience.
Another favourite of mine is also from Chef’s Armoury Sakeshop, Hanzo Umeshu. It is a supremely balanced umeshu, edging towards dry side, make with quality sake.
A particular brand of yuzushu – Eikun brewery’s You’s Time Light has been making great strides into the Australian bar scene. It has only 5% alcohol, so makes for a refreshing alternative to beer or cider.
However, if I had to drink yuzushu, I would be selecting this little friend from the same brewer, Eikun. Full strength yuzushu (12% alcohol), it is made with ginjō sake and has wonderful ricey sake notes peeking through the yuzu dominance. This is just a cocktail in a bottle. Dip the rim of the glass into salt, pour You’s Time in, add a few ice cubes…you might like it better than a margarita.
Kampai!“You are a disgusting fat body, Private Pyle!”
The drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket spoke those words, and we all know how things turned out for those two characters.
Fictionalized bathroom murder-suicides aside, when you have a captive audience of enlisted men who have no choice but to follow your orders, being a raging douche canoe can motivate them to succeed. But there is a big difference between what you can expect of soldiers under your command that you are training to survive in combat and how to motivate the general population.
This brings me to John Burk, an Iraq war vet and former drill sergeant as well as a self-styled “fitness motivator” who thinks that Full Metal Jacket style is the way to help people lose weight. For this week, at least, I believe he qualifies as the biggest douchebag in fitness. As evidence, see how far you can make it through this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2NX9OVeAEU
Why even talk about this guy? Because the video has gone viral. Why has the video gone viral? Well, why is Donald Trump ahead in the polls for leadership of the Republican Party?
In his video Burk says that fat people are “lazy” and “utterly repulsive and disgusting.” It’s a five-and-a-half-minute long hate-filled rant about how despicable Burk finds two-thirds of the population.
Burk says, “I’m not going to accept you for who you are with that bullshit excuse of ‘You should love me because I’m beautiful.’” News flash, John: No one is saying you have to find fat people beautiful. Your tiny little brain is allowed to find attractive whatever you wish.
Burk also says, “It is not okay to be overweight.” Well, there are valid concerns about excess body fat, especially that which is located around the midsection. I wrote about the dangers of obesity for my Chicago Tribune column and have also done battle with the misinformation spread by Health At Every Size. Nevertheless, body fat is but one indicator of health, and there is a lot more to the equation, which is why the Edmonton Obesity Staging System was created.
Burk proclaims that he wants to motivate people to change, but this kind of ranting screed about how much fat people suck; how they’re “repulsive” and they’re gonna die and their kids are gonna be bullied (and then die) and they need to stop being such lazy, fat fucks … that is NOT the way to get people to change their behaviors.
I’ve written numerous articles and even a book on fitness motivation. I’ve read reams of research and interviewed the leading experts on the subject, and not once did I ever discover that shame and fear were effective tools for motivating people to adopt healthier habits.
In fact, the opposite is true. The research shows that shaming people with obesity leads to weight gain. In a 2013 paper published in PLoS ONE, researchers from Florida State University asserted that not only does stigmatizing obesity lead to poorer mental health outcomes, but the authors stated: “Rather than motivating individuals to lose weight, weight discrimination increases risk for obesity.”
And another study published in the journal Obesity in 2014 looked at 2,944 UK adults over four years and discover that those who reported experiencing discrimination over their weight gained more pounds than those who did not. After accounting for baseline difference the study found that, on average, those who faced fat shaming gained a kilogram, while those who didn’t lost 0.7 kilos. See how that worked? Shaming = weight gain / no shaming = weight loss.
So, John Burke isn’t just putting viewers of his video at a greater risk for obesity, he’s also negatively affecting their mental health. Way to go, John.
In a Twitter exchange with John he told me “I don’t coddle” and “I don’t baby people.” As I wrote in my piece about HAES, there is a difference between coddling and compassion, just as I also wrote about how there is a difference between inspiring and shaming people. Burk also told me he doesn’t listen to critics. Well that’s pretty damn obvious, because if he did listen to constructive criticism then perhaps he wouldn’t behave like such a colossal asshat.
Burk seems to think the opposite of coddling and babying is to go full raging and shaming douche nozzle. The reality is, you can get the tough news about the dangers of obesity across and expose the faulty logic behind poor excuses without destroying self-esteem and damaging mental health in the process.
But John has his supporters, yo! Many on his Facebook page and on articles written about his video have come out with a collective “Right on!” about how John has “hit the nail on the head,” and they’re totally motivated now, and stuff.
Yeah, let’s talk to those “motivated” people a year from now and see how they’re doing. This is coupled with the fact that for every one person he might have helped with this video there were likely ten others made to feel horrible by it, adding to the negative emotions society heaps on them. It’s one more thing that causes obesity to spiral out of control.
And even for that rare person who appreciates John’s approach, the fat-shaming train wreck game show The Biggest Loser provides clear evidence that such methods rarely work long-term. Just like in an infantry boot camp, the contestants on the show have little choice but do what they’re told by their fat shaming “trainers.” And because they’re stuck 24/7 in that calorie-deprived labor camp, they do lose weight.
But as soon as they get their freedom, despite having the overwhelming extrinsic motivation of their very public weight loss, the majority of the show’s participants gain the weight back.
So, yeah, maybe some are watching this video and getting all charged up, but it’s going to work for damn few of them for more than a few days or weeks. Videos like these do far more harm than good. Trainers like these do a lot more harm than good.
In fact, John Burk is the epitome of what is wrong with the personal training industry. We’ve seen his like before – this kind of shaming by trainers is nothing new – and we’ll see such ilk again in the future. The older versions of John Burk didn’t help people with obesity, and the new breed won’t either.
I have lost count of how many people have expressed their gratitude for me helping them discover a passion for exercise and healthy eating after a previous trainer had all but destroyed such passion through shame and guilt and heaping insults.
Obesity is a complex phenomenon that has significant environmental causes, and the solution to obesity will be equally complex and require changes to our environment to generate measurable results.
One thing is for certain, screaming at people like an insane, hateful jackoff isn’t the cure for obesity.
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James S. Fell is an internationally syndicated fitness columnist for the Chicago Tribune and author of Lose it Right: A Brutally Honest 3-Stage Program to Help You Get Fit and Lose Weight Without Losing Your Mind, published by Random House Canada. He also interviews celebrities about their fitness stories for the Los Angeles Times, and is head fitness columnist for AskMen.com and a regular contributor to Men’s Health.Hello everybody.
As I got a few request after I posted an explained null-sec map on reddit, so here is a blog that I’ll try to update every month. You can check the « about » page to read a bit more about this idea and about my EVE life.
The Null-sec Map, from the 9th Oct. 2012, with some informations about what’s going on.
(Click on the map to open it in full res.)
So, that’s the null-sec map, which is updated everyday and available here, but mine is an updated version with some kind of informations like the war zone, the coalitions, etc.
What’s happening here, I don’t understand this map. Who’s at war with who?
Tribute : The Clusterfuck Coalition started a war against DotBros. about 2 month ago, because of the non-respect of the OTEC agreement by Northern Coalition. So far, the CFC force managed to took some technetium moons & half of Tribute, but DotBros can counter the offensive during the Aussie Timezone. Since a few days, the front line doesn’t move a lot.
Catch : In result of some event happening inside of the Southern Coalition (read the Feythabolis paragraph), Honey Badger force (mainly Raiden & Initiative) started an assault on Catch the 7th Oct. 2012 after a 2month of harassment by -A- & friends in Querious.
Paragon Soul : What’s happening in Paragon Soul right now is the result of two things. The first one will be reviewed into Feythabolis Paragraph. For the second one, here is the story : Tribal Band was tired of the attempt by Red.Overlord to take/harass Period Basis. They started a counter offensive with Zombie Ninja Space Bears & the HBC.
Feythabolis : Elise Randolph did an awesome review of what’s happening in Feythabolis & Area on Kugu. TL;DR : Some corp within Red.Overlord got mad and decided to left the Alliance and rejoin the HBC via the creation of a new alliance (Unclaimed.). By doing this, a few sovs dropped.
Detorid : A coordinate assault led by The Unthinkable, Nulli Secunda & Why So Serious is taking over the region. The last owner, Cascade Imminent is…cascading. Against All Authorities (-A-) & the SOCO started a campaign to take the region back.
Insmother : A new russian coalition is born, between Red Alliance, Ultima Ratio & Gypsy Band to take back Insmother, the home region of Red Alliance, from SOLAR FLEET Hands. Some good fight will surely happend here in Russian Timezone the next few days.
Geminate : Br1ck SquAd & Solar Fleet take the opportunity of the war in Tribute to shoot at the Technetium moon NCdot owns in Geminate. DotBros decided to fight on a second front against the newly formed Drone Coalition as I named them, because they doesn’t seems to have a name 🙂.A snowboarder who has been missing on Cypress Mountain since early Friday afternoon has been discovered dead.
According to North Shore Rescue, a recovery operation of the body has been completed and the next of kin has been notified. The name of the victim has been withheld at this time.
On Friday, the 40-year-old man was scheduled to return by 2:30 p.m. As he was last seen on the westside of Cypress Mountain, crews began their search along the Howe Sound Crest route where tracks were discovered. Both air and ground crews were used in the search.
Later that day at 10 p.m., rescue crews also encountered a group of missing skiers, who were also in the Howe Sound Crest area. Cell phone contact was made with the missing group, which allowed rescuers to obtain the coordinates of the skiers.
Skiers and snowboarders are reminded to stay in bounds. Current conditions on the mountains are treacherous and avalanche-prone.By all accounts, Ben Carson is a brilliant pediatric neurosurgeon. He was the Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital until he retired, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his surgical achievements.
Carson’s views have come under close scrutiny since he has become a presidential candidate and is closing in on the frontrunner position. Carson is a Seventh Day Adventist. He is a creationist who has stated that he believes Darwin came up with the idea of evolution because of Satan. He thinks the Big Bang is a “fairy tale.”
He famously suggested that those who believe in evolution have no basis for their morality, saying:
“Ultimately, if you accept the evolutionary theory, you dismiss ethics, you don’t have to abide by a set of moral codes, you determine your own conscience based on your own desires.”
This claim is transparently wrong, and discounts a vast and rich philosophical history of morality and ethics.
Apparently the well of anti-intellectual things that Ben Carson has said is very deep, and the media have no difficulty bringing up more examples. Most recently a video from a 1998 commencement speech has surfaced in which Carson states his belief that the Biblical Joseph built the pyramids of Egypt to store grain. He states directly that the world’s archaeologists are wrong, the pyramids were not built for the pharaohs, but Carson in his brilliance had divined their true history and purpose.
His brilliant insight is that something huge must have been built to store grain, and that structure would not just vanish, so perhaps it was the pyramids. Never mind all that archaeological evidence for how, when, and why the pyramids were built and the utter lack of evidence for the Joseph-grain storage hypothesis.
I bring all this up in order to address a question – how can one person be undeniably brilliant in one sphere of their intellectual life, and shockingly ignorant and anti-intellectual in other spheres? I have heard this question often in recent weeks, pretty much every time a new revelation about Carson’s beliefs comes out.
I don’t think this is as much of a contradiction as it may at first seem. Carson is evidence for something that I have tried to emphasize often here – all humans suffer from similar cognitive flaws and biases. We can all be brilliant and stupid at the same time, and apparently have no difficulty compartmentalizing our beliefs in order to minimize cognitive dissonance.
I write frequently about the neuroscience of belief, because I think there is no greater insight we can have than how our own brains function, because that is the tool we use to understand the rest of the universe. Invariably, however, when I discuss a specific cognitive flaw or bias, the common reaction is the equivalent of, “Yeah, other people are stupid.”
Take, for example, the Dunning-Kruger effect. I almost universally hear this principle described as, “dumb people are too dumb to realize how dumb they are.” The data, however, does not support this conclusion. It does not reveal something about “dumb people,” but rather something about all people. We are all on the Dunning-Kruger spectrum, and we can be on different places on the spectrum with regard to different areas of knowledge, at the same time.
It would be better to state the Dunning-Kruger effect as, “People have difficulty assessing their own level of knowledge or expertise with a tendency to be increasingly overconfident at decreasing levels of knowledge.” The Dunning-Kruger effect describes all people, not just dumb people.
Ben Carson is not an anomaly or contradiction. He is a perfect representation of humanity.
Carson is also evidence that people who hold extreme or anti-scientific beliefs are not necessarily stupid. Belief in pseudoscience and the paranormal is not about general intelligence. It is about the human tendency to form and maintain beliefs for a variety of social, cultural, and personal reasons.
Most people adopt the religion into which they were raised. Retention rates for most major religions are above 60%. But there are also generational and cultural trends as well.
Conclusion
The existence of technical brilliance alongside extreme anti-science beliefs in Ben Carson is not an anomaly. It is the human condition. It means he has an extreme belief system that has a dominant effect on how he views the world.
Understanding common tendencies in human behavior, however, does not mean there aren’t important differences in how people form and maintain their beliefs. People have different habits and tendencies. Skepticism is about habitually challenging your own beliefs. Examining the logic and evidence, and using knowledge of human psychology and neuroscience to understand the biases that might be at work in your own thinking.
What we can conclude about Carson is that he is not systematically following a valid intellectual process in forming his beliefs. He has no problem dismissing the opinion of experts and scientists, and substituting his own poorly-informed hunches. Obviously this is a disturbing trait in someone running for high office.U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) delivers remarks at the Center for American Progress in Washington U.S. July 13, 2016. REUTERS/Gary Cameron
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Democrats’ liberal firebrand, Senator Elizabeth Warren, threw down the gauntlet to President-elect Donald Trump on Thursday, telling labor union members there are financial and social issues where her party will fight him and continuing to blast the Republican.
Battling bigotry is the first job for Democrats after the election, said Warren, of Massachusetts, giving a sense of how her party will operate now that it no longer controls the White House and remains the minority in both chambers of Congress.
“We will fight back against attacks on Latinos, African Americans, women, Muslims, immigrants, disabled Americans - on anyone,” said Warren, who sparred frequently over Twitter with Trump and criticized him on the campaign trail in the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s election. “Whether Donald Trump sits in a glass tower or sits in the White House, we will not give an inch on this, not now, not ever.”
She said Trump had “encouraged a toxic stew of hatred and fear” and during the campaign “regularly made statements that undermined core values of our democracy.”
In the speech to the AFL-CIO labor federation, Warren also said Democrats will resist attempts to loosen financial regulation, “gut” the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law and eliminate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
“If Trump and the Republican Party try to turn loose the big banks and financial institutions so they can once again gamble with our economy and bring it all crashing down, then we will fight them every step of the way,” she said.
Warren did highlight areas of agreement. She said “count me in” on Trump’s support of a new Glass-Steagall law to separate investment and retail banking, reforming trade deals, maintaining Social Security benefits, helping on childcare and college costs and rebuilding infrastructure.
Warren rose to lead the liberal wing of the party during the 2007-2009 financial crisis. After Republicans blocked President Barack Obama’s attempt to appoint her as the first director of the CFPB, she won a seat in Congress.
In 2015, progressive groups and a political action committee pressed her to run for president. Since Trump’s victory on Tuesday, many have already renewed their calls, for the 2020 presidential election.Indian and Chinese forces had a brief face-off in the north bank of Pangong lake in Ladakh. Highly-placed sources told India Today that the incident took place early Tuesday morning and lasted for about half-an-hour until both sides pulled back.
The incident comes at a time when both nations have been facing a continued stand-off at the India-Bhutan-China tri-junction in Doka La (Doklam). Sources say that it is believed that the Chinese patrols lost their way due to bad weather conditions but it ended up with heated exchanges between the two sides resulting in stone pelting as well that caused minor injuries to people on both sides.
The People's Liberation Army (PLA) forces were close to two areas: Finger Four and Finger Five. India claims the area till Finger Eight but controls and dominates up to Finger Four. The situation was brought under control after thirty minutes of face-off, when both sides held their banners indicating either side to pull back to their respective positions.
The border stand-off took place on the occasion of Indian Independence Day when as practice Border Personnel Meetings (BPM) take place at five points across Line of Actual Control (LAC) and sweets are exchanged between Indian and Chinese forces. Instead, India Today has learnt that no BPM took place. Indian soldiers had gone with sweets to Nathu La but the Chinese didn't turn up.
Earlier in the week, India Today had also reported about the Chinese PLA having started construction of a bridge near the LAC in Ladakh. Chief Executive Councillor Dr Sonam Dawa Lopo, while speaking to India Today, said, "We will raise the issue with the Government and the Army. They should immediately object to the Chinese construction on LAC".
With increased tensions between India and China due to Doklam, the entire LAC remains volatile including Pangong lake, whose 45-km stretch is on the Indian side while 90-km is on the Chinese side.
DOKLAM STANDOFF
This comes at a time when India and China have been locked in a standoff at the Doklam plateau for over eight weeks.
Beijing wants to construct a road through the plateau, which both Bhutan and China claim. India has objected to the construction, and has deployed the Army to prevent it.
The Indian Army and China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) held a flag meet at Nathu La last week to sort things out, but in vain. Both sides stuck to their stated positions.
China wants the Indian Army to withdraw from Doklam, and India asked China to stop building the road.
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Indian flier alleges Chinese airline staff misbehaved with him due to Doklam standoff
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As Doklam crisis continues, India-China border stand-off at Ladakh's Pangong lakeSony Computer Entertainment's Mark Cerny is now leading development on The Last Guardian, Just Add Water founder Stewart Gilray implied on the PS Nation podcast.
"I did hear a funny story about Last Guardian," said Gilray on episode 427, which was released June 8. "It's a certain somebody's software team [working on it], and that certain somebody is the guy who helped out with the architecture of the Vita and PS4. I'm led to believe that he's — his team is now running Last Guardian to finish."
Gilray did not mention Cerny by name, but Cerny served as lead system architect for the PS4. He was also "heavily involved in the core development of the Vita," said Shuhei Yoshida, head of Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios, in a Gamescom 2013 interview with Eurogamer Digital Foundry. In addition, Cerny was the lead designer for the PS4 launch title Knack.
Yesterday, U.K. newspaper The Guardian published a piece on its 15 most anticipated games of E3 2015. Listed among them was The Last Guardian, with the article's writers saying, "We have it on very good authority that this will be the year that Team Ico finally presents its follow-up to much loved classics Ico and Shadow of the Colossus."
Fumito Ueda's The Last Guardian was originally revealed as a PlayStation 3 exclusive during Sony's E3 2009 press briefing. Following Ueda's departure from Sony at the end of 2011, Sony officials have repeatedly insisted that the game is still in development and hasn't been canceled, even though the company allowed its trademark to lapse (apparently by mistake) earlier this year.
We've reached out to Sony for comment, and will update this article with any information we receive. You can also watch the E3 2009 trailer below. (Yeah, that was six years ago.)
Update: Gilray attempted to clarify his comments on the PS Nation podcast in a statement to Gaming Bolt yesterday, saying that he has no firsthand knowledge of the situation.
"This is my assuming based upon various public facts," said Gilray. "Cerny spoke about [The Last Guardian] last year saying it's definitely still happening. It's a TOKYO Studio project. Ueda-san even said the [Last Guardian] team was working on Knack with Cerny. Adding all these elements together it seems like a good bet that he, or at least his team is involved, wouldn't you say?"In 2013, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie held an approval rating of 77 percent. He was one of the most visible people in New Jersey — a hero to some, even — because of how he handled Hurricane Sandy. Christie’s coalition with President Barack Obama helped propel the Republican governor to a dominating re-election victory in a historically blue-leaning state.
By 2016, the boisterous bully made infamous by Bridgegate was licking his wounds from a failed presidential campaign. Less than three weeks after ending his White House hopes, Christie endorsed Donald Trump.
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Christie, once seen as a rising star in the Republican Party, currently holds an all-time low approval rating of 21 percent in his home state. Here's a look at how he went from front-runner to also-ran to someone who may never run again.
August 2010: The Price You Pay for not completing education paperwork comes out to $400 million
Christie's feuds with the New Jersey Education Association, the state's largest teachers union, have helped contribute to his downfall. In 2010, the state fell three points short of winning $400 million in federal grants because of an application error by the Christie administration.
Before the mindless application error, Christie's commissioner of education, Bret Schundler, completed a draft application with the NJEA, where both parties agreed on new reforms. The compromise would have won them the grant. However, Christie felt that this collaboration would weaken his ability to have political influence over the state's largest teachers union, so he got rid of the agreed-upon reforms, just days before the application was due.
“Throughout his entire tenure there was just a lack of good faith, and as a result of that lack of good faith, there grew an incredible distrust between us and his administration,” Ginger Gold Schnitzer, director of government relations for the NJEA, told Salon. Still, Schnitzer said she had to work with Christie in order to secure government funds for the children. "You don't have the luxury of saying, We don't trust this guy, we're not going to deal with him."
October 2010: Chris Christie scraps tunnel in favor of re-building Thunder Road
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In 2010, Christie shot down an $8.7 billion plan for a commuter rail that would run between New Jersey and New York City, known as Access to the Region's Core. The new tunnel will ultimately be necessary to keep New Jersey's transportation system functioning properly and efficiently. The two current tunnels are over a century old, and run both Amtrak and New Jersey Transit commuter trains.
Christie said the project was expected to be more expensive than originally planned, and he didn't want to force the taxpayers to take on the cost overruns. However, canceling the plan still wound up costing taxpayers $1.2 billion — stemming from expenses related to lawyers, environmental studies and other costs. The state had nothing to show for it.
To add insult to injury, flooding caused by Hurricane Sandy deteriorated the tunnels and left them both in desperate need of repair. Experts say that in 20 years one or both of the tunnels will need to be shut down for renovations that would last a year or even longer. The ARC project would have opened a new tunnel by 2018.
Christie now supports plans for a new tunnel, known as the Gateway project. This tunnel is projected to cost around $23.9 billion, almost four times the cost of ARC.
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June 2011: It's So Hard to Be a Public Sector Worker in Christie's City
Christie signed a bill that forced public employees to pay additional amounts of their paychecks into the pension and healthcare system. In return, the state would increase its payments to the pension program. At the time, this was seen as one of his administration's landmark achievements. However, his promise that the state would make all of its payments into the pension program fell short, with Christie claiming he would not have balanced the state's budget otherwise. Consequently, Christie was sued by various unions, including teachers, police officers, firefighters and more.
New Jersey's pension woes have continued, and as of a Bloomberg report this month, the state has the worst-funded public worker pension system in the country. Failing to make pension payments has also resulted in New Jersey's credit rating being downgraded a total of nine times under the Christie administration, making it harder to borrow money for the state's needs.
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August 2012: Chris Christie completes the Teacher Street Shuffle
Though his victories were few and far between, Christie's tenure overhaul bill in 2012 was seen as a major positive achievement for him. His rare compromise with teachers unions was also widely praised. The bill made reforms to the way public school employees obtain tenure, making the employees' performance a key factor. It also made it easier to fire those who weren't performing to standards.
Initially, Christie and his administration had different intentions for tenure. “His original bill would have all but gutted tenure. It would have eliminated seniority protection, it would have taken away any true due process, and we were successful at getting them to pull back on a lot of that," Schnitzer told Salon. "We're always the organization that says, Okay, let's have a meeting; you don't get things done unless you talk.
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"I think the only reason that they agreed to our tenure bill, to move things off the table and everything else, is because he was interested in running for president. You knew he was going to run for governor again, and he wanted to build up his numbers, and if that's what it took to get it done
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"If you look at where the populists have done well, they’ve actually done well in richer countries, and in the countries where they’ve done well, they’ve done well in the richer regions," Ivarsflaten, the University of Bergen scholar, told me.
She also points to a gender gap — men are much more likely to support the far right than women — as a major problem for the "left behind" thesis.
"If you think of women as workers who usually have lower-paying jobs, and are also in competition with immigrants in, say, the service sector or health care sector... it’s an interesting thing that you don’t see women voting for these parties much," she says. "Xenophobia plays a bigger role than people realize."
That brings us to Donald Trump. Perhaps no issue has been more debated — or more politicized — in the US than the question of whether Trump’s support comes from economic anxiety or racism.
In its purest form, the economic anxiety argument holds that working-class white men have lost economic ground relative to women and other racial and ethnic groups over the past several decades, sparking feelings of anger and resentment that lead them to support Trump.
"White males aren't the most sympathetic victim group — especially because they still earn more money and have more wealth on average than any other demographic," Tim Carney writes in the Washington Examiner. "But since we tend to judge our well-being relative to others and relative to the past, white working-class males naturally see themselves as the victims of the new economic order."
This, again, is testable. If the economic anxiety argument were true, then measures of support for Trump should track with measures of self-reported concern about the US economy. The more one is concerned about the economy, the theory goes, the more likely one should be to support Trump.
Klinkner, the Hamilton College scholar, examined exactly this in a study published by Vox. He set up an interaction variable between measures of economic pessimism and "racial resentment." This tests whether people who were pessimistic about the economy were more likely to be racially resentful and support Trump.
Klinkner found bupkis. People who were racially resentful were more likely to support Trump regardless of their views of the economy.
Someone who was not very economically pessimistic but quite racially resentful was as likely to support Trump as someone who was equally resentful but much more pessimistic about the economy. Economic stress didn’t appear to be "activating" racial resentment.
This tracks with a long history of research on the prejudices Trump is activating.
Take immigration. A number of scholars have examined whether the recent rise of anti-immigrant attitudes in the United States is caused by economic angst among whites or cultural panic about a changing face of America. The consensus, as described by my colleague Dara Lind, is the latter.
"Evidence about the role of economic concerns in opposition to immigration... has been inconsistent," three University of Michigan scholars write in a review of the literature. "On the other hand, symbolic attitudes such as group identities turn up as powerful in study after study."
You can say the same thing about anti-black prejudice.
"Multiple studies, using several different surveys, have shown that overall levels of racial resentment were virtually unchanged by the economic crash of 2008," UC Irvine’s Tesler writes at the Monkey Cage. "Some data even suggests that racial prejudice slightly declined during the height of economic collapse in the fall of 2008. The evidence is pretty clear, then, that economic concerns are not driving racial resentment in the Obama Era."
Tesler’s own research confirms this. He looks at data from the same people, interviewed in 2007 and again in 2012, and examined the relationship between racial resentment and their evaluations of the economy. There was no relationship in 2007; in 2012, there was suddenly a strong correlation.
If the Great Recession didn’t cause this, there’s only one obvious explanation: America’s election of a black president. That means we need to turn the "economic anxiety causes racism" theory on its head: It’s racism that caused a certain group of Americans to say the economy is doing badly. Concern about the economy became, for some, an outlet for anxieties about the country being led by a black man.
It’s not that the tectonic shifts in the global economy have played no role in the rise of the Western far right. That would be difficult to prove — and, moreover, is probably wrong. There are doubtless some people who are attracted to Trump or the FN as a result of their own economic pain.
But it’s telling that in study after study, economics plays so much less of a role than racial and cultural anxiety. It suggests that of the two biggest shifts in Western society in the late 20th century, the move toward genuine multiculturalism is playing a far bigger role than growing inequality in giving rise to a new kind of far-right politics.
A lot of people, especially in the Western cultural elite, find this explanation baffling. They find it genuinely confusing that people could be motivated by status anxiety alone, and look for a "deeper" explanation.
"It may or may not be accurate to attribute the political behavior of large groups of people to racism, but it is not very useful," as economics writer Steve Randy Waldman puts it. "Those people got to be that way somehow. Presumably they, or eventually their progeny, can be un-got from being that way somehow."
But the truth is sometimes uncomfortable. Cultural attitudes aren’t always "caused" by anything else in some immediate or obvious sense. To explain how people "got" to believe in racist and xenophobic status hierarchies is to explain hundreds of years of Western history and the complicated story of how race and national identity were made in the West.
As a result of this history, many people value their culture and identity as much as they value economic security. When their vision of the way the world should work is threatened, they see it as a personal threat. They’re racist because race and hierarchy and group identity have come to play integral roles in how humans understand the world.
To deny that is to deny that both identity and the past matter, to assume everything is reducible to some kind of material or economic ultimate cause. History has shown, conclusively, that this is a mistake.
VII. Can the far right be stopped?
It’s not clear just how high the far right’s ceiling is.
On the one hand, the far right has never taken power in Western Europe or the United States (the "far right" here referring to post-World War II FN-style political movements, not dictatorships like the one that ran Spain). Donald Trump's stunning general election victory was caused by a perfect electoral storm, including an unprecedented and race-shifting intervention by the FBI — he may very well only last one term, and could very well discredit his own ideas if the administration goes badly. The United States will be a majority minority country in 30 years; younger generations on both sides of the Atlantic are less attracted to the far right’s racial dog whistles.
So it’s possible that the Trump presidency is the high-water mark for the far-right. But it’s also possible that the opposite is true. We could be at the very beginning of an era defined by a battle between the far-right, racist nationalists and the kind of liberal cosmopolitanism that transformed the world after World War II.
Marine Le Pen is at the top of the French presidential polls; her leading rival, the center-right Republican party's Francois Fillon, has similarly aggressive views on immigration and multiculturalism. Current polling suggests Vlaams Belang, a spinoff of Vlaams Blok, is likely to quadruple its share of seats in Belgium’s parliament in the next election. And that’s only two examples; you can see these parties rising, particularly in the past year, across the continent.
Canada has become an entirely different type of society
In the United States, Trump appears to have cemented control on the Republican party. There's also no evidence that Republican voters are getting less racist.
Trump is facing little meaningful resistance from congressional Republicans, and his favorability among rank-and-file GOP voters remains quite high. Influential right-wing media outlets like Breitbart News aren’t just embracing Trump — they’re embracing Trumpism, denouncing "globalists" and expressing solidarity with the far right. One Breitbart article termed the far right’s surge in Europe the "Patriot Spring." The structural factors are there, in the US, for a kind of Trumpism without Trump.
And the events giving rise to these ideas aren’t going away. The past year of strong polling for the far right is the result of a one-two punch: a surge of refugees trying to get into Europe and a spate of high-profile terrorist attacks. These two factors made cultural change, particularly Muslim immigration, even scarier, activating prejudices and turning Europeans to the right.
No one has a good solution for the refugee crisis or for Islamist terrorism. Longer term, immigrant populations in Europe will continue to have children, and it’s quite a while before white voters in the US can simply be outvoted. The issue of how to integrate ethnic and religious minorities will never entirely disappear, which means xenophobic politicians may continue to find fertile ground among whites concerned about ongoing cultural change.
Western governments can’t simply ignore the far right. Brexit proved its ability to destabilize major Western institutions and the global economy; Trump proved its ability to capture the most powerful position in the world. Most importantly, these parties threaten the most cherished values in Western society: our all-too-recent embrace of equality and tolerance.
If we want to protect the idea of Western societies as fundamentally open and tolerant places, then Western governments need to do something. One possible path forward can be found in the Western country that’s proven most immune to the rise of right-wing populism: Canada.
You might be tempted to think Canada has always been this way. Far from it: For most of its history, Canada was every bit as bigoted and intolerant as its peers. The Canadian immigration system prior to the 1960s was known as the "White Canada" policy because of explicit ethnic and racial quotas.
A half-century later, Canada has become an entirely different type of society.
In 1982 it passed the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, a major anti-discrimination law that enshrined multiculturalism as an essentially constitutional value. Ottawa now provides funding for communities and individuals to run citizenship and language classes for new immigrants, and sometimes even help them find housing. It eschewed the guest-worker programs used in much of Europe and emphasized to new immigrants that they would be a welcome and permanent part of the Canadian populace.
Canada also works to inculcate pluralistic values in its youngest citizens. By one estimate, public schools receive more than $1 billion a year to pay for teaching aids and videos with pro-immigrant messages.
The result? Today, 20.6 percent of Canada’s population is foreign-born, one of the highest such percentages in the developed world. While other countries have tried to limit Syrian refugees, Canada has welcomed them — letting in tens of thousands of Syrians and clamoring for more.
"Compared to the citizens of other developed immigrant-receiving countries, Canadians are by far the most open to and optimistic about immigration," Irene Bloemraad, the chair of Canadian studies at UC Berkeley, writes in a 2012 study published by the Migration Policy Institute.
The Canadian immigration model is not a blueprint for ending racism. Canada still has serious problems with structural discrimination, particularly when it comes to its First Nations population. It also experiences occasional bouts of xenophobia — see the anti-immigrant demagoguing from Kellie Leitch, a candidate for the leadership of the center-right Conservative party who speaks favorably about Trump's approach.
Even if other Western countries copied large parts of Canada’s immigration system and multicultural ideology, they could have a hard time staving off the growing political strength of the far right. Divisions over race caused the American Civil War; in Europe, centuries of ethnic supremacy culminated in the Holocaust. What we’re experiencing today, thankfully, is far less dangerous — partly because the open racism that the Confederates and Nazis stood for has been utterly delegitimized.
This is a testament to a basic truth, underscored by the Canadian model: Things really can get better. The forces of reaction, of ethno-racial supremacy, have been defeated in the past, and can be defeated again. The key to doing it is to refrain from surrendering on core values — to reaffirm Western societies’ basic commitment to tolerance and to craft policies that promote that commitment rather than back away from it.
The future shouldn’t belong to the Front National and its ilk. It should belong to the people they’re afraid of.Considering how perfect Cadence and Shining Armor are as a couple, their children's lives are not a reflection of that. To the outside world it may seem like they are living the dream, but everypony has secrets. In some cases, some bigger than others. Whilst Callie is starting to lose control over the piece of Sombra's soul that is residing within her, Larimar is trying his best to do damage control and keep their youngest sibling from finding out.Rosie grew up thinking that Callie just happens to have frequent mood swings, but even her young mind starts to notice there's more to it than that.This is one of the few times that Larimar has lost his cool. Callie just had one of the worst attacks and lashed out at Rosie, one of the ponies she has sworn to protect. It was more than just sibling rivarly and banter, which made Larimar realise what was happening and after Callie didn't back down immediately, lose his cool.More on Callie, Larimar and Rosie:My MLP Next Gen folder:At the snap...
7:11 remaining the the 3rd quarter, and the Bengals are leading 14-10. After the Patriots punted, there was a rush for no gain, then a hold, leading to 2nd and 18, from the 8. Cincinnati is in a 3 wide shotgun with Hill (#32) in the backfield and tight end Tyler Kroft (#81) in line next to the left tackle. The Patriots counter with only 2 down linemen, 2 outside linebackers on the line of scrimmage, and Hightower and Roberts (#52) up the middle. It's some hybrid 2-4/3-3/4-2. Branch and Brown are the 2 down linemen. Ninkovich (off screen right) and Flowers (#98) are the 2 outside linebackers, both standing. I don't think I've seen this particular alignment before, and with Roberts pressing the line, it makes it very difficult to differentiate who the rushers will be.
Dalton receives the snap...
As Dalton takes the snap, Roberts is showing blitz as both Brown and Branch start their rush. Flowers looks ready to cover the TE Kroft, and Hightower is just taking a step in, presumably to cover the RB/rush the passer.
Dalton drops back...
As Dalton starts to drop back, something has already gone wrong with his blocking. As Brown (#90) starts his rush, the guard immediately engages him, even though nobody is rushing wide, and left tackle Whitworth (#77) has nobody to block. To further aggravate the problem, Hill appears to be looking to block Hightower, but makes a bad decision of going between the tackle and guard, rather than stepping up in to the middle and letting the tackle handle the outside. As the blocking is going wrong, Hightower has made the quick decision to take his shot up the middle. Dalton and Flowers appear to be looking fo r a "hot route", but the tight end isn't looking.
Hightower shoots through the middle...
Branck does a great job engaging 2 blockers, and luck would seal off a third for him. It is pretty clear Hightower has a free shot. The guard won't be able to shift in time. Dalton is looking for a quick pass, but it won't be there as Flowers did a good job reading his eyes and floating towards the middle.
Too late...
The guard finally adjusted, but it was too late. Hightower is already past him. Whitworth never had anything to do on this play. Somewhere, the communication went wrong both between he and the guard, and between Hill and the whatever the reason was he decided to go through the wrong hole.
Game Over.
This was a great read (I think) by Hightower. The slight hesitation leads me to believe this was a play where he makes a decision between covering the back, or blitzing. Hill certainly made the decision easier, but still a nice job taking the opportunity that presented itself. When Dalton didn't go to his first read, Hightower got there. As soon as Hightower got a hand on Dalton, that was it. He spun him a little and brought him down in the endzone. This safety made it 14-12, Bengals still in the lead, but would prove to be THE turning point for the Patriots on their way to a 35-17 victory that saw New England end the game with 4 scores (3 touchdowns and 1 FG) on their 4 possessions following this play.Myanmar’s top three rulers resigned from the military on Friday, a senior army official said, paving their way to assume the most powerful roles in the country after a parliamentary election in November. The government will be formed by a civilian president chosen by the upper and lower houses following the nomination of three people. The two unsuccessful candidates become vice presidents. The shakeup raises the possibility that Than Shwe, 77, Myanmar’s leader since 1992, could be selected as president, while his close allies Muang Aye, 72, and Thura Shwe Man, 62, become vice presidents. Such appointments would reinforce a widely held view among political analysts that the elections amount to a charade in which Myanmar’s top generals simply exchange army fatigues for civilian clothes without altering the nation’s power structure.On this special edition of Nation of Recap, Jordan is joined by Alex Shanfield the moderator of 90 Day Fiance’s Reddit to catch up on this season of 90 Day Fiancé: Before The 90 days.
90 Day Fiancé: Before the 90 Dayé
Show Notes:
On this special edition of Nation of Recap, Jordan is joined by Alex Shanfield the moderator of 90 Day Fiance’s Reddit to catch up on this season of 90 Day Fiancé: Before The 90 days. We talk about the 90 Day Fiance franchise in general, what makes Before the 90 Days different, and then dive deep into the couples featured on this season so far. From Paul’s trip to the Amazon to Darcy’s Eurotrip, we cover it all!
Info:
We’ll be back next Tuesday for more Bachelor in Paradise.
Catch up on our Bachelor in Paradise Coverage here.
We’ll be back on Thursday & Sunday for more Big Brother 19.
Catch up on Big Brother 19 here.
Check out our The Defenders coverage here.After all the smoke had settled at the Philips Arena in Atlanta, Georgia, on Sat., April 21, 2012, at UFC 145, and Light Heavyweight Champion Jon Jones had successfully defended his title by soundly defeating the fighter who knew him best, Rashad Evans, one question rang out from mixed martial arts (MMA) fans everywhere.
Who can stop this man?
It's an impossible question to answer, though many will try. And it's the task of UFC matchmaker Joe Silva and promotion President Dana White to do their damnedest to find the best candidate for the job.
First up on the list is former Strikeforce Champion Dan Henderson, who will challenge Jones sometime this year, possibly at UFC 149 on July 21 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. With his monster right hand, wrestling pedigree, and uncanny ability to fend off Father Time, he's been given about as much chance as anyone else in the 205-pound division, at least by fans and pundits.
Oddsmakers? Now that's another story.
The MMAOddsbreakers show released its odds on the fight and Jones comes in as a whopping -565 favorite while Henderson limps in as a +385 underdog.
Quite frankly, it's amazing that a championship fight would favor one more over the other that heavily. It's truly a testament to how dominant "Bones" has been during his run competing inside the Octagon.
When examining all the reasons he's favored so heavily, it makes perfect sense. He's 24-years-old with a 16-1 career record. And that one loss was a disqualification due to his throwing illegal elbows. He was handily winning the fight beforehand.
Not only that, here are the names Jones has beaten once he reached the championship level -- Mauricio Rua (to win the title), Quinton Jackson, Lyoto Machida, Rashad Evans.
Are you kidding me?
Henderson is a formidable foe, no doubt, but he's 41-years-old and nearly died of exhaustion trying to finish "Shogun" last November, the same man Jones obliterated to take his place at the throne of the light heavyweight division.
Simply put, there's very little reason to believe "Hendo" will be the man to take the crown from the 205-pound king.
Anyone want to disagree?OAKLAND (CBS SF) — A judge Tuesday dismissed a Berkeley man’s second-degree murder conviction for fatally stabbing a University of California at Berkeley student near campus six years ago, ruling that his trial lawyer failed to provide him with effective assistance of counsel.
Andrew Hoeft-Edenfield, 26, a former Berkeley City College student, was found guilty on May 13, 2010, in connection with the death of 21-year-old Christopher Wootton in the early morning hours of May 3, 2008, and was sentenced to a term of 16 years to life in state prison.
Wootton, who was from Bellflower in Southern California, was only two weeks away from graduating with honors in nuclear engineering when he was stabbed during a confrontation in the parking lot of a sorority house in the 2400 block of Warring Street at about 2:45 a.m. on May 3, 2008.
According to the evidence in Hoeft-Edenfield’s four-month-long trial in Alameda County Superior Court in 2010, the stabbing occurred at the end of a drunken shouting match that developed when Hoeft-Edenfield, who worked at Jamba Juice in Berkeley, and a group of his friends encountered Wootton, who was a member of the nearby Sigma Pi fraternity house, and his friends on a street near campus.
Hoeft-Edenfield’s trial attorney, Yolanda Huang, admitted during his trial that he stabbed Wootton, but said he acted in self-defense after he was outnumbered, surrounded, kicked and stomped by Wootton and a large group of Wootton’s friends.
The California Supreme Court originally upheld Hoeft-Edenfield’s conviction in 2012, but last year it issued an order to show cause why he shouldn’t be entitled to relief based on his allegation that Huang rendered ineffective assistance by refusing to enter into plea bargain negotiations and failing to warn him of the potential consequences of going to trial.
Alameda County Superior Court Judge Larry Goodman, who held a hearing on the matter last month, said in his ruling today that Huang failed to warn Hoeft-Edenfield that he could face a life sentence if he didn’t accept a manslaughter plea bargain, went to trial and was convicted of murder.
Goodman also said Huang was ineffective in negotiating a possible plea bargain and had a conflict of interest because she was representing Hoeft-Edenfield’s friend, Adam Russell, as well as Hoeft-Edenfield in a lawsuit alleging that fraternity members started the fight that led to Wootton’s death.
The suit sought damages for emotional distress, negligence, assault and battery and conspiracy to bring about false arrest and malicious prosecution.
Matthew Dalton, Hoeft-Edenfield’s new attorney, said Tuesday that Huang had never handled a murder case before she represented Hoeft-Edenfield, who was a family friend, and hadn’t handled any felony cases since the early 1990s.
In his ruling, Goodman cited “the breathtaking level of disingenuousness, evasiveness and apparent dishonesty exhibited by Miss Huang throughout her representation of the petitioner (Hoeft-Edenfield).”
Goodman said Huang’s “lack of qualifications” to represent Hoeft-Edenfield combined with “her unexplainable arrogance” in dealing with prosecutors, judges and her own advisors “created a complex web of deception, misrepresentation, disloyalty and self-interest.”
Hoeft-Edenfield, who remains in custody without bail at the Alameda County Jail in Dublin, smiled and waived at his family members and friends as he left court in Oakland following Goodman’s ruling.
In the hallway outside of court, his family members shouted, “Justice is served.”
Alameda County Deputy District Attorney Shara Beltramo said her office will now try to enter into a plea bargain with Hoeft-Edenfield on a manslaughter charge and conduct a trial to try to convict him of second-degree murder again.
Beltramo said her office can’t seek a first-degree murder conviction because the jury at his previous trial acquitted him of that charge.
© Copyright 2014 by CBS San Francisco and Bay City News Service. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.The popular personality had became the face of competitive European Call of Duty, but during the end of the Black Ops III season in 2016, he revealed just days before the CWL Championship that he'd be unable to attend for personal reasons. Beginning his career on Call of Duty 4, Swanny became one of the most decorated players in European CoD history, winning a multitude of regional events throughout the years for the likes of TCM Gaming, Epsilon, Prophecy, Vitality and Millenium. Alongside his EU achievements, he's also the only British player to ever wear the OpTic jersey, competing as part of the Nation squad at UMG Orlando in early 2015.
Despite missing CoD Champs with Millenium, it was expected that he'd return to compete for the Infinite Warare season, but it was later revealed he'd be taking some time out to assess his options. Continuing to stream on a regular basis during 2017 on games such as H1Z1, he revealed he'd be making a competitive return for Call of Duty WWII when it's released in November 2017. Having played with the Dylan 'Madcat' Daly and Jordan 'Jurd' Crawley before he went on a hiatus as part of the Millenium squad who won both stages of the CWL EU Pro Division, it was rumored that Swanny would be joining the Splyce team for CoD WWII after the side dropped Trei 'Zer0' Morris.
x
Speculation began when the British player followed Splyce owner and CEO, Marty Strenczewilk, but unfortunately for those hoping for that rendezvous, we can confirm via sources close to the situation that Swanny won't be teaming up with the Splyce team for the start of the new game. Sledgehammer Games will release Call of Duty WWII on November 3rd worldwide. The title will take the pace of the series back to a boots on the ground style after three years of jetpack movement, which started with Advanced Warfare in 2014.TARPON SPRINGS — Tisa Berset stares at her new hand, willing it to open. "Concentrate," the doctor says, watching over her shoulder. "Like we practiced." A year ago, all of Tisa's fingers were amputated at the knuckles. What remains of her right hand is now strapped inside a silicone glove. It's a prosthetic device billed as the best on the planet, with bionic fingers dexterous enough to pluck a feather or tickle a baby. To open or close or pinch or point, Tisa must wiggle the tiny muscles between her middle and ring knuckles as though she's spreading phantom fingers into a "V" shape. She groans. "It's harder than you think."
Tisa, 22, is a self-described country girl who guzzles Coors Light through a straw. She was born near Boston, raised in Tarpon Springs, and never stopped cheering the Red Sox. She has long, purple-black hair and wide green eyes, which she often lines with glitter. She believes tattoos can protect and heal. She has 10, including Daddy's Little Girl and an infinity sign — to signify her potential.
At Westcoast Brace and Limb in Temple Terrace, orthotist Greg Bauer and a team of specialists have spent six months molding the battery-powered hand to perfectly fit Tisa. They've adjusted the finger length, tightened the Velcro, concocted a special spray tan and listened to her hopes and fears: I want to go out and feel normal.
During this January appointment, Tisa practices with the final version, the one she'll take home.
She holds it close to her face. Focuses on contracting the tiny muscles. Notices her wrist veins bulging.
Joint by electric joint, the bionic fingers uncurl.
Tisa grins at Bauer.
She can move this tool. But she needs to make it her own, make it express who she is.
"Now," she says, "how do I flick someone off?"
• • •
Four years ago, during her freshman year at Valencia College in Orlando, Tisa started vomiting.
The nausea, accompanied by cold sweats and back pain, struck in the shower, during psychology class, behind the wheel of her silver Ford Focus. She told friends it must be the flu, a bad reaction to dormitory food, a vicious hangover. Inside she knew: Something's wrong with me.
After Tisa visited three doctors, an oncologist in Port Richey diagnosed adult onset Still's disease, a rare type of arthritis whose cause is unknown.
She left school to readjust at home. On top of her daily steroid shots to suppress the waves of sickness, another oncologist prescribed chemotherapy. In past patients, he told her, it sent the disease into remission. But Tisa's body rejected it.
One night, she felt unusually queasy and texted a friend: If I don't wake up, come in and make sure everything's okay.
She woke shivering, itching, in Safety Harbor's Mease Countryside Hospital. She faded out and woke again in a Bayflite helicopter to Tampa General Hospital, where nurses wrapped her in blankets and put an oxygen mask on her face. Her heart, they told her, wasn't pumping blood to her extremities. She developed sepsis. Her hands and feet turned blue.
Tisa stayed in the hospital for weeks.
She often woke crying and hugging her pillow pet, Wally, the Red Sox mascot. She snapped at her parents, Bruce and Diane Berset, and then sobbed in their arms.
Why me? she thought. She was just ditching her high school curfew, sensing the possibilities of the world — and now the future was on hold.
Sometimes at night, she'd stare at her blue fingers and toes and struggle to imagine life without them. Who would she be without her pink nail polish? Without being able to flip off an obnoxious Yankees fan?
Tisa knew what was coming before the doctor told her.
"Just get rid of them," she said. "But save my tattoos."
• • •
The first documented person to wear a prosthetic hand was Marcus Sergius, a decorated Roman general during the Second Punic War who lost his right hand in a sword fight. Sergius fashioned new fingers from iron, clutched his shield and charged back into battle.
Over time, wood-carved digits gave way to metal hands with moving joints, which, after years of scientific advancements, gave way to intelligent hands, computer-programmed and custom-fit to users.
The iLimb Digits, made by a Scottish smart prosthetic company called Touch Bionics, was released shortly after Tisa's amputations. The first to use it was a Tampa Marine Corps veteran, said Bauer, the orthotist. The second was Tisa. She was energetic, determined and still had partial hands — the ideal candidate.
The iLimb Digits is special, said Bauer, for its lifelike joints. It grips like human digits, slowly or briskly, adjusting pressure to clasp an iPhone, peck a keyboard or lug a 50-pound suitcase.
Marcus Sergius was a warrior. Without the iron hand to hold his shield he couldn't really be himself.
Could Tisa say the same?
• • •
The 3-year-old boy chewing Chex Mix points at Tisa's scarred knuckles.
"What's that?" Kamari asks, frowning.
"What's what?" she replies.
"That!"
At Our Savior Lutheran Church in Clearwater, where Tisa works part-time, she usually watches the toddlers in the classroom next door. On this February morning, the 3-year-olds wiggling in yellow plastic chairs haven't met her, so she left the bionic hand at home. She worried the device might scare them.
"I don't have fingers, bud. I don't have toes, either."
She kicks off her black, rhinestone-studded loafers.
"See?"
"That's gross," Kamari says.
"Well, it's normal for me."
Tisa knew that life would change after her amputations. She mastered the physical challenges, but hadn't prepared for the social shift — the need to attach an explanation to every introduction.
Tisa calls to a blond boy across the room. An hour earlier, he'd asked the same question.
"Gavin! Tell him what happened to my fingers and toes."
"The doctor took them," he says.
"That's right," Tisa says. "Give me a high five!"
She reaches across the table and touches his hand.
She turns back to Kamari.
"Now you, bud. High-five?"
He slowly touches her palm.
• • •
Insurance covers 80 percent of the iLimb Digits, which costs around $80,000. That's on top of Tisa's new silicone slip-on feet, worth $20,000 each.
After a fundraiser rummage sale at the day care, she still owes around $24,000. But there's a payment plan. And her parents set up a Facebook page where friends and strangers post encouragement, donate money.
Her dad wonders if the financial burden of the bionic hand is worth it. A left hand device won't be considered until that's clear. If the bionic hand's too hard or awkward to use, will it collect dust on her nightstand? "She's good without it. She's so independent," he said once in the doctor's office. "She does it all on her own."
Tisa's progress depends on her determination, Bauer, the orthotist, tells them. And she has already come so far.
After four months of occupational therapy at Tampa General, he estimates, it could become just another body part. Something she wouldn't have to think about.
Tisa knows what she could do with a functioning hand. She'd more swiftly apply her Maybelline Stiletto Lash mascara, brush the horses on her sister's farm, bounce the toddlers she baby-sits, give herself the daily shot to suppress the Still's disease, which she still fights. She could type on a keyboard. Reclaim abilities she lost.
Truth is, she gets around just fine without it.
She traded a laptop for an iPad, which she navigates with the touch of her knuckles. She strokes her gray and white cat Roo with her palms. She drives her Ford Focus and applies mascara with "her little V," the small gap between the nub of her thumb and the inside of her index finger. She found a way to balance without toes and stroll through the mall casually, like anyone else. She moved out of her parents' house and into a friend's duplex in Holiday. She regularly attends counseling.
The iLimb Digits doesn't complete Tisa. She admits it. She can't see how it will ever feel natural or comfortable.
"I learned how to do everything again without my fingers and, honestly, I've gotten good at it," Tisa said. "But don't get me wrong. I'm grateful for the hand. Right now, I just can't say how much I'll use it."
Recently, she tattooed a giant, rainbow-colored dream catcher across her thigh to block out negative energy.
This summer, Tisa plans to take 15 credit hours at St. Petersburg College in Tarpon Springs. She'll jot class notes on her iPad. She'll work toward her dream career: a psychologist who helps teenagers work through loss.
• • •
Winghouse has dollar drafts.
Tisa laughs at the text from her best friend, Nick.
"I bet he drinks three before I even get there."
On this January evening, the plan is familiar: leave work, stop home in Tarpon Springs, ask Mom for money, drive to the Palm Harbor restaurant where waitresses in black spandex serve her Coors Light with a straw.
It's Tisa's place. Her comfort zone.
She pulls on her favorite Boston Red Sox sweatshirt and writes back with a knuckle.
On my way.
Tonight, for the first time, she's wearing the finished hand outside her parents' house and the doctor's office.
Tisa slides it on. Her gray sleeve partially hides the bionic fingers.
She's a little nervous to show Nick. What will he think? Will people stare?
She walks in, eyes straight ahead, past the sports fans and flat-screen TVs and cheese fries, to her table by the window.
Nick looks up from an empty pint glass.
"Wow," he says, smiling. "It's bigger than I expected."
They laugh, order boneless buffalo wings, talk about Gasparilla, a wild night at a Rascal Flatts concert, the Strawberry Festival. They order more beer.
"That server was totally just checking out my hand," Tisa says, grinning. "Watch this."
She sets her elbow on the table.
The veins in her wrist bulge.
She stares at her hand.
The index finger goes down.
The ring finger.
The pinky.
"Pretty cool," he says. "Besides the fact you're flipping me off."
Danielle Paquette can be reached at [email protected] or (727) 445-4224.Overview
Unison is a file-synchronization tool for OSX, Unix, and Windows. It allows two replicas of a collection of files and directories to be stored on different hosts (or different disks on the same host), modified separately, and then brought up to date by propagating the changes in each replica to the other.
Unison shares a number of features with tools such as configuration management packages (CVS, PRCS, Subversion, BitKeeper, etc.), distributed filesystems (Coda, etc.), uni-directional mirroring utilities (rsync, etc
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a two-hour long album that may not be heard by the public for 88 years, has finally been sold to an American collector for a price “in the millions,” according to Forbes and auction house Paddle8. “Millions of what?” you might find yourself asking, given that the album spent much of the year in limbo and was ridiculed even by members of the group who appeared on its 31 tracks.
Little more information is forthcoming about the sale, but Paddle8 has claimed that it is the most expensive single album ever sold, which would mean, as Forbes again points out, that it sold more than the Elvis Presley recording purchased by Jack White for $300,000.
Even beyond the question of the collector’s identity, or the auction price (much less the value) of the album — which, I’ll remind you, is a CD placed inside two nickel-silver boxes that were hand-carved by a Moroccan artist — is the problem of the album’s release to the public. Given Once Upon a Time in Shaolin’s 88 year copyright clause — a scheme dreamed up by RZA and protégé Cilvaringz (creator of Snowballs) as they climbed the Great Pyramid Cheops — members of the public will likely not enjoy a commercial release of the album in their lifetimes. Presumably, though, the owner of the album could release it to the public non-commercially — for free — or at least that was the rub when Sasha Frere-Jones spoke to RZA at MoMA PS1 in March.
It was at that time that I heard roughly 13 minutes of the album. It was not enough, really, to judge it one way or another.That's an incredible claim. Folks arrested in the United States are investigated for weeks by police officers with local knowledge and access to the friends, family, and associates of the accused. Attorneys are provided. A discovery process helps the prosecution and defense to unearth all relevant evidence. A trial is held before a jury instructed to assign guilt only when the charges are proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Even then the defendant has access to a system of appeals. And as we all know, innocent people are sent to prison despite these safeguards.
How does the Obama Administration perform so much better from thousands of miles away, operating in an unfamiliar culture, often without any American boots on the ground? What's their specific explanation for how they accomplish such unerring judgments with the very same intelligence services that failed to prevent the September 11 attacks, concluded that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, imprisoned scores of innocent people in the prison at Guantanamo Bay, and failed to find Osama bin Laden for an entire decade after they began looking?
The Obama Administration has no explanation. It's all classified.
And what little they have said undermines their credibility. Reading the account that anonymous Obama Administration officials gave the New York Times, you'd think that the president himself is judiciously evaluating the status of everyone who winds up being killed by an American drone. There are a lot of reasons we know that isn't true. Here's another one: No one man is capable of rigorously issuing death warrants at the pace of more than one per day, even as he runs for reelection and conducts all of the other functions that are demanded of American presidents.
Don't get me wrong. The dead killed by American drones in Pakistan are often actually bad guys, just as if police chiefs were empowered to execute murderers without trial the dead would often be guilty. But believing that innocents are killed as seldom as the Obama Administration claims is willfully naive. You don't have to see the video of an Apache helicopter mistaking journalists for insurgents, or to read about the two American soldiers killed in a friendly-fire drone death, or to hear a retired brigadier general discussing how easy it is for drone operators to misidentify targets, in order to intuitively grasp that America can't reliably discern between the guilty and the unlucky via drone camera, at least not at the pace of one guilty person killed every single day.
This isn't an argument about whether the drone war is necessary or not, a subject best left to other posts. All I'm saying is that, necessary or not, the drone war results in a lot more innocents killed than the Obama Administration acknowledges. There is a lot of different evidence for that proposition. The sheer pace at which we're killing people is one piece of evidence.One of the core delights of Magic: The Gathering is how it plays with its own rules. While there are big, complicated rules that underwrite every moment of Magic, one of the biggest draws to the game (for me, anyway) is how specific cards use that complicated rule set to do strange, unexpected things. Winning the game by amassing treasure or going on a quest to find too many leviathans are some of the pleasures that I have had the luck of enjoying.
Magic leaned into this quality more than ten years ago with the Unhinged and Unglued sets. Both were, for lack of a better word, “jokey.” Many numbers had fractions in them. There were many puns. As a young player, I thought they were fun, but also mostly throwaways. They didn’t last in my mind, and that lack of resonance seems to have applied to many other players of the game. Now, though, we have a new Un- set in Unstable, and the goal here seems to be less “jokey” and more “experimental.”
Check out Gimme Five:
The brilliance here is not the joke (although this hyped-up octopus is very cool), but instead it is the way that the card recognizes that Magic is a social phenomenon. I’ve played hundreds of matches crammed into small rooms with other people, and this card recognizes that cultural reality and turns it into a mechanic.
Unstable is a “silver border” set, meaning that it cannot be played in traditional competitive Magic (which are “black border”). The beauty of this, though, is that an Un- set can have cards that allow you to high five. They can break out of the very specific bounds that competitive Magic sets for itself and explore further into the world of social interactions, group joy, and weird things that the competitive framework of the game must necessarily leave out.
Unstable will be available for your funtime experiences starting December 8th, 2017.
Cameron Kunzelman tweets at @ckunzelman and writes about games at thiscageisworms.com. His latest game, Epanalepsis, was released last year. It’s available on Steam.Image caption The RCN believes 40,000 posts could close in the next three years
Front-line clinical jobs in the NHS are under threat in England, a union says.
A Royal College of Nursing analysis of 21 NHS trusts where cuts were taking place found more than half of posts under threat were in areas such as nursing and midwifery.
RCN leader Peter Carter said cutting thousands of doctors and nurses could have a "catastrophic" effect on care.
But deputy prime minister Nick Clegg maintained radical reorganisation of the NHS is needed.
Overhaul
While the health budget has been protected, savings still have to be made because of the rising demands linked to the ageing population, new drugs and lifestyle factors like obesity.
A target of £20bn has been set by 2014-15 - a saving of about 4% a year - which ministers have insisted can be achieved through cutting management costs and by front-line services becoming more efficient.
But the union, which released the findings at the start of its four-day annual conference in Liverpool, said its research showed this was not happening.
Clinical staff are the lifeblood of the NHS and it is haemorrhaging at an alarming rate Peter Carter, RCN general secretary
Some of the proposed changes that mark the biggest shake up of the NHS to date have been opposed by one of Mr Clegg's closest advisers.
Lib Dem MP Norman Lamb has said the plans pose a major "financial risk" to the NHS, and has threatened to quit unless ministers rethink some aspects, such as "the rush" to give GPs control of budgets.
Speaking to the BBC's Today programme, Mr Clegg insisted the changes, including some cuts, were necessary, but said the finer details of the plan were up for debate over the next couple of months.
Services closed
The RCN has been gathering evidence about the number of posts under threat in the NHS for nearly a year.
It believes there are now 40,000 posts which could close in the next three years, a rise from 27,000 at the end of last year. Most of these will not be redundancies as the NHS tends to rely on natural turnover from people retiring or changing jobs.
As part of its latest research, the RCN took an in-depth look at 21 trusts to see what sort of posts were being targeted.
Planned cuts Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust is proposing to cut its nurse, midwife and health visitor workforce by 264 by 2015 - a 15% reduction. The trust says the changes are at the planning stage and are "open to change"
At London's Kingston Hospital 214 out of 486 job cuts are in nursing, midwifery and health visiting. The trust said it was part of a five-year plan and services should not suffer
County Durham and Darlington NHS Trust has a £60m savings plan which it wants implemented by 2014. It involves losing 300 nurse posts, but the trust said the figure was just estimated at the moment and was based on falling income and workload
It showed that 54% of about 10,000 job cuts were clinical and, in total, more than a tenth of the nursing workforce could be lost in these areas.
The union also said it had found examples of services being closed, including rehab centres, detox units and talking therapies.
RCN general secretary Peter Carter said the reforms could "well turn out to be the biggest disaster in the history of our public services" if unions and other organisations were not listened to.
"Clinical staff are the lifeblood of the NHS and it is haemorrhaging at an alarming rate. Many trusts are not being transparent by admitting the proportion of clinical jobs being lost.
"From our research we now know the truth - the majority of job losses are front-line clinical jobs, the jobs that matter to patients.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Health Minister, Simon Burns, tells BBC Breakfast that there will be no huge cuts among front line health staff
"Cutting thousands of doctors and nurses could have a catastrophic impact on patient safety and care. Our figures expose the myth that front-line services are protected."
But NHS chief executive Sir David Nicholson questioned the findings, pointing out that latest workforce figures up to December 2010 suggested that nurse posts were continuing to rise.
He added: "There is no excuse to cut back on services that patients need when the NHS will receive an extra £11.5bn of funding.
"The NHS does need to become more efficient, but savings must not impact adversely on patient care. We are clear that every penny saved from efficiencies will be reinvested in patient services."By Michael Hartley
If you were born on Mars, how old would you be today? Or how many times has Jupiter gone around the sun since you were born? What's your age in Venusian years? This page can tell you! Enter your and your friends' birthdays using the form below. The information will only be stored on this computer, not on the server, so don't worry! (PS - I also have some printable space birthday worksheets you can download if you want to do these calculations yourself.)
Your/your friend's name:
Your/your friend's birthday:
You need to enter the year correctly - your Jupiter birthday doesn't fall on the same day each year, in fact most years you don't even have one!
Upcoming Space Birthdays Enter someone's date of birth using the form above. Next Mercury Birthdays Enter someone's date of birth using the form above. Next Venus Birthdays Enter someone's date of birth using the form above. Next Earth Birthdays Enter someone's date of birth using the form above. Next Mars Birthdays Enter someone's date of birth using the form above. Next Jupiter Birthdays Enter someone's date of birth using the form above. Next Saturn Birthdays Enter someone's date of birth using the form above. Next Uranus Birthdays Enter someone's date of birth using the form above. Next Neptune Birthdays Enter someone's date of birth using the form above.
Terry Pratchett's Birthdays Terry Pratchett is a British fantasy author, known and loved for his incredible Discworld series. Links: Amazon, Wikipedia, Official Website, Other Celebrity Space Birthdays Terry Pratchett turns 71 Earth years old on the 28th April, 2019. turns 71 Earth years old on the 28th April, 2019. Terry Pratchett turns 295 Mercury years old on the 17th May, 2019. turns 295 Mercury years old on the 17th May, 2019. Terry Pratchett turns 6 Jupiter years old on the 24th June, 2019. turns 6 Jupiter years old on the 24th June, 2019. Terry Pratchett turns 116 Venus years old on the 8th September, 2019. turns 116 Venus years old on the 8th September, 2019. Terry Pratchett turns 38 Mars years old on the 18th October, 2019. turns 38 Mars years old on the 18th October, 2019. Terry Pratchett turns 33 Discworld years old on the 8th August, 2020. turns 33 Discworld years old on the 8th August, 2020. Terry Pratchett turns 1 Uranus year old on the 24th August, 2032. turns 1 Uranus year old on the 24th August, 2032. Terry Pratchett turns 3 Saturn years old on the 11th September, 2036. turns 3 Saturn years old on the 11th September, 2036. Terry Pratchett turns 1 Neptune year old on the 12th February, 2113. turns 1 Neptune year old on the 12th February, 2113.Photos: Making Madvillainy
March 01, 2004
These are three sets of photos from the making of DOOM & Madlib's album Madvillainy, 2002-2003. These photos by Egon, Madlib and Eric Coleman were published on the last version of our website at various times.
PART 1. In Summer 2002 we announced that MF DOOM and Madlib were working together on a project which, at that time, had no title or projected release date. The two first met up at the Stones Throw house in Los Angeles where Madlib's studio The Bomb Shelter existed in a former 1950s-era bomb shelter. Doom immediately immersed himself in Madlib's music and began writing lyrics and recording demos. He would continue revising lyrics and re-recording vocals for over a year. Scroll down for parts 2 & 3.
PART 2. Madlib took off to Brazil in late 2002 for the Red Bull Music Academy, where early cuts of Madvillain were premiered for the first time. (These demos were also copied here and subsequently bootlegged - we later released the demos on in Madvillainy 2: The Box).
Madlib took these photos himself in his hotel room where he worked on beats for Madvillain's "Strange Ways" and "Rhinestone Cowboy". These two and others were created using the only equipment available: a portable record player, an SP 303 and a borrowed cassette deck.
PART 3. Back in Los Angeles, mid-2003: DOOM & Madlib take over a bedroom to record vocals. Photographer Eric Coleman came through on this day and shot these photos which were used on singles and the album - some of these are taken from the photo proof sheet.
First released was the Money Folder b/w America's Most Blunted 12-inch single in Fall '03. Madvillainy was released March '04.
Also see album designer Jeff Jank's story about the making of Madvillainy & it's album cover over at Egotrip.
www.stonesthrow.com/madvillainIn 1895, photographer Edward Sheriff Curtis met a subject who would change his life and who would forever alter the way we see American Indians.
Her name was Princess Angeline, and she was the daughter of Si’ahl, a powerful American Indian chief for whom the city of Seattle was named. By then she'd grown old, selling clams at markets to make ends meet. He asked to photograph her, paying a dollar per photo—and set himself on a decades-long course to document American Indian life.
Curtis, who died 63 years ago on Monday, became arguably the single most influential chronicler of American Indian culture.
With the backing of J.P. Morgan and Theodore Roosevelt, the photographer dedicated 30 years taking pictures of American Indians from the Arctic to Florida, depicting them as timeless figures untouched by modernity.
“Curtis assigned beauty and romance to the Native American image,” says Alexandra Harris, an editor at the National Museum of the American Indian, in Washington, D.C.
Curtis left behind an unparalleled cultural record of over 80 tribes, comprising some 40,000 photographs and over 10,000 wax cylinder recordings of American Indian language and music. His twenty-volume opus The North American Indian, issued from 1907 to 1930, was among the most ambitious publishing feats of its time.
But the photographer's reputation is far from unblemished. “Curtis is a mixed bag,” says James Faris, a retired anthropologist and author of Navajo and Photography. “His efforts and accomplishments were amazing, but he is guilty of some of the errors of his time.”
Some of Curtis’s methods would violate today’s standards for photojournalism. He staged scenes in studios, provided traditional clothing and jewelry to photographic subjects, even retouched photos to remove modern trappings, such as alarm clocks. What’s more, he chose not to document contemporary issues that American Indians faced, such as federal boarding schools meant to assimilate children at the expense of their cultural heritages.
Most of all, Curtis’s work was strongly shaped by the false notion that American Indians were a “vanishing race” whose cultures were doomed to disappear. “Curtis completely epitomizes our society’s myth of the Native American as some static, unchanging thing,” says Harris. “His photos are the vision of reality he wanted others to see, not what was actually real.”Youth boot camp operator tries to allay escape fears
Posted
The operator of a north Queensland juvenile boot camp says residents are needlessly afraid of offenders escaping and becoming a threat.
The facility, at Lincoln Springs, west of Ingham, is replacing the boot camp at Kuranda which was closed down earlier this year after two teenagers escaped.
Operator Beyond Billabong met concerned property owners who say they have spent thousands of dollars on security measures.
Boyd Curran says no child will be there against their will.
"Residents are concerned for their personal safety and the safety and security of their belongings," he said.
"We will have procedures in place to ensure that if any of our children go missing, that they'll be located very quickly.
"I cannot reiterate enough that the kids that are chosen and who choose to come on the boot camp will be chosen to ensure that they are there willingly.
"We don't see any reason why the kids would voluntarily take off into the bush and turn up at any of our neighbours because where we are is quite isolated and the fact is that the kids are there voluntarily, it's not as though they're held there against their will."
Topics: law-crime-and-justice, youth, prisons-and-punishment, ingham-4850, cairns-4870, townsville-4810In previous two tutorials, I have discussed about “ASP.NET Core and Angular 2 using Visual studio code yeoman” and “ASP.NET Core 2.0 and Angular 2 project folder structure” respectively. But now let’s move ahead. In this tutorial, I will show you how to work with entity framework using ASP.NET Core 2.0 and Angular 2 using Visual Studio Code.
If you don’t know how to setup angular 2 with ASP.NET Core 2.0, then go to previous tutorials.
Entity Framework Core with Angular 2
Let’s start how to work with entity framework Core with Angular 2 and ASP.NET Core 2.0.
Step # 1 – Create a New Project
If you don’t know how to create a new project using Angular2 and ASP.NET Core 2.0, then Click here or click below link to learn how to create a new project.
Step # 2 – Create Models
In this step, we will create a model class (Student.cs) with some properties like StudentID, Name, Email, and Department. Now let’s start how to create a class.
First of all, Create a new folder. Open the terminal, run the command “ mkdir Models ”. It will create a new folder in your project folder structure.
”. It will create a new folder in your project folder structure. Now, right click on the Model folder => select new C# class => enter name (E.g. Student.cs). It will create a new class. Now enter the following properties in this class.
Note:- If you don’t see “New C# Class” after right clicking on the Model folder, then you need to install some C# extensions. Open your VSCode and press “ctrl+shift+x”, It will open a sidebar with search box. Just write C# classes. Then you will see a list on extensions with green color button “Install”. Just press install button and extension will be installed.
Note: – Don’t forget to add the below reference above the class.
using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations;
Step # 3 – Adding Entity Framework Core.
In this step, we will add entity framework in our project. As you know in visual studio IDE, we use package manager console for adding packages, but there is no package manager Console. So, we need some commands to install entity framework in our project.
First of all, right the below command in terminal to add package. It will add package in your project.
dotnet add package Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.SqlServer
Note: – when you will execute the dotnet add package command, then It will add an entry to csproj file.
Now run the below command in terminal to restore all the packages.
Dotnet restore
Install Entity Framework Command Line Tool.
Go to project folder structure => Open.csproj file => add the following code just below the ItemGroup end tag.
Then again restore all the packages.
Run the command (“dotnet restore”) in terminal.
Note:- if you want to see all the available commands, then write this command “dotnet ef” in terminal. It will show all the commands. And moreover, if you want to use dotnet migration command, but don’t know how to use this command, then just write this command (“ dotnet ef migrations –help ”). It will show details of migrations command. And moreover, if you want to use “add” command and need some help, then write this command (“dotnet ef migrations add –help”). And so on.
Step # 4 – Create a DbContext class.
In this step, we will add a DbContext class. First of all, we will make a folder (E.g. Persistence), and then add a class with the name of StudentDbContext.cs. So, let’s start,
run the command “ mkdir persistence ”, It will add the folder with the name of “ persistence ”.
”, It will add the folder with the name of “ ”. Right click on the “ persistence ” folder => choose “ new C# class ” => enter the name StudentDbContext.cs. It will add a new class under the folder persistence.
” folder => choose “ ” => enter the name StudentDbContext.cs. It will add a new class under the folder persistence. Write the below code.
Note: – Don’t forget to add below DbContext reference library.
using Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore
Now go to project folder structure and open startup class. Add the below code just under the ConfigureServices method.
Note: – Add below libraries.
using Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore; using myFirstApp.persistence;
Add Configuration.
Open appsettings.json file => then add connection strings as below in screenshot.
Step # 5 – Creating Database.
Now it’s time to create database using code first.
Add DbSet<> into StudentDbContext class as below in screenshot.
Now add migration. Just run this command “dotnet ef migrations add initialModel”. It will add the migration folder into your project.
Now finally, run this command “dotnet ef database update” to update database. It will create a database in your sql server. Now open sql server, then you will see a database with the name of students.
Summary
Congratulation, we have created a database using Entity Framework with Angular2 and ASP.NET Core 2.0. I hope this tutorial will helpful for you. Please like it and share 😊
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PrintHowever one might care to characterize the U.S.-NATO campaign in Libya, it’s another blow to worldwide nuclear nonproliferation. At the Christian Science Monitor, Reza Sanati writes:
The lesson is elementary. Eight years ago, Libya agreed to dismantle its infant nuclear program. … Would NATO have launched a bombing campaign against Libya if [it] had possessed nuclear weapons?
The United States set a precedent when it attacked Iraq in 2003. The door had been shut on Iraq’s attempts to develop nuclear weapons by the UN inspections regime known as UNSCOM (United Nations Special Commission). Which, of course, didn’t prevent George W. Bush’s administration from propping up the corpse of Iraq’s nuclear weapons program to justify its invasion.
Thus, adding insult to injury, not only did the U.S. attack a country without nuclear weapons, it conjured up the fiction that Iraq had renewed its program. This constituted a double blow to nonproliferation. What’s the point of a state disarming if it’s not only subjecting itself to attack, but leaving itself vulnerable to the possibility that a nuclear-weapons state might make the claim that, in fact, it hasn’t disarmed?
Of course, if Saddam Hussein, in the interests of regional security as he saw it, hadn’t tried to keep up the pretense that Iraq still possessed a nuclear weapons program, the accusations about its program might never have been mounted. What’s worrisome today is that Iran’s contentiousness makes it ripe for exactly that sort of double crossing.
More from Sanati:
Qaddafi’s forceful downfall will make acquiring nuclear weapons all the more justifiable to states that feel threatened by outsiders. In turn, that will erode the vision of nonproliferation that held such promise in the post-cold-war era.
Furthermore, while Iraq and Libya were attacked, “troublesome nuclear-armed states such as North Korea and Pakistan have not been attacked since they acquired the bomb. They’ve also garnered multilayered benefits from the international community.” In other words, Sanati eloquently writes:
The threat or reality of military intervention against nonnuclear states … at times done to dissuade them from acquiring nuclear capability, can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy.
By which he means that those states might seek to develop nuclear weapons. In fact, the United States would be better served if it paid more than lip service to the nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty’s Article VI, which reads: “Each of the Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament.”
Nuclear-weapons advocates sometimes claim that Article VI is lip service itself. They maintain that Article VI does not actually require states party (aka signatories) to negotiate said “treaty on general and complete disarmament” into actual existence. They’re only required “to negotiate in good faith” to that eventual end. That’s despite an advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice in 1996 which maintained: “There exists an obligation to … bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament.”
In any event, non-nuclear-weapon states, especially those that belong to NAM (the Non-Aligned Movement) delight in throwing Article VI back in the faces of the nuclear weapons states. Failure on the part of nuclear-weapon states to take substantive disarmament measures, they claim, only allows states that aspire to nuclear weapons to justify their needs as they see them. But nuclear-weapons advocates believe that western leadership on disarmament would not only do nothing to discourage states that aspire to nuclear weapons but might even encourage them. Nevertheless, even though it might not produce immediate results, there’s really nothing for it but to deprive states that aspire to nuclear weapons of justification.
For its part, though, the United States will probably stick to the status quo. A token treaty like New START while it commits $85 billion to its nuclear weapons program over the next decade. Continuing to contain Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programs with sanctions and incentives respectively.
Furthermore, the United States may comfort itself with the knowledge that the state of surveillance today makes it possible to detect nuclear programs in their infancy and cut them off at the root. How, though, is another matter. While Israel got away with its 2007 airstrike on an alleged undeclared reactor in Syria, just as it did in 1981 with Iraq’s Osirak reactor, the odds of arriving at an international consensus on an attack on, say, Burma, are slim to none.
As long as the United States continues to cultivate a thriving nuclear-weapons program, states that aspire to nuclear weapons — whether or not the effect of our disarmament on them is salutary or not — can continue to use ours to justify growing them in their own defense garden.It has frequently been hypothesized that the helical body shapes of flagellated bacteria may yield some advantage in swimming ability. In particular, the helical-shaped pathogen Helicobacter pylori is often claimed to swim like a corkscrew through its harsh gastric habitat, but there has been no direct confirmation or quantification of such claims. Using fast time-resolution and high-magnification two-dimensional (2D) phase-contrast microscopy to simultaneously image and track individual bacteria in bacterial broth as well as mucin solutions, we show that both helical and rod-shaped H. pylori rotated as they swam, producing a helical trajectory. Cell shape analysis enabled us to determine shape as well as the rotational and translational speed for both forward and reverse motions, thereby inferring flagellar kinematics. Using the method of regularized Stokeslets, we directly compare observed speeds and trajectories to numerical calculations for both helical and rod-shaped bacteria in mucin and broth to validate the numerical model. Although experimental observations are limited to select cases, the model allows quantification of the effects of body helicity, length, and diameter. We find that due to relatively slow body rotation rates, the helical shape makes at most a 15% contribution to propulsive thrust. The effect of body shape on swimming speeds is instead dominated by variations in translational drag required to move the cell body. Because helical cells are one of the strongest candidates for propulsion arising from the cell body, our results imply that quite generally, swimming speeds of flagellated bacteria can only be increased a little by body propulsion.
Keywords
To summarize our results, we present simultaneous shape and tracking measurements of individual H. pylori and its rod-shaped mutant (Δcsd6) while swimming in mucin and broth solutions using 2D phase-contrast imaging at high magnification and at high frame rates. The helical shape of H. pylori enables direct visualization of corkscrew motion. These measurements enable us to determine the rotational speed of the bacterium while simultaneously measuring the translational speed and cell shape parameters of a single bacterium for both forward and reverse motions, as well as the change in direction of rotation after a reversal event, providing detailed kinematic information that allows deduction of flagellar kinematics. We were able to confirm the previous finding that, during swimming, H. pylori’s multiple flagellar bundle together, forming a single left-handed bundle ( 19, 28 ). We used the measured geometry and the observed rotational rate to numerically calculate the swimming speed of both helical and rod-shaped bacteria moving forward as well as in reverse using the method of regularized Stokeslets (RSM) and find good quantitative agreement between theory and experiment for the swimming speed and the pitch of the trajectory. Using the observed rotation rate as an input, we circumvent the problems arising from not knowing the number of flagella in H. pylori, which as mentioned above is known to strongly affect the swimming speed ( 28 ). We find that because of the relatively slow counter-rotation rate of the cell body, the helical shape produces <15% extra propulsive thrust and <15% changes in swimming speeds as compared to the rod-shaped cell. Moreover, the accuracy of the theoretical model allows us to explore the influence of cell body shape on swimming speeds and enables us to predict how the speed depends on length, diameter, and helicity and to examine the effect of varying flagella geometry.
Here, we take advantage of advances in high–frame rate digital tracking and image analysis ( 30 ) to design a study to directly address the question of shape and motility by simultaneously imaging and tracking individual cells as they rotate and translate. Whereas previous work to examine the rotational motion used a specialized, custom built three-dimensional (3D) tracking microscope ( 9 ), we use the more readily available 2D phase-contrast microscope to simultaneously measure both swimming properties and cell geometry for the same individual cell. Single-cell tracks in H. pylori have previously been reported ( 28, 31 ), but they did not address or analyze rotational motion and propulsion of the cell body. Using the high-resolution geometric and kinematic measurements reported here, we can quantitatively validate numerical models of swimming propulsion and thrust, and then use those numerical models to perform properly controlled investigations of how helical body shapes change in swimming speed while keeping other quantities, such as motor torque, fixed, leading to a physical mechanistic understanding of the contribution of cell body shape to thrust. These investigations are not possible without the combination of our simultaneous high-resolution tracking and numerical models.
To directly address the link between cell shape and motility, we use isogenic straight rod cell–shaped mutants of H. pylori, called Δcsd6 ( 26 ), which lack the Csd6 peptidoglycan carboxypeptidase responsible for cell helicity ( 27 ). These isogenic mutants differ only in cell shape due to the single csd6 gene mutation but are otherwise shown to have the same flagellation characteristics and motility as the wild type (WT) ( 26, 28 ). Rod- or C-shaped mutants of H. pylori lacking helical shape were found to show decreased halo formation in soft agar and impaired stomach colonization in a mouse model ( 26, 27 ); however, in these early studies, helical and straight rod bacteria were found to exhibit similar swimming speeds. Recently, we reported a detailed study on the relationship between H. pylori cell shape morphology and motility using live-cell microscopic imaging to track both helical and straight rod mutants of three different strains in several solutions (bacterial broth, gastric mucin, and methylcellulose) ( 28 ) and also measured the distribution of cell shapes and sizes from a separate microscopic imaging of bacteria fixed to a slide. The speed of individual bacteria was found to vary with time as well as due to the broad distribution of cell sizes (length, diameter, and pitch) and variation in the number of flagella among the bacteria population in the sample. Martinez et al. ( 28 ) concluded that, on average, helical bacteria had the same number of flagella and swam with a slightly increased median speed compared to their isogenic rod-shaped mutants, whereas other characteristics of the trajectories, such as linearity of tracks and frequency of reversals, were not significantly altered. They also noted that the effect of shape was larger in gastric mucin solutions than in culture broth or methylcellulose solutions, possibly due to specific interactions between H. pylori and mucin as well as viscoelasticity of mucin solutions. In that paper ( 28 ), resistive force theory (RFT) ( 29 ) was used to calculate the swimming speed using an average of all the cell shape measurements to define the bacterium. The RFT calculations overestimate the effect of shape, producing a significantly larger increase in the speed, ~30% for the helical bacterium relative to an elongated rod-like, ellipsoidal cell shape, as compared to the ~10% enhancement observed experimentally. However, crucially, Martinez et al. ( 28 ) found that variations in swimming speed are dominated by variations in the number of flagella and hence motor torque propelling the cells, meaning that the effect of body shape on swimming speed could be difficult to extract from population averages of bacteria differing not only in shape and size but also in number of flagella. By examining mutants with an average of one less flagella or one more flagella, they showed a direct correlation between the speed and number of flagella ( 28 ). In view of these variable factors of shape, size, and number of flagella within the population, it was not possible to clearly elucidate the relationship between cell body shape and swimming speed by comparing average speeds of rod-shaped mutants and helical WT bacteria.
Here, we use H. pylori, an important human pathogen that colonizes the epithelial surface of the gastric mucosa of the human stomach and is known to cause gastritis, gastric ulcers, and gastric cancer ( 13 – 15 ). Other Helicobacters with a larger number of helical turns [Helicobacter heilmannii, Helicobacter suis, Helicobacter felis, among others ( 16 )] are also found in the gastric mucosa of humans, although they primarily infect other animals. As their name suggests, the helical shape of these bacteria is one of their most salient features and is purported to be an important factor in the ability of the bacterium to traverse the protective mucus barrier and colonize on the epithelial surface of the stomach mucosa. For example, it has been suggested that the helical shape enables the bacterium to bore its way like a corkscrew through the gastric mucus gel that covers the epithelial surface ( 17, 18 ). This commonly held view was questioned by previous studies of ours, which show that H. pylori can rotate its flagella but does not swim in mucin gels buffered at acidic pH 2 to
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to utilize for his pleasure. I’m an adult human being in a relationship with a man who treats me with love and respect”. Whether Miss Grande or not is loose in her real life, only a few know. But you can’t go around flashing and shaking all your bouncy parts and then victimize yourself because you feel you are a piece of meat… when all you do or contribute to music is quite literally your ass.
It will be a long battle, and it will be extremely hard to push back when millions of young people have been indoctrinated. Music is a form of free expression an art form and I am afraid it has been hijacked by narcissistic men and women who go on and push their hedonistic lifestyle into the young and feeble minds. They go on stage wearing little scraps of clothes jiggling their bits and scream and shame at the young boys and men who points out their hypocrisy. Hedonism tribes in the absence of family, and reality, these people are destroying an entire generation of boys and girls, we need to start their undoing by pointing out their blatant hypocrisies. All it takes is a few to point out that the Emperor has no clothes.
Please leave a like and remember to follow me @Cultural_Curfew on twitter.
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Co.Design spoke to 16 design leaders and thinkers at firms like Frog, Artefact, Teague, Argodesign, Huge, and more to find out what designers should focus on today to land the dream job of tomorrow. Of course, none of these experts can see into the future–by 2030, maybe all design jobs will be done by AI-powered robots. Still, their wealth of knowledge and experience are the closest thing we’ve got to a crystal ball. Go to college It doesn’t matter where or what you study. Just go. This might seem head-slappingly obvious–except that, for some people, it isn’t. No design leader Co.Design spoke with advocated dropping out of college. Design has always drawn on a range of subjects, from art to literature to science–and that will be true 15 years down the line. A traditional liberal arts education will not become obsolete. As for where you attend college, Dave Miller, a recruiter at Artefact, put together a short list of American schools from which he always sees standout recruits. While by no means exhaustive, it provides a good sense of the schools that are training for the design challenges of the future: University of Washington
California College of Arts
Art Center
University of Cincinnati
Carnegie Mellon University
College of Creative Studies (CCS)
Rhode Island School of Design
Western Washington University
School of Visual Arts
Parsons School of Design For most jobs, of course, it doesn’t matter where you go to school. “At the end of the day, it’s the quality of the work in your portfolio that gets you hired, not the school you go to,” Miller says. And you don’t need to study design, either. Harry West, the CEO of the global design consultancy Frog, says that the people at the top of the organization come from a variety of backgrounds. Some went to law school, others studied biology, design, and engineering. He believes that you don’t need an undergraduate design degree to be a designer. Without an undergraduate design degree, you can always build up your portfolio in a master’s program. AI is the future Get experience working with it now. Advances in artificial intelligence are changing how people interact with the world, from how we drive to how we listen to music. These are massive design challenges.
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“If I’m designing an online system, that system is not going to be static,” West says. “That system is going to be changing continually as the engine learns more about the customer. That system will be using AI and algorithms to optimize its performance. If the designer wants to play a bigger role in the design of intelligent system, he or she needs to understand how to use data, how to use AI in the creation of these systems.” The stakes are high. After all, design is part of what stands between AI that treats people with decency and AI that’s horrible and racist–just look at what happened with Microsoft’s chatbot Tay. Have two or three extra skill sets in your back pocket As technology morphs, and contemporary roles like UX designer or visual designer give way to roles like voice UX designer or AI designer, designers who have multiple skill sets will be better equipped to take on new responsibilities while remaining flexible in a team setting. There will always be a place for a designer who’s really, really good at just one thing, but it’s much better if you are also skilled in (or at least passionate about) other areas, says Eric Lawrence, creative director at Teague. And they don’t have to be exclusive to design. “Designers who combine their design expertise with formal education in business, the humanities, computer science, or biology will have an extra edge,” says Doreen Lorenzo, director of integrated design at UT Austin. “Businesses are moving fast and employers need students who can work in multidisciplinary environments with ease.” Shadow the head of business development Understanding business basics is a vital skill for designers in the future, especially as more companies start to use design as a competitive edge. “If a company can’t make money out of an idea, that idea is probably not going to happen,” says West, the CEO of Frog. “Finding a way to create something that serves a consumer or customer and makes it so clients can make money, that’s a crucial understanding for the designer to have.”
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That’s because design is becoming more and more of a strategic business discipline, according to Emilia Palaveeva, chief marketing officer at Artefact. “Designers will need to be able to work ever more closely with other teams,” she says. “So some basic understanding of business modeling, organization, and project management, even marketing, will help you be a successful part of the team.” Lawrence, creative director at Teague, advises that interns try and learn about the real-world constraints that designers face instead of only trying to build up a portfolio. He recommends that interns talk to people on the business side of the operation to get a better sense of how business decisions change the scope of projects. Take classes in (or read up on) psychology and sociology Many design leaders emphasized the need for designers to study psychology and sociology. That’s because there is a growing need for designers to think about the interactions between people and objects, especially when objects start talking back. “We’ve long studied how a person ‘uses’ an object but typically only thinking of that object as a passive object to be acted upon,” says Mark Rolston, cofounder and chief creative officer of Argodesign. “But technology is allowing us to animate objects, making them sometimes even conversant. And that creates implications that go beyond design scenarios that would traditionally be centered around concepts like ‘use’ and more into uncharted areas such as ‘talking with’ or ‘asking.'” Rolston says that even though interactions with objects like the Amazon Echo are still technically mechanical, they feel more social. Understanding psychology and sociology and how people interact will help designers create these kinds of social interactions between people and machines. “We’re not here yet,” he says. “This is still the purvey of a few scientists and engineers at the very edge of AI. Soon enough it will need to become an everyday design skill to enable these technologies to prosper and propagate.” For those who are already out of school, Rolston has a few books he recommends that are beginning to nod toward the psychological aspect of interaction design:
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“When you’re designing a bigger system, if you think that the quality of your design alone is going to win the day, you may be disappointed,” says West. “Often it’s just as much about your ability to build relationships with other people, your ability to negotiate trade-offs, so you can explain why the idea that you’re recommending supports the client’s need better.” Palaveeva, CMO at Artefact, agrees. “You would need to be able to not only come up with a brilliant design, but you need to sell it to your clients by building a compelling argument, with a rationale that is relevant to them, in a language that they understand,” she says. “Empathy should be applied not only to the design process, but the communication process as well.”Northern Ireland set to wear poppy armbands in World Cup play-offs BelfastTelegraph.co.uk Northern Ireland is awaiting permission to wear poppies on armbands in next month's World Cup qualifiers. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/sport/football/international/northern-ireland-set-to-wear-poppy-armbands-in-world-cup-playoffs-36273263.html https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/article36273114.ece/12981/AUTOCROP/h342/2016-12-20_new_27259063_I1.JPG
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Northern Ireland is awaiting permission to wear poppies on armbands in next month's World Cup qualifiers.
The IFA have, along with the English, Scottish and Welsh Football Associations, released a statement to confirm that in any year going forward, all four Home Nations intend to display poppies on armbands during matches in the week leading up to and including Remembrance Sunday.
Next month, of course, Northern Ireland face Switzerland in the World Cup play-offs at Windsor Park on Thurday November 9 and in Basel on Remembrance Sunday, November 12. The statement said that the IFA will seek permission from the opposition and FIFA before wearing poppy armbands.
The Swiss FA are already thought to have agreed and so the Irish FA are now awaiting confirmation from FIFA.
Last year, when NI hosted Azerbaijan on Friday November 11, the team wore black armbands but did not display poppies in a bid to comply with FIFA Rule 4.4, which rules that players' equipment should not carry any religious, political or commercial messages.
The IFA were fined £12,000 for other Armistice Day commemorations at the match. However, FIFA last month ruled that poppy symbols would be permitted, providing the opponents agree, and that has led to today's joint-statement from the Home Nations. The Irish FA were also keen to receive a full refund of their fine.
The statement read:
"The four football associations of the home nations (The FA, FAW, Scottish FA and Irish FA) welcome the new clarification on Law 4, issued on 26 September 2017 by The International Football Association Board (The IFAB), in close cooperation and agreement with FIFA, governing what can and cannot be worn on players’ shirts.
"It was important that clarity was brought to this issue as it affects many football matches/competitions throughout the world and is particularly helpful in relation to remembrance and poppies.
"In any year when there are international matches in the week leading up to and including Remembrance Sunday, it is the intention of all four home nations to seek permission from the opposition team and FIFA (as the authority responsible for those matches) to display the poppy on armbands."
Belfast Telegraph DigitalMy daughter said something recently that made me realize that we all feel this way even if we won’t admit it.
She said “If I marry someone who is all Asian, then my baby will be 3/4 Asian and be more than me! Or I could adopt a hapa baby who needs a home, and I will understand how they feel and I can make them feel awesome about themselves.”
I had identical thoughts as a child. Marrying myself to imaginary Koreans and having babies with specific percentages “better than myself”. When I got old enough to feel like I was dating my family, I dated guys thinking about artificial insemination or adoption.
Why do we feel so much about how much of a percent we are? Why does a hapa feel less than next to a full Asian or a quapa the same about people who are hapa/full?
Probably people keep telling us what we aren’t all the time.
“You don’t look Korean. You are American.”
“Are you Native?”
“You’re Puerto Rican, right?”
“She’s not Asian, she’s only half.”
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The Beauty and the Beast Tsum Tsum collection was just announced yesterday and today we already have new information about what collections are coming in September.
Disney has announced that they will be releasing a new Disney Villains collection on September 6!
The villains will include Maleficent, Cruella De Vil, Ursula, The Evil Queen, Jafar, Lady Tremaine and Dr. Facilier.
It will be available both online and in store at the Disney Store.Abu Dhabi: The UAE executed early on Monday Ala'a Badr Abdullah Al Hashimi, an Emirati woman convicted of terrorism two weeks ago, after the killing of an American kindergarten teacher in December 2014.
Ala'a, 31, was sentenced to death two weeks ago for stabbing Romanian-born Ibolya Ryan in the capital's Boutik Mall on Reem Island and attempting to bomb an American-Egyptian doctor.
Ala’a was executed by firing squad, security officials told Gulf News.
Hashimi carried out the attack shrouded in a full black veil and gloves.
She was also convicted of setting up a social media account to spread militant ideology with the intention of undermining the government and of giving money to Yemen’s Al Qaeda organisation for attacks.
Ryan was murdered in a toilet cubicle in Abu Dhabi's Boutik Mall on December 1. On December 4, the Minister of Interior announced Ala'a's arrest.
Attorney General of the State Security Prosecution, Ahmad Al Danhani, said the execution was carried out after the President His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan approved the verdict issued on June 29.
The Federal Supreme Court, headed by Judge Falah Al Hajri, sentenced Al Hashimi to death after she was found guilty of terror-related offences, in accordance with the Federal law No.7 of 2014.
This is the first such verdict under the law.
She was convicted of deliberately killing the victim, stabbing her with a knife, and then proceeding to attempt to kill the residents of an apartment on Abu Dhabi Corniche by planting a primitive explosive device near the door of the flat.
She also faced charges of "collecting explosive materials, funding a terrorist organisation and running a social media account with a view to tarnish the image of the UAE and its leaders.”
Her death sentence was upheld by the State Security Court at the Federal Supreme Court on June 29.Hearing that a shortage of travel funds had terminated plans for qualified young Olympic-style weightlifters to compete in major international competitions, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger pledged to help raise the necessary money, and last night he did exactly that.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (center) added his considerable clout to the fundraising efforts of Kevin (left) and Paul Doherty (right), two brothers who have more than gone the extra mile in their schools to build an Olympic-style weightlifting program that uses athletic achievement to create multiple opportunities for their students. IronMind® | Randall J. Strossen photo.
It began in Columbus, Ohio earlier this year, at the sports festival run by Schwarzenegger and his fitness business partner Jim Lorimer. Olympic-style weightlifting has been on the program at the Arnold, as the three-day event is called, since 2003, and this year Sacramento High coach Paul Doherty had a chance to ask the California governor, “What’s it going to take to get you to come to the Kono?”
Doherty was referring to the open weightlifting competition he and his brother have run for five years, named in honor of Tommy Kono, an Olympic gold medalist who also happens to be a Sacramento High alumnus.
The governor asked his aide why the invitation hadn’t been passed along, and said that he would make it there this year.
In fact, as the contest drew near, Schwarzenegger invited Kono to the governor’s office and after visiting, they drove to Sacramento High together.
Besides wowing the Sac High students with his star power, Schwarzenegger explained how, as a teenager, he had been inspired after seeing Tommy Kono in Vienna, Austria - a fateful event because Schwarzenegger said Kono’s performance spurred on his own efforts and what he accomplished as a result led to his being invited to the United States.
The governor also explained to the student-athletes that the lessons they were learning in the gym - working hard, setting goals, achieving progress - would carry over to the rest of their lives.
As an introduction to his program, Coach Paul Doherty handed Governor Schwarzenegger the June 2009 issue of MILO—pointing out the article on Matthias Steiner’s appearance in Columbus, where Schwarzenegger met the young Austrian-turned-German who won a gold medal in weightlifting at the 2008 Olympics. Doherty then pointed out the article on his school’s weightlifting program, a story not just of achievement on the competition platform, but also the story of kids outperforming their circumstances thanks to an inspired coach making the effort to put together the pieces of the puzzle.
Coach Doherty had also written a letter to the governor explaining his club’s need for financial support and slipped it into the MILO. Without even opening the envelope, the governor, while thanking Coach Doherty for the book, said that he knew he’d just been asked for financial support, which he then pledged to provide.
Even as they were driving back to the state capitol, one of the governor’s aides sent Coach Doherty a text message asking him how much money he was requesting.
“50,” Doherty replied.
“50K?”
“Yes.”
Last night, at Sacramento’s Lucca Restaurant, Governor Schwarzenegger hosted a reception to benefit the weightlifting program of St. Hope Public Schools, one of which is Sacramento High. The function was attended by a sample of the political and business elite that is part and parcel of the governor’s network, along with coaches, athletes and supporters from the weightlifting team. The lifters lifted, the coaches coached and the governor delivered: netting approximately $80,000 for the weightlifting club that the governor explained was in the same position that his was in when he was a 15-year-old kid in Austria, lifting for a club that needed travel money.
“We didn’t need as much, but it was the same thing. That is why I pledged to always help,” said Schwarzenegger, who said he expects great things from these lifters, calling them the next generation that will bring back gold medals in the sport.
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Grainne Healy, co-director of the Yes Equality campaign, said Irish volunteers needed counselling after abuse and hate speech from reform opponents, calling for MPs to stop Australia from seeing an unnecessary plebiscite campaign.
In a letter to all MPs, Dr Healy said a plebiscite on same-sex marriage would bring about hurtful and divisive commentary under the guise of fair debate.
"The 'no' side posters which declared that 'every child deserves a mother and a father' were deeply hurtful and upsetting for LGBT-headed families as they passed the posters on lamp posts and billboards across the country - explaining to our children that they were OK and trying to hide the posters from them was awful for LGBT parenting families.Listen up, horror fans, because there’s some good news headed your way: Stephen King just signed a deal with Universal Studios to develop his beloved novel The Skeleton That Stood On Top Of A Van And Then Waved At A Bird And Stole A Traffic Cone into a movie!
This is incredible news for hardcore horror fans everywhere! We could not be more excited.
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As one of King’s most beloved novels, The Skeleton That Stood On Top Of A Van And Then Waved At A Bird And Stole A Traffic Cone has been terrifying readers since it was first published in 1982, introducing horror fans to the chilling tale of the Coltons, a family living in Bangor, Maine who are standing around in their driveway when a skeleton climbs on top of their van and lies facedown on the windshield for several hours. Over the course of the next 600 bloodcurdling pages of unbridled Stephen King-style terror, the family watches helplessly as the skeleton proceeds to wave at a bird that it sees and also steals a traffic cone from a nearby parking lot before continuing to stand on top of the family’s van for a long time.
The book was quickly recognized as a classic of the horror genre and achieved instant notoriety after it was banned from libraries across the country due to its controversial scene in which the skeleton puts a piece of cardboard in the family’s mailbox and then slides a second piece of cardboard through their mail slot. Since then, The Skeleton That Stood On Top Of A Van And Then Waved At A Bird And Stole A Traffic Cone has amassed legions of devoted fans, who are sure to turn out in droves to see King’s latest masterpiece of horror on the big screen.
Stephen King first announced the movie with an enigmatic tweet, causing fans to immediately start speculating about the film.
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The tweet was later followed by a confirmation from Universal Studios, which wrote in a press release that they were “thrilled to be the ones to bring the skeleton, van, and bird to the silver screen.”
According to Universal, Ewan McGregor has already signed on to play the family’s troubled father, Richard Colton, a man who is haunted by his past and who yells at the skeleton for taking a bath in the creek outside the family’s house. While no other roles have been announced yet, Laura Dern is rumored to be in talks to play Richard’s wife, Diana, a woman with troubles of her own who also yells at the skeleton for trying to show her 7-year-old son a photograph of a Weber grill.
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Although details remain sparse, many fans are already speculating about how the film will accomplish some of the book’s most terrifying scenes, like when the skeleton opens and then closes the van’s sliding door and when the skeleton leaves for a few hours but then comes back later wearing a hat that says “Spoiled Rotten” on it.
The film is already said to make some notable departures from the original novel, including having the skeleton walk counterclockwise instead of clockwise around the van before climbing on top of it and having the skeleton’s sister visit the skeleton after the traffic cone scene instead of before. Although there may be a few tweaks, it’s clear that Universal is dedicated to maintaining the major scares of the novel, which have been giving readers nightmares for decades.
This is absolutely incredible news. If you love Stephen King as much as we do, then you can’t wait for this film to hit theaters. And if the film version of The Skeleton That Stood On Top Of A Van And Then Waved At A Bird And Stole A Traffic Cone is even half as terrifying as King’s original horror masterpiece, then this movie is going to give us nightmares for weeks!Rob Zombie is one of the most polarizing figures in modern horror. Folks seem to either hate his movies or love them to the point of obsession. When he’s not behind the camera, Zombie somehow finds time to also record new music, tour, and put together a massive carnival of metal and haunted house mayhem known as the Great American Nightmare. A renaissance man, to say the least.
Zombie is currently working on his latest film, 31, about five people in 1976 who are abducted and forced to fight for their lives during the five days leading up to Halloween. This time he’s going the crowd funding route (get involved here), offering fans a plethora of goodies for their donations helping get 31 off the ground and into their eyeballs.
Zombie took the time to talk with us about 31, the crowd funding process, what he’s learned over the years as a filmmaker, and his favorite Halloween movies (that aren’t Halloween).
There’s 15 days left in the 31 crowd funding. What’s that experience been like so far and what has the feedback been like from the fans?
I mean, the experience has been great but the feedback has actually been like really, really good. I’m not gonna lie, when the idea came up to do this I was very skeptical. Because I didn’t know much about it and it sounded kinda weird to me, you know? And I was very particular about how I wanted to do it. I wanted to make sure that it was more like an online store, so when people donate they get something that’s more toward whatever that amount was. I didn’t want to skimp people and just ask for free money, basically. To me that’s kind of pathetic.
But really it’s been great. I’ve done a bunch of meet and greets and met a bunch of fans since the whole thing started. Everyone’s been really happy about it, they’re happy to be involved and have the chance to get stuff. And you know horror fans, they’re very involved in everything. Most other genre fans won’t go to conventions and get excited about movies that are 40 years old. They’re really passionate, you know? It’s been really good.
So far you’ve teased a lot of artwork from the film, but how far along is the movie. Is a script written yet?
The script’s finished. That’s been done for a long time. I’ll still mess with it, but essentially it’s done. We’re waiting for this (the crowd funding) to be done, and then we’re looking to start in full production early next year if everything goes according to plan.
Your past films have been pretty brutal and gritty. Is that the approach you’re going for with 31? How would you describe it?
I would say, out of all my films, this is going to be the most brutal. It’s pretty intense, it’s pretty humorless, and it’s pretty all-out.
Wow. And this is your sixth or seventh film…what do you think you’ve learned from the past that you’re applying now to 31?
I’m always learning with each film, but the main thing you learn that’s of real value is how to make the script tight, so don’t shoot the things you don’t use. Because on a movie like this, I don’t have the time to waste shooting things I won’t use. So that’s the thing I’m really trying to do with this script, take it down to the essence. Like on Lords of Salem we had a lot of fun going around shooting things, and that’s always going to happen when you’re making movies. But trying to hone that skill where that happens less and less each time, that’s the most important thing.
In your past films, you’ve managed to create some pretty iconic characters. Capt. Spaulding and the whole Firefly family, for example. It seems like you can’t go to a horror convention and not see someone with a Capt. Spaulding tattoo. Do you think 31 is going to produce any iconic characters like that?
I think there are several characters in this film that are of that caliber. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them quickly become Halloween costumes. Not that I create them with that in mind, but they have that vibe. I mean, I’m amazed with the literally thousands of Capt. Spaulding tattoos I’ve seen. And even with Lords of Salem, I thought I’d post a couple of fan tattoos from that on my Facebook page and now there are hundreds up there. It’s unbelievable how things catch on.
Speaking of Lords of Salem, is Sheri going to be in 31?
I don’t know who’s going to be in it right now. I’m still working on it, it keeps changing. Every time I think about a character, it keeps changing so for now it’s still a mystery.
Okay. Well is there anything you can tell us about 31 that you haven’t teased yet?
I don’t know if I’ve said this yet…but I love the look and feel of The Devil’s Rejects. For me, that’s the type of filmmaking that I really love. With Lords of Salem, I wanted to do something different, that was appropriate to the story. But this is more (in The Devil’s Rejects) vein and the movie is set in 1976, so it’s a full-on, nasty ‘70s movie.
Do you think you could see 31 becoming a franchise?
The set-up of the story definitely could be told over and over and over. I don’t want to give too much away but, I don’t know if I would even be interested in making it a franchise. I’m always moving on to the next idea, you know? But it definitely has the potential to be one. Who knows?
Very cool. Off topic a little bit here, but what’s the status of your Broad Street Bullies movie?
Well I worked on that for a long time, I worked on that for almost two years to be the follow-up to Lords of Salem. It was just one of those things though. It’s a true story with real people and obviously the rights to the Philadelphia Flyers is a whole other story. I didn’t really have a lot of control of the project and it just kept dragging on and on. After two years I was like, “Look, I’m going to go do something else.” I would love to go back to it but I didn’t want to spend five years working on Broad Street Bullies with nothing to show for it so that’s why I moved on to something else.
Very off topic here, why is Tom Baker your favorite Dr. Who?
I think because he was the first one I ever saw back in the ‘70s when I started watching Dr. Who. That’s back when Dr. Who was on PBS, no one knew what it fucking was. I was like “What is this show, Dr. Who?” As a kid didn’t know what it was so I put it on and my first impression was “This is the worst show ever made.” The production value looked like a bad soap opera. And then I got SO into it, I was obsessed with it. And I guess Tom Baker will always be Dr. Who for me because that was the first doctor I saw.
Being Halloween time now, what are your go-to movies for this time of year?
It’s all movies I’ve seen a billion times. Stuff like Island of Lost Souls, and obviously Frankenstein, Dracula, all the old Universal stuff I just love. Me and Sheri have been watching all of the Hammer films lately. I watched Blacula last night, you know. Pretty much older stuff like that.
What’s your favorite movie so far this year?
Good question. Fuck, I don’t even know what I’ve seen. Probably that movie Boyhood. That was pretty awesome.
Right on. And real quick before we go, one of my friends up in New England wanted to know what part of Haverhill do you think sucks the most.
Let’s me think…the high school sucked pretty fucking bad.In the 1950s and 60s, the U.S. Army conducted training exercises using an imaginary enemy named, quite simply, Aggressor. The characteristics of Aggressor were worked out in realistic detail. Soldiers assigned to play the part of Aggressor troops had to learn the organization of its ranks and the types of weapons it used. They wore special uniforms and insignia and even carried fully realized fake identity papers. They also had to speak a different language, and that language, in a twist so ironic it is almost cruel, was Esperanto, the language of peace.
The Hope
Esperanto was created in the 1880s by Ludwik Zamenhof, a sensitive soul who grew up in Eastern Europe among Yiddish, Russian, Polish, and German speakers who had nothing but hostility toward each other. As a child he felt "the heavy sadness of the diversity of languages," seeing it as "the primary force which divides the human family into enemy parts," and he vowed he would do something to solve this problem.
He created Esperanto, a hybrid of European languages with a simplified, regular grammar, designed to be easily learned. He hoped it would serve as a neutral linguistic common ground where people of different nations could meet without kicking up the dust of tricky history and power imbalance that their national languages couldn't seem to shake.
Surprisingly, after Zamenhof published a description of Esperanto in 1887, it really took off. The first international Esperanto congress was held in 1905, and over the next decade every year saw more Esperanto clubs, journals, magazines, and books. Membership in Esperanto organizations grew steadily.
The first Esperanto Congress. Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
At the same time, other inventors offered their own, competing versions of easy-to-learn European hybrid languages. They touted the superiority of their designs and advertised the practical advantages to commerce and science that their languages would bring, but none of those other projects lasted very long. People came to Esperanto for various reasons, but the ones who stayed and helped it grow were not in it for commerce or science or the particular qualities of the language. They were in it for the ideal: peace for humanity, brought about by a common language. They sang about it in their anthem, La Espero (The Hope):
En la mondon venis nova sento (Into the world came a new feeling)
tra la mondo iras forta voko (through the world goes a mighty call)
per flugiloj de facila vento (by means of the wings of a gentle wind)
nun de loko flugu ĝi al loko (now let it fly from place to place)
The 'Aggressor Stomp'
So how did Esperanto come to be, in the words of one Army field manual title, "the Aggressor Language"? Almost everything about it, except for the whole language-of-peace part, made it perfect for the Army's purposes. It had become, as stated in the field manual, "a living and current media of international oral and written communication" with a well-developed vocabulary. It was regular and easy to learn, at least to the level needed for drills, and most importantly, it was "consistent with the neutral or international identification implied by Aggressor." Using Spanish or Russian would have been politically problematic. Making up another language from scratch would have been too much trouble. Esperanto was neutral, easy, and there.
But what a century it had endured in order to be there! Esperanto's whole life was marked by war. Zamenhof's beloved brother killed himself when the Russians ordered him into the army during World War I because he couldn't bear the thought of once again experiencing what he had seen as an army doctor during the Russo-Japanese War. Zamenhof died soon after that, worn out from the news of destruction coming in from all corners of Europe. His children would survive, only to perish in the concentration camps of the next war. Esperantists were persecuted by Hitler, who saw the language as part of a Jewish conspiracy, and sent to the Gulag by Stalin, who saw it as a dangerous badge of cosmopolitanism.
Yet Esperanto survived, weakened, but with its peaceful ideals intact, despite the fact that the savage events of the intervening decades had rendered those ideals hopelessly naïve.
The field manual for the Aggressor language gives a brief description of Esperanto grammar which looks much like what is found in any Esperanto textbook, followed by a dictionary of useful terms which looks like the innocent dream of Zamenhof reflected in a distorted mirror of evil. Unlike most language learning dictionaries it does not include basic words like child (infano) or love (amo), but it does include the following:
armored carrier (kirasportilo), bombing run (bombardaproksimigo), tear gas (larma gaso), insubordination (malobeo), barbed wire (pikildrato), fire power (pafpovo), stab (pikegi), punch (pugnobati), lynch (linĉi), choke (sufoki), strafe (ŝtrafi), slash (tranĉo), poison (veneni), torture (torturi), kill (mortigi)
These are words you need when you're playing the enemy in a war game. It was a testament to the flexibility and productivity of Esperanto that the army was able to coin phrases, like senresalta pafilo (recoilless rifle) that had probably never been uttered by an Esperanto speaker before. It had also probably never occurred to an Esperantist that, as claimed in the 1960 Army Information Digest, "performing 'Aggressor Stomp' to orders barked out in Esperanto helps to instill in each man a feeling that the enemy he portrays is different from U.S. troops."
For the Esperantists, the language had always been a means to feel kinship in place of difference, and this ideal sometimes showed up in the unlikeliest places, displayed by real aggressors during real wars. After the occupation of the Netherlands in World War II, an Esperantist went to check on the building where the local club used to meet in Arnhem and found a note attached to the locked door. It had been left by a German soldier, and it said, in Esperanto, "the house is deserted. A visitor cannot go in. Will the'mighty call' no longer 'go through the world'? Take courage, soon another time shall come! Long live Esperanto! –A German Esperantist."
The Army removed Esperanto from its field manual in the 1970s because it took too long to learn to be practical. Esperantists, unconcerned with mere practicality, continued speaking, joking, singing, fighting, and trying to bring people together in Esperanto. And they are still at it today.
In this U.S. Army informational film, you can see the Americans capture Aggressor prisoners and take them to a command post "where a U.S. interrogating officer was ready to go to work on them in their own language."The Independent Review Panel has ruled one player appeal from Week 26 midweek action in the 2016 MLS season.
Bush red card
The Independent Review Panel, the ruling body for player appeals, has denied the Montreal Impact's appeal for the red card that goalkeeper Evan Bush received in this past Wednesday's 4-1 loss to Orlando City. As a result, Bush will be forced to serve his one-game suspension during this Saturday's road game against the
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to be entirely inappropriate in this context. We are talking about an extensive agreement of the EU with Turkey that is in our mutual interest, so there is no one-sided dependency. We are responsible for helping Turkey in sheltering refugees, close to their home countries. Turkey, at the same time, cannot be interested in people drowning in the Aegean every day and traffickers and other criminals taking hold of Turkish coastal towns. It is in the interest of both parties - the EU and Turkey - to establish legality.
BILD: What if Erdogan were to abort the deal over the visa question? He has set an ultimatum until October.
Merkel: The European Union is willing to fulfill its part of the refugee agreement. I assume this is also true of Turkey. We agreed on an acceleration of the already negotiated visa liberalization - if Turkey fulfills all of the necessary criteria. Many of these are already fulfilled, but not all of them.
BILD: Was it the deal with Turkey or, in truth, the decision of the countries along the Balkans route to close their borders that stemmed the refugee influx to Germany so massively?
Merkel: As has often been said before, of course closing the Macedonian-Greek border initially led to fewer refugees arriving in Germany. However, it has also led to approximately 45,000 migrants stranding in Greece in the weeks between the closing of the Balkans route and the agreement with Turkey coming into force. Converted to the total population of Germany, this would have been 360,000 refugees within one month. You can figure out what that meant for Greece - a country that has almost exhausted its possibilities, anyway. It would not have been possible to leave Greece on its own with this problem. This is why the EU-Turkey Agreement is the key to overcoming the trafficking in the Aegean and to stabilizing the situation in Greece. We have accomplished a lot, but the crisis is far from being solved. For instance, by now, only 3,000 refugees have been distributed from Greece to the European member states. Many refugees are still arriving in Italy. However, now they are all properly registered.
Markus Tedeskino BILD: With the Ansbach and Würzburg attacks, the worst fears have become reality: that, among the refugees, Islamist terrorists could also have entered the country. Can you understand why many citizens are saying: "We will manage" - this is no longer good enough for us?
Merkel: The idea that "we will manage" highlights that this was, and is, a particularly great challenge and that we are motivated and want to overcome any obstacles on our way. For a long time now, Germany has been exposed to the threat of Islamist terrorism - not only since Ansbach and Würzburg. We know that jihadists from Germany, too, went to Syria, were trained by IS and then, partly, also returned here. Moreover, we know that not all refugees came here with good intentions. In general, we have to be very vigilant, since Islamist terrorism represents great challenges for our security services. However, we should never forget that the vast majority of Syrians and Iraqis fled to us from war and terror and oppose violence and extremism as much as we do. I still understand that many people are concerned after Würzburg and Ansbach. We are therefore facing two great tasks: on the one hand, we have to integrate everyone who will stay with us for a longer period of time or permanently. We also have to demand that they are willing to integrate. On the other hand, we have to do everything that is possible to fight Islamist terrorism and to prevent attacks.
BILD: How is your sleep when you think of the fact that our security services do not even know the identity of thousands of refugees?
Merkel: The Federal Office for Migration and Refugees is working very hard on gaining a complete overview of the registrations very soon. However, we should also not forget that there were attackers who were already registered as refugees. This fact has shown us that the simple Eurodac registration is not enough - it has to be combined with other databases, such as the Schengen Information System, where criminal and terrorist activities are registered. The Ansbach and Würzburg attacks - whose offenders were properly registered - have also shown that we need better early warning systems. On the European level, we should start working on an electronic entry control system modeled on the US system. This means that - regardless of whether they travel visa-free or not - anyone who enters a European country and who leaves again is registered, so that you know exactly who has not left and is still somewhere in the Schengen Area.
BILD: Does the thought scare you that Africa contains a potential of migrants that exceeds the Syrian war refugees by several millions? What if these people set off to Europe - to Germany?
Merkel: I think it is essential to improve the economic prospects of this continent with its population of 1.3 billion and to cooperate with the countries there. This is why the EU wants to enter migration partnerships with important countries of origin, and transit countries, such as Niger or Mali.
BILD: Many citizens are concerned that your care for the refugees makes you lose sight of the population's worries. One popular example: is it okay if a pensioner in Germany receives less from the state than what, for instance, an unattended, underage refugee costs?
Angela Merkel in her office in Berlin. Markus Tedeskino Merkel: The difference between pensions and youth welfare expenses applies not only to refugees, but also to German underage children, for instance those who need to stay in a youth shelter. The Federal Constitutional Court has determined standards and guidelines for minimum provisions for refugees. We comply with these and have not cut anybody's benefits in Germany because of the refugee aid. On the contrary, over the last few years, there were several social improvements. We were able to finance all of this, because of our longstanding, responsible fiscal policy. So there is no reason for jealous debates.
BILD:… but reason to be worried?
Merkel: Given the good economic situation, we can manage the challenges. Let us not forget: if the refugees' integration succeeds, both sides will profit. Of course it is also true that those who seek protection with us have to follow our rules. They have to accept our laws and our constitution and have to try to find training and employment in order to contribute to our country. In most cases, this starts with participating in integration courses.
Essentially, the point is: we are a country that puts the dignity of every single human being at the center of things. And if you are facing a humanitarian catastrophe like the one in Syria, you have to take a stand. It is perfectly obvious that last year cannot simply be repeated. This is why we took all those measures I have described. It was right to take this humanitarian responsibility seriously and to still take it seriously. In doing so, we did not take anything away from anybody in this country. We are still fulfilling the task of politics to maintain the quality of life of the people in Germany and to improve it, and we are still as good at this as before.
BILD: What we did indeed manage is primary help for over one million people. The bigger challenge is yet to come: how do we integrate that many people from an entirely different culture, after having failed, to a large degree, in many aspects of this task over the past decades?
Merkel: Fortunately, we have learned a lot from the past, primarily that language is the key to successful integration. The younger people are, the easier it is for integration to succeed. It is worth facing this effort. I would like to use the opportunity to thank everybody who is working towards the success of this integration. This is not only the state authorities, but primarily the countless associations, initiatives, and voluntary helpers.
BILD: What would you say to a Muslim who does not want to shake your hand?
Merkel: I would talk to him about the fact that it is common here to shake each other's hand.
BILD: One year ago, euphoria and a welcome culture prevailed. Now this is superseded by a deep skepticism. Do you think that the majority of Germans still supports your refugee policy?
Merkel: In politics, there are always decisions that one has to make without carrying out an opinion poll first. With the results of our work, of course I hope to, in the long term, convince as many people as possible that our way is the right one. Incidentally, when I ask about the retirement age of 67, I still have no majority today, even though it remains an appropriate and necessary measure.
BILD: Why do you struggle telling the Germans whether you will run for Chancellorship in 2017 or not?
Merkel: You can ask all you want - I will communicate my decision at the right point in time. (smiles)If I were to pick one issue that causes the most infighting amongst libertarians, it would almost certainly be immigration.
Some within the liberty movement see controlling borders as a rightful function of government, while others see it as a restriction of liberty and a harmful intervention in the marketplace.
This issue is not limited to fighting between those who believe in the existence of a state and those who advocate for its abolishment; even anarcho-capitalists have fought amongst themselves over it.
This quarreling comes from a disagreement over what to do with the borders while the state still exists.
Those anarcho-capitalists who are against all forms of border control argue that national borders are illegitimate, as the land the state claims to own was not homesteaded in a traditional sense or acquired via a voluntary transaction with the previous owner. Rather, it was wholly claimed by a small group of people with a monopoly on force (the state) who did not actually mix their labor with the land.
Those who are in favor of the state enforcing borders (while it exists) argue that exclusion of outsiders is legitimate because the taxpayers are the rightful owners of public property.
This idea comes from the fact that taxpayers have been robbed from in order to fund the creation and maintenance of it.
The call for this property to be put into the hands of the individuals who paid for it is essentially a call for a form of restitution, in which those who had money taken from them are compensated with land rights.
One could make a convincing argument that an individual should receive the rights to what their tax money paid for, but only if logistics are ignored.
There is no way of knowing exactly where an individual’s tax money went. It is possible that some net taxpayers have paid little to nothing toward the maintenance of public property, but rather had their money go toward military spending, entitlements, or even paying down the public debt. It is also practically impossible to figure out who is a “net taxpayer” and how their standing as a net taxpayer relates to others (whether they deserve more compensation than their neighbor, for instance).
To theoretically make such a calculation, one would need to add up every tax amount that an individual has paid in his lifetime (of which there is likely no record, unless someone has a receipt of everything they’ve ever bought in order to calculate sales tax) and then subtract the amount that this person has benefited from government services, including entitlements, public infrastructure, and national defense.
Any calculation of this benefit would be entirely subjective, as there is no objective mathematical formula that can be used to decide exactly how much an individual has gained from public services. Person A may have received an education in a public school that helped him advance further in his career than person B. Person C may have benefited more economically from the right to use public roads than did person D. Person E may have been on welfare, but this may be because his business was a victim of government regulation that caused it to fail.
There is no real way of knowing or quantifying any of this.
It cannot just be ignored, either, as doing so would make such a calculation incomplete and would not represent a true metric of who has benefited or suffered a loss from government aggression.
I would personally argue that every person who has been stolen from is a victim of the state (even if they have received welfare benefits), given that they have had money taken from them without their consent. But the discussion within this article must take place in the “net taxpayer” framework, in which input and output are taken into account.
Let us assume for a second that we could objectively calculate who the real victims of the state are.
Even in this situation, it would be wrong to say that each victim is automatically the rightful owner of public property.
Such victims would certainly be owed restitution, as long as it was possible to compensate them without creating more victims (thus additional taxation would not be an appropriate method). But performing this restitution through giving the victims shares of public property is only the preferred method of those who advocate it, not a method commanded by deductive reasoning.
There are numerous ways that victims could be compensated for the loss of their tax money (or for other losses); it does not necessarily have to involve state land. One can, indeed, argue that it is the best possible way to do it, but “best” is subjective and cannot be deemed to automatically be in effect.
Because of the fact that a method of restitution has not yet been decided upon, it is inaccurate to say that net taxpayers are already the present owners of this property. Thus, they cannot yet rightfully exercise control over it.
To further illustrate why taxpayers are not entitled to public property, I will use a brief analogy.
Suppose that a thief steals a valuable painting from me and trades it for a television. In this case, I am not the rightful owner of the television, but rather of the painting. It is what has been stolen from me and what should be returned, even if it ends up in someone else’s hands. The painting should be given back to me, with the television going back to its original owner (and the thief receiving nothing).
The same is true in regard to what has happened to the taxpayer. The taxpayer has had money stolen from him, not land. The fact that the thief (in this case, the state) has traded that money for land does not make the taxpayer the rightful owner of said land. The land should be returned to its rightful owner, which if there was no previous owner, is the state of nature.
One could argue that whatever organization the government paid to alter the land (such as a construction company who worked on a road) should become the legitimate owner, but it is likely that the company was granted an illegitimate monopoly on that area prior to homesteading.
As the great Murray Rothbard wrote in The Ethics of Liberty:
“On the other hand, there are cases where the oil company uses the government of the undeveloped country to grant it, in advance of drilling, a monopoly concession to all the oil in a vast land area, thereby agreeing to the use of force to squeeze out all competing oil producers who might search for and drill oil in that area. In that case… the first oil company is illegitimately using the government to become a land-and-oil monopolist.”
The corporations building the roads, libraries, and other public works are given an unfair advantage by the state in that they are given the right to have no competition in homesteading the area; a rival company is not allowed to start building on the virgin land of the proposed road site, even before construction begins. Thus, it would be wrong under libertarian principles to grant the property titles to these firms.
Given all of the problems listed above, I would propose that public property be opened up to perspective homesteaders in the event of the dissolution of the state. Whoever mixes their labor with the land should be given the private property right to it. While taxpayers have certainly been victimized by the state, such victimization does not entitle them to absolute control of public property.
* John M. Hudak is an anarcho-capitalist writer whose work has been featured at Think Liberty, Antiwar.com, and JohnMHudak.com. He is the Connecticut State Coordinator for Adam Kokesh’s 2020 presidential campaign.Braves right fielder Jason Heyward had to leave Thursday night’s game after he strained his right hamstring running the bases, but he said afterward he thinks he avoided a serious injury.
“I felt something sore first, got a little tight, no pops, no pulls, tears, nothing of that (nature),” Heyward said. “It just got painful.”
Heyward will be re-evaluated Friday but thinks he should be able to avoid a DL stint.
“We’ll evaluate again tomorrow of course, but right now I don’t think it’ll be DL,” Heyward said. “I think the fact that nothing is torn, nothing was pulled, I think I’ll be OK to just have some rest and get it worked out.”
Heyward was advancing from first to third on an infield hit by Justin Upton in the second inning and said he felt it a couple of steps before he slid into third base. He lay on the ground in pain for a few minutes but was able to get up and walk off the field on his own.
“I was looking at the play, and as soon as I got my head turned back around, a step and a half it was sore,” Heyward said. “That’s when it happened right before I slid. So I didn’t do anything running or nothing weird. I didn’t land wrong or anything like that. It just happened.”
Heyward was replaced by Reed Johnson who stayed in the game in right field.
The Braves are thin in the outfield already with Jordan Schafer on the disabled list with a badly bruised right ankle. He isn’t eligible to come off until after the All-Star break. Rookie Joey Terdoslavich hasn’t played in the outfield since he was called up from Triple-A Gwinnett a week ago.
“Hopefully it doesn’t manifest itself into something worse than it is right now,” Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez said of Heyward’s injury. “Those things you just never know how they’re going to get overnight, so we’ll evaluate him in the afternoon when he comes in.”by
Classic iMonk Post
by Michael Spencer
From May 24, 2006
Note from Chaplain Mike:
With the release of Bart Ehrman’s latest book, Forged: Writing in the Name of God–Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are, the critical scholar from the University of North Carolina has discharged his latest salvo at the conservative view of the Bible’s reliability. He has been making the rounds of the talk shows lately, and I have been listening to some of these, as well as some older debates with conservative scholars. Michael Spencer, a fine apologist, took on the Ehrman phenomenon back in 2006 with this piece.
Bart Ehrman is rapidly rising up the list of names appearing frequently in the watchblogosphere. As Ehrman gets more attention on the secular media, more apologists and defenders of the faith invoke Ehrman’s name and contend with his work in New Testament studies. A recent post at a well known watchblog took off from the Washington Post’s coverage of Ehrman.
Ehrman’s rise in public visibility is due to several factors. He’s an ex-evangelical, which the MSM finds irresistably appealing, having attended MBI and Wheaton, but losing his faith in later graduate school at Princeton. Today he describes himself as an agnostic, though I detect no antagonism or resentment toward religion or zealous need to convert others to unbelief.
Ehrman is a prolific author, rivialing NT Wright in production, with a whole basket of best-selling titles generated in the last few years, many riding the wave of interest in radical Jesus studies, Gospel revisionism, gnostic Gospels, The DaVinci Code and other “hot†media topics. Publishers know that Ehrman is gold with a segment of the reading public, and he has been obliging with works on The DVC, Mary Magdalene and The Gospel of Judas.
Ehrman has also been building a reputation as a teacher accessible to the average educated layperson. He has a number of popular teaching series available through “The Teaching Company†dealing with historical Jesus studies and New Testament studies. As head of the religion department at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Ehrman has the credentials and the communication skill to be a “media-friendly†communicator.
Ehrman’s writing is very readable and understandable. He writes good prose that is simple and largely free of jargon. He takes his time to illustrate and explain difficult concepts. It is easy to see why Ehrman’s books are popular and actually read, rather than just purchased and shelved. Many scholars simply aren’t good writers. Ehrman breaks that stereotype.
Of course, Bart Ehrman isn’t a Christian, and his overall project is certainly not friendly to orthodox, confessional Christianity. He is much more a part of the radical revisionist movement in American New Testament studies, though he would never be mistaken for J.D. Crossan. When one reads Dr. Ehrman, one doesn’t read a carping, attacking, angry or demeaning tone. Ehrman is respectful to traditional Christian beliefs which he believes are wrong, and is a contrast in temperament and style to critics like Spong. Part of Ehrman’s appeal is surely his measured, intelligent, NPR-friendly presentation. Reading Ehrman, you don’t feel “preached at†or called upon to walk the aisle as a “true unbeliever.â€
Perhaps the best thing Bart Ehrman has going for him is that he is supplying answers and information in areas the church has long neglected to address on a popular level with any real consistency or competence. Take his seminal book “Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew †and its companion volume of primary texts, “Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament. Both books are interesting, accessible and informative, no matter what one thinks of Ehrman’s conclusions.
I have been involved in church my entire life. I attended a Christian college with required Bible, and I did three years plus of seminary. I have been around Christian education my entire life. I’ve heard of the gnostic Gospels. I understand the basic concepts involved in the development of the New Testament. I could probably do a good job of explaining why the Gospel of Thomas wasn’t in the canon. But I still found Ehrman’s books fascinating, and I learned an enormous amount of basic, very relevant material about the development of the New Testament. Of course I disagree with many of Ehrman’s claims, but I am a specialist compared to the average educated church attender.
A college student or educated layperson, however, will probably NEVER hear ANY of this material in church or Christian education, and is unlikely to hear more than a few dismissive references to these subjects in the typical conservative Christian school at any level. The fact is, writers like Ehrman are able to find a huge audience who have been left ignorant and under-informed by Christian education and teaching that simply finds this era and these topics useless, intimidating or dangerously controversial. In the last ten years, that same audience has been softened up by the Jesus Seminar, constant cable television/MSM attention to fringe scholars and, of course, the endless media buzz over stories like daVinci Code and the Gospel of Judas.
Ehrman has an audience because Christians are oddly reluctant to talk about the birth and early development of our faith. When the faith is on ground that can be addressed by non-Christian historians and scholars, we do not do well. Now that this breech is obvious, books are pouring off of evangelical and Catholic presses, but I think the damage has been done, and the damage is substantial. Instead of acting like our sources and understanding of these basic questions of the early years of the faith are strong, we’ve acted like Mormons who prefer to tell you about the Bowling league and not discuss the sources of Joseph Smith’s writings. We have a lot of ground to make up, and few of us are prepared to do so.
The answer to this is not to vilify a scholar like Ehrman as weak-minded and stupid. It’s unfortunate that some bloggers have caricatured Ehrman’s loss of faith. Reading vilifications of an unbeliever for rejecting the Gospel reveals a pathetically uncompassionate mind and heart.
Personal faith is, according to the reformed theology I was taught, a GIFT of God. If Ehrman is an apostate, then he is no more or less to blame than your lost neighbor who can’t spell textual criticism. I join the critics in finding Ehrman’s tale of his faith being destroyed by coming to believe there was one mistake in Mark to be somewhat dramatic. It makes for good reading in the opening chapter of “Misquoting Jesus.†But I’m going to suggest that if Dr. Ehrman is like the rest of us who have struggled with these issues, then his loss of faith was a complex, multi-layered experience. The “mistake in Mark†may have been a crossroads, but I’ll wager there was much more of the foundations of faith already shaken and ruined. Reading of his assimilation into an evangelicalism that evangelized from a manipulative position of selling peace of mind to teenagers and then putting the faith’s existence on the foundation of the theory of textual inerrancy, I’m not surprised he dropped out. As one who has rejected both of these premises myself, but retained my faith in Jesus, it is my hope that Dr. Ehrman will remain open to a conversation about Jesus that does not rest upon the theories and mythologies that he effectively deconstructs.
What is Ehrman’s agenda? Ehrman wants to recover a view of the early years of Christianity that is full of diversity, social/political dynamism, depraved agendas and not-so-subtle warfare between rival groups. He believes that Christianity is the ultimate case of history being written by the winners, and the non-canonical writings are the key to recognizing the truth of this view of Christian origins. To his credit, he rejects the bizarre version of Christian origins sold in The DaVinci Code, but his views on the development of “orthodoxy†are not a story of divine preservation of the Gospel, but of evolution, distortion, adaptation and political competition.
Ehrman wants us to realize that Paul’s Judaizers believed they were true Christians. He wants us to know that the communities that produced Gnostic texts like Thomas and Judas were “believers†in Jesus with a sincere faith similar in many ways to the faith of all Christians. He suggests that our picture of Jesus is incomplete if we start at the conclusions left us in the creeds, because there is much about Jesus that has been abandoned on the way to a very artificial and vulnerable consensus. He believes the study of the textual history of the New Testament tells a story we have been reluctant to hear.
Could the early years of the church have been as “messy†and chaotic as Ehrman describes? Is his version of a proto-orthodox group willing to change texts, forge, vilify and slander opponents and eventually excommunicate all rivals anywhere near the truth?
I will let the reader decide for him/herself. I abhor those who say real Christians have no business reading someone like Ehrman. I believe that Bart Ehrman’s vision of early Christian history and development is often truthful, and can be helpful to the careful and cautious student. It should stimulate us to more study, and especially to a more careful and committed reading of the documents left us by our ancestors in the first four centuries of the church’s life. We should be less accepting of white-washed versions of church history meant to put us to sleep with the assurance that everyone has always agreed with what we believe, and anyone who doesn’t agree with us is, of course, a heretic. One of the marks of an educated person is not being afraid of hearing a more complex, realistic, less flattering view of his/her own history.
I don’t like what Howard Zinn has to say sometimes, but I need to read his “People’s History,†listen and learn. It won’t destroy my belief in America, and it can make me a better American. So with Ehrman’s version of Christian origins. He provides a workout, and some of us need to get up off the couch.
I also believe Ehrman is often seriously and genuinely wrong. Some of his conclusions are premised upon evidence that has been easily explained for decades. He sometimes finds alarming evidence where simpler explanations are far more likely. (I’m sure he won’t be resigning his positions as a result of my disagreement with him.)
I find that true faith in Jesus is not vaporized by new versions of history written by former evangelicals. The New Testament records conflicts, disagreements, flaws and shameful human depravity among Christians. I do not have any problem believing that the path to our New Testament and to the orthodox confessions of faith contained episodes of every kind of human failure and shameful tactic. I believe I understand what was happening with the various groups who also held faith in a very different interpretation of Jesus and the Gospel to be the truth. None of these things, however, convinces me that the New Testament’s presentation of Jesus is fundamentally false to the belief that God came among us in Jesus, lived, died, rose and transcended the world for us and for our salvation.
Would I recommend Ehrman to young, curious Christians? Perhaps…if they are properly prepared to understand the questions and the evidence, and not to simply accept Ehrman’s answers as always unbiased or reasonable. I would recommend that older, more knowledgeable Christians begin to take the early years of the church, the process of doctrinal development and the quest for the historical Jesus more seriously. If we do that, and our scholars write as well and perform as winsomely as Ehrman, we will have no reason not to read and consider his ideas.ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — The Syrian Minister of Tourism has said he will be visiting the Kurdistan Region’s capital of Erbil and the Iraqi capital of Baghdad in the near future in an attempt to re-invigorate his portion of his nation’s economy.
“I will visit Baghdad and then Erbil in order to strengthen tourism ties,” the Syrian minister of tourism Bshr Yaziji told Rudaw.
There are currently weekly flights between Erbil and Damascus, as well as Sulaimani and Damascus.
“Opening direct flights between Damascus and the Kurdistan Region is the first step and stage of supporting and reactivating the steps of tourism for a near future,” explained the minister.
Currently, there are two weekly flights between Sulaimani and Damascus arranged by Ajnaha al-Sham Company and Fly Damas Company.
“Tourism plays a big role in bringing nations socially closer to one another, in a way people can be become more acquainted with each other’s cultures. It also has an important role in terms of trade and economy,” Yaziji said.
Direct commercial flights between Damascus, Erbil and Sulaimani were halted because of the conflict in Syria, but resumed in May.
“Flights between Damascus and Baghdad have stopped at no time. The airliners of these two countries are fulfilling their duties very skillfully in spite of the crisis in Syria and Iraq. Damascus has direct flights to airports in Baghdad, Basra, Najaf and Karbala. Tourism and business groups too continuously use these lines,” Yaziji said.
Many people use these two airliners on a weekly basis, especially Syrian investors in Erbil and Sulaimani, according to officials from these two companies.
And Yaziji believes there is still more opportunity for more airliners.
“Opening a new airline between Damascus and Iraq especially with the Kurdistan Region would have a positive impact on tourism and strengthening neighborly relations, and further reactivation of flights between Damascus, Erbil, Sulaimani, Baghdad and other Iraqi cities in the future,” the Syrian minister of tourism said.
The tourism sector in Syria is growing in spite of the internal conflict in the country. According to the figures produced by the Syrian ministry of tourism, 33 tourism investment companies have received licenses to do business this year, with most of the projects being in Damascus, Laziqia and Tartus.
“The tourism sector has been hurt badly because of the internal war in Syria over the past six years. It is clear that stability paves the way for the development of the tourism sector. In the past, local tourists were very active,” Yaziji said. “The tourism sector dropped by 41 percent during 2015 to 2017. The return of refugees will reinvigorate the tourism sector. But their non-return will have constant bad impact.”
The Syrian government aims to re-invigorate investment and trade as its six-year-long civil war continues.
“A big and special tourism investment panel will be arranged, which will include 500 important people internationally,” the Syrian minister explained. “The Syrian government has also planned to establish 2,000 new tourism projects. It has invited most of the famous international aviation companies to resume flights to Damascus and coastal areas in Syria.”Australia's greatest sporting rivalry will be accompanied by three great Australian musical acts in 2017.
Birds of Tokyo will feature before Game One at Suncorp Stadium on May 31, Grinspoon will headline the only Sydney match, at ANZ Stadium on June 21, while Bernard Fanning will take centre stage for Origin Three at Suncorp Stadium on July 12.
NRL Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Abdo said he was excited to see three outstanding Australian acts perform during the Holden State of Origin series.
"Holden State of Origin is the best sporting entertainment available in this country so it will be great to see some exceptional Australian talent also performing at all three games this year," Mr Abdo said.
"Clearly the main game is the premier act but what we will have alongside the footy will make this fantastic entertainment across the night for fans of rugby league as well as those who just love a great show.
"There has never been a better chance to experience Origin live while checking out some of the biggest names in Australian music. Every ticket includes free public transport and the precinct will be live from 6pm ensuring there is plenty of activity for fans of all ages to enjoy."
Tickets are still available for all three Holden State of Origin matches.
The musical acts will add to the overall entertainment spectacular, which will include a lights out display and pyrotechnics.
The pre-match entertainment will also feature the launch of an innovative new Blatchys Blues SMARTWiG for Game Two.
The Blatchys SMARTWiG - with an LED antenna to light up when the lights go down and an in-built headphone connecting wearers to SMARTWiG radio - will be available exclusively to Blatchys ticket holders on at ANZ Stadium on June 21.
All tickets to Holden State of Origin Game II at ANZ Stadium on Wednesday 21 June include return travel on Sydney Trains, Sydney Olympic Park Major Event Buses, regular Sydney Buses and Sydney Ferries.
There will be frequent direct trains to Olympic Park. Fans are strongly encouraged to leave the car at home and take advantage of the numerous direct transport services in operation.
ANZ Stadium Chief Executive Officer, Daryl Kerry, said: "The winning game plan for fans is to leave yourself plenty of time to get out to the Sydney Olympic precinct early, enjoy the festivities, and be in your seat in time for the fantastic entertainment."
For Games One and Three, fans travel free to and from Suncorp Stadium on Brisbane Transport Bus and Queensland Rail services by simply presenting your game day ticket. This free travel offer applies from midday until the last scheduled services on game day.
Fans are encouraged to arrive early, avoid the queues at the gates and catch the curtain-raiser games, not to mention the spectacular pre-game entertainment program.Whether it’s Jason Blum‘s hand or head, the producer is betting his life that the new Halloween movie will be in theaters by next October.
“You can kill me. You can behead me. You can chop my hand off,” he told The Wrap when asked about Michael Myers’ return to theaters by next year. “That’s on the record.”
David Gordon Green and Danny McBride are scripting the film, due on Oct. 19, 2018, and Green is directing. John Carpenter, master of the original 1978 Halloween, is executive producing and could still score the film.
Blum obviously understands fans’ frustration when it comes to their horror heroes. His hyperbole shows the urgency behind-the-scenes to deliver a new Halloween film to the fans who have been patiently waiting for years now.
So, with that, filming should indeed begin this fall if they’re going to make their 2018 date. If not, there will be a beheading, at least on social media.OCALA, Fla. - Authorities continue to search for a highly venomous 2-foot-long monocled cobra that escaped from its owner's home Monday in Ocala.
Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission spokesman Greg Workman said a venomous reptile permit holder, Brian Purdy, contacted the FWC on Monday night at 11:15 p.m. to inform the agency that his snake had escaped its enclosure about two hours earlier in the 900 block of Northeast Fifth Street.
"It's a cobra. It has highly toxic venom," Workman told News 6. "It's like any (venomous) snake. It demands respect."
Workman said an apprentice learning to care for venomous snakes was checking on the cobra, opened the cover of the cage and the snake slithered out.
The man called Purdy, who rushed home. When they couldn't find the snake in the concealed room, they called the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Wildlife officials said the apprentice should not have been left alone in the sealed room.
FWC officers searched the room and the entire house, including outside and underneath, but could not find the snake, nor could they determine if it has ventured outside.
Search crews and the snake's owner said Tuesday night that they were confident the venomous reptile was still inside the home.
"The snake is not going to like the cold weather, so the chances are it's going to stay inside a warm climate where the temperature is going to be conditioned to what she likes," Workman said.
Nearby residents were notified about the escaped snake by FWC, which urged them to keep their pets inside and stay vigilant.
[INTERACTIVE: Find venomous snake permit holders in Florida]
Neighbors said many small children live in the neighborhood and are being kept inside.
"You're worried about someone breaking in and robbing you and now you've got to worry about a snake if you step out going to work," neighbor Brandon Lacey said. "And I have young kids, and I'm
|
the Natural History Museum.
In many cases, Goldin said, the failures are a product of a decentralized city government that pits institutions against one another.
"That's a formula for not getting things done," he said. "It cedes a lot of power to developers and people with money. So they end up largely calling the shots."
Although Goldin and Lubell hope these unrealized proposals from the city's past can inspire visionary planning in the future, some plans were selected to provoke a different response.
The Santa Monica Causeway, for example, shocks with its audacity. Conceived as part of the ill-fated Pacific Coast Freeway, the seven-mile offshore causeway would have created an artificial yacht harbor where surfers and sunbathers play today.
Goldin and Lubell said that even if the failed proposals outnumber successful ones, the city can take pride in some projects that actually came to fruition.
"L.A. has built some buildings whose inspirational value rival those in the book," said Lubell, who currently serves as West Coast Editor of the Architect's Newspaper and is the author of four books on architecture.
"Most of them are residential: projects like Pierre Koenig's Case Study House 22 and John Lautner's Chemosphere. In the public realm, I definitely think Disney Hall fits the description. Approaching that building, however flawed it is, still takes my breath away. Union Station is one of the finest train stations in the country, and certainly a building that lifts the spirit and gives you the sense that L.A. is a sophisticated cultural capital."
Even at Union Station, however, the consequences of the city's past failures are apparent.
"Unfortunately once you walk out you see the problems with L.A.," he explained. "It's disconnected from the rest of the city by large roads and a freeway."
The seven-mile-long Santa Monica Causeway would have created an artificial harbor where surfers and sunbathers play today. Courtesy of the City of Santa Monica.
John Lautner's 1975 design for a nature center in Griffith Park. Courtesy of the Getty Research Institute.
Steven Holl's 2002 design for the county Natural History Museum. Courtesy of Steven Holl Architects.
All images provided by Greg Goldin and Sam Lubell. For more on the exhibit, check out Goldin and Lubell's interview on SoCal Connected. This post has been updated to reflect the exhibit's new opening date.
Hosted by the USC Libraries, L.A. as Subject is an association of more than 230 libraries, museums, official archives, cultural institutions, and private collectors dedicated to preserving and telling the sometimes-hidden stories and histories of the Los Angeles region. Our posts here provide a view into the archives of individuals and institutions whose collections inform the great narrative—in all its complex facets—of Southern California.It might be worth a cursory giggle if the person being booked for a crime of violence shares the name with a celebrity. But it becomes laugh-out-loud when that goes for the victim as well.
This was the case for the criminal courts in New York this week dealing with a non-fatal case of a son strangling his mother. The perpetrator, who took a plea deal on Wednesday, entered his name as Denzel Washington and the mother he assaulted was none other than Aretha Franklin.
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.
Well, she was no more the real Queen of Soul than her son was the real Oscar-winning actor and star of films like Training Day, The Magnificent Seven and Flight. That would have been a story fit to eclipse even the parting of ways between Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.
If being a real celebrity can bring special strains on domestic harmony then perhaps merely having the names of two of the most famous African American artists in the country can have something of the same effect too.
But if detectives first handling the case reacted with disbelief when they entered the name first of the accused perpetrator and then of the alleged victim into their note pads, they shouldn’t have done. Those really are their names.
“I am informed by Aretha Franklin,” the criminal complaint in the case says, “that she observed the defendant place his hands around her neck and apply pressure, thereby causing redness, bruising and substantial pain to her neck.”
Mr Washington took a plea of harassment as violation and was sentenced to conditional discharge and enrollment in a supervised anger management programme.
Diligent research established that Ms Franklin the victim, who is 52 years old, is not a relation, however far removed, from the other Ms Franklin. Nor can the New York Mr Washington lay any claim to family ties with the other, somewhat more successful, Mr Washington.
The altercation between son and mother happened in a doorman building on West 93rd Street on the well-to-do Upper West Side of Manhattan. There is another case that is still open in the New York courts involving alleged trespassing by Mr Washington in his mother’s home.
Mr Washington is, by coincidence, a close friend of Ms Franklin. (Not mother and son, the other ones.) Indeed, he was on hand to help the Motown icon celebrate her 72nd birthday at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Manhattan three years ago.
New York fans of the older Ms Franklin were recently disappointed when she cancelled a concert that had been scheduled for 26 September at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan due to an ongoing illness. The Queen of Soul has backed out of a number of concerts in North America for the same reason, rescheduling some for spring of next year.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
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Hospital Ships is collaborating with Andy Byers (www.andybyersart.com) to create a music video for "Servants," a song on the forthcoming Hospital Ships album, Destruction In Yr Soul (Graveface May 21, 2013.) To this end, the Invisible Hand Gallery (www.invisiblehandgallery.com) will be providing studio, performance, and installation space for the creation of the video (March 6-28,) music performance (March 20,) and art installation/showing (March 29th.) The KU Film Department is providing help in the form of equipment, space, and skilled interns.
We are raising funds to pay for the expenses of the video (travel for Andy and materials for sets, costumes, etc....)
Our rewards will encompass art pieces from the video (printed video stills for instance,) music (an exclusive Hospital Ships song in a handmade package,) and and experience (tickets to a Hospital Ships performance/viewing party.)British history provides several opportunities for alternative claimants to the Crown to arise, and historical scholars have on occasion traced to present times the heirs of those alternative claims.
Throughout this article, the names of "would-have-been" monarchs are in italics.
Abdication of Richard II [ edit ]
Richard II abdicated in favour of Henry Bolingbroke on 29 September 1399. However, Henry was not next in the line to the throne; the heir presumptive was Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March,[1][2][3][4] who descended from Edward III's second surviving son, Lionel of Antwerp, whereas Henry's father, John of Gaunt, was Edward's third surviving son.
Had Edmund inherited instead, the alternative succession would have been short-lived, for it re-united with the historical crown when Edward IV was declared king in 1461.
Descendants of George Plantagenet, Duke of Clarence [ edit ]
This line's claim to the Crown is based upon the argument that Edward IV was not the son of Richard Plantagenet, 3rd Duke of York, and thus had no legitimate claim to the Crown.[5] Therefore, when Richard was killed at the Battle of Wakefield, his claim passed first to his eldest legitimate son, Edmund, Earl of Rutland, who was executed shortly after the battle, and then to George, Duke of Clarence. Supporters of the Clarence claim also draw on the debated validity of Edward IV's marriage to Elizabeth Woodville, which allows them to argue that, even if Edward was legitimate, his children were not. Another point is that Henry VI passed a law in 1470 that should both he and his son Edward of Westminster die without further legitimate issue, the crown was to pass to Clarence, as Henry had placed an attainder upon Edward IV. When Henry died in 1471 (Prince Edward having died in battle shortly before), Clarence (who could claim descent from John of Gaunt, as could his wife Isabella Neville) became the legal heir to Henry VI and the House of Lancaster.[6]
The current descendant of this line is Simon Abney-Hastings, 15th Earl of Loudoun. The line of succession is as follows:
Descendants of Mary Tudor, Queen of France [ edit ]
Henry VIII's Third Succession Act granted Henry the right to bequeath the Crown in his Will. His Will specified that, in default of heirs to his children, the throne was to pass to the heirs of his younger sister Mary Tudor, Queen of France, bypassing the line of his elder sister Margaret Tudor, represented by the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots. Edward VI confirmed this by letters patent. The legitimate and legal heir of Elizabeth I was therefore Anne Stanley, Countess of Castlehaven (the marriage of Lady Catherine Grey having been annulled, and her children declared illegitimate, by Elizabeth I).[7]
Her succession, under this theory, follows:
Since Lady Anne Stanley's line is thought to have become extinct with the death of Elizabeth Doughty, the line then passes to the descendants of Lady Anne's sister, Lady Frances Stanley:
Lady Caroline's heir-apparent is her son Timothy Elliot-Murray-Kynynmound, 7th Earl of Minto.
Although the 9th Earl of Jersey had sons from a third marriage, he had been divorced from his first wife, who was still alive when he married his third. Under a strict adherence to the succession laws and customs as they existed in 1603, it is argued that no laws passed by Parliament since 1603 are legitimate, as the heirs did not summon those Parliaments, nor did those laws receive the royal assent to become law. Under the law as it stood in 1603, the 9th Earl of Jersey's divorce was not valid, and therefore both his remarriage during his ex-wife's lifetime was null and void, and the children of his third marriage illegitimate. Consequently, the current holder of the Stanley claim to the throne of England is the only child of the 9th Earl's first marriage, Lady Caroline Ogilvy (née Child Villiers).[8] By a twist of fate her husband's family are themselves highly ranked in the (accepted) line of succession to the British throne, with Lady Caroline's nephew James Ogilvy being fortieth in line.
There is doubt of the legitimacy of Edward Seymour, Viscount Beauchamp. Certainly James I regarded the Seymour line as legitimate, and based his own succession on his right by primogeniture, ignoring the Will of Henry VIII. However, the Seymours were placed ahead of the Stanleys in James's line of succession. The recent death of one of Seymour's descendants had her, rather than Frances Stanley's descendants, listed as the heir to the Mary Tudor claim.[9][10][11]
Her succession follows:
Lady Kinloss's heir-presumptive is her sister Hester Josephine Anne Freeman-Grenville, who is married to Peter Haworth and has three sons.[12]
Continuation of the House of Stuart [ edit ]
The Catholic heirs of the deposed James II of England were passed over by the Act of Settlement 1701.
Charles I of England James II of England, second son of Charles I James Francis Edward Stuart, only son of James II; called "James III" by Jacobites. Charles Edward Stuart, elder son of James Francis. He had no legitimate issue by his wife. He had an illegitimate daughter who has descendants, but they have no succession rights. Also known as "Charles III" by Jacobites or as "Bonnie Prince Charlie" more widely. Henry Benedict Stuart, younger son of James Francis. He was a Cardinal of the Catholic Church and had no children. Called "Henry IX" by Jacobites.
At Henry's death the claim passed to his second cousin twice removed, Charles Emmanuel IV of Sardinia, and then to his brother Victor Emmanuel I of Sardinia. Charles Emmanuel and Victor Emmanuel were great-great-great-grandsons of King Charles I.[13]
When Franz dies, his claim on the English and Scottish crowns[14] will pass to his younger brother Max. And after Max's death, this possible claim most likely will be inherited by the Prince of Liechtenstein through the Hereditary Princess.
A final claim comes from Peter Pininski[15] who claims descent from the legitimised descendants of Charles Edward Stuart alias "the Young Pretender", through the Rohan or Roehenstadt family. However, his claim is disputed by scholars who point out that the Rohans were a large family and it is easy to confuse its many members.[16] "Marie Victoire Adelaide" may be confused with another member of the family called Marie Victoire, who is not descended from the Stuarts.[17]IN THE ’40S AND ’50S, CESAR ROMERO was one of Hollywood’s most classically handsome leading men. Yet in the role he may be best remembered for—the Joker, Batman’s maniacal archenemy in the campy ’60s TV series—Romero’s still-fabulous face was hidden beneath a thick layer of clownish greasepaint.
Romero, who died on New Year’s Day at 86 of a blood clot, didn’t mind forsaking his looks for a juicy, career-reviving part. But he balked when the producers asked him to shave off his proudest feature: his mustache. Recalls Batman star Adam West: “It was as if he’d be losing all those wonderful movies he made [The Gay Caballero, Captain from Castile] when he was the dashing Latin Romeo. So the producers said, ‘Okay, just dab some white makeup over it.’ But if you look closely, you can see the mustache through the greasepaint.”.
In his heyday you could always glimpse the suave, debonair Romero (a self-described “Latin from Manhattan” whose parents were formerly wealthy Cuban émigrés) escorting the likes of Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich and Ann Sheridan. Romance, however, was never in the Joker’s cards. “I have no regrets,” he once said of his un-altared status.
“He was elegant and eloquent,” says one old friend, actress Anne Jeffreys. “His manners, his dress were impeccable. He was,” she reflects, “the last of an era.”New on the TS Blog: A Short Journey to Witness the Proccessing of Oriental Beauty
Oriental Beauty has always occupied a very unique position in the diverse and long-spanning history of tea. Although it is a type of oolong, it does not present any of the normal flavors we have learned to expect. It has a character similar to black tea, but also carries a stronger, almost umami-like flavor which furthers its distinction. Known to originate during the Japanese ruling era (1895 ~ 1945) of Taiwan, it soon turned into one of the most renowned and expensive teas in the world due to it's popularity in Great Britain. As a result, this type of tea is often referred to as "Fan Zhuang Oolong," which literally means "a tea specifically made for barbaric foreigners"... Learn more Here!The underlying cause is still under investigation, said Todd Derum, incident chief with Cal Fire.
"It was reported as a structure fire, but it was outside of the structure," Derum said at a community meeting for evacuees held at the Calistoga fairgrounds. He said wind-blown embers quickly began igniting "spot fires" half a mile or more away in the drought-dried brush.
The fire roared through Middletown in the night. At the height of the blaze, fire hydrants went dry, and by Sunday morning the town, perhaps best known for the nearby clothing-optional Harbin Hot Springs retreat, was filled with smoking ruins.
Residents who sneaked past barricades to try to salvage keepsakes estimated that half the town had been destroyed.
Entire blocks were burned so thoroughly that it was difficult to tell how many homes they had once held. The path of destruction in places seemed capricious. Tidy new town homes with picket fences stood untouched next to a charred lot where three walls and a fireplace were all that was left.
Some landmarks like the Jolly Kone were still standing, but others, including a new elementary school that opened weeks ago and the hot springs resort, had burned.
"We tried the best we could, but it went structure to structure to structure," Derum said.
In addition to the Valley fire, a dozen wildfires were burning actively in California. The largest has scorched more than 138,000 acres in the southern Sierra Nevada since it ignited July 31, according to the U.S. Forest Service.
More than 3,200 firefighters are battling the Rough fire, which is 40% contained and is threatening world-famous sequoia groves in and around Sequoia National Forest, according to the forest agency.
The Rough fire is one of hundreds ignited by a series of lightning strikes in California in late July. In Northern California, about 240 fires sparked by lightning collectively burned well over 200,000 acres, according to the Forest Service.
The other significant fire to break out recently was the Butte fire, which flared up Wednesday and has since raced through more than 71,000 acres of drought-stricken terrain about 45 miles northeast of Stockton, according to Cal Fire. With containment at 35%, that fire has destroyed 135 homes and 79 other structures, and Cal Fire officials said it is threatening an additional 6,400 structures, prompting evacuations.ISTANBUL — Commemoration events organised by Turkish and international human rights groups, took place on April 24 in Istanbul to mark the centenary of the Armenian genocide during which more than 1.5 million Armenians were killed.
On the “Walk to Remember” through the district of Sultanahmet. marchers carried posters that read: “Recognise the Genocide”. Some held red carnations or violet crocuses, a stand-in for the purple forget-me-nots that symbolise the centenary elsewhere.
Later on Friday, a rally was held in Istanbul’s Taksim Square. The ceremony was attended by an unprecedented number of people, mostly Diaspora Armenians, Kurds and Turks.
The Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) Sisli district headquarters and Youth Coordination of Istanbul staged a march on April 23 commemorating the genocide. They visited the houses of some of the Armenian intellectuals who marched to death on April 24, 1915 and laid flowers there.
The participants carried banners with the inscription “Together – 1915-2015” and “Confront the Genocide,” as well as photos of Armenian intellectuals.
Holy mass in memory of the victims was held at the Istanbul Armenian Patriarchal Church. Led by Deputy Patriarch Aram Atesyan, the ceremony was also attended by Turkey’s EU Minister Volkan Bozkir. President Erdogan’s message was also read at the ceremony where white doves symbolizing peace were released and bells were rung 100 times.
In a statement to the press at the entrance of the church, Minister Bozkir said he was greatly honored to take part in the mass led by Armenian Deputy Patriarch Aram Atesyan, adding, “This is the first mass to be held officially since 1916. A representative of the Turkish government is taking part in such a ceremony for the first time”.An estimated 10,000 people might have been killed in the central Philippine province of Leyte alone, which was almost completely destroyed by the powerful typhoon Haiyan, local authorities said.
The typhoon has devastated up to 80 percent of the Leyte province area as it ripped through the Philippines, Chief Superintendent Elmer Soria told Reuters.
“We had a meeting last night with the governor and other officials. The governor said based on their estimate, 10,000 died,” Soria said.
Most of the dead drowned or were killed by collapsed buildings, authorities say.
The UN’s humanitarian agency puts the figure of people displaced at just under 331,000, while those whose lives have also been “affected” by the typhoon number a huge 4.3 million across 36 provinces.
People walking the streets like 'zombies'
The situation in the street reminds one witness of a “movie”. Jenny Chu, a medical student in Leyte told Reuters that “people are walking like zombies, looking for food.”
Meanwhile, reports came in that a big part of Visayas, the group of islands where Leyte and other major islands are located, has sustained great damage.
Mila Ward, a Philippine-born Australian on vacation in Leyte spoke of the human misery that was abundant in the streets everywhere one looked. "They were covered with blankets, plastic,” she spoke of the hundreds of bodies strewn around the streets. “There were children and women," Ward added.
“It’s like the end of the world”, said another witness – Nancy Chang – who was on business in Tacloblan City and said that she had to walk for three hours through a mess of mud and floating debris to reach a military-led evacuation at the airport.
That airport itself was all but destroyed; with seawater so strong it shattered the glass of the control tower. A Reuters reporter was stranded there, recounting how the water had risen to four meters.
"It was like a tsunami. We escaped through the windows and I held on to a pole for about an hour as rain, seawater and wind swept through the airport…some of my staff survived by clinging to trees. I prayed hard all throughout until the water subsided," said the reporter, 47-year-old Efren Nagrama, who discovered five bodies while in the chapel there.
Police have been deployed to patrol the ruins of Tacloblan to prevent looting as desperate residents look for food and water, said Philippine Interior Secretary Mar Roxas, describing the situation as “horrific.”
"The dead are on the streets, they are in their houses, they are under the debris, they are everywhere," said Lim, adding that only about 400 bodies have been recovered so far.
The Red Cross said earlier that 1,200 people we confirmed dead in the Philippines.
Roxas said earlier on Saturday that it was too soon to announce any final figures.
"The rescue operation is ongoing. We expect a very high number of fatalities as well as injured," Roxas told AP. "All systems, all vestiges of modern living — communications, power, water — all are down. Media is down, so there is no way to communicate with the people in a mass sort of way."
Government officials are still waiting to make contact with Guiuan, with its population of 40,000, located in the Mindoro province. The UN says that 80 percent of it is now underwater.
The storm weakened on Saturday after moving away from the Philippines toward Vietnam.
Vietnamese authorities evacuated over 500,000 people to safer areas in preparation for the tumult which is forecast to make a landfall on Sunday afternoon, but that did not stop the disaster from claiming six lives and injuring dozens there too.
International relief effort mission
Philippine President Benigno Aquino III said the priority for the government was to restore communications and power in remote areas and to deliver relief and medical assistance to families.
The Philippine Red Cross is preparing for a relief mission “because of the magnitude of the disaster,” says Richard Gordon, the agencies head.
But logistically speaking getting aid to the devastated regions of Leyte, 560 km from the capital could be difficult as the airport was destroyed.
Russia’s Emergencies Ministry has offered to help by providing search and rescue personal and a mobile hospital. If necessary, Moscow will fly two planes to the Philippines with an operational group of 200 people, if the request is made, the ministry said. Up to 150 Russians are estimated to have been in the affected area at the time of the disaster, according to ministry officials.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said that Washington “stands ready to help.” In the meantime the US navy is assessing the extent of the damage on the ground.
The UN will also be involved in the relief effort, the UN Disaster Coordination Team (UNDAC) has arrived in the city of Tacloblan.
“The United Nations agencies in the Philippines, with their humanitarian partners, are supporting the Government and other responders in their efforts to assess the situation and respond rapidly with vital supplies, through the coordination system led by the local authorities,” said Emergency Relief Coordinator Valerie Amos.
UNICEF estimates that up to 1.7 million children could be affected by the typhoon.
“UNICEF's first priorities are focused on life-saving interventions – getting essential medicines, nutrition supplies, safe water and hygiene supplies to children and families,” said UNICEF's representative in the Philippines, Tomoo Hozumi.
In addition, the World Food Programme (WFP) has so far allocated $2 million for the response as it sent 40 metric tonnes of high-energy biscuits to the victims.
A number of NGOs are also mobilizing their resources to help the families in the Philippines. These include names like Save the Children, World Vision and Habitat for Humanity, as well as an LA-based US relief agency called Operation USA.
Meanwhile, Operation USA, a Los Angeles-based international relief agency is calling for donations to aid recovery efforts and funding for grant distribution to local agencies in the affected areas.UN peacekeepers taken hostage earlier this week by Syrian anti-government fighters on the Israeli border have been released.
The group of 21 Filipinos were taken by the Martyrs of Yarmouk rebel brigade, who demanded pro-Assad forces withdraw from the nearby town of Jamla.
And today UN officials confirmed that they had crossed safely into neighbouring Jordan.
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Abu Mahmoud, a rebel who said he had crossed over into Jordan with them, said: "They are all on the Jordanian side now and they are in good health."
In Damascus, the office of UN-Arab League mediator Lakhdar Brahimi, confirmed that the men had crossed into Jordan.
The Jordanian government initially appeared taken by surprise by the arrival of the peacekeepers, who had been expected to be retrieved instead by a UN convoy inside Syria and possibly taken to Damascus.
That convoy was held up earlier on Saturday in a village north of Jamla, a rebel activist said.
The hostages were from the UN Disengagement Observer Force, which has monitored the border between Syria and Israel under the terms of a 1974 ceasefire. The two countries are technically still at war.
In several videos released on Thursday, the peacekeepers said they were being treated well by civilians and rebels.
The UN said the captives had been detained by about 30 rebel fighters, but Abu Issam Taseel, a Martyrs of Yarmouk activist, said the men were "guests", not hostages, and were being held for their own safety.
The Martyrs of Yamouk are fighting in Syria's civil war, now in its third year, which is thought to have killed more than 70,000 and displaced one million.
The conflict has spilled periodically across the ceasefire line and Syria's borders with Lebanon, Iraq and Turkey, threatening to engulf the region.
On Monday, Israel warned the UN Security Council that it could not be expected to "stand idle" as Syria's civil war spills over its border.
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 nowREADING Borough Council has been working with the Police and other agencies to tackle an increase in aggressive begging in the town centre.
The public have a right to walk around the town centre and use our excellent shops, pubs and clubs without being harassed for money.
Recently, there has been an increase in the number of people walking up to members of the public and asking for cash and sometimes approaching them on bikes when they are sitting outside pubs and cafes in the town centre.
It is an offence to beg in the street and it is a more serious offence to make people feel unsafe, threatened or harassed by approaching them in this way. If people are approached, they should decline politely and contact the police and explain if they felt harassed or threatened or disturbed by behaviour in a public place.
The council and police are working with local businesses to address their concerns over the matter. We have a two way radio system which enables business premises to contact the CCTV control room and report the matter to police staff in there who can talk directly to officers on the ground.
Sometimes, people begging say they are homeless that night, but we are aware that is often not the case. There is evidence that money collected can be used to purchase drink or drugs and, instead of people accepting help to deal with addiction problems, they use donations to support unhealthy life styles which can be very damaging. Public donations to people begging can in reality fuel the very problem people think they are helping with.
The Police in Reading are actively engaging with anyone who appears to be begging and advising them where they can get help and support in the town. Officers will help people to access that support and are linking in with partner agencies including Council-funded services delivered by St Mungo’s outreach team and the Iris Partnership for those experiencing drug and alcohol addiction.
People who are begging are being reminded that begging is a criminal offence and warned that enforcement action will be taken if they continue to beg persistently in spite of warnings and offers of support. Our partnership approach is to try to understand the causes behind people’s behaviour and offer help and solutions but we will not tolerate local people being abused or threatened by aggressive or persistent behaviour.
The Council invests £1.5 million a year in supporting people out of homelessness in the town in partnership with charities and faith groups. However, many of the people who beg in the town are not homeless and many come from outside Reading to beg in town. The majority of people who are homeless do not beg.
Cllr Liz Terry, Reading’s Lead Councillor for Neighbourhoods, said:
“Aggressive begging has become an increasing problem in the town centre and a lot of people have complained about feeling intimidated and harassed as they go about their business.
“We need to deal with this problem with our partners in a way that ensures those people who are begging who genuinely need help and support are offered advice and know where they can receive it.
“It is important we highlight the distinction between beggars and rough sleepers. The Council has a good record of providing support for rough sleepers and homeless people but we will not tolerate residents being harassed by aggressive begging, often carried out by people who have accommodation and live outside the borough.”
Charities including Launchpad Reading, CIRDIC and Faith Christian Group have recently highlighted this problem and encouraged members of the public not to give money to beggars and instead to support the charities in Reading that provide appropriate professional support to individuals.
Ian Caren, Chief Executive of Launchpad Reading, said:
“Please don’t give money to those begging in the town, we encourage you to support charities in Reading that provide appropriate professional support dependant on a person’s individual needs.
“Money given to those begging in the town is highly likely to be used to fund an addiction to Class A drugs such as heroin. Launchpad clients who used to beg, tell us this is what they would spend money on.”
Homelessness
The Council remains committed to supporting homeless people and rough sleepers.
We commission St Mungo’s to provide a street outreach team to support rough sleepers into treatment and accommodation throughout the year. We also pay for a number of services to support and accommodate local single homeless people, including the provision of more than 200 supported accommodation beds. Also, mobile support service for people in their own homes, operated by homeless charity Launchpad Reading, which supports vulnerable people who need help to retain their tenancy or with resettlement.
In freezing temperatures a severe weather action plan becomes active and emergency beds in hostels or B&B’s are offered alongside extra support and advice. FAITH Christian Group also operates Bed for the Night which offers 18 bed spaces for homeless people with local connections throughout January and February.
The Council and its partners focus on getting rough sleepers off the street and into accommodation, individuals rough sleeping often have complex and multiple needs. Whilst the Council and other organisations provide a range of services, offers of accommodation are not always taken up, but the Council will nevertheless continue to offer help to people every day.
The Council and the Police and Crime Commissioner also provide funding to alcohol and drug treatment service IRiS Reading.
World Homeless Day
A group of Reading’s charities, community organisations and Council commissioned services are joining forces on World Homeless Day on 10th October to inform people what they do to help homeless people.
BCHA, CIRDIC, Faith Christian Group, Greyfriars Church, Hamble Court-Riverside, HOLT, St Mungo’s, Launchpad, Lifespring Church, Providence Chapel, IRIS, Reading Minster and the Salvation Army are all involved in helping the homeless of Reading.
They will be running an exhibition in Broad Street between 9am and 3pm on 10th October with stalls to showcase how they work to help the homeless in Reading.One of the best emails to get before a conference you're psyched to attend is the one that outlines all the final details. It links to the final speakers' schedule, reminds you of important things like where to park and when to check-in, and of course, that email tells you about the fun parties. That email revs you up and organizes you for the conference to come.
So when I opened up the "final details" email for the recent All Things Open conference in Raleigh, I was expecting to see an outline of the typical who, what, when, where info. I wasn’t expecting the first item to be a reminder of the conference's anti/no harassment policy. But there it was—the first item on the list:
1. We want everyone to have a great time and we greatly value your attendance, however, be aware that we expect EVERYONE to abide by our anti/no harassment policy. In short, harassment of any type will not be tolerated for one second, and we will remove anyone guilty of it from the conference IMMEDIATELY and without a refund. Read the complete policy, as well as other terms, here - http://allthingsopen.org/terms.html.
Wow. As a woman who is certainly not down with harassment of any kind, my initial reaction was that of shock and gratitude.
Shock: Because I’ve never been to a tech conference that put an anti-harassment policy front and center like that. In fact, I'm not sure the other tech-related conferences I've attended even had such policies.
Gratitude: Because I love the idea of going the extra mile to ensure women and minorities feel comfortable at a male-dominated tech event.
The email also made me wonder if an anti-harrassment policy was even necessary. Turns out it is. Just look at this timeline of sexist incidents in geek communities, which includes incidents of inappropriate behavior at conferences. Even Tim O’Reilly has blogged about the problem, saying: “We’re voicing our strong, unequivocal support of appropriate behavior by all participants at technical events, including Oscon and other O’Reilly conferences.”
Anti-harassment policies at tech events can also have an awesome side effect. Conferences that take the extra step of encouraging a harassment-free environment can attract more women. That's what PyCon and DrupalCon organizers observed. Python Software Foundation Director Jessica McKellar joined Drupal core co-maintainer Angela Byron at the All Things Open conference to speak about "Women in Open Source," noting that anti-harassment policies combined with proactive outreach can bring more out more female participants.
Bringing more women to PyCon
McKellar explained that PyCon instituted its code of conduct to signal to attendees that inappropriate behavior would not be tolerated. As part of the code of conduct, McKellar said PyCon organizers also put together a financial aid program to make it easier to attract people, including women, who might not otherwise be able to attend.
PyCon also developed a pipeline of female speakers after a Python women group worked to help potential speakers prepare session proposals and offered advice on how to pitch their topics, McKellar said. As a result of these inclusive efforts, McKellar said a record 20 percent of the PyCon speakers and attendees were women this year.
Attracting women to DrupalCon
When Bryon attended the first DrupalCon in 2005, she was the only woman out of the 25 attendees. Two years later, women who attended DrupalCon sat down for the inaugural DrupalChix (now Women in Drupal) meeting. Together they created a public forum open to women and men, to create a safe space for women in Drupal to discuss gender issues, women in open source, and diversity in tech. By 2010, 20 percent of DrupalCon attendees were women, Byron said. These days, about 25 to 30 percent of speakers and attendees are women.
Ways to make tech conferences more diverse
So how can you attract more diverse speakers to your tech conference? Byron offered these tips:
Only attend conferences that offer a code of conduct. Byron says this sends a message that you want conferences to be inclusive. Suggest and support diverse speakers. If you know a woman who would make a fantastic speaker, encourage her to send in a proposal or put her on the radar of the conference organizers. Companies should also proactively encourage and support their female employees to sign up to speak at events, Byron said. Speak up if a conference can do better. If you’re attending an event that needs more diversity, say so. Byron encourages attendees to share their feelings with event organizers. Companies can also sponsor diverse speakers, offering financial aid to make it easier for employees who need support to attend, she said.
If increasing diversity in open source is important to you, then take up McKellar on her call to action: Make one personal investment and one company investment in open source diversity this year.
Are you up for the challenge?Karim Benzema goes
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eping up takes basically all my playing time. I joke: “you either play Magic or you play all other games”, because Magic is very demanding, not to play but to keep up on. And so, I usually only get to play a new Magic set maybe once or twice, because I get only once a month time to be able to play some games… So I want to use that time to play the new Magic set. It just doesn’t leave time to play one of the others.
Do you also like RPG games, like the Final Fantasy series?
I played them all, and Final Fantasy X is my favourite. VII is the one that everyone holds up because the worldbuilding is cool. But the story, sorry for all the VII fans out there, was a mess. There were fun characters, and when Aeris died I was ready to punch my TV, but Final Fantasy X story clicked for me, because it was very like the stories I like to write.
I’ve heard that in all your long distance plane flights you work on novellas… Which one have you been writing in this last trip?
On this one, Stormlight has been so demanding and I’m so behind on it that I actually worked on Oathbringer. No novella for me this time, I wasn’t allowed to do it.
You seem to do a lot of collateral things to your writing, like answering reddit, writing annotations to your books, keeping a progress bar about your next works in your website… Why do you try to be so active with the fandom?
I am a Wheel of Time fan. And it was so hard during those years not to know when a new book was coming and how Robert Jordan was doing on it… I understand that not every writer can be transparent: for instance if Patrick Rothfuss talks too much about his book, psychologically it harms his ability to work on it… But my psychology benefits from interaction and accountability, and if I have to report to the fans how I’m doing I’m more likely to get things done. I’m also part of a generation of people who grew up with the Internet, so I’m used to be able to find whatever I want when I want it, and I understand that feeling. So I want to be able to make sure that my fans, who are supporting me and paying for me to exist, have all the information that I can reasonably give them.
I’ve seen two videos of you writing in real-time: the write-a-thon for the Waygate Foundation in JordanCon 2014, and the writing of the Rysn interlude in Words of Radiance. How did you get the idea of showing so openly your writing process?
This came from people who play video games on Twitch or who sometimes do painting demos online, and I thought “can I do something like this with writing”? It turns out that writing is way more boring to do than playing videogames. [Laughs] In painting tutorials the artist can talk while drawing, but when you’re writing it’s very hard to stop and talk about what you’re doing. I might do more of that in the future, but it was super-hard.
What is your opinion on fan fiction based on your characters and worlds? Authors like Martin or Anne Rice are opposed adamantly to it because of copyright issues and to avoid plot collision. Other authors, in contrast, have no issues with derivative works…
I have no issues with it. I think that fans should be free to do what they want. When I read as a young boy, one thing I always did was to insert my own characters into the books as I read them in my head. I believe strongly that once you are reading a book, it belongs to you, at least your version of it in your head. You have the right to change in your head how you want it to be. And I also believe in the power of fiction and art to inspire more fiction and art. We’ll be posting something in my website after running past our attorneys, to give permission for people to create legally fan art and things like this. Even people who do a transformative work, so if they make music or a visual art piece based on my books they should be able to sell that, because it’s a new piece of art. As for writing, I don’t want them writing books to compete with me, but I’m honored that they would want to for their own fun or to release online for free.
Are you worried about book piracy? Readers torrenting your books without buying them, for instance…
It’s not a main concern for me. I worry about it more in countries that don’t already have a strong science fiction and fantasy readership, because I worry about it undermining the bookstores. But in general I think the worry about this is overblown. My experience has been that readers want to support things they like, and if they can support their favourite artists, they will. But if they are at a point in their lives where they can’t, then it’s better to let them read the stories they want, develop their life and their ideas, and let them support artists when they’re capable of it. So I am a big fan of giving away books for free.
Warbreaker is fully available on your website…
And I encourage Tor to give away The way of kings and Mistborn in the US. I don’t think people should in most cases pirate, but I’m not going to take actions to stop them. I let their own morality guide how they approach that, and I’ll just write my books and be thankful for the people who support me.
Si te ha gustado este artículo ¡Haz un donativo online! Cantidad a donar: € Donar una cantidad personalizada Hacer esta donación cada día semana mes año Dona ahora Seleccionar método de pago Credit Card Información personal Nombre * Apellidos Dirección de correo electrónico * Total de la donación: 5,00€ One TimeWhen we look back a few years from now, this might be the moment we'll say the verb "Olivering" became a thing. Because Dr. Oz just got seriously "Olivered" on "Last Week Tonight."
When he appeared before Congress last Tuesday, Oz was forced to admit that many of the dietary supplements he has touted on his show don't pass "scientific muster." John Oliver considered that admission egregious enough to warrant a name change for "The Dr. Oz Show," to something a little more honest:
With Oz's testimony as a jumping off point, Oliver used a full 16 minutes of his show's running time to hammer in the disastrous long-term effects of the deregulation of dietary supplements thanks to their powerful lobbying efforts.
More importantly, since Dr. Oz still has an hour-long show to fill every day, Oliver gave him a primer in how to pander to his audience without endangering their lives. Spoiler: It involves Skyping with George R.R. Martin, a T-shirt cannon and Steve Buscemi tap-dancing.Roman graves unearthed in Slovenia capital
Objects found in the Roman era graves excavated in the centre of Ljubljana
[Credit: MGML archives]
TANN
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On 25 March archaeologists working on the Slovenska Street in the centre of Ljubljana came across an extraordinary find. They unearthed three unspoilt Roman graves belonging to the inhabitants of Emona from 2,000 years ago, as the graves were dated to the early 1st century.From the three newly discovered graves one really stands out. Preserved in a stone chest, it remained unspoilt for two millennia and yesterday archaeologists carefully opened the grave to find a glass urn containing the remains of the deceased, with glass vessels and bottles stored alongside the urn.One of the two remaining graves is slightly more modest, containing a ceramic urn, two ceramic beakers and two glass balsamaria. Martin Horvat, head of the excavation from the Museum and Galleries of Ljubljana, explained that "Romans put these goods into the grave to help the deceased on their way to the afterlife.They also added some of the favourite objects of the deceased." For the media present at the site he also revealed that five graves were so far found during the excavations on the Slovenska Street, while as many as 50 could be present in the area of the construction site."Graves have only been preserved in specific spots and we can count ourselves lucky to have found these. Some were certainly destroyed during earlier constructions when people did not value these treasures yet, while some graves could still be waiting to get discovered", Horvat also added.The discovered graves will be unearthed and taken to museum facilities for cleaning and further processing.Manama: A Kuwaiti businessman has been abducted reportedly by a gang in Iraq where he was purchasing sheep, his family said.
Khalid Abdul Razaq Al Sarhan, 53, regularly travelled to Iraq to buy sheep and export them to Kuwait via Iran, his brother, Abdul Lateef, said.
“My brother is a retired Ministry of Interior employee who traded in sheep and had several butcheries,” he said. “He left Kuwait two weeks ago and stayed in Nassiriyah as usual to purchase the sheep. He was scheduled to return on Wednesday last week, but he called to say he was doing fine, but would stay some extra days because of his transactions,” Abdul Lateef said, quoted by Kuwaiti daily Al Rai on Thursday.
However, on Sunday evening, Khalid’s wife received a phone call demanding a one million dollar ransom.
“The man spoke with an Iraqi accent and told my sister-in-law that her husband had been kidnapped and that he would be freed only if the family paid one million dollars. The caller called again on Tuesday and threatened that my brother would be killed if we failed to pay the ransom,” Abdul Lateef said.
The brother said that the interior and foreign ministries were contacted and that officials launched a series of contacts hoping to help release the kidnapped Kuwaiti.
“I myself called the Kuwaiti charge d’affaires in Baghdad Khalid Al Qanai and he confirmed there were contacts with the Iraqi interior and foreign ministries to try to locate and rescue my brother,” he said.
In December, several Qataris who were on a hunting trip in southern Iraq were abducted from their desert camp by unidentified gunmen.
The Qatari falconry expedition had crossed into Iraqi territory with official permits from the Iraqi interior ministry.
Qatar and fellow Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates called on the Iraqi government to "take decisive and immediate measures" to free the Qataris.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also urged the Iraqi government to do "everything possible to ensure their prompt and safe return.”Your Activism is Helping to Push Concealed Carry Reciprocity in Congress!
“I know your members have been very active and very persuasive.” — A Senate aide explaining the effectiveness of GOA members and activists, April 4, 2017
Not a GOA member yet? You can join Gun Owners of America today for only $20!
Concealed Carry Reciprocity Still Gaining Momentum
(See how you can TAKE ACTION below!)
Dear Friend:
I was in a congressional office recently with several members of GOA’s staff.
We had been walking the halls of Congress, introducing Shaneen Allen to several congressional offices.
Shaneen is the Philadelphia mom who was incarcerated for over 40 days — all because her Pennsylvania carry permit was not recognized in New Jersey.
To put it mildly, Shaneen would greatly benefit from concealed carry reciprocity legislation.
So in one particular office, we were discussing how we can get more cosponsors for the concealed carry reciprocity legislation in Congress.
The bill in the House of Representatives is H.R. 38; the Senate bill is S. 446.
The congressional staff acknowledged that GOA had done a phenomenal job in getting cosponsors to these bills in just a couple of months.
And that’s when one of the aides said: “I know your members have been very active and very persuasive” in getting additional cosponsors.
You may not realize it, but your involvement makes my job at Gun Owners of America so much easier.
It’s your emails — and postcards, if you are a full-fledged GOA member — that makes congressmen sit up and take notice of Second Amendment issues.
Your activism forces them to take action on legislation that they might, otherwise, just simply ignore.
Almost Half of the House Has Cosponsored H.R. 38
(See below how you can GET MORE cosponsors!)
Here’s where we are at.
The bill in the House, H.R. 38, has 188 cosponsors. You can click here to see if your Representative has cosponsored the bill.
The Senate bill, S. 446, has 36 cosponsors. While no Democrats have cosponsored the bill, more than half of the Republicans have.
Here are the Senate Republicans who still need to cosponsor the bill: Alexander (TN), Burr (NC), Cassidy (LA), Collins (ME), Corker (TN), Cotton (AR), Gardner (CO), Kennedy (LA), Lee (UT), McConnell (KY), Paul (KY), Risch (ID), Sasse (NE), Scott (SC), Tillis (NC) and Toomey (PA).
GOA’s postcards are landing on Capitol Hill right now
(TAKE ACTION below to get more cosponsors!)
GOA’s most recent mailing on national reciprocity — with postcards addressed to U.S. Senators — is currently landing in people’s mailboxes.
And GOA members are mailing in those postcards to Capitol Hill, by the thousands.
With all of this momentum behind us, this GOA-mailing couldn’t be landing at a better time.
I want you to know that sending the emails we ask you to send is very helpful. So is making phone calls from time to time.
But there is nothing like heaping mounds upon mounds of postcards and letters on legislators’ desks.
I’ll never forget what one congressional office told us when we killed a background check expansion bill in 2006:
“Oh s—t! We got a lot of postcards and emails from GOA members,” one legislative aide said.
And that pretty much says it all. The postcards landing on their desks get their notice.
So if you haven’t received our postcards in favor of concealed carry reciprocity, I encourage you to take these actions:
1. Sign up to start getting postcards every month. It’s merely $20 to join GOA for a year — less than a box of most ammo.
2. Send emails to your Representative and Senators, explaining the importance of supporting H.R. 38 and S. 446 — and pushing to get a vote on this legislation.
3. Forward this alert to your pro-gun family and friends.
Thank you for your help.
In Liberty,
Erich Pratt
Executive Director
P.S. Start getting postcards so you can add to the deluge of GOA postcards landing on legislators’ desks. Also, send emails today to your Representative and Senators, expressing your support for immediate action on H.R. 38 and S. 446.Just days ahead of President Obama's State of the Union on Tuesday, the White House has announced plans for a major tax overhaul which would raise rates on the nation's wealthiest individuals and increase fees for financial firms while offering an assortment of tax breaks designed to help the nation's struggling middle class.
In a media call with reporters on Saturday, an unidentified Obama administration official offered the broad strokes of the proposal. According to Reuters:
Obama’s proposals call for reforming tax rules on trust funds, which the administration called “the single largest capital gains tax loophole” because it allows assets to be passed down untaxed to heirs of the richest Americans. They also would raise the capital gains and dividends rates to 28%, the level during the 1980s Republican presidency of Ronald Reagan. As a way of managing financial risk that could threaten the US economy, Obama also wants to impose a fee of seven basis points on the liabilities of US financial firms with assets of more than $50bn, making it more costly for them to borrow heavily. The changes on trust funds and capital gains, along with the fee on financial firms, would generate about $320bn over 10 years, which would more than pay for benefits Obama wants to provide for the middle class, the official said.
Vox.com also offered a thorough rundown of the various aspects of the White House proposal.
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) welcomed news of the proposal.
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"At a time of obscene levels of income and wealth inequality, President Obama's plan moves us in the right direction," Sanders said in a statement on Sunday. " I look forward to working with the administration to adopt a tax system that eliminates unfair tax loopholes that only benefit the wealthiest people and largest corporations and to increase the take-home pay of working Americans."
Not surprisingly, the plan spurred immediate condemnation from the Republican Party, but Robert Greenstein, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, assessed the plan by saying it would likely boost economic growth and provide the intended benefits to both lower- and middle-income families.
"The president’s new tax proposals will surely elicit howls of protest from various special interests and on ideological grounds, adversaries will make predictable claims that the proposals would harm the economy and jobs," Greenstein told The Hill. "Yet while the proposals do present a major challenge to the status quo, they should benefit economic growth, not hinder it, while substantially helping tens of millions of middle- and lower-income working families and individuals."
Invoking the French economist Thomas Piketty—whose best-selling book, Capital in the 21st Century, called for a global tax on the wealthiest—the Washington Post's Matt O'Brien lauded the president's plan as he placed it in the context of other domestic policy measures announced ahead of Tuesday's speech. According to O'Brien:
The state of the union is pretty good, actually, but President Obama has an idea to make it better: taxing Wall Street and the super-rich to make middle-class work even more worthwhile. It's Piketty with an American accent. Okay, that's a little bit of an exaggeration, but not a huge one. Obama's State of the Union, you see, will call for $320 billion of new taxes on rentiers, their heirs, and the big banks to pay for $175 billion of tax credits that will reward work. In other words, it's fighting a two-front war against a Piketty-style oligarchy where today's hedge funders become tomorrow's trust funders. First, it's trying to slow the seemingly endless accumulation of wealth among the top 1, and really the top 0.1, no actually the top 0.001, percent by raising capital gains taxes on them while they're living and raising them on their heirs when they're dead. And second, it's trying to help the middle help itself by subsidizing work, child care, and education.
Meanwhile, according to the New York Times' David Leonhardt, what is really driving the debate over tax reform and the economy is what he describes as the "great wage slowdown." He writes:
Wages and incomes for most Americans have now been stagnant for 15 years. They rose at a mediocre pace for much of President Bush’s tenure in the 2000s, before falling sharply during the financial crisis that dominated the end of his presidency. Mr. Obama helped break the back of the crisis, but the recovery on his watch has been decidedly mediocre, too — especially in terms of paychecks. Even as job growth has picked up in recent months, wages haven’t grown much more quickly than inflation. As a result, the government’s official statistics suggest that the typical American household makes no more than the typical household did in the final years of the 20th century.
Taken in terms more familiar to progressives, this argument speaks to the reality that while the top 1 percent have been the main recipients of prosperity and financial improvement for decades, it remains the middle class, the working poor, and those left out of the economy entirely who continue to be punished by rampant inequality and an economic and political elite that has detached itself from the concerns of the majority of people. And though there may be reason to celebrate aspects of the new plan, it's clear that many will be unimpressed by that fact that the proposal to more adequately tax the rich and help the poor arrives at the very moment the president and his party are least capable of making it a reality.Muslim presence in Italy dates back to the 9th century, when Sicily came under control of the Abbasid Caliphate. There was a large Muslim presence in Italy from 827 (the first occupation of Mazara)[1] until the 12th century. The Norman conquest of Sicily led to a gradual decline of Islam, due to conversions and emigration of Muslims toward Northern Africa. A small Muslim community however survived at least until 1300 (the destruction of the Muslim settlement of Lucera). Thereafter, until the 20th century, Islam was virtually non-existent in Italy.
During the 20th century, the first Somali immigrants from Somalia began to arrive.[citation needed] In more recent years, there has been migration from Albania, Bangladesh, India, Morocco, Egypt, and Tunisia.[2]
Legal status [ edit ]
Islam is not formally recognised by the state. The official recognition of a religion different from Catholicism on behalf of the Italian Government is in fact to be approved by the President of the Republic under request of the Italian Minister of the Interior, following a signed agreement between the proposing religious community and the government. Such recognition does not merely depend on the number of followers of a given religion, and it requires congruence between the proposing religion principles and the Constitution.[3] Official recognition gives an organised religion a chance to benefit from a national "religion tax", known as the Eight per thousand. Other religions, including Judaism and smaller groups, such as the Assemblies of God, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Seventh-Day Adventists, already enjoy the official recognition in the form of signed agreements with the Italian government. In 2005, a council composed of Muslim people, the Council for Italian Islam, was founded by the Italian Minister of the Interior.[4] Strong disagreement between Council members slows its work.[5]
History [ edit ]
Saracens [ edit ]
The Italian island of Pantelleria (which lies between the western tip of Sicily and North Africa) was conquered by the Arabs in 700. The Arabs had earlier raided Roman Sicily in 652, 667 and 720 A.D.; Syracuse in the eastern end of the island was occupied for the first time temporarily in 708, but a planned invasion in 740 failed due to a rebellion of the Berbers of the Maghreb that lasted until 771 and civil wars in Ifriqiya lasting until 799. Arabian attacks on the island of Sardinia, less important than those on Sicily, failed to achieve its conquest although they induced its separation from the Roman Empire, giving birth to a period of Sardinian independence, the era of the giudicati.
Conquest of Sicily [ edit ]
According to some sources, the conquest was spurred by Euphemius, a Byzantine commander who feared punishment by Emperor Michael II for a sexual indiscretion. After a short-lived conquest of Syracuse, he was proclaimed emperor but was compelled by loyal forces to flee to the court of Ziyadat Allah in Africa. The latter agreed to conquer Sicily, with the promise to leave it to Euphemius in exchange for a yearly tribute. To end the constant mutinies of his army, the Aghlabid magistrate of Ifriqiya sent Arabian, Berber, and Andalusian rebels to conquer Sicily in 827, 830 and 875, led by, amongst others, Asad ibn al-Furat. Palermo fell to them in 831, followed by Messina in 843, Syracuse in 878. In 902 the Ifriqiyan magistrate himself led an army against the island, seizing Taormina in 902. Reggio Calabria on the mainland fell in 918, and in 964 Rometta, the last remaining Byzantine toehold on Sicily.
Under the Muslims, agriculture in Sicily prospered and became export oriented. Arts and crafts flourished in the cities. Palermo, the Muslim capital of the island, had 300,000 inhabitants at that time, more than all the cities of Germany combined. The local population conquered by the Muslims were Romanized Catholic Sicilians in Western Sicily and partially Greek speaking Christians, mainly in the eastern half of the island, but there were also a significant number of Jews.[6] These conquered people were afforded a limited freedom of religion under the Muslims as dhimmi, but were subject to some restrictions. The dhimmi were also required to pay the jizya, or poll tax, and the kharaj or land tax, but were exempt from the tax that Muslims had to pay (Zakaat). Under Arab rule there were different categories of Jizya payers, but their common denominator was the payment of the Jizya as a mark of subjection to Muslim rule in exchange for protection against foreign and internal aggression. The conquered population could avoid this subservient status simply by converting to Islam. Whether by honest religious conviction or societal compulsion large numbers of native Sicilians converted to Islam. However, even after 100 years of Islamic rule, numerous Greek-speaking Christian communities prospered, especially in north-eastern Sicily, as dhimmi. This was largely a result of the Jizya system which allowed co-existence. This co-existence with the conquered population fell apart after the reconquest of Sicily, particularly following the death of King William II of Sicily in 1189. By the mid-11th century, Muslims made up the majority of the population of Sicily.
The battle at Ostia in 849 ended the third Arab attack on Rome.
Emirates in Apulia [ edit ]
From Sicily, the Muslims launched attacks on the mainland and devastated Calabria. In 835 and again in 837, the Duke of Naples was fighting against the Duke of Benevento and appealed to the Sicilian Muslims for help. In 840 Taranto and Bari fell to the Muslims, and in 841 Brindisi.[7] Muslim attacks on Rome failed in 843, 846 and 849. In 847 Taranto, Bari and Brindisi declared themselves emirates independent from the Aghlabids. For decades the Muslims ruled the Mediterranean and attacked the Italian coastal towns. Muslims occupied Ragusa in Sicily between 868 and 870.
Only after the fall of Malta in 870 did the occidental Christians succeed in setting up an army capable of fighting the Muslims. Over the next two decades, most of the mainland was freed from Muslim rule. The Franco-Roman emperor Louis II conquered Brindisi and beat the Arabs at Bari in 871, but then fell captive to the Aghlabids. In his stead the Byzantines conquered Taranto in 880. In 882 the Muslims had founded at the mouth of Garigliano between Naples and Rome a new base further in the north, which was in league with Gaeta, and had attacked Campania as well as Sabinia in Lazio. A hundred years later the Byzantines called the Sicilian Muslims for support against a campaign of German emperor Otto II. They beat Otto at the battle of Stilo in 982 and for the next 100 years largely succeeded in preventing his successors from entering southern Italy.
In 1002 a Venetian fleet defeated Muslims besieging Bari. After the Aghlabids were defeated in Ifriqiya as well, Sicily fell in the 10th century to their Fatimid successors, but claimed independence after fights between Sunni and Shia Muslims under the Kalbids.
Raids in Piedmont [ edit ]
After they had conquered the Visigoth Kingdom in Spain (729-765), the Arabs and Berbers from Septimania and Narbonne carried out raids into northern Italy, and in 793 again invaded southern France (Nice 813, 859 and 880). In 888 Andalusian Muslims set up a new base in Fraxinet near Fréjus in French Provence, from where they started raids along the coast and in inner France.
In 915, after the Battle of Garigliano, the Muslims lost their base in southern Lazio. In 926 King Hugh of Italy called the Muslims to fight against his northern Italian rivals. In 934 and 935 Genoa and La Spezia were attacked, followed by Nice in 942. In Piedmont the Muslims got as far as Asti and Novi, and also moved northwards along the Rhône valley and the western flank of the Alps.[citation needed] After defeating Burgundian troops[citation needed], in 942-964 they conquered Savoy and occupied a part of Switzerland (952-960)[citation needed]. To fight the Arabs, Emperor Berengar I, Hugh’s rival, called the Hungarians, who in their turn devastated northern Italy. As a result of the Muslim defeat at the Battle of Tourtour, Fraxinet was lost and razed by the Christians in 972. Thirty years later, in 1002, Genoa was invaded, and in 1004 Pisa.[citation needed]
Pisa and Genoa joined forces to end Muslim rule over Corsica (Islamic 810/850-930/1020) and Sardinia. In Sardinia in 1015 the fleet of the Andalusian lord of Dénia come from Spain, settled a temporary military camp as a logistic base to control Tyrrhenian Sea and Italian peninsula, but in 1016 the fleet was forced to leave its base due to the military intervention of maritime republics of Genoa and Pisa.
Sicily under the Normans [ edit ]
The cultural and economical bloom in Sicily that had started under the Kalbids was interrupted by internecine fights, followed by invasions by the Tunisian Zirids (1027), Pisa (1030–1035), and the Romans (1027 onwards). Eastern Sicily (Messina, Syracuse and Taormina) was captured by the Byzantines in 1038–1042. In 1059 Normans from southern Italy, led by Roger I, invaded the island. The Normans conquered Reggio in 1060 (conquered by the Romanin 1027). Messina fell to the Normans in 1061; an invasion by the Algerian Hammadids to preserve Islamic rule was thwarted in 1063 by the fleets of Genoa and Pisa. The loss of Palermo in 1072 and of Syracuse in 1088 could not be prevented. Noto and the last Muslim strongholds on Sicily fell in 1091. In 1090–91 the Normans also conquered Malta; Pantelleria fell in 1123.
A small Muslim population remained on Sicily under the Normans.[8][9] Roger II hosted at his court, among others, the famous geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi and the poet Muhammad ibn Zafar. At first, Muslims were tolerated by the Normans, but soon pressure from the Popes led to their increasing discrimination; most mosques were destroyed or made into churches.[citation needed] The first Sicilian Normans did not take part in the Crusades, but they undertook a number of invasions and raids in Ifriqiya, before they were defeated there after 1157 by the Almohads.
This peaceful coexistence in Sicily finally ended with the death of King William II in 1189. The Muslim elite emigrated at that time. Their medical knowledge was preserved in the Schola Medica Salernitana; an Arabian-Roman-Norman synthesis in art and architecture survived as Sicilian Romanesque. The remaining Muslims fled, for example to Caltagirone on Sicily, or hid out in the mountains and continued to resist against the Hohenstaufen dynasty, who ruled the island from 1194 on. In the heartland of the island, the Muslims declared Ibn Abbad the last Emir of Sicily.
To end this upheaval, emperor Frederick II, himself a Crusader, instigated a policy to rid Sicily of the few remaining Muslims. This cleansing was done in small part under Papal influence but mostly in order to create a loyal force of troops which could not be influenced by non-Christian infiltrators. In 1224–1239 he deported every single Muslim from Sicily to an autonomous colony under strict military control (so that they could not infiltrate non-Muslim areas) in Lucera in Apulia. Muslims were recruited however by Frederick in the army and constituted his faithful personal bodyguard, since they had no connection to his political rivals. In 1249 he ejected the Muslims from Malta as well. Lucera was returned to the Christians in 1300 at the instigation of the pope by King Charles II of Naples. Muslims were forcefully converted, killed or expelled from Europe. However a Muslim community was still recorded in Apulia in 1336[10] and very recently in 2009, a genetic study revealed a small genetic Northwest African contribution among today's inhabitants near the region of Lucera.[11]
15th century: Ottomans in Otranto [ edit ]
During this century, the Ottoman Empire was expanding mightily in southeastern Europe. It completed the absorption of the Byzantine Empire in 1453 under Sultan Mehmet II by conquering Constantinople and Galata. It seized Genoa's last bastions in the Black Sea in 1475 and Venice's Greek colony of Euboea in 1479. Turkish troops invaded the Friuli region in northeastern Italy in 1479 and again in 1499–1503. The Apulian harbor town of Otranto, located about 100 kilometers southeast of Brindisi, was seized in 1480 (Ottoman invasion of Otranto), but the Turks were routed there in 1481 by an alliance of several Italian city-states, Hungary and France led by the prince Alphonso II of Naples, when Mehmet died and a war for his succession broke out. Cem Sultan, pretender to the Ottoman throne, was defeated despite being supported by the pope; he fled with his family to the Kingdom of Naples, where his male descendants were bestowed with the title of Principe de Sayd by the Pope in 1492. They lived in Naples until the 17th century and in Sicily until 1668 before relocating to Malta.
Attacks in the 16th century [ edit ]
It is a subject of debate whether Otranto was meant to be the base for further conquests. In any case, the Ottoman sultans had not given up their ambition to take over the Italian Peninsula and to install Islamic sovereignty. After the conquests of Ragusa (Dubrovnik) and Hungary in 1526 and the defeat of the Turkish army at Vienna in 1529, Turkish fleets again attacked southern Italy. Reggio was sacked in 1512 by the famous Turkish leader Khayr al-Din, better known by the nickname of Barbarossa; in 1526 the Turks attacked Reggio again, but this time suffered a setback and were forced to turn their sights elsewhere. In 1538 they defeated the Venetian fleet. In 1539 Nice was raided by the Barbary states (Siege of Nice), but an attempted Turkish landing on Sicily failed, as did the attempted conquest of Pantelleria in 1553 and the siege of Malta in 1565.
Next to Spain, the biggest contribution to the victory of the Christian "Holy League" in the battle of Lepanto in 1571 was made by the Republic of Venice, which between 1423 and 1718 fought eight costly wars against the Ottoman Empire. In 1594 the city of Reggio was again sacked by Scipione Sinan Cicala, a renegade who converted to Islam.
Present day [ edit ]
Muslim population in Italy by the year: Year Pop. ±% 1999 520,000 — 2009 1,200,000 +130.8% 2016 1,400,000 +16.7% 1999 and 2009 estimates[12]
2016 census[13]
According to the latest Italian official statistics, there are 1.400.000 Muslims in Italy (2.3% of the Italian population), almost one third of Italy's foreign population (250.000 have acquired italian citizenship). The majority of Muslims in Italy are Sunni, with a Shi'ite minority. There are also a few Ahmadi Muslims in the country.[13]
Despite illegal immigrants representing a minority of the Muslims in Italy, considering that illegal migrants overwhelming come from islamic countries, the issue of Islam in contemporary Italy has been linked by some political parties (particularly the Lega Nord) with immigration, and more specifically illegal immigration. Immigration has become a prominent political issue, as reports of boatloads of illegal immigrants (or clandestini) dominate news programmes, especially in the summertime. Police forces have not had great success in intercepting many of the thousands of clandestini who land on Italian beaches, mainly because of a political unwillingness, partly fostered by the EU, to address the issue. However, the vast majority of the clandestini landing in Italy are only using the country as a gateway to other EU states, due to the fact that Italy offers fewer economic opportunities and social welfare for them than Germany, France, or the United Kingdom.
While in medieval times the Muslim population was almost totally concentrated in Insular Sicily and in the city of Lucera, in Apulia, it is today more evenly distributed, with almost 60% of Muslims living in the North of Italy, 25% in the Centre, and only 15% in the South. Muslims form a lower proportion of immigrants than in previous years, as the latest statistical reports by the Italian Ministry of Interior and Caritas indicate that the share of Muslims among new immigrants has declined from over 50% at the beginning of the 1990s (mainly Albanians and Moroccans) to less than 25% in the following decade, due to the massive arrivals from eastern Europe.
Recent points of contention between native Italians and the Muslim immigrant population include the presence of crucifixes in public buildings, including school classrooms, government offices, and hospital wards. Adel Smith has attracted considerable media attention by demanding that crucifixes in public facilities be removed. The Italian Council of State, in the Sentence No. 556, 13 February 2006, confirmed the display of the crucifix in government sponsored spaces. Smith was subsequently charged with defaming the Catholic religion in 2006.[14]
In November 2016, Minister of the Interior Angelino Alfano reported that Italy had deported nine imams for inciting racial violence.[15]
In January 2017, community groups representing around 70% of the Muslim community in Italy signed a pact with the government to "reject all forms of violence and terrorism
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agriculture, the rapidly expanding pesticide treadmill that accompanies GMOs, replacement of natural biodiversity, water and soil loss or degradation, and expanding corporate domination, with increasing social inequity, loss of small farmers, monopolization and unsustainability of our food system, and the potential link between gut health and inadequately studied GMOs.
Feed the hungry or “cows and cars?”
Cassidy (2015) critiques the argument that GMOs can feed a rapidly growing global population this month in an Environmental Working Group paper. The author contrasts the reported need for a doubling in food supply in the next 50 years with the progress up to now in GMO crops, which primarily feeds “cows and cars” while expanding social inequity through monopolization and profit-making by large corporations. The expanding social inequity and loss of small farmers contributes to more poverty, which is the real source of hunger. Feeding cows and cars instead of people also puts added pressure on water use and soil degradation, while expanding nitrate pollution in our waters and nitrous oxide pollution in our air. Cassidy also argues that crop yields with GMOs are no better and are sometimes worse than yields of traditional crops. Holt-Giménez et al. (2012) add a different argument against the claim that GMOs can feed the world. We already grow enough food for a global population of 10 billion people, but because of social inequity and poverty, that food is not distributed evenly. Even if we expand food production faster than population growth, GMOs are not the answer.
High transformity agriculture
The most systemic argument against GMOs is the energy-intensive nature of high-tech agriculture that requires the extraction of profit, not letting Nature do the work through traditional diversity and seeds. Energy/emergy intensity of agriculture has increased many fold during the past century of agricultural industrialization (Rydberg and Hayden, 2006). Global energy production has plateaued and is forecast to decline, with a large discrepancy in available fossil fuels to support our current developed society (US-EIA, 2013). The Middle East retains about 2/3 of all proven reserves of oil, while the United States oil production peaked in 1970 (BP Statistical Review, 2014). These facts do not bode well for the sustainability of industrial agriculture, which has evolved to rely heavily on natural gas and fossil fuel subsidies for fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation, over-sized tillers and harvesters, and now tech-intensive GMOs that are necessary to stay ahead of plant blights that impact monoculture farms. The research, marketing, law, and other complex necessities of high-tech agriculture each demand more emergy from society, which takes resources from other needed societal supports. Renewable energy sources have less net energy, so renewables are unable to sustain industrial society in the place of non-renewable liquid fuels (Day et al., 2009). GMOs make us less sustainable, as they make our food system increasingly dependent on fossil fuel inputs and increasingly centralized and high-tech.
http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/adoption-of-genetically-engineered-crops-in-the-us/recent-trends-in-ge-adoption.aspx
The pesticide treadmill
Tilman et al., 2002
The second controversial argument against GMOs relates to environmental health and the accumulation of increasing volumes of pesticides in the environment as a result of the pesticides treadmill. Annual proprietary seeds that demand concurrent use of changing, untested and expanding mixes of both fertilizer and proprietary pesticides leads to a pesticide treadmill (Tilman, 2002). The evidence on how much pesticide use is increasing globally varies greatly by report, ranging from a sympathetic meta-analysis report of a reduction in pesticide use by 37% over the past 20 years (Klumper & Qaim, 2014), to an increase of 7% over that same general period (Benbrook, 2012).
The information on global pesticide production is proprietary and not widely touted, but the evidence is visible in healthy, growing corporate profits. Corporate pressure may influence scientific reports through funding and publication bias. Pesticide-resistant super weeds develop, old patents expire, and new GMO seeds are repeatedly developed for new crop categories in hopes of expanding corporate markets and profits, leading to increased costs for farmers and increasing damage to the environment. What is the relevant endpoint if corporate survival mandates ever-increasing growth of herbicides, which kill plants, insects, and birds in the environment? The loss of creatures who eat crop-eating insects leads to the need for more pesticides, and around we go again.
http://www.stephaniemcmillan.org/codegreen/
Monocultures replacing natural biodiversity
http://www.stephaniemcmillan.org/codegreen/
How much is too much pesticide for the planet as a whole, given the additive toxicity of many pesticides and non-food uses? The third large-scale argument against GMOs is the loss of biodiversity, water, and soil nutrients/erosion, through expansion of pesticides, replacement of natural systems with industrial-scale agriculture, and over-fertilization and irrigation. Replacing natural biodiversity and insects with insect-free monocultures hastens the demise of our environmental support systems that we cannot live without—witness dead zones in the ocean, depleting and nitrate-polluted aquifers, and so on. Rockstrom et al. (2009) name biodiversity loss as our greatest problem, and Rhodes’ excellent recent article describing the linkages between the problems of biodiversity and soil loss with bee declines and other problems illustrates this. Additionally, chemical and GMO-based agriculture is fertilizer and water-intensive, adding to ocean dead zones and water shortages, which some claim as the biggest problem of the 21st century. In essence, the idea that we can outsmart Mother Nature and replace her biodiversity with a genetically new agricultural system is arrogant.
Unsustainable corporatization and centralization
Bradford, J. Dec. 21, 2007. Does less energy mean more farmers? The Oil Drum
http://www.stephaniemcmillan.org/codegreen/
The fourth large-scale argument addresses expanding corporate domination of seed patents, farm ownership, research, marketing, and so on. Fossil-fuel-based industrial agriculture winnows small farmers and creates a trend towards large-scale production with an inverse correlation between per capital farmers and energy intensity (Bradford, 2007). Since we are now beginning energetic descent, we will need more small farmers, less intensive methods such as agroecology, and less reliance on technology to become sustainable and avoid collapse of societies. The loss of small farmers adds to social stratification and inequality within the farming industry, but also in society at large, as regulatory capture by corporations leads to weakened regulations, more GMOS, more pesticides, and so on, in an autocatalytic merry-go-round. Feedback loops for policies favorable to corporations beget more large corporations, which expands unsustainable trends into overshoot.
Poorly studied GMOs and health
Benbrook, 2012, Environmental Sciences Europe
(Bt Corn in Acres planted and CDC data)
The fifth argument is the question of human health and poorly studied GMOs. The United States in particular places the burden of proof for regulation of hazardous chemicals on the Environmental Protection Agency and citizens to defend environmental health based on the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act. Laws in the last decade in the European Union assume a more precautionary approach by ruling that the proponent of an activity must bear the burden of proof in showing safety. One must wonder whether there is a correlation between the new “disease” of gluten intolerance and the recent rapidly expanding production of GMO foods. We do not know the human health or environmental results of gene manipulation of our food are. A quick search of the literature suggests that there is much research on genetic treatment of diseases, but very little study of the questioned link between human health and GMO-based diets. The only studies so far consist of 90-day rat-feeding trials. A small, longer-term study in 2012 of rat health by Seralini et al. (2014) received great criticism and the journal editors retracted the article. Large corporations can pay for biased research, and can control publication and news media. Who will fund neutral research on GMOs and human health?
What is the energy basis of GMOs?
The claim that GMOs exist to feed the world is a false one, derived from corporations’ desire for profit. This post has raised energetic, ecological, social, and health arguments against GMOs. Other arguments include the unknown, unintended consequences of intentional mutation of the gene pool of our food, and the biased funding and publication of research.
In an era of population overshoot and resource scarcity, being able to fall back on our biosphere’s ecosystem services will be critical for a society that prospers. An industrialized, high-tech food system that requires increasingly complex research, laws, profit-making corporations, and annexation of natural systems into massive fields sowed with machinery, sprayed with poisons, fertilized with fossil fuels, and irrigated with our children’s aquifers while being supported by massive research labs to stave off the next pesticide-resistant insect is not a sustainable model. In my opinion, the only way to avoid collapse of our food system is to return to agroecological systems which show four systemic properties: productivity, stability, sustainability, and equitability.
The land company—that’s the bank when it has land—wants tractors, not families on the land. Is a tractor bad? Is the power that turns the long furrows wrong? If this tractor were ours, it would be good – not mine, but ours. We could love that tractor then as we have loved this land when it was ours. But this tractor does two things – it turns the land and turns us off the land. There is little difference between this tractor and a tank. The people were driven, intimidated, hurt by both. We must think about this (Steinbeck, 1939, Chapter 14).
As Steinbeck suggests in The Grapes of Wrath, there may be a point at which technology owns us, and takes us to a place from which we cannot return without revolution of the system. We’re going to need a lot more farmers and less technology in a future with less fossil fuel, and more sustainable and ecologically based agricultural practices. GMOs only move us further towards an unsustainable goal of continued growth for a global economy in overshoot.Dies irae ( Latin pronunciation: [ˈdi.ɛs ˈi.rɛ]; "Day of Wrath") is a Latin sequence attributed to either Thomas of Celano of the Franciscans (1200 – c. 1265)[1] or to Latino Malabranca Orsini (d. 1294), lector at the Dominican studium at Santa Sabina, the forerunner of the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelicum in Rome.[2] The sequence dates from at least the thirteenth century, though it is possible that it is much older, with some sources ascribing its origin to St. Gregory the Great (d. 604), Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153), or Bonaventure (1221–1274).[1]
It is a Medieval Latin poem characterized by its accentual stress and rhymed lines. The metre is trochaic. The poem describes the Last Judgment, trumpet summoning souls before the throne of God, where the saved will be delivered and the unsaved cast into eternal flames.
It is best known from its use in the Requiem (Mass for the Dead or Funeral Mass). An English version is found in various Anglican Communion service books. The melody is one of the most quoted in musical literature, appearing in the works of many composers.
Use in the Roman liturgy [ edit ]
The Dies irae has been used in the Roman liturgy as the sequence for the Requiem Mass for centuries, as evidenced by the important place it holds in musical settings such as those by Mozart and Verdi. It appears in the Roman Missal of 1962, the last edition before the implementation of the revisions that occurred after the Second Vatican Council. As such, it is still heard in churches where the Tridentine Latin liturgy is celebrated. It also formed part of the traditional liturgy of All Souls' Day.
In the reforms to the Roman Catholic liturgy ordered by the Second Vatican Council, the "Consilium for the Implementation of the Constitution on the Liturgy", the Vatican body charged with drafting and implementing the reforms (1969–70), eliminated the sequence as such from funerals and other Masses for the Dead. A leading figure in the post-conciliar liturgical reforms, Archbishop Annibale Bugnini, explains the rationale of the Consilium:
They got rid of texts that smacked of a negative spirituality inherited from the Middle Ages. Thus they removed such familiar and even beloved texts as Libera me, Domine, Dies irae, and others that overemphasized judgment, fear, and despair. These they replaced with texts urging Christian hope and arguably giving more effective expression to faith in the resurrection.[3]
Dies irae remains as a hymn ad libitum in the Liturgy of the Hours during the last week before Advent, divided into three parts for the Office of Readings, Lauds and Vespers.[4]
Text [ edit ]
The Latin text below is taken from the Requiem Mass in the 1962 Roman Missal. The first English version below, translated by William Josiah Irons in 1849, albeit from a slightly different Latin text, replicates the rhyme and metre of the original.[5][6] This translation, edited for more conformance to the official Latin, is approved by the Catholic Church for use as the funeral Mass sequence in the liturgy of the Anglican ordinariate.[7] The second English version is a more formal equivalence translation.
0 1 Dies iræ, dies illa
Solvet sæclum in favilla,
Teste David cum Sibylla. Day of wrath and doom impending.
David's word with Sibyl's blending,
Heaven and earth in ashes ending. The day of wrath, that day
will dissolve the world in ashes,
David being witness along with the Sibyl. 0 2 Quantus tremor est futurus,
Quando Judex est venturus,
Cuncta stricte discussurus! Oh, what fear man's bosom rendeth,
When from heaven the Judge descendeth,
On whose sentence all dependeth. How great will be the quaking,
when the Judge is about to come,
strictly investigating all things. 0 3 Tuba mirum spargens sonum,
Per sepulchra regionum,
Coget omnes ante thronum. Wondrous sound the trumpet flingeth;
Through earth's sepulchres it ringeth;
All before the throne it bringeth. The trumpet, scattering a wondrous sound
through the sepulchres of the regions,
will summon all before the throne. 0 4 Mors stupebit et natura,
Cum resurget creatura,
Judicanti responsura. Death is struck, and nature quaking,
All creation is awaking,
To its Judge an answer making. Death and nature will marvel,
when the creature will rise again,
to respond to the Judge. 0 5 Liber scriptus proferetur,
In quo totum continetur,
Unde mundus judicetur. Lo, the book, exactly worded,
Wherein all hath been recorded,
Thence shall judgement be awarded. The written book will be brought forth,
in which all is contained,
from which the world shall be judged. 0 6 Judex ergo cum sedebit,
Quidquid latet apparebit:
Nil inultum remanebit. When the Judge his seat attaineth,
And each hidden deed arraigneth,
Nothing unavenged remaineth. When therefore the Judge will sit,
whatever lies hidden will appear:
nothing will remain unpunished. 0 7 Quid sum miser tunc dicturus?
Quem patronum rogaturus,
Cum vix justus sit securus? What shall I, frail man, be pleading?
Who for me be interceding,
When the just are mercy needing? What then will I, poor wretch [that I am], say?
Which patron will I entreat,
when [even] the just may [only] hardly be sure? 0 8 Rex tremendæ majestatis,
Qui salvandos salvas gratis,
Salva me, fons pietatis. King of Majesty tremendous,
Who dost free salvation send us,
Fount of pity, then befriend us! King of fearsome majesty,
Who freely savest those that are to be saved,
save me, O font of mercy. 0 9 Recordare, Jesu pie,
Quod sum causa tuæ viæ:
Ne me perdas illa die. Think, kind Jesu! – my salvation
Caused Thy wondrous Incarnation;
Leave me not to reprobation. Remember, merciful Jesus,
that I am the cause of Thy way:
lest Thou lose me in that day. 10 Quærens me, sedisti lassus:
Redemisti Crucem passus:
Tantus labor non sit cassus. Faint and weary, Thou hast sought me,
On the Cross of suffering bought me.
Shall such grace be vainly brought me? Seeking me, Thou sattest tired:
Thou redeemedst [me], having suffered the Cross:
let not so much hardship be in vain. 11 Juste Judex ultionis,
Donum fac remissionis,
Ante diem rationis. Righteous Judge, for sin's pollution
Grant Thy gift of absolution,
Ere the day of retribution. Just Judge of vengeance,
make a gift of remission
before the day of reckoning. 12 Ingemisco, tamquam reus:
Culpa rubet vultus meus:
Supplicanti parce, Deus. Guilty, now I pour my moaning,
All my shame with anguish owning;
Spare, O God, Thy suppliant groaning! I sigh, like the guilty one:
my face reddens in guilt:
Spare the supplicating one, O God. 13 Qui Mariam absolvisti,
Et latronem exaudisti,
Mihi quoque spem dedisti. Through the sinful woman shriven,
Through the dying thief forgiven,
Thou to me a hope hast given. Thou who absolvedst Mary,
and heardest the robber,
gavest hope to me, too. 14 Preces meæ non sunt dignæ;
Sed tu bonus fac benigne,
Ne perenni cremer igne. Worthless are my prayers and sighing,
Yet, good Lord, in grace complying,
Rescue me from fires undying. My prayers are not worthy:
but do Thou, [who art] good, graciously grant
that I not be burned up by the everlasting fire. 15 Inter oves locum præsta.
Et ab hædis me sequestra,
Statuens in parte dextra. With Thy sheep a place provide me,
From the goats afar divide me,
To Thy right hand do Thou guide me. Grant me a place among the sheep,
and take me out from among the goats,
setting me on the right side. 16 Confutatis maledictis,
Flammis acribus addictis,
Voca me cum benedictis. When the wicked are confounded,
Doomed to flames of woe unbounded,
Call me with Thy saints surrounded. Once the cursed have been silenced,
sentenced to acrid flames:
Call Thou me with the blessed. 17 Oro supplex et acclinis,
Cor contritum quasi cinis,
Gere curam mei finis. Low I kneel, with heart's submission,
See, like ashes, my contrition,
Help me in my last condition. [Humbly] kneeling and bowed I pray,
[my] heart crushed as ashes:
take care of my end. 18 Lacrimosa dies illa,
Qua resurget ex favilla,
Judicandus homo reus.
Huic ergo parce, Deus: Ah! that day of tears and mourning,
From the dust of earth returning
Man for judgement must prepare him,
Spare, O God, in mercy spare him. Tearful [will be] that day,
on which from the glowing embers will arise
the guilty man who is to be judged.
Then spare him, O God. 19 Pie Jesu Domine,
Dona eis requiem. Amen. Lord, all-pitying, Jesus blest,
Grant them Thine eternal rest. Amen. Merciful Lord Jesus,
grant them rest. Amen.
Because the last two stanzas differ markedly in structure from the preceding stanzas, some scholars consider them to be an addition made in order to suit the great poem for liturgical use. The penultimate stanza Lacrimosa discards the consistent scheme of rhyming triplets in favor of a pair of rhyming couplets. The last stanza Pie Iesu abandons rhyme for assonance, and, moreover, its lines are catalectic.
In the liturgical reforms of 1969–71, stanza 19 was deleted and the poem divided into three sections: 1–6 (for Office of Readings), 7–12 (for Lauds) and 13–18 (for Vespers). In addition "Qui Mariam absolvisti" in stanza 13 was replaced by "Peccatricem qui solvisti" so that that line would now mean, "You who freed/absolved the sinful woman". This was because modern scholarship denies the common medieval identification of the woman taken in adultery with Mary Magdalene, so Mary could no longer be named in this verse. In addition, a doxology is given after stanzas 6, 12 and 18:[4]
O tu, Deus majestatis,
alme candor Trinitatis
nos conjunge cum beatis. Amen. O God of majesty
nourishing light of the Trinity
join us with the blessed. Amen. O thou, God of majesty,
gracious splendour of the Trinity
conjoin us with the blessed. Amen.
Manuscript sources [ edit ]
The text of the sequence is found, with slight verbal variations, in a 13th-century manuscript in the Biblioteca Nazionale at Naples. It is a Franciscan calendar missal that must date between 1253 and 1255 for it does not contain the name of Clare of Assisi, who was canonized in 1255, and whose name would have been inserted if the manuscript were of later date.
Inspiration [ edit ]
A major inspiration of the hymn seems to have come from the Vulgate translation of Zephaniah 1:15–16:
Dies iræ, dies illa, dies tribulationis et angustiæ, dies calamitatis et miseriæ, dies tenebrarum et caliginis, dies nebulæ et turbinis, dies tubæ et clangoris super civitates munitas et super angulos excelsos. That day is a day of wrath, a day of tribulation and distress, a day of calamity and misery, a day of darkness and obscurity, a day of clouds and whirlwinds, a day of the trumpet and alarm against the fenced cities, and against the high bulwarks. (Douay–Rheims Bible)
Other images come from Revelation 20:11–15 (the book from which the world will be judged), Matthew 25:31–46 (sheep and goats, right hand, contrast between the blessed and the accursed doomed to flames), 1Thessalonians 4:16 (trumpet), 2Peter 3:7 (heaven and earth burnt by fire), Luke 21:26 ("men fainting with fear... they will see the Son of Man coming"), etc.
From the Jewish liturgy, the prayer Unetanneh Tokef appears to be related: "We shall ascribe holiness to this day, For it is awesome and terrible"; "the great trumpet is sounded", etc.
Other translations [ edit ]
A number of English translations of the poem have been written and proposed for liturgical use. A very loose Protestant version was made by John Newton; it opens:
Day of judgment! Day of wonders!
Hark! the trumpet's awful sound,
Louder than a thousand thunders,
Shakes the vast creation round!
How the summons will the sinner's heart confound!
Jan Kasprowicz, a Polish poet, wrote a hymn entitled "Dies irae" which describes the Judgment day. The first six lines (two stanzas) follow the original hymn's metre and rhyme structure, and the first stanza translates to "The trumpet will cast a wondrous sound".
The American writer Ambrose Bierce published a satiric version of the poem in his 1903 book Shapes of Clay, preserving the original metre but using humorous and sardonic language; for example, the second verse is rendered:
Ah! what terror shall be shaping
When the Judge the truth's undraping –
Cats from every bag escaping!
Rev. Bernard Callan (1750–1804), an Irish priest and poet, translated it into Gaelic around 1800. His version is included in the Gaelic prayer book, The Spiritual Rose.[8]
Literary references [ edit ]
Music [ edit ]
Musical settings [ edit ]
The words of Dies irae have often been set to music as part of the Requiem service. In some settings, it is broken up into several movements; in such cases, Dies irae refers only to the first of these movements, the others being titled according to their respective incipits.
The original setting was a sombre plainchant (or Gregorian chant). In four-line neumatic notation, it begins:
In 5-line staff notation, the same appears:
The earliest surviving polyphonic setting of the Requiem by Johannes Ockeghem does not include Dies irae. The first polyphonic settings to include the Dies irae are by Engarandus Juvenis (c. 1490) and Antoine Brumel (1516) to be followed by many composers of the renaissance. Later, many notable choral and orchestral settings of the Requiem including the sequence were made by composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Hector Berlioz, Giuseppe Verdi, Gaetano Donizetti, and Igor Stravinsky.
Musical quotations [ edit ]
The traditional Gregorian melody has been used as a theme or musical quotation in many classical compositions, film scores, and popular works, including:Far Cry 3 will be one of the biggest action games this year, but its push for modernism has left Far Cry 2’s vision looking more astonishing than ever. Patrick Garratt’s heart is still in Africa.
I’m so worried about this new direction because Far Cry 2 is one of the only games I ever truly identified with. I loved it. Yes, it was far from perfect, but I was spellbound till the credits rolled, totally absorbed in its unique, unwavering vision. Based on what we’ve seen so far, Far Cry 3 just looks to me like a balls-out action game.
“OK, we go. Hey sir, sorry for the delay. So you’re going to a hotel in Pala. Yeah, I know the place. It’s lucky for you. Pala has only one hotel still working.”
It’s doubtful Ubisoft Montreal could have ever created Far Cry 2 if the studio hadn’t been compelled by central Africa. In the game’s first few minutes, we’re transported so absolutely into a pseudo-real environment of lawlessness that the team’s obsession burns brighter than a bushfire.
I swat away a mosquito and leaf through my notes. I’m given photoless information on the Jackal, the man I’m here to kill, an arms trader blamed for accelerating the situation between two local militia groups from unstable peace to imminent civil war. A wide variety of mercenaries are in the area, their history ranging from experience with the USMC to paratrooping with the KLA in Kosovo to any number of private security operations. I’m ex-IRA.
My fixer seems decent. He laughs as we watch a light aircraft flee. “You won’t see any more very soon.” We’re nearly hit another jeep, its horn screeching. He shakes his fist.
“Bloody idiot. Nobody follows the rules any more.”
The only music is on the car’s radio. There’s no score, no Hollywood. I am there. Everything the driver says drags me further in. He tells me how uncontrolled fires destroyed the wealth of his brother, burning his bungalow and three cattle. We pass civilians loping to the airport, unbelieving that the “big planes” aren’t coming back. A cow blocks our path and we sit and wait until it can be bothered to move. The music vanishes from the speakers.
“This is Liberation Radio, speaking the truth for the truth seekers. And the truth is your country needs you. Beware the evil APR scourge.”
The driver throws me a sheepish look and snaps it off as we approach a checkpoint. The broadcast is a clear nod to the Rwandan genocide, in which radio stations were used by the Hutus as a key method of inciting hatred against Tutsis.
Ubi Montreal did so much homework.
The mood’s fragile. A white guy heads up the checkpoint of AKs and my man buys them off with the promise of beer. The country’s obviously turned to shit. The driver tells me not to worry as we pass burning huts, says it’s boys letting off steam. Looks more like smoke to me. The APR and AFLL are ready to go thermo and anyone with any sense is going in the opposite direction. As we pull up to the “hotel,” my malaria kicks in and the world turns black.
The UI. It burns.
Five minutes. That’s the first five minutes of Far Cry 2. I’ve omitted a great deal. It’s mesmerising in its detail as it is mature in its storytelling. Far Cry 2 was a game so far ahead of its time it’s bewildering. It’s about an African civil war, a warmongering humanitarian, a freeform environment so diligently contrived that I’m sure it just flew over the heads of most. It’s one of the only truly adult games ever made and one of my favourite games all all time.
Which is why this movie of Far Cry 3 gameplay has been giving me rough nights.
Out of Africa
You see, Far Cry 2 was a game of the period. It came out in 2008, and it was designed to be as immersive as possible. Action games were moving in that direction then. The UI is bare minimal, only appearing when you ask it to; you don’t know how much ammo you have, for example, unless you reload. The overlay doesn’t even appear when you fire. There’s no “mini-map”. When you look at the map, you look at a map. You can zoom in and out by flicking the scale, during which the map disappears and a new page is offered. You have a GPS for tracking position in vehicles. It’s like everything had to make sense, that nothing could be implausible.
The same can’t be said of what we’ve seen Far Cry 3 so far. That video shows a first-person shooter, first and foremost, with ziplines, overlays, enemy direction indicators and a permanent map. It’s like the team doubled-back on itself.
In Far Cry 2, for instance, when you approached a door a glowing hand appeared. It’s an effect designed to let you know you can do something without being intrusive to your state of immersion. In Far Cry 3, we have, “Hold X to interact,” and, “A to climb.”
And then there are the missions and characters. Far Cry 3 appears to be set on some kind of middle ground between The Island of Doctor Moreau and Lost. There’s the psychopath we saw in the E3 reveal last year, who apparently wants to kill everyone for fun, and the new gameplay trailer shows us a mad doctor with bowls of deadly pills that packs you off on a magic mushroom hunt. You end up tripping your bollocks off in a luminous cave.
Far Cry 2. Just look at it, for God’s sake.
The Far Cry 2 characters were real. They could have been real. They’re military men after rough diamonds. These people exist.
The music, too, is at odds with the past. Far Cry 2 had a dynamic backdrop of African drums which alerted you to danger and added to the ambience. Far Cry 3 has a thumping rock track adrenalizing your sliding moves and take-downs, because you’re in a frickin’ action game, bucko. Here wehave set pieces, like a crumbling wall dropping you into a subterranean pool, or a bomb scuppering a ship to leave you with a linear escape mission, Uncharted 2-style.
Far Cry 2 didn’t even have an aiming reticle.
I’m so worried about this new direction because Far Cry 2 is one of the only games I ever truly identified with. I loved it. Yes, it was far from perfect. We all know the checkpoint repetition could be wearing, and the pylon missions were all the same. We all know that. But I was spellbound till the credits rolled, absorbed in its unique, unwavering vision. Based on what we’ve seen so far, Far Cry 3 just looks to me like a balls-out action game.
Maybe that’s what people want. Maybe it was the market, not the team, that did the u-turn. Maybe Far Cry 3 will be a game of its period, as was its predecessor. I personally can’t wait to play it. I’ll finish it without coming up for air. But will it drown me? I hope so. I doubt it. My heart’s still in Africa.The composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died on 5 December 1791 at the age of 35. The circumstances of his death have attracted much research and speculation. Some principal sources of contention are as follows.
Whether Mozart declined gradually, experiencing great fear and sadness, or whether he was fundamentally in good spirits toward the end of his life, then felled by a relatively sudden illness. The former hypothesis was accepted for most of the history of Mozart biography, but the latter has been advanced by contemporary scholars.
The actual cause of his death: whether it was from disease or poisoning. The poisoning hypothesis is widely discredited. If a particular disease was the actual cause of death, then it remains unknown; only plausible conjectures can be offered.
His funeral arrangements, and whether they were the normal procedures for his day, or if they were of a disrespectful nature. Modern scholarship generally supports the view that the funeral arrangements were normal for Mozart's time.
The course of Mozart's final illness [ edit ]
The traditional narrative [ edit ]
Mozart scholarship long followed the accounts of early biographers, which proceeded in large part from the recorded memories of his widow Constanze and her sister Sophie Weber as they were recorded in the biographies by Franz Niemetschek and Georg Nikolaus von Nissen. For instance, the important biography by Hermann Abert (1923/2008:1305-9) largely follows this account. The following is a summary of this view.
When in August 1791 Mozart arrived in Prague to supervise the performance of his new opera La clemenza di Tito (K. 621), he was "already very ill" (Abert, p. 1305). During this visit, Niemetschek wrote, "he was pale and expression was sad, although his good humour was often shown in merry jest with his friends."[1] Following his return to Vienna (mid September 1791),[2] Mozart's condition gradually worsened.[3] For a while, he was still able to work and completed his Clarinet Concerto (K. 622), worked toward the completion of his Requiem (K. 626), and conducted the premiere performance of The Magic Flute (K. 620) on 30 September. Still, he became increasingly alarmed and despondent about his health. An anecdote from Constanze is related by Niemetschek:
On his return to Vienna, his indisposition increased visibly and made him gloomily depressed. His wife was truly distressed over this. One day when she was driving in the Prater with him, to give him a little distraction and amusement, and they were sitting by themselves, Mozart began to speak of death, and declared that he was writing the Requiem for himself. Tears came to the eyes of the sensitive man: 'I feel definitely,' he continued, 'that I will not last much longer; I am sure I have been poisoned. I cannot rid myself of this idea.'
Constanze attempted to cheer her husband by persuading him to give up work on the Requiem for a while, encouraging him instead to complete the "Freimaurerkantate" (K. 623), composed to celebrate the opening of a new Masonic temple for Mozart's own lodge.[4] The strategy worked for a time – the cantata was completed and successfully premiered on 18 November.[5] He told Constanze he felt "elated" over the premiere.[6] Mozart is reported to have stated, "Yes I see I was ill to have had such an absurd idea of having taken poison, give me back the Requiem and I will go on with it."
Mozart's worst symptoms of illness soon returned, together with the strong feeling that he was being poisoned. He became bedridden on 20 November, suffering from swelling, pain and vomiting.[7]
From this point on, scholars are all agreed that Mozart was indeed very sick, and he died about two weeks later, on December 5 (see below).
Revisionist accounts [ edit ]
The view that Mozart was in near-steady decline and despair during the last several months of his life has met with skepticism in recent years. Cliff Eisen supervised the reissue of Abert's biography in 2008 in a new edition, supplementing it with numerous footnotes. While generally deferential to Abert, Eisen expresses sharp criticism in the footnoting of the section leading up to Mozart's death:
It should be noted that, in this context, the evidence cited by Abert is selective and suits the intended trajectory of his biography. With the exception of citations from Mozart's letters, all of the testimony is posthumous and prompted by complicated motives both personal and financial. Although it is 'authentic' in the sense that it derives from those who witnessed Mozart's death, or were close to him, it is not necessarily accurate.... To be sure, Mozart was under the weather
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Pfizer, Intel, Dell – they were all there. If you had a Pentium-powered computer back in the early-2000s there’s a good chance it was made in the plant near Dublin. If you were taking Viagra, its active ingredient had been produced in Cork.
People were flooding into Ireland for work. The boom had taken hold less than a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union and there was a huge influx of migrants from Eastern Europe. There were Vaclavs and Pavels in farms, front-line service jobs, and on construction sites all over the east coast.
The afternoon paper in the city, the Evening Herald, started printing a section of Polish news every Friday. By some estimates in 2006 there were up to 200,000 Poles in Ireland.
But people were coming from all over the world. Dublin exploded with a new cosmopolitanism. Post-Catholic Ireland was enjoying the party, swapping sackcloth and ashes for martinis and holiday homes in Seville.
This did bring visible signs of strain in the workforce. Comprehension of basic orders in restaurant service was an acknowledged industry problem. After one day being at a working lunch and ordering pizza only to be promptly delivered an ice cream sundae, I decided to look into the problems the hospitality industry was having with a lack of English speaking staff. I ended up doing a story for The Sunday Times about the restaurant industry undertaking a trade mission to Canada to try to recruit people. It really was so bad that Ireland was trying to market itself to Canadian bartenders.
The euro had been introduced in January 1999 and, despite the best efforts of the government to avoid price-gouging, it triggered increases in the cost of everything from GP visits to beer to fashion items. Inflation was running at around 5% in the early 2000s.
There was the arrival of the superpubs: giant entire office buildings in central Dublin converted to multi-level bars charging six euros or more for a pint of Guinness. They were always full from Wednesday night on, and packed to the point of a fire hazard on Fridays and Saturdays. Then came the swanky wine bars where people would drop hundreds of euro on a “little drop they tried on my recent trip to Bordeaux”.
It was madness. Any Irish person who lived through it and watched the crash happen will tell you the country should have seen what was coming.
On top of it all, there was the total insanity of the property market.
In the late 90s, house prices were surging. It started to look like a good investment. Soon people in their mid-20s were buying second properties.
Between 1997 and 2005, by The Economist’s estimate, property prices in Ireland rose 192%. By some estimates, over the entire life of the boom, Dublin property prices rose 400%. With the overall economic prosperity and full employment came this simple reality that Ireland needed to import labour. The influx of migrants to the booming country created a seemingly insatiable demand for housing. This made second mortgages a seemingly sensible investment for even young people.
The then-prime minister, Bertie Ahern – who was famous for his mangling of English – memorably said in 2006: “The boom just got boomier”. It was a reflection of what many people thought: the good times would not just keep rolling, but the momentum would continue to build.
But of course, that didn’t happen.
The trouble was, Irish people were borrowing money from Irish banks for property speculation and selling the houses on to other Irish people. And the banks were pretty happy to lend the money. To a certain extent, this pattern required sustained demand from migrants – either Irish people returning home or people from overseas needing to come to Ireland and needing houses. Property developers were buying huge tracts of land and building huge numbers of houses on them, which in turn would be bought as the population continued to expand.
Around 2007 the spectacular rate of economic growth started to slow. House price growth eased off. The eastern expansion of the EU in 2005 to include many of the former Soviet republics had a hand in an important demographic shift: after working abroad for years to support their families, migrants started to return home.
Then the GFC arrived, crushing the global credit markets and leaving Irish banks to answer for all the money they had borrowed offshore to fuel the boom.
Irish banks could get no more money to lend to Irish people to buy Irish houses. The market for all those investment properties dried up quickly. Rental demand, and rental yields, disappeared.
In hindsight, the unwinding of everything looks like a Hindenberg-level economic cataclysm. But the bubble didn’t so much pop as exhale.
The post-GFC collapse of the Irish property market and the nation’s economy was not complicated. People had believed property prices would continue to rally for ever, and had bet on it by borrowing up.
The bets failed.
BOOM TOWNS
Naturally many Irish people – not just expats but also in Ireland itself – are now watching what’s happening in Australia – Sydney in particular – with house prices with some interest.
A mate and I who left Ireland at the same time now joke we were leaving the insanity to move somewhere that people would surely have enough common sense to resist getting caught up in credit-fuelled property and lifestyle bubble. And we chose Sydney.
Much of the conversation has not been light, though, as the property boom has taken hold about the similarities between Ireland during the doomed boom and modern-day Sydney. The outrageous house price rises. The $10 beers. The high cost of doing business, especially in wages.
A range of articles in The Irish Independent, the country’s biggest-selling newspaper, have drawn connections between what’s happening in Sydney and, to a lesser extent, Melbourne, and the warning signs of excess that preceded Ireland turning into a basket case after the GFC.
Here’s an excerpt from one recent story:
Brian Whelan, a Perth-based estate agent, believes the Australian property market is an accident waiting to happen. Originally from Beaumont, Dublin, Whelan (30), gave up his job as a financial consultant in 2011 and moved to the southern hemisphere with his wife Zarrin. “The average house price is now AUS$1m in Sydney and Melbourne is also too hot. There are tonnes of apartments on the market in Perth. There are warning signs everywhere,” he said. “The cost of living is also high while unemployment levels are also growing. “I predict that the Australian property market will crash next year or in 2017 and I will be ready to buy property when it does,” he added. Property issues aside, then there’s the commodities market. With Australia at the end of a 24-year growth cycle, some investors believe recession is inevitable given the cyclical nature of economies.
David McWilliams, the economic commentator who coined the phrase “the Celtic Tiger” to describe the Irish boom that gathered in the 1990s, recently examined the threats to Australia’s property market from the apparent slowdown in China. He wrote:
Up to now, most people saw the past 30 years’ economic miracle and concluded that China would find a way again. In recent months that view is being reassessed. This reassessment focuses of countries whose dependence is significant and of course, China’s quarry, Australia comes to mind. Right now, the Aussie housing market looks to be madly overvalued. Without commodity wealth, Australia looks like a large leveraged bubble. But as we know in Ireland, these bubbles can inflate for a long time before they burst… When it comes to the fallout from housing booms, Aussies would be well advised to heed the wisdom of John Stuart Mill, the 19th century English economist and philosopher, who said of market booms and busts that “the bust doesn’t destroy wealth, it merely reflects the extent to which wealth has already been destroyed by stupid investment decisions taken in the so-called boom”. When we see average house prices hit one million dollars, we can’t say we weren’t warned.
Tell us what you really think, mate.
Now sure, there are plenty of comparisons to make between Ireland in the mid-2000s and Sydney today. Not even bullish investors believe the kind of price growth in housing we’ve seen can be sustained. When John Fraser, the secretary of the federal Treasury, is prepared to say that Sydney is “unequivocally” experiencing a housing bubble, you can’t say, to borrow from McWilliams, you weren’t warned.
After everything fell in a heap in Ireland, it became clear the banks had engaged in obscene levels of risky lending, especially to those large-scale property developers building huge residential projects. They put enormous liabilities on banks’ books and bankers were confident the money would come back. These lending practices were the cause of the true disaster that will now haunt Irish taxpayers for decades. The bailouts have now cost around €40 billion, or some $A60 billion on current exchange rates.
I should be clear: there is no chance, on the current facts available, that anything similar will happen in Australia. But here are a few themes worth thinking about.
TOO MUCH ECONOMIC EXPOSURE TO HOUSING DEBT AND THE BANKS THAT CARRY IT IS A VERY BAD THING…
Young couples buying second properties in a hot market might be a colourful warning sign that things are getting out of hand, but the real seeds of the crisis were sown by enormous levels of borrowing by developers building houses which, as it would turn out, were not needed. When this was combined with the willingness of banks to lend, and the wilful misrepresentation of the amount of money that the bank had out in loans, catastrophe became inevitable. (The head of Anglo was hiding €87 million in loans from directors and auditors.)
The worst-case scenario for an Australian bank right now is that a severe correction in property prices that will expose, first, some over-eager property speculators and, within a bank, a large pile of risky loans.
… BUT IT LOOKS LIKE AUSTRALIANS ARE GETTING ON TOP OF IT
One of the great uncelebrated achievements of the Australian community since the GFC has been people’s responsibility with money. Household borrowing was a concerning trajectory in the run-up to the GFC but since then, Australians have been doing a very good job of paying off their bills. In the three months to June, household debt in Australia was reduced by $25 billion.
This effect of this is that it is the build-up in the ability of households to withstand future stresses, such as a global economic shock or the eventual, but inevitable, return of interest rate rises in the future. Perhaps part of this is driven by an increasing realisation that the government, with the budget position having crumbled from its mining-boom strength, will not be able to provide as strong a buffer against shocks as it once may have been.
THE EXPOSURE OF THE BANKS TO RESIDENTIAL PROPERTY DEBT IS RIDICULOUS BY GLOBAL STANDARDS…
There are plenty of commentators around the traps – I don’t need to name them, because you can find them easily – who will say there is a bubble in Australian property that’s going to pop, that there’s a huge structural issue with the Australian banks that means the nation will be plunged into recession because of our housing debt.
Now the argument on whether this is the case could go on forever, but this simple chart which shows how much of the Australian banking system’s loans comprise of residential mortgages – and how that compares to other countries around the world – will give anyone pause for thought.
Chart: APRA
This was not rolled out by some harbinger of doom. It was presented by Wayne Byers, head of the banking regulator, APRA, to a gathering of economists last month.
In his accompanying speech, Byers said: “With such a concentration in a single business line, we are all banking on housing lending remaining ‘as safe as houses’.”
Quite.
… BUT SOMETHING’S BEING DONE ABOUT THAT, TOO
Byers and his team have been crawling all over the loan books of Australian banks for the past year and the results of that exercise are now being seen. The major banks have been cranking up the prices of loans to investors, and they are also drastically reducing the amount of money that people can borrow to buy homes, signalling that money is not going to be easy to come by, despite the historic lows of interest rates.
Banking stocks have been hit harder than the broader market over this year.
Some would argue that APRA should have stepped in earlier. The fact that Byers has been so determined and vocal in his rhetoric about the need to contain the banking system’s exposure to property debt is, by itself, a sign that there is probably too much risk in the system.
But at the same time, the activity of the regulator is clearly having an impact. The Australian stock market has had a nasty year but bank stocks have undergone a drastic re-rating as investors reconsider the outlook for bank profitability given the crackdown on housing investment.
This “tap on the brakes” is, in the estimation of some analysts, effectively as good as an increase in interest rates, which will basically take some of the heat out of the property market.
WITH ALL THIS HAPPENING, ATTRACTING PEOPLE TO LIVE IN AUSTRALIA IS VITAL
Chart: RBA
With this backdrop, sustained demand for residential property is arguably the most important force in this economy. It’s the lifeblood of the banking system, not to mention the retirement plan and investment of choice for millions of families.
If the Irish experience tells you anything, it’s that people being prepared to choose somewhere else to live because of a force beyond your control can be the start of something very difficult.
So the importance of migration intake – and the desire and willingness of people to come live in Australia – becomes clear.
This year, the Reserve Bank of Australia made an adjustment to its economic outlook because data had shown that migration into Australia was not as strong as expected. Here’s the RBA in its Statement on Monetary Policy last month:
Lower population growth has important implications for the economy. It lowers the growth in demand for goods and services, as well as the economy’s capacity to supply those goods and services. On the demand side, lower population growth would, all else being equal, be associated with less growth in consumption. Over time, it may also reduce the need to expand the capital stock through investment in residential housing, non-residential buildings, machinery & equipment and so forth. At the same time, lower population growth implies that there are fewer individuals available to be employed in producing goods and providing services.
So overall, clearly, it’s not a desirable situation.
When we talk about “Australia’s competitiveness”, real policy settings matter, especially tax settings. Having high rates of personal income tax and corporate tax rates can make a difference to people’s decisions to come live and work here.
With taxation reform now high on the political agenda and likely to be a central issue in the next federal election, the debate about these policy settings really should understand that the migration intake is not just about bringing in skills, but about sustaining some pretty important parts of the domestic economy, too.
On the facts available, there is no indication Australia is at risk of going through anything like what happened to Ireland. But there’s no harm in understanding the lessons about debt buildup, speculating, and the importance of risk levels in banking loans that it offers.
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Follow Business Insider Australia on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.Strategies for understanding game artifacts
A common (and sensible) way for a game designer to improve his or her understanding of a design-in-progress is to playtest a prototype. Doing so gives the designer empirical information about what players do in the game (and when and how they do it), as well as about their subjective reactions. There has been considerable recent work in using visualization and AI tools to improve the process of collecting and understanding this empirical information. The most well-known visualization is probably the, a map of a game level color-coded by how frequently some event occurs in each part of the map, allowing a quick visual representation of, e.g., where players frequently die. This can be extended into more complex analysis of gameplay patterns, characterization of play styles, and analysis of subjective player experience.
In all these approaches, the source of information is exclusively the player. Empirical information is collected from players, by methods such as logging their playthroughs, tracking their physiological responses during play, administering a post-play survey, etc. Then this data is analyzed and visualized in order to understand the game and the gameplay it produces, with a view towards revising the design.
For some kinds of game-design questions, it's sensible or even necessary for our source of information to be empirical data from players. If we want to know if a target audience finds a game fun, or what proportion of players notice a hidden room, we have them play the game and find out. But an additional purpose of playtesting is for the designer to better understand their game artifact, in the sense of a system of code and rules that works in a certain way. Some common results of playtesting aren't really empirical facts at all. When the designer looks over a player's shoulder and remarks, "oops, you weren't supposed to be able to get there without talking to Gandalf first", that isn't an empirical fact about players or gameplay that's being discovered, but a logical fact about how the game works.
While this kind of improved understanding of a game artifact can be discovered through playtesting, the only real role of the player in uncovering that kind of information is to put the game through its paces, so the designer can observe it in action. We need not treat the game as a black box only understandable by looking at what happens when players exercise it, though; we can analyze the game itself to determine how it operates. Indeed, designers do so: when they design rule systems and write code, they have mental models of how the game they're designing should work, and spend considerable time mentally tracing through possibilities, carefully working out how rules will interact, and perhaps even building Excel spreadsheets before the game ever sees a playtester. Can we use AI and visualization techniques to augment that thinking-about-the-game-artifact job of the designer, the way we've augmented thinking about player experience?
As you might guess, my answer is yes. Here I'll sketch seven strategies for doing so, several existing and others new. While they can be used as alternatives to player-based metrics and visualizations for some kinds of design questions, especially early on in prototyping (so that the designer can focus playtesting on more subjective or experiential questions), many also work naturally alongside existing metrics/visualization approaches. Although my own work has been based on modeling game mechanics in symbolic logic, here I'll attempt to discuss strategies in a way that's open to a range of technical approaches that could be used to realize them—focusing on what we might want to get out of analyzing games and why.
Strategy 1: "Is this possible?"
The easiest questions to ask are of the form: can X happen? Examples: Is the game winnable? Can the player collect every item? Can the player die while still in the first room? Can the player die right on this spot I'm clicking? Can both of these doors ever be locked at the same time?
This strategy answers any yes/no question whose answer is determined directly by the rules of the game: whether a game state is possible, or an event can ever happen, given all possible player behaviors. In fact questions might not even involve variation on the player's part, but variation in the system: Do enemies ever spawn at the bottom of a pit?
This analysis strategy could be exposed directly to the designer in a query setup. Alternately, classes of answers can be visualized. For example, we can ask, for every square in a grid-divided level, whether the player could die there, and color-code the map accordingly, producing a version of the popular player-death heatmap that shows instead where it is possible for players to die.
Consider this pair of player-death heatmaps on a toy example level:
On the left is a heatmap of where deaths empirically happened in a few playthroughs of a room in a Zelda-like game; and on the right, a map of where it's possible to die. There's a clear structural pattern immediately visible in the second figure, derived from the game rules rather than from empirical playtest data: the player can only die in two specific rows. In the first figure, this pattern hasn't quite been made clear via the pattern of empirical player deaths. Especially with more complex patterns, it can take a lot of playtesting data to spot these sorts of structural features in the possibility space, which are usually caused by unnoticed interactions of rules, or interactions between game mechanics and level design. In addition, it can be useful to have both kinds of heatmaps, to allow the designer to disentangle which patterns are caused by the possibility space, and which are caused by patterns within player behavior. A figure like the second one can even be used to tweak level design at a more detailed level, e.g. to place safe spots.
Several techniques can been used to implement this strategy. For example, we can playtest games with a simulated player that evolves itself in order to try to achieve particular outcomes. My own work uses [pdf] logical inference for query-answering. More specific (and likely more efficient) algorithms can be used for special cases of possibility as well; for example, flood-fill algorithms are sometimes used to make sure there are no disconnected parts of a level, and graph-reachability algorithms can be used for similar purposes. A challenge with using these special-case algorithms in a larger system is to automatically recognize when they're applicable, and in which variants; for example, basic flood-fill suffices for reachability as long as a level doesn't involve movable walls or keys.
Strategy 2: "How is this possible?"
Beyond finding that something is possible, a designer often wants to know how it could happen. In player metrics this is answered by collecting a log or trace of the actions the player took, along with information about game state (such as the player's position and health). These traces can be used both for debugging (to track down how something happened when it shouldn't have been possible), and as a way to understand the dynamics of the game world, by looking at the paths that can lead to various game states. Here's an admittedly fairly boring event log of a player dying after walking up to a monster and then doing nothing.
happens(move(player,north),1)
happens(attack(monster,player),2)
happens(attack(monster,player),3)
happens(die(player),3)
This log could be elaborated with the value of various game states at each point in the log, such as the player's position and health. However, its boringness raises the follow-on question: can you show me not only ways that something is possible, but interesting ways that it could happen? For some outcomes, like those that should never happen, any log is interesting, but for others this is a trickier question. One approach is to let the designer interactively refine the trace they're requesting. In this example, they could ask for a way the player dies without ever standing around doing nothing, and then go on to add more caveats if the result were still too mundane; this can be thought of as trace zooming.
In a simulation framework, the log of how something is possible would simply be a log of the actions taken during the successful simulation run (although it may take time to recompute new runs if something like interactive zooming is offered). In a logical framework, it can be posed as an abduction problem: finding a sequence of events that, if they happened, would explain how the sought-after outcome could come about; zooming would be abduction with added constraints on the explanations. It's also possible to view finding a path to an outcome as a planning problem within the story world, and use a classical AI planner. For example, we can find solutions to game levels and display them as comic-like sequences [pdf] of illustrated events.
Strategy 3: Necessity and dependencies
Once we know what things are possible, and how they can happen, we might also want to know what must happen. Can you beat Final Fantasy VI without ever casting "Meteo"? Which quests can the player skip? Is this powerful sword I just added to the game needed or superfluous?
These kinds of questions also relate to the questions that can be asked via the first two strategies. Some kinds of necessity questions can be rephrased in terms of whether it's possible to reach a particular state that lacks the property we want to determine the necessity of. For example, whether it's necessary to level-up to level 5 before reaching the second boss is equivalent to asking whether it's possible to reach that boss while at a level of 4 or below. Other kinds of necessity questions can be rephrased in terms of zooming in on traces. For example, asking whether a particular sword is necessary to beat the game is equivalent to asking for a gameplay trace where the player beats the game, which doesn't contain the pick-up-that-sword event.
In empirical playtesting, it's common to collect metrics about usage: how many players achieve a particular quest, use each item, etc. Similarly to how we can juxtapose empirical data with analytically determined possibilities in Strategy 1, in this strategy we can juxtapose empirical data with analytically determined necessities. Of course, if the empirical results show less than 100% for some item or event, it couldn't have been necessary, but on the other hand there may be things that 100% of our playtesters did which aren't actually necessary, which this game-analysis strategy would distinguish.
More automatic dependency analysis is also possible. For example, asking whether it's necessary for event A to precede event B, or vice versa, can let us build up a graph of necessary event ordering, which at a glance indicates some of the causal structure of the game world. That includes causal structure that wasn't explicitly written; for example, entering a locked room might have several explicit preconditions, like the player needing to find a key before entering, but also several implicit preconditions caused by interaction of other rules, like the player needing to find a particular suit of armor before entering (because there is simply no way they can successfully get to the room without having first acquired that suit of armor).
To my knowledge, no existing game-analysis work explicitly aims at this kind of automatic necessity or dependency analysis. My own work follows the approach, described in this section, of reducing necessity and dependency analysis to a series of queries implemented using strategies 1 and 2.
Strategy 4: Thresholds
Sometimes there are magic numbers delineating the boundaries of possible behavior, or of a certain regime of game behavior. What is the shortest possible time to complete a Super Mario Bros. level? What range of money could a SimCity player possess when five minutes into the game?
This strategy can give useful information often not discovered in initial playtesting, for example by finding speedruns of a level, or cheats to quickly finish it, that the usually not-yet-expert-at-the-game players in a playtesting session wouldn't have found. In addition, it can be paired profitably with empirical player data to give an idea of how close the particular range of data being observed comes to the theoretical bounds that the game's rules define. For example, any metrics graph that graphs players as a distribution on a numerical scale could also draw bounds of the largest and smallest possible values—and not just largest or smallest in the sense of the value's hypothetical range (e.g. a score defined as 0 to 100), but largest and smallest actually reachable in the specific context.
In addition to telling us whether playthroughs significantly different on a particular metric's axis from the empirically observed ones are possible, the relationship between the empirical range of data and the theoretical extrema can tell us something about the players in our playtest. For example, in one experiment [pdf] we discovered that the typical players in our playtest of an underground-mining game were much more cautious with returning to the surface to refuel than was strictly necessary. This can then be used in concert with Strategy 2 to figure out how to achieve the threshold values.
In a logic-based approach, thresholds can be found using a branch-and-bound method. A possible solution (of any value) is first found, and then a constraint is added that a new solution be better than the one already found (e.g. shorter, if we're looking for the shortest playthrough). Then we look for another solution meeting the new constraints, and repeat until no additional solutions are found. This has the advantage of generality, but can be slow.
Future work on the problem could explicitly use an optimization method, whether a randomized one like genetic algorithms, or a mathematical one like linear programming. In addition, there are a wide range of algorithms to find maximal or minimal solutions to more specific problems. For example, given a model of a level, we can find the shortest spatial path through the level using a standard algorithm like Dijkstra's algorithm. As with the specialized algorithms in Strategy 1, a difficulty in using these specialized algorithms would be automatically determining when they're applicable; for example, the shortest spatial path through a level may not be the shortest actually achievable path, given the game mechanics—it might not even be a lower bound, if the mechanics include teleportation. On the other hand, these kinds of differences might also give information; the difference between the shortest spatial path through a level and the shortest path that a player could possibly achieve through a level might give an indication of its worst-case difficulty, for example, since it would mean that there is some minimal level of off-perfect-path movement the player would have to perform.
Strategy 5: State-space characterization
The strategies so far can be seen as trying to probe a game's state-space from various perspectives. Could we more directly analyze and characterize the state-space of a game?
One possibility is to try to visualize the state space. In any nontrivial game, the full branching state graph will be unreasonably large to display outright. However, it may be possible [pdf] to cluster or collapse the possible dynamics into a smaller representation of meaningful states and dynamics. In addition, techniques developed for summarizing the state space of empirical player data could be applied to summarizing sampled traces from the overall space of possible playthroughs.
More interactively, single traces can display some information about their neighbors in the state space; for example, branch points might show alternate events that could have happened at a given point in the trace, besides the event that actually happened in that trace. This can be used to "surf" the space of possible playthroughs, in a more exploratory manner than the specifically requested traces returned from Strategy 2. Alternately, we can start with empirically collected traces and observe their possibility-space neighbors; this can be used to bootstrap a small amount of playtesting data into a larger amount of exploration, by showing possible—but not actually observed—gameplay that is similar to the observed gameplay.
Moving into more mathematical territory, games largely based on mathematical approaches such as differential equations, influence maps, and dynamical systems might be analyzed using standard mathematical techniques, such as finding fixed points or attractors or displaying phase-space diagrams. Some basic experimentation along these lines is sometimes done during Excel prototyping, but this area (to my knowledge) remains largely unexplored.
Strategy 6: Hypothetical player-testing
The strategies so far try to investigate the overall way a game operates. We could restrict this by trying to characterize only how a game operates with a particular, perhaps highly simplified, model of a player. Such a restriction is not intended mainly to insert a realistic player model, but to investigate how the game operates in various extreme or idealized cases. For example, what happens when the game is played by a player who always attacks, except heals when low on health? If that player does very well, the game might be a bit too simple. Or, in a multiplayer game, different players could be pitted against each other to see how they fare, which might tell us something about the design space.
The Machinations system simulates hypothetical players playing a Petri net game model, and collects outcomes after a number of runs. My own logic-based system applies strategies 1 through 4 conditioned on a player model, answering various questions about possibility, necessity, etc., under the added assumption that the player is acting in a particular manner. In a slightly different formulation, Monte-Carlo "rollouts" of boardgames pit two possible strategies against each other in a specific point in the game, to determine how they fare against each other.
Strategy 7: Player discovery
While hypothetical players can be useful for probing how a game behaves under various kinds of gameplay, I've found that designers often had difficulty inventing such hypothetical players, and instead wanted the process to work backwards: given a game prototype, could we automatically derive a simple player model that can consistently achieve certain outcomes? For example, rather than having to try out questions such as, "can this game be beaten by just mashing attack repeatedly?", some designers would prefer we analyze the game and come back with: here is the simplest player model that consistently beats your game (e.g., "your game can be beaten by just mashing attack repeatedly").
This question can be seen as a stronger or more generalized version of trace-finding (Strategy 2). Finding how a particular outcome is possible returns one possible instance where it could happen. Finding a player that can consistently make the outcome happen is a compressed description of many such instances.
There are several ways to invent these kinds of player models. One approach is to sample many possible traces reaching the requested state (using techniques from Strategy 2), and then inductively extract a player model from these traces, or perhaps several player models from different clusters of traces. There are already techniques from empirical gameplay metrics that can be used to infer [pdf] such player models, which could be applied to extracted gameplay traces instead.
A different approach is to directly infer whether there exists a player model from a class of simplified players that can reach the desired state. For example: is there any single button a player can mash constantly to beat the game? If not, is there a 2-state button-mashing finite state machine that can consistently beat the game (perhaps alternating between attack and heal)? If not, we can query for state machines with more states, or other kinds of more complex player models. One axis of complexity is how "blind" the player model is: the button-mashing or alternate-between-two-states model ignores the game state completely. If there's no simple blind finite state machine that can beat the game, how about one that only looks at one game state (or two game states)? If a player model of that kind exists, it would tell us something about the game state that is relevant for decision-making. I've been performing some experiments in this kind of player-model inference using logical abduction, but overall the space of possible approaches is quite open.
In multiplayer games, player discovery can be related to game-theory terminology, such as finding optimal strategies (for various kinds of optimality), dominated strategies, etc. While using game theory for videogame analysis or balancing has often been discussed, it seems to resist practical application in part due to the mismatch in scale between the size of games that game-theory software typically handles, and even small videogame prototypes. In particular, most computational game theory assumes either a one-step game, or an iterated (staged) game with relatively few steps, typically as few as three or four; whereas most videogames go on for many timesteps, and have their dynamics emerge over at least slightly longer timescales. Overcoming this problem would require either finding a way to pose many of the interesting problems in terms of less-iterated game-theory problems, or else scaling the tools to many more iterations.
Finally, a large class of gameplay algorithms can be used as player-discovery algorithms of a sort, especially if they produce interesting internal structure that tells us something about the game they learn to play. For example, a reinforcement-learning algorithm that learns a state-value function would be an interesting source of data for augmenting the kinds of state diagrams in Strategy 5, adding to them information about how valuable each state is from the perspective of reaching a particular goal.
* * *
While playtesting games is, and will remain, a valuable source of information about gameplay, the game artifact itself need not be a black box, since we can learn many things about a game design simply by better understanding the game itself—how the rules and code inside the game operate and structure play experience. This analysis of games can benefit from an ecosystem of metrics and visualization techniques that will hopefully grow as rich as that now featured in player metrics research.
Towards that end, I've sketched seven strategies for extracting knowledge from a game artifact: what information we might extract from a game, why we would want to extract it, and how it relates to the kinds of information we can find in playtests. While I've briefly mentioned existing work that tackles the implementation of some of these strategies, much remains unstudied, both in terms of undertaking many kinds of analysis at all, and for those that have been undertaken, in understanding the strengths and weaknesses of various technical approaches to modeling games and extracting information from them. My hope is that this set of proposed strategies will spur some work from diverse technical perspectives on implementing them, as well as start a conversation on the role of understanding game artifacts in game design.Today is the launch of the first classic side-scrolling Metroid title in thirteen years! Samus has well and truly returned, and we loved it! (See our reviews here and here) many fans across the world will be receiving their copies across various stores, many will be mildly annoyed they missed out on one of the special editions and there will be some who may be playing the game post-launch. However you decide to play Metroid: Samus Returns, we hope you have a ton of fun! Ultimately, this is what truly matters!
For those of you who are just about to get stuck into the game, our content writer Deceptimike has written up some tips for playing Metroid: Samus Returns that should help you on your mission to planet SR388! Struggling with that Melee-Counter? Want to get the most out of your Aeion abilities? Perhaps you’re struggling to find where those last remaining items are! Our tips should help you through, and we hope to extend these tips to other games in the franchise over time!
If you’re playing the game, be sure to tell us what you think! We would love to hear from you on Twitter and Facebook!
Today, a legend returned! Enjoy every second of it Metroid fans!The president of CNN said Donald Trump wants to “delegitimize journalism.”
In a recent interview with New York Magazine, Jeff Zucker defended his network’s decision to report on an unsubstantiated 35-page dossier that claimed the Russian government has comprising information about the president-elect.
“I actually think this was a pretty easy call in terms of its news value,” Zucker said. “The fact is, the top four intelligence chiefs of the United States decided to include in their briefing to the president and president-elect a two-page summary of allegations involving the president-elect. That is newsworthy by any definition.” (RELATED: WikiLeaks Blasts
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a blind eye when political protests have transformed into anti-Semitic mob actions," said Berman, the Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
He said that European societies in the long run have to find a way to grapple with their failed immigration policies and achieve more effective integration, he said. This includes more efficiently integrating immigrants into the cultural expectations of their new societies.
"Post–World War II Europe had as a core value a rejection of the anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust. Europeans have to develop a pedagogy that can pass that value on to the new members of their communities," said Berman.
Roots of hatred
The recent eruption of anti-Semitism in Europe has multiple causes, according to Berman. The continent's lagging economy, the influx of immigrants from Muslim countries and the ongoing Israeli and Palestinian conflict are large factors.
And as last year's European parliament elections revealed, right-wing extremism has grown across Europe, he said.
"The far right is historically a home of anti-Semitism wrapped in nationalism and xenophobia. Some of this development can be attributed to the ongoing economic crisis, but some is certainly also a reaction against what is sometimes called the 'democracy deficit' in the European Union," Berman said.
Some Europeans believe their national political life has been subordinated to a "transnational bureaucracy" in the form of the European Union, Berman said. He added that this breeds resentment, and one expression of that is anti-Semitism, which is coinciding with traditional European nationalism.
Berman added, "Clearly this does not apply to all Muslims in Europe, but it has become an unmistakable feature in those population cohorts susceptible to radicalization as a response to a sense of social marginalization."
In Europe, immigrant populations are often clustered in de facto segregated neighborhoods, forming a parallel society, Berman said.
"While policies of multiculturalism have in the United States often contributed to productive integration, in Europe they have worked differently and undermined social cohesion. In that context, anti-Semitism has festered," he said.
Ongoing conflicts in the Middle East have also fanned the flames of European anti-Semitism, Berman said. Meanwhile, protests did not arise in Europe when Muslims and Christians were massacred in recent months in Syria and Iraq.
"A year ago, one could still make an at least conceptual distinction between anti-Zionism [criticism of Israel] and anti-Semitism [hatred of Jews]," he said.
The events in the past months in the streets of Europe have erased that distinction, Berman said.
"The politics of criticizing Israel have been fully taken over by anti-Semites, whether from the traditional European far right, the extremist left or parts of the immigrant communities," he said.
Anti-capitalism, economic downturns
When the European economy soured, leaving many young people unemployed at a time of surging globalism – all against a "residual" communist backdrop that still exists in parts of Europe – anti-Semitism was the result, according to Berman.
"That inherent anxiety and free-floating animosity in Europe turns into hostility to minorities," he said. "It can generate both anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim prejudices, but anti-capitalism is today, as it has been historically, a particular source of anti-Semitism."
Berman calls this left-wing anti-Semitism – the targeting Jews as the symbols of capitalism – which he says has a long history. "A socialist leader of the 19th century once called anti-Semitism 'the anti-capitalism of fools,' and that's part of what we still see today," Berman said.
Opportunity, education, the future
Amir Eshel, a professor of German studies and of comparative literature, said Europe needs to do a better job of integrating Muslim immigrants into their new societies. In particular, he said, more economic opportunities must be given to people from disenfranchised communities.
"Nothing is as important as giving people opportunities to make their lives better," said Eshel, the Edward Clark Crossett Professor in Humanistic Studies. He is also an affiliated faculty member at the Europe Center in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
Eshel points to important roles for the media and educational systems to play in clamping down on anti-Semitism. There are programs in place – International Holocaust Remembrance Day, for example – to remind people about the evil inflicted on Jews in Europe more than 60 years ago.
"What has changed is that young people are less biographically connected to these crimes of the past," said Eshel.
"When this happens, as the Holocaust drifts further in time, a certain sensibility arises that one should not be bound by the lessons of the past," he said.
Anti-Semitism in Europe, he said, is the worst he's seen or known about since the end of World War II. He's especially worried about the large numbers of Muslims from Britain and France who have joined the jihadist movements in places like Syria and Iraq.
"It's not going to be easy to track them if they return," Eshel noted, "and it'll be a challenge for many years in Europe."
Fear among Jews
History Professor Norman Naimark said that some French Jews are leaving the country because of ongoing anti-Semitic violence.
"Germany has also experienced an ongoing problem on both the extreme left and right, but there the authorities and the Jewish community seem to have the situation under control," added Naimark, the Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor in Eastern European Studies.
Naimark, the director of the Stanford Global Studies Division and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, described European anti-Semitism as following an oscillating curve up and down, especially in times of Middle East crises.
"England seems particularly susceptible to these kinds of oscillations," he said.
Media Contact
Russell Berman, German Studies and Comparative Literature: (650) 723-1069, [email protected]
Amir Eshel, German Studies and Comparative Literature: (650) 723-0413, [email protected]
Norman Naimark, History: (650) 723-2674, [email protected]
Clifton B. Parker, Stanford News Service: (650) 725-0224, [email protected] words from Indians owner Paul Dolan were jarring. Speaking at an Akron radio station’s speaker series on Wednesday, Dolan said the Indians and the baseball commissioner’s office are “not exactly aligned” on the future of Chief Wahoo, an Indians logo that is beloved by many of the team’s fans, and considered offensive by others outside of Cleveland, and surely some in that city, too.
Not exactly aligned? What exactly are the Indians waiting for, a preferred positioning of the moon, the sun and the stars?
No, the battle is over, and Dolan knows it. He acknowledged as much, saying, “We will come to some understanding some time relatively soon, meaning before the start of the 2018 season, and maybe sooner than that.” What he needs to embrace is that the time is right for the Indians to move on from Wahoo now, even as he spoke of the “emotional attachment” that many Clevelanders feel toward the logo.
The ongoing controversy about Wahoo is a...Today, on 12 March, the European Parliament has adopted the Annual Report on Human Rights and Democracy in the world 2013. Several clauses of this document are relevant to Armenia, especially the paragraph that “calls, ahead of the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, on all the Member States to acknowledge it, and encourages the Member States and the EU institutions to contribute further to its recognition.
European Friends of Armenia (EuFoA) has warmly welcomed this European Parliament report. EuFoA Director, Mr Eduardo Lorenzo Ochoa, comments: “After a long break, the European Parliament reasserts its position on the Armenian Genocide, and again reaffirms that genocides and their denials are a human rights matter. During this special year, we are thankful for this strong signal of European solidarity with the Armenian people.”
In addition, the text adopted by the EP puts a particular focus on the question of human rights in the relations with EU partners. Indeed, the very first paragraph of the report states that “the preamble to the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union affirms that the EU ‘places the individual and human dignity at the heart of its activities'”. The reports then adds that “the performance-driven ‘more for more’ approach should guide the EU’s relations with all third countries, that the EU should grant partner countries advanced status only if clear human rights and democracy requirements are met, and that it should not hesitate to freeze this status if those requirements are no longer fulfilled.”
“In practical terms it means that the European Parliament does not want the EU to compromise its stance on human rights, democracy and rule of law when dealing with third countries.” comments Mr Lorenzo Ochoa. “With these two paragraphs in mind, it becomes clear why the report insists on human rights clauses in EU international agreements, including trade agreements. This is also why the report, with its 215 paragraphs, is much longer than the previous yearly reports on that matter. We are very pleased that the EU reasserts its moral authority with this lengthy but clear report.”
The adopted text also recalls the situation of religious minorities, particularly in the Middle East, mentioning among others the Apostolic Armenians. In that particular paragraphs, the Parliament “calls for the EU and its Member States to ensure that religious minorities are respected worldwide, particularly in the Middle East, where Christians, including Catholics, Apostolic Armenians, Copts and Yezidis, and Muslim minorities are being persecuted by ISIS and other terrorist groups.”
The report was drafted by MEP Pier Antonio Panzeri (S&D, Italy) and adopted at the committee level on 9 February and will be published by the European Parliament in the coming days.The actress — who nearly quit the business after a bad experience on a "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie — reveals what it's like to go where no woman (of color, no less) has gone before as she headlines two franchises and a potential third: "My balls are pretty big."
This article first appeared in the August 1 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.
A lot of of movie stars have a franchise on their résumé. Some even have two. But there never has been an actor who has pulled off three humongous ongoing sci-fi action series all at the same time. Until -- just maybe -- now.
Zoe Saldana, the 36-year-old star of Avatar and Star Trek, whose films have reeled in more than $5 billion total box office, is poised for the ultimate Hollywood hat trick with the Aug. 1 opening of Guardians of the Galaxy, Marvel's latest big-budget (reportedly $170 million) effort at transforming a bunch of C-list comic book characters into an Iron Man-sized phenom. Joining Saldana's green-skinned assassin Gamora are Chris Pratt's stranded Earthling Peter Quill, a tattooed bruiser named Drax (Dave Bautista), a walking tree (voiced by Vin Diesel) and a raccoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper) with a predilection for firearms. "If anybody can pull it off, it's Zoe," says J.J. Abrams, who auditioned more than 40 actresses to play Uhura in his 2009 reboot of the Trek series. "When she came in the room," he remembers, "she had this incredible commitment and toughness -- she swore a lot -- and yet she was also really funny and sharp and beautiful. She told us she was right for the part, we didn't tell her."
Alas, Saldana won't be at Comic-Con this year -- she'll be in Europe promoting Guardians -- but THR caught up with her for a long chat before she headed overseas. Below, she reveals what she knows about James Cameron's next three Avatar films, her long love of science fiction and the reality of being an actress of color in today's Hollywood.
You started your career in a giant franchise, with a smallish role in 2003's Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. But you hated it, no?
Those weren't the right people for me. I'm not talking about the cast. The cast was great. I'm talking about the political stuff that went on behind closed doors. It was a lot of above-the-line versus below-the-line, extras versus actors, producers versus PAs. It was very elitist. I almost quit the business. I was 23 years old, and I was like, "F— this!" I am never putting myself in this situation again. People disrespecting me because they look at my number on a call sheet and they think I'm not important. F— you.
And now you're headlining in three simultaneous giant sci-fi franchises -- Guardians of the Galaxy, Star Trek and Avatar. How did that end up happening?
You just gravitate naturally to what your heart yearns for. And I grew up in a very science fiction-driven household. It was odd for me to grow up and go out in the world and not see other women going crazy for science fiction …
Wait a second. You're saying that as a kid you'd come home from school, make yourself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and turn on the TV to watch Star Trek?
Well, not Star Trek. That was too old for me. But I watched Terminator, Aliens, The Hunger, supernatural thrillers, I'm one of the only people who loved Dune. The casting was superb. Not every actor can do a David Lynch movie.
You've proved your geek cred. So, what are Avatar 2, 3, and 4 going to be about? Reveal every plot detail, please.
I wish I knew! I've been told by Jim [Cameron] that it'll be about an overall spiritual journey, but I don't have a script.
OK, then how about Star Trek 3?
I know even less about Trek 3. All I know is that the producers of Trek 3 called the producers of Avatar 2 to find out when Avatar will finish shooting. [They both start shooting next year.]
The sci-fi genre has not always been such a welcoming place for women. In the original Trek, most of the women were in miniskirts or tin-foil bikinis. Even Uhura wasn't much of a role …
She was eye candy. But that's true of every genre. Eighty percent of what's out there is told through the point of view of a male. I can sit down with so many filmmakers for so many projects and play so many actors' girlfriends or wives. But in sci-fi, I can play Gamora.
For those of us who never read the comics, Gamora is an alien assassin with superhuman strength and agility.
She was taken from her planet when she was a child and forced into a life of violence and crime. She reminds me of the lost kids of Sudan, the boys who are taken from their family and have to come back to their villages and shoot everybody. Even though it's a Marvel movie, I take it all very seriously. My husband [Italian artist and ex-soccer player Marco Perego] was a great help with the research for the part. He was talking to another artist who showed us her latest work. It was this matador doing a beautiful march of death with a cape and the sword. I saw it and thought: "That's Gamora. That's what a female assassin would do." She'd seduce her victim. And then I got to England and sat down with the fight coordinators -- these guys were pure testosterone; women were like aliens to them -- and had to convince them that this was what she would do. They'd been designing the fight scenes for weeks before I got there, but I was like, "No."
Is it true you almost broke co-star Chris Pratt's ribs during a fight scene?
I almost kicked him in the nuts. He was like (in a high-pitched voice), "It's fine, it's fine." (Laughs.) I love that about men. They're determined to maintain their dignity. Even when they're crushed.
There's a rumor going around that you got married last year after only a month of knowing your husband.
No! I've known my partner for five years. I knew of his work. I knew of him. Then we met. And months later, we both made the decision to do what we both individually vowed never to do -- to get married.
You vowed never to get married?
Why get married? Because I believe in love? Because I don't want my kids to be called bastards? No. Those reasons are not natural to me. Maybe for tax reasons I would have done it.
What turned it around?
He did. And as soon as we decided we were going to get married, we didn't wait. We did it three weeks later. That part was very, very quick.
There's also a story about your mom once mistaking Thandie Newton for you …
Yeah, that's true. She saw a poster for Crash and called me to ask me why I didn't tell her I was in a movie with Matt Dillon.
Are you often mistaken for other actors?
I've gotten Kerry Washington and Jada Pinkett, too, but mainly Thandie. People ask me if I'm offended that I'm confused with every other black actress out there. "Doesn't it bother you that people think you're all the same person?" No. Because one time I entered a restaurant and there were all these beautiful blond girls around a table, probably all from Orange County. It felt like it might have been a high school reunion or something. There were like 20 beautiful girls, but they were all the same. I couldn't tell any of them apart.
So is Hollywood getting better about race? Do you feel resistance?
I don't want to spend my life thinking about all the impossibilities I face when I wake up in the morning. But the reality is, I'm a woman of color in America. That itself is enough for you to wake up and go, "Oh, f—!"
Well, you've done pretty well.
My balls are pretty big. There's a confidence that my sisters and I were raised with. After my dad died [in a car accident, when she was 9], my mom moved us from Queens back to the Dominican Republic. A very macho sort of place. But my mom raised us to know that we are equal to anyone. Whenever we went out, if we were meeting other people, my mom would always say, "I hope you like them." Not "I hope they like you." We were the most important.
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Your skin tone has changed from blue in Avatar to green in Guardians …
And this time it was actual makeup. Avatar was motion-capture, so everything was done in post. But Guardians was the way it's normally done. You get picked up at 3:30 in the morning and spend 4½ hours getting things glued and spray-painted on to your face.
Which did you like better?
Avatar. Working in the volume, doing performance-capture. Because you don't have to worry about what you're going to look like. That gets added later. You just play the character.
Are you worried about getting typecast in sci-fi? Are you longing to do a serious drama set in a one-room cottage in the woods?
A lot of the people who have power -- the ones doing the casting or writing reviews -- these are people who put people in boxes. They look at what I've done and think, "Oh she's a sci-fi beauty queen." I wish that wasn't the case. I didn't purposely avoid doing things other than sci-fi. In between Avatar, Star Trek and Guardians, I've done other films, right here on Earth.
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Like the Nina Simone biopic coming out later this year. You've been blue and you've been green, but ironically the movie that generated the most controversy is the one in which you're brown. There was criticism that you were too light-skinned to play Simone.
You have to try to understand where people are coming from. This has always been an issue in our society. A white person can play Cleopatra, even though Cleopatra was a North African woman who in reality had coffee skin. But that's not sellable in Hollywood. So you get Elizabeth Taylor with purple eyes. So there's always been a lot of tension in the African-American community about Hollywood being a whitewashing machine. But that wasn't the case with Nina. There were so many other variables that people don't know about. I wasn't the first person to step up to the plate. They went out to everybody for the part. There were other people attached for years [like Mary J. Blige]. And they just decided not to do it. And at the end of the day, we had to tell this story. It's our duty to go out and tell stories about women and about people of color because we don't do that enough.
Race doesn't seem to matter as much in sci-fi.
You know why? Because the people we discriminate against in sci-fi movies are the aliens. We make them the villains. We have to make somebody bad.January’s cold, dry weather in many areas of the United States seems to usher in the perfect conditions for seasonal influenza — in humans. But for birds in Europe and Asia, flu season is already in full swing: An epidemic of the H5N8 flu has broken out among European poultry. In Asia, the H5N6 strain is widespread, and another strain, H7N9, has infected birds and even killed three people.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, flu activity in the United States is “elevated” as of the beginning of January, but there’s no epidemic. However, for those of us keeping an eye on flu headlines, questions remain, like: What do all those "Hs" and "Ns" in these flue names mean? And how do they relate to our seasonal flu shot?
As it turns out, there are many different kinds of influenza, and they typically mutate easily and frequently. The Hs and Ns in the names of some flu strains are short for hemagglutinin and neuraminidase — two proteins on the surface of the Type A influenza virus allowing it to grab onto and infect cells. Hemagglutinin has 18 subtypes, and neuraminidase has 11 — those subtypes are what the numbers refer to.
But that’s not all: Flu can be Type A, B, C or D. In humans, seasonal flu is caused by Type A and Type B. (Type A strains are more common, but Type B strains are thought to be more dangerous for children.) There’s also Type C, which is usually very mild, and Type D, which mainly infects cattle.
In the United States, the annual flu vaccine is based on strains that circulated in Asia the year before. This year, the flu vaccine protects against Type A strains H1N1 and H3N2, as well as the Type B “Brisbane” strain. (B strains aren’t divided into H and N subgroups, like Type A strains are — instead, they’re named for their place of origin.)
While many kinds of animals can get the flu, our main sources of infection — besides other people — are pigs and birds. Migrating birds carry avian flu all over the world, infecting domestic poultry flocks. The H5N8 epidemic in Europe has already led to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of chickens, ducks and turkeys, and some 30 million birds have been killed in Korea to prevent the spread of H5N6.
While avian influenzas usually don’t infect humans, they can be deadly when they do. Experts think the flu strain that swept the globe in 1918 was a mutated bird flu. And the current H7N9 — a mild illness for ducks and chickens — has killed three people and sickened dozens in China.
So while most avian flus remain “for the birds,” public health officials are constantly alert — because there’s always the danger that the usually mild illnesses could mutate, spawning the next global outbreak.
This article is based on reporting by Helen Palmer that aired on PRI’s Living on Earth.On Thursday, Hillary Clinton wrote a love letter in Time magazine to Elizabeth Warren. But what she did next is even more important for the faction of the Democratic Party that's passionate about tightening the screws on Wall Street: she hired Gary Gensler as her campaign's chief financial officer.
Who is Gary Gensler?
Gensler is a former banker at Goldman Sachs who became an unlikely hero of the financial reform movement during his stint as chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
Viewed biographically, Gensler is an example of the revolving door between business and government — he was a Goldman exec who was handed a huge job regulating his former colleagues. But he was much tougher on the financial industry than Obama administration officials like Tim Geithner and Larry Summers.
Gina Chon of the Financial Times led her article about Gensler stepping down with the observation that he is "regarded by some as one of the toughest regulatory cops policing Wall Street."
Tom Ashbrook of NPR called him "a hero to those who call for a crackdown on Wall Street."
Ben Protess of the New York Times wrote, "Even as Mr. Gensler’s aggressive streak thrust the once-backwater agency into the front lines of reform, it also maddened colleagues and complicated his legacy."
In the course of gaining this reputation for regulatory toughness, Gensler made a lot of enemies in the mainstream of the Obama economic team. Part of what reformers liked about him was that he was willing to fight with other stakeholders in the administration and wasn't afraid to dish about those fights to reform-minded journalists. To the White House and the Treasury Department, this was doubly infuriating. To Gensler's fans, the low esteem in which he was held by his colleagues made him that much more heroic.
Gensler's odd job on Hillary's campaign
The job of campaign chief financial officer has, of course, nothing to do with derivatives regulation, the Volcker Rule, or any of the other things Gensler clashed with people about.
But as a gesture, the indication that Gensler is in Clinton's good graces is a very loud and clear dog whistle to financial reformers and to journalists who cover these agencies. It also implies that after leaving the Obama administration with a slew of smoking bridges, Gensler might be in line for a top financial regulation job in a hypothetical Clinton administration.
This is, for Wall Street skeptics, a huge deal: Gensler is the kind of regulator a President Elizabeth Warren would be expected to pick, not a President Clinton. But if Clinton is going to pick the kinds of regulators Warren was going to pick, then the difference between them isn't as large as many thought.
Gensler opens doors to other hires
Associating with Gensler is clever in another way, as he is very much a poster boy for the proposition that the relationship between working on Wall Street and regulating Wall Street is more complicated than simplistic analysis would suggest. Compared with Geithner or Summers or Ben Bernanke, Gensler had much deeper personal and professional ties to the world of big-time banking — yet he was still much tougher.
Indeed, on the CFTC itself Gensler often found himself clashing with Mark Wetjen, a Democratic commissioner and former Harry Reid staffer who took a generally more moderate line than Gensler and who also lacked Gensler's Wall Street background.
All of which is to say that Gensler is a good guy to have around if you are planning to hire some more folks with Wall Street experience and want to defuse concern that this means you are bringing in a bunch of patsies for the banking industry. For example, when Obama tried to tap former Lazard investment banker Antonio Weiss for a top Treasury job, Gensler would have been a good person to point to as an example of how these relationships can work out fine.
Except the Obama-Gensler relationship was so bad, Obama can't point to Gensler as an example of anything. By rebuilding the relationship, Clinton now can. He's simultaneously outreach to Wall Street haters and cover to work with Wall Street veterans. It's a very shrewd move, and a reminder that whatever her limitations as a charismatic public figure, Clinton is a profoundly skilled practitioner of other aspects of the political game.The Securities and Exchange Commission, which demands good accounting in the corporate world, has considerable trouble keeping its own books, according to a report this week by federal auditors.
A $58 million accounting problem here. A $102 million mistake there. A $452 million item somewhere else that was not properly disclosed until the auditors caught it.
A review by the Government Accountability Office found “a litany of issues... which frankly the SEC should have prevented or detected on its own,” said Jeannette Franzel, a managing director at the GAO.
The problems are not new: Auditors have been issuing warnings about the SEC’s internal accounting for years, and the SEC has acknowledged weaknesses. But the situation worsened in 2010 as temporary patches failed, according to GAO officials.
Instead of trying to rebuild its troubled systems, the SEC has decided to outsource its financial reporting to another part of the government, the Department of Transportation.
That will not solve the problem completely, because some of the work must still be done at the SEC, auditors said.
The GAO report pertained to the SEC’s financial reporting, not its performance regulating companies and markets, SEC spokesman John Nester said.
The commission’s chairman, Mary L. Schapiro, recently told a Senate Committee that the weaknesses at her agency were “unacceptable.” She said they were caused by “years of underinvestment in financial systems technology.”
Experts say there are many reasons for concern when an agency’s accounting is in disarray. The agency could wind up spending money that it doesn’t have, for instance. Congress could be handicapped as it tries to oversee the agency’s performance or make decisions about its budget. What’s more, someone trying to disrupt the agency could tamper with numbers.
The GAO concluded that, after various errors were caught, the financial statements the SEC issued for 2010 were accurate. That was not a vote of confidence.
“We found that they are at risk that they could get it wrong in the future and not know it,” Franzel said.
Some parts of the federal government are in worse shape than the SEC. For the 2010 fiscal year, the financial records of the departments of Defense, Labor and Homeland Security were in such disarray that they could not even be audited, according to the GAO.
Unlike those departments, the SEC is in the business of regulating accounting and auditing, making its shortcomings particularly problematic.
In a March 29 letter to the SEC chairman, the GAO detailed an array of glitches.
The agency collects fines in enforcement cases, and it distributes that money to the U.S. Treasury or to investors who were victims of the fraud. But it essentially lost track of $102 million, failing to record that it had been transferred to the Treasury, according to the GAO.
The SEC was supposed to provide details about the finances of an investor protection fund, but as it drafted its financial disclosures it neglected to break out a $452 million item until the GAO noted the omission.
In many cases, SEC personnel paid contractors’ bills without proper approval. More than half of the 67 “non-payroll disbursements” that auditors examined had been handled improperly.
The agency is supposed to collect interest on delinquent fines assessed in enforcement cases. But when it came to fines ordered by federal courts, the SEC did not record the amount of interest it was owed until the fines were paid.
As of the middle of last year, $464 million of interest on court judgements was delinquent.
The GAO letter also highlighted the fact that many of the penalties the SEC trumpets are never collected. Some alleged wrongdoers may lack the funds.
As of Sept. 30, the SEC was owed $657 million in fines and “disgorgement” — the surrender of ill-gotten gains — but the agency expected that $575 million of that would go uncollected.
The GAO also warned that the SEC is exceptionally vulnerable to a calamity. A key administrative center in Alexandria and another facility for backup data are located so near each other that both could be taken out by the same disaster.
In a written response to the GAO, Schapiro said the SEC “is committed to investing the time and resources to put its internal controls over financial reporting on a strong, sustainable path.”NASA is changing the way it is doing business, spending less on traditional contracts and partnering more with the private sector and local governments to further the growth of the commercial space industry.
That transition promises to be a prime preoccupation for the agency’s new top lawyer, Sumara Thompson-King.
Thompson-King became NASA’s general counsel on June 1, replacing Michael Wholley, who held the post since 2004. She is the first woman and the first African American to lead the agency’s legal department, which has about 175 attorneys. She joined NASA’s legal team in 1986 at Goddard Space Flight Center and moved to the agency’s headquarters in 1991 as a senior attorney, litigating disputes over contracts. She rose to associate general counsel of contracts procurement, and later, deputy general counsel.
Thompson-King — her first name is pronounced “sue-MARE-ah, a combination of the names of her great-great grandmother, Sudy, and her great-grandmother, Mary — talked about the agency’s transition last week at the American Bar Association’s Space Law Forum at Jones Day in the District, her first speaking engagement since assuming the general counsel role.
In 1993, she said, NASA spent about 90 percent of its funding on contracts — buying goods and services from contractors to carry out NASA programs — but by 2006 that portion had fallen to 87 percent, and in 2012, it was down to about 80 percent, according to government reports. Today, the agency spends an increasing portion of its resources on collaborating with the commercial space industry and other government agencies, and Thompson-King says those relationships will grow.
“While most of our funding is used for carrying out NASA programs, you see that is going down,” Thompson-King told those gathered at the forum. “We’re spending that money on different types of things, not just contracts.”
Those other avenues include partnering with companies such as Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Orbital Sciences to spur development in the private sector. The agency’s funding efforts to support the commercial space industry began in 2006, when it entered into commercial orbital transportation agreements with those two companies to send cargo to the International Space Station. NASA is seeking a partner in the private sector to help transport crew members to the space station.
NASA is also working with Space Florida, the aerospace economic and development agency that was created by the Florida state legislature to explore ways the private sector could use Kennedy Space Center now that NASA no longer uses the shuttle landing facility there. (The last flight was the Atlantis, in 2011). SpaceX and Boeing have both won approval to use equipment and space at the center.
Space Florida “has been working and talking with us to manage the shuttle landing facility because they want to create a multi-user spaceport facility in that area,” she said. “There is a commercial industry, we all know it’s growing, so the state of Florida wants to encourage that industry. We are now engaged in more conversations and agreements with state and local governments to further commercial space activities.”
NASA’s budget is about 0.5 percent of the U.S. budget, with the president’s fiscal year 2015 budget proposal asking for $17.5 billion for the agency.
Thompson-King said the agency is excited about its goal to send humans to Mars, an undertaking that will require developing new technology including solar electric propulsion, which the agency has commissioned contractors to study.
“These are really interesting times for us,” she said. “We’re doing a lot, and we’re doing things differently.”
The agency is not permitted to formally lobby Congress, but it does regularly meet with members of Congress and their staff to educate them on how the agency works, Thompson-King said.
“We recognize we have 435 [House] members who may not really understand what exactly NASA does,” she said. “We’re spending a lot of time within the agency to educate Congress, to provide technical assistance and give them information about our program so they better understand what we’re doing and why we’re doing it, so when they vote for funding on the programs, they have a better understanding of what we do.”Reporters wait for the arrival of White House press secretary Sean Spicer in the James Brady Press Briefing Room on June 23. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
White House Correspondents’ Association President Jeff Mason on Monday night alleged that the White House had drafted him to criticize the work of other reporters. “There have definitely been times over the last several months where the White House has come to us — often to me specifically — asking that we or I intervene and criticize a member news organization or reporter,” said Mason at an event held at the White House Historical Association.
The topic brought to mind a specific instance: “In one case, and I won’t say the name, but in one case, I was asked to on behalf of the WHCA to release a statement criticizing a reporter’s story,” said Mason, to a wave of disbelief in the conference room. “And I said ‘No,’ because that’s not what we do and that’s not something we would ever do.”
For background, the White House Correspondents’ Association has a mission of ensuring “a strong free press and robust coverage of the presidency by advocating for access by the media to the President, White House events and administration officials.” The idea is to bug whatever administration is occupying the White House for as much official face time as possible — and that includes interviews, photo availability and wide-open press briefings, which have become an endangered species under President Trump.
WHCA leaders spent as much time explaining what they do not do as what they actually do. They do not issue media credentials to the White House. They do not decide who gets called on in briefings. And they certainly do not cast editorial judgment on the work of their member organizations.
That White House officials ever supposed that the WHCA would indeed slam a specific news report speaks to one of two possibilities: 1) The White House has no idea how this whole thing works; or 2) It cares not a whit about attempting to turn a neutral organization of long standing into a political tool. In his comments, Mason mentioned a “learning curve for the White House to figure out our role, but we have made very clear what our role is.”
Moments after Mason made his comments, he was apprised that Twitter had lit up
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importance.
The fact is that today millions of Jews live in Israel and, ancestral homeland or not, this is their home now. As for whether Jews constitute a people, this is a vexed question given the lack of consensus in general about what it takes for any particular group of people to count as “a people.” The notion of “a people” can be interpreted in different ways, with different consequences for the rights that they possess. My point is that even if we grant Jews their peoplehood and their right to live in that land, there is still no consequent right to a Jewish state.
However, I do think that it’s worth noting the historical irony in insisting that it is anti-Semitic to deny that Jews constitute a people. The 18th and 19th centuries were the period of Jewish “emancipation” in Western Europe, when the ghetto walls were torn down and Jews were granted the full rights of citizenship in the states within which they resided. The anti-Semitic forces in those days, those opposing emancipation, were associated not with denying Jewish peoplehood but with emphatically insisting on it! The idea was that since Jews constituted a nation of their own, they could not be loyal citizens of any European state. The liberals who strongly opposed anti-Semitism insisted that Jews could both practice their religion and uphold their cultural traditions while maintaining full citizenship in the various nation-states in which they resided.
But, as I said, let’s grant that Jews are a people. Well, if they are, and if with the status of a people comes the right to self-determination, why wouldn’t they have a right to live under a Jewish state in their homeland? The simple answer is because many non-Jews (rightfully) live there too. But this needs unpacking.
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First, it’s important to note, as mentioned above, that the term “a people” can be used in different ways, and sometimes they get confused. In particular, there is a distinction to be made between a people in the ethnic sense and a people in the civic sense. Though there is no general consensus on this, a group counts as a people in the ethnic sense by virtue of common language, common culture, common history and attachment to a common territory. One can easily see why Jews, scattered across the globe, speaking many different languages and defined largely by religion, present a difficult case. But, as I said above, for my purposes it doesn’t really matter, and I will just assume the Jewish people qualify.
The other sense is the civic one, which applies to a people by virtue of their common citizenship in a nation-state or, alternatively, by virtue of their common residence within relatively defined geographic borders. So whereas there is both an ethnic and a civic sense to be made of the term “French people,” the term “Jewish people” has only an ethnic sense. This can easily be seen by noting that the Jewish people is not the same group as the Israeli people. About 20 percent of Israeli citizens are non-Jewish Palestinians, while the vast majority of the Jewish people are not citizens of Israel and do not live within any particular geographic area. “Israeli people,” on the other hand, has only a civic sense. (Of course often the term “Israelis” is used as if it applies only to Jewish Israelis, but this is part of the problem. More on this below.)
So, when we consider whether or not a people has a right to a state of their own, are we speaking of a people in the ethnic sense or the civic one? I contend that insofar as the principle that all peoples have the right to self-determination entails the right to a state of their own, it can apply to peoples only in the civic sense.
After all, what is it for a people to have a state “of their own”? Here’s a rough characterization: the formal institutions and legal framework of the state serves to express, encourage and favor that people’s identity. The distinctive position of that people would be manifested in a number of ways, from the largely symbolic to the more substantive: for example, it would be reflected in the name of the state, the nature of its flag and other symbols, its national holidays, its education system, its immigration rules, the extent to which membership in the people in question is a factor in official planning, how resources are distributed, etc. If the people being favored in this way are just the state’s citizens, it is not a problem. (Of course those who are supercosmopolitan, denying any legitimacy to the borders of nation-states, will disagree. But they aren’t a party to this debate.)
But if the people who “own” the state in question are an ethnic sub-group of the citizenry, even if the vast majority, it constitutes a serious problem indeed, and this is precisely the situation of Israel as the Jewish state. Far from being a natural expression of the Jewish people’s right to self-determination, it is in fact a violation of the right to self-determination of its non-Jewish (mainly Palestinian) citizens. It is a violation of a people’s right to self-determination to exclude them — whether by virtue of their ethnic membership, or for any other reason — from full political participation in the state under whose sovereignty they fall. Of course Jews have a right to self-determination in this sense as well — this is what emancipation was all about. But so do non-Jewish peoples living in the same state.
Any state that “belongs” to one ethnic group within it violates the core democratic principle of equality, and the self-determination rights of the non-members of that group.
If the institutions of a state favor one ethnic group among its citizenry in this way, then only the members of that group will feel themselves fully a part of the life of the state. True equality, therefore, is only realizable in a state that is based on civic peoplehood. As formulated by both Jewish- and Palestinian-Israeli activists on this issue, a truly democratic state that fully respects the self-determination rights of everyone under its sovereignty must be a “state of all its citizens.”
This fundamental point exposes the fallacy behind the common analogy, drawn by defenders of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, between Israel’s right to be Jewish and France’s right to be French. The appropriate analogy would instead be between France’s right to be French (in the civic sense) and Israel’s right to be Israeli.
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I conclude, then, that the very idea of a Jewish state is undemocratic, a violation of the self-determination rights of its non-Jewish citizens, and therefore morally problematic. But the harm doesn’t stop with the inherently undemocratic character of the state. For if an ethnic national state is established in a territory that contains a significant number of non-members of that ethnic group, it will inevitably face resistance from the land’s other inhabitants. This will force the ethnic nation controlling the state to resort to further undemocratic means to maintain their hegemony. Three strategies to deal with resistance are common: expulsion, occupation and institutional marginalization. Interestingly, all three strategies have been employed by the Zionist movement: expulsion in 1948 (and, to a lesser extent, in 1967), occupation of the territories conquered in 1967 and institution of a complex web of laws that prevent Israel’s Palestinian citizens from mounting an internal challenge to the Jewish character of the state. (The recent outrage in Israel over a proposed exclusion of ultra-Orthodox parties from the governing coalition, for example, failed to note that no Arab political party has ever been invited to join the government.) In other words, the wrong of ethnic hegemony within the state leads to the further wrong of repression against the Other within its midst.
There is an unavoidable conflict between being a Jewish state and a democratic state. I want to emphasize that there’s nothing anti-Semitic in pointing this out, and it’s time the question was discussed openly on its merits, without the charge of anti-Semitism hovering in the background.
Joseph Levine is a professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where he teaches and writes on philosophy of mind, metaphysics and political philosophy. He is the author of “Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness.”TITLE: Carving For Cash
SCAMMER NAME: Williams Smith
SCAMMER LOCATION: Lagos, Nigeria
SCAMBAITER: Shiver Metimbers
Mr. Williams Smith contacts me with an impressive opening salvo. Considering the trouble Mr. Smith has gone into his introduction it is only proper that I concoct a counter-scam worthy of his commitment to a solid project. I think we need to set Mr. Smith a challenge. Anyone fancy some artwork?! From: Williams Smith
To: Derek Trotter
Date: January 5, 2006
Subject: Investment/Urgent Attn: Sir/ Madam, May I crave your indulgence to open this business discussion by a formal letter of this sort. It is pertinent that a business of this magnitude should have commenced properly with a formal meeting of you and us to enable us know ourselves, have a fore knowledge of the nature of the business, discuss and acquaint ourselves with the responsibilities and functions of parties concerned, and appropriate sharesaccordingly. However, for time factor, confidentiality and personality of people involved here in Nigeria, we choose this approach for the remittance of this Ten Million, Five Hundred Thousand, U.S. Dollars (US$10.5M). Please bear with us for making the initial contact through e-mail. But my partners are insisting for a meeting in order not to fall into a wrong hand again. I am Mr.F. Williams Smith, we are members of the special committee for Budget and Planning of the Ministry of Petroleum. This committee is principally concerned with contract appraisal and the approval of the contracts in order of priorities as regards capital projects of the past military government of Nigeria.With our positions, we have successfully secured for ourselves this sum of Ten Million, Five Hundred Thousand U.S. Dollars (US$10.5M). This amount was accumulated through undeclared windfall sales of crude oil during the gulf war. Hence together with two of our top officials at the Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), we plan to transfer this amount of money into a secure verseasaccount by awarding a sort of contract from the NNPC.To this effect I have been given the mandate by my colleagues to contact you and ask foryour assistance.What we need from you is to provide a nice account inwhich the funds will be transferred. Everything about me is nice Mr. Smith, so you've hit the jackpot here. My colleagues and I have agreed to compensate you or the owner of the account used for this transaction with 25% of thetotal amount remitted. We shall have 70% and the remaining 5% reserved for taxes and other miscellaneous expenses in your country. It may interest you to know that last two years a similar transaction was carried out with one Mr.RogerWilliams, the President of Craine International Trading Corporation at number 135 East 57th Street, 28th Floor, New York, NY 10022 with telephone number (212)308-7xxx and telex number 6731xxx. After the agreement between both partners in which he was to take 20% of the money while the remaining 80% for us. With all the required documents signed, the money was duly transferred into this account only to be disappointed on our arrival in New York, and we wereeliably informed that Mr. Patrice Miller was no longer on that address while his telephone and telex numbers have been reallocated to somebody else. That was how we lost US$9 Million to Mr. Roger Williams. Roger, if you're reading this I hope you're feeling guilty! This time around we need a more reliable and trustworthy person or a reputable company to do business with hence this letter to you. Yes, I'm your man for reliability Mr. Smith. So if you can prove yourself to be trusted and interested in this deal then we are prepared to do business with you. What we want from you is the assurance that you will let us have our share if this amount (US$10.5M) is transferred into your account. If this proposal is okay by you, then reply through my email urgently so that we can set the ball rolling and negotiate the modalities involved. Kindly, treat as very important and strictly confidential, I honestly assure you that this transaction is 100% risk-free. I look forward to your response and expected co-operation and God bless you. Regards. Mr. Williams Smith Lets open up with a familiar routine to regular readers... From: Derek Trotter
To: Williams Smith
Date: January 6, 2006 Dear Mr. Smith,
Thank you so much for your very interesting email, however I am afraid that I will be unable to help you at this time. These next three months are by far the busiest and most profitable period for my company and I cannot give any time to anything other than the procurement of artwork especially wooden carvings.
You may already know of me since it was you that contacted me. My name is Derek Trotter and I am the director of Trotter Fine Arts Dealer and Art Scholarships. We are dealers in fine art and ethnic art from all over the world and we supply many business and private customers. We own eight art galleries and two scholarship centres here in the UK. We also offer scholarship donations to aid up and coming new artists who may otherwise not have the financial means to be able to produce or improve their work. Our scholarship payments range from between $25,000 and $150,000 depending on the potential of the artist.
I am sorry Mr. Smith but I am unable to enter into your business proposition at this time, however if you have any contacts in your part of the world who have artists who you think may benefit from our financial help then I would be very interested to be put in touch with them. We are especially very keen on promoting new artists with experience in small wood carvings and will be happy to offer a very generous $25,000 to $150,000 scholarship package to young or old artists with good potential. If you know of an artist who could benefit from our financial help and who would be prepared to produce work for us to sell or promote then please do let me know.
I wish you luck in finding somebody to help you.
Sincerely,
Derek Trotter - Director
Trotters Fine Arts
www.deltrotter.co.uk It takes a few days for Williams to reply, and it doesn't look promising. From: Williams Smith
To: Derek Trotter
Date: January 11, 2006
Subject: Re: Investment/Urgent Dear Mr. Derek Trotter,
Your crosspondence letter dated 5/1/2006, was received and the contents there in was dully noted. I am sorry for late response,due to christmas holiday. However, i will like to inform you that we can still transact this business while doing the art business as we will invest the fund into the art business, I assured you free and fair transaction, all I require from you is your honest cooperation to enable us see this transaction through and i guarantee that this will be executed under legitimate arrangement that will protect you from any breach of the law.
This is how the first step will go, We will submit your name as the company and you as the managing director, making you the benefiaciary of the contract sum. The moment we are able to conclude and have the registration certificate, we will apply for the release of the money to you as contract payment for contract perceived to have been executed by you.Once we have the approvals, the contract payment will either be released to you through the governments paying bank or direct wire transfer to your nominated account. Just say you can do it, then we can set the ball rolling. I anticipate a timely response from you now.
I wish you and your family a delighted and prosperious new year.
Yours Faithfully.
Williams. From: Derek Trotter
To: Williams Smith
Date: January 11, 2006 Dear Mr. Smith,
Thank you for your reply however as I have already told you in my previous email, I have no interest in your proposition at this time.
Sincerely,
Derek Trotter - Director
Trotters Fine Arts
www.deltrotter.co.uk Williams doesn't get the message. From: Williams Smith
To: Derek Trotter
Date: January 11, 2006
Subject: Re: Investment/Urgent Mr. Derek,
Thanks for your urgent mail wich is well understood. Note, Because of the trust and confidentiality in this business, that is i have contacted you for us to be partnership in business. However, i would like you to look for a trustworthy and honest person like you, i can transact this business with. I await your urgent response.
Thanking you for your usual understanding.
Remain Bless,
Mr. Williams. From: Derek Trotter
To: Williams Smith
Date: January 11, 2006 Dear Mr. Smith,
I repeat again; I cannot help you with your business proposition and I do not know anybody who can.
Sincerely,
Derek Trotter - Director
Trotters Fine Arts
www.deltrotter.co.uk He doesn't give up easily and sends me a repeat of his email of Jan 11. From: Williams Smith
To: Derek Trotter
Date: January 12, 2006
Subject: Re: Investment/Urgent Dear Mr. Derek Trotter,
Your crosspondence letter dated 5/1/2006, was received and the contents there in was dully noted. I am sorry for late response,due to christmas holiday. However, i will like to inform you that we can still transact this business while doing the art business as we will invest the fund into the art business, I assured you free and fair transaction, all I require from you is your honest cooperation to enable us see this transaction through and i guarantee that this will be executed under legitimate arrangement that will protect you from any breach of the law.
This is how the first step will go, We will submit your name as the company and you as the managing director, making you the benefiaciary of the contract sum. The moment we are able to conclude and have the registration certificate, we will apply for the release of the money to you as contract payment for contract perceived to have been executed by you.Once we have the approvals, the contract payment will either be released to you through the governments paying bank or direct wire transfer to your nominated account. Just say you can do it, then we can set the ball rolling. I anticipate a timely response from you now.
I wish you and your family a delighted and prosperious new year.
Yours Faithfully.
Williams. Time to issue a mild slap. From: Derek Trotter
To: Williams Smith
Date: January 12, 2006 Dear Mr. Smith, Despite me telling you THREE times now that I have no interest in your proposition you still keep trying to change my mind. THIS WILL NOT HAPPEN.
You tell me the contents of my letters are "duly noted" however you are NOT duly noting them, you are in fact ignoring them. For the very last time; I am NOT interested in your proposition. I do NOT want to be your partner. I do NOT have the time. I do NOT want any of your money. I will NEVER be interested in your proposition even if you ask me a million times.
I am sorry to appear rude to you Mr. Williams but you need to understand that I am EXTREMELY busy and do not have time to waste sending emails backwards and forwards for no reason at all.
PLEASE seek out somebody else to help you. I am not interested in making more money. I am already a very wealthy man and I do not seek more wealth. Notice how I dangle the "carrot of wealth" here! Sincerely,
Derek Trotter - Director
Trotters Fine Arts
www.deltrotter.co.uk Williams decides he can supply artwork after all. Surprise surprise! From: Williams Smith
To: Derek Trotter
Date: January 13, 2006
Subject: Sorry/Reply now Dear Mr.Derek,
Thanks for your email dated 11/1/2006, I am not trying to change your mind for what your spirit did not want, rather i want you to believe that i am for real and this is not junk mail. Anyway, since your spirit have told you not to assist, there is no problem, and i am sorry if my note dated 10/1/2006 annoyed you.
Regards to your email dated 5/1/2006, i want to tell you that i will like to be one of your representative in the arts business here in Nigeria and i also got two clients for you for inrespect of the scholarship award, A male and female of age between 15 and 17 years, The female is an Orphan. Please, i will like to know the procedures, So that you can communicate with them. Thanking you for your esteemed understanding.
Yours Faithfully,
Mr. Williams. From: Derek Trotter
To: Williams Smith
Date: January 13, 2006 Dear Mr. Williams, It is not a case of whether I think your email is "junk" mail or not. As I explained in my first email to you, you have unfortunately contacted me in the very busiest period of the financial year for my company. If you had contacted me just a few months previously or maybe even in a few months time then yes, I may well be interested in your offer, however at the moment I can allow nothing to interfere with my business presently. Over 70% of our business is conducted over these next three months and is worth many millions of dollars to us, so I hope you can appreciate that I cannot allow myself to be involved in anything else at the moment. I have many employees who depend on me to keep things running smoothly.
You say you have two artists who wish to apply for our donation/scholarship payments? Well that is good news, and if they agree to our terms then I am sure that we can be of great help to them.
The way our programme works is that we seek out new or up and coming artists all over the world who may not otherwise be financially able to promote or sell their work and then we help them to realise their full potential. We aid them by presenting them with a scholarship payment ranging from $25,000 to $150,000 which again is entirely dependent on their potential, but the minimum payment we award any artist willing to supply work for us is $25,000. Presently we are seeking artists who specialise in wooden sculptures.
HOW OUR DONATION/SCHOLARSHIP PROCEDURE WORKS:
1. Before we could make any kind of monetary payment to any artist we would of course require proof of their abilities. We do not ask artists to send in prepared samples of their work because of course there is no way for our foundation to know if the artwork is indeed the artists own work, therefore we would require your artists to provide a brand new sample for us to evaluate their abilities.
2. My company will submit to you (by email attachment) a sample photograph or photographs. This may be of a person, a animal, a building or other such item. Your artist would then be required to carve a small representation of the image we send to you. Once your have completed the work it is to be sent to us for evaluation and then a donation amount would be awarded according to your artists skill or potential. Our donation payments range from between a minimum of $25,000 up to $150,000.
3. On receipt of a satisfactory piece of artwork my four board members will then gauge the quality and therefore the size of the donation/scholarship amount to send to you. The payment is sent by whatever means suits you best and is made within 24 hours of receiving your work.
IMPORTANT: Please note that no payments whatsoever can be given in advance of receiving the artwork. It is very important that you understand this completely. You will be responsible for shipping the sample to us. Your shipping expenses WILL be refunded but only AFTER we receive the sample.
Please not also that we can only process one application from one artist at a time. Although you state you have TWO artists willing to submit work only one at a time will be able to submit a sample. Once your first artist has been paid by us in full for their sample then we can accept the second submission.
I hope that is clear to you, and if you are in agreement to the terms above please let me know as soon as possible and I will arrange for a sample picture to be sent to you by email attachment. Kind regards,
Derek Trotter - Director
Trotters Fine Arts
www.deltrotter.co.uk From: Williams Smith
To: Derek Trotter
Date: January 14, 2006
Subject: Representative Dear Mr. Derek,
Your crosspondence letter dated 13/1/2006 meets me in good spirit and have gone through the contents and the contents there in have been take note of, Actully i have more than two artistan who are really interested, But i want to start up with two first to see how the business will work. Again i will like to pin point the issue of Shipment, Is there no way your company will be of any assistance atleast half of the cost of the Shipment? Anyway, Let me have the sample of the carved woodens, then after my client has done the art work, Then i will know how much for the Shipment, But i think that will not be much problems.
I look forward for a good business relationship with you, While expecting the sample of Photograph or Photographs of what you want via email, But is it not possible you send via DHL, For a clear copy picture? Nope!
Remain Bless,
Yours Faithfully,
Mr. Williams. I sense that this particular scammer is desperate to stick with me. Time to start nailing this one down. From: Derek Trotter
To: Williams Smith
Date: January 14, 2006 Dear Mr. Williams, No, we will 100% most definitely NOT be paying any shipping in advance.
I have decided that I no longer wish to work with you on this project. Please seek somebody else to help you.
Kind regards,
Derek Trotter - Director
Trotters Fine Arts
www.deltrotter.co.uk From: Williams Smith
To: Derek Trotter
Date: January 14, 2006
Subject: Re: Representative My Brother Derek,
This is a question i asked,Based on the mail you sent to me dated 13/1/2006, Beside you are the one who said your company will not be responsible for the Shipment, So i need to ask, If your company will be responsible for half payment of the Shipment, Simple No, Than to get upset. You dont need to get angry, if you are a real business man, After all the question i asked is what i think is right to ask.
Well, Let us not be draging for something like this, if you feel that you are no longer interested to deal with me, No problem, After all we are trying to help each-other. Have a nice day. Rgds, Williams. From: Derek Trotter
To: Williams Smith
Date: January 14, 2006 Dear Mr. Williams,
You seem to be under the mistaken impression that I am angry? I am not.
It was made quite obvious in my previous emails that my company WOULD be responsible for reimbursing your entire shipment costs, but only AFTER we have received the sample, I quote:
"IMPORTANT: Please note that no payments whatsoever can be given in advance of receiving the artwork. It is very important that you understand this completely. You will be responsible for shipping the sample to us. Your shipping expenses WILL be refunded but only AFTER we receive the sample."
You will notice also that the text was printed in bold so as to ensure you took careful notice of it.
I am sorry if you are unable to read correctly. As a Barrister I assumed you would have been a well educated man. It seems I was mistaken.
Sincerely,
Derek Trotter - Director
Trotters Fine Arts
www.deltrotter.co.uk As I'd hoped, he caves in. From: Williams Smith
To: Derek Trotter
Date: January 15, 2006
Subject: Re: Representative Dear Mr. Derek, Good day. Your mail dated 14/1/2006, was received and have understood all the contents. I look forward for the sample of the art your Company want.
God Bless,
Mr. Williams. I give him another negative email. Lets see if he comes back more pliable. From: Derek Trotter
To: Williams Smith
Date: January 16, 2006 Dear Mr. Williams, You don't seem to be reading my emails. You asked me to change our rules about shipping fees and I told you I would not do that, so as far as I am concerned we have no further business together.
Sincerely,
Derek Trotter - Director
Trotters Fine Arts
www.deltrotter.co.uk From: Williams Smith
To: Derek Trotter
Date: January 18, 2006
Subject: Re: Representative Attn: Mr. Derek,
Please refer to my mail to you dated 15/1/2006, I agreed for the rules of your Company that i will take care of the shipment, and have been waiting for the sample of the art work on your company want it, You If you are ready to deal with me, Send the sample of the art work, So that we can set the ball rolling.
Thank and God bless,
Williams. OK. Lets give him some hope! From: Derek Trotter
To: Williams Smith
Date: January 19, 2006 Dear Mr. Williams,
Instructions for your or your artist can be found below. Please let me know if you have any questions.
INSTRUCTIONS FOR ARTISTS:
As mentioned on my previous email to you, before we can send you the donation/scholarship payment, you will have to submit a piece of work to our requirements. This serves to ensure the work is indeed your own artists work, and also so that we can gauge the quality of your artists workmanship.
Please find attached to this email the sample images. We have taken great care to photograph the sample images from various angles so that you know exactly the layout of the object, which in this case is a dog and a cat sitting on chair. The artist will be required to make a carving of this piece in the wood of his/her choice. The sample we send has been specially selected to show off various skills. Please note the following rules:
1. The carving can be any size you choose. Obviously you will need to take into consideration the weight of the carving so that the shipping cost is not to great for you, however, remember that we will of course reimburse your shipping costs in full on receipt of the artwork. As an example to you, the normal LENGTH of this particular carving along the longest length is 10 inches. You may make your submission larger or smaller but no larger than 15 inches along the longest length.
2. The carving can be in any type of wood that you choose, and must NOT be painted. Obviously the quality of the wood, and if possible a polished smooth finish will increase the chances of your donation payment being larger.
Attention to detail is important and will help my board members to judge the skill of the artist. You will see that the attached photographs have many small details. Try to capture as much detail as possible.
NOTE: An exact duplicate of the sample is not required as we are presently uncertain of your artists skills, however the closer your artists work is to the supplied sample then the higher the donation payment is likely to be. We realise of course that to exactly duplicate the carving would take an artist of exceptional skill, so we do not expect the carving to be of such detail and quality, however the closer to the original artwork that your artist can reproduce the sample in wood, the larger the donation amount will be.
Please bear in mind again that the artwork will have to be shipped to us for inspection before the donation payment is given, so obviously you must take into consideration the weight of the artwork so that the shipping cost is not too high for you.
You will need to ship the completed sample to us by a courier such as FedEx or DHL etc. All your shipping fees will be refunded in full but your fees will only be refunded AFTER we receive the completed sample. It is not our company policy to pay for work that we have not yet received.
On receipt of satisfactory artwork we will then judge the skill level of the artist submission and will reward you with a monetary donation depending on the quality of your work As mentioned previously, the minimum donation amount per artist is $25,000 but this can rise up to $150,000 per artist. Note that my board member will usually pay higher amounts for carvings which have obviously taken great skill and time to produce. Donation payment are usually given within 24 hours of us receiving the sample artwork.
Should your artists be some skill we would then like to make arrangements to have some more work produced by you after we have received your sample. If this is the case we will of course pay your full fees in advance. As a guideline for good quality carvings we tend to pay between $8,000 - $15,000 per item, so as you can see if your artists work is of sufficient quality then you could benefit greatly from our partnership.
I hope that is of help to you and I look forward to hearing from you soon. If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to ask. Please note that once you receive this email and agree to our terms your artist must have the carving ready to submit to us within 4 weeks.
Also, please let me know when you expect to have the artwork ready for shipping. In the meantime, please can you tell me what your preferred method of payment is? Sincerely,
Derek Trotter - Director
Trotters Fine Arts
www.deltrotter.co.uk I attach 10 sample pictures of the item I want carving. Three small example images are below though the pictures I sent to Mr. Smith were very large and detailed. Hey, I go out of my way to help people! UK readers will probably recognise the pictures as the animals from the UK TV series "Creature Comforts". Meet Trixie and Captain Cuddlepuss. I'm sure you can work out which is which! This particular piece is from my personal collection of Creature Comforts collectibles A few days later my personal art agent informs me work is underway. From: Williams Smith
To: Derek Trotter
Date: January 25, 2006
Subject: the job is in progress Dear Mr. Derek,
Good day. I want to inform you that the job is in progress, Hopefully to finish the work soonest.
Have a nice day and God bless,
Mr. Williams. From: Derek Trotter
To: Williams Smith
Date: January 25, 2006 Dear Mr. Williams,
Thank you very much for your update, it is very much appreciated.
If you need any more information or have questions then please do not hesitate to telephone me.
Sincerely,
Derek Trotter - Director
Trotters Fine Arts
www.deltrotter.co.uk It seems Williams is a perfectionist... From: Williams Smith
To: Derek Trotter
Date: January 30, 2006
Subject: update Dear Mr. Derek,
Good day to you and the entire family. Today i inspected the job, But was not perfect enough to my liking and have to do 4-5 samples before they will get the best. Hopefully to get the best and get it done soonest. I get intouch to you through phone later today or tomorrow.
Thanks and God bless,
Yours Sincerelly,
Williams. I get a call from Williams but it was a very bad line so no point posting it here as it's almost impossible to hear what he is saying. From: Derek Trotter
To: Williams Smith
Date: January 30, 2006 Dear Mr. Williams,
Thank you for your telephone call this morning, it was nice to speak with you even though the line was quite bad.
As you have requested, the address of our head office is below. Please mark the package for the attention of my secretary Miss. Paula Jervis. Miss Jervis is of course my non-existent secretary. I am usually out of the office most of the say so Miss Jervis will advise me the moment your package arrives to that I can see to your case immediately. Note that we have several different departments in our building so it is very important that you address the shipment exactly as below:
Miss Paula Jervis
D.T.F.A.
16 Xxxxxxxxxx Street
xxxx
xxxxxxx
England
United Kingdom
Please advise me of the tracking number and carrier so that I will know when to expect the delivery of the package. Payments usually require 24 hours notice to process, however if I am aware of the expected date of arrival I can ensure that your payment is processed as soon as possible.
Sincerely,
Derek Trotter - Director
Trotters Fine Arts
www.deltrotter.co.uk From: Williams Smith
To: Derek Trotter
Date: February 1, 2006
Subject: Re: update Dear Mr. Derek,
Good day to you and your crews, Your email of today 1/2/2006. The job will reach to your destination on or before friday 10th febraury 2006, All is in progress. I will be reaching you on your line today, for more information. Thanks and God bless, you and your family.
Sincerelly Yours,
Williams. From: Derek Trotter
To: Williams Smith
Date: February 1, 2006 Dear Mr. Williams,
Thank you for your email and I shall look forward to inspecting your artists work.
Please ensure that you give me the tracking details as soon as possible. Also, when you ship the package put the value as US $30 and mark it as a gift. This will cut down on the duty charges to be paid and will also stop any possible delay whilst waiting for duty charges to be processed.
Advise me also of the cost of the shipping so that I can arrange for the full amount to be reimbursed to you the moment we receive the package.
Sincerely,
Derek Trotter - Director
Trotters Fine Arts
www.deltrotter.co.uk Just over a week goes by and I hear nothing. I was beginning to suspect Williams had given up on me, but then I receive a telephone call. Note that parts of the tracking code have been beeped out so as not to give away the location of my safe drop-box. From: Williams Smith
To: Derek Trotter
Date: February 8, 2006
Telephone call: Williams Smith to Derek Trotter (470k MP3) I had a bit of a cold today so apologies over my voice, but notice that Williams said "I love you" at the end of the call. I doubt very much that this will be a long lasting romance. Nearly $350 for shipping? How annoyed is he going to be?! Just as
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remain committed to supporting democracy, human rights, and fundamental freedoms in Turkey. And when they’re not met, we certainly express our concerns, and that’s true in many countries around the world,” Jen Psaki, State Department Spokesperson, told reporters during a daily briefing on July 16.“Ambassador Bass will serve as a strong voice in support of democratic principles in Turkey. I worked very closely with him and I can’t think of a better representative for the United States, and I can assure you that when he’s confirmed, I think the people of Turkey will see that as well,” Psaki added.Bass faced a series of tough questions from Senator John McCain during his hearing at the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations over his nomination as ambassador to Turkey on July 15. Senator McCain said he would not support Bass’ nomination until he got a straight answer on whether he thought Turkey was drifting towards authoritarianism.“It is a drift in that direction, yes,” Bass eventually replied.A pair of stranded satellites will perform a test of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity that they were not designed to do. The results will be more precise than previous tests
It’s a total fluke. No one was thinking about making the most precise test yet of general relativity when the Soyuz rocket lifted off from French Guiana on 22 August 2014. The European Space Agency was launching Galileo 5 and 6, a pair of navigation satellites to break Europe’s reliance on the American GPS system.
At first everything appeared to be going well. The rocket cleared the launch pad and sped away from the surrounding rain forest on its way to space. But trouble was brewing inside the rocket’s upper stage, the final motor that would put the satellites into their operational orbit.
A pipe containing frigid liquid helium had been placed too close to a fuel line. The fuel froze, stopping the upper stage from manoeuvring correctly and placing the brace of satellites in the wrong orbit.
Instead of a circular path, they followed elliptical orbits from 13,713 km up to 25,900 km and back down again. Using onboard thrusters, the satellites were manoeuvred into somewhat less elliptical orbits and a team of specialists is now studying whether this will allow them to be used for their intended navigation purposes. Even if not, the satellites are far from a complete write-off.
They continue to orbit Earth twice every day, changing their altitude by 8500 km on each circulation. As luck would have it, this makes them perfect for a world leading test of Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
Devised 100 years ago this month, general relativity is a theory of gravity. One of its mind-bending predictions is that time will pass more slowly in a gravitational field. In other words, clocks on Earth ‘tick’ more slowly than clocks in space.
This was demonstrated on 18 June 1976 by the American space probe Gravity Probe-A, which was lobbed to an altitude of 10,000 km before it fell back to Earth. Although in space for just under two hours, its transmissions showed that the highly accurate clock on board had sped up.
Now, such clocks are routinely used on global navigation satellites because their signals have to be corrected for these effects. They speed up by a few tenths of a microsecond every day. If not taken into account, this would cause navigation errors of around 10 km per day.
The remaining elliptical orbits of Galileo 5 and 6 mean that their onboard clocks will continuously sweep through weakening and strengthening parts of Earth’s gravitational field as they orbit to and fro. This will continuously affect the rates of the clocks in a way that can be predicted by theory and measured from the satellites’ signals.
At the end of the year-long experiment, scientists from the ZARM Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity, Germany, and SYRTE Systèmes de Référence Temps-Espace, France, expect to have measured this time dilation to four times the accuracy of previous experiments.
Continually testing Einstein’s predictions is the key to making progress in gravitational physics. There is reason to believe that gravity behaves subtly differently in extremely strong gravitational fields such as those found close to black holes. If so, minuscule variations from relativity’s predictions could be seen in the wider universe. So, physicists are always on the look out for a new way to test Einstein’s ideas.
Scientists often talk about serendipity when accidentally discovering new phenomena that they were not actually looking for. This story shows that the same can happen with spacecraft operations.
And in the centenary year of the general relativity’s formulation, think of it as an anniversary present.
Stuart Clark is the author of The Unknown Universe (Head of Zeus), and co-host of the podcast The Stuniverse (Bingo Productions). He is teaching the Guardian Masterclass, How the Universe Works in December.P. Sainath has to be crazy.
Or all those who read him, hear him and do nothing about what he is writing, saying, doing, have to be crazy.
He says of the Indian drought : ‘Drought horribly exacerbates misery. It adds cruelly to the crisis. It is not the cause of it. There has been deep rural distress in good monsoon years as well. Our crisis is driven by human agency, drought is that awful last straw on the agrarian back. Farmers have dealt with drought through history – today, they’re incredibly more vulnerable to it.’
Drought is accompanied by a shadow: callousness in the human agency.
The wealthy classes of the Page 3 type and the upwardly mobile middle classes are hardly hurt by drought. Hardly or not at all. They can in fact even feel good, for droughts jerk charity, generate work at the ravaged sites so that immediate hunger and thirst are alleviated. Down and out? Look at me, I am giving you a leg up! Rise and shine. So he says everybody loves a good drought. Sainath has to be crazy.
When was his book Everybody Loves A Good Drought published?
One hell of a long time ago?
Not too wrong.
Twenty years ago, in 1997.
This year is its twentieth anniversary.
Sainath was a year short of 40 then and was already known for his work in Russi Karanjia’s provocative Bombay tabloid, Blitz. He was what Blitz’s banner claimed for itself: Free, Frank, Fearless. Blitz stayed throughout its career a magazine by the city of the city and for the city. Its writers, readers were urban, its pulse throbbed radically but in spasms of metal, urban metal. Sainath was not from the villages either. Born in Madras, educated in that city and in New Delhi, he was a city-zen. But in some inexplicable switch of genetic magnets he thought gaon, felt dehat, and wanted to write facts, gramin facts. That is, facts and not stories not about the ‘top 5%’ who were dominating media but the ‘last 5%’ who seemed to exist only for Premchand pre-independence and Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, post. This was contrarian and even more ironically, helping him with a scholarship to study those facts was that mega metro Moghul, The Times of India.
That was in 1993. Villages being real India, India being ‘real’ only in the villages, ‘Go to the villages if you want to study India’, were standard clichés then as they are now. Not for Sainath, whose desire to come to grips with rural India’s rock-hard realities was a passion amounting to an obsession – impressive for most sensitive people but also tedious, hugely tedious, to those wanting the good life. Don’t see, don’t know, don’t worry. The obsession took him to a clutch of states including, principally, Bihar, then in the grip of a drought of particular ferocity.
No place, in 1993, could have been stonier, sterner and starker in its drought-caused devastation than Bihar. Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao announced large, almost unprecedented scales of relief for Bihar. Drought-relief work started then as it does now, almost wholly state-driven. The drought was asmani, the relief, sultani. Money came in, as it should have, but so did the patrimony of selection, the clasp of patronage, the power of largesse. To the two crops – rabi and kharif – was now added, Sainath heard a small peasant organiser in Palamau say, a third.
‘Where is everyone?’ Sainath had asked him, pointing to an empty BDO’s office.
‘Everyone is at work…’
‘At work? But I see no one…’
‘Not here…but out in the fields…reaping the teesri fasal, the third ‘crop’ – drought relief’.
Everyone, including those swiped by the evaporation of the two fasal, hailed, celebrated the third. It stood in for the failed two. It gave some food for the starving, water to the thirsty. But did it solve the roots of poverty? Did it suffice to tackle the causes of abject destitution? Was poverty, of which drought is a dramatic spectacle, to be tackled with relief, not rectification?
There was a déjà vu to all this.
Indira, JP and the great Bihar drought
Some 27 years earlier, in 1966-1967, Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh had been through a similar trauma. No rains and so no water, no crops. No crops and so no food, nothing to sell or even to eat. Dry shards of land, thirsty rib-cages of cattle and, worst of all, parched human mouths. Not monsoon failure, nor drought, but those dreaded two syllables in Hindi – a-kaal, and two in English – fa-mine. Indira Gandhi, as India’s new prime minister sensed the inadequacies of the government machine. After some weeks of indecision and prevarication, she saw that relief needed not just credit but credibility. The turbine of inspiration, determination and action in Bihar was Jayaprakash Narayan. Belatedly but clearly, she saw that drought relief, under his oversight, would stay clean and so work credibly. His non-official, all-party Bihar Relief Committee was consequently made the independent supervisor of all government relief operations and coordinator.
JP’s committee received and spent Rs 40 lakh in relief-donation, and disbursed, for the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund, Rs 90 lakh more. JP appealed for funds nationally and internationally. The pope contributed, among others though mahants nearer the scene kept their purses closed tight. The peasants were grateful for what they got, but JP was far from happy. ‘The reactions I met in Delhi to my appeals ’, he said to his biographer Wendy Scarfe, ‘were a bewildering medley of self-righteousness, complacency insensitivity, cynicism and hypocrisy. Their reactions were : “It is the Biharis own fault…You appeal for money…But what’s the use? You can’t trust anyone…”. I felt too fed up to protest or argue back’. JP discovered that some officials – even ‘back then’ in 1966-67 – were, in his words, ‘trading in human miseries’. They were realising 200 rupees per pumping set supplied to the peasant. Depressed though he was, he did not give up. In the end, Bihar relief got the better of the Bihar famine.
Sainath’s reactions are not very different. Complacency continues, callousness rules, only their nature has diversified.
JP predicted then that the new high yielding crops that were being introduced by new farm technologies could sharpen existing inequalities and polarise the rural community unless the benefits flowed to small tenants and landless cultivators. It could, he said, even lead (in Wendy Scarfe’s words) to ‘ an explosion until a national minimum was assured…’
A national minimum? JP too sounded crazy. Even the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, Asoka Mehta, an old JP comrade who helped the Bihar committee enthusiastically, could not comprehend the idea of the national minimum.
Swaminathan ignored
Half a century on, in 2017, what JP said then and what Sainath has been saying over the last two decades is happening right in our faces. Not just droughts but endemic neglect and wrong-doing have made India’s agriculture a theatre of crises and turned farmers, in a world record of grimness, to suicide. As rural affairs editor of The Hindu earlier and now as the founder of the Peoples Archive of Rural India – PARI – Sainath has been speaking and writing, documenting and reporting unceasingly. Neither he nor Yogendra Yadav who with his Swaraj Abhiyan has been sensitising India to rural poverty will accept comparison with JP. But who was – or is – crazy? The whistle blowers or those who refuse to hear the warnings?
The ‘Farmers’ Report’ presented by the chairman of the National Commission on Farmers, M.S. Swaminathan, to the erstwhile UPA government had warned of telescoping disasters. The Swaminathan recommendations included
Improvement in implementation of minimum support price (MSP) not just for paddy and wheat but for crops other than paddy and wheat as well. And, most significantly,
MSP being at least 50% more than the weighted average cost of production.
The MSP has been at the heart of farmers’ agitations in recent weeks. It was my privilege to accompany Sainath for a day, a day too little, in western Maharashtra earlier this week. Monsoon clouds were out in the sky. They seemed determined to moisten the earth. But Maharashtra’s peasants were out in the fields all over the state. They were determined to stir the state. ‘The agitation is spreading’, Sainath told me. ‘There is a great new determination among the peasants to ask for what they see as their fundamental right. It is not about loan waivers alone. It is not about relief but justice. It is about produce and pricing, work and wages… And this in a situation where statistics are being manipulated to show a decline in farmers’ suicides against the testimony of actual corpses.’ As we motored into the interior news came in of preventive arrests. Farmers agitating non-violently for basic human needs being arrested preventively? Crazy – who?
What farmers want
My visit to the Karad region of Sangli was in connection with a commemoration organised by PARI of a memorable event that had occurred during the freedom struggle – the Shenoli train loot of June 7, 1943. Leaders and members of a revolutionary band called the Toofan Sena had stopped a train that was carrying payroll, seized the currency and, keeping what was necessary to organise ‘independence’, distributed it to the local peasantry. Satara district, of which Sangli was then part, came under what is called the prati sarkar or parallel government which ran miraculously and memorably for some three years – 1943 to 1946 – under the leadership of Nana Patil. This was a formidable occurrence, as rare as it was audacious. ‘Original players’, now in their 90s, of that movement and their descendants had converged in the village of Kundal, to mark the anniversary. Speakers stayed to the agenda, namely, commemoration of the train loot and of the prati sarkar. But the ongoing agitation is what was on everyone’s mind.
As farmers were being fired upon, jailed, beaten we heard of the RBI’s governor speaking of the ‘moral hazard’ of loan waivers and of ‘fiscal rectitude’ in not giving the waivers. Urjit Patel is not to be faulted. He was doing the dharma of an RBI governor. But others in the country who are trustees not of currency but of life, not state budgets but of domestic livelihoods, have their own dharma to perform. They must think of the moral hazard of farms turning into doormats and farmers into helots. They must think of the ethical rectitude of letting our food providers languish. Are the chief ministers of UP, Punjab, Delhi, Tamil Nadu and other states taking upon themselves the onus of repaying banks and waiving loans doing something that is void of morality or rectitude? Making fiscal deficit figures a priority in a drought-exacerbated year of agrarian distress is akin to painting the horns of a bullock that is dying of thirst. And saying, as we polish it, ‘Look how they gleam!’
But the agitation in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh facing violent repression including police firings and preventive arrests, is not about loan waivers alone. It is about agriculture’s place in the life our country, equity’s place in the life of our agriculture, and farmers’ place in the world of equity. Farmers and farms are in crisis. Loss of topsoil, loss of dignity, loss of livelihood and behind all this, the absence of someone like Jayaprakash Narayan to speak of their agony, of the injustice of the pricing system, the purchase system, the profit system, nationally, non-politically, but passionately, is what the agitation is about. And to compound the crisis is a new zulm – the preventive arrests of farmers and farmers’ leaders.
The waiver of farm loans and MSP+50% are necessary but those essential steps may also end up being a new ‘love of drought’, unless we see agriculture with completely fresh eyes. Sainath asks for a special session of parliament, 10 days at least to
discuss the agrarian crisis study and debate the Swaminathan Commission’s report place a white paper on the table, not on agriculture growth figures, but the condition of India’s farmers decide on which way, in what direction, India’s agriculture should go.
To not do that would be morally hazardous.
And historically unacceptable in the centenary year of the Champaran satyagraha and of Lokamanya Tilak’s declaration ‘Swaraj is my birthright,’ made on 1 June 1916, not far from where a hundred and one years later, on June, 8, 2017, Dhanaji Chandrakant Jadhav hanged himself leaving a suicide note that said ‘I am a farmer…I am committing suicide today…’.
I see now more than ever before why P. Sainath simply has to be crazy.Equifax Inc. said after the close of stock markets on Thursday that it was the victim of a cybersecurity breach that may affect approximately 143 million U.S. consumers.
The Atlanta-based consumer credit reporting agency said the perpetrators exploited a U.S. website application vulnerability to gain access to some files. Equifax said that based on its investigation, the unauthorized access occurred from mid-May through July 2017.
Information accessed in the breach primarily includes names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and some driver's licence numbers.
Equifax also said credit card numbers for approximately 209,000 U.S. consumers, and some dispute documents with personal identifying information for approximately 182,000 U.S. consumers, were accessed.
Additionally, Equifax also found unauthorized access to limited personal information for some Canadian and U.K. residents. The number of people affected in that part of the security breach was not disclosed.
"Equifax will work with U.K. and Canadian regulators to determine appropriate next steps," the company said, adding that it has "found no evidence that personal information of consumers in any other country has been impacted. "
The company said it found the unauthorized access on July 29, and hired a cybersecurity firm that has been conducting a forensic review to determine the scope of the breach, including the specific data impacted.
Shares of Equifax fell more than six per cent to $134 US in after-hours stock trading following the announcement.OLATHE, Kan (Reuters) - A white U.S. Navy veteran charged with murdering an Indian software engineer at a Kansas bar gazed at a camera from jail and gave curt answers to a judge by video during his initial court appearance on Monday over the shooting, which federal authorities are probing as a possible hate crime.
Adam Purinton, 51, accused of killing Srinivas Kuchibhotla, 32, and wounding Alok Madasani, 32, as well as an American who tried to intervene, is shown in closed circuit TV in court from the Johnson County detention center as Purinton heads towards a room with his public defender, Michelle R. Durrett (L) during his initial court appearance in Olathe, Kansas, U.S., February 27, 2017. REUTERS/Jill Toyoshiba/The Kansas City Star/Pool
Adam Purinton, 51, is accused of killing Srinivas Kuchibhotla, 32, and wounding Alok Madasani, also 32, as well as an American who tried to intervene during Wednesday evening’s incident at Austins Bar and Grill in Olathe, a Kansas City suburb.
At least one bystander told the Kansas City Star he shouted “get out of my country” before shooting. The incident led news bulletins in India, where some suggested on social media that a climate of intolerance in the United States had been fuelled by President Donald Trump’s rhetoric on immigration.
Purinton, appearing via video conference from jail, asked the court to appoint him an attorney and waived the reading of the formal charges against him of one count of premeditated first-degree murder and two counts of attempted murder during the five-minute hearing in the Johnson County District Court in downtown Olathe.
Purinton, who could only be seen from the chest up on the court’s television screen, is being held on $2 million bond in the adjacent Johnson County Jail. In clear language, he replied to a handful of questions from the judge, mostly with curt answers.
Michael McCulloch, who was named by the court to be Purinton’s attorney, declined to comment after the hearing.
Purinton wore an Army green, sleeveless suicide-prevention smock and stared straight at the camera the whole time. His reddish-brown hair was short on the side and spiked on top. He had sideburns to his jawbone and the shadow of a beard.
His next hearing is set for March 9.
White House spokesman Sean Spicer on Monday called reports about the shooting and more acts of vandalism at Jewish cemeteries “disturbing.” On Friday, he said any loss of life in the shooting was tragic, but it was absurd to link the killing to Trump’s “America First” stance.
The Indian Embassy in Washington has expressed India’s deep concern over the incident to the U.S. government and requested a “thorough and speedy investigation.”
Purinton was arrested hours after the shooting at an Applebee’s restaurant in Clinton, Missouri, about 80 miles (130 km) south of Olathe.
According to a recording of a 911 call made by a female bartender at the Applebee’s, Purinton said he needed to hide because he had killed two Iranian men, local NBC affiliate KSHB-TV reported.
“He wouldn’t tell me what he did. I kept asking him and he said he would tell me if I agreed to let him stay with me. I finally got him to tell me,” the bartender tells a dispatcher, according to the tape obtained by KSHB-TV. “He said he shot and killed two Iranian people in Olathe.”
Both the gunman’s Indian victims worked as engineers with navigation device maker Garmin Ltd. (GRMN.O)Everyone wants to know more about progress towards shipping. Wish I could help you there, but while people in Treg may know more than others, we typically don't have the kind of information that would let us know when WayTools will ship.
But I do keep a rough chart of what people are reporting on the Slack boards. While I won't give out individual reports (testers can decide for themselves if they want to share their personal experiences), I can give a more general report.
There is one problem that seems to be the fault of Apple, which causes bluetooth connection issues. I do not know if WayTools can find a workaround for this, but once a user knows about it, it isn't hard for them to avoid it in most cases.
The reason I say, "most cases" is because some reports sound like they may be different. Could be related or could have a different cause.
So, depending on how you look at this, it could be a gating issue or not. Personally, if it is Apple's problem and I can't do a workaround at WayTools, I'd still ship. I just wish I knew more about those cases which are about connections, but have some different symptoms.
Most of the rest have to do with individual key issues, typically swaps. I suspect a lot of us have, at one time or another, had swap issues. Fortunately, it seems they have ended for most of us as well. I don't know why a few still have these issues. And it may depend on what OS they are using. I also believe at least one of them hadn't yet updated to the latest App version (which helped my problems a lot).
Based on these things - and only these things - I'm feeling pretty good about shipping. But then we have to factor in all the stuff involved in mass production. How many can they produce a day? How well does quality control hold up? These are important factors for even the biggest companies and there isn't a single thing that I know about how things stand at this time.
Not long ago, WayTools seemed to say that hardware was not a problem. From reports I've seen, that seems to be so. Since then I feel the firmware and app changes have made big strides to solve issues there with just a handful reporting issues still. So I'm very hopeful that this part is about done too.
But that still leaves the mass production step, which is a complete unknown.9 years ago
Did Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger mean to hide a message in this note?
(CNN) - Was Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's message to state lawmakers unhappy - or obscene?
That's the current debate in California after the governor sent a letter directed to "Members of the California State Assembly" that appeared to have a subtle but pointed message hidden within the text.
The seven-line note in which the California Republican blasts the legislature for not advancing his administration's proposals on a host of issues appears innocuous enough at first glance.
But upon closer examination, the first letter of every line collectively spells 'f**k you'.
A spokesman for Schwarzenegger said the governor had no intent of hiding the message within his note, calling it a mere "coincidence."
–CNN's Carey Bodenheimer contributed to this story.President Donald Trump says “We’re going to have to wipe out” Puerto Rico’s debt in the wake of destruction caused by Hurricane Maria.
He tells Fox News in an interview that: “We’re going to work something out.”
He goes on to say: “We have to look at their whole debt structure. You know, they owe a lot of money to your friends on Wall Street. And we’re going to have to wipe that out.”
The White House did not immediately respond to questions about how the president wanted to do that.
Trump spoke to Fox in San Juan, Puerto Rico, which he toured Tuesday.
Before the storm, the island’s government was in the midst of bitter negotiations with creditors to restructure a portion of its $73 billion in debt. The island’s previous governor had declared that debt unpayable.Written by Patrick Howell O'Neill
The Tor Project, responsible for software that enables anonymous Internet use and communication, is launching a new mobile app to detect internet censorship and surveillance around the world.
The app, called “OONIProbe,” alerts users to the blocking of websites, censorship and surveillance systems and the speed of networks. Slowing internet speeds down to a crawl is one way governments censor internet content they deem illegal. The app also spells out how users might be able to circumvent the blockage.
Operating under the Tor Project umbrella, the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) is a global observation network watching online censorship since 2012. Data from OONI has detected censorship in countries including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, South Korea, Greece, China, Russia, India, Indonesia and Sudan. The project watches over 100 countries and serves as a resource to journalists, lawyers, activists, researchers and people on the ground in countries where censorship is prevalent.
In 2016, internet censorship was used in countries like the African nation of Gabon during highly contested elections and subsequent protests. To stop citizens from sharing videos of election irregularities, the country’s internet was down for four days. Earlier in 2016, Uganda engaged in similar widespread censorship. Both countries at times denied their actions, making tools like OONI ever more valuable.
“What Signal did for end-to-end encryption, OONI did for unmasking censorship,” Moses Karanja, a Kenyan researcher on the politics of information controls at Strathmore University’s CIPIT, said in a statement. “Most Africans rely on mobile phones as their primary means of accessing the internet and OONI’s mobile app allows for decentralized efforts in unmasking the nature of censorship and internet performance. The possibilities are exciting for researchers, business and the human rights community around the world. We look forward to interesting days ahead. ”
Internet freedom declined for the sixth year in a row in 2016, according to a report from Freedom House, making censorship and surveillance transparency a high priority for activists looking to turn back that momentum.
Twenty-four governments blocked access to social media sites and communication services in 2016, compared with 15 governments doing so last year, according to Freedom House. Internet freedom fell most precipitously in Uganda, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Ecuador and Libya. Several countries, including Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, reportedly tried to block Signal, the increasingly popular encrypted messenger developed in the United States. That’s part of a global trend that’s seen governments go after apps like WhatsApp and Telegram in an effort to stymie secure communications.
“Never before has it been so easy to uncover evidence of internet censorship,” Arturo Filastò, OONI’s project lead and core developer said in a statement. “By simply owning a smartphone (and running ooniprobe), you can now play an active role in increasing transparency around internet controls.”
The app will be available on the Google Play and iOS app stores this week, according to Tor Project spokeswoman Kate Krauss.Thoughts on Political Parties, Mankind, and Our Future
JamesMFBrown Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 3, 2016
Years and years of supposed “progress”, billions of dollars, many politicans elevated to positions of power, and for what? The middle class is shrinking, they are becoming poorer, unable to live at their current living standards forced into the lower classes by years of detrimental policies, corruption,and rampant capitalism. The working class will soon become the useless class in the eyes of industrialists. Yet, the political parties in our country, those who are supposed to look out for the interests of citizens, have become ends in themselves instead of a means to an end.
Jobs are disappearing at an alarming rate, the cardinal campagin promise of today’s political parties; jobs, jobs, jobs has been heard but not seen. Increasingly our country has become more and more divided economically, socially, and politically. We give these parties our time, our energy, and our votes, but what do my fellow citizens have to show for it? We continue to hurt, continue to feel the effects of bad policies, corruption, and an inability to direct ourselves in a direction that would be profitable for the 99% in America. So why vote? Why give our money to these professional swindlers? To these political parties that do not benefit us, but only benefit the 1%? We allow these people every election cycle to come to us and ask for our votes, our time, and our trust and what have WE gained by it? A wink and a damn smile? Promises that are never kept? More despair? More hardship? And for what? So these politicians and industrialists can fill their pockets? Satisfy their lust for money amd for power? Power that is against, rather for us at that. What will we do when the oligarchy gets strong enough that they no longer have to consider our interests? How long before they use their power to make us slaves? They are already sucking us dry. How much longer until we have no more to give and then they dispose of us because a number of citizens have become useless to them economically? Because machines have filled our roles?
Our labor, thus far, has been the only leverage we have had to fight the industrial elite since the industrial age began. Protests, Boycotts, Unions have been the tools workers have used to fight against industrialists that exploit the workers, and who abuse their economic power in the poltical and social spheres. Artificial Intelligence is poised to not only make those tactics ineffective, but wipe out any chance for workers to earn a income and not only survive, but thrive in this world, by increasingly displacing workers across different economic sectors with machines. It is happening NOW! Our biggest employers Walmart, Amazon, Mcdonalds, Uber, even professions such as lawyers and doctors have already begun being replaced by those implementing A.I, and have cut their workforce, but have kept all of their profits. Yet, political parties tout “progress” and call for jobs.
Climate change, one of the biggest existential threats we face today as a species, has been widely ignored, and not acted upon. The only planet we have is being destroyed. The weather has become abnormal. Last year we had summer on Christmas Day. Places like California, are suffering droughts. The ice in the artice is melting at an alarming rate, faster than anticipated, and scientists believe we are reaching the point of no return. Yet, our political parties have been beholden to moneyed interests, those who stand to lose money have used their wealth to obstruct or ouright stop efforts that would curb climate change and at least stop the damage to our planet, aided by our political parties, those who claim to “protect our best interests.”
Yet, our ability to thwart these charlatans and evil people has been degraded. These people use advocacy organizations, interest groups, and other methods to oppose and defeat any attempt to fix these problems. Using their money and influence to abuse the political process for private gain, and to prevent any challenge to their power. They are better organized, and do not even obey the same rules that average citizens do. Meanwhile, many citizens have sat back, and allowed this to happen because they don’t care and are consumed with themselves.
I just turned 23, and had just began to learn about what is going on in the world a few years ago and I am furious. I am angry at the elites who wield their power to oppress citizens. Angry at those who sit by idly as the elites gain power, while my fellow citizens get weaker. The wealth of workers has been decreasing for 30 years, and our livelihoods are being taken away by those who constantly mislead us, those who are hanging citizens out to dry so that they can enjot a few extra privleges, those who rose to office but ended up exploiting citizens, but I admire the citizens that tried, who fought in the interests of America. But those who in their apathy and ignorance allowed what was happening in our government, allowed the siphoning of our power and means to act I find it hard to have any respect for.
I fear for the future of this country, for the future of this planet, for the future of our species. Some may believe that God will save us. Save us from the nuclear weapons we have had pointed at each other for years. Save us from our social ills. Save us from the destruction of our planet. Save us from ourselves.
Those who can should step up, they must rise up to the challenge, join together, and face these fuckers before our species face total destruction the likes of which there is no coming back from. If we continue on the same path we are now, wait until shit hits the fan, and when its too late. Are we really going to be the species that looks back and wishes that we had done more, had not come together when we ought, had noy risen up when we ought, or had fought back when we ought? There is nothing that will descend from the stars or the heavens to come fix mankind’s conundrums, ultimately it will rest on all of our shoulders.Tim Page-Walker from Coffee Keg. Photo: Colin Page
Bellarine Brewing Company grabbed attention with its slightly briney mussel stout but now the company has taken a new tack: kegged nitrogen-charged cold brew coffee.
The new direction came about when the brewery moved from the Bellarine Peninsula to South Geelong and was unable to brew for six months due to red tape, says owner Tim Page-Walker.
Along with a friend who owns a coffee-roasting business, he came up with the idea of making nitrogen-charged coffee.
Geelong-based Coffee Keg is producing nitrogen-charged cold brew coffee. Photo: Colin Page
Twelve months on, he's making coffee in kegs and bottles for more than 20 coffee roasters, including Proud Mary and Veneziano.
Freshly roasted beans are steeped in cold water for up to 50 hours before being extracted without filtration or preservatives. The coffee is then put into kegs or bottles charged with nitrogen, which helps it pour like an Irish-style beer, with a thick crema. It is usually served black over ice but it can also be mixed with milk and flavoured syrups. Page-Walker is also working on coffee concentrates that can be used for espresso martinis or coffee milkshakes.
The bottles need to be well shaken before use. "I'm putting it into bottles with twist-off lids so you can pour out the neck height, put the cap back on and shake again then pour it out completely. Nitrogen as a gas is a strong little bubble so you have to upset it a lot before it will roll and cream."
He is brewing tea in a similar way for two companies at the moment, bottling them with carbon dioxide to give them a spritz.
Details: Coffee Keg coffeekeg.com.auThe Nowak Brothers
Mikkel and Szandor kill monsters. They're not government funded, they're not from a time-honored lineage of hunters, nor are they rich kids with lots of toys. They're two twenty-something brothers from the poor side of town who have taken it on themselves to rid the streets and underground of creatures who would prey on the innocent. Donning gas masks and using makeshift weaponry, they delve into the labyrinthine sewer system of New Avalon to grapple with snarling zombies, flesh-eating ghouls, insectoid hive creatures, and more. It's a dirty job and it rarely pays, but someone
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serve balls into the box from the outside while defending service back in their own end. Kellyn Acosta, who played both right and left fullback (in addition to defensive midfield) against the LA Galaxy last weekend, says playing as an outside back in a diamond is a lot more work for his position, but it can also be a lot more fun.
“A fullback has more of a role to get up and down the field more often because in a diamond, [the midfielders] are more central, so that flank is wide open for fullbacks,” Acosta told MLSsoccer.com on Wednesday. “It’s an opportunity for myself to get forward and create chances for my teammates.”
With regular starter Zach Loyd not with the team for their two-match road trip on the West Coast due to a knee injury, Acosta is likely to see a lot of time at right back in Portland this Saturday (11 pm ET, watch on MLS Live) and then in Southern California against Chivas USA next Wednesday. The young Homegrown signing and US U-20 national team player says he looks to Barcelona’s attack-minded fullback Dani Alves for inspiration when playing that position.
Michel's natural position is left back and he agrees with Acosta that playing fullback in the diamond 4-4-2 can create space for them to make more attacking runs, but they also have to be cognizant of counterattacks because of the more open flanks. He says that’s where newcomer Erick can show his quality on the pitch.
“Erick’s a great [holding] midfielder,” Michel explained through an interpreter. "What he does best is stay in a defensive position and we didn’t really have that before, a true defensive midfielder. It gives us more confidence going up, knowing that Erick’s in that position."
Get more FC Dallas news at FCDallas.com
Michel had seemingly fallen out of favor with Hyndman after being pulled at halftime of FCD’s draw with the Montreal Impact on July 20 and then did not start the subsequent two matches. Hyndman emphasized that the issues with Michel had nothing to do with a rift between the two, but that they were more to do with the 31-year-old’s fitness.
The Brazilian admitted that not being used to the unforgiving Texas heat was a factor in his recent tiredness, but he feels that he has worked through those issues in training and the workout room. He came on at halftime of the Galaxy match and served two free kicks that ended up going into the back of the net, displaying once again the value he brings to the squad.
“Yes, absolutely it showed the importance of having him on the field that we’re back into scoring on set pieces,” said Hyndman. “I think it was a combination of getting him back on the field with great services and also our attacking players.”If you've been eyeing LG's circular G Watch R, your wait is about to come to an end, at least in the UK. Clove and Unlocked Mobiles are set to commence sales of the smartwatch in the country, with initial stock expected tomorrow and first orders shipping from October 27.
The G Watch R costs £224 ($358) on Clove and £229 ($366) on Unlocked Mobiles, making it slightly more costly when compared to other devices in this segment. The Moto 360, for instance, is priced at £199 ($318) on Clove, and although the retailer is out of stock, it has mentioned that additional inventory will be arriving in November.
Found a better deal on the G Watch R in the UK? Let us know in the comments.Gen Con 2016 is finally in the books and what a week it was. From the games, to the events, to the atmosphere of the convention in general, it truly was “the best four days in gaming”. We begin our annual Gen Con recap by talking about the games. And then later in the week we will discuss our thoughts on the convention in general. But let’s get started by talking about the new game releases at Gen Con 2016
Gen Con 2016 Games
Favorite Game I Bought:
Tony – Cry Havoc (Portal): If you would have asked me this question after Thursday night, it would probably have been a different game because our first play was a bit of a disaster, having got a ton of rules wrong. However, after getting some clarifications from Portal, we tried Cry Havoc again and I LOVED it. This quick playing, asymmetrical, area-control war game hit all the right marks for me. Each faction felt very different, and the game play was really unique. I actually wanted to play it again right away.
Alex (and Stephanie) – Mystic Vale (AEG): A unique take on a deckbuilding game, Mystic Vale is the first using a ‘card-crafting’ mechanic, giving players the power to stack different powers and abilities on the cards in their deck. I had the opportunity to demo this with the designer, John D. Clair, and it hit me in my sweet spot of games that are quick to get into, but have some strategy and depth in the decision-making. The quality of the cards are great, and the artwork is absolutely beautiful. This hit the table every night we were at Gen Con, and I foresee Mystic Vale being a popular game in my house and with my gaming group. I’m looking forward to more expansions and games using this type of mechanic.
Andrew – Order of the Gilded Compass (Grey Fox Games): This game kind of flew under the radar for me most of the convention. I had heard some rumblings about it, but it certainly wasn’t making a huge splash. I had some time to kill Sunday before heading home and stopped by Grey Fox for a demo. And I’m very glad I did. The game is a dice placement game with various locations that can be different during setup for additional replayability. It plays up to 5 players, and we played the full game in a 4-player demo in about 40 minutes. Looking forward to getting more plays of this game.
Jeff Petersen (and Brian Biewer) – Potion Explosion (CMoN): I was looking for a good family game that was not too childish, and this fits the bill. Potion Explosion emulates the Candy Crush feel with marbles and includes strategic elements with choices of potions and timing of their use. I had a great time playing with fellow gamers at the con and then again on the day of my return with the family.
Walt – Hit Z Road (Space Cowboys/Asmodee): Martin Wallace is more well-known for heavy strategy and/or train games, but this year he debuted two games at Gen Con that are much more family friendly: Via Nebula (which is my runner-up for Favorite Game), and Hit Z Road, a quick, cool dice chucker with an auction mechanic. Even though it’s a lighter game, it’s still a tough one to beat. I hadn’t heard about this game at all prior to Gen Con, but after seeing a demo, I was hooked, and decided to buy it.
Heather – I have to pick just one?! Impossible. Favorites included Potion Explosion (CMoN), Mystic Vale (AEG), Ice Cool (Brain Games) and Junk Art (Pretzel Games). To be fair, I think all these games were already purchased before I got to the Con late on Friday, but I’m glad Tony snapped them up to add to our game library before my arrival. (Thanks Tony!) I’m looking forward to introducing my non-gamer friends to almost all of these!
Brian Winters – Adventure Land (HABA): While HABA is typically known for little kid games – within the last year they branched out and made some for older kids and old kids like me. Adventure Land is a fun, well-developed, and light tactical game. It’s not a deep thinker but by far it’s no stinker.
Sarah – Onitama (Arcane Wonders): I hate demoing games at Gen Con because it makes me nervous when strangers watch me while I am learning a new game. That being said, the instructions for the demo took approximately one minute, I completely understood the game, and I beat Brian. Onitama is simple and elegant. It also has a high replay value due to the number of move cards included in the game.
What Game I Wish I Could Have Bought:
Tony – Giant Rhino Hero (HABA Games): This year we made our annual pilgrimage to the HABA booth to request them to sell Giant Rhino Hero here in the States. It’s somewhat available in Japan, but really expensive to try to import. However, word from the big-wigs at HABA USA is that they are finally considering releasing it here in the future. Fingers crossed!
Alex (and Stephanie, Tyler) – Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle (USAopoly): While not breaking new ground with mechanics; the theme, cooperative nature, and deckbuilding of Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle makes this an insta-buy for me. I love the fact that as the game progresses, your character levels up and gains powers as they go through Year 1 to Year 7. There was no way, however, I was going to brave the onslaught of people attempting to get the limited daily copies at the opening of the exhibit hall. Fortunately, I have it on good authority that this game will be released in September, just in time for my birthday!
Andrew – The Last Friday (Ares Games): While I was able to get most of the games I wanted this year, I did miss out on The Last Friday. I really like the horror-movie theme of the game and would like to give it a try at some point. Unfortunately copies were limited and because hidden movement games are hit and miss for me, I didn’t prioritize running to Ares each morning to try to snag one of the few copies at the convention.
Jeff Petersen – Ice Cool (Brain Games): It was sold out early, and was in the back of the hall. I will learn to start back there one of these years. I like to bring one dexterity game home to play with the family. It is a fun game of chase with the flicking of penguins.
Brian Biewer – Above and Below Kickstarter Edition (Red Raven Games) – I wanted to buy this for my daughter as she LOVED the base game. I passed on it on Friday, but decided to get it Saturday…and it was sold out. Above and Below is also sold out online as of the time of this writing, excluding price gouging Amazon/Ebay/BGG Marketplace offers. I do not need this game THAT badly…
Walt – Inis (Matagot/Asmodee): By the time I sat down for a demo of this on Friday afternoon, I was told that the small number of copies they had were sold out, and it wasn’t known if they were going to be getting any more. People kept comparing this to Kemet and Cyclades, which, as those who know me can attest, are the types of games that are not in my wheelhouse. However, there was just something about this Celtic-themed area control and card drafting game that won me over as soon as I started playing it. Very cool mechanics and card powers, and gorgeous component artwork. I’ve added this one to the top of my list of games to buy (after my wallet gets a much needed break!)
Heather – Lotus (Renegade Game Studios): After hearing about Lotus, it sounded really neat and the artwork on the box looked beautiful. Unfortunately they sold out before I even got to Gen Con! Thankfully Walt was able to snag a copy and we played on Saturday night. It was a great game and it’s no wonder why it went so fast. I love how the players are creating different flowers with their cards and that it’s friendly to both gamers and non-gamers. This game is definitely on my buy list.
Brian Winters – Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu (Z-Man Games): Sadly, I got to watch Tony, Alex, Heather, and Steph play this one and we just ran out of time to do another. I love all things mythos, but Z-Man, like many other publishers sold out Saturday morning. I now need to wait until this hits retail in September.
Sarah – Ticket to Ride: Rails and Sails (Days of Wonder): I really like Ticket to Ride and the addition of boats looked interesting; unfortunately it was sold out by the time I got to Asmodee’s booth on Saturday.
Favorite Unreleased Game:
Tony (and Brian Winters, Jeff Petersen, Tyler) – Adrenaline – (CGE): We had a chance to demo the prototype of Adrenaline and loved it. It was a fast paced game based on a first person shooter style deathmatch. Made by a company most known for complex eurogames, Adrenaline actually has a bit of a euro feel to it as there are no dice, low luck, and the most victory points wins.
Alex – Sagrada (Floodgate Games): A game of dice-drafting and placement, Sagrada has you placing dice to create a stained-glass window. Following stringent rules for placement, with different scoring conditions and special powers each game, Sagrada is a Kickstarter that I am looking forward to backing, based on my play of the game at Gen Con.
Andrew – Star Wars: Destiny (Fantasy Flight Games): While I may have told myself I’m never playing a collectible game again…Star Wars: Destiny may change all that. I was able to play through a few rounds of demo games and I’m excited to see more. The gameplay is straightforward and of course it’s always fun to play with characters from the Star Wars universe. I liked it much more than any of the sets I’ve played from Dice Masters. The result of the dice roll itself really controls the game in Dice Masters, but I felt like I had plenty of ways to mitigate a bad roll here. Coming this November, I’m sure I’ll be looking for a way to organize a few hundred dice for this game.
Brian Biewer – Arkham Horror LCG (Fantasy Flight Games): Arkham Horror/Cthulhu theme? Check. Cooperative LCG. Check? Pre-ordered at Coolstuff already? Check!
Walt – 4 Gods (Ludically/Asmodee): Yep, I spent a lot of time at the Asmodee juggernaut of booth(s). All I knew about this game before the con was that it was designed by the designer of Archipelago, but this title is very different. Two words: real-time Carcassonne! Ok, it’s a little more than that, but not much more. Players are drawing tiles with different landscape features and trying to fit them into a central framed grid on the table, working from the outside in, and claiming areas with their minis when they can – and they’re doing this all at the same time. It was frantic, but a lot of fun. P.S.: Alex, I liked Sagrada too!
Stephanie – Pathfinder Adventure Card Came – Mummy’s Mask (Paizo): If you go back to previous year’s recaps, you will note that I am a huge fan of the PACG. Early on Thursday, I was able to get into a demo. Since they don’t even have a release date yet, there wasn’t a full set to peek through. Paizo introduced at least two new characters (Spiritualist, Slayer), new types of Blessings mechanics, “triggered” traps, and more I can’t remember. I appreciate how each version of the PACG brings something new and just doesn’t repeat the same mechanics with a new story. I will have this in my hands as soon as it is released.
Most Surprising Game:
Tony – Get Rich Quick (FoxMind Games): I stopped by the FoxMind booth to chat with them and they told me about their new game Get Rich Quick. To be honest, if I were just walking by, I would have dismissed this game immediately. It has all the look of your typical mass-market game. However, that was apparently on purpose as this is FoxMind’s gateway game for their fans to transition them from easy, mass-appeal games to more hobby-style games. Under the clever layer some familiar graphic design is actually a euro game with simultaneous action selection and a worker placement mechanic.
Alex (and Heather) – Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu (Z-Man): I feel the Cthulhu mythos has reached its saturation point in board game design, so I did not have a great interest in what I thought was a reskin of Pandemic, one of the greatest games ever produced. How wrong I was! Not a simple re-theming, Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu uses some of the traditional Pandemic mechanics while adding some interesting variations on others and adding some completely new ideas. This game was a pleasant surprise to play, and I’m looking forward to picking up a copy!
Andrew – Sakura Arms (BakaFire Party): When I heard that there was going to be more of an international presence at Gen Con I was excited to take a look at what types of games were being developed outside of America and Europe. I was headed to the NECO booth, planning to demo Iki. They weren’t running a demo at that time, but BakaFire was there demoing his newest game, Sakura Arms. The game is 2-person duel where players manage the distance between themselves and their own resources. Cards are used to attack, but only work at certain distances. There is also a deck-building element. Each player chooses two Megami, each of which has 11 cards. You choose 10 cards from the 22 available to play with. Its beautifully produced and a great, quick playing game. Sakura Arms was available in Japanese with printed English rules and paste-ups and I’m excited to get it sleeved and playable.
Jeff Petersen (and Tyler) – Codenames: Pictures (CGE) – I have not enjoyed my plays of Codenames. I am one of the worst clue givers in the history of the game. Almost all of my clues have a one after the word. I was not looking forward to Codenames: Pictures, but surprise it was fun and much easier for me and am I guessing for families to play.
Brian Biewer – Bloodborne (CMoN) – I bought this because I love Eric Lang games and I love Bloodborne. I figured I would be able to play it once with my family and then rely on friends to play any other time due to my family typically not liking aggressive games. My entire family enjoyed the game. It is not as confrontational as I thought it would be and the decisions that need to be made, especially around when to retreat to bank your blood, were more engaging than I thought they would be. I REALLY liked this game!
Walt – Game of Thrones: Hand of the King (Fantasy Flight Games): What’s most surprising about this choice is that I’m actually picking a Fantasy Flight game! I wasn’t prepared to like yet another GoT-themed game, but this smart puzzly card game is actually light on theme. There is a grid of cards on the table depicting all our favorite GoT characters, and players are selecting them to place in front of them, following some strict selection rules. Rule the largest number of Houses at the end of the game to win! The bonus cards players can acquire do add some nice thematic touches to the game (the Khal Drogo card lets you immediately take the Daenerys card, of course). All in all, a fun, thinky game that even non GoT fans can enjoy.
Brian Winters – Mystic Vale (AEG). I’m not much of a deck building guy but it won me over from the start. It’s innovative “card crafting” makes the game much more deep and thinky than most deck building games I’ve ever played. Instead of grabbing a card for your deck, you have over twelve choices (if can afford them) to build and improve your base cards. Mystic Vale was a welcome surprise and this was one of the first deck builders I truly enjoyed playing. I have to say I think other designers will try to emulate the “card crafting” element and I won’t blame them one bit. It’s pretty slick and cool once you first see it in play.
Sarah – Stockpile (Nauvoo Games): I am not a fan of the stock market. Booorrrriiinnnggg. Then my husband, a CPA, made me demo Stockpile. We bought it approximately four seconds after the demo was completed. This game was surprisingly fun, especially given the theme. The demo was engaging and the designers were both genuinely nice guys.
Most Disappointing Game:
Tony – Codenames Pictures (CGE): While I’ve always enjoyed Codenames, I’ve never been one of the people who thought it was an amazing game. It was fun, but nothing I reach for regularly. I was hoping that Codenames: Pictures would add some excitement to the game for me. But it actually didn’t play any different from Codenames, and if anything, it was a bit duller and easier. I can’t see a reason why someone would ever need to own both.
Alex (and Tyler) – Star Trek Ascendency (Gale Force Nine): It is well-known that I am a sucker for all things Trek, so I was looking forward to checking this out. I had heard good things from friends who had a chance to have a more-involved demo about the creation of the galactic map and the various powers of the different races. However, finding out Star Trek Ascendency was three-player-only (before expansion) and took at least 3 hours to play will leave this title off my table and on my shelf 99% of the time. Disappointing!
Andrew – Potion Explosion (Cool Mini or Not): I knew that Potion Explosion probably wasn’t a game for me, but I was excited to try it nonetheless because the coolness factor is off the charts. I was able to play through a couple of games and it really just missed the mark entirely. First some of the marbles that came with the copy I played were in bad shape. Misshaped and dented to the point that one really wouldn’t go into the cardboard dispenser without a push. The dispenser itself took a lot of work to put together and needed a few taps occasionally to get all the marbles to come out. Not sure if those issues are widespread or just a bad copy, but production issues aside I just didn’t have much fun playing it. Just never felt like I really had any interesting decisions to make.
Jeff Petersen – Costa Rica (Mayfair Games): I didn’t make time to sit down at many demos in the dealer hall and I am sure I could have found a few games that were really disappointing. But Costa Rica was the worse new release gameplay that I had at Gen Con. I wanted to like it, but the randomness really hurt our play. I had the worse luck in pulling tiles and the game was over. Too much luck and not enough strategy even for a kid’s game.
Brian Biewer (and Sarah) – Aquarium (Z-Man Games) – I really want a good aquarium building game. This was not it. Aquarium was a bidding/set collection game. The aquarium theme was tacked on. It really could have been about ANYTHING. I MIGHT have liked it more had I not had my mind set on finally playing an aquarium building game.
Stephanie: Star Wars Rebellion (Fantasty Flight Games): Star Wars? Check. Fantasy Flight quality components? Check. Overly complicated rules? Um, yeah. Overly long demo where the demoer talked too much and we played too little? Yup. I don’t know if it was the overly complicated rules or the way in which the demoer was explaining the game, but I was literally falling asleep during this demo. On paper, Star Wars: Rebellion was perfect for me. Totally fell flat.
Brian Winters – I can’t say any new games really disappointed me. I did play Flip City for the first, and maybe the last time, but I really didn’t have any lemons aside from that one time.
That about wraps up Part 1 of our Gen Con recap. In part two, we discuss the convention at large. What about you? What games were your favorite from the show? Which ones fell flat for you? Let us know in the comments below.DEFINITION: Personal Income tax as a percentage of total tax collected by the country. Data is for 2002. SHOW ALL LESS
APA MLA MHRA CSE AMA Chicago Bluebook Bluebook/JOLT Citation
"Countries Compared by Economy > Tax > Components of taxation > Personal income tax. International Statistics at NationMaster.com", OECD Revenue Statistics. Aggregates compiled by NationMaster. Retrieved from http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Economy/Tax/Components-of-taxation/Personal-income-tax
"Countries Compared by Economy > Tax > Components of taxation > Personal income tax. International Statistics at NationMaster.com, OECD Revenue Statistics. Aggregates compiled by NationMaster." 2002. <http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Economy/Tax/Components-of-taxation/Personal-income-tax>.
'Countries Compared by Economy > Tax > Components of taxation > Personal income tax. International Statistics at NationMaster.com, OECD Revenue Statistics. Aggregates compiled by NationMaster.', <http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Economy/Tax/Components-of-taxation/Personal-income-tax> [assessed 2002]
"Countries Compared by Economy > Tax > Components of taxation > Personal income tax. International Statistics at NationMaster.com", OECD Revenue Statistics. Aggregates compiled by NationMaster. [Internet]. 2002. Avaliable from: <http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Economy/Tax/Components-of-taxation/Personal-income-tax>.
"Countries Compared by Economy > Tax > Components of taxation > Personal income tax. International Statistics at NationMaster.com", OECD Revenue Statistics. Aggregates compiled by NationMaster. Avaliable at: nationmaster.com. Assessed 2002.
"Countries Compared by Economy > Tax > Components of taxation > Personal income tax. International Statistics at NationMaster.com, OECD Revenue Statistics. Aggregates compiled by NationMaster.," http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Economy/Tax/Components-of-taxation/Personal-income-tax (assessed 2002)
"Countries Compared by Economy > Tax > Components of taxation > Personal income tax. International Statistics at NationMaster.com", OECD Revenue Statistics. Aggregates compiled by NationMaster., http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Economy/Tax/Components-of-taxation/Personal-income-tax (last visited 2002)
"Countries Compared by Economy > Tax > Components of taxation > Personal income tax. International Statistics at NationMaster.com", OECD Revenue Statistics. Aggregates compiled by NationMaster., http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Economy/Tax/Components-of-taxation/Personal-income-tax (as of 2002)
SHARE TWEET EMBED Economy > Tax > Components of taxation > Personal income tax: Countries Compared MapThe rushed burial of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani may be undone as several remedies may address the issue when the time comes, Senate President Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III said Saturday.
“Of course, this being a political issue, let us not lose hope, because this can be reversed anytime,” said Pimentel, chief ally of President Rodrigo Duterte at the Senate.
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Pimentel is strongly against Marcos’ burial; his father, former Senate President Aquilino Pimentel Jr., was among opposition leaders detained during the strongman’s repressive martial rule.
It was the President, whose father Vicente served in the Marcos Cabinet, who had allowed the late dictator’s interment at the LNMB. Pimentel, who heads the President’s party, said he is not keen to raise the matter again to Mr. Duterte as Marcos has already been buried.
But he said, Mr. Duterte could still have a “change of heart.” Or else, the next President could undo the burial.
“Then by 2022, when we have a new President and he believes that there are disqualified persons buried in the Libingan ng mga Bayani, then he can order their transfer, or their removal,” he told the Inquirer when reached by phone.
Pimental said the Commission on Audit (COA) may also “disallow all expenses connect with the burial once it reviews the transactions” of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), which was tasked to make the funeral arrangements.
Such disallowance would compel the military to “justify, explain or return the sum spent.”
“If it was allowed, then what was done must be reversed,” Pimentel said.
The senator noted that the state has remaining claims of money from the Marcoses, who is known to have amassed stolen wealth of about $5 billion to $10 billion.
“They owe the state a huge debt, and yet the state even gave them a favor,” he said.
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“This is not because of the legal (aspect). It is because a benefit is given to a person or his family against which the government has financial claim, which has not been returned and/or repaid,” he continued.
The issue of Marcos’ burial also prompted Pimentel to file a measure that would set aside land within the LNMB for the burial of “Filipinos of historical interest,” separate from plots reserved for the military.
This area, per his proposal, shall be called Libingan ng mga Makasaysayang Pilipino, where former Presidents of the Philippines, statesmen, dignitaries, and national artists and scientists may be interred.
Creating such delineation would “preserve the LNMB as a military memorial consistent with the purpose intended” when it was established in 1947, he said.
As protests continued over the burial, Pimentel said Filipinos should continue exercising their constitutional rights and take the time for some reflection on how much we value lessons of history.
“This will strengthen our democracy. This will also show the people that the Philippines has a lot of problems, this is one of them but this is not the only one. So, therefore, this will also prompt us to value our time, value our priorities,” Pimentel said.
“Let us allow all of these exercises to happen and then we will learn some lessons, and we will be a better democracy, a stronger country and a more historically conscious people because of all of these developments,” he said.
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MOST READposter="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201703/369/1155968404_5361775535001_5361764326001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true Mulvaney justifies budget: We can't ask a coal miner to pay for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting
As they fleshed out the budget blueprint released Thursday morning by the White House, Office of Management and Budget director Mick Mulvaney said officials from the administration of President Donald Trump asked themselves: Can we ask the taxpayer to pay for this?
For a dramatic uptick in military funding, Mulvaney said, the answer was yes. For a wide array of domestic programs, it turns out, the answer was no.
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Trump’s budget, which Mulvaney said was assembled in part by examining excerpts from the president’s speeches and media interviews, delivers on his campaign promise to build up the military, designating an additional $54 billion in defense spending. The budget pays for that additional spending by cutting funding to nearly every other department, including 21 percent budget cuts at the departments of Labor and Agriculture, 28 percent at the State Department and 31 percent at the Environmental Protection Agency.
“When you start looking at places that we reduce spending, one of the questions we asked was can we really continue to ask a coal miner in West Virginia or a single mom in Detroit to pay for these programs? The answer was no,” Mulvaney said Thursday morning on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “We can ask them to pay for defense, and we will, but we can’t ask them to continue to pay for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.”
Federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting would be cut entirely under Trump’s budget blueprint, which also reduces spending on the Coast Guard by 14 percent and FEMA by 11 percent.
Asked how cuts to the State Department’s budget might affect the U.S. military and its activities around the globe, Mulvaney said “make no mistake about it, this is a hard-power budget, not a soft-power budget. That is what the president wanted and that’s what we gave him.”
And asked about cuts to educational programs, including aid to low-income students, teacher training and after-school and summer programs, Mulvaney said that they, by and large, are ineffective and cannot justify their existence.
“A lot of those programs that we target, they sound great, don't they? They always do. We don't put a bad name on a program. Programs are always wonderful. It’s always small business or whatever. They don't work. A lot of them simply don't work,” he said. “I can't justify them to the folks who are paying the taxes. I can't go to the autoworker in Ohio and say ‘please give me some of your money so that I can do this program over here, someplace else, that really isn't helping anybody. I can ask them to help pay for defense. But I can’t do it anymore. I can’t go to them and say ‘I need your money to go help this program.’”SOUTH Korea's "battle of the singles" - a highly-anticipated mass dating event organised on Facebook - fizzled out yesterday, with thousands of lovelorn men at the venue but few women in sight.
The event was triggered last month after two young men jokingly floated the idea on the social networking site and eventually prompted more than 36,000 Facebook users to sign up.
But only about 3500 people - mostly men in their 20s or 30s - turned up. Many of the women who did show up brought male partners just to watch the event.
"Apparently most of the participants were young men... many left fairly quickly as the place was increasingly filled with guys," a police officer in Seoul told AFP.
Romantics who braved temperatures of around minus 10 degrees Celsius mostly milled aimlessly around the venue in a city park during the two-hour event.
Women had been asked to dress in red and men in white when they gathered at the park in Seoul's Yeouido financial district.
The two groups were asked to stand facing each other a few metres apart until the event started at 3pm, then walk towards a potential date and grab his or her hands.
But the face-to-face fizzled out after it became clear that there were simply not enough women to cater for a horde of men.
"Where the hell are the girls? I can't find any," said Kim Sung-Sik, a 23-year-old college student, describing the event as "utterly disappointing".
"This is awful... I didn't come all this way to get stuck in a bunch of smelly guys," said another male participant who declined to be named.
"It looks like there are more doves flying around here than there are girls... I feel like I'm in the army again," he said, referring to the two years of military service mandatory for all South Korean men.
Similar male-dominated scenes have been reported in other cities where the same "battle of the singles" events were arranged.
Out of a population of some 50 million, South Korea - one of the world's most-wired nations - has 31 million smartphone users and nearly 20 million users of either Facebook or Twitter.(CNN) Special counsel Robert Mueller has asked the White House to preserve all documents relating to the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower that Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort had with a Russian lawyer and others, according to a source who has seen the letter.
Mueller sent a notice, called a document preservation request, asking White House staff to save "any subjects discussed in the course of the June 2016 meeting" and also "any decisions made regarding the recent disclosures about the June 2016 meeting," according to the source, who read portions of the letter to CNN.
The letter from Mueller began: "As you are aware the Special Counsel's office is investigating the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, including any links or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of Donald Trump. Information concerning the June 2016 meeting between Donald J Trump Jr and Natalia Veselnitskaya is relevant to the investigation."
The preservation request is broad and includes text messages, emails, notes, voicemails and other communications and documentation regarding the June 2016 meeting and any related communication since then.
On Wednesday, the White House counsel's office sent a notice to White House staff informing them of the document preservation request. A second source confirmed to CNN the letter was sent to White House personnel.
Such notices are frequently sent in the early stages of investigation and puts those who receive it on notice of the need to hold on to the material and specifically not to destroy documents that could be relevant to the investigation and requested in the future.
A White House spokeswoman told CNN they don't comment on internal communications and the special counsel's office declined to comment.
CNN reported last week that the White House scramble to respond to revelations about Donald Trump Jr.'s emails may have exposed the aides involved to special counsel scrutiny about what they learned about that meeting.
White House aides and Kushner's legal team began strategizing late last month over how to manage the disclosure of newly discovered emails setting up the June 2016 meeting, according to sources close to Kushner's legal team.
Their public relations efforts culminated in a series of stumbles in response to inquiries from media outlets about the June 2016 meeting.
Some of the President's closest aides, who were traveling with him back from Europe helped strategize about a response for Trump Jr., according to people briefed on the matter. The New York Times first reported on the crafting of the statement.
A sensitive legal matter such as this would normally have been handled by the attorneys, given that it was about the Russia investigation.
But the President's lawyer, Marc Kasowitz, who is designated to handle personal legal issues, was not traveling with the President and was largely uninvolved, according to the people familiar with the matter. The Times reported last week that the President himself approved the statement, raising the possibility the President may have opened himself up to new legal issues not covered by attorney-client privilege. Jay Sekulow, the President's attorney, denied that Trump was involved.
"I wasn't involved in the statement drafting at all, nor was the President. I'm assuming that was between Mr. Donald Trump Jr., between Don Jr. and his lawyer. I'm sure his lawyer was involved, that's how you do it," said Sekulow in an interview on CNN's New Day.BTW
A day after Seattle Seahawks star Michael Bennett accused the Las Vegas Police Department of racially profiling him and putting a gun to his head
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Roman Emperor. Romulus is the last Western Roman Emperor. Yes
Atahualpa Constantine was a Roman Emperor. Atahualpa was an Inca Emperor. Yes
Fahrenheit Original XBOX game Yes, no conflict Yes, weather
Midnite 'Constantine' is a character in the same-named movie and so is Midnite. Yes, e.g. a moon, blue night sky
Torque Village Roadshow/Warner Bro Picture Yes, no conflict Yes, physics
Vonzell American Idol season 4 contestant Yes, no conflict
Haridopolos Florida state senator Yes, no conflict
Siplin Florida state senator Yes, no conflict
Thrasher Florida state senator Yes, yes
Villalobos Florida state senator Yes, no conflict
Charalambos Constantine is a greek name so is Charalambos Yes, yes
Agesilaos Constantine is a great king of the Roman Empire. Agesilaos(Ἀγησίλαος) is a great king of the mighty people of Sparta. No conflicts found
Casablanca old movie the 1942. name means white (blanca) house (casa). one of the largest artificial ports in the world. place how hosted the Casablanca Conference in 1943. Yes
Ferdinand Ferdinand I of León and Castile was called The Great, so was Constantine I of Rome. Yes.
Mascara Constantine is a province in Algeria, so is Mascara. Yes
Kublai Constantine is an emperor of the Roman Empire, so Kublai is an emperor of the Mongolia. Yes [14]
Isabella (Isabel) Queen regnant of Cilician Armenia (1219-1252) [15]. Constantine of Barbaron, Armenian noble, was her guardian and then she was married with Hethum, his son Yes, found a font and freeware game "Princess Isabella: A Witch's Curse" Yes, medieval Europe themes
Langstrom Constantine is the last name of a character in comics, so as Langstrom. Comics
Hammurabi First King of Babylonian Empire. Constantine is a mighty King so is Hammurabi.
Horseshoe Constantine is a lake in Eagle County CO; Horseshoe is a lake in Sedgwick County KS. Another spin on the "lucky" theme. Yes, no apparent conflicts. UPDATE: oops Horseshoe Technologies.
Gloriana Constantine is a character of Arthurian legends (based on the historical figure), and so is Gloriana, the Faerie Queen. [16] Yes, found a font and a pc game Yes, Arthurian legends or fairy theme
Muenster Constantine is a variety of cheese[17], as is muenster No obvious collisions
Severus Constantine is a Triumphal Arch in Rome. Severus is also the name of an ancient roman arch. No problems found (What about Harry Potter?)
Helena Saints Constantine and Helena is a resort town on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast Yes, No problems found
Spitzer Constantine is a mathematician, so is (Frank) Spitzer Yes, no obvious problems
Stanley Constantine Beskov was a famous Russian football player. Stanley Matthews was famous UK football player. They played together during the first tour of a Soviet club to the West (Dynamo Moscow - Arsenal, Britain, 1945). Football, sports
Photios (Saint) Constantine studied at the University of Constantinople as did Saint Photios
Karius Constantine (Valley) is an undersea feature just north east of Amchitka island, south west of Alaska. Karius Canyon is also an undersea feature just south west of the Amchitka Island. Yes, no conflicts Water, Ice, Depth, Marine, Arctic
Loana Constantine is a sobriquet of an African dynastic ruler (descendant of Solomon and Sheba - real name Zara Yakob[18]) as is Loana (Ever Youthful Rain Queen - real name Modjadji[19]) Yes, only references to Umberto Eco's book Rain
Katherine Princess Katherine was the child of King Constantine I of Greece. [20] Yes [21]
Nikias General Nikias was a general in ancient Athens during the Peloponnesian War and drove the peace process with King Leonidas of Sparta. King Constantine was the last emperor of ancient Greece as we know it. The name means victorious. [22]
Peteca female dog name Yes [23]
Caroline There are a Constantine rock in California [24] [25], and so is a Big Caroline rock in Australia [26] Yes, found Carolina Software, Inc. (one letter differs)
Copernicus on honor to Nicolaus Copernicus, because was the first astronomer to formulate a comprehensive heliocentric cosmology, which displaced the Earth from the center of the universe. the propietary software was displaced by Fedora of the center of the world
Jason Constantine is the name of a main character of a movie and so is Jason (movie). Yes, found two possible issues but need verification (1 and 2
Matrix Constantine is the name of a movie staring Keanu Reeves, and so is The Matrix.
Hermione John Constantine is a fictional British wizard, and so is Hermione Granger. Yes Wizardry, Magic
Ashurbanipal Constantine is a king, and emperor, and so is Ashurbanipal, who has created the world very first ancient library in Assyria. Yes Yes, library hall, similarly as an sanctuary - with in the middle the statue of the king [30]
Azaña Constantine II was an European chief of state (the last King of Greece) ousted by a fascistic dictatorship. So was Manuel Azaña, last President of the Spanish Republic, ousted by Franco. Yes
Alexandrine Alexandrine, Queen of Denmark, and Constantine I, king of Greece, was grand commanders of the Danish chivalric Order of the Dannebrog [31] Yes, no problems found
Apostate Flavius Claudius Julianus, known also as Julian, Julian the Apostate was born at Constantinople in 331. His father was Julius Constantius, half-brother of the rome emperor Constantine through Constantius Chlorus. Was Roman Emperor (Caesar, November 355 to February 360; Augustus, February 360 to June 363), last of the Constantinian dynasty. Julian was a man of "unusually complex character": he was "the military commander, the theosophist, the social reformer, and the man of letters" Yes, no problems found
Penguin Constantine was an emperor, emperor is a type of penguin. Also Kevin Constantine was a coach for the Pittsburgh Penguins Yes, possible conflict with [32] although it seems no trademark was ever registered. Tux, Antartica, Everything Linux!
Dominic is a saint as is Constantine, and is the patron saint of civil engineering Yes, none found civil engineering
Dryden is a translator as is Constantine. He was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright. Yes, no conflicts found written word
Eustathios / Eustathius is a (greek) name meaning steadfast, so is Constantine (in latin) [33] only names of persons found Byzantine. [34]
Enmerkar is an author of a writing system [35], so is Constantine/Konstantin aka Cyril [36] Metal band of same name found. Plenty: anything Babylonian, Summerian, Assyrian; Alphabet(s),...
Ancient Snot is an anagram of Constantine, so is Constantine. Or if Mono's included, how about "Contains Net"?
Han-sur-Lesse Constantine, Cornwall is a place near 50°7'N, 5°10'W, Han-sur-Lesse (Belgium) is a place on the other side of the Greenwich Meridian (50°7'N, 5°10'E) yes caves
Roma Constantine was Roman emperor and Rome was the centre of the Roman Empire
Byzas is a founder of Byzantium, the city later known as Constantinople was founded by Constantine.Shira Banki, the 16-year old girl who was stabbed at Thursday's gay pride parade in Jerusalem, has succumbed to her wounds.
On Thursday several thousand people attended Jerusalem's gay pride parade. It was relatively peaceful and joyous, until Yishai Schlissel allegedly started stabbing people. There were six victims, some treated at the scene, some transported to the hospital. One, a 16-year old girl named Shira Banki, was critically wounded. She died today in the hospital of her wounds.
Shira Banki, who went to celebrate love at #JerusalemPride. Her family has decided to donate her organs. Z"L pic.twitter.com/tGwQmiqcp9 — Anna Ahronheim (@AAhronheim) August 2, 2015
Yishai Schlissel had just been released from prison weeks earlier, serving 10 years of a 12 year sentence for stabbing three people at Jerusalem's 2005 gay pride parade.
Schlissel reportedly had made threats before his release, and after, but before the parade, "distributed hand-written anti-gay pamphlets calling the LGBT rally'shameful' and 'blasphemous,'" the International Business Times reported.
The ultra-orthodox Jew wrote: "It is incumbent upon every Jew to risk beatings or imprisonment and together to stop the desecration for the sanctity of His name. If we refrain from declaring war, they'll feel free to spread this shame all over the world." He also gave interviews to media outlets heaping scorn on the gay parade.
An LGBT advocacy group, Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance, had organized the pride event, the Washington Blade reports.
"The LGBTQ community in Jerusalem and the Jerusalem Open House mourn her death at the hands of a fanatic, consumed with hatred and fear. The knife that fatally injured Shira was sharpened by years of incitement," the group said in a statement in response to Shira Banki's death. "That knife targeted all those who believe in a just society, where every woman and man can live freely, without fear of violence and persecution. That knife has wounded all those who believe in life and in God's creation."
Shira Banki, 16 years old. May her memory be a blessing. pic.twitter.com/OtrQRFAJgA — Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) August 2, 2015
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement, "Shira was murdered for courageously supporting the principle that each and every person has the right to live their life in security and respect."
"We will not allow this loathsome murderer to undermine the basic values upon which the Israeli society is based. We staunchly condemn this attempt to sew the seeds of hatred and violence among us and will act to bring the murderer to justice," he added.
Statement of Shira Banki's parents upon her death. (http://t.co/yhz5VwIQjI) pic.twitter.com/4yY9VZIa10 — Noga Tarnopolsky (@NTarnopolsky) August 2, 2015
Jerusalem's mayor also denounced the "murder of this young girl at the Gay Pride Parade on the streets of Jerusalem."
"We will continue to allow full freedom of expression in this city, we will continue to support all groups and communities, we will enhance education and tolerance for others in our school system, and we will not be deterred by those who are trying to prevent it," Mayor Nir Barkat said.
The police have come under fire for not foreseeing the possibility Schlissel would strike again.
Image by Anna Ahronheim via Twitter
See a mistake? Email corrections to: [email protected]Establishing L-G’s Superiority
In effect, the Delhi High Court has firmly and categorically re-asserted Delhi’s status as a “Union Territory” for constitutional purposes – one that is ruled essentially by the administrator (in this case, the lieutenant governor) who is an appointee and agent of the Centre. Unlike the governor of a state, who is largely a symbolic figurehead except in some situations (as the Supreme Court recently reiterated), the L-G, according to the Delhi High Court, has the final say in all executive functions of the Delhi government.
On its own terms, this interpretation is not untenable. It is entirely plausible on a plain reading of Article 239AA. Other Union Territories, after all, are governed similarly and Article 239AA, according to the high court, does not in any way take away from the powers of the lieutenant governor. The high court also contrasts the lieutenant governor’s position under the Constitution to that of the governor who has to act solely on the aid and advice of the council of ministers in a state.
Merely because the interpretation is tenable, is it necessarily the right one? I don’t think so.A new study finds a potential neural overlap between physically induced and socially transferred increased sensitivity to pain, or hyperalgesia. Previous research has shown that pain sensitivity associated with alcohol withdrawal can be communicated to nearby individuals by olfactory cues. But how this social transfer of pain occurs is not known.
Scientists at OHSU have now demonstrated that pain and empathy for pain activate partially overlapping regions of the brain in mice and that those experiences are reversed by inhibiting activity in one region of the brain—the anterior cingulate cortex. Monique Smith, Ph.D., led the research, published in eNeuro, which was conducted in the lab of Andrey Ryabinin, Ph.D., a professor of behavioral neuroscience in the OHSU School of Medicine.
The researchers first mapped changing activity in brain regions associated with pain and empathy for pain and then inhibited some of the activated brain regions. Brain activity of three groups of mice were monitored: primary mice with access to increasing concentrations of ethanol, bystander mice housed in the same room, and control mice housed in a separate room. The primary mice showed increased activity in the dorsal medial hypothalamus when access to alcohol was removed, which may indicate a role for this area in alcohol withdrawal. In contrast, bystander mice showed increased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex and insula. Inhibiting activity in the anterior cingulate cortex reversed hyperalgesia in both primary and bystander mice.
One important observation: The two forms of hyperalgesia in this study do not have a basis in tissue or nerve injury. Rather, the results confirm that withdrawal-related hyperalgesia can be socially transferred in mice housed together. These findings set the stage for research to determine if there are distinct circuits within the anterior cingulate cortex that govern physically induced and socially transferred hyperalgesia.You don’t accidentally climb Mt. Everest. If you don’t plan to, you won’t. As you set your goals for your life, one of my top time management tips is to plan your ideal week. Michael Hyatt shared this tip back in 2011 on his blog and it has made a huge difference since I picked it up in 2012.
Why does planning your ideal week work so well? In The Power of Habit, author Charles Duhigg shares how making an appointment with yourself significantly increases the likelihood that you’ll do the item! I’ve found this true. When you plan your ideal week, you’re visualizing what it looks like. As you make choices of what you will (and won’t) do, you’re aligning your week with your goals.
While I don’t always follow my “ideal” week, using this method, my ideal week follows me. As my Google calendar reminds me what I SHOULD be doing, I tend to keep up on grading, lesson plans, and videos. I also have worked out five days a week when I redid my calendar in January to include a workout first thing in the morning.
You are what you do. What would you do with your time if you could plan your ideal week? Here’s how I do it.
My ideal week includes time to exercise, read, write and plan. I also include essential tasks for teaching so that I can keep up. This one habit helps me plan my week and get more done. I color code my week by changing the default colors. Sometimes I can’t do all of these things but that is OK. Notice it isn’t on my main calendar so that I can turn it off and ignore it anytime plans are slightly different.
Step 1: Create an Ideal Week Calendar
First, create a special calendar on your Google Calendar or Outlook. (see above) You can also download an Excel template (link at end) and do it in there. I call mine “Routine of Excellence.” You’ll want a separate calendar so you can turn it on and off. I turn it on as I plan my week.
Step 2: Intentionally Schedule the Things You Want in Your Week
There is an ironclad rule of farming. When Dad planted corn in the back field, he never… not once harvested soybeans. It doesn’t work that way. You plant what you want to harvest.
Make Time to Exercise FIRST
If you don’t plant physical exercise in your body — you won’t inherit a physically fit body that can climb to the top of a Mayan temple when you’re on vacation. If you plant all the physical worry of being a teacher and don’t plant something to help soothe your nerves and handle stress — you’ll harvest a shorter, less healthy, unhappier life.
Psychologist Dr. Charles Lowery calls exercise, “The silver bullet of psychology.” He claims no medication invented today is better at handling depression and giving you better health than the one habit of exercise. But if you don’t schedule it, YOU WON’T DO IT!
Charles Duhigg in the Power of Habit says:
“Typically people who exercise, start eating better and becoming more productive at work. They smoke less and show more patience with colleagues and family. They use their credit cards less frequently and say they feel less stressed. Exercise is a keystone habit that triggers widespread change.”
Schedule exercise FIRST. Plan it. Make time for it. Everything depends upon it – most of all your own happiness.
Make a List of the Essential Things You Want to Do Every Week
Second, make a list of the essential things you want to do every week. Here are some ideas:
Exercise — How often? What times are idea?
— How often? What times are idea? Going outside – When is a time and place that works for you?
– When is a time and place that works for you? Read? Leaders are readers.
? Leaders are readers. Important routines (I’ll be sharing more about this but see my Pareto Saturday post)
Reading and Learning – You’ll see “IRD” which means “Intentional R&D”. I use Feedly for this quick time of reading and learning in field.
Journaling? Quiet Time? Reading your Bible or other inspiration? Prayer? Meditation? How do you quiet down and focus on the values that are important in your life. You are what you think.
Errands like Groceries or Dry Cleaning?
like Groceries or Dry Cleaning? How do you need to close out your day, so you have a list for tomorrow?
, so you have a list for tomorrow? Essential job tasks : Lesson Plans? Recording Videos? Grading? Email?
: Lesson Plans? Recording Videos? Grading? Email? Social media or writing tasks?
tasks? Special projects? Rather than choose what project I’ll be working on, I note that special projects will happen at certain times.
Rather than choose what project I’ll be working on, I note that special projects will happen at certain times. Pareto Power Zone activities like weekly review, planning menus, laying out clothes.
The times when you prefer that you have appointments. Clustering appointments saves time!
. Clustering appointments saves time! Spending time with key people: spouse, children, parents, siblings, friends. Include “messing around” time to make memories. Goofing off time is especially important with kids. They spell love T-I-M-E. You don’t have to BE doing something just be around them.
with key people: spouse, children, parents, siblings, friends. Include “messing around” time to make memories. Goofing off time is especially important with kids. They spell love T-I-M-E. You don’t have to BE doing something just be around them. Hobby time
time Time spend moving your goals forward (See Thomas Edison’s info below)
forward (See Thomas Edison’s info below) Essential housework activities.
activities. Essential things that you attend: church, meetings, clubs, exercise classes.
Step 3: Schedule Your Time and Set Clear Goals
Using your special calendar from Step 1, plan your ideal week including the items in Step 2. If something is in a smaller chunk than 20 minutes, then consider making it a routine or ritual. (See info on the 30/30 app in my 18 Epic Productivity Apps blog post.) You’re going to run out of room and have to make CHOICES. It is best to make the decision now.
Make Time for Accomplishing Your Goals
In a sermon series on Leadership, my pastor, Michael Catt, shared that Thomas Edison had a goal to create a major invention every six months. He had as a goal to create a minor invention every ten days! EVERY 10 DAYS. Edison wasn’t an accidental inventor – he was an intentional one. IF you are fortunate enough to know your calling – GO AFTER IT WITH ALL YOUR BEING. I love this quote by John Maxwell
I schedule time to write my books. Books don’t write themselves. I won’t have a new book unless I put my derrierre in the chair and WRITE. (Same with this blog!)
Step 4: Plan Your REAL week this week
Fourth. Once you have your calendar as you like it, then get ready to plan your week. If you’ve used an electronic calendar, then just copy the item over to your “real calendar”. If you need to move it around you can because of other appointments.
I attached a sticky mailing label on top of an old magnet. After I wrote the places I want to share, I cut them apart. As I share in that place, I move it to the day where I shared it. This way I can keep up with the last time I’ve shared in each place. When I do my social media routine, I Just start with the oldest magnets and move them forward. The question for me is forward progress – not if I get to every place every day. Can people trust me to consistently share helpful things. Routines like this help me keep up with it.
Remember to Plan time for Routines
For example, I’ve had a routine for years designed to help me be someone who is consistently sharing helpful stuff on social media. Now, I am spending more time writing books and want to finish this third one. So, I’m shifting my routine so that I schedule many blog posts and social media items ahead of time. Then, I take 15-20 minutes every afternoon to respond to current conversations on various social media. That way, I’m sharing good stuff and participating in the conversation but also carving out larger chunks of time to be able to write books. I use magnets (shown below) to track when I’ve shared and when to keep up with it.
When I get to school, I have a beginning school routine that I do that makes my day flow so much better! (See 3 Little Tricks to Smooth Out Your Day)
Good luck! Plan Your Ideal Week!
So, good luck working on your personal routine. Consider your ideal week. To hit something, you must aim for it. If you aim for nothing, don’t be upset where your arrow flies. Life is too short just to let it go by, be intentional so you can be a leader but it starts by leading yourself!
Leaders are repeaters — they repeat the routines and habits that help them consistently achieve greatness. When you want to achieve something – whether it is an awesome classroom, a book, or a family vacation — don’t let yourself get in way of your dreams. Schedule it. Plan it. Do it! BE IT!
Helpful LinksBy Anthony Castrovince
His club was just swept by the Phillies, the Braves are lurking (distantly but persistently) and ahead is a three-game series in the other Washington, against a hot Mariners team that will be running its three-headed rotation monster out on the mound this weekend.
Matt Williams, therefore, must have far more on his mind than his October rotation and lineup. Right now, this is the sort of topic only we over-thinkers on the outside are consumed by.
So, let's consume it for a second, shall we? After all, going into action Friday, Williams' Nationals had a 93.6 percent chance of winning their division, so it's not like we're getting too pie-in-the-sky with the postseason chatter. They have the most comfortable division cushion in the National League, and it's a testament to their depth that they pose perhaps the most interesting of October alignment dilemmas.
Come to think of it, the Nats might be the best team in baseball right now, that stinker of a Philly series notwithstanding. Sure, that's a transient title that has wound its way through San Francisco and Oakland and Detroit and Milwaukee and Los Angeles at various points in this long season. And what really matters is who's claiming that title at the finish line.
Right now, though, it's the Nats.
They're averaging 4.51 runs per game since the break (only the A's and Pirates are slightly higher). They're showing a remarkable flair for the dramatic, with five of their last eight wins coming in walkoff form. And when you consider the contributions they're getting from the recently acquired Asdrubal Cabrera (.808 OPS in 23 games) and Matt Thornton (7 2/3 scoreless innings), to say nothing of the performances of post-2012 arrivals Denard Span, Doug Fister and Anthony Rendon, they might even be a little bit deeper and more well-rounded than they were in that 98-win season.
Undoubtedly, they're more experienced, having tasted both the thrill of baseball's best regular-season record and the chill of seeing a dream season come unraveled in that year's National League Division Series against the Cardinals. Probably even more motivated.
The rotation, though, is the big separator here. With the injury issues currently impacting the Dodgers and Tigers, with the middling numbers posted by that revamped A's squad in the second half so far, with the questions that arise about the guys following Seattle's big three of Felix Hernandez, Chris Young and Hisashi Iwakuma, I would take the Nats' starting five over anybody else's in the present tense.
Injuries can alter the equation, of course. And the mere process of writing these words is offending whichever of the baseball gods has the Nation's Capital in its jurisdiction. But if Williams' club can hold onto its edge over the Braves (primarily by taking care of business when they meet each other six times in mid-September), the rookie skipper Williams will have the luxury of aligning his starting five however he sees fit.
That is simultaneously thrilling and daunting, and one would imagine that some early conversation is taking place among the Nats' coaches, because September will be the time to line these guys up right.
How should they do it?
Well, you've got to start with Jordan Zimmermann, the heart and soul of this starting staff. At 28, he's having the best season of his career. It doesn't show in the 9-5 record that he'll take into Friday's start in Seattle, but his ERA, at 2.93, is more than a shade better than the 3.25 mark he had in last year's 19-win campaign. Beyond that, he's posted by far the best strikeout-to-walk ratio (5.83) and FIP (2.80) of his career. He had a 12-strikeout shutout of the Padres earlier this year that, by one objective measure (Bill James' Game Score), was the best start in team history.
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Now, here's where it gets a little more tricky. In no way, shape or form am I suggesting Stephen Strasburg should be out of the Nats' postseason rotation, but you can't peg him as the No. 1 and it's awfully hard to mount a compelling argument for him as the No. 2.
Strasburg has had a wildly inconsistent season -- leading the league in strikeouts, sure, but also generating, per FanGraphs.com, the highest sOPS+ (133) among qualified starters this year. For the uninitiated (don't blame you), this is a way of saying that the quality of hits against Strasburg this season have been 33 points better than league average (and this is also explained, in part, by a line-drive percentage six points higher than it was a year ago).
Still, you can't skip past Strasburg. Six times this season, he's gone at least seven innings and allowed just one earned run or less. That doesn't happen by total accident. If you're the Nats, you just hope it happens when it matters most.
The real dilemma rests in the decision between the veteran left-hander Gio Gonzalez and the sensational sophomore Tanner Roark.
Roark, per Baseball-Reference.com, has been the Nats' most valuable pitcher this year, with a 4.4 WAR mark. He has 12 wins, a 2.81 ERA and a 1.086 WHIP. These are good things.
Alas, he also has 166 2/3 innings pitched, after working a previous career-high of 159 1/3 innings between the Majors and Minors last year. Which means that, with a month left in the season, Roark is already in unchartered workload territory.
Maybe the Nats can manipulate that workload down the stretch, and Roark, at 27, is certainly more fully developed (and less reliant on velocity) than Strasburg was when the Nats famously shut him down in 2012. But can you run Roark out there in October, with as many as 200 innings under his belt, and expect him to maintain his stuff and stamina? Doubtful.
Gio is the right choice here, no matter what the statistics (a 3.86 ERA and 1.302 WHIP) might say. He'll have a relatively fresh arm because of an early season injury that has limited him to 22 starts thus far, and he'll offer a left-handed look the rotation will sorely need on that stage.
Who knows how much thought Williams has given to this, but hopefully the above serves as an answer worth considering. If we were really generous, we'd tell Williams how to handle what could be a looming lineup controversy, assuming Ryan Zimmerman returns in September, as planned. Zimmerman, Rendon, Span, Cabrera and Bryce Harper can't all fit in the same lineup, after all.
But we'll have to settle that matter another time. I mean, we don't to be accused of thinking too far ahead.The long anticipated White iPhone 4 will finally be available by the end of April, according to a report from BusinessWeek. The phone will be sold at both AT&T and Verizon stores, with presumably the only difference being the devices color. If the white iPhone 4 does appear in the coming weeks, this will meet the “spring 2011” timeline that Apple announced last fall.
Apparently the white phones extended delay was due to manufacturing challenges, including an issue where the paint would peel under heat. BusinessWeek seems confident of the timeline, citing three individuals who are privy to the release date.
Now the question remains if anyone still cares about the white iPhone 4 model, as talk and hype has moved onto the theoretical iPhone 5 which may or may not come this year. If the white iPad 2 is any indicator of interest, the white iPhone 4 will certainly be popular, despite the rumormill churning out iPhone 5 theories.The new Greenspan concedes that the decisions made by participants in the economy are not always governed by rational adaptation to given facts, and that this failure leads to unpredictability and instability. Instead the economist-forecaster-policymaker has to take account of “animal spirits.” (The phrase was introduced into economics by Keynes and was recently revived by George Akerlof and Robert Shiller.) This is a step in the right direction, but even here Greenspan does a poor job. He rattles off a long list of what he regards as “inbred” propensities of people and groups to behave irrationally, or at least non-rationally, in economic matters. They include fear, euphoria, aversion to risk, preference for early rewards over larger later ones, herd behavior, dependency on peers, a bias toward dealing with people close to home, competitiveness, reliance on a code of values, a bias toward one’s relatives, self-interest, and self-esteem. That comes to twelve propensities, some broad, some narrow, some vague, some precise, some important, some less so, and Greenspan says that there are more of them.
I suppose that this is progress if you had not previously realized that such tendencies are at work in economic life. For the rest of us, who knew this, it is not much help. Given a free hand with a dozen miscellaneous propensities, I can explain anything after the fact. To get anywhere, one needs an immense amount of pedestrian analysis. Under what circumstances does fear overcome euphoria, and by how much, for how long? Under what circumstances does self-interest overcome home bias, and by how much? How does competitiveness interact with this or that code of values, and how are they changed in the process? The phrase “In my experience” occurs depressingly often in the book. Greenspan’s experience and intuition are not to be sneezed at, but this is not how a serious argument is made.
How is it made? It is supposed to be done with data and statistical analysis. There is a lot of that in the book too, but most of it cannot be taken at face value. Here I have to be a little technical, but I will stretch for lucidity. Many of Greenspan’s assertions about the economy rest on a statistical technique called linear regression. Suppose that you want to study the relation between two variables—say, quarterly retail sales of strawberry jam and the average price at which it is sold. You can plot the figures for a series of quarters on squared paper: each dot shows the price and quantity for a particular quarter. You can then visualize their mutual relation, and find a line or other curve that best summarizes it, as well as various measures of how close that relation is. (All of this can be extended to more than two variables, but visualization is harder.)
That part is easy. But how do you interpret the resulting line or curve? What does it mean? What does it tell you about the market for strawberry jam? Long tradition says that price and quantity occur where “supply equals demand,” or more completely where a rising supply curve (showing how much jam will be produced at various prices) intersects a falling demand curve (showing how much would be bought at various prices). Then why don’t we observe just one price and one quantity, the same in every quarter? Obvious answer: because the supply curve shifts from time to time (good or bad strawberry crop, higher or lower wages, and so on), and so does the demand curve (consumers are better or worse off, or their feelings change about substitutes like raspberry jam and peanut butter). Each observation marks the intersection of that quarter’s supply and demand curves. So what does that line or curve that more or less connects the dots mean?
Well, it doesn’t mean much. It really cannot be interpreted just by looking at it. If you want to learn something about the market for strawberry jam, you will need a much more complicated analysis, looking closely and quantitatively at the sources of those shifts in supply and demand curves. The simple regression line is more or less uninterpretable. But many of Greenspan’s regressions are of this general kind, and fall under this general suspicion. What is strange is that he must know this: what I have just been saying is the stuff of every elementary textbook of econometrics. Many of his regressions would not be acceptable in a term paper. I suspect that what we are really being asked to rely on is “In my experience” or some such intuitive claim. The regressions are there to illustrate the interpretation, not to generate it. That is a different matter altogether, because intuitions and prejudices tend to be inseparable.
This is not just academic logic-chopping. Consider what is probably Greenspan’s most eye-catching and weighty conclusion about the way the American economy works. It connects two variables: one is “Government Social Benefit Payments to Persons,” and the other is “Gross Domestic Saving,” both expressed as percentages of GDP. Domestic Saving includes saving by households, by businesses (undistributed profits), and by governments (budget surpluses, with deficits counted negatively). The “Gross” means that no account is taken of depreciation of existing assets. Greenspan’s Iron Law is that the sum of these two numbers is approximately constant, at least for the last
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12,000-a-year average subsidy of other big Silicon Valley companies like Cisco Systems and Oracle.
Wait list vs. subsidy
Faced with this dilemma, Google decided that the way to solve the dual problems of a too-long wait list and a too-large subsidy was--are you sitting down for this?--to get rid of CCLC and make the Kinderplex more like the Woods. (Google says it was always planning to replace CCLC.) Given that decision, the only possible way to reduce the subsidy was to raise prices through the roof.
If you are shaking your head at this point, that's because you lack the proper understanding of Google's culture. Having conquered the Internet, Google's executives tend to believe that they can do pretty much everything better than everybody else--even day care. When I spoke to Laszlo Bock, the company's vice president for "people operations" (aka human relations), he told me that "what is really driving the cost is eliminating the two-year wait list while focusing on providing really high quality."
Google can't just have low teacher-child ratios--it has to have the lowest of anybody. Its teachers have to be the best. Its toys have to be the most advanced. If it costs a lot of money to provide the Greatest Day Care on Earth, well, that's life.
Plus, the high price of Google day care solves the waiting list problem. Indeed, getting the waiting list down was a huge priority for Google; the spokesman told me that forcing people to wait two years for day care was "inequitable." And maybe it is.
But parents who talked to me said that several times during the six-week-long day care brouhaha, Brin made comments indicating that he viewed the whole thing as a giant economics experiment. "This is a supply-and-demand issue," he told one group of parents--adding that Google needed to charge what the market would bear. (Through a Google spokesman, Brin denies making such a statement.) Given that Google has lots of pre-IPO millionaires, it can clearly charge a lot.
Indeed, at one meeting, Wojcicki, a multimillionaire herself, told the parents that she planned to keep her own children in Google day care, despite the higher cost. "I've had firsthand experience with the great care provided by these centers and I want as many other parents as possible to have access to it," Wojcicki noted in an e-mail message.
Google has also started charging people several hundred dollars to stay on the waiting list; as a result the list has dropped to around 300 parents. By next fall, Google plans to open new facilities with another 300 places. See? No more waiting list.
Objects strongly to criticism
Google, I should note, believes that it has handled the day care issue in a "Googly" way and objects strongly to the criticism by the parents. The company points out that the prices are somewhat lower than originally planned, that it is expanding its day care operation, that its facilities will be state of the art and that it will be giving scholarships to parents who can't afford to keep their children in Google day care. (Although yet to release the details of the scholarship plan, the company says that employees will have to show proof of household income to qualify.)
But here's the real problem: providing day care isn't an economics experiment, nor should it be just another Google perk, alongside organic food and free M&Ms.
Day care matters to people's lives in a way that few other perks do. There are many people in this country--including, I'll bet, many Googlers--who believe that employer-provided day care, at affordable prices, ought to be like health insurance, a benefit that every company provides as a matter of course. Yet as the technology blog Valleywag noted recently, Google doesn't even advertise day care as a benefit for its employees anymore. That's the real shame.
Google may be providing the greatest day care ever, but so what? It doesn't matter how good the day care is if only its wealthiest employees can afford to use it. If Google had really wanted to do something path-breaking about its day care crisis, it would have spent less time creating elitist day care centers and more time figuring out how to "scale" day care for everybody no matter what their salaries.
Instead, Google has shown that it thinks about day care the same way every other company does--as a luxury, not a benefit. Judging by what's transpired, that's what Google is fast becoming: just another company.The research by Migration Watch UK comes after the Government admitted that just under 30,000 families claim benefits and tax credit for 50,000 children who live outside the UK, but within the European Union, Iceland and Norway. It costs the taxpayer £55 million a year to fund this system, which is replicated in only four other EU countries — the others require the child to be resident.
Sir Andrew Green, the chairman of Migration Watch UK, said: “It is absurd that child benefit is paid to children who do not even live in the UK.
“At a time that UK taxpayers are being asked to tighten their belts, the Government is paying out over £1 million per week to support children in other countries where costs are, in any case, often much lower.
“The majority of EU countries have the good sense to ensure that the child in question must be resident in that country in order to qualify and it is about time the UK did the same.”
Poland is home to the highest number of children who are receiving benefits claimed in Britain, with more than half the total (25,659) receiving welfare. Child benefit in the UK is worth £81.20 per month for the first child and £53.60 for subsequent children. This is about four times higher than Polish rates.
Migration Watch UK calculated that each year child benefits paid to 40,171 children overseas cost £36.6 million and child tax credit cost £18.6 million.
The Czech Republic, Germany, Latvia and Holland also allow benefits for children living in other EU countries.
The original figures were disclosed by Sajid Javid, a Treasury minister, in a written answer to Keith Vaz, chairman of the home affairs select committee.
The data will add to concerns about the impact of an expected wave of immigration from Romania and Bulgaria.
The Government has refused to give an estimate of the number of people who might move to Britain after gaining the right to live and work in the UK from the end of December.
Migration Watch UK has predicted previously that up to 250,000 Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants — equal to the population of Newcastle — could arrive in Britain within five years.
About 7.5 million families currently claim child benefit for about 13 million children, and about 5.2 million families receive child tax credit for almost 9.3 million children.
A HMRC spokesman said EU rules allowed child benefit to be claimed if the parents paid national insurance.A 37-year-old man has also been arrested in relation to the case, the police say.
SINGAPORE: The police are looking into allegations that one of its female officers made "inappropriate comments" while attending to a complaint regarding an alleged molest case, the Singapore Police Force (SPF) said on Friday (Feb 10).
The authorities added that a 37-year-old man had been arrested for alleged outrage of modesty and was assisting with investigations.
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The Police are aware of allegations that some inappropriate comments were made by a female Police officer, when... Posted by Singapore Police Force on ; Friday, 10 February 2017
The incident came to light after Facebook user Amanda Lai alleged in a post that her colleague was molested at a restaurant at Cross Street on Wednesday. The victim was reportedly accosted by two men as she was leaving the restroom, one of whom allegedly asked her to take her shirt off. When she refused, the man picked her up and molested her, Ms Lai said.
Ms Lai added that when the victim filed a police report the next day, she had to endure an "unpleasant" interview by an officer.
"Are you sure you want to do this? If this goes to court, you'll need to testify," the officer was quoted as saying.
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After taking the victim's statement, the officer is also said to have asked: "Are you sure they weren't just trying to be friendly? You know, 'ang moh' (Caucasian) culture is different from ours."
"I'm most disappointed by the fact that the police officer who took my colleague's statement, didn't take her complaint seriously. I worry that they will do nothing," Ms Lai wrote in the post.
The post has been shared more than 1,500 times on Facebook as of Saturday evening.
If convicted of outrage of modesty, the suspect faces up to 10 years in jail and caning.This was the week the reality of Brexit hit home. Now it is time for the government to rethink its position, writes Seema Malhotra
This week has proven to be the great unravelling of the government’s Brexit promises, when fantasy met reality and they were left stuck between a rock and a hard border. It’s a week in which the clock is ticking, not only in Brexit negotiations but likely the premiership of Theresa May.
The Tory tug of war is set to enter a critical few days. May is going to have to make a decision this week on the Irish question that both honours the government’s responsibility as a co-guarantor of the Good Friday Agreement and manages the politics of her colleagues. This is potentially the most critical week in the negotiations and the hard Brexiteers know it.
What happens will set the tone and direction for a hard or softer Brexit – a more managed and orderly move to transition on similar arrangements to current terms, or a pulling of the plug that risks our prosperity for a generation. A hard Brexit in reality would mean a physical border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. Every expert or politician who understands the reality knows this isn’t a circle that can be squared, but a hard choice to be made.
Against this Three Ring Circus backdrop, if May hoped it couldn’t get worse, it did. Philip Hammond let slip to the Treasury Select Committee that the Cabinet has not yet had a full discussion about the “end state”. It’s a great example of knocking down a house without any idea of what you plan to build in its place – a classic route to years of indecision and the worst of both worlds.
That wasn’t the biggest omission of gross incompetence this week, that award goes to the Brexit Secretary. Appearing in front of the Brexit Select Committee, we witnessed David Davis’s very own Houdini act with the Brexit impact assessments. Davis may have forgotten what he has told Parliament before but thankfully there is no “blessed sponge of amnesia” that wipes the record from Hansard.
A year ago, we were told that the government is about to begin quantitative analysis as soon as the DexEU team grows, and that research is being undertaken into nearly 60 sectors of the economy. In February, Davis introduced the government’s White Paper saying: “We continue to analyse the impact of our exit across the breadth of the UK economy, covering more than 50 sectors – I think it was 58 at the last count – to shape our negotiating position.”
On the Andrew Marr Show in June he confirmed they’d been completed. In September, in his department’s FoI response to me, he said they couldn’t be shared. In October, he said the Prime Minister had seen them and they were in excruciating detail. In November, we heard they didn’t exist.
The Select Committee voted by 11-8 that Davis had met the terms of the motion in Parliament to release the assessments on what is effectively a technical point. They couldn’t hand over impact assessments if they didn’t have any. But concerns have now been expressed as to why there has been such inconsistency in what has been said to Parliament over the course of the last year and whether he has complied with the spirit of the motion or misled Parliament. The substantive and underlying key question is what the government has. It’s a shambles.
The hard Brexiteers wanted the country to believe we could leave the EU while keeping all of the benefits without a single consequence. But reality is the most sobering of tonics. The referendum promises of a trade deal with the EU, spoken of as the “easiest in human history”, have given way to an acceptance that transitional arrangements at the very best will be needed post-March 2019. The first stage on negotiations on the divorce bill was meant to be the “row of the summer”. The government eventually conceded that we must pay to meet our obligations – the initial sum the EU had asked for, but half a year down the road. Theresa May has drawn and redrawn her red lines for the ECJ, which now look as likely as the promises made to the NHS on the Red Bus. The economy was destined to flourish and is now floundering at the bottom of the G7 table, after weakest economic growth forecast since 1983.
Let us not forget this is still Stage One of the talks and the clock is well and truly ticking. The reality for us is that it’s not only a ticking clock but a ticking time bomb on our country’s social cohesion and a generation of economic prosperity.
The way the Conservatives have handled Brexit – led by ideology, not careful evidence and deliberation – is staggering and an utter dereliction of duty.
Now Brexit is nearing our shores, reality has hit home and it is time for the government to rethink its position before it unravels the negotiations and our economy is hit hard – with businesses and families paying the price.
Seema Malhotra is Labour MP for Feltham and Heston and a member of the Brexit Select CommitteeThe late Sheikh Wahid Al-Balous of Al-Sweida City was constantly referenced by Syrian Opposition activists as the “voice” for the Syrian Druze of the Al-Sweida Governorate, while never displaying any sympathetic rhetoric for the Islamist militants combatting the Syrian Arab Army (SAA).
Most of the time, the late Sheikh’s rhetoric was distorted by Syrian Opposition activists to propagate dissent amongst the people of the Al-Sweida Governorate; however, if they were to interview Sheikh Balous’ supporters, they would recant their fabrications about an “armed uprising” against the Syrian Armed Forces inside the province.
Much to the surprise of the Syrian Opposition, the prominent Syrian Arab Army officer, Major General Issam Zahreddine, was in attendance for the funeral of Sheikh Wahid Al-Balous, as he and his eldest son – Yarob – paid tribute to the murdered religious figure.
What does this mean?
Major General Issam Zahreddine is beloved in Al-Sweida and considered a hero to the people; his gallantry on the battlefield has garnered him many loyal supporters, including the three Sheikh Al-Aqls (Durzi religious leaders).
Meanwhile, to the Syrian Opposition, Major General Issam Zahreddine is a “brute” that was labeled the “Durzi beast” for his alleged “crimes” against the Syrian protesters – no evidence of misconduct was ever presented.
Sheikh Balous was outspoken about the conscription of Durzi men into the Syrian Arab Army; but, it had little to do with being unpatriotic and more to do with the fact that Al-Sweida was relatively unprotected.
With ISIS and Al-Qaeda operating inside Al-Sweida’s northern countryside, the fear of genocide left many Durzi civilians concerned over the future of their community and land.
Sheikh Balous never denounced the Syrian Arab Army, nor did he state his support of the Islamist militants; in fact, many of his pictures were taken with the flag of the Syrian Arab Republic.
When the Syrian Al-Qaeda group “Jabhat Al-Nusra” and their allies from the Free Syrian Army’s “Southern Front Brigades” attacked the Tha’lah Military Airport in west Al-Sweida; it was Sheikh Balous that was pictured with an assault rifle in preparation for an imminent attack on the Durzi populous of Al-Sweida.
AdvertisementsA few days back, a woman from China uploaded a picture of stockings on her Sina Weibo (a Chinese social media network) account, of herself wearing a pair of stockings that are designed to make make her legs look those of a hairy man's. Ever since her post, the picture of the bizarre conception has gone viral, says an update on Mashable.
The source says these stockings are used as a way to keep any 'perverts' at bay, with such a ghastly image purported to be the perfect men repellent. What's even more shocking is the wording of the caption accompanying the picture, as shared by Mashable. The caption reads "super sexy, summertime anti-pervert full-leg-of-hair stockings, essential for all young girls going out." It is unclear yet whether such stockings are for sales, or whether it was more of a DIY endeavour by the girl, whose name is report as "Happy".
Yet, it doesn't seem like the idea is going to catch on; perhaps the only thing that really makes sense is the horrified response generated by the photo. A blog called ChinaSMACK has gotten feedback ranging from comments such as "this will not only prevent against perverts, it’ll definitely also result in preventing handsome guys from approaching you!" to "If it has come to this, why not just wear pants?".
One can only hope such an invention stays in the virtual domain, and far away from clothe lines.President-elect Donald Trump is set to visit Ohio State on Thursday for a private event at the Schottenstein Center.
The purpose of the visit is to speak with victims of the Nov. 28 attack on campus committed by Abdul Razak Ali Artan, a third-year in logistics management, which left Artan dead and 11 in the hospital, said OSU spokesman Chris Davey. Trump is also set to speak with first responders from the incident.
“These private events will be held in meeting spaces at the Schottenstein Center on Thursday afternoon and are closed to the news media and the general public,” Davey said in an email.
The president-elect is expected to address the press following the private meetings.
The event is not open to the public, and is not listed on Trump’s campaign website, which has stops listed for Trump’s post-election “USA Thank You Tour.”
“Our nation’s leaders routinely make visits to Ohio State,” Davey said. “The university works to welcome these visits while minimizing disruption to the campus community.”
A request for comment was not immediately returned by Trump’s presidential transition team.
Multiple requests made Wednesday for information regarding the confirmation of the event or the reservation of rooms in Trump’s name were denied by Schott employees.THE USE OF GELATINE IN WINE FINING C.G.B. Cole
Published in the Proceedings of the 1st SAAFoST Technical Symposium, Emulsifiers, Stabilisers and Thickeners in the Food Industry 1, held in Durban, RSA, in April 1986. Natal Technikon Printers. PO Box 953 Durban 4000
SYNOPSIS
The basic chemistry of protein is developed to enable an understanding of its fining reactions in beverage clarification. Results of various European and South African wine fining experiments are presented. The efficiency of both very high and very low molecular weight gelatins are discussed and it is proposed that protein isoelectric point is a more important attribute in determining fining performance than is the Bloom strength of the gelatine.
Introduction.
Beverages like wine, cider and unfermented fruit juices contain insoluble matter which imparts a haze to the beverage which is often not practical to remove by filtration.
The process of haze removal is known as fining. It involves the formation of a floccular precipitate in the beverage which will absorb the natural haze forming constituents while settling. After a settling period, the supernatant can be withdrawn and given a polishing filtration prior to sale.
It is important that the settling process be efficient in the removal of natural haze. It must also be reasonably rapid, and the loss of salable product in the sediment or lees should be minimal. Finally, the beverage, once clarified, should remain clear and the clarification or fining process should not have any undesirable effect like the removal of wanted flavourants or the addition of unwanted flavour components.
Gelatine has been used for the clarification or fining of wine since the Roman civilization (Ringland 1983) and probably before that as well. At that time the chemistry of the process was certainly very poorly understood, and hence it is not surprising that the process is often considered to be an art rather than a science, and like all arts, the process can be surrounded by misconceptions which can result in inefficiency. Hence, it is the intention to review the chemistry of fining and to present some results of South African investigations and compare these with results obtained in Europe and to attempt to account for the discrepancies.
Fining Reactions.
The primary reaction occurring with gelatine is a complex formation between polyphenols in the wine and the protein of gelatine to give the desired floccular precipitate.
The second reaction, less well understood, but equally important, is the complex formation between the natural proteins of the wine and the added protein, gelatin.
The third reaction is between bentonite or silica sol (which should be added after the gelatin) which absorbs or complexes with any residual dissolved protein, be it gelatin or natural protein in the beverage.
The Nature of Gelatin.
Gelatin is a protein, that is, it is a polymer of amino acids joined together by peptide bonds as shown in Figure 1a. Hence, proteins can be depicted as long molecules with many different side chains (Figure 1b), which accounts for their varying properties.
Figure 1. Developing concepts of protein structure, a) the formation of the peptide bond and the polypeptide, b) peptide side chains, c) peptides as amphoteric compounds and d) charge on the peptide chain.
The side chains can be, for example:
Neutral Side Chains
R = -H Glycine
R = -CH3 Alanine
R =
Tyrosine
Cationic Side Chains
R = -CH2 - CH2 - CH2 - NH2 Lysine
Anionic Side Chains
R = -CH2 - COOH Aspartic Acid
Cyclic Side Chains
Proline
Proline is very important in that it imparts a twist to the chain and affects the shape of the protein molecule and its rigidity.
The protein chain is more accurately depicted in Figure 1c, that is the molecule is amphoteric and can carry either a positive or negative charge depending on the pH of the medium. In wine and beverages at a pH of 3.6, one would expect most of the amino groups to be positively charged and most of the acidic groups to be uncharged as in Figure 1d.
The molecule would then behave as a cation provided the pH was below the isoelectric point, i.e. It would attract and form polar associates with anions in solution. In addition proteins form associations due to hydrogen bonding using the negatively charged oxygen and nitrogen atoms in the molecules.
The isoelectric point (pI) of a protein is that pH at which the protein will not migrate in an electric field. This is due to the fact that at that pH the molecule carries an equality of positive and negative charges, i.e. the molecule is isoionic, in the absence of added ions other than hydrogen and hydroxyl ions in solution. Gelatin, is rather unique in that it can have an isoelectric point anywhere between pH 9 and pH 5, depending upon the source and method of production.
Type A gelatins are usually derived from acid pretreated pigskin and have isoelectric points between 6 and 9, with the high gel strength (Bloom strength) gelatins having the higher pI and the low Bloom strength gelatins having a pI closer to 6. Gelatins derived from limed hide or limed ossein are known as Type B gelatins and all of them have a pI close to 5. The significance of pI is, of course, that the higher the pI, the greater the cationic charge on the molecule at a beverage pH of say 3.6. In other words, at pH 3.6, all gelatins would be positively charged, but the charge density would be far higher for high pI gelatins.
Phenol - Protein reaction.
Both tannins and anthocyanins in beverages are molecules containing benzene rings with adjacent hydroxyl groups as shown by the gallic group (Figure 2) which are proposed as the major source of the hydrogen bonds which are the basis of complex formation between gelatin and tannins or anthocyanins in beverages (Figure 3):
Figure 2. Galloyl group, a major constituent of tannins.
Figure 3. Polyphenol - peptide hydrogen bonding (Ringland 1983).
Gelatin is held to be particularly suited to hydrogen bonding because one third of the amino acids are glycine, where R = H, and hence steric hindrance to hydrogen bonding would be far less than with proteins containing less glycine. However, the tannin/gelatin complex is also very pH dependent and disappears at approximately pH 8, which would be due to both molecules becoming negatively charged and hence mutually repulsive. Hence, the role of polar bonding between molecules of dissimilar charge must not be overlooked.
Protein - Protein Interaction.
Beverage proteins would be derived from the enzymes which are responsible for the diversity of the biological processes occurring prior to and during conversion of the substrate into a beverage. In beer the proteins would be in the form of wort enzymes needed to convert starch into glucose and then alcohol. In wine the growth and ripening enzymes of the grape and the fermentation enzymes would provide the protein. Both beer and wine makers know that, with time, these proteins associate to form insoluble precipitates, i.e. they are responsible for "protein instability". It is worth noting that for beer fining, Isinglass, a close relative of gelatin derived from fish swim bladder is most effective. This protein has an extremely high molecular weight and a pI of 4.5 to 4.8 (i.e. higher than the pH of beer). (Vickers & Bracher 1966).
For protein-protein interaction it is necessary that the two proteins be of opposite charge at the beverage pH for polar association to occur. This association leads to a reduction of hydrophilic sites and hence precipitation. Also, further hydrophobic bonding due to association of hydrophobic sites in aqueous medium can lead to an increase in effective molecular weight and precipitation.
It would be wrong to neglect to mention the two other proteins that have received a fair amount of use in fining, namely egg albumin and casein. However in both these cases the floc formation is due to the insolubility of the fining protein at pHs below their pIs, hence the fining action is not the same as in the case of gelatin which is soluble at all pHs, even at its isoelectric pH.
Gelatin Fining.
In Europe, from where we inherited the art of wine making, most of the available gelatin is Type A pigskin gelatin. Ossein gelatin, having a higher viscosity, is mainly employed in film forming applications, and in Europe there has been a tendency to think that cattle hide gelatin was only suitable for use as glue. In RSA however, gelatin is only made from cattle hide and is thus Type B, and we would contend that it is in no way inferior to Type A, especially in fining applications!
There is a wealth of European data which appears to show quite conclusively that low Bloom strength gelatin is optimum for fining, as shown in Table 1. This will come as no surprise to the technologist trained in Europe, and this is so much a dictate of the art that it requires a real "Thomas" to consider the possibility of reinventing the wheel. Table 2, however from the study of W. Bestbier of KWV, shows that there really is no detectable difference in performance between the use of gelatins of between 100g and 275g Bloom strength. This applied to all parameters tested, i.e. sediment volume, clarity of supernatant and protein stability. Hence the gelatin to use is determined by economics alone and once again it looks as though the Europeans are correct, because traditionally, the lowest Bloom strength gelatins command the lowest price. However, there is one vintner who will not be swayed from the use of "Superfine" 250-270 Bloom strength gelatin. Such a gelatin, of very high molecular weight, is partly insoluble and forms a coacervate in 10 % alcohol solution. Hence, this user of gelatin is managing to add the insoluble floc fining action of egg albumin or casein to the normal fining action of gelatin and it is not considered to be a trade secret! Thus the advantage of superior hydrogen bonding reactivity of gelatin protein, as well as the apparently ideal pI of gelatin protein and additionally, the unusual induced insolubility of gelatin protein, is used and the result is a vastly superior rate of settling. Overnight settling and a compact sediment is said to outweigh completely the higher cost of Superfine gelatin. The price differential between 275g and 100g Bloom Strength gelatin would be 27 c/g and a usage rate of 4 g/hl would therefore equate to an increased cost of some 1.08 c/hl!
TABLE 1. The range of quantities of individual types of gelatin which achieve optimum fining.
Gelatin Type - Bloom Strength. Optimum usage rate.
A-267 90-100 g/hl
A-210 80-90 g/hl
A-195 80 g/hl
A-141 50-70 g/hl
A-120 40-60 g/hl
A-100 30-60 g/hl
A-80 30-90 g/hl
A-60 25-100 g/hl
From: Wucherpfennig, K., Ph. Possmann, Kettern, W. and Scherpe, W.
TABLE 2. Gelatin Fining Tests on 1982 Stein, using Type B gelatin at 3 g/hl.
Gelatin Bloom Str. g Control 100 125 150 175 200 225 250 275 Determination Bentonite used g/hl Sediment % 20
40
60
80 3.2
4.4
5.4
6.2 4.2
5.4
6.4
7.4 4.4
5.3
6.5
7.3 4.4
5.4
6.4
7.4 4.6
5.5
6.5
7.5 4.8
5.2
6.6
7.4 4.6
5.4
6.7
7.5 4.7
5.3
6.5
7.4 4.6
5.6
8.8
7.6 Clarity (%T @ 520 nm) 20
40
60
80 88
89
89
88 91
92
92
91 92
91
91
91 91
92
91
91 92
91
91
92 92
91
92
91 91
91
91
92 91
92
91
92 91
91
92
91 Protein Stability
O= Unstable
S= Stable 20
40
60
80 O
S
S
S O
S
S
S O
S
S
S O
S
S
S O
S
S
S O
S
S
S O
S
S
S O
S
S
S O
S
S
S
From: Bestbier, W.
In taking the liberty of introducing the advantages of high Bloom Strength gelatin in fining, it is necessary to emphasize that, if one does not use a very dilute solution of gelatin, then one must remember that, on cooling, the solution will gel. Hence it is of prime importance to ensure that when warm gelatin solution is added, it is added at a point of very intense agitation such that the small amount of gelatin is intimately mixed into a large bulk of beverage before any gelling can occur. One point of application that can be recommended is into the suction of a centrifugal transfer pump as depicted in Figure 4.
Figure 4. Techniques for gelatin addition under large scale conditions. (Troost 1980)
Liquid Gelatin Fining.
A disadvantage of gelatin fining is the difficulty of gelatin dissolution. It requires both heat and time, and in addition, gelatin solutions gel on cooling, and further more, they should not be stored for more than a few hours at a time because gelatin is an excellent nutrient for most forms of microbiological life. Hence, in line with European dictate that lower Bloom strength is better for fining, a number of manufacturers have produced a highly concentrated solution of non-gelling hydrolyzed gelatin preserved with SO 2 which is allowed in wine. This concept has a lot of convenience advantages and has received support from the wine industry in New Zealand in particular. Researchers at KWV were very interested in the concept and have agreed to the use of previously unpublished results in Tables 3 to 5.
TABLE 3. Influence of gelatin fining on the polyphenol content of a South African 1984 Riesling.
Fining Polyphenol Content
Control + 40 g/hl bentonite 225 ppm*
Liquifine 3 g/hl + 40 g/hl bentonite 215 ppm
Superfine 3 g/hl + 40 g/hl " 210 ppm
* Method of Slinkard and Singleton (1987)
From: Baumgarten, G. (1984)
TABLE 4. The influence of gelatin fining on the filter-ability of 1984 Pinotage.
Fining Filtrate ml*
Control 13
Liquifine 2 g/hl 20
3 g/hl 21
4 g/hl 21
Superfine 2 g/hl 21
3 g/hl 21
4 g/hl 20
* ml clear supernatant wine filtering through Whatman No. 1 filter paper in 120 sec.
From: Baumgarten, G. (1984).
TABLE 5. The influence of gelatin fining on the protein stability of a protein stable 1980 Cabernet.
Fining Protein Stability *
Control Stable
Liquifine 2 g/hl Unstable
3 g/hl "
4 g/hl "
Superfine 2 g/hl Stable
3 g/hl "
4 g/hl "
* Bento test and heating to 85°C for 5 hours.
Table 3 shows that the high molecular weight gelatin "Superfine" removed slightly more polyphenol from the Riesling than did the low molecular weight "Liquifine". However, both gelatins removed significant amounts of polyphenol.
Table 4 indicated that the gelatin molecular weight did not affect the filter-ability of the wine after settling.
Table 5 showed that without adequate precautions by way of bentonite usage, the convenience of using low molecular weight hydrolyzed gelatin, "Liquifine", can be offset by inducing protein instability into the wine.
The use of finings at the pressing stage has not received much acceptance, largely it is said, because the vintner feels he should see what the grapes are providing before he modifies this gift of God in any way. However, some vintners in Australia have reported greatly increased yields due to the formation of very compact sediment, by the use of Liquifine hydrolyzed gelatin in the pre-fermentation stage of wine making. The addition of gelatin to cold grapes would generally lead to waste due to gelling of the solution and it is here that Liquifine has an undisputed advantage over gelatin, as a fining agent.
Conclusions.
In contrast to the European findings with Type A gelatins, that low Bloom strength gelatin has optimum performance characteristics, it has been shown with South African wines and Type B gelatins, that Bloom strength has no influence on fining performance. When it is realised that high Bloom strength Type A gelatins have a pI close to 9, whereas low Bloom strength Type A gelatins have a pI close to 6 and Type B gelatins have pI close to 5, it appears probable that the superior fining action of low Bloom strength Type A gelatins when compared to high Bloom strength Type A gelatins, is more a function of pI than of Bloom strength, and as has been found with beer, the closer the beverage pH to the pI of the fining agent, the better is the fining performance. The use of hydrolyzed gelatin as a fining agent has convenience advantages but has been shown possibly to lead to protein instability. The use of high (250-270) Bloom strength (250-270) Type B gelatine for wine fining has been reported to reduce greatly the settling time required for the fining of South African wines.
Acknowledgments.
The author wishes to thank Davis Gelatin Industries (Pty) Ltd. and KWV (Suider-Paarl) for permission to use previously unpublished data.
References.
Baumgarten, G. 1984. The use of Liquifine Gelatine as a substitute for Gelatine powder in wine preparation. (Private communication.)
Bestbier, W. 1983. Ondersoek na die brei-effekt van gelastien met verskillende Bloom-getalle. Die Wynboer 621, 61-62.
Ringland, C. & Eschenbruch, R. 1983. Gelatine for juice and wine fining. Food Technology in New Zealand. August 1983.
Slinkard, K & Singleton, V.L. 1977. Total phenol analysis. Am. J. Enol. Vitic. 28. 49-58.
Troost, G. 1980. Technologie des weines. Verlag Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart, Germany.
Vickers, J. & Ballard, G. 1966. Fining in perspective. Brewers Guild Journal. June 1966.
Vickers, J. & Bracher, C. 1961. Isinglass & Finings. Brewers Guild Journal. June 1961.
Wucherpfennig,
|
in 2007, while the remaining members of the band pursued other personal endeavours. The hiatus would result in the longest time gap between OLP studio albums to date.
The band began working on Burn Burn, their seventh studio album, in February 2007. On March 31, 2009, Legacy Recordings released OLP's second compilation album, The Very Best of Our Lady Peace as part of the Playlist series. The album includes the popular singles "Naveed" and "Somewhere Out There", as well as lesser-known songs such as "Car Crash" and "Stealing Babies". That same month, the band completed the new material, with Raine calling the new album "huge", and noted it as being a "proper rock album again", featuring a return to the raw originality of the band's first album Naveed, though a "little more mature".[35] Maida produced the album himself, noting his excitement over "not (having had) anybody intrude on (recording) sessions".[35] The album was released in North America on July 21, 2009 to mixed reviews, though the album later received Gold status in Canada.[36] The band toured to promote Burn Burn and made stops in several cities across North America from July through December 2009.[37]
Clumsy and Spiritual Machines recreation tour Maida performing with a megaphone during OLP'sandrecreation tour
Recreation tour and Curve (2010–2012) [ edit ]
In December 2009, the band announced a new tour. In a tour that ran from March to May of 2010, and spanned Canada and select U.S. cities, the band "recreated" both their 1997 album Clumsy and their 2000 album Spiritual Machines in their entirety.[38]
Our Lady Peace's eighth studio album, Curve, began production in January 2010 and was released April 3, 2012.[38][39][41] The album's first single, "Heavyweight", was released on December 20, 2011. In a March 2010 interview, lead singer Raine Maida noted that after having gone back to re-learn songs from Spiritual Machines and Clumsy in preparation for their tour, he was "brought back to the great things about this band". He added that fans — especially those who are particularly fond of the pre-Gravity albums — should expect to see "a lot of stuff (from pre-Gravity albums) creeping its way back into our music".[9]
In 2012, the band released a song titled "Fight the Good Fight" in reaction to the Occupy Wall Street events that took place across North America in late 2011. This track appears on the Occupy This Album compilation box set.
Taggart's departure and Somethingness (2014–present) [ edit ]
A planned tour to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Naveed was cancelled in early 2014 due to "scheduling conflicts". In June 2014, speculation began that longtime drummer Jeremy Taggart was no longer part of the band; this was confirmed in statements by both Taggart and Our Lady Peace on June 30, 2014. Canadian drummer Jason Pierce (ex-touring drummer for Paramore and current touring drummer for Treble Charger) filled in during live shows, and Jason Boesel of Rilo Kiley handled recording duties.[42]
On April 30, 2014, Raine Maida revealed on his Twitter account that OLP was headed back into the studio with producer Mike Elizondo, in Los Angeles. On July 10, 2014, the band débuted their single, "Won't Turn Back", on Toronto's 102.1 The Edge radio station. On July 17, "Won't Turn Back" was released on iTunes in Canada.[43] Maida described the song as "poppier" than much of their discography.[44]
On November 20, the band tweeted that it would be releasing unreleased songs and b-side tracks via email subscription. The first song from the "OLP Vault" was "No Warning", released on November 27. A second, a demo of "Not Afraid" was released on December 11. A live cover of Lana Del Rey's "Summertime Sadness" was released on December 24 and on January 15, a demo version of Consequence of Laughing, named "Immune" was released from the vault. On January 28, "Hurt Yourself", a track recorded during Healthy in Paranoid Times, and released alongside #BellLetsTalk to raise awareness for mental illness, was released. On February 14, the band released a clip of the demo "Say". A full version of the song "Vampires" was released on March 2.
It was later announced that Pierce was now an official member of Our Lady Peace.
On August 11, 2017 the band announced the release of their ninth album, Somethingness, on their Facebook page. The band planned the release in the form of two EP volumes. The first single "Drop Me In The Water" was released on August 18, and the Vol. 1 EP was released on August 25, 2017. The full album (including the tracks from the Vol. 1 EP) was released on February 23, 2018.[citation needed]
Musical style and themes [ edit ]
Our Lady Peace has been described as grunge,[45] post-grunge,[46] alternative rock,[47] and hard rock.[48]
In the band's early years, especially on Naveed and Clumsy, their overall sound was often compared to alternative rock and grunge bands including Soundgarden, The Smashing Pumpkins, and Pearl Jam.[7] The band's melodic structure was also said to echo that of bands such as The Beatles and Led Zeppelin.[7] Lead singer Raine Maida's voice was called "erratic" and "truly unrivaled" in his field.[7] In albums Naveed through Spiritual Machines, Maida sang in a countertenor vocal register and was known for his frequent use of falsetto. This singing method, in combination with the band's melody structure, often gave many songs a surreal sound and effect.
The band's song "Whatever" was used as professional wrestler Chris Benoit's WWE theme song from 2002 to 2007. They had not performed the song live for a number of years prior to the murder/suicide of Benoit and his family in 2007. In a 2012 interview, the band vowed to never play the song live ever again due to the circumstances of Benoit's death.[49]
Discography [ edit ]
Band members [ edit ]
Current members
Former members
Jeremy Taggart – drums, percussion (1993–2014)
Mike Turner – lead guitar, backing vocals (1992–2001)
Chris Eacrett – bass guitar (1992–1995)
Jim Newell – drums (1992–1993)
Paul Martin – bass guitar (1992)
Touring/supporting members
Jamie Edwards – guitar, keyboards (1999–2002)
Mike Eisenstein – guitar, keyboards (2002–2003)
Joel Shearer – guitar (2005–2006)
Robin Hatch – keyboards (2012–2016)
Jason Boesel – drums on "Won't Turn Back" (2014)
[42] [50]Colorado Avalanche defenseman Francois Beauchemin, front, is congratulated after scoring a goal against the New York Islanders in the first period of an NHL hockey game, Thursday, Dec. 17, 2015, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
No. 1 Star: Francois Beauchemin, Colorado Avalanche
Francois Beauchemin, offensive juggernaut. The defenseman provided all the offense that Semyon Varlamov (33 saves) would need in the Avs’ 2-1 win over the New York Islanders. Beauchemin’s third-period goal at 16:12, his fifth of the season, was the game-winner.
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No. 2 Star: Chad Johnson, Buffalo Sabres
If the Anaheim Ducks’ offense wasn’t like bringing a pillow to a swordfight this might rank higher. But 44 saves are 44 saves, and Johnson blanked the Ducks, 3-0. Evander Kane scored his seventh.
No. 3 Star: Brent Burns, San Jose Sharks
Burns had the overtime game-winner and assisted on two other goals in the Sharks' 5-4 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs. Joe Pavelski also had a goal and two assists.
Story continues
Honorable Mention: Jonathan Quick made 45 saves, including 15 in the third period as the Kings managed only four shots, in his 3-0 shutout win over the Montreal Canadiens. Drew Doughty, Anze Kopitar and Marian Gaborik had the goals.... The Florida Panthers had five different goal scorers in their 5-1 win over the New Jersey Devils. Brandon Pirri had a goal and two assists. … Flyers goalie Steven Mason made 36 saves in shutting out the Vancouver Canucks, 2-0. That including 16 saves in the second period during which the Canucks had a 5-on-3 power play. … Mikko Koivu had two goals and an assist as the Minnesota Wild defeated the New York Rangers, 5-2. … Teuvo Teravainen had two goals and an assist and Corey Crawford made 33 saves as the Chicago Blackhawks defeated the Edmonton Oilers, 4-0. Marian Hossa had three assists. … First-period goals by Sean Monahan and Dougie Hamilton helped propel the Calgary Flames to a 3-1 win over the Dallas Stars. Karri Ramo made 35 saves. … Brandon Saad, Cam Atkinson and Alexander Wennberg all had a goal and two assists in the Columbus Blue Jackets’ wild 7-5 win over the Arizona Coyotes. Dave Clarkson scored his first of the season. … This Vladimir Tarasenko snipe, his 20th of the season, gave the St. Louis Blues the 2-1 win over the Nashville Predators:
Did You Know? The Canadiens have failed to score a power-play goal in their past seven games (0-for-21) and are 1-6-0.
Dishonorable Mention: Mike Cammalleri, Adam Henrique and Lee Stempniak were all minus-3. The Devils managed just 16 shots. … Patrik Nemeth was a minus-3. Anders Lindback was pulled after giving up four goals on 10 shots. Stefan Elliott was a minus-4. Shane Doan, Karl Dahlbeck and Kyle Chipchura were a minus-3. … Henrik Sedin was injured on a Michael Del Zotto hit.... Antti Raanta left the Rangers’ game after 13:49 after taking a puck in the mask by a slap shot by Wild defenseman Marco Scandella:
Finally, Jared Boll and John Scott dropped’em.
____
Greg Wyshynski is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at [email protected] or find him on Twitter. His book, TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE PUCK, is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.To turn the public off climate change, right-wing media is blaming scientists for hurting kids and being puppets of totalitarianism
Have you seen the spirited new game being played by a few right-wing columnists in high profile media outlets of late?
The game is called "You've been framed" and it's available at a toyshop or conservative-leaning news outlet in an alternative reality near you.
Another name for this game might be "What's the most offensive and ridiculous thing we can get away with saying about climate scientists?"
To play, you need to first pretend thousands of studies, inquiries and reports into climate change and the science behind it never happened.
You also need to accept a conspiracy theory so elaborate it would make the forger of Barack Obama's birth certificate green with envy. The New World Order might also be seriously cheesed off.
Then, you should school yourself in a tried and tested technique known as "framing" so that your reader associates your subject – in this case climate science – with something distasteful.
So who's playing?
Australian News Ltd columnist Miranda Devine carried out a deft move a few weeks ago in her column in Sydney's The Daily Telegraph.
In it, she suggested scientists had been "co-opted" by the "climate industry" and that this "bastardisation of climate science" had eroded public confidence in science generally.
The knock-on effect, she wrote, was that parents were now failing to vaccinate their kids because they didn't trust science.
Ergo, we can all blame climate scientists for giving sweet-faced Jonny and Jenny horrible life-threatening diseases that could have been prevented.
The UK-based columnist and anti-wind farm activist James Delingpole, who blogs for the UK's Daily Telegraph, is one of the game's most regular players.
Delingpole has previously compared the wind farm industry to a paedophile ring. When the Australian Press Council found against Delingpole, he repeated the comparison.
In a recent column for The Australian, Delingpole described climate science as a "junk-science boondoggle" and then suggested those involved face a court with the power to dish out a death sentence (he claims it was a metaphor).
But you can almost picture them in your mind can't you? All those bearded climate scientists lined-up in the dock ready to swear on oath – right hand placed on a bounded volume of Science- that they didn't do it, me lud.
Not to be outdone, enter Peter Ferrara, a former White House staffer under Ronald Reagan and fellow in a number of free market promoting institutes.
One of those organisations is the Heartland Institute, which ran a legendary billboard campaign last year in which it claimed if you believe in global warming, then you were in a camp with serial killer Ted Kacynski – aka the Unabomber (that means you, every major science academy in the world).
Ferrara has a column on the website of Forbes magazine. His most recent offering argues that climate science is akin to "Lysenkoism".
Trofim Lysenko was a fake scientist whose rejection of genetics was embraced by Marxists and Joseph Stalin in the 1930s, 40s and 50s Soviet Union. He said organisms could be given new characteristics just by changing their environments.
The Lysenko case is often held up as an example of what can happen when science becomes captured by particular political ideologies. Some dissenters to Lysenko's state-sanctioned junk theory were sent off to the gulags.
By arguing that climate science was a new instance of Lysenkoism, Ferrara wants readers to equate climate science to a scary totalitarian regime. It's not so much "reds under the beds" as "scary climate scientists hiding in your cupboard".
Apart from Delingpole, Devine and Ferrara constructing an alternative reality where human-caused climate change is largely overblown bunkum, their columns have something else in common – the use of framing.
So when we think about climate scientists, Delingpole has them in a criminal court, Devine has them victimising children and Ferrara characterises them as puppets of a regime.
The potential outcome – intentional or otherwise - is to make us either feel grubby about accepting the genuine serious consequences of human-caused climate change or grubby about the science itself and the people doing it.
This is when I tell you about how these columns are just the kind of thing you might expect from the Intergovernmental Panel For Putting Venomous Snakes Under Your Kids Pillow At Night.
See what I did there?Canadian mixed martial artist
Sarah Kaufman (born September 20, 1985) is a Canadian mixed martial artist (MMA). She competes in the women's bantamweight division where she is the Invicta FC Bantamweight Champion.[1] Kaufman was the first Strikeforce Women's Bantamweight Champion and was also the first and only Hardcore Championship Fighting Women's Bantamweight Champion.[4]
Kaufman is the #8-ranked pound-for-pound female MMA fighter in the world by MMARising.com[5] and the #4-ranked 135-pound female fighter according to the Unified Women's MMA Rankings.[6]
Biography [ edit ]
Kaufman is a graduate of Claremont Secondary School and attended two years at the University of Victoria with a goal of becoming a cardiovascular surgeon.[1] Kaufman's father is Jewish.[7]
A dancer since the age of two, Kaufman had joined a dance company and danced everything from ballet to jazz to hip-hop. When she was 17,[1] an MMA school was opened by Adam Zugec in the building where her dance company rehearsed. She joined the school for an aerobics kickboxing class.[8][9] Enjoying it, she quickly began taking as many classes as Zugec offered.[1]
While being interviewed on February 15, 2010 by MMA Junkie Radio, Kaufman revealed that she had obtained a purple belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. She was awarded her brown belt[3] on October 1, 2011.[10]
Mixed martial arts career [ edit ]
Kaufman faced Valérie Létourneau at TKO 29 - Repercussion on June 1, 2007. She won the fight via TKO in the second round.[11] This was the first female MMA fight in the promotion's history.[11]
She captured the Hardcore Championship Fighting Women's Bantamweight Championship by defeating Ginele Marquez via TKO in the second round at HCF - Title Wave on October 19, 2007.[12]
Kaufman faced Molly Helsel at HCF - Crow's Nest on March 29, 2008. She won the fight via TKO in the second round. This was her only title defense before the promotion folded in 2008.[4]
On April 23, 2009, she faced Sarah Schneider for Palace Fighting Championship and won the fight via TKO in the second round.[13]
Kaufman debuted for Armageddon Fighting Championship on April 2, 2011 at the promotion's fifth event, Judgment Day, where she fought in front of her hometown of Victoria, British Columbia.[14][15] She defeated Megumi Yabushita by TKO in the third round of the main event.[16]
Strikeforce [ edit ]
Less than one month later on May 15, 2009 at Strikeforce Challengers: Evangelista vs. Aina, Kaufman made her Strikeforce debut as a late replacement against wrestler Miesha Tate.[17] Kaufman won the fight by Unanimous Decision, but it was the first time that she had gone the distance in her career.[18]
She fought again five weeks later on June 19, 2009 at Strikeforce Challengers: Villasenor vs. Cyborg against submission specialist Shayna Baszler and once again won via Unanimous Decision. The fight marked the first time that a women's bout was contested under five-minute rounds in Strikeforce.[19]
Women's Bantamweight Champion [ edit ]
Kaufman was set to face highly touted Japanese standout Takayo Hashi at Strikeforce Challengers: Kaufman vs. Hashi on November 20, 2009, but the fight was later removed from the card. It was first rescheduled for January 2010,[20] but finally took place on February 26, 2010.[21] The fight crowned the first Strikeforce Women's Bantamweight Champion (135 lbs).[22] Kaufman won the fight by Unanimous Decision.[23]
In an interview posted on May 12, 2010, Kaufman stated that she was no longer under contract with Strikeforce.[24] However, Strikeforce maintained that Kaufman's contract was automatically extended following her title victory over Takayo Hashi and she remained with the promotion.[25]
Kaufman defended her Strikeforce title against Roxanne Modafferi at Strikeforce Challengers: del Rosario vs. Mahe on July 23, 2010.[26] She won the fight via knockout due to a slam in the third round.[27]
Kaufman faced Marloes Coenen on October 9, 2010 in San Jose, California.[28] Kaufman was defeated by Coenen at 1:59 of the third round by submission after tapping out to an armbar applied from the bottom. This marked the first loss in Kaufman's MMA career and she relinquished the Women's Bantamweight Championship.[29]
After losing Championship [ edit ]
Kaufman (right) versus Megumi Yabushita at Armageddon Fighting Championship 5: Judgment Day
On July 22, 2011, Kaufman defeated Liz Carmouche via unanimous decision at Strikeforce Challengers: Voelker vs. Bowling III in Las Vegas, Nevada.[30]
On January 7, 2012, it was announced that Kaufman would face Alexis Davis in a rematch at Strikeforce: Tate vs. Rousey on March 3 in Columbus, Ohio.[31] Kaufman won the back and forth bout via majority decision.[32]
Kaufman challenged Women's Bantamweight Champion Ronda Rousey on August 18, 2012, in San Diego, California.[33] She was defeated by submission due to an armbar early in the first round.[34][35]
Kaufman's tenure with Strikeforce ended when the promotion ran its final show in January 2013, having been purchased and eventually closed by UFC owners Zuffa LLC.[36]
Invicta Fighting Championships [ edit ]
Kaufman was scheduled to make her Invicta FC debut against Kaitlin Young at Invicta Fighting Championships 3 on October 6, 2012.[37] However, on September 17, it was reported that Kaufman had suffered an injury and would not be able to compete.[38]
Kaufman faced Leslie Smith at Invicta FC 5: Penne vs. Waterson on April 5, 2013.[39] This was her promotional debut. She won the back-and-forth fight via split decision.[40][41] The bout was named Fight of the Night.[42]
Ultimate Fighting Championship [ edit ]
On February 25, 2013, Kaufman signed with the Ultimate Fighting Championship along with four other women. She was expected to make her promotional debut against Sara McMann at UFC Fight Night 27 on August 28, 2013.[43] However, McMann withdrew from the bout for undisclosed personal reasons.[44] As a result, Kaufman was pulled from the event as well.[45]
Kaufman faced fellow UFC newcomer Jessica Eye at UFC 166 on October 19, 2013.[46] She lost the fight via controversial split decision.[47][48][49] However, in February 2014, the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation changed the result to "no decision" with no reason given for the change.[50] It was later revealed that Eye had failed her post-fight drug test for marijuana.[51]
Kaufman was expected to face Shayna Baszler at The Ultimate Fighter Nations Finale.[52] However, it was announced on April 1, 2014 that Baszler pulled out due to injury.[53] Kaufman was then scheduled to face Amanda Nunes,[54] but Nunes withdrew as well. Kaufman eventually faced former opponent Leslie Smith on the card.[55] She won the fight via unanimous decision.
After over a year away from the sport, Kaufman returned to face Alexis Davis for a third time on April 25, 2015 at UFC 186. Despite seemingly winning the first round due to her dominant striking, Kaufman lost the fight in the second round via submission.
Kaufman was scheduled to face Germaine de Randamie at UFC on Fox: dos Anjos vs. Cerrone 2. However, De Randamie pulled out of the fight on December 3 citing an injury. Kaufman instead faced Valentina Shevchenko.[56] She lost the fight via split decision.[57]
Kaufman became a free agent after the UFC did not resign her to a new contract after the loss to Valentina Shevchenko.[58]
Invicta Fighting Championships [ edit ]
It was announced on December 6, 2017 that Kaufman was signed by Invicta Fighting Championships.[59]
Kaufman faced Pannie Kianzad on January 13, 2018 at Invicta FC 27.[60] At weight-ins, Kianzad weighted 136.7 Ibs, missing 1.7 Ibs of the upper limit of bantamweight of 135 Ibs and the bout proceeded at catchweight. Kianzad was fined twenty five percent of her purse for falling make weight.[61] Kaufman won the fight via unanimous decision.[62]
Kaufman faced German bantamweight Katharina Lehner at Invicta FC 29 on May 4 with the vacant Invicta FC bantamweight title on the line. Kaufman won the bout in the third round via rear-naked choke.[63]
Championships and accomplishments [ edit ]
Mixed martial arts [ edit ]
Mixed martial arts record [ edit ]
Professional record breakdown 25 matches 20 wins 4 losses By knockout 10 0 By submission 1 3 By decision 9 1 No contests 1
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]Beer and Cider Coming to 76 More Grocery Stores by Canada Day
Ontario Moves Forward on Improving Convenience and Choice
May 9, 2017 7:00 A.M. Ministry of Finance
Ontario has announced the next 76 grocery stores across the province that can sell beer and cider, starting June 30.
The winning grocers were selected via a competitive bidding process held by the LCBO. An additional 11 independent grocery stores and 65 stores owned by large grocers are now authorized to sell beer. This is the second round of Ontario's commitment to make it more convenient for people to buy beer, while opening up additional opportunities for breweries and cideries.
Currently, up to 130 grocery stores across Ontario can sell beer and cider, including up to 70 that can sell wine. The 76 new grocery store authorizations will bring the total to up to 206 grocery stores authorized to sell beer and cider.
Ontario maintains a strong commitment to social responsibility. By law, grocers selling beer, cider or wine must have designated sales areas and operate within standard hours of sale, abide by limitations on package size and alcohol content, and meet staffing and social responsibility training requirements.
Giving consumers more choice and convenience, while creating a more dynamic and competitive business environment for beer and cider producers, is part of the government's plan to create jobs, grow our economy and help people in their everyday lives.
Quick Facts The AGCO has authorized 76 new locations, with four more authorizations still ongoing.
Ontario continues to make the biggest changes to beverage alcohol retailing in 90 years.
Ultimately, beer and cider will be available in up to 450 grocery stores, including up to 300 that will also sell wine.
For a map and list of the currently authorized grocery stores that sell beer, wine or cider, visit ontario.ca/morechoice.
Allowing beer and wine in grocery stores implements the recommendations made by the Premier's Advisory Council on Government Assets. Changes to beverage alcohol retailing in Ontario include the sale of beer in grocery stores, the sale of cider in grocery stores, online shopping at LCBO.com and the sale of wine in grocery stores.
Background Information Locations of 76 New Grocery Stores Authorized to Sell Beer and Cider(Reuters) - Hewlett-Packard Co HPQ.N and attorneys representing shareholders have agreed to settle litigation over its troubled $11.1 billion acquisition of British software company Autonomy Corp, according to a source familiar with the negotiations.
A view of the Hewlett Packard headquarters in Palo Alto, California November 23, 2009. REUTERS/Robert Galbraith
Under the terms of the settlement, involving three lawsuits, the attorneys for the shareholders have agreed to drop all claims against HP’s current and former executives, including CEO Meg Whitman, board members and advisers to the company, the source said.
The exception to that will be former officials at Autonomy. As part of the agreement, the shareholders’ attorneys will assist HP in pursuing claims against Autonomy’s co-founder and former CEO Michael Lynch, its former chief financial officer Sushovan Hussain, and potentially others related to Autonomy, the source said. The precise nature of such claims and when HP might file them could not be learned.
The settlement, which followed mediation, is expected to be announced as soon as Monday. The source said it is likely to be signed before Monday.
HP took an $8.8 billion impairment charge in November 2012 for its purchase of Autonomy only just over a year earlier, with more than $5 billion of that linked to what HP said at the time were “serious accounting improprieties, misrepresentation and disclosure failures.”
The size of the loss, and the speed with which it occurred, marks the deal as one of the most disastrous done by a major company in recent years.
In particular, sources close to an HP investigation into the matter say that the technology giant believes that Autonomy’s results and prospects were made to look much better than they were.
Lynch has consistently denied HP’s allegations, saying HP is blaming him for its own failure to manage Autonomy after the acquisition.
A spokesman for Lynch said that “we continue to reject HP’s allegations.” He said it appears that Whitman will be using a large sum of HP’s money to avoid explaining in court why she made the November 2012 allegations regarding Autonomy. “We hope this matter will now move beyond a smear campaign based on selective disclosure and HP will finally give a full explanation,” the Lynch spokesman added.
HP responded by saying that it has evidence showing how Autonomy “created the illusion” that it was a high-growth company. “This had the effect of misleading investors and HP”, it said in a statement.
Hussain has not responded to calls and emails. His lawyer, John Keker, a founding partner of Keker & Van Nest LLP in San Francisco, did not respond to requests for comment.
SHARED RESULTS OF PROBE
Shareholders had sued HP board members and executives, accusing them of breaching their fiduciary duties and wasting corporate assets. The lawsuits sought corporate governance changes at HP, attorneys’ fees, and the ability to pursue damages claims against those responsible for the acquisition.
Former HP chief executive Leo Apotheker, the architect of the Autonomy deal who was ousted in September 2011 just weeks after it was announced, said he believed the conclusions of a special committee of HP board members that has reviewed the shareholder lawsuit would be a “welcome measure of vindication”.
“Mr Apotheker has maintained all along that he acted with integrity, good faith and in partnership with the HP Board on the Autonomy acquisition,” a spokeswoman for Apotheker said in a statement.
HP has shared the results of its investigation into accounting questions at Autonomy with attorneys representing the shareholders, the source familiar with the negotiations said.
One of the law firms representing shareholders in the settlement, Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd LLP, declined to comment. The other firm, Cotchett Pitre & McCarthy LLP, was not immediately available for comment.
The attorneys representing shareholders will receive fees for helping HP pursue any further claims, the source said. Additional terms of HP’s settlement with shareholders are unclear.
HP’s allegations of accounting improprieties, misrepresentation and disclosure failures at Autonomy have prompted an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as the UK’s Serious Fraud Office.
The U.S. authorities have asked for more documents and interviewed several witnesses in recent weeks, sources familiar with the HP investigation said.
Representatives of the FBI and the SEC declined to comment. The SFO said its probe was “very much in progress.”
It is unclear if the investigations by the authorities in the U.S. and UK will lead to action against any parties involved in Autonomy or HP’s deal to acquire it.
At the end of March, HP also settled a lawsuit that accused the personal computer maker’s former management of defrauding shareholders by abandoning a business model it had long touted. In that case, the company agreed to pay shareholders $57 million.
The lawsuit was filed after former CEO Apotheker shocked investors on August 18, 2011 by announcing plans to refocus the company on business services and products, which included the Autonomy purchase.Remember all those headlines about the "milions" of people swamping the new Obamacare exchange sites and how that explained why the "glitches" appeared and how this proves the American people are so desparate for the insurance... well, the truth appears to be leaking out. As Politico reports, California’s health insurance exchange reported - wrongly - that it had received 5 million hits on its website the first day of Obamacare. State officials said the real number was only about a tenth of that, or 645,000. Is it any wonder that fewer Americans trust other Americans than ever before?
Via Politico,
Dana Howard, a spokesman for Covered California, as the state exchange is known, said internal miscommunication about the numbers caused the error. “Someone misspoke and thought it was indeed 5 million hits. That was incorrect," the paper quoted him as saying.
California has an ambitious goal of signing up about 2 million people for Obamacare – a big chunk of the seven million the White House wants to get covered in the health insurance exchanges the first year.
...
Like most states, California’s exchange had a rough first day, with computer problems and temporary halts to enrollment and online insurance shopping. Officials had cited the high volume e- the 5 million – as a reason the $313-million online system was so troubled. Glitches and delays persisted on Wednesday.
Federal officials have also been blaming higher than anticipated traffic for the snarls of the website of the federally-operated exchanges serving three dozen states.Jonathan Luke Ke Huy Quan (Chinese: 關繼威; pinyin: Guān Jìwēi; Vietnamese: Quan Kế Huy; Cantonese: Gwāan Gaiwāi; born August 20, 1971) is a Vietnamese-born American actor and stunt choreographer of Chinese descent.[1] He is best known for his appearances in the 1980s Steven Spielberg productions of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom[2] and The Goonies.[1]
Early life and career [ edit ]
Quan was born in Saigon, South Vietnam (present-day Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam). He was forced to leave his country when the Army of the Republic of Vietnam was defeated during the Fall of Saigon. His family was selected for political asylum and emigrated to the United States. He became a child actor at age 12, starring as Harrison Ford's sidekick Short Round in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. After being cast, his family changed his name to Ke Huy, the name by which he is credited in the film.
In 1985, he co-starred in The Goonies as a member of the eponymous group of children, the inventor Richard "Data" Wang. He played a pickpocket orphan in the 1986 Taiwanese movie It Takes a Thief. In 1987, he appeared in the Japanese movie "Passengers" (Passenjā Sugisarishi Hibi) with the Japanese idol singer Honda Minako. He played Sam on the short-lived TV series Together We Stand (1986–1987) and played Jasper Kwong in the sitcom Head of the Class from 1989 to 1991. He also starred in the movie Breathing Fire (1991) and had a small role in Encino Man (1992). He played the starring role in the 1993 Mandarin language TV show The Big Eunuch and the Little Carpenter which ran for forty episodes. He also starred in the 1996 Hong Kong/Vietnam collaboration movie Red Pirate. He last appeared onscreen in the 2002 Hong Kong movie Second Time Around alongside Ekin Cheng and Cecilia Cheung.
Personal life [ edit ]
He attended Mount Gleason Jr. High in Tujunga, California, and Alhambra High School in Alhambra, California. After high school, he graduated from the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts. He later attended the University of Manchester, in the United Kingdom.[3] He is fluent in Vietnamese, Cantonese, Mandarin, and English.
Having studied Taekwondo under Philip Tan on the set of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, he later trained under Tao-liang Tan.[4] He worked as a stunt choreographer for X-Men[5] and The One as the assistant of renowned Hong Kong fight choreographer Corey Yuen.[3]
Filmography [ edit ]
Television Year Title Role Notes 1986 Together We Stand Sam 19 episodes 1991 Head of the Class Jasper Kwong Season 5 1991 Tales from the Crypt Josh Season 3 Episode 9 1993 The Big Eunuch and the Little Carpenter (大太監與小木匠) Ba Dajia (巴大家) Starring; TV series from Taiwan, 40 episodes
References [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ]Police in the Indian city of Bangalore said assailants fired multiple times at journalist Gauri Lankesh as she walked from her car to her home on Tuesday.
The three attackers, who were on motorbikes, quickly fled the scene and Lankesh died "instantaneously" after two bullets hit her chest and one her forehead, according to a Press Trust of India (PTI) report.
Top police officer R.K. Dutta said it was too early to say who killed her. He said he had met Lankesh recently, but she did not mention any threat to her life.
The 55-year-old, who edited a weekly tabloid newspaper in the local Kannada language, was an outspoken critic of right-wing Hindu extremism.
Read more:
2016 is another deadly year for journalists in the world's hotspots
'Ridiculous and arbitrary' – Indian journalists slam NDTV ban
In 2016, she narrowly avoided jail after being found guilty of defamation of two politicians from India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party for her writing about the issue.
India's otherwise progressive southern state has seen some targeted killings of political activists and scholars in the recent past.
In 2015, scholar Malleshappa M. Kalburgi was killed in a similar way, also in Bangalore. He had
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errista represents the start of an exciting new journey in culinary innovation, a place where new possibilities will take root and surprising new twists with flavor and health in mind cultivate daily,” said Berrista Chef/Partner Jeffrey Mauro.
The Old Irving Park location at 4219 W. Irving Park is an interesting choice, without other gourmet neighbors like Cantu’s other restaurants in Fulton Market, but we’re interested to see how it competes in the neighborhood. Maybe healthy options and miracle berry powers are exactly what it takes to go up against Dunkin’ Donuts.
Berrista is projected to open in spring 2014.In a video interview last Friday, Ethel Kennedy offered another ringing endorsement of her grandson Conor Kennedy's girlfriend, Taylor Swift. In the past, Ethel has limited herself to enthusiastic "I hope so"s when asked about Swift (Will Conor and Taylor get married? "I hope so!" Will Swift move next door? "I hope so!"). But at a charity golf tournament last Friday, Ethel practically gushed when an interviewer inquired about the constantly surprised pop star:
She is just spectacular. She's just sensational. She's very kind. You know what she really is? She's game. She had never sailed before. She had never gone dragging before. She played anything that everyone else was doing, and she was good at it. No fuss. I'm happy we'll be neighbors. I'm thrilled.
How embarrassing that Swift had never sailed before. As for dragging, well, no one knows what that is but still, Swift obviously should've studied up on obscure rich person sports before trying to hang with the Kennedys.
Ethel also sort of said her grandson was totally in love with Swift. When asked if Conor had feelings for Swift, Ethel didn't miss a beat:
Yes, how could you not. I think the world does.
She also said something about a charity in Haiti (boring), and then she hit a golfball.Wat is foltering?
De definitie in het VN-verdrag tegen foltering is de meest geciteerde: foltering is het toebrengen van ernstige lichamelijke of geestelijke pijn, door of in opdracht van de overheid, met als doel een bekentenis te krijgen of angst aan te jagen…
Ten aanzien van verdachten van een strafbaar feit en vallend onder het parket van Antwerpen geldt dat een aanwijzing van schuld voldoende is, om gedetineerd te kunnen raken in de in zeer slechte staat verkerende gevangenis van Antwerpen Begijnenstraat.
Recidivegevaar, vluchtgevaar en gevaar voor collussie zijn termen die door onderzoeksrechters in Antwerpen massaal worden misbruikt om potentiële verdachten maar op te sluiten. Het heeft er alle schijn van dat bijvoorbaat alle verdachten als schuldig worden behandeld. Een meer uitgebreide uitleg op de persoon van de verdachte wordt simpelweg niet toegepast, met alle gevolgen van dien voor het persoonlijk leven van de betrokkene.
Potentiële verdachten worden door het misbruik van het bevel tot aanhouding ernstig benadeeld in hun privé sfeer en professionele leven. Immers, na de uitspraak van het bevel tot aanhouding, begint in Antwerpen de ellende pas echt!
De verdachten worden direct overgeplaatst naar de gevangenis Begijnenstraat. Hier wordt Men direct geconfronteerd met overbevolking, gevangenispersoneel wat door werkdruk gefrustreerd rondloopt, zeer slechte omgevings hygiëne en faciliteiten die een direct gevaar vormen voor de volksgezondheid.
Frustratie van gevangenispersoneel uit zich in kleinerende pesterijen, onnodige discussies en een niet aflatende regeldruk.
Koude douches, cellen met veel technische mankementen, verplicht gevangenistennue wat steevast niet past, kapot is en door karigheid bijdraagt aan een slechte opwarming van het lichaam. Eigen ondergoed, sokken en t-shirts, zijn om welke onduidelijke reden ook, streng verboden. Gedetineerden die toch smokkelen wacht het caschot. Mensen zonder geld, lijden dus in de winterperiode veel kou. De verwarming staat op koud en de douches geven steevast koud water.
Het duurt doorgaans maanden voordat er reparatie plaatsvindt. Toiletten zijn veelal defect en de technische dienst is kwalitatief slecht geschoold. Overduidelijk wordt hier niets aan het toeval overgelaten het de gedetineerden geestelijk werkelijk onmogelijk te maken.
Men wordt simpelweg op een bepaalde manier overduidelijk gedwongen geconfronteerd met vormen van geestelijke foltering!
Het management van de gevangenis of op zijn minst de hoogst verantwoordelijken, laten het na structurele wijzigingen door te voeren die borg staan voor een humane samenleving.
Immers; de gevangenis Antwerpen Begijnenstraat is een zogenaamd arresthuis, waar voor de Wet, onschuldigen in afwachting zijn van het verloop van het gerechtelijk onderzoek en een eventuele doorverwijzing naar de correctionele rechtbank.
Men is pas schuldig als de hoogste rechter uitspraak heeft gedaan. Tot die tijd heeft een ieder het volste recht om in afwachting van het proces in vrijheid te verblijven conform,het gestelde in artikel 6 van het Europees verdrag voor de rechten van de mens.
De situatie in de gevangenis van Antwerpen Begijnenstraat is onhoudbaar en kan door onnodige en gedwongen geestelijke druk bijdragen aan een bekennende verklaring die de positie van de verdachten in het rechtsgeding enorm schaden, met alle negatieve maatschappelijke effecten tot gevolg.Tucker Carlson and Julissa Arce heartily debated the morality of President Trump’s proposed border wall on Fox News Thursday night.
Arce, who came to the U.S. illegally before working her way up the corporate ladder at Goldman Sachs and gaining citizenship through marriage, characterized the wall as “a symbol of hate” toward immigrants, a point that The Daily Caller founder clearly took issue with.
WATCH:
“It suggests that you don’t think America has a right to protect its borders,” he shot back at Arce. “That seems a very odd attitude for someone who has benefited so much from your adopted country.”
Arce would go on to argue that her claim isn’t odd, but just a manifestation of her right as a citizen to “voice” an opinion.
She also began to argue that the wall will put an unfair burden on American taxpayers, at which point Carlson shut her down.
“I’m not challenging your right to say what you think and I would defend it, literally. However, I don’t understand why a country’s desire to protect its border is an expression of hate.”
“I’m sorry, you know what?” he continued. “I don’t have any patience for that argument because that’s not a real argument.”
You can watch the entire interview below.
WATCH:
Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com
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The Edward Snowden bust is no more. But like all great art, the brief-but-famous statue has been replaced by a hologram, thanks to a Brooklyn-based projection collective that wasn't about to let The Man silence The People.
The eerie, looming projection was cast in Fort Greene Park last night, over the Prison Ship Martyrs Monument where a guerrilla bust of the whistleblower stood for a few hours yesterday before it was covered and removed by authorities. The projection group responsible for it, The Illuminator, has worked with activist groups all over the world—they cast the Snowden Hologram to maintain the message of the unknown artists who installed the now-expunged statue.
"Inspired by the actions of these anonymous artists, The Illuminator Art Collective recreated the intervention ephemerally by projecting an image of the sculpture into a cloud of smoke," group member Kyle Depew told us in a statement. "Our feeling is that while the State may remove any material artifacts that speak in defiance against incumbent authoritarianism, the acts of resistance remain in the public consciousness. And it is in sharing that act of defiance that hope resides."
Up next: Edward Snowden Living Statue, which would also be a great way to sneak Snowden back into the country.Learn this phrase: "Hey, man, that's not cool."
Use that phrase whenever you encounter ordinary, everyday sexism in your life--which, as a guy in contemporary society, you will.
When some guy says "wow, look at what she's wearing, what a slut," say "Hey, man, that's not cool." When you hear someone crack a totally hilarious rape joke that's, like, totally hilarious because a woman is forced into sex against her will, say "Hey, man, that's not cool." When some dudebro on the subway is all like "hey, baby, you're so fine I'd like to do you like a crossword puzzle, hur hur hur," say "Hey, man, that's not cool."
One of the features of sexism is that your voice, as a man, carries more weight than women's voices. So, use it! Stand up when you see other men behaving inappropriately.Transgender High School Student Responds To White House Guidelines
NPR's Robert Siegel talks to Gavin Grimm, a Virginia high school student, who fought his school district to win the right to use the boy's bathroom, after the district limited bathroom use by "biological gender."
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
The Obama administration made clear today to school across the nation they could lose federal funds if they discriminate against transgender students. This guidance from the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education caps off a week of tension between the federal government and North Carolina over a new law in that state. Soon, we'll hear from North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory. But first, we turn to Gavin Grimm, a transgender student at Gloucester High School in Virginia. He has been through this debate in a very public way. He used the boys' restroom at school until some parents complained. The county school board sided with them. Gavin sued. The U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled in his favor. Earlier today, I asked Gavin what he thought of the Obama Administration's new guidance.
GAVIN GRIMM: Well, I think it's a very positive thing. It can give a lot of schools that may not know what to do a very clear outlining of exactly what they should be doing.
SIEGEL: Is there an issue of safety here as well as civil rights, or no?
GRIMM: I mean, certainly, if you, you know, look at a trans-woman who looks, by all accounts, like a woman and is expected to go into the men's room, you can certainly get violence that way. And if you look at a trans-man who looks, by all accounts, like a man and he goes into the women's room, you get just nastiness. You know, I myself was kicked out of quite a few women's rooms before I was even fully transitioned.
SIEGEL: Let's talk a bit about your experience. Before the school board stepped in, you used the boys' restroom at school for almost two months. Were there complaints?
GRIMM: Not that I received. I didn't have any kind of altercations. I didn't have any funny looks. I didn't exchange words of any kind - positive or negative - with anybody. Like, nothing abnormal happened in any case of me using the restroom. In every single case of me going into that restroom, I used it and I left.
SIEGEL: Well, the school board then adopted a new policy requiring you to use an alternative private restroom. Why wasn't that an adequate solution, as you saw it?
GRIMM: Because, you know, that's basically saying, you can't use the restroom with the rest of the kids. I'm not unisex. The alternative facility was a unisex bathroom. I'm not unisex. I'm a boy. And there's no need for that kind of ostracization.
SIEGEL: Since all this, I mean, what has life been like in school since your case was settled by the court?
GRIMM: I mean, not a whole lot different. The injunction was not granted, so it's still a while off until I'm able to use the boys' room at school. And things are just about how they have been. It's - you know, no one really says anything to me directly, but it's kind of uncomfortable to be there in general.
SIEGEL: Kind of uncomfortable to be there in general?
GRIMM: Yeah. I mean, you know, I don't have a restroom I'm allowed to use aside from the nurse's room or an alternate private facility, which is not adequate. And, you know, of course, now, it's such in the public eye. And I know for a fact that all of my peers surely are not supportive. We have a very mixed demographic in Gloucester, so, you know, it's kind of - it's kind of uncomfortable knowing that, you know, anyone in this room could have a serious problem with who I am.
SIEGEL: What do you think about the allowance that's actually made by the U.S. Department of Education - or at least they cite school districts that makes such an allowance - for other kids who are uncomfortable with a transgender student in the restroom, and they might be able to use another facility. What's your reaction to that?
GRIMM: I think that's, you know, fine. I don't have a problem with anyone using a unisex bathroom if - you know, if someone feels more comfortable in a single-stall location or what have you, that's fine by me. It's not my business, really, just so long as I was able to use the correct room, which is the the boys' room.
SIEGEL: Even if the motive for using the unisex bathroom for them might be to avoid using the same restroom that you're using?
GRIMM: Yeah, I mean, you know, if that's - that's their prerogative. They don't - if they don't like me, if they have a problem with me, I'm not looking to really change that because, you know, that's not my responsibility, you know what I mean?
SIEGEL: Yes, I do. Gavin Grimm, high school junior, transgender in Gloucester County, Va., thank you very much for talking with us.
GRIMM: Thank you.
Copyright © 2016 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
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By PFF Analysis Team • Nov 13, 2017
The New England Patriots went into Sports Authority Field and came out with their fifth straight victory, defeating the Denver Broncos 41-16.
QB Tom Brady was his usual excellent self, with 266 passing yards, 7.8 yards per attempt, and three touchdowns versus no interceptions. The Patriots stable of backs also chipped in, with 28 carries for 99 yards.
QB Brock Osweiler and the Broncos did not get the win, but it wasn’t all on the quarterback’s shoulders. RB C.J. Anderson had over five yards per carry, but the widening scoring gap forced the Broncos away from running the ball. Osweiler ended the night with 221 yards, one touchdown pass and one interception.
While the cornerbacks for the Broncos were as good as we regularly expect, the interior coverage defenders were regularly exploited by Brady. The Patriots defense played solidly, making sure not to give up any back breaking plays throughout the night. With that, we give you our PFF exclusive takeaways from the contest for each team.
Top 5 Grades:
G Joe Thuney, 88.7 overall grade
TE Rob Gronkowski, 85.4 overall grade
QB Tom Brady, 84.6 overall grade
FB James Develin, 83.2 overall grade
CB Patrick Chung, 80.6 overall grade
Performances of Note:
QB Tom Brady, 84.6 overall grade
Brady had a solid, reliable performance against the Denver defense on Sunday night. When adjusting for drops and throwaways, Brady completed 81.3 percent of his passes, including a perfect 100 percent on six targeted throws when under pressure. Those six throws went for 89 yards, a touchdown, and a perfect 158.3 passer rating.
TE Rob Gronkowski, 85.4 overall grade
Gronk had only four catches on the night, but made the most of them, as all four went for first downs. He ranks second among all tight ends in the league with 2.16 receiving yards per route run this season.
CB Patrick Chung, 80.6 overall grade
The Patriots defense had their troubles in certain areas Sunday Night but has vastly improved over their early season struggles. Veteran defensive back Patrick Chung stood out in coverage, as his 81.5 pass-defense grade shows. He was targeted four times, allowing three catches for only 14 yards and nabbing a fourth quarter interception. Chung has had his struggles in coverage up to this date, allowing a passer rating of 93.8 while targeted this season but New England will hope see more of what showed up against the Broncos.
Edge Trey Flowers, 80.3 overall grade
Flowers was the Patriots only pass-rusher that generated a noteworthy amount of pressure against a Broncos offensive line that has struggled at times this season. New England utilized Flowers on a number of stunts and he finished with three total pressures on the night. It was clear the New England game plan attempted to create confusion for the Broncos line with the number of games they ran and it was relatively successful, as they ended with 12 total pressures and forced Osweiler to get the ball out early.
Top 5 Grades:
G Ron Leary, 90.1 overall grade
WR Emmanuel Sanders, 89.4 overall grade
CB Bradley Roby, 83.9 overall grade
CB Aqib Talib, 81.8 overall grade
C Matt Paradis, 81.3 overall grade
Performances of Note:
WR Emmanuel Sanders, 89.4 overall grade
The much anticipated match up between CB Malcom Butler and Emmanuel Sanders was won by the Broncos wide receiver throughout much of the game. Sanders was targeted nine times against Butler and he caught five passes for 99 yards, as his shifty route running gave Butler a tough time. Sanders ended the game with six catches on 10 targets for 137 yards, which surpasses his previous season high of 76 yards in a game.
QB Brock Osweiler, 63.1 overall grade
To his credit, Osweiler played much of the game without making costly mistakes, but in the fourth quarter that changed, as he wasn’t as accurate and threw an interception into trap coverage. Brock struggled under pressure, going 3-of-10 for only 45 yards compared to 15-of-23 for 176 yards when given time in the pocket. The Broncos quarterback was improved over last week but still needs to improve upon his decision making at times.
Edge Von Miller, 77.0 overall grade
Von Miller actually was held in check this week. Miller had just two pressures despite going up against back up tackle LaAdrian Waddle for much of the game. Unlike last week where he was highly productive in the running game, Miller did not have a defensive stop and had little impact as the Patriots ran away from him quite a bit. Miller did not have a single defensive stop of any kind for the first time since Week 4 of the 2016 season.
CB Bradley Roby, 83.9 overall grade
Prior to the Patriots final drive of the game, Roby had been targeted three times in the game. Those three targets resulted in a catch for a loss of three yards, a catch for no gain, and a pass breakup. Only a screen pass to Brandin Cooks in garbage time with the game well out of reach gained any yardage against Roby. He now has a pass breakup in seven of nine games this season.
PFF Game Ball: Tom Brady, QB
*Grades are subject to change upon reviewThe video was soon given the Twitter hashtag #LordAudi. Several users identified the aggressor as Rafael Márquez Gasperín, the son of a telecommunications businessman. As of Friday he has not publicly commented on the allegations.
"I thought he was the son of a politician or some businessmen," Santillán said in a phone interview. "I kept recording, it helps to expose backroom influence and tackle impunity."
Cyclist Ari Santillán began filming with his phone after the Audi on his tail in a bike lane started pushing up against his back tire on Wednesday evening. He put the video on his Facebook page the following morning, and by late Thursday it had become the talk of the town. Santillán said he is convinced that his video going viral helped end his 10-hour-long wait at the city prosecutor's office where he went to report the aggression.
"This is Mexico, dude, got it?" the young man in a white t-shirt and sunglasses tells the officer at one point in the video. "Call my dad, dude."
A viral video of an obviously affluent Mexico City driver seen almost running over a cyclist, fighting with a police officer, and then speeding away, has become the latest example of how social media is exposing the aggressiveness and arrogance of the country's elite.
Read more
A viral video of an obviously affluent Mexico City driver seen almost running over a cyclist, fighting with a police officer, and then speeding away, has become the latest example of how social media is exposing the aggressiveness and arrogance of the country's elite.
"This is Mexico, dude, got it?" the young man in a white t-shirt and sunglasses tells the officer at one point in the video. "Call my dad, dude."
Cyclist Ari Santillán began filming with his phone after the Audi on his tail in a bike lane started pushing up against his back tire on Wednesday evening. He put the video on his Facebook page the following morning, and by late Thursday it had become the talk of the town. Santillán said he is convinced that his video going viral helped end his 10-hour-long wait at the city prosecutor's office where he went to report the aggression.
"I thought he was the son of a politician or some businessmen," Santillán said in a phone interview. "I kept recording, it helps to expose backroom influence and tackle impunity."
The video was soon given the Twitter hashtag #LordAudi. Several users identified the aggressor as Rafael Márquez Gasperín, the son of a telecommunications businessman. As of Friday he has not publicly commented on the allegations.
Video via Facebook
Hashtags headed by the words "Lord" or "Lady" have become common in Mexico in recent years to accompany videos aimed at shaming the rich and powerful. There has been a particularly intense recent spate of these videos involving the drivers of expensive cars.
#LordRollsRoyce became famous in May thanks to images filmed by a passer showing him hitting and pointing a gun at a man who had cut him off on a main avenue in the State of Mexico.
The victim was later identified as Jorge Vera, an off duty federal police officer. Lord Rolls Royce turned out to be a 42-year-old businessman called Emir Garduño who was travelling in his Phantom with an entourage of eight bodyguards distributed between three additional vehicles and two motorcycles.
Garduño is now in jail, though not because of the aggression against the officer which shot him to fame. Instead he is facing fraud and money laundering charges involving his construction firm and alleged irregular contracts signed with the state's government.
#LordFerrari hit the headlines in April when two of his bodyguards were filmed beating up another driver who had overtaken his Ferrari 458 on a Mexico City street. He turned out to be another businessman named Alberto Sentíes from the neighboring state of Morelos.
The case continued to make waves after one of the bodyguards, who was facing prosecution for assault, was found dead in a cheap hotel room with a suicide letter in which he accused Sentíes, his boss, of ordering the beating, and ruining his life. Lord Ferrari, who was already being investigated for tax fraud, is now also facing charges for the incident.
Related: Mexico's business elite speak out against corruption in an extremely polite protest
Even public officials have turned to using social media to back their efforts to rein in elite assumptions that they can do anything with their vehicles.
Last February Arne aus den Ruthen, an official from one of Mexico City's wealthiest boroughs, used Periscope to livestream bodyguards assaulting him after he told them to move their cars off a sidewalk. At one points Raúl Libien, a media businessman from the State of Mexico, shouts "go fuck yourself" at the official through the phone of one of his bodyguards. This led to his hashtag #LordMeLaPelas
Santillán, the cyclist from this week's video who is also an activist, is convinced that the strategy of exposing abuse via social media will, slowly, lead to a change in civic culture by demonstrating that even the powerful can no longer assume they are above the law.
"The idea of the video is not to shame a person or exhibit them," said Santillan. "It's a way of pressuring the authorities."
Related: The bodyguards of Mexico's elite are getting out of control
Follow Alan Hernandez on Twitter: @alanpastenAlong comes the church. God bless her mess. The “glitter ash” phenomenon within the Church only started this Lent it seems. And I have endured, frankly, some really ridiculous conversations about it flowing for three days across my newsfeed. While glitter ash harkens to what we do in the Castro, it feels wrong. Several words come to mind…condescending being chief among them. This isn’t something that has arisen organically in the Church as much as it seems an empty gesture imposed on those within her walls because it seems welcoming and lovely. This is very different from the street ministry of our beloved Companions who offer a choice, and for whom the glittery blessings of the Sisters has a 35 year history of meaning. The Church can’t really lay claim to this without co-opting something empty of history and meaning to the Church communities they offer it to.
Likewise, it appears that there is no “opting out” with the glitter ash the Church has chosen for this rite. Glitter and ash together reduces the symbolism and power of each, without making the resulting combination any the better or richer for it.
It also assumes that glitter is an appropriate symbolic gesture for all LGBTQ people. I know from our experience that while there are a good many who wish the double blessing of both ash and glitter in our Castro ministry, many prefer one or the other rather than both. Those who want ashes want them for sacramental reasons. Those who want glitter want it because they have been so excluded from sacramental life that they can’t bring themselves to embrace the traditions of the Church, or because they simply don’t have any religious persuasion at all.
Glitter ash as proposed by the current trend proposes a difference between gender queer folks and others. There are times and moments when this is not such a bad thing…the differences gender queer people bring to the table should indeed be celebrated. There are ways of doing that without the Church co-opting a symbol of “solidarity” that has nothing to do with solidarity. Trust me, there are million ways to show solidarity with LGBTQ people that have nothing to do with glitter on Ash Wednesday. Mixing glitter into ash isn’t going to make LGBTQ people feel welcome. It may make some people feel solidarity with our community. And others it may simply annoy. There are reasons why in the queer community we often call glitter “drag herpes.” Some folks will still find it in their houses this Christmas.
So…my thoughts are - the Church within her walls should knock it off. LOL
If the Church wants to go out into the streets, into the communities where LGBTQ people have sought refuge, then glitter and/or ashes may be suitable. Or not. But certainly not mixed together, and as gestures with some choice. And some meaning.
In what other context do you find glitter in Church sacrament or Rite? Ever? We have an abundance of symbols of our faith. Glitter is not one of them. So, for this reason I feel confident that it did not arise organically in the Church. Whether it becomes a lasting durable symbol in our tradition remains to be seen. I doubt it. It lacks context.
Why does it feel like co-opting? Well, partly because the stated goal of said glitter in this particular Rite is to represent resurrection. Light and life and affirmation. Glitter doesn't represent that in the queer context. We aren't unicorns. In the queer context, glitter represents defiance. Grit. It represents fabulous self assertion - and this is important - in the context of persecution! In defiance of laws did queens dress in drag, and perform cabarets. They risked arrest for doing so. And death from violence. In defiance of cultural biases, laws, and animosity LGBTQ people risk being themselves.
Glitter holds no magic for trans folk in general, nor for the lesbian community overall...not that I've ever seen evidence for. Glitter arises from drag culture, and is far from a universal symbol for the broader LGBTQ community. And when it does resonate, it doesn't do so as a symbol of queer culture, as much as the defiance of heteronormative culture...in the midst of criminalization and social stigma. In many cases, perpetuated by the Church! This is what I mean by co-opting symbols. It is not for the Church to take glitter, make it a symbol for our broader queer community, and then use it to feel good about their "solidarity" with us.
I have no doubt the Church wants to do things that reinforce their solidarity, love, support, and atonement for their treatment of the LGBTQ community. But I emphasize this last most importantly. The Church needs to atone. Publicly. And it needs to seek gestures that actually mean something to LGBTQ people. The gesture of glitter ash means nothing without an appreciation for why LGBTQ people don't really want the Church to remind them of their mortality. What good news is it for us that we are all dust, if the good news and hope of God's love isn't made more explicit by a Church that has long withheld it from us?A worker sprays water over a car at a car-wash shop in Beijing on February 5, 2009 despite the drought affecting other parts of the country. Parts of China are experiencing their worst drought in half a century, threatening the water supply of millions of people and putting the winter harvest at risk, state media reported on February 5. AFP PHOTO/LIU Jin (Photo credit should read LIU JIN/AFP/Getty Images) A car wash in Beijing. (Credit: LIU JIN/AFP/Getty Images)
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Workers at two car washes in the Bronx walked off the job Saturday, accusing their employers of retaliating against them after they voted to join a union.
The workers were to go on strike Saturday at the Webster Car Wash, 1738 Webster Ave., and the WCA Car Wash – also known as the Rico Pobre car Wash, at 1440 Westchester Ave.
The workers left to protest what they called “ongoing harassment and retaliation” from store managers after they organized and voted to unionize. The workers also said management had not responded to calls for better health and safety conditions, according to a news release.
“These courageous ‘carwasheros’ at Webster & ‘Rico Pobre’ voted within the last year to join our union and have been harassed and threatened ever since,” Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, said in a news release. “We deplore the unfair, harsh and anti-union actions this owner used. These workers want basic respect and dignity on the job.”
The Webster Car Wash workers voted to join the union last October, and the WCA car wash workers took the same vote in July, the release said.
But the workers claimed that car wash owners and management “targeted the union’s representatives, and punished workers by changing rules in retaliation for supporting the union,” the release said.
Car wash employees said they have not been able to address their issues or begin bargaining with owner John Lage.
“With the union, we have tried addressing our issues with Lage directly, but he has only given us the run-around,” Mexican immigrant Milton Munoz, 30, said in the release. “We know that with this protest and the support of the community we can get fair proposals from Lage at the bargaining table, and sign a fair contract that will guarantee our basic rights.”
Lage has not issued a comment in published reports.
You May Also Be Interested In These StoriesThere’s not a day that goes by where some thought about soccer, particularly soccer in Cincinnati, doesn’t go through my head. I read news about various leagues on the bus, I think of ideas for Die Innenstadt while on my bike, I listen to podcasts about the game when I’m driving. It’s been just over two years since FC Cincinnati was announced as an expansion club in the then third division United Soccer League. Since those days of rumors and press conferences, so much has transpired here at home and in the game across the nation. Shaky early marketing aside, I was on board, hopeful about FC Cincinnati from the beginning.
There were a lot of like minded people, we formed this supporters group.
There were even more like minded people. They joined up with us and in other groups across the city.
Then there were thousands of people, they helped fill the stands for record attendances that watched league play, the Open Cup, international friendlies, and the US Women’s National Team.NEW YORK -- With 23.2 seconds remaining, the Madison Square Garden crowd stood on its feet to shower the New York Knicks with a hard-earned standing ovation.
As satisfied fans stood around Phil Jackson, the Zen Master remained in his center-court seat but managed to break out a smile as a raucous “Let’s Go Knicks!” chant broke out.
The streaking Knicks didn’t just win their seventh straight game with a stirring 92-86 victory over the Indiana Pacers. They now are starting to believe that they can not only track down the eighth spot in the East but also make noise in the playoffs.
The Knicks are a long way from the playoffs despite a seven straight wins. Brad Penner/USA TODAY Sports
“That we can accomplish it, and not only that we can accomplish it, but we can do something once we get in,” Tyson Chandler said when asked what the win over the Pacers makes them believe. “I don’t really think a team wants to see us in the first round.”
The Knicks are still a long way from getting into the postseason dance as they trail the Atlanta Hawks (31-35) by four games with just 14 games remaining. But Wednesday night’s win over East-leading Indiana adds legitimacy to their streak and shows how good they are playing.
If the Knicks can keep this up, they could potentially build a double-digit winning streak. The Knicks next play at the Philadelphia 76ers, who are streaking in the other direction with 22 straight losses. After that, the Knicks play the Cleveland Cavaliers (26-42) at home on Sunday. Cleveland is without the injured Kyrie Irving.
The Knicks then embark on a five-game West Coast swing that could make or break their postseason hopes. They face the Los Angeles Lakers, Sacramento Kings, Phoenix Suns, Golden State Warriors and Utah Jazz on the road trip.
April doesn’t bring any relief for the Knicks. Their last seven games of the season are against Eastern Conference playoff contenders. They play the Brooklyn Nets twice, Toronto Raptors twice, visit the Miami Heat and play the Washington Wizards. With exception to Miami, all those teams will be jockeying for playoff positioning so they will likely have something to play for.
But the Knicks now know what they are capable of when they play defense and play with grit and determination. They held Paul George to 4-of-17 shooting and 17 points. They forced the Pacers’ starters into 11 turnovers and perhaps more impressive was the fact that they did not back down against one of the best defensive teams in the NBA.
Amar’e Stoudemire was a factor inside. He scored 21 points against Indiana and now has scored in double-figures in his past eight games, averaging 16.9 points.
“Amar’e has been playing at a very high level,” Carmelo Anthony said. “We’ve been feeding off of that. You can see at times we’re going at him. We’re riding that horse.”
Anthony put on an offensive show for Jackson with 34 points. He scored on an array of isolation moves, even posting up George before executing a spin-and-dunk move that would have impressed Michael Jordan.
Something that might’ve caught Jackson’s eye more than that though was Anthony’s assists. Four of his five dimes came in the final 13:32, each one of them a big assist. One came on a Pablo Prigioni 3-pointer with 1:32 left in the third and then another came at the end of the quarter when he threw a pass downcourt to a streaking Prigioni for a basket that came off a goaltending call to give the Knicks a five-point lead going into the fourth quarter.
With 9:22 left in the fourth, Anthony found Iman Shumpert for a 3-pointer after
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isn’t quite the case. Max Scherzer is the clear front-runner at this point, with a host of other pitchers behind him all trying to make an argument why they might have had better seasons. Clayton Kershaw has a lower ERA. Zack Greinke pitches in a much tougher park. Teammate Stephen Strasburg has a lower FIP.
Those are just the stats that measure outcomes, though. Let’s see what Statcast has to say about the sort of contact the other candidates are allowing to see if anybody has a real case against Scherzer.
First, a handful of stats on which we typically when evaluating pitchers. For the purposes of this post, I looked at the five pitchers who’ve produced an average of 5.0 WAR between FanGraphs WAR (which is FIP-based) and RA9/WAR (which is based on runs allowed). Apologies to Jacob deGrom, Jimmy Nelson, Aaron Nola, and Robbie Ray, who have all had good years, but didn’t quite fit here.
NL Cy Young Candidates Metric Max
Scherzer Zack
Greinke Clayton
Kershaw Stephen
Strasburg Gio
Gonzalez IP 197.1 198.1 171.0 167.2 196.2 K% 34.2% 27.0% 30.3% 29.1% 23.1% BB% 7.0% 5.5% 4.5% 6.7% 9.5% HR/9 1.00 1.09 1.16 0.70 0.96 BABIP.246.281.262.283.252 ERA 2.55 3.18 2.21 2.68 2.75 FIP 2.92 3.25 3.01 2.73 3.90 WAR 5.9 5.1 4.7 5.3 3.3 Leader in orange, second place in blue.
Max Scherzer leads all NL pitchers in WAR, is barely second in innings among those included here, and is the only pitcher to rank either first or second by ERA and FIP. He’s way ahead in strikeouts as well, but look at that BABIP. He’s the best among this group on turning balls in play into outs, but what if that isn’t all Scherzer? What if there’s actually been quite a bit of luck or good defense involved, and he’s not wholly responsible for all of those great numbers?
I’ll attempt to address that question in a moment. First, some other WAR-like metrics.
NL Cy Young Candidates Metric Max
Scherzer Zack
Greinke Clayton
Kershaw Stephen
Strasburg Gio
Gonzalez WAR 5.9 5.1 4.7 5.3 3.3 RA9/WAR 6.9 5.4 6.6 5.5 6.7 BRef 6.9 6.0 4.7 5.8 6.8 BPro 7.2 5.8 4.7 4.9 5.1 Leader in orange, second in blue.
Again, this is why Scherzer is the favorite. He’s leading no matter who you ask. But back to that BABIP issue. How’s his defense? Here are the team metrics both for Defensive Runs Saved and Ultimate Zone Rating as of a couple days ago.
NL Cy Young Candidates Team Defense Metric Max
Scherzer Zack
Greinke Clayton
Kershaw Stephen
Strasburg Gio
Gonzalez UZR 1.8 -14.9 17.5 1.8 1.8 DRS -29 2 48 -29 -29
We have three teammates, but that doesn’t actually seem to make the picture much more clear. By DRS, the Nationals are rated poorly; all three Nats receive a slight bump in Baseball-Reference’s WAR because of it. However, by UZR, the Nationals’ defense has been fine. In any event, we can’t really know from what kind of defensive performance any of the three pitchers has personally benefited, as each amounts to only one-fifth of the season and is subject to variation. Clayton Kershaw appears to have gotten a benefit from the Dodgers defense, but we don’t really know for sure. We can get a little bit closer to knowing using Statcast.
Expected wOBA (xwOBA) uses launch angle and exit velocity, along with walks and strikeouts, to arrive at an estimated performance for each pitcher. We can compare these xwOBA marks to their actual wOBAs to see if there are any discrepancies.
NL Cy Young Candidates xwOBA Pitcher wOBA xWOBA Difference Max Scherzer.253.243.010 Clayton Kershaw.256.251.005 Zack Greinke.282.281.001 Stephen Strasburg.265.266 -.001 Gio Gonzalez.282.289 -.007
Based on xwOBA, not only is there nothing to indicate that Scherzer should be regarded as anything less than the favorite in the Cy Young race, there’s actual evidence that he should be doing better than the results have provided. Scherzer’s xwOBA of.243 is actually the best in baseball. It is possible that Clayton Kershaw has been slightly unlucky, as well, in some respects, while Gio Gonzalez has reaped some benefits. That doesn’t necessarily mean we should be mentally adjusting Kershaw or Scherzer’s ERA lower. Scherzer has a 80.4% left-on-base rate that has helped him, while Kershaw has an astronomically high 88.1% mark. Out of nearly 5500 qualified seasons since Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, Kershaw’s 88.1% LOB-rate is the second-highest to John Candelaria’s 88.8% back in 1977.
Taking away strikeouts and walks, we can see what kind of difference the pitchers have had on contact, including home runs. Below is wOBA and xwOBA when the batter hits the ball.
NL Cy Young Candidates xwOBA on Contact Pitcher wOBA on Contact xwOBA on Contact Difference Max Scherzer.338.321.017 Zack Greinke.360.359.001 Clayton Kershaw.345.337.008 Stephen Strasburg.336.337 -.001 Gio Gonzalez.316.327 -.011
Max Scherzer is at the top again, and it appears he might have been a bit unlucky in this case. We see the same with Kershaw, and we see that Greinke has been hit a bit harder than the rest of the group. How much faith you have in a pitcher’s ability to control batted balls will dictate how much credence you want to give a stat like xwOBA, particularly here, on contact. We can remove home runs from the equation, looking at wOBA and xwOBA on balls in play, perhaps getting a better picture of how defense or luck might have played a role.
NL Cy Young Candidates xwOBA on Balls in Play Pitcher wOBA on BIP xwOBA on BIP Difference Max Scherzer.253.271 -.018 Zack Greinke.286.317 -.031 Clayton Kershaw.260.272 -.012 Stephen Strasburg.289.310 -.021 Gio Gonzalez.248.281 -.033
Kershaw and Scherzer again lead the way when it comes to the xwOBA for these balls, but here we see that every pitcher has benefited some from defense or luck. Gonzalez and Greinke have received the biggest benefit despite mediocre defenses behind them overall, while Kershaw — despite the best defense by the numbers — has received the least help. There isn’t really any way around it: Max Scherzer has been the best pitcher in the National League. The cursory look at the numbers on the top is supported by the Statcast numbers at which we’ve just looked. If you wanted to look at only Statcast numbers, Scherzer has been the best pitcher in the NL there as well.
I took a fairly rough route to create a wins above replacement based on xwOBA. This obviously isn’t a definitive creation, nor is it an absolute value. It doesn’t factor in opponent, for example, nor are home runs included at all. If you wanted a WAR metric that includes strikeouts, walks, and Statcast-expected offense based on launch angle and exit velocity, however, this is rough estimate. I included a small difference for AL and NL pitchers and just took innings divided by eight to get replacement runs. The rest was done by creating runs above average from xwOBA and then converting those runs to wins. The entire list is presented below without commentary.UPDATE: The Singapore Police Force have since confirmed that three club-goers were arrested for assaulting a cop.
All hell broke loose at a nightclub at St James Power Station on Sunday morning (Nov 12) as the dance floor of ENVY hosted a whirlwind of violent punches, kicks, thrown furniture, and spilled beer.
The best part? The tremendous pandemonium was captured on video and uploaded on Facebook for all to see. The exact cause of the riot was unclear, but it seemed to have been triggered by a patron who tossed a beer cup at a bouncer. You can see the part where a bouncer had been shining his green laser pointer at someone when the beer cup went flying in the air.
From that point onwards, it was complete chaos as the brawl spread across the dancefloor, with many others joining in the clubbers vs bouncers fray.
You can see just how insane the riot turned out to be, with a wave of human bodies falling over and someone getting kicked and punched in the head. Absolute madness.
At one point in time, a group of rowdy patrons started yelling gang chants — but it’s unclear if this was before or after the fights broke out.
ENVY Dance Club has since issued a statement about the brawl, apologizing to all for the violent incident while assuring that it’ll take action against those responsible. According to the club’s management, security officers, staff, and even police officers were assaulted during the free-for-all.
Edit: Article amended to reflect the correct date of the incidentEarly versions of the game were apparently a lot more colorful and upbeat from what we know. According to the developers, whenever you got into a fight the screen would switch to 2D, and from there the rhythm game would take over, involving "colored circles bashing into each other," like the notes in Rock Band or something. The idea was that the fight would unfold depending on how well you hit those notes.
"Is that 'Nevermind' again? Seriously, asshole, learn another song."
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This wasn't a crazy idea that they joked about and tossed right away -- at a different stage in development, they even considered making Arkham Asylum a "full on rhythm action game." The game's director Sefton Hill puts it like this: "We went off in some slightly crazy directions to begin with. In fact, one of the earliest versions was like a rhythm action game and saw you judging when to hit the 'notes' (i.e. punches), which was an interesting idea but never really worked."
Maybe because you'd be dressed as the goddamn Batman, which is way too restrictive in the groin area.
As bizarre as that seems, he also points out that the final game isn't that different from this version: "When you're fighting enemies there's a kind of rhythm to it. I'm a big kung-fu fan and when you watch the fights in those films there's a lovely natural rhythm to it. That's something we wanted you to feel when you were playing Batman; that you're in control at all times. We wanted it to look choreographed, but with you being directly responsible for every move and attack."
Pirouette, punch, angst, neck break, press X to pretend you're a seed.
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If you've played Arkham Asylum, you know this is true. It's all about timing your movements correctly -- pressing the punch button at precisely the end of the previous hit on an enemy, or the counter button whenever an enemy shoots electrical wires out of his head. The special combos in Arkham Asylum are basically like note combinations in Guitar Hero; the main difference is that you don't look like that much of a dork while playing it.
We do wonder what the soundtrack would have been like in this version. Here's a strong possibility:
You can find Steve's Twitter by clicking these words here. For more from Ashe, check out Weird Shit Blog and Film School Rejects. For more from Karl, check out his blog or find him on the Facebook.
For more drastic changes in direction, check out 6 Global Corporations Started by Their Founder's Shitty Luck and 7 Bizarre Early Versions of Famous Cartoon Characters.
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Do you have an idea in mind that would make a great article? Then sign up for our writers workshop! Do you possess expert skills in image creation and manipulation? Mediocre? Even rudimentary? Are you frightened by MS Paint and simply have a funny idea? You can create an infograpic and you could be on the front page of Cracked.com tomorrow!Heroes come in all shapes and sizes—and some, in black and white stripes.
One man was rewarded for his heroic actions after he came to the rescue of a female corrections officer who was brutally attacked in a county jail.
Antonio Brown wasn’t expecting to see life beyond iron bars for at least another one and half years, but when Kent County Circuit Judge Mark Trusock awarded Brown a “get out of jail free card” for what he did, he was probably the first ever to be able to do that.
Thirty-one-year-old Antonio Duane Brown was arrested and sentenced to one-and-a-half to five years in prison for fleeing and eluding an officer in Grand Rapids, Michigan on September 13, 2014. But just hours into serving his prison sentence at Kent County Jail, Brown got a second chance at freedom for his doing the right thing in the early morning of September 14.
A female prison guard was on shift the night that would be Brown’s first in serving his sentence, when inmate Willie Williams requested toilet paper from the guard. The unnamed guard used a remote unlocking system to let Williams out of the cell so he could help himself to some toilet paper, and when she heard the door shut and lock, she assumed he was back where he was supposed to be—inside his prison cell.
But to her horrifying discovery, Williams was actually hiding behind a pillar waiting for the her to walk by.
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The unknowing guard began to make her rounds patrolling the grounds when Williams jumped from the shadows and viciously attacked her.
Williams knocked the radio from her hands and pressed the buttons to release the other inmates. Just when the prison guard didn’t think things could get any worse, she saw 6 to 7 prisoners, freshly released from their cells, approaching the scene, but to both Williams and the guard’s surprise, they came to her rescue.
Led by Brown, the inmates courageously fought off Williams and defended her from the vicious attacker—even using her radio to call for help.
Kent County Sheriff Larry Stelma said Brown took the initiative to rescue the officer and led the others to help him. “He came to the officer’s aid. He took the assailant (Williams) and separated him from the officer,” Stelma Kent County Sheriff Larry Stelma said Brown took the initiative to rescue the officer and led the others to help him. “He came to the officer’s aid. He took the assailant (Williams) and separated him from the officer,” Stelma said. “He was the first one there to help and gave her some reprieve.”
Stelma suggested to Judge Truscok he resentence the man for his life-saving actions.
Kent County Prosecutor Bill Forsyth had no objections to the resentencing and permitted Judge Trusock to do so, calling it an unprecedented event. “I’ve been in the office 30 plus years and I’ve never seen it. Which is, I suppose, a good thing because you don’t want this sort of thing to happen very often,” he told Mlive.
The Judge agreed.
“Sir, I think this is something that you did that was heroic, that was brave, and honorable, and I think it needs to be taken into effect in your sentencing,” Judge Trusock told Brown.
Judge Trusock called Brown’s actions “brave” and “honorable.”
“You intervened at your own peril and pulled that individual off of her, probably saved her life and protected her from him attacking her again,” Trusock said.
The Judge gave Brown credit for 149 days served–shaving 4.5 months off his total sentence, and and thanked him on behalf of the judicial system.
Sheriff Mark Stelma hopes Brown will use this unprecedented second chance to turn his life around.
“My hope and prayer is that this event has…when he recognizes that he’s recognized for good behavior and can utilize this as a turning point in his life,” Stelma said.
Watch the gut wrenching story below!Vermont, the tiny west coast state in USA is famous world wide for it’s dazzling array of fall colors which are a visual treat. Every year, thousands of people flock to witness the bejeweled colors that only Vermont in Fall can offer. We made the trip in late September in 2015 to see nature’s riot of colors and this post is a recap of what we did in the Green mountain state. Consider it a first timer’s handy guide to Vermont fall foliage drives as well as best places to stay for Vermont Fall foliage watching and includes fall foliage tracker link which you should keep an eye on to plan your visit around peak foliage in New England. Finally, as usual this guide also comes with is vegetarian and vegan friendly. So without further ado let’s get started on this sneak peak on what to do in Vermont in Fall.
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Vermont Fall Foliage Drives: resources for Fall foliage watching
Although Vermont has something for visitors every season, its most famous season is perhaps Fall, where the entire state breaks out into this out-of-world menagerie of colors which is nature’s beauty at its best. People from all over the world flock to see the spectacular Vermont fall foliage, specially in the first few weeks of October (around Columbus day/Oct 12), so we decided to avoid the crowds and go in a little early, i.e. end of September/early fall. The leaves had just started changing color and the country side was still lush with lots of greenery, so I guess it’s best to still aim for mid-late fall (October) for Vermont fall foliage drives and if you are blessed with good luck, you will get to see the wondrous colors of nature before the rain hits and the leaves fall away. The Vermont tourism website is a good resource for things to do and see if you visit Vermont in Fall (they have a pretty good Vermont fall foliage tracker map/forecaster based on earlier years’ data, which, although, warned to be not an accurate marker for the current year, still gives you a general idea). It’s also a very good idea to request their free Vermont guide well in advance to get a state map and information on byways (more on that later) and you can also sign up to get emails on Vermont fall foliage on a weekly basis, should you want to minimize your chances of a disappointing show. Here is another excellent resource on foliage tracker providing photo updates on Vermont fall foliage.
Flying in from the west coast involves an entire day being lost, so we landed late evening in Burlington, Vermont’s “most bustling” city by Lake Champlain, one of the best cities in America and home to University of Vermont. We spent the night near the airport at Smart Suites (South Burlington), which is a pretty decent, basic accommodation for a stop over and provides free morning breakfast, wifi and a small kitchen (fridge, microwave, stove top) if you wish to warm up/cook food. We had dinner at Revolution Cafe in downtown Burlington, an awesome place if you are in the mood for a meatless dinner.
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Vermont in Fall: Lake Champlain Byway
Day 1 of our three days in Vermont started with breakfast at Magnolia Bistro, another charming cafe in Burlington which has grub to satisfy carnivores, vegetarians and vegans. This was followed by a swift checkout as we started our Vermont Fall foliage drive by heading north in the hope of catching some fall colors. The beauty and idyllic village life that has made this tranquil, green state a staple of all postcards can only be experienced via driving along the byways and not the highways (although they too are very pristine with no ugly billboards marring the view). These byways are simply roads parallel to the highways and meander leisurely through small towns and villages to give you a taste of real Vermont. You can get more information on these famous Vermont byways here and the map is included in your free Vermont guide, if you request one from the tourism website mentioned before. We drove along the Lake Champlain byway, skirting the border of the lake that ferries Vermonters to New York, all the way up to the city of St. Albans. We stopped on our way at a small gift store in one of the Lake Champlain islands where we were greeted by Shamus, an adorable pooch who was the official greeter for his mom’s shop. The store carried art and handicrafts made in Vermont and was a delightful place to do some shopping.
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Out of the shop and into the cornfields, such is the changing scenery of Vermont (cheeky grin inserted)! An impromptu photo-shoot amidst the tall corn husks and then we were on our way to St. Albans in search of Vermont fall colors.
Lunch was at an Italian joint at St. Albans and then we made our way to Fairfax falls, which to my utter dismay was fenced and locked, thus preventing a closer look and toe-dipping. We then drove further east via Morrisville to lake Lamoille, a beautiful tranquil lake a la oasis in the country side. Lake Lamoille is a must visit and should be included in your itinerary ASAP for its shimmering blue water and lush greenery around which will go wild with fall colors providing breathtaking views of the mirroring water later in fall.
Where to stay in Vermont in Fall: High Hill Inn in Montpelier
Lake Lamoille was the final stop in our Vermont Fall foliage drive on Day 1 before we headed south via the towns of Jeffersonville, Stowe and Waterbury to Montpelier, the capital of Vermont. Our destination was High Hill Inn in East Montpelier, one of Vermont’s favorite and most coveted B&Bs which is out of the world charming and a must stay place if you are planning a trip to see Vermont in fall.
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High Hill Inn is literally located at the top of a small hill, surrounded by greenery as far as the eye can see and mountains beyond. The owners, Anne-Marie and Joe, are the kindest, nicest, warmest people one can ever meet and made us feel so much at home! Their hospitality and amazing lip smacking breakfast aside (which we had the next two mornings; they are also very accommodating of any dietary restrictions that you may have), what was most endearing to us was their love for animals and nature. They have a 100 acre property with a dog, cats (Swepea’ and Two Toes), horses (stallion and mares), goats and chicken. Swepea’ took a shining to S as I snapped a gazellion photos of her being petted by him. They have several guest rooms and a loft above, separated from others(where we stayed) and get filled up pretty quickly due to their five star reviews. This is one of the best places to stay in Vermont in Fall and I highly recommend that you book a few months in advance should you plan to visit New England in the fall season.
We ended the evening of our first day on a spectacular note by strolling in downtown Montpelier and savoring some date-nibs and dandelion latte (coffee like concoction minus the caffeine, can be made vegan using almond or coconut milk) followed by a sumptuous dinner at Hen of the Woods in Waterbury, one of Vermont’s finest restaurants and a pioneer in the farm-to-table/locavorian food movement the state is famous for. In one of our many firsts (the first of them being seeing hens pecking at apples near the apple tree at the inn), we had a menu completely devoted to Vermont cheese. We sampled the softest goat cheese with immense trepidation since we are anything but cheese connoisseurs and were super happy with our choice. Post dinner, we chalked out our route for day 2 of our Vermont fall foliage drives sojourn, hoping against hope that Stowe would miraculously show us those blazing colors and fulfill our burning desire to see bursts of red, orange and gold!
Vermont Fall Colors: Exploring Stowe
Our second day in Vermont was off to a good start with a sumptuous breakfast of french toast drizzled with Vermont’s very own locally made Maple syrup, freshly squeezed orange juice, home baked banana-nut bread and granola with yogurt and berry compote, all thanks to our gracious hosts! We started off with our bellies full and decided to explore some of the local industries of Vermont lined along the byway during our drive to Stowe.
Three days in Vermont: Local industries and business
Vermont is famous for its wide variety of cheese, maple syrup and apple cider, while being home to famous chocolatiers such as Lake Champlain chocolates and Handcrafted American Pewter, Danforth Pewter. But the most famous export of Vermont, one that put the state on the world map, is perhaps its iconic Ben and Jerry’s ice cream which true to its Vermont roots, is a business with a heart (think love, peace, justice, ice cream served all in one). So a stop at the Ben and Jerry’s near Waterbury was a must and we took the painless, fun 25 min tour (includes a brief movie about the company, an aerial view of their production facility and tour guides explanation of how ice-cream is made and finally a taste testing on an unreleased flavor: ours was orange cream). Finally, we departed B&J with a scoop of Maple walnut, the flavor of the day. Ice-cream gave way to cider as we stopped along the famous Cold Hollow Cider Mills and sampled their cold cider, marveled at all kinds of apples, edible items made from maple syrup (candy of all kind) and left with some maple drops. Lake Champlain chocolates apparently serves the best hot chocolate in town and so how could I resist testing the claim? Needless to say, the hot cocoa tinged with spice hit the right spot! We gave into the old world charm of pewter and got some gifts (delicate chains with tiny animal pendants and drop earrings) from Danforth Pewter.
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Post shopping, we drove up to the Van Trapp Lodge and marveled at the beautiful surroundings and the wooden lodge itself. The lodge is a fully functional hotel so you need to make reservations to stay. We rested in the lobby for a little while where all the photos of the Von Trapp Family (who inspired the iconic musical “The Sound of Music”) were proudly displayed and left after snapping a few photos of nearby fall foliage. In this portion of our Vermont Fall foliage drive, we did catch a few leaves changing color, as you can see from the photos below.
Up next was lunch and we got some grub at the fantastic pizzeria Piecasso (pun on their favorite artist and food) which is also part of Vermont’s Farm-food network,i.e. they source everything locally and support local farmers. We had a fantastic vegetarian pizza there and I washed it down with some local cider. We could not resist walking down a beautiful trail starting right outside the parking lot of the restaurant and walked around for some time to burn off those pizza calories!
Where to see Fall colors in Vermont: Danville and St. Johnsbury
We kept on driving after lunch towards Danville and St. Johnsbury where we hoped to be greeted by some more Vermont fall foliage. We stopped by a beautiful lake in West Danville and then grabbed a bite to eat at one of the cafes nested in the US Postal Office building at St. Johnsbury. In all these places, we were greeted with green leaves changing color but the blazing reds and yellows and orange hues still eluded us (early fall, damn you!).Disheartened and tired we made our way back to East Montpelier but then on the way back, this beautiful scenery appeared from no where. The last rays of the sun lit up the trees in the distance like a billion fireflies with the rolling green countryside stretched in front of us with bails of hay and a cart tossed on one side. A full rose over it all giving it such a romantic aura! The diffuse light of dusk made everything seem so magical and blissful that we forgot all our woes. Perhaps this is how Vermonters attain their “state of mind” aka zen amidst the crazies of life, they have so much natural beauty to bounce back to. Finally, the night ended with a beautiful dinner at Tulsi Tea room in downtown Montpelier. The tea room serves vegan thalis (Indian full meals with several courses), Dosas (south Indian pancakes) and other curry bowls. The food was simple, yet hearty and just what we needed for our tired bodies.
Exploring Vermont in Fall: Capitol and Rutland
We saved the best for the last aka exploring the Capitol building and stopping by Rutland on our third day in Vermont. Our kind hosts at the High Hill Inn informed us that the State House dome was made of real gold (we did get a glimpse of it the previous day when we were in town) and that made me instantly want to go and click a million photos of it! Also, S found out about the Norman Rockwell Museum in Rutland, a town an hour and a half south of Montpelier, which again had to be visited since we both are such big fans of the legendary American artist. Finally, we decided to pay homage to Vermont’s love for all things maple and stop by the famous Morse Farm Maple Sugarworks, one of the most famous maple producers of the state and a host farm (i.e they allow visitor interaction).
We chose to photograph the state house in the early morning light with the mist still hanging in the air. The dull glow of the dome in the thin fog, the feel of the wet grass beneath the feet and the amber like glow of the crisp leaves strewn all over with lush greenery all around made the serene morning extra beautiful. Honestly, that is the perfect time to click some photos of the majestic building and its surroundings (i.e. garden and lawn) since it gets crowded very quickly with tourists flocking to the front get a view.
Post photo session, we had one more round of yummy breakfast at the inn, packed our bags and said our goodbyes to humans, kitties, hens and goats and drove off to Morse Farm. Morse Farm is a fun little place with tons of maple syrup loaded products and the world famous maple creemee, Vermont speak for soft serve infused with maple syrup. Fun fact: this awesome creemee is listed in the top 75 quintessential American eats. After gobbling down the creemee, which was a slice of instant melt heaven, and touring the gift shop, we were off to our next destination, i.e. Vermont’s poster child of an idyllic village, Woodstock. True to the recommendation, Woodstock indeed turned out to be a charming little hamlet with some cute boutiques and cafes to nosh. We had sandwiches and local cider at Mon Vert cafe, which had a beautiful patio to sit and enjoy lunch.
Vermont attractions: Norman Rockwell Museum
The last stop before we returned to Smart Suites, South Burlington, for the night was the most anticipated Norman Rockwell museum in Rutland. The museum is in a small building literally in the middle of nowhere and showcases the artists work (about 3000 of them) from 1920s all the way to 1978, when he passed away. The joy of watching rows and rows of his art on several magazine covers, the most notable being the Saturday Evening Post and the beauty, skill and painstaking detail of each of his creations left us completely in awe. My personal favorite (see below) was a little boy snuggled with his dog in a warm blanket, an advertisement piece. I have been to several museums all over the world, but there was indeed something special about this tiny abode filled with curated art work (original and prints) that will always find a special place in my heart. Much like Mr. Rockwell’s body of work, which was considered more of a commercial artist’s work and a picture rather than a painting for the elitists to be showcased in museums, but neverthless caught the fancy of millions who loved his art as it captured Americana in a way no one else could, this museum too symbolizes that rugged simplistic attitude embodied in his work minus the ornateness that you see at other places. Highly recommended for the art lover to squeeze this in your Vermont Fall foliage drives itinerary.
Places to see in Vermont in Fall: Burlington
We ended our three day visit to Vermont by flying out from Burlington. On our drive back, I caught sight of some much waited Vermont fall foliage with three fantastic horses grazing in an empty field nearby. I waded through itchy tall grass to get to those majestic beasts and boy, they were super curious of this pint sized human and came right up to the edge of their enclosure. I went shutter crazy and clicked the regal chestnut brown, white and jet black stallions like crazy! We spotted a two-humped camel aka a Bactrian Camel smack-gob in the middle of the field grazing casually with a bunch of sheep around. Don’t believe me? here’s the proof!
We checked in for the night at Smart Suites again and then left for dinner to downtown Burlington, i.e. to the market square, a bustling and fun place to hang out. The square has the city hall located on one end and lots of good eateries. We had a great dinner over poutine (The french-Canadian influence is all over in Vermont due to its code proximity to Montreal) and vegan crepe at the Skinny pancake, a very popular joint amongst the college-goers.
Next morning it was a quick breakfast at Penny Cluse Cafe in Burlington (one of the few places that open at 7 AM) and then we were off to the airport to fly back home! Although we could not catch Vermont fall foliage in all its glory (all pun intended), we had a great stay with great food, scenery, very friendly people who opened their hearts and homes to us, lots of furry friends and abundant greenery that made us drought stricken Californians realize how brown and dried up our state has turned into! I hope you enjoyed this guide to Vermont in Fall and are already planning to spend a few years to see some jaw dropping fall colors and roll in those crunchy leaves! Do share your experience with me!
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Vermont Fall Foliage Drives: A Guide to Savoring Three Days of Vermont in Fall was last modified: byA man trying to steal from a Clearwater restaurant Saturday morning got caught when he fell through the ceiling of the kitchen.
The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office said workers at the Country Skillet, located at 2839 Roosevelt Blvd., were setting up the restaurant when they heard noises coming from the ceiling.
Less than a minute later the burglar, identified as 56-year-old Chris D. Williams, fell from the ceiling.
Deputies said Williams was very polite with the restaurant workers and told them he didn’t think it was occupied.
Investigators said Williams waited for deputies to arrive.
He was arrested and charged with burglary of an occupied structure.
The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office said workers at the Country Skillet were setting up the restaurant when they heard noises coming from the ceiling. Less than a minute later the burglar, identified as 56-year-old Chris D. Williams, fell from the ceiling.Updated: 8 September 2016. This tutorial shows how easy it is to create captions/subtitles files in WebVTT, SRT and DFXP format for subtitling in videos and audios. Depending on the media player you use, you can even provide subtitles in different languages for the same media. Subtitle files are basically text files you can write in Notepad(Win) or SimpleText(Mac).
Don’t use a test editor that permits formatting (changing the appearance of text) because the files will contain hidden information that prevents the subtitles from appearing in your video/audio. It has to be in the UFT-8 format, which both text editors mentioned above provide.
For Mac users: although you can format text in SimpleText, don’t do it!
How do we start?
The ideal would be to start from a scenario in which the spoken text is already written. Then you just need to extract the spoken text and place it in your simple text editor and afterward adapt it to the format of your choice.
However, many people create videos in which they simply talk in a natural way about a subject. In this case, you will have to play your video or audio and write down everything that is said, preferably dividing it in short sentences, because you want to avoid many lines of text. In this first take, you do not need to worry about the time, we cover that further up.
Here is an example of text in its initial state:
Lost Corners consists of charcoal paintings with pastel on paper and canvas.
The series shows landmarks, places and objects which we are so used to that we do not really see them anymore.
We would only notice if they would disappear, when it is too late.
Most of the charcoal paintings have a desolate atmosphere, enhanced by the limited range of color, consisting mostly
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ained his left ankle Sunday against the Bears, but a league source said Monday that tests showed no significant damage to his ankle, and the NFL's leading rusher said he's confident he'll play Sunday.Commune in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France
Le Chambon-sur-Lignon ( French pronunciation: [lə ʃɑ̃bɔ̃ syʁ liɲɔ̃]; Auvergnat: Lo Chambon) is a commune in the Haute-Loire department in south-central France.
Residents have been primarily Huguenot or Protestant since the 17th century. During World War II these Huguenot residents made the commune a haven for Jewish people fleeing from the Nazis. They both hid them within the town and countryside, and helped them flee to neutral Switzerland. In 1990 the town was one of two collectively honored as the Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in Israel for saving Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe. The other awardee was the Dutch village of Nieuwlande.
World War II [ edit ]
During World War II, throughout France, the Nazis and the collaborationist Vichy regime were rounding up Jews and sending them to the death camps.
Under the remarkable leadership of local Protestant minister Pastor André Trocmé, and his deputy pastor Edouard Theis, the citizens of the village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon risked their lives to rescue and hide Jews from being rounded up. They hid the Jews in private homes, on farms in the area, as well as in public institutions. Whenever the Nazi patrols came searching, the Jews were hidden in the mountainous countryside.
After the war, one of the villagers recalled: "As soon as the soldiers left, we would go into the forest and sing a song. When they heard that song, the Jews knew it was safe to come home." The situation took a more tense turn when the Germans invaded the South Zone in 1942. Local people continued to protect the Jews in open defiance of the authorities. For instance, they gave Vichy Youth Minister Georges Lamirand a petition against the deportation of the Jews when he visited the village in 1942.[1]
In addition to providing shelter, the citizens of the town obtained forged identification and ration cards for Jews to use. They helped them cross the border to the safety of neutral Switzerland. Some of the residents were arrested by the Gestapo such as Rev. Trocmé's cousin, Daniel Trocmé, who was sent to Maidanek concentration camp, where he was murdered.
It was estimated that the people of the area of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon had saved between 3,000-5,000 Jews from certain death. However, more recent estimates lower the figures to between 800 and 1000, though this remains disputed.[3]
Present day [ edit ]
The ethos and practice of sheltering refugees continues, with migrants coming from many war zones, including Congo, Libya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Kosovo and Chechnya.
Honors [ edit ]
Miscellaneous [ edit ]
The town of Chambon-sur-Lignon is home to Le Collège-Lycée Cévenol International, a private boarding school founded in 1938 by local Protestant ministers André Trocmé and Edouard Theis.
Alexander Grothendieck, a central figure of 20th century mathematics, was among the Jewish children sheltered during the war.
Malcolm Gladwell uses Chambon-sur-Lignon in his book David and Goliath as an example of how the rebellious origin of its people influenced their actions when protecting Jewish people during the Second World War.
Geography [ edit ]
The town lies in the middle of the commune, on the right bank of the Lignon du Velay, which flows north-northwestward through the commune and forms part of its north-western border.
Twin towns [ edit ]
Fislisbach, Switzerland
Meitar, Israel - since November 9, 2006
Notes [ edit ]Federica Mogherini, the EU's foreign policy chief, at the EU headquarters in Brussels | John Thys/AFP via Getty Images Turkey and the EU still miles apart on membership Turkey ‘clearly is and stays a candidate country,’ says Mogherini, but talks with senior ministers were tense.
The strained relationship between the EU and Turkey “makes it difficult in this moment to imagine the opening of further chapters” in its bid to become a member of the bloc, Federica Mogherini, the EU's foreign policy chief, said Tuesday.
Speaking at a two-hour long joint press conference with senior members of the Turkish government, Mogherini said Turkey “clearly is and stays a candidate country" but was clear that no further progress was likely unless Ankara changed its ways.
Along with Commissioner for Enlargement Johannes Hahn, Mogherini held talks in Brussels with Turkey’s Foreign Affairs Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and EU Affairs Minister Ömer Çelik on a wide range of issues including Turkey’s membership bid as well as energy, antiterrorism, migration, trade and foreign policy.
However, the Turkish government's crackdown on the opposition since a failed coup just over a year ago loomed large.
Hahn expressed “very strong concern” about the imprisonment of "a large number of journalists, writers, academics, lawyers and human rights defenders... We expect due legal procedure in respect of the presumption of innocence.”
“It is not only the Cyprus issue that makes it difficult in the moment to imagine the opening of further chapters,” Mogherini said.
The Turkish ministers had their own demands and called for more commitment from the EU, including on the opening of several "chapters" in the membership talks.
Çelik said Turkey was still a candidate country and called on the EU to open up two more membership chapters. "We must open these two chapters,” he said.
Çavuşoğlu spoke of a “different mindset on certain issues” and gave reasons for Turkey’s arrests of journalists and NGO staff.
“We should see real journalists as apart from pseudo journalists, who help terrorist activities and terrorists,” he told reporters. “Just because you carry out a journalistic activity doesn’t mean you will not carry out a criminal offense.”
The recent tensions have resulted in little progress being made on negotiations toward Turkey's membership of the EU, which started in 2005.
In addition, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's recent call to bring back the death penalty prompted members of the European Parliament to call for a complete suspension of membership talks.
Relations are particularly bad with Germany, and Erdoğan was recently banned from giving a speech to supporters at the G20 in Hamburg. German officials also expressed frustration after Turkish officials arrested Peter Steudtner, a human rights activist from Berlin who is accused of supporting a terrorist organization.
Asked about Erdogan’s criticism of Germany, Çavuşoğlu said: “Just because you have a problem with a given country doesn’t necessarily mean you are against Europe or you are criticizing a European country.”President Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, reportedly faced a blackmail attempt.
Politico reported Thursday that a purported cyber attack of Manafort's daughter shows a text that appears to be from Ukrainian parliamentarian Serhiy Leshchenko, attempting to reach Manafort.
In the message, the sender says he has politically damaging information on both Manafort and Trump.
“I need to get in touch with Paul i need to share some important information with him regarding ukraine investigation," the sender says in the text message to Manafort's daughter.
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“I actually have proofs that he received money...If i dont get any reply from you iam gonaa pass it on to the fbi and ukrainian authorities including media...As soon as he comes back to me i will pass you documents."
A note attached to the text alleges the discovery of "bulletproof facts regarding the person — Ukraine resident whos signature is inside the Yanukovich accounting book and who was responsible for rendering assets to you personally for your consulting services during organized meetings."
"One of such meeting with Donadl Trump took place on 06.17.2012 with close Yanukovich affiliate — governor of Cherkassy — Mr. S. Tulub," the note attached to the text reads.
“Considering all the facts and evidence that are in my possession, and before possible decision whether to pass this to [the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine] or FBI I would like to get your opinion on this and maybe your way to work things out that will persuade me to do otherwise."
In a post on Facebook, Leshchenko denied the correspondence.
A White House official questioned the claim, saying the president didn't work with Manafort prior to the 2016 campaign, according to Politico.
Manafort confirmed the authenticity of the texts sent to his daughter but said he didn't arrange a meeting between Trump and Tulub in 2012.
He also said he had received similar texts to his own phone number from the same address in the past.
The texts reportedly came before The New York Times published a story last August alleging that handwritten ledgers show $12.7 million in undisclosed cash payments earmarked for Manafort from former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych's pro-Russia political party.
Manafort denied the claims.
Several lawmakers recently have raised questions about the connections between the Trump campaign and Russia. Recent stories in The New York Times and on CNN alleged that Trump campaign officials had constant contact with Russian intelligence officials before Trump was sworn in.In a surprise move echoing last year’s performance, Ragen flew from Los Angeles to Phoenix, AZ early this morning. She took the opportunity to post a rant on Facebook about clearly oversized chairs with arms at the airport and has not officially confirmed she plans to race on Sunday. Thanks to a keen-eyed blog reader who was coincidentally checking in at the same time, Dances with Facts has received definitive photo confirmation Ragen is checked in as of 9:55AM MST and also registered for 2017. We note again that Ragen has not confirmed she will actually be racing, and may simply have flown to Tempe to take advantage of pre-race registration for 2017 and a non-refundable flight. This post will be updated throughout the day if further information becomes available, and the detailed event information will be posted tomorrow.
AdvertisementsAfter Google employee James Damore was sacked for suggesting that inborn differences in likes and dislikes (such as preferring people to things) might explain why there were fewer female employees working in technology than men, the first person he gave an interview to was a relatively unknown Canadian professor, Jordan Peterson.
To some it might seem like an odd choice. It’s true that Peterson, a professor of psychology at the University of Toronto, has a substantial online presence — his videos have had 150 million views — but all the same, Damore had the world’s media knocking on his door. Why choose Peterson?
To those who follow Peterson, the reason will be apparent. Damore clearly picked up much of his information about innate gender differences from one of Peterson’s many lectures on the subject of psychometrics, an academic discipline that mainly focuses on empirically measuring the variations in different psychological traits between human beings, including across the axis of gender.
Peterson has been in similar trouble to Damore for posting his supposedly controversial lectures online. In August, he was briefly suspended from YouTube and Google without explanation, although he was quickly reinstated after a furore in the Canadian media.
At the University of Toronto, after receiving two written warnings, he has been in danger of losing his job following his announcement that he would refuse to use the preferred gender pronouns of students and faculty who don’t identify with their biological gender, to the fury of radical transgender activists. The use of such pronouns is mandatory under a recently instituted Canadian law, Bill C-16. Peterson rejects the injunction on free speech grounds. ‘I’m not going to cede linguistic territory to post-modernist neo-Marxists,’ he says. He has expressed the view that he might use the preferred gender pronoun of a particular person, if asked by that individual, rather than having the decision foisted on him by the state.
I first came across Peterson not in any of his political manifestations but because as a novelist and writing teacher I stumbled across his deconstructions of classic stories and myths, which for any storyteller are extraordinarily instructive. He has turned his mind to popular classics like Disney’s Pinocchio and The Lion King, and he is currently giving a series of lectures (viewable online) on the psychological meaning of the most popular story of all, The Bible.
I spoke to him shortly before the Damore furore broke. Peterson is a rather handsome and intense 55-year-old, who has suffered depression and has a lugubrious demeanour often interrupted by bursts of acute wit, self-deprecation and humanity. His eyes, if he were to be the subject of a romantic novel, might well be described as ‘burning’ and he is a man gripped by a deep passion for his subject, which is apparent in nearly every utterance. A critic might claim that ‘demonic’ would be a better description, especially when underlit by a computer screen on one of his YouTube channel broadcasts, combined with an imposing set of eyebrows and a style of speech that is punctuated with penetrating, almost evangelical convictions about what the world is like and what is currently going wrong with it.
Free speech is a core value for him — the core value — and one that is becoming increasingly pressing, most recently (as I write this) with the resignation of the Labour shadow minister Sarah Champion after she made remarks in the Sun about Pakistani sex gangs and ran foul of what was considered acceptable by the Labour leadership. That elements of the left have begun to label free speech as somehow a ‘right-wing’ value is particularly rattling (although such censorious thinking has a long history in radical left ideology).
‘If I can’t say what I think, then I don’t get to think, and if I can’t think then I can’t orient myself in the world, and if I can’t do that, then I’m going to fall into a pit and take everyone else with me,’ Peterson says.
Peterson has been saddled by some of his critics with the label ‘alt-right’, which he views as a ridiculous slander. He describes himself as a ‘classic British liberal’ who makes those on both the left and right uncomfortable. He supports socialised health care and the liberalisation of drug use, and is libertarian on most social issues.
‘Alt-right’ is certainly one of the most inaccurate pigeonholes you could imagine cramming him into. His heroes include Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung, Orwell and Solzhenitsyn. He is a Christian, but more on the pattern of existential Christians such as Søren Kierkegaard or Paul Tillich than anything to be found in the Midwest Bible belt.
Peterson’s thought-crime is that he disagrees with the view of transgender activists that gender is a social construct and has no grounding in biology (although he is not opposed to transgender rights in general). So why does his right to free speech trump a transgender activist’s right not to be offended? Why not just keep his thoughts to himself?
‘Because thoughts aren’t like that,’ he says. ‘People mostly think by talking. Not only do they think by talking, but they correct their thoughts by talking. If you deprive people of the right to think, then you doom them to suffering. You doom their stupidity of its right to die. You should allow your thoughts to be cast away into the fire — instead of you.’
His claims about gender — that women consistently differ, cross-culturally, from men on many of the Big Five personality traits identified by psychometric researchers — are, in psychology circles at least, not particularly controversial. These traits are Openness, Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, Extraversion and Agreeableness (each of these are technical definitions that are somewhat more precise and different in meaning to their casual usage as terms).
‘These traits are not social-cultural,’ says Peterson. ‘The evidence is crystal clear. As you make a country more egalitarian, the gender differences get larger. Most particularly, women are higher when it comes to Agreeableness — wanting everyone to get along, not liking conflict, compassionate, polite, self-sacrificing — and Neuroticism — higher in negative emotion and more responsive to grief and threat and punishment and isolation.’
The denial of what he considers these fundamental realities has led him to become an outspoken critic of mainstream academia.
‘The humanities in the universities have become almost incomprehensibly shallow and corrupt in multiple ways,’ he says. ‘They don’t rely on science because they are not scientifically educated. This is true particularly in sociology, where they mask their complete ignorance of science by claiming that science is just another mode of knowing and that it’s only privileged within the structure of the oppressive Eurocentric patriarchy. It’s appalling. We’re not having an intelligent conversation, we are having an ideological conversation.
‘Students, instead of being ennobled or inculcated into the proper culture, the last vestiges of structure are stripped from them by post-modernism and neo-Marxism, which defines everything in terms of relativism and power.’
His battle to defend the fundamental tenets of free speech against language control has meant he has had to pay a price. There are videos on YouTube showing disturbing confrontations between him and radical transgender activists.
‘I’m very upset by the criticism — very, very upset,’ he says. ‘But I know what the consequences of failing to engage in the necessary conflict are — and those consequences are worse. To speak words that others told me to speak is to kowtow to a corrupt ideology and would break the part of me that is useful in the world.’
Peterson studied political science — notably 20th- century European totalitarianism — before taking up psychology. This has left him with a dark view of the path that collectivist thinking can lead you down. He is both astonished and puzzled that the crimes of Stalinism and Maoism have not received anything like the attention that has been given to the Nazi atrocities.
Students coming to his classes are often entirely unaware of the mass exterminations those systems of belief wrought during the 20th century — numerically greater than those perpetrated by the Nazis.
This ignorance, he believes, as a Jungian, is a real and present danger, since he considers that the Shadow (the dark part of oneself that has to be recognised and incorporated in order to produce a mature human being) needs to be acknowledged if it is not going to wreak havoc — and totalitarian pathology disguises its malevolence with declared good intentions.
‘We are all monsters and if you don’t know that, then you are in danger of becoming the very monster that you deny,’ he says.
This belief is not a million miles from the Christian belief in original sin. Peterson’s Christianity is perhaps one of the most mysterious sides of his personality. His current deconstruction of The Bible grew out of his previous work in analysing the meaning of world myths and folk tales, a journey recorded in his book Maps of Meaning — The Architecture of Belief. This is a hefty and challenging work which opens with a quote befitting someone who has the demeanour of a prophet: ‘I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world.’
His Christianity is also viewed through a Jungian lens. He points out that the INRI inscription on crucifixes also has a mystical meaning, apart from ‘King of the Jews’ — ‘Through fire all nature is renewed’. ‘Which means that in order to renew your soul, you have to die and be reborn repeatedly,’ he explains. Peterson’s world view includes a lot of respect for Taoism, which sees nature as a constant battle between order and chaos, and posits that without that struggle, life would be rendered meaningless.
Peterson is not, rather surprisingly, only a philosophical Christian. When I ask him whether he actually believes that Jesus physically rose from the dead, he is unable to answer.
‘The world is a very, very strange place,’ he says. ‘What we don’t know about consciousness and its relationship with the body, and time, and corporeality, and vulnerability — and death — would fill many books. I don’t understand the structure of being well enough to make my way through the complexities of the resurrection story. I don’t think it’s reasonable to boil it down to “do you or do you not believe it”. I don’t know the limits of human possibility. I am unwilling to rule out the possibility of life after death, the idea of universal redemption and the defeat of evil.’
However, it is not his unorthodox Christianity that is responsible for Peterson’s immense online audience. It is gender. More than 90 per cent of his audience are men, which seems a pity since there is nothing particularly gender-specific about his teachings. Why the imbalance then? ‘Because these men’s stress levels are very high,’ he says. ‘I’m telling them something they desperately need to hear — that there are important things that need to be fixed up. I’m saying, “You guys really need to get your act together and you need to bear some responsibility and grow the hell up.”
‘The lack of an identifiable and compelling path forward and the denialism these kids are being fed on a daily basis is undoubtedly destroying them and that is especially true of the young men.’
At this point, to my astonishment, Peterson begins to weep. He talks through his tears for the next several minutes. ‘Every time I talk about this, it breaks me up,’ he says. ‘The message I’ve been delivering is, “Find the heaviest weight you can and pick it up. And that will make you strong. You’re not who you could be. And who you could be is worthwhile.”’
They’re so starving for that message. Young men are so desperate for a pathway that they are dying for it. And it’s heart-breaking and terrible that this idea has been kept from them. It is a malevolent conspiracy or ignorance to keep that from young men. Some of the young men who come to my lectures are desperately hanging on every word because I am telling them that they are sinful, and insufficient, and deceitful and contemptible in their current form, but that they could be far more than that, and that the world NEEDS THAT. This presents an ideal that can be approached and life without that is intolerable. It’s just meaningless suffering and that’s true if you have all the cake you can eat and all the girls you can have one-night stands with.’ Peterson composes himself. The tears are patently sincere — his sincerity probably defines him more than any other quality. It is rare to come across a public figure so lacking in artifice or conscious self-presentation.
Whether he will be finally destroyed by the forces that oppose him — which is entirely possible — or continue to gather followers at the current remarkable rate is open to question. He will be publishing a new book in January 2018, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (Penguin Random House Canada) — and this may be what lodges him firmly in the popular imagination.
I have watched dozens of the videos Peterson has posted — they are addictive — and I am coming to the conclusion that I am probably watching one of the most important thinkers to emerge on the world stage for many years. Peterson is quite likely to find himself outshining the rogue Marxist Slavoj Zizek — whose concerns about free speech he shares — as the celebrity academic de nos jours.
But he is a more profound, charismatic and serious figure than Zizek and is almost certain to end up as a front-line warrior in the culture wars that continue to rumble across Western societies. One of his mottos is ‘Don’t apologise for what you think’ and there is no question of him backing down under pressure from his ideological critics. As such, he is either remarkably brave, irrepressibly stubborn or wilfully provocative. Whatever the case, he has become increasingly difficult to ignore — and whoever chooses to do so, whether out of partiality or prejudice, will deprive themselves of an intriguing intellectual journey.
Follow Tim Lott on Twitter hereEven the most devoted of Doctor Who fans – those who deal with timey-wimey plot-lines on a weekly basis – were left scratching their head at the end of the series seven (part one) finale, The Angels Take Manhattan. The episode, broadcast in September last year, saw the Ponds bid farewell to the Doctor in a Weeping Angels story that, according to some, left plot holes far too big to ignore.
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In the new issue of Doctor Who Magazine, however, Steven Moffat has cleared up one of the biggest mysteries: just how did the Statue of Liberty make it all the way across New York to Winter Quay without being seen? He says:
“The Angels can do so many things. They can bend time, climb inside your mind, hide in pictures, steal your voice, mess with your perception, leak stone from your eye… New York in 1938 was a nest of Angels and the people barely more than farm animals. The abattoir of the lonely assassins!
“In those terrible days, in that conquered city, you saw and understood only what the Angels allowed, so Liberty could move and hunt as it wished, in the blink of an eye, unseen by the lowly creatures upon which it preyed. Also, it tiptoed.”
So, yeah, that’s that explained… kind of. But it’s not the most obvious question arising from the episode. That was put to the showrunner by fan site Blogtor Who earlier this year, who asked him why, when zapped back in time to New York by the Angels, couldn’t the Ponds just move to, say, England and let the Doctor visit them there? He answered:
“New York would still burn. The point being, he can’t interfere. Here’s the ‘fan answer’ – this is not what you’d ever put out on BBC1, because most people watch the show and just think, ‘well there’s a gravestone so obviously he can’t visit them again’. But the ‘fan answer’ is, in normal circumstances he might have gone back and said, ‘look we’ll just put a headstone up and we’ll just write the book’. But there is so much scar tissue, and the number of paradoxes that have already been inflicted on that nexus of timelines, that it will rip apart if you try to do one more thing. He has to leave it alone. Normally he could perform some surgery, this time too much surgery has already been performed. But imagine saying that on BBC1!”
If your head hurts now, wait until someone asks Moffat what happened to the whole ‘an image of an Angel becoming an Angel’ thing. That’s a lot of dangerous New York postcards, right there…
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The new issue of Doctor Who Magazine (#460) is on sale nowOn Thursday, a CNN report showed exactly how a major 2013 online child sexual abuse bust went down. The case's breakthrough came from the kind of photo manipulation that happens on TV crime dramas, in which a horribly blurry photo is somehow magically "enhanced."
Homeland Security Investigations special agent Jim Cole showed CNN how a blurry photo of a bottle of prescription pills led to the 110-year conviction of Georgia sexual predator Stephen Keating. Though CNN described the analysis as "game-changing," the tools used to confirm the suspect appear to be relatively common.
In 2012, photos recovered from a computer by Danish investigators was handed off to the HSI's Cyber Crimes Center. Cole demonstrated that filters built into Adobe Photoshop were used to sharpen the text on a bottle—which was visible because a victim was photographed in front of a bathroom cabinet—to confirm a first name, the first two letters of a surname, and the beginning of a code for a prescription type.
Another recovered image from the same photoshoot included a grown man's fingers. Cole's office boosted the contrast in that image before running the visible fingerprints through a federal fingerprint database until they found a match for a Stephen whose surname began with "Ke"—who had also been linked to the assumed prescription seen in the first photo.
The CNN video hints at other computer programs used in the HSI's investigations, including a photo-matrix display that shows a circular arrangement of photo thumbnails—possibly to triangulate common elements in faces and other details—and an audio spectral analysis program, likely used to compare voices in various cases and isolate possible audio clues. However, the CNN report was wholly lacking in names of programs or software vendors involved in such cases—and it even named the major PhotoDNA initiative without giving credit to its creators at Microsoft.I blogged previously that I was having a look at the Python Testing Cookbook courtesy of the eager marketeers at Packt Publishing. Well I’ve finished reading it — in installments on the Tube — and I think I’ve come to a conclusion.
The short version is: I’m not mad about the layout; it’s not entirely what I expected from a Cookbook; but I think it does what it does very well.
Since I’m overall positive, I’ll just pick up on the very slight negatives first. In a previous Packt review I commented (adversely) on the style of the layout and so on, and I’m afraid that it hasn’t really changed. Obviously, this is somewhat subjective, but I can’t be the only person who’s subconsciously affected by the font and layout choice. (Bear in mind that I was reading it via PDF which may make a difference). To be clear: it’s not awful; it’s not even bad; it’s just suboptimal.
The other slight negative is hardly a negative at all: that the “recipes” in this cookbook are far broader — in some cases, chapter-length — than I’d expected. Subjective expectation, to be sure. But I was a very little bit surprised.
Ok, that’s the downsides. Now the upsides:
* Nice division of chapters
* The right pacing
* Pretty much one example used throughout
* “Why didn’t you do this?” question sections
* Good re-use or alternative use of previous examples or approaches
* Interesting spread and combination of toolsets
The chapter divisions are: unittest, nose, doctest, BDD, UAT, CI, coverage, load-testing, good habits. In broad terms, each chapter builds on previous ones, but thanks to the reuse of the a simple shopping cart example, repeated in nearly every chapter, you can take a chapter on its own without too much difficulty. In addition, different chapters sometimes offer alternative approaches to the same problem when it makes sense to illustrate one point rather than another. One chapter, for example, walks you through creating a nose plugin to show how to do it; the next chapter introduces you to a ready-made one since the focus of that chapter is not nose plugins.
And that brings me to the variety of toolkits & modules mentioned throughout the text. This is not a book which simply uses stdlib code to perform various tasks (which I had rather thought it might be when I started). It introduces the ideas mentioned in the paragraph above. And puts forward Python modules (such as nose or mock) or external tools (such as Hudson / Jenkins or TeamCity) as best-of-breed or useful tools.
One final point which really put the icing on the cake is the occasional introduction of pull-out sections answering the very question which was occurring to me as a reader: “Why didn’t you use this technique here?” or “How is this different from that?”. Perhaps it’s just me, but I find this smoothes my progress through a book considerably which otherwise would be (mentally) jarred by my wondering “Now why did he do that?”.
I can’t but recommend this book. There’s a sample chapter here if you want to have sniff. As a final note, it’s very slightly unfortunate that the timing of its production precluded the author from picking up on Michael Foord’s magnificent work in producing unittest2 / unittest for 2.7 & 3.2. Perhaps there’s a “missing chapter” opportunity in there for someone…So I was getting ready to start working on a SSF Scion character and it occurred to me that there are some skill gem's I may have to mule for myself to maintain the "self found" status. I looked around online to try and find a comprehensive list of the skill gem's not available to the Scion, but most of them just linked to the vendor rewards page on the wiki and I figured if I was gonna work through the info I may as well consolidate it for others to use as well, so here it is! Format: ACT # Quest Name Skill Gem - Characters that get the gem (M - Marauder, T - Templar, W - Witch, S - Shadow, R - Ranger, D - Duelist) ACT I Enemy At the Gate Ethereal Knives - MWS Fire Trap - MWSR Freezing Pulse - TWS Glacial Hammer - MTD Ground Slam - MTD Breaking Some Eggs Caustic Arrow - SRD Detonate Dead - WSR Flame Totem - MTW Frost Wall - TWD Puncture - SRD Reckoning - MTD Riposte - MSRD The Caged Brute Clarity - TWS Freeze Mine - SRD Rallying Cry - MTWRD Shield Charge - MTD Smoke Mine - MWSRD Whirling Blades - SRD The Siren's Cadence Arc - TWS Firestorm - MTW Lightning Arrow - SRD Lightning Trap - WSR Reave - SRD Searing Bond - MTW Sweep - MTD ACT II Sharp and Cruel N/A The Root of the Problem N/A ACT III Lost in Love Assassin's Mark - WSR Determination - MTD Grace - SRD Poacher's Mark - SRD Projectile Weakness - SRD Vengeance - MTD Vitality - MTD Warlord's Mark - MTD Sever the Right Hand Ball Lightning - TWS Explosive Arrow - MRD Glacial Cascade - TWS Shockwave Totem - MTW A Fixture of Fate Blood Magic Support - MTRD (Scion reward for Eternal Nightmare on Cruel) Chance to Ignite Support - MTWS Increased Duration Support - MTD ACT IV Breaking the Seal N/A The Eternal Nightmare N/A Totals M: 21 T: 23 W: 18 S: 22 R: 17 D: 24 Templar/Shadow only misses Explosive Arrow Shadow/Duelist misses Flame Totem, Firestorm, Searing Bond, and Shockwave Totem Duelist/Templar misses Ethereal Knives, Fire Trap, Detonate Dead, Lightning Trap, and Assassin's Mark So the least work to get them all for a Scion if you didn't want to trade for them from other players would be to get a Templar and a Shadow through A Fixture of Fate in ACT III and hope you find an Explosive Arrow, otherwise you will have to use three characters for it. Don't know if this will be useful for anyone else, but I figured someone out there may find themselves asking the same question I did. If I am missing any (or if you find any errors) please let me know and I'll add them!
Note that getting your off-class gems isnt that hard solo self found, you have a good chance to come across what you want during leveling.
Of course, if its your planned active skill gem, things will get tedious, but if its a support or utility skill that has a reasonable alternative, go for it! Those skilldrops are some of the more memorable drops you'll have on your journey.
To provide some context, last 48hr flashback race i played an RF Totems Chieftain. I got to lvl 55 in the weekend, and finished him solo self found without masters in Prophecy league to about 86. I did every new map the moment it dropped as another challenge, which ended the story at Malformation Piety, where i couldnt manage kill a speed aura totem in time in her boss room. (I placed the first few totems in her storm clouds :().
Anyway, Sure RF totems is a build with next to no gear requirement. The totems have no mana cost, and arent scaled by spell damage, flat damage, cast speed, etc. I ran a blue 40% ele sceptre with a fire damage roll for really long, as there wasnt really anything to upgrade it with. Totem Life is the other thing that scales it, but is only available on jewels. I alted a few, but i'm derailing.
Marauder misses a lot of gems for RF totems however.
here's what i'd get from Marauder, and sort of the worst-case build:
RF-Spelltotem-AoE-IncBurning/Less Duration
Blasphemy-Vulnerability-Flammability
Searing Bond-IncBurning-Blood Magic-Less Duration
Purity of Fire to start playing the build late normal
cwdt-golem-immortal call
leap slam-fatt-bm(-fortify)
-> Found Temp Chains twice, great upgrade over Vulnerability. Never found a third curse unique, but did find Arctic Armour to go along with double blasphemy.
-> Found Elemental Focus twice, and Rapid Decay once. Used them for serious upgrades to Less Duration and Inc Burning on both the RF totems and Searing Bond.
-> Found Ice Spear and Increased Crit Chance to proc Ele Overload.
-> Found Lightning Trap and Cluster Trap to proc Elemental Equilibrium. (alternatives to those would have been Orb of Storms and Ice Trap, which i found as well)
-> Found Culling Strike for my golem.
-> Found Enfeeble to swith out with Flammability, or in case i wouldve found a triple curse item.
-> Found Conc Effect for bosses.
(even found enhance & empower, but they're still level 0).
All in all, the only things i didnt get that i was somewhat on the lookout for were mainly Controlled Destruction gems. Elemental Focus and Rapid Decay do the same thing really anyway though, and i never found me a fivelink. On the wanted list i made when creating the char i also see Item Rarity and Discipline, but i dont think i'd really have used those should i have found them.
Last one i didnt get was Elemental Weakness, the second most damaging curse, but i think there too i would've chose temp chains over it anyway, prolly even enfeeble should i have gotten that third curse.
Those Temp Chains, Ele Focus/Rapid Decay and EleEq/EleOv proccing gems were the most fun drops i had on the character, maybe even the experience that made it worth it.
Last edited by Toverkol on Nov 8, 2016, 3:03:56 PMHow Much Energy Do Building Energy Codes Really Save? Evidence from California
NBER Working Paper No. 20797
Issued in December 2014
NBER Program(s):Environment and Energy Economics
Construction codes that regulate the energy efficiency of new buildings have been a centerpiece of US environmental policy for 40 years. California enacted the nation’s first energy building codes in 1978, and they were projected to reduce residential energy use—and associated pollution—by 80 percent
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, apparently abandoned by its mother.
Naturally, they scooped up the trembling beast and delivered her to a wildlife rehabilitation hospital.
The only problem was that the fawn was not injured. Nor was she abandoned. Instead, she was among the 500 perfectly healthy fawns a year that well-meaning animal lovers bring into California rehabilitation hospitals, often causing more harm than good.
The California Department of Fish and Game is warning the public not to handle wildlife, especially babies. The department also noted that it's illegal in California to keep wildlife unless you're a licensed wildlife rehabilitator.
"People bring in healthy wildlife all the time. We call it kidnapping," said Melanie Piazza, director of animal care at WildCare wildlife hospital in San Rafael. "I know people mean well, but if they see baby animals, they should let Mom and Dad raise them, not us."
Deer, rabbits and some other animals often leave their babies alone for up to 12 hours at a spell while the parents forage for food.
In the case of the Alamo fawn, veterinarian Anneke Moresco of the Lindsay Wildlife Museum in Walnut Creek gave her a complete physical exam before determining that she was a tad terrified but otherwise OK.
"She was making a very pathetic little noise," she said. "But she was very alert, very responsive."
A volunteer from the Lindsay museum returned the fawn a few hours later to the exact spot where the family found her, in hopes the fawn's mother would never know her baby was missing.
Wildlife experts said obviously injured or abandoned animals should be left alone unless the cause of the animal's distress is related to humans. For example, babies whose mother was hit by a car, or an animal that's been injured by an off-leash dog, should be brought to a wildlife hospital.
But in most cases, babies that appear abandoned aren't. Even animals that look injured might just be temporarily dazed.
"We highly advise people to leave animals alone," said East Bay Regional Park District spokeswoman Shelley Lewis. "Sometimes picking it up is the worst thing you can do."
Park officials urge people to contact a ranger or other park staff member who can safely move the animal to a treatment facility.
Otherwise, people should let nature take its course.
"If a crow goes after a dove, there's no point in treating the dove because the crow will just find another dove," Moresco said. "It's hard to watch sometimes, but it's nature."Solid state drives (SSD) are slowly marching toward the consumer space by gradually stepping up to bat against their traditional counterparts. Capacities and read/write times are still a little low, while prices are still quite high. Toshiba's president, however, laid out a game plan for the industry that puts SSD drives in one quarter of notebooks within three years.
Speaking at a recent seminar hosted by IDEMA Japan, Toshiba's Shozo Saito discussed the future of NAND flash memory and what it means for SSD drives. Considering that the advantages of these drives (no moving parts, compact design) make them a good fit for notebook PCs, Saito wants to target them exclusively to notebooks, leaving the more capacious needs of desktop PCs to HDDs. He expects that Toshiba will be offering a 512GB SSD by 2011 This focus on SSDs for notebooks is a result of Toshiba's findings that demand for this configuration will expand by 313 percent every year from 2008 to 2011.
To help bring manufacturing costs for NAND memory down and get these drives into more consumers' price ranges, Toshiba is working to increase its multi-level cell capacities. In March, the company began producing 3-bit-per-cell drives and is now working on a 4-bit-per-cell technology to maximize the use of silicon materials. Saito stated that this should help lower Toshiba's NAND manufacturing costs by 40-50 percent each year.
Already, with apparently strong success of products like Apple's MacBook Air and other notebook lines with SSDs, prices seem to be coming down to earth. When the MacBook Air was introduced earlier this year, Apple charged $999 to upgrade to a 64GB SSD drive, while Dell reportedly charged nearly $1,700. Now the same drive costs anywhere from $550-$800 from Dell, depending on the notebook model. We also saw reports of a 128GB costing $4,600 last September; that same drive can now be had for about $3,400.
Current multi-level-cell SSDs support up to 10,000 rewrites, and Saito believes that more efficient caching could keep the number of rewrites needed during a notebooks typical five-year life span well below that number. Moving towards 2011, Saito also stated that the price ratio between SSDs and HDDs will likely dissipate as well, as long as NAND manufacturing costs keep reducing by his 50 percent per year goal.
Further ReadingA little more than week after Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz introduced a bill calling for the disposal of 3.3 million acres of federal land in 10 Western states, the fifth-term Republican announced late Wednesday on Instagram he was withdrawing H.R. 621.
“I’m a proud gun owner, hunter and love our public lands,” he wrote below a photo of himself in camouflage hunting gear, holding his hound. “Groups I support and care about fear it sends the wrong message. I hear you and HR621 dies tomorrow #keepitpublic.”
Chaffetz has introduced the federal land disposal bill five times in his career. Under the Obama Administration, it was largely considered a message bill, an unlikely proposal that coddled core constituents.
But with the uncertainty surrounding the Trump Administration’s position on public lands and the Republican Party platform supporting the conveyance of some federal lands, this year the bill seemed more consequential. Especially after the House of Representatives last month passed a rule change that made it easier to transfer public lands by designating federal land sales as “budget neutral” and eliminating rules that prevented the undervaluing of public lands.
Last week 20 outdoor industry groups — including the influential Outdoor Industry Alliance, the National Wildlife Federation and Backcountry Hunters & Anglers — sent a letter to the 115th Congress blasting the rule change, saying the public lands “shape our national identity” and “are critical to the future of hunting, fishing and wildlife and the sustained economic health of communities bordering these lands.”
The Outdoor Industry Association in Boulder shows the outdoor recreation economy, which leans heavily on accessing public lands, delivers a $646 billion economic impact to the U.S. and employs 6.1 million Americans. Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper last week told The Denver Post that Colorado should elevate its protection of public lands as an enticement for the Utah-based $45 million Outdoor Retailer summer and winter trade shows, where outdoor industry leaders are growing increasingly frustrated with public lands proposals like Chaffetz’s.
Earlier this week, hundreds of protesters rallied at statehouses in New Mexico and Montana rejecting efforts to transfer the ownership of federal lands.
“I think we are seeing, across all sorts of issues, a grassroots energy really pushing elected officials to stand with their constituents. Public lands allies and sportsmen across the West are fired up about this stuff. This is sort of a red line for them,” said Greg Zimmerman, the deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities. “Outdoor businesses and the outdoor recreation community is recognizing they are big industry and very important to these rural Western economies and we are seeing this Congress really kowtow to oil and gas and coal industries. They’re saying ‘Hey we are the future of the West and our voices need to be heard’ and I like to think Congressman Chaffetz is acknowledging that fact with this decision.”
While Rep. Chaffetz’s withdrawal is certainly a win for land advocates, conservationists, sportsmen and outdoor industry leaders, it’s one victorious skirmish in a growing battle. Chaffetz did not withdraw his H.R. 622 bill, which he first introduced last year, that would transfer law enforcement on Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service land to local sheriff’s deputies. Legislation in Wyoming could pave the way for the transfer of as much as 25 million acres of federal lands to state control. The threat of reversing the Obama Administration’s creation of 29 national monuments under the Antiquities Act of 1906, including Colorado’s Chimney Rock and Browns Canyon, still lingers. Congress is making moves to reverse the Bureau of Land Management’s revised land-use planning rule, a signature Obama Administration project finalized in December 2016 known as Planning 2.0.
Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney this week proposed a bill to repeal Planning 2.0, saying in a statement that the new planning rule “represents a federal power grab that ignores expert knowledge and undermines the ability of state and local governments to effectively manage resources and land use inside their own districts.”
The fight to keep federal lands federal is one that will last years.
“While this is certainly heartening that Congressman Chaffetz heard people and responded, we are going to continue to make a heck of a lot of noise. This is an uphill battle and it’s one being fought on several fronts,” National Wildlife Federation spokeswoman Judith Kohler said. “Even though we keep saying the same things over and over again, we are going to have to keep it up.”'Repeat and serious' health and safety violations similar to those in nine other states found at store in Rochester, New York
Walmart has agreed to improve safety conditions at more than 2,800 stores in 28 US states after inspectors discovered "repeat and serious" health and safety violations at a store in Rochester, New York. The agreement, which included a $190,000 fine, was negotiated by the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), after it uncovered "unacceptable" safety hazards to employees at the Rochester store that were similar to those in Walmart locations in nine other states.
The US multinational, which is the largest private employer in the world, has been cited in more than 100 OSHA reports of health and safety violations over the last five years, according to the government body's website. The company has faced a series of work stoppages, amid increased scrutiny over labor conditions of sub-contracted workers in its supply chain, both within the United States and abroad.
In the Rochester case, OSHA cited Walmart for hazards including a lack of training on hazardous materials, blocked exits and unsafe trash compactor procedures, some of which were similar to those discovered at other stores in nine states between 2008 and 2010.
The fine was almost half of the $365,500 initially proposed, in a settlement which reflected the firm's agreement to improve conditions across all stores under federal jurisdiction.
Dr David Michaels, assistant secretary of labor for occupational safety and health, said: "This settlement will help to keep thousands of exposed Walmart workers safe and healthy on the job. We hope this sends a strong message that the law requires employers to provide safe working conditions, and OSHA will use all the tools at our disposal to ensure that all employers follow the law."
The agreement, which affects employees using trash compacters and cleaning chemicals, covers 2,857 Walmart and Sam's Club stores in states that follow federal OSHA standards. The 22 states that operate their own OSHA inspection programs could negotiate similar agreements. Under the federal settlement, Walmart has agreed to improve worker training programs for operating hazardous equipment.
OUR Walmart, a group of several thousand Walmart workers affiliated to United Food and Commercial Workers, the retail and grocery union, welcomed the settlement but accused the company of "malfeasance throughout the supply chain" and said it must go beyond its terms and investigate other safety problems they have identified. A statement posted on the "OUR Walmart" section of the UFCW website said: "The problems detailed in the settlement are issues we have been raising for years, but it's clear that the company has consistently failed to listen to our concerns, let alone address them."
Listing hazards faced by workers, from inadequate fire safety measures to poorly maintained equipment, the statement said: "This is just the latest indication of Walmart's malfeasance throughout the supply chain, and these serious problems represent a major danger to workers, the environment, and the company's future.
"We like our jobs and want what's best for the company. We hope that today's settlement sends a message to Walmart that cutting corners on safety comes at great costs, not just to employees, but also to the company."
Stacy Mitchell, a senior researcher for the Institute for Local Self Reliance, said: "Walmart's negligence in managing hazardous chemicals is yet another illustration of its disregard for the environment and the health of workers and communities. "
In July, warehouse workers moving Walmart goods in California announced a two-day strike in protest at alleged retaliation for exposing safety risks. They had filed an official complaint with labour authorities, over what they claimed was inadequate safety protection, not enough access to drinking water in warehouses that can reach 125F on a hot day, and a management culture that bullies them. The transport firm NFI, which runs the warehouse, contested the complaint.
Walmart is not unionised and UFCW, which helped co-ordinate picketing and protesting at stores over wages and working conditions, has formally pledged not to try to unionise the company's workers, so that it cannot be accused of illegal picketing during strikes protesting working conditions.
Randy Hargrove, Walmart's director of media relations, said: "We have long-standing policies and training requirements in our stores designed to ensure the safety of our associates. When we learned of concerns raised by OSHA at our Rochester, NY store in 2011, we immediately addressed them and reinforced the company's guidelines.
"We will continue providing training to our associates nationwide, including addressing the areas outlined in the settlement. We are pleased this resolves the issues that were raised."1st 2nd 3rd OT F Minnesota 1 0 0 1 3 Michigan 2 0 0 0 2 3 Box Score | Season Stats 2
Scoring Summary First Period Team Time Scorer Assist MINN 9:20 Skjei (4) Unassisted MICH 12:36 Allen (3) Lynch MICH 18:02 Copp (14) Motte, Hyman Second Period Team Time Scorer Assist MINN 17:52 Kloos (12) M. Reilly, Condon Third Period Team Time Scorer Assist No Scoring Overtime MINN 2:44 Rau (11) PPG Fasching, Boyd Goalies GA SVS Wilcox (MINN) 2 22 Nagelvoort (MICH) 3 25 Team Statistics UM MI Shots on Goal 28 24 Power Play 1-3 0-1 Penalties 1-2 3-6 Gopher Hockey Online • Hockey Home | Hockey Blog |
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March 14, 2014
ANN ARBOR, Mich. (GopherSports.com) - Kyle Rau lived up to his lofty reputation with the overtime winner as the No. 1 Minnesota men's hockey team clinched the inaugural Big Ten title in a 3-2 overtime win over No. 13 Michigan.
Minnesota (25-4-6 overall, 14-2-3-0 Big Ten) has now won a program-record three-straight conference championships while this year's seniors are the first class to win three conference titles in their careers. Minnesota won back-to-back MacNaughton Cups as Western Collegiate Hockey Association regular-season champions in 2012 and 2013.
In one of the most grueling battles Minnesota has seen this year, the game winner came off the stick of one of the program's most successful skaters. Rau, a junior captain, lit the lamp 2:44 into the overtime session during a Gophers' power play to seal the title for Minnesota with Hudson Fasching and Travis Boyd tallying assists on the goal. The game-winning goal moves Minnesota to 62-9-6 all-time when Rau scores a point.
After weathering a tough 10 minutes to open the game, the Gophers jumped out to an early lead with Brady Skjei's fourth of the year at 9:20 of the opening stanza. The sophomore defenseman gloved a clear attempt at the point and put his wrist shot past Zach Nagelvoort in net for the Wolverines.
Michigan (17-12-4, 9-8-2-1 Big Ten) would not go quietly, however. The Wolverines scored twice in the second half of the first to take a 2-1 lead into the first intermission. Evan Allen banked in a shot from deep in the corner at 12:36 and Andrew Copp gave the home squad a one-goal lead at 18:02 of the first period.
The Gophers bounced back in a tight battle during the second period though with Justin Kloos scoring on a rocket late in the period. The freshman tallied his 12th of the year at 17:52 after being set up by Mike Reilly and Nate Condon as the two Big Ten rivals went into the third period all squared at 2-2. Reilly's assist gives the sophomore 29 points this season - most among Big Ten defensemen. Condon, meanwhile, tallied his 98th career point and has now skated in 152-consecutive games for the Maroon & Gold.
After a scoreless third went back and forth between the two storied programs, the Gophers leaned on Rau for a power-play goal that gave Minnesota its first overtime win of the year in seven tries.
While Rau, Skjei and Kloos provided the offense, Adam Wilcox backstopped the Gophers with another stellar performance in net. The sophomore Hobey Baker Award and Mike Richter Award candidate made 22 saves on the night and helped the Gophers outlast an early storm by the Wolverines. The netminder moved to 23-4-6 on the season with the victory on Friday while Nagelvoort made 25 saves for Michigan to move to 10-8-3.
The Gophers outshot Michigan 28-24 on the night. Minnesota went 1-for-3 on the power play and was 1-for-1 on the penalty kill.
The Gophers close out the 2013-14 regular season on Saturday night against Michigan at 6 p.m. ET. The series finale is on the Big Ten Network and BTN2Go.com while radio broadcast is on 1500 ESPN and the Gopher Radio Network.
-Pride on Ice-Zach Bowman has sold everything he owns, slapped a camper to his high-mileage 2003 Dodge Ram and has taken his family on the road. His clan numbers three, counting wife, Beth, and their infant daughter. They are touring America, working and discovering, and are sending The Drive periodic dispatches from the road.
Part 39 Bowman's Odyssey
The river is deep and cold and moving fast, thick with sand and soil dredged from a hundred flash flood canyons. A 2,000-cubic-foot-per-second slurry of snowmelt and runoff boiling at its center. I'm standing barefoot on one muddy bank, a nylon sling over my naked shoulder, a thick steel tow cable knotted to one end. A hundred yards away, near the far side, two friends are stranded on the roof of a pickup. The water has risen in the six hours since the truck first attempted the ford, brown waves pushing over the hood, licking at the side mirrors, and pouring over the windowsills. The tow truck idles behind me. I take a deep breath and try to push out the sound of the impatient diesel, try to quiet my hammering heart. I take three steps forward. Slide in to my waist before I know what’s happening, the water doing its best to push me down. I pull 300 feet of cable upstream, grabbing handfuls of reeds and mud and roots to steady myself and keep from getting swept away. I run out my slack. I take full, deep breaths, press my feet against the muddy bank, and launch myself at that wild current.
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At first, it’s easy work. Hand over hand; breathe, turn, breathe, turn. Kick like hell. I’m wrapped in a coat of adrenaline and I don't feel the chilly water until I get midstream. Not until all that line sweeps out in a vast arc behind me, acting like a goddamned anchor. I’m not moving forward. When I stop to check my progress, the weight of it pulls me under. The darkest of my childhood fears uncoils in my gut. The terror that says, “you will drown here.” We’d been camped outside of Moab, Utah, with Brandon and Leigh. Set ourselves up at the base of a tall slickrock spire, the peak etched and painted with graffiti. The oldest of those words has looked out over the Dolores River valley for some 102 years. None of it profane or vulgar, just names and dates. A few inspiring words hidden away from the rest of the world. The best of them: “May you live as long as you want.”
Zach Bowman and Amanda Womble
We spent two days poking through the rocky hills on a pair of mountain bikes, watching the moon crawl its way over the flattop ridges to our east. Kevan and Amanda, friends from Knoxville, joined us early in the week. It’s always good to see familiar faces, to grab hold of a tether to the home we left behind, and I was happy to show them the miracle and beauty of the desert. Kevan’s one of the more talented off-road drivers I know. Smooth and confident behind the wheel, he can pick a perfect line over seemingly impassible terrain and drive through it like he’s idling down his driveway. He’s owned a passel of machines, but his latest, a 2005 Toyota Tacoma TRD Off Road, might be his best. He spent the last six months gearing up for the trip out west, adding body protection, a small lift, meaty tires, a winch, and—yes—a snorkel.
Zach Bowman and Amanda Womble
The plan was to meet up with Kevan and Amanda, then take one of the two off-road routes from Moab to Grand Junction, Colorado. Brandon and I scouted the first, Kokopelli trail, but found it too aggressive for my old Dodge and his Vanagon. From Dewey Bridge on, the route devolved into a series of deep sand slogs and rough slickrock climbs. The second option was more manageable—basically a dirt road with a few muddy hills and rocks to contend with. That, and a ford at the Dolores River. One lazy afternoon, Brandon, Kevan, and I decided to take a look at the water, to see if it’s even possible to get across this time of year. It didn’t look good when we arrived. It was wide, fast. Kevan walked out in it and probed the bottom with a stick. He decided it was risky, so he’d nose the truck in for a few photos, then back out and call it good. Except the current grabbed the Tacoma in a blink, lifting it off its tires and floating it downstream. Kevan put the throttle on the floor, desperate to get the truck paddling. And it worked, the Toyota fighting the river, grabbing traction where it could, and pushing to the trail exit on the far side. He managed to get it within 15 feet before getting bogged down in the deep sand there. Before the interior flooded and the engine died for good. Brandon and I watched helpless from the shore. When it was clear the Tacoma wasn’t going to wind up a few miles downstream in the Colorado River, I hauled ass back to camp and grabbed the Dodge.
I was in a modifying frenzy before we left Knoxville. I’d debated whether it was worth the weight penalty to add a big, heavy steel bumper, and a bigger, heavier winch to the nose of the truck. When I spoke to the guys at ARB about it, they made a solid case for the equipment: when you're hours from help, it’s better to have the tools and not need them than to need them and not have them. ARB sent me a pallet of parts to try out on the rig, and when Kevan and I bolted the big bumper and massive winch to the front of the truck in Knoxville all those months ago, I hoped like hell I’d never have to use them. So much for hoping. I nosed the Dodge to the river’s edge and began unspooling line. One hundred feet of thick steel cable—not enough to get to the Tacoma. We had a few recovery straps, but even those weren’t up to the task of getting us across the water. We shouted a plan over the sound of the wind: one of us would swim my line out, then we’d marry it to a tow strap, which we’d then wed to Kevan’s winch line.
Zach Bowman and Amanda Womble
I’m a competent swimmer. I grew up loving the water—the soft, snaking rivers of my Virginia high school years. The rolling surf of the Atlantic. Floating rapids or surfing short breaks. Canoeing and boating. But soaked through as I am, with a real and heavy fear of drowning—of my lungs filling with water, of sinking—I'm less than confident. Brandon knows this. During their wilderness first aid course, he and my wife, Beth, discussed our various weaknesses. Allergies, fears, that sort of thing. And when he saw me preparing to wade into the Dolores, he stopped me. Insisted he go instead—this, for a guy Brandon had known for less than a full day. It’s a rare thing to glimpse the heart of a person, to see the fullness of his character. It made my heart ache behind my ribs. He stripped down to his skivvies, a strap in the crook of his elbow, and waded in. Walked a bit up stream and pushed off. If watching Kevan and his truck fall to the mercy of that river was terrifying, watching Brandon face it while dragging an anchor of recovery gear was worse. The current whipped him. He put his feet down and stood up, waist deep in the swift water, legs braced against the rush. He tried a step, nearly lost his footing, and gave up trying to walk the short distance to the stranded truck.
Zach Bowman and Amanda Womble
It was a long throw, but Kevan managed to get him a tow strap, and Brandon was aboard the Tacoma in short order. We hooked the lines together and I began winching. As soon as the cable went taught, it slacked again. In a few minutes, I had the full length of my cable, the tow strap, and the frayed end of Kevan’s cable on the bank. He’d left the winch on spool, and I’d pulled the line right off the drum. Everyone went quiet for a moment. The day had just become infinitely more complicated. We sent an emergency text from our Delorme Inreach Explorer to Amanda’s father, who called a wrecker service in Moab. I’m not sure what I expected out of the tow driver. Some sort of clever device to launch a rope 300 feet? A kayak, maybe? He rolled up in an old F-350. Stepped out and said: “I need a swimmer.” So much for cleverness. By then, Leigh had joined the party on the bank. Like her husband, she’s a strong swimmer, and she was putting up a protest when I made my way to the Dodge to change into my trunks. “You have a daughter,” she said.
Zach Bowman and Amanda WombleThe reconstructed wreckage of the MH17 airplane is seen after the presentation of the final report into the crash of July 2014 of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over Ukraine, in Gilze Rijen, the Netherlands, October 13, 2015. REUTERS/Michael Kooren
MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Russian Foreign Ministry will summon the Dutch ambassador in Moscow on Oct. 3 to explain Russia’s reasons for not accepting the findings of an investigation into the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, the ministry said on Friday.
A team of international investigators on Wednesday presented findings showing that the missile launcher used to shoot down MH17 over Eastern Ukraine in 2014 came from Russia and was returned there afterwards - despite Russian denials of involvement in the conflict in Ukraine.
The Dutch Foreign Ministry summoned Russia’s ambassador in The Hague for a diplomatic rebuke on Friday after Moscow made remarks critical of the MH17 investigation
The ministry, citing spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, said that Moscow will explain its reasoning for not accepting the methods of the international investigation, which took the probe “in a wrong direction”.If nothing else, the next few years should be interesting up in Boston.
That’s the first reaction many had when they heard the news that the Red Sox hired Bobby Valentine to be their next manager. This is especially interesting to me because I wrote a book on managers, Evaluating Baseball’s Managers (winner of The Sporting News-SABR Baseball Research Award for 2010), so I’m always looking to talk managers.
Overview: Valentine’s place in time
Valentine’s hiring is part of a trend in recent years of bringing back a veteran manager after a prolonged absence from the majors. Davey Johnson, Jack McKeon and even Terry Collins previously underwent this.
It’s also part of a trend of managers being older these days than before. Valentine turns 62 this year. Here’s a partial list of prominent managers who left the dugout before that age: Sparky Anderson, Dick Williams, Gene Mauch, John McGraw, Bucky Harris, and Bill McKechnie. Those are some the biggest names and winningest managers ever. But Valentine is still younger than Dusty Baker, Charlie Manuel, or Jim Leyland.
On Opening Day 2012, Valentine will be the only manager left that once squared off against Earl Weaver or Billy Martin. He was the opposing manager in the game in which Tom Kelly made his big league dugout debut. Kelly retired a decade ago after a career of nearly 2,400 games. When Valentine was a rookie manager, Ozzie Guillen was a rookie player.
For Valentine, this will be a return to the major leagues after 10 years elsewhere. It will be his first time as an AL manager in 20 years.
Want to know how long it’s been since he managed in the AL? The month he last did it, Bud Selig became baseball’s commissioner. Interim commissioner, they said at the time. Last time Valentine managed in the AL, Mike Scioscia was a veteran catcher, Joe Girardi a young catcher, Terry Francona a rookie minor league manager, baseball had 26 teams and our solar system had nine planets.
Valentine as man and as manager
Valentine is better known for his personality than his managing characteristics. He has a loud personality and certainly doesn’t shy away from the limelight. He’s always had a reputation for cockiness and even arrogance, words not normally associated with outgoing Red Sox manager Francona.
After all, this is a man most famous for once making a fake mustache out of those eye-black stickers players wear in order to sneak back on the dugout bench after umpires ejected him from a game.
Based on his attention-getting personality, you’d expect Valentine to be a highly active manager, always looking to inject himself in the game. In some ways that’s the case. He really likes using in-game replacements for his position players. His batters have fewer complete games than most of their opponents. He also does an above-average job making sure his batters and pitchers have the platoon advantage. Valentine will vary his batting order from day to day.
More than that, Valentine loves using pinch hitters. In six full seasons with the Mets, New York was first in pinch hitters used three times and runner-up in the other trio of seasons. With the Rangers, Valentine used 213 pinch hitters in 1990, a record for a DH league.
That said, it would be unfair and inaccurate to portray Valentine as always getting himself involved just for the sake of getting himself involved. His bullpen usage has generally been fairly normal. He’s fairly average when it comes to issuing intentional walks. Also, he prefers to play for the big inning rather than one run at a time. He calls for sacrifice hits and calls on his runners to steal about as often as most managers do.
The best tool I know for evaluating managers came from a friend named Phil Birnbaum. He created two algorithms, one for hitters and the other for pitchers, designed to see how well a player under/overperformed in a given season.
Using Bill James’ Runs Created for hitters and his Component ERA (which is the Runs Created by opposing batters) for pitchers, Phil’s system estimates how a player should be expected to do based on what he did in the surrounding seasons. You adjust for ballpark, playing time, and regress to the mean, and then compare expected performance to actual performance.
When applied to managers, it’s a handy way of seeing who got the most or least out of the talent at hand. For example, Bobby Cox got tremendous production from his pitchers. Earl Weaver did great with hitters and pitchers. And so on. In short, the results make sense and pass the smell test.
How does Valentine do? Well, his hitters and pitchers both exceeded projections; +76 for his hitters and +151 for pitchers.
In all, that’s 227 extra runs, which is among the top 30 ever. That’s pretty damn good.
Valentine’s weak spot: the running game
The running game is the main Achilles’ heel in Valentine’s managerial game. No manager in the last half-century has been harmed more by it than he.
Please realize this category refers to two things: 1) the ability of Valentine’s players to steal bases, and 2) the ability of his teams to stop their opponents’ running games. If a team can run wild on the bases but then lets the opponents run just as wild, the running game just breaks even for them. Alternately, if a team never runs but prevents its opponents from stealing, the running game isn’t really hurting them.
One way I like to look at managers is through differentials. Want to know how much a team was helped or hurt by home runs? Subtract how many homers they allowed from how many they hit. The same works for walks, or strikeouts, or any stat.
Apply it to stolen bases, and Valentine’s teams have done horribly bad. In the 2,189 games Valentine managed, his teams stole 1,380 bases while allowing 1,838 steals. That’s 458 steals behind. I’ve checked the differentials for a couple dozen skippers, including everyone with at least 2,000 games managed since 1950, and only one tops Valentine’s gap of -458.
Still, that’s not such a big deal because it’s only half the equation. It’s possible to make it up on caught stealings. How do Valentine’s teams fare there? Well, Valentine’s runners were caught steal 778 times in his 2,189 games while nabbing would-be base stealers on the opposing teams 692 times.
In other words, despite stealing 458 fewer bases than their opponents, Valentine’s runners were still caught 86 more times. Yeah, that’s bad. Doing standard sabermetric shorthand of a stolen base being worth 0.3 runs and a caught stealing equaling –0.6 runs, in all, Valentine’s teams have lost 189 runs on the bases. Per 162 games, that’s 14 runs, or a win and a half per season.
For perspective, here are the worst scores I know for managers:
MANAGER SB CS SBA CSA SB.Dif CS.Dif Runs Bobby Valentine 1380 778 1838 692 -458 86 -189 Bobby Cox 2831 1380 3164 1296 -333 84 -150.3 Ozzie Guillen 807 420 918 277 -111 143 -119.1 Jimy Williams 815 408 1401 526 -586 -118 -105 Frank Robinson 1450 849 1650 782 -200 67 -100.2 Felipe Alou 1286 544 1687 588 -401 -44 -93.9 Joe Torre 3429 1678 3147 1402 282 276 -81 Phil Garner 1425 690 1304 522 121 168 -64.5 Tom Kelly 1714 863 1594 706 120 157 -58.2 Terry Francona 1092 388 1362 431 -270 -43 -55.2
(In cases when a manager was hired or fired in midseason, the above info only includes info from the games he helmed).
I’m sure some guys belong on the list that I didn’t consider, but I doubt anyone tops Valentine. His lead is too huge. Cox, despite managing over twice as many games, still can’t touch Valentine. Impressive. Guillen is the only one who comes close on a per-game basis.
You can play sympathy for the devil on this one. Part of Valentine’s problem was that Mike Piazza caught for him for five years in New York. Piazza is a great hitter who wasn’t very good at throwing guys out. Sure, starting Piazza would cost you on the bases, but you’d be a damn blasted fool to pull him because of it. What he gave you was more than what he cost you.
What impact does Piazza have? Well, in the five years he caught for Valentine, the Mets lost 68.1 runs on the bases; that’s 13.6 runs per 162 games. In the rest of Valentine’s career, his clubs lost 14.2 runs per 162 games. So, no, you can’t blame Piazza for this one.
Let’s look closer. Here’s the chart for Valentine’s teams year-by-year (again only looking at the games he managed in full seasons). The runs column refers to runs gained/earned by his team’s exploits; runs allowed are what the opposing teams did on the bases.
Year SB CS SBA CSA R RA Dif 1985 115 64 101 27 -3.9 14.1 -18 1986 103 85 165 51 -20.1 18.9 -39 1987 120 71 205 56 -6.6 27.9 -34.5 1988 130 57 145 52 4.8 12.3 -7.5 1989 101 49 140 51 0.9 11.4 -10.5 1990 115 48 131 52 5.7 8.1 -2.4 1991
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primitive Italian stocks, the Iapygian, the Etruscan, and that which we shall call the Italian. The last is divided into two main branches,--the Latin branch, and that to which the dialects of the Umbri, Marsi, Volsci, and Samnites belong. Iapygians As to the Iapygian stock, we have but little information. At the south-eastern extremity of Italy, in the Messapian or Calabrian peninsula, inscriptions in a peculiar extinct language(1) have been found in considerable numbers; undoubtedly remains of the dialect of the Iapygians, who are very distinctly pronounced by tradition also to have been different from the Latin and Samnite stocks. Statements deserving of credit and numerous indications lead to the conclusion that the same language and the same stock were indigenous also in Apulia. What we at present know of this people suffices to show clearly that they were distinct from the other Italians, but does not suffice to determine what position should be assigned to them and to their language in the history of the human race. The inscriptions have not yet been, and it is scarcely to be expected that they ever will be, deciphered. The genitive forms, -aihi- and -ihi-, corresponding to the Sanscrit -asya- and the Greek --oio--, appear to indicate that the dialect belongs to the Indo-Germanic family. Other indications, such as the use of the aspirated consonants and the avoiding of the letters m and t as terminal sounds, show that this Iapygian dialect was essentially different from the Italian and corresponded in some respects to the Greek dialects. The supposition of an especially close affinity between the Iapygian nation and the Hellenes finds further support in the frequent occurrence of the names of Greek divinities in the inscriptions, and in the surprising facility with which that people became Hellenized, presenting a striking contrast to the shyness in this respect of the other Italian nations. Apulia, which in the time of Timaeus (400) was still described as a barbarous land, had in the sixth century of the city become a province thoroughly Greek, although no direct colonization from Greece had taken place; and even among the ruder stock of the Messapii there are various indications of a similar tendency. With the recognition of such a general family relationship or peculiar affinity between the Iapygians and Hellenes (a recognition, however, which by no means goes so far as to warrant our taking the Iapygian language to be a rude dialect of Greek), investigation must rest content, at least in the meantime, until some more precise and better assured result be attainable.(2) The lack of information, however, is not much felt; for this race, already on the decline at the period when our history begins, comes before us only when it is giving way and disappearing. The character of the Iapygian people, little capable of resistance, easily merging into other nationalities, agrees well with the hypothesis, to which their geographical position adds probability, that they were the oldest immigrants or the historical autochthones of Italy. There can be no doubt that all the primitive migrations of nations took place by land; especially such as were directed towards Italy, the coast of which was accessible by sea only to skilful sailors and on that account was still in Homer's time wholly unknown to the Hellenes. But if the earlier settlers came over the Apennines, then, as the geologist infers the origin of mountains from their stratification, the historical inquirer may hazard the conjecture that the stocks pushed furthest towards the south were the oldest inhabitants of Italy; and it is just at its extreme south-eastern verge that we meet with the Iapygian nation. Italians The middle of the peninsula was inhabited, as far back as trustworthy tradition reaches, by two peoples or rather two branches of the same people, whose position in the Indo-Germanic family admits of being determined with greater precision than that of the Iapygian nation. We may with propriety call this people the Italian, since upon it rests the historical significance of the peninsula. It is divided into the two branch-stocks of the Latins and the Umbrians; the latter including their southern offshoots, the Marsians and Samnites, and the colonies sent forth by the Samnites in historical times. The philological analysis of the idioms of these stocks has shown that they together constitute a link in the Indo-Germanic chain of languages, and that the epoch in which they still formed an unity is a comparatively late one. In their system of sounds there appears the peculiar spirant -f, in the use of which they agree with the Etruscans, but decidedly differ from all Hellenic and Helleno-barbaric races as well as from the Sanscrit itself. The aspirates, again, which are retained by the Greeks throughout, and the harsher of them also by the Etruscans, were originally foreign to the Italians, and are represented among them by one of their elements--either by the media, or by the breathing alone -f or -h. The finer spirants, -s, -w, -j, which the Greeks dispense with as much as possible, have been retained in the Italian languages almost unimpaired, and have been in some instances still further developed. The throwing back of the accent and the consequent destruction of terminations are common to the Italians with some Greek stocks and with the Etruscans; but among the Italians this was done to a greater extent than among the former, and to a lesser extent than among the latter. The excessive disorder of the terminations in the Umbrian certainly had no foundation in the original spirit of the language, but was a corruption of later date, which appeared in a similar although weaker tendency also at Rome. Accordingly in the Italian languages short vowels are regularly dropped in the final sound, long ones frequently: the concluding consonants, on the other hand, have been tenaciously retained in the Latin and still more so in the Samnite; while the Umbrian drops even these. In connection with this we find that the middle voice has left but slight traces in the Italian languages, and a peculiar passive formed by the addition of -r takes its place; and further that the majority of the tenses are formed by composition with the roots -es and -fu, while the richer terminational system of the Greeks along with the augment enables them in great part to dispense with auxiliary verbs. While the Italian languages, like the Aeolic dialect, gave up the dual, they retained universally the ablative which the Greeks lost, and in great part also the locative. The rigorous logic of the Italians appears to have taken offence at the splitting of the idea of plurality into that of duality and of multitude; while they have continued with much precision to express the relations of words by inflections. A feature peculiarly Italian, and unknown even to the Sanscrit, is the mode of imparting a substantive character to the verb by gerunds and supines,--a process carried out more completely here than in any other language. Relation of the Italians to the Greeks These examples selected from a great abundance of analogous phenomena suffice to establish the individuality of the Italian stock as distinguished from the other members of the Indo-Germanic family, and at the same time show it to be linguistically the nearest relative, as it is geographically the next neighbour, of the Greek. The Greek and the Italian are brothers; the Celt, the German, and the Slavonian are their cousins. The essential unity of all the Italian as of all the Greek dialects and stocks must have dawned early and clearly on the consciousness of the two great nations themselves; for we find in the Roman language a very ancient word of enigmatical origin, -Graius-or -Graicus-, which is applied to every Greek, and in like manner amongst the Greeks the analogous appellation --Opikos-- which is applied to all the Latin and Samnite stocks known to the Greeks in earlier times, but never to the Iapygians or Etruscans. Relation of the Latins to the Umbro-Samnites Among the languages of the Italian stock, again, the Latin stands in marked contrast with the Umbro-Samnite dialects. It is true that of these only two, the Umbrian and the Samnite or Oscan, are in some degree known to us, and these even in a manner extremely defective and uncertain. Of the rest some, such as the Marsian and the Volscian, have reached us in fragments too scanty to enable us to form any conception of their individual peculiarities or to classify the varieties of dialect themselves with certainty and precision, while others, like the Sabine, have, with the exception of a few traces preserved as dialectic peculiarities in provincial Latin, completely disappeared. A conjoint view, however, of the facts of language and of history leaves no doubt that all these dialects belonged to the Umbro-Samnite branch of the great Italian stock, and that this branch, although much more closely related to Latin than to Greek, was very decidedly distinct from the Latin. In the pronoun and other cases frequently the Samnite and Umbrian used -p where the Roman used -q, as -pis- for -quis-; just as languages otherwise closely related are found to differ; for instance, -p is peculiar to the Celtic in Brittany and Wales, -k to the Gaelic and Erse. Among the vowel sounds the diphthongs in Latin, and in the northern dialects generally, appear very much destroyed, whereas in the southern Italian dialects they have suffered little; and connected with this is the fact, that in composition the Roman weakens the radical vowel otherwise so strictly preserved,--a modification which does not take place in the kindred group of languages. The genitive of words in -a is in this group as among the Greeks -as, among the Romans in the matured language -ae; that of words in -us is in the Samnite -eis, in the Umbrian -es, among the Romans -ei; the locative disappeared more and more from the language of the latter, while it continued in full use in the other Italian dialects; the dative plural in -bus is extant only in Latin. The Umbro-Samnite infinitive in -um is foreign to the Romans; while the Osco-Umbrian future formed from the root -es after the Greek fashion (-her-est- like --leg-so--) has almost, perhaps altogether, disappeared in Latin, and its place is supplied by the optative of the simple verb or by analogous formations from -fuo-(-amabo-). In many of these instances, however--in the forms of the cases, for example--the differences only exist in the two languages when fully formed, while at the outset they coincide. It thus appears that, while the Italian language holds an independent position by the side of the Greek, the Latin dialect within it bears a relation to the Umbro-Samnite somewhat similar to that of the Ionic to the Doric; and the differences of the Oscan and Umbrian and kindred dialects may be compared with the differences between the Dorism of Sicily and the Dorism of Sparta. Each of these linguistic phenomena is the result and the attestation of an historical event. With perfect certainty they guide us to the conclusion, that from the common cradle of peoples and languages there issued a stock which embraced in common the ancestors of the Greeks and the Italians; that from this, at a subsequent period, the Italians branched off; and that these again divided into the western and eastern stocks, while at a still later date the eastern became subdivided into Umbrians and Oscans. When and where these separations took place, language of course cannot tell; and scarce may adventurous thought attempt to grope its conjectural way along the course of those revolutions, the earliest of which undoubtedly took place long before that migration which brought the ancestors of the Italians across the Apennines. On the other hand the comparison of languages, when conducted with accuracy and caution, may give us an approximate idea of the degree of culture which the people had reached when these separations took place, and so furnish us with the beginnings of history, which is nothing but the development of civilization. For language, especially in the period of its formation, is the true image and organ of the degree of civilization attained; its archives preserve evidence of the great revolutions in arts and in manners, and from its records the future will not fail to draw information as to those times regarding which the voice of direct tradition is dumb. Indo-Germanic Culture During the period when the Indo-Germanic nations which are now separated still formed one stock speaking the same language, they attained a certain stage of culture, and they had a vocabulary corresponding to it. This vocabulary the several nations carried along with them, in its conventionally established use, as a common dowry and a foundation for further structures of their own. In it we find not merely the simplest terms denoting existence, actions, perceptions, such as -sum-, -do-, -pater-, the original echo of the impression which the external world made on the mind of man, but also a number of words indicative of culture (not only as respects their roots, but in a form stamped upon them by custom) which are the common property of the Indo-Germanic family, and which cannot be explained either on the principle of an uniform development in the several languages, or on the supposition of their having subsequently borrowed one from another. In this way we possess evidence of the development of pastoral life at that remote epoch in the unalterably fixed names of domestic animals; the Sanscrit -gaus- is the Latin -bos-, the Greek --bous--; Sanscrit -avis- is the Latin -ovis-, Greek --ois--; Sanscrit -asvas-, Latin -equus-, Greek --ippos--; Sanscrit -hansas-, Latin -anser-, Greek --chein--; Sanscrit -atis-, Latin -anas-, Greek --neissa--; in like manner -pecus-, -sus-, -porcus-, -taurus-, -canis-, are Sanscrit words. Even at this remote period accordingly the stock, on which from the days of Homer down to our own time the intellectual development of mankind has been dependent, had already advanced beyond the lowest stage of civilization, the hunting and fishing epoch, and had attained at least comparative fixity of abode. On the other hand, we have as yet no certain proofs of the existence of agriculture at this period. Language rather favours the negative view. Of the Latin-Greek names of grain none occurs in Sanscrit with the single exception of --zea--, which philologically represents the Sanscrit -yavas-, but denotes in the Indian barley, in Greek spelt. It must indeed be granted that this diversity in the names of cultivated plants, which so strongly contrasts with the essential agreement in the appellations of domestic animals, does not absolutely preclude the supposition of a common original agriculture. In the circumstances of primitive times transport and acclimatizing are more difficult in the case of plants than of animals; and the cultivation of rice among the Indians, that of wheat and spelt among the Greeks and Romans, and that of rye and oats among the Germans and Celts, may all be traceable to a common system of primitive tillage. On the other hand the name of one cereal common to the Greeks and Indians only proves, at the most, that before the separation of the stocks they gathered and ate the grains of barley and spelt growing wild in Mesopotamia,(3) not that they already cultivated grain. While, however, we reach no decisive result in this way, a further light is thrown on the subject by our observing that a number of the most important words bearing on this province of culture occur certainly in Sanscrit, but all of them in a more general signification. -Agras-among the Indians denotes a level surface in general; -kurnu-, anything pounded; -aritram-, oar and ship; -venas-, that which is pleasant in general, particularly a pleasant drink. The words are thus very ancient; but their more definite application to the field (-ager-), to the grain to be ground (-granum-), to the implement which furrows the soil as the ship furrows the surface of the sea (-aratrum-), to the juice of the grape (-vinum-), had not yet taken place when the earliest division of the stocks occurred, and it is not to be wondered at that their subsequent applications came to be in some instances very different, and that, for example, the corn intended to be ground, as well as the mill for grinding it (Gothic -quairinus-, Lithuanian -girnos-,(4)) received their names from the Sanscrit -kurnu-. We may accordingly assume it as probable, that the primeval Indo-Germanic people were not yet acquainted with agriculture, and as certain, that, if they were so, it played but a very subordinate part in their economy; for had it at that time held the place which it afterwards held among the Greeks and Romans, it would have left a deeper impression upon the language. On the other hand the building of houses and huts by the Indo-Germans is attested by the Sanscrit -dam(as)-, Latin -domus-, Greek --domos--; Sanscrit -vesas-, Latin -vicus-, Greek --oikos--; Sanscrit -dvaras-, Latin -fores-, Greek --thura--; further, the building of oar-boats by the names of the boat, Sanscrit -naus-, Latin -navis-, Greek --naus--, and of the oar, Sanscrit -aritram-, Greek --eretmos--, Latin -remus-, -tri-res-mis-; and the use of waggons and the breaking in of animals for draught and transport by the Sanscrit -akshas- (axle and cart), Latin -axis-, Greek --axon--, --am-axa--; Sanscrit -iugam-, Latin -iugum-, Greek --zugon--. The words that denote clothing- Sanscrit -vastra-, Latin -vestis-, Greek --esthes--; as well as those that denote sewing and spinning-Sanscrit -siv-, Latin -suo-; Sanscrit -nah-, Latin -neo-, Greek --netho--, are alike in all Indo-Germanic languages. This cannot, however, be equally affirmed of the higher art of weaving.(5) The knowledge of the use of fire in preparing food, and of salt for seasoning it, is a primeval heritage of the Indo-Germanic nations; and the same may be affirmed regarding the knowledge of the earliest metals employed as implements or ornaments by man. At least the names of copper (-aes-) and silver (-argentum-), perhaps also of gold, are met with in Sanscrit, and these names can scarcely have originated before man had learned to separate and to utilize the ores; the Sanscrit -asis-, Latin -ensis-, points in fact to the primeval use of metallic weapons. No less do we find extending back into those times the fundamental ideas on which the development of all Indo-Germanic states ultimately rests; the relative position of husband and wife, the arrangement in clans, the priesthood of the father of the household and the absence of a special sacerdotal class as well as of all distinctions of caste in general, slavery as a legitimate institution, the days of publicly dispensing justice at the new and full moon. On the other hand the positive organization of the body politic, the decision of the questions between regal sovereignty and the sovereignty of the community, between the hereditary privilege of royal and noble houses and the unconditional legal equality of the citizens, belong altogether to a later age. Even the elements of science and religion show traces of a community of origin. The numbers are the same up to one hundred (Sanscrit -satam-, -ekasatam-, Latin -centum-, Greek --e-katon--, Gothic -hund-); and the moon receives her name in all languages from the fact that men measure time by her (-mensis-). The idea of Deity itself (Sanscrit -devas-, Latin -deus-, Greek --theos--), and many of the oldest conceptions of religion and of natural symbolism, belong to the common inheritance of the nations. The conception, for example, of heaven as the father and of earth as the mother of being, the festal expeditions of the gods who proceed from place to place in their own chariots along carefully levelled paths, the shadowy continuation of the soul's existence after death, are fundamental ideas of the Indian as well as of the Greek and Roman mythologies. Several of the gods of the Ganges coincide even in name with those worshipped on the Ilissus and the Tiber:--thus the Uranus of the Greeks is the Varunas, their Zeus, Jovis pater, Diespiter is the Djaus pita of the Vedas. An unexpected light has been thrown on various enigmatical forms in the Hellenic mythology by recent researches regarding the earlier divinities of India. The hoary mysterious forms of the Erinnyes are no Hellenic invention; they were immigrants along with the oldest settlers from the East. The divine greyhound Sarama, who guards for the Lord of heaven the golden herd of stars and sunbeams and collects for him the nourishing rain-clouds as the cows of heaven to the milking, and who moreover faithfully conducts the pious dead into the world of the blessed, becomes in the hands of the Greeks the son of Sarama, Sarameyas, or Hermeias; and the enigmatical Hellenic story of the stealing of the cattle of Helios, which is beyond doubt connected with the Roman legend about Cacus, is now seen to be a last echo (with the meaning no longer understood) of that old fanciful and significant conception of nature. Graeco-Italian Culture The task, however, of determining the degree of culture which the Indo-Germans had attained before the separation of the stocks properly belongs to the general history of the ancient world. It is on the other hand the special task of Italian history to ascertain, so far as it is possible, what was the state of the Graeco-Italian nation when the Hellenes and the Italians parted. Nor is this a superfluous labour; we reach by means of it the stage at which Italian civilization commenced, the starting-point of the national history. Agriculture While it is probable that the Indo-Germans led a pastoral life and were acquainted with the cereals, if at all, only in their wild state, all indications point to the conclusion that the Graeco-Italians were a grain-cultivating, perhaps even a vine-cultivating, people. The evidence of this is not simply the knowledge of agriculture itself common to both, for this does not upon the whole warrant the inference of community of origin in the peoples who may exhibit it. An historical connection between the Indo-Germanic agriculture and that of the Chinese, Aramaean, and Egyptian stocks can hardly be disputed; and yet these stocks are either alien to the Indo-Germans, or at any rate became separated from them at a time when agriculture was certainly still unknown. The truth is, that the more advanced races in ancient times were, as at the present day, constantly exchanging the implements and the plants employed in cultivation; and when the annals of China refer the origin of Chinese agriculture to the introduction of five species of grain that took place under a particular king in a particular year, the story undoubtedly depicts correctly, at least in a general way, the relations subsisting in the earliest epochs of civilization. A common knowledge of agriculture, like a common knowledge of the alphabet, of war chariots, of purple, and other implements and ornaments, far more frequently warrants the inference of an ancient intercourse between nations than of their original unity. But as regards the Greeks and Italians, whose mutual relations are comparatively well known, the hypothesis that agriculture as well as writing and coinage first came to Italy by means of the Hellenes may be characterized as wholly inadmissible. On the other hand, the existence of a most intimate connection between the agriculture of the one country and that of the other is attested by their possessing in common all the oldest expressions relating to it; -ager-, --agros--; -aro aratrum-, --aroo arotron--; -ligo-alongside of --lachaino--; -hortus-, --chortos--; -hordeum-, --krithei--; -milium-, --melinei--; -rapa-, --raphanis-; -malva-, --malachei--; -vinum-, --oinos--. It is likewise attested by the agreement of Greek and Italian agriculture in the form of the plough, which appears of the same shape on the old Attic and the old Roman monuments; in the choice of the most ancient kinds of grain, millet, barley, spelt; in the custom of cutting the ears with the sickle and having them trodden out by cattle on the smooth-beaten threshing-floor; lastly, in the mode of preparing the grain -puls- --poltos--, -pinso- --ptisso--, -mola- --mulei--; for baking was of more recent origin, and on that account dough or pap was always used in the Roman ritual instead of bread. That the culture of the vine too in Italy was anterior to the earliest Greek immigration, is shown by the appellation "wine-land" (--Oinotria--), which appears to reach back to the oldest visits of Greek voyagers. It would thus appear that the transition from pastoral life to agriculture, or, to speak more correctly, the combination of agriculture with the earlier pastoral economy, must have taken place after the Indians had departed from the common cradle of the nations, but before the Hellenes and Italians dissolved their ancient communion. Moreover, at the time when agriculture originated, the Hellenes and Italians appear to have been united as one national whole not merely with each other, but with other members of the great family; at least, it is a fact, that the most important of those terms of cultivation, while they are foreign to the Asiatic members of the Indo-Germanic family, are used by the Romans and Greeks in common with the Celtic as well as the Germanic, Slavonic, and Lithuanian stocks.(6) The distinction between the common inheritance of the nations and their own subsequent acquisitions in manners and in language is still far from having been wrought out in all the variety of its details and gradations. The investigation of languages with this view has scarcely begun, and history still in the main derives its representation of primitive times, not from the rich mine of language, but from what must be called for the most part the rubbish-heap of tradition. For the present, therefore, it must suffice to indicate the differences between the culture of the Indo-Germanic family in its oldest undivided form, and the culture of that epoch when the Graeco-Italians still lived together. The task of discriminating the results of culture which are common to the European members of this family, but foreign to its Asiatic members, from those which the several European groups, such as the Graeco-Italian and the Germano-Slavonic, have wrought out for themselves, can only be accomplished, if at all, after greater progress has been made in linguistic and historical inquiries. But there can be no doubt that, with the Graeco-Italians as with all other nations, agriculture became and in the mind of the people remained the germ and core of their national and of their private life. The house and the fixed hearth, which the husbandman constructs instead of the light hut and shifting fireplace of the shepherd, are represented in the spiritual domain and idealized in the goddess Vesta or --Estia-- almost the only divinity not Indo-Germanic yet from the first common to both nations. One of the oldest legends of the Italian stock ascribes to king Italus, or, as the Italians must have pronounced the word, Vitalus or Vitulus, the introduction of the change from a pastoral to an agricultural life, and shrewdly connects with it the original Italian legislation. We have simply another version of the same belief in the legend of the Samnite stock which makes the ox the leader of their primitive colonies, and in the oldest Latin national names which designate the people as reapers (-Siculi-, perhaps also -Sicani-), or as field-labourers (-Opsci-). It is one of the characteristic incongruities which attach to the so-called legend of the origin of Rome, that it represents a pastoral and hunting people as founding a city. Legend and faith, laws and manners, among the Italians as among the Hellenes are throughout associated with agriculture.(7) Cultivation of the soil cannot be conceived without some measurement of it, however rude. Accordingly, the measures of surface and the mode of setting off boundaries rest, like agriculture itself, on a like basis among both peoples. The Oscan and Umbrian -vorsus- of one hundred square feet corresponds exactly with the Greek --plethron--. The principle of marking off boundaries was also the same. The land-measurer adjusted his position with reference to one of the cardinal points, and proceeded to draw in the first place two lines, one from north to south, and another from east to west, his station being at their point of intersection (-templum-, --temenos-- from --temno--); then he drew at certain fixed distances lines parallel to these, and by this process produced a series of rectangular pieces of ground, the corners of which were marked by boundary posts (-termini-, in Sicilian inscriptions -termones-, usually --oroi--). This mode of defining boundaries, which is probably also Etruscan but is hardly of Etruscan origin, we find among the Romans, Umbrians, Samnites, and also in very ancient records of the Tarentine Heracleots, who are as little likely to have borrowed it from the Italians as the Italians from the Tarentines: it is an ancient possession common to all. A peculiar characteristic of the Romans, on the other hand, was their rigid carrying out of the principle of the square; even where the sea or a river formed a natural boundary, they did not accept it, but wound up their allocation of the land with the last complete square. Other Features of Their Economy It is not solely in agriculture, however, that the especially close relationship of the Greeks and Italians appears; it is unmistakably manifest also in the other provinces of man's earliest activity. The Greek house, as described by Homer, differs little from the model which was always adhered to in Italy. The essential portion, which originally formed the whole interior accommodation of the Latin house, was the -atrium-, that is, the "blackened" chamber, with the household altar, the marriage bed, the table for meals, and the hearth; and precisely similar is the Homeric --megaron--, with its household altar and hearth and smoke-begrimed roof. We cannot say the same of ship-building. The boat with oars was an old common possession of the Indo-Germans; but the advance to the use of sailing vessels can scarcely be considered to have taken place during the Graeco-Italian period, for we find no nautical terms originally common to the Greeks and Italians except such as are also general among the Indo-Germanic family. On the other hand the primitive Italian custom of the husbandmen having common midday meals, the origin of which the myth connects with the introduction of agriculture, is compared by Aristotle with the Cretan Syssitia; and the earliest Romans further agreed with the Cretans and Laconians in taking their meals not, as was afterwards the custom among both peoples, in a reclining, but in a sitting posture. The mode of kindling fire by the friction of two pieces of wood of different kinds is common to all peoples; but it is certainly no mere accident that the Greeks and Italians agree in the appellations which they give to the two portions of the touch-wood, "the rubber" (--trypanon--, -terebra-), and the "under-layer" (--storeus--, --eschara--, -tabula-, probably from -tendere-, --tetamai--). In like manner the dress of the two peoples is essentially identical, for the -tunica- quite corresponds with the --chiton--, and the -toga- is nothing but a fuller --himation--. Even as regards weapons of war, liable as they are to frequent change, the two peoples have this much at least in common, that their two principal weapons of attack were the javelin and the bow,--a fact which is clearly expressed, as far as Rome is concerned, in the earliest names for warriors (-pilumni--arquites-),(8) and is in keeping with the oldest mode of fighting which was not properly adapted to a close struggle. Thus, in the language and manners of Greeks and Italians, all that relates to the material foundations of human existence may be traced back to the same primary elements; the oldest problems which the world proposes to man had been jointly solved by the two peoples at a time when they still formed one nation. Difference of the Italian and the Greek Character It was otherwise in the mental domain. The great problem of man--how to live in conscious harmony with himself, with his neighbour, and with the whole to which he belongs--admits of as many solutions as there are provinces in our Father's kingdom; and it is in this, and not in the material sphere, that individuals and nations display their divergences of character. The exciting causes which gave rise to this intrinsic contrast must have been in the Graeco-Italian period as yet wanting; it was not until the Hellenes and Italians had separated that that deep-seated diversity of mental character became manifest, the effects of which continue to the present day. The family and the state, religion and art, received in Italy and in Greece respectively a development so peculiar and so thoroughly national, that the common basis, on which in these respects also the two peoples rested, has been so overgrown as to be almost concealed from our view. That Hellenic character, which sacrificed the whole to its individual elements, the nation to the township, and the township to the citizen; which sought its ideal of life in the beautiful and the good, and, but too often, in the enjoyment of idleness; which attained its political development by intensifying the original individuality of the several cantons, and at length produced the internal dissolution of even local authority; which in its view of religion first invested the gods with human attributes, and then denied their existence; which allowed full play to the limbs in the sports of the naked youth, and gave free scope to thought in all its grandeur and in all its awfulness;--and that Roman character, which solemnly bound the son to reverence the father, the citizen to reverence the ruler, and all to reverence the gods; which required nothing and honoured nothing but the useful act, and compelled every citizen to fill up every moment of his brief life with unceasing work; which made it a duty even in the boy modestly to cover the body; which deemed every one a bad citizen who wished to be different from his fellows; which regarded the state as all in all, and a desire for the state's extension as the only aspiration not liable to censure,--who can in thought trace back these sharply-marked contrasts to that original unity which embraced them both, prepared the way for their development, and at length produced them? It would be foolish presumption to desire to lift this veil; we shall only endeavour to indicate in brief outline the beginnings of Italian nationality and its connections with an earlier period--to direct the guesses of the discerning reader rather than to express them. The Family and the State All that may be called the patriarchal element in the state rested in Greece and Italy on the same foundations. Under this head comes especially the moral and decorous arrangement of social life,(9) which enjoined monogamy on the husband and visited with heavy penalties the infidelity of the wife, and which recognized the equality of the sexes and the sanctity of marriage in the high position which it assigned to the mother within the domestic circle. On the other hand the rigorous development of the marital and still more of the paternal authority, regardless of the natural rights of persons as such, was a feature foreign to the Greeks and peculiarly Italian; it was in Italy alone that moral subjection became transformed into legal slavery. In the same way the principle of the slave being completely destitute of legal rights--a principle involved in the very nature of slavery--was maintained by the Romans with merciless rigour and carried out to all its consequences; whereas among the Greeks alleviations of its harshness were early introduced both in practice and in legislation, the marriage of slaves, for example, being recognized as a legal relation. On the household was based the clan, that is, the community of the descendants of the same progenitor; and out of the clan among the Greeks as well as the Italians arose the state. But while under the weaker political development of Greece the clan-bond maintained itself as a corporate power in contradistinction to that of the state far even into historical times, the state in Italy made its appearance at once complete, in so far as in presence of its authority the clans were quite neutralized and it exhibited an association not of clans, but of citizens. Conversely, again, the individual attained, in presence of the clan, an inward independence and freedom of personal development far earlier and more completely in Greece than in Rome--a fact reflected with great clearness in the Greek and Roman proper names, which, originally similar, came to assume very different forms. In the more ancient Greek names the name of the clan was very frequently added in an adjective form to that of the individual; while, conversely, Roman scholars were aware that their ancestors bore originally only one name, the later -praenomen-. But while in Greece the adjectival clan-name early disappeared, it became, among the Italians generally and not merely among the Romans, the principal name; and the distinctive individual name, the -praenomen-, became subordinate. It seems as if the small and ever diminishing number and the meaningless character of the Italian, and particularly of the Roman, individual names, compared with the luxuriant and poetical fulness of those of the Greeks, were intended to illustrate the truth that it was characteristic of the one nation to reduce all to a level, of the other to promote the free development of personality. The association in communities of families under patriarchal chiefs, which we may conceive to have prevailed in the Graeco-Italian period, may appear different enough from the later forms of Italian and Hellenic polities; yet it must have already contained the germs out of which the future laws of both
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average price of a home could still measured using five figures. The only real constant has been the reliability of 1303!
Finally, in August this year, Liam decided that the time was right to retire the car. Still roadworthy but looking a little tired, 1303 was replaced, fittingly, by another Land Cruiser, a 2007 120-Series with 47,000 miles on the clock – fewer than 12% of 1303’s total.
As told to me by Liam Young. Do you have a Toyota story that you’d like to share with us? Leave a comment below and we’ll be in touch shortly.How to upgrade Ubuntu 10.4 / 10.10 Maverick to the latest version of Ubuntu Linux?
Are you seeing errors like Failed to fetch http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/maverick/main/ binary … 404 Not Found?
Ubuntu have dropped support for 10.4 & 10.10. By default now when you run the apt-get / apt-update and sudo do-release-upgrade you’ll start getting 404 errors to say that various repositories can’t be fetched / found.
For examples you’ll be seeing something like this:
Failed to fetch
http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/maverick/main/binary-amd64/Packages.gz
404 Not Found
Failed to fetch
http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/maverick/restricted/binary-amd64/Packages.gz
404 Not Found
This is because Ubuntu have moved them from their archive site to their http://old-releases.ubuntu.com site but your Ubuntu Linux installation doesn’t know about that site. I’m not sure why they do this because it must be causing pain for thousands of users as they come to upgrade. I know they’ve had plenty of time to upgrade but lots of people don’t upgrade until they have a real business driver to do so.
BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING ALWAYS MAKE A BACKUP
How to fix your Ubuntu Linus 10.4 / 10.10 Maverick so you can upgrade it.
To fix the 404 issue so that your Ubuntu Maverick installation can find the repositories so that it can do the upgrade you need to update your sources.list file.
To do that issue the sudo vi /etc/apt/sources.list command
Replace the existing lines with the following:
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick main restricted
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick-updates main restricted
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick universe
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick-updates universe
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick multiverse
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick-updates multiverse
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick-security main restricted
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick-security universe
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick-security multiverse
save the file and then issue the following commands:
sudo apt-get clean
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install update-manager-core
sudo do-release-upgrade
The do-release-upgrade command will now upgrade you to the next release eg 11.04. When that finishes do it again to go to 11.10 and again to go to 12.04 etc until your system is up to date or at the level you want it.
This assumes you are happy to upgrade from the command line.Topic Number 502 - Medical and Dental Expenses
If you itemize your deductions for a taxable year on Form 1040, Schedule A.pdf, Itemized Deductions, you may be able to deduct expenses you paid that year for medical and dental care for yourself, your spouse, and your dependents. You may deduct only the amount of your total medical expenses that exceed 7.5% of your adjusted gross income. You figure the amount you're allowed to deduct on Form 1040, Schedule A.
Medical care expenses include payments for the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease, or payments for treatments affecting any structure or function of the body.
Deductible medical expenses may include but aren't limited to the following:
Payments of fees to doctors, dentists, surgeons, chiropractors, psychiatrists, psychologists, and nontraditional medical practitioners
Payments for inpatient hospital care or residential nursing home care, if the availability of medical care is the principal reason for being in the nursing home, including the cost of meals and lodging charged by the hospital or nursing home. If the availability of medical care isn't the principal reason for residence in the nursing home, the deduction is limited to that part of the cost that's for medical care.
Payments for acupuncture treatments or inpatient treatment at a center for alcohol or drug addiction; or for participation in a smoking-cessation program and for drugs to alleviate nicotine withdrawal that require a prescription
Payments to participate in a weight-loss program for a specific disease or diseases diagnosed by a physician, including obesity, but not ordinarily payments for diet food items or the payment of health club dues
Payments for insulin and for drugs that require a prescription for its use by an individual
Payments made for admission and transportation to a medical conference relating to a chronic illness of you, your spouse, or your dependent (if the costs are primarily for and essential to necessary medical care). However, you may not deduct the costs for meals and lodging while attending the medical conference
Payments for false teeth, reading or prescription eyeglasses, contact lenses, hearing aids, crutches, wheelchairs, and for a guide dog or other service animal to assist a visually impaired or hearing disabled person, or a person with other physical disabilities
Payments for transportation primarily for and essential to medical care that qualify as medical expenses, such as payments of the actual fare for a taxi, bus, train, ambulance, or for transportation by personal car; the amount of your actual out-of-pocket expenses such as for gas and oil; or the amount of the standard mileage rate for medical expenses, plus the cost of tolls and parking
Payments for insurance premiums you paid for policies that cover medical care or for a qualified long-term care insurance policy covering qualified long-term care services. However, if you're an employee, don't include in medical expenses the portion of your premiums treated as paid by your employer. Employer-sponsored premiums paid under a premium conversion plan, cafeteria plan, or any other medical and dental expenses paid by the plan aren't deductible unless the premiums are included in box 1 of your Form W-2.pdf, Wage and Tax Statement. For example, if you're a federal employee participating in the premium conversion plan of the Federal Employee Health Benefits (FEHB) program, you may not include the premiums paid for the policy as a medical expense
If you're self-employed and have a net profit for the year, you may be eligible for the self-employed health insurance deduction. This is an adjustment to income, rather than an itemized deduction, for premiums you paid on a health insurance policy covering medical care, including a qualified long-term care insurance policy for yourself, your spouse, and dependents. The policy can also cover your child who is under the age of 27 at the end of 2018 even if the child wasn't your dependent. See Chapter 6 of Publication 535, Business Expenses, for eligibility information. If you don't claim 100% of your paid premiums, you can include the remainder with your other medical expenses as an itemized deduction on Form 1040, Schedule A.pdf.
You may not deduct funeral or burial expenses, nonprescription medicines, toothpaste, toiletries, cosmetics, a trip or program for the general improvement of your health, or most cosmetic surgery. You may not deduct amounts paid for nicotine gum and nicotine patches that don't require a prescription.
You can only include the medical expenses you paid during the year. You must reduce your total deductible medical expenses for the year by any reimbursement of deductible medical expenses, and by expenses used when figuring other credits or deductions. This is true whether you receive the reimbursement directly or it's paid on your behalf to the doctor, hospital, or other medical provider.
To determine whether an expense is deductible, see Can I Deduct My Medical and Dental Expenses? For additional information on medical expenses, including who qualifies as your dependent for purposes of this deduction, how to figure, and how to report the deduction on your return, see Publication 502, Medical and Dental Expenses.Police today seized 155 cartons of IMFL illegally traded from Haryana in a cash van bearing the sticker of a nationalised bank.
Acting on a tip off, the police team searched the cash van bearing a Haryana registration number between Donar and Beta Chowk and seized 155 cartons of Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL), Additional Superintendent of Police Dilnawaz Ahmad told reporters.
Two persons, both residents of Darbhanga, were arrested from the van.
Investigation was on to find out the whether the bank sticker was genuine, the ASP said.
He said that after prohibition, the police were getting information about liquor being transported mainly from Haryana in ambulance, vehicles carrying vegetables and cash vans of banks for which a strict surveillance was on.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has expressed concern over trade of liquor from a far off state like Haryana into the state and instructed police to unearth the network.The two old rivals meet on Friday night in Columbus but tensions are raised after an election that has seen incendiary anti-Latino rhetoric
Tensions ahead of an always charged USA-Mexico soccer game this Friday have suddenly been magnified by the election of Donald Trump as America’s 45th president.
Trump ran a scorched-earth campaign that openly denigrated immigrants and called for the mass deportation of Mexicans from the United States. His incendiary rhetoric – Trump called Mexican immigrants, among other things, rapists – could make for an ugly backdrop to a rivalry that has already had its fair share of nasty incidents. There is a real fear that the rhetoric Trump used could make its way into the stands and streets around the stadium, targeting Mexican fans.
American goalkeeper Tim Howard refused to answer questions on Wednesday before training, saying that he wasn’t invested in politics and didn’t vote – but added that if he had, it wouldn’t have been for Trump.
The Joy of Six: classic moments from the Mexico-USA football rivalry Read more
Michael Bradley was more open about the subject, though he took care with his statements. Bradley did not criticize the president-to-be, instead making a plea both for acceptance and for the American people to come together.
“I certainly think given the way everything has gone the last few months, there’s an added layer to this game,” he said. “But my general feeling is that we, as Americans, we trust our system, we respect our democracy and regardless of your beliefs and regardless of how you’ve voted, we have an obligation to come together, get behind our new president and have faith and trust that he will do what’s best for the entire country.”
That type of acceptance may take a while to take hold, as a wave of melancholy has swept the country after Tuesday night’s result. The typically vibrant “Short North” section of Columbus that houses both millennials and many members of the local LGBT community was full of quiet conversation and downcast faces on Wednesday (Columbus, in Franklin County, was won by Hillary Clinton, but areas surrounding it turned red for Trump). Chicago, home of both US Soccer and Barack Obama, was jittery, with protests and gallows humor in evidence. Whether things will change by the time Friday’s game rolls around is doubtful, especially considering the rivalry’s checkered history.
The USA-Mexico rivalry stretches back to 1934, but did not really burst into the American consciousness until the 1990s. Soccer has always been vastly more culturally important in Mexico than in the US; when the American team started to enjoy even modest success, Mexican fans began to chafe. A landmark game – a 1991 win at the Los Angeles Coliseum for the USA in a regional tournament – set a precedent that has now lasted for almost 25 years: the USA have been dominant at home, while Mexico have ruled the roost when games are played at the Azteca.
But tensions between the two teams have steadily risen over the years as both sides have clawed for supremacy in North America. Part of it is the normal sporting tension seen in rivalries across the globe. But part of it is a reflection of the fact that Mexico has long been the poorer cousin to the south, and as a global recession has taken root, Mexican emigres have become scapegoats in many American communities.
Recent USA-Mexico games have seen a ratcheting up of the pressure. Mexican fans have been criticized for booing the American national anthem at several events; racist messages and anti-Mexican signs have been seen in the American crowd. This mirrors a growing hostility between the nations – culminating in Trump’s infamous call for a wall between the nations – that has been steadily brewing.
Despite this, Howard insists that fans will enjoy the spectacle of the game and put aside politics at the gate. When asked what he expected from the US fans on Friday night, he responded with a simple: “I don’t know, they’re going to be excited for hopefully a US win.”
“It’s politics and this is football,” Howard added. “Mexico is going to try and kick our asses and we’re going to try and kick theirs. It’s got nothing to do with politics.”
Sport always tries to pretend it is apolitical. In reality, bringing together two countries that have shared a contentious history three days after the presidential election is going to produce reactions. What the American Outlaws decide to do or what the Mexican fans choose to express during the game may just be banter, but it is likely to take on charged overtones Friday.
Ironically, Trump has also been linked to this famous rivalry: in an ill-judged move, Fox Soccer released a promotional video last October ahead of a must-win playoff game between the nations that featured footage of one of Trump’s speeches. The clip was widely condemned, and Mexico had the last laugh.
Fired up by the insult, El Tri went on to upset the USA 3-2 at the Rose Bowl.
Mexico v USA: a stormy history
– Visiting American players and fans have often been pelted with objects thrown from the crowd in Mexico. Landon Donovan was hit with bags containing urine at a World Cup qualifier in Mexico City; other fans have been pelted with coins, batteries and bottles. Filmmaker Michael Whalen recalled shielding a 10-year old girl from a hail of bottles while taping a documentary on the rivalry in 2012.
– Donovan incensed Mexican fans in 2004 when local press reported he had urinated on a practice pitch in Guadalajara. (He hadn’t.) Two days later, the USA was serenaded with chants of “Osama, Osama” amid a 4-0 loss, a reference to the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
– On-field incidents have ranged from the usual poor sportsmanship to the more extreme, such as a 2007 incident in which goalkeeper Oswaldo Sanchez attempted to trip American striker Eddie Johnson as he celebrated scoring a goal. In 2009, a Mexico assistant coach slapped an American player, Frankie Hejduk, in the tunnel post-game. Most infamously, Rafa Marquez headbutted Cobi Jones during a 2002 World Cup game, and received a four-match ban.
– Howard memorably ripped into Concacaf, the region’s governing body, after a home game at the Rose Bowl had a post-game awards ceremony conducted entirely in Spanish. Said Howard at the time: “I think it was a fucking disgrace. You can bet your ass if we were in Mexico City, it wouldn’t be in English.”
– Tensions have risen in the stands as well: 32 arrests were made after the last meeting between the two teams, a one-off playoff game at the Rose Bowl. Seventeen fans were also ejected from the game for fighting during the game.In 2006, Sting came out with Songs from the Labyrinth, an album devoted to the Elizabethan composer John Dowland. It was an unlikely choice of musical material for a rock star, yet Sting approached Dowland with enthusiasm and respect, refraining from rendering his songs into pop or setting them to a rock beat (as Richard Thompson for example has done with Renaissance tunes and Italian madrigals). He employed a professional lutenist, Edin Karamazov, and accompanied some of the pieces on the lute himself, one of his recent passions. Showing restraint and taste, Sting did not attempt to sing the songs in the stylized “classical” manner but used his voice’s natural register to adopt at times a relaxed and conversational, at times a more hushed or emphatic tone to suit each song’s occasion.
The result was oddly compelling and delightful. In the decade since the recording was released, the album’s Amazon page has accumulated over 200 largely favorable customer reviews. The handful of negative reviews are not, as one might suspect, from Sting fans baffled by his newfound classical preoccupation but rather finicky classical purists taking issue with his vocal incompetence, his nerve in attempting something out of his league. Yet they miss the point. The rocker’s homespun approach reveals the music’s texture in a fresh way, and moreover reflects the actual conditions in which Dowland’s music was performed, namely by musician friends in a relaxed and intimate setting.
Dowland appeals to us in that he shares certain affinities with the modern notion of the artist—the artist as alienated, rebellious iconoclast, misunderstood by his society, striking out on his own in proud defiance of convention. The English long for a Caravaggio, Beethoven or Van Gogh to call their own (they do have one in fact: Shakespeare, but he’s not neurotic enough). Dowland can, partially at any rate, be said to fit the bill. He is indeed an enigmatic and somewhat tragic figure, in the Greek sense, his fate largely self-inflicted. Before we investigate the reasons for this, and what it all has to do with the point of this essay, we need to slip back a few decades in time to the start of Queen Elizabeth’s reign and the extraordinary story of her chief court musician, Alfonso Ferrabosco.
Elizabeth and Ferrabosco
The Tudors took music seriously. Elizabeth’s father Henry VIII was a composer. To ensure the court was surrounded by cutting-edge musicians of the highest caliber, he hired them from Italy, the musical center of Europe. Two musician families of Jewish heritage, the Bassano’s and the Lupo’s, established themselves at the English court in the 1540s, when Elizabeth was a young girl (the tradition of Jewish excellence in classical music carries on today). She herself had thorough musical training. Music was taken for granted in royal life; any man not skilled on the lute, or woman on the virginal, was uncultivated and boorish. It was constantly at hand, performed by musicians of the court and the church, by courtiers and the Queen herself—an endless outpouring of hymns, dances, songs, anthems. It’s hard to imagine the like in our time, as if the most important item on the resume of White House staffers up to the President himself was proficiency on an instrument (a vestige of this survives in the popular musical acts given the honor of performing at White House state dinners). Incidentally, two recent books explore the possibility that Amelia Bassano, born in 1569 of the same family, was the “dark lady” of Shakespeare’s sonnets (Sally O’Reilly, Shakespeare’s Dark Lady) or that she herself was the author of Shakespeare’s plays (John Hudson, Shakespeare’s Dark Lady).
Elizabeth assumed the throne in 1558 at the age of twenty-five. Not long after, a few years perhaps, we find a teenage musician from Italy suddenly appearing at the English court. By 1562, Alfonso Ferrabosco’s status was such that at the age of nineteen he was hired full-time at the generous annual salary of £66 (raised to £100 five years later, or about USD $40,000 in modern currency). This must have been humiliating for the established court musicians, who were traditionally regarded as menial workers and paid on a part-time basis. The circumstances of the boy’s hiring aren’t known, whether a young musician of fresh blood had been sought after by Elizabeth, or Ferrabosco’s family had sent him there on rumors of handsome employment opportunities; in any case there was no apparent involvement by the Bassano or Lupo families.
Despite his great position of privilege as the Queen’s top musician, Ferrabosco bumbled his way throughout his career from one misstep and mishap to the next. A year later in 1563, he returned to Italy to deal with unknown family matters. Forbidden from leaving Italy (due to England’s apostate status with the Church), Ferrabosco snuck back to England. At this point he had grown friendly with the Queen’s favorite (and alleged lover) Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who made him master of his horse. Leicester himself had become the Queen’s Master of the Horse in 1558 and was frequently seen riding with her; I imagine the three of them rode together. Dudley and Ferrabosco would certainly have been useful to each other, Ferrabosco conveying Dudley’s messages to the Queen whenever out of favor with her, and Dudley speaking on Ferrabosco’s behalf when the Queen grew impatient over his frequent absences abroad.
In 1569 the Queen legally bound Ferrabosco to her in perpetual service as chief musician of the court. In the same year, Ferrabosco was in Italy again, where he remained for the next two years. He wrote letters to the Secretary of State William Cecil with various excuses for his delays: he was in danger of losing his family inheritance over his previous unlicensed trip to England (this indeed transpired upon his father’s death in 1574), he was robbed, etc. Back in England by 1572, he published his first compositions. Around that time he married a woman from Antwerp named Susanna and had a girl and a boy by her, the latter named after him, Alfonso. Perhaps because the children were born out of wedlock before their marriage took place, or the Church refused to recognize the marriage (Ferrabosco was Catholic), or Susanna wasn’t the actual mother of the two children, they were declared illegitimate.
Music was taken for granted in royal life; any man not skilled on the lute, or woman on the virginal, was uncultivated and boorish.
By 1575 his musical fame in England was earning him the praise of the two most prominent English composers at the time, Thomas Tallis and William Byrd. Meanwhile, some Venetian diplomats on a visit to the English court were struck by the fact they could only receive communications from the Queen through Ferrabosco, now serving as groom of her privy chamber. In 1577 word got out of secret visits by Ferrabosco to the French Ambassador to attend mass, scandalizing the court and embarrassing the Queen (Ferrabosco’s Catholicism had not been an issue as long as he maintained the pretense of no longer professing it). Two weeks later he was accused of killing a musician employed by the poet courtier Sir Philip Sidney, but had probably been framed by his enemies. Likely as a result of this his annual salary was cut by half, and he succumbed to pressure to leave England, this time for good. A year later, the Queen hired Englishman John Johnson to take Ferrabosco’s place as chief court lutenist.
Remarkably, in spite of these events, Ferrabosco’s relationship with the Queen remained in good standing. A letter from Robert Dudley reassured him that she believed in his innocence regarding the homicide. In fact she seemed to rely on him for important matters of state. While in France, he was entrusted by English officials acting on the Queen’s behalf to deliver thousands of pounds worth of currency and jewels (totaling as much as several million USD today) to certain highly placed Englishmen living in Italy; he proceeded to sell one of the jewels to pay off his debts. We next hear of Ferrabosco’s imprisonment in Italy on the Pope’s orders, accused of spying for England.
Suspicions had been rife among diplomatic circles in Italy and France that Ferrabosco was the Queen’s spy, and his proximity to her indeed made this possible. He may also have been her lover. No portraits survive to indicate whether he was handsome, but he was young enough when first established at court in his role as fashionable and exotic Italian musician to have had a strong symbolic, if not physical sex appeal. Historians have conjectured much on Elizabeth’s hypothetical love life, often doubtfully, given that her ladies in waiting surrounded her twenty-four hours a day to safeguard her status as the “virgin queen.” Others have argued she was after all the one who was in charge and could have met privately with anyone she chose. There is no reason to rule out the possibility she and Ferrabosco were intimately involved. It’s no more implausible than the widely held assumption she had slept with the Earl of Leicester or any of the other lover candidates with whom she had frequent association; rumors of her sexual involvement with favorites at the time were rife enough.
The Queen enlisted the Queen Mother of France, Catherine de’ Medici, to seek Ferrabosco’s release through the French Ambassador in Rome. He was set free in 1582 and thereafter employed by the Duke of Savoy. At this time Ferrabosco petitioned the Queen through her secretary Sir Francis Walsingham to have his two children sent to him (who had been in the care of a guardian). She refused, evidently holding them as ransom to force his return to England. He continued to receive his annuity, which he instructed to be distributed to his children; the payments stopped in 1583. By 1586 he was still petitioning for their release. And then, suddenly, in 1588 he died. Meanwhile, Ferrabosco the younger was now in his teens, and had been receiving musical training. In 1592 he was appointed musician in the Queen’s Viols. Yet he never managed to attract her personal attention, perhaps because she was resentful of his father’s betrayal. In 1594 court lutenist John Johnson died, and the top musical post opened up again. This is where Dowland enters the picture.
Elizabeth and Dowland
Dowland had displayed attributes of the artist from early on—restlessness, individualism and curiosity, a strong desire to wander, to travel. At the mere age of seventeen, he was in France serving under the English ambassador. Something kindled his interest in music, and a few years hence he returned home to pursue a musical career. By 1590 we first hear of his accomplishments on the lute, and in 1592 he managed to perform before the Queen. On the basis of this minor triumph, he might have convinced himself he was the foremost lutenist in England. Two years later, he applied for Johnson’s post and was rejected. In evident despair, he abandoned his country and traveled to Rome, with the intention of meeting, or studying under, the great madrigalist Luca Marenzio, whose fame had spread to England, but it seems they never met.
Dowland proceeded to Florence, where he mingled with English Catholic agitators conspiring to overthrow the Queen. Though he had converted to Catholicism on his previous stay in France, he quickly distanced himself from them. He took the occasion to gain the Queen’s favor with a letter to her Secretary of State, Robert Cecil, providing details of the plot (Sting reads excerpts from this letter between songs on his Dowland album). Nothing came of it, but a year later the courtier Henry Noel, a long-time friend, offered to plead on Dowland’s behalf before the Queen and urged him back to England. Dowland returned, but Noel unfortunately died before he could be of any help. Dowland’s reputation throughout Europe meanwhile had been growing. He was offered employment in Germany but accepted a position as court lutenist in Denmark. This lasted until 1606, when for unknown reasons he was fired, and despite the high salary he had received, left penniless and in debt. He returned once again to England where he spent his remaining years, finally being appointed court lutenist under King James in 1612, and dying in 1625.
Belated success notwithstanding, Dowland likely never got over his 1594 rejection for the post of court lutenist. It’s interesting to speculate as to why he was passed over. He himself told Robert Cecil it was due to his Catholicism (this is unlikely considering it never subsequently became an issue). More probably, to the extent that the Queen had been involved in the decision at all, she was weary of court lutenists since the Ferrabosco affair and indifferent. A simpler explanation is that Dowland was never more than a peripheral figure at court. To Elizabethan ears at the time, there was nothing about his music which particularly stood out, and he had no musical publications to his name (his First Book of Songs wasn’t published till 1597); he was a non-entity. Ferrabosco, on the other hand, despite his erratic tenure, had been held in the highest esteem; his early departure from England was perceived as a significant loss for English music. The lutenist succeeding him for the next fifteen years, John Johnson, was himself a fine musician and composer (as his recordings testify today). These musicians were surely deemed irreplaceable, and any new talent difficult to discern, least of all by the aging Elizabeth.
Dowland and contemporaries
The parallels between the Dowland and Ferrabosco stories are striking, and the contrasts telling. Both were Catholics who spent years away from their homeland, alienated loners who despite the popularity of their music and successes in the courts of Europe stumbled through their careers blindly and never seemed to fit in anywhere or call any place home. Though they received high salaries, they mismanaged both their finances and their friends and grew resentful, even paranoid, toward the very people who were trying to help. Ironically, their sense of inadequacy only seemed to increase with their popularity. And ironically too, whereas Dowland, the superior composer, longed for proximity to the Queen, Ferrabosco, the inferior composer, fled the Queen. (It’s tempting to add a third notorious Catholic composer to the story, John Bull, whose intrigues got him kicked out of England despite a former friendship with Elizabeth.)
In certain respects Dowland’s life parallels that of Shakespeare’s as well. They were born only a year apart. Both had rapid career success, culminating in performances at court by their late twenties, though neither succeeded in garnering the Queen’s sustained interest. Both fared better under James, whose reign saw more frequent artistic activity at court. Shakespeare wrote his last plays in 1612 or 1613 before retiring to Stratford, the same year Dowland was appointed court lutenist. Shakespeare died a decade before Dowland, no doubt contentedly, at the knowledge of his magnificent achievement in the theater along with his wise real estate investments, which had enabled him and his family to retire comfortably. And there the similarities end. Dowland too ceased composing and seems to have wiled away his remaining years of cushy sinecure in increasing obscurity—and melancholy, as popular attention shifted to a new generation of composers.
We can picture Dowland stewing in resentment at two younger upstarts. One was Robert Johnson, son of the court lutenist John Johnson whose vacant position Dowland failed to secure two decades earlier; the other was the viol player Alfonso Ferrabosco the younger (Dowland derided the growing fashion for the viol). Innovative collaborations in masque productions were now taking place in the Jacobean theater under director Inigo Jones, playwright Ben Jonson, and the younger Johnson and Ferrabosco, both highly talented at song writing. This was when secular music in England was migrating away from the court to the public and into the homes of amateur players. The Italian madrigal had been all the rage in England since the late 1580s, with a new school of composers like Thomas Morley, John Wilbye and Thomas Weelkes writing English madrigals designed for amateur singers. Dowland too had his hand at the English madrigal, scoring many of his songs optionally for four or five voices instead of instrumental accompaniment. But around the time of Elizabeth’s death, the madrigal craze came to a halt.
Cast as unlikely genius composer from England, Dowland’s reputation on the Continent was stronger than in his homeland (the last English composer to have achieved such renown was John Dunstable two centuries earlier). This reputation rested largely on a single song, “Flow my teares,” published in his Second Book of Songs in 1600; the same melody was scored for solo lute and elaborated in a consort set for viols, the Lachrimae or Sevean Teares of 1604. The melody’s seductive little descending theme, depicting the falling of tears, struck a powerful chord. It rapidly spread and was soon borrowed or plagiarized by composers throughout Europe, riding on the current fashion for the “melancholic” (the black bile of the four humors, or the depressive cast). It was an early example of the rapid international dissemination of a meme centuries before electronic media. The aestheticizing of despair also prefigured the Romantic hysteria that greeted Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther two centuries later, when a rash of young men copied Werther’s life down to his dress and suicide and shot themselves. The cult-hit status of Dowland’s song has survived into the present; it was the inspiration for Philip K. Dick’s 1974 science fiction novel, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, as well as featuring in Sting’s Songs from the Labyrinth.
Retrospect shows us the relative merits of past composers more objectively. While employed in Spain in the mid-1580s, Ferrabosco the elder had published two sets of madrigals to widespread acclaim. Some of these were included in Nicholas Yonge’s 1588 Musica Transalpina, which took the English musical world by storm. Most of the madrigals in the collection were by Ferrabosco and Marenzio. That these two figures were liberally represented side by side reveals much about the era’s misapprehension of artistic worth. Today’s verdict is that Ferrabosco was a composer of accomplished but uninspired music, and is remembered only for being an important conduit of Italian musical ideas into England, and for fathering a composer superior to himself, Ferrabosco the younger.
Over his thirty-five year career, Dowland composed some 200 songs and lute pieces, a modest body of work, not especially prolific. He was innovative but not radical or revolutionary. Many of his songs have memorable melodic hooks and a distinct individuality (e.g., the starkly sublime “In darknesse let mee dwell” from 1610). He had the artist’s obsessiveness and attention to detail required to lift his product above the swamp of mediocrity, and consequently his reputation beyond provincial borders to wider Europe. Nonetheless, though he attained amazing success with his “Flow my teares,” he never replicated it. Distinguished as many of his songs are, he is remembered as a one-hit composer. At most he could be described as having achieved for English secular music the gravitas and respectability enjoyed by sacred music, and thus he shares the stage with his contemporaries Byrd and Tallis. But Dowland was no Marenzio.
The madrigalian revolution
The secular art song, long dominated by the French chanson, had evolved since the thirteenth century in incremental, glacial step with the conservative pace of sacred music. Now in the latter decades of the sixteenth century it was time to explode it and see what could be done with the detritus. Beethoven did something analogous at the turn of the nineteenth century, destabilizing the facile symmetries of the Classical genres, breaking them open, enlarging them, rendering them more asymmetrical and organic, as if modeled on natural forms. At the turn of the twentieth century, Mahler, Richard Strauss and Schoenberg likewise took Wagner’s destabilization of tonality to its endpoint and beyond and unleashed soundscapes of ever more daring dissonance. Each musical revolution brings us closer to the sounds of nature—cacophony. The Renaissance Italians set about a similar task, cracking open the madrigal’s stately, measured artifice, pulling it apart, plasticizing its rhythms, making them entwine more tightly with the text, injecting the music with drama and suspense. But by destabilizing the madrigal, they turned it into something else. It blew apart, and out came the panoply of the early Baroque.
We might compare Marenzio, his contemporary Giaches de Wert and later Claudio Monteverdi to Da Vinci, Titian and Michelangelo in the visual arts respectively: they moved the state of art forward by the sheer weight of their achievements. Over his twenty-year career, Luca Marenzio wrote some 500 madrigals and sacred songs, one wrought gem of concentrated power after another, many a miniature masterpiece. Consider his madrigal “Nè fero sdegno mai, Donna, mi mosse” (from Book Four, 1587), where the six overlapping voices succeed in enacting with visceral pull the lover’s frantic rowing of his boat toward his disdainful beloved while buffeted by crashing waves: “Even though from all the foam coming from them…so many Venuses were born….” Or his “Questi vaghi concenti” (Book Seven, 1595), where the echo effects of the lover’s shouting “in these lonely and deserted hills” rebound with increasing majesty. The echo was a common cliché of madrigal word-painting (and later of Baroque instrumental music), but it takes a great composer to transfigure a cliché into musical necessity, and to do this again and again in hundreds of madrigals.
By destabilizing the madrigal, they turned it into something else. It blew apart, and out came the panoply of the Baroque.
The madrigalian revolution started in the 1560s under Wert and lasted until the opening decades of the 1600s, by which point it had morphed into something else: the aria, and the opera. England’s knowledge of the madrigal had been limited to Yonge’s 1588 narrow compilation (Ferrabosco and the early Marenzio), and it took time for the latest developments coming out of Italy to migrate to England. Meanwhile,
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u Sekerspor 5 4 Jaroslaw Marycz (Pol) CCC Polsat Polkowice 3 5 Clément Koretzky (Fra) Bretagne-Seche Environnement 1
Mountain 3 - Saksaganbeli, 76.5km 1 Mauro Finetto (Ita) Vini Fantini-Selle Italia 10 pts 2 Sergiy Grechyn (Ukr) Torku Sekerspor 7 3 Bjorn Thurau (Ger) Team Europcar 5 4 Jaroslaw Marycz (Pol) CCC Polsat Polkowice 3 5 Timothy Duggan (USA) Team Saxo-Tinkoff 1
Mountain 4 - Gögübeli, 153.5km 1 Natnael Berhane (Eri) Team Europcar 10 pts 2 Kevin Seeldraeyers (Bel) Astana Pro Team 7 3 Mustafa Sayar (Tur) Torku Sekerspor 5 4 Maxime Mederel (Fra) Sojasun 3 5 Yoann Bagot (Fra) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 1
Teams 1 Cofidis, Solutions Crédits 12:52:05 2 Torku Sekerspor 0:00:48 3 Sojasun 0:01:18 4 Colombia 0:02:24 5 Bretagne Séché Environnement 0:03:40 6 Team Saxo -Tinkoff 0:03:42 7 Caja Rural 0:06:59 8 Astana Pro Team 0:07:13 9 Team NetApp-Endura 0:08:42 10 Unitedhealthcare Pro Cycling Team 0:09:35 11 Omega Pharma-QuickStep 0:10:13 12 Team Argos-Shimano 0:11:28 13 Lotto Belisol Team 0:13:01 14 CCC Polsat Polkowice 0:16:15 15 Team Europcar 0:16:35 16 Accent Jobs - Wanty 0:16:40 17 Vini Fantini-Selle Italia 0:17:15 18 Bardiani Valvole-CSF Inox 0:21:23 19 Orica GreenEdge 0:22:25 20 Team Novo Nordisk 0:22:27 21 Katusha Team 0:22:44 22 MTN Qhubeka 0:24:56 23 Lampre-Merida 0:26:38 24 Blanco Pro Cycling Team 0:35:48 25 Crelan - Euphony 0:56:57
General classification after stage 3 1 Natnael Berhane (Eri) Team Europcar 10:48:27 2 Kevin Seeldraeyers (Bel) Astana Pro Team 0:00:10 3 Mustafa Sayar (Tur) Torku Sekerspor 0:00:12 4 Maxime Mederel (Fra) Sojasun 0:00:26 5 Rory Sutherland (Aus) Team Saxo-Tinkoff 0:00:34 6 Yoann Bagot (Fra) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 7 Cameron Meyer (Aus) Orica-GreenEdge 8 Florian Guillou (Fra) Bretagne-Seche Environnement 0:00:38 9 Darwin Atapuma Hurtado (Col) Colombia 0:00:40 10 Nicolas Edet (Fra) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 0:00:43 11 Danail Andonov Petrov (Bul) Caja Rural 0:00:47 12 José Joao Pimenta Costa Mendes (Por) Team NetApp-Endura 0:00:49 13 Angelo Pagani (Ita) Bardiani Valvole-CSF Inox 0:00:53 14 Fabricio Ferrari Barcelo (Uru) Caja Rural 0:01:06 15 Serge Pauwels (Bel) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 0:01:12 16 Andrey Kashechkin (Kaz) Astana Pro Team 0:01:13 17 Luca Mazzanti (Ita) Vini Fantini-Selle Italia 0:01:20 18 Brice Feillu (Fra) Sojasun 19 Warren Barguil (Fra) Team Argos-Shimano 0:01:25 20 Marc De Maar (AHo) UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling Team 0:01:36 21 Adam Hansen (Aus) Lotto Belisol 0:01:46 22 Andrey Mizourov (Kaz) Torku Sekerspor 0:01:49 23 Robinson Eduardo Chalapud Gomez (Col) Colombia 0:02:29 24 Bruno Pires (Por) Team Saxo-Tinkoff 0:02:34 25 Erick Rowsell (GBr) Team NetApp-Endura 26 Maxim Belkov (Rus) Katusha 0:02:41 27 Rudy Molard (Fra) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 0:03:00 28 David De La Fuente Rasilla (Spa) Torku Sekerspor 29 Jurgen Van Goolen (Bel) Accent Jobs-Wanty 0:03:10 30 Geoffroy Lequatre (Fra) Bretagne-Seche Environnement 0:03:19 31 Wilson Alexander Marentes Torres (Col) Colombia 0:03:32 32 Nazim Bakirci (Tur) Torku Sekerspor 0:03:49 33 Rémi Pauriol (Fra) Sojasun 34 Thomas Damuseau (Fra) Team Argos-Shimano 0:04:01 35 Sébastien Duret (Fra) Bretagne-Seche Environnement 0:04:10 36 Jay McCarthy (Aus) Team Saxo-Tinkoff 0:04:51 37 Davide Frattini (Ita) UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling Team 0:04:58 38 Adrian Kurek (Pol) CCC Polsat Polkowice 0:05:03 39 Michal Golas (Pol) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 40 Dennis Van Niekerk (RSA) MTN-Qhubeka 0:05:44 41 Javier Megias Leal (Spa) Team Novo Nordisk 0:06:13 42 Juan Esteban Arango Carvajal (Col) Colombia 0:06:41 43 Nikolay Mihaylov (Bul) CCC Polsat Polkowice 0:06:56 44 David Lozano Riba (Spa) Team Novo Nordisk 0:06:58 45 Daniel Summerhill (USA) UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling Team 0:07:18 46 Miguel Ubeto Aponte (Ven) Lampre-Merida 0:07:26 47 Mirac Kal (Tur) Torku Sekerspor 0:07:28 48 Bjorn Thurau (Ger) Team Europcar 49 James Vanlandschoot (Bel) Accent Jobs-Wanty 0:07:33 50 André Greipel (Ger) Lotto Belisol 0:07:36 51 Vicente Reynes Mimo (Spa) Lotto Belisol 0:07:46 52 Sergiy Grechyn (Ukr) Torku Sekerspor 0:08:15 53 Gert Dockx (Bel) Lotto Belisol 54 Frantisek Rabon (Cze) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 55 Nico Sijmens (Bel) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 0:08:19 56 Tomasz Kiendys (Pol) CCC Polsat Polkowice 0:08:33 57 Anthony Delaplace (Fra) Sojasun 0:09:23 58 Yannick Talabardon (Fra) Sojasun 59 Pier Paolo De Negri (Ita) Vini Fantini-Selle Italia 0:09:26 60 Scott Thwaites (GBr) Team NetApp-Endura 0:09:36 61 Jonathan Hivert (Fra) Sojasun 0:09:46 62 Ruslan Tleubayev (Kaz) Astana Pro Team 0:10:01 63 Sander Cordeel (Bel) Lotto Belisol 0:10:04 64 Olivier Kaisen (Bel) Lotto Belisol 65 Armindo Fonseca (Fra) Bretagne-Seche Environnement 0:10:14 66 Stefan Van Dijk (Ned) Accent Jobs-Wanty 67 Ignatas Konovalovas (Ltu) MTN-Qhubeka 68 Filippo Pozzato (Ita) Lampre-Merida 69 Andrea Pasqualon (Ita) Bardiani Valvole-CSF Inox 70 Andreas Schillinger (Ger) Team NetApp-Endura 0:10:19 71 Arman Kamyshev (Kaz) Astana Pro Team 0:10:41 72 Nikias Arndt (Ger) Team Argos-Shimano 0:10:46 73 Rafael Andriato (Bra) Vini Fantini-Selle Italia 74 Viacheslav Kuznetsov (Rus) Katusha 0:11:01 75 Mauro Finetto (Ita) Vini Fantini-Selle Italia 0:12:08 76 Marcel Kittel (Ger) Team Argos-Shimano 0:12:52 77 Clément Koretzky (Fra) Bretagne-Seche Environnement 0:12:56 78 Leigh Howard (Aus) Orica-GreenEdge 0:13:04 79 Fumiyuki Beppu (Jpn) Orica-GreenEdge 80 Gert Joeaar (Est) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 81 Renaud Dion (Fra) Bretagne-Seche Environnement 82 Gael Malacarne (Fra) Bretagne-Seche Environnement 83 Marko Kump (Slo) Team Saxo-Tinkoff 84 Gert Steegmans (Bel) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 85 Koen De Kort (Ned) Team Argos-Shimano 86 Aidis Kruopis (Ltu) Orica-GreenEdge 0:13:09 87 Bryan Coquard (Fra) Team Europcar 0:13:14 88 Andrea Palini (Ita) Lampre-Merida 0:13:15 89 Kristian Sbaragli (Ita) MTN-Qhubeka 90 Alexey Tsatevich (Rus) Katusha 0:13:19 91 Mikhail Ignatyev (Rus) Katusha 92 Manuel Antonio Leal Cardoso (Por) Caja Rural 93 Christopher Jones (USA) UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling Team 94 Michael Hepburn (Aus) Orica-GreenEdge 95 Jean-Marc Marino (Fra) Sojasun 96 Bert De Backer (Bel) Team Argos-Shimano 97 Gerald Ciolek (Ger) MTN-Qhubeka 0:13:23 98 Benoit Jarrier (Fra) Bretagne-Seche Environnement 99 Jaroslaw Marycz (Pol) CCC Polsat Polkowice 100 Juan Pablo Valencia (Col) Colombia 101 Ahmet Orken (Tur) Torku Sekerspor 102 Martin Wesemann (RSA) MTN-Qhubeka 103 Evan Huffman (USA) Astana Pro Team 104 Alessandro Bazzana (Ita) UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling Team 105 Andreas Stauff (Ger) MTN-Qhubeka 106 Christopher Juul Jensen (Den) Team Saxo-Tinkoff 107 Junya Sano (Jpn) Vini Fantini-Selle Italia 108 Nikolas Maes (Bel) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 0:13:31 109 Kevin De Mesmaeker (Bel) Team Novo Nordisk 0:13:33 110 Andrew Fenn (GBr) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 111 Fabio Calabria (Aus) Team Novo Nordisk 112 Sébastien Chavanel (Fra) Team Europcar 113 Daniel Schorn (Aut) Team NetApp-Endura 114 Jacopo Guarnieri (Ita) Astana Pro Team 115 Tony Hurel (Fra) Team Europcar 116 Guillaume Levarlet (Fra) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 117 Albert Timmer (Ned) Team Argos-Shimano 0:13:40 118 Jérémy Bescond (Fra) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 0:13:48 119 Luca Wackermann (Ita) Lampre-Merida 0:13:49 120 Takashi Miyazawa (Jpn) Team Saxo-Tinkoff 0:13:54 121 Stéphane Poulhies (Fra) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 0:13:56 122 Giovanni Bernaudeau (Fra) Team Europcar 123 Damien Gaudin (Fra) Team Europcar 124 Grzegorz Stepniak (Pol) CCC Polsat Polkowice 0:14:09 125 Jacobe Keough (USA) UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling Team 0:14:11 126 Frederique Robert (Bel) Lotto Belisol 0:14:12 127 Francesco Chicchi (Ita) Vini Fantini-Selle Italia 0:14:18 128 Tomas Vaitkus (Ltu) Orica-GreenEdge 129 Jacobus Venter (RSA) MTN-Qhubeka 130 Jonathan Cantwell (Aus) Team Saxo-Tinkoff 0:14:21 131 Kevin Peeters (Bel) Crelan-Euphony 0:14:30 132 Davide Vigano (Ita) Lampre-Merida 0:14:33 133 Yuriy Metlushenko (Ukr) Torku Sekerspor 0:14:34 134 Ji Cheng (Chn) Team Argos-Shimano 0:14:35 135 Jos Van Emden (Ned) Blanco Pro Cycling Team 0:14:37 136 Alexander Porsev (Rus) Katusha 0:14:50 137 Luca Paolini (Ita) Katusha 138 Roberto De Patre (Ita) Vini Fantini-Selle Italia 0:14:53 139 Iljo Keisse (Bel) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 0:15:16 140 Roger Kluge (Ger) Team NetApp-Endura 0:15:37 141 Francisco Javier Moreno Allue (Spa) Caja Rural 0:15:52 142 Joonas Henttala (Fin) Team Novo Nordisk 0:16:09 143 Andrea Di Corrado (Ita) Bardiani Valvole-CSF Inox 0:16:10 144 Gregory Habeaux (Bel) Accent Jobs-Wanty 0:16:46 145 Moreno Hofland (Ned) Blanco Pro Cycling Team 0:16:53 146 Bradley Potgieter (RSA) MTN-Qhubeka 0:17:56 147 Javier Francisco Aramendia Lorente (Spa) Caja Rural 0:18:00 148 Andrea Guardini (Ita) Astana Pro Team 0:18:13 149 Robert Wagner (Ger) Blanco Pro Cycling Team 0:18:51 150 Massimo Graziato (Ita) Lampre-Merida 0:18:58 151 Matteo Trentin (Ita) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 0:19:40 152 Maximiliano Ariel Richeze (Arg) Lampre-Merida 0:20:18 153 Francesco Lasca (Ita) Caja Rural 154 Blaz Jarc (Slo) Team NetApp-Endura 0:20:20 155 Marco Coledan (Ita) Bardiani Valvole-CSF Inox 0:20:23 156 Marco Haller (Aut) Katusha 0:20:24 157 Filippo Fortin (Ita) Bardiani Valvole-CSF Inox 0:20:27 158 Edwin Alcibiades Avila Vanegas (Col) Colombia 159 Markus Eichler (Ger) Team NetApp-Endura 160 Sonny Colbrelli (Ita) Bardiani Valvole-CSF Inox 161 Julio Alexis Camacho Bernal (Col) Colombia 0:20:29 162 Graeme Brown (Aus) Blanco Pro Cycling Team 0:20:31 163 Sacha Modolo (Ita) Bardiani Valvole-CSF Inox 0:20:34 164 Elia Favilli (Ita) Lampre-Merida 0:20:35 165 Aldo Ino Ilesic (Slo) UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling Team 166 Piotr Gawronski (Pol) CCC Polsat Polkowice 0:20:39 167 Pawel Charucki (Pol) CCC Polsat Polkowice 0:20:50 168 Christian Delle Stelle (Ita) Bardiani Valvole-CSF Inox 0:20:51 169 Rick Flens (Ned) Blanco Pro Cycling Team 0:21:03 170 Timofey Kritskiy (Rus) Katusha 0:21:06 171 Baptiste Planckaert (Bel) Crelan-Euphony 0:21:40 172 John Murphy (USA) UnitedHealthcare Pro Cycling Team 0:22:13 173 Duber Armando Quintero Artunduaga (Col) Colombia 0:23:42 174 Timothy Duggan (USA) Team Saxo-Tinkoff 0:24:21 175 Jetse Bol (Ned) Blanco Pro Cycling Team 0:24:43 176 Frédéric Amorison (Bel) Crelan-Euphony 0:25:04 177 Roy Jans (Bel) Accent Jobs-Wanty 0:26:23 178 Benjamin Verraes (Bel) Accent Jobs-Wanty 0:26:25 179 Joeri Stallaert (Bel) Crelan-Euphony 0:26:28 180 Koen Barbe (Bel) Crelan-Euphony 0:26:35 181 Jonathan Breyne (Bel) Crelan-Euphony 0:26:41 182 Andrea Peron (Ita) Team Novo Nordisk 0:27:18 183 Kevin Claeys (Bel) Crelan-Euphony 0:28:17 184 Martijn Verschoor (Ned) Team Novo Nordisk 0:29:01 185 Allan Davis (Aus) Orica-GreenEdge 0:31:35 186 Thomas Raeymaekers (Bel) Team Novo Nordisk 0:32:07
Points classification 1 André Greipel (Ger) Lotto Belisol 27 pts 2 Sergiy Grechyn (Ukr) Torku Sekerspor 17 3 Natnael Berhane (Eri) Team Europcar 15 4 Marcel Kittel (Ger) Team Argos-Shimano 15 5 Aidis Kruopis (Ltu) Orica-GreenEdge 15 6 Kevin Seeldraeyers (Bel) Astana Pro Team 14 7 Marco Coledan (Ita) Bardiani Valvole-CSF Inox 14 8 Mustafa Sayar (Tur) Torku Sekerspor 13 9 Yuriy Metlushenko (Ukr) Torku Sekerspor 13 10 Maxime Mederel (Fra) Sojasun 12 11 Roger Kluge (Ger) Team NetApp-Endura 12 12 Yoann Bagot (Fra) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 11 13 Andrew Fenn (GBr) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 11 14 Alexander Porsev (Rus) Katusha 11 15 Maximiliano Ariel Richeze (Arg) Lampre-Merida 11 16 Rory Sutherland (Aus) Team Saxo-Tinkoff 10 17 Leigh Howard (Aus) Orica-GreenEdge 10 18 Francesco Lasca (Ita) Caja Rural 10 19 Cameron Meyer (Aus) Orica-GreenEdge 9 20 Vicente Reynes Mimo (Spa) Lotto Belisol 9 21 Florian Guillou (Fra) Bretagne-Seche Environnement 8 22 Grzegorz Stepniak (Pol) CCC Polsat Polkowice 8 23 Darwin Atapuma Hurtado (Col) Colombia 7 24 Edwin Alcibiades Avila Vanegas (Col) Colombia 7 25 Nicolas Edet (Fra) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 6 26 Filippo Fortin (Ita) Bardiani Valvole-CSF Inox 6 27 Juan Esteban Arango Carvajal (Col) Colombia 5 28 Clément Koretzky (Fra) Bretagne-Seche Environnement 5 29 Danail Andonov Petrov (Bul) Caja Rural 5 30 Andrea Palini (Ita) Lampre-Merida 5 31 Gerald Ciolek (Ger) MTN-Qhubeka 5 32 José Joao Pimenta Costa Mendes (Por) Team NetApp-Endura 4 33 Alexey Tsatevich (Rus) Katusha 4 34 Graeme Brown (Aus) Blanco Pro Cycling Team 4 35 Angelo Pagani (Ita) Bardiani Valvole-CSF Inox 3 36 Nikolay Mihaylov (Bul) CCC Polsat Polkowice 3 37 Bjorn Thurau (Ger) Team Europcar 3 38 Mauro Finetto (Ita) Vini Fantini-Selle Italia 3 39 Junya Sano (Jpn) Vini Fantini-Selle Italia 3 40 Jonathan Breyne (Bel) Crelan-Euphony 3 41 Fabricio Ferrari Barcelo (Uru) Caja Rural 2 42 Andrea Guardini (Ita) Astana Pro Team 2 43 Serge Pauwels (Bel) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 1 44 Javier Francisco Aramendia Lorente (Spa) Caja Rural 1 45 Sacha Modolo (Ita) Bardiani Valvole-CSF Inox 1 46 Piotr Gawronski (Pol) CCC Polsat Polkowice 1 47 Baptiste Planckaert (Bel) Crelan-Euphony 1 48 Roy Jans (Bel) Accent Jobs-Wanty -4 49 Sébastien Duret (Fra) Bretagne-Seche Environnement -5 50 Frederique Robert (Bel) Lotto Belisol -5 51 Pawel Charucki (Pol) CCC Polsat Polkowice -5 52 Joeri Stallaert (Bel) Crelan-Euphony -5 53 Koen Barbe (Bel) Crelan-Euphony -5 54 Martijn Verschoor (Ned) Team Novo Nordisk -5 55 Allan Davis (Aus) Orica-GreenEdge -5 56 Thomas Raeymaekers (Bel) Team Novo Nordisk -10
Turkish Beauties sprint classification 1 Ahmet Orken (Tur) Torku Sekerspor 6 pts 2 Mikhail Ignatyev (Rus) Katusha 5 3 Francisco Javier Moreno Allue (Spa) Caja Rural 5 4 Frederique Robert (Bel) Lotto Belisol 3 5 Duber Armando Quintero Artunduaga (Col) Colombia 3 6 Clément Koretzky (Fra) Bretagne-Seche Environnement 1 7 Francesco Lasca (Ita) Caja Rural 1
Mountains classification 1 Mauro Finetto (Ita) Vini Fantini-Selle Italia 17 pts 2 Bjorn Thurau (Ger) Team Europcar 15 3 Sergiy Grechyn (Ukr) Torku Sekerspor 15 4 Natnael Berhane (Eri) Team Europcar 10 5 Mustafa Sayar (Tur) Torku Sekerspor 10 6 Nazim Bakirci (Tur) Torku Sekerspor 8 7 Jaroslaw Marycz (Pol) CCC Polsat Polkowice 8 8 Kevin Seeldraeyers (Bel) Astana Pro Team 7 9 Maxime Mederel (Fra) Sojasun 3 10 Robinson Eduardo Chalapud Gomez (Col) Colombia 3 11 Yoann Bagot (Fra) Cofidis, Solutions Credits 1 12 Clément Koretzky (Fra) Bretagne-Seche Environnement 1 13 Francisco Javier Moreno Allue (Spa) Caja Rural 1 14 Timothy Duggan (USA) Team Saxo-Tinkoff 1Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Blacklist is an action / stealth game developed by Ubisoft Toronto, Ubisoft Montreal and Ubisoft Shanghai, published for PlayStation 3, Wii U, Xbox 360 and PC in 2013. As we can read on Wikipedia, in November 2010 Jade Raymond from Ubisoft Toronto announced that the studio was developing a new Splinter Cell game.
During the Microsoft’s press conference at E3 2012, Splinter Cell: Blacklist was officially revealed with a beta video that you can see below. One major difference is the plot and interactive torture sequence in the beta. After a major uproar from critics, it was announced by the creative director of the game, Maxime Béland that the now dubbed “interrogation” sequences are rendered cutscenes and the only choice made by the player is to either let the target live or die.
Ubisoft responded with an official statement regarding the removal of the controversial scene:
“As with other game features, the storyline evolves as part of the standard development process. Based on how the game has progressed, we felt that this scene no longer fit in the context of the game, so we decided to remove it. Splinter Cell Blacklist, like previous Splinter Cell titles, has always tried to keep the topics and themes relevant and current. Splinter Cell Blacklist explores moral choices and dark themes through the concept of the Fifth Freedom; a recurring theme in the franchise.” “Definitely we are not going to see when the game’s coming out that there are torture scenes in it. That scene is not there any more,” said producer Andrew Wilson “The first thing I’d say about that is that possibly there was missing context – and in an unabridged snapshot, it seemed like pretty tough material.”
The second major change is the plot: in the beta the group known as The Engineers are a quasi-league of nations rather than a borderless terrorist group that has the national backing of twelve unnamed nations found in the final game.
The level itself was unchanged during development other than who inhabits the camp and level introduction. The camp in the beta was labeled as “ Jadid Basecamp”. In the final game, only the location is given: Mirawa, Iraq. The introduction of the level in the beta has Sam Fisher wearing an enemy uniform and carrying a body into the camp. In the final product, Sam Fisher is air-dropped into the level after enemies near the LZ (landing zone) are eliminated by sniper support.
Some minor changes between the beta and final game are:
The level’s name colors are changed: green in the beta, white for the released game.
Changes in the HUD (heads up display) such as weapon icons.
The choice to either kill or spare Jadid Haidos isn’t in the beta.
Jadid Haidos’ model is changed between the beta/ released game.
Icons for the mark and execute are changed.
Sounds for in the process of being detected and finally being detected are changed. Also, the words “Warning” and “Detected” do not appear in the final game.
The icons for the three play styles: ghost, panther, and assault are not in the beta.
There is no ability to call in an air strike from the Paladin as shown in the beta is not available in the final game.
There is no ability to use explosive breaches as in the beta.
Drone strike are not as readily available as in the beta.
The mission’s endings are changed between the beta and the final game.
Jeff Wheaton noticed a number of notable differences (in chronological order of the video):
The level shown is not in the final game. No exact designs are taken from it, though many of its assets do appear.
Sam is never wearing the enemy uniform in the final game, nor are there any player-driven animations of him carrying an unconscious or dead character.
At no point in the final game do button prompts appear in any language other than the selected localization
The animations for most of the stuff in the cutscenes are absent from the final game.
The icons for marks in the final game are slightly different.
A lot of cutscene dialogue never appears in the final game.
A lot of HUD differences
Several plot differences. In the final game, the Blacklist is masterminded by a borderless group of individuals calling themselves The Engineers, not a group of nations.
Different sound for being detected. The final game also does not feature a “Warning” message.
The Ghost, Panther, and Assault point indicators are absent from the entire demo.
There is no instance of being able to trigger a UAV strike in the manner shown in the demo in the final game.
Jadid’s dialogue is different than it was in the final game, and no Spare or Kill option is given.
Very interesting nonetheless! Thanks a lot to Jeff and Matt Redmond for the contribution
Beta Video:
What do you think about this unseen game? Give your vote!
(2 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)
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(your first comment will be moderated before to be published)“It looks increasingly likely Noor’s defence will be that he panicked and believed his squad car was attack after a loud noise — described by some sources as a banging on the car — and seeing a figure rushing in the dark towards them.”
Weak defense. Officers ought to be able to stand seeing someone rush toward them in the dark without immediately opening fire.
“He is extremely nervous … he is a little jumpy … he doesn’t really respect women, the least thing you say to him can set him off. When they say a policeman shot an Australian lady I thought uh, oh but then when they said who it was I was like, ‘OK.’…He has little respect for women he has little respect for blacks and kids.”
Here is yet more evidence that Noor was not fit to be a police officer only on the force to head off “Islamophobia” charges. With three complaints against him in two years, Mohamed Noor seems at very least to be dangerously reckless and/or incompetent. It is likely that Minneapolis officials were so anxious to have a Somali Muslim police officer they could showcase that they put Mohamed Noor on the force and kept him there when his obvious shortcomings would have had a non-Muslim officer fired or not hired in the first place.
“Neighbour of Justine Damond’s killer gives shocking new insight into his behaviour,” by Sarah Blake, Daily Telegraph, July 20, 2017:The Healthcare.gov website is displayed on laptop computers arranged for a photograph in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, Oct. 24, 2013. The failure of Obamacare's website to process millions of applications drew fire from contractors who said more time was needed for final testing and from lawmakers who traded criticism over political motivations. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images
By KELLI KENNEDY, The Associated Press
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Federal health officials, after encouraging alternate sign-up methods amid the fumbled rollout of their online insurance website, began quietly urging counselors around the country this week to stop using paper applications to enroll people in health insurance because of concerns those applications would not be processed in time.
Interviews with enrollment counselors, insurance brokers and a government official who works with navigators in Illinois reveal the latest change in direction by the Obama administration, which had been encouraging paper applications and other means because of all the problems with the federal website. Consumers must sign up for insurance under the federal health overhaul by Dec. 23 in order for coverage to start in January.
"We received guidance from the feds recommending that folks apply online as opposed to paper," said Mike Claffey, spokesman for the Illinois Department of Insurance.
After a conference call earlier this week with federal health officials, Illinois health officials sent a memo Thursday to their roughly 1,600 navigators saying there is no way to complete marketplace enrollment through a paper application. The memo, which Claffey said was based on guidance from federal officials, said paper applications should be used only if other means aren't available.
Federal health officials also discussed the issue during a conference call Wednesday with navigators and certified counselors in several states.
"They've said do not use paper applications because they won't be able to process them anywhere near in time," said John Foley, attorney and certified counselor for Legal Aid Society of Palm Beach County, who was on the call.
That contradicts what federal health officials told reporters during a national media call this week, during which they said there were no problems with paper applications.
"There is still time to do paper applications," Julie Bataille, communications director for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told reporters on the call Wednesday.
A CMS spokesman declined to comment directly on the issue Friday when asked whether they discouraged navigators from using paper applications.
"With the recent fixes to the website, we are encouraging consumers to use healthcare.gov since it's the quickest way to get coverage, but paper applications remain an option for consumers and navigators if they choose," said spokesman Aaron Albright.
In early November, President Barack Obama himself encouraged paper applications as one of several alternatives to the federal website.
"I just want to remind everybody that they can still apply for coverage by phone, by mail, in person," Obama said on Nov. 4 in remarks to Affordable Care Act supporters at a Washington hotel.
The paper application problem comes as insurance agents and brokers are dealing with a massive backlog of applications that they can't process because of problems with the federal website, including incomplete enrollment files sent electronically to insurance companies.
Paper applications seemed like a safe bet in early October as agents and navigators struggled with online applications. Once federal health officials receive a paper application, they check with other federal agencies to determine whether an applicant is eligible for a subsidy to help pay for a portion of their health coverage. But the process, which includes verifying incomes and immigration status, is taking longer than expected.
"This timing concern is enormous," said Jessica Waltman, senior vice president of government affairs for the National Association of Health Underwriters.
Her organization, which represents insurance brokers and agents, is in daily contact with CMS on enrollment issues. In several recent conversations, Waltman said CMS has expressed concerns about paper applications but stops short of saying they can't be used.
"We've gotten concerns from them saying, 'I don't know about the paper applications. That's a really slow go or I don't know if that's the best idea,'" she said.
Kelly Fristoe, an insurance agent in Wichita Falls, Texas, has submitted 25 paper applications since early October and hasn't received a response from federal health officials yet.
"At this time, we are not using any paper applications," he said.
That also contradicts what CMS told reporters this week.
Bataille, the spokeswoman for the federal agency, said all paper applications received during October have been processed.
__These days, it’s possible to buy clones of popular 3D printers from China for satisfyingly low prices. As always, you get what you pay for, and while usable, often they require some modification to reach their full potential. [g3ggo] recently laid down €270 for a clone of the Prusa i3 by Geeetech, knowing it would require some modifications for safety and performance.
First on the bill was a wobbly Z-axis, which was dealt with by printing some new parts designed to fix this issue which have already been developed by the community. Forums are your friend here – often an enterprising user will have already developed fixes for the most common issues, and if they haven’t, you can always step up to be the hero yourself. There was a darker problem lurking inside, though.
[g3ggo] began to wonder why the MOSFETs for the hot end were running so hot. It turned out to be an issue of gate drive – the FETs were only being driven with 5V, which for the given part, wasn’t enough to reach its lowest R_DS(on) and thus was causing the overheating issue. It gets worse, though – the heatsinks on the MOSFETs were bolted on directly without insulation, and sitting fractions of a millimeter above traces on the PCB. Unfortunately, with a small scratch to the soldermask, this caused a short circuit, destroying the hot end and MOSFETs and narrowly avoiding a fire. This is why you never leave 3D printers unattended.
The fix? Replacing the MOSFETs with a part that could deal with a 5V gate drive was the first step, followed by using insulating pads & glue to stop the heatsinks contacting the PCB. Now with the cooler running MOSFETs, there’s less chance of fire, and the mainboard’s cooling fan isn’t even required anymore. Overall, for a small investment in time and parts, [g3ggo] now has a useful 3D printer and learned something along the way. Solid effort!“This is the disappearance of a feature from the last glacial age, which would have probably survived without anthrop
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commenced to employing a single unskilled worker in America to produce the doohickeys.)
Should we lament this development? Would Americans really become poorer by importing low-cost doohickeys from Portugal? (Or: Would Americans really be kept rich, and the American economy keep growing, if Uncle Sam slaps a prohibitive tariff on doohickeys and, thus, protects high-paid doohickey production jobs in America?)
Clearly not.
It’s true that 5,000 MIT-trained engineers would lose their high-paid jobs in the U.S. doohickey industry. But is their labor so robotic, so narrow, so inflexible, so specific to doohickey production, that they have no other ways to earn good incomes? No other way to produce other outputs? Clearly not – for if it were, this labor’s opportunity cost would be near-zero. And if this labor’s opportunity cost were near zero, it would be extremely unlikely that these workers would ever have been able to command high pay for producing doohickeys.
…..
In sum, paying people high wages to help the domestic economy cope with artificially created scarcities is not a recipe for economic growth.
CommentsIn May 2014, Piotr Delgado “The Mexican Runner” Kusielczuk decided he would speedrun through the entire NES archive of games — 714 in total. Today, ending with Super Mario Bros. 3, Kusielczuk finally accomplished his goal, bringing an end to “NESMania.”
Kusielczuk spent more than 3,000 hours making his way through the library of titles — an endeavor that started after a friend jokingly suggested he take an “A-Z” approach to speedrunning each of the 714 games. Instead of only playing the games for a couple of minutes at a time, Kusielczuk’s friend from Chile challenged him to play through each of the titles from beginning to end.
On his blog, Kusielczuk said from the very beginning of the challenge, when he dove into Whomp ‘Em on May 28, 2014 to the drama that came around game #395 and the realization someone else was attempting a similar goal to finally finishing the challenge today, he’s very proud of what he was able to accomplish.
“Almost three years had passed and what had started as an impossible quest had become an achievable reality,” Kusielczuk wrote. “The list of unbeaten games had shrunk to only a few titles and the excitement for the last games had been growing. The closer I got to the end, the more nostalgia and responsibility I felt. I wanted to make sure this epic quest had a proper ending that could honor how big and how important it had been in my life.”
As part of his challenge, Kusielczuk played through every single NES game that was released in North America and 35 PAL-exclusive games. Kusielczuk has already made a name for himself with Battletoads and Contra, in which he holds records, but with the new feat under his belt, he’s the first person to accomplish speed-running all 714 games.
In total, Kusielczuk put in more than 200,000 minutes and upward of 900 days into finishing the project. You can see him finally cross the line in the stream below.Norwegian Church Council leader Kristin Gunleiksrud Raaum (in red) and Chairman of the Oslo diocesan council Gard Sandaker-Nielsen (R) vote on a proposal to allow same-sex marriage within the Norwegian Church, in Oslo, Norway April 11, 2016. REUTERS/Ole Martin Wold/NTB Scanpix
OSLO (Reuters) - Norway’s Lutheran Church voted on Monday in favor of allowing same-sex marriage, becoming the latest of a small but growing number of churches worldwide to do so.
Last year the French Protestant Church allowed gay marriage blessings, while the U.S. Presbyterian Church approved a change in the wording of its constitution to include same-sex marriage.
In a vote at the annual conference of the Norwegian Lutheran Church on Monday 88 delegates out of 115 in total backed same-sex marriage.
“Finally we can celebrate love independently of whom one falls in love with,” said Gard Sandaker-Nilsen, leader of the Open Public Church, a religious movement within the church that had campaigned to change the rules.
Under the new rules, priests who do not want to marry a same-sex couple will still have the right to object.
The vote by Norway’s Lutheran Church reflects increasingly liberal attitudes in wider Norwegian society to issues such as homosexuality.
Norway became the second country in the world after Denmark to allow same-sex registered partnerships in 1993. The Nordic country of 5.2 million people has allowed civil same-sex marriage since 2009.
Some 74 percent of Norwegians were members of the Lutheran Church last year, according to the national statistics agency, but that number has been declining.Notre Dame's Manti Te'o, the stories said, played this season under a terrible burden. A Mormon linebacker who led his Catholic school's football program back to glory, Te'o was whipsawed between personal tragedies along the way. In the span of six hours in September, as Sports Illustrated told it, Te'o learned first of the death of his grandmother, Annette Santiago, and then of the death of his girlfriend, Lennay Kekua.
Kekua, 22 years old, had been in a serious car accident in California, and then had been diagnosed with leukemia. SI's Pete Thamel described how Te'o would phone her in her hospital room and stay on the line with her as he slept through the night. "Her relatives told him that at her lowest points, as she fought to emerge from a coma, her breathing rate would increase at the sound of his voice," Thamel wrote.
Upon receiving the news of the two deaths, Te'o went out and led the Fighting Irish to a 20-3 upset of Michigan State, racking up 12 tackles. It was heartbreaking and inspirational. Te'o would appear on ESPN's College GameDay to talk about the letters Kekua had written him during her illness. He would send a heartfelt letter to the parents of a sick child, discussing his experience with disease and grief. The South Bend Tribune wrote an article describing the young couple's fairytale meeting—she, a Stanford student; he, a Notre Dame star—after a football game outside Palo Alto.
Did you enjoy the uplifiting story, the tale of a man who responded to adversity by becoming one of the top players of the game? If so, stop reading.
Manti Te'o did lose his grandmother this past fall. Annette Santiago died on Sept. 11, 2012, at the age of 72, according to Social Security Administration records in Nexis. But there is no SSA record there of the death of Lennay Marie Kekua, that day or any other. Her passing, recounted so many times in the national media, produces no obituary or funeral announcement in Nexis, and no mention in the Stanford student newspaper.
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Nor is there any report of a severe auto accident involving a Lennay Kekua. Background checks turn up nothing. The Stanford registrar's office has no record that a Lennay Kekua ever enrolled. There is no record of her birth in the news. Outside of a few Twitter and Instagram accounts, there's no online evidence that Lennay Kekua ever existed.
The photographs identified as Kekua—in online tributes and on TV news reports—are pictures from the social-media accounts of a 22-year-old California woman who is not named Lennay Kekua. She is not a Stanford graduate; she has not been in a severe car accident; and she does not have leukemia. And she has never met Manti Te'o.
* * *
Here is what we know about Manti Te'o: He is an exceptional football player. He's a projected first-round NFL pick. He finished second in the Heisman voting, and he won a haul of other trophies: the Walter Camp, the Chuck Bednarik, the Butkus, the Bronko Nagurski. In each of his three seasons as a full-time starter, he racked up at least 100 tackles.
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We also know that Te'o is a devout Mormon. When asked why he picked Notre Dame over Southern California, the school he had supported while growing up in Hawaii, he said he prayed on it. "Faith," he told ESPN, "is believing in something that you most likely can't see, but you believe to be true. You feel in your heart, and in your soul, that it's true, but you still take that leap."
We know, further, that Te'o adores his family. Te'o's father said that Manti had revered his grandfather, who died in January 2012, since the day he was born. He ran his sister's post-graduation luau. And he loved his late maternal grandmother, Annette Santiago. (Here's her obituary.)
But that's where the definite ends. From here, the rest of Te'o's public story begins to grade into fantasy, in the tradition of so much of Notre Dame's mythmaking and with the help of a compliant press.
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Assembling a timeline of the Kekua-Te'o relationship is difficult. As Te'o's celebrity swelled, so did the pile of inspirational stories about his triumph over loss. Each ensuing story seemed to add yet another wrinkle to the narrative, and details ran athwart one another. Here is the general shape of things, based on occasionally contradictory media accounts:
Nov. 28, 2009: Te'o and Kekua meet after Stanford's 45-38 victory over Notre Dame in Palo Alto, according to the South Bend Tribune: "Their stares got pleasantly tangled, then Manti Te'o extended his hand to the stranger with a warm smile and soulful eyes." Kekua, a Stanford student, swaps phone numbers with Te'o.
2010-2011: Te'o and Kekua are friends. "She was gifted in music, multi-lingual, had dreams grounded in reality and the talent to catch up to them" (South Bend Tribune). "They started out as just friends," Te'o's father, Brian, told the Tribune in October 2012. "Every once in a while, she would travel to Hawaii, and that happened to be the time Manti was home, so he would meet with her there."
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Early 2012: Te'o and Kekua become a couple. They talk on the phone nightly, according to ESPN.
Some time in 2012: Kekua has a car accident somewhere in California that leaves her "on the brink of death" (Sports Illustrated). But when? Eight months before she died of cancer, in September, reports ESPN. "About the time Kekua and Manti became a couple," reports the South Bend Tribune. April 28, reports SI.
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June 2012: As Kekua recovers from her injuries, doctors discover she has leukemia. She has a bone-marrow transplant. ("That was just in June," Brian Te'o told the South Bend Tribune in October of 2012. "I remember Manti telling me later she was going to have a bone marrow transplant and, sure enough, that's exactly what happened. From all I knew, she was doing really, really well.")
Summer 2012: Her condition improves. Kekua "eventually" graduates from Stanford, according to the South Bend Tribune. (A New York Times story, published Oct. 13, identifies her as a "Stanford alumnus.") She soon takes a turn for the worse. At some point, she enters treatment, apparently at St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton, Calif. (In a letter obtained by Fox Sports published Oct. 25, Te'o writes to the parents of a girl dying of cancer: "My girlfriend, when she was at St. Jude's in LA, she had a little friend.")
Te'o talks to Lennay nightly, "going to sleep while on the phone with her," according to Sports Illustrated. "When he woke up in the morning his phone would show an eight-hour call, and he would hear Lennay breathing on the other end of the line."
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Sept. 10, 2012: Kekua is released from the hospital; Manti's father, Brian, congratulates her "via telephone" (South Bend Tribune).
Sept. 11-12, 2012: Te'o's grandmother dies in Hawaii. Later, Kekua dies in California. Or is it the other way around? "Te'o's girlfriend, Lennay Kekua, died Sept. 11 of complications from leukemia. His grandma, Annette Santiago, died after a long illness less than 24 hours later," according to the Sept. 22 South Bend Tribune. No, Annette dies first, according to the Oct. 12 South Bend Tribune. In fact, Lennay lives long enough to express condolences over the death of Annette:
Less than 48 hours later [after Lennay's release from the hospital], at 4 a.m. Hawaii time, Kekua sent a text to Brian and Ottilia, expressing her condolences over the passing of Ottilia's mom, Annette Santiago, just hours before. Brian awakened three hours later, saw the text, and sent one back. There was no response. A couple of hours later, Manti called his parents, his heart in pieces. Lennay Kekua had died.
Or does Kekua die three days later (New York Post)? Four days (ESPN, CBS)?
In any case, according to Te'o's interview with Gene Wojciechowski in a segment aired during the Oct. 6 episode of College GameDay, Lennay's last words to Te'o were "I love you."
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Sept. 12, 2012 (morning): Te'o is informed of his grandmother's passing (Sports Illustrated).
Sept. 12, 2012 (afternoon): Te'o is informed of Kekua's passing by her older brother, Koa (Sports Illustrated).
Sept. 15, 2012: Te'o records 12 tackles in leading the Irish to an upset win over Michigan State.
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Sept. 22, 2012: Kekua's funeral takes place in Carson, Calif. (The Associated Press puts it in "Carson City, Calif.," which does not exist.) Te'o skips the funeral, saying Kekua had insisted that he not miss a game (Los Angeles Times). Her casket is closed at 9 a.m. Pacific time, according to Te'o. That night, Notre Dame beats Michigan, 13-6, to go to 4-0, the school's best start in a decade. Te'o intercepts two passes. After the game, he says of Lennay: "All she wanted was some white roses. So I sent her roses and sent her two picks along with that." Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly awards the game ball to Lennay Kekua, handing it to Te'o to "take back to Hawaii."
* * *
It was around this time that Te'o's Heisman campaign began in earnest, aided in part by the South Bend Tribune. He appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated's Oct. 1 issue, above the headline, "The Full Manti."
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And it was around this time that Manti and his father began filling in details about the linebacker's relationship with Lennay. Brian Te'o told multiple reporters that the family had never met Kekua; the Te'os were supposed to spend time with her when they visited South Bend, Ind., for Notre Dame's Senior Day on Nov. 17. The elder Te'o told the South Bend Tribune in October, "[W]e came to the realization that she could be our daughter-in-law. Sadly, it won't happen now."
Lennay Kekua's death resonated across the college football landscape—especially at Notre Dame, where the community immediately embraced her as a fallen sister. Charity funds were started, and donations poured into foundations dedicated to leukemia research. More than $3,000 has been pledged in one IndieGogo campaign raising money for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.
Te'o's story moved beyond the world of sports. On the day of the BCS championship game between Notre Dame and Alabama, CBS This Morning ran a three-minute story that featured a direct quote from Lennay Kekua:
Babe, if anything happens to me, you promise that you'll stay there and you'll play and you'll honor me through the way you play.
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CBS also displayed this photo of Kekua several times throughout the piece:
This week, we got in touch with a woman living in Torrance, Calif. We'll call her Reba, to protect her identity. She was initially confused, then horrified to find that she had become the face of a dead woman. "That picture," she told us over the phone, "is a picture of me from my Facebook account."
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Manti Te'o and Lennay Kekua did not meet at Stanford in 2009. The real beginning of their relationship apparently occurred on Twitter, as an encounter between @MTeo_5 and @lovalovaloveYOU, on Oct. 10, 2011. Here's the moment they first made contact.
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Lennay Kekua's Twitter name was @lovalovaloveYOU from 2011 until April 2012, @LennayKay from April until September 2012, and has been @LoveMSMK ever since. Their interactions, by and large, consisted of mild flirting. By January 2012, they were a "couple," and Te'o sprinkled #LMK (for Lennay Marie Kekua) throughout his Twitter timeline in 2012.
As for what Kekua was tweeting, we have only bits and pieces. Her Twitter was private during most of this time, though various Google caches reveal her ever-changing series of avatars and a handful of Twitpics.
All of those photographs—with one important exception—came from the private Facebook and Instagram accounts of Reba, whom we found after an exhaustive related-images search of each of Lennay's images (most of which had been modified in some way to prevent reverse image searching). We sent her a number of photographs that had appeared on Lennay's Twitter account, which is now private but apparently still active (see this retweet, for instance). One picture in particular brought Reba to a start. It had been used briefly as @LoveMSMK's Twitter avatar and later in the background of the page (we've blurred out the face, at Reba's request):
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That photo hadn't appeared on the internet—at least, not to Reba's knowledge. She had taken it in December 2012 and sent it directly to an old high school acquaintance. The two hadn't talked since graduation, but the classmate, whom Reba remembered fondly, contacted her on Facebook with a somewhat convoluted request: His cousin had been in a serious car accident, and he had seen her photos before and thought she was pretty. Would she be so kind as to take a picture of herself holding up a sign reading "MSMK," to put in a slideshow to support the cousin's recovery? (He didn't explain what MSMK meant, and Reba still doesn't know.) Baffled but trusting, Reba made the sign and sent along the photo.
And now here it was on a dead girl's Twitter profile. After googling Lennay Kekua's name, Reba began to piece things together. She called up the classmate. He expressed alarm, Reba told us later, and "immediately began acting weird." "Don't worry about it," he told her. Moments after the phone call, Reba's picture was removed from the @LoveMSMK Twitter profile. Then, in a series of lengthy phone calls, Reba told us everything she knew about the classmate, a star high school quarterback turned religious musician named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo.
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Ronaiah Tuiasosopo comes from a big football family. His father, Titus, played for USC in the late '80s and early '90s. One uncle, Navy, played for the L.A. Rams; another uncle, Mike, coaches the defensive line at Colorado. A cousin from an older generation, Manu, went to Seattle in the first round in 1979; another cousin, Marques, went to Oakland in the second round in 2001. A cousin from a different side of the family, Fred Matua, earned All-America honors at guard for USC and played on several NFL teams, before dying this past August of a heart-related issue. (He was 28.)
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Ronaiah Tuiasosopo
Tuiasosopo, now 22, had once been something of a football prospect himself. In 2005, the Los Angeles Daily News wrote that the young Tuiasosopo, then the sophomore starting quarterback for Antelope Valley High School in Lancaster, Calif., "looked like a star" in practice, despite some in-game growing pains. His coach said he was a "great kid" who did a fine job leading the older seniors. He was an honorable mention for the all-league team. But then he transferred out of town, to Franklin High in Stockton, where he spent his junior year living with an aunt and handing the ball off. His team featured two 1,000-yard rushers, and he completed only five passes all season. He transferred again: His senior year, he turned up at Paraclete High in Lancaster. Titus, his father, had become an assistant coach there. That's where he encountered Reba. His team lost in the semifinals. A season recap article suggested that he might sign with Hawaii, but that evidently went nowhere.
Once high school ended, in 2008, Tuiasosopo threw himself into his father's church. Titus is the pastor at the Oasis Christian Church of the Antelope Valley, and Ronaiah leads the church's band. He also has his own little YouTube music career. He sings secular songs, with a cousin (Conan Amituanai, a former Arizona lineman whom the Vikings once signed), and religious songs, both solo and as part of an ensemble. "Ignite," the lead single on the group's ReverbNation page, is a likable enough song. It borrows its chorus from Katy Perry's catchy "Firework." But the song only has 10 Facebook likes, a fairly low figure that seems especially low once one considers who plugged Tuiasosopo's single on Twitter in December 2011: Manti Te'o.
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Te'o and Tuiasosopo definitely know each other. In May 2012, Te'o was retweeting Tuiasosopo, who had mentioned going to Hawaii. Wrote Te'o, "sole"—"bro," in Samoan—"u gotta come down." In June, Te'o wished Tuiasosopo a happy birthday. How they know each other isn't clear. We spoke to a woman we'll call Frieda, who had suggested on Twitter back in December that there was something fishy about Lennay Kekua. She was Facebook friends with Titus Tuiasosopo, so we asked her if she knew anything about Ronaiah.
"Manti and Ronaiah are family," she said, "or at least family friends." She told us that the Tuiasosopos had been on-field guests (of Te'o or someone else, she didn't know) for the Nov. 24 Notre Dame-USC game in Los Angeles. USC was unable to confirm this, but a tweet from Tuiasosopo's since-deleted account suggests he and Te'o did see each other on that West Coast trip. "Great night with my bro @MTeo_5! #Heisman #574L," Ronaiah tweeted on Nov. 23, the night before the game.
And there was something else: Tuiasosopo had been in a car accident a month before Lennay's supposed accident.
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Was this Lennay Kekua? We spoke with friends and relatives of Ronaiah Tuiasosopo who asserted that Ronaiah was the man behind Lennay. He created Lennay in 2008, one source said, and Te'o wasn't the first person to have an online "relationship" with her. One mark—who had been "introduced" to Lennay by Tuiasosopo—lasted about a month before family members grew suspicious that Lennay could never be found on the telephone, and that wherever one expected Lennay to be, Ronaiah was there instead. Two sources discounted Ronaiah's stunt as a prank that only metastasized because of Te'o's rise to national celebrity this past season.
The hoax began crumbling around the edges late last year. On Nov. 4, 2012, an "U'ilani Rae Kekua," supposedly Lennay's sister, popped up on Twitter under the name @uilanirae. Manti Te'o immediately tweeted out the following:
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Te'o also wished U'ilani a happy Thanksgiving on Nov. 22.
Numerous Notre Dame fans sent U'ilani messages of condolence, and she responded with thanks. On Nov. 10, U'ilani tweeted the following:
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A few weeks later, the @uilanirae account was deleted. The deletion came immediately after tweets from two now-suspended Twitter accounts had alleged that U'ilani was a fraud, that the same person behind Lennay was operating the U'ilani account, and that the images of "U'ilani" were really of a woman named Donna Tei.
Tei's Twitter account is @FreDonna51zhun; Fred Matua wore No. 51, and Tei's profile is full of pictures of herself with the late football star (and cousin of Tuiasosopo's). We showed U'ilani's Twitter avatar to one of Tei's friends, and he confirmed it was her.
In yet another now-deleted tweet, Tei herself reached out to Nev Schulman, star of the 2010 film Catfish and executive producer of the MTV program of the same title. Schulman's movie and show are about romantic deception through fake online personas.
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Manti Te'o, meanwhile, has deleted his tweets mentioning U'ilani.
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There was no Lennay Kekua. Lennay Kekua did not meet Manti Te'o after the Stanford game in 2009. Lennay Kekua did not attend Stanford. Lennay Kekua never visited Manti Te'o in Hawaii. Lennay Kekua was not in a car accident. Lennay Kekua did not talk to Manti Te'o every night on the telephone. She was not diagnosed with cancer, did not spend time in the hospital, did not engage in a lengthy battle with leukemia. She never had a bone marrow transplant. She was not released from the hospital on Sept. 10, nor did Brian Te'o congratulate her for this over the telephone. She did not insist that Manti Te'o play in the Michigan State or Michigan games, and did not request he send white flowers to her funeral. Her favorite color was not white. Her brother, Koa, did not inform Manti Te'o that she was dead. Koa did not exist. Her funeral did not take place in Carson, Calif., and her casket was not closed at 9 a.m. exactly. She was not laid to rest.
Lennay Kekua's last words to Manti Te'o were not "I love you."
A friend of Ronaiah Tuiasosopo told us he was "80 percent sure" that Manti Te'o was "in on it," and that the two perpetrated Lennay Kekua's death with publicity in mind. According to the friend, there were numerous photos of Ronaiah Tuiasosopo and Te'o together on Tuiasosopo's now-deleted Instagram account.
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The sheer quantity of falsehoods about Manti's relationship with Lennay makes that friend, and another relative of Ronaiah's, believe Te'o had to know the truth. Mostly, though, the friend simply couldn't believe that Te'o would be stupid enough—or Ronaiah Tuiasosopo clever enough—to sustain the relationship for nearly a year.
Since Notre Dame was blown out in the BCS national championship game, Te'o has kept a low profile. He has tweeted sparingly, and he declined an invitation to the Senior Bowl. His father made news recently when he announced on the "Manti Te'o 'Official' Fan Club" Facebook page that he had "black listed" the Honolulu Star-Advertiser, which had carried a photo on its front page of Manti getting bowled over by Alabama's Eddie Lacy in the title game.
Te'o hasn't tweeted at Lennay since Nov. 6, when he wrote:
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As of this writing, Te'o's Twitter profile carries a quotation from Alexandre Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo, the great adventure novel about a man in disguise.
Life is a storm.. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes.
We called a cellphone for Manti Te'o, but the number we had is not accepting calls. Brian Te'o, Manti's father, was in a meeting when we called, according to a text message he sent in response. Ronaiah Tuiasosopo did not answer his phone or respond to multiple text messages. We left a message with Notre Dame earlier this afternoon. We'll update with comments when and if we get any.
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Update (5:17 p.m.): Notre Dame responds:
On Dec. 26, Notre Dame coaches were informed by Manti Te'o and his parents that Manti had been the victim of what appears to be a hoax in which someone using the fictitious name Lennay Kekua apparently ingratiated herself with Manti and then conspired with others to lead him to believe she had tragically died of leukemia. The University immediately initiated an investigation to assist Manti and his family in discovering the motive for and nature of this hoax. While the proper authorities will continue to investigate this troubling matter, this appears to be, at a minimum, a sad and very cruel deception to entertain its perpetrators. Dennis Brown
University Spokesman | Assistant Vice President
Update (6:10 p.m.): Manti Te'o's statement:
This is incredibly embarrassing to talk about, but over an extended period of time, I developed an emotional relationship with a woman I met online. We maintained what I thought to be an authentic relationship by communicating frequently online and on the phone, and I grew to care deeply about her. To realize that I was the victim of what was apparently someone's sick joke and constant lies was, and is, painful and humiliating. It further pains me that the grief I felt and the sympathies expressed to me at the time of my grandmother's death in September were in any way deepened by what I believed to be another significant loss in my life. I am enormously grateful for the support of my family, friends and Notre Dame fans throughout this year. To think that I shared with them my happiness about my relationship and details that I thought to be true about her just makes me sick. I hope that people can understand how trying and confusing this whole experience has been. In retrospect, I obviously should have been much more cautious. If anything good comes of this, I hope it is that others will be far more guarded when they engage with people online than I was. Fortunately, I have many wonderful things in my life, and I'm looking forward to putting this painful experience behind me as I focus on preparing for the NFL Draft.
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Update (Feb. 14, 2013): CBS This Morning video edited at request of CBS.
Additional reporting by Dom Cosentino and Tom Ley. Top image by Jim Cooke/photo by Getty. Email Tim Burke at [email protected] or find him on Twitter @bubbaprog. Jack Dickey is at [email protected] and @jackdickey. Please send any media requests to [email protected].
New to Deadspin? Read some of our greatest hits.Last month 9to5Mac published the first report highlighting LG UltraFine 5K Display performance problems when using the Apple-recommended monitor with Macs near Wi-Fi routers. Now we’ve learned that Apple Stores have stopped carrying the LG UltraFine 5K Display in retail locations for now.
Apple’s online store pushed back delivery dates on new UltraFine 5K purchases last week from 2-3 days to 5-6 weeks at the end of last week as well. LG’s Mac display originally went on sale on the end of last year and has had a special USB-C sale price of $974 (regular $1299) that ends on March 31.
Apple said at its MacBook Pro event back in October that the company worked with LG to create the UltraFine 5K Display which integrates well with macOS. UltraFine 5K is Apple’s current solution for Apple Thunderbolt Display customers looking for external Retina resolution monitors for Macs after Apple discontinued its own external display. It features the same resolution as 27-inch iMacs but uses Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C like Apple’s new MacBook Pros.
9to5Mac discovered the performance problems with LG’s UltraFine 5K monitor when using the display near Wi-Fi routers. LG later confirmed that poor shielding caused interference that future builds of the display would resolve. Existing LG UltraFine 5K Displays will require retrofitting with additional shielding to resolve the issues.
Apple’s online store still list ship times as 5-6 weeks out with no options for pickup in Apple Stores. Apple’s retail channels are currently the only outlets for purchasing LG UltraFine 5K Display with LG’s website listing the product but not offering buy options.
An Apple Store customer support representative confirmed that Apple pulled the existing 5K monitor stock from Apple Stores at LG’s request while new hardware is being manufactured.
LG UltraFine 4K Display which is slightly smaller at 21.5-inches versus 27-inches is unaffected by the ship time delays and performance issues.The World Happiness Index surveys each year numerous people from various countries around the world in search of the country that has the happiest population.
This year’s winner is Denmark, followed by Switzerland, Iceland, Norway, Finland and Canada. And India at a poor 118.
The process is actually rather simple.
The researchers ask people to rank their own happiness. These answers are then weighted based on six other factors: levels of GDP, life expectancy, generosity, social support, freedom, and corruption.
Then, the results are compared to Dystopia, an imaginary place the team created where everyone is miserable. This fictional, sad realm allows all of the countries to remain positive in the six factors listed above. The size of the sample is 2,000 to 3,000 people per country. When you consider population size, that’s not great.
But the team claims, ” a sample size of 2,000 to 3,000 is large enough to give a fairly good estimate at the national level. This is confirmed by the 95 percent confidence intervals shown at the right-hand end of each country bar.”
Denmark leads the pack with Switzerland (last year’s winner), Iceland, Norway, Finland, Canada, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Australia, and Sweden rounding out the top 10. The US ranks 13th, and the UK 23rd.
The unhappiest countries are Afghanistan at 154th followed by Togo and Syria.
The team thinks that this report helps countries gauge how ready they are to start pursuing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, which include ending poverty and hunger, increasing healthcare and the quality of education, reaching gender equality and many other great, humanitarian goals that would benefit the world.
The team also believes that the index is helpful because it looks at more than just economic factors, like most other world polls do.How much does the Daily Mail hate women? It obviously hates female celebrities, despite featuring them so heavily. The paper and, to a larger extent, the website is pretty much built upon a foundation of "articles" – though that word does seem a stretch – about female celebrities who all fall into the dichotomy of being either thigh-rubbingly salacious ("Look at this sexy young woman in minimal clothes! Look! Look at her!") or eye-poppingly repulsed ("Look at this woman who is older than 30, and over nine stone! Ew! Look! Look at her!") Sometimes the two genres are combined.
Samantha Brick's article for Tuesday's Daily Mail has attracted derision – and a huge readership. Photograph: Daily Mail
Martin Clarke, Mail Online's editor, recently explained his editorial ideology to Lauren Collins, staff writer for the New Yorker. When Collins asked why Clarke decided to run the agenda-setting story of a young actor suffering from acne, Clarke replied: "Well, we all just looked at the picture and went 'Yuck'. Look, she's an actress in 90210, and she's spotty."
It obviously hates its female readers, too, despite women making up 53% of its readership. The general motto of the Daily Mail seems to be that a woman's role in life is to be pretty, thin, get married, quit work, have children and, ideally, disappear or die before getting embarrassingly old and fat (it is no wonder the paper loved Diana so much.) The paper is full of scare stories warning its female readers about the terrible repercussions of diverging from that course, usually written by female columnists who regret the terrible life choices that have led to them being childless and unmarried at the shockingly geriatric age of 40 plus. Few of them ever talk about the terrible life choices that have led to them selling their souls to the Daily Mail, a development many would probably see as far more tragic than not being married.
Which leads us to the issue about how much it obviously hates its female writers. Again, and not coincidentally, it has plenty of those in abundance. There was much talk a few months ago about how poorly represented women are in the media. As Kira Cochrane pointed out in her extensive piece on the matter, the Daily Mail comes closer than any other British paper in achieving parity of male and female bylines, yet this paper overturns the assumption that gender equality among writers is, in and of itself, the goal. The paper uses its female writers as Trojan horses to voice
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dealing with deficit reduction Clean bill with agreed-upon framework but not actual bill reducing deficit: Best case: reduces uncertainty in markets, reduces political risk, but doesn’t cure issue of deficit reduction. Not a terrible outcome but not desired either. The broader question in all of this necessitates clear gesture to fiscal consolidation — tax reform and entitlement reform with latter in out-years, revenue increases sooner. With housing market uncertainty already looming, slow job growth looming, essential to factor out as much uncertainty as possible. Markets need policymakers to make good-faith effort to address both in immediate fashion. What happens to precious metals/oil futures if no deal? Gold will be safe haven until a deal is struck, then it will drop precipitously. Oil, other commodities will depend on dollar reaction. How to calm people down? Biggest fear is uncertainty driving people to make run on the markets, banks which could trigger a depression-like scenario. Important to repeat that default is a highly unlikely event and will not happen even if 8/2 deadline passes. Even if there were a default, it would be viewed as a technical default due to political dysfunction rather than systemic. Interest payments will be made, and as long as that happens, no panic is necessary. Policymakers will not allow brinksmanship to that degree, and should remember that any rise in interest rates increases the deficit. Aren’t issues larger than the deficit and debt ceiling? Yes, clearly there are larger issues but the debt ceiling is now driving the debate. Biggest issues: growth isn’t large enough to drive down unemployment rate, but challenges are temporary and related to political risk. Housing market is legacy issue. Savings rate is up, worst of deleveraging cycle is behind us measures of consumer credit quality not deteriorating, delinquency rates decreasing. All positive factors. Best case scenario: spending cuts not front-loaded and tax code changes more immediate. This is a “senseless, self-imposed crisis.” With progress toward mitigating deficit, economy accelerates because there is stimulative policy in place if we can overcome political dysfunction. On stimulative economic policy, he says revenue as share of GDP fell to 14%, stimulus prevented far worse outcome but is now running out. Deficit top layer of other issues: revenues must increase, entitlements should be pre-funded to avoid a crisis out in the future. Where is the safe harbor? Nowhere is 100% safe right now but treasuries are the safest assets out there still. Moving money to other countries’ bonds builds currency risk in. There is no riskless asset, but there is reason to believe this crisis will pass and be resolved.
There were two big takeaways from this call for me. One, there is no question that this economist, at least, views revenues as a key piece of the package. In fact, he was pretty clear that immediate cuts with out revenue increases were necessary not only to stabilize the markets and our credit rating, but to push the economy back into a growth phase. Two, the markets aren't freaking out because there's recognition that this is a "senseless, self-inflicted crisis" which could be resolved if Congress puts on their big boy pants and starts acting responsibly. If they do not do that, or if John Boehner continues to kowtow to the Tea Party (assuming the Senate can reach some sort of compromise internally), that self-inflicted wound could turn into a near-death blow.
Finally, one other theme emerged out of this call. When Ron Paul calls for the Treasury to forgive interest on internal debt and the very real possibility looms that interest rates could increase on Treasury bonds as a result of either a default or a failure to come to a reasonable agreement on deficit reduction, it is clear the target for both of these is Social Security, since the bulk of our internal debt is on Social Security trust funds. To be clear, if that interest were forgiven, $1.6 trillion -- TRILLION -- is immediately stripped from the trust fund. And if interest rates increase, the deficit will increase simply because interest will also be paid at a higher rate on those same trust funds, along with other debt, which will erode its solvency sooner than 2037.
Imagine Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid in a box. Surrounding the box are progressives, Democrats, and yes, even the President, locked in a protective stance. Surrounding those people are a bunch of wild-eyed lunatics with stones and weapons, looking for every possible way to break that lock and loot the box. That's where we are right now.On the first working day of 2017, the head of Germany's Social Democrats (SPD) laid out his concept for national security. On the second day, the interior minister for the Christian Democrats (CDU) did the same, and on the third day, its sister party, the Bavarian CSU, held a closed-door meeting to focus on the same topic. The Greens, the Left Party, the liberal FDP and the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) have also put security at the top of their agendas.
It sounds like the kind of electioneering and actionism that is to be expected in the wake of an attack. But in reality, Germany's political parties are now engaged in a competition for the best national security concept. This is an issue that citizens are truly passionate about. Fear and uncertainty are on the rise, and everyone is looking to see what answers the politicians can provide.
One of the questions up for discussion is video surveillance. Following the attack on the Berlin Christmas market, many people were asking why there were no images of Anis Amri running away from the scene of his crime at Breitscheidplatz? It's because in Germany, public squares are not subject to comprehensive video surveillance. Because in the past, people were more worried about "Big Brother" than fighting crime. But with the SPD and the interior minister now in favor and the FDP, for example, against increased video surveillance, the situation is clear: Citizens will have to weigh the arguments and decide.
DW's Fabian von der Mark
Ankle bracelets for suspects?
Another question centers on how to treat people who are on the authorities' watch list because they're considered likely to commit an Islamist attack - people such as Amri. The authorities say they're monitoring around 550 such people. Some are subject to continuous monitoring, while others are not. Should certain behavior, such as radical Islamist statements, be criminalized in order for such people to be prosecuted? Should all such people be made to wear ankle bracelets to make it easier to monitor their whereabouts? Or should the police and intelligence services simply receive additional personnel, as is the SPD's plan?
Not all national security questions are so evocative, and yet just as important and, to some extent, controversial. Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière wants to strengthen the federal police force and intelligence service in order to better combat terrorists nationwide.
A total of 17 German police and intelligence offices currently have to exchange information on cases such as that of Amri, who traveled across Germany and Europe. Shouldn't there simply be one German authority to investigate and liaise with European partners? Questions regarding the responsibilities of state level intelligence and police offices come at the expense of each of Germany's federal states. The CSU from Bavaria, for example, will be expected to take a position on proposals to centralize these functions.
Need for simplification
Then there's the treatment of rejected asylum seekers, an issue that was also highlighted in the case of Anis Amri. Should asylum seekers facing deportation be held in deportation centers or even prisons, if they are deemed dangerous? And which countries of origin should be considered safe enough for the return of failed asylum seekers?
The Greens, in particular, have so far always been on the side of asylum seekers, and must now explain their position to voters. The other parties will also have to take a stand. Germans are entitled to a sober security debate about what is feasible, what the costs are, and what the impact on civil liberties will be.
But in addition to a debate, some things just have to be done. Germany should not have to tolerate people who preach messages of hate in backroom mosques and chat rooms, and there are laws to protect against such speech. More investment in prevention is needed at both the state and federal levels to ensure that young people do not become radicalized. On a European level, there needs to be a better exchange of information so that dangerous people remain on the radar.
The German government should up the pressure at the EU level to make sure this happens. The German authorities need the technical capability to monitor secret communication forums, and companies involved in messaging platforms have a duty to cooperate. These are the steps needed to quickly improve our security. The other questions will have to be answered over the course of the election campaign. Those politicians who do not deliver clearly do not take the concerns of the German people seriously.
Have something to say? Add your comments below.Today, the FBI seized the Darknet market Silk Road 2.0 and arrested its alleged operator, Blake Benthall. The former SpaceX employee now faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years for "conspiring to commit narcotics trafficking," and could end up behind bars for the rest of this life.
The website DeepDotWeb has confirmed that two other Darknet markets, Hydra and Cloud 9, have also been seized by the FBI. But the remaining Darknet markets -- and there are a lot of them -- appear to be functioning normally.
It's possible other markets may come down soon, or that they are already under the control of the FBI. But if this latest operation is restricted to just the three sites named above, it would affect only a fraction - anywhere from a quarter to a third - of total Darknet commerce.
In August of this year, the group Digital Citizens' Alliance issued a report on the size of Darknet markets, including the number of items for sale on each. All told, Silk Road 2.0, Hydra and Cloud 9 accounted for roughly 20,000 out of 66,000 listings, including drugs and other items.
Silk Road 2.0 is the largest of the three seized sites, but a recent story by The Economist suggest that its overall Darknet market share has shrunk since August. It's also very likely that a number of other Darknet markets have sprung up since then, and that the existing markets have boosted the number of items for sale.
All told, the latest operation represents a much smaller share of the overall Darknet market than the original Silk Road bust last year. Back then, Silk Road was the only major player in the game. But the Darknet economy rebounded from that set back, growing to more than double its original size within a year. There's currently no reason to expect that the same thing won't happen again this time.
In the FBI's statement, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said "Those looking to follow in the footsteps of alleged cybercriminals should understand that we will return as many times as necessary to shut down noxious online criminal bazaars. We don’t get tired."
In essence, this is nothing more than a promise of an endless arms race between the FBI and Darknet administrators. It's understandable that the FBI is going to pursue to biggest facilitators of drug sales -- which are still illegal at the federal level -- but it' stills a throwback to the darkest days of the drug war, when law enforcement's relentless focus on "supply reduction," shutting down drug sellers and manufacturers, fueled a surge in crime and had, studies showed, no impact on overall drug use trends.
Much of the rhetoric coming out of the federal government recently, on the other hand, has been focused on the flip side of that coin: demand reduction, including drug use prevention and treatment measures. These measures largely embrace the notion that drug use is a fact of modern life, and that the best way to address it is to focus on eliminating the harms associated with it.In February, Mr. Ventrell put in place a system for filing complaints about member organizations.
The system is too new and the data too sparse to draw conclusions yet, he said; so far, of the 10 complaints filed, four related to payments for patient referrals.
In New York City, 346 treatment programs — including residential and outpatient — are certified by the New York State Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services; 22 of them are on Staten Island.
Rob Kent, the general counsel for the agency, said he was concerned about paying for referrals.
“If you are referring a patient to somebody that is paying you, is it because they are paying you or because you believe the program is the best option for the patient?” Mr. Kent said.
Addiction treatment providers across the city also said they had been offered money for referrals.
Donna Mae DePola, the president of the Resource Counseling Center, which offers outpatient treatment in Brooklyn and is opening a recovery center on Staten Island this year, said the subtle nature of the approaches made them hard to document and report to the authorities.
“A lot of it is hearsay,” Ms. DePola said, adding that a solicitor could easily deny making offers. “So what I try to do is tell my friends in the field. We talk, send emails, say stay away — stuff like that.”
And the approach is often obscured.
“They ask you in a way that doesn’t sound illegal,” she said. “‘Well, we can do a contract and the contract can say this.’”
Staggering Toll
Before heroin became the drug of choice, there were prescription pain pills.
“Once the pills came around Staten Island, it just, it exploded,” said Kevin Oshea, 33, a recovering addict from Annadale, Staten Island, in treatment at Camelot.The Madhya Pradesh government on Sunday cleared a proposal to enact a law for awarding death sentence to those guilty of raping girls aged 12 or below in the state.
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The moves comes in the wake of a spurt in rape incidents recently. “The Cabinet chaired by Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan okayed the recommendation to hand down capital punishment for rape of girls aged 12 years or below,” MP Finance Minister Jayant Malaiya said.
“We are going to present a bill to this effect in the winter session of the assembly beginning on Monday,” he said. He said the Cabinet also decided to give harsher punishment to those guilty of molesting, stalking and harassing women. Now, a fine of Rs 1 lakh will also be imposed on such offenders, he added.
Once cleared by the assembly, the bill for capital punishment for rape of girls aged 12 or below will be sent to the Centre, which in turn will send it to the President for his approval.
The Madhya Pradesh government had recently come in for criticism over recent incidents of rape in the state. A 19-year-old UPSC aspirant was allegedly raped when she was returning home from a coaching institute on October 31 here. After public outrage, some police officers were suspended and transferred for the delay in registering an FIR.
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The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data for 2015, released in August last year, showed that Madhya Pradesh reported highest number of rape cases (4,391) in the country. According to the NCRB data for 2014, the state reported 5,076 rape cases, which was 14 per cent of the total incidents reported in the country. In 2013, 4,335 rape cases were reported in the state as against 3,425 in 2012.Hi everyone I am very happy you have found my campaign. Let me start with a little history and then get into the meat and potatoes of the project.
I started making EL Wire masks around two years ago for my wife and I. The first ones were crude masks made just for Halloween. But I received such a reaction from people and got so many customer requests that i continued improving on the designs. Within three months I was picked up by a national fashion show touring the USA, and by Director Daniel Flannery who invited me to do an international show in China for three months. Here I met many people who actually work on custom designs for Hollywood and shows like Circus de soleil and Cavalia. These wonderful designers like Jack Tung, Francine Lecoultre, and Micheal Curry's puppeteers only helped me to further improve our designs and comfort of our masks.
To keep up with the demand of our masks we are starting a manufacturing line here in the USA. I have all the manufacturing set up for production and only need to raise enough revenue to get our masks started on a larger scale output.
For helping us achieve our goal you will find our masks will range in the $20 to $40 range. You will never have an experience like the one when wearing our QitaWear masks. You think you are going to wear a cool or fun mask but it ends up being an experience like no other. This I promise!
Masks are extremely lightweight and comfortable, some weighing only 30 grams. I have never had a complaint on the compatibility and weight of our present designs. You will have the option of choosing one of ten colors for you mask when you pick a reward. Colors are Blue, White, Red Orange, Orange, Yellow, Pink, Blue Green, Lime Green, Green and Purple.
OUR REWARDS
#1 A generous thank you for helping us build our U.S assembly line.
#2 QitaWear Cozy to keep your drinks nice and cool.
#3 "LUCKY ONE" Nice mask that just covers the eye area of your face, leaving your mouth and nose open for easy breathing and drinking and eating if needed.
#4 "RAVER" This is one of our most highly sold masks, probably because it was one of our original first designs. You choose the color of lighting you want.
#5 "FOX" Another of our popular masks. When used with red EL wire it can be substituted for a devil looking mask.
#6 "EQUALIZER MASK" This is a mask I cannot keep in stock because it is in such high demand all the time.
#7 "Mumm Ra" Best way to hit up all the Halloween party's. Get it together this year, a "Mumm RA" light up mask. Dual color, you are the artist and pick the color combination desired on your mask.
#8 "Fairy Butterfly" Our female mask is super lightweight and beautiful to wear with any costume.
#9 "Elf" This mask can be used for both female and male, female version is 10% smaller and looks great with any get up.
#10 Custom Request, Two "lucky one" masks for one pledge
#11 "Blue Fox" One of our largest masks that makes a definite impact. Lightweight and extremely comfortable. Comes in one of ten colors you choose.
#12 Custom Request Two butterfly mask for one pledge
#13 "Tiger Mask" Limited Mask. I will build each one myself and sign them as well.
#14 "Animal Pack" Receive both the "Blue Fox" and "Fox" choose the color of your liking.
#15 "Mumm Ra" and "Elf" Combo. As always you will get to choose the colors of your mask. Great combo for any event,
#16 "Couples Mask" Get both the "Fairy Butterfly" and "Elf" mask.
#17 "Elf" and "Blue Fox" Combo. Custom request. Nice combo for any event. You choose the colors.
#18 Dragon Tattoo Mask. 3 dimensional style mask that is sure to make an impact for any event or party. Mask will not come with the sequins for scales. $100
#19 "Lighting" Limited item leather mask. Hand made by myself and signed. Equalizer will be standard coloring but you can still pick the color lighting for the lighting effects. $100
#20 "Family Pack" Raver, Fox, Fairy Butterfly, and Elf. If you like you can replace any mask with a equalizer mask, we are flexible with your wishes. All masks will come in the color you request.
#21 "Performance Pack" Receive all 7 masks for any event or costume. Create a dance routine or just show up as a light up group to any event.
#22 Duel Performance Pack. You will get two of each mask. 14 masks in total. Great for any event.
# 23. You are the artist pack. We will produce your own personal design regular sized mask, 50 in total. Send us your design or we will work with you to complete your idea. Production of your "Artist Pack" will not be assembled until you are happy with the result. EXAMPLE PHOTO BELOWYou probably check the weather forecast before you head out the door, but soon you might be able to check the subway forecast as well. Mathematicians in Sweden have developed a new algorithm that can predict when trains will be delayed, letting commuters avoid delays and better plan their travel.
Developed by Stockholmståg, the company that runs and manages all of the commuter trains in Stockholm, Sweden, the algorithm relies heavily on the mountain of data generated by modernized commuter systems. These days the exact position and location of commuter trains are tracked to give passengers an accurate ETA of when one will be rolling into a station.
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But Stockholmståg has found a way to use that data to also predict the ripple effect a single delay has on its entire system. An accident somewhere along its route means a train will be delayed before it rolls into the next station. But that also affects the train behind it, and the train behind it, and so forth. Eventually a single incident can throw off the scheduling of an entire commuter system, even if the original source of the disruption has already been resolved.
The new algorithm can’t predict if a train will have an accident, obviously, but it can give commuters a good idea on how nightmarish a commute might be up to two hours before they arrive at their station. So if someone needs to be at work at 9am for an important meeting, Stockholm’s public transit system will soon be able to let them know if they’re better off driving—well ahead of their morning commute.
[Stockholmståg]Newly-inducted Health Secretary Jean Ubial says from the P26B budget at the beginning of the Aquino administration, the DOH now has P154B at its disposal
Published 2:30 PM, July 04, 2016
MANILA, Philippines – The new secretary of the Department of Health (DOH) promised to maximize the increased budget allocated to the agency.
During her induction into office on Monday, July 4, Health Secretary Paulyn Jean Rosell Ubial said that the DOH would utilize the higher budget to achieve the mission “All for health towards health for all.”
Ubial said that from the P26 billion budget at the beginning of the Aquino administration, the DOH now has P154 billion at its disposal – more than 5 times of the 2010 budget.
“Wala po tayong ititipid when it comes to frontline services,” Ubial said. (We will not scrimp when it comes to frontline services.)
Plans
Ubial said she would prioritize the completion of the Universal Health Insurance, “especially for the poor.”
Ubial also mentioned the strengthening of the DOH’s Service Delivery Network for those living in remote areas. Through this network, she said, the healthcare workers will reach out to the communities instead of the other way around.
She committed to continuing the past administration’s efforts in dealing with contagious and contaminating diseases, such as malaria, tuberculosis, and dengue, as well as degenerative diseases, such as stroke, diabetes, and cancer.
But Ubial said that the previous administration may have forgotten common injuries, such as burns, and other disorders, such as mental illnesses.
“Ito ang mga hindi napagtuunan,” she said. (These were the ones that had not been given attention.)
From the ranks
Colleagues lauded Ubial in her induction for being a health secretary who “rose from the ranks.”
Before the appointment, Ubial had been assistant secretary for health regulations, handling maternal and child health and immunization programs for the department since 2008.
The 53-year-old Ubial is the 4th woman to become the country's health secretary. – Rappler.com
Rambo Talabong is a Rappler intern.Malik Obama, president Barack Obama's older half-brother, announced he will run for governor in the Kenyan county of Siaya, Bloomberg reports.
The elder Obama announced his candidacy as an independent in a rally on Sunday.
“Siaya county is facing a lot of problems from poor infrastructure to poverty due to bad leadership,” Obama said, according to Bloomberg. “I will change this if elected.”
Kenyans will head to the polls on March 4 to elect a new president and parliament as well as regional representatives, France 24 explains.
Kenya is hoping to avoid a repeat of deadly post-election violence that broke out after a national vote in 2007. Fighting over the 2007 election results left hundreds of people dead and displaced hundreds of thousands across the country.
Violence related to the upcoming election has already erupted this year, however. Abbas Gullet, the head of the Kenya Red Cross, warned that by August 2012 at least 200 people had already died in pre-vote violence. "It's about governorship, it's about senator-ship, it's about members of parliament, and women representative, and boundaries of communities that have co-existed for centuries," he told the Associated Press. Gullet added that two out of the four Kenyan elections since 1992 have been marred by violence.It is no secret that President Donald Trump won the election because of a relatively small amount of votes in three states — Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Despite losing the national popular vote by roughly three million, Trump was able to narrowly pull out these three states — states that all went to Barack Obama by comfortable margins in 2008 and 2012.
So, obviously, there were a lot of crossover votes this past cycle, with folks who previously voted for Obama casting ballots for Trump. So, considering that the two men are diametrically different, and Trump introduced himself on the national political stage via birtherism, how do some of these voters explain this shift?
Well, the Washington Post’s Aaron Blake dug through transcripts of focus groups conducted in Michigan and Wisconsin and came up with some pretty amazing revelations.
According to one woman in Wisconsin, she voted for Obama because she was hoping it would help ease race relations, all while using some racially offensive language:
“I voted for Obama too, because, I mean, there’s always been a white person, obviously, in office. I mean, he was of African descent, so I voted for him thinking I would change a little bit of the race issues that we had going on and make the colored people feel better, like they have a black person in office.”
Yes, she actually used the term “colored people.”
So it would appear that for this woman, at least, the race issues haven’t changed all that much. Slate’s Jamelle Bouie had a noticeable reaction to this woman’s answer:
“i thought obama would make the black people shut up, and they didn’t, so #maga“ — Jamelle Bouie (@jbouie) May 5, 2017
this is a more common view than people think, and something to remember when someone says that obama voters couldn’t be racist. — Jamelle Bouie (@jbouie) May 5, 2017
Meanwhile, a man from Wisconsin expressed amazement that Trump was the real-life president, despite voting for the man:
“‘I’m still, to this day, amazed he’s our president. I think about it sometimes, and I can’t believe it. Like I’ll see him on TV, and I just can’t believe he’s the president. … I mean, one minute he’s on this thing — you know, ‘You’re fired’ and all that stuff — and the next thing he’s, you know, we’re sending missiles over to Syria. And I just, I’m just, I’m wowed.” (Again, this man and everyone else here voted for Trump.)
As far as Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, there were some strong opinions given, including from this Michigan man:
“I just, she never like went away and like rebranded herself. She just stayed. She was like a piece of [expletive] that wouldn’t go down the toilet. She just like, she was done being secretary of state. You knew the next step was she was just gearing up to run for presidential, and she never got away. And then there always like with her and her husband, just always some kind of scandal of them d‑‑‑ing people over.”
While there was also the feeling that Clinton was cheating via the use of an earwig:
“Well, on top of that, she had an earwig in, and they were feeding her the answers.” (This was a conspiracy theory pushed by the Drudge Report and others. A woman on the panel seemed to agree, responding: “Right, well, that’s what I’m saying.”)
[image via screengrab]
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Follow Justin Baragona on Twitter: @justinbaragona
Have a tip we should know? [email protected] via Colbert Nation
Ah, mountaintop removal mining. It's perhaps the most needlessly destructive practice we've currently got going -- there's nothing quite like blowing entire mountains to bits to make getting at coal seams a little cheaper. A majority of Americans are consistently outraged by the practice, scientists say outright it should be banned, and yet it goes on -- destroying pristine mountain environments, filling streams and valleys with toxic debris, and making nearby communities sick. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long been an anti-MTR advocate, and last night, he dropped by the Colbert Report to promote his new film "The Last Mountain".
He told Stephen that, among other things, MTR has led coal companies to obliterate an area in the Appalachian mountains equal to the size of all of Delaware. Colbert, of course, claims that mountains are a "renewable resource" because they eventually grow back. Watch:
Mountaintop removal mining is a disgrace. Kennedy seems a little put off by Colbert's shtick, but even despite the discomfort he makes for a good spokesperson for the case against MTR. The more eyeballs on the issue the better -- mountaintop removal is one case where any publicity is bad publicity. We just need more Americans to pay attention.
More on Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining
Biggest Financers of Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining Exposed...
EPA Data Shows Streams Near Mountaintop Removal Coal Mines Toxic
An Alternative to Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining in West Virginia
EPA Halts Largest Mountaintop Removal Coal Mine in West VirginiaSAN ONOFRE, Calif. – Strength in numbers, members of the Coalition to Decommission San Onofre Nuclear plant gathered together to declare victory.
“It’s a happy, happy day,” said Ray Lutz, activist. “This blunder and catastrophe we see behind us is finally going away.”
For years activists have waged war on Southern California Edison and the San Onofre facility. Today the utility announces it’s pulling the plug on the power plant for good.
“The principal reasons we’ve outline for that are continuing uncertainty future of the plant,” said Ted Craver, Chairman and CEO of Edison International.
The plant has not produced power since January 2012. As the twin reactors have sat idle, Edison’s spent more than $500 million in repairs and replacement power. It has been a 16 month tangle on whether the reactors could safely be restarted.
In the end, company officials said it came down to regulatory hurdles and economics.
“It wasn’t just the approval, but it was also the length of the approval process,” said Craver. “While the plant sits idle we would have to endure major costs to keep the plant in the ready when the approval came through.
Craver added by the end of the year, it would really not be the least cost alternative.
“”It’s a very old plant, it’s risky,” said Lutz.
Activists said the shutdown had nothing to do with cost, but rather safety.
“This was the nearest near miss we’ve had in the US in the last 10 years,” said Arnie Gunderson, a consultant hired by the group Friends of the Earth.
Gunderson who has worked in the nuclear industry for more than 40 years conducted several recent studies. He looked at the reactors after a small leak was detected in a steam generator in January of 2012.
“We identified the old steam generators were entirely different than the ones they replaced them,” said Gunderson.
He said when the utility tried to replace the old with the new, it only made the problem worse.
“They made the decision at the beginning of this process that caused those generators to break,” said Gunderson.
Gunderson claimed the idea of restarting the plant was based purely on experiment.
“Unit 3 was so badly broken they said it would never start again, unit 2 they were trying to run as 70% power,” said Gunderson. “Edison’s blaming everyone except themselves, this is a self inflicted wound.”
“The steam generators have not performed as the original specifications,” said Craver. “The design and manufacturer of the steam generators clearly are not performing the way they were specified.”
Edison admits the plan was a mistake.
“If we could roll the clock back we would try to do it differently,” said Craver.
Activists argued the mistake left millions of lives in jeopardy.
“They were playing with the health and safety of 8.4 million people and their livelihood,” said Cathy Iwane,
“If that earthquake were to happen this plant would go into a meltdown,” said Lutz.Quick Access
Review / Favorite Track / For Fans Of / Atmosphere Levels / Links (Music & Social)
Sugar-Rush for the Brain… Nourishment for the Soul!
“Hello sir, can I help you?” “Yes, I’m checking into your brain hotel and will be staying for some time” “Oh wonderful, what name is the booking under sir?” “Taiga. Taiga Woods”
How do we explain this one… let’s see… have you ever had one of those amazing sandwiches that has layers of your favourite flavours, foods and sauces all smushed together into a little explosion of sensory pleasure… hitting your tongue in waves of yum? Or one of those cakes that looks amazing and then you cut into it to find it is a multitude of flavours and textures all perfectly crafted like floors of a skyscraper? Taiga Woods is a sensory feast with enough variety to attract and enthral most fans tastes within the More Fuzz spectrum and beyond. This is making me hungry… time to dig in and get some nourishment.
How is the sound?
Taiga Woods’ selftitled hits the ground running and maintains a surprisingly driven and unrelenting pace throughout this wonderfully crafted debut. Make no mistake, these are SONGS, written and produced with more spit, polish and shine than should be possible for a debut album.
Do you want reference points? Fine! There are sonic fingerprints all over this record… Truckfighters style energy-boosts… Torche-y tastes sugary sweet vocal harmonies … first album Queens of the Stone Age drum skitter… Josh Homme octave textures on overdrive and fuzz… Red Fang’s 70’s hard and garage rock aesthetics… all tempered by ASG’s sumptuous harmonically-soaked chunkiness… with a dash of Church of the Cosmic Skull grandeur. You get the drift…this is catchy, sticky and knows when to rock.
Ignore all that though. I’ll give you a better reason to pull the $$ trigger on this one; Taiga Woods is a band with two major weapons in The-War-Upon-Blandness : they understand dynamics and song-writing. It’s a sudden left turn, or a momentary easing off the accelerator (which is floored throughout). They’ve got those rare “oh” and “oooh” moments that have you reaching to turn it up. And hot-damn these guys make it sound so organic and easy.
Taiga Woods is a sultry and seductive beast of an album. It’ll catch your attention in a crowded bar and make you forget you were ordering another round. With a wink and a gesture it’ll have you knocked up and giving birth to hyperbolic reviews to your mates, inciting them feverishly to go buy it. The super shiny production may give the impression that the substance here is a quick sugar-high fix but you’d be mistaken… this is an album that will take time to work its way into your system with hooks buried deep, a sign of true song-writing (a rarity these days).
Digest at your leisure.
Why is this album worth listening?
Riffs that build into actual songs
Vocal harmonies so thickly layered they’ll rot your teeth
Deliciously polished 70’s style production job
A blend of some of the catchiest styles in the genre but with a twist all of their own
It has energy up the wazoo (that’s a technical term)
In what situation you should listen to this album?
This could be a get me-up-in-the-morning record, or that little energy lift you need just before heading out. And it’s easy to picture these guys as the Friday or Saturday night mid-evening band at a festival…giving the audience a rush of adrenaline with broad enough appeal to get everyone shit-faced and jumping.
It can be easy to OD on such sweet, sweet goodness especially when it is delivered with this kind of urgency…a bit like eating too much of that delicious cake we mentioned earlier. However, you get the impression that when something is this good on record experiencing it live will be akin to eating that same cake whilst strapped to the front of a rollercoaster with no brakes.
You’re in for a treat…go on, have a taste!One of the great things about Cycle EXIF is the exposure we get to bikes and builders we might not usually come across. Who’d have thought that in the Canary Islands would reside a master welder of titanium, who creates some very innovative frame designs?
Pedro Jeronimo is the holder of the torch, and this is one of his designs, interestingly called the Slütter. Pedro designed this bike to be an all-rounder. Considering Tenerife is apparently, a privileged environment for both mountain biking and road cycling, it only make sense to have a bike that is adept at both. For the true enthusiast, a bike you can do a few laps of the island in the morning, change the wheels, then carve up the slopes of the Parque Nacional del Teide in the afternoon. While looking the bee’s knees and enjoying the ultimate tenor of a titanium ride.
I’m still looking forward to my first ride on a belt drive, being a big believer in the concept. On motorcycles the ease of maintenance is surpassed only by a shaft-drive, and I’m interested to see how the bicycle industry adopts it, if even for the commuter and single speed sector. Pedro has granted us the best of both worlds by installing a Shimano Alfine internal rear hub on the Slütter and that, combined
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"that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion, and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy which at once destroys all religious liberty,"
it is declared
"that it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order."
In these two sentences is found the true distinction between what properly belongs to the church and what to the State.
In a little more than a year after the passage of this statute, the convention met which prepared the Constitution of the United States. Of this convention, Mr. Jefferson was not a member, he being then absent as minister to France. As soon as he saw the draft of the Constitution proposed for adoption, he, in a letter to a friend, expressed his disappointment at the absence of an express declaration insuring the freedom of religion (2 Jeff.Works 355), but was willing to accept it as it was, trusting that the good sense and honest intentions of the people would bring about the necessary alterations.
Page 98 U. S. 164
1 Jeff. Works 79. Five of the States, while adopting the Constitution, proposed amendments. Three -- New Hampshire, New York, and Virginia -- included in one form or another a declaration of religious freedom in the changes they desired to have made, as did also North Carolina, where the convention at first declined to ratify the Constitution until the proposed amendments were acted upon. Accordingly, at the first session of the first Congress, the amendment now under consideration was proposed with others by Mr. Madison. It met the views of the advocates of religious freedom, and was adopted. Mr. Jefferson afterwards, in reply to an address to him by a committee of the Danbury Baptist Association (8 id. 113), took occasion to say:
"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God; that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship; that the legislative powers of the government reach actions only, and not opinions -- I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should'make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore man to all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties."
Coming as this does from an acknowledged leader of the advocates of the measure, it may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the amendment thus secured. Congress was deprived of all legislative power over mere opinion, but was left free to reach actions which were in violation of social duties or subversive of good order.
Polygamy has always been odious among the northern and western nations of Europe, and, until the establishment of the Mormon Church, was almost exclusively a feature of the life of Asiatic and of African people. At common law, the second marriage was always void (2 Kent, Com. 79), and from the earliest history of England, polygamy has been treated as an offence against society. After the establishment of the ecclesiastical
Page 98 U. S. 165
courts, and until the time of James I, it was punished through the instrumentality of those tribunals not merely because ecclesiastical rights had been violated, but because upon the separation of the ecclesiastical courts from the civil the ecclesiastical were supposed to be the most appropriate for the trial of matrimonial causes and offences against the rights of marriage, just as they were for testamentary causes and the settlement of the estates of deceased persons.
By the statute of 1 James I (c. 11), the offence, if committed in England or Wales, was made punishable in the civil courts, and the penalty was death. As this statute was limited in its operation to England and Wales, it was at a very early period reenacted, generally with some modifications, in all the colonies. In connection with the case we are now considering, it is a significant fact that, on the 8th of December, 1788, after the passage of the act establishing religious freedom, and after the convention of Virginia had recommended as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States the declaration in a bill of rights that "all men have an equal, natural, and unalienable right to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience," the legislature of that State substantially enacted the statute of James I., death penalty included, because, as recited in the preamble, "it hath been doubted whether bigamy or poligamy be punishable by the laws of this Commonwealth." 12 Hening's Stat. 691. From that day to this, we think it may safely be said there never has been a time in any State of the Union when polygamy has not been an offence against society, cognizable by the civil courts and punishable with more or less severity. In the face of all this evidence, it is impossible to believe that the constitutional guaranty of religious freedom was intended to prohibit legislation in respect to this most important feature of social life. Marriage, while from its very nature a sacred obligation, is nevertheless, in most civilized nations, a civil contract, and usually regulated by law. Upon it society may be said to be built, and out of its fruits spring social relations and social obligations and duties with which government is necessarily required to deal. In fact, according as monogamous or polygamous marriages are allowed, do we find the principles on which the government of
Page 98 U. S. 166
the people, to a greater or less extent, rests. Professor, Lieber says, polygamy leads to the patriarchal principle, and which, when applied to large communities, fetters the people in stationary despotism, while that principle cannot long exist in connection with monogamy. Chancellor Kent observes that this remark is equally striking and profound. 2 Kent, Com. 81, note (e). An exceptional colony of polygamists under an exceptional leadership may sometimes exist for a time without appearing to disturb the social condition of the people who surround it; but there cannot be a doubt that, unless restricted by some form of constitution, it is within the legitimate scope of the power of every civil government to determine whether polygamy or monogamy shall be the law of social life under its dominion.
In our opinion, the statute immediately under consideration is within the legislative power of Congress. It is constitutional and valid as prescribing a rule of action for all those residing in the Territories, and in places over which the United States have exclusive control. This being so, the only question which remains is whether those who make polygamy a part of their religion are excepted from the operation of the statute. If they are, then those who do not make polygamy a part of their religious belief may be found guilty and punished, while those who do, must be acquitted and go free. This would be introducing a new element into criminal law. Laws are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices. Suppose one believed that human sacrifices were a necessary part of religious worship; would it be seriously contended that the civil government under which he lived could not interfere to prevent a sacrifice? Or if a wife religiously believed it was her duty to burn herself upon the funeral pile of her dead husband; would it be beyond the power of the civil government to prevent her carrying her belief into practice?
So here, as a law of the organization of society under the exclusive dominion of the United States, it is provided that plural marriages shall not be allowed. Can a man excuse his practices to the contrary because of his religious belief?
Page 98 U. S. 167
To permit this would be to make the professed doctrines of religious belief superior to the law of the land, and, in effect, to permit every citizen to become a law unto himself. Government could exist only in name under such circumstances.
A criminal intent is generally an element of crime, but every man is presumed to intend the necessary and legitimate consequences of what he knowingly does. Here, the accused knew he had been once married, and that his first wife was living. He also knew that his second marriage was forbidden by law. When, therefore, he married the second time, he is presumed to have intended to break the law. And the breaking of the law is the crime. Every act necessary to constitute the crime was knowingly done, and the crime was therefore knowingly committed. Ignorance of a fact may sometimes be taken as evidence of a want of criminal intent, but not ignorance of the law. The only defence of the accused in this case is his belief that the law ought not to have been enacted. It matters not that his belief was a part of his professed religion; it was still belief, and belief only.
In Regina v. Wagstaff (10 Cox Crim.Cases, 531), the parents of a sick child, who omitted to call in medical attendance because of their religious belief that what they did for its cure would be effective, were held not to be guilty of manslaughter, while it was said the contrary would have been the result if the child had actually been starved to death by the parents under the notion that it was their religious duty to abstain from giving it food. But when the offence consists of a positive act which is knowingly done, it would be dangerous to hold that the offender might escape punishment because he religiously believed the law which he had broken ought never to have been made. No case, we believe, can be found that has gone so far.
6. As to that part of the charge which directed the attention of the jury to the consequences of polygamy.
The passage complained of is as follows:
"I think it not improper, in the discharge of your duties in this case, that you should consider what are to be the consequences to the innocent victims of this delusion. As this contest goes on, they multiply,
Page 98 U. S. 168
and there are pure-minded women and there are innocent children -- innocent in a sense even beyond the degree of the innocence of childhood itself. These are to be the sufferers; and as jurors fail to do their duty, and as these cases come up in the Territory of Utah, just so do these victims multiply and spread themselves over the land."
While every appeal by the court to the passions or the prejudices of a jury should be promptly rebuked, and while it is the imperative duty of a reviewing court to take care that wrong is not done in this way, we see no just cause for complaint in this case. Congress, in 1862 (12 Stat. 501), saw fit to make bigamy a crime in the Territories. This was done because of the evil consequences that were supposed to flow from plural marriages. All the court did was to call the attention of the jury to the peculiar character of the crime for which the accused was on trial, and to remind them of the duty they had to perform. There was no appeal to the passions, no instigation of prejudice. Upon the showing made by the accused himself, he was guilty of a violation of the law under which he had been indicted, and the effort of the court seems to have been not to withdraw the minds of the jury from the issue to be tried, but to bring them to it; not to make them partial, but to keep them impartial.
Upon a careful consideration of the whole case, we are satisfied that no error was committed by the court below.
Judgment affirmed.
* Supra, p. 89 U. S. 147.
MR. JUSTICE FIELD.
I concur with the majority of the court on the several points decided except one -- that which relates to the admission of the testimony of Amelia Jane Schofield given on a former trial upon a different indictment. I do not think that a sufficient foundation was laid for its introduction. The authorities cited by the Chief Justice to sustain its admissibility seem to me to establish conclusively the exact reverse.
NOTE. At a subsequent day of the term, a petition for a rehearing having been filed, MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WAITE delivered the opinion of the court.
Since our judgment in this case was announced, a petition for rehearing has been filed, in which our attention is called to the fact that the sentence of the
Page 98 U. S. 169
court below requires the imprisonment to be at hard labor, when the act of Congress under which the indictment was found provides for punishment by imprisonment only. This was not assigned for error on the former hearing, and we might on that account decline to consider it now; but as the irregularity is one which appears on the face of the record, we vacate our former judgment of affirmance, and reverse the judgment of the court below for the purpose of correcting the only error which appears in the record, to-wit, in the form of the sentence. The cause is remanded, with instructions to cause the sentence of the District Court to be set aside and a new one entered on the verdict in all respects like that before imposed, except so far as it requires the imprisonment to be at hard labor.The Republican line continues to be that the Affordable Care Act is wildly unpopular and Americans are dying to repeal it. (See Matthew Continetti's Weekly Standard editorial for a good sample of said agitprop.) The reality, while hardly encouraging for liberals, is still a lot better than that. The law may not be popular, but most of its provisions are. The claim that Democrats are uniformly running away from the law -- Continetti: "Practically the only Democrats who mention the law in campaign ads are those who brag about voting against it" -- is flatly untrue:
In a fight for his political life in Wisconsin, Sen. Russ Feingold went on the air last week with an advertisement that explicitly defends provisions in the bill and attacks his opponent, Republican Ron Johnson, for wanting to repeal it.
The ad portrays two Wisconsin residents telling Johnson: "Hands off my health care." Their message is that repealing the health-care law would, as another voter says, "put insurance companies back in control."
Feingold's is one of the more powerful ads about the bill, but his isn't the only one. In an ad that focuses on holding corporations accountable, Rep. Steve Israel of New York touts the bill for stopping insurance companies from denying coverage because of preexisting conditions. In Nevada, Rep. Dina Titus has a TV ad praising the same provision.
And in his effort to win back a traditionally Democratic congressional seat in New Orleans, state Rep. Cedric Richmond has made incumbent Republican Joseph Cao's vote against the health-care bill a central issue in the campaign.
And it remains true that Americans were turned off by the long, ungainly process, but very few hew to the right-wing repeal position:
This isn't to say that the Affordable Care Act is popular. But the public adamantly wanted health care reform, and the process during a terrible economy and fierce partisan opposition soured the public mood, but Americans still overwhelmingly oppose the GOP approach.U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren — a liberal superstar who has remained on the sidelines during the presidential race — said she is now “getting more involved,” spurred by the “ugliness” in the Republican race.
“I’m getting more involved and I will get more involved as we head closer and closer to November. I’m watching what’s happening right now on the Republican side and it reaches a point where silence is not a virtue,” Warren told reporters after giving a lecture at Clark University in Worcester. “There is a form of ugliness and extremism that is erupting on the right and it not only threatens the Republicans, it threatens the entire country.”
Warren has yet to make an endorsement of one of her fellow Democrats, or to join either on the campaign trail.
Pressed on how she intends to be involved, she demurred.
“Am I going to support the extremists? Is that what you’re asking me?” she said to laughter from a small gathering of elected state officials. “I’ll find a way. I usually have a fairly loud voice.”
Warren, whose large constituency of populist fans had urged her to run for president in this cycle, is the only member of the Massachusetts delegation and the only Democratic woman in the Senate who has not endorsed Hillary Clinton over her rival Bernie Sanders.
Extolling the debate on the Democratic side while denouncing the “ugliness” among Republicans, Warren rebuffed speculation about whether she could be a vice presidential candidate and offered no sense of when she will formally back either of the Democratic candidates.
But asked if she felt her voice was needed in the race, she replied, “You bet.”
Warren has faced some criticism for remaining silent on an endorsement even as the Massachusetts presidential primary came and went this month — with Clinton eking out a narrow victory.
Today, she needled the Republican field for constantly trying to “out-ugly each other,” without naming frontrunner Donald Trump. But she steered clear of mentioning Clinton or Sanders, praising the primary process as one focused on issues such as college debt, trade deals and Wall Street regulation.
“I don’t feel tied to a timeline (to endorse),” Warren said. “I know where we are today and I think we’re in a good place.”
At one point, a reporter asked her about her thoughts of an all-female ticket, which Warren laughed off.
“Right now I think we need to concentrate on getting our presidential candidates (selected),” she said. She later added, “I love my job. That should be pretty clear. … I’m not thinking about another job.”CHICAGO (AP) -- The Chicago-area's penny-per-ounce tax on soda and sugary drinks is no more.
The Cook County Board voted 15-2 in October to end the tax, just more than two months after it took effect. The tax expired Friday.
David Goldenberg of Can the Tax Coalition calls it a day for celebration. He said county residents stood up to the tax and commissioners listened.
Among the tax's supporters was billionaire Michael Bloomberg, whose super PAC ran ads defending the tax as a way to fight obesity.
The tax passed last year when Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle cast the deciding vote after commissioners deadlocked.
The repeal of the tax left an approximate $200 million budget hole. County commissioners last month approved a $5.2 billion budget that included about 300 job cuts.Announcing the GDAX Digital Asset Framework
Adam White Blocked Unblock Follow Following Nov 2, 2017
We are excited to release the GDAX Digital Asset Framework. We believe the number of digital currencies and tokens will continue growing and contribute to creating an open financial system. To support this growth, GDAX will add assets which align with this framework and promote our mission of creating an open financial system for the world.
The digital asset ecosystem has experienced significant growth over the last year. Since January 1, 2017, the total market capitalization of all digital assets has increased nearly 10x to reach a current valuation of approximately $180 billion. We have also seen the number of assets, breadth of companies, and amount of capital grow significantly:
There are more than 1,100 digital assets listed on exchanges
Over 100 crypto hedge funds have collectively raised over $2 billion of capital
Venture firms have invested more than $800 million into digital asset startups
Customers often ask us how we decide which assets to support. By sharing this framework we hope to improve transparency and highlight the factors we evaluate when considering which new assets to support on GDAX.
This framework is not intended to be a definitive methodology, investment advice, or a commitment to support any specific asset. As the technology, use cases, and regulatory environment evolve, so too will this framework. We are committed to supporting more assets, but our priority is always to protect customer funds and comply with regulatory requirements.
We are excited to support the growth of the industry and provide customers greater access to a variety of digital assets. To start trading today, sign up for a GDAX account.
Download a copy of the GDAX Digital Asset Framework here.
Special thanks to project lead Courtney Chin, as well as Adam White, David Farmer, Jacob Horne, Justin Mart, Reuben Bramanathan, Linda Xie, Jordan Clifford, CoinCenter, ConsenSys, and many more for input which influenced the development of this framework.The United States has backtracked on an announcement that Palestinian offices in Washington, DC would be closed, following Palestinian threats to sever all communication with the Americans as they work on a new Middle East peace plan.
The US order last week to close the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) office was in response to efforts by Palestinians to indict Israeli officials at the international court, over illegal settlement expansion and violent crimes.
However, the US State Department announced the reversal on Friday, saying the PLO office in the US capital would be allowed to operate for at least the next 90 days.
The US had "advised the PLO Office to limit its activities to those related to achieving a lasting, comprehensive peace between the Israelis and Palestinians", State Department spokesman Edgar Vasquez told reporters.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said at the United Nations in September that the Palestinians "called on the International Criminal Court [ICC] to open an investigation and to prosecute Israeli officials for their involvement in settlement activities and aggressions against our people".
Illegal Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories have expanded exponentially in recent years. And, for the first time in two decades, a new Israeli settlement is being built in the West Bank.
Since 1967, Israel's government has transferred between 600,000 and 750,000 Israeli citizens into the occupied territories.
The office closure announcement ignited an angry response from the Palestinians who threatened to cut all communication with US officials, thereby thwarting US President Donald Trump's effort to broker Middle East peace.
Trump's adviser, Jared Kushner, has been working on a peace plan to present to both sides in the coming months.
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"We, therefore, are optimistic that at the end of this 90-day period, the political process may be sufficiently advanced that the president will be in a position to allow the PLO office to resume full operations," Vasquez said.
A legal requirement enacted in 2015 said the US cannot allow the Palestinians to have a Washington office if they support investigations of Israeli nationals for alleged crimes in Palestine.
While Israel is not a party to the Rome Statute - the treaty of the ICC to which all members are bound to - its nationals could be tried by The Hague-based court for crimes committed on Palestinian territory.Springfield Police search for suspects after deadly shooting Copyright by WDTN - All rights reserved Video
SPRINGFIELD, Ohio (WDTN) - Springfield police confirmed a man in his 20s was shot and killed on the corner of E. John Street and Clifton Avenue around 9 PM Thursday.
According to investigators, the victim was behind the wheel when he was struck. His SUV then rolled down the street, through the intersection, and into a nearby yard where it eventually hit a tree before coming to a complete stop.
Shortly after their arrival Springfield PD found the man dead inside the vehicle with a gunshot wound to the head.
A crowd of people gathered at the crime scene and a fight broke out among onlookers. It's unclear if the fight was related to the shooting in anyway.
The identity of the victim has not been released and no suspect information provided.OMG Santa you really went all out for this exchange! I have been checking the tracking number for your package CONSTANTLY and couldn't contain myself when it finally arrived this morning! I was super excited when I realised it was coming all the way from Hawaii (the postage must have been so expensive, I'm sorry!!) and the gift is made extra Hawaiian by a wee bag and flower garland. :D
It's so cool to have this many new things to try! I love how many macadamia themed things there are as they don't really turn up in snacks at all over here, and I'm excited to use the pancake mix, with a hint of fear in case I do a crappy job! I'm also looking forward to putting the wun tun strips on everything!
The only thing I've tried already is the snazzy melon slices. I think they taste sort of like bubble gum! Srsly Santa. You were really generous and thoughtful and thank you!! Now the only challenge is to make this stuff last more than a week...
I will rotate these images once I'm on a computerNDFP Southern Mindanao Region
Press Release
More than 15,000 revolutionary forces and representatives from at least 10 regions in the country, peace advocates, officials from both Government of the Republic of the Philippines and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines made up the fiery, artistic and militant celebration of today’s 48th founding anniversary of the Communist Party of the Philippines and National Assembly for Just and Lasting Peace in Paquibato district, Davao City.
The activity was divided into two parts: the whole day National Peace assembly, and the night concert-rally for the CPP celebration. Participants came from the National Capital Region, Bicol, Southern Tagalog, Cordillera, Panay, Southern Mindanao, North Central Mindanao, North Eastern Mindanao, Far South Mindanao and Western Mindanao regions.
The national peace assembly and CPP anniversary celebration, hosted by 1st Pulang Bagani Battalion-NPA Southern Mindanao, paid homage to the Party’s absolute leadership of the Filipino revolution as it also condemned the unfulfilled promises of the Duterte government in granting amnesty to the more than 400 political detainees in the country and in the numerous ceasefire violations committed by AFP, PNP and paramilitary in some 500 villages nationwide.
The December 26 celebration kicked off at around 8:30 am with six platoons of the 1st Pulang Bagani Battalion-New People’s Army Southern Mindanao mounting a battalion formation at an open field some 200 meters away from the barangay covered court where the program was held. More than 200 NPA combatants stood in stiff attention amid a tactical inspection presided by NDF consultant Porferio Tuna, Jr.
In his message to the Army, Tuna hailed the New People’s Army as the true army of the masses–determined, disciplined and strong defender of the people. He also gave salute to martyred NPA commander Ka Parago who was killed in an enemy raid in Paquibato last year.
At the formal opening of the National Peace Assembly, representatives from the GRP and NDF marched, flanked by NPA guards and bearers of flags of NDF member organizations. An NDF choir sang flaming songs in chorale. A Lumad Datu (tribal chieftain) and Moro leader gave a rousing oranda (song) and prayer.
In militant dances and speeches led by NDF consultant Concha Araneta from Panay, the resounding message of the National Peace Assembly and CPP anniversary was clear: People’s War is for People’s Peace. The only way to annihilate the roots of violence and unrest is to realize the land distribution for the millions of peasants in the country, to respect the ancestral domain of indigenous people and Moro people, to abolish the wage slavery and end the exploitation of all workers, and to attain justice for all victims of human rights abuses and oppression. And the only way to pursue peace is only by waging the national democratic revolution and the people’s war.
In his audio visual message gave by NDF Chief Political Consultant, Jose Maria Sison, took the occasion to condemn the Duterte government for reneging on its commitment to the peace negotiations, particularly on the amnesty and freedom of all political prisoners. This is in violation to the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG) and to the Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL). The non-release of political detainees also runs counter to the possible declaration of the bilateral interim ceasefire agreement between the NDF and the GRP and the acceleration of the peace negotiations.
In a press conference, former chief of the NDF peace negotiating panel and now senior adviser Luis Jalandoni stressed that the NDF will not lay down its arms even as it is engaged in peace talks with the Duterte government. Jalandoni also warned that as human rights abuses are perpetrated with the continued implementation of counter-revolutionary program Oplan Bayanihan and Enhanced Oplan Bayanihan, it will be forced to withdraw its ceasefire declaration to protect the masses and defend communities.
Ka Wendell, master of ceremonies of the celebration, said the communities are clamoring for an end to the ceasefire as they face threats from COPD and PDOP military troops that continue to operate in peasant and Lumad communities. Disciplined as they are, the NPA Red fighters stood ground to abide with the CPP’s unilateral ceasefire declaration and in respect to the ongoing GRP-NDF peace negotiations.
At the press conference and later at the open forum with the assembly participants, NDF leaders took turns to explain the various provisions of the next substantive agenda for the peace talks, the Comprehensive Agreement on Socio-economic Reforms (CASER).
NDF consultant Eduardo Genelsa said Mindanao continues to be resilient and to advance despite escalating enemy attacks because communists, cadres, NPA combatants, and revolutionary forces have vigorously waged the armed struggle and raised the people’s war to greater heights.
NDF leaders assert that there can be no peace until the roots of armed struggle are addressed decisively. The revolutionary forces are now stronger more than ever to wage armed revolution, gain concrete benefits for the people, and ultimately attain justice and true peace. Indeed, today’s celebration highlighted the militant battlecry: there can be no just and lasting peace without the people’s war.
For reference:
(sgd.) Rubi del Mundo
NDF–SMR spokespersonThe Department for Transport and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, working in partnership with the Technology Strategy Board, are to invest up to £10m in collaborative R&D projects to research further how driverless cars can be integrated into everyday life in the UK.
A briefing event, combining networking and consortia-building activities, is expected to be held in London on 30th July.
Almost a year since the government previewed a scoping study for a town and city to host a test site for consumer testing of driverless cars, a competition is expected to be announced next week. Webinars to enable further questions to be asked will be held after the briefing event, and a final consortia building event is expected in September before the competition closes.
Background to the competition
On 16 July 2013, the Secretary of State for Transport presented a report - Action for roads: a network for the 21st century outlining the government’s strategy for roads that included a promise to work to encourage the development and introduction of autonomous vehicles.
The document stated the DfT will commission a scoping study to look at the barriers to implementation and explore opportunities for UK trials.
The Government also promoted Robotics and Autonomous systems as one of the ‘eight great technologies’ for driving UK growth.
Then on 4 December 2013, alongside the Chancellor’s Autumn statement, the Department for Transport stated in its National Infrastructure Plan 2013 that, “Looking forward, driverless cars are innovative technology that will change the way the world’s towns and cities look and the way people travel; they present opportunities for the British automotive industry in the manufacture of the cars and the wider science and engineering sectors in the design of towns. To ensure that UK industry and the wider public benefit from the development of driverless cars, the government announces in the National Infrastructure Plan that it will conduct a review, reporting at the end of 2014, to ensure that the legislative and regulatory framework demonstrates to the world’s car companies that the UK is the right place to develop and test driverless cars. It will also create a £10 million prize for a town or city to develop as a testing ground for driverless cars.”
Moving forward to 14 February this year, the Department for Transport in conjunction with the Department for Business Innovation & Skills and the Transport Systems Catapult ran a workshop in London that discussed the design of a ‘driverless cars challenge’.
The Transport Systems Catapult is working on trialling pods that will actually drive themselves around Milton Keynes.
At its London event in February, over 80 stakeholders from sectors including local authorities, the insurance industry and the research community attended as well as representatives from The Treasury, Automotive Council and Technology Strategy Board.
The results from the workshop were to be analysed by the Government to produce the scope for the £10m driverless cars challenge which will be launched this month.
Save the date - 30th July for the first briefing and networking event in London. We expect the Technology Strategy Board to provide a live feed of this event if you can’t make it to London in person. This event will provide potential applicants and interested parties with the background and scope of the competition, along with competition guidelines for consortia, and an opportunity to network.
This briefing event will be followed by a couple of webinars for anyone who would like to know more, or can’t make it in person or online on the 30th, and we plan to run an information and networking event in September before the competition closes.
UPDATE 17 JULY: REGISTRATION NOW OPEN
Click here to register to attend the event in London on the 30th July.
Please click here if you can't make it, but would like to attend via webinar (this will simply be a webcast of the event - for the consortia-building and networking you'd need to be there in person).While everybody in the tech industry seems to be trying to make programming easier to pick up, most of the efforts that have popped up either repackage the concepts found in existing languages or boil down the logic programmers use to the point where you don’t learn skills that are directly applicable to actual software development.
Eve founder Chris Granger wants to change that. As a former Product Manager on Microsoft’s Visual Studio team and the brain behind the only coding environment to raise more than $300,000 on Kickstarter (okay, probably the only coding environment to crowdsource hundreds of thousands of dollars anywhere), he’s seen many attempts to make the tools we use to code simpler. But even with his prior work, he says that most improvements “simply made programmers more productive, instead of opening the door to people who haven’t spent years poring over text files full of abstract symbols.”
With Eve, Granger is shooting higher. He envisions an Excel-like web application that lets anyone build software by drawing the interface and then filling in the logic that powers it by dragging around boxes of data. To share these apps, users will only have to give others a link to a hosted web application. Behind the scenes, it’ll be able to connect to services that offer APIs, so applications built on Eve will be able to integrate with things like Facebook, Twitter, or Google Maps like an application built in a “real” coding environment. When Eve debuts in early 2015, Granger says it will enable “a normal person to be able to make a site that’s as complex as a Kickstarter.”
While it’s designed to be accessible to beginners, Eve is also ready for advanced coders to dig in. If there’s anything missing in the built-in logic, coders extend Eve by creating their own functions in JavaScript (in fact, Eve itself is written in JavaScript.) Users will eventually be able to share these functions and the grids they arrange to build their apps in a GitHub-like social platform that will also facilitate discussion.
That end of things is where Eve plans to monetize. Granger plans to make the actual development platform open source (you could run it on your own server) and charge for premium features involving collaboration, versioning, hosting, and computation.
Several big-name investors have gotten behind Eve. In its seed round, Granger and his two co-founders have raised $2.3 million from Andreessen Horowitz partner Chris Dixon, Y Combinator president Sam Altman, and Sep Kamvar (the guy who personalized Google search results).President Donald Trump arrives at Danang International Airport, Friday, Nov. 10, 2017, in Danang, Vietnam. Trump is on a five country trip through Asia traveling to Japan, South Korea, China, Vietnam and the Philippines. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
DANANG, Vietnam (AP) — President Donald Trump will not have a formal sit-down with Russian President Vladimir Putin while the two attend a summit, the White House said Friday shortly before Trump landed in Vietnam, the fourth stop on his first official visit to Asia.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force Once, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders blamed scheduling conflicts on both sides for the fact that the leaders will not meet formally during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit taking place in the coastal city of Danang.
But Sanders said it was “possible” and “likely” that they could have a less formal encounter, either in Danang or later in the Philippines when Trump and Putin attend another regional conference.
“Now, they’re going to be in the same place. Are they going to bump into each other and say hello? Certainly possible and likely,” she said. “But in terms of a scheduled, formal meeting, there’s not one on the calendar and we don’t anticipate that there will be one.”
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had told reporters in Beijing on Thursday that there was no reason to schedule a meeting if the U.S. and Russia are unable to make significant progress on issues including Syria and Ukraine.
“The view has been if the two leaders are going to meet, is there something sufficiently substantive to talk about that would warrant a formal meeting,” he said.
Both sides have been working to reach agreement on how they hope to resolve Syria’s civil war once the Islamic State group is defeated. The potential understanding comes as an array of forces are near a final defeat of IS, the extremist group that once controlled vast stretches of both Iraq and Syria. Fighting the group is no longer top priority, shifting the focus back to Syria’s intractable conflict between Russian-backed President Bashar Assad’s government and armed rebels, to whom the U.S. lends at least rhetorical support.
The news comes a day after Trump set aside his blistering rhetoric in favor of friendly overtures to China on Thursday, trying to flatter his hosts into establishing a more balanced trade relationship and doing more to blunt North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.
Winding down his two days in Beijing, Trump suggested that if the U.S. and China jointly took on the world’s problems, “I believe we can solve almost all of them, and probably all of them.”
In the name of furthering that relationship, Trump largely shelved his campaign complaints about China, at least in public. He focused on exhorting Beijing to help with North Korea, an effort expected again to take center stage at an international summit in Vietnam on Friday.
The Chinese rolled out a lavish welcome for the American president. Trump returned the kindness, heaping praise on
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than a week into their campaign, creators Radical Fish Games have managed to rake in a respectable €15k, and they still have well over three weeks to go. Whether they'll make it is still highly uncertain of course, but it's always nice to see an underdog make it. And this is a game that looks promising.The game was previously featured in an article on GOL when a browser version of the demo was made available. It is a game built around the mechanic of throwing balls, not unlike the Brockian Ultra Cricket, which you use both to fight and to solve puzzles. The protagonist of the game is the mute Lea, who has lost her memory and is stuck in a fictional MMO of the distant future. Her only hope to regain her memory is to play the game. The game is divided into story, puzzle and exploration modes, and judging by the demo, they all seem well fleshed out.Pledging €15 will give you both a DRM free build and a Steam key on release. The €25 also gives beta tester access, but what this means for a Linux backer seems uncertain, since they so far have given little info on when to expect the Linux version, other than that it will be ready before the final release.3D collect-a-thon platformer Clive & The Stones of the Ancient Bunnies makes a return to Kickstarter, but this time under the new and snappier name. The goal is unchanged from their last run, but they've already made more progress towards the £25k with over twice as many backers and more than twice as much pledged. That said, they still have far to go, as they are still well short of £5k with less than three weeks left of the project.The game is inspired by 3D platformers of the late 90s and early 00s, like Banjo-Kazooie, Spyro the Dragon, and Jak and Daxter.has you controlling the titular dual protagonists as they race through 10 different time periods to collect watches and ancient stones to stop the evil Dr. Daucus from taking over the world with his mutant army (and probably force-reading Vogon poetry to everybody too). The game will be stuffed with collectibles, enemies and mini-games and promises a solid dose of the kind of 3D platforming that has been sorely missing for the last decade.For a £10 pledge you'll get a digital download of the game once it's released. A £40 pledge puts your name in the credits, while a pledge of £60 or more scores you a t-shirt. The game could also use some help on Steam Greenlight, and even if it doesn't end up getting funded this round either, I don't think we've seen the last of this game, as the creator seems determined to finish it.is an action adventure game involving stealth, combat, puzzles and exploration. You play as Patchman, who is a prominent figure among the mostly harmless people the Sheeple. Drones arrive and subversively enslave the Sheeple, no small thanks to your oblivious protagonist, but as the game begins, you get a chance to redeem yourself by overthrowing the Drones.To do so you must grow and eat plants to gain abilities and to use both as weapons against the drones and to free your people. The Sheeple are being subjected to propaganda that makes them only want food from vending machines provided by the Drones, and in order to break the spell you need to destroy the proganda and provide the Sheeple with a healthy alternative. The Drones of course want none of this and they will do their best to destroy both you and your produce on sight, so in order to succeed you'll have to fight the Drones when possible, and otherwise stay out of sight.The developers, Naturally Intelligent, are asking for $25kto make this project become a reality. They're already past $5k, but still have a long way to go to reach their goal before the campaign ends in a little over three weeks. If you want to help, you can do so by pledging $10for a copy once it's released. If you have more money to spare, the tiers above offer interesting things like a hackable version of the game and exclusive in-game content. There's also a Steam Greenlight page for the game where you can vote if you want to be able to play the game on Steam when it's done.What do you get when you cross the classic video game The Oregon Trail with Star Trek? Probably something not quite unlike. Be a starship captain and keepsome of your crew alive while the galaxy throws weird things at you.Be it warp weasels, alien banquets or jungles on mysterious planets, every encounter has a variety of decisions that can change based on your current situation and crew. In turn, each decision you make will influence your resources, such as food, fuel andcrew. And yes, things will go wrong. Horribly wrong. For the universe is a vast, strange and frankly quite dangerous place. You're more likely to get eaten by the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal than to live long and prosper. But would we want it any other way?The fee of entry for the game is a mere $10, but $20 will also get you the SID-alicious soundtrack by Rainbow Kitten. Other rewards include the naming of crew and red/blue/gold shirts. They're still missing nearly half of their $90k goal, but that should be manageable in 10 days, right?From a game about space faring to a game taking place on a dying planet after the collapse of a space faring civilisation, long forgotten even by the Encyclopaedia Galactica.lets you play as the titular Tahira, a reluctant princess of the descendants of a colony on a forgotten outpost world. The planet is growing more inhospitable by the year, a vast army threatening to crush your people is gathering and now you, the sole heir to the throne, need to make a stand.Taking cues from both western RPGs like BioWare's games and eastern RPGs like Final Fantasy Tactics and Fire Emblem,is a story-driven RPG with tactical round-based combat. Converse with people to gain allies and influence the story. Travel and explore the world to learn more about its current denizens, and maybe unravel the history of the long-gone space farers. During combat, take control of different units and allies, leveraging their unique skills to gain victory.Graphically, the game features beautifully rotoscoped animations, giving it a realistic, but hand-drawn appeal. The design and setting are influenced by travels through Asia and the Middle East, and the music (by composer Max LL ) too mirrors the sounds and cultures of these regions. To deepen the atmosphere, the two stretch goals they've picked out would improve the soundtrack through orchestration and added voiced dialogues.One word of "warning", though: this will be an episodic game, and most of the work has gone into the first episode alone. This crowdfunding campaign only covers that first episode, as they don't want to promise more than they can deliver.Currently, with 17 days to go, they've managed to get a bit more than a third of their $68kgoal. $10gets you the first episode, $25the episode plus the soundtrack, a digital art book and a high-resolution copy of the world map.Who says pixel graphics are ugly and belong to the past? Someone who has never heard of, surely. It's Wolf Brew Games' first creation, and though it's admittedly heavily influenced by hack-n-slash classics from the 80s and the 90s like Altered Beast, Ghosts 'n Goblins, or Shadow of the Beast, it sports stunningly atmospheric graphics and enough gore to satisfy your darkest desires. It's set in a gothic world where dark forces have seized seven great towers, each one guarded by an army of nasty creatures and a mighty overlord. Bathoryn, the lycanthropic hero, will set forward to conquer the towers and liberate them from their evil occupants.The game is split up into seven areas, as you could have guessed, but each one is in turn divided into two different sections. The first one covers the approach to the tower in a horizontal side-scrolling fashion, is mainly focused on combat, and has a mini-boss at the end. The second one is the proper ascension (or descent) of the tower, and there the focus changes towards platforming and puzzles. The grand finale for each tower is of course the battle against its overlord. The gameplay retains a basic characteristic of the classics of yore, and that is its brutal and unforgiving difficulty, both in the combat and in the platforming involved, so this is probably not a game for the faint of heart or for rage-quitters.The entry fee to secure a copy of(both a DRM-free download and a Steam key), plus your name in the credits and a wallpaper, is set at $15. It's certainly a sure bet, as it currently sits at the 75% funding mark with more than 3 weeks to go. But we haven't told you the best part yet: we almost won't have to wait until its release, which is set for May 2015, a mere two months!Now, please follow us to page 2 if you want to learn the fate of last issue's picks and discover our new Biggie favourites!Obama surrounded by scandals from IRS/DOJ/NSA/HHS/EPA/State… toss squirrels w/ a speech on 50th ann of equal pay act and hope MSM follows! — Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) June 10, 2013
Vagina Squirrel! President Obama is totally breaking out his binders full of squirrels today. Perhaps he is taking a page from David Axelrod’s dunce book. Axelrod tried to throw out a squirrel via Twitter on Monday morning.
You see, President Obama is speaking on the most pressing issue of the day:
Please watch at 11:30AM as President Obama delivers remarks on the 50th Anniversary of the #EqualPay Act at http://t.co/EwhnTelGEs — Valerie Jarrett (@vj44) June 10, 2013
Unreal.
Citizens see through the charade and offer up some equal mockery.
The issue on everybody's mind RT @breakingpol: Live video: President Obama makes remarks on Equal Pay Act – @NBCNews http://t.co/5AvQOhU9My — Asawin Suebsaeng (@swin24) June 10, 2013
RT @breakingpol: Live: President Obama makes remarks on Equal Pay Act http://t.co/MZT1iDhAEb //Glad 2 C he's addressing scandals #tcot — Where's Yo Dolla (@tokm) June 10, 2013
#Eyeroll RT @whitehouse: At 11:30am ET, President Obama delivers remarks on the 50th anniversary of the #EqualPay Act. — Brent (@brento76) June 10, 2013
Obama speaks on Equal Pay Act today. "We still have much work to do, based on salary complaints in the private emails I've been reading." — John Hayward (@Doc_0) June 10, 2013
Snicker.
Obama: Equal Pay Act is important because women in the workplace are likeable enough and they're great to throw under the bus in a pinch. — Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) June 10, 2013
Double snicker.
Citizens also point out some irony: Uh, what about the White House pay gap and the fact that Democrats pay female staffers less?
Will Obama's remarks re: 50th anniversary of equal pay act include announcing that WH will begin the practice? — Brad Cundiff (@bradcundiff) June 10, 2013
So, "I don't comply with it." RT @whitehouse At 11:30am ET, President Obama delivers remarks on the 50th anniversary of the #EqualPay Act. — William Newton ن (@wbdnewton) June 10, 2013
Does the equal pay act have anything to do with how much the Obama pays women in his admin. or no? — woot6 (@woot6) June 10, 2013
Bingo.
Too bad he had no remarks on the 69th anniv. of #DDAY. MT @POLITICOvideo: WATCH LIVE: Obama remarks on 50th anniversary of the Equal Pay Act — Stand Up! Speak Up! (@geezervision) June 10, 2013
Huh. Funny that. But, hey, what chance would he have had then to offer up some lady parts squirrel?
Related:
#PaycheckFairness hijacked: Reid, Obama tweet about ‘paycheck fairness’ while Dems pay female staffers less
With laser-like focus on Romney’s ‘binders full of women,’ Obama ignores White House pay gap
Democrats use women as pawns; Conservatives fight back on Paycheck Fairness Act, equal pay nonsense
Democrats position Paycheck Fairness Act as raise, ignore White House disparity
War on diversity! Obama taps all white male candidates for key positions
White House releases more ‘proof’ that Obama doesn’t think girls have cooties
White House pic: Boys rule, girls drool! Obama keeps women out of inner circle; Update: WH releases ‘hey, guys, he totally loves women’ photoResponding to US President Donald Trump’s announcement on June 16 that he is reversing steps to normalize relations with Cuba, the Cuban government said the US is in no position to lecture on human rights.
In a speech described by the Cuban government as “full of hostile rhetoric,” US President Donald Trump slammed Cuba for human rights abuses, targeting the country’s unique political system as the root cause of the problem. “This is the simple truth of the Castro regime,” he said. “My administration will not hide from it, excuse it, or glamorize it. And we will never, ever be blind to it.”
The Cuban government hit back at Trump’s restrictions and harsh rhetoric, saying the US is returning to the “coercive methods from the past.” Calling the US president “ill-advised,” Trump was criticized for favoring the political interests of what the Cuban government termed an “extremist minority” in order to punish Cuba for sticking to its own development path, effectively taking away the country’s right to development, and warned that any strategy aimed at regime change would be doomed to fail.
US policy toward Cuba has always been intended to keep the country poor and isolated with the hope of bringing about regime change, an aggressive foreign policy that has its roots in the Cold War. Reversing hard-won steps to end the outdated policy and normalize bilateral relations suggests that Trump’s Cuba policy is not all about human rights. The reversal also goes against US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s idea that American values should be separate from US foreign policy.
In its statement, the Cuban government detailed a litany of human rights problems in the US, such as worsening racial discrimination and high levels of violence, many of which are highlighted in China’s Human Rights Record of the United States, an annual report that takes a much-needed critical look at the human rights situation in the US. The report details aspects of the human rights situation, including mass shootings, racial discrimination, and police brutality, as well as irresponsible behavior on the world stage, including repeated trampling on other countries’ human rights and refusal to approve key international conventions on human rights.
The policy reversal on Cuba should, therefore, not be surprising. China has long argued that the US is more concerned with using human rights as a political instrument against other countries than it is with promoting human rights, and has repeatedly called on the US to cease applying double standards on human rights and pursuing hegemony under the pretext of human rights and democracy. While China’s human rights record is not perfect, the country is dedicated to improving its situation, with efforts to end extreme poverty being among the greatest human rights achievements of all time.
No doubt, many Americans are quick to dismiss such statements and reports as propaganda or fake news, but the truth of the matter is that the US really is in no position to claim the title of human rights defender. Addressing the UN Human Rights Council earlier this month, US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said: “Being a member of this council is a privilege and no country who is a human rights violator should be allowed a seat at the table.” Yet, not only do many US laws and practices violate internationally recognized human rights, the world remains deeply worried about grave and systematic abuses by the US government, including the use of torture at the CIA’s network of "black sites," and one of the most notorious detainee interrogation techniques -- "waterboarding," a form of torture which Trump stated he wanted to bring back.
To make matters worse, the human rights situation in the US has seen a dramatic deterioration under Trump as the administration continues to take actions that undermine human rights at home and abroad, according to the Trump Human Rights Tracker, an online tool created by the Columbia Law School. Alleged abuses by the US president are both numerous and extensive, and include everything from violations of the right to privacy to violations of the right to life. The most recent entry shows Trump’s decision to take the US out of the global fight against climate change, a selfish and reckless decision that carries huge human rights implications for the entire world.
As criticism of human rights abuses in the US shows, both by world governments and US-based nongovernmental organizations, the country is in no position to lecture the world on human rights. The US should look in the mirror before pointing fingers or casting blame on other countries for their problems, because the truth of the matter is that, while the US values human rights and has an important role to play in promoting them, it is just another country and not a shining city on a hill.Presenting the Shaykh ‘N Bake: A critical analysis of the utilization of shame grenade discourse by Muslims on the internets and its efficacy. Please watch the following video along with the written explanation immediately after.
Definition of Terms
Shaykh ‘N Bake: To reverse a regular conversation into something serious, religious, or self-righteous. Characteristic of manipulative behavior. In other words, to lob a shame grenade. \’shām grə•nād\ noun – A rhetorical object hurled into a conversation to compel someone into a certain action via complete embarrassment. When detonated it makes everyone within its “shame radius” want to give up on life.
Usage
Commonly occurs online. Utilized most often by overzealous people online under the guise of “dawah” or “naseehah,” but accounts to little more than a feeble attempt at self-importance and humiliation of others. The phenomenon is not unique to the Muslim community (see: Jesus Juke), but we do have our own distinct flavor of it. The easiest way to shame grenade someone is to conflate two situations that are not mutually exclusive (or sometimes even related) in an attempt to guilt someone into a desired action. “How dare you spend $3 on coffee instead of donating $3 to my project.” Or, “how dare you watch a movie in Ramadan, you should spend that time in ibadah.” Also, “if you love Islam and want people to stop starving, share this photo on Facebook otherwise you are complicit in their oppression.” Please see video above for more detailed real life examples.
Characteristics
If I haven’t seen it, it must not exist. We sometimes confuse having Google with having access to the angels recording everything (or rather, the angels on the shoulders of whoever we want to attack). I once engaged someone in this type of discussion and asked them, “have you listened to every single lecture of theirs both online and in person to know they’ve never spoken about this topic?” And they said something along the lines of no, but it should show up when I google it. What’s ironic is the same people want you to make 70 excuses for them or their cause, but they can’t give you more than 1.5 seconds of Google. Guilty until proven innocent. Because their cause is so important, it somehow gives them free reign to throw out accusations against people. It is okay to be rude, abrasive and offensive – because attacking people is for a greater good of clarifying the truth. And because these are scholars/speakers/activists, it is okay to assume they’re guilty first. The burden of proof and good manners are thrown in the trash in the name of the truth and the “good” of “the ummah.” And the qualifications of those shaming the speakers? Often, nothing aside from feeling entitled to throw around accusations of guilt. Polarized Us vs. Them Cult Mentality They think whatever issue they are shaming others on is a clear, unequivocal truth. And not only a truth, but a truth that trumps any other issue of concern. Therefore, if you’re not with them, you’re against them. Sound familiar? This leads them to make personal attacks against whoever they are ‘advising’ and feel it is completely justified. Priorities will always differ by context and circumstance. But you know what? Most of these people will acknowledge that point and then argue that they are the exception. Mark my words, it will probably happen in the comments section of this very article. Advice is a Duty Upon Muslims We have something in Islam called hikmah (wisdom). An example of this is Aisha saying if the prohibition of alcohol was the first commandment given, no one would have followed it. Another is the hadith mentioning that gentleness is not put into something except that it beautifies it [reference]. Even Musa [as] was told to speak to Fir’awn in a kind way. They think just because what they are saying is technically “true,” it somehow absolves them of context, good manners, and common sense. It’s kind of like being in the ER because you just had a heart attack, on the brink of death, and then kicking the Muslim physician out of the room for not having a beard. You may win the battle, but.. False Humility This is my favorite one. This is when someone feels they are right, but they know if they insist upon it, they will sound arrogant. So they put on the cloak of false humility and act like they don’t know anything and ask questions to cause fitnah. This is unbelievably common. If you have an opinion or understanding, there is a way to express it and ask a question. People do it all the time. But donning the false humility persona is usually an indicator that they’re gearing up to attack someone but want to appear polite. Part of false humility is claiming they are acting for the “good of the ummah” – as if their comment on a YouTube video will somehow save thousands of people from falsehood. It’s very much a Fox News style tactic (that was also parodied quite well by Southpark – Disclaimer: link may have some inappropriate language). Toxic Negativity This is the worst consequence. It seems people who do this are obsessed with determining who Allah hates, why He hates them, and speaking on His behalf about it nonstop. They show up online, shout venom at everyone, and then disappear. If you went to their local masjids, most people would not even know who they were. It’s doubtful any of them have made a positive impact on anyone there. Rather, they’re usually most likely known as troublemakers (if known to anyone at all). They think they are doing good work online by somehow forbidding the evil, but all they do is alienate and drive people away from the religion. This type of negativity never results in anything positive. It doesn’t result in changed behavior on the part of the one being “advised.” It doesn’t even motivate the one “advising” to actually do something productive. A Zero-Sum Game This is bigger than just being a characteristic of the Shaykh ‘n Bake. It’s an entire mindset. It’s the incorrect understanding that everything in life is zero sum. It is about making things mutually exclusive when they aren’t. Zero sum is something normally applied to things like money. It’s like the gas in your car, once it’s out, it’s out. But do you apply this principle to your kids? Do you have 2 kids, find out you’re expecting a 3rd and say, “You know what, that’s great but I’m just all out of love to give.” One of the ways these people operate is by convincing others that everything is zero-sum. If you comment on one tragedy, it means you’ve somehow taken away importance from another. If you make dua for one thing, it means you can’t make dua for another. This point is critical, because their entire paradigm hinges on it. They have to convince everyone that if a scholar comments about one thing, it means he is ignoring another – and therefore must be attacked. Manipulation, Bullying, and Spiritual Blackmail Yes, there is such a thing as spiritual blackmail. When someone is not able to articulate a point in an effective or persuasive manner, such that the one listening is actually affected by it – then they resort to this manipulation technique. I am right, and if you disagree with me, you’re going to hell. Forget about my own akhirah, how are YOU going to answer to Allah on the Day of Judgment when He asks you in front of all of mankind about your Facebook post?? In reality, this behavior is nothing more than good ole bullying – except under a religious guise. It’s meant to manipulate others and try gain some type of upper hand. They will never admit they are wrong. They get overly dramatic and give an exaggerated sense of importance to their issue. Life is a game for them. In fact even the religion has some game like qualities for them. It’s about proving you are right, that you’re on the winning team. It’s showing you held your ground and overcame your opponent. And in order to win, you may manipulate others.
People who cannot articulate their faults or mistakes see life as a game. They are keeping score and they intend to win. They want you to submit but have no intention of submitting themselves. Theirs is not a world where we are supposed to create intimacy and trust through grace, but a world where we are supposed to accumulate power and security by tricking the people around us (Donald Miller, The Single Defining Characteristic of a Manipulator). Like this? Get more of our great articles. Get more of our great articles.
All is fair when you are working for a higher purpose.
Perspective
The most important lesson I have learned is to simply block these people out. There was a time where I used to engage and debate with people on issues like this, but life is simply too short. In the end, you don’t win anything. At most, you might change someone’s mind, but even that is unlikely. The most likely consequence is that they will kill your positive energy. They will make you hate life. They will make you wish you had never opened your mouth, about anything. If these people had their way, no one would ever accomplish anything good. In their mind, unless something meets their arbitrary level of perfection, it is not worth being done. Keep doing your work. Keep driving your bus, and don’t let them get on it. Anas ibn Malik reported: The Messenger of Allah,, said, “If you’re about to plant a tree and the Day of Judgment commences, finish what you started” (Musnad Ahmed, sahih). No matter what you work on, there will be haters. No matter what effort you make, someone will be there to criticize it. And while it may not be easy, you simply need to sniff out those trying to shame grenade you and block them out of your life. Unfriend them on Facebook, block them on Twitter, delete their contact from your phone, and don’t let them get to you. Those who complain and criticize will disappear forgotten, but in the end the good work you do will remain and insha’Allah be a legacy. Click the image below for an infographic of the video by Sketchy Muslim:
Humiliating people in the name of religion is the practice of someone deprived of the first fruit of religion, humility. — nouman (@noumanbayyinah) August 29, 2013
“There are two types of people in this world: people who do things, and people who criticize those who do things.” — Ḥamza Yūsuf Quotes (@HamzaYusufQ) September 2, 2013
Insulting others is never a way of correcting them. Instead it causes more damage & proves that we need help ourselves. — Mufti Ismail Menk (@muftimenk) September 2, 2013
7. Haters are life’s truest losers. Do you want to end up losing everything that matters in life? Be a hater. — umair (@umairh) September 1, 2013
Why do so many Muslims assume everything is forbidden, and look to deny and prohibit rather than encourage and inspire? — haroon moghul (@hsmoghul) August 29, 2013
2. Be a creator, not just a critic. Otherwise, you’ll always wonder. — umair (@umairh) August 27, 2013
Do the hard work or support those doing it but dont hinder it. Some people neither do the work nor let others do it. — Mufti Ismail Menk (@muftimenk) August 23, 2013
“Shame الحياء” is a believer’s personal trait to introspect one’s own words-actions, not something to bring upon others #shamegrenade — Nomaan Baig (@ShaykhNBaig) September 2, 2013
I’m always uneasy about the concept of “speaking truth,” as if we somehow know the truth and only have to enlighten others… — Noam Chomsky (@daily_chomsky) September 11, 2013
…who have not risen to our elevated level. — Noam Chomsky (@daily_chomsky) September 11, 2013Share. And yes, you can get it on vinyl. And yes, you can get it on vinyl.
Ubisoft has revealed that Cliff Martinez, the man behind the scores of Drive and Spring Breakers, will be composing the soundtrack for Far Cry 4.
The film composer and former Red Hot Chili Peppers member has been working with Ubisoft Montreal's Far Cry 4 Music Designer Jerome Angelot, Music Supervisor Simon Landry, and Audio Director Tony Gronick.
“Bringing Cliff on board was a no-brainer," said Gronick. "Collaborating with him was a dream. He has the remarkable ability to portray compelling emotions and elevate the mundane into extraordinary with his musical talent.”
Exit Theatre Mode
Martinez's name has been in the works since last year, when he casually announced he was working on the soundtrack well before the game's announcement.
Those interested in owning the soundtrack will have a variety of ways to do so. A digital edition will be released on November 4, and a limited 2-CD edition will be available on December 2 in North America and on December 9 in Europe. The soundtrack will also be available on vinyl, with a limited 3-LP edition released in January 2015.
Far Cry 4 launches world-wide on November 18 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC.
Lauren Puga is a freelance writer and aspiring Disney princess. You can follow her on Twitter @kittentarantino.The online multiplayer add-on content for 2010's Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, set to release on PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade this week, has been delayed once again just two days before its scheduled release, a representative for Ubisoft confirmed to Polygon today.
The representative stated that the content has been further delayed for "fine-tuning" to address concerns raised over the presentation of the content's sprites.
"The downloadable content for Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game has been delayed for fine-tuning and to incorporate feedback from the passionate Scott Pilgrim community," the representative said. "Ubisoft is addressing feedback from the community on the best ways to honor retro games in the Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game DLC in an accurate and respectful manner. Ubisoft, and the new team developing the DLC, respect creative properties and, of course, want to be sure to deliver a game experience that is a proper tribute to the Scott Pilgrim franchise."
Last week, criticism over the DLC's content spread via social media sites, some claiming the DLC's sprites had been copied from 2004 Game Boy Advance title Sonic Battle. In response to fan tweets about the supposedly copied sprites, creator Brian Lee O'Malley tweeted that "none of the team worked on this DLC."
The add-on content, originally announced in August 2012 for $5/400 Microsoft Points — over three years after the game was originally announced at the 2009 Comic-Con — will add an online multiplayer component and Scott's roommate Wallace Wells as a playable character. That same month it was announced the DLC would be delayed until fall. In December the content was pushed back again to 2013, and just last month the XBLA version was given a Feb. 6 release date.BONN Germany (Reuters) - A U.S. plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions from power plants is not enough to achieve its goals for limiting climate change, and all nations will need to significantly step up actions to curb warming, a group of scientists said in a report on Wednesday.
Washington announced plans on Monday to cut emissions from power plants by 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, as the centerpiece of a U.S. policy to fight climate change.
Niklas Hoehne, of Ecofys - joint compiler of the Climate Action Tracker report with research group Climate Analytics and the Pik Potsdam Institute - said the plan would not even ensure that the United States meets an existing national goal, set in 2009, of a cut of 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.
The world is on track to exceed an agreed ceiling for average temperature rises of 2 degrees Celsius (1.4 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times, seen as a threshold for worsening droughts, heatwaves and rising seas, scientists say.
“Every little step has to be welcomed... but this is not enough to get on a 2C pathway,” said Climate Analytics’ Bill Hare told a news conference.
“All governments will have to significantly increase their action on climate change – both before 2020 and after”, to stay below 2 degrees, according to the report, released on the sidelines of a June 4-15 U.N. meeting in Bonn, Germany on ways to limit global warming.
The Climate Action Tracker suggested that overall U.S. emissions would be only about 10 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, roughly equal with existing levels, unless tougher action is taken in sectors from transport to agriculture.
And worldwide, it said that greenhouse gas emissions would have to fall to zero sometime between 2060 to 2080 - more ambitious than almost any nation’s long-term plans - to give a strong chance of limiting warming to below 2 degrees Celsius.
On current trends, it said that temperatures were set to rise by about 3.7 degrees Celsius and have already risen by about 0.8 degrees since the Industrial Revolution.
Almost 200 nations agreed the 2-degree goal in 2010 and the Bonn meeting of senior officials and ministers is part of work towards a deal due to be done at a summit in Paris at the end of 2015 to limit warming. [ID:nL6N0OK22O]
The U.N’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says it is at least 95 percent probable that human actions, led by burning of fossil fuels, are the main cause of climate change rather than natural variations in the climate.ABBOTSFORD (NEWS 1130) – It’s been just over a week since a racially offensive confrontation on South Fraser Way in Abbotsford went viral online and there has been a break in the case.
In the video, which was posted to Twitter, a man is seen in a parking lot shouting racial slurs, expletives, and the words “white power” to a person behind the camera. The man also asks, “When did you come to Canada?” The man behind the camera is heard saying, “I was born in Canada.”
The man on camera grabs a cell phone from a parked pick-up truck and walks up to the videographer while continuing to yell.
Police in Abbotsford now say 47-year-old Karry Vernon Corbett of Hope has been charged with several offences including two counts of assault, one count of uttering threats and one count of causing a disturbance.
However, police have yet to find Corbett. They say a warrant has been issued for his arrest. “Shortly after that video was recorded, the witness made contact with the APD and then we began our investigation. We identified the suspect, then ultimately forwarded a report to Crown Counsel,” explains Constable Ian MacDonald.
#abbypd looking for 47 year old Karry CORBETT of Hope in relation to incident – racist rant caught on video. https://t.co/9xAWxxH6vq pic.twitter.com/1et8F6Lkt7 — Abbotsford Police (@AbbyPoliceDept) October 31, 2016
He adds the charges of assault doesn’t necessarily mean there was a physical fight. “It isn’t restricted to just actually making physical contact with someone. It can be gesturing and posturing and having the ability to do that person harm and we believe Mr. Corbett did that first to the 72-year-old traffic attendant, then to the witness. We believe also that he uttered a threat to that traffic attendant prior to the camera being turned on. We’ve got corroboration of those facts from some witnesses.”
MacDonald says the province’s Hate Crimes Unit was called in, but no hate crimes charges have been approved. “That can be something that can be considered. The standard for a hate crimes per se is pretty difficult given the circumstances. To get an actual hate crimes charges, he would’ve had to either been inciting others to join in the hatred or that he’s publishing with an intent to spread hatred. For the information we have, this was essentially a belligerent and albeit, a racist sounding individual who was targeting his comments at one individual.”
Police are pleading with anyone who knows his whereabouts to call 911 or CrimeStoppers at 1.800.222.TIPS.Downing Street has played down the significance of Barack Obama’s comments urging the UK to remain part of the European Union if it did not want to lose influence in the world, stating that the British people would have the final say.
The US president made his strongest intervention yet in Britain’s nascent referendum campaign in an interview
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ties everything together, not only about mutations, but about the breakdown of the Gulf ecosystem generally. There’s no way that every one of these mutated fish was caught before it ended up on a dinner plate. I don’t know what that means for humans who consume them; the process of cooking may have removed some of the toxics. But I am no longer hankering for Gulf sushi. And the Gulf of Mexico provides 40% of all seafood consumed in the US, so it’s not really “Gulf” sushi at all.
Scientists know enough about dispersants to say fairly confidently that they’re causing the mutations in the Gulf. I’m sure the American Petroleum Institute can find some who think otherwise. And the office of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, contacted for the story, claimed that “Gulf seafood has consistently tested lower than the safety thresholds established by the FDA for the levels of oil and dispersant contamination that would pose a risk to human health.” And then there’s this bit of fancy footwork:
At the federal government level, the Food and Drug Administration and Environmental Protection Agency – both federal agencies which have powers in the this area – insisted Al Jazeera talk with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA won’t comment to the media because its involvement in collecting information for an ongoing lawsuit against BP.
So much remains unknown about the oil disaster, that it’s hard to take any statement denying serious damage to the Gulf on faith.Long before "Making a Murderer," wrongly convicted prisoner Anthony Porter grabbed national headlines, spending nearly 17 years on death row before his murder conviction was overturned. But now a lot of people think this free man may have been guilty of the crime.
Crime Watch Daily investigates "A Murder in the Park."
Anthony Porter may be the luckiest man on earth. He was convicted of a grisly murder, and his clock on death row was ticking. Porter was just 48 hours away from being executed. Then somebody else confessed.
It's the subject of "A Murder in the Park," Showtime's sensational tale of a single-minded pursuit of justice that goes barreling off the rails.
After 17 years on death row, Porter walks into the arms of the man who freed him: Dr. David Protess.
The good doctor engaged a team of his star Northwestern University journalism students to find the real killer in Porter's case. And when they found the man who confessed to the crimes, Alstory Simon, Porter breathes free, and it seems justice prevails.
But there's a catch.
TV and film producer Shawn Rech combed through reams of court documents and hours of testimony to reveal the untold truth of this explosive story.
And even for the veteran true-crime producer, he was blown away by what he found.When it comes to politicians abandoning election promises, time should not heal all wounds
Braden Klassen, Contributor
When the federal government officially announced that it was breaking a steadfast campaign promise by abandoning its efforts towards facilitating electoral reform, Canadians reacted in delight and dismay, but mostly in disinterest.
Those who were upset by the flip-flop have every right to be, and they should continue to voice their opinions about this issue, even though the chances of reinvigorating electoral reform are practically non-existent. Besides voting, consistent scrutiny and openly-voiced dissent are some of the few methods that citizens have to influence their government toward being accountable for its actions.
An online petition sponsored by Nathan Cullen of the NDP has gathered tens of thousands of signatures from people who want the reform efforts to continue. In cities across Canada, there are multiple rallies being held in protest of the unpopular decision to leave the election process as it is.
The erratic political atmosphere of late, replete with Trumps and Brexits and Putins (oh my!) is providing ample fuel for activist movements, and seems to be galvanizing people who were previously indifferent to politics. Younger Canadians are becoming more involved in social and political issues, and it’s possible that this broken promise could serve as a watershed moment for the young voter—a lesson in government deception, a cause that could inspire change in the future leaders of the country.
For most governments, the complacency of the public is almost as good as total assent, and nothing short of a substantial loss of votes in the next election can prevent the leading party from crossing the people that elected them. When Trudeau presumptuously talks about “doing what’s best for Canada,” he’s wresting the control of the country away from its citizens and telling them it’s in their best interest, like some kind of misguided and overprotective parent. His claims that proportional representation can lead to divisive politics that enable extremist political sects is sheer exaggeration. Germany, New Zealand and Ireland are examples of countries that have used a form of proportional representation in their governments for years, and they all hold high rankings on the political stability index maintained by The World Bank.
Disappointingly, the attention span of the electorate has proven to be a little short on issues like these in the past, but there are signs that that’s beginning to change. Social media has become an increasingly powerful political apparatus, and the online publications and records of everything that politicians do is now permanently saved and accessible. This is hugely beneficial to those who are interested in the goings-on of our government, and helps to facilitate political discussion and online advocacy efforts like Cullen’s petition.
Breaking a promise as big as electoral reform is a big deal. Betrayals like this really do matter. These kinds of transgressions add up over time, especially if we let them slide without calling them out. The federal government always has some kind of longer-term political calculus at play when it comes to enacting or backing out of decisions, which means that the political calculus of the electorate needs to match that if it wants to effectively hold the government to account. They’re counting on the tendency of the public to become pacified given enough time and space, and we shouldn’t allow that.
Refusing to forget the broken promises of the past can help us prevent the broken promises of the future. If you’re mad about electoral reform being scrapped, the best thing you can do to stop something like this from happening again is to stay mad.History will be made Wednesday in Kansas City when Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred visits the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.
Manfred, along with MLB Players Association executive director Tony Clark, is expected to announce a partnership with the museum including a significant donation, according to Negro Leagues Museum president Bob Kendrick.
“We’ve gotten some support throughout our existence, but we’ve never sat down at a table with the league to find out ways to support the museum,” Kendrick said. “It’s important to formulate partnership not just for financial reasons, but to have that support and to create a platform we can continue to rely on going forward.”
Kendrick pointed out the ever-changing social conditions of the country and wants baseball fans to know the museum is a platform of learning and a place to draw strength.
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“Timing is everything,” Kendrick said. “Ever since the museum’s existence, we’ve been about promoting the game of baseball. We continue to develop new fans and show the tremendous impact Negro Leagues had in making baseball better.”
Manfred’s announcement comes just after the museum inducted its 2017 “Hall of Game” class last Saturday.
Kendrick was mum on discussing a donation figure, but said support from the league is being significantly raised to a new level.
“We are ecstatic,” Kendrick said. “What better place to have this conversation than the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum … Whatever financial support we get will be appreciated and put to great use.”
Manfred is expected to speak at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, located in the 18th and Vine Jazz District.Image caption Guillaume Sagot, founder of Ateliers de Nimes, in his workshop
Although jeans are often associated with North America, the material they are made from - denim - actually originates from the southern French city of Nimes. And now a small company has started making jeans in the birthplace of denim.
In his small workshop looking out on to a sun-drenched courtyard in a residential street in Nimes, Guillaume Sagot is cutting up a denim canvas with a giant pair of scissors.
The 31-year-old entrepreneur uses chalk first to draw the outline of the different jean segments before carefully cutting them to size. The cuts will then be sent to Marseille, an hour and a half's drive away, to construct pairs of jeans at a small artisanal textile factory.
Sagot started his business, Ateliers de Nimes, two years ago. The idea was simple: to make jeans in the birthplace of denim.
But in a city that no longer has a textile industry that proved difficult from the outset.
"I had to start completely from scratch," he tells me.
"There is no-one left in Nimes who can make jeans. I found a tailor in Marseille who taught me how to make them and I now do most of the work myself by hand. The factory in Marseille puts all the components of the jeans together."
The birthplace of denim
The term "denim" derives from the French "serge de Nimes", meaning "serge (a sturdy fabric) from Nimes". Yet the fabric is no longer produced anywhere in France.
Sagot therefore buys the denim canvas from the Venice region of Italy, made on an old shuttle-loom from the 1950s.
Image caption Each pair of Ateliers de Nimes jeans is hand-made and individually numbered
Nimes once had a booming textile industry. In the 18th and 19th Centuries, the city was home to large textile factories producing many different fabrics.
Thousands of people worked in textiles in the city during the height of the industry. They would crouch along the river that flowed through the streets of Nimes, dying cotton, wool and silk.
Many of these fabrics were exported to North America, including serge de Nimes, which caught the eye of businessman Levi Strauss in the 1860s. Strauss used this new fabric, re-baptised as denim, to create what became known as blue jeans.
There is little left now in the city to testify to Nimes' once thriving textile industry. The river that was used by the dyers is now underground, old factories have been repurposed, and the city's economy is now mainly service-led.
Image caption In the 18th and 19th Centuries a river ran through this street where workers would dye cotton, silk and wool
At the turn of the 20th Century, textile production in the city slowed down. Despite the popularity of denim, fashion tastes changed and demand for many of Nimes' fabrics fell. Production of denim eventually moved to cheaper locations in Europe and then Asia, and vanished from the region all together.
"The skills and expertise are starting to disappear completely now," explains Martine Nougarede, the former curator of the city's history museum who has spent the best part of her life researching the history of textile production in the city.
"There is always this nostalgia to revive the textile industry in Nimes. I don't think that's possible though. There isn't the demand for it here.
"With the advent of globalisation, textile factories have moved to places where labour is cheaper. You can't compete in terms of production and labour costs by having factories in France or even anywhere in Western Europe."
Denim dreams
Over 50% of denim is now produced in Asia, in countries such as China, India and Pakistan. The few denim mills left in Europe and North America are facing another significant challenge: the use of synthetic fibres.
In an effort to reduce costs, many manufacturers are blending cotton with polyester, and as a result denim factories are being dismantled as demand for top quality denim falls.
Image caption Martine Nougarede, does not believe it is possible to revive the textile industry in Nimes
Despite those pressures, back in his Ateliers de Nimes workshop, Guillaume Sagot remains upbeat. His ambition is to produce jeans entirely made in France, from the denim to the buttons and rivets.
"My dream is to open two factories in Nimes. One that makes denim and the other that creates jeans," he says.
But how can he remain competitive when labour and production costs are so high?
Well Ateliers de Nimes' jeans don't come cheap - the three styles on offer cost €269 (£235) each.
"The jeans are for people who really appreciate good denim, and want jeans that last and that are distinctive," Sagot explains. "Each model is hand-made and individually numbered so you know that the jeans you are wearing are unique."
Ateliers de Nimes sells its jeans online and in just over a dozen small boutiques dotted around the south of France. Sagot says he is already getting more orders from the shops and he is now working on new cuts.
So despite the huge cost of making jeans in France, it seems there is a demand for high-end artisanal jeans, but we appear to be a long way off from seeing a return of denim production and a revival of the textile industry in the south of France.
You can listen to Joshua Thorpe's report on World Business Report.Shortly before 1 PM, Michelle Kersch, the appointed PR person for the new hockey organization, stepped up on stage and announced to the gathering of media that in a few short moments The Creator and a guest would be taking the stage. They will share a few short remarks, open questions to the room, to the people joining on the phone, and then after the press conference is over there will be a photo opportunity and a chance for individual on camera interviews.
Textbook. Like every press conference I’ve ever been to before. Then, we strayed from the regular every day press conference, and we entered into the world of Las Vegas hockey. Just follow along, I’ll explain what I mean later.
The Creator and George McPhee walked in to the room together. Bill jumped up on stage first followed by the man he was about to formally announce as the first general manager in franchise history. McPhee says softly, “where you want me (to sit).” The Creator responds, “Well I don’t know, you’re the GM.”
And there you had it. The official announcement of the most important hire in team history had been made. As an off the cuff remark… about chairs.
It was a small short moment, but a telling one. A moment in which most in the room probably didn’t even understand the significance. A moment that will forever be etched in the history of Las Vegas hockey, and years down the road, hopefully on a night when we watch our team hoist the Stanley Cup, we’ll all sit back and have good laugh about.
It was a microcosm of the organization as a whole. Rather than this…
George McPhee is our guy. He’s a former hockey player, he’s a lawyer, he was the general manager of the Capitals for 17 years, a very well managed and successful organization, and I am proud to introduce him today as the new general manager of our hockey club in Las Vegas. -The Creator
Which came two minutes later. The sound byte and quote formally introducing the GM was “Well I don’t know, you’re the GM.”
And in a way, it was perfect. It’s exactly what we’ve come to know from this organization and it’s beautiful. It’s like watching a person go from infant to toddler to a child to an adult. They don’t know better because they’ve never done it before, and we are here to live it with them every step of the way.
I also want to thank Steve Carp (LVRJ) for calling me on the phone and saying Foley you really better have a press conference to announce this because it’s kind of a big deal. -The Creator
They are quite literally, figuratively, learning how to walk. Willing to take assistance from just about anyone who is there to offer it to them.
With the hires of guys like George McPhee, eventually Murray Craven, and every other hockey lifer that’s brought on board, the organization will grow closer and closer to resembling what we’ve all come to expect from a professional sports franchise. Guys who have been there, done that, seen it all, and know what’s right from wrong when it comes to forming public perception about this franchise.
In the meantime, we have the opportunity to sit back and watch something incredibly rare in sports. An organization that’s so innocent it’s actually malleable. Suggestions are seriously taken to heart, and if they are good enough, they’ll be put to action.
The team is a ball of clay right now, and I for one am having so much fun watching it as it molds into a masterpiece.
So what’s next for this franchise?
“Well I don’t know, you’re the GM.”There has been a growth in precarious work in Ontario in the past decade. This affects us all. Beyond the anxiety itself that comes with vulnerable work, many in the labour market do not have the same social and legal protections and security that other workers enjoy. This needs to change. Precarious employment is now found in all sectors of our economy and in every occupation. According to recent reports by United Way Toronto with McMaster University and the Law Commission of Ontario, barely half of us have stable jobs with benefits and security. Perhaps most surprising, insecure jobs have crept into middle- and high-income — groups that were previously immune to this type of employment.
Freelance and other precarious work has been on the rise in Ontario for the past decade. ( Jim Rankin / Toronto Star )
A shrinking manufacturing sector, advances in technology and fierce global competition have all contributed to a shifting jobs picture. These changes in the labour market are fairly well known, but the impact on our lives outside work is coming as a surprise to many. Creeping job insecurity is taking a toll on our personal sense of well-being. It curtails family time, produces financial worries and causes many of us to delay significant life decisions. Research suggests the growth in precarious employment may be undermining our community by straining social networks, threatening charitable giving and limiting civic engagement. So what should we do to reduce individuals’ insecurity in light of the realities of today’s labour market? A number of practical steps can be taken that would mitigate the negative impacts of precarious employment and reduce the vulnerability of workers.
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We first must bring people together to understand the importance of the issue for the well-being of our community. It’s crucial for the private sector and labour, community organizations and governments to come together to identify common ground. Recently, United Way Toronto and McMaster University took a first step in this direction. The consensus that emerged from those consultations was that precarious employment and the insecurity that goes with it were having a real impact on the health of individuals and our community and that all of us must be part of creating solutions. We must then develop a comprehensive policy response to this growth in precarious employment that is nonetheless sensitive to the economic realities we face. The policy response will need to be multi-faceted and, ultimately, will need to modernize our social benefits to account for changes in the labour market. A full response would need to include federal changes to the Employment Insurance system to include more workers in the Greater Toronto Region under the EI umbrella. It would ensure that federal training funds are more widely available to precarious workers who are currently shut out of most federal training programs. But the province will need to also play a big role, given its jurisdiction over employment standards, wages and many income security programs. The upcoming Ontario Budget is an opportunity to take practical steps to help precarious workers at little to no cost. The provincial Employment Standards Act is the basic foundation of rules to ensure that fairness in the workplace is the right of all Ontarians. The province made a number of significant changes to the Act in 2009 in response to changes in the labour market. These were important in extending protections to the growing number of workers employed by temporary agencies. Further steps to modernize the Act are now necessary.
Ontario has also begun to move forward with a key plank in its Poverty Reduction Strategy by committing additional resources to enforce employment standards. The province now needs to move forward and act on the pledge through an additional $5.5 million into dedicated proactive inspections. This would go a long way toward ensuring every worker is treated fairly. Ontario has an opportunity to modernize its legislation to improve protection for vulnerable workers. In conjunction with social assistance reform, this could be an important step forward in ensuring that employment is truly a pathway to income security. This is a goal that all parties in the Ontario Legislature should support. And it would be an important momentum-builder for an agenda that every sector of our society has to take part in. Susan McIsaac is President & CEO of United Way Toronto. Matthew Mendelsohn is the founding director of the Mowat Centre at the University of Toronto.Hardcore outfit Like Moths To Flames’ new LP Dark Divine drops tomorrow, but AP is streaming the full record right now, and you can listen to it below. Accompanying the stream are lyrics pulled from Dark Divine, analysed and explained by frontman Chris Roetter himself.
Read more: 10 essential tips for songwriters, from scene songwriter Curtis Peoples
Listen to Dark Divine right now:
“Shut my eyes from the mess I'm in
Pull me out from the wreckage”
— “New Plagues”
“Last couple years have kind of been a mess for the band, treating this album as a chance for a rebirth; and this song kind of ties in with that theme.”
“To silence all the voices in my head
I'd have to forget every word you said”
— “Even God Has A Hell”
“This is kind of a personal look at one of the relationships I hold closest to my heart. I almost lost one of my best friends a few years back when they became ill. Their voice remained in my head, and since then I’ve used it as a driving force to keep pushing forward.”
“Nothing like a little spite
In pure disgust to feel alive”
— “Mischief Managed”
“This kind of pays tribute to some of our past material. There is a freeing feeling in letting someone go, especially one that’s weighed you down. While we’ve changed a lot of focus in the lyrical content, I think this feels almost connected to some of the older songs.”
“I should have known
I should have trusted
My instinct never proves me wrong
I should have known
I should have listened
To my intuition”
— “Instinctive Intuition”
“This song is about going with your gut—pretty self-explanatory with the lyrical content in the chorus. It’s pretty easy to beat yourself up when something happens, that you had a feeling would happen.”
“I feel dead in this room
Hear the sound of waves
I close my eyes and it brings me back to life”
— “The Skeletons I Keep”
“One of the nights in the studio, I remember closing my eyes and feeling weightless when I thought of the ocean and the sound of the waves. I was having a hard time writing the song and just imagined myself floating through it. The rest of the song came to life afterwards.”
“I'll set fire to your legacy
Up in smoke
Without sympathy
Crashing to burn in your misery”
— “False Idol”
“I think a lot of people manipulate the platform they’re given—whether it be in the music industry or outside of it. People who aren’t doing what they do for the right reasons deserve to be exposed for it.”
Like Moth To Flames' Dark Divine releases Friday, Nov. 3, and you can pre-order here.
Check out their tour dates with Fit For A King and In Hearts Wake below:
11/09 – St. Louis, MO @ Fubar
11/10 – St. Paul, MN @ Amsterdam Bar & Hall
11/11 – Chicago, IL @ Beat Kitchen
11/12 – Milwaukee, WI @ The Rave II
11/14 – Columbus, OH @ Park Street Saloon
11/15 – Detroit, MI @ The Shelter
11/16 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Rex Theater
11/17 – Toronto, ON @ Hard Luck
11/18 – Montreal, QC @ La Tulipe
11/19 – Worcester, MA @ The Palladium
11/20 – Baltimore, MD @ Baltimore Soundstage
11/21 – Philadelphia, PA @ Voltage Lounge
11/22 – New York, NY @ The Gramercy
11/24 – Freehold, NJ @ GameChangerWorld
11/25 – Richmond, VA @ The Canal Club
11/26 – Greensboro, NC @ Arizona Pete’s
11/27 – Nashville, TN @ Rocketown
11/28 – Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade
11/29 – Orlando, FL @ Backbooth
12/01 – Houston, TX @ Scout Bar
12/02 – San Antonio, TX @ Paper Tiger
12/04 – Phoenix, AZ @ Joe's Grotto
12/05 – San Diego, CA @ SOMA
12/06 – Anaheim, CA @ Chain Reaction
12/07 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Roxy
12/08 – Sacramento, CA @ Holy Diver
12/09 – Portland, OR @ Hawthorne Theatre
12/10 – Seattle, WA @ Studio Seven
12/12 – Salt Lake City, UT @ The Complex
12/13 – Denver, CO @ Marquis Theater
12/15 – Lawrence, KS @ The Bottleneck
12/16 – Dallas, TX @ Trees‘We see growing efforts by terrorists to poison the minds of people like the Boston Marathon bombers and the San Bernardino killers,” President Obama said while addressing the nation in the wake of the latest homegrown massacre at the hands of Muslims.
But is that really what’s poisoning their minds?
FBI investigators are now operating on the belief that San Bernardino terrorists Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik were individually “radicalized,” and for “quite some time,” possibly starting as early as 2013 — before the rise of ISIS and its Internet propaganda machine. So it wasn’t ISIS poisoning their minds, as the president suggests.
So what was it? The feds are still scratching their heads, willfully blind to the obvious religious factor.
But this much they know: “These two killers were starting to radicalize towards martyrdom and jihad as early as 2013, and so that’s really before ISIL [ISIS] became the global jihad leader that it is,” FBI Director James Comey testified Wednesday. “They were actually radicalized before they started dating.”
Unlike other mass murderers, who exhibit antisocial, paranoid, narcissistic or schizoid traits, Farook and Malik do not appear to be natural born killers. Neither had a history of violence nor criminal record, and both generally were described as pleasant people.
In fact, friends invariably called the 28-year-old Farook a “very nice person,” while his landlord even described him as a “very gentle person.” He enjoyed working on old cars and shooting hoops. For her part, the 29-year-old Malik was seen as “a good girl” and a good student who aspired to be a pharmacist. Before dressing in austere Islamic clothing, she was even viewed as a “modern girl.”
Muslims and non-Muslims alike spoke highly of them both. Then suddenly a switch went off, and the couple went medieval.
By all accounts, that switch was piety. They simply got closer to their religion, immersing themselves in Islamic scripture.
Farook and Malik devoted themselves to Islamic study, which culminated in both of them memorizing the Koran, a high honor in Islam. They began wearing traditional Islamic garb — Farook, a white tunic and skullcap, and Malik, a black veil and robe.
Before long, Farook was slaughtering fellow Americans, many of them co-workers, shooting them at point-blank range with his wife by his side, the two of them stopping only to reload. Why? Because as US taxpayers, the 14 people they killed supported Israel and the Jews.
We saw the same transformation in the Tsarnaev brothers of Boston, who were considered “nice” and “normal,” even partiers — until their mother made them stick their noses in their holy books and get religion. Within a matter of just a couple of years of becoming more fervent in their Muslim faith, these “typical American boys” were making shrapnel bombs and blowing off limbs of innocent bystanders at the Boston Marathon to “punish” fellow Americans for supporting wars in Muslim lands. And that was after the oldest boy, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, nearly beheaded a couple of Jews he once befriended.
“I told Tamerlan that we are Muslims, and we are not practicing our religion, and how can we call ourselves Muslims,” Mrs. Tsarnaev said. “And that’s how Tamerlan started reading about Islam, and he started praying, and he got more and more and more into his religion.”
The change was dramatic in both boys, who stopped partying and started hating — Jews, Christians, America. Suddenly they were growing out Islamic beards and saying they were “willing to die for Islam.”
‘Evidence exists to demonstrate that a greater level of adherence to Islamic law correlates to a greater likelihood of violence.’ - FBI veteran John Guandolo
A similar change came over the Chattanooga jihadist, Mohammad Abdulazeez, who was described as “very friendly” — until he became intensely observant in his faith and saw it as his religious duty to fatally gun down five soldiers in Tennessee earlier this year.
Moreover, two brothers suspected in last month’s Paris terror attacks were born-again Muslims as well. Reportedly, they really began to change around six months prior to the attacks, when they stopped drinking and started studying and praying.
This phenomenon is well documented in virtually every FBI case of homegrown American terrorism: the more religious, the more radical. The pattern is borne out in hundreds of criminal complaints and court documents since 9/11 that I’ve reviewed for my books on terrorism. Almost to a person, suspects are described by family, friends, neighbors or co-workers as “nice” — that is the universal adjective for these mass murderers — until they get closer to their religion and suddenly seek out infidels to kill.
Case agents have seen the link between Islamic belief and violence firsthand.
“Evidence exists to demonstrate that a greater level of adherence to Islamic law correlates to a greater likelihood of violence,” said FBI veteran John Guandolo, who worked some of the nation’s biggest terrorism cases out of the bureau’s Washington field office after 9/11.
Studies back him up, including one recently published in Europe that found that Islam is the only religion in the world in which people become more violent the stronger they believe.
Danish linguist Tina Magaard and a team of researchers spent three years examining the texts of the 10 largest religions to see if any incite violence. “The texts of Islam are clearly distinct from the other religions’ texts, as they, to a higher degree, call for violence and aggression against followers of other faiths,” she concluded. “There are also direct incitements to terror.”
A 2010 study of 45,000 teens by a German criminal research institute, moreover, found that young religious Muslim boys were much more likely to use violence than their non-Muslim counterparts, even when social factors were taken into account.
Unlike federal agents and investigators working terrorism cases on the ground, higher-ups in Washington are too clouded by politically correct fantasies about Islam to accept what is self-evident. They cannot even entertain religion as a motivating factor in terrorism. They cannot fathom that such heinous violence could be inspired by sacred texts.
Forced to rule out workplace rage, seduction and now ISIS as sources in the San Bernardino case, Comey now says: “We’re working very hard to understand the source of their inspiration.”
“The question for us is how and by whom and where were they radicalized?” said David Bowdich, the FBI’s assistant director in Los Angeles.
Brass will continue searching in vain for an “un-Islamic” motive — anything to avoid arriving at the inevitable, unspeakable conclusion that these Muslims, like countless jihadists before them, were faithfully following the dictates of Islam.
The switch that turns a good person into a “bad Muslim” isn’t heretical outside forces. The tens of thousands of jihadists threatening the West aren’t all “brainwashed” by evil modern cult figures. Though personalities certainly have an influence, the main influence is the religion itself. If there’s any radicalization, it’s self-radicalization through devotion.
“They think they’re doing something good for Allah,” al Qaeda informant Morten Storm, a former Muslim, said. “They really believe that.”
There’s a famous speech on the show “The West Wing” where the fictional president accosts a Christian radio host. She believes homosexuality is wrong because the Bible says so. He points out that the Bible also allows him to sell his daughter into slavery and execute his chief of staff for working on the sabbath. The “West Wing” president, by the way, is a practicing Catholic — but he’s making the point that Christianity went through a reformation.
Most Christians today don’t read the Bible literally, and the ones that do are roundly mocked by liberals. But those same liberals bristle at any suggestion that Islam is inherently intolerant.
Islam is not a “religion of peace,” and won’t be until most of its followers — the Taliban, the Ayatollah, ISIS, the Muslim Brotherhood, the mullahs of Saudi Arabia — reject tenets like jihad. To suggest otherwise is naive. Virtually everyone is hacking at the branches of this growing menace, and almost no one is striking at its root.
Paul Sperry, a visiting Hoover Institution media fellow, is author of “Infiltration” and “Muslim Mafia.” [email protected] change is not the only outcome of increased greenhouse gas concentrations. The oceans have absorbed a lot of the excess carbon in the atmosphere, reducing the impacts of climate change to date, but at a cost. Higher concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere have led to an increase in acidity of ocean water, a process known as ocean acidification. The process of acidification is laid out by Cheryl Logan in a user-friendly 2010 summary in the journal Bioscience.
Ocean acidification occurs when CO2 dissolves in ocean water, undergoing a chemical reaction that produces carbonic acid. The rate of this reaction is completely predictable and as a result the progression of acidification as CO2 levels increase is completely predictable. Unlike climate change, ocean acidification is not controversial at all—basically nobody disputes that it is happening—and happening rapidly.
Ocean acidification might disrupt the planet’s ecosystem before climate change does.
As Logan explains, acidity is measured through the concentration of hydrogen ions—called the pH scale, for power of hydrogen—more hydrogen equals greater acidity. Since the late 19th century, the concentration of hydrogen ions in the ocean has increased by 30%, and that will increase another 150% by 2100, according to common emissions projections.
That is a massive change to ocean chemistry in a short amount of time, and many of the ocean’s inhabitants are struggling to adapt. The shells of many marine organisms are made of calcium carbonate, which is highly susceptible to acid. Logan explains how some organisms are starting to have trouble forming new shells, and in extreme cases, existing shells are getting thinner.
Just in case the plight of a few snails seems like a relatively minor concern, the issue goes well beyond snails. Corals, sea urchins, many species of plankton- organisms crucial to marine habitats and food webs- all rely on calcium carbonate as part of their structure. Some research even suggests that acidification can disrupt the ability of plants to perform photosynthesis. As marine organisms are responsible for much of the Earth’s oxygen production, this might one day threaten our very survival.
Acidification has the potential to completely disrupt the ocean’s—and perhaps even the planet’s—ecosystem before climate change has a chance to do so. Despite the urgency Logan describes, the American public is largely unaware of the issue. Public awareness notwithstanding, the solution to ocean acidification is straightforward: burn less carbon. Efforts to curb the climate change will address acidification as well, but progress is slow. It is astounding that such a key issue, one that might genuinely threaten our survival as a species, is still so little-known.Although the FAI's plan to overhaul the underage game will begin in September, the more radical reforms of the strategy show no signs of being embraced by those with ultimate responsibility for implementing the changes.
Although the FAI's plan to overhaul the underage game will begin in September, the more radical reforms of the strategy show no signs of being embraced by those with ultimate responsibility for implementing the changes.
Saturday's annual general meeting of the Schoolboys FAI (SFAI), held in Cavan, included a briefing from FAI vice-president Donal Conway on the status of the Player Development Plan, a blueprint designed to address Ireland's alarming failure to produce players of real quality.
Only the first two recommendations of the 10-point plan - related primarily to introducing a uniform game structure from six-year-old upwards - were discussed by delegates from the 32 leagues that cater for the 100,000 players up to U-16 level.
While broad agreement prevails on these measures, which will see the national U-12 Cup switch to nine-a-side using small goals, gaining approval on the two most controversial changes floated by FAI high performance Director Ruud Dokter is still uncertain.
The first of these centres on funnelling elite players at all age-groups from their leagues into a regional structure to play on a weekly basis. Even more contentious is the notion of switching every league in the country to summer football.
A staunch dissenter of these proposals is veteran legislator Pat Kelly, so the election of the Waterford Schoolboy League secretary to the position of SFAI vice-chairman represents a curious development.
Kelly ventilated his concerns surrounding the FAI's charter during the association's roadshow in February and he wasn't alone.
As a provincial league already struggling to retain players in the face of competition from Gaelic football and hurling, he deems it nonsensical to compound the problem by altering the season to clash directly with their rivals.
The return of Kelly to the top table on Saturday - he beat challenger Chris Nestor from the Midlands League in a secret ballot - coincided with the largest league in the country, the Dublin District Schoolboys League (DDSL), ending their two-year boycott of SFAI meetings.
Relations between the DDSL and SFAI had broken down completely over several issues, principally the implementation of the infamous 'radius rule' preventing players travelling over certain distances from their school to play for teams as well as the removal of seeding from the national cup draws at league level.
John Earley, interim chairman of the SFAI up to Saturday's summit when he took the role on a two-year term, believes the decision of Kelly to come out of retirement can have a unifying effect on a schoolboy sector bedevilled with rancour.
"It was great to see the DDSL back at our meetings
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themselves to Christian Zionism. Behind them, it is widely assumed, stands US Christian Zionist money.
Allison Deger reported in Mondoweiss last month on a venture by US Christian Zionists to sell small plots of land for $1,200 a time between Nazareth and the Sea of Galilee, as a way to strengthen an evangelical broadcasting network based in Jerusalem and Texas.
How the Holy Land Dream Company has acquired the plots, given that 93 per cent of land in Israel is state-owned and can only be leased by Jews, is so far unclear.
Other evangelical channels have recently established themselves in Jerusalem, including God-TV. It is working closely with the Jewish National Fund, a semi-governmental agency, to plant a forest in the Negev to displace Palestinian Bedouin from their ancestral lands.
Is the Christian Zionist team behind the Peace Campus in Nazareth — Pastor Hagee, Governor Perry and Chancellor Sharp — playing a tangential role in these developments?
One possibility is that Netanyahu and the Israeli right may hope to promote closer involvement by US evangelicals in the lives of the Palestinian Christian community in Israel. That could be potentially useful in undermining the revival of Palestinian nationalism inside Israel that followed the collapse of the Oslo Accords from 2000 onwards.
Palestinian Christians have traditionally been at the forefront of the Palestinian national movement, both in Israel and the occupied territories. They have thereby discredited claims from Israel that it stands on the fault line of a clash of civilisations between a Christian-Jewish west and a Muslim east.
The outlines of a possible Israeli strategy in response may be emerging, one that requires both strengthening the role of Christian Zionists in the Holy Land — with a university campus in the heartland of the Christian population in Israel — and demanding military service from local Christians.
That way, Netanyahu and the right may hope they can start to erode local Christians’ identification as Palestinians and generate new sources of conflict between the Christian and Muslim populations.
The “Zionisation” of local Christians would be a major achievement for the Israeli right. Not least it would clear the path for US evangelicals to claim they represent the true interests of Christians in the Holy Land.
Possibly even more importantly, it would isolate overseas churches that have traditionally shown solidarity with the Palestinians. Some of them are starting to take a lead in the promotion of the BDS campaign and what Israel characterises as a campaign of “delegitimisation” — another strong reason for Israel to want to recruit local Palestinian Christians to its cause.
The Nazareth campus may mark a change of tactic by Israel. But it seems the same cynical strategy is alive and kicking.Background & Aims Patients with non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS) do not have celiac disease but their symptoms improve when they are placed on gluten-free diets. We investigated the specific effects of gluten after dietary reduction of fermentable, poorly absorbed, short-chain carbohydrates (fermentable, oligo-, di-, monosaccharides, and polyols [FODMAPs]) in subjects believed to have NCGS.
Methods We performed a double-blind cross-over trial of 37 subjects (aged 24−61 y, 6 men) with NCGS and irritable bowel syndrome (based on Rome III criteria), but not celiac disease. Participants were randomly assigned to groups given a 2-week diet of reduced FODMAPs, and were then placed on high-gluten (16 g gluten/d), low-gluten (2 g gluten/d and 14 g whey protein/d), or control (16 g whey protein/d) diets for 1 week, followed by a washout period of at least 2 weeks. We assessed serum and fecal markers of intestinal inflammation/injury and immune activation, and indices of fatigue. Twenty-two participants then crossed over to groups given gluten (16 g/d), whey (16 g/d), or control (no additional protein) diets for 3 days. Symptoms were evaluated by visual analogue scales.
Results In all participants, gastrointestinal symptoms consistently and significantly improved during reduced FODMAP intake, but significantly worsened to a similar degree when their diets included gluten or whey protein. Gluten-specific effects were observed in only 8% of participants. There were no diet-specific changes in any biomarker. During the 3-day rechallenge, participants’ symptoms increased by similar levels among groups. Gluten-specific gastrointestinal effects were not reproduced. An order effect was observed.On June 23, the United Kingdom held a referendum on whether it should stay in the European Union or become independent from it. The people voted to leave by a margin of 17,410,742 (51.89%) to 16,141,241 (48.11%). Seven observations on this event follow.
1. Neither polls nor bets are reliable means of predicting elections. Leading up to the vote, almost all polls indicated a Remain vote. Bettors, who frequently predict election results better than polls do, were even more in favor of a Remain result. Yet Leave was victorious. This, along with other polling mishaps both recently and historically, calls into question the usefulness of polls for measuring public support for issues and candidates.
2. Leftists favor democracy until people vote against leftist goals. Following the Brexit vote, a petition to hold a re-vote was started, which has since gained over 2.5 million signatures. This is par for the course for leftist elites, who pay lip service to democracy while trying to undermine it for their own ends. Whether they put their thumbs on the scales through election fraud, demographic displacement, or simply re-voting until they get their desired result and then stopping re-voting, democracy is only a means to an end for the left. The impact is best summarized by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, “Democracy has nothing to do with freedom. Democracy is a soft variant of communism, and only rarely in the history of ideas has it been taken for anything else.”
3. When one side of a debate uses facts and the other side uses fear, the side with facts is correct. The Leave campaign consisted primarily of a reasoned case for why the UK would be better off independent from the European Union, while the Remain campaign consisted mostly of fear-mongering. The use of scare tactics in an argument is a sign that the user has no rational case to make, otherwise one should be expected to use logic and evidence. We may therefore conclude that the Leave campaign made a superior case.
4. This is only the beginning of a long process. The referendum was advisory, meaning that it is not legally binding. In theory, the British Parliament could choose not to implement Brexit and deal with the wrath of voters in response. It is also possible that a two-thirds majority of MPs could call for a general election in which a party campaigns against Brexit. If that party wins, then they could claim that their election result counters the referendum.
If Brexit goes forward, the UK must invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, which specifies how member states may leave the European Union. The UK will then have two years to negotiate its withdrawal, at which point it will be removed from the EU regardless of whether said negotiations are concluded. During this process, the UK will be subject to EU treaties and laws but will have no say in its decisions.
5. This is likely to be only the first secession of many more to come. While England and Wales both voted for Leave, Scotland and Northern Ireland both voted for Remain. In response, there are calls for another vote for Scotland to leave the UK in order to stay in the EU. (One such vote was held in 2014; Scots voted 55.3% in favor of remaining in the UK.) There is also talk of Irish reunification (Northern Ireland leaving the UK) for the same purpose.
The successful vote in the UK has resulted in calls for similar referendums in Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, and Sweden. It is quite possible that one or more of these nations will also leave, throwing the very survival of the EU into question. There is also a recent history of secessionist movements within European nations gaining traction, such as the Catalan independence movement.
6. This is an excellent buying opportunity for investors. Upon news of the Brexit vote, world financial markets tumbled. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 610.32 points (-3.39%), the NASDAQ lost 202.06 points (-4.12%), the S&P 500 lost 75.91 points (-3.59%), and the Russell 2000 lost 44.68 points (-3.81%). British and Chinese markets fell slightly less, while German and Japanese markets lost a larger percentage. Gold gained $59.30 per ounce (4.69%) as investors fled to safety, while the British pound fell to $1.35, its lowest exchange rate since 1985. But nothing has really changed to warrant such a selloff. Business will continue as usual for at least the next few months, and the UK will not be fully independent until late 2018 at the earliest. The downturn is more emotional than substantial, and therefore presents an excellent buying opportunity for anyone sitting on the sidelines holding capital.
7. Leftist cries of racism and xenophobia will backfire. Predictably, leftist elites have yet again failed to engage in any self-reflection concerning their policies, which have enriched themselves at the expense of the common person for at least a generation. Their immigration policies have depressed wages, endangered safety, and eroded cultural identities. Their foreign policies have contributed to terrorism. Their domestic policies have led to increasing police statism. But rather than acknowledge that they have done wrong, the leftist elites have decided to deride the voting public as racists and xenophobes. Not only does this misunderstand what motivates most people to vote against the establishment, it will only serve to throw gasoline onto the fire. There is a proverb in the Deep South of the United States, “If you knock on the devil’s door long enough, someone will answer you.” At some point, the common people will conclude that if they will be accused of racism and xenophobia, then they might as well embrace those ideas. To some extent, this has already happened with the rise of the alt-right, but that movement has plenty of room to grow and newly fertile ground in which to do so. A reaction of openly racist people is coming, and matters will get ugly.
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Like this: Like Loading...CLEVELAND -- Browns starting right tackle Tony Pashos is "really upset'' about being released by the Browns after he played all last season on a ruptured tendon in his left foot that required surgery, his agent Rick Smith told the Plain Dealer today.
The Browns will release Pashos, who underwent the surgery last Tuesday, on the basis that he failed his physical, Smith said. The move is expected to by made by Tuesday, when free agency begins.
Pashos, who was set to make $3.35 million in 2012, will receive $1 million for injury protection per the collective bargaining agreement.
"Tony feels like he had the team's back last season,'' said Smith. "He wishes the team had his back now.''
The Browns declined to comment through team spokesman Neal Gulkis.
Smith explained that Pashos, 31, completely ruptured the peroneus longus tendon in his left foot during the final preseason game, but that the peroneus brevis tendon remained intact.
Because the one tendon was intact, Pashos was told he could either have the surgery right away, or "basically gut through it'' and repair it after the season, Smith said. He was told the rehab would take about 9-10 months.
"Because the team lacked depth on the offensive line, especially at right tackle, Tony wanted to help the team,'' said Smith. "He knew what he was doing.''
Pashos sat out the first three regular season games, and then returned on the injured tendon.
"But in order to be able to do that, he had to be given an enormous amount of pain pills and shots,'' said Smith. "It was an enormous amount, to the point where at Christmas, he went into the hospital with three ulcers from the pain medication. You can see that he missed the final regular season game, because he was in the hospital with the ulcers.''
Smith stressed that Browns head trainer Joe Sheehan had Pashos' back throughout the season.
"Joe told Tony 'at any point, if you want to shut this down, I'll go upstairs and shut this down for you,''' said Smith. "Joe was real good to Tony. But Tony wanted to continue to try to help the team.''
Smith said Pashos had to wait until last Tuesday to have the surgery because of the ulcers.
"While Tony was in the hospital, I got the call from the Browns giving me the heads up that they were releasing him,'' said Smith. "When Tony called the Browns, they told him he was a warrior.
"But he's not a warrior. He's somebody's son, somebody's husband, somebody's father. He's a guy trying to support his family.''
Smith said Pashos, who's heading into his 10th season, will be out for eight or nine months, which means he'll miss most or all of next season.
"He's going to do whatever it takes (to play again), but the last film on him is him playing half speed,'' said Smith.
He said Pashos never used the foot as an excuse last season, even though he occasionally took some heat for his performance. "He didn't hide behind the injury,'' said Smith. "You never heard a word out of him all year.''
He said the Browns could've placed Pashos on the physically unable to perform list and let him rehab with the Browns, or they could've reduced his salary. As it is, the Browns will save about $2 million on the salary cap, which will put them about $19.4 million under the cap heading into free agency.
"Tony really bought into what the Browns were selling,'' said Smith. "Now he's off on his own.''
Pashos signed with the Browns as a free agent in 2010, earning $4 million in salary and bonuses his first year and $2.2 million in 2011. He played in only six games in 2010 because of an ankle injury that landed him on injured reserve.By Eurasia Review
A new study on the relationship between people and the planet shows that climate change is only one of many inter-related threats to the Earth’s capacity to support human life.
An international team of distinguished scientists, including five members of the National Academies, argues that there are critical components missing from current climate models that inform environmental, climate, and economic policies.
The article, published in the National Science Review, describes how the recent growth in resource use, land-use change, emissions, and pollution has made humanity the dominant driver of change in most of the Earth’s natural systems, and how these changes, in turn, have important feedback effects on humans with costly and serious consequences.
The authors argue that current estimates of the impact of climate change do not connect human variables — such as demographics, inequality, economic growth, and migration — with planetary changes. This makes current models likely to miss important feedbacks in the real Earth-human system, especially those that may result in unexpected or counterintuitive outcomes.
Furthermore, the authors argue that some of the existing models are unreliable. The United Nations projections of a relatively stable population for the whole of the developed world depend, for instance, on dramatic, and highly unlikely, declines projected in a few key countries. Japan, for example, must decline by 34%, Germany by 31% and Russia by about 30% for the projected stability in total developed country population to be born out.12 In addition, countries often highlighted for their low birth rates, like Italy and Spain, are not projected to decline by even 1% for decades.
In this new research, the authors present extensive evidence of the need for a new type of model that incorporates the feedbacks that the Earth System has on humans, and propose a framework for future modeling that would serve as a more realistic guide for policymaking and sustainable development.
“Current models are likely to miss critical feedbacks in the combined Earth-Human system,” said co-author Eugenia Kalnay, professor of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science at University of Maryland. “It would be like trying to predict El Niño with a sophisticated atmospheric model but with the Sea Surface Temperatures taken from external, independent projections by, for example, the United Nations. Without including the real feedbacks, predictions for coupled systems cannot work; the model can get away from reality very quickly.”Story highlights Syrian people "have the will to win," Morsy tells CNN in an exclusive interview
"They will decide what they want to do to those who committed crimes against them," he says
The Egyptian president tells Wolf Blitzer he's pushing for Palestinian unity
Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy supports calls by people in Syria for President Bashar al-Assad to be tried for war crimes, he told CNN on Sunday in an exclusive interview.
"The Syrian people through their revolution and through the movement will -- when the bloodshed stops -- move to a new stage where they will have an independent parliament and a government of their choosing," Morsy, Egypt's first freely elected leader, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in Cairo. "And then they will decide what they want to do to those who committed crimes against them. It is the Syrian people who decide."
Al-Assad's effort to crush anti-government protests in 2011 has turned into a bloody civil war in which the United Nations estimates that more than 60,000 people have been killed. In his first televised address since June, al-Assad said Sunday that Syria was under "an external attack" by "extremists, who only know the language of killing and criminality."
Asked about Syria, Morsy repeated his previous calls for al-Assad to leave power.
Egyptian revolutionaries toppled longtime strongman Hosni Mubarak in early 2011, and Morsy has said Egypt will work for Arab and international support to replace al-Assad. Asked whether he thought the Syrian leader should be tried before the International Criminal Court for war crimes, Morsy said, "It is not I who want this, but the Syrian people who want this."
JUST WATCHED Syrian President Assad makes rare speech Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Syrian President Assad makes rare speech 00:25
JUST WATCHED Blitzer interviews Egyptian Pres. Morsy Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Blitzer interviews Egyptian Pres. Morsy 02:44
JUST WATCHED Egypt: Testing the limits Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Egypt: Testing the limits 04:56
"This phase is the phase of the people," Morsy said. "Similar to what the Egyptian people wanted, the Syrian people want it. And we support the Syrian people, and they're going to win, and they have the will to win."
Morsy brokered the November cease-fire that ended an eight-day conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist faction Hamas, which controls Gaza. Now, he has invited the heads of the two major Palestinian factions to meet in Cairo in hopes of building unity, a task he acknowledged won't be easy.
Morsy said he invited Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to meet with Khaled Meshaal, the political leader of Hamas, who lives in Cairo. Hamas controls Gaza, while Abbas's party, Fatah, controls the West Bank. The two factions have clashed violently over the years.
The United States, Israel and the European Union list Hamas as a terrorist organization. The group has carried out numerous attacks, killing scores of civilians.
In the interview Sunday with CNN, Morsy sought to assure viewers around the world, as well as people in his own country, that he is committed to promoting democracy and protecting minorities, including the country's Coptic Christians, from discrimination.Read this... Windows XP: What to expect once Microsoft shuts down support Even though the world won't end because of Microsoft's withdrawal of support for Windows XP, those left clinging to the OS after April's deadline still face a number of issues. Read More
Government staff still running Windows XP at home should be denied access to corporate networks, according to the data security arm of UK surveillance agency GCHQ.
In newly-issued guidance designed to cut risks for government organisations after Microsoft ends support on 8 April for the 12-year-old operating system, the CESG lists the removal of remote access from Windows XP devices.
Discussing short-term measures, the guidelines' authors say some remote access solutions include end-user device posture checks on incoming connections.
"It may be possible for those posture checks to enforce that no Windows XP devices can be used to remotely access corporate systems," they write.
"This will reduce the risk of the enterprise network being exposed to a compromised unpatched device. This control would only help protect the enterprise network from attack as it does not protect any data stored or cached on a Windows XP device."
The CESG goes on to say that where organisations expose some internal services to unmanaged end-user devices under BYOD arrangements, this control could also help ensure that users do not remotely access organisational information from devices known to be vulnerable.
Read this Microsoft: Why the Windows XP show is finally over With Windows XP entering the final few weeks of official support, Microsoft executive Jay Paulus offers his take on the OS and explains why it's high time to move. Read More
Figures suggest Windows XP still accounts for between a quarter and a third of desktops worldwide, even though it was first released to manufacturers in August 2001 and went on sale on 25 October that year.
When extended support for Windows XP ends in eight weeks, Microsoft will issue no further software updates or security patches for the operating system.
As well as suggesting the removal of network access from Windows XP devices, the CESG guidelines propose stopping remote workers using any machines still running Windows XP on the network.
Divided into four main areas, the CESG guidance suggests migrating away from obsolete software, short-term mitigations, and mitigations to reduce the scope and impact of compromised systems.
Measures include preventing access to untrusted services from XP machines or, where that's not possible, a reduction in the use of untrusted services in general. Also listed are preventing the use of removable media with XP devices, and converting Windows XP devices to thin clients.
Among the steps to reduce the impact of compromised XP machines, the guidelines suggest categorising the devices as unmanaged, to mark them out as less trusted on the network, along with the introduction of better monitoring and network zoning to cut the scope for malware to spread inside an organisation.
Although the guidance focuses on Windows XP, the authors say the principles apply to any software approaching the end of its support period.
More on Windows XPA number of times throughout history, tyranny has stimulated breakthrough thinking about liberty. This was certainly the case in England with the mid-17th-century era of repression, rebellion, and civil war. There was a tremendous outpouring of political pamphlets and tracts. By far the most influential writings emerged from the pen of scholar John Locke.
He expressed the radical view that government is morally obliged to serve people, namely by protecting life, liberty, and property. He explained the principle of checks and balances to limit government power. He favored representative government and a rule of law. He denounced tyranny. He insisted that when government violates individual rights, people may legitimately rebel.
These views were most fully developed in Locke’s famous Second Treatise Concerning Civil Government, and they were so radical that he never dared sign his name to it. He acknowledged authorship only in his will. Locke’s writings did much to inspire the libertarian ideals of the American Revolution. This, in turn, set an example which inspired people throughout Europe, Latin America, and Asia.
Thomas Jefferson ranked Locke, along with Locke’s compatriot Algernon Sidney, as the most important thinkers on liberty. Locke helped inspire Thomas Paine’s radical ideas about revolution. Locke fired up George Mason. From Locke, James Madison drew his most fundamental principles of liberty and government. Locke’s writings were part of Benjamin Franklin’s self-education, and John Adams believed that both girls and boys should learn about Locke. The French philosopher Voltaire called Locke “the man of the greatest wisdom. What he has not seen clearly, I despair of ever seeing.”
It seems incredible that Locke, of all people, could have influenced individuals around the world. When he set out to develop his ideas, he was an undistinguished Oxford scholar. He had a brief experience with a failed diplomatic mission. He was a physician who long lacked traditional credentials and had just one patient. His first major work wasn’t published until he was 57. He was distracted by asthma and other chronic ailments.
There was little in Locke’s appearance to suggest greatness. He was tall and thin. According to biographer Maurice Cranston, he had a “long face, large nose, full lips, and soft, melancholy eyes.” Although he had a love affair which, he said, “robbed me of the use of my reason,” he died a bachelor.
Some notable contemporaries thought highly of Locke. Mathematician and physicist Isaac Newton cherished his company. Locke helped Quaker William Penn restore his good name when he was a political fugitive, as Penn had arranged a pardon for Locke when he had been a political fugitive. Locke was described by the famous English physician Dr. Thomas Sydenham as “a man whom, in the acuteness of his intellect, in the steadiness of his judgement,... that is, in the excellence of his manners, I confidently declare to have, amongst the men of our time, few equals and no superiors.”
Family Background
John Locke was born in Somerset, England, August 29, 1632. He was the eldest son of Agnes Keene, daughter of a small-town tanner, and John Locke, an impecunious Puritan lawyer who served as a clerk for justices of the peace.
When young Locke was two, England began to stumble toward its epic constitutional crisis. The Stuart King Charles I, who dreamed of the absolute power wielded by some continental rulers, decreed higher taxes without approval of Parliament. They were to be collected by local officials like his father. Eight years later, the Civil War broke out, and Locke’s father briefly served as a captain in the Parliamentary army. In 1649, rebels beheaded Charles I. But all this led to the Puritan dictatorship of Oliver Cromwell.
Locke had a royalist and Anglican education, presumably because it was still a ticket to upward mobility. One of his father’s politically connected associates nominated 15-year-old John Locke for the prestigious Westminster School. In 1652, he won a scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford University’s most important college, which trained men mainly for the clergy. He studied logic, metaphysics, Greek, and Latin. He earned his bachelor of arts degree in 1656, then continued work toward a master of arts and taught rhetoric and Greek. On the side, he spent considerable time studying with free spirits who, at the dawn of modern science and medicine, independently conducted experiments.
Having lived through a bloody civil war, Locke seems to have shared the fears expressed by fellow Englishman Thomas Hobbes, whose Leviathan (1651) became the gospel of absolutism. Hobbes asserted that liberty brought chaos, that the worst government was better than no government—and that people owed allegiance to their ruler, right or wrong. In October 1656, Locke wrote a letter expressing approval that Quakers—whom he called “mad folks”—were subject to restrictions. Locke welcomed the 1660 restoration of the Stuart monarchy and subsequently wrote two tracts that defended the prerogative of government to enforce religious conformity.
In November 1665, as a result of his Oxford connections, Locke was appointed to a diplomatic mission aimed at winning the Elector of Brandenburg as an ally against Holland. The mission failed, but the experience was a revelation. Brandenburg had a policy of toleration for Catholics, Calvinists, and Lutherans, and there was peace. Locke wrote his friend Robert Boyle, the chemist: “They quietly permit one another to choose their way to heaven; and I cannot observe any quarrels or animosities amongst them on account of religion.”
Locke and Shaftesbury
During the summer of 1666, the rich and influential Anthony Ashley Cooper visited Oxford where he met Locke who was then studying medicine. Cooper suffered from a liver cyst that threatened to become swollen with infection. Cooper asked Locke, apparently competent, courteous, and amusing, to be his personal physician. Accordingly, Locke moved into a room at Cooper’s Exeter House mansion in London. Locke was about to embark on adventures which would convert him to a libertarian.
Cooper was born an aristocrat, served in the King’s army during the Civil War, switched to the Puritan side, and commanded Puritan soldiers in Dorset. But he was dismissed amidst Puritan purges. He was arrested for conspiring to overthrow the Puritan Commonwealth and bring back the Stuarts. King Charles II elevated him to the peerage—he became Lord Ashley, then the Earl of Shaftesbury—and joined the King’s Privy Council.
Soon Shaftesbury spearheaded opposition to the Restoration Parliaments, which enacted measures enforcing conformity with Anglican worship and suppressing dissident Protestants. He became a member of the four-man cabinet and served briefly as Lord High Chancellor, the most powerful minister. Shaftesbury championed religious toleration for all (except Catholics) because he had seen how intolerance drove away talented people and how religious toleration helped Holland prosper. He invested in ships, some for the slave trade. He developed Carolina plantations. Locke is believed to have drafted virtually the entire Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, providing for a parliament elected by property owners, a separation of church and state, and—surprisingly—military conscription.
Shaftesbury’s liver infection worsened, and Locke supervised successful surgery in 1668. The grateful Shaftesbury encouraged Locke to develop his potential as a philosopher. Thanks to Shaftesbury, Locke was nominated for the Royal Society, where he mingled with some of London’s most fertile minds. In 1671, with a half-dozen friends, Locke started a discussion group to talk about the principles of morality and religion. This led him to further explore the issues by writing early drafts of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding.
Shaftesbury retained Locke to analyze toleration, education, trade, and other issues, which spurred Locke to expand his knowledge. For example, Locke opposed government regulation of interest rates:
The first thing to be considered is whether the price of the hire of money can be regulated by law; and to that, I think generally speaking that ’tis manifest that it cannot. For, since it is impossible to make a law that shall hinder a man from giving away his money or estate to whom he pleases, it will be impossible by any contrivance of law, to hinder men... to purchase money to be lent to them....
Locke was in the thick of just about everything Shaftesbury did. Locke helped draft speeches. He recorded the progress of bills through Parliament. He kept notes during meetings. He evaluated people considered for political appointments. Locke even negotiated the marriage terms for Shaftesbury’s son and served as tutor for Shaftesbury’s grandson.
Shaftesbury formed the Whig party, and Locke, then in France, carried on a correspondence to help influence Parliamentary elections. Shaftesbury was imprisoned for a year in the Tower of London, then he helped pass the Habeas Corpus Act (1679), which made it unlawful for government to detain a person without filing formal charges or to put a person on trial for the same charge twice. Shaftesbury pushed “exclusion bills” aimed at preventing the king’s Catholic brother from royal succession.
Countering Stuart Absolutism
In March 1681, Charles II dissolved Parliament, and it soon became clear that he did not intend to summon Parliament again. Consequently, the only way to stop Stuart absolutism was rebellion. Shaftesbury was the king’s most dangerous opponent, and Locke was at his side. A spy named Humphrey Prideaux reported on Locke’s whereabouts and on suspicions that Locke was the author of seditious pamphlets.
In fact, Locke was contemplating an attack on Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha, or The Natural Power of Kings Asserted (1680), which claimed that God sanctioned the absolute power of kings. Such an attack was risky since it could easily be prosecuted as an attack on King Charles II. Pamphleteer James Tyrrell, a friend whom Locke had met at Oxford, left unsigned his substantial attack on Filmer, Patriarcha Non Monarcha or The Patriarch Unmonarch’d; and Tyrrell had merely implied the right to rebel against tyrants. Algernon Sidney was hanged, in part, because the king’s agents discovered his manuscript for Discourses Concerning Government.
Locke worked in his bookshelf-lined room at Shaftesbury’s Exeter House, drawing on his experience with political action. He wrote one treatise which attacked Filmer’s doctrine. Locke denied Filmer’s claim that the Bible sanctioned tyrants and that parents had absolute authority over children. Locke wrote a second treatise, which presented an epic case for liberty and the right of people to rebel against tyrants. While he drew his principles substantially from Tyrrell, he pushed them to their radical conclusions: namely, an explicit attack on slavery and defense of revolution.
Exile in Holland
As Charles II intensified his campaign against rebels, Shaftesbury fled to Holland in November 1682 and died there two months later. On July 21, 1683, Locke might well have seen the powers that be at Oxford University burn books they considered dangerous. It was England’s last book burning. When Locke feared his rooms would be searched, he initially hid his draft of the two treatises with Tyrrell. Locke moved out of Oxford, checked on country property he had inherited from his father, then fled to Rotterdam September 7.
The English government tried to have Locke extradited for trial and presumably execution. He moved into one Egbertus Veen’s Amsterdam house and assumed the name “Dr. van der Linden.” He signed letters as “Lamy” or “Dr. Lynne.” Anticipating that the government might intercept mail, Locke protected friends by referring to them with numbers or false names. He told people he was in Holland because he enjoyed the local beer.
Meanwhile, Charles II had converted to Catholicism before he died in February 1685. Charles’s brother became King James II, who began promoting Catholicism in England. He defied Parliament. He replaced Anglican Church officials and sheriffs with Catholics. He staffed the army with Catholic officers. He turned Oxford University’s Magdalen College into a Catholic seminary.
In Holland, Locke worked on his masterpiece, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, which urged people to base their convictions on observation and reason. He also worked on a “letter” advocating religious toleration except for atheists (who wouldn’t swear legally binding oaths) and Catholics (loyal to a foreign power).
Catholicism loomed as the worst menace to liberty because of the shrewd French King Louis XIV. He waged war for years against England and Holland—France had a population around 20 million, about four times larger than England and 10 times larger than Holland.
On June 10, 1688, James II announced the birth of a son, and suddenly there was the specter of a Catholic succession. This convinced Tories, as English defenders of royal absolutism were known, to embrace Whig ideas of rebellion. The Dutchman William of Orange, who had married Mary, the Protestant daughter of James II, agreed to assume power in England as William III and recognize the supremacy of Parliament. On November 5, 1688, William crossed the English Channel with ships and soldiers. James II summoned English forces, but they were badly split between Catholics and Protestants. Within a month, James II fled to France. This was the “Glorious Revolution,” so-called because it helped secure Protestant succession and Parliamentary supremacy without violence.
Locke resolved to return home, but there were regrets. For example, he wrote the minister and scholar Philip van Limborch:
I almost feel as though I were leaving my own country and my own kinsfolk; for everything that belongs to kinship, good will, love, kindness—everything that binds men together with ties stronger than that of blood—I have found among you in abundance.... I seem to have found in your friendship alone enough to make me always rejoice that I was forced to pass so many years amongst you.
Locke sailed on the same ship as the soon-to-be Queen Mary, arriving in London, February 11, 1689. During the next 12 months, his major works were published, and suddenly he was famous.
A Letter Concerning Toleration
Limborch published Locke’s Epistola de Tolerantia in Gouda, Holland, in May 1689—Locke wrote in Latin presumably to reach a European audience. The work was translated as A Letter Concerning Toleration and published in October 1689. Locke did not take religious toleration as far as his Quaker compatriot William Penn—Locke was concerned about the threat atheists and Catholics might pose to the social order—but he opposed persecution. He went beyond the Toleration Act (1689), specifically calling for toleration of Anabaptists, Independents, Presbyterians, and Quakers.
“The Magistrate,” he declared,
ought not to forbid the Preaching or Professing of any Speculative Opinions in any Church, because they have no manner of relation to the Civil Rights of the Subjects. If a Roman Catholick believe that to be really the Body of Christ, which another man calls Bread, he does no injury therby to his Neighbour. If a Jew do not believe the New Testament to be the Word of God, he does not thereby alter any thing in mens Civil Rights. If a Heathen doubt of both Testaments, he is not therefore to be punished as a pernicious Citizen.
Locke’s Letter brought replies, and he wrote two further letters in 1690 and 1692.
Locke’s Two Treatises on Government
Locke’s two treatises on government were published in October 1689 with a 1690 date on the title page. While later philosophers have belittled it because Locke based his thinking on archaic notions about a “state of nature,” his bedrock principles endure. He defended the natural law tradition whose glorious lineage goes back to the ancient Jews: the tradition that rulers cannot legitimately do anything they want because there are moral laws applying to everyone.
“Reason, which is that Law,” Locke declared, “teaches all Mankind, who would but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his Life, Health, Liberty, or Possessions.” Locke envisioned a rule of law:
have a standing Rule to live by, common to every one of that Society, and made by the Legislative Power erected in it; A Liberty to follow my own Will in all things, where the Rule prescribes not; and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, Arbitrary Will of another Man.
Lock
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we're running another massive sale on the game. The game is currently available for only! Please help spread the word so we can get those player counts up really high again.We've made a lot of improvements to hit detection, especially in instances where lag is a factor. A lot of the levels have seen upgraded lighting and optimizations and we've added the ability to dodge roll backwards and diagonal sprint (pressing A or D while sprinting forward).With this build we have made some changes to Toybox Assault that may potentially fix some of the lighting issues we're seeing on some Linux machines. If this does resolve the issue, we will roll out the fix to the rest of the maps.As usual we love to hear your feedback and suggestions so please keep them coming.Below is a list of the changes/fixes that made it into this patch.- Added backwards combat roll- Added diagonal sprinting- Added 'on fire' effect when you're hit by a flame thrower- Added damage taken sound when hit by flamethrower- Added new objective SFX- Added low health sound- Added new got hit sound- Added support for DirectX 10 (beta)- Adjusted post effects for Fishtank Frenzy- Updated Japanese localization (Thanks HoT_Chocol4tE)- Updated Korean localization (Thanks DioklecijaN)- Decreased fog in Table Top, more optimization for this level, updated lighting- Improved lighting in Sandbox Showdown near flags- Adjusted Global Illumination in Halloween Hustle- Updated Flamethrower, improving material, fixing hit trace so it better aligns with particles- Updated explosion and muzzle effects- Kitchen Run optimization- Updated bullet fly by sound cues- Updated enemy killed indicator sound- Updated sound when player is killed- Adjusted some camera shakes- Adjusted sound volumes- Weapons reload 20% faster- Weapons switch 50% faster- Updated Sandbox Showdown's spawn points- Adjusted blend times for landing/jumping- Fixed Octopus head so it would have more accurate bullet collision- Fixed Octopus tentacle's not being synced with server so bullet collision could be off- Fixed rockets exploding instantly when on ducks in Bathtub Bash- Fixed warning spam of ducks being set to moveable- Fixed weapon mismatch between client/server for impacts- Fixed ice blocks melt speed and network spam- Stopped network spam caused by damage from Skeletons- lowered overall cost of impacts on players- Fixed game mode crash- Fixed a few potential issues that could cause reload bug- Fixed lighting and reflections in Tutorial level- Potentially fixed lighting issue on some Linux Machines on Toybox Assault- Improved bullet impact accuracyDocuments from the Canadian government show that the nation’s military and diplomats have been secretly working on plans to invade Syria for quite some time, cobbling together five distinct scenarios that they could use to justify such an attack.
Canadian officials have publicly insisted for months they have “no plans” to be brought into the Syrian Civil War, but the internal documents, classified and heavily redacted, detail preparations for both an intervention and a long-term presence to back pro-West rebels as an alternative to al-Qaeda.
Canada has no history of unilateral interventions of this sort, so it is likely that the planning presumes the nation getting sucked into a war in Syria as some part of a NATO occupation, though the redactions in the documents make it entirely unclear.
The preparations also reveal that Canada has been working at training myriad rebel factions in “leadership skills” in anticipation of eventually backing them as a new government.
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Former Suns general manager Bryan Colangelo jokes that the only thing Shawn Marion could have done more of in his career is get to the free-throw line.
That's because Marion, who's more popularly known as The Matrix, basically did it all in a 16-year career that should lead to a Hall of Fame nomination. "I remember scouting his college games for the 1999 draft, and my eyes were fixated on him," Colangelo said. "The guy was literally all over the place."
The 37-year-old, who became the first player in NBA history to reach 15,000 points, 10,000 rebounds, 1,000 blocks and 500 threes, won a title with the Dallas Mavericks in 2011, brought unique versatility to both ends of the court and was mostly durable throughout his illustrious career. Marion, who will be retiring after the Cavaliers' Finals run, was even the top fantasy player in his mid-20s.
"Shawn made us not guardable and also defensively he helped us by far because we could put him on a point guard and he'd guard big guys," said Mike D'Antoni, reflecting on his Suns teams in the mid-2000s. "He was one of the first ones to do all that stuff. And he never wore down and he never got pounded. It's almost like a boxing match where you catch a guy in the ropes, but they could never catch him in the ropes. He was always dancing and moving. He beat all expectations."
Just like the way Marion bounced around the court, he'll be doing the same in retirement: dabbling in everything from business to acting to family time to culinary arts to outdoor adventure.
Bleacher Report recently spent time with Marion to have him reflect on his basketball career and open up about the next stage of his life. The conversation below is presented from his perspective and edited for clarity and length.
Gregory Shamus/Getty Images
Is this how I wanted to go out? No, not playing right now. But I wanted to go out on top of the mountain, winning it all. That would be the icing on the cake for me. That was one of my dreams.
When you're a competitor the way I am, of course you want to contribute more. I would love to be on the floor helping the guys more if it was possible, but sometimes it's not in your control all the time; it's coaching and timing. We all come to a certain position in our careers, and we've got to make sacrifices. To win a championship, you've got to sacrifice for the team, and that's what it's about.
The older you get, it's definitely an adjustment, but I know every little thing helps. It's about leading by example—just having positive words and encouragement. That's what builds a team. You hold one another accountable and then when guys are down, you try to pick them up.
Our team has a bunch of great guys with great personalities, comical guys. We're around one another a lot, from dinners to bowling to sitting around and drinking wine. You've got to have some kind of bond, some kind of chemistry to really make the spark work. We did a pretty good job of being a team collectively, and it says a lot.
Mark Duncan/Associated Press
When I was young, I had a great group of veterans in Phoenix, and they opened the door for me and paved the way. I was going to everybody's house. I took turns going from Penny Hardaway's to Jason Kidd's to Rodney Rogers' to Tom Gugliotta's—everybody. I wanted to learn how to be a pro. It's easy to be an NBA player, but it's hard for guys to learn how to be a professional athlete. Those guys made my adjustment easy.
I kept getting better and better every year, and I expanded my game. I went from shooting a few threes my rookie season to shooting multiple threes and doing all kinds of stuff. When you're playing with different point guards—from Kidd to Stephon Marbury to Steve Nash—you have to adjust your game.
I adapted every time.
I played so much it was ridiculous, especially early in my career. People were like, "Take a little time off, young fella." I was like, "Take time off?" I was back in the gym two weeks after the season was over. There is a rookie wall in your first couple of years, but once I fought through it, I got to the point where I didn't get tired anymore. I felt like I was the Energizer Bunny out there.
When I came into the league, everybody was talking about my knees. But I've never had major surgeries on them. I had one scope on my left knee and that was it. I've had tendinitis a little bit, but that's about it. But who doesn't have tendinitis when you're playing 82 games per year?
More recently, I've developed arthritis in certain joints from just the wear and tear of the game. But I've basically been injury-free my entire career.
One surgery I'll likely get down the road is to correct my bent left pinkie finger. I broke it in high school and then dislocated it my first day of practice in the NBA. During my career, it kept getting hit more and more, and going further and further out. I just can't get surgery while I'm playing because if it breaks again, it will go right back to the way it was. Fortunately, I've avoided the knife a lot. I'm a firm believer in once you do that, you'll probably never be the same again.
A big inspiration early in my career was my former Suns teammate Cliff Robinson, one of the most versatile guys coming into the league. He was the first guy who was able to guard 1 through 5. Even though he was bigger than me, I was like, "If he can do it, I can do it."
Jeff Gross/Getty Images
I went from guarding the 3s to guarding the 1s to the 4s, and I felt like I deserved Defensive Player of the Year. I was banging with the 4s for a full year in Phoenix, and that's when you really had power forwards. One night I'm guarding Kevin Garnett and then the next night I'm guarding Tim Duncan or Chris Webber—every power forward in the league.
I was way undersized at 6'7". And I didn't do it for like one, two quarters; I did it for the whole game. Even two, three years ago in Dallas, I was guarding all the point guards in the league.
You know what's funny? When they talked about my shooting form over what I was doing on the floor. Nobody in the league shoots the same way, so why do you want to use that as a focal point to talk about what I'm doing? I've seen guys with perfect form who can't hit the backboard. I don't shoot any different than anybody else; I've just got a slower release.
When Kenny Smith gave me my nickname on national TV in my first-ever preseason game, that's what everybody knew me as, and it's something that I ran with. I actually trademarked "Matrix 31" my rookie season, with my jersey number. I got it incorporated as an LLC.
I put "Matrix 31" on everything I do to a certain degree. It's my website, I've put it on my cars and it's the logo on my seats in my home movie theater. Even my pool and poker tables have "Matrix 31." The Suns and Mavericks also designed The Matrix-inspired bobbleheads of me for the fans, and I had them blown up. They're about four feet high. I also have posters themed from the movie. I collect almost everything I can, and people have sent me some cool stuff as well.
I also collect custom guitars. My first one was a gift from a sponsor when I was in Phoenix. I was like, "This is a hell of a souvenir." It was decorated with a monogram of an action image of myself. That's what I've been doing more recently, incorporating every team I've played on.
Brandon Wade/Associated Press/Associated Press
Was it a tough process to retire? No. I said a long time ago that I wanted to play 15 years in the league, which I did last year. But I saw an opportunity in Cleveland to go out with a championship possibly, and I had to explore it. And I was able to be close to Chicago, where my son is.
Shawn Jr. just turned one, and your priorities change once you have a child. I developed a little bond with him last summer, and it goes a long way. Also, everything was kind of shifting for me. My body is telling me it's definitely slowing down and it's a lot harder to come back from injuries. It's so rigorous right now that I had to look at the options for myself and what's best for me now and my family.
The biggest thing is I want to develop a full-time schedule with my son, but I'm slowly getting into the process of exploring some things. I definitely want to do something with the NBA, but I don't know what yet. I do have the 10th season of my basketball camp this summer at North Chicago Community High School. My camp director is one of my sisters, Quinnisha, and she wanted to make sure we did at least 10.
I'm also thinking about getting my real estate license. I've got some investments, a few hedge funds. I attend a few business and investment seminars, and it's interesting. My former Suns teammate Jimmy Jackson really got me thinking about the business side of basketball, and I've talked to Magic quite a bit on investment deals. He's just a mogul now.
I do have an interest in acting. I've made guest spots on some shows, and I've actually thought about doing an internship with a big movie studio. I also may take a culinary class. I love grilling and entertaining people. I love catfish, lasagna and fried chicken. Actually I'm going to get some recipes for soups and side dishes from our team chef, Terry Bell. But if I don't know how to make something, I call my mother, Elaine, and she helps me.
Overall, I try to enjoy life to the fullest. I really want to do a trip around the world, and I'm planning how to do it now. I want to go to a lot of different places—Dubai, Fiji, Thailand. I've been to China, but I want to go to Hong Kong.
I also love the water. I go boating, tubing and I have jet skis, and I'm actually building a second house in north Dallas on a lake. I've also got a couple of ATVs, and I love paintball. I've always wanted a paintball course at my house, but it's kind of hard to do.
I am going to start deer and wild boar hunting later this year in Texas and Arkansas, where my family is. When I played in Dallas, I met some people who hunt, and I like going to the gun range. I even have two collectible pieces that are gold-plated, including a Desert Eagle and an AK-47 that was used as a movie prop. For the hunting I'm going to do, I actually need to get fitted for a custom gun because my arms are so long.
It's crazy how everything has come full circle in Cleveland. I teamed up with Raja Bell and James Jones in Phoenix, Mike Miller in the 2001 Goodwill Games, LeBron in the 2004 Olympics, Brendan Haywood in Dallas and general manager David Griffin and assistant coach Jim Boylan in Phoenix. You can't put a price on all that stuff.
There's also no price on being able to compete at the level we compete at and play in the front of the world. It's just amazing; it's just a true blessing. Everybody has dreams and aspirations of doing certain things, and I was fortunate enough to make my dreams come true and do it at a high level. It doesn't get any better than that.
The Hall of Fame—why not? It's a hell of an accomplishment.
Jared Zwerling covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram.Researchers have traveled to the ends of the earth in search of exotic microorganisms that can produce the medicine we need to live and thrive. But as a new study points out, we may have overlooked an extremely rich source of drugs that was right under our noses: bacteria in and on the human body.
Scientists from University of California, San Francisco School of Pharmacy have pinpointed a vaginal bacterium that naturally plays a role in the organ's defense, isolated and amplified its defense capabilities, and created an antibiotic that can kill harmful pathogens while sparing the bacteria that are an important part of the vagina’s bacterial environment.
"We used to think that drugs were discovered by drug companies and approved by the FDA and then prescribed by a physician, and then they get to you,” lead researcher and biologist Michael Fischbach, Ph.D. told The Huffington Post. "What this finding shows is that bacteria that live on and inside of us are mounting an end run around the process.”
The vaginal bacterium Lactobacillus gasseri was the basis of an antibiotic called lactocillin that can kill the pathogens that cause vaginal infections, but without wiping out the bacteria that coexist peacefully with the organ. Traditional antibiotics can have a scorched earth effect, wiping out all bacteria — even the good kinds — which can lead to more problems down the road.
But beyond the immediate implication (a possible new drug for vaginal infections), the methods used to find the bacteria could upend the way we approach pharmaceutical research and manufacturing, argues Fischbach.
A microbiome of over 100 trillion bacteria lives on and in each one of us, and most of them are either benign or even helpful. Fischbach’s research is some of the first to search for drug-producing bacteria within the human microbiome.
"It’s very early days and we don’t know all the implications yet, but it looks like gut, skin and oral bacteria are better chemists than we thought, and are capable of making many more molecules that resemble drugs than had previously been realized,” said Fischbach. “This may be a great way of learning just how helpful bacteria help us."
Fischbach's team identified more than 3,000 clusters of bacterial genes on humans that can make drug-like molecules.
To isolate the Lactobacillus gasseri’s special drug-producing powers, Fischbach used a computer algorithm to look through the genome sequences of bacteria collected as part of the NIH Human Microbiome Project, an ongoing, multi-center effort to genetically map out the bacteria that live in the human body. He was looking to see if he could spot drug-producing genes that were especially common. Although Fischbach isolated bacteria from inside the vagina, he is hopeful that the technology could benefit men as well.
"We think they still have bacteria producing the same drug, but it’s just a different bacterial species that lives in the mouth and has not yet been isolated,” explained Fischbach.
The need for new antibiotics is urgent; it’s estimated that at least two million people in the U.S. become infected with antibiotic-resistant bacteria, which results in 23,000 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The growing antibiotic-resistant threat is what makes Dr. Vincent Young, M.D., Ph.D., so excited about the implications of Fischbach’s research. As both an associate professor and an infectious disease physician at University of Michigan’s Medical School department of internal medicine, Young regularly encounters patients that show up at the hospital with multi-drug resistant infections.
“We almost have nothing to treat these patients,” said Young in a phone interview with the Huffington Post. “This is a new way of doing drug discovery.”
More broadly, Young called Fischbach’s study a “technical tour de force” that stands out among other papers on the microbiome for the way he used what was already known about our bacteria (their genetic sequences), turned it into a new medicine and then analyzed the way it interacted with the rest of the bacterial community in the vagina.
“It really points the way on how microbiome research will move in the future,” concluded Young.
Joseph Petrosino, Ph.D., director of the Alkek Center for Metagenomics and Microbiome research at Baylor University, echoed Young’s praise for Fischbach’s methodology. Petrosino wasn’t involved with Fischbach’s research, but praised the study for providing insight on just how crucial our good bacteria is for overall health.
“This research demonstrates directly how the microbiome can convey protection against pathogens that are a constant threat to human health,” wrote Petrosino in an email to HuffPost.It is well known that Alexander Hamilton joined the New York state militia while still attending college. However, many of the details given by Hamilton’s friends and biographers have been questioned and, indeed, many eyewitness statements appear contradictory. The following excerpt from Alexander Hamilton: The Formative Years firmly establishes when Hamilton joined the militia, which company he belonged to, and reveals some interesting newly discovered details about his militia service:
According to Nicholas Fish, “In the year 1775, immediately after the battle of Lexington,” news of which reached New York City on April 23, Hamilton “attached himself to one of the uniform Companies of Militia then forming for the defence of the Country by the patriotic young men of this city.” Less than two months later, on June 14, 1775, Hamilton appeared on a list as a private in the militia. Thus, sometime between April 23 and June 14, 1775—probably in late April or early May based on Fish’s account—Hamilton, along with Robert Troup and Nicholas Fish, enlisted in the militia. Robert Troup reported that the company he and Hamilton joined “was uniformed in short green coats and leather caps having the inscription of ‘Freedom or death’ in front.” Troup wrote that the company was commanded by a Major Fleming, but Hercules Mulligan and Nicholas Fish said it was commanded by Captain Fleming, whereas that list from June 1775 had him listed as Colonel Fleming. According to a list of New York’s “Independent Foot Companies” dated August 9, 1775, the Corsicans had “short Green Coats, Small round Hats Cock[ed] on one side. A Red Hart of Tin with the words, God and our Right, round the Crown Liberty or Death.” Edward Fleming was captain of the Corsicans and lieutenant colonel of the battalion. With the correct captain, nearly the same motto, and the same green coats, Hamilton clearly belonged to the Corsicans.
John C. Hamilton, however, said that Alexander Hamilton, Robert Troup, and Nicholas Fish were in a militia company called the Hearts of Oak. But the Hearts of Oak do not appear on the catalog of New York militia companies from August 9, 1775. On August 28, 1775, Edward Fleming was appointed Deputy Adjutant General for the New York Department. With this promotion, Fleming was no longer able to command the Corsicans. On a list of companies dated September 14, 1775, the Corsicans no longer show up but there appears out of nowhere the “Hearts Oak,” or “Hearts of Oak” as it was called in a subsequent list. John Berrian, who had been a lieutenant in the Corsicans, was captain of the Hearts of Oak. Frederick Jay, John Jay’s younger brother, who had been second lieutenant of the Corsicans, became first lieutenant of the Hearts of Oak. With two former Corsicans taking command of the Hearts of Oak and John C. Hamilton putting Hamilton, Fish, and Troup in the company, it is clear that the Corsicans sometime between August 9 and September 14 became the Hearts of Oak, either by changing its name or by the members of the old company forming a new one. Thus, Hamilton served first in the Corsicans and afterwards in the Hearts of Oak.
Alexander Hamilton dove right into his military training with characteristic enthusiasm and energy. Nicholas Fish remembered how Hamilton “devoted much time attending regularly the parades and performing tours of duty with promptitude and zeal.” Robert Troup recalled that “the Company met every morning, for a considerable time, for exercise in the Church Yard of St. George’s Chapel in New York,” and that Hamilton “was constant in his attendance and very ambitious of improvement. He became exceedingly expert in the manual exercise.” Within just weeks of enlisting, Alexander Hamilton had so impressed his superiors that he was recommended for promotion by being included in a June 1775 “List of Gentlemen who were deemed Qualified to Serve as Officers in the Provincial Army... if one should be raised.”Product details
Base Signal
We use a well known hardware analog and virtual analog synthesizers to generate a base-signals for Meteora. We combine these into one small creative box as a rompler device.
Samples? We call our device a sample-based Rompler, because the multilayered samples we used are just the base-signal. This signal is then routed through the filters, pre-fx and fx-sections. The samples used give the Meteora Rompler its own character, that can be seriously modified to allow you to create new sounds.
Instrument sections
Base-signal - lead of analog monster-synthesizer. HyperSaw - Hyper waveform of Saw signal. Liquid - sound of Pad with Lead from very well known German VA-synthesizer. Sub-Bass and TB - bass sounds from classic ’90s British analog synthesizer. Drums - one-shot kits. Every section has level, cut/reso/env and tune knobs for creating variations of the base device sound. Every instrument include SineOSC, LFO, 24LP Filter, 2 Fx and 2nd Filter.
SineOsc + LFO
In every instrument You can use SineOSC to modify your sound with sine wave. In the LFO section You can select Waveforms and use them to change the base-sound.
Filters
In all instrument sections we used a classic LP24 filter. Also You can use Reverb effect, Shaper Drive or Distortion Drive controls to modify the sound. Signal come to Filter sections on every instrument. Here You can choose the type of filter: LP12, LP24, LP+, BP6, HP12, HP+ and control the filter with Cutoff and Resonance. Note: LP+ and HP+ are controlled only by Cutoff (Resonance is not active).
Pre-FX
Section include Pre-FX Filter (6 modes) and LongVerb static FX.
FX Board
This section includes 14 FX: Chorus, Reverb, Delay, Phaser, Flanger, Lo-Fi, Rotary, Overdrive, Distortion, Compressor, Limiter, EQ, Multiband, End Filter. Adjustable settings of the effect sections can create variations of sounds that You build. After the End-Filter, the signal is routed into the Convolution section.
Convolutions
Convolution section includes 10 emulated impulses from a few popular hardware fx-processors. Note: For better DSP level use minimum on the Quality parameter knob.
Update - 1.1.4:
Fixed bug in LFO 1-4 sections Minor bugfixes Addition LFO Link to ModWheel Addition LFO 1-5 Destinations (Vol/Pan/Tune/Start)Today, Ann Coulter announced that she will no longer attempt to speak at the University of California, Berkeley tomorrow, Thursday, April 27, because of safety concerns. This latest success for those willing to threaten or engage in violence in order to silence a campus speaker establishes a genuinely dangerous precedent.
Public colleges and universities have a legal duty to protect First Amendment rights. They also have a responsibility to do their best to protect all those present on campus from threats to their physical safety. But curtailing the rights of a speaker in the name of safety is wrong unless absolutely necessary, and canceling a speech must be the very last resort. Otherwise, restricting or silencing a speaker is simply a capitulation to violence or threats.
No university may be considered “safe” if speakers voicing unpopular ideas on its campus incur a substantial risk of being physically attacked. A university where people or viewpoints are likely to be opposed with fists rather than argumentation is unworthy of the name. Granting those willing to use violence the power to determine who may speak on campus is an abdication of UC Berkeley’s moral and legal responsibilities under the First Amendment.
In the wake of the violence at UC Berkeley on Feb. 1, we at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) counseled patience, given that UC Berkeley professed to have been caught off-guard and that it promised an investigation into what happened. Nearly two months later, and after multiple incidents of political violence in the adjoining City of Berkeley, the university still appears to be unprepared to ensure the safety of a controversial speaker, attendees, or peaceful protesters.
Moving forward, UC Berkeley must be properly prepared to host and protect speakers of all stripes. FIRE also calls for UC Berkeley’s promised investigation to go forward with thoroughness and transparency, and that its findings be made public without delay. The health of our democracy demands no less.
CONTACT:
Daniel Burnett, Communications Manager, FIRE: 215-717-3473; [email protected] Gov. Phil Bryant indicated late Thursday his intent to appeal a court ruling against a “religious freedom” law seen to enable sweeping anti-LGBT discrimination in the state, ending speculation on whether a district judge’s order against the law would be the final word on the matter.
Legal documents filed in the federal lawsuit against HB 1523 provide notice of appearance for Drew Snyder as counsel for Bryant and alert the court the governor seeks to appeal the preliminary injunction against the law to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
In addition to those filings, Bryant’s attorney filed legal documents calling on the court to stay the injunction against the law issued last week pending appeal of the lawsuit.
In a nine-page filing, Snyder argues a stay is warranted on the basis that Mississippi is likely to succeed on appeal, HB 1523 is constitutional and the state will suffer irreparable injury without a hold on the order.
“On equal protection, this Court held that HB 1523 failed rational-basis review, but that conclusion is untenable,” the filing says. “HB 1523 has an obvious rational basis: Protecting the citizens of Mississippi from being forced or pressured to act in a manner contrary to their deeply held religious or moral beliefs.”
Last week, U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves, an Obama appointee, granted a preliminary injunction blocking the enforcement of HB 1523 on the day it was set to take effect on the basis that it violates the Establishment Clause barring the government from aligning itself with a particular religion.
Mississippi Attorney Jim Hood, a Democrat, has suggested he wouldn’t appeal the decision against HB 1523, saying the “churchgoing public was duped into believing that HB 1523 protected religious freedoms.” A Hood spokesperson told the Friday the attorney general will make a decision about the appeal in the coming days.
Signed by Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant in April, House Bill 1523 is seen to enable sweeping anti-LGBT discrimination in the name of “religious freedom.” The law permits clerks to deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples, provided someone else in their office can offer the service, and allows business and individuals to deny services to same-sex couples as well as transition-related care to transgender people.
Reeves issued the preliminary injunction as a result of two separate lawsuits. One was filed on behalf of the Campaign for Southern Equality by Roberta Kaplan, the lesbian New York-based attorney who successfully argued against the Defense of Marriage Act before the U.S. Supreme Court. The other was filed by Rob McDuff of the Jackson-based law firm McDuff & Byrd in Jackson and the Mississippi Center for Justice.
In April, the Blade reported Bryant has a gay son who was physically attacked in 2012 because of his sexual orientation.
h/t BuzzfeedBreaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Jan. 23, 2017, 3:55 PM GMT / Updated Jan. 23, 2017, 5:16 PM GMT By Pete Williams
Abortion could become illegal in more than half the states if a future Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v Wade decision, according to a new report from the Center for Reproductive Rights.
"More than 37 million women in 33 states are at risk of living in a state where abortion could become illegal," the group said.
The report was issued to observe the 44th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision.
Donald Trump said during the presidential campaign that he would appoint "pro-life justices" to the Supreme Court.
If the court voted to overturn Roe, "it will go back to the states, and the states will then make a determination."
Pro-choice activists hold signs in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 22, 2014 on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Alex Wong / Getty Images
Based on an analysis of party control in state legislatures and governorships, as well as existing laws and constitutional provisions, the report said 22 states were at the highest risk of banning abortion. Most are in the central and southern US.
Four of them — Louisiana, Mississippi, and North and South Dakota — have laws in place that would automatically make abortion illegal if Roe v Wade were to be overturned.
Eleven states were classed as an intermediate risk. And in the remaining 17, abortion rights were said to appear secure.
22 high risk states: WI, ID, ND, MI, SD, IN, OH, UT, MO, KY, WV, AZ, KS, AR, TN, SC, OK, LA, MS, AL, GA, TX 11 moderate risk states: NH, IL, WY, IA, PA, RI, CO, NE, VA, DE, NC 17 states where the right appears secure: ME, VT, WA, MT, MN, NY, MA, OR, NV, NJ, CT, CA, MD, NM, HI, AK, FL
"We cannot go back to the days before Roe, when some women put their lives on the line when they needed to end a pregnancy," said Nancy Northup, the Center’s president.
President Trump has pledged to nominate a replacement promptly for Justice Antonin Scalia. Any nominee who opposed the Roe decision would have the same view Scalia did.
But Trump might need to put two more appointees on the court in order to make overturning Roe a realistic possibility.
Sen. Jeff Sessions, Trump's nominee for attorney general, said in his confirmation hearing that while he opposes abortion, "It is the law of the land, it has been so established and settled for quite a long time and it deserves respect. And I would respect it and follow it."Fox News used yet another dishonest graphic to paint a misleading picture of President Obama's handling of the economy. In a graphic labeled "Growth of Government Spending (As A Share Of GDP)," Fox & Friends suggested that government spending increased from 3.2 percent of the economy at the end of the Bush administration to an average of 23.8 percent under Obama. But in doing so, Fox compared the level of deficits under Bush to overall spending under Obama -- two completely different measures of government spending. The figure for "government spending" during the Obama administration is in line with historical data for overall spending as a percentage of the economy, a figure that does not take into account federal revenue. By contrast, the 3.2 percent figure used to illustrate "government spending" under Bush and the figures for the 1940s are in line with historical data for deficits, a figure that does take into account revenues. The actual figures for government spending ("outlays") as a percentage of the economy were 20.8 percent in 2008 and 25.2 percent in 2009. An honest graphic of the data would indicate that government spending as a percentage of the economy has increased only slightly since 2008 and actually dropped since 2009, not show the massive increase that Fox's mismatched data presents. In fact, the very source cited by Fox's graphic makes this point clear. According to the related September 24 Wall Street Journal column: "The deficit in fiscal 2008 was a mere 3.2% of GDP." The column further claimed that federal spending would amount to 23.8 percent on average during Obama's tenure, a figure marginally higher than an average of 20.1 percent under Bush.
And here's another glaring problem with the graph: Under the averages for 1943-1945, years during which Roosevelt was president, the Fox graphic showed a picture of Harry S. Truman. But Truman wasn't sworn until April 1945 upon Roosevelt's death.
Fox & Friends was recently forced to correct a chart that dishonestly compared two completely different measures of unemployment -- a distortion that suggested the unemployment rate has nearly doubled under Obama's watch. At the time, Washington Post media blogger Erik Wemple wrote:
[E]ven by the low standards of informed opinion on cable television, on the Internet and in printed matter, "Fox & Friends" occupies a special wacko cubbyhole. It's not so much commentary as blind bomb-throwing, morning after morning after morning.
Just last week, the morning show corrected -- via Twitter -- the false claim that Obama met with a pirate rather than meeting with world leaders the day before. That claim was based entirely on a photo of the president from 3 years ago.
Co-host Steve Doocy wrote on his Twitter feed, "By the way, our picture of the President with a pirate was from 2009. How time flies!"
UPDATE: On September 28, Fox & Friends addressed the dishonest chart. Guest co-host Eric Bolling stated: "We mixed up the numbers on Wednesday, so we wanted to clear things up."
But far from clearing things up, Bolling did not explain how Fox made such an error or note that government spending as a percentage of the economy has actually increased only slightly since 2008. Rather, Bolling hosted Wall Street Journal assistant editorial page editor James Freeman to throw out different numbers to make the case that Obama is responsible for huge increases in debt.
In fact, experts -- including a former adviser to President Reagan -- say that Bush's policies are almost entirely to blame for the country's deficit problems.Expand An officer from the Egyptian Central Security Forces (CSF) takes aim at a crowd of retreating protesters as security forces disperse the Rab’a sit-in on August 14, 2013. © 2013 AFP/Getty Images
(Cairo) – The systematic and widespread killing of at least 1,150 demonstrators by Egyptian security forces in July and August 2013 probably amounts to crimes against humanity, Human Rights Watch said today in a report based on a year-long investigation. In the August 14 dispersal of the Rab’a al-Adawiya sit-in alone, security forces, following a plan that envisioned several thousand deaths, killed a minimum of 817 people and more likely at least 1,000.
What Egypt Should Do: End excessive use of force in policing demonstrations What UN Member Countries Should Do: Urgently establish an international commission of inquiry to investigate mass killings of protesters; Suspend all sales and provision to Egypt of security-related items and assistance Tweet Our Recommendations
The 188-page report, “All According to Plan: The Rab’a Massacre and Mass Killings of Protesters in Egypt,” documents the way the Egyptian police and army methodically opened fire with live ammunition on crowds of demonstrators opposed to the
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them and update them here as they become available. Since I didn’t actually use these schematics when building it, I can’t guarantee that they’re perfect, so use at your own risk!
Each layer of eight solenoids is controlled by one of these boards. The boards are daisy-chained such that the serial in of the first 74HC595 (pin 14) is connected to the Arduino, and the serial in of each subsequent 595 is attached to the previous chips’ serial out (pin 9).On October 29, in Urumqi, 489 special travelers climbed on the slow train to Guangdong that takes 50 hours to cross the whole of China diagonally. All of them where Uighurs. They were making this trip in order to start a new life, which was a part of a national plan to spread Uighurs across the country.
The concept had been validated by Xi Jinping at a two-day forum on Xinjiang in May. Local governments were invited to offer young Uighurs work and educational opportunities so as “to enhance mutual understanding.” As one of China's wealthiest provinces, Guangdong had committed itself to take 5,000 of these individuals up to 2016. This year, a total of 1,000 have departed.
This scheme has been carefully prepared at both ends of China. A similar attempt had been tried five years ago but ended in failure. At the time, in a toy factory in Shaoguan (Guangdong), 800 Uighurs from Shufu (Xinjiang) had been attacked by the rest of the workers, mostly Han Chinese, who accused them of raping two Chinese women. Two Uighurs were killed and 120 were injured in a stampede that occurred during this incident. Protests had then followed in Xinjiang, leading to a very short and extremely violent upheaval in Urumqi that left 200 dead.
So before once again taking up this scheme, the Chinese government spent five years reflecting on what had gone wrong earlier and trying to fix the problems.
The main step was carefully screening the future migrants in order to weed out notorious extremists. All those accepted for the program then underwent training on ethnic unity, law, and Han Chinese etiquette and manners. From Xinjiang, one local official would accompany 50 of the migrants, who are granted renewable permits to stay as long as they wish.
Concerning the plan’s quality and its chances of working, James Leibold, a foreign scholar with considerable expertise on Xinjiang, believes that many hurdles will have to be overcome on the path to success. For instance, the six Chinese companies who had agreed to accept the Uighur employees probably did not wholeheartedly acquiesce to the plan. They did so only after having their arms twisted and being guaranteed subsidies from the local government. And while the objective is to achieve a degree of mingling among the workers' "social groups," local officials will arguably wish to keep them separate, so as to avoid any trouble.
Another strange measure launched two months ago (beginning of September) is the offer by local governments in Xinjiang, such as the one in Qiemo, to give out 10.000 yuan per year for five years to couples in mixed marriages. This is a lot of money in a territory where average income last year totaled 7,600 yuan. Adding this grant to the regular income of such a couple could quickly make them rich, at least by local standards.
Another series of benefits go beyond this annual payment. For example, 90% of the medical bills of these mixed couples will be covered by free insurance, and they will also receive housing benefits if the union lasts more than three years. Other perks include exemption from school fees within the county, a 3,000 yuan yearly scholarship for their children reaching college followed by another one of 5,600 yuan for those children reaching university.
This scheme, which has also been applied in Tibet, seeks to overcome the divide between Han Chinese and ethnic minorities in order to“increase interethnic contact, exchange and mingling” (交往交流交融) and was officially ratified at the Second Central Xinjiang Work Forum.
But can it work? Probably not, as it confuses some key issues. While it would be more than nice for young eloping people from both ethnic sides to receive such goodies, such benefits certainly cannot alone lead the potential couples to forget about the mistrust and prejudices which exist between Uighurs and Han Chinese. Besides, marriages based completely on money tend to be less durable than one based on true love and respect.
Conclusion: Incentives for mixed marriages, placement of Uighurs throughout Han Chinese regions and the high speed train to Urumqi, are all political investments by China’s rulers to secure peace and harmony among the troubled Uighur ethnic minority group. They leave no doubt about the total commitment of the CCP to solve the problem and succeed at both developing and integrating the Uighurs.
The problem here, however, is twofold. The Uighurs were not consulted on any of these initiatives and none of the measures address their core grievance, namely the feeling that they are being deprived of their land and culture. Thus, Beijing’s new palliatives for the Xinjiang problem will at worst fail and at best become just one element of a broader and more effective approach to winning Uighur loyalty. And that comprehensive solution has yet to be advanced.iPhones have always been expensive, but they have never been this expensive…
Following reports from Goldman Sachs, Nikkei, Fast Company and KGI Securities’ famed Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo that Apple will start iPhone X pricing from $1,000 is more evidence to explain why.
In short: no iPhone has ever been this expensive to build.
Shedding new light on this is the Economic Daily News (via DigiTimes). It reveals longtime Apple component supplier TPK Holdings has quoted 2-2.5x the price for integrating 3D Touch into the 10th anniversary iPhone’s display - and Apple has accepted. This works out as $18-22 vs $7-9 in previous generations.
Why? The move to OLED: “The solution directly bonds 3D Touch sensors on LTPS TFT-LCD display panels of the iPhone, but 3D Touch solution for OLED panels entails bonding of a glass cover on the front and back side of an OLED panel each to reinforce the fragile OLED panel,” claims the Economic Daily Times.
What’s more, this is just the latest in a series of component price rises.
Goldman Sachs says the OLED itself will add $35 to the overall manufacturing cost, new “3D sensing” technology (expected to be in the camera) adds an additional $20 and upgraded memory will be $16-29 more expensive than last year.
Combined with the new 3D Touch module, these areas total roughly $100 and may be just the tip of the iceberg. After all long overdue wireless charging and quick charging are also expected to arrive with this generation along with Touch ID integrated into the display. So given a 256GB iPhone 7 Plus already sells for $969 (and Apple needs to maintain its industry-leading profit margins), $1,000 actually seems conservative.
Despite this - and fears of a dull ‘Plan B’ backup - Goldman Sachs says “we believe Apple has now locked down the design." This would mean Apple has also committed to manufacturing costs and therefore the knock-on effect they will have on retail pricing.
Of course, Apple isn’t shy about raising prices. The company increased MacBook Pro prices dramatically (and controversially) with the most recent generation and both sales and brand loyalty for the range continue to be strong. Furthermore, iPhones have the considerable benefit of their cost being spread out via long-term carrier contracts.
So the arrival of the $1,000+ iPhone is coming and Apple looks set to reap the reward, on one condition: It gets it right…
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Over the years, the once-cohesive environmental community has divided into multiple factions, splitting along philosophical and tactical lines. Some environmentalists, such as Arne Naess, have advocated a “deep ecology” view, which retreats from the modern world, seeking ways to live in harmony with the nature. Others, such as Bill McKibben and his 350.org group, are focused on creating a widespread political and social movement, reminiscent of the 1960s and ’70s, to rattle cages and change things through protests and grassroots action. Then there are the wonks and scientists, such as most of us in academia and government, who typically focus on the role of science and policy in shaping the future of the environment.
Others, like Bjorn Lomborg and the Copenhagen Consensus group, challenge traditional environmentalism and call for different international priorities, mainly focused on economic development, poverty alleviation and public health. Also challenging the environmental mainstream are Michael Shellenberger, Ted Nordhaus and the Breakthrough Institute, who focus on the power of innovation and technological change to solve big environmental problems.
Once divided, the debates start. Whether about nuclear power, the use of genetically modified crops, the Keystone pipeline, the importance of climate change or the role of businesses in addressing sustainability, these factions couldn’t be further apart. Sadly, over time, these groups have become suspicious and distrustful of each other. Like those among members of a family, the fights among these closely related groups are sometimes vicious. Most days, it’s hard to even imagine we all think of ourselves as “environmentalists.”
A theory of change is simply that: a theory about how you think the world changes for the better.
Yet we all generally want the same things: a sustainable world, where people can live full and productive lives without compromising the environment or the opportunities of future generations. So why all the friction? Why all the division, debate and suspicion?
I think a lot these differences boil down to people having different “theories of change.”
A theory of change is simply that: a theory about how you think the world changes for the better. Some people, like Bill McKibben, think the world changes because of political and social movements. Others, like the Deep Ecologists, think it takes fundamental cultural shifts in our attitudes toward nature, while Neo-environmentalists think it takes economic transformation and radical technological change. And there are many other theories of change, each representing a deeply held set of assumptions about how the world changes.
Regardless of their underlying assumptions, the most important thing about a theory of change is that it be a real, working theory. To me, as a scientist, this means it starts as a hypothesis (an initial guess or assumption) and then is constantly tested against data through ongoing observation and experimentation. This is how a theory works: It must be tested. Data, not our feelings, rule. If the data say a theory is wrong, then it’s simply wrong — and it’s time to move on to a new one.
But most of us are reluctant to give up our deeply held assumptions, and are unwilling to put our theory of change to the test. We stubbornly ignore the data around us and cling to these theories even in the face of contradictory evidence.
Let’s consider two different theories of change that are pretty common these days.
First, many of my friends are deeply concerned about climate change and have become involved with Bill McKibben’s latest political movement, focused on stopping the construction of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. It’s easy to admire these folks: They’re committed and deeply caring, and are putting themselves on the front line. When challenged on the efficacy of their movement — especially by those who say that Keystone would only add a tiny amount to the nation’s emissions, and that reducing coal use, improving efficiency and deploying more renewables would have far bigger impacts — they speak of the powerful symbolism of the pipeline, and its ability to galvanize a larger climate “movement” in the future. That makes sense, but when was the last time a social or political movement caused a major environmental policy change in Washington? Wasn’t it the early 1970s when we saw landmark federal legislation to protect clean air, clean water and endangered species? (If I’m wrong about this, please let me know.) In today’s toxic political landscape, where outside money, dime-a-dozen pundits and hyper-partisanship have utterly gridlocked D.C., do we honestly think activists and protests can change anything? With all possible respect, I have to ask: Where is the evidence to support this theory of change? (For the record, I’ll be very happy to be proven wrong about this. But, for the moment, I just don’t see enough data to support this theory. Instead, I see people taking this as an article of faith more than an observable fact.)So I just put a book out: the amusingly titled Finding Jesus, in which you literally find Jesus (aka, widely reconizable public domain character). Out of a wish to not harangue you (believe me, it's taking all I've got to be even this self-promotional) I'll just say that it's a fun novelty book that's basically Where's Waldo? but with amusing cultural references, and you can check it out here, or if you're in the U.K. then look over here. And you can get an idea of the book's artwork in this column, because working on said book got me thinking about other things that are as hard to find as Jesus in a huge crowd of Jesus-looking hipsters. Here now is a selection...
#4. A Woman at a Prog Rock Show
Apologies to the women who ARE prog rock fans -- it's not that you're not out there, it's just that you're hard to find. And you might assume it's due to the unconventionally attractive guys on stage playing 10-minute songs about god knows what (and don't get me wrong, I love this shit), but I think that one reason it's so hard to find women at prog shows is because it's so hard to find women PLAYING at prog shows -- or any rock shows, for that matter.
I'm guessing that it's tied into the whole vicious cycle of women who rock and/or roll not getting radio play, so they can't get traction, so they can't inspire other women, so they can't break the dudelock (that's a deadlock involving dudes). It's really, really hard to find a rock station that will play new albums by female rockers, because they literally won't play female rock music, except for maybe Heart and Joan Jett (source: a female rock band I talked to who were told that to their faces).
So that's one reason why there aren't more female rock bands that you've heard of. Did you know that it's really, really hard to find reasons to not go mental and run screaming into the woods because of how shitty radio is for this reason (among others...)? A good radio station is hard to find because radio is part of the reason why there are no women at or playing at prog shows. You think women can't prog? They can prog with the best of them, and always have. They just don't get the airplay.
#3. A Video Game Character That Isn't an Angry White Dude With Brown Hair
It's not news that every AAA video game ever seems to star the same goddamn gruff, muscly white guy with brown hair, but it's unfortunately easy to find reasons why this should be. The fact that most games are made by dudes is the main cause -- much as the tonally repetitive world of graphic novels has the problem of every comic being made by literally the same guy cloned five times. The real issue, though, is why is it so hard to find people who design characters that look different from themselves and/or what's popular?
Dudes: don't be like radio. Don't get into a self-perpetuating loop of creating an audience that's like you by excluding things that aren't like the audience. You can create any sort of character, and even if you do it for arbitrary reasons the audience can and will respond to them. Part of it is we still see people who aren't us as The Other, and we think we can't relate to them. But we're all far more alike than we are different.
Here's a starting point: if you're designing a video game, then, as usual, write a character who is exactly like you. But once you're done, drop all that dialogue into a body that DOESN'T look like yours. If you're intimidated to write someone unlike yourself or can't be bothered with research and empathy, then DON'T write one -- just write a character, because that's what we all are. Devise a personality and then drop it into a body and tweak according to hormones and sociological pressures -- that's what nature does, and you're not better than nature, are you? (Nature has killer bees -- what do you have? Some shitty, similar characters.) If everyone tried that, interesting new video game characters might become easier to find. It'll at least be better than the current situation.Cambridge University is introducing an official'register' for lecturers to declare if they are having sexual relationships with students.
The measure is part of a campaign to crack down on harassment on campus. Starting next week, the university will unveil a policy that will actively discourage relationships.
Lecturers who disclose liaisons with students could be barred from teaching the students or giving them references.
The measure is part of a campaign to crack down on harassment on campus. Pictured: King's College, Cambridge
It comes after alumni claimed they were sexually assaulted by their tutors at the world-leading university in the 80s and 90s.
Called Breaking the Silence, the online guide advises that ‘personal relationships between students and staff should be avoided’.
But if such relationships do exist, they say academics should disclose the relationship in an email to human resources or by talking to their head of department.
Staff can ‘reorganise’ the pair’s schedules to minimise any contact. In some situations, the student and tutor could be banned from seeing each other in a professional capacity to make sure they do not receive any preferential treatment.
Called Breaking the Silence, the online guide advises that ‘personal relationships between students and staff should be avoided’
Students will be able to take part in the Good Lad Initiative workshops, which tackle the macho culture at university.
In a statement, Cambridge University said: ‘There is no place for any form of harassment or sexual misconduct at the University of Cambridge.
‘All members of the university community have an individual and a collective responsibility to ensure that their professional relationships are sensitive to the imbalances of power that exist within any organisation.’CEBU, Philippines - Whether or not the plug was pulled early on her just concluded afternoon soap “Pinulot Ka Lang sa Lupa” – where she played villain to headliners Julie Anne San Jose and Benjamin Alves – due to poor ratings, LJ Reyes has the luxury of not having the time to dwell on it.
She’s after all, occupied with another GMA-7 Afternoon Prime series that will premiere today after “Legally Blind,” taking over the slot vacated by the short-lived, and might we say badly written, “Pinulot.”
Titled “D’Originals,” LJ is a good girl this time, playing an entrepreneur forced to wear the pants in her marriage when her husband (Mark Herras) chooses to mope at home while waiting for his dream job. When her character becomes too busy for his amorous advances, he finds more than enough comfort in his sister-in-law (Lovely Abella).
Sharing the title role with LJ in this dramedy is premier actress Jaclyn Jose and TV vixen Kim Domingo.
The 29-year-old actress is still no missus in real life, but with the blossoming of her romance with fellow actor Paolo Contis, is that about to change anytime soon?
“I don’t think as an adult, you will enter into a relationship that you don’t think will flourish into something beautiful,” says LJ during an interview with the Cebu press on the possibility of Paolo putting a ring on it sooner rather than later.
“Of course, our vision is to get there. As of now, we’re just praying for it. Marami pa kaming kailangang ayusin sa buhay. So we’re still taking it one step at a time.”
Along with another Kapuso celebrity couple Mark Herras and Wynwyn Marquez, LJ and Paolo will be seen on Sunday (April 23) in the first episode of the docu-reality show “Follow Your Heart” hosted by Heart Evangelista.
While Paolo is definitely a major inspiration for LJ these days, the actor isn’t the main guy in her life. That title goes to Ethan Akio, LJ’s six-year-old son with Kapamilya star Paulo Avelino.
“Motherhood teaches you patience. It makes you realize how much love you can give,” shares LJ. “Ang isang tao or babae pala can give so much love, that hindi mo maintindihan saan nanggagaling yun. Yung love mo para sa anak mo is as deep as the ocean. Hindi na masyadong mababaw ang tingin mo sa mga bagay.”
LJ, who has proven she has the acting chops with a 2010 Cinemalaya Best Supporting Actress and 2016 Gawad Urian Best Actress awards, is also crediting motherhood for her sense of purpose when it comes to work.
“Dati nung wala akong anak, ‘Okey, work, just have fun.’ Ngayon, you work but at the same time, you’re thinking of your son, you’re thinking of your business, you’re thinking of so many things. Motherhood made me experience a lot of emotions that I use in acting.” –VAB/Photo by ALDO NELBERT BANAYNALGetty Images
Few high school football coaches ever get to the NFL. Few football coaches who get to the NFL ever go back to high school football. Mike Sherman is.
The former Packers head coach, Texans offensive coordinator, Texas A&M head coach, and Dolphins offensive coordinator has become the head coach at Nauset Regional in North Eastham, Massachusetts, according to Bill Higgins of the Cape Cod Times.
A Massachusetts native, the 60-year-old Sherman last coached in the NFL in 2013.
“I guess I’d say, why not? I’ve been fortunate financially over the years, which is allowing me to do this,” Sherman said. “Back in January I was looking for a place to have a football camp this summer and Nauset High School came up. Then I heard they were looking for a head football coach.
“It took me a while to pull the trigger. It hasn’t been an easy decision because I wanted to make sure I was all 100 percent in. The kids deserve that from their coach. I’ve loved coaching in the NFL and college for the last 33 years, but I am definitely looking forward to working with the kids at Nauset.”
Sherman’s plan is to work what he has — and to exploit whatever the opponent doesn’t.
“Maybe we don’t have a Pro Bowl player at QB, but there is a good chance our opponent isn’t defending with a Pro Bowl cornerback, either,” Sherman said. “We’ll adjust to wherever our talent leads us. If we can run it, we’ll run it. If we can throw it, we’ll throw it. If we can do both, we will.”
Sherman’s broader goal is to make a difference for the players who will be entrusted to him.
“I have always admired high school coaches who give their time to their players,” Sherman said. “They have a chance to impact young lives. That is exciting and I’m looking forward to having an effect on these kids’ lives.”
It’s a great way for an otherwise retired coach to give back to the sport, and it should be an excellent opportunity for the players to learn from a man who knows the sport far better than most at that level.Eagles rookie QB Carson Wentz got his first taste of being under pressure Wednesday night but it had nothing to do with football. The number 2 overall draft pick tweeted that he got locked in the bathroom of a New Jersey gas station. (Published Friday, Oct. 7, 2016)
Eagles rookie quarterback Carson Wentz was under pressure Wednesday, though it had nothing to do with the football field. The number 2 draft pick tweeted that he got locked in a bathroom at a New Jersey gas station. Thankfully attendants with “garden shears” as well as a man “with the leg kick” managed to help him get out.
Wentz’s tweet was retweeted around 3500 times with followers having a bit of fun at the rookie’s expense. Check out some of the funniest reactions below.The families held a vigil on Wednesday night to remember the 96 victims of the Hillsborough tragedy
Hundreds of families of Liverpool fans involved in the Hillsborough tragedy are to bring a class action against South Yorkshire and West Midlands police forces.
Both forces being pursued by relatives of the victims - and survivors - are accused of "a systematic cover-up" in the civil claim which alleges "abuse on an industrial scale".
Sky Correspondent Martin Brunt said: "Something like 386 are joined together in a class action. They are suing the forces for damages."
Liverpool's Mayor Joe Anderson gave a speech during the Hillsborough vigil Liverpool's Mayor Joe Anderson gave a speech during the Hillsborough vigil
It was issued at the High Court last year, but could not be reported until the outcome of the inquests.
"We are still not allowed to know the specific details, and the forces have up to seven months in which to respond," said Brunt.
Saunders Law, a London-based legal firm, is coordinating the action.
James Saunders, senior partner, told Sky News: "There is evidence of a systematic cover-up intended to transfer the blame for what happened from South Yorkshire Police to the innocent by spreading lies, doctoring evidence, pressurising witnesses and suppressing the truth.
Liverpool legend Kenny Dalglish delivered a poignant Bible reading on Wednesday Liverpool legend Kenny Dalglish delivered a poignant Bible reading on Wednesday
"The evidence points to abuse on an industrial scale by both South Yorkshire and West Midlands Police beyond any one bad apple analysis.
"In addition to actions by individuals the evidence suggests institutional misfeasance by these bodies directed against our clients and the fans generally."
It comes as former South Yorkshire Police officers were reportedly told they "did a good job" during the 1980s in a message that mistakenly appeared on a website in the wake of the Hillsborough inquest findings.
Thousands of people sung the Liverpool FC anthem 'You'll Never Walk Alone' at a vigil in memory of those who died in the Hillsborough disaster Thousands of people sung the Liverpool FC anthem 'You'll Never Walk Alone' at a vigil in memory of those who died in the Hillsborough disaster
The retired officers are understood to have been told they had tried to act with dignity while "bile and hatred" had been directed towards the force - which has come under severe criticism for its response to the tragedy.
The inquest jury ruled the 96 fans who died in the disaster were unlawfully killed - and that the behaviour of supporters was not a factor in the tragedy at the 1989 FA Cup semi-final.
Jurors also concluded blunders by the police and ambulance services "caused or contributed to" the deaths.
Two investigations into the tragedy are under way, one a criminal probe into the deaths called Operation Resolve. The other is being carried out by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
A decision on whether to bring prosecutions will be taken once investigators have handed in their reports to the Crown Prosecution Service, likely in three to six months' time.Forty years ago today, Doctor Who aired an episode where the Doctor cautioned his soon-to-be companion Leela all about the dangers of people altering facts to “fit their views.” Huh, now where does that sound familiar?
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It’s the 40th anniversary of the classic Doctor Who episode “The Face of Evil Part 4.” The episode, which aired January 22, 1977, is all about the Doctor trying to make peace between two warring tribes, the primitive Sevateem and the technically brilliant Tesh. After Xoanon, a computer who the Sevateem worship as a god, takes control of Leela’s mind, the Doctor breaks her trance through hypnosis. But not before reminding her, and the audience, how hard some people work to convince themselves or others that there are five lights.
“You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common,” the Doctor said. “They don’t alter their views to fit the facts. They alter the facts to fit their views.”
One more time, for the people in the back.
Kellyanne Conway, in an interview on Meet the Press, recently declared that White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer wasn’t lying when he said that President Donald Trump’s inauguration was the most-attended one in history (it wasn’t). Rather, she said Spicer was sharing “alternative facts.” He wasn’t, he was lying.
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Calling something “alternative” is another way of swerving around the truth in order to serve a narrative. It’s a tactic that’s already been used to try and disguise white nationalism as “alternative right,” and will likely be used again to justify more lies and bigotry. Luckily, the Doctor is smarter than that. Hopefully we are too.
[Twitter]
Video via Tim BurkeWHAT IS THE PLOT?
The first season opens up with Gryth beginning to date King Midas's daughter Zoe. Through this relationship Gryth becomes acquainted with the gods, since King Midas is friends with the god Pan, and Zoe's best friend in the show is Psyche (Cupid's love interest). Gryth's journey will bring him amongst Hades in the Underworld, Poseidon in the Sea, and the first season will end with Gryth meeting Zeus on Mount Olympus. Along the way Gryth will meet Ancient Greek heroes as well, such as Hercules and Perseus.
THE HEART OF THE STORY:
I had the idea to create a coming of age comedy set in Ancient Greece about college students who were inclined to follow gods like Dionysus, getting intoxicated frequently, while there parents and teachers disapprovingly tried to sway them into worshiping nobler gods like Apollo. Throughout their journey amongst the gods, Gryth and his friends try to find the fine line between order and chaos.
WHAT MAKES THE SHOW UNIQUE?
The Characters: The main story follows Gryth and Lykos, two mischievous college students at Plato's Academy. The show combines historical characters, such as their teacher Plato and their know-it-all peer Aristotle, with mythological gods and heroes, like Zeus and Hercules.
It's Educational: In every episode, Gryth's narrative weaves together real classical myths of ancient writers such as Ovid and Homer. During the end credits of each episode, the audience will be reminded that they can go on The Myth of Gryth website to learn more about the real myths that were featured in that episode.
It's a Comedy: Most films made about the time period are Action or Drama. When I was learning about Ancient Greek and Roman mythology, I kept seeing so much opportunity for comedy in how flawed the gods are, and in the absurdity of some of the myths.
HOW LONG IS THE SHOW?
I'm going to take three months off of work to write the first season of the show, which will be six 22-minute-long episodes.
REVIEWS:
I first wrote The Myth of Gryth as a short story in a creative writing class and it got a great reception. Here's what some of my classmates had to say:
WHAT WILL YOU DO WITH THE SHOW ONCE IT'S WRITTEN?
I will finish the first season of the Myth of Gryth by the end of May. In early June I will be moving to Los Angeles to work in the film industry. There are no guarantees, but I am going to try my hardest to get the show picked up by a television network in the next few years.
Of course! Once the funding closes, stop by my website www.shanebarbera.com every Thursday for an update on the scripts. I'll reveal more plot details, character details, and even post excerpts from some of the funniest scenes! You can also "like" The Myth of Gryth page on Facebook to receive updates!
WHY ARE YOU WRITING IT IN ROME?
I originally came up with the concept for The Myth of Gryth while I was studying abroad in Rome in the Fall of 2011. I have never been as inspired to write as when I was in Rome; I wrote a 60 page script last time I was there. Rome is an ideal place to be writing about mythology because I'll literally be surrounded by the environments that the original myths were about.
WHAT IS "BACON MY HEART"?
Bacon My Heart is my newest short film (about 15 minutes in length). Because the script of The Myth of Gryth wouldn't make that great of a reward (most people don't want to read a script; it's meant to be seen, not read) and if the show is made it won't be for a few years, I am offering the download of my newest film as a reward to backers.Jessica Williams. Photo by Larry Busacca/Getty Images
Should Jessica Williams be the next host of The Daily Show? Lots of fans think so. More than 14,000 of them have signed a Change.org petition to get Comedy Central to hire Williams as Jon Stewart’s successor. Many saw a gag in Hot Tub Time Machine 2, in which Williams hosts The Daily Show in 2025, as an omen. So when Williams announced on Sunday night that she didn’t want the job, it was to be expected that disappointment would ensue. What wasn’t expected was a fierce debate about impostor syndrome, leaning in, and the perils of commenting on celebrities’ life choices.
Here is how Williams announced her lack of interest in the Daily Show hosting gig:
Fact 1: I'm not hosting. Thank you but I am extremely under-qualified for the job! — Jessica R. Williams (@msjwilly) February 16, 2015
Twitter’s 140-character limit doesn’t always allow for maximum clarity, and these tweets are a bit confusing. Williams’ first tweet said she was “under-qualified,” but the second and third tweets implied that the issue was not so much her credentials as her disposition. Williams seemed to be saying that she didn’t feel she had the metabolism and expertise to be able to do the job well.
But it was the “under-qualified” comment that caught the eye of Billfold writer Ester Bloom, who used Williams’ tweet as a peg for a post about the lack of diversity in late-night comedy and the impostor syndrome that afflicts many young women in the workplace. Impostor syndrome typically involves feeling unqualified for work that one is, in fact, very well qualified to do, and Bloom saw signs of it in Williams’ tweet:
You can almost hear all the old white people who benefit from the status quo nodding their approval. We did it, they whisper. We have succeeded in instilling in yet another competent, confident young woman a total lack of understanding of her own self-worth! We didn’t even need to undermine her; we gave her the tools and she undermined herself. Well done all. Good show. Let’s play eighteen holes and then hit up Hooters for lunch.
Jessica Williams, respectfully, I reject your humility. What on earth does “under-qualified” mean when it comes to being a comedian? You’re smart, you’re funny, you’re self-possessed. Is there something I’m missing? …
All Williams needs is a pep talk. Get Luvvie in a room with her, and Jazmine, and Amy Poehler and Lena Dunham. Get Paul Feig in there too, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, and George R. R. Martin. Get her the best Lean In group of all time. She will emerge as from a funeral pyre, naked and coiled in dragons, ready to lead.
I confess that when I first read Bloom’s post, though the tone of the piece rankled, I mostly agreed with it. I am familiar with the concept of impostor syndrome and have found it useful as a way of conceptualizing my own professional insecurities. (And I’ve been surprised to learn that lots of women who have reached objectively impressive professional milestones also often feel fraudulent.) I also think the almost universally white male face of late night reflects shamefully on the entertainment industry, and I really like Jessica Williams and think it would be awesome if she hosted The Daily Show. “Under-qualified” be damned! If fans and Comedy Central executives think you’re qualified to host The Daily Show, then you’re qualified.
But Williams didn’t see the Billfold post that way, and she told Bloom as much in a series of tweets:
Her comments raise a broader point that’s too often lost in a media landscape that fetishizes skyrocketing young careers more than ever: It’s perfectly OK for young people to feel like they need more time to learn how to do something. In campaigning for Williams to be hired as the next host of The Daily Show, some fans have tried to cast her as an ambassador for women of color, busting through glass ceilings for the benefit of all. No one can live up to that kind of pressure. (And if Williams is the only obvious black female candidate for the Daily Show gig, that doesn’t mean she’s obligated to accept it, needless to say—it means Comedy Central needs to look harder for black female candidates.)
Williams’ star will, I hope, continue to rise for a long time, and people will continue to discuss her career as a barometer of changing norms. Hopefully they’ll do it in a way that’s respectful and that acknowledges the fact that Williams is a human being with her own life goals. But being famous almost always means losing control of the narrative of your career, and when you’re forced to mean so many things to so many people, you seem to lose control even faster. It goes without saying that Williams should be able to make professional choices based on what she feels is right for herself, not what other people expect of her. The fact that lots of young women underestimate their professional competence doesn’t mean that Williams herself suffers from impostor syndrome—and it doesn’t mean that a 25-year-old needs to be thrust into a job recently vacated by a 52-year-old just because she is extraordinarily good.The Beatles' remarkable catalog includes just one official live album, and the group's immense popularity made it unlistenable. The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl, recorded in 1964 and 1965 but not released until 1977, was always a frustrating listen. Try as you might, you simply cannot hear much music above the fan
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"CBS Player of the Game" for his performance.
Peyton Manning [ edit ]
Manning finished 28/43 for 290 yards and three touchdowns, with two interceptions (one of which being the 39 yard pick-six by Graham) and two fumbles, one that he lost.
Jacoby Jones [ edit ]
Jacoby Jones was on the receiving end of the "Mile High Miracle" play that forced the game into overtime. Jones finished the game with 2 receptions for 77 yards and 1 touchdown.
Trindon Holliday [ edit ]
Holliday's 90-yard punt return and 104-yard kickoff return were the longest ever in each NFL postseason category (with the latter broken just three weeks later by Jacoby Jones in Super Bowl XLVII). His 248 total special teams return yards were an NFL postseason record as well, breaking Andre Coleman's record of 244 return yards in Super Bowl XXIX (and later tied by Desmond Howard in Super Bowl XXXI).
Starting lineups [ edit ]
The starting lineups for the game were:[10]
Officials [ edit ]
Referee: Bill Vinovich (#52)
Bill Vinovich (#52) Umpire: Undrey Wash (#96)
Undrey Wash (#96) Head Linesman: George Hayward (#54)
George Hayward (#54) Line Judge: Ron Marinucci (#107)
Ron Marinucci (#107) Field Judge: Bob Waggoner (#25)
Bob Waggoner (#25) Side Judge: Ronald Torbert (#62)
Ronald Torbert (#62) Back Judge: Billy Smith (#2)
Legacy [ edit ]
The Ravens went on to avenge the previous year's AFC Championship Game loss to the New England Patriots with a 28–13 win and went on to defeat the San Francisco 49ers (coached by Jim Harbaugh, the brother of Ravens coach John Harbaugh) in Super Bowl XLVII. Jacoby Jones continued his postseason success in the Super Bowl with a touchdown reception and a kick-off return for a touchdown. Following the season, he competed on the sixteenth season of Dancing with the Stars. He was the highest-placed male contestant and came in third overall behind winner Kellie Pickler and runner-up Zendaya.
The loss made a disappointing end for the Broncos, for whom there were high hopes after Manning's comeback season and an 11-game winning streak. Manning was criticized for throwing a pair of interceptions in his eighth time exiting a postseason without a win, tying him with Brett Favre for the most career post-season losses by a starting QB. Broncos head coach John Fox was blamed for his "ultra conservative" playcalling, particularly for not using the two-minute drill. Nearing the end of the first half, with the game tied and three time-outs available, Fox had Manning hand the ball off to his running back before running out the clock. At the end of regulation, with 2:30 remaining, Fox called three running plays up the middle and after the Jones' touchdown, made Manning take a knee with 31 seconds to play in regulation and 2 timeouts remaining.[1]
At 76 minutes and 42 seconds, the game was the 4th-longest in NFL history and was the sixth double overtime game in history, the first since the 2003 divisional round game between the St. Louis Rams and the Carolina Panthers, which coincidentally also featured head coach John Fox.[11]
By virtue of winning Super Bowl XLVII, the Ravens—who lost numerous starters in the offseason—were scheduled to host the Kickoff Game on Thursday, September 5, 2013. However, due to a scheduling conflict with the Baltimore Orioles (with whom they share a parking lot), the Ravens were the first Super Bowl champions in 10 years not to host the following year's Kickoff Game. The 2013 Kickoff Game was instead played at Sports Authority Field at Mile High in a rematch with the Broncos and resulted in a 49–27 win for the Broncos where Manning threw a record 7 touchdown passes.Pinterest (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
An event hasn’t officially happened until someone has written a hot take about it.
Okay, so first things first. Hillary Clinton won the debate last night. And that's not just my biased lefty opinion. Most post-debate polls and focus groups showed she walked away with the thing. Even Breitbart's poll said she won, and its former executive chairman is running the Trump campaign. And if that's not enough for you to grant her the victory, how about this? Ashley Feinberg at Deadspin did the research that nobody else would enjoy doing and found that even the white supremacists (and Trump lovers!) of Stormfront felt that Hillary won the debate.
But can this level of certainty stop the hot takes? Of course not. And USA Today is here to bring us one. Are you ready? It is a doozy.
The headline: "Trump pulled off presidential: James Robbins." A good rule of thumb that indicates a hot take is coming is that the publication will put the writer's name in the headline, lest people think that the editors of the publication agree with what's coming. So today's hot-taker-in-chief is Mr. James Robbins, who will be arguing the preposterous opinion that what Donald Trump did last night was "presidential." Oof. Good luck, James. He begins:
"You can’t fact check leadership, and tonight Donald Trump showed himself a leader."
Whoa. I have to be honest, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to get through this whole take. YOU CAN'T FACT-CHECK LEADERSHIP?! That's such a terrible, terrible line that it is actually making my brain short-circuit. It's basically saying: "All these whiny libtards want the 'facts,' but who cares about 'facts' when you got leaderballs?!" Beyond it being dumb, it's also wrong. You can fact-check leadership. Like using the fact that Donald Trump, as the head of many companies, has used his leadership to run them into the ground or refuse to pay his workers. It's hard to start a piece with so much dumb and wrong in one sentence, but here we are. It's almost impressive. Moving on.
This is where the piece gets weird. Rather than trying to prove the leadership point, which is, you know, the more controversial half of that topic sentence, the author instead goes down a five-paragraph rabbit hole of trying to argue that moderators shouldn't be fact-checkers. Okay. Maybe that would be a fair argument to have before the debate, though I would argue back that a candidate who so willfully lies and seems to count on the media not calling him on those lies calls for an exception to the "moderators shouldn't fact-check" rules, if those rules should even exist. But after the debate? In an op-ed claiming Trump was presidential? Seems like a bad idea.
The author finally gets to his point toward the piece's end. Kinda. He cites the famous "there you go again" Carter-Reagan debate and says:
Reagan did not come off as the cartoonish, conservative cowboy of Democratic talking points. The Lowell Sun observed, “Ronald Reagan had not self-destructed. He had not made any ill-advised statements that were clearly foolish, as Carter had hoped. Reagan appeared calm under Carter’s attack. With his polished stage manner, he went a long way in presenting himself as presidential timber.” Many Americans agreed. A Gallup poll two days before the debate showed Reagan trailing Carter 39% to 47%. A week later, Reagan won the election 51% to 41%.
Okay. Those are some interesting Reagan-Carter facts. Where is he going with this?
The same words could apply to 2016. Donald Trump did not self-destruct, he did not make foolish statements (whether you agree with him or not), he gave as well as he got. And despite Clinton’s numerous mocking remarks to the contrary, he came off as presidential. And that’s a fact.PayPal has recently entertained the notion of accepting and clearing the bitcoin unit on its pervasive platform. It's a bit like the prince joining the revolution. Is this a good thing?
Naturally, some bitcoin businesses will see this as PayPal moving in to usurp bitcoin's popularity and momentum in the marketplace. But, depending on your outlook, it may not be all negative and it raises the identical issues that a bank would face if embracing bitcoin, especially since PayPal is now viewed as part of the legacy apparatus.
Speaking as if PayPal represented some sort of global payments umbrella, CEO John Donahoe told the Wall Street Journal, "It’s a new disruptive technology, so, yeah, we’re looking at Bitcoin closely. There may be ways to enable it inside PayPal." I find this statement funny, particularly in light of the fact that WordPress' reason for accepting bitcoin was that PayPal disabled certain parts of the globe for them.
Let's examine what it could mean when something like Bitcoin, that is both platform and unit, is absorbed into something like PayPal that is just platform. Phil Archer writing at The Genesis Block categorized the four areas of likely impact -- online wallets, escrow services, merchant processing, and exchange services. PayPal account funding alone is not exactly bitcoin sitting on the PayPal payments network, so that use case is not included in the analysis. Archer concludes that PayPal's immediate advantage would be in the first two areas with eventual game-changing impact probable in the latter two.
While I tend to agree with the category choices, the analysis overlooks what the PayPal-Bitcoin world would not be getting (or, what it would be losing).
Firstly for the consumers, the new PayPal paradigm would look like a Coinbase on steroids with massive connectivity into your bank accounts and even more intrusive data collection. As a fully-regulated money services business (MSB) and licensed money transmitter, PayPal would be the undisputed gorilla in the U.S. marketplace with online wallets and fast exchange services. Of course, escrow services would be welcomed because this model is almost always needed in a free market and banks could look to provide this functionality as well.
However, what would consumers not be getting in this bitcoin nirvana? Not a huge fan of transactional privacy, PayPal would have to link your identity to your account and eliminate the user-defined privacy aspects of bitcoin. This has the effect of reducing bitcoin's important cash-like qualities. While it may be convenient for exchange services to be an integrated part of your personal online wallet, it is fundamentally unnecessary.
Furthermore, it's unlikely that PayPal would reach into many new countries that it doesn't serve today because it would need the banking infrastructure to do so. By the way, that is the same situation for Coinbase too. So consumers would not gain anything in terms of worldwide access. Also, consumers would not get unimpeded access to their funds because it's doubtful that PayPal will modify any of their current policies on account suspension.
Secondly for the merchants, the new PayPal paradigm would offer merchant processing services similar to BitPay with exchange rate guarantees for conversion into national currencies. As BitPay is more nimble with first-mover advantage and low-cost pricing, they are considered a likely acquisition target. PayPal's distinct advantage in this area comes from leveraging its installed merchant base, however it is unclear how fee savings with bitcoin could be passed on to merchants due to the potential cannibalization of PayPal's other revenue streams.
Larger merchants maintaining their balances in bitcoin and managing currency risk internally seems like the most efficient practice, but it's unlikely that PayPal would offer that option for free. As part of the PayPal network, merchants would not enjoy the attractive bitcoin benefit of "no account freezing," because without segregated bitcoin balances, a merchant's overall funds could be ensnared in an account suspension.
Also, when it comes to specific merchant categories being restricted like online casinos or prescription drug sites, a PayPal-Bitcoin world is unlikely to remove the blocks on those merchants. It is a symptom of having one foot in the old banking and credit card world and one foot in the new decentralized and nonpolitical currency world. Perhaps, the PayPal executives view bitcoin as creative destruction but somehow I don't think so.
My advice to PayPal and other conglomerates "looking into" Bitcoin with a shoehorn approach is to understand how authorization, clearing, and settlement occur nearly simultaneously within the Bitcoin distributed transaction network. Enhancing, rather than diminishing, that feature is the key to success. Bitcoin doesn't need PayPal to be mobile, but PayPal probably needs Bitcoin to become seamlessly mobile.
About the best that could be said of any potential arrangement between PayPal and bitcoin is that it would bestow public credibility on bitcoin as a "unit of account" or new currency code. However, squeezing only the monetary unit portion into a legacy payments platform inserts an intermediary into a decentralized system and dilutes the value of the whole. Not to mention that Bitcoin will simply outlast PayPal.
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Retro remaster master DotEmu has brought the cult classic 90s adventure I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream to iOS and Android.
The game is based on a short story by Harlan Ellison, and is set in a post-apocalyptic world after a supercomputer named AM has wiped out humanity. You're one of five survivors.
As AM hates humans (who doesn't, mate?), each character will be subjected to their own personal hell. You'll have to help the different characters confront their fears and weaknesses, solve sadistic puzzles, and maybe even try to get free.
This mobile version has different graphic filters and audio options, and both touch and classic controls. And it has subtitles for German, French, Spanish, and Italian players.
I've never played this one, but I know lots of people dig this heady sci-fi saga. If that's you, or you're keen to see what all the fuss is about, the game's available on the App Store and Google Play for £2.99 / $3.99.5 Arrogance Posted by Sonny Waldron on Apr 13th 2018
Near death experiences are usually not self inflicted... But when the taco man said he had the hottest tacos in the world(red flag) i felt a wave of arrogance. I like spicy food i said, i've been called the iron stomach even. Then he opened a small black leather pouch and put on some gloves (red flag), because you wouldn't want this stuff on your skin..... But in my mouth apparently it's ok? He used a glass eye dropper because the plastic one started to melt before(red flag). 5 Small drops onto the tortilla, then all the taco fixings. The second bite the pain hit... The third bite it was unbearable. 1 Min in i started to cry i asked wtf was in that lil brown bottle? Mad dog 357 it's carolina reaper pepper extract concentrate, 5,000,000 scoville unit! He said with the grin of satan himself. 5 Min in came the vomiting, 10 min in abdominal cramps, that just kicked in the nuts feeling... 30 Min later i'm home curled in the fetal position in bed wishing for a peaceful death in my sleep.Perhaps looking to strengthen his issue portfolio as he runs to be governor of Massachusetts, anti-gay activist Scott Lively has posted a list on his website of the “top seven reasons I am pro-life.” Although the first few are standard fare (e.g. “abortion is just another name for murder”), Lively strays off the pro-life movement’s messaging when he goes into the reasons why a woman’s right to choose undermines men’s “biblical authority.”
“Legalized abortion robs fathers of their fundamental rights as parents, and their Biblical authority as heads of their households,” Lively contends. In the case of rape, he adds, “a child must never be required to pay for the sins of his father.” But among all this, he concludes, it is women who are “degraded” by the right to choose.Newly elected NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair has ruled out co-operating with the Liberals in the next election, insisting the New Democrats are "poised" to form the next government.
"It's absolutely not in the cards," Mulcair said late Saturday night in a response to a question from CBC's Peter Mansbridge. He said he instead intends to rally progressive voters behind the NDP banner.
"We've got all these great ideas in the NDP but now for the first time we're poised. We've got to take a state of fact — because the Official Opposition is just the party that gets the second-highest number of seats — and turn it into a state of mind... that the NDP can actually form the next government."
Mulcair made the comments after defeating Brian Topp in a fourth-round ballot faceoff to become the new leader of the NDP and the head of the Official Opposition, replacing the late Jack Layton.
Mulcair said he resolved to run a positive, upbeat campaign and he thinks sticking to that helped boost his support.
He added he knows the party strategists want to run ads quickly to help define the new leader against Conservative attacks but he said he wants to discuss that with them and with his caucus.
As for maintaining some of the status quo, Mulcair told CBC's Peter Mansbridge that it's "extremely important in terms of continuity" that he keep Vancouver MP Libby Davies as his deputy. Davies and Mulcair were NDP co-deputy leaders under Layton.
Mulcair also described his meeting on stage with Topp after the results.
"He just said, 'Let me be the one to raise your hand,' and I just said, 'Great to see you.' It was sincere, it was heartfelt," Mulcair said. "[It was a] bit of a rough and tumble campaign... and now we understand that our only priority is to get together."
Long night at the convention
The last ballot of a long Saturday that saw numerous voting delays pitted Mulcair, the Montreal MP perceived by many as the front-runner coming into the vote, against Topp, the former party president who entered the race with many high-profile endorsements including that of former leader Ed Broadbent.
Mulcair claimed 33,881 votes, or 57.2 per cent of the votes cast, to Topp's 25,329 votes.
"In order to win the next election and have the first federal NDP government, our party must reach beyond its traditional base and unite all progressive forces under the NDP's banner," Mulcair said in his victory address.
P.O.V. Is Mulcair the right choice for the NDP? Take our poll.
While his speech said many of the right things to the crowd of NDP faithfuls, including his former rivals and their supporters, Mulcair's delivery lacked the emotion that many expected from a man who finally captured his party's leadership.
The new leader also talked about how young people are turned off by today's politics and don't vote.
"It's not that they don't care its that they don't trust that their vote will make a difference," he told the crowd.
A lawyer from Montreal and formerly a Quebec cabinet minister, Mulcair ran in the Outremont federal byelection as a New Democrat candidate in 2007 and won the longtime Liberal seat. Layton named him his Quebec lieutenant and deputy leader. Mulcair was later appointed NDP House leader.
Many New Democrat MPs lined up behind Mulcair after the third round of voting, including Megan Leslie, who called the front-runner a "strong progressive voice" who will unite the caucus. "I think he's the right person for me," Leslie said.
Several others moved over to Mulcair from Nathan Cullen, including Brian Masse, Bruce Hyer, Dennis Bevington and Denise Savoie.
Former party leader Alexa McDonough also threw her support behind Mulcair. She had intially supported Peggy Nash and Cullen prior to their eliminations from the contest.
Topp declined to give up after the third ballot, even though he trailed his rival by several thousand votes.
"Why throw in your hand when you can win?" Topp said. "I think it's fit and proper to let the party decide who the leader is and to not have the appearance that it was arranged."
Cullen releases supporters
British Columbia MP Cullen was knocked out after finishing last in the third round of voting.
Cullen, who had made the contentious proposal of co-operation with the Liberals and Greens, released his supporters and did not commit when he was asked if he would support Mulcair or Topp.
"My delegates will go the way they want to go," Cullen said. "I trust them as I’ve always trusted them to do what is right for this party and I know they will. I feel overwhelmed and proud of what we did."
Mulcair's supporters immediately chanted "Nathan" after the results were announced and were waving him over.
Supporters celebrate Thomas Mulcair win at the NDP leadership convention March 24 in Toronto. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
Balloting in the second, third and fourth rounds was hit by technical issues and delays. Voting was extended several times to give people more time to vote. Party officials said they may be able to identify the source of the outside attack that jammed its online voting system. Two IP addresses suspected in the attacks have been identified.
Senior party official Brad Lavigne said the system was not hacked and the integrity of votes cast had not been compromised. But the apparent attacks bedevilled convention organizers through to the final ballot.
Nash out after 2nd ballot
Toronto MP Peggy Nash was automatically eliminated after she finished last on the second ballot.
"I wish we could have taken this to the very last ballot but it is not to be," Nash told her supporters after the results were announced.
Niki Ashton garnered the lowest vote total on the first ballot and was eliminated from the race. As was widely expected, Martin Singh also dropped out after the first ballot and threw his support to Mulcair.
Ottawa MP Paul Dewar also withdrew from the race after a disappointing finish in the first ballot. He released his supporters without endorsing a candidate.
MP Charlie Angus, who was a Dewar supporter, immediately threw his support behind Mulcair.
"Thomas is fearless, Thomas is organized," said Angus, adding that he's developed a great support base across the country. "He's one of the strongest MPs we've seen in the House of Commons and he's certainly a match for Stephen Harper.
"I thought Paul Dewar has what it takes and Thomas Mulcair has what it takes."
[IMAGEGALLERY galleryid=2120 size=large]“With a normal job, if you're sick, you don't go in,” says Louis Carnell, aka producer Visionist, over the phone from his hometown of London. Carnell recently released a dark, tetchy electronic record called Safe chronicling the arc of a panic attack: the teetotal producer suffers anxiety so severe he once had to cancel an Australian tour. “As a DJ, if you’re on tour and can't turn up to a gig, you lose money,” he adds. “And you don’t just lose the money you're about to earn—you're probably gonna have to pay for flights.”
As well as emptying your wallet, chronic anxiety on the road can pose a grave psychiatric risk. In 2013, singer-songwriter Beth Jeans Houghton—now signed to Mute as glam outfit Du Blonde—was cooped up mid-tour in a Zurich hotel, obsessing about death. After five sleepless days, she suddenly panicked and called her tour manager; when he arrived, she had become paralyzed. “I looked at him and tried to say, ‘You need to get me an ambulance,’” Houghton remembers, speaking on the phone from her north London home. “And gibberish came out. I thought, I'm either dying or I'm going to spend the rest of my life in a mental institution.”
Luckily, her tour manager recognized the symptoms of a nervous breakdown, and spent seven hours cradling her to sleep. But it needn’t have got that far. “My label checks in with my tour manager to see how my voice is doing,” Houghton reasons, highlighting a disproportionate focus on physical health. “Maybe every six months they could have a meeting and check how we are, mentally.”
A simple enough idea, but in practice, it’s compromised by the stigma that still exists around the subject of mental health. Mike Sniper, the owner of Brooklyn label Captured Tracks, stresses that he’s “definitely interested” in artists’ wellbeing, yet bristles at the thought of reaching out. “Certain artists, if I was to suggest a thing [concerning mental health], they or their managers would be upset,” he tells me over the phone from his New York office. “Like, ‘What gives you the right? Why would you think you're even able to do this?’” In Sniper’s eyes, the parties responsible are “management, bookers, promoters, venues, and artists who make the money on live performance.” After all, he claims, “nobody's forcing you to tour.” While technically true, the financial realities are often different.
“When you're in the middle of an album cycle, it feels like this inexorable process where you can't get out of it,” ex-Joanna Gruesome frontwoman Alanna McArdle says today from a Hackney café. “And because it's a small label—and I really love working with Sean [Price]—I thought, I can't fuck this up, because this is his money on the line.” After a short run of dates this February, McArdle—destabilized by sleepless nights, bipolar-induced mood swings, and the threat of costly show cancellations—realized she’d had enough. “Lately, my mental health problems have become a lot worse and I've gone through a pretty shitty time,” she wrote in a Facebook statement that June. “Thanks to everyone who ever put up with me on tour, and anyone who stopped any assholes from hurting other people at our shows.” With overwhelming love and support from fans, she parted ways with the group.Seven Seas Entertainment is pleased to announce the license acquisition--both print and digital–of the manga Accomplishments of the Duke’s Daughter by Reia and Suki Umemiya, the story of a young woman’s struggles after being reborn into one of her beloved romance otome games–as the antagonist!
Iris, an otome game addict with no time for romance, gets hit by a truck after getting out of work–but instead of dying, she finds herself in the world of a game she’d played just hours earlier. However, she’s not reborn as the game’s protagonist, the main heartthrob of the harem. Instead, she starts her new life as the antagonist, right at the moment she’s being sent to live in a nunnery–for the rest of her life!
Seven Seas will publish the manga series Accomplishments of the Duke’s Daughter for the first time in North America in print and on digital platforms in single volume editions. Volume 1 will be released on August 14, 2018 for $12.99 USA / $14.99 CAN.Get the biggest daily news 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
There are over 400 hours of video footage uploaded to YouTube every minute. But the single biggest star on the platform is Swedish vlogger Felix Kjellberg.
Known as PewDiePie, Kjellberg has built up a loyal following of 49 million subscribers thanks to his energetic and flamboyant style. So far this year his channel has racked up 13 billion views.
But the home-grown superstar has this week published a video claiming that he will delete his channel and start all over again when he hits 50 million.
PewDiePie celebrates hitting 50 MILLION subscribers
The reason, he states, is because of changes YouTube is making that push overtly clickbaity videos towards users rather than the channels they've actively subscribed to.
"All I want is that the people that subscribe to me watch my videos," he says in the 10-minute piece-to-camera.
He goes on to accuse YouTube of promoting "videos that have nothing to do with personality, has nothing to do with content, just has a really great title and a really great thumbnail."
It's worth pointing out that PewDiePie is a big deal for YouTube. He worked for the Google-owned platform producing premium content for its YouTube Red service.
(Image: Getty)
“YouTube is trying to kill my channel. It is clear. It is happening if you watch my analytics. It is all going down,” said Kjellberg, who made an estimated $15 million (£12 million) from the service last year.
"I've decided the only way to stop my channel from dying - I know you are going to think I am joking - but I am going to delete my channel."
Following his video, Kjellberg said he heard from YouTube and that they were looking into the issues. He posted a couple of updates on Twitter.
Mirror Online has contacted YouTube for a comment about this issue and we heard back from a spokesperson denying any changes are being made that would affect video views.
“Some creators have expressed concerns around a drop in their subscriber numbers,” we were told.
“We've done an extensive review and found there have been no decreases in creators subscriber numbers beyond what normally happens when viewers either unsubscribe from a creator's channel or when YouTube removes spammed subscribers.
"We do the latter to ensure that all creator subscriber numbers are accurate.”
You can watch PewDiePie's entire video below - but be warned - he swears a lot.
Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8 Cancel Play nowEmily Lakdawalla • November 3, 2014
Seven Mars spacecraft attempted observations of comet Siding Spring. How did they go?
It's been two weeks since comet Siding Spring passed close by Mars, and six of the seven Mars spacecraft have now checked in with quick looks at their images of the encounter. None of the spacecraft photos of the comet is visually spectacular -- there are no enormous fireballs streaking across Martian skies. What the released images do show us is that this is a terrific data set taken from very close range on an Oort cloud comet; over the coming months and years, we'll enjoy the fruits of careful scientific investigation of a unique data set.
And it's worth taking a moment to appreciate how we got these photos. A year ago, we discovered a teeny tiny object that had never visited the inner solar system before; we predicted that it would pass by another planet; we already had five spacecraft at that planet, and two more preparing to launch; and we commanded all these autonomous robots to catch the comet as it flashed by at 55 kilometers per second.
NASA / JPL / Cornell / ASU / TAMU Comet Siding Spring from Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity A comet fresh from the Oort cloud visited Mars on October 19, 2014. Opportunity pointed her cameras before sunset and then woke up to take this photo at 3:19 a.m. local time on sol 3817, about 2.5 hours before its closest approach to Mars. The comet makes a slightly elongated smudge across the sky -- but it is elongated in a different direction than the streaked stars in this long exposure, indicating the comet's apparent rapid motion across the Martian sky. A comet fresh from the Oort cloud visited Mars on October 19, 2014. Opportunity pointed her cameras before sunset and then woke up to take this photo at 3:19 a.m. local time on sol 3817, about 2.5 hours before its closest approach to Mars. The comet makes a slightly elongated smudge across the sky -- but it is elongated in a different direction than the streaked stars in this long exposure, indicating the comet's apparent rapid motion across the Martian sky.
The very best photos of the close approach of the comet to Mars were actually not taken from any of the Mars spacecraft; they were taken by astronomers on Earth, mostly amateurs. Here are three of my favorites, taken by three different amateur astronomers from telescopes at Siding Spring Observatory, where the comet was discovered last year.
James Willinghan Comet Siding Spring and Mars -- from Siding Spring Observatory (James Willinghan) Comet Siding Spring (center) and Mars (brilliant object at upper right) seen on October 18, 2014 at 10:25 UT, 32 hours before the comet's closest approach. Image acquired from iTelescope Siding Spring, Australia Comet Siding Spring (center) and Mars (brilliant object at upper right) seen on October 18, 2014 at 10:25 UT, 32 hours before the comet's closest approach. Image acquired from iTelescope Siding Spring, Australia
SEN / Damian Peach Comet Siding Spring just hours before its close approach to Mars (Damian Peach) Less than eight hours from closest approach, Siding Spring's green coma is dwarfed by the brilliant blaze of Mars. Less than eight hours from closest approach, Siding Spring's green coma is dwarfed by the brilliant blaze of Mars.
Rolando Ligustri Comet Siding Spring after its close approach to Mars (Rolando Ligustri) Comet Siding Spring (just above center) and Mars (brilliant object to lower left) seen on October 20, 2014 at 09:47 UT, hours after the comet's closest approach. Image acquired from iTelescope Siding Spring, Australia. The bright star at upper right is 51 Ophiuchi. Comet Siding Spring (just above center) and Mars (brilliant object to lower left) seen on October 20, 2014 at 09:47 UT, hours after the comet's closest approach. Image acquired from iTelescope Siding Spring, Australia. The bright star at upper right is 51 Ophiuchi.
For more amateur views, check the Bad Astronomer's and Universe Today's galleries, or try the Realtime Comet Gallery at spaceweather.com.
All five Mars orbiters successfully performed the tricky observations that they were commanded to do, but not all five produced results. Three of the five (Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, MAVEN, and Mars Express) definitely detected the comet. Sadly, the comet was not bright enough in infrared wavelengths for Odyssey to detect it with its THEMIS instrument, Phil Christensen has told me. I've heard nothing about ISRO's Mars Orbiter images, but I presume we would have heard something by now if the comet were detectable in them.
It turns out that one of the first spacecraft to detect the comet was the MAVEN orbiter, newly arrived at Mars. It captured this view of the hydrogen surrounding the comet two days away from its approach to Mars:
NASA / LASP / University of Colorado MAVEN view of comet Siding Spring at Mars MAVEN captured this ultraviolet image of hydrogen surrounding comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring on October 17, 2014, two days before the comet's closest approach to Mars, When the comet was 8.5 million kilometers away. The image shows sunlight that has been scattered by atomic hydrogen. Comets are surrounded by a huge cloud of atomic hydrogen because water vaporizes from the icy nucleus, and solar ultraviolet light breaks it apart into hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen atoms scatter solar ultraviolet light, and it was this light that was imaged by the Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph. MAVEN captured this ultraviolet image of hydrogen surrounding comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring on October 17, 2014, two days before the comet's closest approach to Mars, When the comet was 8.5 million kilometers away. The image shows sunlight that has been scattered by atomic hydrogen. Comets are surrounded by a huge cloud of atomic hydrogen because water vaporizes from the icy nucleus, and solar ultraviolet light breaks it apart into hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen atoms scatter solar ultraviolet light, and it was this light that was imaged by the Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph.
You can see hydrogen out to about half a degree away from the comet nucleus, which was about 150,000 kilometers. The MAVEN team points out that this is comparable to the distance of the comet's closest approach to Mars, which means that hydrogen atoms were slamming in to Mars' atmosphere at relative speeds of 56 kilometers per second. This photo hints at the possibility of a pretty interesting data set from MAVEN.
The most anticipated photos of the comet were those of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's HiRISE camera, which was the only one that could hope to resolve the comet's nucleus. HiRISE was actually able to spot the comet 12 days before it arrived at Mars, and it's a good thing they did, because without those early photos, they would not have been pointing in exactly the right spot to image the comet when it got much closer. They haven't released the photo taken 12 days before closest approach, yet.
Fortunately, HiRISE did get the necessary update on the comet's position and successfully imaged the comet at very high resolution. But the photos don't show as many pixels across the comet as predicted, because the comet turned out to be smaller than predicted.
NASA / JPL / UA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE spies comet Siding Spring HiRISE caught these photos of comet Siding Spring on the spacecraft's last Mars orbit before the comet's closest approach, around 17:00 UTC on October 19. This composite image shows two versions of each of two of the best HiRISE images of the comet. Shown at top are images with the full dynamic range, showing the nucleus and bright coma near the nucleus. Shown at bottom are versions where the fainter outer coma is brightened, saturating the inner region. The images at left and right were taken about nine minutes apart. The comet turned out to be smaller than predicted. HiRISE caught these photos of comet Siding Spring on the spacecraft's last Mars orbit before the comet's closest approach, around 17:00 UTC on October 19. This composite image shows two versions of each of two of the best HiRISE images of the comet. Shown at top are images with the full dynamic range, showing the nucleus and bright coma near the nucleus. Shown at bottom are versions where the fainter outer coma is brightened, saturating the inner region. The images at left and right were taken about nine minutes apart. The comet turned out to be smaller than predicted.
Although the comet's small size is a little disappointing for the images, it's actually quite an exciting scientific result, probably. The size of unresolved solar system objects is estimated by taking its absolute magnitude (which can be measured reasonably precisely) and assuming an albedo, or reflectiveness, of its surface. All the comets we've ever seen up close are exceedingly dark, with albedos around 5 percent, give or take a couple percent. The fact that Siding Spring turned out to be smaller than predicted means we guessed its albedo wrong. Its surface is more reflective than we predicted. Which is wonderful, because it's consistent with the
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eyes now turn to Xbox One, due out in November, which many developers hope will be a more open system than the Xbox 360.
Microsoft declined to comment when contacted by Eurogamer.The Melbourne Storm have confirmed a number of players who will not be with the club next season.
The club has posted a tribute to the departing players on their website, acknowledging their achievements and contributions.
It’s been well publicised that 2017 would Cooper Cronk’s final season with the Storm, with the halfback moving to Sydney to be with his fiancee and Fox Sports presenter Tara Rushton.
Currently, it’s unknown if Cronk will continue to play on in 2018 but there have been strong rumours linking him to the Sydney Roosters and South Sydney Rabbitohs.
2018 also sees a number of players leaving Melbourne for opportunities at new clubs. The departures of Slade Griffin (Newcastle Knights), Tohu Harris (New Zealand Warriors), Jordan McLean (North Queensland Cowboys) and Robbie Rochow (Wests Tigers) have all been announced earlier in the season.
The club has also confirmed that Jeremy Hawkins, Mark Nicholls, Jake Turpin and Charlie Galo will not be returning in 2018.
Nate Myles was not mentioned in the tribute for the departing players but is currently off contract suggesting he might be re-signed by the club in the near future.DEFAULT
One year after heroic human rights activist Ales Bialiatski was arrested and jailed on politically-motivated charges, Index asks you to take action in solidarity
Tomorrow (4 August) is the first anniversary of the arrest of Ales Bialiatski, one of the best known human rights activists in Belarus, who is currently serving a four-and-a-half year prison sentence.
Bialiatski’s wife, Natallia Pinchuk, says that she knows little about his life in jail.
“I received a letter from him last week,” she says, with sorrow in her voice. “Ales reminisces about events of the past and thinks of his friends and family. But there is nothing about his present condition. He just says he is all right. Anything more would give the prison censors an excuse to ban the letter.”
Natallia says that the last year has been “crossed out” from her life. “At first I tried hard to accept the fact that he is behind bars and attempted to adapt myself to the situation. But it is really impossible to get used to this.”
Bialiatski, 50, launched the Human Rights Centre Viasna in 1996. Since then it has grown into the leading human rights organisation in Belarus and has provided help to hundreds of its citizens, including political prisoners, their families and others oppressed by the state. The authorities withdrew its official registration in 2003, but Bialatski and his colleagues continued their work. He has been elected vice-president of the International Federation for Human Rights and has been nominated several times for the Nobel Peace Prize, most recently in 2011.
Bialiatski was arrested on 4 August 2011 on charges of tax evasion. The income on which he was found guilty of not paying taxes had in fact been used to support the activities of his organisation after it lost its official status. It is obvious that his four-and-a-half-year prison sentence is punishment for his principled stance in support of civic freedoms in Belarus.
“He is in prison for all of us, for all human rights movement of Belarus,” says Tacciana Raviaka, a Viasna colleague. “I remember exactly what he told me when the police detained him a year ago: ‘Keep Viasna going!’ His words still ring out for all of us here. We keep on with our work. They can’t stop us. They can’t stop what Ales believes in even when he is behind bars.”
It appears that the authorities are still afraid of the man they imprisoned. They have refused to permit a single demonstration in support of Bialiatski anywhere in the country.
“This isn’t just a reflection on the limits on the freedom of assembly in our country,” says Raviaka. “It is done to hide the truth that Viasna is still working. We are not afraid and we have not given up. We are keeping up the fight for our leader and all other political prisoners in Belarus.”
Despite the attempts to suppress the protests, Bialiatski feels the solidarity and support of people outside his prison cell.
“He keeps receiving letters and postcards, both from Belarus and abroad, from people he knows and complete strangers. These words of solidarity and human concern really help,” says Natallia Pinchuk.
Send a postcard or a letter of support to Ales Bialiatski at the following address:
Ales Bialiatski
Sikorski St., 1; Prison №2
Babruisk, 213800
Mahiliou Region
BELARUS
Алесю Бяляцкаму
Папраўчая калонія №2, атрад №14
вул. Сікорскага, 1, г. Бабруйск
213800, Магілёўская вобласць
БеларусьRumors swirling around Microsoft's mystery event on Monday have repeatedly centered on a tablet, but if TechCrunch sources are right, Microsoft may only play a partial role in the project. The unveiling, according to the claims, may instead be a tablet, e-reader or a crossover of the two built in teamwork with Barnes & Noble -- a company that just recently established a vague partnership with Microsoft after many months of legal wrangling over Android and the Nook. The slate may not include Windows 8 RT at all, despite earlier assertions, but that's not to say that Microsoft wouldn't be breaking ground in other areas. One of the reported insiders believes it could be the first device without the Microsoft badge to get Xbox Live video streaming, which might explain Redmond's eagerness to turn Xbox into a general media brand at its E3 keynote. It's still very much unknown if there will be any hardware at all, although decisions to host the event in the media capital of Los Angeles and detach the invitation from any existing Microsoft division provide at least indirect support for the notion. Whatever happens, we'll be there tomorrow to give you the lowdown.A biologist studying the Zika virus puts blood on iron plates to feed the females of the nursery that produces genetically modified mosquitoes in Campinas, Brazil. An Ingham County resident has contracted the virus. (Photo: Victor Moriyama, Getty Images)
LANSING – An Ingham County woman is the first confirmed case of the Zika virus in Michigan, state health officials said.
The woman, 61, contracted the virus when traveling in Barbados, where the virus is being transmitted, said Linda Vail, health officer of the Ingham County Health Department.
The woman sought medical attention three weeks ago after developing a fever and rashes. Because those are symptoms of the Zika virus, the woman was tested, as procedure dictates, Vail said. There are a handful of other samples from residents in the county that are awaiting results, she said.
The woman no longer has the virus, she said.
Vail declined to say more specifically where the woman was from.
Zika virus is spread to humans primarily through bites from infected Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, which are not native to Michigan. Many who are infected will not experience any symptoms. There have been rare reported cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome following Zika virus infection and rare reports of sexual transmission of the virus.
There is no vaccine to prevent or medicine to treat Zika virus infection, Vail said.
Prior to 2015, outbreaks of Zika virus have occurred in Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands. In May of 2015, Brazil reported the first cases of Zika virus in the Americas. The virus has since spread to other countries and territories in South and Central America and the Caribbean.
Although Zika is not currently being spread by mosquitoes in the continental United States, cases have been reported in returning travelers. Health officials expect the number of Zika cases among travelers returning to the U.S. to increase as the outbreak continues.
"We expect to see a handful of these cases," Vail said, adding that people get the virus from mosquitoes in affected countries in Central and South America. "There is no person-to-person transmission issues."
Pregnant women are most at risk for complications from the Zika virus. Serious birth defects have been reported in children born to women who were infected with Zika virus during pregnancy. Vail said some test results the health department is waiting on are from pregnant women who traveled to affected countries but did not have any related symptoms.
For the most up-to-date information about where Zika virus is found, visit http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/page/zika-travel-information.
Contact Alexander Alusheff at (517) 388-5973 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @alexalusheff.
Read or Share this story: http://on.lsj.com/1QF7FRzThe growing appetite for meatless meals driven largely by health and environmental concerns will soon reach a new milestone: The country’s first vegan butcher shop is opening in Minneapolis.
The Herbivorous Butcher is scheduled to open on Jan. 23 in northeast Minneapolis.
“It’s going to be a vegan blood bath,” quipped Kale Walch, who started the business with his sister, Aubry Walch.
The pair have attracted quite a following since they first started serving up their signature maple glazed bacon, Sriracha brats and other meatless wonders at farmers markets around the Twin Cities in 2014. They spent three years perfecting the recipes, using ingredients such as yeast, soy, juices and a blend of seasonings.
The opening of a vegan butcher shop is yet another sign of the rise of fake meat in American diets. Since 2012, sales of plant-based meat alternatives have grown 8 percent, to $553 million annually, according to the market research firm, Mintel.
Most people told Mintel that they were choosing the meatless products because they viewed them as healthy. Concerns over the environmental impact of large-scale animal production also are fueling the trend.
Just what will the country’s first meat-free butcher shop look like?
“The architect was joking that we have to get a massive slab of tofu and hang it from a meat hook,” Kale Walch said.
“To Your Health” offers quick doses of health news several times a week.It’s 10:45 am, and Patrick Vieira is patrolling a patch of grass on a nondescript training field in Bradenton, Florida.
On this particular Thursday, the man who helped France claim historic World Cup and European Championship victories — the brilliant midfielder who won the English Premier League three times during a memorable spell at Arsenal and went on hoist a quartet of Serie A titles to boot — finds himself offering some sage advice to fresh-faced 22-year-old forward Khiry Shelton.
Undeniably one of the EPL’s all-time hardest, most tough-nosed midfielders, Vieira’s tone softens considerably as he offers his tutelage, his arms drawing an imaginary path for Shelton to follow on his next run, which he dutifully follows. “Good, Khiry,” says Vieira, a broad smile coming across his face. The youngster gets a pat on the back from David Villa before trotting back to his position.
After winning everything there is to win in Europe then trading in his boots for management, this is Vieira’s latest challenge: bringing together New York City FC’s collection of European mega-stars and American upstarts, pointing a club that failed to qualify for the MLS Cup playoffs in its expansion season toward the promised land. The expectations are massive. Vieira seems unfazed.
“I’m happy here,” Vieira says at the team hotel later. “I have a great team and a great staff. Now all I have to do is win.”
Jason Kreis was relieved of his duties on Nov. 2 following an up-and-down expansion season that ended in disappointment. One week later, Vieira was introduced as New York City FC's second manager. Pablo Maurer/MLSsoccer.com
"All I have to do is win.”
Certainly that’s the expectation of any coach, but it’s particularly true at City Football Group, the conglomerate which owns NYCFC, Manchester City and a host of other global clubs.
It was their expectation last year, as well, when former Real Salt Lake coach Jason Kreis was hired more than a year before the club’s first game then indoctrinated in Manchester, partially by Vieira, before assembling a team from scratch. Things didn’t go as planned. City fell short of a playoff spot, undone by a lack of chemistry and a shaky backline. Kreis paid the price, relieved of his post one week after a season-ending loss to New England.
Vieira feels those expectations. And this coaching assignment – his first senior role after guiding Manchester City’s Elite Development Squad (EDS) for the past two years – is quite a bit different than the European posts the Frenchman had been linked with in the past. With it come the intricacies of Major League Soccer’s unique roster rules and regulations, guidelines that complicated the lives of former foreign coaches like Ruud Gullit and Hans Backe.
Vieira chuckles when the subject is broached. It’s an answer he’s found himself answering in nearly every interview since his introductory press conference in January.
“I just think that coaching in the MLS is of course harder than in Europe,” Vieira explains. “Because of the salary cap and the roster, and the way you have to make things balanced in the squad, making sure you have the players you need … In Europe, if you want a player, you just go out and buy them. Here, you can’t do it unless you have all these certain criteria. It is really interesting, really fascinating.
“Because this is all about coaching as well – having the balance in your roster and spending your money the right way. I like it. I really do like it. Of course I still have a lot of the rules to learn to understand, but next to [NYCFC Director of Player Recruitment David Lee] and [Sporting Director] Claudio [Reyna,] I’m getting it.”
The Arsenal legend joins a club many perceived as a bit long in the tooth last year, and it’s no secret that rejuvenating the roster was among Vieira’s priorities from the get-go. A bevy of offseason acquisitions fit that mold. Still, New York’s trio of global superstars remain: 34-year-old Spaniard Villa, 36-year-old Italian legend Andrea Pirlo and 37-year-old Frank Lampard, perhaps playing the final season of his career.
It makes for an interesting juxtaposition on the training pitch, where relative newcomers like Thomas McNamara, Patrick Mullins and Kwadwo Poku trade touches with players they’d watched in World Cups.
On this day, Vieira seems a good fit for such a group. His coaching style, perhaps molded by his days leading youngsters in Manchester, is well suited for NYCFC’s young charges. The 39-year-old is upbeat, highly instructive. During stoppages in play, there’s rarely a moment when Vieira isn’t offering some sort of guidance. In other moments, Villa or Pirlo take their turn playing teacher.
Vieira also retains a bit of an aura from his playing days, which he’s only five years removed from, and his resume gives him instant credibility with his players.
Vieira took over Manchester City's Elite Development Squad in 2013, the same year Chilean Manuel Pellegrini took over the first team. Barcelona legend and current Bayern Munich manager Pep Guardiola will take the reins in the fall. In the meantime, Vieira will attempt to send NYCFC to its first playoff appearance in his first season as a first-team head coach. Pablo Maurer/MLSsoccer.com
As a coach, however, he remains unproven, though he says his time in Manchester helped prepare him for the task at hand with NYCFC.
“I think it was a massive step for me, going from my ambassador role [at Manchester City] to the coaching role with the academy,” reflects Vieira. “It was the right step to do – because it was important for me to find out who I was as a coach, to know the style of play that I wanted to implement to the team. I think going with the [academy] allowed me to make the mistakes that I wouldn’t have been allowed to make at a higher level.”
Of course, the task is not his alone. Vieira readily admits he’s tapped into Villa, Pirlo and Lampard to serve as proxies for the coaching staff as well.
“There’s a lot of exchange [between young and old],” he continues. “You saw it this morning. David, the way he’s talking to Khiry, the way he interacts with Mix, or Tony [Taylor] or Tommy – they have the responsibility and I’ve put it on their shoulders because they have the experience. They’ve been through what these players are going through so they have the answers already. They have a massive power to influence the success of the group.
“What I like about [David, Frank and Andrea] is that they are good human beings, good people, humble people. Football doesn’t have a lot of people like that.”
Vieira and the club’s stars can offer tutelage to the club’s young core, but finding significant minutes for those players may prove a challenge.
He has been openly critical of the youth development model in England, going as far as to suggest that teams in the Premier League would benefit from fielding “B” sides in the Championship so players are exposed to “man football,” as he often puts it. Vieira acknowledges that may prove an even bigger challenge stateside.
“When I’m seeing players coming out from college at 22 or 23 years old and playing a three month season over the year, something’s not right, you know what I mean?” Vieira says. “When you come out of college at 22 or 23, that’s really late.
“It’s going to be a challenge because of how the system works. And we need to find a way to work in that system, that’s the way it is, but to try and see if we can be more creative … There are basics that you just have to learn at an early age. If you have to wait until 14, 15, 16 to learn them, it’s too late. It’s all about how much they will want to implement soccer in the US as well. If you really want to develop soccer, you will need to come up with a different way of developing young players.”
It's a problem NYCFC face on this side of the Atlantic as well. Reyna has vowed not to rush the process – the academy won't field a U-18 team in 2016, while 11 feeder clubs help provide a talent pipeline – and the club renewed its USL affiliation with the Wilmington Hammerheads in early February to provide opportunities for young first-team players.
That’s big picture thinking. Right now, Vieira knows he must focus on the task at hand: preparing NYCFC’s players for a playoff-caliber season. Many could learn a thing or two from their manager.
Halfway through training, Vieira can’t help but step up to a ball that’s trickled to his feet, whizzing it skillfully into goal from 25-yards out. During 5-v-2 games, Vieira sneaks in a touch or two, and is the first to join in on the ribbing when an unnamed player gets megged.
Head coach @OfficialVieira getting in on the fun #NYCFC https://t.co/GEKZMOu7gd — New York City FC (@NYCFC) February 9, 2016
He also seems to encourage the same sort of high-energy, physical play that earned him his reputation as a player.
“What I want to do is [for us] to play the way I see the game,” Vieira says. “That means I really want to play the positive way – the positive way meaning that we play with an open mind. I want players to go on the field and play to win the game. I don’t want players to go on the field and say, ‘We’re playing to not lose the game.’ … It may happen that we’ll go and play a fantastic game and we’ll lose the game. It will happen. That’s the way football is.
“But we will win more games playing that way than the other way around. So I just want the team to show passion, to show intensity in the game, I want the team to have an attacking mind. I don’t see the game as sitting back, getting the ball and counterattacking. Of course I’d like the team to reflect who I am as a person.”
Players gather around Vieira at training in Florida during preseason. The World Cup winner has brought levity to camp, but acknowledges there is plenty of pressure on himself and his players. Pablo Maurer/MLSsoccer.com
Laughter is a constant soundtrack to this particular session. That’s not to say Vieira’s players aren’t taking their jobs seriously, but there is an undeniable air of positivity in camp.
Maybe it’s the weather, or simply a reflection of their coach’s personality. When NYCFC newcomer Ethan White tries to play a ball around Pirlo, the former Juventus man deftly deflects it away with his arm. Vieira doesn’t see it, and play continues. White chuckles, Pirlo gives a mischievous shrug, and the young defender gives the Italian a playful shove.
But there is pressure to bear. Immense pressure. Perhaps more on Vieira than anyone else.
He’s been linked with top jobs in the EPL in the past, and there are many who view his stay at NYCFC as a mere layover on a journey to a more glamorous European destination like Manchester City, where Pep Guardiola will take over this summer on a three-year contract.
Vieira emphasizes he’ll do what feels right, trusting his instincts just like during his playing days. When it’s suggested that he might eventually move on to a bigger club, he cuts the question off mid-sentence: “I already am coaching for a big club,” he says, steely-eyed.
“I made the decision to come here because this was the right place for me. This is where I can achieve what I want,” Vieira emphasizes. “If it works for the next 10 years, I’d be more than happy to stay. If I stayed here for 10 years and we win year after year, I’d stay no problem at all. [Failure] is part of the job as a coach. It’s part of the pressure – you have to do well. If I do well, I would be more than happy to stay.
“I don’t have an ambition to go. People say, ‘Oh, he’s just coming here for a few years.’ For me to say it’s wrong, it would be a waste of time,” he continues. “I don’t have anything to prove to anybody on that side. The fact is that I’m coming here and am really happy here because I’m really fascinated with this project. That’s the reason why I signed the three-year contract here.
“If I don’t get sacked before then,” Vieira adds with a smile, “I will be here for the three years easy.”NEWS OF THE MORNING
Mo Williams uses Trail Blazers win as therapy | Lakers call Knicks, talk trade | Rondo won’t play until New Year | Paul talks the talk
No. 1: Blazers’ Williams rides emotional wave in Philly — Portland guard Mo Williams had a hand in the Trail Blazers’ 3-pointer-fueled barrage against the Philadelphia 76ers. But unlike his teammates, it wasn’t all smiles for the veteran point guard. He played with a heavy heart while dealing with the loss of a loved one. That didn’t stop him from joining the party as the Blazers made a franchise-record 21 shots from deep. On a night when LaMarcus Aldridge did his usual MVP work and Damian Lillard, Wesley Matthews, Nic Batum, Dorell Wright and rookie Allen Crabbe all took part in the 3-point party, the three 3s that Williams knocked down had extra special meaning, as Joe Freeman of The Oregonian explains:
Jerome Coleman, died after a lengthy fight with colon cancer. He was 63. On Dec. 5, Williams’ uncle,, died after a lengthy fight with colon cancer. He was 63. Coleman’s funeral was Saturday morning in Mobile, Ala., and Williams wasn’t about to miss the chance to say goodbye to “Uncle Roni.” So after the Blazers’ Thursday night victory over the Houston Rockets, Williams left the Moda Center and boarded a charter flight to Mobile. He didn’t sleep a wink the entire way, touching down in Mobile at 8:30 a.m. What followed was an emotional whirlwind of consoling family, attending memorials and taking part in countless talks that reminisced about “Uncle Roni,” the older brother of Williams’ mother. “I’m just emotionally drained,” Williams said after the game. “Time will heal. Basketball will help. But you still have those times where you just can’t let it go. Being at the funeral, holding my grandma, holding my mom, then jumping on the flight coming here. It’s been a draining day.” The NBA allowed the Blazers to set up a charter flight for Williams so he could play Saturday, and the moment he walked into the visiting locker room — about 90 minutes before tipoff – his stress and sadness washed away. LaMarcus Aldridge cracked a joke at his expense as soon as he saw his teammate, and Williams smiled for seemingly the first time all day. Then he dove into his pregame routine. There were no deep talks. No one asked for stories about the funeral. It was as if it was any other day. And it was exactly what Williams needed. “That was kind of therapeutic for me, being around the guys,” he said. “Throughout the game, they didn’t beat me up with the fact that they knew I was going through something. They just treated me like they treat me every day. I needed that.”
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No. 2: Knicks fielding calls on Shumpert and Chandler? — Kyle Lowry is low-hanging fruit, as Kobe Bryant would say, when it comes to trade talks. The Los Angeles Lakers apparently have something a bit more aggressive in mind since they are now engaging the New York Knicks in discussions about two of the teams main rotation players, the seemingly always available Iman Shumpert and defensive anchor Tyson Chandler, according to ESPN’s Chris Broussard:
No trade is imminent, and sources say the Lakers’ call was more about doing their due diligence; it’s well-known Shumpert is available. The Lakers are unlikely to make a deal before the end of their current four-game trip, which concludes Tuesday night in Memphis. But with Steve Blake, who is expected to miss at least six weeks with an elbow injury, joining point guards Steve Nash and Jordan Farmar on the injured list, the Lakers could be interested in strengthening their backcourt. Shumpert is more of a shooting guard, but with Bryant taking on more of a playmaking role — averaging a career-high 6.7 assists while attempting fewer than nine shots a game — since returning from a torn Achilles tendon last Sunday, it’s easy to see the two playing together. Shumpert is struggling through a disappointing season, and the Knicks have discussed trades involving him with several other teams, including the Denver Nuggets and Toronto Raptors. Sources say the Lakers also are interested in another Knicks player — center Tyson Chandler. The Lakers did not inquire about Chandler when they called about Shumpert, but they are weighing whether to propose a Pau Gasol-for-Chandler trade, according to sources. The Knicks are not looking to move Chandler — several teams have contacted them about him, sources said — but if a club agreed to take back struggling guard J.R. Smith, the Knicks would consider such a deal.
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No. 3: Rondo won’t play until January — There won’t be any speculation about an earlier than anticipated return date for Boston’s All-Star point guard Rajon Rondo. Now that he’s been cleared for full contact, Celtics coach Brad Stevens moved swiftly to ease the pressure on his star by announcing that he won’t play in a game until January, at the earliest. That gives Rondo a minimum of at least two and a half weeks to get himself ready for live action and potentially much more time if he doesn’t progress as the Celtics hope. But is he, as Mark Murphy of The Boston Herald examines, the missing piece for a Celtics team that has already surpassed most people’s expectations?:
And Rondo, according to Stevens, looked “pretty good.” “Rajon is doing more and more in practice every day. He had a good trip yesterday as far as getting good news,” said the Celtics coach. “He’s on schedule to be closer, but it still seems like we’re not going to see him on the court this month. Hopefully, the beginning of January he’ll be closer. “He’s been cleared for that in practice. He wasn’t cleared 100 percent until yesterday,” said Stevens. “But he’s done more and more, and today was the most he’s done. He looked pretty good.” Though Stevens repeatedly has said his system is designed to fit Rondo back into the team as seamlessly as possible, the coaching staff actually has to start the implementation process. “I haven’t thought a ton about it, because it really hasn’t presented itself,” said Stevens. “My focus is what we’re going to do on Monday, but certainly your focus is on not only getting him into it, but also how you’re going to manage everything around that. “Certainly there’s a lot of players who play at a high level (on this team),” he said. “The key is to continue those guys playing very well, and add in another very good player.”
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No. 4: Paul lives up to his own words for Clippers — It’s a bit early in the season for must-win declarations, but the Clippers’ Chris Paul doesn’t care. He’s mandating that his team step their collective game up and that starts with the man in the mirror. And that meant he had to prove his point against the Wizards, wearing them out to the tune of 38 points and 12 assists. He joined Clyde Drexler as the only player in the last 40 NBA seasons to post a 38 and 12 line while also shooting 78 percent or better (he was 10-for-13) from the floor. Drexler did it when Paul was barely out of diapers ((Nov. 13, 1990). But Paul’s point was made, writes Jovan Buha of ESPNLosAngeles.com, so much so that Doc Rivers shouldn’t have to come up with any fire and brimstone speeches now that the Clippers’ road trip is over:
Paul stood by his bold statement, scoring 38 points — the most since his 42-point performance on Halloween against the Golden State Warriors — on 11-of-14 shooting and dishing out 12 assists in the Clippers’ 113-97 victory at Verizon Center. He’s the first player since 2009 to go for 38-plus points, 12-plus assists and three-plus steals in a game, and he already has done it twice this season. While Clippers coach Doc Rivers disagreed with the notion that the game was a must-win at shootaround, he admitted that going 3-4 against mainly sub-.500 Eastern Conference teams would be a major disappointment at any point in the season. “I think they’re a little frustrated on this trip,” Rivers told reporters. “They think it should have gone better. It still can go well. If you win this game, 4-3 on a seven-game trip — that’s good. It’s not what we wanted. We want to win all seven of them. But you just keep plugging along.” With the win, the Clippers finished the trip above.500 at 4-3 and are now 16-9. That isn’t necessarily where they expected to be at this point in the season, but at the very least Saturday’s win showed that if they need to win a tough road game to ease their mental psyche, they can.
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SOME RANDOM HEADLINES: The Bulls’ Joakim Noah insists we’re going to find out what his team is about now that they are facing another round of adversity … Mike Woodson has grown tired of J.R. Smith’s antics, the break up can’t be far off … and make sure and take a look at Ray Allen becoming the sixth active player to join the 24,000 point club.
ICYMI: Josh McRoberts didn’t have the Dunk of the Night, that honor was bestowed upon his Bobcats teammate Jeff Taylor, but he did get loose against his former team for Saturday night’s Play of the Day …
Category: HT News, Morning Shootaround / Tags:, Blake Griffin, Boston Herald, Brad Stevens, Celtics, Chris Paul, Clippers, Damian Lillard, Dwyane Wade, ESPNNewYork.com, Heat, Iman Shumpert, Knicks, Kobe Bryant, Lakers, LaMarcus Aldridge, LeBron James, Mark Murphy, Mike Woodson, Mo Williams, Nic Batum, Pau Gasol, Portland Trail Blazers, Rajon Rondo, Ray Allen, Tyson Chandler, Wesley Matthews / 59 Comments on Morning Shootaround — Dec. 15 /Image copyright AFP Image caption The US wants both sides to approve a "framework" accord that would extend the negotiations beyond April
A meeting between Palestinian and Israeli peace negotiators has been postponed in the wake of a killing of an Israeli in the West Bank.
A spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said it had been rescheduled for Thursday.
Israeli officials declined to give a reason, but the shooting of an off-duty policeman on Monday has caused outrage.
The US has been struggling to persuade both sides to agree extend their direct talks beyond a 29 April deadline.
The negotiations, which resumed last July after a three-year hiatus, appeared on the verge of collapse earlier this month when both sides took what Washington called "unhelpful steps".
The Palestinians submitted applications to join 15 UN treaties and conventions, while Israel refused to release a fourth group of 26 long-term Palestinian prisoners and re-issued tenders for more than 700 new homes at a Jewish settlement in occupied East Jerusalem.
Israel has since said it will also deduct debt payments from tax revenues collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority (PA) - which governs parts of the West Bank not under Israeli control - and limit its access to deposits in Israeli banks.
'Ongoing incitement'
US Secretary of State John Kerry and US special envoy Martin Indyk have been trying to persuade both sides to agree to a "framework" accord on core issues that would allow the negotiations to continue.
"The parties are working right now on an agreement to extend the negotiations, and that means extending the negotiations past 29 April," state department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on Tuesday evening.
Ms Psaki explained that Israeli and Palestinian negotiators were scheduled to discuss "a range of issues" on Wednesday evening, but by early afternoon it emerged that the meeting had been delayed at the request of the US, reportedly to allow for Mr Indyk to arrive in the region.
"The meeting that was planned for tonight between Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams will not be taking place. It's being postponed," an Israeli official told the AFP news agency.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Clashes erupted between Palestinian protesters and Israeli police at a holy site in Jerusalem on Wednesday
The official declined to explain the decision, but said Monday's killing of Baruch Mizrahi, a high-ranking officer in Israeli police intelligence, had been the "direct result of ongoing incitement and glorification of terrorism that we see in the official Palestinian media and education system".
On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed PA leaders who he said "continue to peddle hate-filled material". He also complained that they had failed to condemn the attack.
Palestinian Religious Affairs Minister Mahmoud al-Habash did so on Wednesday, telling Israeli reporters in Ramallah that he felt "the pain of the families". He added that he expected the Israeli government to condemn the killing of Palestinians, but that "this doesn't happen".
Israeli security forces are still hunting for the gunman who opened fire on Mr Mizrahi's car outside Hebron. His wife and child were also wounded.
Also on Wednesday, clashes erupted between Palestinian protesters and Israeli police at a holy site in Jerusalem, known to Jews as the Temple Mount and Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary).
Reports say the violence broke out after the site was opened to visitors in the morning. The protesters began throwing stones, and the police officers responded by firing stun grenades and rubber bullets. The AFP news agency reported that dozens of protesters were hurt.May 15th!HIGH CRIMES, illustrated and colored by me, and written by the incomparable Christopher Sebela (Captain Marvel, Screamland) is avaialble on Comixology for just 99 cents.About the book:People die every year on Mount Everest. This year is going to be murder. Living in the bleak majesty of Kathmandu, Zan Jensen is an American expatriate on the run from a scandalous past. Working for a fly-by-night adventure consulting service, Zan escorts tourists and thrill-seekers up the Himalayas' tallest and deadliest peaks. Along with Haskell Price, fellow climbing guide and mentor, the two partner up in a more sinister line of work: high-altitude grave robbing. Stripping the bodies they find left at deadly altitudes of personal effects and right hands, Zan and Haskell shake down the families and friends of the dead for a hefty body return fee. When Price stumbles across the decades-old corpse of Sullivan Mars below the peak of Mount Everest, it puts the partners in the crosshairs of a global mystery that someone is all too willing to kill to keep secret. The first chapter of a new crime thriller that stretches from rural America to the roof of the world from Christopher Sebela (Screamland: Death of the Party, Captain Marvel) and Ibrahim Moustafa (The Pound: Ghoul's Night Out).You can purchase each chapter on your laptop or desktop computer by using the following link:Or, if you have a tablet or smartphone, download the free comixology app from your device's app store, and type "High Crimes" into the search field.This is a must have for anyone who's seen gravity falls! However I would NOT recommend this to anyone who hasn't seen the show or all the episodes in order cause it contains lots of spoilers and probably wouldn't make sense to someone who hasn't seen the show. I pre ordered my copy and got it the day it was released, I have since then read
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feel them inside me. I wasn't sure I could, but it didn't matter. I wanted them all. I needed to take them all inside me. With that thought, I went sort of wild. I started pushing bigger chunks of meat and maggots, and even handfuls of just maggots into me, over and over. I was practically hyperventilating, too. I wasn't thinking at all about the noise I must have been making. But now I could definitely feel the maggots squirming inside my vagina. Just the idea of it made me cum again.Finally, once I had crammed all of the rotten meat, and all of the maggots I could inside me, I felt so filthy, so disgusting, like I'd turned myself into some low, depraved sort of beast. And that made me so incredibly hot, together with the constant movement of the maggots inside me. But it was time to go. Holding my hand over my crotch, I slowly crawled back to my clothes and managed to get dressed again without anything coming out. I put the gloves back into my pocket and climbed out of the dumpster. And right then I could hold back the revulsion of what I'd just done no longer. Holding myself up against the side of the dumpster, I threw up. Ever vomited while you were horny? It's weird.Walking home down the alley, I felt like I was in a daze. I kept asking myself how I could have done this to myself, but then asking why I'd waited so long. I had to walk slowly to make sure nothing got squeezed out of my vagina, but also to keep from cumming again. I found myself amazed at the whole thing, that I'd stuffed the most intimate part of myself with these things that were too disgusting to even touch without gloves. And that I was totally getting off on it.Once I was home, I locked myself in my bedroom, took off my clothes, except for my double-panties, and got into bed. I closed my eyes and just let myself feel the maggots squirming inside me. For a while I tried to watch TV, but I could really pay attention to it. The maggots were too wonderfully distracting. I skipped dinner. Later on, when I really had to pee, I did it by taking down my panties and holding my hand over my crotch, wearing the rubber gloves, of course.The next morning I called off of work after being awake most of the night. I mainly stayed naked in my bed all day masturbating, barely getting up for anything. I wanted to do nothing but let my nauseating little babies grow inside my pussy. Pretty early, though, I realized the smell was getting really horrible. I opened the window. I also wet a bath towel and stuffed it under my bedroom door. I didn't want my parents to get suspicious.A little later on I realized that I didn't need the panties to hold the maggots and the meat inside me. The mass pretty much stayed in place as long as I laid kind of still. I thought hey, I guess that means I'm infested, which made me cum again. I was always right on the edge of orgasm, and it didn't take much to go over the edge. I also noticed that the maggots seemed to be more active if I kept my legs apart and realized that they probably needed to breathe. So that's how I stayed a lot of the time. I did get up and read my email and posted an update on my web page but I couldn't seem to think clearly enough to write much. Then I had to pee again, but I just didn't want to get up. So I just peed in the bed. It made me cum. I just wanted to keep feeling the maggots moving. And they were. They seemed even stronger, in anything. I was totally in heaven with it. I didn't eat at all, either.I heard my parents come home from work. During the evening my mom said hello through the door and wondered why I was staying in my room like a hermit. I said I was reading a novel all the way through at once, which I actually do sometimes. She left me alone. I hoped she didn't smell anything. I surfed the Web for a while that night and looked at porn. I came a few more times. I decided to go ahead and take a shit in my bed, right where I was. That just made me more turned on and I ended up smearing some of my shit over my thighs and my pussy and cumming again. I noticed that the maggots started coming out a bit. Maybe they liked the shit. A couple tmes one would creep up on my belly. I'd just flick it back down between my legs.I was getting tired at that point. It really was time to sleep and my vagina was throbbing and kind of sore from all of the attention. But I was most worried about making sure my maggots could breathe while I was sleeping. Somehow, I managed to find the energy to place a chair on either side of my bed and use sheets to tie my ankles to them. That would keep my legs apart during the night. I pulled the blankets over myself and dozed off lying in my piss and shit.For the most part I slept through the night, but I kept waking up sweating, with my vagina throbbing worse. I knew I was getting a bad infection from this, but I didn't care. I was not thinking right. I could also feel maggots crawling all over me. I guess I decided I liked that and I'd play with my clit until I came again. I don't know if I realized at the time that I wasn't wearing the rubber gloves anymore. I'd fall back to sleep and wake up again later with little phrases running through my head. Other girls have babies but I give birth to decay and filth, I'd keep thinking to myself. Or I'd say I'm probably ruining my womb and I don't care, I want to be ruined. I know I must have been hallucinating from the infection. I was hoping the maggots had given up on the rotten meat and were eating my vagina instead. My fingers were buried inside my vagina, with my fingertips against part of the meat. Whenever I pressed on it, the maggots would squirm faster and I'd climax again. I could do it over and over and keep cumming.Finally it was Tuesday morning and sunlight made me wake up. I knew I was really, really sick at that point. I felt weak and dizzy, I knew I had a fever, and now my whole lower belly was sore and throbbing. Despite all that I was still horny and I was still right on the edge of cumming. And then for some reason, all I wanted to do was see my maggots.I pulled the blankets aside and saw that I really did have maggots crawling all over my body. I was so whacked out I loved it. But I also saw that I had a rash spreading over my tummy and my thighs, and I was soaked with sweat. And then suddenly I needed to see what it looked like between my legs. I sat up a little, picked up the hand mirror I have on the table next to my bed, and held it between my thighs.My pussy was totally gaped wide open. I'd never seen it like that before. It reminded me of a mouth in a sick, gagging expression. My inner lips were swollen and dark purple, almost black, while my outer lips were cherry red and I was losing a layer of dead skin, like a sunburn. A stream of the light brown slime was oozing from inside my vagina and down my butt crack onto the shitty mattress. Although I could still feel a large mass of maggots and rotten meat inside me, there were maggots everywhere between my legs. Hundreds of them.And then I saw my fingers on my pussy. They plunged deep into my vagina and dragged out a wad of slime and maggots, which I pressed hard against my clit. I remember having a huge orgasm right then, and I must have passed out. I think I was sobbing too, but I'm not sure.That's all I remember until I woke up in the hospital.On October 13, 2015, General Chang Wanquan, Chinese state councilor and Minister of National Defense, held talks with Kazakhstan’s Defense Minister Imangali Tasmagambetov in Astana. The China-Kazakhstan bilateral summit resulted in an exchange of defense policy ideas and the promise of expanded inter-military cooperation between the two countries on common security concerns. Chang emphasized that China and Kazakhstan are friendly neighbors and strategic partners, while his Kazakh counterpart underscored their common desire to ensure stability in Central Asia.
The conciliatory rhetoric between China and Kazakhstan on defense policy represents a significant upgrade in the partnership between the two countries, which has historically been dominated primarily by economic linkages. It also highlights Kazakhstan’s desire to restrict the scope of its integration with Russia.
China’s shift from threat to strategic partner in the eyes of Kazakh policymakers in the two decades since the breakdown of the USSR is a major sea change in perceptions. Despite this progress, China faces a major uphill battle if it is to supplant Russia as the leading influencer of Kazakhstan’s security policy. The legacy of Kazakhstan’s historical integration with Russia and the lack of progress on dealing with separatist threats of major concern to both countries ensure that the partnership is not as deep-rooted as official rhetoric would suggest.
From Security Threat to Military Partner
In the years immediately following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan had a circumspect attitude towards China on security issues, as it feared a potential Chinese military intervention across its shared border. Anti-Chinese sentiments amongst Kazakh policymakers were shaped profoundly by the belief that China had a neo-colonial attitude towards Central Asia. A 1954 map released by the Chinese government showing parts of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan as Chinese territory, provided convincing proof for the Kazakh elites’ concerns.
Kazakhstan’s reduced ability to defend itself following its decision to renounce its nuclear weapons stocks further cemented elite feelings of distrust towards China. The ecological damage caused by China’s nuclear testing projects in the early 1990s and the Sinification fears associated with rising labor migration between China and Kazakhstan were also major obstacles to durable bilateral cooperation.
The turning point in China’s security relationship with Kazakhstan came in 1996; in retrospect, that year was the starting point for fruitful defense cooperation. The Shanghai Five pact between China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan (the precursor of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, or SCO) legally bound all five countries to respect the integrity of the others’ borders. China was also the first UN Security Council member to sign a universal moratorium on nuclear tests, a move that thawed relations considerably with Kazakhstan.
During the early 2000s, China’s military assistance to Kazakhstan shifted towards cooperation in the conflict against separatism and Islamic extremism. Senior leadership figures in the Chinese and Kazakh regimes arranged a consultation meeting in the wake of the 9/11 attacks that pledged unity in counter-terrorism measures. Chinese solidarity with Kazakhstan was demonstrated by donations of communications equipment and other technologies to the Kazakh military.
Kazakhstan’s gradual pivot towards China is also linked to its broader desire to dilute Russia’s monopoly over the provision of its security. Northern Kazakhstan possesses a concentration of ethnic Russians and the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, which was partially justified by the need to protect Russian civilians, increased alarm among Kazakh policymakers about the possibility of a Russian military foray into this region.
Kazakhstan’s prominence as an oil supplier for China due to pipeline constructions that commenced in the mid-2000s has increased its profile as a competitor to Russia, which signed a $400 billion energy deal with China to counter Western sanctions. To redress Kazakhstan’s concerns that deepened economic integration with Russia resulting from EEU membership will compromise its sovereignty, Kazakhstan has welcomed China’s military assistance so it can be prepared in the event of a Russian intervention on its soil.
Long-Term Implications
The principal focus of Kazakhstan’s October 2015 military deal with China is preparation for asymmetric warfare: a reference in the Central Asian context to combating terrorist networks and guerilla movements. China agreed to coordinate special forces training with Kazakhstan, to increase the Kazakh military’s preparedness for war in urban environments, mountain conditions and at sea. As Joshua Kucera recently noted in an article for EurasiaNet, this kind of training occurred previously under the auspices of the SCO but bilateral exercises are a new, intriguing development.
Despite deepened on-the-ground military cooperation between China and Kazakhstan, the extent of bilateral coordination on security issues is limited. The operational language of the Kazakh military is still Russian and not Chinese. Kazakh military personnel are also largely untrained in Chinese military techniques. It is estimated that only 100 Kazakh students attended Chinese military academies in the past two decades.
The Chinese PLA also possesses limited military reach in Central Asia, as Kazakhstan’s military continues to rely on imports of discounted equipment from Russian suppliers. China has also refused to match Russia’s offers with sales of decommissioned equipment from its own military. In light of these factors, it is clear that China’s dramatically expanded economic leverage over Kazakhstan relative to Russia has not translated equivalently to greater hegemony over Kazakh security policy.
Border security is the most natural sphere for security cooperation between Kazakhstan and China, due to the perceived threat posed by the Uighur population who reside immediately southeast of Kazakhstan. But even on this issue, the bilateral relationship is marred by corruption and criminality. In 2011, Russian authorities discovered a $130 million smuggling ring on the Kazakhstan-China border, which allegedly earned more than $5 million a week on illegal car sales. The mysterious deaths of 15 border guards in the border post of Arkankergen in May 2012 alarmed Russian authorities and complicated Kazakhstan’s eventual accession to the Russian-led customs union.
Russian officials have expressed concern that Kazakhstan could replace the Russian Far East, as the primary middleman in the trade of smuggled Chinese goods. Should this trade intensify as the EEU is mired in an economic malaise, China may be forced to scale back security cooperation initiatives with Kazakhstan, to ensure that its more vital energy interests and trade with Russia are not jeopardized.
Kazakhstan’s announcement of expanded defense cooperation with China represents yet another confirmation of the shift in the bilateral relationship from adversaries to strategic partners. But China’s ability to meaningfully dictate Kazakhstan’s security agenda or lessen Kazakhstan’s dependency on Russia is more limited than these closer relations would imply. In the short term at least, Russian President Vladimir Putin has little reason to worry, as Chinese military influence will likely be projected more powerfully through the SCO (which Russia is also a member of) than through bilateral agreements that undercut Russia’s regional hegemony.
Samuel Ramani is an MPhil student in Russian and East European Studies at St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford. He is also a journalist, whose work has also been featured in the Huffington Post, Washington Post, Kyiv Post and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.Despite opposition from his own troops in Congress, President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday reaffirmed his vow to slap a “border tax” on companies that move jobs outside the U.S. — further putting the business community on notice that things will change when he is in the White House.
He has praised companies that have announced expansions in the U.S., threatened those that are considering moving plants elsewhere and even pitted corporations against each other in government contracting, trying to drive the best deal possible for taxpayers.
Although it is tough to calculate the effect on jobs, there is no question that businesses are listening — and responding.
After one meeting with Lockheed Martin Corp., the lead contractor on the expensive and behind-schedule F-35 fighter jet, Mr. Trump emerged to say no progress had been made on cutting costs. He then posted a Twitter message saying that he had asked Boeing Co., a Lockheed competitor, to offer a plan to update its F-18 and replace the F-35 contract.
The arrow struck its target. Lockheed CEO Marillyn Hewson quickly announced that she had given Mr. Trump her “personal commitment” to drive down the price of the F-35.
“Companies are scared of Trump,” said Daniel Mitchell, a senior fellow at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute. “He’s getting loads of credit for browbeating the companies.”
The president-elect, in a press conference Wednesday, continued to publicly embarrass the F-35, calling it “way, way behind schedule” and “many, many millions of dollars over budget” and again hinting at using the F-18 as an alternative.
“We’re going to have some competition, and it’s going to be a beautiful thing,” he said.
Mr. Trump has the most power over government contracts, but he also has delved into more nuts-and-bolts business decisions.
Mr. Trump praised recent announcements from Ford Motor Co. and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles about their plans to develop within the U.S. Mr. Trump earlier criticized Ford’s reported plans to move its small-car production to Mexico.
“I appreciate that from Ford. I appreciate it very much from Fiat Chrysler,” Mr. Trump said Wednesday. “I hope that General Motors will be following, and I think they will be.”
Ford CEO Mark Shields told CNBC recently that the company canceled the plans for a plant in Mexico because of market demand and that Ford could use capacity it already has.
The company did, however, acknowledge in November that Mr. Trump supported its decision to keep the manufacturing of a particular utility vehicle model in Kentucky — though Mr. Trump boasted that he had “worked hard” with company Executive Chairman Bill Ford to keep a plant in the state.
Mr. Trump also has threatened to make car companies such as General Motors Co. and even Japan-based Toyota Motor Corp. pay a “big border tax” if they manufactured products in Mexico and sold them in the U.S.
The auto industry is taking notice. Michael Jackson, chairman and CEO of AutoNation Inc., an auto retailer, told CNBC that the Detroit Auto Show this week is awaiting Mr. Trump’s next industry-shattering social media statement.
“We can’t even get to the vehicles. Everyone’s hanging on the next tweet,” Mr. Jackson said — though he added that there was a general mood of optimism for Mr. Trump’s pro-growth vision for the economy.
Mr. Trump is simultaneously acting like the president and a sort of chief economic officer, said Mark T. Williams, who teaches finance at Boston University.
“His tweets are impacting shareholders,” Mr. Williams said, pointing to large fluctuations in the stock values of Boeing and Lockheed after Mr. Trump put their names at the top of the news.
Shares of health care and pharmaceutical stocks dropped Wednesday after Mr. Trump talked about his desire to get a more open bidding process in place for drug prices.
“What they’re doing is they’re trying to manage perceived risk, and really a political risk they have if they don’t appear publicly to kowtow to Donald Trump,” Mr. Mitchell said of companies in general. “It has much larger implications — global trade implications.”
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.BBC’s John Laurenson’s asks in this edition of Heart & Soul, whether the Lebanese Message, which Pope John Paul II exalted, can survive with the Christian population shrinking due to immigration and war threatening to spill over from neighboring Syria.
Laurenson travels to Lebanon, which he describes as “once a by-word for religious war,” and discovers instead that it is a “country that has been moulded like no other by Christianity and Christian culture.” Borrowing from the words of John Paul II and Benedict XVI, Laurenson calls Lebanon a “message to the world of how different religions can live side by side in a spirit of mutual respect and harmony.”
However, Laurenson also points out the “hopes and fears” of Christians, not only Lebanese but all Arab Christians, who live in a “Muslim sea.”
Listen to this edition of Heart & Soul.
AdvertisementsVice President of Business and Culture at the Media Research Center, Dan Gainor, talked with Breitbart News Daily SiriusXM host Alex Marlow on Monday regarding Democrat’s silence after a joke by actor Johnny Depp about assassinating President Trump while they continue to claim Republicans must tone down their rhetoric and accuse the GOP of wanting to kill people due to the new Senate Healthcare Bill.
Regarding the Depp joke, Gainor said, “I think the amazing thing is how little coverage it gets. That’s the consistent theme.”
“The media accepts now a level of hate,” continued Gainor, “a level of talk about violence coming from the Left that is disturbing, is pushing us towards an edge where I don’t think anybody wants to be. But the media accepts it like it’s ordinary and they should go after Johnny Depp. He should be made to pay for that.”
Gainor went on to point out that “within moments after they talk about lowering the tone (of political rhetoric) you see Democrats saying basically everything Republicans want to do is going to kill people.”
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
LISTEN:On Media Blog Archives Select Date… December, 2015 November, 2015 October, 2015 September, 2015 August, 2015 July, 2015 June, 2015 May, 2015 April, 2015 March, 2015 February, 2015 January, 2015
Sharyl Attkisson's computers compromised
Sharyl Attkisson, the Emmy-award winning CBS News investigative reporter, says that her personal and work computers have been compromised and are under investigation.
"I can confirm that an intrusion of my computers has been under some investigation on my end for some months but I'm not prepared to make an allegation against a specific entity today as I've been patient and methodical about this matter," Attkisson told POLITICO on Tuesday. "I need to check with my attorney and CBS to get their recommendations on info we make public."
(PHOTOS: Politicians and their iToys)
In an earlier interview with WPHT Philadelphia, Attkisson said that though she did not know the full details of the intrustion, "there could be some relationship between these things and what's happened to James [Rosen]," the Fox News reporter who became the subject of a Justice Dept. investigation after reporting on CIA intelligence about North Korea in 2009.
On Sunday, The Washington Post reported that the Justice Dept. had searched Rosen's personal e-mails and tracked his visits to the State Dept. The court affadavit described Rosen as “at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator" of his government source, presumably because he had solicited classified information from that source -- an argument that has been heavily criticized by other journalists.
(WATCH: POLITICO roundtable: West Wing contempt for press?)
Attkisson told WPHT that irregular activity on her computer was first identified in Feb. 2011, when she was reporting on the Fast and Furious gun-walking scandal and on the Obama administration's green energy spending, which she said "the administration was very sensitive about." Attkisson has also been a persistent investigator of the events surrounding last year's attack in Benghazi, and its aftermath.
UPDATE (Wed., 7:30 a.m.): The Justice Dept. now tells POLITICO that it is not responsible for the irregular activity: “To our knowledge, the Justice Department has never ‘compromised’ Ms. Atkisson’s computers, or otherwise sought any information from or concerning any telephone, computer, or other media device she may own or use," Dean Boyd, a Justice Dept. spokesperson, told POLITICO on Tuesday night.
Follow @politico[bitcoin-dev] Authentication BIP
Hi As already mentioned in the recent BIP151 thread (https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2016-June/012826.html), I propose the following authentication scheme to basically allow MITM detection and rejection in conjunction with BIP151. The proposed authentication BIP does require BIP151. The propose BIP does assume, node operators want to build trusted connections for various reasons. BIPs mediawiki github page available here: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/compare/master...jonasschnelli:2016/07/auth_bip?expand=1 =================================================== BIP:??? Title: Peer Authentication Author: Jonas Schnelli <dev at jonasschnelli.ch> Status: Draft Type: Standards Track Created: 2016-03-23 == Abstract == This BIP describes a way how peers can authenticate – without opening fingerprinting possibilities – to other peers to guarantee ownership and/or allowing to access additional or limited services. == Motivation == We assume peer operators want to limit the access of different services or increase datastream priorities to a selective subset of peers. Also we assume peers want to connect to specific peers to broadcast or filter transactions (or similar action that reveals sensitive informations) and therefore they want to authenticate the remote peer and make sure that they have not connected to a MITM. Benefits with peer authentication: * Peers could detect MITM attacks when connecting to known peers * Peers could allow resource hungry transaction filtering only to specific peers * Peers could allow access to sensitive information that can lead to node fingerprinting (fee estimation) * Peers could allow custom message types (private extensions) to authenticated peers A simple authentication scheme based on elliptic cryptography will allow peers to identify each other and selective allow access to restricted services or reject the connection if the identity could not be verified. == Specification == The authentication scheme proposed in this BIP uses ECDSA, ___secrets will never be transmitted___. ___Authentication initialization must only happen if encrypted channels have been established (according to BIP-151 [1]).___ The ___encryption-session-ID___ is available once channels are encrypted (according to BIP-151 [1]). The identity-public-keys used for the authentication must be pre-shared over a different channel (Mail/PGP, physical paper exchange, etc.). This BIP does not cover a "trust on first use" (TOFU) concept. The authentication state must be kept until the encryption/connection terminates. Only one authentication process is allowed per connection. Re-authenticate require re-establishing the connection. === Known-peers and authorized-peers database === Each peer that supports p2p authentication must provide two users editable "databases" # ___known-peers___ contains known identity-public-keys together with a network identifier (IP & port), similar to the "known-host" file supported by openssh. # ___authorized-peers___ contains authorized identity-public-keys === Local identity key management === Each peer can configure one identity-key (ECC, 32 bytes) per listening network interface (IPv4, IPv6, tor). The according identity-public-key can be shared over a different channel with other node-operators (or non-validating clients) to grant authorized access. === Authentication procedure === Authentication after this BIP will require both sides to authenticate. Signatures/public-keys will only be revealed if the remote peer could prove that they already know the remote identity-public-key. # -> Requesting peer sends `AUTHCHALLENGE` (hash) # <- Responding peer sends `AUTHREPLY` (signature) # -> Requesting peer sends `AUTHPROPOSE` (hash) # <- Responding peer sends `AUTHCHALLENGE` (hash) # -> Requesting peer sends `AUTHREPLY` (signature) For privacy reasons, dropping the connection or aborting during the authentication process must not be possible. === `AUTHCHALLENGE` message === A peer can send an authentication challenge to see if the responding peer can produce a valid signature with the expected responding peers identity-public-key by sending an `AUTHCHALLENGE`-message to the remote peer. The responding peer needs to check if the hash matches the hash calculated with his own local identity-public-key. Fingerprinting the requesting peer is not possible. 32bytes challenge-hash `hash(encryption-session-ID || challenge_type || remote-peers-expected-identity-public-key)` `challenge_type` is a single character. `i` if the `AUTHCHALLENGE`-message is the first, requesting challenge or `r` if it's the second, remote peers challenge message. === `AUTHREPLY` message === A peer must reply an `AUTHCHALLENGE`-message with an `AUTHREPLY`-message. | 64bytes || signature || normalized comp.-signature || A signature of the encryption-session-ID done with the identity-key If the challenge-hash from the `AUTHCHALLENGE`-message did not match the local authentication public-key, the signature must contain 64bytes of zeros. The requesting peer can check the responding peers identity by checking the validity of the sent signature against with the pre-shared remote peers identity-public-key. If the signature was invalid, the requesting peer must still proceed with the authentication by sending an `AUTHPROPOSE`-message with 32 random bytes. === `AUTHPROPOSE` message === A peer can propose authentication of the channel by sending an `AUTHPROPOSE`-message to the remote peer. If the signature sent in `AUTHREPLY` was invalid, the peer must still send an `AUTHPROPOSE`-message containing 32 random bytes. The `AUTHPROPOSE` message must be answered with an `AUTHCHALLENGE`-message – even if the proposed requesting-peers identity-public-key has not been found in the authorized_peers database. In case of no match, the responding `AUTHCHALLENGE`-message must contains 32 bytes of zeros. | 32bytes || auth-propose-hash || hash || `hash(encryption-session-ID == Post-Authentication Re-Keying == After the second `AUTHREPLY` message (requesting peers signature -> responding peer), both clients must re-key the symmetric encryption according to BIP151 while using ___a slightly different re-key key derivation hash___. They both re-key with `hash(encryption-session-ID || old_symmetric_cipher_key || requesting-peer-identity-public-key || responding-peer-identity-public-key)` == Identity-Addresses == The peers should display/log the identity-public-key as an identity-address to the users, which is a base58-check encoded ripemd160(sha256) hash. The purpose of this is for better visual comparison (logs, accept-dialogs). The base58check identity byte is `0x0F` followed by an identity-address version number (=`0xFF01`). An identity address would look like `TfG4ScDgysrSpodWD4Re5UtXmcLbY5CiUHA` and can be interpreted as a remote peers fingerprint. == Compatibility == This proposal is backward compatible. Non-supporting peers will ignore the new `AUTH*` messages. == Example of an auth interaction == Before authentication (once during peer setup or upgrade) # Requesting peer and responding peer create each an identity-keypair (standard ECC priv/pubkey) # Requesting and responding peer share the identity-public-key over a different channel (PGP mail, physical exchange, etc.) # Responding peer stores requesting peers identity-public-key in its authorized-peers database (A) # Requesting peer stores responding peers identity-public-key in its known-peers database together with its IP and port (B) Encryption # Encrypted channels must be established (according to BIP-151 [1]) Authentication # Requesting peer sends an `AUTHCHALLENGE` message AUTHCHALLENGE: [32 bytes, hash(encryption-session-ID || "i" || <remote-peers-expected-identity-public-key>)] # Responding peer does create the same hash `(encryption-session-ID || "i" || <remote-peers-expected-identity-public-key>)` with its local identity-public-key # If the hash does not match, response with an `AUTHREPLY` message containing 64bytes of zeros. # In case of a match, response with an `AUTHREPLY` message AUTHREPLY: [64 bytes normalized compact ECDSA signature (H)] (sig of the encryption-session-ID done with the identity-key) # Requesting peer does verify the signature with the `remote-peers-identity-public-key` # If the signature is invalid, requesting peer answers with an `AUTHREPLY` message containing 32 random bytes # In case of a valid signature, requesting peer sends an `AUTHPROPOSE` message AUTHPROPOSE: [32 bytes, hash(encryption-session-ID || "p" || <client-identity-public-key>)] # Responding peer iterates over authorized-peers database (A), hashes the identical data and looks for a match. # If the hash does not match, responding peer answer with an `AUTHCHALLENGE` message containing 32 bytes of zeros. # In case of a match, responding peer sends an `AUTHCHALLENGE` message with the hashed client public-key AUTHCHALLENGE: [32 bytes, hash(encryption-session-ID || "r" || <client-identity-public-key>)] # Requesting peer sends an `AUTHREPLY` message containing 64 bytes of zeros if server failed to authenticate # Otherwise, response with signature in the `AUTHREPLY` message AUTHREPLY: [64 bytes normalized compact ECDSA signature (H)] (sig of the encryption-session-ID done with the identity-key) # Responding peer must verify the signature and can grant access to restricted services. # Both peers re-key the encryption after BIP151 including the requesting-peer-identity-public-key and responding-peer-identity-public-key == Disadvantages == The protocol may be slow if a peer has a large authorized-peers database due to the requirement of iterating and hashing over all available authorized peers identity-public-keys. == Reference implementation == == References == * [1] [[bip-0151.mediawiki|BIP 151: Peer-to-Peer Communication Encryption]] == Acknowledgements == * Gregory Maxwell and Pieter Wuille for most of the ideas in this BIP. == Copyright == This work is placed in the public domain. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 819 bytes Desc: OpenPGP digital signature URL: <http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20160808/e83bc378/attachment-0001.sig>Ryu Hosts Meeting on Plans for Sixth Street Safety Improvements
Last Saturday, Los Angeles City Councilmember David Ryu hosted a neighborhood meeting on possible safety improvements for Sixth Street from Fairfax Avenue to La Brea Avenue in the Mid-City West area. The one-mile stretch of roadway runs along along the north side of the L.A. County Art Museum and along the south side of Park La Brea. This part of Sixth Street is a block north of two under-construction Metro Purple Line Subway stations on Wilshire at Fairfax and at La Brea.
For about a half-mile, especially between Hauser Boulevard and Fairfax, Sixth Street widens significantly. Along with the wider lanes comes increased speeding and increased crashes, injuries, and deaths.
According to the city, this stretch of Sixth Street saw two traffic deaths in 2016. At Sixth and Hauser, a cyclist was killed on September 1. At Sixth and Ogden Drive, a pedestrian was killed on August 10. On July 11, 2012, a particularly gruesome incident saw a morning driver jump the curb and kill a pedestrian by crushing her against a building. Herbie Huff, a city planner and resident of this area, says that “it’s glaringly obvious to anyone who lives here that this street is awful and needs to change. We hear cars crashing all the time, and find the leftover pieces of glass and metal the next day after the wreckage is cleaned up.”
SWITRS data, mapped above, show numerous serious collisions all along the corridor.
For several years, the Mid-City West Community Council (MCWCC) has been pushing the city of Los Angeles to make this stretch of Sixth safer. MCWCC worked with LADOT to propose safety improvements, including a road diet. The 2016 MCWCC-approved plan was also supported by the Park La Brea Residents Association, La Brea Hancock HOA, Greater Miracle Mile Chamber of Commerce, and L.A. Walks.
To date, the MCWCC plan has barely been acknowledged by Councilmember Ryu. Ryu expressed skepticism about road diets, asserting (minute 3:00) that road diets are “creating traffic” so “be careful what you ask for” but stated that (minute 32:00) despite “unintended consequences” he would study and “consider” the neighborhood council’s Sixth Street road diet plan.
At Councilmember Ryu’s neighborhood meeting Saturday, two options were presented for this portion of Sixth Street:
Option A – New Left Turn Pockets. This option would remove some on-street parking to add left-turn pockets at La Brea and Hauser, and to add capacity to the existing westbound left-turn pocket at Fairfax.
Option B – Road Diet. This option is very similar to the MCWCC plan. The road diet would eliminate a travel lane in each direction, adding a continuous left-turn lane allowing for easier left turns at La Brea, Detroit Street, Cloverdale Avenue, Cochran Avenue, Dunsmuir Avenue, Burside Avenue, Ridgeley Drive, and Hauser. The consultant’s (Kimley-Horn) maps showed the road diet taking away a half-dozen blocks of on-street parking (this was disputed by locals, see below).
A questionnaire was distributed for attendees to express their preferences, though the survey did not match the options presented. The survey did not include option A or B, nor did it include bike lanes, the road diet, nor the road diet’s left-turn pockets. The survey asked attendees to respond yes/no to numerous continental “zebra” crosswalks that are standard for the city of L.A. – something which is a bit like asking whether folks support having all three colors in a traffic signal.
Hard to judge whether people support bike lanes when you don't even ask them if they do pic.twitter.com/mOyBzPjzOr — Michael (@topomodesto) October 21, 2017
Mid-City West Community Council leaders and livability advocates expressed a great deal of skepticism about the forum, the survey, minimal attendance, errors in the presentation boards and the plans presented.
Advocates displayed a sign urging “best practices over best politics.”
According to MCWCC board chair Scott Epstein, the road diet would remove only four to six parking spaces between Dunsmuir and Cochran; these are to connect to Cochran so that cyclists can transition to 4th Street. According to Epstein, the road diet would yield “a net gain in parking” by removing peak-hour and daytime parking restrictions. Per Epstein, the MCWCC plan would remove current 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. restrictions for three blocks from Cochran to La Brea, and remove current peak-hour parking restrictions for two blocks from Ridgeley to Dunsmuir.
Epstein criticizes Option A, stating it “sacrifices a ton of parking in a neighborhood that is demanding more
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to this failure is to drop these previous restrictions, providing direct US military aid to forces fighting for the overthrow of the Syrian government, including Islamists who would have been excluded from the Pentagon training program.
In the first announcement of the new program, Defense Secretary Ash Carter, speaking in London following a meeting with his British counterpart, Michael Fallon, said that it would be modeled on “the work we’ve done with the Kurds in northern Syria... That’s exactly the kind of example that we would like to pursue with other groups in other parts of Syria going forward. That is going to be the core of the President’s concept.”
The US coordination with the Kurds, particularly during the ISIS siege of the Syrian city of Kobani, on the Turkish border, involved Kurds providing ground forces, while identifying targets and calling in airstrikes by US warplanes.
As part of the new program, Pentagon officials said that the US military would train “enablers,” leading members of various militias, who would be instructed in how to coordinate with American warplanes in targeting and striking forces on the ground.
The Kurdish “example” has been rendered problematic by Washington’s alliance with Turkey, which has allowed US airstrikes to be launched from Incirlik Air Base and other bases inside Turkey in return for Washington’s tacit approval of Turkish bombing of the Kurds.
The identity of the “other groups” with whom Washington wants to replicate this strategy is far from clear. Some media reports named the “Syrian Arab Coalition” as a likely recipient of US weapons and close air support. Prior to Friday’s announcement, however, no one had ever heard of this coalition, which appears to be something that the Pentagon hopes to cobble together from existing “rebel” groups.
The dominant forces fighting the Assad government consist of ISIS, which Washington claims to be committed to destroying, the al-Nusra Front, which is on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations, and Ahrar al-Sham, another Islamist group whose founders came out of Al Qaeda. Other smaller factions are largely fighting in alliance with these forces.
To the extent that the US military provides air support to these militias, it may well come into direct conflict with Russian warplanes that are bombing them.
Far from a tactical retreat, it appears that the suspension of the Pentagon’s train-and-equip program is only setting the stage for a far bloodier war inside Syria, while heightening the real danger of a military clash between the world’s two largest nuclear powers, the United States and Russia.
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.Narendra Modi addressing a rally in Bharuch on Saturday
Accusing the Congress of "trying to hide in the bunker of secularism", BJP's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi today said that it was fighting for its survival with even a 100-seat mark in the new Lok Sabha appearing "an uphill task for it".Mr Modi was reacting to Congress president Sonia Gandhi's accusation that his election campaign was a "dangerous combination of religious fanaticism, power and money".Responding to Mrs Gandhi's dig that he was promising to make India a paradise, he said, "I have never claimed that I will make India a paradise and that I have solutions to all problems. I am sure even people do not expect this from me."People of India were not looking forward to miracles but "they certainly deserve a stable, decisive and sensitive government," he said.Asked about recent attacks on him by Priyanka Gandhi who had accused him of humiliating her family and husband Robert Vadra, the BJP leader said that as a daughter and sister she has a right to campaign for her mother and her brother. ( Now, Priyanka Gandhi Vadra takes on Narendra Modi over 56-inch chest remark "It is natural that a daughter would like to defend her mother. A sister would like to defend her brother. I do not have any problems with that," Mr Modi said.Answering a question on how allegations against Mr Vadra would be dealt with in the event of his coming to power, the BJP leader said that he did not believe in politics of vendetta and witch-hunting of which he had been a "victim" for the last ten years. ( There will be no sparing, no witchhunt: Arun Jaitley on Robert Vadra "At the same time, nobody was above law and if somebody had done something wrong, the law must take its own course. But that has to happen in an institutional manner as per the due process without interference from any quarter. Such actions should never be guided by political considerations," Mr Modi said.When asked if he would reach out to regional leaders like Mamata Banerjee, Jayalalithaa and Mayawati who had been critical of him during the campaign but whose support he may need after the poll results were out, Mr Modi replied," As of now I firmly believe that the BJP with its pre-poll NDA partners is going to get the required numbers to form a government at the Centre. You must keep in mind that we already have a big and powerful alliance of more than 25 partners. ( Full Coverage: India Votes 2014 "We are sure that we will get the numbers to run the government. However, we will need everyone's support and cooperation to run the country."Mr Modi sharply attacked recent moves by the Congress for an OBC quota for backward Muslims and said that this was nothing but a "last ditch effort" to indulge in "vote bank politics and politics of appeasement on the eve of elections".The Congress was making such a promise knowing fully well that they cannot implement it, he said, adding, "I must also say that it exposes the true'secular' character of the party which aims to garner votes on the basis of religion."Asked if he subscribed to the view that the current election campaign was the most polarised one in India's democratic history, Mr Modi said that he agreed "in a way" that it is a polarised election but "the polarisation is of a different kind this time".He said, "polarisation is inherent in a democracy. It is natural for people holding different viewpoints to think and vote differently. Per se it is not an undesirable thing. It is the kind of polarisation happening that matters".The Gujarat Chief Minister was of the view that the polarisation in this election was between those who believed in the inclusive politics of development and good governance and against who believe in divisive politics of vote banks, caste and religion.Asked if there was a "Modi wave" or an anti-Congress wave, or both, the BJP leader replied, "I think it is both. There is a very strong anti-Congress wave together with an equally strong wave for the BJP and its NDA partners".Describing the elections as "extraordinary and unprecedented", he elaborated that probably it was a first time that a strong anti-incumbency feeling was accompanied by an equally strong desire for change.Mr Modi declined to answer a question on the post-Godhra Gujarat riots of 2002. However, replying to another question, Mr Modi said his opponents had not been able to find any serious allegations of corruption, nepotism or incompetence against him.Asked if he would like to assure Muslims that they should feel safe and secure and that they will not be discriminated against by a government led by him, the BJP leader said that there was no reason for anybody to feel unsafe and insecure, be it Hindus or Muslims."If anybody should feel insecure, it is the parties who treat Muslims as vote banks and do nothing for their development. Their politics has reached its expiry date. Such parties better improve or they face extinction," he said.Mr Modi emphasised that there was no reason for anyone to feel unsafe and insecure under a BJP government."We are committed to the safety, security and development of 125 crore Indians which includes all Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians etc. Our motto is '' (everybody's support, everybody's development)," he added.Asked about his recent reference to 'Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb'(composite culture) at the time of filing his nominations from Varanasi, Mr Modi said that this was his message of India First - Let us unite together rising above caste and religion and let us all work together for development and prosperity.Those Who Insist Aereo Ruling Won't Impact Cloud Computing Don't Seem To Understand Cloud Computing
from the or-copyright-law,-for-that-matter dept
The only unifying characteristic I’ve discerned among the deniers is that none of them are actually in the business of providing cloud services.
Ultimately, when Spangler and others deniers dismiss the cloud-related issues and condemn Aereo’s complex technology as “a Rube Goldberg-like contrivance,” it strikes me as an implicit concession: ‘yes, Aereo’s technology is indeed designed to facilitate private performances, but since Aereo could also be engineered other ways, where the performance would be public, we’re just going to expand the definition of what’s public in order to sweep in Aereo too.’
This is a chillingly activist interpretation of copyright law. The boundary between public performances and private performances determines what copyright does and does not regulate. It’s why you don’t need a license to sing in the shower, but you do to sing on stage. It’s why you don’t need a license to put your music collection in the cloud, but you do if you want to launch a commercial streaming service. Redrawing that boundary in real time to ensure that Aereo doesn’t disrupt the way consumers now receive free over-the-air television is not a prescription for economic success.
Notably, the “remote DVR” system in Cablevision, a 2008 case upon which much of the reasoning in Aereo has been based, and which provided legal certainty that ushered in a wave of extraordinary investment in cloud computing, didn’t look anything like Dropbox either. Even though Cablevision’s remote DVR didn’t look like a cloud storage service, however, investors quickly concluded that the decision’s reasoning had legitimized storing users’ files in the cloud, and streaming them back.
A few weeks ago, we wrote about how the Aereo case, which will be heard by the Supreme Court in a few weeks, is likely to have a huge impact on the future of cloud computing, and went into detail to explain why. The primary issue is that, under copyright law, what Aereo is doing is effectively indistinguishable from what most cloud computing services do. However, a number of folks whoseem to dislike Aereo continually insist that the case will have no impact whatsoever on cloud computing. Variety's Todd Spangler recently wrote a typical version of this argument, basically waving off the issue based on the idea that Aereo more or lessdifferent from Dropbox. But that fundamentally ignores the actual copyright issues at stake.Matt Schruers has a blog post up at the Project Disco blog pointing out why this "cloud denialism" by the anti-Aereo crowd is both dangerous and misleading. It includes the money line that a bunch of folks have been quoting:Indeed, a bunch of companies and organizations that actuallyinvolved in cloud computing businesses have weighed in on the case, warning how a ruling against Aereo might create serious problems for their businesses. The issue, again, is very narrowly focused on what is a "public" performance when transmitting a single copy of a file to an individual in their home. The problem with the broadcasters' position is that they want to declare that transmitting multiple copies of a single work magically makes something "public," even if each transmission is a unique copy that is transmitted only to the requesting subscriber. But that's the same way cloud computing works, and it would create a massive headache.And, honestly, while Schruers has that wonderfully quotable line above, what's much more scary about the "cloud denialists" is they fundamentally don't seem to understand, and are trying to twist it because they just hate what Aereo is doing. I am reminded of law professor Eric Goldman's comment from a few years ago, that there are really two different copyright laws -- normal copyright law and "file sharing copyright law," where what's actually stated in copyright law gets thrown out the window because OMG EVIL PIRATES! As Goldman points out, "it's a mistake to think those two legal doctrines are closely related."As Schruers notes in his piece, it seems pretty clear that everyone recognizes Aereo is architected to create a private performance, not a public one, it's just that folks on the copyright maximalist side of the scale, and that leads them to want to just pretend the law says something different than it does:Of course, this sort of issue has been present throughout the Aereo case. Pretty much everyone concedes that Aereo's technical setup is insane -- but it's insane because that's what the law requires to stay within its bounds. We've seen many, as described above, try to use this against Aereo. Multiple comments on various Aereo posts have people insisting that the convoluted setup of Aereo's technology (individual antenna for each subscriber, distinct copies of the same programming for each user) shows that they're trying to skirtthe law. However, it seems rather obvious that it's the exact opposite. There is no logical reason to have this kind of setup. Aereo's "insane" technological setup is much an indication of why it's legal -- and how screwed up copyright law is that this is the only legal way to build such a system.Furthermore, for those who insist that Aereo is unrelated to cloud computing because it doesn't look like what they think cloud computing looks like, Schruers points out that one of the most important rulings for cloud computing -- the Cablevision remote DVR case -- didn't "look" like a cloud computing case either, but it helped spur massive investment in cloud computing by clarifying some key legal issues -- much of which an anti-Aereo ruling might now destroy.The broadcasters and their supporters don't want people to associate Aereo with cloud computing mainly because they hate what Aereo stands for. But their failure to understandcloud computingbasic copyright law might seriously hinder important innovations well into the future.
Filed Under: cloud computing, copyright, public, transmission
Companies: aereoOKLAHOMA CITY -- Known for as much for the emotion he plays with as his athletic explosiveness, Oklahoma City Thunder guard Russell Westbrook says he's "done" picking up technical fouls.
"I'm done with those days," he said Tuesday at shootaround. "I learned in the summertime, once they make a call, they ain't changing it. Took me a while, but I learned it."
Westbrook led the NBA in technicals last season with 17 and had a number of them rescinded, including one against the Indiana Pacers on April 12 that would've resulted in a one-game suspension. Over the summer, Westbrook reviewed film on each of his technicals and came to an important conclusion on every one: Not once did a referee change his/her mind and reverse the call after his complaints.
Russell Westbrook says he watched film of all his technicals last year and ultimately decided to tell himself there's no need to argue. AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki
"I watched film. I watched all my techs and all the dumb s--- I was doing, so I decided to tell myself, there's no need to argue," Westbrook said. "They're not changing it, so move on."
Westbrook still has been hit with four technicals this season, which is tied for ninth in the league. But it's been obvious he is attempting to restrain himself after disputable calls.
Since the 2011-12 season, Westbrook has picked up 52 technicals.
Kevin Durant, who has also improved in the technical department with only two this season, isn't buying Westbrook's gentlemanly approach.
"Not at all, not at all," he said. "We'll see. Hopefully he doesn't get any more, but I don't buy that."This May 3, 2016 NASA satellite image shows the Fort McMurray wildfire in Alberta, Canada (AFP Photo/)
Edmonton (Canada) (AFP) - Raging wildfires pressed in on the Canadian oil city of Fort McMurray Thursday after more than 80,000 people were forced to flee, abandoning fire-gutted neighborhoods in a chaotic evacuation.
No casualties have been reported from the monster blaze, which swept across Alberta's oil sands region driven by strong winds and hot, dry weather.
But authorities warned that the next 24 hours would be critical for the city's survival.
Meanwhile mandatory evacuation orders were issued for two other Alberta towns -- High Level, home to 4,000 people about 350 kilometers (220 miles) northwest of Fort McMurray, and Lac Ste Anne, a community of several hundred people about 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of Edmonton, the provincial capital. The alert was later lifted in Lac Ste Anne.
In Fort McMurray, the fires late Wednesday forced the evacuation of Saprae Creek, a neighborhood east of the city's airport that until now had been out of danger. Even its fire station was pulled out.
"This fire is absolutely devastating," said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. "It's a loss on a scale that is hard for many of us to imagine."
The flight from Fort McMurray began in earnest shortly before midnight Tuesday when the Alberta emergency services placed the city of 100,000 under a mandatory evacuation order.
Footage showed trees ablaze near highways crowded with bumper-to-bumper traffic, while black smoke billowed as the flames ate away at buildings.
Mayor Melissa Blake said predictions of what would happen not only came true but were worse than imagined.
"This is a very explosive situation," warned Bernie Schmitte of Alberta's agriculture and forestry ministry. "These are catastrophic wildfires."
The fire has destroyed some 2,000 residences in the city's most outlying districts and ravaged 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres), he said.
More than 80,000 have fled the city, located 400 kilometers north (250 miles) of the provincial capital Edmonton, according to Scott Long of Alberta's emergency management agency. The area around the airport is the only one not under an evacuation order.
Warning that the next 24 hours were critical, Schmitte launched an urgent appeal to the population as firefighters noted that winds were fanning the flames in various parts of the city.
"We are going to ask you to stay where you are so that we can utilize all roads," he said.
Nine air tankers, a dozen helicopters and some 250 firefighters were battling the flames, and the military was put on alert.
"Obviously, Fort McMurray being evacuated has been extremely difficult, not just for the province and officials, but for the folks who live there," Trudeau said.
The prime minister added he had spoken with Alberta Premier Rachel Notley and offered her "our total support as a government to anything needed in the short-term but obviously anything in the long-term."
Notley said that no casualties had been reported, noting that everything possible was being done to ensure the population's safety.
"I believe at this point we have the resources that we need and we are continuing to work very hard to get the fire under control," Notley told a news conference, adding that "the view from the air is heartbreaking."
Since 8:00 am (1400 GMT) Wednesday, flights to the city have been suspended.
- Wind fans flames -
Oil companies crucial to the region such as Suncor, Syncrude and Shell reduced operations to facilitate the evacuation of non-essential employees.
Public Security Minister Ralph Goodale, working in connection with the armed forces, said "a number of federal air assets are now positioned in the neighborhood" to help with evacuation.
The fire, which had been contained until Monday south of Fort McMurray, was pushed toward the city by winds of 50 kilometers per hour and quickly reached homes, helped by a drought in Alberta.
The province saw record temperatures of nearly 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit).
The evacuation has caused huge traffic jams, especially around gas stations where some drivers waited hours to fill their tanks. With some pumps in the 400 kilometers between Edmonton and Fort McMurray to the north empty, the Alberta government has said it sent a tanker under guard to help rescue stranded vehicles.
- Charred cars -
The authorities said the inferno had reached the neighborhood of Beacon Hill, only five kilometers from downtown Fort McMurray.Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz will need his political savvy in advancing the president’s agenda.
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. — Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz is known around his department for a quick wit, a leader of a vast bureaucracy who draws quotes from Monty Python skits and chuckles self-deprecatingly at the attention paid to his unusual Colonial-style hairdo.
As he toured a government lab in Virginia the other day, he also displayed a deep knowledge of technical science, making small talk with fellow scientists that sounded like code to an outsider.
“What’s the typical Q?” he asked about one machine (“8 times 10 to the 9th,” came the answer). As they passed by a cleanroom used for experiments, he asked nonchalantly whether it was a “Class 10’’ (it was). Introduced to a high school senior interested in science, he enthusiastically recommended a book: “The Existential Pleasures of Engineering.”
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But hidden behind the wonky demeanor one would expect from Moniz, a former MIT professor who got hooked on physics at Durfee High School in Fall River, is a measure of political savvy earned as a veteran of the Clinton administration. It is a well of experience that his supporters say will help him lead key initiatives in President Obama’s second term — including an expansion of America’s nuclear power industry.
Boston College/file Ernest Moniz, second from left in the top row, posed with the staff of the Cosmos, the science journal of Boston College.
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At a time when the White House plans to exercise greater executive authority to circumvent a recalcitrant Congress, Moniz, 69, is in charge of one of the most controversial portfolios in the Cabinet, requiring him to balance worries about global warming with the demands of a powerful energy industry.
Related Links Fossil fuels will continue to dominate energy mix, expert says
Constituencies clamoring for his favor include gas and oil companies that want permission to drill and export more; clean energy start-ups eager for more government loans; environmentalists, some of them critical of Moniz’s ties to industry, who want a stronger emphasis on wind and solar energies; and scientists seeking more research money.
In a wide-ranging interview as he traveled around the Virginia coast — touring a federal laboratory and giving a speech at Hampton University — Moniz, who was confirmed 97 to 0 by the Senate in May, discussed the administration’s “all-of-the-above” energy philosophy.
He previewed plans to increase energy efficiency standards. And he said he planned to move forward aggressively on more government loans to private energy companies, despite the embarrassing bankruptcy filings of Solyndra and A123 Systems of Waltham.
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”We’ve got a big-time problem to address climate,” he said, riding in the back of a sport utility vehicle. “And if it’s business as usual, we’re not going to get there in time.”
The opera-loving fly-fisherman also divulged details about his hair, which has generated intense interest on Twitter, triggered photo galleries online, and drawn comparisons to, among others, George Washington.
“No one except my wife has cut my hair in decades. And she’s not a professional,” he said. “It’s a big joke, and that’s OK.”
“If it gets people interested in the Department of Energy,” he added with a laugh, “it’s good.”
Moniz was born in Fall River, where his father worked at Firestone, the rubber manufacturing plant, and his mother watched after him, the only child. All four of his grandparents were emigrants from the Azores Islands.
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“I came from a blue-collar town, a public school,’’ he told students at Hampton University. “It’s a great country to be able to do this.”
He played baseball and tennis at Durfee. He also benefited from an MIT initiative to develop a stronger physics curriculum in high schools, after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik and fears spread that the United States was falling behind.
“Fortunately the physics teacher at the high school decided that the high school would be one of the pioneers, one of the guinea pigs,” Moniz said. “That’s when I got hooked on physics.”
He went to Boston College on a scholarship from his father’s labor union and became editor of Cosmos, the school’s science journal. After getting his doctorate in theoretical physics at Stanford, he joined the MIT faculty in 1973. He was the founding director of the MIT Energy Initiative and the MIT Laboratory for Energy and the Environment.
“He has this marvelous sense of humor,” said Susan Hockfield, the former MIT president. “You don’t feel as though you’re getting browbeaten by him. You feel like he’s teaching you. And he’s a master teacher.”
He served as a science adviser and as the undersecretary at the Department of Energy in the Clinton administration. Some say he is more politically savvy than his predecessor, Steven Chu, a Nobel-winning physicist from California who at times frustrated the White House by going off script.
“He’s the best-prepared secretary of energy — ever,” T.J. Glauthier, a former top-ranking energy department official who now advises energy companies, said of Moniz.
As he was preparing to take the job, Moniz consulted with George Shultz, who held four Cabinet positions under Presidents Nixon and Reagan and who worked with Moniz on the MIT Energy Initiative.
“I told him, ‘Stay close to members of Congress. In the end, they own the money,’ ” Shultz said in an interview. “You go and talk to them, just informing and whatnot — not just when you’ve got a crisis.”
Moniz said he has taken that advice. Several Republicans have praised his approach, and he recently had dinner with Representative Mike Simpson, an influential Republican on energy issues from Idaho.
But some environmentalists accuse Moniz of being too close with the oil and gas industry, citing ties established at the MIT Energy Initiative, which was funded primarily by those industries.
“So far he’s known for his deep love of fracked natural gas,” said Bill McKibben, a prominent environmental activist.
Moniz said damage to the environment should be mitigated, but his primary goal is lowering carbon levels in the atmosphere — even if that means promoting nuclear power or natural gas exploration through fracking, a controversial technique that uses pressurized water to fracture underground rock and release trapped gas.
“I frankly don’t care what the mix of technology is, as long as it gets us to low carbon,” he said. “And I think we need every arrow in the quiver.”
He bristles at criticism that the administration isn’t doing enough.
“Here we have the president who has done the most to commit to climate — I have been out there as a climate warrior,” he said. “But it’s not good enough because we refuse to exclude part of the portfolio.’’
Moniz strongly defends the use of government loans and grants for clean-energy companies, saying it is a vital way to develop technologies. While high-profile failures have caused Republicans to contend the government should not be investing in startups, Moniz said some risk is inevitable when you “push the envelope.’’
“We are not defensive about it,” he said, citing a remaining $50 billion in lending authority. “Quite the contrary. We have a lot more authority left. We’re going to use it.”
In the interview, Moniz would not discuss in any detail one of the more controversial proposals he must decide: whether to expand US exports of natural gas. He also would not weigh in on the Keystone Pipeline, which would carry oil from tar-sands fields in Canada to US refineries and ports. The highly controversial project is being reviewed by Secretary of State John Kerry, but the Department of Energy has an advisory role. Obama has said he will not approve the project if it would “significantly exacerbate” greenhouse gas emissions.
When asked if he believes it would increase carbon emissions, Moniz said, “I’m not commenting on Keystone.” He also declined to say if he has discussed the project with Kerry.
Moniz lives with his wife in Brookline, but his schedule keeps him away from home for weeks at a time. He often travels overseas to meet with foreign leaders about climate issues (although his home is about a mile and a half from Fenway Park, he watched Game Six of the World Series from the US Embassy in Japan).
The travel has kept him away from most games in the “Over-the-Hill Soccer League,” which he has played in for about 25 years (when he shows up, he is the only one who now has a security detail).
He also recently had a sobering responsibility, acting as the potential last line of defense in the event of a catastrophe. He was the “designated successor,” sitting out the State of the Union in case the president and other top officials died at once in the House chamber.
He was placed in an undisclosed location, with ample security and communications capability. The accommodations were not exactly meager.
“We had a steak dinner,” he said.
Matt Viser can be reached at [email protected]'naya has been for years the locus of choice for anti-Putin dissidents in the capital, who have shown up, typically relatively few in number, to suffer the ritual of arrest and brief detention. This time (as well as the night before, at a rally on the same square that drew as many as 15,000), things were different -- and tellingly so. The faces in the crowd were new, the slogans spontaneous enounced, the reactions fearful and evasive ahead of phalanxes of burly charging police -- even to the appearance of police vans. Demonstrators turned and ran -- just what one would expect of neophyte protestors. With genuine outrage they berated the police ("Shame! Shame!" and "These are Your People!") who dragged and manhandled youths into the waiting vans.
Every so often, someone in a passing car would open their window and shout, "Russia Without Putin!" or honk and make victory signs, smiling at demonstrators through the glass.
Thousands of these often shockingly apolitical people, angered over apparent electoral fraud, videos of which have registered hundreds of thousands of hits online since December 4th, are now rejecting the prospect of 12 more years of Putin's rule and have finally stood up for themselves.
At Monday's demonstration, authoritiesarrested the chief opposition figures in attendance (among them, the esteemed anti-corruption firebrand blogger, Alexei Navalny), and preemptively detained others on Tuesday, including nationalist oppositionist Eduard Limonov and Parnas leader Boris Nemstov.
But who in Russia has the widely recognized, if informal, authority -- the street cred, as it were -- to lead the protests and transform them into a viable movement capable of ousting a regime that has shown itself, so far, to be extremely adept at thwarting opposition? If we know what the protestors dislike, what exactly do they stand for? Free elections and Putin's departure, we know, but what else? The Western-style democracy advocated by Grigory Yavlinsky and his Yabloko party and by the now-silent, onetime challenger, former chess champion Garry Kasparov? The hard-line nationalism espoused by, among others, Limonov and his National Bolsheviks? Or some other figure yet to appear? Given Putin's effective marginalization of potential challengers, who is left to stand in his stead? And following Putin's imposition of the "power vertical," based on his authority and that of the intelligence services from which he came, which state institutions have retained enough legitimacy to back a new pretender to the Kremlin throne?
More protests are scheduled. Will the government suppress them, deploying the Dzherzhinksy division of Internal Ministry troops it transported into Moscow yesterday? Now seeing how sharply public opinion has soured on it, would Putin's regime dare annul election results, as former President Mikhail Gorbachev is calling for it to do, and announce new, honest, and truly inclusive polls? (Many challengers and their parties were proscribed from participation in the December 4 elections.)“It’s a mess right now, I’d say,” says Michael Andretti. Michael, if you’re unaware, is an IndyCar hero, and the son of 1978 Formula One world champion Mario Andretti. The ‘mess’ he’s talking about is, of course, F1.
Speaking to TopGear.com ahead of his Formula E team’s upcoming season in the electric race series, the American racing star – who spent a year with McLaren partnering none other than Ayrton Senna – was vocal about Formula One’s current travails.
“They made a mistake allowing engineers to come up with all the rules and everything,” he told TopGear.com. “I mean, it’s still the biggest racing sport in the world, and it has a huge following, but they need to make some changes.”
The changes he suggests may not come as a surprise to regular Formula One viewers.
“They need to go back to the rules,” he said. “They’ve made these things way too expensive. With this new engine, they’ve basically doubled the leases for what it costs customer teams to run these things. It’s stupid money, and for what?”
“Then of course you continually hear the complaints of the cars being too quiet, and that they’re too easy to drive. They need to change the rules, get it back to where a Formula One car is hard to drive, and it’s faster than anything out there,” he added.
Andretti has, as they say stateside, ‘previous’ with F1, having partnered the late, great Ayrton Senna at McLaren for a year in 1993.
“That was the toughest year of my life, for sure,” he admitted, “and for a lot of reasons that I don’t want to talk about.”
Of his time with Senna, though, Andretti has nothing but praise for the legendary Brazilian.
“He was great, and he became a good friend of mine,” Michael said. “He was a big supporter, even when I was let go from McLaren, he had a press conference at the next race saying how unfairly I was treated, and how I was one of his best teammates. That’s something he didn’t have to do, and he did it because he just felt that way.”
So what was it like partnering a driver of such calibre? “He [Senna] was a tough partner, because of course he’s probably one of the best drivers that ever lived, so when I was being compared to him that was hard.
“But again, I was being compared to the best, and a lot of the time when we were testing, I would be right on pace with him and that made me feel good. Then you get to the race, and seriously, I’d be a second or two seconds off the pace. But he was a quality person…”
So what of McLaren’s current woes?
“It’s hard to say if it’s Honda or McLaren. I think Honda is putting in a big effort and I would never count them out,” Andretti told us. “They’re our partners in IndyCar and they’re very aggressive and don’t like losing. I assume they’ll turn it around.”
Messrs Button and Alonso will be hoping that mess sorts itself out sooner rather than later…Siddhartha Dhar, who fled Britain last month and joined the Islamic State, poses in Syria with his newborn child. (National News/via ZUMAPRESS.com)
Last month in Syria, Siddhartha Dhar stood in front of a banged-up yellow pickup truck, holding an assault rifle in his right hand and cradling his newborn son with his left.
Dhar’s first four children had been born in London, his native city, but his new baby, wrapped in a fuzzy brown onesie, was born in territory controlled by the Islamic State.
Someone snapped a photo of Dhar, 31, and he proudly tweeted it out as proof that he; his wife, Aisha; and their children had fled Britain and were now living in what the militants consider an Islamic caliphate that will one day reign over the world.
The arrival of the Dhar family in Syria last month represents a key strategic goal of the Islamic State: to build not just an army but a society. The group has vowed to create a nation ruled by Islamic sharia law, and its leaders and online recruiters have encouraged doctors, nurses, lawyers, engineers and accountants to join them in building the institutions of a new holy land.
Entire families — fathers, mothers and children — have answered that call in numbers that have surprised and alarmed analysts who study the extremist group.
View Graphic Map: Flow of foreign fighters to Syria
“These families believe they are doing the right thing for their children,” said Melanie Smith, a research associate at the King’s College International Center for the Study of Radicalization in London. “They think they are taking them to a kind of utopia.”
Back in London, Dhar’s younger sister, Konika Dhar, 27, said she was heartbroken when she saw the Twitter photo on her phone.
Her brother was now an Islamist militant calling himself Abu Rumaysah, who fled to Syria with his family while he was on bail in Britain after being arrested on terrorism-related charges. In his caustic tweets from Syria, he taunted the U.K.’s “shoddy security system” that had allowed him to jump bail.
But Konika Dhar still thought of her brother as “Sid,” the stylish British kid who gelled his hair, dated girls, listened to Nirvana and Linkin Park, rooted for the Arsenal soccer team, and loved to watch American action movies.
“I think he has actually forgotten Siddhartha Dhar, and he has become this other person,” she said. “I just want my brother to know it doesn’t have to be this way. He really doesn’t have to leave his life. I really miss the children; I can’t imagine not seeing them again.”
Promise of earthly rewards
Unlike al-Qaeda, which operates in many countries but is a stateless army, the Islamic State controls territory that it has taken by force in Iraq and Syria. To create the Islamist society it envisions, the group has gone to great lengths to take over existing schools, hospitals and playgrounds, or to build these and other institutions of daily family life.
“The more they are successful at creating a whole new society, the more they are able to attract entire families,” said Mia Bloom, a professor of security studies at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell who has written extensively about women and terrorism. “It’s almost like the American dream, but the Islamic State’s version of it.”
In the Syrian city of Raqqa, the group’s main stronghold, the extremists have established a clinic for pregnant women run by a female gynecologist trained in Britain. Boys attend school, studying almost exclusively religion, until they are 14, when they are expected to start fighting, Smith said. Girls stay in school until they are 18; their instruction is about the Koran and sharia law, as well
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And drop it did. Because of the front-loaded structure of Hossa’s deal, he was paid handsomely during the first seven years of his contract despite the fact he had a cap hit of $5.275 million. Across those first seven seasons, he earned $7.9 million per year, and this past season saw his salary slashed nearly in half. He’s earning $4 million this season, and come the 2017-18 campaign, he’s under contract for a mere $1 million per year until the end of 2020-21.
But here Hossa is — again, at 38 — as a 20-goal scorer. The list of players who have done that since the dawn of the dead puck era is limited. Among those who’ve accomplished the feat are Daniel Alfredsson, Teemu Selanne, Martin St-Louis and the ageless wonder, Jaromir Jagr. And here’s Hossa, the 30th player in the past 20-plus years his age or older, to net 20 goals. It gets more absurd yet if he somehow reaches the 30-goal mark, as he’ll join a list of three players, including Selanne, St-Louis and Brett Hull, to pot 30 at their age in this time period.
The Blackhawks, as always, are going to be up against the cap and keeping Hossa at his current rate isn’t easy, but with what he’s provided offensively now, and what he provides defensively always, makes it that much easier to stomach. He won’t be earning what he has in the past, but he said he would “try to go for it” and his production is proving that he’s still got more than enough in his game to give it a real shot.
So, play another five years? At this point, one has to wonder if a Jagr like youthful exuberance won’t allow Hossa to play another season on top of the five he has left.
Want more in-depth features and expert analysis on the game you love? Subscribe to The Hockey News magazine.At least 26 people have died and scores injured in 10 car bomb attacks in central Iraq, including five in Baghdad.
The blasts on Tuesday in the Iraqi capital hit three different areas, killing at least nine people, officials told Al Jazeera. Officials also told Al Jazeera that at least 53 people were wounded as a result of the attacks.
Bayaa, in south Baghdad, was hit by two car bombs which killed at least three people and injured 10 others.
Four more car bombs exploded in Hilla, south of Baghdad, killing 17 people and wounding 43.
In a separate attack, 13 soldiers were reported killed in a battle with Sunni fighters in Fallujah in Anbar province.
The attacks came a day after a series of explosions in the capital left at least 23 dead and 94 injured. Those attacks on Monday occurred shortly after sunset and targeted crowded commercial areas near Shia mosques.
Violence in Iraq has reached a level not seen since 2008, when it was emerging from a brutal period of sectarian killings that claimed tens of thousands of lives.
And all of one major city and parts of another in Anbar province, west of Baghdad, have been held by anti-government fighters for weeks.
Attacks and clashes have killed more than 470 people so far this month and more than 1,450 since the start of the year, according to AFP figures based on security and medical sources.The Reform Alliance, headed by Lucinda Creighton, has taken a major step towards becoming a fully fledged political party by registering with the Standards in Public Office Commission (SIPO).
The Reform Alliance, headed by Lucinda Creighton, has taken a major step towards becoming a fully fledged political party by registering with the Standards in Public Office Commission (SIPO).
Following their expulsion from Fine Gael, there has been much speculation about the intentions of the Reform Alliance. But it is now expected that the new party will officially be launched next September, after the local and European elections.
It has also been confirmed that Ms Creighton and high-profile independent TD Stephen Donnelly have "chatted" in recent weeks and are "at one" in their views about political and economic reform.
The Reform Alliance has registered as a "third party" with SIPO in order to allow it to raise funds for political research and policy development in the coming weeks.
The group is made up of Ms Creighton; her husband, Senator Paul Bradford; TDs Billy Timmins, Denis Naughten, Terence Flanagan, and Peter Mathews; and Senator Fidelma Healy Eames.
It does not receive any State funding at present and the ramping up of political activity, and its clear attempts to shake off its pro-life image, after the abortion saga are seen as highly significant.
"It is early days but it is about being fully compliant with the rules should we fundraise in order to carry out political research and develop new policy. We want to be a vehicle for new thinking in the Dail and Seanad," Ms Creighton told the Sunday Independent.
Crucially, Ms Creighton also refused to rule out the possibility of ultimately establishing a fully fledged party, saying: "I can't say what the future holds."
In a further hint at what direction the group was heading, the Dublin South East TD also said she never wanted to be an independent, adding she was a big believer in party politics.
"You have freedom in what you can say as an independent, but there is also strength in numbers. I am a great believer in party politics," she said.
It has also emerged that the new party is likely to retain the name "Reform" in its title with some suggesting it will be named either The Reform Alliance Party or The Reform Party.
For his part, Mr Donnelly has in recent weeks spoken of his frustration at being an isolated independent TD in opposition. His financial expertise and career experience in public sector transformation, added to his thirst for driving political and economic reform, make him an ideal fit for not only the Alliance but also Fianna Fail.
Yesterday, several members of the Reform Alliance spoke very warmly about Mr Donnelly's pedigree, and he in turn paid handsome compliments to several members of the Reform Alliance.
Ms Creighton said: "In terms of what he wants to achieve, there is a lot of common ground. On reform, I share a lot of Stephen's views, there is a lot of shared ground.
"In the coming months, I am happy to co-operate with him and definitely there is an opportunity for us to work together."
Speaking yesterday, Mr Donnelly said he was very much open to having formal discussions with the Reform Alliance about possibly joining forces.
"I would entertain a discussion. I am not sitting here waiting, but I'll listen," he said.
"There is most undoubtedly a need for a new party, the current system is so old, stale and so badly in need of reform."
He said they have to move away from the pro-life agenda and he said their stance on the Seanad was important.
"They are going to have to work hard to get away from the pro-life single issue, but they have some seriously smart people. Lucinda is very smart. The only question is will they achieve a critical mass or will some of them go back into Fine Gael," he said.
Mr Donnelly has also moved to distance himself significantly from claims that he is contemplating a move to Fianna Fail.
The focus on Mr Donnelly's political intentions has intensified after Tanaiste Eamon Gilmore predicted that he would be "wearing the Fianna Fail jersey" by the next general election.
Mr Donnelly, though, anxiously moved to dispel any notion "that I am talking to Fianna Fail. Micheal Martin and I are not having pints in Doheny and Nesbitts every week trying to sort the world out."
But affirming his desire for a new party, Mr Donnelly said: "There is a political cartel in Ireland and having a new party to challenge the cartel is a good idea."
He added: "The establishment protects itself very well in Ireland, it's a very closed system in terms of elites, it would be healthy for democracy if a new party challenged our vested interests".
He also warned this "cartel" had created the scenario where "huge swathes of the public sector and the political system are stuck in a 1970s style time-warp".
By Daniel McConnell and John Drennan
Irish IndependentThirty-two House Republicans joined Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., in a letter to the president calling on him to end the policies that have caused the surge of illegal border crossings. The letter calls on Obama to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, and to forego policies that give the recent illegal border crossers or other illegal aliens special treatment under the law.
"As our country faces an unprecedented surge in the arrival of unaccompanied alien children (UACs) at our southwestern border, we call on you to immediately end the failed policies that encourage young individuals to put themselves in peril, leave their home countries, and make a long and dangerous journey to enter our country illegally,” the letter said.
The letter continues, “The Executive does not get to pick and choose which laws to enforce and which to selectively ignore…The DACA program must be immediately ended to send a clear signal to all individuals that our laws will be enforced…We request that you remove from consideration any preferential treatment for individuals who have recently crossed our borders… Your continued commitment to circumvent Congress and implement policies contrary to the intent of immigration law sends foreign nationals the false hope that administrative amnesty is possible…(W)e ask that you immediately clarify the intent of [DHS Secreatry Johnson’s administrative] review and ensure that no special treatment for any illegal alien, including [unaccompanied alien children] will be attempted through this review.”
Signatures include: Rep. Darrell Issa, Rep. Pete Sessions, Rep. Sam Graves, Rep. Lamar Smith, Rep. Blake Farenthold, Rep. Gus Bilirakis, Rep. Marsha Blackburn, Rep. Tim McClintock, Rep. John Duncan, Rep. Tom Cotton, Rep Jim Bridenstine, Rep. Alan Nunnelee, Rep. Gregg Harper, Rep. Doug LaMalfa, Rep. Paul Gosar, Rep. Lynn Jenkins, Rep. Vicky Hartzler, Rep. Tom Cole, Rep. Markwayne Mullin, Rep. Ken Calvert, Rep. Brad Wenstrup, Rep. Virginia Foxx, Rep. Ander Crenshaw, Rep. Phil Gingrey, Rep. Rob Wittman, Rep. Ralph Hall, Rep. Roger Williams, Rep John Campbell, Rep. Steve Stockman, Rep. Dan Benishek, Rep. David Jolly, Rep. Ted Yoho, and Rep. Tim Griffin.
The full text of the letter is here.NEW YORK -- After throwing a 40-pitch bullpen session Friday, sidelined starter Ted Lilly thinks he might be in position to help the Dodgers soon.
Lilly thinks one of his close friends would be able to help them too — that is, if they can agree to a trade with the Chicago Cubs.
Lilly played with Dodgers trade target Ryan Dempster from 2007 to 2010. The Dodgers have proposed a deal for Dempster.
"Obviously, he's a very good pitcher," Lilly said. "He's one of the best teammates I've ever had."
Lilly has told Dempster about his team. "All good things," Lilly said.
As a player with 10 years of major league service time who has spent the last five years with the same club, Dempster can block a trade to any team.
Lilly was upbeat about his own progress. He last pitched on May 23 and has been out since with shoulder inflammation.Barack Obama
Bill Van Auken Correspondent
Last week at the Democratic National Convention, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama delivered lengthy speeches filled with platitudes and bromides, but they did not bother to mention one extremely important piece of information. They did not tell the American people that, even as he spoke, Obama had just ordered the US military to carry out a major new act of war. With the air strikes launched against the Libyan coastal city of Sirte on Monday, US imperialism has embarked on a major new escalation of its protracted military intervention in a region that has seen the killing and maiming of millions in unending US invasions, bombings, targeted assassinations and regime-change operations over the course of a quarter century.
The Obama administration ordered the strikes without congressional authorization or bothering even to make a pretence of explaining the rationale for this latest act of war to the American people.
A Pentagon spokesman, asked about the legality of the bombings, cited the 2001 Authorisation for Use of Military Force, which sanctioned military action against those who planned and executed the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and those who supported them. Fifteen years later, the argument that this applies to anyone killed by US bombs in Libya is absurd on its face.
Ostensibly, the bombing raids are aimed at aiding a group of militias aligned with the Western-backed “Government of National Accord” to prevail against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which has controlled Sirte since February of last year.
In reality, the desperate conditions in Sirte and throughout Libya are the direct product of the 2011 US-NATO war for regime-change that ended with the toppling of the Libyan government and the lynch mob murder of its leader, Muammar Gaddafi.
Washington and its allies relied upon Islamist Al Qaeda-linked militias that were subsequently funnelled, along with massive stockpiles of Libyan arms, into Syria to carry out an even bloodier, and ongoing, regime-change operation in that country. Those who took over Sirte, the hometown of Gaddafi and the city most devastated by the war, consisted of these former US proxy forces who returned from the Syrian killing fields.
The dropping of more American bombs on Libya, whose economy and society have been destroyed by the US-Nato intervention, will hardly resolve the country’s crisis. That is not their purpose. Rather, this fresh eruption of American militarism is meant to serve as another assertion of US hegemony in the region.
It is also a pointed threat to Washington’s adversaries under conditions where the debacles produced by the CIA-orchestrated war for regime-change in Syria and the failed US-backed coup in Turkey have raised tensions between the US and Russia to the boiling point.
The World Socialist Web Site has warned for some time that the current US election will be followed in short order, no matter which capitalist party prevails, by a new eruption of American militarism.
Traditionally, the US ruling establishment has held off on major new military interventions until after elections, so as to prevent the question of war from becoming an issue before the voters. The bombing of Libya, however, makes clear that they cannot wait, so sharp is the crisis confronting US imperialism.
One thing is certain, the attack on Libya was not planned yesterday. High-ranking officials who spoke before the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia last week, including, besides Obama and Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden, were well aware that a new military intervention was imminent.
The bombs dropped on Libya make clear the significance of the convention’s non-stop glorification of the military and the fascistic chants of “USA, USA” used to drown out even the muted and scattered expressions of opposition to war.
New and far more dangerous wars are being prepared and will not be postponed. On the final day of the convention, Jeremy Bash, a top Clinton foreign policy advisor and former chief of staff at both the Pentagon and the CIA, told the British daily Telegraph that “a Syria policy review will be one of the first items of business for the national security team.” He described the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad as a “murderous regime” and vowed that the new administration would get him “out of there.” According to the report, he described “a foreign policy more hawkish than that of the current administration.”
The current administration is already carrying out daily bombing raids in Syria that over recent days have killed hundreds of civilians. It has deployed hundreds of special operations troops on the ground in support of US proxy forces. It has proven incapable, however, of propping up the so-called “rebels,” consisting of the Al Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front and other Islamist militias, against a Russian-backed offensive by Syrian government forces.
Under these conditions, a “more hawkish” policy can mean only one thing: a direct military intervention against the Assad regime and a confrontation with the Russian and Iranian forces that are supporting it.
Once again, the meaning of the convention rhetoric is revealed. The McCarthyite rhetoric against Russia in connection with unsubstantiated claims that Putin was behind the WikiLeaks release of Democratic National Committee emails exposing DNC machinations to rig the primary process in Clinton’s favour was aimed at preparing public opinion for a military confrontation between the world’s two largest nuclear powers.
It is far from clear that such a confrontation can be held off until a new administration takes office, or even until the November election. The imminent collapse of the “rebel” stronghold in the Syrian city of Aleppo and the move toward rapprochement between Turkey and Russia are driving Washington toward new military actions. It may not be able to wait to carry out the military escalation for which the Democratic convention set the stage.
The world situation is on a hair trigger. Outside of the intervention of the working class, a third world war is not only a threat, but an inevitability.
As the International Committee of the Fourth International’s February 18, 2016 statement “Socialism and the Fight Against War” makes clear, the decisive question is the building of a new mass antiwar movement of the working class, armed with a socialist and internationalist program. It states: “The permanent war of the bourgeoisie must be answered with the perspective of permanent revolution by the working class, the strategic goal of which is the abolition of the nation-state system and the establishment of a world socialist federation.”After a homeowner found two people in his Lantana home, an exchange of gunfire ensued that left one person dead and another wounded, according to the Palm Beach Sheriff's Office.
The two intruders killed two dogs inside the residence, authorities said. And when the homeowner arrived, he exchanged gunfire with the assailants, the Sheriff's Office said. Both intruders were wounded. One died, and the other was taken to a hospital for treatment.
"An altercation ensued, resulting in the suspects and homeowner both discharging their firearms," said Teri Barbera, sheriff's spokeswoman.
The homeowner, however, was not injured.
The shooting unfolded about 8:25 p.m. in the 400 block of Hibiscus Tree Drive, the Sheriff's Office said. The Palm Beach Sheriff's Office says it wasn't a random attack. The agency is still investigating.
Mike Inman, 29, said his grandmother lives in the house a few doors down from the shooting. He was sitting outside talking on the phone Thursday night when he heard two shots ring out. By the time he had realized what happened, deputies and ambulances lined his street.
"Everything happened within 5 minutes," Inman said. "It was crazy. It was right there, and I know [the family]."
He described his neighbor as a friendly guy who had two young kids. On Friday morning, Inman said he spoke to his neighbor, who seemed pretty shook up about the incident.
Inman said the neighborhood is usually pretty quiet and neighbors on that side of the street know each other and lookout for one another.
Still, he said he is leery of strangers he sees walking around the street. Many people he knows carry guns in case of dangerous situations, such as home invasion.
"If I ever came home and somebody was in my house," he said, "I'd shoot them."
Sun Sentinel news partner WPEC-Ch. 12 contributed to this report.
[email protected], 561-243-6547 or Twitter @katejacobsonA steakhouse in Nashville has responded to complaints that its staff forced a cancer patient to remove his hat over the weekend because he did not have a note from his doctor.
According to WZTV, the controversy started when a group of 16 people were finishing up a $2,000 company Christmas dinner at Morton’s Steakhouse when one man, who is being treated with chemotherapy and is sensitive to the cold, decided to put on a wool cap for warmth.
“When he put on a wool beanie in the restaurant to keep warm, he was immediately asked to remove it… which he did,” Amanda W. explained in a Yelp review. “When his family mentioned his condition and questioned the treatment from Catrina, the assistant manager, they were told he could wear it if he presented a doctors’ note… or if we had given them previous notice so we could be accommodated elsewhere. (Out of sight, out of mind?)”
“In short, what followed was shock/disbelief (can’t say that I blame them) and the cops being called (huh?), and we were (all 16 of us) asked to leave,” she said.
Ashley S., who was also at the dinner, told a very similar story in her Yelp review.
“I understand there are rules at establishments…I get it, really. But when we are there, spending a few thousand dollars, and one of the men in the group who is battling cancer and has an extreme sensitivity to cold, decided to slip on his black wool beanie (AT THE END OF THE MEAL mind you…) he was told to take it off, which he did,” she wrote. “Upset, his son decided to tell the manager Catrina that his dad has cancer, etc…well her response was he needed a DOCTOR’S NOTE. Are you kidding me??? His wife then got extremely upset, and the family got up to leave…not before speaking with the management. They told them they should have called in advance so they could have put us in a room by ourselves…we didn’t realize cancer was so offensive!”
“And not to mention, they called the police on them! When another owner who happened to be the one paying the ridiculous bill went to speak with the manager, he was thrown out by police. Then we all had to leave, because they couldn’t handle us all being upset.”
Morton’s Steakhouse responded in a message posted to Facebook: “We are aware of the situation that happened at our Nashville location over the weekend. We appreciate you all bringing it to our attention, and we have reached out to the parties involved and can assure you that all facts will be uncovered.”
Watch this video from WZTV, broadcast Dec. 16, 2013.
[Photo: A senior man in ski cap and thin jacket shivering from the cold via Shutterstock.com]Eighteen-year-old James Whelton never imagined he'd become a minor Internet celebrity, nor did he plan to kickstart a race to hack Apple's sixth-generation touchscreen iPod nano. But the secondary student from Cork, Ireland found himself doing just that this week after winning a pink 8GB iPod nano in a student Web design contest. Now the teen is working with some well-known iOS developers and hackers to try and suss out a way to load and run custom software on the tiny device. While much progress has been made in the last few days, figuring out how to code software for the device could take significant time and resources to accomplish.
On a flight home from a conference where he won the iPod nano, Whelton decided to pass the time by attempting to hack his new prize. "It was just a product of boredom," he told Ars. "All the factory-installed stuff was seemingly boring to me, and I had time to kill, so I started playing with it."
The system-on-a-chip that powers the touch-based nano is in fact similar to the SoC used in both the fourth-gen iPod nano and the second-gen iPod touch. And while the device has a user interface that appears similar to that of iOS, it actually runs the same Pixo OS that has powered all iPod and iPod nanos since the original iPod was released in 2001. Whelton noted that plenty of work has been done to hack fourth-gen nanos, and he used knowledge of techniques used on that device to gain limited access to the system running on the touch-based nano.
This led Whelton to discover a file called IconState.plist. This file controls what icons are displayed on the nano's tiny screen to access different functions. While the file itself doesn't make any reference to "SpringBoard," the visual UI and application launcher used on iOS devices, the app icons themselves are labelled "SBPhotos," "SBSongs," etc, leading Whelton and others to refer to the launcher UI on the nano as its "SpringBoard."
What Whelton was able to do in his early hacking attempts was discover a way to bypass the nano's cache-checking feature, which allowed him to load a modified version of IconState.plist. By modifying this file, he was able to remove one of the icons on the nano's display, leaving a blank space on the SpringBoard.
"In terms of technical hacking it was nothing impressive," Whelton told Ars, but it did show that it was theoretically possible to get the device to load modified files, and even possibly display custom icons on the SpringBoard.
More importantly, his small hack attracted the attention of other developers. Developer Steven Troughton-Smith was able to find what he described as the nano's equivalent of the iOS DFU recovery mode, and modified a hacking tool called iRecovery to allow reading and writing files on the device.
Developers connected to the iOS jailbreak scene, including "DarkMalloc" and "Chronic" also began digging in to the firmware of the device. While no critical details have yet been uncovered, references to features including video playback and audio recording have been discovered in the devices firmware. The current hardware may be capable of much more than Apple has revealed so far, or those references may be features planned for a future iPod nano update.
"A few guys are hacking up the firmware at the moment," Whelton said. "We're working on it and making measurable progress. But it will take time before we know what the state of play is with us making our own apps."
"It's the same with everything—we'll have to play, hack, and learn, but the creation of our own apps is a top priority," Whelton explained.
Tough nut to crack
While the progress so far is promising, and the existence of games for previous-generation nanos shows that running additional apps is possible, developing a custom app for the device won't be as easy as working with iOS. Apple provided a Pixo OS SDK to licensors like Electronic Arts and PopCap, both of which produce games for older iPods, but there isn't one for the latest nanos. "No 'normal' developer has ever had access to any of that stuff," Troughton-Smith told Ars.
"We have no idea what the internals look like—what the binary format is, how to make a toolchain to build apps," Troughton-Smith explained. "Apple may have a UI library on the device for their built in apps, or the apps may well be baked into the OS shell [SpringBoard] itself. We don't know anything about it."
Since the nano shares similar CPU and graphics resources as the second-gen iPod touch, however, it should be capable of some pretty impressive graphical applications. "Pixo uses OpenGL ES heavily, so if we were to ever build apps for it, games would be the easiest to port," Troughton-Smith said.
Both Whelton and Troughton-Smith were quick to point out that things are in the very early stages. "Suffice it to say, this all like what, a few days old?" Whelton said.
Troughton-Smith said that Whelton's work is the very first step in a long chain of events that have to happen before custom apps can be loaded. Pushing code, executing code, finding exploits, decrypting firmware, modifying firmware, and building a toolchain all come before writing apps is possible.
"We're at the push-and-execute stage," Troughton-Smith said. "To get anywhere further, an exploit will need to be found."
Listing image by James WheltonTeam Lists Super Rugby Round 14
Team Lists Super Rugby Round 14
Only the Southern Kings are getting a rest this weekend everyone else has to work! My match of the round has to be the huge clash between the Waratahs nd the Brumbies. We’ll see if the Tahs really are back this weekend.
Friday’s games.
Hurricanes v Chiefs
Hurricanes Versus Chiefs Ben Franks 1 Pauliasi Manu Ash Dixon 2 Hika Elliot Ben May 3 Ben Afeaki Jeremy Thrush 4 Craig Clarke (C) Jason Eaton 5 Brodie Retallick Faifili Levave 6 Liam Messam Jack Lam 7 Tanerau Latimer Victor Vito (c) 8 Matt Vant Leven TJ Perenara 9 Tawera Kerr-Barlow Beauden Barrett 10 Aaron Cruden Julian Savea 11 Asaeli Tikoirotuma Tim Bateman 12 Bundee Aki Reynold Lee-Lo 13 Charlie Ngatai Alapati Leiua 14 Lelia Masaga Andre Taylor 15 Robbie Robinson Reserves Reggie Goodes 16 Mahonri Schwalger Jeffery Toomaga-Allen 17 Ben Tameifuna James Broadhurst 18 Michael Fitzgerald Brad Shields 19 Nick Crosswell Chris Smylie 20 Augustine Pulu Tusi Pisi 21 Dan Waenga James Marshall 22 Save Tokula
Date : Friday 17 May
Venue : Westpac Stadium, Wellington
Kick Off: 17:35
Referee: Lourens van der Merwe
Assistant Ref 1:Garratt Williamson
Assistant Ref 2:Sheldon Eden-Whaitiri
TMO : Glenn Newman
Melbourne Rebels v Stormers
Melbourne Rebels Versus Stormers Nic Henderson 1 Steven Kitshoff Ged Robinson 2 Scarra Ntubeni Laurie Weeks 3 Pat Cilliers Hugh Pyle 4 Eben Etzebeth Cadeyrn Neville 5 Andries Bekker Jarrod Saffy 6 Deon Fourie Scott Fuglistaller 7 Siya Kolisi Scott Higginbotham (c) 8 Nizaam Carr Nic Stirzaker 9 Louis Schreuder Bryce Hegarty 10 Elton Jantjies Lachlan Mitchell 11 Bryan Habana Rory Sidey 12 Jean de Villiers (c) Mitch Inman 13 Juan de Jongh Tom English 14 Gio Aplon Jason Woodward 15 Joe Pietersen Reserves Shota Horie 16 Martin Bezuidenhout Paul Alo-Emile 17 Frans Malherbe Luke Jones 18 Gerbrandt Grobler Gareth Delve 19 Don Armand Jordy Reid 20 Nic Groom Nick Phipps 21 Gary van Aswegen Kimami Sitauti 22 Gerhard van der Heever
Date : Friday 17 May
Venue : AAMI Park, Melbourne
Kick Off: 19:40
Referee: Mike Fraser
Assistant Ref 1:Rohan Hoffmann
Assistant Ref 2:Ed Martin
TMO : Matt Goddard
Western Force v Sharks
Western Force Versus Sharks Pek Cowan 1 JC Janse van Rensberg Heath Tessmann 2 Kyle Cooper Kieran Longbottom 3 Jannie du Plessis Toby Lynn 4 Anton Bresler Sam Wykes 5 Franco van der Merwe Matt Hodgson (c) 6 Marcell Coetzee Chris Alcock 7 Willem Alberts Ben McCalman 8 Keegan Daniel (c) Alby Mathewson 9 Charl McLeod Sias Ebersohn 10 Patrick Lambie Nick Cummins 11 Lwazi Mvovo Kyle Godwin 12 Meyer Bosman Ben Jacobs 13 JP Pietersen Patrick Dellit 14 Odwa Ndungane Jayden Hayward 15 Riaan Viljoen Reserves James Hitlerbrand 16 Monde Hadebe Tetera Faulkner 17 Wiehahn Herbst Rory Walton 18 Pieter Steph du Toit Richard Brown 19 Derick Minnie Brett Sheehan 20 Jean Deysel Junior Rasolea 21 Tian Meyer Sam Norton-Knight 22 Piet Lindeque
Date : Friday 17 May :
Venue : NIB Stadium, Perth
Kick Off: 21:45
Referee: James Leckie
Assistant Ref 1:Ian Smith
Assistant Ref 2: Damien Mitchelmore
TMO : Steve Leszczynski
Saturday’s Games
Crusaders v Blues
Crusaders Versus Blues Wyatt Crockett 1 Tim Perry Corey Flynn 2 Keven Mealamu Owen Franks 3 Angus Ta'avao Luke Romano 4 Cullum Retallick Sam Whitelock 5 Ali Williams (c) George Whitelock 6 Steven Luatua Matt Todd 7 Luke Braid Kieran Read (c) 8 Peter Saili Andy Ellis 9 Piri Weepu Dan Carter 10 Chris Noakes Zac Guildford 11 George Moala Ryan Crotty 12 Jackson Willison Robbie Fruen 13 Rene Ranger Tom Marshall 14 Frank Halai Tom Taylor 15 Charles Piutau Reserves Ben Funnell 16 Quentin MacDonald Joe Moody 17 Sam Prattley Dominic Bird 18 Anthony Boric Luke Whitelock 19 Brendon O'Connor Willi Heinz 20 Jamison Gibson-Park Adam Whitelock 21 Baden Kerr Israel Dagg 22 Francis Saili
Date : Saturday 18 May
Venue : AMI Stadium, Addington Christchurch
Kick Off: 17:35
Referee: Glen Jackson
Assistant Ref 1:Nick Briant
Assistant Ref 2:Kane McBride
TMO : Keith Brown
Waratahs v Brumbies
Waratahs Versus Brumbies Benn Robinson 1 Scott Sio Tatafu Polota-Nau 2 Stephen Moore Paddy Ryan 3 Ben Alexander Sitaleki Timani 4 Scott Fardy Kane Douglas 5 Sam Carter Dave Dennis 6 Peter Kimlin Michael Hooper 7 George Smith Wycliff Palu 8 Ben Mowen (c) Brendan McKibbin 9 Nic White Bernard Foley 10 Matt Toomua Drew Mitchell 11 Joseph Tomane Rob Horne 12 Christian Lealiifano Adam Ashley-Cooper 13 Tevita Kuridrani Cam Crawford 14 Henry Speight Israel Folau 15 Jesse Mogg Reserves John Ulugia 16 Siliva Siliva Sekope Kepu 17 Ruan Smith Will Skelton 18 Fotu Auelua Mitchell Chapman 19 Colby Faingaa Matt Lucas 20 Ian Prior Berrick Barnes 21 Pat McCabe Peter Betham 22 Robbie Coleman
Date : Saturday 18 May
Venue : ANZ Stadium, Sydney
Kick Off: 19:40
Referee: Steve Walsh
Assistant Ref 1:Rohan Hoffmann
Assistant Ref 2:Graham Cooper
TMO : Peter Marshall
Sunday’s Games
Bulls v Highlanders
Bulls Versus Highlanders Morne Mellet 1 Jamie Mackintosh Chiliiboy Ralepelle 2 Andrew Hore (captain) Frik Kirsten 3 Chris King Flip van der Merwe 4 Brad Thorn Juandre Kruger 5 Jarrad Hoeata Deon Stegmann 6 Joe Wheeler Dewald Potgieter 7 John Hardie Pierre Spies (c) 8 Mose Tuialii Francois Hougaard 9 Aaron Smith Morne Steyn 10 Colin Slade Lionel Mapoe 11 Hosea Gear (vice-captain) Jan Serfontein 12 Shaun Treeby JJ Engelbrecht 13 Tamati Ellison Akona Ndungane 14 Tino Nemani Jurgen Visser 15 Ben Smith Reserves Callie Visagie 16 Liam Coltman Werner Kruger 17 Tony Woodcock Grant Hattingh 18 Elliot Dixon Arno Botha 19 TJ Ioane Jano Vermaak 20 Fumiaki Tanaka Louis Fouche 21 Hayden Parker Bjorn Basson 22 Jason Emery
Date : Sunday 19 May :
Venue : Loftus Versfeld, Pretoria
Kick Off: 01:05
Referee: Jaco Peyper
Assistant Ref 1:Ben Crouse
Assistant Ref 2:Stefan Breytenbach
TMO : Shaun Veldsman
Cheetahs v Reds
Cheetahs Versus Reds Coenie Oosthuizen 1 Greg Holmes Adriaan Strauss (c) 2 Saia Faingaa Lourens Adriaanse 3 James Slipper Lodewyk de Jager 4 Rob Simmons Francois Uys 5 James Horwill (c) Heinrich Brussow 6 Ed Quirk Pieter Labuschagne 7 Liam Gill Phillip van der Walt 8 Jake Schatz Piet van Zyl 9 Will Genia Elgar Watts 10 Quade Cooper Raymond Rhule 11 Digby Ioane Robert Ebersohn 12 Anthony Faingaa Johan Sadie 13 Chris Feauai-Sautia Willie le Roux 14 Rod Davies Hennie Daniller 15 Luke Morahan Reserves Ryno Barnes 16 James Hanson Trevor Nyakane 17 Ben Daley Rynhard Landman 18 Ed O'Donoghue Boom Prinsloo 19 Jarrad Butler Sarel Pretorius 20 Beau Robinson Riaan Smith 21 Ben Lucas Ryno Benjamin 22 Ben Tapuai
Date : Sunday 19 May
Venue : Free State Stadium, Bloemfontein
Kick Off: 03:10
Referee: Craig Joubert
Assistant Ref 1:Stuart Berry
Assistant Ref 2:Sieg van Staden
TMO : Johan Greeff
BYES
Southern Kings
Remember, we’ll update the lists as the teams come in. Or you can get all the latest info on our Facebook, Twitter and Google plus pages.Authors: Manish Vaid, ORF and Tridivesh Singh Maini, JSIA
In October last year, trade ministers from 12 countries reached an agreement on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). On 4 February, the agreement was signed. These developments have intensified debates within India about whether the country could fit into the TPP’s structure, either now or in the future.
Union Minister of Commerce and Industry, Nirmala Sitharaman, has hinted at India’s position on the agreement. During her address to the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Partnership Summit, Sitharaman reassured industry stakeholders: ‘There is nothing to worry about the adverse impact of TPP on India. We have taken necessary steps to boost India’s trade and investment in the wake of emerging new trade architecture’.
At another CII event, the Commerce Minister said the TPP would affect India’s export sectors and, given the TPP’s higher standards compared to WTO norms, India should consider
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in combination with flat shading, brings back the style of the early '90s, using techniques that anyone can learn. And it's not just a nostalgic throwback; flat-shading can easily be combined with modern techniques like ambient occlusion maps to give your game a striking, avant-garde look.
Get the example Unity project here
This tutorial assumes you already know how to do 3D modelling, or are able to find free 3D models on the internet. I'll be pulling example models out of thin air; there are tons of tutorials on the internet for how to get started in 3D modelling. If you're just starting out, I can highly recommend Wings 3D and SketchUp. Both have extremely accessible interfaces compared to professional modelling apps, and will export to formats that Blender and Unity can use.
Why Use Flat Shading?
So you've decided to get your hands dirty with Unity and start making a fully 3D game. Maybe you have no prior game art skills, or maybe you've made some art for 2D games; in either case, you will quickly learn that 3D games require a very large set of skills to create. Not only do you need to learn how to create 3D models, you need to unwrap those models to correctly draw a texture on the surface of your model. You also need to painstakingly create the texture, of course.
What if you could just create the model, but have it finished and ready for your game after a few extra steps to color and shade it? You might end up with something like this:
Or this:
Sure, the look is spartan and lo-fi—but that's the point! Whether you're aiming for early '90s nostalgia, a modern abstract look, or just want to save a lot of time making assets for a jam game, flat shading is an excellent choice of style for beginners and 3D experts alike.
If you are just getting started with game art, the simplicity of the workflow lets you concentrate on the fundamentals: learning how to create a 3D model with a nice silhouette and form, and coloring it with a small set of hand-picked colors. Concentrating on these fundamentals teaches you the basic skills of art without distractions.
How Flat Shading Works
Every 3D model is composed of a set of vertices that determine the shape of that model. For every vertex, there's also a vector called a normal—think of this as a small pin sticking out of the vertex.
The rendering engine uses the normal for each vertex and compares its direction to the direction of any incoming light source(s), and the direction in which the camera is facing, in order to determine the amount of light to apply to that vertex.
The renderer slowly fades the amount of light from one vertex to the next, giving a basic 3D model a "pillowy" look. Unless you apply a texture (and often, even if you do), this looks really terrible on anything that isn't actually a curvy, "pillowy" surface:
With flat shading, the entire surface of a polygon receives a uniform amount of light, calculated from a normal sticking outward from the center of the polygon:
Modern modelling applications use "hard edges" or "smoothing groups" to adjust your model's vertex normals to match the polygon they're adjacent to, thus causing it to be uniformly and flatly shaded. A skilled 3D artist will use these to make sharp edges look sharp and flat surfaces look flat, but we're interested in making the entire model look sharp and flat. Thankfully, Unity makes this very simple.
Basic Technique
If you're sufficiently familiar with your modelling tool you can make your model look flat-shaded by setting all the edges as "hard". However, in Unity you can simply choose to let Unity create hard edges automatically:
Step 1
Click on your model in the Project window to bring up its Import Settings in the Inspector panel.
Step 2
Go to the Normals & Tangents section and, in the Normals dropdown, choose Calculate.
Step 3
Set the Smoothing Angle to 0 and click Apply.
Unity will make any edge that's a sharper angle than this into a hard edge. We want all our edges to be hard, so naturally setting it to 0 gives this effect.
Feel free to experiment with different smoothing angles, depending on the geometry of your model, it can be an amazingly easy way to give it a completely different look.
Step 4
Now that we have our model flat shaded, we need to give it some color! There are many ways to do this, but some are better than others:
Select portions of your model and set them to a different material for each color you want to use.
Assign vertex colors in your modelling program.
Create a "palette texture" containing a bunch of colored squares and texture-map your model using this.
I greatly prefer the last method, which I'll describe to you below. Normally, after creating a 3D model, you must painstakingly unwrap it to match a hand-crafted texture. However, since we're only interested in having a single color for each polygon, it doesn't really matter what your UV unwrapping job looks like—it could just be a random jumble of vertices, so long as it's on top of the correct color!
The first step in coloring is to create the texture. For our example, let's say we want four colors:
Next, load your completed 3D model in your modeller of choice and load up your texture. Select all of the faces of the model you want to be a certain color and automatically UV unwrap them. The result will probably be a confusing jumble of polygons.
As I said, though, that really doesn't matter. Move all of the polygons on top of each other and scale them down into a little blob that will fit into one of the squares on your palette texture. Then, drag them on top of the color of your choice.
Take a look at your model; the textured sections now have the correct color! Repeat this process for the rest of the faces of your model, again selecting and unwrapping them based on the color you want them to be. If you make a mistake, it's no big deal, just select the faces again, unwrap again if necessary, and put them in the right place on the texture. The same can't be said for "real" UV unwrapping!
Voilà! You have a colored, flat-shaded model that you can import into your game.
What About the Other Methods?
In case you were wondering, here's some reasons to avoid the other two methods:
Multiple Materials
This method creates a lot of materials you'll have to keep track of in Unity, and more importantly, Unity will not dynamically batch your models and use an entire draw call for each material, which is often the smallest bottleneck on modern graphics hardware.
Simply put, you'll get terrible performance if you use this method extensively.
Vertex Colors
This actually works fairly well, and you may in fact want to use this depending on your particular needs or art workflow. However, you'll notice something immediately: when you import your model and use a basic Diffuse shader, your vertex colors don't seem to be showing up!
This is because the basic shaders ignore them; you'll need to use special shaders that actually use the vertex color data. These can be easily found, but things get complicated if you also want other rendering effects from other shaders: these shaders often don't use vertex colors either, and you'll need to modify the shader yourself.
If you don't already know how to write shaders, this can lead to a lot of time and effort that you would rather be spending on the rest of your game. Also, it might just be me, but I find it a lot easier to change multiple colors at once with a texture rather than manually setting them in a modeller or in-game with a script.
Optimizing
Now that you have a texture palette and a basic technique figured out, you can go on to create the rest of the models for your game. As you may suspect, you can just keep adding colors to your palette and use the same texture for the entire game.
There are actually some big performance advantages to doing this: if you stick to using the same material for your entire game as well, Unity will usually draw all of your objects more efficiently by "batching" them. As I mentioned before, "draw calls" are a major bottleneck in computer graphics and it's a good idea to keep them to a minimum.
Unity will automatically try to draw your scene in as few draw calls as possible if you use a single material for everything, though every model needs to be scaled the same way and have less than about 300 vertices. It will inform you how well it's done in the Stats window:
Tip: If you'd like to know more about batching, be sure to check out the Unity docs on the subject. This should be required reading for anyone interested in the performance of their game!
Changing Colors on the Fly
You have a set of models that are flat-shaded and colored, and everything seems in place, but what if you want to change colors while the game is being played?
For example, let's say that you have a script that will spawn your airplane, but afterwards you want to color it blue if it's friendly or red if it's an enemy. You can certainly just create separate palettes and separate materials, but it means you lose the performance boost of batching these two types of airplanes.
That's not a big deal if there's only a few of them in view at once. However, take the example of a procedurally-generated terrain made up of tons and tons of tiles or cubes, of many different terrain types, like a certain popular sandbox game. This would mean a ton of draw calls—but fear not, there's a way to keep using just one material!
Remember how you colored your model by shoving its UV coordinates into colored boxes? Unity lets you modify the vertices of your model on the fly, including the UV coordinates, so for each different terrain type you can just move the UV coordinates into the correct color box via script.
Create a new C# script in Unity called PaletteColorizer and paste this code into it:
To use this script, simply add it as a component to any game object with a material using a palette texture, set the number of colors per row, and set the color index (starting with 0 in the upper left-hand corner and counting to the right and down).
If your model's UV coordinates are not set up to fit inside the palette boxes (such as in the case of the "water" quad around the hexes), check the Override UVs checkbox; as you can see above, this will make the script write entirely new coordinates rather than shifting existing ones.
One thing to keep in mind about this method is that, when modifying any mesh, Unity will quietly create a new mesh in memory. If you do this particularly often on a large number of meshes, you might run into memory issues, and you'll want to look into a means of caching and sharing meshes that have been colorized the same way. For a reasonable number of low-poly models, though, you'll probably never need to worry about it.
Baked Ambient Occlusion
Flat shading doesn't necessarily need to always be paired with uniform blocks of color. One way you can add some subtle detail and a realistic "dusty" look to any surface is to add ambient occlusion to it. Unity Pro provides ways to add ambient occlusion as a post-processing filter, but I want to show you a way you can add that extra bit of polish without needing the Pro version, and without even needing any special shaders.
All you need to do is unwrap your model and "bake" the ambient occlusion effect onto a texture. This does require you to actually spend some time and effort to correctly unwrap your model, but after that step it's a matter of a few clicks and a bit of fiddling in your paint program to give your model a slightly more real, avant-garde look.
Step 1
First, you will want to boot up Blender with an empty scene: Press A to select all objects in the startup scene, press Delete, then press D to confirm. You don't want any Lamps or Cameras because these will get imported as empty junk objects into Unity.
Step 2
Then, import your model into it. (File > Import > Wavefront (.obj)). For this example, let's start with a boulder.
Step 3
Open the UV Editor and create a texture that's able to contain roughly the amount of detail you want. I'm pretty stingy, so I stick to 256x256px for anything about the size of the player (a rock or tree), and only go bigger for very large objects (like the mountain they're walking on).
Step 4
Now, unwrap your model. There are many ways to go about this, which are covered in much more detail than I could ever hope to, so please consult the Blender documentation or other online tutorials on how to correctly and efficiently unwrap your model.
Step 5
Now that you have an unwrapped model, you're ready to bake the ambient occlusion onto your texture. Blender will render the ambient occlusion directly onto your texture, respecting the UV coordinates you just unwrapped. Simply follow these steps:
Click the Render button (the camera icon) on the Properties panel on the right side of the screen. Scroll down to the Bake subsection (at the bottom) and expand it. Change the Bake Mode from Full Render to Ambient Occlusion. Click the Bake button directly above that.
Step 6
Now you have the baked AO texture and a model that has the correct UV coordinates to use it. Save the texture to an image file and export the model in Blender to a format Unity can use (such as.fbx ).
Step 7
Depending on your needs, you may be able to use the texture as-is. Simply create a new Diffuse material that uses your new baked AO texture and set the color to something that looks nice.
However, you'll likely want to have models with multiple colors, such as a tree. You only need to follow a few extra steps. Follow the directions above to create a baked AO texture for your tree model. This time, though, you'll want to keep track of where you put your UV coordinates, because you'll need to color those locations on the texture manually.
It would be wise to group your UV islands by color. In this example, I'm putting the trunk parts at the top of the texture and the leaf parts on the bottom.
Step 8
Open your baked AO texture with your paint program of choice (anything that supports layers will do, such as GIMP). Create a new layer and put it above your AO layer, using the AO layer as a guide to color the new layer according to the colors you want to see in the model.
Use the Lasso tool, or other selection tool of your choice, to select the portions of the texture you want to color, then fill those with the correct color.
Step 9
You now have the colors set up, so it's time for the final task: blending the AO on top of the colors. Move the AO layer on top of the colored layer and change the blend mode to Multiply.
Set the layer opacity to whatever looks nice. Use your own judgment, but be sure to write down this percentage, since to get a uniform effect on all of your textures you'll want to use the same blend method and amount.
Save this texture to a file and import it in Unity alongside the tree model. Create a material just like you did for the boulder, using the texture you just made.
That's pretty much it! Use this technique on all your models to give the whole scene a more polished, tangible look than you could get with basic flat-shading.
You may notice that your materials are using just basic diffuse shaders. One of the beautiful things about using baked AO blended directly on top of the color texture is that you can use this texture with any other shader that takes a diffuse texture... with no AO-specific code required!
Conclusion
Now you have a handy toolbox of graphics techniques you can use to create an entire flat-shaded game. With enough practice, you can make stunning visuals that are quick to produce and that render efficiently.This article is about a former tavern in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. For the brewpub in Atlantic City, New Jersey, see Tun Tavern Brewery
Tun Tavern was a tavern and brewery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, which was a founding or early meeting place for a number of notable groups. It is traditionally regarded as the site where what became the United States Marine Corps held its first recruitment drive during the American Revolution.[1] It is also regarded as one of the "birthplaces of Masonic teachings in America".[2]
History [ edit ]
Founding [ edit ]
The tavern was erected in 1686 at the intersection of King (later called Water) Street and Tun Alley by settler Joshua Carpenter, brother of Samuel Carpenter, a Quaker merchant who made a fortune trading in Barbados. Joshua Carpenter built the Tun on the caraway that led to Carpenter's Wharf.[3] Tun Tavern was named for the Old English word "tun", meaning a barrel or keg of beer.[4] In the 1740s, a restaurant appelation, "Peggy Mullan's Red Hot Beef Steak Club" was added to the name of the tavern.[5]
Organizations founded in the tavern [ edit ]
Tun Tavern hosted the first meetings of a number of organizations. In 1720, the first meetings of the St. George's Society (a charitable organization founded to assist needy Englishmen arriving in the new colony—predecessor of today's Sons of the Society of St. George) were held there.[6] In 1732, the tavern hosted the first meetings of St. John's Lodge No. 1 of the Grand Lodge of the Masonic Temple. The Masonic Temple of Philadelphia recognizes Tun Tavern as the birthplace of Masonic teachings in America. In 1747, Tun Tavern became the founding place of the St. Andrew's Society, which like the St. George's Society, helped newly arrived Scottish.
Tun Tavern was a significant meeting place for other groups and individuals. In 1756, Benjamin Franklin used the inn as a recruitment gathering point for the Pennsylvania militia as it prepared to fight Native American uprisings. The tavern later hosted a meeting of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and the Continental Congress.
According to tradition, Tun Tavern was where the United States Marines held their first recruitment drive. On November 10, 1775, the Second Continental Congress commissioned the innkeeper and former Quaker Samuel Nicholas to raise two battalions of marines in Philadelphia. The tavern’s manager, Robert Mullan, was the "chief Marine Recruiter". Though legend places its first recruiting post at Tun Tavern, the historian Edwin Simmons surmises that it was more likely the Conestoga Waggon [sic], a tavern owned by the Nicholas family. The first Continental Marine company was composed of one hundred Rhode Islanders commanded by Captain Nicholas. Each year on November 10, U.S. Marines worldwide toast the memory of this colonial inn as the officially-acknowledged birthplace of their service branch. The earliest marines were deployed aboard Continental Congress Navy vessels as sharpshooters because they were typically recruited as outstanding marksmen.[2]
The early history of Lodge No. 2 is the history of Freemasonry in Pennsylvania and in fact all of America. [7]
Present day [ edit ]
In 1781, near the end of the American Revolution, Tun Tavern burned down. Its former structure stood at a location now occupied by Interstate 95, where it passes Penn's Landing. Tun Alley once existed between Walnut and Chestnut Streets east of Front Street. A commemorative marker on the east side of Front Street indicates the site, across from Sansom Walk.[8]
In homage to the likely 1775 Tun Tavern menu, the U.S. Marine Corps National Museum located in Quantico, Virginia, contains a Tun Tavern-themed restaurant, whose lunch menu features beer and other fermented (alcoholic) beverages, peanut soup and bread pudding, the non-alcoholic recipe of which remains a traditional staple among some U.S. Marine food services to this day.
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Coordinates:1 of 7 View Caption
Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune The DABC is requiring Encore Bistro, inside the new Eccles Theater, to add a ceiling Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune The DABC is requiring Encore Bistro, inside the new Eccles Theater, to add a ceiling Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune People who are standing on the balcony at the Eccles Theatre can look down into the new Encor Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune People who are standing on the balcony at the Eccles Theatre can look down into the new Encor Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune People who are standing on the balcony at the Eccles Theatre can look down into the new Encor Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune People who are standing on the balcony at the Eccles Theatre can look down into the new Encor Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune People who are standing on the balcony at the Eccles Theatre can look down into the new EncorBikram Choudhury is on the lam after a sexual harassment lawsuit has put his hot yoga empire on the line. The Associated Press reports that an arrest warrant has been issued for Choudhury in California, and he’s been ordered to pay $6.8 million to his former legal adviser Minakshi “Micki” Jafa-Bodden. Where Choudhury is hiding isn’t exactly clear, although he’s fled the country. His warehouses in Nevada and Florida are locked by court order, and he’s apparently being tracked down by his attempts to move luxury property overseas.
The link between sex and Bikram Yoga’s founder are nothing new. He’s long lead a glamorous lifestyle, teaching some of the most beautiful people on the planet. As the Guardian reports, Choudhury has had celebrity clients in enviable locals since the 1970s, when he taught the likes of “Michael Jackson, Jeff Bridges, Shirley MacLaine, Barbra Streisand and Raquel Welch.” According to the Guardian, Benjamin Lorr — who wrote a book on Choudhury in 2012 — chalked much of the guru’s success up to his charisma, and even compared the Bikram founder’s “unscripted responsiveness” to that of Donald Trump.
In 2011, at the height of hot yoga fever, GQ did a profile on Choudhury’s San Diego teacher training course, describing a scene where lithe yogis strip down to their Speedos at a resort which “throbs with the libidinal energy,” as Choudhury barks aggressive, lewd comments to the crowd. Erections and hookups apparently abounded. Numerous profiles describe women brushing their guru’s hair and providing him massages at these events.
Even so, Choudhury himself insists that sex and yoga don’t mix. It isn’t that he doesn’t notice the beautiful women — he once told ABC “Nightline, “Every women loves me. You know, president’s daughter, you know, prime minister’s daughter, you know, billionaire’s daughter, super star, actress, singers. The hardest problem in my life … is to stay away from women.” But according to Choudhury, he’s stayed true to his spiritual path. “Yogi is supposed to be yogi,” he told “Nightline.” “They cannot involve with the women.”
Except that there are numerous plaintiffs who tell a different story.Three students in 3D animation are sure to get a perfect grade after a video depicting an eagle snatching a toddler in a Montreal park went viral and generated discussions around the world.
Normand Archambault, Loïc Mireault and Félix Marquis-Poulin, students at Centre NAD, have come forward to claim responsibility for the overnight sensation.
The video "Golden Eagle Snatches Kid in Montreal" shows a large bird swooping down from the sky above Mont Royal Park and pick up a child with its talons. The bird travels several metres before dropping the toddler and flying away.
The camera then zooms in on the child, who is crying but seems to be uninjured.
The video garnered over five million views in one day.
Archambault said his team came up with the perfect equation to get people to talk about their work.
"We brainstormed some ideas of what is viral online," said Archambault. "Everything that is animal related and baby related are super popular so we tried to bring both together and make something extraordinary that wouldn't happen every day."
The video took the students 400 hours to create.
The school grades the project according to the amount of views each video receives. Videos that exceed 100,000 views get a perfect score.
Centre NAD's production simulation workshop has gained attention for other hoax videos in the past, including one of a penguin appearing to escape from the Montreal Biodôme.
David Bird, a McGill University professor of wildlife biology, had said earlier that he doubted the video's authenticity.
Bird said he has never heard of an eagle grabbing a child.
"The public has nothing to fear from bald eagles in that regard of picking up their babies, and for that matter, even their pets."
Several people in online communities had guessed that the video was a hoax created using computer-generated images.
This is the second time in the past few days the public was fooled by a Montreal-based hoax.
Last week, CBC's satirical radio show This is That tricked Canadians with a fictitious story about a proposed bylaw requiring dogs to be trained to understand commands in French and English.Robert McCartney's sisters demand review of funding as community groups place 'Jock' Davison tribute in Irish News BelfastTelegraph.co.uk The sisters of Robert McCartney have said the authorities must urgently review the funding of community groups that eulogised murdered IRA commander Jock Davison in a newspaper advertisement. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/robert-mccartneys-sisters-demand-review-of-funding-as-community-groups-place-jock-davison-tribute-in-irish-news-31211025.html https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/article31211022.ece/9d30b/AUTOCROP/h342/2015-05-11_new_9430348_I1.JPG
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The sisters of Robert McCartney have said the authorities must urgently review the funding of community groups that eulogised murdered IRA commander Jock Davison in a newspaper advertisement.
The McCartneys also denounced victims organisation Relatives for Justice for putting its name to the tribute.
"It is nauseating that a group which campaigns on behalf of those who have suffered in the conflict lauds a man who left dozens of people here bereaved and injured," Catherine McCartney said.
"Relatives for Justice should hang its head in shame."
In a full-page advertisement in Saturday's Irish News, 63 community groups in Belfast paid a glowing tribute to Davison and his work as a "community activist".
"The funding bodies must immediately reconsider giving public money to organisations which elevate a killer," Catherine added.
"I understand the republican movement paying tribute to Jock - he was a senior member - but it is utterly inappropriate that community groups, particularly those representing women and children, are honouring someone who brought death and destruction into the lives of women and children across this city.
"The question must be asked, do these groups represent communities or do they represent paramilitaries? Jock's IRA beret and gloves were placed on top of his coffin.
"That leaves no one in doubt as to what he was at the time of his death. Far from being expelled by the IRA, he clearly remained a central and active member. These groups are paying tribute to a leading paramilitary."
Davison, who was shot dead near his home in the Markets area of Belfast last week, was involved in numerous murders and 'punishment' attacks.
He was employed as a community worker with the Markets Development Association.
The McCartney sisters believe Davison gave the order to kill their brother Robert outside Magennis' bar 10 years ago, a charge which he denied.
Robert McCartney was beaten and stabbed to death in the frenzied attack. An eyewitness said the IRA commander drew a finger across his throat to indicate to his henchmen what he wanted done.
In the advertisement, Davison is described as "highly esteemed" and "a courageous community activist" who "managed to thrive in difficult circumstances" and held "those with power and responsibility to account".
It denounced attempts to "criminalise" him and claimed he was "respected and loved".
Among the signatories are the West Belfast Partnership Board, Feile an Phobail, Falls Community Council, Clonard Monastery Youth Centre, Cliftonville Community Regeneration Forum and the Lower Ormeau Residents' Action Group. Also joining in the tribute were Glen Community Parent Youth Group, Lenadoon Women's Group, Lorag Youth Project, the Market Women's Group, Ardmonagh Family and Community Group, Newhill Youth and Community Association, St Malachy's GAC and Whiterock Children's Centre.
Paula McCartney said she was "dismayed and disgusted" at the advertisement. "Words can't convey my feelings about this despicable ad. These so-called community groups haven't an ounce of integrity or humanity.
"To glorify a murderer is insensitive, not just to our family, but to all the families who were victims of Jock Davison.
"This is just one big slap in the face to us all. It is endorsing the murderer of our loved ones. Our family never received even a letter of sympathy from any one of these groups when Robert was murdered.
"No ad was placed in the Irish News paying tribute to him, and Robert was a totally innocent man who never harmed another human being in his life. These community groups are being unbelievably antagonistic to victims." Catherine said she believed that supporters of Davison would now try to paint a mural dedicated to him in the Markets area.
"Our family will vigorously oppose any such attempt," she added.
Belfast TelegraphThe Trust Project is a collaboration among news organizations around the world. Its goal is to create strategies that fulfill journalism’s basic pledge: to serve society with a truthful, intelligent and comprehensive account of ideas and events.
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Last summer, I went on a canoe trip down the Petawawa River, paddling the same rapids Pierre Trudeau once travelled. In the middle of this iconic Canadian scene, a friend and I started chatting about Israel. As our voices slowly rose, two other canoes approached, and we all put down our paddles for an impromptu summit. Surrounded by and oblivious to the peace and tranquility of Algonquin Provincial Park in central Ontario, we started arguing. Is a corrupt occupation ruining Zionism? Is boycotting Israel anti-Semitic? Are Israelis guilty of human rights violations? How much responsibility should Palestinians take for their situation? Our token WASP kept quiet, unable to get a word in, until finally he asked, “How will they ever figure out how to get along in the Middle East? Even the Montreal Jews can’t agree.”
No matter what you say about Israel, someone will get angry. Venturing to question the Jewish state gets you labelled an anti-Semite by right-wing Zionists, but left-wing activists can be just as vicious. Admit that you want Israel to remain a safe haven for Jews, and you’ll be told your Zionism is racist. My Jewish friends are scared of lefties, and my lefty friends are scared of Zionists. As a lefty Jew, I’m scared of both.
A few years ago, I gave a talk in Los Angeles at the University of California’s Center for Near Eastern Studies, where I spent a semester during a post-doctoral fellowship. I was making the case that Israelis in the occupied territories misuse Holocaust memory when they argue that settling Palestinian land is necessary to guard against a second Holocaust. A representative of a Zionist watchdog organization showed up, ostensibly to guard against anti-Semitism in Middle Eastern studies departments. When he posted his misunderstanding of my lecture online, I received a series of standard threats from strangers. One expressed a hope that I would “show [my] sincerity by leading the way to the gas chambers,” while another stated, somewhat ungrammatically, that I was “carrying a death wish for himself.” Within twenty-four hours, my post-doctoral supervisor in Montreal got an email saying I was a “turd” who would “shit his pants” if I was put “on the front lines.” This entirely accurate insult highlighted an unacknowledged truth: talking about Israel does put you on the front lines. When emotions explode into anger and accusations start flying, you are no longer discussing the conflict. You are a part of it.
My media activist friends have a traditional Marxist theory about why it’s so tough to talk about Israel. For them, it boils down to power, which means money. Zionist money funds lobby groups and media watchdogs that attack the pro-Palestinian media. My friends argue that this creates a climate of antagonism, and that many media outlets systematically avoid the question of Israel because it’s too much hassle to deal with the backlash.
Wait a second. Are my lefty friends saying Jews control the media?
The left has a long tradition of such anti-Semitic clichés. You may recall the scandal in 2004 when the Vancouver magazine Adbusters published an article titled “Why Won’t Anyone Say They Are Jewish?,” which infamously listed “the 50 most influential neocons in the US,” with black dots beside the Jewish names. But keep in mind the watchdog organization that targeted me at UCLA. There certainly are well-funded Zionist groups that pressure and attack anyone perceived to be critical of Israel. It is intimidating; one has to think twice before talking publicly or writing about the conflict.
This is because the weapons of this war are not only bullets, stones, tanks, and explosive jackets. The extremists attack and defend with words or, more specifically, with invocations of the Holocaust and accusations of genocide—to the point of absurdity. Today, almost twenty years after Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi, comparisons with Nazi Germany have become cynical clichés. Palestinians put swastikas on Israeli flags, Israelis compare Arab leaders to Hitler, and Zionist settlers accuse those proposing to withdraw settlements of being complicit in the final solution. Given the number of so-called Nazis out there, you would think Germany had won the damn war.
Debates rage over whether anti-Zionism can be defined as the new anti-Semitism. The Palestinian-driven campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions attempts to link Zionism and Israel to apartheid-era racism in South Africa. Since the 1980s, members of Israel’s hasbara programs have used academic, religious, and government resources to teach Zionists rhetorical tactics and ideological strategies to defend Israel against criticism in social media and elsewhere (if you are reading this online, you may hear from them in the comments below). While hasbara translates as “explanation,” this Internet-era “public diplomacy” more often resembles old-school propaganda.
The problem with this linguistic warfare is that it re-entrenches existing positions. Everyone wants to convince, and no one wants to listen.
In highlighting the role of money in shutting down the conversation about Israel, my Marxist friends miss an essential point: extremist ideological positions would not be so effective, or appealing, if they didn’t tap in to real emotions and fears. You can’t understand the way many Canadian Jews are deeply attached to Zionism, to the point of being unable to consider another point of view, without addressing Holocaust survivors and the history of anti-Semitism in Canada, and in Montreal in particular.
Canadian Jews, while liberal in many ways, are surprisingly right wing when it comes to Zionism. According to a census analysis done in 2006, 25 percent of American Jews identify as Zionist, while 42 percent of Canadian Jews do. Toronto and Montreal have some of the highest rates of visitation to Israel of any Jewish community in North America, at 75 percent. This gives the impression of a seemingly univocal, unconditional support for the Israeli state in Canada, at least within the Jewish community.
Toronto and Montreal are quite different from Tel Aviv, where I went in early 2012 to interview Jews who had become pro-Palestinian activists. We sat in the cafés, and while these Israelis criticized their government, raged against the power of the settlers, and testified to Palestinian suffering under the occupation, I kept looking nervously over my shoulder. “Relax,” one refusenik told me. “This is Israel. You say what you want here.”
Back in Canada, I visited the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre to ask Jacqueline Celemencki, the education coordinator, why Canadian Jews are more conservative in their Zionism. Her answer is simple—and difficult. After World War II, Montreal received the third-largest group of Holocaust survivors in the world. “The Holocaust plays a critical role,” she says. “It dismantled and destroyed generations and generations of Jewish life that will never be re-established in many countries, so the only hope for the future is a collective identity based on this controversial and contested piece of land.”
She points out that among Montreal Jews, as in many victimized groups concerned with survival, a mistrustful attitude persists. Unity and solidarity within the community are valued more than debate and dissent. This resonates with the experience of many young Montreal Jews I know, who are more comfortable talking critically about Israel in Tel Aviv or New York.
Yet New York and Israel took in even more Holocaust survivors than Montreal after the war. So why are New York Jews more liberal, and why is it easier to trash-talk Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv? I met Stephanie Schwartz to discuss these questions over coffee in Mile End, one of Montreal’s historical Jewish neighbourhoods, where I live and where my father went to Talmud Torah. She does research for an online museum of Montreal’s Jewish community, has a Ph.D. in religious studies (specializing in Canadian studies), and researches multicultural Canadian Jewish identity.
She explains that in Montreal, the centre of Canadian Jewish life up until the 1980s, most Jews never felt fully accepted. Caught between the two solitudes and victimized by European-imported anti-Semitism, Jews were excluded not once but twice over, from both French and English institutions, which made it difficult to get hospital jobs and university spots. While the city harboured pockets of British and French brands of nationalism, neither appealed to eastern European immigrants. American republicanism encouraged Jews to hop into the melting pot, but Canada’s bicultural, and subsequently multicultural, structure encouraged more segregated ethnic identifications. Unlike their American cousins, who helped define fast-talking, neurotic New York, Montreal Jews rarely felt included or welcome in Canada’s national project. Hence the appeal of Zionism, and the distant utopia of Israel, a place that is controlled by the Jews.
Trauma also plays a role in shutting down the conversation. Too often, the word gets
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studied, well, if not by science, at least scientifically. The bad news is that it’s not a simple answer.
Your car’s built in extractor won’t be enough, so just cranking the A/C won’t cut it.
Rolling down windows in a moving aerodynamic car may not do the trick due to something called the boundary layer of air that “clings” to the surface of the car.
Rolling down windows in a less-aerodynamic car can be problematic because of the Helmholtz effect (the wub-wub-wub air pressure) and that makes this a risky tactic.
Opening a sunroof (if you have one) might be good, but pulls the stench up right past noses, so not ideal either.
The best strategy—according to that article and conversation amongst my less squeamish friends—is to crank the AC, then open the driver’s window a couple of inches, and then the rear passenger window half way.
But this generic strategy changes with each car, the weather (seriously, temperature matters, and you wouldn’t want to do this in heavy precipitation), and the skankness of the fart. This is all a LOT to manage when one’s eyes are meant to be on the road and you’re in an nauseated panic. Having the cabin air just refresh at the touch of one button is good for road safety.
If it’s so smart, then, why don’t we have Fart Fan panic buttons in our cars today?
I suspect car manufacturers don’t want the brand associations of having a button labeled FART FAN on their dashboards. But, IMHO, this sounds like a naming problem, not some intractable engineering problem. How about something obviously overpolite, like “Fast freshen”? I’m no longer in the travel and transportation business, but if you know someone at one of these companies, do the polite thing and share this with them.
So aside from the interface considerations, there are also some strategic ones to discuss with the remote kill switch, but that deserves it’s own post, next.AlChestBreach is a YouTuber who releases videos reviews of modifications, often referred to as "Mods", of the game Fallout: New Vegas and modded playthroughs of Fallout 3, a Survival/Adventure playthrough of Minecraft and has recently been working on a "Let's Play" of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and other games. In some of his videos, he makes up songs from what seems to be off the top of his head. In the Fallout videos, he has his famous modded companions "Mister Cuddlesworth" and "Jerry McGhoulBerry" and a numerous amount of others. The signature part of his videos isn't the mods or the playthroughs, but his amazing sense of humor. He is pure awesome. Because of his awesomeness, an entire wiki has been devoted to him and his videos.People are making way too much hay over the comments Rand Paul made about some of the strategy Ted Cruz uses. Paul told Brian Kilmeade on Fox News Radio he wasn’t surprised no Republicans supported Cruz’ amendment on Planned Parenthood funding because of his attitude on the Senate floor.
“Ted has chosen to make this really personal and chosen to call people dishonest in leadership and call them names which really goes against the decorum and also against the rules of the senate, and as a consequence he can’t get anything done legislatively. He is pretty much done for and stifled and it’s really because of personal relationships, or lack of personal relationships, and it is a problem. I approach things a little different, I am still just as hardcore in saying what we are doing, I just chose not to call people liars on the senate floor and it’s just a matter of different perspectives on how best to get to the end result.”
What Paul is referring to is Cruz’ decision to say Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told him a “flat-out lie” during talks over the Ex-Im Bank in July. Cruz was right in his accusations but his decision to say it publicly on the Senate floor was probably a mistake. This isn’t the 1800’s when Congressmen challenged each other to duels. There are rules which need to be followed. There’s nothing wrong with that. There are people who will point out John Boehner called Cruz a “jackass” but that was at a fundraiser, not on the House floor. Cruz and Paul have certainly had disagreements on strategy before. Cruz wrote in his book how he thought Paul wasn’t very helpful during the September 2013 fight over Obamacare.
“My friend Rand Paul came to the Senate floor to ask questions that seemed deliberately designed to undermine our efforts. Question such as, ‘Do you want to shut down the government? … Will you accept a compromise? Will you work with the President?’ His questions echoed the skeptical attacks of Mitch McConnell, and I marveled that Rand had decided not to be with us in this fight.”
Was Cruz probably hurt Paul didn’t agree with him 100%? Sure, and there’s nothing wrong with being annoyed with an ally for not showing as much support you’d like. But that doesn’t mean the men hate each other and will suddenly turn into Alexander Hamilton-Aaron Burr II. Both Cruz and Paul are going to make mistakes. Paul shouldn’t have supported McConnell over Matt Bevin, while Cruz maybe shouldn’t have gotten so involved in the Kim Davis thing as he did. It happens. This isn’t stopping the media from making the Cruz-Paul differences out to be a massive, huge, “oh my goodness me, they’re fighting!” deal. POLITICO screamed “Cruz unloads on McConnell, Paul in new book,” while The Dallas Morning News said Paul and Cruz were sniping at it each other. The Hill is going with “Rand Paul: Cruz ‘Can’t Get Anything Done’” as their headline over Paul’s comments, while Roll Call proclaimed “Rand Paul: Ted Cruz ‘Pretty Much Done For’ in Senate.”
This is just stupid. What Paul and Cruz supporters need to realize is that the media and the GOP establishment WANT this strategic disagreement to turn into an outright war. It probably won’t happen between Cruz and Paul, but the media and the establishment would love to see their supporters start tearing at each others throats. It cuts at the “freedom and liberty” coalition Paul, Cruz, and Utah Senator Mike Lee have fought so hard to maintain. Paul supporters are already mocking Cruz and vice versa for some of the steps they’ve taken. One Cruz supporter accused Paul of just being an establishment hack because he’s friends with McConnell, while a Paul supporter slammed Cruz for hiring Bob Barr to do outreach. It’s ridiculously sad to see things disintegrate this quickly because both candidates probably don’t want this to happen. It really puts the “freedom and liberty” coalition at risk when infighting takes it down. A splintered movement is what the establishment and the left want. Don’t give in to it.
Both Cruz and Paul want a smaller federal government. Both Cruz and Paul have issues with Republican leadership. Their strategy is just different. Paul seems more like the kind of person who wants to use a cutless, while Cruz is more interested in using a warhammer. There’s nothing wrong with either, it just depends on when to pull out the swords and when to pull out the hammer. This would be like if Patrick Henry and George Mason got together and disagreed on strategy. They both want the same thing, they just disagree on how to get it done. This happens all the time in politics, so no one should be shocked to see this happen. Don’t give in to the madness Paul and Cruz supporters! It’s not worth getting into a fight with each other when both sides should be allies.Planned Parenthood sued the state of South Dakota last Friday over a new law that requires women to receive counseling at a “pregnancy help center” before they can have an abortion, and imposes a 72-hour waiting period between that counseling and when a doctor can perform the procedure.
In a press release, Planned Parenthood Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota said that the new law toughens what were already the most stringent abortion laws in the nation and infringes on both patients’ and doctors’ First Amendment rights against “compelled speech.”
“This law goes farther than any other in the country in intruding on the doctor-patient relationship, and putting women and families at risk,” Sarah Stoesz, president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota was quoted as saying in the press release.The law, H.B. 1217, is framed as a measure intended to prevent women from the threat of “induced abortion.” It states that women are too often inadequately informed about the implications of abortions, and that the laws purpose is to, “protect the pregnant mother’s interest in her relationship with her child”
The law requires women to complete several steps before they have an abortion. First, a doctor must certify that a woman’s decision has not been influenced by “coercion, subtle or otherwise.” After that, women must attend a pregnancy help center to hear the risks associated with their decision. Once both of those requirements have been met, women must then still wait 72 hours before they can actually have the procedure.
According to Planned Parenthood the three-day waiting period would be the longest in the country.
The law was passed back in March, and is not scheduled to go into effect until July.The agency charged with securing U.S. embassies plans to purchase a system that could locate and track diplomats during an emergency based on the signals beaming from their satellite and cell phones, solicitation documents show.
That system could be extremely effective at monitoring security during an embassy or consulate attack, such as the Sept. 11 attacks in Libya and Egypt, but also could expose diplomats to new dangers if the system is hacked, experts told Nextgov.
The personnel tracking locator system would replace nine-year-old technology that the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service uses to pinpoint the location of employees both at embassies and domestically, the solicitation documents said.
DSS is responsible for securing embassies from attack and for protecting certain State Department officials traveling abroad, a job that’s come under increasing scrutiny since the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other diplomats. The service also is responsible for guarding some foreign dignitaries traveling in the United States.
It’s not clear whether the existing personnel tracker played any role in the State Department response to the Benghazi and Egypt attacks. The department declined to answer questions about the current tracking system or its proposed replacement, stating only “as is standard procedure, the department published a presolicitation notice.”
Tracking systems based on signals from the current generation of mobile and satellite phones are not powerful enough to provide precise location information, said R. James Duckworth, an engineering professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts who conducts government-funded research in tracking technology. The proposed system likely would be effective at determining whether all tracked personnel had evacuated a building, but less effective at locating someone who might still be inside, he said.
Duckworth’s research focuses on using custom-built trackers, which emit a much stronger signal than mobile and satellite phones, to help emergency responders locate their colleagues in burning or collapsed buildings. The project is partly funded by the Homeland Security Department and partly by private donors, he said.
“This is all about situational awareness,” Duckworth said. “If you can get the commanders or other people on the scene better information about what’s happening around them, that’s huge.”
Even the custom-built sensors Duckworth is using aren’t yet capable of giving precise enough location information for emergency responders. That capacity is still two to three years away, he said.
“For those guys, working in a smoke-filled and maybe a collapsed building, you’ve got to be within two to three meters’ accuracy,” Duckworth said. “If a firefighter is down and you send in a rescue team and you’re more than two meters inaccurate you’re close to being on an incorrect floor. You could be on the other side of a wall.”
The proposed DSS system must be “device agnostic,” according to the Oct. 5 presolicitation notice. That means it should be capable of capturing and tracking signals from the current generation of mobile and satellite phones regardless of their manufacturer as well as from future versions of such devices.
There are dangers associated with using tracking technology abroad, said Tom Kellermann, vice president of cybersecurity at Trend Micro, a company that develops antivirus software.
“What’s dangerous about this is that these systems can be hacked so they could basically be beaconing [diplomats’] positions,” he said. “In a country with non-state actors that are not friendly to the U.S. that will make them more susceptible. They could be beaconing their own position and setting themselves up for assassination.”
Kellermann was formerly a senior data risk management specialist for the World Bank.
Hacking commercially available phones has become so common that even technically unsophisticated groups are capable of it, Kellermann said. Once a hostile group has wormed its way into a diplomat’s phone, it’s not difficult to jump from there to the full tracking system, he added, where the group can either track a particular diplomat by her phone signal or send misinformation about officials’ locations into the system.
“This goes to a bigger issue,” Kellermann said, “which is that physical security people who specialize in personal security are very good at what they do, but they have a tendency to adopt and roll out technology like this without doing a true risk assessment of unintended consequences. There’s a phenomenon all through the U.S. government where physical and personal security folks adopt technology to provide more kinetic security and, in fact, they open up an entirely new can of worms.”Posted on November 11, 2012
Kristol: "Won't Kill Country If We Raise Taxes A Little Bit On Millionaires"
BILL KRISTOL: The leadership in the Republican party and the leadership in the conservative movement have to pull back. Let people float new ideas, let's have a serious debate. Don't scream and yell when one person says, 'You know what? It won't kill the country if we raise taxes a little bit on millionaires.' It really won't, I don't think.
I don’t really understand why Republicans don't take Obama's offer to freeze taxes for everyone below $250,000 -- make it $500,000, make it a million. Really? The Republican Party is going to fall on its sword to defend a bunch of millionaires, half of whom voted Democratic and half of whom live in Hollywood and are hostile to Republican principles.Brendan Rodgers expects Luis Suárez to be fit enough to make a "seamless" return for Liverpool when his 10-match suspension expires in time for next week's Capital One Cup tie against Manchester United.
Suárez serves the final game of his ban for biting the Chelsea defender Branislav Ivanovic against Southampton on Saturday and is being considered for an immediate recall in the fourth-round clash at Old Trafford on Wednesday. The Uruguay international's availability is timely after Philippe Coutinho was ruled out until the end of October with a shoulder injury sustained at Swansea City.
Liverpool's leading striker has not played competitively for his club since the Ivanovic incident on 21 April but did feature in the Confederations Cup in June plus Uruguay's recent World Cup qualifiers against Peru and Columbia. He has also been involved in several behind-closed-doors matches with Liverpool, the latest coming on Wednesday against Burnley.
Rodgers has refused to guarantee Suárez will start against United, saying only that a potentially explosive return against Liverpool's great rivals and Patrice Evra – who he was found guilty of using racially abusive language towards and banned for eight matches in 2011 – "would be something to consider".
The 26-year-old, however, has worked towards a late-September return all summer, including during his failed attempts to secure a transfer to Arsenal, and the Liverpool manager is confident the striker can make an instant impression.
"We have been organising some games behind closed doors, both in terms of in-house 11-a-side matches and bringing teams in," explained Rodgers. "In between that he has had international games as well to keep him ticking along. He has been doing a lot of individual work specific to him on top of all that and replicating his high-intensity speed runs that he would do in a game.
"It is not the same as playing in a match but say he did 1,000 high-intensity runs in a game, he has been replicating that in training so that he is at a level where we hope he will hit the ground running. There are always other things in a game – the crowd and the anxiety that you cannot replicate in training – but what you can at least do is get him to a level of fitness so that his numbers are replicated and that keeps him at a high level."
The Liverpool manager does not envisage shifting Daniel Sturridge from a central striking role to accommodate Suárez, with the England international flourishing in that position and scoring six goals in five matches this season. But Rodgers has been encouraged by Suárez's response in training following the distractions of the summer's transfer saga.
He added: "The idea is that hopefully when he steps back in it will be seamless. Of course there will be a transitional period for him but I am really looking forward to having him back. He is working his socks off. At the end of sessions, he is having extra work tagged on relative to him and his position. He is flushing himself out to the maximum to be as fit as he possibly can. I am looking forward to it."
Suárez has attended Liverpool games at Anfield this season but Rodgers has kept the striker away from the squad on match-days, particularly on away trips, to avoid increasing the striker's frustration at his ban. "You have to look at the individual," the manager explained. "Defenders enjoy being in and around the team all the time but strikers are different, I think. They don't miss playing more than others, but it can be counterproductive having them in and around the team if they're not playing.
"Suárez loves the game. If he doesn't play the game, it kills him. Any kid when they start to play, the integral part of it all is the game and that is what he is like. If you put him in the environment of the changing room when he can't play it can be counterproductive. We have to keep him out of the way."
The Premier League leaders, meanwhile, suffered a fresh injury setback on Wednesday when Coutinho was ruled out for at least one month with a shoulder injury. The influential Brazilian is to undergo surgery on the problem sustained during Monday's 2-2 draw at Swansea, when he landed awkwardly following a foul by Ashley Williams.
Coutinho is not expected to return until late October, meaning the £8.5m capture from Internazionale is scheduled to miss Premier League games against Southampton, Sunderland, Crystal Palace and Newcastle United, plus the United cup tie. Liverpool confirmed in a statement: "After being assessed by the Reds medical staff, it's been decided that Coutinho will now have surgical stabilisation on the AC joint in his shoulder. Liverpool hope to have the 21-year-old back in contention again towards the end of October."
Rodgers has also lost Glen Johnson and Aly Cissokho to ankle injuries in recent weeks while Daniel Agger missed the Swansea game having suffered a freak rib injury in training. The Danish defender damaged his side trying to prevent a dumbbell falling on his foot and remains a doubt for Southampton's visit to Anfield.MORE | Coke gives anti-gay RFRA supporters heartburn
The sponsor of Georgia's controversial "religious freedom" bill says the measure is dead for this legislative session. That's the second consecutive year that the anti-gay bill has flamed out.
From Insider Advantage:
“I do not expect further developments,” Sen. Joshua McKoon, R-Columbus, said in an email about his Senate Bill 129. McKoon says the legislation would prevent government from intruding into religious practice, while opponents claim it would cause discrimination against gays.
The legislation has sparked a battle between anti-gay religious supporters and LGBT and progressive activists. The latest chapter came Tuesday when nearly 200 opponents of McKoon's bill marched to the Capitol.
McKoon – no stranger to political shenanigans to move his legislation forward – blamed political shenanigans on the bill's flop.
McKoon said he thinks his bill became entangled in the passage of the transportation spending bill Tuesday. “I believe Democrats received assurances that if they supported HB 170 that RFRA would be tabled for the year.”
But the bill ignited intense criticism from LGBT activists worried that McKoon's bill would further legalize anti-gay discrimination and gut gay-inclusive non-discrimination ordinances in place in Atlanta and nearly five-dozen other municipalities across the state. Critics – including tourism officials, businesses and Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed – also denounced the bill in recent days as a threat to Atlanta's economy and the city's efforts to be inclusive.
McKoon denied that the legislation would open the door to anti-gay discrimination, but he fought attempts to amend his bill to provide LGBT protections. His ties to an anti-gay ministry were also exposed during the legislative dustup. Last week, conservative Republican supporters quickly moved to table the bill after a trio of GOP lawmakers – led by state Rep. Mike Jacobs – successfully amended the bill to add LGBT protections.
On Friday, McKoon lamented about the legislative roadblock but pledged that he would eventually prevail.
"We are going to keep working and at the end of the day, the truth of what Senate Bill 129 is going to do, is going to prevail. We are going to prevail in this debate. It may be this year, it may be next year but we are going to get there," he said.
The legislative session ends on Thursday and Insider Advantage warned that state Rep. Sam Teasley could try and attach his failed "religious freedom" bill to other legislation in the closing hours of the session.
Last year, McKoon's attempts to attach his bill to another failed and Teasley's bill stalled after a contentious hearing.We were looking for trunks with a washboard-size sheen. “Recently dead,” I told my wife. “Morels sprout from their decaying roots.”
This season was our first as morel hunters in Minnesota. Two weeks earlier, we spent an afternoon in Kinnickinnic State Park, spitting out gnats and stepping through bramble, futilely searching.
Last Sunday afternoon, after hiking for a few miles, we had seen nothing, and I could sense my wife’s waning confidence. Nothing curbs a husband’s pride quite like a wife’s distrust in his ability to sniff out fungus.
“I swear I know what I’m doing,” I told her.
It didn’t matter — the search had become a one-man job, as my wife kept to the trail while I ducked in and inspected potential sites. After three hours, I also had more or less given up faith, though I still stopped and stooped when I spied bark sheds, if only out of stubbornness.
I had just finished surveying another prime spot, I thought — dead elm, moss and bark on ground. No morels. Then on my way back to the trail, in 6 inches of dry grass, there it stood: a pristine morel half the size of my fist.
I yelled for my wife. My tone and volume could mean only one thing — we got one!
We found three more nearby, same size. On our way back to the car, we snipped a few handfuls of dandelion leaves. The afternoon was complete.
Such a rare and unique treat, the taste of morels should never get covered up in any dish. A simple vodka-reduction and tomato mix, this pizza sauce recipe serves as a great compliment to morel mushrooms. Fried garlic helps highlight the earthy, nutty flavor of the morels, while still providing the flare of authentic Italian pizza.
For more morel storage and cooking tips, plus a white pizza sauce recipe, visit my blog.
MOREL AND DANDELION PIZZA
One 12-inch pizza serves two.
Red sauce ingredients:
1 pound on-vine tomatoes, destemmed and roasted
1 cup vodka, reduced to half
2 large cloves fresh garlic, fried
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 tablespoon sugar
Canola oil for frying garlic
1 tablespoon olive oil
Pizza ingredients per pizza:
1 14-ounce, 12-inch Boboli original crust
3 ounces morel mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
Half ounce of dandelion leaves or arugula, cleaned
Sauce to lightly cover pizza
4 ounces Italian cheese blend (mozzarella, provolone, romano, asiago and parmesan)
To clean and prepare morels: cut in half, soak in a salt-water solution for 1 hour to clean out bugs and dirt. Sliced into strips once cleaned.
To prepare red sauce: Heat half-inch of canola oil in pot to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Peel garlic and place in oil, turning until brown. Remove and set aside. Use paring knife to remove stems from tomatoes. Spray or rub tomatoes with canola oil and place in baking dish and slide into oven. Roast for 20 minutes or until tomatoes are soft and skin peeled back. Remove from oven, peel off skin. Add tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, sugar, salt and pepper to food processor. Blend thoroughly. In medium pot, heat vodka on low until it reduces to half. Add tomato sauce mix. Simmer for half hour.
To assemble and cook pizza: Keep oven preheated at 450 degrees. Cover base of pizza crust with light amount of sauce. Sprinkle morels and dandelion (or arugula) leaves over pizza then cover with cheese. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes or until crust is golden brown. Consider turning broiler on high to finish off browning cheese. Let sit for 1 minute before cutting.While Ohio Governor John Kasich continues to face fire from abortion advocates for signing a restrictive new abortion law, lawmakers here in Virginia aim to follow in his foot steps during the 2017 General Assembly next month.
While Ohio Governor John Kasich continues to face fire from abortion advocates for signing a restrictive new abortion law, lawmakers here in Virginia aim to follow in his foot steps during the 2017 General Assembly next month.
Delegate Dave LaRock of Hamilton, (R-33), has resubmitted HB 1473, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would limit abortions in the Commonwealth to 20 weeks. Currently Virginia allows abortions through the second trimester, but abortions after the first trimester must be undertaken at a hospital, something advocates say is an undo burden on women.
“It’s something that absolutely needs to pass,” said Del. LaRock in an interview with RVAMag. He described himself as a member of society and a father, and once he learned the specifics of a abortion after 20 weeks he said he had to do something.
“I’m very much of the mind to subject a baby to a dismemberment abortion… while it’s alive in a mother’s womb, is nothing short of a gruesome treatment of babies and I think its very appropriate to criminalize it,” he said.
How much pain a fetus feels during an abortion after 20 weeks is something Factcheck.org has trouble really confirming. They say science exists on both sides, and “pain is a subjective experience and a fetus cannot indicate if something hurts.”
LaRock’s bill mirrors one signed into law in at least 19 other states, though courts have blocked the law in three.
Similar bills have been pushed every year, including the last two years by LaRock, here in Virginia since at least 2012 but all have failed.
One of the issues the bill faced last year was its lack of exceptions for rape or incest, something Tara Gibson, State-wide field director for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Virginia, said could be a problem again this year.
Gibson said the 2016 bill failed its first committee step when even Republican legislators took issue with its lack of exceptions. But with the OH bill getting signed by Kaisch similarly not allowing such exceptions, she noted “It’s hard to predict the outcome.”
While LaRock admits whats happens in OH doesn’t necessarily happen in VA, he also thinks its success shows “it’s not only a good bill, its durable.”
And as for the lack of exceptions for rape and incest, LaRock said he views an abortion after 20 weeks as only adding to the crime.
“These are very difficult situations for the women to be in, and I think its fair and right that no baby… should be subjected to this torturous death,” he said. “I have all the sympathy in the world for a woman in that situation but making the baby the second victim in that situation does make it right.”
But Gibson doesn’t buy that – she sees it as “another in a long line of attacks against women’s health care.”
“We’re going to do everything we can to make sure the bill does not become a law as we did last year [when] it was to extreme for even the GA here in VA,” she said. “But we’re still disheartened to see it come up again and see legislators once again lining up to limit women’s access to healthcare and abortions.”
Wile Virginia remains below the national average for number of abortions, it does have some other notable requirements before the procedure can take place: There is a 24 hour waiting period, parents of a minor must be notified, and a woman must receive an ultrasound and be offered to view the fetus before the abortion can be performed.
Virginia also passed TRAP laws which activists say put undo burdens and unnecessary medical and physical requirements on women’s health clinics, forcing three facilities to close.
While Gibson and her group hope the committee assigned this bill will again toss it aside, she’s confident Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe will veto any bill that rolls back abortion laws in the state. She called McAuliffe a “brick wall” against new limits and his record, including vetoing a bill in 2016 which would have defunded Planned Parenthood, suggests he’d stop any new legislation like this that would make it to his desk.
RVAMag will follow this bill as it reaches the GA in a few weeks.WASHINGTON — U.S. naval forces are moving closer to Syria as President Obama considers military options for responding to the alleged use of chemical weapons by the Assad government. The president emphasized that a quick intervention in the Syrian civil war was problematic, given the international considerations that should precede a military strike.
The White House said the president would meet Saturday with his national security team to consider possible next steps by the United States. Officials say once the facts are clear, Obama will make a decision about how to proceed.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel declined to discuss any specific force movements while saying that Obama had asked the Pentagon to prepare military options for Syria. U.S. defense officials told The Associated Press that the Navy had sent a fourth warship armed with ballistic missiles into the eastern Mediterranean Sea but without immediate orders for any missile launch into Syria.
U.S. Navy ships are capable of a variety of military action, including launching Tomahawk cruise missiles, as they did against Libya in 2011 as part of an international action that led to the overthrow of the Libyan government.
“The Defense Department has a responsibility to provide the president with options for contingencies, and that requires positioning our forces, positioning our assets, to be able to carry out different options — whatever options the president might choose,” Hagel told reporters traveling with him to Asia.
Hagel said the U.S. is coordinating with the international community to determine “what exactly did happen” near Damascus earlier this week. According to reports, a chemical attack in a suburb of the capital killed at least 100 people. It would be the most heinous use of chemical weapons since Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein gassed thousands of Kurds in the town of Halabja in 1988.
SEE ALSO: Obama: Syria chemical weapons attack ‘a big event of grave concern’
Hagel left little doubt that he thinks the attack in Syria involved chemical weapons, although he stressed there is not yet a final answer. In discussing the matter, he said, “it appears to be what happened — use of chemical weapons.”
The United Nations disarmament chief, Angela Kane, arrived in Damascus on Saturday to press the Syrian government to allow U.N. experts to investigate the alleged chemical attacks.
Obama remained cautious about getting involved in a war that has killed more than 100,000 people and now includes Hezbollah and al Qaeda. He made no mention of the “red line” of chemical weapons use that he marked out for Syrian President Bashar Assad a year ago and that U.S. intelligence says has been breached at least on a small scale several times since.
“If the U.S. goes in and attacks another country without a U.N. mandate and without clear evidence that can be presented, then there are questions in terms of whether international law supports it — do we have the coalition to make it work?” Obama said Friday. “Those are considerations that we have to take into account.”
Obama conceded in an interview on CNN’s “New Day” program that the episode is a “big event of grave concern” that requires American attention. He said any large-scale chemical weapons usage would affect “core national interests” of the United States and its allies. But nothing he said signaled a shift toward U.S. action.
U.S. defense officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss ship movements publicly. But if the U.S. wants to send a message to Assad, the most likely military action would be a Tomahawk missile strike, launched from a ship in the Mediterranean.
For a year now, Obama has threatened to punish Assad’s regime if it resorted to its chemical weapons arsenal, among the world’s vastest, saying use or even deployment of such weapons of mass destruction constituted a “red line” for him. A U.S. intelligence assessment concluded in June chemical weapons have been used in Syria’s civil war, but Washington has taken no military action against Assad’s forces.
U.S. officials have instead focused on trying to organize a peace conference between the government and opposition. Obama has authorized weapons deliveries to rebel groups, but none are believed to have been sent so far.
In his first comments on Syria since the alleged chemical attack, Obama said the U.S. is still trying to find out what happened. Hagel said Friday that a determination on the chemical attack should be made swiftly because “there may be another attack coming,” although he added that “we don’t know” whether that will happen.
After rebels similarly reported chemical attacks in February, U.S. confirmation took more than four months. In this instance, a U.N. chemical weapons team is already on the ground in Syria. Assad’s government, then as now, has rejected the claims as baseless.
Obama also cited the need for the U.S. to be part of a coalition in dealing with Syria. America’s ability by itself to solve the Arab country’s sectarian fighting is “overstated,” he said.
• AP National Security Writer Robert Burns was traveling with Hagel. AP writers Josh Lederman and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC.Science Frontiers
ONLINE No. 100: Jul-Aug 1995 Issue Contents
How can the moon affect the earth's temperature?
Several weather phenomena, such as precipitation and thunderstorm frequency, have been linked to the phase of the moon. Now, it seems that the moon's "cold" emanations can also raise the earth's temperature. Explaining how the moon's phase can have any warming effect at all on the earth's atmosphere is difficult, because the infrared energy received from the moon is only 10-5 that in sunlight. Nevertheless, a slight but statistically significant temperature effect does exist.
In one study, the microwave emission of molecular oxygen was measured by a polar-orbit satellite. These data gave meteorologists the temperatures of the lowest 6 kilometers of the atmosphere from all areas of the planet. The temperature difference between full moon and new moon was only 0.02°C, with the full-moon temperature being the higher. (Ref. 1)
A second study took actual surface temperatures measured at noon GMT each day at 51,200 locations around the world. These near-surface temperatures revealed a difference of 0.2°C between full and new moons -- ten times larger than that from the satellite study. (Ref. 2)
0.2°C and even 0.02°C are much too large to be attributed to direct lunar "heating." Instead, geophysicists wonder if the moon's orbit modulates the influx of meteoric dust which may affect solar heating of the earth by absorption.
References
Ref. 1. Balling, Robert C., Jr., and Cerveny, Randall S.; "Influence of Lunar Phase on Daily Global Temperatures," Science, 267:1481, 1995.
Ref. 2. Gribbin, John; "A Mysterious Monthly Temperature Cycle," New Scientist, p. 18, January 28, 1995.
From Science Frontiers #100, JUL-AUG 1995. © 1995-2000 William R. Corliss"For the talent show I was gonna recite 'I Have a Dream'... as Gollum"
“RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars”: Behind the Scenes Of Episode 1 (SPOILERS)
Are you still reeling from the premiere episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars? So may twists, so much drama. Imagine what it’s like for the queens!
Well, actually, you don’t have to imagine—our friends at World of Wonder went backstage in the work room and got some unfiltered kiki from the remaining contestants.
Katya tells the cameras she likes the changeup in the elimination format: “I like both twists—it makes the lip sync, like FUN!”
While Phi Phi revealed she almost went in a completely different direction for the talent show: “I was gonna recite ’I Have a Dream’… as Gollum.”
Detox, meanwhile, just wants to get back to the hotel: “If they don’t put me a bathtub soon, these asscheeks are going to be permanently stuck together!”
WOW also checks in with Coco Montrese, who was sent home in Thursday’s episode.
“I can’t say I’d do anything differently,” she says. “I just hope the fans don’t think I let them down.”
As for the twist? Well, being eliminated by a fellow queen is a bitter pill to swallow.
“It’s easier to accept your idol saying ’I love you but it’s time to go.”Hola, Pendejos! My Spanish friend told me that means “Hello amazing people!”. I’m back with another juice recipe. The last time I posted a recipe for my Rainbow Cold Pressed Juices, lots of people went mental for it. I guess people really love juice! This time round, I’m here to share a recipe for my Cold Pressed Strawberry Lime Cooler.
Strawberry and Lime are one of my favorite flavor pairings. The first time I encountered the two
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Twitter joke theft, users have rallied against stolen tweets before. Theft from writers, even if it’s 140 characters at a time, is clearly not tolerated on the Internet.
Photo via Rob Delaney/InstagramThis article is from the archive of our partner.
Like all savvy reality TV, famous-for-no-good-reason stars, the cast of The Jersey Shore has capitalized on their pseudo star-power, attaching their names to brands for cash. Usually endorsement deals involve wearing, or drinking, or bronzing with a certain product, but teeny-bopper clothing brand Abercrombie & Fitch has turned the tables, reports The Speakeasy's Elizabeth Holmes. "Teen apparel retailer Abercrombie & Fitch Co. is offering to pay Michael 'The Situation' Sorrentino not to wear its merchandise." Is the company really concerned that the widely watched guidos are flashing their brand to their devoted Ambercrombie & Fitch wearing viewers? No, the company is obviously doing it for attention, of which they've gotten a lot. But unfortunately it looks like their efforts have backfired, as much of the press points out their nonsensical reasoning and attention grab.
People see through A&F's offer. The real reason Abercrombie has called to ban the brand from the MTV star's bronzed body is obvious, argues The Cut's Amy Odell. "Oh Abercrombie is loving this, especially since every blog from here to Mars won't be able to resist running that press release today." People used to rail against the company's inappropriate models, but then moms got over it and the chatter died down. They miss the attention. Was A&F even pretending to be serious? Women's Wear Daily wonders: "It wasn’t clear whether the offer was a serious one, or simply a tongue-in-cheek attempt to gain publicity."The owners of the world’s most luxurious houses can be a mysterious bunch. We all know who owns Buckingham Palace, but does anyone recognize the name Tim Blixseth? Or know the Indian billionaire who built a 27-story apartment building just for himself? We’re guessing not.
Well, the mystery ends here. Using information provided by CompareCamp.com, we’ve got a rundown of the world’s 10 most expensive houses—modern castles, really—and the people lucky enough, and rich enough, to own them.
10. 7 Upper Phillimore Gardens
Location: London
Value: $128 million
Details: This 10-bedroom prep school turned mansion has an underground swimming pool, a sauna, gym, cinema, and even a panic room. That’s all in addition to an interior covered in marble, gold, and priceless artworks.
Owner: Olena Pinchuk—daughter of Leonid Kuchma, Ukraine’s second president. She is known for being the founder of the ANTIAIDS Foundation and a friend of Elton John.
9. Kensington Palace Gardens
Location: London
Value: $140 million
Details: Located on London’s Billionaires Row, the already tricked-out pad will soon add an underground extension with a tennis court, health center, and auto museum.
Owner: Roman Abramovich—a Russian billionaire and owner of the private investment firm Millhouse LLC. He’s probably best known in the West as the owner of the English Premier League’s Chelsea Football Club.
8. Seven The Pinnacle
Erik Petersen—AP Photo/Bozeman Daily Chronicle
Location: Big Sky, Montana
Value: $155 million
Details: The largest property in the Yellowstone Club, a private ski and golf community for the mega-rich, the house has heated floors, multiple pools, a gym, a wine cellar, and even its own ski lift.
Owners: Edra and Tim Blixseth—Real estate developer and timber baron Tim Blixseth cofounded the Yellowstone Club, but the club’s bankruptcy, a divorce, and other troubles have seriously reduced his wealth in recent years.
7. Hearst Castle
Doug Steakley—Getty Images/Lonely Planet Images
Location: San Simeon, California
Value: $191 million
Details: The 27-bedroom castle, used in the movie The Godfather, has hosted John and Jackie Kennedy, Clark Gable, Winston Churchill, and other famous figures.
Owners: William Randolph Hearst’s trustees—The castle, built by the country’s first newspaper magnate, is now a heritage and tourist site and part of the California Park System.
6. Ellison Estate
Location: Woodside, California
Value: $200 million
Details: Less a house than a compound, this 23-acre property is home to 10 buildings, a man-man lake, koi pond, tea house, and bath house.
Owner: Larry Ellison—Co-founder of Oracle and the third-richest man in the world in 2013, according to Forbes.
5. 18-19 Kensington Palace Gardens
Location: London
Value: $222 million
Details: Another property on Billionaires Row, 18-19 sits alongside the home of Prince William and Kate Middleton. This particular residence has 12 bedrooms, Turkish baths, an indoor pool, and parking for 20 cars.
Owner: Lakshmi Mittal—The head of Arcelor Mittal, the world’s largest steel manufacturer, and, according to Forbes, one of the 100 richest men in India.
4. Four Fairfield Pond
Location: Sagaponack, New York
Value: $248.5 million
Details: This 29-bedroom home sits on 63 acres and has its own power plant. Inside, there are 39 bathrooms, a basketball court, bowling alley, squash courts, tennis courts, three swimming pools, and a 91-foot long dining room.
Owner: Ira Rennert—Owner the Renco Group, a holding company with investments in auto manufacturing and smelting. He also has holdings in metals and mining.
3. Villa Leopolda
Eric Estrade—AFP/Getty Images
Location: Cote D’Azure, France
Value: $750 million
Details: This 50-acre estate includes “a commercial sized green house, a swimming pool and pool house, an outdoor kitchen, helipad, and a guest house larger than the mansions of most millionaires,” according to Variety. The house was famously used as a set in the 1955 Hitchcock classic To Catch a Thief.
Owner: Lily Safra—A Brazilian philanthropist and widow of Lebanese banker William Safra. Her husband died when another one of the couple’s homes burned down, apparently due to arson.
2. Antilia
Alex Robinson/AWL Images Ltd.—Getty Images
Location: Mumbai, India
Value: $1 billion
Details: The Antilia isn’t even really a home in the traditional sense. This 27-story, 400,000-square-foot building has six underground parking floors, three helicopter pads, and requires a 600-person staff just to maintain it.
Owner: Mukesh Ambani—India’s richest man, with a net worth of $23.6 billion, according to Forbes. Ambani made his money running Reliance Industries, an energy and materials company.
1. Buckingham Palace
FCL Photography—Alamy
Location: London
Value: $1.55 billion
Details: Technically still a house, but certainly not for sale, the Queen’s residence was valued at roughly $1.5 billion by the Nationwide Building Society in 2012. The property holds 775 rooms, including 19 state rooms, 52 bedrooms, 188 staff rooms, 92 offices, and 78 bathrooms.
Owner: The British Sovereign—Currently Queen Elizabeth II, who has ruled since February 6, 1952.
See CompareCamp.com’s full graphic, including more images of these home, hereNote: This is the last batch of individually- or small-group-posted papers this week. Tomorrow is the pre-Jacksonville paper mailing deadline, so we expect a bunch of papers to come in all at once, and instead of blogging about them individually, those will all advertised here next week as part of the mailing blog post.
New WG21 papers are available. If you are not a committee member, please use the comments section below or the std-proposals forum for public discussion.
P0186R0: Iterator Facade Library Proposal for Ranges (Beman Dawes, Eric Niebler, Casey Carter) Proposes a library component for easily creating conforming iterators. Based on existing practice. Depends only on the C++17 working paper plus Concepts TS and Ranges TS. Breaks no existing code or ABI's. Two open-source implementations including test suites available. Proposed wording provided.
P0218R0: Adopt the File System TS for C++17 (Beman Dawes) Technical work on N4100, File System Technical Specification, ISO/IEC TS 18822:2015, was completed in July 2014, and published by ISO in July 2015. There are three shipping implementations and one soon-to-ship implementation. Two of the shipping implementations have been have been in use for several years. This document proposes adopting the File System Technical Specification, with corrections, for C++17. The alternative to this proposal is to start work on version two of the File System TS. Doing nothing is not an alternative.A controversial ban on the burkini was overturned by France’s highest administrative court on Friday, prompting a Right-wing backlash as mayors vowed to defy the ruling.
The State Council’s judgment suspended a ban in the Riviera resort of Villeneuve-Loubet and set a legal precedent for about 30 other towns that have also prohibited the full-body swimsuit worn by a minority of Muslim women.
The council ruled that mayors overstepped their powers by introducing the bans this month amid growing anxiety over security after a series of terrorist attacks including the Bastille Day massacre of 86 people in Nice.
“The emotion and the anxieties resulting from the terrorist attacks and especially the one committed in Nice on July 14, are not sufficient to justify legally the prohibition,” the judgement said.
The ban “constituted a serious and manifestly illegal infringement of fundamental liberties”, it said, ruling that mayors “may only restrict freedoms if there are confirmed risks” to public safety, which it said was not the case with the burkini.
Lionnel Luca, the mayor of Villeneuve-Loubet, said: “This decision, far from pacifying, will serve only to heighten tensions which will carry risks of trouble which we wanted to avoid.”
He argued that the judgment was inconsistent as another Riviera town, Mandelieu-la-Napoule, introduced an identical ban in 2013 that was never contested.Josef Newgarden's car rolls to the upright position after being involved in a wreck with Conor Daly during an IndyCar auto race at Texas Motor Speedway, Sunday, June 12, 2016, in Fort Worth, Texas. (AP Photo/Tim Sharp) (Photo: Tim Sharp, AP)
FORT WORTH, Texas — IndyCar Series driver Josef Newgarden suffered a fractured right clavicle and a small fracture of the right hand in a double-impact crash Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway.
The crash occurred on Lap 42 of the Firestone 600, which was stopped shortly thereafter by a second day of heavy rain. Due to a poor weather forecast and IndyCar’s scheduled tests at other tracks this week, the race, originally scheduled for Saturday night, was postponed to Aug. 27. The Saturday race will restart at 8:15 p.m. EDT.
James Hinchcliffe will be the leader on Lap 72.
Conor Daly’s car lost traction exiting Turn 4, then hooked toward the outside wall, where Newgarden’s car was passing. The first contact took them hard to the right, then there was a secondary hit with Newgarden’s open cockpit exposed to the wall. In the latter hit, the roll hoop on Newgarden’s car dug into the steel portion of the energy-absorbing barrier, creating a hole that had to be repaired.
After a couple of minutes, Newgarden got out of the car under his own power before reaching for his right shoulder and then slumping to the ground. He was loaded into an ambulance and taken to the track’s infield care center. He managed to wave to the crowd with his left hand.
On Twitter, fellow driver Ryan Hunter-Reay called it “a gnarly hit.”
Daly said he talked to his longtime friend in the care center.
“I apologized to him in there because it was my mistake, for sure,” Daly said. “He’s a tough kid; I grew up with him. I feel so bad. To ruin someone’s race is never good.”
Newgarden was taken to Parkland Memorial Hospital but was expected to be released Sunday night, according to an IndyCar statement.
Both cars were heavily damaged.
“The car appeared to do what it was supposed to do, the SAFER barriers did what they’re supposed to do,” IndyCar President Jay Frye said. “Thank goodness (Newgarden) is OK.... He appears to be in good shape.”
In the IndyCar statement, Newgarden thanked Dallara, the car manufacturer, along with IndyCar, the Holmatro Safety Team and track officials.
“The car held up great and the response from the safety team was amazing,” he said. “I’m banged up a little bit but I’m generally OK. That’s all thanks to IndyCar and all the work everyone within the series does.
“I am feeling a little pain but I hope to be ready to rock and go again soon. We had a great car today, it just did not go how we planned. I feel bad for both Conor and myself, but I’m glad Conor is OK as well. I’ll be back there fighting as soon as I can.
“Luckily, I am all right, thank you again to everyone who helped me.”
Said Ed Carpenter, who is Newgarden’s teammate and car owner: “The car did a very good job protecting Josef.”
Carpenter said Newgarden’s helmet was not scuffed.
Daly was not injured. “I didn’t even hit hard,” he said.
Daly was one of the last drivers still running with the same tires he started the race on when he lost control.
“It felt like the right rear (tire) just went and lost all grip and basically drifted from (Turns) 3 to 4,” he said. “I couldn’t get out of (the throttle) quick enough. It’s my fault. I lost it in front of Josef.”
During the pit stops that followed under caution, Marty Armstrong, the inside front tire changer for driver Jack Hawksworth, suffered a lower back injury when he was struck by the air gun hose. Armstrong took stitches in the infield care center and was released.
After Saturday night’s race was rained out, a second wave of heavy rain arrived Sunday about 4:15 p.m., ending hope for a resumption of the race this weekend.
With a strong likelihood of rain Monday, a busy week of testing ahead and several drivers flying to France for the 24 Hours of Le Mans sports car race, series and track officials agreed to postpone the event.
All tickets purchased for this event will be honored, and the one-day event will include a practice, an autograph session and a resumption of the race. That means 177 laps remain. The television component has not been finalized, Frye said.
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
Running the last weekend in August makes it the 14th of 16 races this season, with the penultimate race at Watkins Glen (N.Y.) International on Sept. 4 and the season finale Sept. 18 at Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway.
Follow IndyStar reporter Curt Cavin on Facebook and Twitter: @curtcavin.AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Thousands of Dutch Catholics are researching how they can leave the church in protest at its opposition to gay marriage, according to the creator of a website aimed at helping them find the information.
Tom Roes, whose website allows people to download the documents needed to leave the church, said traffic on ontdopen.nl - “de-baptise.nl” - had soared from about 10 visits a day to more than 10,000 after Pope Benedict’s latest denunciation of gay marriage this month.
“Of course it’s not possible to be ‘de-baptized’ because a baptism is an event, but this way people can unsubscribe or de-register themselves as Catholics,” Roes told Reuters.
He said he did not know how many visitors to the site actually go ahead and leave the church.
About 28 percent of the population in the Netherlands is Catholic and 18 percent is Protestant, while a much larger proportion - roughly 44 percent - is not religious, according to official statistics.
The country is famous for its liberal attitudes, for example to drugs and prostitution, and in April 2001 it was the first in the world to legalize same-sex marriages.
In a Christmas address to Vatican officials, the pope signaled the he was ready to forge alliances with other religions against gay marriage, saying the family was threatened “to its foundations” by attempts to change its “true structure”.
Roes, a television director, said he left the church and set up his website partly because he was angry about the way the church downplayed or covered-up sexual abuse in Catholic orphanages, boarding schools and seminaries.
A report by an independent commission published a year ago said there had been tens of thousands of victims of child sexual abuse in the Netherlands since 1945 and criticized the church’s culture of silence.David Sherman/Getty Images
UPDATE, FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 23: Kevin Garnett announced he's officially retiring after a fitting 21 seasons, That changes portions of this preview and the Minnesota Timberwolves' present, but his illustrious contributions will never be forgotten and the team's future remains the same.
***
The supposedly bright future has been on the horizon for so long, Minnesota Timberwolves fans could be forgiven for wondering when and where it is, or if it even exists.
It's here.
Just listen to the voice of the future himself if you're doubting, as Karl-Anthony Towns told Jace Frederick of TwinCities.com:
We’re concocting a plan to be the best Timberwolves team that’s come around in a long time. A lot of people tend to think that we’re the Timberwolves, and we’re at the bottom of the barrel. I just want everyone to know that we’re coming. Just remember us, remember who we were for the last 13 years, because things are about to change.
It's best not to doubt the one they call KAT, by the way—a player so dominant during his rookie campaign that Bleacher Report's Adam Fromal ranked him as the NBA's second-best center in this year's NBA 200.
It's admittedly shocking to see Towns listed as the No. 2 center, as the No. 6 big man and among the league's top 20 overall players. But just go watch some tape, because he was legitimately that good. Despite being less than a year removed from playing for John Calipari, Towns excelled in virtually every area and had no distinct weaknesses. After the All-Star break, he was the only NBA player to average at least 20 points, 10 rebounds and three assists while making more shots than he missed, per Bleacher Report's Andy Bailey.
The scariest part? Towns is just one (huge) cog in a machine that was built over the past three years by the late Flip Saunders. It's ready to be oiled and run through its paces by new team president and head coach Tom Thibodeau.
This is gonna be good.
Biggest Offseason Move
David Sherman/Getty Images
Last year's 29-53 record was not good, but let's give credit where it's due: Sam Mitchell got thrown into an extremely difficult situation, having to suddenly take over as head coach after Saunders' death from cancer.
The season could have been an unmitigated, and wholly understandable, disaster. Yet Mitchell's steady presence and faithfulness helped the team stay focused. They played just outside the top 10 in offensive rating (according to NBA.com) and grew together under his watch.
However, despite the fact he was 2007's Coach of the Year during his days with the Toronto Raptors, Mitchell's rotations rarely made sense, and his defense was rated the league's fourth-worst (according to NBA.com). Towns was around for all 82 games, yet how many times did the ball wind up in Tayshaun-Freaking-Prince's hands during crunch time instead?
There was always the sense the Wolves could and should be growing more.
That's why Thibodeau's arrival is so important.
Sporting a 255-139 record (per Basketball-Reference) and a 2011 Coach of the Year Award from his time with the Chicago Bulls, Thibs is already one of the three most accomplished helmsman in franchise history (Rick Adelman and Flip Saunders being the other two).
He arrives at a pivotal time in the roster's maturation process and has what Bleacher Report's Grant Hughes describes as the perfect muse in Towns.
A guy entering his age-21 season with that statistical profile, who also has the makings of a true defensive force, who will now play for noted defensive mastermind Tom Thibodeau, who is surrounded by a legion of similarly young and promising talents...well, a guy like that is essentially a holy vessel for basketball enthusiasm.
Jim Mone/Associated Press/Associated Press
Last season's defense was noticeably better every time Kevin Garnett was involved (though that was only for 38 games), and it would have been nice if he could have stuck around to mentor the pups for one more season. Whether his retirement decision was more affected by the way Mitchell's ouster left a bad taste in his mouth (per Mitchell on Sirus XM NBA Radio) or his own body breaking down, we'll never know.
Yet, even his short second stint in Minny was extremely valuable for the educations of Andrew Wiggins, Zach LaVine and Towns, especially defensively.
When you have Towns and Ricky Rubio as already elite NBA defenders, plus two potentially All-NBA stoppers in Wiggins and Gorgui Dieng, this could be another all-world Thibodeau defense. If the late-clock and late-game offense runs first through Towns, then Wiggins and Zach LaVine will thrive and close wins can finally happen.
Of course, it probably won't all happen this season.
There will be flashes, overshadowed by plenty of teaching moments, headaches and heartaches. So the biggest question is: Will the gravel-voiced sideline stalker be patient enough to let the kids grow with him, rather than prematurely pulling the plug for "safe" veterans who do his bidding but wreck the team's limitless ceiling in the process?
With an untested amount of unchecked power at his fingertips, hopefully Coach Thibs doesn't influence President Thibs into making any kind of unforgivably short-sighted, franchise-altering moves.
Rotation Breakdown
David Sherman/Getty Images
On paper, the Timberwolves seem to have just about everything they need. Almost.
PG SG SF PF C Ricky Rubio Zach Lavine Andrew Wiggins Gorgui Dieng Karl-Anthony Towns Kris Dunn Shabazz Muhammad Nemanja Bjelica Cole Adrich Tyus Jones Brandon Rush Adreian Payne Jordan Hill Nikola Pekovic*
Rubio is a pass-first savant and a strong defender, but "he can't shoot" is the only accurate thing about his offense. LaVine is athleticism incarnate and, as B/R's Fromal cited when naming him his 26th-best guard entering 2016:
The first half of Zach LaVine's sophomore season held him back, but he was one of the league's more dangerous scoring guards after the All-Star break [and his second-straight Slam Dunk Contest win]. After Feb. 19, he averaged 16.4 points while shooting 48 percent from the field and 43.7 percent from beyond the arc. Everything clicked when he was no longer tasked with creating so much of his own offense. If his mid-range jumper follows the same developmental path his three-point stroke did in 2015-16, he'll be yet another alpha dog on a Minnesota Timberwolves roster brimming over with them.
But that's the thing: There's no consistent track record of him hitting threes (yet).
Wiggins has Jimmy Butler 2.0 written all over his frame and game, but he'll need Thibs to install a Butler 2.0 motor for it to work right. Oh, and a consistent jump shot.
Dieng is quietly good at just about everything, and getting better—but he's not a stretch 4.
That Towns guy we keep talking about may already be the best shooter on the starting unit. Of course, his coach basically wouldn't let him shoot long balls last season, so we only have 30 made threes (on 88 attempts for a.341 clip) on which to base that.
And unlike years past, there's reasonable depth at every position this year.
John Locher/Associated Press
Kris Dunn was voted "most likely to be named Rookie of the Year" by his peers, according to John Schuhmann of NBA.com. It seems to be a matter of when, not if, he pushes Rubio for the starting point guard job. At least he hit 37 percent of his threes last season, but that was on only 113 attempts, according to Sports-Reference.
If there's one thing Shabazz Muhammad can do, it's put up points. Fast. And...come to think of it, that's pretty much the one thing he does. He's also only a career 31 percent three-point shooter who made 44 of 152 attempts (.289) last year.
Jordan Hill and Cole Aldrich have both logged meaningful NBA minutes up front while Garnett has a career full of them. Not a one stretches beyond 18 feet. Tyus Jones and Adreian Payne have shown flashes of "gamesmanship" and "something-or-other-I-think?" to keep around for another season, but you guessed it: can't shoot.
That means the big-heavy roster is counting on two second-unit "specialists"—one a 28-year-old sophomore who often looked too overwhelmed by NBA speed to use his five tools last season, and a 31-year-old world champion whose body has restricted him to less than 15 minutes per game the past four years.
Yup, Nemanja Bjelica (career.384 from 3) and Brandon Rush (.403) are going to be more important than you realize.
Reasons for Confidence
Seriously, who doesn't have the Wolves on their "most likely to improve," "teams to watch" and "next wave" lists? (If someone doesn't, stop trusting his or her judgment. Immediately.) There are so many good reasons for that, but it begins and ends with Towns.
When your starting center handles the ball like this, you can push in transition and put the game in his hands anywhere in the half court:
When he locks down like this, your all-world defensive coach can build a future all-universe defense around the kid.
When that near-7-footer did all of the things as a rookie, eerily mirroring the early years of your franchise's greatest-ever 20 years ago, you realize the future is indeed here. And it's blindingly, maddeningly bright.
When your team's star is smart, coachable and seemingly mature beyond his years, your biggest variable is already a certainty. All you need are the right supporting pieces.
Growing up is going to be fun.
Reasons for Concern
David Dow/Getty Images
The long-time starting point guard may want out if progress isn't made. Or he might be losing his job soon if Dunn is ready quickly.
No one has really acknowledged this is Towns' team yet. Are we sure Wiggins and LaVine are going to be cool with that as the seasons go by, contract years approach, shots diminish and roles are set? The specter of Stephon Marbury already looms here.
This was a promising-but-bad basketball team last season that didn't play defense and couldn't (wouldn't?) shoot threes because of coaching schemes. Their new headmaster's old Bulls teams played defense but generally ground their own possessions to a halt, didn't stretch the floor and relied too much on the top of the rotation.
That's all concerning in an era of free-flowing offenses, long-distance snipers and minute monitoring.
Finally, this is a division that features last year's surprise playoff darlings (Portland Trail Blazers), this year's most likely replacement (Utah Jazz), another deep, young team on the rise (Denver Nuggets) and a former title contender that's still talented and helmed by motivated madman superstar point guard Russell Westbrook (Oklahoma City Thunder).
That's just the division. Oh, and the Western Conference is still the Western Conference, by the way.
Growing up isn't going to be easy.
Predictions
Rich Pedroncelli/Associated Press/Associated Press/Associated Press
A funny thing can happen when pressure is turned up on a team that's yet to taste real success, much less figure out how to overcome years of disappointment.
Some players may remain oblivious and just "happy to be here," surprising themselves and a lot of people until the playoff push tightens and so do they. Or they can start straining under the spotlight, so caught up with every little nit magnified in front of them that they stop moving forward at all.
The Minnesota Timberwolves now have playoff whispers attached and a coach/president with big expectations both on him and from him. All the tools are available, but each needs to be sharpened—many to a large extent and likely for more than one year. This could be a great leap forward, or simply a season filled with acclimation and troubleshooting.
Speaking of shooting, someone needs to find more of that, too. Thinning out the frontcourt logjam for another competent sniper would sure be nice. Ray Allen-Garnett-Thibodeau reunion, anyone?
Yes, the crazy thing with bright futures is, once expectations start, the clock begins ticking on player development, looming large-contract decisions, "final pieces" and fulfillment.
It's all here.
Final Record: 45-37
45-37 Division Standing: 3rd in Northwest
3rd in Northwest Playoff Berth: No
No B/R League-wide Power Rankings Prediction: 17th
*It's been two years and Nikola Pekovic still isn't fully healed from his Achilles and foot issues. It's sounding like he'll be bought out soon. Now we know why Cole Aldrich and Jordan Hill were added to an already logjammed front court.
Joel C. Cordes is Bleacher Report's Associate NBA Editor. In addition to the occasional written piece, you can catch him on sports talk stations across the country and follow him on Twitter @bballJoel.After being in development for over 20 years, a new RPG released today on Steam — and gamers are decidedly unimpressed.
Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar — which, by the way, is the most RPG name an RPG game has had since D&D — went live on Steam today after one of the longest development cycles in gaming history. The announcement banner on its Steam page leans into its semi-mythical status by saying, “Itz Coming” and “This is not a drill.” Ironically, the date on that banner is three days off from the actual release date, but what’s a few days’ delay after so long?
Let’s take a look at similar runs: Final Fantasy XV was in development for 10 years before it was released last year. Aliens: Colonial Marines? 12 years. Duke Nukem Forever? 15 years. So while it may not stretch the limit of credulity that much — damn. 20 years kinda takes the vaporware cake.
The game has only one developer: Cleve Blakemore. He’s received a fair share of attention and funding, but has not met previous release dates he’s set. In a failed Indiegogo campaign (which still raised almost $11,000), he said:
COMPLETION NOT SUBJECT TO FUNDING!! THIS GAME WILL SHIP IN MAY 2013 WITH OR WITHOUT ENHANCEMENT!! A PLEDGE HERE WILL BE FULFILLED. THIS CAMPAIGN IS NOT A FUNDING FOR COMPLETION, IT IS A FUNDING FOR ENHANCEMENT!!! COMPLETION IS GUARANTEED HERE!
And after all this time, what do gamers think of Blakemore’s brainchild? If the Steam reviews are anything to go by, not much. Here’s a little selection:
user interface is old-school in the bad way…
The game crashes on launch, when it doesn’t crash on launch it crashes on any menu button being pressed…
Crashes to desktop when trying to enter character inventory.
This is awful.
An absolute disaster.
Seems 20 years was still not enough time to cobble something together worth playing. But Blakemore’s proven he has resolve — hopefully the patches take less time to arrive than the game did.
Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar is now live on Steam after 20 years of development on PC Gamer
Read next: How restaurants can execute a successful marketing strategyA 450-kilogram cow being prepared for slaughter jumped a 1.8-metre fence and bolted through the streets of Pocatello, Idaho, before police shot and killed it following a lengthy pursuit.
Pocatello police Chief Scott Marchand said his officers fired two shots at the heifer because it posed a safety risk. The cow had escaped from a meat processing business on Friday afternoon.
Early in the chase, an officer shot the cow in the head but the wounded animal kept running.
Police and animal control officers on foot and in vehicles chased the cow through the city's north side. It rammed an animal control truck and two police cars.
The animal was eventually cornered in a residential backyard about five kilometres away, where it was shot and killed by a police officerThe former deputy mayor of Jerusalem had a stark warning for his American audience. Using official figures, Meron Benvenisti showed how the Israeli government had “proceeded methodically and effectively toward de facto annexation of the West Bank.” In terms of the West Bank’s “part in a solution” with the Palestinians, said Benvenisti, the time is “five minutes to midnight.”
Sounds pertinent? In fact, that speech was given 34 years ago, in 1982. According to a report of Benvenisti’s remarks, the Israeli government at the time (under Menachem Begin) aimed “to have 100,000 settlers in the West Bank as soon as possible”, a “critical mass” so large “that no Israeli government thereafter could agree to withdraw from the territory.”
More than three decades later, the population of Israel’s illegal settlements across the West Bank has grown to around 400,000. Add the colonies in East Jerusalem, and the total figure reaches approximately 600,000. So if it was ‘five minutes to midnight’ in 1982, what time is it now?
The problem, to stretch the metaphor, is that a lot of people seem to have stopped watches. It’s not as if Benvenisti’s 1982 speech was a unique, isolated warning; the following year, The New York Times reported how Palestinians feared that “time for compromise is running out in the face of the extensive settlement construction [by Israel].”
That same article, incidentally, cited the infamous remarks by the then-outgoing Israeli army chief, Rafael Eytan, who told the Knesset: “When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged roaches in a bottle.’”
Jump forward to 1999, and The New York Times was writing that while “there will almost certainly be a Palestinian state… it will be a state of a peculiar kind.” Why? Because “Jewish settlements in the West Bank are a fundamental obstacle to the creation of a normal state for the Palestinians.” The words echo Yitzhak Rabin’s vision for a “[Palestinian] entity which is less than a state.”
Seven years ago, one commentator in The Guardian wrote how “it’s hard to see Israeli control of the area of the pre-1967 state, the West Bank and Gaza as constituting anything other than one, de facto state.” In 2012, there was “mounting international alarm” that Israeli settlement expansion “was killing off any prospect of a future peace agreement with the Palestinians.”
This is just a snapshot; examples abound, going back more than 30 years, of concerns that Israel’s colonisation of the West Bank was endangering the viability of a Palestinian state. Yet in terms of rhetoric, the time remains stuck at five minutes to midnight. Judging by their actual actions, Western governments aren’t in any sort of hurry at all.
Today, we have an Israeli government made up of explicit, or implicit, rejectionists of Palestinian statehood. A year ago, Benjamin Netanyahu declared: “We won’t divide Jerusalem, we won’t make concessions, we won’t withdraw from land.” Last October, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked told an audience in Washington D.C.: “There is not and never will be a Palestinian State.”
Earlier this week, Shaked declared that “she is crafting a plan with the attorney general to apply Israeli law in the West Bank”, an escalation, of “a trend in recent years to apply Israeli law in the West Bank, both via rulings and military orders.” Naftali Bennett, the head of Shaked’s party Jewish Home, has explicitly stated that the annexation of the West Bank is an incremental “process.”
Settlement construction, and expansion, continues apace. But why be surprised? When Netanyahu was elected as prime minister for the first time in 1996, CNN reported how the Likud leader had “promised to slow the peace process, build new Jewish settlements in the West Bank, block creation of a Palestinian state.”
The savvier Israeli politicians, and certainly the pro-Israel lobby groups active in Western capitals, are desperate to maintain the illusion that a Palestinian state is still possible. This serves two purposes: to stave off serious consideration of alternatives that would threaten Israel as a ‘Jewish state’, and to ward off the possibility of serious pressure being applied on the Israeli government.
To keep the game going while Israel’s grip on the West Bank tight
|
uesa and PO1 Bernard Orpilla following the March 2 resolution by the DOJ.
The accused filed a petition for review with the DOJ and released a resolution last May 29 and ordered the Leyte prosecutor to amend the charge sheet in court.
The motion was signed by Provincial Prosecutor Ma. Arlene Hunamayor-Cordovez and filed filed at the Baybay City Regional Trial Court Branch 14.
“It is respectfully prayed of this Honorable Court to recognize and give weight to the said resolution on the petition for review before the DOJ and after due hearing, grant leave for the public prosecution to amend and downgrade the Information for Murder to Homicide in these cases,” the motion said.
BACKSTORY: NBI: Mayor Espinosa was murdered, defenseless
Cordovez filed the motion as ordered by the DOJ.
A case for murder is filed if it could be proven that it is attended by any of the qualifying aggravating circumstances under Article 248 of the Revised Penal Code.
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In this case, the March 2 resolution noted that the death of Espinosa and Yap were attended by treachery and the respondents used stealth to carry out the raid and that they clearly outnumbered and out-armed the victims.
LOOK: DOJ resolution says Espinosa slay well planned
“The panel likewise determined that the respondents strategically positioned themselves to secure the ingress and egress of the jail facility. It was also determined that evident premeditation was also present since the attack was well-planned, with the execution of the killings under the deception of implementing a search warrant,” said part of the resolution.
The resolution was signed by Senior Assistant State Prosecutor Lilian Doris Alejo, who headed the prosecution panel, and approved by Senior Deputy State Prosecutor Pedrito Rancis.
The DOJ’s March 2 resolution was based on the findings of the National Bureau of Investigation.
But the DOJ, in its May 29 resolution said there was nothing on records to show that there was evident premeditation.
“Not a single witness was present during the pre-operation meeting where it was surmised that the “plan” was hatches by the respondents,” the DOJ resolution stated.
On the use of excessive force, the DOJ said: “The participation of the 19 police respondents during the incident does not meet this qualifying circumstance.”
“It is just reasonable and logical that police operation requires several armed men to ensure its success, their protection and security,” the resolution added.
The DOJ said it was not excessive but “necessary force” which was used to implement the search warrant since they were refused admission by the jail guards.
The DOJ added that Espinosa and Yap tested positive of gun powder confirming the claims of the police that the two inmates fought it out.
Last March 31, President Rodrigo Duterte said he was ready to pardon Marcos and the other police officers involved in the death of Espinosa and Yap. Once they plead guilty, he said he would grant them absolute pardon. /IDL /rga /atm
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MOST READHeading into the season, it seemed like the Yankees had a surplus of outfielders. Since Carlos Beltran has been sidelined with an elbow injury, Jacoby Ellsbury and Brett Gardner have been the only outfielders guaranteed to start. Joe Girardi has been able to choose between Alfonso Soriano, Ichiro Suzuki, and more recently, Zoilo Almonte, for the other outfield spot. For some reason, Soriano has earned the most playing time so far (46 games played compared to Ichiro's 37). Would it make more sense to bench him in favor of starting Ichiro?
Last season was Ichiro's career worst in terms of average, on base percentage and wRC+ and I think the vast majority of Yankee fans were worried that he would have a terrible 2014 season. Yet he's somehow managed to turn things around. Ichiro is batting.357/.416/.414 with a wRC+ of 135. He's been worth 0.7 fWAR. Comparatively, Soriano is hitting.240/.266/.413 with a wRC+ of 81, and he's been worth -0.1 fWAR. While it's true that Ichiro did miss several days with a back injury, Girardi has generally favored putting Soriano into the lineup over Ichiro, which was especially true when Beltran was the regular third outfielder. This is probably because Soriano is a power threat, but he hasn't been recently. He's only hit two home runs during the month of May so far, and he's only managed to get two hits over his last 18 plate appearances.
It's also not like Soriano deserves to start over Ichiro because his defense is so spectacular or anything. Ichiro's UZR is currently 1.1 compared to Soriano's UZR of -0.8. Ichiro has played more innings in the outfield, yet Soriano's had 100 more plate appearances because Girardi insists on putting him in the DH role. At this point, it seems like the team would benefit the most from Ichiro being the third outfielder the majority of the time, at least until Beltran comes back, and other people subbing into the DH spot. It's not like there simply isn't anyone besides Soriano who can DH. Derek Jeter probably should be in the DH role more often than he has been. In anticipation of the argument that Ichiro is playing better this year because he was overworked last year (which could certainly be true), Ichiro could also DH. Almonte probably deserves to be the third outfielder over Soriano at this point too.
Putting Soriano in the DH spot, or starting him in right field because he prefers to actually be playing a position, is not doing the team any favors right now. Soriano has mostly just been collecting strikeouts, as his strikeout percentage is up to a dreadful 27.7% (Only 17 other players have a higher strikeout percentage than Soriano). Ichiro, on the other hand, is hitting significantly better than Soriano, and he's been working a lot of walks (his BB% is 9.1 compared to Soriano's 2.8). Until Ichiro cools down, or Soriano heats up, it just doesn't make sense for Soriano to be playing so frequently.
Do you think Soriano should be getting as much playing time as he has been or that it makes sense to bench Ichiro so that Soriano can start?A Milwaukee bus driver was just about to start her last loop of the night when she stopped to run into a convenience store.
It was midnight and she stopped dead in her tracks when she the heard the sounds of a child crying.
Read: Former Bus Driver Steals City Bus After Driver Tells Her to Stop Smoking
Running up the street in 20-degree cold was a 5-year-old boy with no shoes, no coat and wearing only a pair of shorts.
Denise Wilson scooped him up and ran to the gas station, where someone handed over a shirt for the child. Wilson took him back to her bus, cranked the heater and gave him her coat.
Surveillance video taken inside the bus shows her giving the boy a snack and tucking her jacket around his tiny frame.
“Sometimes God puts us in places where he needs us, and I think a lot of us bus drivers out here seem to always be in the right place, Wilson told WTMJ-TV.
Read: Video Shows School Bus Driver Being Attacked as Kids Scream and Cry: 'Mommy!'
Police said the boy had wandered out of his house and gotten lost. They said the incident was just an accident.
The Milwaukee County Transit System praised Wilson for her help and posted the surveillance video to its Facebook page.
It has been viewed more 2,500 times.
Watch: Bus Driver Builds Ramp for 10-Year-Old in Wheelchair Struggling to Leave Home
Related Articles:Video (03:21) : Does Teddy Bridgewater have what it takes to start for the Vikings? NFL Draft Insider Russ Lande tell us the latest with Bridgewater and what to expect from other NFC rookies this season.
The list is scribbled on a piece of paper and tucked away in one of his notebooks, so he can see it every day. It might as well be in a vault, though. It is for Teddy Bridgewater’s eyes only.
Bridgewater always has been a goal-oriented person, and he has a summer ritual of writing down his goals before reporting for training camp. He crossed many of them off his list during his college career at Louisville and his high school playing days in Miami before then.
But Bridgewater doesn’t feel the need to share them, certainly not to an inquisitive reporter.
“I can’t tell you what’s on the list,” the busy rookie quarterback said while walking and talking after a recent practice. “I can give you the biggest goal: to not make the same mistake twice.”
This has become his go-to talking point the first week of training camp in Mankato, and in his brief time with the Vikings, Bridgewater has displayed the poise of a veteran while throwing around coachspeak as much as he has when throwing around footballs — and he has looked sharp doing that.
But one can assume that Bridgewater’s goals are more ambitious than that, that the top-secret list also includes seizing the starting quarterback job and leading the Vikings back to the playoffs. And whether or not he says it publicly, Bridgewater expects both to happen in due time. Bridgewater started preparing to become an NFL starter and the face of a franchise long before the Vikings drafted him with the 32nd overall pick in May’s NFL draft.
Teddy Bridgewater wanted to land with the Vikings, and he got his wish. Now, the question is when will he be ready to take over as the starting quarterback.
Bridgewater must beat out veteran Matt Cassel to cross that one off his list. Even if he doesn’t by Week 1, the Vikings still believe they have hitched their future hopes to the right quarterback.
“Teddy has been a really good get for us,” coach Mike Zimmer said. “I do not know when [he will start], but I am ecstatic to have him. I love his personality. I was teasing him this morning about some stuff. He has a good head on his shoulders and is a good kid. The Vikings fans will be proud to have Teddy Bridgewater with us for a long, long time.”
Never giving up
Bridgewater’s discipline was developed at a young age, in part, by his father, Teddy Sr., an Army veteran. Even after his parents divorced when he was 4, Bridgewater had to charge through a list of chores when he visited his father. Keeping his grades up were also a must.
“My father did teach me some things,” Bridgewater said. “The No. 1 thing is respect.”
His drive? That comes from his mother, Rose Murphy, who raised Bridgewater and his three older siblings in the working-class Brownsville neighborhood of Miami.
Back then, Bridgewater stood out among his peers on the ball fields and sandlots, not just because he was one of the best athletes, but also because he was one of the tallest. By the time he was 9, his mom had to bring his birth certificate to quiet any parents who questioned his age.
Rose knew her baby was a special athlete as he watched him smack baseballs around the park and effortlessly play a handful of positions in pee-wee football. To her, Bridgewater was destined to become a star, but he considered putting football on hold when she was diagnosed with breast cancer when he was 14.
Rose, who is now cancer-free, wasn’t having it. She wasn’t quitting, and neither was he.
“His dream was always to be a professional football player and he wasn’t going to accept no as an option,” she said. “He got his strength and his stride just from watching me.”
Her battle with cancer taught Bridgewater “to live life with a purpose and live that purpose out loud,” and to never give up.
“It doesn’t matter what you’re going through, my mom always told me, ‘It gets greater later,’ Bridgewater said. “Even though she went through breast cancer, watching her continue to smile even when her hair was falling out and her fingernails were turning black and she was too weak to go to the bathroom. Watching her smile, that meant a lot to me, and I take those things from her and just apply them to my life.”
A soft landing
The family motto, the one about things getting greater later, was tested after a poor pro day. Bridgewater, once considered a squeaky-clean prospect, ended up being scrutinized as much as anyone in the draft.
Then, before landing in Minnesota, Bridgewater had to wait four hours on draft night for his name to be called, and not before he watched the Vikings pass on him once and heard the unconfirmed reports that they tried to trade up to select Texas A&M scrambler Johnny Manziel instead.
Privately, Bridgewater was telling friends and family that he hoped to land with the Vikings, who gave off a family vibe during his interactions with them. And while he admits that being the predraft punching bag for draft analysts ticked him off, he is happy with how everything turned out.
Teddy Bridgewater, airing out a pass in Mankato on Friday, didn’t have a good pro day, which caused him to drop in the draft — and motivated him to push harder.
“Of course, it motivates you for one. But I tried to put all the predraft process, what happened, behind me,” he said. “Because hey, I’m here in Minnesota now. What was said back then doesn’t affect what I do tomorrow or what I do the next day. It happened and I’m glad it’s over with. And now I can just focus on being the best Minnesota Viking that I can be.”
The anti-Manziel
Before the draft, while national media buzzed about the star power Manziel could bring to a lifeless organization, at least one prominent analyst voiced concerns about Bridgewater’s ability to be the face of a franchise.
So far, though, Bridgewater has kept a smile on a face with people tugging him from every direction.
On reporting day here, the cheers for Bridgewater were as loud as for anyone, and he smiled as he signed autographs for many of the hopeful fans. The following day, he patiently flipped a football for several minutes until a photographer got the perfect shot. Hours later, he patiently answered questions — many of which he had already answered the day before — inside a sizable scrum of reporters.
While Manziel has provided countless clicks for websites such as TMZ and Deadspin — and reportedly has partied his way from a quarterback competition into the doghouse in Cleveland — the Vikings are not expecting to see Instagram photos of Bridgewater holding a bottle of champagne while floating on an inflatable swan or pretending a giant stack of dollar bills was a telephone.
Bridgewater’s kind of scene is a good dinner and a quiet night in with his playbook.
“He’s been extremely impressive in his approach, not only what he’s doing on the field, but what he does off the field,” Vikings General Manager Rick Spielman said.
Bridgewater, who learned to be a self-starter while having to fend for himself when his mother was at work, believes he will succeed in the NFL if “he says within his character, stays true to himself.”
Opportunity knocks
In high school, Bridgewater snagged passes from future University of Miami quarterback Jacory Harris as a sophomore while he waited for his turn in the huddle. At Louisville, he again patiently prepared to play, but early in his freshman year when an injury sidelined starter Will Stein, Bridgewater pounced, never surrendering the job.
Now, he is learning on lessons learned in the past — in life and in football — while battling Cassel and Christian Ponder to start. Cassel had the leg up when the Vikings arrived in Mankato, but Zimmer said he would have no reservations about starting the 21-year-old Bridgewater, who had a strong spring and impressed the coaching staff with his study habits and his deep ball, if he is the best fit for this team.
“We’re really not afraid to do anything,” Zimmer said.
All business now, Bridgewater has said all the right things about the quarterback competition and how he just wants to get better every day — you know, not making the same mistake twice.
But last month, Bridgewater briefly allowed himself to think about what it will be like to step into the huddle for the first time as the Vikings starting quarterback, something he is likely to cross off his list at some point this fall.
“It will be a great feeling,” he said. “I know that I won’t get there unless I continue to just compete at a high level. It’s just going to be a great feeling. When the time comes, I’ll take advantage of it.”Image caption Mr Bandak visited several parts of the camp and laid a bouquet of flowers
A spokesman for the Palestinian militant movement Hamas has criticised a visit by a Palestinian official to the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, media reports say.
Fawzi Barhoum was quoted as saying the visit by Ziad al-Bandak, adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, was "unjustified and unhelpful".
He also called the Holocaust an "alleged tragedy", media reports say.
Hamas spokesmen have previously described the Holocaust as fabricated.
More than a million people, mainly Jews, were murdered at Auschwitz, part of some six million Jews killed in the Nazi genocide during World War II.
Mr Bandak visited the camp late last month and paid his respects there to the dead.
Mr Barhoum is quoted in media reports as saying the visit is at "the expense of the true Palestinian tragedy".
A comment piece published by the Hamas-run Filastin newspaper also criticised Mr Bandak's visit.
"What is the wisdom in such a simple step that supports the Jews and their crimes?... Neither the Jews nor we believe that Hitler killed six millions Jews," the article read.
In 2009 the Hamas-led administration in the Gaza Strip resisted attempts to introduce lessons about the Holocaust in UN-run schools.The female college students who enthusiastically supported Barack Obama for president might not know that he wants women to register with the Selective Service at age 18, just as men do. Or that he wants the military to officially open combat positions to women.
Although the topic was drowned out by campaign rhetoric and statements on policies that college students find more congenial, his position on registration of women is clear. And Obama’s national security spokeswoman stated before the election that Obama intended to change current policies on women in combat. Women are “already” serving in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, said Wendy Morigi, Mr. Obama’s national security spokeswoman. If elected president, she said, Obama will “consult with military commanders to review the constraints that remain.”
In other words, he wants to eliminate gender discrimination from the armed services. No doubt president-elect Obama views both of these stances as leveling the playing field for women, an extension of the equal opportunity he wants to create for all Americans.
And maybe this is a plank that today’s 18-year-old females think is cool.
I don’t. Senator Obama’s two positions threaten women’s liberty and safety.
I can agree with the Senator, and feminists, to a point. No one should be disqualified from a position based solely on sex. However, there is at least one big problem with opening combat positions to women – currently, women do not have to meet the same physical fitness standards as men. The military’s tests for strength, speed and stamina are scaled according to age and gender. In direct combat, having women who are weaker and slower than men could be disastrous.
According to the 1992 report of a presidential commission on women in the armed forces, most women fall far below most men in meeting such standards. “In terms of physical capability, the upper five percent of women are at the level of the male median,” the report said. “The average 20-to-30 year-old woman has the same aerobic capacity as a 50 year-old man.”
Current Department of Defense restrictions on women in combat units – including tank, field artillery and Special Forces – exist for good reasons. Most women don’t have the upper-body strength to haul heavy weapons or wounded team members. Under field conditions, they lack the stamina of most men. In general, women are shorter, lighter, and slower than their male counterparts.
And the field of combat is not designed for affirmative action. The desert is not more forgiving to women than to men. Gunfire will not slow down for a woman who can’t run as fast as a man. Individuals who cannot meet the standards set for the most able soldiers will not perform as well. Holding women to lower standards than men puts them at a disadvantage on the battlefield, particularly in the offensive operations or “direct ground combat” from which they are currently barred.
But no woman (or man) exists as a generality. Many experts agree that some women have the physical strength and endurance to be combat soldiers. Women who are strong enough and fast enough, physically and mentally, for participation on the front lines shouldn’t be barred based on gender.
Department of Defense tests should be objective measures based on the requirements of the job. Women who cannot meet those standards would be safer and more effective elsewhere. And for those women who can meet objective standards, lowering the bar is merely insulting.
Opponents of women in combat insist that challenges would arise from having women in combat units, but the preponderance of military divisions have already met those challenges. The US military is still the most effective in the world.
A real step forward for women would be to remove both the current restrictions on combat and the affirmative action that endangers them on the battlefield.
Opening the door to the draft would not accomplish much for women, either. Although Obama does not explicitly favor a draft, his proposal to register women as well as men moves us further in that direction. I oppose registration for both men and women.
Conscription is bad policy for a number of reasons. Branches of the armed services, having tried it both ways, strongly prefer an all-volunteer force, according to the Army Times. Many high-ranking officers in the military explain that motivated volunteers perform much better than indifferent draftees. Moreover, morale is far better when all involved feel strongly that they are engaged in a noble and chosen pursuit than when they are forced to participate in an activity they would not choose.
Most importantly, the draft is involuntary servitude – regardless of gender. The very concept of conscription, or even registration with the Selective Service, is incompatible with the principle of liberty. Years ago, economist Milton Friedman famously campaigned against the draft in his Newsweek column. He argued that it was not only uneconomical but that it violates the Constitution. Requiring women to register for selective service would simply make more people susceptible to the injustice it inflicts on those who are drafted.
So, in answer to Senator Obama’s offer, I have one reply: “no deal.”Jonathan Ashmore, a resident physicist at King’s College Hospital, keeps a pair of sound-cancelling headphones on his desk. He dons them every time a very young patient arrives at the MRI scanner in the room next door, to drown out the sounds.
“Sometimes the parents are the worst part - and the kids read off of them,” Ashmore tells WIRED.
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It’s an unfortunate side-effect of any medical procedure involving a young child; the child may be confused, scared or simply not stay still enough. The younger the child, the more chance there is they won't comply and either have to return another day or in serious circumstances, where a scan is vital, receive a general anaesthetic. These situations are clearly distressing for the child, their parents and the medical team trying to help. Ashmore, unhappily listening to this conflict from his office next door, decided to build a tool that would help everyone: a space helmet.
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“It started with a bike helmet, and Google Cardboard,” he tells WIRED. “Before they come into the room, the radiographer offers them the helmet and asks them if they would like to fly through space.” Using a free virtual reality space flight app, the child is drawn into an immersive environment and they do not notice the anaesthetic being administered. “I made a second one, an aqua helmet. They go underwater and snorkel and there is a valve for the anaesthetic gas. One little girl pretended she was swimming and told us she saw a dolphin - she swam over to the anaesthetic station and didn’t even notice.” It’s a simple hack to distract the child, but with infinite benefits for their health and happiness.
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Ashmore talks about intervening as early as possible in the “spiral” that can occur when working with young children. If they are regular hospital visitors, it can get to the point the child refuses to even leave their home for an appointment.
The space and aqua helmets are currently on trial but Ashmore and King’s College Hospital have today unveiled a fully-formed and potentially scalable tool that's already helping children prepare for MRI scans. The My MRI at King’s app designed by Ashmore, learning technologist Jerome Di Pietro, and a play therapist at the hospital has been launched free on the Play Store. It takes users on a 360-tour of the hospital and the MRI scanner that will ultimately carry out their scan. More than 18 months in the making and just out of beta, the footage is shot from the perspective of the child, and an easy-to-use introduction animation lets them navigate a map of the different areas, from the hospital to the waiting room and the scanner itself.
“There are mock scanners kids can use to prepare themselves, but these can cost £10,000 and take up a whole room in a hospital,” Ashmore said at a demonstration of the app at the Future Laboratory in Shoreditch, east London. “I wondered if would be able to create something that I can give to kids and a play specialist to show them the journey.”
Read next We won't know if screen time is a hazard until Facebook comes clean We won't know if screen time is a hazard until Facebook comes clean
The first obstacle was getting the footage.
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“Normally anything you put in an MRI scanner breaks.” Ashmore had to tape a Gear 360 camera to the MRI to take the footage. After complaints that a key scene felt completely wrong - when looking down from the 360-degree view, a human body was missing - Ashmore used some clothes and shoes belonging to the radiographer’s child to make up the appearance of a person. The wearer has the full experience, including the incredibly loud banging of the electrical current in the scanner booting up.
The entire experience is tailored to the hospital, with real staff manning the reception desk and the MRI room. “But any hospital could use it,” says Ashmore. Hospitals could either use it as is or upload their own videos. There is also a tablet version of the app for any patient with neurological issues that might prevent them from using VR.
Ten-year-old Matthew Down, on hand at the launch, has to have annual MRI scans after undergoing surgery to alleviate a buildup of fluid on his brain in September 2014. He tested the app while in beta, and said: “I was really worried before my first scan because I didn’t know what to expect, even though my Dad explained I couldn’t imagine what it would be like. I think the app is really helpful as it shows you what to expect and it feels like you are inside the machine.”
Consultant paediatrician in Paediatric Neurology at King’s, Dr Darshan Das added: “So far the app has had some really positive feedback and I can see it has the potential to significantly relieve anxiety and prevent the need for children to undergo an anaesthetic in many cases.”
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Throughout the trial, Ashmore had been posting Google Cardboards out to children ahead of their scans to get feedback. But there are now 20 hardier VR headsets in the hospital, that will be used by play therapists when a child is particularly anxious. Eventually, Ashmore would like to see the headsets tethered in waiting rooms. A link to the Play store will also be included in appointment letters to children identified as being the most anxious (an iOS version is in the works), but Ashmore wants it to be included as standard in all letters eventually. The footage has been uploaded at a lower resolution than originally planned, so it can be used on phones of differing quality, and Ashmore suggests other hospitals could even upload their footage to YouTube and send links to those videos in appointment letters if they did not want to go down the app route. “Guy's and St Thomas’ emailed me last night and really want to use it,” he said.
There is a version for adults “in the pipeline”, too, and Ashmore believes there are applications for different versions of the app targeting surgery, biopsies and more. “These can be extremely traumatic for children.” VR applications already exist for fighting PTSD, phobias and more.
But for now, he is working on perfecting space flight in south-east London.Victoria University management has rejected accusations it is deliberately sacking union branch officers in a bid to cripple the voice of staff ahead of new negotiations.
National Tertiary Education Union branch president Paul Adams, vice president Stuart Martin and secretary David Garland have all been forcibly made redundant.
Dr Adams said three of the four officers of the local branch being made redundant just as a new enterprise bargaining period opens is clearly an attempt to weaken the union and cannot be a coincidence.
“It’s never happened before, for three of four branch officers to be retrenched,” he said.
Dr Adams, who has spoken out about the loss of more than 100 jobs in a university restructure, said he had taught at VU for 24 years and the teaching environment has become increasingly difficult for staff.
Other staff echoed the claims, suggesting management has taken an adversarial stance in its moves to reposition the university in the face of dwindling income.
Mr Garland said he was very suspicious about his job loss and the removal of the staff best positioned to negotiate.
“I think people are sort of shocked about the whole thing, they do say that this seems to be suspicious.”
He pointed to the recent move by Murdoch University in West Australia to abandon an enterprise agreement and force staff back onto a basic award.
“Of all the universities in Victoria, VU would be the first in line for this sort of treatment.”
A Victoria University spokeswoman said a widespread transformation agenda has been pursued since 2016, aiming to improve the student experience and concentrate research efforts.
“Victoria University remains committed to enhancing the quality of teaching, learning and shaping the 21st century student experience,” she said.
“We aim to do all this in a structure that is financially sustainable.”
The spokeswoman said change of this magnitude will have an inevitable impact on staff, but Victoria University has consulted with all staff and adhered to legal and industrial relations obligations.
“Forced redundancies remain the option of last resort, and only after all other available options have been exhausted,” she said.
“Assertions regarding targeting individuals are completely false.”
NTEU state secretary Colin Long said the sacking of almost an entire branch all at once was unprecedented.
“The uni does have some financial problems, but no employer in any uni sector or anywhere should be targeting someone for redundancy based on them being part of a union.”
Dr Long said VU would be “risking its reputation” if it followed the lead of Murdoch University.
A recent meeting of the National Council of the NTEU condemned the sackings, passing a motion noting that VU management have recently hired human resources staff from Patricks and the CFA “which are organisations that have a long history of ‘union bashing’”.
The National Council called for “a massive union protest” at the next VU Council meeting on November 2.Disney said it planned to release a seventh “Star Wars” feature film in 2015, with new films coming every two or three years.
—New York Times
“Star Wars Episode VII: A Saga Continues” (2015):
Following the successful destruction of the Death Star, Han Solo and Princess Leia wed in a beautiful ceremony on Endor. Chewbacca keeps hanging around with them on Endor but feels a little existentially lost. Meanwhile, Luke Skywalker fights off the few remaining stormtroopers in a climactic battle sequence.
“Star Wars Episode VIII: Return to the Glory Days” (2019):
The Galactic Republic is called back into order as Princess Leia and Han Solo must go through a messy custody battle over their four-year-old daughter, Madison. Meanwhile, Luke rounds up people that he thinks might be stormtroopers—or at least have stormtrooper tendencies. Chewbacca goes back to college.
“Star Wars Episode IX: Attack of the Panic Attacks” (2022):
Over a long week in Taanab, Han Solo attempts to reconnect with a now twelve-year-old Madison. Meanwhile, Luke becomes obsessed with locating “Empire sympathizers” and is sentenced to five years in prison after drunkenly shooting lasers at where the Death Star used to be. Chewbacca graduates from medical school cum laude and begins practicing full time.
“Star Wars Episode X: When Did We Get So Old? Did It Happen All at Once, Like Overnight? Or Have I Just Been Asleep All These Years?”(2026):
Upon his release from prison, Luke makes a firm commitment to therapy, and through hard work, a devoted Jehovah’s Witness community, and a caring therapist, he is able to overcome his past familial trauma. He gets a job shelving at a local library and even starts dating a little. Meanwhile, Han Solo is forced to confront lingering feelings toward Princess Leia after she gets into a car accident. Chewbacca works furiously and saves her legs.
“Star Wars Episode XI: A New Beginning—Every Day Is One, When You Stop Worrying and Appreciate the Little Things” (2029): Over Thanksgiving, Luke sees Leia for the first time since his “laser episode.” Leia smiles politely when the conversation turns to Luke’s newfound belief in Kabbalah mysticism. Meanwhile, Madison introduces her girlfriend, Charlotte, to the family, and a drunken Han makes some inappropriate jokes. Chewbacca gets diagnosed with prostate cancer but thanks to early detection faces a ninety per cent survival likelihood.
“Star Wars Episode XII: Looking Back, I Guess Everything Did Happen For a Reason—Or Really, We Make Our Own Reasons to Describe What Happened—Either Way, I Don’t Have Any Regrets, Do You?” (2033):
Han and Leia decide not to remarry but instead to live in neighboring apartment complexes and watch television together twice a week. Every once in a while, Madison, Charlotte, and their baby son, Josh, stop by for dinner. Meanwhile, Chewbacca survives his surgery but resigns from his medical practice, devoting himself to philanthropy. Luke changes his name to Yusuf after converting for the third time; he claims to finally understand the Force.
“Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope” (2037):
Remake of 1977 classic.SONAR 2017.01 Update: Fixes and Enhancements Last updated on 1/30/2017
The SONAR 2017.01 update includes the following:
How to Download the SONAR 2017.01 Update
Open Cakewalk Command Center. If you don’t have the latest installer, Command Center will prompt you to download and install it. Cakewalk highly recommends that you do this. (Also remember that you can always download the latest version from the Cakewalk Command Center page.) Update SONAR Core by selecting SONAR Platinum/Professional/Artist, then clicking Install. Update Rapture Session Core by selecting Rapture Session, then clicking Install Update Engineering FX Suite by selecting it, then clicking Install Update SONAR Local Documentation by selecting it, then clicking Install
Chase MIDI Notes
Artist, Professional, Platinum
You can now start playback from the middle of a MIDI note and the note event will trigger and sustain for the remainder of its duration. You no longer need to start playback before the note start time in order to trigger the note.
To enable/disable MIDI Note chasing, go to Edit > Preferences > Project > MIDI and select MIDI Event Chase on Play and Include Note Events.
When Include Note Events is enabled, SONAR analyzes the project and includes MIDI Note events that start before the point where playback begins. If Include Note Events is disabled, only MIDI Note events that begin after the playback location will trigger.
A. Start playback from here B. These notes will only play if Include Note Events is enabled, because the note start times occur before the playback location C. This note will not play because it ends before the playback location D. These notes will always play because they start after the playback location
MIDI Note chasing is very useful in different situations where note events overlap the point where playback begins, including:
When starting playback on a measure boundary, and the project contains syncopated notes that occur slightly before the downbeat.
When starting playback in the middle of a project that contains long sustaining notes that trigger a synth pad or arpeggiator.
Matrix View enhancements
Artist, Professional, Platinum
Matrix view cells are now editable using the Step Sequencer or the Loop Construction View. Editing a cell is easy: simply double-click on the cell to open it.
Edit Cell Content
Individual MIDI cell content can be edited with the Step Sequencer, and audio cell content can be edited with the Loop Construction view.
To edit a cell, do one of the following:
Double-click the cell background.
Select an audio cell and press ALT+7.
Select a MIDI Step Sequencer cell and press ALT+4.
If you want to edit MIDI cells that don’t contain Step Sequencer content, you must first convert the MIDI data to Step Sequencer data. To do so, select the cell(s) you want to convert, then right-click the cell and select Convert MIDI Clip(s) to Step Sequencer on the pop-up menu.
To create a new Step Sequencer cell, right-click an empty cell and select Create New Step Sequencer Cell on the pop-up menu.
Insert Instrument Row
To insert a new MIDI row routed to a new Instrument track, right-click a row and point to Insert Instrument Row on the pop-up menu, then select the desired instrument.
Rapture Session Enhancements
Home Studio, Artist, Professional, Platinum
Rapture Session continues to evolve: version 2.0.5 offers several new features as well as some fixes.
Poly Synth Instrument Page
Including a graphic that indicates the instrument type has always been regarded as one of Rapture Pro and Rapture Session's more helpful features. One such graphic is now provided for poly synth programs too.
50 New Poly Synth Sounds
And since there’s a Poly Synth instrument page, why not include some new sounds to go along with? Why not, indeed—there are now 50 new sounds with the core install.
Load Waveform and Save Program Improvements
Rapture Pro now remembers independent locations for Load Program and Save Program, which solves the potential annoyance of having
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quiet about Hastert's past misconduct.
He is scheduled to be sentenced April 27. An alleged sex abuse victim could testify at the sentencing hearing, the Associated Press has reported.
A defense filing Wednesday asked the presiding judge to give Hastert probation and spare him prison time. It cited Hastert's deteriorating health, as well as the public shame he's already suffered.
"Despite his mistakes in judgment and his transgressions, for which he is profoundly sorry, we implore this Court, in imposing sentence, to consider the entirety of Mr. Hastert's life (including the fact that he reshaped his life many years ago), the mitigating circumstances that surround the offense to which he pled guilty, and his deteriorated condition," his attorneys wrote.
Prosecutors have recommended that Hastert serve no more than six months in prison.
The case has been shrouded in secrecy since the May 2015 indictment. Prosecutors only confirmed at a March hearing that sex-abuse claims were at its core. But there was no prior word of the hearing, so the court was mostly empty. Transcripts later revealed what transpired.
Law enforcement sources told CBS News last year that the misconduct mentioned in court documents refers to sexual misconduct allegations involving a young man that date back more than 30 years. From 1965 to 1981, Hastert was a popular teacher and wrestling coach in Yorkville, Illinois.AMMAN: Syria’s third-oldest mosque was badly damaged by a direct airstrike in rebel-held Idlib on Thursday in what one local lawyer monitoring damage to the province’s antiquities calls “a violation of historical sites and places of worship.”
Maarat Misrin’s Great Mosque “was directly hit by a thermobaric missile at midnight last night,” citizen journalist Mustafa Abu al-Zahraa told Syria Direct on Thursday from the rebel-held town 10km north of Idlib city. “It caused major structural damage and destruction in its courtyard, and burned furniture and contents.”
The Idlib Civil Defense reported Thursday’s bombing and posted pictures of personnel responding to the Great Mosque.
The 7th-century mosque “has huge historic value,” Abu al-Zahraa told Syria Direct, adding that it is the third-oldest mosque in Syria, after the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus and the Great Mosque of Aleppo.
Abu al-Zahraa alleges the missile that struck the mosque on Thursday came from a Russian warplane. “Since Russia intervened to support Assad, they’ve been the ones who’ve bombed us,” he said.
Syria Direct could not confirm the source of Thursday’s single airstrike. Neither Russian nor Syrian state media has reported the bombing.
Maarat Misrin’s Great Mosque on Thursday. Photo courtesy of Mustafa Abu al-Zahraa.
Maarat Misrin’s Great Mosque has been damaged by nearby bombings before, but never directly hit, Abu al-Zahraa told Syria Direct.
Nearly 1,400 years ago, when Abu Ubaidah ibn al-Jarrah and Khalid bin al-Waleed—companions of the prophet Muhammad—conquered northern Syria in the first half of the 7th century CE, they captured Maarat Misrin, in what is today Idlib province, from Byzantine forces.
The new rulers then converted the town’s church into a mosque and added to the original structure. For more than a millennium, Maarat Misrin’s Great Mosque stood.
Now, “the mosque is no longer suitable for prayer because of the destruction,” said Abu al-Zahraa. “People are afraid to pray there. It’s become a target.”
Maarat Misreen residents survey the damage to the town’s Great Mosque on Thursday. Photo courtesy of Maarat Misrin Local Council.
Images provided to Syria Direct and posted online by Maarat Misrin civilian authorities on Thursday show extensive damage to the Great Mosque’s courtyard.
Several stone archways have been destroyed, a gaping hole left in their place, with tawny stone blackened by flames. Shrapnel has pockmarked the walls. A modern metal roof providing shade to the courtyard lies on the ground, crumpled and bent like paper.
“This bombing is a violation of historical sites and places of worship,” Idlib native and lawyer Nizar al-Burghul told Syria Direct on Thursday. Al-Burghul is a founding member of Lawyers for Justice, an Idlib organization that documents damage inflicted on Idlib’s ancient ruins and antiquities. “The mosque is the oldest and greatest in Idlib province.”
“We work on all violations against humanity, antiquities and houses of worship, so it is within the scope of our work.”
The Great Mosque in Maarat Misrin in better days. Photo courtesy of Al-Aan TV.
“The Great Mosque is important for all of Syria, as one of the oldest mosques,” said Maarat Misrin resident Abu al-Zahraa. “Salaheddin al-Ayyubi prayed in it,” he added, referring to the renowned 12th-century Kurdish founder of the Ayyubid dynasty.
Of the more than 760 antiquities sites in Idlib province, “490 have been recorded as damaged,” lawyer al-Burghul told Syria Direct last month.
For Maarat Misrin residents, recent airstrikes have also displaced many residents, and put the main hospital out of service.
“The town is being subjected to a wave of daily bombings,” said resident Abu a-Zahraa, describing “a state of panic and fear among residents.”
On Thursday afternoon, the Idlib Civil Defense reported that a single air raid with cluster munitions used at the outskirts of Maarat Misrin injured five people.
Maarat Misrin is currently controlled by the Islamist factions Ahrar a-Sham and Jaish al-Islam. Jabhat a-Nusra until recently also maintained a presence in the town, resident Abu al-Zahraa said, but fighters “moved the headquarters to agricultural areas three days ago,” a claim that Syria Direct could not immediately confirm.This article is about the part of the World Wide Web not indexed by traditional search engines. For other uses, see Deep web (disambiguation)
Not to be confused with Dark web
The deep web,[1] invisible web,[2] or hidden web[3] are parts of the World Wide Web whose contents are not indexed by standard web search engines. The opposite term to the deep web is the surface web, which is accessible to anyone using the Internet.[4] Computer scientist Michael K. Bergman is credited with coining the term deep web in 2001 as a search indexing term.[5]
The content of the deep web is hidden behind HTTP forms,[6][7] and includes many very common uses such as web mail, online banking, and services that users must pay for, and which is protected by a paywall, such as video on demand, some online magazines and newspapers, among others.
The content of the deep web can be located and accessed by a direct URL or IP address, and may require a password or other security access past the public website page.
Terminology [ edit ]
The first conflation of the terms "deep web" and "dark web" based came about in 2009 when the deep web search terminology was discussed alongside illegal activities taking place on the Freenet darknet.[8]
Since then, the use in the Silk Road's media reporting, many[9][10] people and media outlets, have taken to using deep web synonymously with the dark web or darknet, a comparison many reject as inaccurate[11] and consequently is an ongoing source of confusion.[12] Wired reporters Kim Zetter[13] and Andy Greenberg[14] recommend the terms be used in distinct fashions. While the deep web is reference to any site that cannot be accessed through a traditional search engine, the dark web is a portion of the deep web that has been intentionally hidden and is inaccessible through standard browsers and methods.[15][16][17][18][19]
Non-indexed content [ edit ]
Bergman, in a paper on the deep web published in The Journal of Electronic Publishing, mentioned that Jill Ellsworth used the term Invisible Web in 1994 to refer to websites that were not registered with any search engine.[20] Bergman cited a January 1996 article by Frank Garcia:[21]
It would be a site that's possibly reasonably designed, but they didn't bother to register it with any of the search engines. So, no one can find them! You're hidden. I call that the invisible Web.
Another early use of the term Invisible Web was by Bruce Mount and Matthew B. Koll of Personal Library Software, in a description of the #1 Deep Web tool found in a December 1996 press release.[22]
The first use of the specific term deep web, now generally accepted, occurred in the aforementioned 2001 Bergman study.[20]
Indexing methods [ edit ]
Methods that prevent web pages from being indexed by traditional search engines may be categorized as one or more of the following:
Contextual web: pages with content varying for different access contexts (e.g., ranges of client IP addresses or previous navigation sequence). Dynamic content: dynamic pages, which are returned in response to a submitted query or accessed only through a form, especially if open-domain input elements (such as text fields) are used; such fields are hard to navigate without domain knowledge. Limited access content: sites that limit access to their pages in a technical way (e.g., using the Robots Exclusion Standard or CAPTCHAs, or no-store directive, which prohibit search engines from browsing them and creating cached copies).[23] Non-HTML/text content: textual content encoded in multimedia (image or video) files or specific file formats not handled by search engines. Private web: sites that require registration and login (password-protected resources). Scripted content: pages that are only accessible through links produced by JavaScript as well as content dynamically downloaded from Web servers via Flash or Ajax solutions. Software: certain content is intentionally hidden from the regular Internet, accessible only with special software, such as Tor, I2P, or other darknet software. For example, Tor allows users to access websites using the.onion server address anonymously, hiding their IP address. Unlinked content: pages which are not linked to by other pages, which may prevent web crawling programs from accessing the content. This content is referred to as pages without backlinks (also known as inlinks). Also, search engines do not always detect all backlinks from searched web pages. Web archives: Web archival services such as the Wayback Machine enable users to see archived versions of web pages across time, including websites which have become inaccessible, and are not indexed by search engines such as Google.[24]
Content types [ edit ]
While it is not always possible to directly discover a specific web server's content so that it may be indexed, a site potentially can be accessed indirectly (due to computer vulnerabilities).
To discover content on the web, search engines use web crawlers that follow hyperlinks through known protocol virtual port numbers. This technique is ideal for discovering content on the surface web but is often ineffective at finding deep web content. For example, these crawlers do not attempt to find dynamic pages that are the result of database queries due to the indeterminate number of queries that are possible.[5] It has been noted that this can be (partially) overcome by providing links to query results, but this could unintentionally inflate the popularity for a member of the deep web.
DeepPeep, Intute, Deep Web Technologies, Scirus, and Ahmia.fi are a few search engines that have accessed the deep web. Intute ran out of funding and is now a temporary static archive as of July 2011.[25] Scirus retired near the end of January 2013.[26]
Researchers have been exploring how the deep web can be crawled in an automatic fashion, including content that can be accessed only by special software such as Tor. In 2001, Sriram Raghavan and Hector Garcia-Molina (Stanford Computer Science Department, Stanford University)[27][28] presented an architectural model for a hidden-Web crawler that used key terms provided by users or collected from the query interfaces to query a Web form and crawl the Deep Web content. Alexandros Ntoulas, Petros Zerfos, and Junghoo Cho of UCLA created a hidden-Web crawler that automatically generated meaningful queries to issue against search forms.[29] Several form query languages (e.g., DEQUEL[30]) have been proposed that, besides issuing a query, also allow extraction of structured data from result pages. Another effort is DeepPeep, a project of the University of Utah sponsored by the National Science Foundation, which gathered hidden-web sources (web forms) in different domains based on novel focused crawler techniques.[31][32]
Commercial search engines have begun exploring alternative methods to crawl the deep web. The Sitemap Protocol (first developed, and introduced by Google in 2005) and OAI-PMH are mechanisms that allow search engines and other interested parties to discover deep web resources on particular web servers. Both mechanisms allow web servers to advertise the URLs that are accessible on them, thereby allowing automatic discovery of resources that are not directly linked to the surface web. Google's deep web surfacing system computes submissions for each HTML form and adds the resulting HTML pages into the Google search engine index. The surfaced results account for a thousand queries per second to deep web content.[33] In this system, the pre-computation of submissions is done using three algorithms:
selecting input values for text search inputs that accept keywords, identifying inputs which accept only values of a specific type (e.g., date) and selecting a small number of input combinations that generate URLs suitable for inclusion into the Web search index.
In 2008, to facilitate users of Tor hidden services in their access and search of a hidden.onion suffix, Aaron Swartz designed Tor2web—a proxy application able to provide access by means of common web browsers.[34] Using this application, deep web links appear as a random string of letters followed by the.onion TLD.
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]February 14, 2006 Almost everything we use requires electrical storage via a battery - computers, cell phones, cars, personal entertainment devices and much more – and as compelling functionality has increased in the digital age, so too has our reliance on the traditional battery which has changed little since it was developed by Alessandro Volta in 1800. Now, work at MIT's Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems (LEES) holds the promise of the first technologically significant and economically viable alternative to conventional batteries in more than 200 years. Using nanotube structures, the LEES invention promises a significant increase on the storage capacity of existing commercial ultracapacitors by storing electrical fields at an atomic level. The new LEES ultracapacitors could replace the conventional battery in everything from the smallest MP3 players through to electric automobiles and beyond, yielding batteries with a lifetime equivalent to the product they power and recharging times inside a minute. Most significantly, they promise a much smaller and lighter “battery”, and will be an enabling technology for many new concepts such as electric bicycles with the “burst” peak power of a motorcycle, or electrical trams with the capacity of a train but without the infrastructure. In automotive terms, they raise the possibility of an integrated starter/generator and the capability of ultra-efficient regenerative braking systems. The work was presented at the recent 15th International Seminar on Double Layer Capacitors and Hybrid Energy Storage Devices and the LEES “batteries” could reach market within five years. A potentially disruptive technology!by
Bible Readings for Wednesday, May 4th, 2011 – The 2nd Week of Easter *Click on each bible passage to expand the text. Psalm 114 1. When Israel went out from Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language,
2. Judah became God’s sanctuary, Israel his dominion.
3. The sea looked and fled; Jordan turned back.
4. The mountains skipped like rams, the hills like lambs.
5. Why is it, O sea, that you flee? O Jordan, that you turn back?
6. O mountains, that you skip like rams? O hills, like lambs?
7. Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the LORD, at the presence of the God of Jacob,
8. who turns the rock into a pool of water, the flint into a spring of water. Jonah 2:1-10 1. Then Jonah prayed to the LORD his God from the belly of the fish,
2. saying, “I called to the LORD out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice.
3. You cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me.
4. Then I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight; how shall I look again upon your holy temple?’
5. The waters closed in over me; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped around my head
6. at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the Pit, O LORD my God.
7. As my life was ebbing away, I remembered the LORD; and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple.
8. Those who worship vain idols forsake their true loyalty.
9. But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Deliverance belongs to the LORD!”
10. Then the LORD spoke to the fish, and it spewed Jonah out upon the dry land. Matthew 12:38-42 38. Then some of the scribes and Pharisees said to him, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you.”
39. But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.
40. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so for three days and three nights the Son of Man will be in the heart of the earth.
41. The people of Nineveh will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because they repented at the proclamation of Jonah, and see, something greater than Jonah is here!
42. The queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, because she came from the ends of the earth to listen to the wisdom of Solomon, and see, something greater than Solomon is here!
The sea looked and fled; Jordan turned back. – Psalm 114:3
“But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I will pay. Deliverance belongs to the LORD!” – Jonah 2:9
But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.” – Matthew 12:39
The Sign of Jonah.
Essentially, the Sign of Jonah is someone who, to all appearances, is dead for 3 days and then is alive again.
How do you think it would go over today?
Our tale of the modern sign of Jonah begins at the opulent offices of one of Wall Street’s most infamous corporate raiders, Nintz, Nehser, & Vahr.
Just days ago, the firm lost its visionary founder, Brian Nintz, a man renowned for his ruthless hostile takeovers and the incredible accumen with which he would dispatch the assets of the newly aquired companies. He was affectionately called, “Gekko”, around the office.
It’s early Monday morning, when a newly minted vice-president (one of 12), named Chuck, raced into the newly minted CEO’s office. Chuck is extremely animated and excited.
“John! Holy shit! Did you hear about Nintz?”, Chuck blurted.
John stopped mid-sip, surprised,”Uh, yeah, Chuck. I was just at the hospital when he passed. I was at the Gekko’s goddamned funeral! What do you mean,’ did I hear’?”
Chuck gulped breathlessly, “Well, uh, he’s back.”
John’s eyes narrowed, “What do mean ‘back‘?”
John Nehser was a helluva raider, legendary even. He could make Harvard MBA’s mess their shorts if they pissed him off.
“He’s, uh…”, Chuck stumbled, and suddenly he regretted even mentioning Nintz, “…he’s… I mean… I heard from Susan, who, uh, heard from Nintz’s wife.. that, uh… he’s back. Like, from the dead.”
“From the dead? What do you mean, they buried him alive??” John’s face was noticeably paler at the thought.
“Uh, no… he was pretty dead. Susan said he was embalmed and everything.”
“What, then? What was it?!?” John bellowed, “You had better not be bullshitting me, Chuck. I swear to God, I am not in the mood to be made a fool of today.”
“I’m not bullshitting you, I s-swear, John,” Chuck stammered, “I’m just telling you what I heard happened!”
Susan, senior VP, suddenly burst through the doorway, and shoved a startled Chuck out of the way.
“It’s on the goddamn news!” Susans announced, matter-of-fact-ly. She swiped the remote from John’s coffee table and punched the power button for the plasma TV. The face of a local news anchor quickly appeared. Susan turned the sound up to full.
John noticed the entire staff on his floor was gathering outside the glass walls of his office, pressing against the glass and straining to hear. Everyone looked a little shocked.
“… astounded to report that legendary Wall Street raider, Brian Nintz, who’s death was reported right here on News First 5 three days ago, has reportedly been seen alive. Witnesses claim he was spotted walking away from the Phillips Creek Cemetery, covered in dirt and disoriented. He reportedly asked to use a bystander’s cell phone and then hailed a cab. Philips Creek has confirmed that, in fact, Mr. Nintz’s burial site has been disturbed and the body is missing. We have not been able to gather any more reports of Mr. Nintz’s current whereabouts, the confirmation of his identity, or where this cab might be now…”
John looked grave, “When, when did this happen?”
“About an hour ago,”Chuck answered,”It seriously just happened.”
John suddenly stood from behind his desk, his chair careening back and clanging off the window behind him,”But what happened, Chuck?? What the fuck is going on?”
Chuck raised his arms defensively and began to back out of the doorway, “Hey, John, I don’t know, man. I’m just the messenger. I don’t know.”
John looked pale which made Chuck look even more so because John Nehser never looked pale.
“What the fuck,” John pondered aloud, at a loss.
“Yeah,” Chuck agreed, relieved,”yeah, really…”
“Brian was my best friend,” John wasn’t even looking at Chuck any longer. He was looking past him, eyes out of focus, as if lost in memory.
“Uh, John?” Chuck interrupted.
“What?”
“Susan says he’s coming here.”
“What??”
Susan swallowed hard, “I just spoke with Nintz, John. He called me.”
“You spoke with him? You’re sure??”
“I’ve worked with Nintz for 20 years, John. It was him. Trust me, it’s crazy I know, but it’s true.” Susan admitted.
“Jesus,” John whispered.
Susan continued, “Nintz got a cab, called his wife, and then he called me. He said he’s coming here, John. He said he needs to talk to us about something.”
“Brian is coming here?? And he wants to talk to us??” John reached back for his chair, fumbled for it without looking, and pulled it forward awkwardly. He collapsed into it like an exhausted boxer, late in the fight, “What does this mean?”
He brought his hands to his face, rubbed his forehead, and took a deep contemplative breath to steady himself.
Suddenly, Susan realized the television had changed from the steady shot of the local anchor to an aerial shot if a building’s exterior. Susan sucked in her breath sharply.
“Holy shit!” Chuck exclaimed.
John looked up, already weary, “What? What is it?”
Susan spun around, her face suddenly shifting from pale fear to bright red fury, “Who did it!?! Who the fuck did it? Which one of you sneaky little bastards did it??”
She stalked toward the office door. The gathered staff suddenly seemed disinterested in the events of John’s office and began to turn away quickly.
“What? Did what?” John begged, lost, “Chuck, what’s going on?”
“The plasma, John. Look,” Chuck offered.
John looked at the shot of the building. He choked in shock.
His building. Here.
The TV now showed a yellow cab pulling up to the curb outside, a crowd of onlookers and reporters were teeming on the sidewalk, anxiously awaiting the door to open. Camera’s and microphones thrust forth from desperate hands, a sea of bodies and tense faces jostling for position.
“… we now cut live to our news crew who is on-scene outside of the offices of Nintz, Nehser, & Vahr, where we are hearing confirmation that the passenger of the cab we’ve been following off an anonymous tip is, in fact, Brian Nintz…”
“God help us,” John exclaimed, “this is going to be a circus!”
“What do you want me to do, John,” Chuck asked, motionless.
John paused, at a loss, and then suddenly snapped into action, “Get down there, Chuck! Get down there and get him… it… whatever the hell it is in here.”
Chuck looked nauseous, “Me?”
“Yes, goddamnit, YOU! GO!”
As Chuck hurried from the office, John’s gaze drifted back to the television. John could not believe what he was seeing. Live on television, his recently dead best friend of 30 years was struggling through the crowd of press, disheveled, pale and filthy, his once luxurious suit matted with leaked fluids and mud. Brian Nintz looked terrified, but definitely, clearly alive.
“…’Mr. Nintz! Mr. Nintz! What happened?? How are you here? WHY are you here?’…”
“…’I was sent with a message…’”
“…’Who sent you? What is the message?’…”
John had an idea of what the message might be, and it numbed his very soul to think of.
I was sent with a message.
John suddenly lurched down and bent frantically under the desk, his hands groping for the trash can. He slipped from his chair and fell forward onto his knees. His body convulsed as choking sobs and moans began to escape from his lips.
He was lost. He was scared. He was terrified.
He vomited into the trash can.
I was sent with a message.Think going to the office is all work and no play? While it may be true in some places, it is definitely not true in the small town of Bad Koening, Germany, where grown men and their office chair turned racing machine, compete, for the title of Office Chair Champion.
Now in its third year, the race, inspired by a similar event in Switzerland, was started as a joke by members of a local club responsible for organizing carnivals. To their surprise, it was an instant hit, with 70 contestants showing up in the first year. Since then, the wacky competition that also attracts thousand of spectators, has taken a life of its own with the participants come from all over the country.
The rules were quite simple. All the contestants have to race down a steep hill in pairs and the one to do it the fastest, is declared the champion. In order to help them race faster, competitors can fit their office chair with inline skate wheels, as well as, innovative handles. However, the effort has to be completely manual, which means that the chairs cannot have any kind of motorized aids.
This year's event, which took place on Saturday, April 16th, attracted 58 contestants, who arrived wearing protective gear on their heads, arms and legs, all ready to race down the steep 600ft. hill. With thousands of spectators cheering them on, they hurled down at speeds exceeding 35mph - Some stumbled and fell off their chairs, while others went completely off course, taking the spectators by surprise, as they crashed into the side barriers.
However, Luxemburg resident Pierre Feller, used the perfect technique. Lying low, he zoomed down the course with no mishaps, setting a new championship time of 26.95 seconds. The second and third prizes went to local contestants, while the best chair design was awarded to Heiko Winter, who dressed up like a cowboy and his chair, like a horse, complete with head and all.
But, as everyone knows, competitions like these are not about winning - They are just about having a good time by adults pretending to be kids!
Resources: thelocal/de/sport, worldcuppictorial.com, dailymail.co.ukFridman is the co-founder of the Luxembourg-based LetterOne investment fund and Alfa Bank, one of Russia’s biggest commercial banks.
Mikhail Fridman has been named businessman of the year by Forbes Russia after investing over $5 billion in foreign companies, a record for Russian businessmen in 2017.
A dossier published by Buzzfeed earlier this year accused Fridman of interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections on President Vladimir Putin’s orders. The oligarch, alongside two fellow investors, filed defamation suits against the news website and the investigation firm that compiled it.
"It's total nonsense. Not only in substance but in form," Fridman said about the dossier in an interview with Forbes Magazine earlier this year.
The businessman said he hopes to restore his business reputation with the lawsuit, though he told Forbes that the proceedings could take up to three years.
“The West has a very simplistic view of Russia, just as Russia has about the West," he said.
“Russia means oligarchs, and all oligarchs are agents of the Kremlin.”
This year, LetterOne purchased a British health food chain for $2.3 billion and invested $3 billion in a private equity firm.
Forbes named Fridman this year's seventh-richest Russian businessman with a fortune of $14.4 billion.Digging Movie from Phoenix's Sol 18
The Surface Stereo Imager on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander recorded the images combined into this movie of the lander's Robotic Arm enlarging and combining the two trenches informally named "Dodo" (left) and "Goldilocks."The 21 images in this sequence were taken over a period of about 2 hours during Phoenix's Sol 18 (June 13, 2008), or the 18th Martian day since landing.The main purpose of the Sol 18 dig was to dig deeper for learning the depth of a hard underlying layer. A bright layer, possibly ice, was increasingly exposed as the digging progressed. Further digging and scraping in the combined Dodo-Goldilocks trench was planned for subsequent sols.The combined trench is about 20 centimeters (about 8 inches) wide. The depth at the end of the Sol 18 digging is 5 to 6 centimeters (about 2 inches).The Goldilocks trench was the source of soil samples "Baby Bear" and "Mama Bear," which were collected on earlier sols and delivered to instruments on the lander deck. The Dodo trench was originally dug for practice in collecting and depositing soil samples.The Phoenix Mission is led by the University of Arizona, Tucson, on behalf of NASA. Project management of the mission is by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Spacecraft development is by Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver.Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Texas A&MIs the rollout for Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN) on track? Are we employing the right technology for the job? Will the NBN be fast enough to handle future demands?
The Senate Select Committee on the National Broadband Network recently asked five of Australia’s leading academic experts to give their views on the state of the NBN.
Here, each of the experts gives a summary of their views as they presented them to the Committee, raising concerns about the current technology and suggesting there might be ways to improve the NBN rollout using new approaches being adopted overseas.
David Glance, University of Western Australia
The Senate Committee was brought up-to-date with contemporary answers to these questions. It was given examples of companies and countries that thought fibre to the node (FTTN) was an adequate implementation strategy, but have since changed to a fibre to the premises (FTTP) approach.
In the US for example, AT&T last year abandoned fibre to the node and has switched to deploying fibre to the premises because of the speed and capacity limitations, and because 1 Gigabit per second (1 Gbps) is the “new normal”.
AT&T is also now certain that 25 Mbps will not be adequate for most people, and in fact, won’t be what most people actually want to deploy in their homes or businesses. Households are already consuming multiple simultaneous media streams at whatever definition their network will support. Business, especially in an online innovation-led economy, is increasingly coming to rely on the presence of ultra-fast broadband.
Costs and technologies that make up those costs have also changed. In Australia, since the decision was made to switch to a fibre to the node implementation of the NBN, costs of implementing other solutions, including Fibre to the Pavement (Sidewalk) have come down. Technology solutions like G.Fast allow short lengths of copper to be used to a home and still deliver 1 Gbps speed.
With technology, especially in the time frame of the construction of the NBN, the rationale for a particular approach will change. In the case of the NBN, most of the answers to the usual questions have indeed changed, and continuing with a fibre to the node approach no longer makes any sense.
Mark A. Gregory, RMIT University
The NBN is a nation building project that has been hijacked by politics. As a result, the obsolete fibre to the node technology is being rolled to a large number of Australians.
The government should accept the weight of international evidence and move back to fibre to the premises (FTTP). There is an urgent need for a 20 to 30 year life-cycle costing analysis to be completed to provide an engineering cost benefit justification for the NBN technologies to be used in the rollout.
There is a need for a broad panel to be formed that includes academics, industry, consumer representatives and government to discuss the future of the NBN beyond 2020.
It is time for Australia to adopt a “universal access” regime, where everyone can connect reliably to digital services, including health and education and other government services, at all times. This is especially for the socially and economically disadvantaged, including the homeless and itinerant, to be provided with the means to access digital services.
For this reason, nbn Co should rollout a national wholesale Wi-Fi network to facilitate companies and local government offering free Wi-Fi similar to what is happening now through Telstra Air.
Rod Tucker, University of Melbourne
Since the days of dial-up modems, there has been a relentless growth in demand for higher broadband speeds. But the 2014 Vertigan report underestimated Australia’s future broadband needs by a factor of ten. Vertigan supported the Coalition’s game-changing shift from fibre to the premises (FTTP) to fibre to the node (FTTN).
Since Vertigan, a lot has happened in the broadband world. For example, the major US telco AT&T has switched from FTTN to FTTP, arguing that demand is growing for speeds that FTTN cannot deliver. And rollouts of FTTP are accelerating in many countries. Australia is rapidly being left behind.
All of this points in one direction: Australia’s FTTN network will be obsolete by the time it is rolled out and will not be able to deliver the speeds that will be needed in the future.
Unlike FTTP and other technologies such as fibre to the distribution point (FTTdP), FTTN will be expensive to upgrade and a future owner of the FTTN network may not bother. Every way you look at it, FTTN is a bad idea.
The notion FTTP is much more expensive than FTTN turns out to be incorrect. The cost of rolling out FTTN is often understated and the cost of rolling out FTTP is overstated. New lower-cost FTTP construction techniques and cost increases for FTTN have changed the equation.
While public attention has generally focused on the fixed network in urban areas, people in rural and remote areas will use NBN’s satellites. Qantas also plans to use nbn’s satellites to provide video entertainment on its flights, sapping bandwidth from people on the ground. A third satellite will alleviate this problem.
My advice to the Senate Select Committee on the NBN is that the FTTN rollout should be abandoned before it is too late, and replaced with FTTP.
Arthur Lowery, Monash University
I have been in telecommunications for over 35 years now, and co-founded VPIsystems, a company that develops software tools for optimising and rolling-out telecommunications systems using multiple technologies, such as national broadband connectivity.
The goal of the NBN is laudable: to provide decent connectivity to everybody in Australia. I’m interested, as a taxpayer, in how this can be done in a cost efficient manner. One of my points is that a rollout is a longish-term endeavour, and maybe it should provide long-term employment for its skilled-up workforce.
Thus, when designing the rollout, a staged approach should be used. Because civil engineering is a large part of the cost, it is prudent to defer decommissioning existing infrastructure close to dwellings (which can support > 1 Gbit/s, as it is short and not shared), and concentrate on the real bottlenecks nearer the exchanges.
This means “fibre-to-the-fence” (G.fast). The fact that many period Australian homes are being rapidly replaced also makes FTTP question somewhat academic. Of course, once fibre is at the gate, it’s relatively easy extend to any building in the future, if needs be.
Thas Nirmalathas, University of Melbourne
The rapid proliferation of connected devices is transforming connectivity between people, places and things and creating a networked society. This presents many opportunities for citizens, businesses, and governments through the advancement and use of connectivity.
The NBN presents Australia with an opportunity to provide the critical infrastructure for the networked society. It remains the essential launch pad for transformation of key industry sectors,
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-optic cables and was able to process data from at least 46 of them at a time.
Document quoting Lt Gen Keith Alexander, head of the NSA, during a visit to Britain
Each of the cables carries data at a rate of 10 gigabits per second, so the tapped cables had the capacity, in theory, to deliver more than 21 petabytes a day – equivalent to sending all the information in all the books in the British Library 192 times every 24 hours.
And the scale of the programme is constantly increasing as more cables are tapped and GCHQ data storage facilities in the UK and abroad are expanded with the aim of processing terabits (thousands of gigabits) of data at a time.
For the 2 billion users of the world wide web, Tempora represents a window on to their everyday lives, sucking up every form of communication from the fibre-optic cables that ring the world.
The NSA has meanwhile opened a second window, in the form of the Prism operation, revealed earlier this month by the Guardian, from which it secured access to the internal systems of global companies that service the internet.
The GCHQ mass tapping operation has been built up over five years by attaching intercept probes to transatlantic fibre-optic cables where they land on British shores carrying data to western Europe from telephone exchanges and internet servers in north America.
This was done under secret agreements with commercial companies, described in one document as "intercept partners".
The papers seen by the Guardian suggest some companies have been paid for the cost of their co-operation and GCHQ went to great lengths to keep their names secret. They were assigned "sensitive relationship teams" and staff were urged in one internal guidance paper to disguise the origin of "special source" material in their reports for fear that the role of the companies as intercept partners would cause "high-level political fallout".
The source with knowledge of intelligence said on Friday the companies were obliged to co-operate in this operation. They are forbidden from revealing the existence of warrants compelling them to allow GCHQ access to the cables.
"There's an overarching condition of the licensing of the companies that they have to co-operate in this. Should they decline, we can compel them to do so. They have no choice."
The source said that although GCHQ was collecting a "vast haystack of data" what they were looking for was "needles".
"Essentially, we have a process that allows us to select a small number of needles in a haystack. We are not looking at every piece of straw. There are certain triggers that allow you to discard or not examine a lot of data so you are just looking at needles. If you had the impression we are reading millions of emails, we are not. There is no intention in this whole programme to use it for looking at UK domestic traffic – British people talking to each other," the source said.
He explained that when such "needles" were found a log was made and the interception commissioner could see that log.
"The criteria are security, terror, organised crime. And economic well-being. There's an auditing process to go back through the logs and see if it was justified or not. The vast majority of the data is discarded without being looked at … we simply don't have the resources."
However, the legitimacy of the operation is in doubt. According to GCHQ's legal advice, it was given the go-ahead by applying old law to new technology. The 2000 Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) requires the tapping of defined targets to be authorised by a warrant signed by the home secretary or foreign secretary.
However, an obscure clause allows the foreign secretary to sign a certificate for the interception of broad categories of material, as long as one end of the monitored communications is abroad. But the nature of modern fibre-optic communications means that a proportion of internal UK traffic is relayed abroad and then returns through the cables.
Parliament passed the Ripa law to allow GCHQ to trawl for information, but it did so 13 years ago with no inkling of the scale on which GCHQ would attempt to exploit the certificates, enabling it to gather and process data regardless of whether it belongs to identified targets.
The categories of material have included fraud, drug trafficking and terrorism, but the criteria at any one time are secret and are not subject to any public debate. GCHQ's compliance with the certificates is audited by the agency itself, but the results of those audits are also secret.
An indication of how broad the dragnet can be was laid bare in advice from GCHQ's lawyers, who said it would be impossible to list the total number of people targeted because "this would be an infinite list which we couldn't manage".
There is an investigatory powers tribunal to look into complaints that the data gathered by GCHQ has been improperly used, but the agency reassured NSA analysts in the early days of the programme, in 2009: "So far they have always found in our favour".
Historically, the spy agencies have intercepted international communications by focusing on microwave towers and satellites. The NSA's intercept station at Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire played a leading role in this. One internal document quotes the head of the NSA, Lieutenant General Keith Alexander, on a visit to Menwith Hill in June 2008, asking: "Why can't we collect all the signals all the time? Sounds like a good summer project for Menwith."
By then, however, satellite interception accounted for only a small part of the network traffic. Most of it now travels on fibre-optic cables, and the UK's position on the western edge of Europe gave it natural access to cables emerging from the Atlantic.
The data collected provides a powerful tool in the hands of the security agencies, enabling them to sift for evidence of serious crime. According to the source, it has allowed them to discover new techniques used by terrorists to avoid security checks and to identify terrorists planning atrocities. It has also been used against child exploitation networks and in the field of cyberdefence.
It was claimed on Friday that it directly led to the arrest and imprisonment of a cell in the Midlands who were planning co-ordinated attacks; to the arrest of five Luton-based individuals preparing acts of terror, and to the arrest of three London-based people planning attacks prior to the Olympics.
As the probes began to generate data, GCHQ set up a three-year trial at the GCHQ station in Bude, Cornwall. By the summer of 2011, GCHQ had probes attached to more than 200 internet links, each carrying data at 10 gigabits a second. "This is a massive amount of data!" as one internal slideshow put it. That summer, it brought NSA analysts into the Bude trials. In the autumn of 2011, it launched Tempora as a mainstream programme, shared with the Americans.
The intercept probes on the transatlantic cables gave GCHQ access to its special source exploitation. Tempora allowed the agency to set up internet buffers so it could not simply watch the data live but also store it – for three days in the case of content and 30 days for metadata.
"Internet buffers represent an exciting opportunity to get direct access to enormous amounts of GCHQ's special source data," one document explained.
The processing centres apply a series of sophisticated computer programmes in order to filter the material through what is known as MVR – massive volume reduction. The first filter immediately rejects high-volume, low-value traffic, such as peer-to-peer downloads, which reduces the volume by about 30%. Others pull out packets of information relating to "selectors" – search terms including subjects, phone numbers and email addresses of interest. Some 40,000 of these were chosen by GCHQ and 31,000 by the NSA. Most of the information extracted is "content", such as recordings of phone calls or the substance of email messages. The rest is metadata.
The GCHQ documents that the Guardian has seen illustrate a constant effort to build up storage capacity at the stations at Cheltenham, Bude and at one overseas location, as well a search for ways to maintain the agency's comparative advantage as the world's leading communications companies increasingly route their cables through Asia to cut costs. Meanwhile, technical work is ongoing to expand GCHQ's capacity to ingest data from new super cables carrying data at 100 gigabits a second. As one training slide told new users: "You are in an enviable position – have fun and make the most of it."Eminem’s uncle, said to have been a father figure to the rap star, has committed suicide, according to reports.
Todd Nelson, 42, shot himself in his Michigan backyard and his son discovered his body, according to SOHH, a New Jersey-based hip-hop news service. It is being reported that Nelson shot himself.
There has been no comment from Eminem, 32, or his Interscope Records regarding the tragedy.
The BBC reports that Betty Kresin, the grandmother of Eminem (real name: Marshall Mathers III), said that Nelson was arrested by police after trying to run over his neighbor’s dog and that he feared being jailed.
“We were having trouble raising $4,000 for an attorney, and I said ‘Why don’t you call Marshall?'” Kresin is quoted as saying. “He said ‘Mom, I don’t want to ask him for nothing, he’ll just think that I want his money.'”
Nelson is credited with raising the future rapper after Eminem’s father deserted the family, though Nelson and Eminem later fell out over the sale of a family house, say reports.
Says Kresin: “Oh he loved Marshall, oh my God, he was his uncle, and when he was little they played together and he helped watch him.”
SOHH reports that Nelson had been upset over a rottweiler owned by the local sheriff. In recent days, the dog had allegedly scratched Nelson’s car and scared his girlfriend’s son, though authorities reputedly took no action.
In 1991, another uncle of Eminem’s, Ronnie Polkingham, also committed suicide.These are stories Report on Business is following Thursday, May 9, 2013.
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Eisman frets about Canada
A hedge fund manager who made a killing betting against the U.S. housing market is now publicly fretting about Canadian real estate.
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Steven Eisman's comments on Canada are arguably more important than those of other observers given that he put his money where his mouth was in the run-up to the U.S. meltdown, gaining renown and, eventually, becoming one of the players noted in The Big Short, the book by Michael Lewis.
Most observers believe that Canada's housing market, while cooling rapidly, is in a soft landing, with the exception of Vancouver. Canada's finance minister has moved several times to prevent a burst bubble and tame the mortgage market amid record levels of consumer debt.
At a conference in New York yesterday, Mr. Eisman, who founded Emrys Partners, noted the exceptional run-up in prices for Canada homes, deemed by the Economist as the most overvalued in the world.
He pointed specifically to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp., according to published reports, warning that it's closing in on a $600-billion ceiling for its portfolio.
"When something gets that big, even governments get nervous," Mr. Eisman said, according to The New York Times, which covered yesterday's annual Sohn Investment Conference.
The nation's banks, he added, aren't protected enough should housing collapse.
The hedge fund chief also cited Home Capital Group, which, among other things, is a non-prime lender, as a possible trouble spot.
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Just yesterday, Toronto-listed Home Capital posted a jump in quarterly profit to $59.7-million, or $1.72 a share, from $52.5-million, or $1.50, a year earlier, and said it believes Canada's housing markets are "in balanced territory" and still healthy.
"While the company experienced overall originations below the last quarter of 2012, the activity was within management's expectations given seasonality and the slower start to the spring housing market this year," it said.
"The company continues to observe good demand for its traditional mortgage products from customers with strong credit profiles and originations in this product were up over the same period last year. The company anticipates that demand for its traditional products to continue to be robust, but recognizes that over all markets have softened and demand could be reduced in future quarters. Management is prepared to adjust its strategy in such a situation."
While the housing market has cooled, most, though not all, economists say there's no crash in the offing.
"Tougher mortgage rules, high household debt and reduced affordability in some regions have taken the wind out of the housing market's sales, though most signs point to a soft rather than hard landing," BMO Nesbitt Burns says in a new forecast, citing the 15-per-cent in drop in existing home sales in March from a year earlier, but "milder declines" in some regions last month.
"That's not a bad outcome after a 10-year boom that took ownership rates to record highs and house prices up two-fold," BMO added.
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"Builders have responded to softer demand by slowing construction in line with household formations."
The key measure of household debt to disposable income in Canada stands at about 165 per cent, and the Bank of Canada sees it stabilizing there.
While Canadians are holding the line, credit growth is still outpacing income gains.
In the first quarter of the year, for example, growth in mortgage debt from a year earlier was at its slowest pace since late 2001.
Canadian Tire to spin off real estate
Canadian Tire Corp. is taking a page from Loblaw Cos. Ltd.'s books, unveiled plans to spin off most of its property holdings into a real estate investment trust.
The REIT would own the Canadian chain's portfolio of some 250 properties, roughly 18 million square feet worth $3.5-billion, the company announced today.
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Canadian Tire would hold 80 per cent to 90 per cent of the REIT, with the rest going to investors through an initial public offering planned for the fall, The Globe and Mail's Marina Strauss reports.
The company holds more than that going into the REIT, but stores under scrutiny for replacement, development or relocation wouldn't be included.
"We are executing a strategy that reinforces the strength of our Company while pursuing new growth opportunities organically and through acquisition," said chief executive officer Stephen Wetmore.
"Today's announcement regarding a REIT would increase CTC's financial flexibility, providing us with the ability to access funds at an attractive cost of capital as we continue to invest in and grow our business," he said, referring to the company by its stock symbol.
Plans for the REIT came as Canadian Tire posted a 2.9-per-cent jump in first-quarter profit to $73-million, or 90 cents a share, from $71-million or 87 cents a year earlier. Revenue climbed 1.7 per cent to $2.48-billion from $2.44-billion.
"We had a great start for the first 70 days of the quarter but that shifted dramatically in the last two weeks as a result of last March's early spring temperatures combined with this March's cold, wintry weather," Mr. Wetmore said.
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"That said, the first quarter is our smallest for the retail segment."
Loonie near parity, yen sinks
The Canadian dollar is back to levels just shy of parity with the greenback, though down slightly today. The yen, on the other hand, is at a four-year low.
"It's very strong," chief currency strategist Camilla Sutton of Bank of Nova Scotia said of the Canadian currency. "It's flirting with parity. We just can't get there yet."
The strength of the currency is a headache not only for the country's exporters, but also for those who've been betting against Canada.
The currency, said chief economist David Rosenberg of Gluskin Sheff + Associates, has strengthened even amid the uncertainty related to the appointment of the next Bank of Canada governor, "defying the plethora of skeptics along the way."
Mr. Rosenberg noted how currency speculators have been betting heavily against the loonie, as the dollar coin is known in Canada, citing the shift to huge short positions on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
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"The level of speculative net shorts on the Canadian dollar on the CME at nearly 70,000 contracts (a massive swing from net longs totaling 63,166 contracts at the end of 2012) is near its highest level ever," he said.
"In other words, the sellers of the loonie have totally exhausted themselves and the bears on Canada are hurting real bad," he added in his research note.
Mr. Rosenberg added that he had "a good chuckle" reading a Wall Street Journal story yesterday on the bearish sentiment.
"The last time the sharks on the CME thought they smelled loonie blood on the CME to this extent was back in July 2007," he said.
"The result - the mother of all short coverings which sent the [Canadian dollar] surging 7 per cent in the ensuing three months."
Today, the U.S. dollar topped the ¥100 mark for the first time in four years.
"The yen fell nearly 2 per cent to four-year lows against a generally strong greenback following better-than-expected U.S. jobless claims figures on Thursday," said Sal Guatieri of BMO Nesbitt Burns. The currency has lost 14 per cent of its value so far this year."
Oliver backs down
Canada's natural resources minister is playing down suggestions of his government launching a trade battle with the European Union over its proposal to label oil sands crude as dirty, The Globe and Mail's Paul Waldie reports from London.
In Brussels yesterday, Joe Oliver said Canada would consider a complaint with the World Trade Organization, which would come amid talks between Ottawa and the European Union over a trade deal.
But in London today, he pulled back.
"We have always kept, and will continue to keep separate, the issue of the trade negotiations and the fuel quality directive," he said. "That's something which the Europeans also want to do. So there is no issue."
BCE profit climbs
BCE Inc. posted a jump of almost 7 per cent in first-quarter profit as its wireless customers rose by almost 4 per cent to stand at 7.8 million.
TV subscribers rose 5 per cent, and Internet customers 1.3 per cent.
The Canadian telecommunications giant earned $566-million or 73 cents a share, compared to $531-million or 69 cents a year earlier.
"Our wireless and wireline operations have a positive profile and are well complemented by Bell Media, which continues to deliver solid profitability," said chief financial officer Siim Vanaselja.
"With a good start to the year across all our operating segments and no fundamental changes in outlook, our 2013 financial plan is on track as we reconfirm today all our guidance targets for the year."
Telus boosts dividend
Like BCE, Telus Corp. also posted a better quarter today, at the same time hiking its quarterly dividend by 11.5 per cent to 34 cents and unveiling a $500-million share buyback this year.
In fact, the carrier said it would hold that buyback target until 2016, for a total $2-billion.
Telus posted a first-quarter profit of $362-million or 56 cents a share, compared to $319-million or 49 cents a year earlier.
Revenue rose to $2.76-billion from $2.63-billion.
Telus said it added 59,000 postpaid wireless users, 34,000 TV customers and 16,000 on the Internet, while it lost some prepaid wireless and some wireline users.
Bombardier revenue climbs
Bombardier Inc. got a boost in revenue in the first quarter thanks to a strong performance in its aerospace division, The Globe and Mail's Bertrand Marotte reports.
The Montreal-based plane and train maker said today tat first-quarter revenue totalled $4.3-billion (U.S.), up from $3.5-billion a year earlier.
Bombardier profit dipped to $148-million or 8 cents a share from $155-million, also 8 cents.
Profit on an adjusted basis was $156-million or 8 cents per share, compared with $150-million or 8 cents in the same period last year.
"We had a good first quarter, with an overall increase in revenues of 25 per cent," said chief executive officer Pierre Beaudoin.
"Aerospace is showing increased deliveries, revenues and EBIT, and the CSeries tests are progressing well with first flight next month."
Cineplex profit dips
Shareholders of Cineplex Inc. got a 6.7-per-cent dividend increase today, but don't thank Iron Man, who was just a bit too late to the game.
As The Globe and Mail's Steve Ladurantaye reports, the Canadian movie chain boosted its dividend to $1.44 a year, even amid a 41-per-cent drop in first-quarter profit.
Cineplex earned $8.8-million or 14 cents a share, compared to 26 cents a year earlier.
Revenue was flat at $248-million.
That's because of a 5.5-per-cent drop in attendance and eroding box office revenues hit by a lack of blockbusters.
Iron Man 3 opened just last week. Just sayin'.
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Business tickerDATE:07/25/2001 SLUG:ST/PATTERSON CREDIT:TRACY A WOODWARD/TWP James Patterson, an author who's known for his thrillers has come out with his first romance. Photos taken at the Borders bookstore, Sterling, VA. Original Filename: STPAT9.jpg (Photo by Tracy A. Woodward/The Washington Post/Getty Images)
James Patterson said on "CBS This Morning" that he intended to help children become better readers. His announcement comes at a time when one in every seven American adults reads below a fifth grade level.
The bestselling author of the Alex Cross series said, "It's so easy to get kids reading." He offered an anecdote about his own son, stating, "When... Jack was 8, that summer we said 'Jack, you have to read every day.' And he said, 'Do I have to?' and we said, 'unless you want to live in the garage.'"
Patterson urged viewers to go to local libraries or local bookstores, then made a surprising announcement: Over the next year, the author will donate $1 million of his own money to local bookstores. The only stipulation? The stores receiving donations must have children's sections.
Indie bookstores and libraries alike have been receiving their fair share of donations from generous individuals; Last week, the Columbus Metropolitan Library broke ground on a new building thanks to a $1 million donation from one of its previous employees.A Romanian member of the European Parliament has lashed out at Europe’s approach to the cultural war with migrants, and questioned the ability of Europe as a cultural entity to continue in the face of the onslaught.
Romanian MEP Laurentiu Rebega is a member of the same Europe of Nations and Freedom group as Marine Le Pen and the Front National, having joined last year after he crossed the floor from the Conservative party.
Speaking out in the immediate aftermath of the Brussels bombing attack this week, he told Breitbart London that the flow of refugees to Europe wouldn’t end until there was peace in the Middle East — a potentially unlikely prospect.
Speaking of the migrants travelling to Europe in ever greater numbers, Mr. Rebega said: “They can’t be integrated, they will never be integrated.
“The people who attack Europe are the people whose families came here 40 years ago. They cannot adapt to our culture. This shows we have a really big problem if we accept them in our cultural space.
“We have this mass of people from mass migration who have penetrated Europe without any control, any debate even over how they can be part of our culture. They come here, they refuse to take part in any kind of process to adapt to our norms”.
Stopping this flow of migrants was paramount to the survival of European people, he said: “In my opinion we have to stop this right away, otherwise Europe won’t exist in ten years from now. Right now we are at war.
“These people aren’t insane individuals who are out of control, and who decide to [attack us].
“This is very well organised. The [Brussels attacks] shows they are starting a war against the Europeans. We have a duty to protect our own citizens, we don’t have one to care for others.
“You might say we have to show humanity and compassion to [migrants] but now we see they are attacking our own citizens. They kill innocent people”.
When pressed on what the solution to these problems was, Mr. Rebega expressed there was much to be done, but emphasised the importance of protecting the frontier. He said: “The biggest problem we have now is the uncontrolled border.
“There is no doubt about this. We have no border control, we have no say on who comes from other places, enters with a different culture”.
Mr. Rebega explained he was particularly dissatisfied with the way the European Union failed to support nations at the frontiers, who were dealing with the day-to-day reality of mass migration. He lamented: “We didn’t help them, we just talk and talk, and force them to take mass migration”.Find An Event Create Your Event Help Trapped Under Ice, Twitching Tongues (Record Release), Scalped, Plead The Fifth 924 Gilman St
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Event Trapped Under Ice, Twitching Tongues (Record Release), Scalped, Plead The Fifth Friday, 6 November 2015
BANE SHOWS ANNIVERSARY SHOW!!!!
TRAPPED UNDER ICE
(Baltimore Hardcore legends RETURN!!!)
https://www.facebook.com/trappedunderice
TWITCHING TONGUES
('DISHARMONY' RECORDS RELEASE)
http://www.twitchingtongues.com/
SCALPED
(Bay Area Hardcore)
https://scalped415.bandcamp.com/
PLEAD THE FIFTH
(Sacramento Hardcore)
https://pleadthefifth.bandcamp.com/
Doors: 7PM Start: 8PM
$14 Door + $2 Annual Membership
924 Gilman Street, Berkeley, California 94710.
An All Ages DIY, Volunteer Run, 501(c)(3) Nonprofit, Music & Art Community Space Since 1986. Location 924 Gilman St (View)
924 Gilman St
Berkeley, CA 94710
United States 924 Gilman StBerkeley, CA 94710United States
Categories Music > All Ages
Kid Friendly: Yes! Dog Friendly: No Non-Smoking: Yes! Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! Contact Owner: 924 Gilman On BPT Since: Nov 18, 2010 924 Gilman 5105248180 [email protected] 924gilman.org
Ask a question... Ask!Keep our enemies close, but our allies closer
Updated
Australia can go on hoping that China's rise might yet prove peaceful, but mounting evidence suggests it won't. This means our US alliance still remains the best policy, writes Matthew Dal Santo.
Former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser has urged Australia to rethink its alliance with the United States, the cornerstone of Australian defence and foreign policy for six decades.
In Fraser's eyes, the alliance is getting too risky. Recent events in Asia make you think he might be right.
Just over two weeks ago, on a trip to Asia planned long in advance of the Ukraine crisis but clearly marked by its impact, US president Barack Obama did all he could to reassure anxious allies of the steadfastness of America's treaty commitments.
From Tokyo to Seoul and Manila (to say nothing of Canberra, left ungraced this time by the praesentia praesidentalis), governments across Asia are worried about an increasingly truculent China that seems more and more inclined to push back against the US-led strategic status quo in the Western Pacific.
A few years ago, it seemed the most worrying flashpoint was the South China Sea, where exorbitant claims would have Beijing's sovereignty reach thousands of miles south towards sunny islets and tropical reefs equally claimed by Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Indonesia. Because these countries are much weaker than China, some once feared that they would roll over before Beijing's mix of bullying and blandishments and hand the freedom of these southern seas to China.
That hasn't happened. With a US security guarantee that resembles the same one that underpins Australia's defence, the Philippines has stood up under more or less relentless Chinese pressure and intimidation. So has Vietnam. Just last week, the Chinese coast guard blasted Vietnamese ships with water cannons when they tried to prevent the installation of a Chinese drilling rig off a group of disputed islands.
The anti-Chinese riots that have followed show that fuel for a conflagration here hasn't evaporated. But perhaps it's because both of these countries are so much weaker than the emerging regional bully that the risk of the conflicts getting really "hot" seems more remote and the effort required to prevent it spiralling out of control into a devastating regional war so much easier.
Vietnam and the Philippines are poor countries with a defence budget a small fraction of China's and wouldn't so much lose face in backing down before a Chinese threat as win a moral argument that assured them the world's sympathy. And though Washington would probably resist an attack on the Philippine home islands, it would find it much easier to prevaricate if China's targets remained the sea floor or the uninhabited atolls, rocks and shoals mounted with concrete platforms that form the crux of the dispute.
Alas, the same can't be said in relation to Japan and its war of words with China over a barren cluster of islands in the East China Sea, which Tokyo calls the Senkakus and Beijing, Diaoyu.
Eight rocky outcrops inhabited by feral goats, an endangered species of indigenous mole, and, when it suits them, wandering albatross, are leading China and Japan, respectively the world's second- and third-largest economies, closer and closer to the brink of an immensely destructive regional war that would quickly suck in not only the United States but many of its allies, too.
At a defence symposium in Europe a few weeks ago I listened as Japanese academics fretfully described their country's worsening strategic situation as China returns to its historical position as Asia's greatest indigenous power.
At the time, what struck me most was the evidence one panellist presented not so much of the extent or existence of Chinese nationalism (which is well known), but of its specific, anti-Japanese form.
Not one but two Chinese television channels, it appears, dedicate their broadcasts to films depicting "The War Resisting Japan" - blood-soaked re-enactments of Japan's ruthless attempt to conquer China between 1931 and 1945. As the panellist put it, "Hundreds of Japanese soldiers are being killed every day on the Chinese small screen."
That Communist Party censors rarely find fault with such films suggests that this ritualised daily slaughter takes place with Beijing's implicit blessing.
Now, Tokyo has long struggled to own up to the full horror of an invasion that included events of such infamy as the 1937 Rape of Nanking (where Japanese soldiers massacred 300,000 Chinese civilians) - and the unusually hawkish government Shinzo Abe now leads has found it particularly hard. So there's certainly an argument to be made in favour of ensuring such crimes aren't forgotten. All the same, there was something singularly chilling in the panellist's words.
The cultivation of such war-readiness should fill us with grave misgiving. Kitting their children out in sailor suits and miniature military uniforms, the comfortable British and German middle classes became in the years before the outbreak of the First World War inured to the idea of conflict.
Another panellist set out what he called China's "grey-zone operations" in and around the Japanese-controlled Senkaku Islands. Speaking anxiously about "foreign submarines operating in Japanese territorial waters" or "marines disguised as fishermen", he described the "paramilitary probing" of the islands by Chinese ships and planes, the creation of a state "not fully of peace but neither of war" through the accumulation of "unilateral actions designed to reverse the status quo".
Today, this seems especially worrying. After all, by similarly brazen revisionist acts that fell individually short of invasion, but ultimately amounted to the same thing, Russia seized and annexed Crimea.
According to our Japanese panellists, in 2012 some 23 Chinese vessels entered the Senkakus' waters and in 2013 that number rose to 52. How would Japan react if it awoke one morning to find that while it slept from such vessels a hundred or so Chinese "fishermen" and their families had disembarked in the moonless darkness and set up camp on the Senkakus?
Would Tokyo use force to dislodge them? Would Washington support it? Would Canberra?
If Japan did send in the marines, there can be little doubt about China's response. With apparently millions of Chinese sitting at home, understandably enraged as they watch yet another Japanese marine get his just deserts for an act of unspeakable cruelty against a helpless Chinese nation, were the Japanese to be shown attacking Chinese "civilians" or the soldiers sent to protect them, the Chinese public already knows the script for what follows.
The cultivation of such war-readiness should fill us with grave misgiving. Kitting their children out in sailor suits and miniature military uniforms, the comfortable British and German middle classes became in the years before the outbreak of the First World War inured to the idea of conflict. And when the Kaiser dismissed Britain's treaty commitments to Belgium - that infamous "scrap of paper" - people on both sides of the North Sea ran headlong into barbarism.
Aiming to calm Japanese nerves, in Tokyo Mr Obama pointedly declared that the United States' security guarantee of Japan covered the Senkakus: Washington would consider a Chinese operation against those islands an attack on Japan itself. So China now has its scrap of paper too, should it wish to trample on it.
Yet, for all that, Mr Fraser is still wrong. Australia, a country of barely 23 million, will never be able to counterbalance China, an empire of 1.3 billion, either on its own or as part of a coalition of much weaker and poorer regional states. Only nuclear weapons could make up for China's exponentially greater sources of power.
Mr Fraser is free to go on hoping that China's rise might yet prove peaceful. (Though why he does, deserves a discussion of its own.) In the meantime, the strong-arm tactics that are becoming an increasingly frequent feature of Beijing's regional "diplomacy", and the aggrieved, anti-Japanese nationalism the Chinese Communist Party seems to be complicit in fostering at home, suggest it won't.
Which means that the US alliance, along with a concerted effort of our own to make plain to both sides the full risks of confrontation, remain our best bet.
Hope, famously, isn't a policy.
Matthew Dal Santo is a freelance writer and foreign affairs correspondent. He previously worked for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. View his full profile here.
Topics: government-and-politics, foreign-affairs, unrest-conflict-and-war
First postedYou really have to work hard to get hooked on smoking opium. The Victorian-era form of the drug, known as chandu, is rare, and the people who know how to use it aren’t exactly forthcoming. But leave it to an obsessive antiques collector to figure out how to get to addicted to a 19th-century drug.
Recently, Steven Martin—no relation to the actor—came by the Collectors Weekly office and told me all about his harrowing journey from collecting to substance abuse. He started out collecting innocuous things; at first, it was seashells and stones, then it was currency and Asian antiques like textiles. Eventually the Navy veteran found his way to Bangkok, Thailand, where he worked as a journalist and travel writer, covering Southeast Asia.
There, he also discovered the beauty of antique opium pipes, bowls, and lamps, as well as opium trays and the hundreds of little implements that went with the ritual. Because opium smoking had been so thoroughly eradicated around the globe in the early 20th century, Martin realized very little had been written about these objects. After years of intense research, he produced the first opium-smoking antiques guide, The Art of Opium Antiques, in 2007.
Martin’s research wasn’t limited to mining Victorian medical books or hunting down authentic pieces on eBay. As he came across various pipes and tools, he sought out the last of the Laotian opium dens to learn how these accoutrements were used and, yes, to try them himself. Before long, he and a friend had created their own private opium den in rural Southeast Asia, but when another of Martin’s smoking buddies, a top Asian ceramics expert, died in 2008, possibly from withdrawal symptoms, Martin knew he had to quit before it was too late for him, too. This summer, Random House published his latest book, Opium Fiend: A 21st Century Slave to a 19th Century Addiction, in which Martin details how his obsessive collectors’ bug led to his opium addiction.
Collectors Weekly: What drew you to antique opium paraphernalia?
Steven Martin: There was something dark about it. People collect all sorts of weird things, like old torture mechanisms, just bizarre stuff. I think this falls into the same category. It had this outlaw-chic thing about it that attracted me right away.
When I started seeing these really opulent pieces made from the best materials that were known to man back then, like ivory, rhinoceros horns, silver, or jewels, it seemed to sum up the hedonism of that world. What I’m most attracted to as a collector are the most opulent examples, because of the decadence they evoke.
Collectors Weekly: How did you first get into opium antiques?
“I had all these little tools and wasn’t sure what they were. That’s why I hung out in opium dens and experimented with the drug.”
Martin: In 2001, I was working as a fixer and translator for a good friend of mine, Karl Taro Greenfeld, a journalist for the Asian edition of Time. He wanted to do a story about the remnants of opium smoking in Laos, which, at the time, was the only country in the world where you could see opium smoking in the traditional Chinese manner—that is, with a pipe that’s designed to vaporize the drug and a lamp as a source of heat and all the crazy, little tools and accoutrements. Through some weird quirk of history, this sort of opium smoking was eradicated
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Ladder
Greater Western Sydney
Sydney Swans
Western Bulldogs
West Coast
Geelong
Hawthorn
Melbourne
Adelaide
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St Kilda
Collingwood
Richmond
Essendon
Gold Coast
North Melbourne
Port Adelaide
Fremantle
Brisbane Lions
Carlton
Jack Billings has had a strong pre-season and is ready to fire. Picture: AFL Photos
Matt Thompson
Premier: Greater Western Sydney
Runner-up: Western Bulldogs
Wooden spoon: Carlton
Moving up: Melbourne
Set to fall: Hawthorn
Brownlow Medal: Patrick Dangerfield (Geelong)
Coleman Medal: Lance Franklin (Sydney)
NAB AFL Rising Star: Andrew McGrath (Essendon)
Recruit of the year: Tom Mitchell (Hawthorn)
Surprise All Australian: Zach Merrett (Essendon)
Headline you'll see: Players get massive pay rise
Headline you won't see: Dustin Martin splits from celebrity agent
Game-changer: Off the field, now the AFL owns Etihad Stadium, tenant clubs will reap the rewards of newfound prosperity.
Pass the tissues: Fans finally get a full look at Jaeger O'Meara's potential, bringing tears to the eyes of both Hawks and Gold Coast supporters - albeit for different reasons.
The new normal: The barrier between fans and players becomes further restricted, with more controlled media access meaning we hear less from the stars of the game.
Ladder
Greater Western Sydney
Western Bulldogs
Sydney
West Coast
Geelong
Melbourne
Collingwood
St Kilda
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Hawthorn
Essendon
Gold Coast
Richmond
Adelaide
North Melbourne
Fremantle
Port Adelaide
Brisbane Lions
Carlton
Callum Twomey
Premier: Greater Western Sydney
Runner-up: West Coast
Wooden spoon: Carlton
Moving up: Essendon
Set to fall: Geelong
Brownlow Medal: Nat Fyfe (Fremantle)
Coleman Medal: Tom Lynch (Gold Coast)
NAB AFL Rising Star: Ben Ainsworth (Gold Coast)
Recruit of the year: Jaeger O'Meara
Surprise All Australian: Orazio Fantasia
Headline you'll see: Mitchell makes Hawks pay
Headline you won't see: Dusty calls press conference to update media on contract talks
Game changer: Play on, play on, play on. The 'rush' tactic is in vogue with clubs keen to break open play instead of short-passing the ball to find an opening.
Pass the tissues: Jobe Watson wins Essendon best and fairest and returns to career-best form.
The new normal: Stricter media access to players despite new CBA deal.
Ladder
Greater Western Sydney
West Coast
Western Bulldogs
Adelaide
Sydney
Hawthorn
Essendon
Geelong
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Melbourne
Gold Coast
Fremantle
St Kilda
Collingwood
Richmond
Port Adelaide
North Melbourne
Brisbane Lions
Carlton
Could Jobe win another Brownlow in a fairytale return? Picture: AFL Photos
Michael Whiting
Premier: Greater Western Sydney
Runner-up: Sydney
Wooden spoon: Carlton
Moving up: Gold Coast
Set to fall: North Melbourne
Brownlow Medal: Luke Parker (Sydney)
Coleman Medal: Josh Kennedy (West Coast)
NAB AFL Rising Star: Hugh McCluggage (Brisbane Lions)
Recruit of the year: Pearce Hanley (Gold Coast)
Surprise All Australian: Dylan Shiel (GWS)
Headline you'll see: How long can Bucks hold on?
Headline you won't see: Eddie says Giants losing the Riverina is bad for game's growth
Game-changer: Who's going to be the first to not press everyone up and leave a couple of forwards stationed at home?
Pass the tissues: Nic Nat returns and helps West Coast storm into a prelim final.
The new normal: Signing draftees to multi-year extensions before they've played a game – particularly interstate clubs. The Suns have done it and watch for others to follow. Win-win for player and club.
Ladder
Greater Western Sydney
Sydney
West Coast
Western Bulldogs
Adelaide
Geelong
Hawthorn
Gold Coast
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Melbourne
St Kilda
Collingwood
Fremantle
Port Adelaide
Richmond
Essendon
North Melbourne
Brisbane Lions
CarltonCheck out their line of headsets, camera cables, and LED lighting today!
Ten Simple things you can do to improve your airmanship.
I thought it might be helpful to post up a few things that I have found useful, in terms of keeping the rust off and trying to continuously improve the craft. I’m sure you have some of your own methods and we’d love to hear them.
#1 Fly more often – Recency of experience is pivotal in keeping you skills sharp. Motor coordination, muscle memory, SA (situational awareness), all benefit from regular lubrication.
#2 Study – Seems simple, but it takes discipline to set aside time on a recurring basis to read something educational about flying. It might be a FAR/AIM or you AFM, or your favorite training manual. It could also be a good aviation periodical or website. Seems simple, but it takes discipline to set aside time on a recurring basis to read something educational about flying. It might be a FAR/AIM or you AFM, or your favorite training manual. It could also be a good aviation periodical or website. Source for current FAR/AIM
#3 Enroll in the FAAWings program – I know this may not be a popular option and it may be stronger in some locations than others, but it’s free and generally the programs are good.
# 4 Fly with others – Inevitably I learn from flying with other pilots. Everyone brings their unique style and technique to the task and this might expose you to something positive, hopefully.
# 5 Flight Simulation – You have heard me preach the value of desk flying. One shouldn’t go overboard on this, but there are benefits. Basic sims aren’t overly expensive and run on most mainstream computer platforms. – You have heard me preach the value of desk flying. One shouldn’t go overboard on this, but there are benefits. Basic sims aren’t overly expensive and run on most mainstream computer platforms. Source for home flight sims
# 6 Dry fly – Setting in the cockpit and running through “what-if”
– Setting in the cockpit and running through “what-if” scenarios, especially abnormals or emergency procedures, can make a big difference if you are pressed to do this stuff in real life. I do this with a cockpit poster on the Falcon.
# 7 Go on a cross-country – If this is the only kind of flying that you do, disregard. But if you are a traffic pattern, local only, or a short-range $100 hamburger aviator, you need to spread it out. If for some reason that isn’t practical at least go through the steps to plan a mock trip of several hundred miles.
# 8 Additional training – An add-on rating or a new certificate is one of the best ways to take your skills to the next level. Some of these aren’t super-expensive. Fun ones on my personal list are glider commercial and floatplane. You can also do acro or upset recovery training. Maybe a tailwheel endorsement? All of these are big fun. – An add-on rating or a new certificate is one of the best ways to take your skills to the next level. Some of these aren’t super-expensive. Fun ones on my personal list are glider commercial and floatplane. You can also do acro or upset recovery training. Maybe a tailwheel endorsement? All of these are big fun. Source of training supplies
#9 Challenge yourself – The next time you get in the airplane, be committed to make the flight go perfectly. Seek ultimate precision. Throw in a few maneuvers from your Practical Test Standards (PTS) for the license or ratings you hold. Don’t assume after years of disuse you can still do an adequate short field landing or turns around a point, etc. Strive for perfection. – The next time you get in the airplane, be committed to make the flight go perfectly. Seek ultimate precision. Throw in a few maneuvers from your Practical Test Standards (PTS) for the license or ratings you hold. Don’t assume after years of disuse you can still do an adequate short field landing or turns around a point, etc. Strive for perfection. Source for PTS books
#10 Fly different airplanes -There is nothing like jumping into a completely different airplane to boost skills and maybe humble you a little. If you have all of your time in a Cirrus and you jump into a C-172, or vice versa, you will be amazed. Best to bring an instructor which will likely be dictated by the rental facilities policies and/or insurance requirements.
-There is nothing like jumping into a completely different airplane to boost skills and maybe humble you a little. If you have all of your time in a Cirrus and you jump into a C-172, or vice versa, you will be amazed. Best to bring an instructor which will likely be dictated by the rental facilities policies and/or insurance requirements. Source for flight manuals. The more experience you have the better, but not always. I love flying new and different airplanes. I consider myself an airplane polygamist.
There you have it! Ten things you can do today to level up your flying.
If you aren’t already licensed, get to work!
by Brent Owens
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But, there was a big problem: load times. The Angular 2 version consistently took several seconds longer to load than the non-Angular version. Over the summer, we worked with the Angular team to improve our load times. The end result of these efforts is that our new editor loads five seconds faster than it did before and one second faster than our old editor. We even created a 29KB Hello World Angular 2 app along the way.
The Problem
When we released the beta of the Angular 2 version of our editor, we consistently saw load times about four seconds slower than our old editor.
While analyzing our load times, we found that a large amount of time was being spent bootstrapping the Angular app with the runtime template compiler. We saw mentions of an offline compiler, but it did not appear to be available or documented yet. In an attempt to improve our load times, we reached out to the Angular team in March about Ahead of Time (AoT) compilation.
They kept us up to date on the progress of the AoT compiler and informed us that it only worked with TypeScript. Problem was, we were using the JavaScript version of Angular 2 in concert with the Google Closure Compiler to typecheck and minify our JavaScript.
When we mentioned to the Angular team our inability to use TypeScript due to the Closure Compiler, they suggested two tools they built at Google to solve this same problem: Tsickle and Clutz.
The Solution
The Angular team built two tools to use TypeScript with the Closure Compiler: Tsickle and Clutz. Tsickle produces Closure annotated JavaScript from TypeScript, and Clutz produces TypeScript definition files from Closure annotated JavaScript. Together, they enable you to use TypeScript in a Closure compatible codebase, and vice versa.
At Lucid, we modified Angular 2, its dependencies, and the AoT compiler in order to produce Closure compatible JavaScript from Angular 2 TypeScript. The end result is a five second improvement in load time for our new editor.
The above figure shows load times from May to September for our old editor (purple) and our new editor (blue). We switched from JavaScript to TypeScript with simple optimizations from the Closure compiler in the middle of August, which is when we see the first dip in load times. The second dip comes at the end of August, when we got Closure’s advanced optimizations working with TypeScript.
Currently, we see load times about five seconds lower, on average, with AoT compilation than with runtime compilation. The new load times are even about one second faster, on average, than our old editor.
When we compare flame graphs collected while loading our new editor with AoT and runtime compilation, we see a large difference. The biggest difference is, as expected, between the Angular 2 bootstrap and the first Angular 2 tick. The ahead of time compiler cuts out a large amount of template parsing and compilation that otherwise happens at runtime. Accordingly, things are much faster. Fair warning, the scales on these graphs are not equal.
How We Did It
In this section and the next, we discuss what we did to make this happen and provide an example, in case you would like to reproduce our efforts.
For those who want to skip straight to the example, you can find it here: https://github.com/lucidsoftware/closure-typescript-example
Tsickle
Tsickle is a project from the Angular team that produces Closure compatible JavaScript from TypeScript. It wraps the TypeScript Compiler and uses the TypeScript Compiler API to add Closure compatible annotations to TypeScript, compiles TypeScript to JavaScript, and converts CommonJS modules to goog.modules.
You can use Tsickle to create TypeScript dependencies in your Closure JavaScript codebase.
Tsickle transforms something like this:
import Statement from 'goog:Statement'; export class Greeter { constructor(public statement: Statement) {} greet(): string { return this.statement.getStatement(); } };
Into this:
goog.module('js.app.ts.greeter');var module = module || {id: 'js/app/ts/greeter.js'}; class Greeter { /** * @param {?} statement */ constructor(statement) { this.statement = statement; } /** * @return {?} */ greet() { return this.statement.getStatement(); } static _tsickle_typeAnnotationsHelper() { /** @type {?} */ Greeter.prototype.statement; } } exports.Greeter = Greeter; ; //# sourceMappingURL=greeter.js.map
Clutz
Clutz is a project from the Angular team that produces TypeScript definition files from Closure compatible Javascript. It uses the Closure Compiler’s API mode and performs a full closure compilation in order to produce a definition file that lets you use all your existing Closure JavaScript in a TypeScript project.
Symbols or modules from your Closure JavaScript are available in TypeScript under the “goog:” prefix. For example, if you had “goog.provide(‘lucid.model.CustomShape’);” in your JavaScript, you could import it in TypeScript using “import CustomShapeModel from ‘goog:lucid.model.CustomShape’;”
Clutz can be used to turn something like this:
goog.provide('Statement'); /** * @constructor * @param {string} statement */ var Statement = function(statement) { /** @private {string} */ this.statement = statement; } /** * @return {string} */ Statement.prototype.getStatement = function() { return this.statement; } /** * @param {string} statement * @return {string} */ Statement.prototype.setStatement = function(statement) { this.statement = statement; }
Into this:
declare namespace ಠ_ಠ.clutz { class Statement extends Statement_Instance { } class Statement_Instance { private noStructuralTyping_: any; constructor (statement : string ) ; getStatement ( ) : string ; setStatement (statement : string ) : string ; } }
Putting it All Together
Using Tsickle and Clutz, we modified our build system to support TypeScript dependencies in JavaScript and vice versa. It works like this: TypeScript and JavaScript build targets can mark other build targets as dependencies. Those build targets are then built, using either Tsickle or Clutz, depending on the type of dependency.
In order to support Angular 2 generating Closure compatible JavaScript with AoT compilation, we modified Angular 2 and RxJS. We built a custom version of both projects and currently use them in our build process. If you would like to know more about the modifications we made to get this working, please see this GitHub issue.
The 29 KB Hello World App
Lucid built a proof of concept Hello World Angular 2 application using Tsickle and Clutz before we tried implementing the same thing in our large JavaScript codebase. You can find the example on GitHub at https://github.com/lucidsoftware/closure-typescript-example.
The purpose of the project is to provide an example of Tsickle, Clutz, and Angular 2 working together. Things are built from source, so you can see how we go from modified Angular 2 all the way to the final product. Comments, questions, and pull requests are welcome.
When we compress the resulting bundle using Brotli, the final bundle size is right around 29KB. gzip is not far behind:
$ ll --block-size=KB -rw-rw-r-- 1 james james 115kB Sep 27 02:45 main.js -rw------- 1 james james 29kB Sep 27 02:45 main.js.brotli-11 -rw-rw-r-- 1 james james 35kB Sep 27 02:45 main.js.gz
How to Run the Example
More information can be found in the example’s README, but to run the example, either:
1. Docker
docker pull jjudd/closure-typescript-example docker run -t -i -p 8000:8000 --net=host jjudd/closure-typescript-example localhost:8000/index.html?compiled=1
2. Build it Yourself
make run
Note: You will need to make sure you have all the dependencies installed for this to work. It has only been tested on Ubuntu 14.04.These are 12, 1920x1080 wallpapers using characters from Air Gear, made these for my PS3, included in the rar file is a PS3 theme file that has all 12 of the wallpapers + icons I made too
this project took around two months cause of my great procrastination skills~ actually finished a big chunk of it over this weekend
please enjoy yourselves
- - - - - - update - - - - - -
I noticed I made a slight mistake when making the icons for the ps3 theme file, the download icons is not the right one, it uses the new vmemory card icon instead
I've fixed it now so just need to download the rar again and reinstall the theme, and please message me if there are anymore stuff like thatJACKSONVILLE, Fla. - A 16-year-old was arrested Friday, accused of attacking a disabled man pumping gas last month.
Kevin Johnson is charged with abuse of a disabled adult in the Feb. 4 attack at the Hess station on Merrill Road.
Michael Caraway was walking with a cane when he was struck in the face by a group a teens he believes was playing the "knockout game." Caraway told Channel 4 the pain was extreme for a long time after he was attacked in February.
"I'm doing better, just taking things one day at a time," said Caraway. "My wife and children are way more cautious than what we've been."
Jacksonville Sheriff's Office investigators obtained video from a nearby store that captured a group of males walking in front of a store during the same time period the attack occurred. Investigators were able to identify Johnson as a suspect and obtained a search warrant for his cellphone.
Police say multiple videos on the phone show juveniles walking up to unsuspecting individuals and punching them -- an activity called the "knockout game" by national media outlets.
Channel 4 brought the news of the arrest in his case Friday night to Caraway as he was outside his Arlington home.
"We would never expect it to happen to me and it did. So now we're saying it can happen, so I tell my daughters be on their best behavior, looking out for people," said Caraway. "They go in pairs now; my daughter does not like to go out by herself anymore since this happened."
While Caraway said he is relieved that there's been an arrest, he also thinks there are other teens who were present when he was punched in the face. Caraway said he hopes any accomplices are caught as well.
"They really try to knock you out, so when they try and knock you out, they're going to do it. These are big boys," said Caraway.
Johnson was charged as a juvenile with a third-degree felony and was ordered held without bond.
Copyright 2014 by News4Jax.com. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Image copyright AFP Image caption Iraqi forces backed by coalition air strikes retook Ramadi from IS earlier this year
A British citizen has been killed in Iraq trying to defuse a bomb left by the so-called Islamic State group, US contractor Janus says.
Another worker is said to have been hurt clearing ordnance in Ramadi, 60 miles (100km) west of Baghdad.
Iraqi forces backed by coalition air strikes retook the city from IS last December, but mine-clearing has to be completed before residents can return.
The Foreign Office said it was in contact with Janus following the death.
According to the AFP news agency, the incident was also confirmed by the mayor of Ramadi, although he did not specify the nationality of the wounded contractor.
The incident is said to have taken place in the al-Malaab neighbourhood of Ramadi, the capital of the western Anbar province.
A Foreign Office spokesman said: "We are in contact with the employer of a British national who has died in Iraq and have offered our support at this difficult time."
Dozens of Iraqi civilians have died in explosions while trying to return to their homes in the city.
Janus Global Operations began its work in April after being awarded the contract to clear thousands of devices and booby-traps left by IS.
It confirmed the death of the British contractor without providing further information.TAMPA, Fla. -- The New York Yankees are seriously contemplating dropping the $153 Million Man, Jacoby Ellsbury, to the bottom of the batting order this season. Since Ellsbury has been a Yankee, he has nearly always hit in the first three spots of the lineup, despite being barely an average player. It seems as if his seven-year deal could go down as the worst free-agent signing in franchise history.
Ellsbury’s potential fall in stature continues a downward slope to his Yankees career, which leaves it hard to imagine a happy ending with four more seasons remaining and Ellsbury's 34th birthday arriving in September.
This season, the Yankees are paying Alex Rodriguez $21 million not to play, per the terms of his final 10-year, $275 million contract. Owner Hal Steinbrenner has shown the team will eat money if there is no better option.
Ellsbury's time with the Yankees has been downright boring, with few memorable highlights and benchings in pivotal games. He has built no equity with the team.
The Yankees have played in just one playoff game in Ellsbury’s three years in the Bronx, and Ellsbury, with a lefty on the mound, didn't start it. Last September, when the Yankees were still contending for a playoff spot, Ellsbury sat in some big games against lefties as manager Joe Girardi favored another left-handed hitter, Brett Gardner. Now, Gardner -- with similar skills, but a contract for three fewer seasons and nearly $100 million less -- might be the guy at the top of the order, with Ellsbury near the bottom, likely in the seventh spot.
Is time running out for Jacoby Ellsbury in the Bronx? AP Images
Last year, Gardner had a.351 on-base percentage compared to Ellsbury’s.330 as they batted in the first two spots in the Yankees' order. Gardner also saw more pitches per at-bat (4.1 to 3.7). Girardi has floated the idea of splitting the two apart in the lineup, which usually in his tempered media parlance means he is going to do it. It's hard to come up with a compelling reason why Ellsbury would beat out Gardner for a spot at the top of the lineup card.
"We are going to evaluate as we move forward," said Girardi, leaving open the possibility of keeping Ellsbury and Gardner atop the order.
This spring, the Yankees have a plethora of outfield prospects and no historical loyalty to Ellsbury. If Ellsbury doesn't pick up his game -- and with Aaron Judge and Clint Frazier knocking on the Yankee Stadium door -- Ellsbury’s next demotion could be to the bench. Age, clearly, is not on his side.
“I don’t even let that enter my mind,” Ellsbury said. “I still have speed. I still have explosiveness. That’s how I view it. I try not to look at age, just how the body is feeling and the body feels good.”
The Yankees and Ellsbury had better hope there is some spark in that body, because he has yet to provide even one season commensurate with his nearly $22 million yearly wage.
“I still think that there is more in the tank with Jacoby Ellsbury for us,” Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said.
Ellsbury’s seven-year, $153 million contract is vying for the worst in Yankees history. Its shear enormousness, an overreaction to the impending loss of Robinson Cano in the winter of 2013, will likely give it the edge over Ed Whitson's, Carl Pavano's and Kei Igawa's in Yankees free-agent infamy. (Not that anyone should feel bad for Ellsbury; who wouldn’t want to be overpaid?)
Two days after Christmas in 1984, Whitson signed a five-year, $4.5 million deal. He went 15-10 with a whopping 5.38 ERA in a season-plus -- and went to war with both his skipper, Billy Martin, and angry Yankees fans -- before getting shipped back to San Diego in July 1986 for veteran reliever Tim Stoddard. In 2004, Pavano signed for four years and nearly $40 million, then was branded “American Idle” by the New York Post after making just 26 starts in three seasons (and not many good starts, either, as he posted a 5.00 ERA in pinstripes). Igawa was signed for five years and $20 million -- not including an additional $26 million posting fee they paid to the Japanese pitcher's former team, the Hanshin Tigers -- in what turned out to be a foolish response to the Red Sox winning the Daisuke Matsuzaka bid in 2006. Igawa threw a total of 71⅔ major league innings, with a 2-4 record along with a very unpleasant-looking 6.66 ERA.
New York, New Yuck A glance at a few of the worst free-agent deals in Yankees history. Player Signed Deal Tenure with Yankees Kevin Youkilis 2012 1-$12M Played 28 games in final MLB season A.J. Burnett 2008 5-$82.5M 4.79 ERA in 98 starts before trade to PIT Kei Igawa 2006 5-$20M* 6.66 ERA in 2 seasons Carl Pavano 2004 4-$39.95M 5.00 ERA in 26 starts over 4 seasons Jaret Wright 2004 3-$21M 4.99 ERA in 40 starts before trade to BAL Kenny Rogers 1995 4-$20M 5.11 ERA in 2 seasons before trade to OAK Hideki Irabu 1996 4-$12.8M 4.80 RTA in 3 seasons before trade to Expos Ed Whitson 1984 5-$4.4M 5.38 ERA in 2 seasons before trade to SD Steve Kemp 1982 5-$5.45M.264 BA, 19 HR in 2 seasons before trade to PIT * not including $26M posting fee paid to Hanshin Tigers
The three are among the worthy contenders, but Ellsbury’s utterly average production and flareless play give him the inside track because of the value and length of his contract.
In his three seasons in the Bronx, he has hit.264 with a.326 on-base percentage -- far below his career totals of.297 and.439 coming into the contract. He has stolen just 80 bases -- 10 more than he stole in a single season, 2009, with the Boston Red Sox. He has hit 32 homers in three seasons as a Yankee, which is the same amount he swatted in 2011 in Boston, the one year that seemed to justify his big-bucks signing. Ellsbury chases balls down in center field, but he throws worse than a New York Jets quarterback.
On top of this, Ellsbury brings no buzz to the team. He is as invisible in the clubhouse as he is on the field. He is not a leader, typically the role of higher-paid players. When things went wrong, Derek Jeter was almost always there to answer the tough questions. It is part of the job for the top crop of Yankees to communicate to the fans. Ellsbury is rarely in the clubhouse, especially when the big-time players are being held accountable.
Even Hal Steinbrenner has put Ellsbury slightly on blast, though in a much tamer way than his old man would have with such a contract.
“Jacoby is a great player,” Steinbrenner said. “He comes to play every day. He’s been great with the young kids. The stats are what the stats are. But I’ve enjoyed having him on the club.”
Will Steinbrenner enjoy having Ellsbury on the club for another four years? If he is demoted in the batting order, the next logical step is out of the starting lineup entirely, then the bench and then...Glens Falls, New York, to me, is a hockey town. Growing up I got to see so many awesome teams with A+ jerseys and at that time that is all that mattered because lets face it, as a kid the only thing you’re really looking at is who looks cooler. I’ll never forget walking into the Civic Center and seeing the legendary Barry Melrose standing by the beer line, mullet flowing in the breeze, embracing his inner hockey fan. As awesome as this was, hockey has been a roller coaster for the last few years. Teams coming and leaving left me feeling lost, without control. These were dire times but you know what? Not anymore. The Adirondack Thunder are here and they are here to stay.
Jack, from Two Buttons Deep, and I attended the Thunders Teddy Bear Toss game and boy oh boy it did NOT disappoint. Jack and I were literally there for 5 minutes and we both felt we already had gotten everything we needed to show you guys what hockey in Glens Falls was about. That right there is why I love hockey north of Saratoga. The fans are real meat and potato type people and are so incredibly loyal to their hockey teams. One word to describe Adirondack Thunder Fans? Passion.
If you’re interested in going to a Thunder game check out this link here. Let them know the boys from Two Buttons Deep and The Morning Skate sent you. Great people up there.
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Throughout this tutorial, we are going to explore different approaches for persisting and retrieving data in cross-platform desktop applications, built using the Electron platform and web technologies.
We'll see how to use popular SQL and NoSQL databases like MySQL, SQLite, SQLite3, MongoDB and NeDB. And ORMs like Sequelize to perform CRUD operations in Electron apps.
We'll also cover how to install the required tools, write some sample code, and then see some pros and cons of each approach. But first, lets start with an introduction to Electron, for those who are not yet familiar with it.
An Introduction to Electron
Electron was released by Github, back in 2013, allowing web developers to use their existing front-end skills with JavaScript, CSS and HTML to build native-like cross-platform desktop apps for Windows, MAC and Linux with a single code base.
Electron is based on Google Chromium project and Node.js platform, which means you have an embedded browser with latest web standards (thanks to Chromium) and the whole Node.js modules, available from NPM, at your disposal.
Since Electron is basically a web browser, you can take advantage of the most modern client side frameworks and libraries, such as Angular and React, to build apps not just for the web but for the desktop too.
If you have any doubts about Electron, and if it's really changing the way we are developing desktop applications, ignoring the fact that big companies and even Microsoft are using it (You shouldn't), you can simply check the NPM statistics related to the use of Electron from this link. And also the ongoing list of apps created using Electron from this link
Persisting Data in Electron Apps
First of all, why would you want to do that i.e. persist data?
In most cases an application needs to persist data, for many reasons such as:
Saving user defined settings: There exist many application wide settings or parameters which are different from a user to another and therefor, they need to be set by end users and persisted by some mechanism to avoid losing them between application restarts.
Saving domain specific data: In data extensive applications such as enterprise apps, data is the centric element so persistence and retrieval is a crucial feature. This kind of apps needs data storage for keeping track of information or for further processing and analysis.
Adding off-line support: If your application depends on on-line data, and you maybe want to add off-line support then you also need to integrate some mechanism to persist data locally.
Implementing caching: There may be some situations when you need to add some sort of disk caching for network data to your application.e.g. In order to optimize app loading time, using an embedded database such as SQLite.
Thinking about how to persist data is a key step when developing applications, desktop apps make no exception. The way you use to handle data in your application affects your app performance and as a result the final user experience.
There is a plethora of available mechanisms, for persisting data, ranging from flat files, key-value stores to SQLite and fully fledged database systems such as MySQL, PostgreSQL and Microsoft SQL Server etc.
You can use simple classic storage mediums such as flat files, embedded databases, relational database systems or NoSQL databases. It's completely your call but you need to take into consideration your app requirements, and the pros and cons of each approach to make the right decision.
How to Choose the Best Way of Persisting Data in Your Electron Apps?
Nearly all kind of apps need some sort of data storage and retrieval but not every approach is suitable for all use cases, e.g. If you just need to store some configuration data or user defined settings then a flat file or a key-value store such as the HTML5 localStorage, or the HTML5 NoSQL IndexedDB can be very useful and simple mechanisms for this kind of tasks.
localStorage API is quite easy to use. For IndexedDB, the API is a little bit complex but you can use it with wrapper libraries such as Dexie.js which has a simple and clear API.
If you need to persist domain specific data, with a simple structure i.e. with few relationships between different data entities and few attributes, then SQLite or a similar embedded database solution is the right choice for these use cases.
In the case that you are building a complex database application or a data heavy application, with multiple tables and relationships, Using raw SQL can be intimidating and error prone. As so an ORM will be of a great help for you, by allowing you to easily express your database requirements and letting you focus on the business domain side of your application. There exist many JavaScript/TypeScript ORMs that integrate well with Electron ecosystem such as Sequelize, Bookshelf.js and the relatively new TypeORM (based on TypeScript).
There are two major types of databases: relational databases and NoSQL databases. The right database type to use depends heavily on these two points: The nature and structure of your database, and the synchronization requirements. But which are the criteria to use one database type over the other?
To answer this question lets imagine this scenario: You are building an application for an enterprise which needs to keep track of data such as manufacturers, customers, products, orders and invoices. These data are related to each other with different relationships. For example an order belongs to a customer and has many associated products, an invoice is related to some order etc. Besides storing data, you need also to be able to perform simple queries involving either one entity or complex queries joining multiple entities.
According to these requirements we can draw some points which will help us to decide what database system we'll need to use, for example:
Data entities can be stored in tabular structures with columns and rows.
Data entities columns (schema) can be predicted, earlier, when developing the application.
Data integrity is required.
For this use case a relational database is an ideal choice.
If otherwise the schema is not predictable, constantly evolving and needs to be changed overtime, data is unrelated and performance is a primary concern then a NoSQL database is what to be used.
You can also read this article for further details about SQL vs NoSQL comparison.
Besides that, there are many factors that you also need to consider, such as:
Performance,
Data portability,
In memory vs disk IO based database,
Synchronization,
Off-line first or not,
Serverless or not,
Embedded or not,
Usage license,
So choosing the right approach, for persisting data, depends on your app requirements. In this article we are going to see some possible, either simple and advanced, mechanisms for persisting data in your Electron apps.
If you would like to test the code, as you continue reading the tutorial, you need to create a new Electron project, you can simply do that with GitHub quick start project, so using your terminal or command prompt start by cloning their repository:
git clone https://github.com/electron/electron-quick-start cd electron-quick-start
Then install the requirements and start the app:
npm install npm start
You can also follow this tutorial which walks you through installing Electron, building and packaging a simple desktop application.
Persisting Data with Plain SQL and MySQL Databases
MySQL is an open source, relational database system created by Michael Widenius. To be able to use MySQL in your system you need to first have it installed, which is dependent on your target operating system but it's generally an easy to follow process. So before working with MySQL in this tutorial or test MySQL demos make sure to install the version of MySQL for your system.
MySQL is available for most major operating systems including Linux, Mac and Windows.
Installing MySQL Client
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ran out of class. It was a dispute resolution class. They were very troubled, worried, obviously, about what happened to their family members. I had the choice as a professor to cancel the class in the middle of this, but I got this idea in my head to tell the students, “OK, in the book today, we talk about how do you negotiate with Middle Eastern terrorists, and now you’ve got to go talk to George Bush and advise him on what he should do. And we’re all under the emotion of 9/11 here.”
And various people wanted to beat people up and all that stuff, but I was always struck by this older student who was a Navy veteran, who said, “The first thing we have to do is figure out what our values are, and then we can decide on the kind of strategy that we want to take.” And the thing that I think that has been very unfortunate with all this since that day was that that first step of actually looking at what are our American values was not taken, in the panic that these people who were running the government had. And the dark side always shows its face quickly then, and they went down that path.
AMY GOODMAN: That’s Ben Davis of the University of Toledo College of Law and others speaking at a town hall meeting here in Toronto, Canada, last night, hosted by Psychologists for Social Responsibility. Today, the American Psychological Association, that’s the largest association of psychologists in the world—over a 130,000 of them—their Council of Representatives is scheduled to vote on a resolution to bar psychologists from participating in national security interrogations. The discussion has just commenced as we broadcast this program. You can get an update at democracynow.org through the day.
This is Democracy Now! When we come back, the Republican presidential debate. Stay with us.Sweden’s director of public prosecution says she has decided to discontinue the investigation into WikiLeaks founder
Swedish prosecutors have dropped their preliminary investigation into an allegation of rape against the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, bringing an end to a seven-year legal standoff.
The decision was taken after prosecutors concluded that “at this point, all possibilities to conduct the investigation are exhausted”, Sweden’s director of public prosecutions, Marianne Ny, said on Friday.
“In order to proceed with the case, Julian Assange would have to be formally notified of the criminal suspicions against him. We cannot expect to receive assistance from Ecuador regarding this. Therefore the investigation is discontinued.
“If he, at a later date, makes himself available, I will be able to decide to resume the investigation immediately.”
The WikiLeaks founder sought asylum in Ecuador’s embassy in London in 2012 after losing court battles to avoid extradition to Sweden over the claims, which he denies.
Separate allegations of sexual assault, made by a second Swedish woman, were dropped by Swedish authorities in 2015 after the statute of limitations expired.
Shortly after the announcement on Friday morning, an image of Assange smiling was posted to his Twitter account.
Later he tweeted again: “Detained for 7 years without charge while my children grew up and my name was slandered. I do not forgive or forget.”
However, a lawyer representing the woman who made the allegation of rape described the decision as a “scandal”.
“It is a scandal that a suspected rapist can escape justice and thereby avoid the courts,” Elisabeth Massi Fritz told Agence France-Presse in an email. “My client is shocked and no decision to [end the case] can make her change [her view] that Assange exposed her to rape.”
With the threat of extradition to Sweden removed, the 45-year-old Australian could potentially opt to leave the embassy.
However, Assange’s lawyers have repeatedly said he will not do so without assurances that he willnot face extradition to the US over possible espionage charges linked to WikiLeaks’ publishing activities – the basis on which Ecuador granted him asylum.
The Metropolitan police in London said Assange would also face immediate arrest for breaching his bail conditions; a warrant was issued when he failed to attend a magistrates court after entering the embassy.
“The Metropolitan police service is obliged to execute that warrant should he leave the embassy,” the statement said.
It added: “Whilst Mr Assange was wanted on a European arrest warrant (EAW) for an extremely serious offence, the MPS response reflected the serious nature of that crime. Now that the situation has changed and the Swedish authorities have discontinued their investigation into that matter, Mr Assange remains wanted for a much less serious offence. The MPS will provide a level of resourcing which is proportionate to that offence.”
Per Samuelson, Assange’s Swedish lawyer, told reporters the decision represented a total victory.
“This is one of the happiest days of my legal career. The decision was taken because he was interrogated in November 2016 and could give a good explanation of what happened … This is obviously about consensual sex between two adults.”
Ecuador’s foreign minister, Guillaume Long, also welcomed the decision, adding that he “regrets that the Swedish prosecutor delayed more than four years in carrying out this interview. Given that the European arrest warrant no longer holds, Ecuador will now be intensifying its diplomatic efforts with the UK so that Julian Assange can gain safe passage, in order to enjoy his asylum in Ecuador.”
But Claes Borgström, the lawyer who originally represented Assange’s two accusers but is no longer involved in the case, said he found the decision regretful. He told the Guardian: “I understand why the prosecutors have dropped the case now. Such a long time has passed. But I regret that Julian Assange was not brought to the Swedish court of law to answer the allegations against him.
“All the time since he left Sweden it has been in his hands. He decided to avoid the arms of justice. He didn’t want to come to court. He didn’t want to answer the allegations, so he decided to escape.”
The EAW against Assange was formally withdrawn at Westminster magistrates court on Friday morning, the Crown Prosecution Service confirmed. The UK Home Office said the decision to drop the rape investigation was a matter for the Swedish authorities, and not one in which the British government had any involvement.
Reuters reported in March that a long-running US grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks had been expanded to include recent leaks of CIA documents, a move that Assange’s lawyers said strengthened the grounds for his asylum claim.
Why has the rape inquiry into Julian Assange been dropped? Sweden's director of prosecutions Marianne Ny said that the possibilities for investigating the allegations, which date from 2010, had been exhausted and that it was therefore necessary under Swedish law to discontinue the inquiry. But, she said, it could be reopened if Assange returns to Sweden before the statute of limitations ends in 2020. Another allegation of sexual assault made by a second Swedish woman was dropped by Swedish authorities in 2015 after the statute of limitations expired. The UK government said on Friday it had no involvement in Sweden’s decision to drop the investigation.
Assange was interviewed by Sweden’s deputy public prosecutor, Ingrid Isgren, in the embassy in November, following a lengthy diplomatic and legal impasse between the Swedish and Ecuadorian authorities.
Friday’s announcement in Sweden followed the Swedish government receiving a letter from the government of Ecuador which accused the prosecutor of “serious failure”, including a “lack of initiative” to complete inquiries.
The letter raised questions about developments in the US since the election of Donald Trump as president, including a speech by the CIA director, Mike Pompeo, describing WikiLeaks as a “hostile intelligence service” and a threat to US national security.
Public declarations such as this constituted an “obvious risk” for Assange, the letter said.
The US attorney general, Jeff Sessions, said last month that arresting Assange was a priority. There are no charges against him, although media reports have suggested the US justice department is considering how to bring them.
“We’ve already begun to step up our efforts and whenever a case can be made, we will seek to put some people in jail,” Sessions said.
Asked at a Conservative party campaign event in Edinburgh if the UK would now support a request to extradite Assange to the US, Theresa May said: “We look at extradition requests on a case-by-case basis.”
The prime minister added: “In relation to Julian Assange, any decision that is taken about UK action in relation to him were he to leave the Ecuadorian embassy would be an operational matter for the police.”This mod is not opted-in to receive Donation Points
Use this for anything, just don't make money off of it.
A simple mod that replaces all the moving banners indoors with static ones.
Attention: This mod is no longer being supported or updated.
This mod has been uploaded by "The Care Taker" at the request of its owner. The Care Taker account is run by Nexus Mods for the purpose of hosting mods created by authors who are no longer active in the community.
If you are a mod author and would like to learn more about this service or have questions, you can find details regarding The Care Taker HERE.
Happy modding!
No Waving Banners Indoors
The Problem:
The Fix:
Description:
This mod is really simple.
I walked into Dragon's Reach and noticed that the banners were waving around for some reason. Now I guess it could be a draft or something, But let's be honest, it's not.
Enter this mod: A mod that makes all banners interiors static. A mod I whipped up in around 2 hours to fix to fix this annoyance.
This mod removes animations from the banners that in interiors. It doesn't overwrite any vanilla meshes and all the new static meshes have been manually replaced by hand.
Note: I didn't edit Sovngarde's banners because It seems logical that those should still be waving.
Compatibility:
This mod has been cleaned with Tes5Edit and checked for errors. It is not likely to conflict with much except for mods that modify the banners (If any do that for some reason). Compatible with any re-textures that uses the default texture paths for banners. I recommend using Design of the Nords.
Here is a full list of interior cells that now have static banners.
It seems that ELFX Enhancers causes some of the banners to disappear from certain angles. Not sure why this is, but i'm looking into it. Normal ELFX works fine however.
Install:
Install with mod manager. Activate in load order. Position in load order does not matter.
Permissions:
You may use this mod for absolutely anything you want as long as you don't make money off of it. This includes the static meshes.
Bugs/Issues:
I really only replaced banners in locations where i've noticed the effect and it's bothered me. But if i've missed somewhere let me know.
Credits:
Besthesda for the meshes
Niftools for Nifskope
Why is there wind inside?! If the wind is this strong, why is that candle still lit?A perfectly calm banner because there isn't wind indoors.The California residency requirement for legal medical marijuana doesn’t exist — if we don’t want it to.
That’s the conclusion of at least two Bay Area lawyers, who say the medical cannabis industry is widely misinterpreting state law. Thursday, veteran cannabis attorney William Panzer confirmed via phone the contents of a talk given by another attorney Lauren Vazquez to a group of cannabis entrepreneurs on Jan. 22.
“No, there is no residency requirement,” Panzer said. “It’s just misinformation.”
The vast majority of cannabis-specialized physicians’ offices and medical marijuana dispensaries enforce such a rule, essentially turning away potentially tens of millions of dollars in business each year by enforcing the non-existent rule.
Very few doctors and collectives will serve out of state patients, patients confirm, though the drug would be quite popular among medical visitors. One in 20 California adults are estimated to have used medical cannabis for a “serious” condition, and 92 percent of them are estimated to have thought it was helpful, recent polls indicate.
Vazquez said in her remarks to about 30 cannabis entrepreneurs that the preface to the 1996 Compassionate Use Act mentions “Californians”, but the preface has no legal value. It’s window dressing. The California Supreme Court confirmed the preface doesn’t count in a split ruling in 2013 that allows cities and counties to ban any medical cannabis activity.
“It’s a legal grey area,” said Brendan Hallinan, a San Francisco lawyer that also advises the industry. “If someone shows up with a passport and is in town to buy marijuana that’s not enough. If they can show some proof of temporary residency for treatment and if they avail themselves of California law, I think you should be afforded protection.”
“Why not?” said Panzer. “My wife hurt her ankle in Florida and had to go to the doctor for pain pills. They didn’t say, ‘Sorry, you don’t live in Florida.'”
So — say you are or know a patient coming to California for breast or brain cancer treatment and you want cannabis, which is an official form of Integrative Oncology. If their primary care physician recommends cannabis, great. But chances are, patients are going to have to call around to specialized cannabis clinics, or even advocacy groups to get linked up with a doctor who will write them a recommendation. “I know of a few but they also want to stay private,” said Vazquez.
From there, patients need to start calling collectives and dispensaries in the area, asking if they’ll serve an out-of-state patient. Most follow what’s now a debunked rule. “Most dispensaries are not going to let someone in who doesn’t have some sort of physical connection with California,” said Hallinan.
“It’s just one of those things that somebody did and it got copied and everybody started doing it and now people are turning away a sizable percentage of their customers and patient base for no good reason,” said Vazquez.More than 250 tech companies have signed a letter demanding greater transparency from Congress and decrying the broad regulatory language in leaked parts of the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership trade bill.
The TPP would create an environment hostile to journalists and whistleblowers, said policy directors for the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Fight for the Future, co-authors of the letter. “TPP’s trade secrets provisions could make it a crime for people to reveal corporate wrongdoing ‘through a computer system’,” says the letter. “The language is dangerously vague, and enables signatory countries to enact rules that would ban reporting on timely, critical issues affecting the public.”
Among the signatories are activist, sci-fi author and Guardian tech columnist Cory Doctorow. “Democracies make their laws in public, not in smoke-filled rooms,” Doctorow wrote. “If TPP’s backers truly believed that they were doing the people’s work, they’d have invited the people into the room. The fact that they went to extreme, unprecedented measures to stop anyone from finding out what was going on – even going so far as to threaten Congress with jail if they spoke about it – tells you that this is something being done *to* Americans, not *for* Americans.”
Also on the list were prominent members of the open source community, including David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of the popular Ruby on Rails web development framework, image hosting company Imgur and domain name manager Namecheap.
There was a notable absence from the letter of big, international tech companies like Apple, Google and Facebook. Apple and AT&T are part of the president’s International Trade Advisory Committee (which advises the Oval Office on matters relating to industry) and their representatives have presumably been able to read sections of the bill that would apply to their industry.
The letter’s signatories also criticized the fast-track bill – known as the Trade Promotion Authority – which is being discussed in Congress this week. If passed, the TPA would give Obama a yes or no vote on the trade pact without the ability for legislators to amend it. The fast-track bill needs to be passed to even give the TPP a shot at approval.
Several other companies and industry trade groups sent statements to Congress in support of the legislation, among them Cisco and the Consumer Electronics Association.
The Seminconductor Industry Association (SIA) said: “SIA strongly supports trade promotion authority (TPA) and applauds the introduction of this bipartisan legislation. TPA paves the way for free trade by empowering US negotiators to reach final trade agreements consistent with negotiating objectives laid out by Congress. Free trade is especially critical to the US semiconductor industry, which designs and manufactures the chips that enable virtually all electronics.”
TPP has sparked a growing row within the Democrat party. Senator Elizabeth Warren renewed her attack on the pact this week, issuing a scathing report on past trade deals.
Of particular concern to the tech community is an “Investment Chapter” of the TPP drafted in 2010 and leaked by Wikileaks. The letter’s signatories argue the provisions would allow corporations to use an international legal system to override national sovereignty: “The TPP Investment Chapter contains text that would enable corporations to sue nations over democratic rules that allegedly harm expected future profits. Companies can use this process to undermine US rules like fair use, net neutrality, and others designed to protect the free, open internet and users’ rights to free expression online.”
The section has likely been revised in the last five years, but whether the provisions have changed has not, and cannot, be disclosed.
“The future of the internet is simply too important to be decided behind closed doors,” said Evan Greer, campaign director of Fight for the Future. “The Fast Track/Trade Promotion Authority process actively silences the voices of internet users, startups, and small tech companies while giving the biggest players even more power to set policy that benefits a few select companies while undermining the health of the entire web.”Congress heard from a long-awaited witness in the Benghazi investigation today that no one in U.S. Africa Command was brought in on the White House preparations to gird against a 9/11 anniversary attack.
Gen. Carter Ham was in charge of AFRICOM on the night of the terrorist attack on the diplomatic compound in Benghazi. A month after the attack, President Obama nominated a replacement for Ham and the four-star general retired.
The House Armed Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations met for a classified briefing this morning to hear testimony from three Benghazi figures: Ham; Lieutenant Colonel S.E. Gibson, former commander of the site security team at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli; and Rear Admiral Brian Losey, former commander, Special Operations Command Africa.
A statement from the committee said the witnesses "did clarify several matters with respect to the events of September 11 and 12, 2012" as they described U.S. posture and response.
The White House issued a readout on Sept. 10, 2012, saying that then-counterterrorism adviser John Brennan had led a briefing that was the culmination of “numerous meetings to review security measures in place” and included “steps taken to protect U.S. persons and facilities abroad, as well as force protection.” Brennan has since been appointed CIA director.
Ham "stated that neither he or anyone working for him was consulted as part of the Brennan 9/11 planning process," the committee said.
Gibson told the panel that contrary to news reports he was not told to "stand down" as he sought to take three Special Forces soldiers to aid to the fight in Benghazi but was "ordered to remain in Tripoli to defend Americans there in anticipation of possible additional attacks, and to assist the survivors as they returned from Benghazi."
"Gibson acknowledged that had he deployed to Benghazi he would have left Americans in Tripoli undefended," according to the committee. "He also stated that in hindsight, he would not have been able to get to Benghazi in time to make a difference, and as it turned out his medic was needed to provide urgent assistance to survivors once they arrived in Tripoli."
The committee did not give any indication what Losey told the panel. In April, he was pulled off Special Operations Command Africa and was assigned as commander of Naval Special Warfare Command in San Diego.
Earlier this week, after a lack of cooperation from Secretary of State John Kerry, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) issued four deposition subpoenas to State Department officials connected to lax security before the Benghazi attack.The Clayton home of Pleasants and Driver
Police have charged a Johnston County man after his girlfriend's son was shot twice in their Clayton home early Saturday morning.Authorities said it happened just after midnight in the 900 block of East Joyner Street. Police said the suspect and the victim lived together.When officers arrived at the house, Brandon Pleasants, 33, told police his mother's boyfriend had shot him in the face. On the way to the hospital, Johnston County EMS discovered Pleasants had also been shot in the stomach.Pleasants had surgery at WakeMed and is expected to recover.Clayton police arrested the suspect, 58-year-old Timothy Carroll Driver, a short time after the shooting about a block away from their home.Driver is charged with assault with a deadly weapon inflicting serious injuries, possession of a firearm by a felon, and alter/remove gun serial number. He is being held at the Johnston County Detention Center on an $80,000 secured bond.A spokesperson with the town of Clayton said Pleasants' two children also live at the home on East Joyner Street. They were both home at the time of the shooting, but they were not harmed, the spokesperson said.An official said it was a domestic argument between Pleasants and Driver that led to the shooting, but the details are still under investigation.PARIS (Reuters) - The French authorities sent in private rubbish collection trucks to clear piles of rotting garbage from Paris streets on Friday and told striking public sector workers they would not be allowed to disrupt Europe’s soccer championship.
Soldiers pass by a pile of rubbish bags on the Grands boulevards in Paris, France, during a strike by garbage collectors and sewer workers of the city of Paris to protest the labour reforms law proposal, June 9, 2016. REUTERS/Charles Platiau
The eyes of the continent are on France as the Euro 2016 tournament kicks off later in the day, with 1.5 million foreign fans expected to join millions of French supporters for the month-long sports festival.
“All the rubbish will be cleared up, starting now, today,” said Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, adding that about 50 trucks had been dispatched overnight and 30 more on Friday morning to rid the city of waste left piled up by striking workers.
“It will take a few days obviously.”
The waste treatment workers’ strike is one of several by public sector employees angry at government plans to make hiring and firing easier with a revamp of labor law, which President Francois Hollande has repeatedly said he will not withdraw.
Wary of damage to France’s international image, Transport Minister Alain Vidalies condemned plans by Air France pilots to strike for four days from Saturday and said train drivers would be forced to ensure public transport for fans if needed.
The soccer tournament is supposed to showcase the ability of a country still smarting from deadly militant attacks last November to handle a major international event smoothly.
“If requisitioning is required... we’ll do it,” Vidalies said. “There will be no more negotiating. There’s no longer any reason to continue the strike if it’s not for political reasons.”
Public-sector waste treatment staff who have been on strike for days have vowed to continue the protest into next week. Workers at the state-owned SNCF railways were on strike for a tenth day on Friday.
Air France said it hoped to guarantee about 80 percent of flights on Saturday when pilots start a four-day stoppage over pay cuts. One in four medium-haul flights would be scrapped and about one in 10 scrapped on long-haul and domestic routes.
Vidalies said the government would not tolerate any form of illicit protest such as occupation of railway tracks, a ploy used occasionally in recent days to bring transport to a halt.
One big concern was threats by some unions to disrupt train links between Paris and the suburban 80,000-capacity Stade de France stadium where France plays Romania in the tournament opener on Friday night.
“This is an action against France and the French people,” the minister told Europe 1 radio.
Fans were urged to turn up early at Stade de France, where gates would open three hours before a 1900 GMT kickoff, with the SNCF promising to ensure high-frequency rail connections at crunch moments. Local media said SNCF executives were being drafted in to replace striking train drivers.
Asked if images broadcast worldwide of rotting rubbish would also compromise Paris’s bid to host the 2024 Olympics, Vidalies quipped: “I didn’t see any hordes of rats on my way here.”
A pile of rubbish bags is seen on the Grands boulevards in Paris, France, during a strike of garbage collectors and sewer workers of the city of Paris, June 10, 2016. REUTERS/Charles Platiau
France is deploying nearly 90,000 police and security staff to head off any risk of violence or repeat of attacks in which Islamist militants killed 130 people and injured hundreds last November in Paris and outside the Stade de France.
Police in the southern port city of Marseille stepped in to halt skirmishes in the early hours of Friday between locals and England supporters who spent the night drinking alcohol outside pubs in the lively Vieux Port area of the city. [nL8N19217M]
Almost 90,000 people danced overnight at an incident-free music concert to celebrate the start of the Euro tournament at the foot of an Eiffel Tower, lit up in the French colors of blue, white and red for the occasion.A young ultra-Orthodox man with a long black beard and flowing black coat got on an Egged bus this week in a relatively secular neighborhood of Jerusalem. He quickly looked up and down the bus. It was late and there were few passengers, and he sighed in relief upon spotting three empty adjacent seats. He sat down, placing beside him his attache case and, on the seat opposite, his wide-brimmed hat wrapped in a dark plastic bag against the rain.
As the driver halted at stops for other passengers, the man looked up anxiously as a few travelers stepped on, huddled together against the cold. He quickly averted his eyes when a woman passed down the aisle, seating herself farther down the bus. The buffer zone he had created around him remained inviolate.
An overcrowded Jerusalem light rail carriage. Tomer Appelbaum
Jerusalem's public transport system is a perfect metaphor for the situation in which Israeli society finds itself at the beginning of 2012. The city's three communities are trying to keep their distance from each other. As Haaretz's religious affairs correspondent wrote last week, the real segregation on the "mehadrin" bus-lines are not between men and women. Instead they are between the Haredi passengers who use them and the secular/masorati/dati Jerusalemites who are discouraged from doing so.
Meanwhile, few Jewish city residents are aware of this but the Arab population has its own totally separate transport system, with its own central bus station and stops, a network of white buses, operating in the east of the city, and traversing Jewish areas without stopping to connect outlying Arab neighborhoods. For now, the Jewish and Arab buses coexist peacefully on parallel lines, while the different Jewish communities have started bickering on the hegemony over the Egged buses.
But one urban area cannot sustain disconnected transport systems for long; the volume of traffic is forever growing beyond the capacity of old roads. The three communities of Jerusalem are now being forced into the same carriages of the light rail network - years overdue, billions over budget, under speed and with a route of debatable efficiency, but finally up and running. And over the last five months, it has been the one closed space in which members of all the communities have been rubbing shoulders.
Naturally, this hasn't been without friction. Before the light rail service began, Haredi politicians demanded separate compartments for men and women. For once their demands were refused. Occasional scuffles have broken out in the carriages, with security guards proving a little too ready to pepper spray Arab youths accused of rowdiness, but on the whole the gray-silver trains have wended their way in peace from Pisgat Ze'ev, through Shuafat, by the Haredi neighborhoods in the north of the city, through downtown across nationalist-religious Kiryat Moshe and the secular hold-out of Beit Hakerem.
I doubt any friendships have sprung up on the light rail - people usually keep to themselves - but for a short while, the three communities are forced to leave their ghettoes and coexist in a closed space. Whatever the political future of Jerusalem, it will continue to be a unified urban area, the circumstances of city life giving disparate groups no choice but to share certain joint areas.
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Unorthodox thinking required
The recent wave of clashes between the communities making up Jerusalem and nearby Beit Shemesh is novel only in the disproportionate media attention they have attracted. In many ways, this is similar to the social justice protests that swept Israel last summer. There was nothing new about the inequalities and economic hardships hundreds of thousands were railing against; only the combination of articulate spokespeople and the media that, for a few weeks, had nothing more exciting to report.
In both cases, social ills that have been festering away for years are suddenly being thrust into the light of day, with all the subtlety and erudition that our national tabloid press and television are famed for. Add to that the leftist agenda of most Israeli journalists, who hope to find new issues to erode the support of the Netanyahu coalition, which is also a factor here in emphasizing each new report of a Haredi man directing a sexist remark toward a secular woman.
But while politics plays a major role, it is obscuring the deeper social process. Israel is too small to sustain for much longer a structure of isolated communities. It is not only the national economy that is increasingly under strain due to the low workforce participation in the ultra-Orthodox and Israeli Arab communities, which increases the tax burden on the non-Haredi Jewish sectors. It also creates tensions within these communities.
The aspirations of a younger generation, not prepared to lead a life of financial and intellectual poverty when the wider Israeli economy offers so many avenues for professional advancement, is a national challenge. The series of events that have been catalogued in recent weeks by the media - under the misleading headline of "female exclusion" - are merely a side-effect of this convergence of communities, a consequence of the gradually increasing participation of Haredi men in a workplace which, at the same time, is also expanding the integration of women.
There is no excuse for sexism, discrimination or violence, but politicians who eagerly pounce on these instances are simply out to serve their own narrow interests. The Haredi leadership is even more narrow-minded and, out of concern for its own weakening hold on an increasingly independent-minded constituency, is emphasizing obscure chumrot under the bogus banners of modesty and purity as never before in Jewish history. There is no reason, though, to punish the hundreds of thousands of ultra-Orthodox men and women who are eager for a chance to earn an honest living, for the sins of hard-line rabbis and a handful of bigoted fanatics.
Israel is currently enjoying the lowest rate of unemployment in its history, and this is an ideal opportunity to integrate new communities into the workplace. The government is beholden to the Haredi parties in the coalition, under order from the rabbis to maintain the untenable benefits-based financial system currently underpinning the ultra-Orthodox community. The Arab Israelis, meanwhile, are suffering neglect of a different order and cannot rely either on their political representatives, who are adept mainly at scoring points on nationalist issues.
In the same way that the protests of Rothschild Boulevard were forgotten and the recommendations of the Trajtenberg Committee frittered away, so the current craze for Haredi horror stories is already dissipating. The real issue - the problems and challenges of 40 percent of Israelis currently excluded from the mainstream of Israel's society and economy - is not going to go away and will come back to bite us. The buffer zones are a fiction that will not hold back the inevitable change for long.With a reemerging China in great power politics, instability on the Korean Peninsula, ongoing territorial disputes with Russia, and the rise of non-state actors, Japan is recalibrating its national security calculus at a time of changing dynamics in the Asia Pacific. The reinterpretation of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution to allow for collective self-defense and the accompanying structural changes to the country’s institutional fabric gives rise to the notion that Japan’s military industrial complex is poised to come into its own. But how will Tokyo manage its transition to what the Abe administration has termed “proactive pacifism” amidst condemnation from neighboring countries, internal push-back from both rival and coalition political groups, and a citizenry largely conditioned in a culture of non-militarism?
To sell the image of a non-threatening Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) at home and abroad, important both in terms of domestic politics and international diplomacy, Tokyo has and will continue to utilize a web of affective cultural and entertainment resources – the Creative Industrial Complex (CIC) – to influence perceptions of Japan’s military establishment. The alignment between the CIC and the JSDF is nuanced, storied, and important for understanding both how Japan sees its own defense identity and how the international community sees Japan’s military.
The Manga Military
The CIC has produced a stunning amount of film, anime, theater, literature, fashion, and other expressive media designed to generate affinity towards the nation’s growing hard power identity and burgeoning military industrial base. Manga, perhaps chief among them and a multi-billion dollar publishing marvel, is an artistic iconography developed in Japan during the 19th century and long used by Japan’s political and government establishments as a potent marketing and communicative tool. In particular, the commodification of manga cuteness, often typified by extenuated character traits such as proportionally large eyes and small bodies, taps the power of “moe,” what Patrick Galbraith, author of The Moe Manifesto, describes as an affective response to fictional characters or representations of them – it is a cognitive or emotional reaction elicited from iconographic images.
Beginning in the early 1970s, state agencies, recognizing the strong commercial success of manga both at home and abroad, and the potential malleability of the moe that it engenders, collaborated with large corporations to produce manga that communicated political, business, literary, and educational information to the public. With this move towards cute, or kawaii, communication came a correlative change in how the Japanese citizenry digested their official information. This culminated in the production of a Manga History of Japan (Manga Nihon no rekishi) commissioned by the academic and literary publisher Chūō Kōronsha, a 48-volume work recognized by the Ministry of Education and Culture as an official educational resource for public schools.
By the mid 1980s, the use of manga as an official communicative medium had thoroughly permeated nearly all state-sponsored institutions save one – the Self-Defense Forces. Long shy of engaging with a highly critical citizenry and suffering from a poignantly negative internal and international public image, the JSDF had preferred to keep to itself, strategically slow in employing modern and non-traditional communication strategies. However, as economic hardship in the 1990’s reduced Japan’s relative power and influence, and a host of emergent foreign-born security threats reduced Japan’s absolute power and influence, it became clear to the JSDF and Ministry of Defense that answers to many important questions facing the nation would need to be answered with a more participatory defense establishment.
Thus, and as curtains closed on the Cold War theater, the JSDF and sister institutions sought to employ private sector creative industries to build avenues of information and knowledge flow to, from, and between the Japanese people and international community. With the launch of Prince Pickles, a cartoon and comic series that sought to describe the ideal “journey to peace,” and an initiative to publish official defense white papers in manga format for general consumption starring a character by the name of Ms. Future, the JSDF moved from a position of self-imposed isolation to one of active engagement. Strategically utilizing the then well-established and normalized popular culture of kawaii manga, the JSDF incorporated “cute” throughout its recruiting and public relations campaigns in what University of California professor Sabine Fruhstuck has described as a two track effort to pacify and negate its violent war-waging past and potential while also selling its role as a competent protector of Japan.
The popular AlphaPolis manga and anime series Gate perhaps best exemplifies the extent to which military-creative industry collaboration has become widespread since the turn of the century, as well as the changing manner in which Japan’s military interprets and represents itself. Produced, designed, and funded in coordination with the JSDF, the fantasy-based series glorifies Japan’s defense establishment with a doe-eyed cast of capable, identifiable, and non-threatening characters that protect Japan from alien invaders. As the plot unfolds, the youthful defenders of the nation’s sovereignty drive back the invading forces with the use of superior technology and, backed by the U.S. army, send a counter-invading task force outward to the place beyond the portal Gate on a quest for retribution. The story’s tracking with contemporary security-related issues and government agendas is unmistakable.
Cover art from the manga Gate, depicting Japan’s affable and attractive heroines
The utilization of moe by Japan’s manga military represents a poignant example of how postwar Japan negotiates the contentious process of normalizing its armed forces. It is precisely moe’s divergence from reality that allows it to serve as a familiar, affective lubricant in showcasing Japan’s JSDF and Ministry of Defense to a kawaii-primed public skeptical of its own armed forces and militaristic history. Moe induced by manga is the recognition of a fictional realism, whereby Japan is able to explore its hard power identity against a backdrop of cute fantasy, one in which the JSDF symbolically disarms itself by normalizing, domesticating, and emasculating the military. Indeed, the manga military has become virtually indistinguishable from many of the prominent “neighborly” government institutions, including the postal service, utilities, and railway, cast in their likeness from the same popular culture mold.
The Moe Ministry of Defense
Although not much covered by mainstream media, Japan has embarked on a new approach to defense technology spearheaded by the recently established Acquisition Technology and Logistics Agency (ATLA) at the Ministry of Defense. The ATLA is tasked with core management functions concerning defense cooperation, R&D, and promotion of Japan’s indigenous high-tech industrial base: The organization is a central node in Japan’s growing military industrial network. Late last year, the ATLA hosted the annual Defense Technology Symposium for the first time, and as Crystal Prior notes for The Diplomat, a notably interesting aspect of the event was the use of manga/moe in showcasing and advertising the agency. From the gender, saucer-eyes, imp
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takes over the Hall's lease, an arrangement which will last until 1962. Old-time dance programs, including waltzes, polkas and square dances, continue to draw crowds to the venue.
Sept. 27, 1940
The Woody Hite Band plays a private event at Cotillion Hall, a rare appearance for a jazz big band -- Farrier eschewed the genre in favor of the music and movements championed by Watson.
Dec. 30, 1950
The Hall reopens as the Crystal Ballroom, just in time for New Year's dances -- its manager's favorite. Farrier, who supervised the venue in between his full-time duties as the owner of American Casket Co., was returning from a two-year leave of absence.
1959
The Crystal celebrates the Portland centennial. "Guests came in the guise of a famous historical figure," Hills writes. The venue changes hands again this year, to Carl Peters. Farrier takes another break, and audiences for dance halls -- thanks to the newfound popularity of a strange little box known as "television" -- thin out in Portland.
New Year's, 1961
Farrier, in fading health, offers his retirement. His speech inspires Sandy Sanders, who takes over as manager and keeps the dances coming.
November 1962
Mune Louie buys the Crystal Ballroom, which he'll own for over three decades.
-- David GreenwaldThe 2017 college football season was loaded with incredible drama, thrilling finishes and unthinkable upsets. Below are the 20 best games of the season:
1. UCLA 45, Texas A&M 44 (Sept. 3)
UCLA capped a 34-point comeback with quarterback Josh Rosen's fake-spike, game-winning touchdown pass to receiver Jordan Lasley with 43 seconds remaining. The Bruins' win, however, didn't save coach Jim Mora's job. And all but sealed Kevin Sumlin's fate at Texas A&M.
play 0:53 Mayfield, Sooners outduel Rudolph, Cowboys In a scoring fest, Baker Mayfield led Oklahoma to a crucial victory with a 500-plus-yard performance and six total touchdowns.
2. No. 6 Ohio State 39, No. 2 Penn State 38 (Oct. 28)
Delivering maybe the game of his career, Ohio State quarterback J.T. Barrett connected with tight end Marcus Baugh on a go-ahead, 16-yard TD with 1:48 left. Barrett finished 33-of-39 passing with four touchdowns. However, neither he nor the Buckeyes could keep the momentum rolling, as Ohio State fell to Iowa by 31 points the following week.
3. Western Michigan 71, Buffalo 68 (Oct. 7)
Running back Jarvion Franklin's touchdown lifted Western Michigan to victory in a record-tying seven overtime periods with a record-breaking 139 total points. Adding to the wackiness, the sister of Western Michigan tight end Donnie Ernsberger was initially flagged for running onto the field to celebrate her brother's TD during the first OT period.
4. Iowa State 38, No. 3 Oklahoma 31 (Oct. 7)
In his first career start, walk-on senior quarterback Kyle Kempt passed for 343 yards and three touchdowns, including a jump ball 25-yarder to receiver Allen Lazard that put Iowa State up for good with two minutes to play in the fourth quarter. The victory was just the Cyclones' second over OU since 1961. They would go on to take down another top-five team later in October with a 14-7 win over TCU.
5. No. 15 UCF 49, USF 42 (Nov. 24)
After a McKenzie Milton TD pass gave UCF an eight-point lead with 2:21 to play, South Florida knotted the game at 42 on quarterback Quinton Flowers' 84-yard scoring bomb to receiver Darnell Salomon, followed by a successful two-point try. UCF's Mike Hughes, however, returned the ensuing kickoff 95 yards to give the Knights back the lead, and the UCF defense forced a late fumble to seal the win, sending the Knights to the American Athletic Conference championship game. The victory also gave UCF an 11-0 regular-season record, just two years after the Knights went 0-12.
Editor's Picks 2017 ESPN All-America team Headlined by Heisman winner Baker Mayfield at QB and Butkus winner Roquan Smith at linebacker, here is ESPN's 2017 All-America team.
2017 Freshman All-America team Wisconsin's Jonathan Taylor and Georgia's Jake Fromm took center stage for two playoff contenders. After their performances, they headline the year's best freshmen. 1 Related
6. No. 4 Penn State 21, Iowa 19 (Sept. 23)
PSU running back Saquon Barkley kick-started his Heisman campaign with 211 yards rushing and 94 receiving. But quarterback Trace McSorley produced the game-winning play, finding receiver Juwan Johnson for a 7-yard TD on the game's final snap in a thrilling Big Ten opener.
7. No. 5 Oklahoma 62, No. 11 Oklahoma State 52 (Nov. 4)
In the highest-scoring game in Bedlam history, Oklahoma State had a chance to take a late lead. But quarterback Mason Rudolph's fourth-down pass sailed over the head of receiver Tyron Johnson. And with a school-record 598 passing yards, OU's Baker Mayfield left Stillwater with a 3-0 mark against the rival Pokes.Dear Reader, As you can imagine, more people are reading The Jerusalem Post than ever before. Nevertheless, traditional business models are no longer sustainable and high-quality publications, like ours, are being forced to look for new ways to keep going. Unlike many other news organizations, we have not put up a paywall. We want to keep our journalism open and accessible and be able to keep providing you with news and analysis from the frontlines of Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World.
The Jewish Agency on Monday decided to cancel a dinner event with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu scheduled in the framework of its Board of Governors meetings, on the heels of two government decisions passed Sunday which deeply disappointed prominent figures of Diaspora Jewry.
The cabinet on Sunday cancelled its January 2016 decision to establish a third plaza at the Western Wall for egalitarian prayer services as well as advancing a controversial conversion bill which would grant the Chief Rabbinate a total monopoly over Jewish conversion in Israel.
Following suit, leaders of the Reform Movement in Israel and the US announced Monday that they too were cancelling a meeting with the prime minister that was scheduled to take place on Thursday.
The movement's President, Rabbi Rick Jacobs described the Cabinet's decision as cause for a major crisis between the Israeli government and Diaspora Jewry. He added that the leaders feel like they have nothing to discuss with Netanyahu at the moment.
Later on Monday, the Jewish Agency for Israel's Board of Governors formulated a resolution calling on the government to halt what it called the "dangerous and damaging steps."
Referring to the proposed conversion bill which would cement the Chief Rabbinate's monopoly on conversion, the resolution stated that it has the "devastating potential to permanently exclude hundreds of thousands of Israelis from being a part of the Jewish people."
Additionally, deploring the freezing of the agreement reached for an egalitarian prayer section at the Kotel, the resolution stated that these two decision "have a deep potential to divide the Jewish people and to undermine the Zionist vision and dream of Herzl, Ben-Gurion, and Jabotinsky to establish Israel as a national home for the entire Jewish people."
Thus, the נoard in its resolution calls on each צember of the Knesset and all elected public officials "to take all necessary action to ensure that these dangerous and damaging steps are halted."
"We will continue to build a broad coalition of Israelis, together with partners from around the world, who care passionately about keeping our people united and who are committed to the unity of the Jewish people; and We call upon the Government of Israel to understand the gravity of its steps and reverse its course of action accordingly," it concludes.
Following suit, leaders of the Reform Movement in Israel and the US announced Monday that they too were cancelling a meeting with the prime minister that was scheduled to take place on Thursday.The movement's President, Rabbi Rick Jacobs described the Cabinet's decision as cause for a major crisis between the Israeli government and Diaspora Jewry. He added that the leaders feel like they have nothing to discuss with Netanyahu at the moment.Later on Monday, the Jewish Agency for Israel's Board of Governors formulated a resolution calling on the government to halt what it called the "dangerous and damaging steps."Referring to the proposed conversion bill which would cement the Chief Rabbinate's monopoly on conversion, the resolution stated that it has the "devastating potential to permanently exclude hundreds of thousands of Israelis from being a part of the Jewish people."Additionally, deploring the freezing of the agreement reached for an egalitarian prayer section at the Kotel, the resolution stated that these two decision "have a deep potential to divide the Jewish people and to undermine the Zionist vision and dream of Herzl, Ben-Gurion, and Jabotinsky to establish Israel as a national home for the entire Jewish people."Thus, the נoard in its resolution calls on each צember of the Knesset and all elected public officials "to take all necessary action to ensure that these dangerous and damaging steps are halted.""We will continue to build a broad coalition of Israelis, together with partners from around the world, who care passionately about keeping our people united and who are committed to the unity of the Jewish people; and We call upon the Government of Israel to understand the gravity of its steps and reverse its course of action accordingly," it concludes.
Israel freezes plan for mixed-sex Jewish prayer site at Western Wall (credit: REUTERS)The Jewish Agency released a statement Monday that "in light of yesterday's decisions by the Government of Israel, the Board of Governors of the Jewish Agency will be changing its entire agenda for the remaining two days of its meetings in Jerusalem, in order to address the ramifications of these decisions. The scheduled dinner with the participation of the Prime Minister has been cancelled."The agency's summer board meetings drew hundreds of Jewish leaders from around the world to Jerusalem, and marked 50 years since Jerusalem’s reunification.Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky was a central figure in formulating the plan for the egalitarian prayer section at the Western Wall, and -- along with many other politicians, Jewish groups and religious leaders -- he expressed deep disappointment over the determination to indefinitely freeze implementation of the agreement.“Five years ago, the prime minister asked me to lead a joint effort to bring about a workable formula that would transform the Western Wall into – in his own words – ‘one wall for one people,’” Sharansky said.“After four years of intensive negotiations, we reached a solution that was accepted by all major denominations and was then adopted by the government and embraced by the world’s Jewish communities.“Today’s decision signifies a retreat from that agreement and will make our work to bring Israel and the Jewish world closer together increasingly more difficult. The Jewish Agency, nevertheless, remains staunchly committed to that work and to the principle of one wall for one people.”MK Yosel Hasson (Zionist Union), who was scheduled to attend the dinner, said that it "would have been the height of hypocrisy" had the event gone ahead: "A sharp and clear message to the government of world Jewry. Enough is enough."
Join Jerusalem Post Premium Plus now for just $5 and upgrade your experience with an ads-free website and exclusive content. Click here>>(CNN) So everyone is shuffling around furiously swiping at their phones and bragging about their Vaporeon and you're just sitting here like "What's a Pokéball?"
It's okay. You're in the trust tree. All of your Pokémon questions will be answered in time.
Long story short, Pokémon GO is a phone game that's taking over people's lives.
It's an "augmented reality" game that uses real-world aspects and overlays the magical, slightly deranged world of Pokémon in a thinly-veiled ploy to get people out of their houses and exercising for once.
More on that later. Let's start from the very beginning.
What even is a Pokémon? Please help me, I am so lost. My friends would disown me if they knew of my ignorance.
(This is a Pikachu)
A Pokémon (short for pocket monster) is a little animalian creature. There are many, many types. It's best to think of them like different species and breeds of animals. When someone is catching Pokémon in Pokémon GO, the general aim is to get as many different kinds as possible.
The most well-known Pokémon is Pikachu, who you will surely recognize regardless of how out-of-the-loop you are.
How do the Pokémons get in my phone though?
Here's a Squirtle (type of Pokemon), waiting to be caught.
IMPORTANT NOTE: The plural of Pokémon is Pokémon, not Pokémons. Although it is funny to say, if you are intentionally trying to sound like someone's out-of-touch aunt (which is definitely an aesthetic, no judgment).
Anyway, the app, which is free to download and play, uses GPS to make a cartoony map of your neighborhood and basically anywhere you go. In this colorful, slightly Big-Brother-y version of reality, Pokémon are interspersed throughout, and when you come within range of a Pokémon you can "approach" them and they will show up on your phone.
The game uses your phone's camera, so you will get the very disconcerting impression that there is a ghost Pokémon flapping or undulating directly over your desk, your bath water, your local place of worship, etc. and only you can see it. It's very "6th Sense."
I SEE VENONATS!
What do you do with them?
The game gives you a limited amount of Pokéballs. You can trap wild Pokémon by throwing balls at them using a flicking motion with your finger. It's extremely frustrating. Sometimes they try to resist, other times they go quietly into that good night and you are rewarded points and other goodies.
Been flingin pokéballs outside this portapotty for what feels like forever. just stay in the ball zubat pic.twitter.com/mdPC1g3ReV — me yr golden BLU boy (@ddfoxfriend) July 7, 2016
While the Pokéhoarding aspect is certainly enough to keep you in the game for hours like a kawaii FitBit, you can actually use your Pokémon to fight other people's Pokémon and earn all sorts of other items and bragging rights.
Points and Pokéballs. You are losing me, friend.
Okay so you have an avatar, which is basically you if you were a sexy animated Pokémon trainer. Your little guy or gal gets experience points when you do stuff, which makes them a more powerful Pokémon trainer and allows them to "level up."
Here's the important part: To get more Pokéballs, you walk to different "Pokéstops."
Pokéstops are usually at interesting places around your city or community. Let's say you were walking down Main Street, Whereverville. You might find a Pokéstop at a popular store, landmark, work of art or other point of interest. There are several in the CNN Center in downtown Atlanta alone. Don't be jealous.
The ideal gameplay strategy is to walk around, trying to cover a lot of ground to get to different Pokéstops and come across different Pokémon who might be hiding in your path.
That sounds dangerously close to exercise.
As mentioned before, Pokémon GO is clearly nothing more than a ploy by Big Video Game to get you up and moving around. There are several incentives in the game that prove this, and the most blatant are "eggs," which are unhatched Pokémon you can acquire at Pokéstops. In order to hatch the eggs, you have to walk to "incubate" them; 5 kilometers, 10 kilometers, etc. How transparent is that?
It works, though. Here's the search frequency of the query "5km in miles" from Google Trends.
That spike is July, when Pokémon GO was released in the U.S. Coincidence? Probably not. People are just planning their Pokémon GO strategies and learning about the metric system.
In fact, loads of players have reported alarming increases in their physical activity.
I still harbor reservations and/or I am resistant to change. Is this game scary?
While response to the game has been overwhelmingly positive with people trading stories of friendships and discoveries made, Pokémon GO has had its share of literal pitfalls. A girl found a dead body while playing a group of teenagers used the app's in-game features to lure people close and rob them, and police departments have even issued mildly bemused warnings to players reminding them to do basic things like look both ways before crossing the street.
The nature of the game also means you may be tempted to loiter and tresspass a little. How far are you willing to go for a Pokémon? Kayaking in a fountain? Sneaking in a neighbor's backyard? It's happened. One guy has even made a few dubious friends after his home -- a refurbished church -- was designated a Pokémon Gym. We'll save you a question: A gym is a place where you can take your Pokémon and fight them with other nearby people's Pokémon.
Anyway, this poor guy now has people parked in front of his house at all hours, tapping on their phones like lunatics in a quest to be the very best. (That's a Pokémon reference. You wouldn't get it.)
This is what I'm a little leery of. People pulled up, blocking my drive way as they sit on their phones. pic.twitter.com/WpRbilk6g6 — Boon Sheridan (@boonerang) July 10, 2016
This seems complex. Next you're going to tell me it gets even MORE complex.
It does. Really, there's so much else going on. Playing the game will net you things like potions and stardust and candy and then there's the issue of evolving Pokémon and trading them, and there are plans to release a companion wrist device that alerts players of nearby Pokémon even without a phone in hand. Oh, and there are teams. There's no need to get into that. You learned what a Pokémon was today, and that's enough.President Barack Obama and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey participate in a ceremony at the Pentagon Memorial,Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2012, to mark the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
(CNSNews.com) –Eleven years later,President Obama has quietly extended the national emergency declaration first issued by former President George W. Bush after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York City and the Pentagon.
The declaration, which has to be reissued each year, invokes several war-time powers that give the president greater control of the military. Obama cited the continuing threat of a terrorist attack in justifying his decision to continue the now 11-year national emergency.
“The terrorist threat that led to the declaration on September 14, 2001, of a national emergency continues. For this reason, I have determined that it is necessary to continue in effect after September 14, 2012, the national emergency with respect to the terrorist threat,” Obama said September 11.
Despite the winding-down of the war in Afghanistan – originally launched in 2001 in retaliation for the 9/11 attacks – Obama has again granted himself special war-time powers by declaring that a national emergency still exists because of the attacks of 11 years ago.
Under federal law, a national emergency declaration lasts for only one year, meaning that the 9/11 national emergency has now been re-declared 10 times.
The powers re-invoked by President Obama all relate to the military and include the ability to suspend retirements and separations of military personnel, recall the Ready Reserve, activate recently-retired Coast Guard officers and personnel, and prohibit or regulate financial transactions with foreign entities involved in terrorism.In that brief time not long after he became Prime Minister, when Gordon Brown was regarded as a serious political figure and one refreshingly less artful than his predecessor, he delivered a speech at the University of Westminster on liberty. It was an erudite and thoughtful exposition of this country's difficult, and sometimes bloody, attempts to come to terms with the countervailing demands of individual liberty and state power.
I recall being impressed that a prime minister was making such a weighty and thought-provoking speech. I even kept a copy, though it can be found on the Number 10 website; and after last week's decision to ban a Dutch MP from visiting Britain because of his views on Islam, I thought it apposite to read it again.
"Too often in recent years the public dialogue in our country has undervalued the importance of liberty," Mr Brown said. "Now is the time to reaffirm our distinctive British story of liberty – to show it is as rich, powerful and relevant to the life of the nation today as ever; to apply its lessons to the new tests of our time."
Yet, not for the first time, what the Government does bears no resemblance to its rhetoric. From today, new counter-terrorism laws come into effect that will entrench a growing tendency by the police to prevent anyone taking photographs in public, especially if they (the police) are the subject. There has been a worrying increase recently in police arresting or seeking to prevent what is a lawful activity.
Andrew Carter, a plumber from Bedminster, near Bristol, took a photograph of an officer who had ignored a no-entry road sign while driving a police van. This might have appeared a somewhat petulant thing to do, but taking a photograph in a public place is not a crime. Yet the policeman smashed the camera from Mr Carter's hand, handcuffed him, put him in the back of the van and took him to the police station, where he was kept for five hours. When he returned to answer bail the following week, he was kept at the station for another five hours. He was released without charge, despite an attempt by the police to claim some spurious offence of "assault with a camera".
Whereas in the past the police have not had the power to prevent photographs being taken of them, from today they have. Under the new Counter-Terrorism Act it is an offence to take pictures of officers "likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism". This is such a catch-all measure that it can be used – and, in view of recent trends, will be used – to prevent photographs to which the police object merely by invoking counter-terrorist requirements. While it is important for officers involved in such operations to maintain anonymity, many photographers fear these powers will be abused.
In an article in the British Journal of Photography, Justin Tallis, a freelance photographer, recounted how he was threatened while covering a protest against the BBC's decision not to broadcast a fundraising film for Gaza. He was approached by an officer who had just been photographed. According to Tallis, the officer tried to take his camera away, but gave up as other photographers captured the incident.
A few weeks ago, an amateur photographer was stopped in Cleveland by officers when taking pictures of ships. The photographer was asked if he had any terrorism connections and told that his details would be kept on file. According to the Government, while there are no legal restrictions on photography in public places, "there may be situations in which the taking of photographs may cause or lead to public order situations or raise security considerations".
The problem is that there are so many instances of counter-terror laws being invoked to stop perfectly innocent activities, such as trainspotting or bird watching, that many photographers do not believe such assurances.
There is a wider issue of creeping censorship which a new organisation, the Convention on Modern Liberty, is seeking to highlight with the publication today of a list of examples of this insidious development. They include a demand by Suffolk police that Facebook shut down a page dedicated to an over-zealous traffic warden because it contained "hurtful criticisms"; proposed curbs on financial reporting during the banking crisis; a ban on students filming an interview in Parliament Square; the threatened arrest of two evangelical preachers for committing a "hate crime" by handing out Gospel leaflets in a predominantly Muslim area of Birmingham; the occasions when the police have reprimanded people for wearing T-shirts carrying political slogans; and, of course, the ban last week on Geert Wilders from showing a film on Islam to a group of parliamentarians.
In his speech on liberty, Mr Brown said: "The character of our country will be defined by how we write the next chapter of British liberty – by whether we do so in a way that respects and builds on our traditions, and progressively adds to and enlarges rather then reduces the sphere of freedom." At least it sounded good at the time.Opening the debate, European Parliament President Antonio Tajani urged Turkey to respect fundamental rights, which are the basis of Europe. He stressed that “Europe is not an Islamophobic continent and is not closing the door on the Turkish people.”
Many MEPs voiced concern at the way Turkey’s referendum, which backed expanding presidential powers, was conducted, calling it unfair. They said it is time to reassess EU - Turkey relations and start a new chapter.
Some MEPs could not see Turkey ever becoming a full EU member, while others still hoped that it would be enough to suspend the negotiations, leaving the possibility for Turkey to change its current course.
An expanded customs union, more trade, student exchanges, and cooperation on security and migration, were some of the ideas presented by MEPs as a new way forward. Some also advocated maintaining support for democratic forces in Turkey, as millions of Turks do want to be a part of EU.
Next steps
The European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee is set to start debating the traditional annual resolution on Turkey’s progress on 2 May. The draft resolution for 2016, prepared by rapporteur Kati Piri (S&D, NL), also calls on the EU “to suspend the accession talks with Turkey if the constitutional package is implemented unchanged”.
You can catch up with the debate via Plenary on DemandGetty Images
Correction appended: July 3, 2013, 10:58 p.m. E.T.
Every night, thousands of Internet users come home from work and hop onto Reddit, a discussion-based website. But lately some of the users who log on at 8 p.m. haven’t been perusing the site just for fun. They’re coming in hopes of fighting government surveillance.
These nightly meetings take place under the “Restore the Fourth” section of Reddit, where supporters are currently planning nationwide protests in over 100 locations on July 4. Restore the Fourth — a double entendre that invokes both the nation’s founding and Fourth Amendment privacy rights — also created a website that will serve as a central hub for supporters in planning these rallies.
“Reddit didn’t take well to all the information about the news leak as far as NSA goes,” says Michael Reed, Restore the Fourth’s director of communications. “So we started organizing there, and the next thing you know, we’re organizing in over 100 cities and it’s only getting bigger.” Although the group first formed at the beginning of last month, its Reddit page has quickly gathered over 19,000 subscribers. In just the first three days of the site’s launch, over half a million visitors accessed their page, Reed says.
(MORE: Snowden’s Worst-Case Scenario: What if No Countries Take Him?)
“The idea is to take this energy that we’ve seen online and turn that into physical protests around July 4th,” says Rainey Reitman, the activism director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
So far, supporters are planning rallies in cities such as Los Angeles, Philadelphia, St. Louis and Boston. Reed expects thousands will turn out, possibly as many as 20,000 0r more. Organizers say the largest protest will be held in Washington, D.C., where they invited high-profile supporters like Senator Rand Paul, the Republican from Kentucky, to speak. Although Senator Paul is unable to attend the rally, last week he reached out to Restore the Fourth with a recorded video message via YouTube to express his support. Reed says Restore the Fourth plans to play the video at the protest.
“The Fourth Amendment ought to be defended,” Paul said. “I think really the right to privacy is one of the new fights of this century.” The Kentucky Senator also said he would continue to lead the fight against the government’s surveillance programs, which he called “a tragedy.”
The D.C. rally will have several guest speakers, including NSA whistle-blower Thomas Drake, Bill of Rights Defense Committee’s Shahid Buttar and president of the Libertarian Party Carla Howell. (On Facebook, more than 200 people have signed up to attend the D.C. event.)
According to their press release on June 18, Restore the Fourth hopes the demonstrations will achieve three things. First, the group calls on Congress to reform the Patriot Act and the FISA Amendments Act, so that blanket surveillance of Internet and phone records of U.S. residents is prohibited. Second, they demand the creation of a special committee to further investigate domestic spying. And finally, Restore the Fourth wants public officials who are responsible for the programs to be held accountable.
David Segal, the executive director of online activist organization Demand Progress, believes these grassroots rallies will grab the attention of lawmakers. “As Congress members are spending more and more time outside of D.C. over the summer, we can steer people to various town halls and other public events where lawmakers will be present,” Segal says. He also plans to forward information about the local July 4 rallies to his site’s 1.5 million members.
(MORE: Putin to Offer Snowden Asylum, but With a Catch)
However, Segal does caution that the movement has been very decentralized, and that some rallies “will be more robust than others.” There are some other warning signs that the movement may not be as strategically decisive as organizers hope. Restore the Fourth supporters on Reddit set up a fundraising campaign to purchase a full-page ad in the New York Times, but failed to meet the $100,000 price tag. By the time their deadline was up, the group could only muster a total of $2,943.
Polls also show that public outrage over NSA monitoring is not all that overwhelming. According to a Washington Post–Pew Research Center poll, 45% of Americans say it’s okay for the government to monitor everyone’s e-mail if officials say doing so might avert future terrorist attacks. The poll also found that a 56% majority believes NSA tracking of phone records is “acceptable.”
But even without flashy newspaper ads and sweeping support from the polls, Restore the Fourth isn’t giving up hope. Restore the Fourth’s Reddit subscribers have used their fury over the NSA to fuel much of the work. Users have teamed up to create viewer-friendly pamphlets, flyers and business cards to distribute in their local communities, while others are in the process of creating a promotional video.
Restore the Fourth spokesman Reed believes the movement will make an impact, especially because of its diverse appeal. The surveillance-opposition efforts have so far brought together an eclectic group of supporters, including two unlikely partners — an Ohio Tea Party association and Occupy Wall Street NYC. This bipartisanship is an advantage Reed thinks will make Capitol Hill lawmakers stop and listen.
“The main thing is getting out there and getting our voice heard,” Reed says. “Because the more attention we have, the more awareness America will have about how deep this issue actually goes, and how many people care.”
MORE: Snowden’s Hong Kong Escape: Behind the Role That Beijing Played
An earlier version of this article misstated the name of the organization Shahid Buttar is affiliated with. It is the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, not Council.Turkish riot police have fired tear gas to disperse thousands of demonstrators in central Istanbul protesting against what they see as authoritarian new laws from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government.
Officers backed by water cannon on Saturday evening cleared demonstrators from the main Istiklal shopping street, some chanting "Everywhere Taksim, Everywhere Resistance", a reference to weeks of protests last year.
Tear gas spread into shops and restaurants as police chased proteters into side streets, in the second such protest in recent weeks, the Reuters news agency reported.
At least five people were detained, according to the AP news agency.
Battling a corruption scandal, Erdogan's ruling AK Party has pushed through laws tightening government control over the Internet and courts this month, and has proposed a bill envisaging broader powers for the national intelligence agency.
"[Prime Minister] Tayyip Erdogan, don't pull the Internet plug," read one banner among the crowds.
"We are here because we are sick and tired of Tayyip's angry scolding and AK Party laws trying to limit every freedom we have," said Sinem Gul, a 26-year-old architect.
Erdogan's critics see the new laws as an authoritarian backlash against the corruption inquiry shaking his government, which his supporters say is a plot against him by powerful US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, who wields extensive, if covert, influence over the police and judiciary, Reuters reported..
EU criticism
Social media and video-sharing sites have been awash with leaked recordings presented as evidence of government wrongdoing since the corruption scandal erupted in December.
The government said the laws - including the Internet bill which allows web pages to be blocked within hours - protect privacy and defend democracy.
This week, Turkish President Abdullah Gul ignored calls for a veto and signed the Internet bill into law, saying he had received government assurances that two disputed articles of the legislation would be amended.
The European Union has criticised the legislation and called it "a step back" for media freedom.
The corruption scandal poses one of the greatest threats to Erdogan's 11-year-old rule and his response, including dismissing or reassigning thousands of police officers and hundreds of prosecutors and judges, has betrayed what critics said are increasingly authoritarian tendencies.
Gulen has denied orchestrating the scandal and his supporters have said they are the victims of a witch-hunt.The 16th Century was a transitional period when England was developing into a modern nation state. However for everyday common people life was relatively unchanged since the Middle Ages and their manners and eating habits were highly influenced by age-old superstitions and Catholic rituals. At this time the vast majority of the English population lived in the countryside and therefore most peoples’ lives revolved around agricultural farm work. Rural society was strictly hierarchical and everyone knew his or her place from the landowners to the labourers. However when it came to eating dinner everybody came together in a convivial atmosphere, united by their love of food.
The Tudors only had one main meal per day. Breakfast and supper were sparse affairs, which usually consisted of scraps. All farm workers worked from sunrise until sunset and so dinner at midday (the word ‘lunch’ did not exist) was an event of great importance.
When dinner was announced everybody gathered in the farmhouse and assembled around the ‘board’ in social order, with the Master at the top and the labourers at the end. The men would take off their hats out of deference to the Master and the ladies would make sure their ears were covered so that they would not hear the whisperings of the Devil (unfortunately in this era women were still blamed for the Fall thanks to Eve).
The board was a large banqueting table where dinner was served. However it was not a ‘table’ as we know it. A modern table’s surface and legs are fixed together. A board is different in that the surface was rested on wooden trestles so it could be disassembled to make additional floor space. This was important in Tudor households where living spaces were often at a premium. The board was essential to Tudor life and consequently we have inherited many common phrases from its importance.
For example when everybody gathered around the board at dinner the Master of the House might ask his labourers about conditions on the farm. The resulting conversation would be known as a “Board Meeting”. The Master himself would sit on a chair while everyone else sat on stools. That made him the “Chairman of the Board”. When he paid his labourers at the end of the each day he would place the money visibly on top of the board so that everyone could see there was no financial wrongdoing.
This ensured that everything was “above board”. If it was a Sunday, the day of rest, then the board might be turned over and on its underside would be games scratched into the surface for people to play. These would be known as “board games” Finally the Master might have guests come to stay at his house and he would traditionally offer them “Bed and Board”.
Once everyone was gathered around the board, each person would remember their manners before food was served. Contrary to popular belief the Tudors were punctilious about manners to an obsessive degree. Forbidden practices included swearing, talking with your mouthful, and no belching or farting. Another aspect of being “above board” was to ensure that the men did not secretly grope the women sat next to them. Therefore everyone’s hands had to be visible. However, you could not lean your elbows on the board. As the surface was not fixed if everybody leant on one side of the board then it might tip and the food would fly everywhere. Even today it is considered bad manners to “put your elbows on the table”.
Once manners were checked it was time to get out the napkins and cutlery. Napkins were placed over the shoulder, as it was believed that was where the Devil sat. By flicking the napkin over your shoulder you were hitting the Devil in the face. Similarly, when people today spill salt they often throw it over their shoulder. This habit comes from the tradition of throwing salt into the Devil’s eye. You could also not use cutlery with your left hand as it was considered that Satan controlled it. Left-handed children were beaten to correct their ‘sin’.
The Tudors did not provide cutlery at dinner and so everyone carried their own sets. This consisted of a knife, pricker and spoon. Knives had the same sharpness of a modern Stanley blade and were used for outdoor cutting tasks as well as eating. Therefore eating from your knife was extremely dangerous and even today we are encouraged not to lick our knives. A pricker was a small knife designed to pick up food.
Forks did exist but they were status symbols that were usually presented as part of a set. The spoon was the most personal cutlery item. Everyone was given a spoon at their Christenings by their godparents who acted as their financial sponsors or “spoonsters”. People who had good quality spoons were referred to as having been “Born with a silver spoon in their mouth”. Most middling people owned a spoon made of horn but if you were poor a wooden spoon was common. Today the wooden spoon is a famous booby prize in competitions.
Finally, after grace was said, it was time to eat. Tudor dinner normally consisted of three courses and sometimes more depending on the occasion. Farm labourers needed at least 5,
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pretty well,'” Rodriguez said then. “So I think we want to remain with our original plan. It was to look to have the hard discussions at the end of the season. I don’t want to speak for Basti, but from what we’ve gleaned and what he shared with us, he and Ana are very comfortable in the city. They love it.
"I think he’s really enjoyed the locker room, the guys, the support of the fans. I think he’s really taken to the challenge of Major League Soccer. I think the signs are positive, but again we would prefer to have the season close before finalizing anything.”
And now, with the close of the Fire’s season upon us, it remains to be seen where the German World Cup winner’s future lies.
For his part, Schweinsteiger also towed the company line on Wednesday night, and gave very little away on where he sees his immediate future.
“As Nelson Rodriguez said, we are in talks, we will see how it is, the same with every player here,” he said.
Looking ahead to next season, Schweinsteiger believes the strides made this year can help the current roster reach the next level and compete for trophies with the likes of this season’s MLS Cup favorites Toronto FC.
“You need to give the team a little bit of time,” Schweinsteiger said when asked how far the team is from winning trophies. “It was a great success, achievement, what we did this season, and I think you need to add maybe one or two pieces. If you have 10 steps, I think we took seven.”
“From our perspective, our experience has been extraordinarily positive with Bastian,” Rodriguez added on Wednesday. “We think he’s delivered across all of our expectations and we hope that we have delivered against his expectations.”
Shane Murray is a contributor to MLSsoccer.com.(CNN) The White House on Thursday said President Donald Trump is considering a 20% tax on imports from Mexico to pay for a southern border wall, but that the President is still weighing other options.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer told reporters on Air Force One Thursday that Trump was backing the proposal and had just discussed it with congressional Republicans in a private meeting.
Hours later, amid an uproar from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, Spicer said that he was simply putting forward one idea Trump is considering to show how the administration could fund the multibillion-dollar construction of a wall on the US's southern border. Spicer repeatedly said the White House was aiming to be "illustrative" rather than "prescriptive" as he walked back the more definitive comments he made earlier Thursday.
"Part of our goal today was to demonstrate that there is an easy way -- or several ways -- tone is to generate the reviews because the cost of the wall in the big picture is really not that significant," he said. "Imports (are) one way. I just want to be clear that we're not being prescriptive in saying that is the only way nor is the rate prescriptive."
White House chief of staff Reince Priebus also told reporters the White House is considering a "buffet of options" as it considers how to pay for the border wall.
Read MoreMercury retrograde in Libra (September 17th – October 9 2015)
Mercury goes retrograde September 17th, 2015 and, until October 9, it will be difficult for all of us to think clear, to remain open-minded and not to yell, when someone irritates us. And, with Mercury traveling backward through the zodiac, you can be sure that a lot of people will drive you nuts. So, how to deal with them? And another challenge: what to do to not become yourself one of these annoying people?
Mercury Retrograde in Libra: Hard times for artists, writers, lawyers and public speakers
Mercury is retrograde in Libra, an artistic sign, ruled by Venus, planet of love and beauty. So, these Venus-ruled professions are the ones that will feel the full impact of Mercury retrograde. Everyone who has a creative job will feel a lack of inspiration. Writing an article or a book, composing a song or painting a picture will require a lot of time and the artists will feel, more than once, like banging their head against a brick wall.
Libra is also a sign of justice and those who serve it – lawyers, prosecutors or judges – will also get through challenging times, in their profession.
Mercury retrograde for you
Of course, Mercury is retrograde for everybody and writers or judges are not the only ones who have to manage a scattered brain and to avoid quarrels.
So, we’ll show, for each sign, the areas of life where is better not to risk, but to remain calm and to avoid, if possible, any crucial decision.
If you are Libra, Mercury retrograde in your own sign makes you look like a hasty and irritable temper. You’re always in a hurry, with or without reason. Take care of your health, continuous stress is dangerous anyone!
If you are Scorpio, Mercury retrograde brings loneliness. It’s almost impossible to make friends in this period. Actually, it’s difficult even to keep old friends close. So, be very careful what you say and what you do and avoid ruining relationships and friendships!
If you are Sagittarius, collective projects and group activities are not working properly. Also, this is not the best time to think about the future and to develop long-term plans.
If you are Capricorn, you will find yourself in some awkward situations, in public! Also, you must remember that September 17th – October 9 is not the best time to get a raise or a promotion at work.
If you are Aquarius, stay home! The travels, especially those to remote places, can bring all sorts of trouble. Bad news, also, for Sagittarius students: try to postpone events after October 9, because Mercury retrograde will affect your intellectual abilities.
If you are Pisces, wait no inheritance or expensive gifts from September 17th to October 9! It is better to retain from spending, because there is a considerable risk to take bad financial decisions.
If you are Aries, you can expect relationship problems. So, you better open up the channels of communication between you and your partner and begin to focus on the good things.
If you are Taurus, the work environment will be way to tense. Sleep well every night, maintain healthy eating habits, drink more water and limit your vices – your body needs extra care, during Mercury’s retrograde period of time.
If you are Gemini, your creativity will suffer. Mercury is the ruler of your zodiac sign, so his retrograde motion will affect your life more than others’. Your love life will be his favourite target.
If you are Cancer, you will probably argue your parents and other relatives (especially the oldest family members: grandparents, uncles, aunts, even older brothers and sisters). Also, your fertility suffers and there not so much chances to conceive a baby right now.
If you are Leo, your colleagues or your schoolmates and even your neighbours become, suddenly, extremely annoying. It will be very difficult for you to avoid quarrels, proud as you are.
If you are Virgo, be careful with your money! Stop buying stuff you don’t need, avoid impulse purchases and don’t let yourself fooled by marketing! Otherwise, you’ll spend in three weeks more than in two months.Fantastic Arbitrary Day gifts from Canada, my anonymous Santa did some amazing sleuthing. I absolutely love everything, thank you for going above and beyond to make a random stranger on the internet so happy.
Here's hoping your Arbitrary Day is as awesome as you just made mine \o/
*Update - photo of framed picture.
*Update² - an unexpected package arrived in the mail! Whilst carrying it inside, I briefly wondered if I'd been inebriated on Amazon. Turns out, Santa wanted me to have the entire series of In Her Name - The Last War.
Thank you so much!
PS, the coffee is great :D
*Update³ - Santa is insane. I'm speechless, this is just too much awesome to comprehend. Another package arrived today, revealing five books from Dean Koontz' Odd Thomas series. I've been meaning to read more from this author for the longest time now, HOW DO YOU KNOW THESE THINGS?For all the furious hype around the gene-editing tool Crispr/Cas9, no one has ever really seen it in action. Like really seen it. How the protein Cas9 unzips a strand of DNA, how it slips in the molecule that guides it to a target—and finally, how it goes snip snip on the DNA. The power of Crispr/Cas9 is its ability to do this all so precisely and reliably.
How can you see something as small as a protein anyway? For decades, that has meant coaxing proteins to grow into crystal structures. Scientists then shoot X-rays through the crystal, and the diffraction pattern elucidates the protein’s structure. Today, for the first time, a study in Science led by Crispr/Cas9 pioneer Jennifer Doudna uses that technique to capture the structure of activated Cas9, in the moment it's primed to cut DNA.
Knowing how Cas9 works in such magnificent molecular detail matters because while the system is good for editing genes—even very good—it is not perfect. Sometimes it cuts the wrong stretch of DNA. Sometimes it doesn’t cut the stretch it is supposed to. Insights from the new study could lead to “more efficient design of Cas9 mutant with high specificity,” says Osamu Nureki, a biologist at the University of Tokyo who has also worked on the structure of Cas9.
The Cas9 protein (outlined in blue) interacting with DNA and a guide RNA. Jiang, et al./Science
But here’s the thing. Even without knowing the structure of active Cas9, scientists have already started modifying the protein. Such is the pace of Crispr/Cas9 research, which has exploded since the first paper to show its DNA-editing potential in 2012. As scientists have raced to use the system to modify pigs, mosquitoes, mice, and even in one case, nonviable human embryos, others have been working on making it better—so good that it could one day be used to cure diseases in humans.
The big hang up is specificity. Cas9 finds its target with the help of a guide RNA, a molecule whose letters pair up with the target DNA sequence. Occasionally, though, the guide RNA pairs up with sequences it does not match perfectly—the so-called off-target problem. In December, a team led by MIT and the Broad Institute’s Feng Zhang, another Crispr pioneer, tweaked the molecules in a groove of Cas9 that holds DNA to improve specificity 25-fold for certain sites.
Zhang and fellow Broad researcher George Church have worked on another strategy to combat off-target mutations, too. Cas9 is often compared to a pair of scissors, but it’s actually two pairs of scissors fused together, each of which cuts one of DNA’s two strands. Zhang and Church have mutated Cas9 to blunt one of those scissors, so it only cuts one strand. Now you need a second Cas9 with second guide RNA to cut the second strand—with redundancy comes less error.
The downside is that these single-scissor Cas9s can still “nick” DNA individually and cause potential mutations. So yet another group led by Harvard’s Keith Joung have fused the guide RNA-binding part of Cas9 to the the scissors of another a DNA-cutting protein called FokI. Not only do you need two FokI-Cas9 to cut a whole piece of DNA, but the two individual hybrid proteins need to actually combine into one mega protein before either will cut DNA, so you don’t get any nicking either.
But what happens if you blunt both of Cas9’s scissors and don’t give it any replacements? That’s where things get really interesting. Jonathan Weissman, a biochemist at the University of California, San Francisco, and collaborators including Doudna have fused that dead Cas9 to molecules that can turn genes on and off.
Every cell in your body has the same genome, but the epigenome turns genes on or off to turn skin cells into skin cells or brain cells into brain cells. “Cas9 has been a great tool for engineering the genome,” he says. “The dead Cas9 is great too for engineering the epigenome.” Weissman calls the system Crispr-i or Crispr-a (for interference and activation, respectively), and his collaborators are using it to manipulate the activation of genes in mice. The technique is good for investigating the function of genes, but it could also, conceivably, be useful therapy. For example, you might turn off the genes for receptors that the Ebola virus uses to enter human cells.
All of this research into modifying Cas9 has plowed ahead while scientists are still figuring out exactly how the protein works. With a higher resolution molecular map of Cas9 now available, that work is only going to speed up.Share
We had to figure it was only a matter of time before some other exciting ideas rolled out of the kind of technology that drives Google Glass.
When it comes to wheels, it look likes one of the first will fall in the hands of motorcyclists.
According to a CNET report, a Moscow-based company called LiveMap, is developing a new helmet for bikers that features a head-mounted display, built in navigation and Siri-like voice recognition.
The headgear will feature a translucent, color display that’s projected on the visor in the center of the field of vision and a custom user interface. The helmet’s display features a light sensor for adjusting image brightness based on external light conditions as well as an accelerometer, gyroscope, and digital compass for tracking head movements, according to CNET.
The CNET report notes that unlike visor mounted heads up displays, LiveMap is fully integrated within the helmet and layers information in real space,
The helmet, which features the same type of augmented-reality technology as google glass, will be offered as an English only Android based headgear at launch.
LiveMap, however, isn’t the first we’ve heard of toying with the technology for two-wheelers. Jeffrey Young, a motorcyclist based in Modetso, Ca., developed a helmet with some similar features as part of Google Glass’ Explorer Program, as reported by Geek.com in May.
LiveMap essentially takes the concept much, much further.
Cost? Likely $2,000, or $1,500 for what the company calls “early birds,” according to CNET.
But I wouldn’t get too hyped about the high-tech headgear just yet. Apparently, LiveMap still needs to secure additional funding for the venture to mass produce the helmets with plans to begin sales in late 2014.
Still, the concept gives us a good idea of where augmented-reality can take us down the road.
Photo Source: CNETThe name Drungo Hazewood by itself is enough to elicit tales of legendary power, strength, and speed. Standing 6-foot-3, with a 210-pound frame talented enough to warrant a full scholarship to USC as a tailback and a 1977 first-round selection from Orioles, Hazewood's physical gifts were some of the most awe inspiring his teammates had ever seen.
"The only other person I can come close to describing his physicality [to] probably was Bo Jackson," said Bob Bonner, a teammate with the Orioles. "Everybody just looked at Drungo with envy, [thinking], 'If I had a body like his, an arm like his, if I could run like him.' He had just so much natural talent, it was unbelievable."
Hazewood died Sunday in his Sacramento, Calif., home from complications of ampullary cancer. He was 53.
"He was diagnosed in June 2011," said his wife, Lagette. "He had major surgery to remove the cancer in August 2011. He did six months of chemo and that put it in remission. We lost our son in August and soon after that he had a reoccurrence. We started to fight it again in October, he had another surgery and radiation, and [Sunday] he lost the battle."
While his major league records show a hitless five at-bats in 1980, the tale of this prodigy is greater than the few weeks he spent in an Orioles uniform.
Despite batting.184 in his first minor league season, he was promoted within the Orioles' system, and the more he played, the more he drew comparisons to the greats of the game.
"He was the next Mickey Mantle," said Scott Christopher, a teammate with Double-A Charlotte. "I used to take his cutoff throws from right field and it was like it came out of an absolute cannon. Some of the bombs he hit were devastating, probably 500-plus feet. The guy was unreal."
Bonner recalled one tape-measure shot that left everyone in the stadium agape.
"We were playing for Charlotte in 1979, and at one field, I remember it was 375 to left center and there was a parking lot behind the fence and a 10-story apartment complex behind that, and he hit it over that complex," Bonner said. "It was estimated at 600 feet. I stood in awe. Everybody did. You could hear a pin drop at the ballpark when he hit it."
Cal Ripken Jr., who played with Hazewood for two seasons in Charlotte, marveled at the abilities of the strapping outfielder.
"He was big and fast and something to watch scoring from first on a double," Ripken wrote in his book "The Only Way I Know."
Yet it was Hazewood's strength that left a lasting impression on the Hall of Famer. After a brawl resulted in Hazewood being ejected, Ripken recalled how Drungo broke a bat using his hands and nothing else.
"He threw on some street clothes — no shower — and then stopped in front of a display of two bats mounted on hooks on the wall. He grabbed one and snapped it like a toothpick. … Drungo didn't snap this bat across anything, and he didn't hit it against anything. He just twisted and snapped it like a toothpick."
While his raw ability has been glamorized, his fierce devotion to his teammates was something that was seldom reported.
"He was a very loyal teammate," Bonner said. "He was one guy that if you were ever in a brawl on the field, you would want him on your side."
Bonner explained how Hazewood manhandled the entire opposition after a player was plunked in succession after his teammates twice hit back-to-back-to-back home runs.
"To make a long story short, it was quite a brawl," Bonner said. "After the brawl was over, Drungo put two of their guys in the hospital. You didn't want to mess with Drungo. He was so strong."
So why didn't Hazewood, with these wondrous displays of strength, stay longer in the big leagues? He couldn't hit the curveball. Pitchers started to figure out that off-speed pitches were Hazewood's kryptonite.
"Had he mastered the curveball, he could have been standing next to Cal in the Hall of Fame," Christopher said.
Instead, Hazewood was out of baseball only a few years after his 1980 major league debut at the age of 21. He abruptly stopped playing in 1983, leaving baseball to take care of his mother who was suffering from breast cancer. Rumors circulated regarding his whereabouts, as he was absent from team reunions and unresponsive to fan mail. Hazewood slipped into relative anonymity in his hometown of Sacramento, no longer a ballplayer, but a family man who was busy driving a truck and raising seven children.
The last few years were difficult for Hazewood after his 2011 cancer diagnosis. His teenage son Aubrey died in 2012, and his former teammates, led by Christopher, united to help raise funds for the funeral and Hazewood's growing medical expenses.
"I told the funeral home director that this group of teammates will take care of what needs to be done, which we did," Christopher said.
The outpouring of support for Hazewood continued after his passing.
Said Bonner: "Anytime someone asks me who the greatest player I ever played with was, and of course I played with Ripken, [I tell them] the guy who had more talent than anyone I ever played with was Drungo LaRue Hazewood."The UK Bitcoin exchange Netagio today announced intentions to close the exchange as of the 18th of March, opting instead to launch a wealth storage business which will safe guard cash in money vaults across the globe.
Speaking on the closure, Simon Hamblin, CEO of Netagio, said:
"As with any early stage business, we have kept the business plan under close and constant review. We have worked tirelessly to protect our customers' interests and in response to demand introduced USD and EUR order books, followed by credit / debit card payments options. From the outset we voluntarily subjected ourselves to rigorous external audits and have implemented strict regulatory and compliance requirements (AML and KYC) in order to operate an orderly and transparent Bitcoin market place and contribute to the overall transparency and best practice in the Bitcoin industry. We are immensely proud of our efforts and achievements to date while facing the reality of a stagnating market place in Europe, in an environment of regulatory and political uncertainty facing Bitcoin businesses. As experienced Board representatives we recognise when industry winds blow in other directions and it is time to review and restructure. We look forward to bringing our experience and established credibility to bear in the new wealth storage venture. At the time when trust in banks is low and potential bank bail-outs across Europe are a reality, the need for alternative ways to safeguard savings is clear, with cash savings significantly on the increase. Our heritage in gold and Bitcoin storage puts us on the right path to work with our partners to provide highly secure, globally located vaults to fulfil our customers' cash safekeeping needs."
Netagio's exit from Bitcoin and entry into fiat comes as a record amount of money has been stolen from banks across the world.Ricky Gervais is making a version of hit show The Office for Chinese television, the star has confirmed on his blog.
The sitcom, set in a Slough paper company, made Gervais a household name and has been remade for viewers around the world.
Best known of the remakes is the US version starring Hollywood funnyman Steve Carell.
But versions have also been made in countries like France and Israel.
Writing on his blog, Gervais said: "I have some amazing news too. We are about to start work on developing a Chinese 'The Office'. How cool is that?"
The 49-year-old is also working with long term collaborator Stephen Merchant on a new project - Life's Too Short - about the day-to-day frustrations of a dwarf.
The show's been commissioned by the BBC and the pair will appear on screen as well as being executive producers.The Amtrak train that derailed was the first regular service to use the “bypass” track that goes directly from Tacoma to DuPont, instead of a slow but scenic path along Puget Sound at Tacoma Narrows.
Monday’s fatal derailment of an Amtrak train occurred on a rebuilt, $181 million passenger corridor that was supposed to make the trip between Seattle and Portland more reliable.
Amtrak Cascades 501, with 77 passengers and seven crew aboard, was the first scheduled trip to use a new 14.5-mile bypass track from Tacoma to DuPont, instead of a slow but scenic path along Puget Sound at Tacoma Narrows.
The railcars derailed onto I-5 on an old overpass that was outfitted with new rails, said Janet Matkin, spokeswoman for the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT). There are no switches in the immediate area, she said.
The Associated Press said at least six people died, while dozens of others were transported to hospitals or treated by medics.
This was the second Cascades derailment of the year. In July, a train ran a stop signal and was deflected into gravel near Chambers Bay along the Sound, causing some minor injuries.
Washington state is one of the few regions investing heavily in passenger rail, a program marred by Monday’s tragedy, and its blockage of both rail and freeway networks. Sound Transit owns the track corridor.
The passenger-rail retrofit was approved by regional voters in the Sound Transit 2 ballot measure of 2008, and by WSDOT’s rail division. Funding included stimulus money from the Obama administration, which sought to create faster rail across the U.S. Some states ignored or rejected federal aid, but Washington state ended up with about $800 million.
The trackway near DuPont is meant to carry trains at speeds up to 80 mph. By improving tracks and switches, WSDOT hoped to reduce delays and lower travel times by 10 minutes between Seattle and Portland.
Dignitaries on Friday rode the new inland route to celebrate its completion. Besides trackwork, the $181 million program includes the addition of two more Amtrak trains starting Monday, for a total of six round-trips, and a new Tacoma Dome Station that opened this month.
The regional ST3 transit tax measure, approved last year, includes a promise to put Sounder commuter trains on the line south of Lakewood, so they reach future stations at Tillicum and Dupont.
Positive train control equipment, to limit unsafe movements or halt trains before a collision, was part of the retrofit, but Amtrak said the controls were not in effect yet where the derailment occurred.
Trains made test trips on weekends and off-peak hours at varying speeds up to 79 mph, since early 2017.
The derailment began on a curve approaching the overpass, where overhead photos show the southbound train’s front end traveled to the right, along the ground and onto I-5.
Not everyone thought the rail bypass was a great idea.
The city of Lakewood sued to halt the project, because of the threat of faster trains going through neighborhood crossings. In addition, the route crosses major arterials next to I-5 and Joint Base Lewis McChord. Monday’s crash occurred a mile from population centers.
Amtrak now runs in a corridor that previously used just by slow, Tacoma Rail local freight trains. Sound Transit and WSDOT issued a public education campaign, including a video by Seahawks receiver Doug Baldwin, that people should expect faster trains than before.
These are the first deaths on Amtrak Cascades trains in Washington state. In 1993, five crewmembers died in a head-on crash between freight trains at Kelso.
Regional freight, including oil trains, continues to wind along the Narrows and Point Defiance. Freight trains combine with the Amtrak line in Nisqually, just south of the derailment site, and share the tracks continuing south.
Because of the derailment, WSDOT says, the Amtrak Cascades trains will detour onto their former route along the waterfront.
Watch:
Here’s what we know about the Amtrak train derailmentSupport for sweeping curbs on immigration to the UK has reached record levels, a major study of public opinion shows.
Almost eight out of 10 Britons now believe that the number of new arrivals should be limited and nearly six in 10 want to see major reductions in the number allowed in.
The numbers advocating a large cut have swelled by more than 40 per cent since before the expansion of the European Union, according to the latest findings from the British Social Attitudes survey, which has been charting public opinion for more than 30 years.
Strikingly, it shows that even among those who believe that immigration has boosted Britain’s economy and enriched its culture, clear majorities now want to see it cut.
There is also a sharp divide along class lines, with an elite of highly paid and highly qualified people twice as likely as workers from middle and lower income families to view immigration in positive terms.
Significantly, attitudes have also hardened even among those from immigrant families themselves with less than half now convinced that it is good for the economy and a quarter doubting the cultural benefits.
The findings came as Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, underlined divisions with the Coalition over immigration insisting that the Government “certainly won’t achieve” its target of getting numbers below 100,000 before the General Election next year.
Speaking in a BBC documentary, The Truth About Immigration, he described the cap, a flagship Conservative policy, as “not sensible”.
In the same programme, Jack Straw, the former Home Secretary, described Labour’s estimates of migrant numbers ahead of the main eastward expansion of the EU in 2004 as “completely catastrophic”.
And David Blunkett, his successor, admitted that the Blair government had not spelt out likely the full impact because of a “fear of racism”.
Nick Robinson, the BBC’s political editor, who presents the programme, said at the weekend that the corporation had made a “terrible mistake” in downplaying public concerns over immigration.
The study of more than 3,000 people found that 77 per cent want immigration reduced, with only four per cent favouring an increase.
Fifty six per cent support reducing it “a lot” – a record level. In 1995, when the question was first asked, only 39 per cent supported major reductions and two years ago only 51 per cent did.
Although the number of people believing that immigration benefits the economy is marginally higher than two years ago, it is still a view held by less than a third of Britons, compared with almost half who see it as harmful.
Only one in three Britons believe immigration enriches Britain culturally, against 45 per cent who think it is detrimental.
Significantly, 54 per cent of those who see immigration as good for the economy still want to reduce it, including a quarter who would support severe reductions. Among those who see immigration as culturally beneficial, 55 per cent now support curbs.
Penny Young, chief executive of NatCen Social research, which conducted the study, said other issues not specifically covered by the questions – such as pressure on the NHS or housing – could be at work.
“Reducing immigration is technically about stopping more immigrants coming to Britain so it may well be that people have got to the point where they think that we are ‘full’,” she said.
“They may think that it has been good for the economy or culturally but that if it carries on it may have a problematic effect.”
Strikingly, the proportion of first or second generation immigrants who believe migration is good for the economy has slipped below half in the last two years. A quarter of migrants now even doubt that it immigration is even benefiting Britain culturally.
When responses were analysed along class lines, one of the most notable findings is that only a third of those in the top earnings bracket see immigration as bad for the economy compared with around half of those in the middle.
David Cameron has pledged to reduce net migration to the "tens of thousands" rather than hundreds of thousands. But figures published in November show it rose markedly ni the last year and now stands at 182,000.
Aked whether he thought the target was realistic, Mr Cable said: "It’s not sensible to have an arbitrary cap because most of the things under it can’t be controlled.
"So it involves British people emigrating - you can't control that. It involves free movement within the European Union - in and out. It involves British people coming back from overseas, who are not immigrants but who are counted in the numbers. So setting an arbitrary cap is not helpful, it almost certainly won’t achieve the below 100,000 level the Conservatives have set anyway, so let’s be practical about it."
Asked whether it was "nonsense", he said: "The idea it should come down to 100,000 is something the Liberal Democrats have never signed up to because we simply regard it as impractical."
Immigration is expected to dominate the agenda in the lead up to the European elections later this year and a General Election next year.
While the UK Independence Party is expected to take votes from the Conservatives over the issue, the study shows that Labour voters are the most sharply divided over immigration.
Similar proportions of Labour voters – roughly four out of 10 – see immigration as helping or harming the economy and Britain’s cultural life.
Government estimates a decade ago were that around 13,000 people from Eastern European member states would come to Britain a year. According to the ONS there are now just over a million people from Poland and the seven other countries which joined the EU in 2004 living in the UK.
“The predications were completely catastrophic,” Mr Straw told the programme.
“I mean they were wrong by a factor of 10.
“On immigration, it was bluntly a nightmare and it got more and more difficult”
Mr Blunkett addeds that the Treasury was convinced that the economic benefits would outweigh the disadvantages.
“We didn’t spell out in words of one syllable what was happening, partly because of a fear of racism” he said.This article is over 2 years old
Drug war claims another 13 lives in western region riven by murders and violence
Western Mexico’s plague of violence has continued with the discovery of six decapitated heads in one state and the killing of seven people in another.
The Michoacan state prosecutor’s office said the six heads were found on Christmas Day in Jiquilpan, a municipality near the state of Jalisco in a region that has been a battleground between competing drug gangs in recent years.
From glamour to gunfire: the tourist city of Acapulco torn apart by violence Read more
In a brief statement, it said the six men had not yet been identified and their bodies had not been found.
Meanwhile state security officials in the neighbouring state of Guerrero said gunmen entered a house and shot seven people dead in the municipality of Atoyac de Alvarez. Five were members of one family and two were a married couple.
State security spokesman Roberto Alvarez Heredia said in a statement that two of the seven killed were municipal police officers and one a state police officer.
The preliminary investigation suggested the gunmen wanted to kill one of the victims in a revenge attack but ended up killing them all.
Guerrero, where Acapulco is located, is one of the states most plagued by drug gang violence.Updated: April 21, 6:40 a.m.
Partial results from Afghanistan’s presidential election released Sunday reveal candidate Abdullah Abdullah as the front runner, though a runoff election still appears likely.
Abdullah, a former Foreign Minister who ran against outgoing President Hamid Karzai in the last election, has 44 percent of the votes that have been tallied so far, the Associated Press reports. Abdullah’s closest competitor, former Finance Minister and World Bank official Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, has received 33.2 percent of the vote. Either candidate will need to secure more than 50 percent of the vote to avoid a runoff election.
Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission announced the results, which represent close to half of the approximately 7 million votes cast in the April 5 election. Final election results are expected on May 14.
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The victor will oversee Afghanistan through a period of transition as the U.S. and other NATO countries are expected to withdraw troops from the nation. Both candidates have called for a new start with Western countries and have promised to sign a U.S. security pact with which Karzai has refused to agree.
[AP]
Write to Nolan Feeney at [email protected] parliament now grants secret fund to President Erdoğan
ANKARA – Turan Yılmaz
AA Photo
A regulation granting a discretionary fund for the presidency was passed as part of a government-sponsored omnibus bill in the General Assembly of the Turkish parliament early March 27, despite objection from opposition parties.The president can use the fund “for state necessities that contain discreet intelligence and defense services; the national security and higher interests of the state; political, social and cultural purposes; and extraordinary services,” according to the regulation passed in parliament, which made changes to the Public Finance Management and Control Law, which provides the discretionary fund for the prime ministry.How and where the presidential discretionary fund will be used will be defined by a presidential enactment that will only bear the president’s signature. The discretionary fund for the prime ministry is paid with an order that is signed by the prime ministry, the finance minister and the relevant minister for whom the fund is used.Just like all the other presidential enactments, which are regulated under Article 107 of the constitution, the enactment for the presidency discretionary fund will not be subject to administrative jurisdiction.A discretionary fund covers a great range of expenditures as it can be used for anything from confidential missions to retrieving cultural monuments overseas, which is seen as necessary for the government and the state. The law forbids the use of this fund for family purposes, adding that the fund cannot exceed the funds given with the overall budget of the relevant year.The regulation giving a discretionary fund for the president was inserted in the omnibus bill in a motion filed by Interior Minister Sebahattin Öztürk, who was appointed to the post for three months in early March to replace Efkan Ala, who procedurally resigned from his post as part of a constitutional obligation designed to ensure a neutral election environment, which will take place on June 7.While the fund was defended by ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) deputies, the regulation elicited the objections of opposition party deputies.Development Minister Cevdet Yılmaz said the discretionary fund was given to a post and not a person, therefore the president, as the head of state, would act responsibly, adding that there was nothing odd about the fund.AKP Group Deputy Chairman Ahmet Aydın said the fund to be given to the presidency was normal and should also be perceived as normal.“[The president] has assumed duty to conduct the missions that need to be done for the higher interest of the state. It is absolutely normal that there are some fund allocations to him to pursue according to these national interests. It should be perceived as normal,” said Aydın.But Republican People’s Party (CHP) Group Deputy Chairman Akif Hamzaçebi objected to the regulation, suggesting that the new fund, which he dubbed as the “presidential coup,” was an attempt to gain control over the Turkish National Intelligence Agency (MİT), which is under the authority of the prime ministry.“This is a constitutional coup. [President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan] wants to tie the illegal structure inside MİT directly to himself. With this regulation, secret operations will be conducted much more easily under Erdoğan’s instruction,” said Hamzaçebi. “This is treason to the parliamentary system and the prime minister.”Hamzaçebi added that with the discretionary fund, a “parallel state” had been established inside the presidential palace.Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) Group Deputy Chairman Oktay Vural questioned the regulation by asking what the president would do with this fund. Vural mocked the presidential discretionary fund by proposing that deputies send one of their monthly salaries to the presidency, as the presidency’s money was not enough, so that a
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economic oddity of athletes bringing in millions and getting comparatively little in return (beyond their scholarships and high-profile platforms).
At the same time, the athletes themselves have barely stood up to their institutions publicly, let alone demanded employee status. A small campaign this football season, in which a handful of football players from seven teams wore uniforms bearing “APU” (for All Players United) in protest of NCAA rules, was considered groundbreaking for this time, though it was one of a periodic set of similar protests dating back to the 1980s.
It’s not a coincidence that a call for unionization is starting at Northwestern: the football team’s quarterback, Kain Colter, was the star participant in the APU protest, which was orchestrated by the advocacy group National College Players Association – whose president, Ramogi Huma, filed the papers on behalf of Colter and his undisclosed number of teammates. (According to NLRB rules, at least 30 percent, or 26, of the team’s 85 scholarship players must sign the filing.)
A final outcome – which, if certified by NLRB, would be the College Athletes Players Association – could be more than five years down the road.
Now that CAPA and the athletes have filed for recognition, first reported by ESPN's "Outside the Lines," an NLRB regional board will consider the request. That decision could be appealed to the national board, and Northwestern and the NCAA have already made clear they oppose this movement. The decision could ultimately lie with the federal court system.
Although the NCAA will almost certainly enter the legal fray, Maxcy posited that it may be wiser to resist. That’s because if colleges and the NCAA are acting under labor laws instead of antitrust laws, when squabbles arise, everyone can work together to solve them. Acting under antitrust law as it does now, the NCAA will be at the mercy of the courts and individual athletes if they someday decide athletes should be paid.
Under labor laws, “If employees and employers agree on something, they can implement actions that otherwise would be illegal,” said Warren K. Zola, an adjunct associate professor of business law at Boston College, citing the NFL draft as an example.
Michael LeRoy, a University of Illinois professor of law and labor employment relations who proposed a sort of semi-union with financial benefits for athletes that stopped short of a negotiated salary, favors a plan that preserves the “idea of a student-athlete” rather than one that professionalizes college sports, such as unionization.
But “all the power to them,” if the Northwestern athletes can make this happen, he said.
“Low probability but not out of the question,” LeRoy said. The NLRB would have to overturn the precedent that says athletes aren’t employees while extending more recent precedent that says graduate assistants are employees, with a third party – the NCAA – also claiming it has rights, via contracts and charters, to make the rules. “I think that part makes it an uphill climb.”
Only scholarship football and men’s basketball programs from Division I Football Bowl Series institutions would be eligible to join CAPA at first. (If employee status is about money, there’s a huge difference between a football player at Florida State University and a cross-country runner from a small Division II college.) Further, the decision precedent would also apply only to private colleges. Athletes at state universities are subject to state laws, and 24 of them do not support unions.
There’s also that other concern, way, way down the line: what if the players do unionize – and then go on strike? What happens with the team Northwestern was supposed to play this weekend – to those tickets, to that revenue?
“It sounds so wonderful in theory to some people, but a serious issue is, would the conference be able to keep them in this organization?” LeRoy said. (Big Ten Conference officials also said in a statement that the conference “does not believe” that athletes are employees for their institutions.)
There’s also the possibility of college sports losing its tax exemption and what that could mean for a system that profits hugely from tax-exempt donations from fans and alumni.
“If you go through this rabbit hole, there are other unintended consequences that I’m not sure everyone has considered,” Zola said.
There will be plenty of time now, he added.
“I think this is yet another step toward some level of meaningful dialogue between the leaders of higher education, the NCAA, and those advocating on behalf of college athletes. We have unionization efforts, we have the O’Bannon case, we have the financial ramifications of the new College Football Playoff, all of which are coming together to recognize the role and the magnitude of the business of sports,” Zola said. “And I suspect that the resolution will be found in discussions and settlement talks rather than in the courtroom.”Louisville was outrebounded 53-41, but rode strong offensive performances by Wayne Blackshear, Montrezl Harrell and Terry Rozier to a 91-71 win over Barry in their first of two exhibition games.
Here's your box score:
BARRY 71
Total 3-point Rebounds ## Player p fgm-fga fgm-fga ftm-fta off-def tot pf tp a to blk stl min 22 Tray Leonard f 5-8 1-2 4-8 7-4 11 2 15 0 1 1 0 18 24 Savad Garner f 0-5 0-0 0-0 1-2 3 5 0 1 2 0 1 17 03 Juan Ferrales g 2-8 0-3 2-4 2-2 4 0 6 2 3 0 0 26 10 Deric Hill g 2-12 2-8 3-3 2-1 3 2 9 7 5 0 3 28 23 Yunio Barrueta g 2-10 0-7 0-2 1-4 5 2 4 1 4 1 0 28 01 Josh Irving - 0-0 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 02 Arie Williams - 3-3 2-2 2-2 0-0 0 1 10 0 4 0 1 12 04 Toure Hunt - 0-0 0-0 0-0 0-1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 14 Anders Haas - 1-6 1-4 2-2 1-3 4 1 5 2 0 0 0 22 21 Jevoni Robinson - 5-11 0-0 3-4 8-5 13 2 13 3 1 0 3 23 32 Adrian Gonzalez - 4-8 1-1 0-0 2-2 4 2 9 0 0 0 0 18 33 Alvaro Simoza - 0-1 0-1 0-0 0-0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 5 TM Team - - - - 5-0 5 - - - - - - - Totals.............. - 24-72 7-28 16-25 29-24 53 17 71 16 20 2 8 200 33.3% 25.0% 64.0% Team summary: FG 3FG FT 1st Half: 11-35 3-14 4-7 31.4% 21.4% 57.1% 2nd Half: 13-37 4-14 12-18 35.1% 28.6% 66.7%
LOUISVILLE 91
Score by Periods 1st 2nd Total BARRY 29 42 71 Record: (0-0) LOUISVILLE 45 46 91 Record: (0-0)
And your postgame quotes from Rick Pitino:
Head Coach Rick Pitino
(Opening statement)
"From our practice film I realized what our weaknesses are. One are the turnovers, we did much better today. Our second weakness is rebounding and Barry did us a great favor. When you give up 29 second-chance shots, two things happen - you're playing good defense - they're shooting a low percentage, but when you give second shots you're taking away every fast break opportunity. Even though it was a high-tempo game, we only had five fast breaks in the first half. That's what exhibition basketball is all about. You see what you're doing well and you see where your weaknesses lie. It's really technique and that's why we've been rebounding poorly. What we're doing is, we're in good position the shot goes up but then we run to the rim. If it's a jump shot and the ball comes off more than five feet and we're running into the arc. We've been watching tape on Kenneth Faried where instead of going towards the rim he goes toward the perimeter while he watches the flight of the ball. Thirty percent of his rebounds is chasing down the ball because he knows the angle it's coming off. We're running to the rim and the only thing you can do that there is take the ball out of bounds."
"From a technical standpoint, this was very good for us because right now we saw our flaws. We keep our turnovers down and that's been a point of emphasis. I think our conditioning was good except for one time when I had to call a timeout. I wanted to play some of our guys major minutes and pressing. We didn't play any zone, we played all man. I saw a lot of things I liked. The great thing about exhibition games is you know what to work on. The obvious thing right now is we can't play great defense and give up 29 second shots."
(On whom was Pitino most pleased with)
"I don't think necessarily that I was happy with any individual. I thought Wayne was very aggressive. But he didn't go to the offensive glass and that's something he has to do. We did some good things passing the ball wise. I wasn't really happy with any specific player. I try not to focus on that as much as I do the ball movement, defensive help and rotation. I think I can get up to eight guys out of the rotation."
(On why the players weren't disciplined on rebounding)
"They've been told from practice that it's their weakness. Sometimes a dad can tell someone don't go in that neighborhood or you'll get in trouble. Then finally you'll get in trouble and say why didn't I listen to my dad. Sometimes coaching wise you tell them the weakness from watching film every day. Until the game starts they don't realize it. We've got their attention right now because that was one of the three areas of weakness on our basketball team.
(On the team's defensive communication)
"They're doing a pretty good job there. You know sometimes when you're physically weak; like Mangok is a very good offensive rebounder, he's weak defensively because his legs are so thin he gets pushed underneath. So the way to cure your rebounding woes is you have to rebound on the weak side where 80 percent of the rebounds come off 2 versus 1. The guard has to lead them in and go to the back of the guy that is pushing Mangok, or pushing somebody underneath and that's the other area we have to work on. Make sure that we rebound the weak side 2 vs. 1."
(On the team's ball movement) "That's what I would a say a team wise, that's good. Now obviously, we are not running a lot of our sets right now because, our early opponents, we don't want to give them too much. Every game of ours is on television, so we don't want to show as much as we would for a regular game."
(On Chinanu Onuaku's performance)
"Onuaku is going to be a good basketball player. He's very smart, he's physical, he's ready to play. He's going to be a good basketball player."
(On Onuaku's passing and high and low stuff he can do)
"Yeah, he also understands the game a little bit. Like Montrezl understands the game; he has a very good feel for the game of basketball. That's something - he has to play a lot this year obviously when you go against the size of Minnesota or Iowa State and you play the team's we're playing he's going to have to log a lot of minutes. The good thing is, he's 18 so he's much more mature now."
(Bigger team than in the past, ACC connection or did it just shake out like that)
"It just shook out that way. I think that, I know these big guys, when you look at them, I've been through it so much in my life, that they're just are not ready to play; but guards are always ready to play early. The bigs are ready late and these guys are going to be ready late. Like one guy doesn't have good skills right now - Matz (Stockman) - the other guy (Anas Mahmoud) doesn't have good strength. They're both going to get strength and he's going to get skills from all the individual instruction. Nanu gets by because he is physically ready to play; Shaqquan is not physically ready to play. Shaqquan is 175 pounds, so we played Montrezl a little on small forward because of the type of schedule we are going to face."
(On turnover creation being what he wanted)
"Yeah, I thought we did... we were a little late on rotations, but that's to be expected. When you play, you press the whole game and you play good man and you're always moving, it's a great conditioner as well. The obvious thing is you can't get teams to take bad shots. And I would say about 30 percent of our rebounds tonight, we just didn't chase the ball down. They were long, got them to take bad shots, but we didn't chase them down and you have to chase rebounds down."
(On 30 second shot clock experiment)
"We play with a 28 second shot clock at practice every day. We're slow to move in college basketball with a lot of things, but the women have played with it for a long time. Now they're quicker, smarter, better than us, but they've been playing with it for a long time."
(On Chris Jones having foul trouble and playing out of sync)
"You know, I let him play with his two fouls for some time. I was happy that Wayne didn't get in any. Chris usually can stay out of foul trouble. That's a minor miracle [that Blackshear had three fouls]. It was a good exhibition game for us, it really was, because they're a well-coached team, well drilled team, they run good sets, and I know exactly now what I felt we needed to work on and it solidified everything in my mind."
(On dunks getting a rise out of Montrezl Harrell)
"Does it get a rise out of me? No, that's Montrezl, that's what he can do. His timing is excellent, his length is excellent, he's a very good passer, he's a good leader. He doesn't surprise me at all. Terry doesn't surprise me, Chris doesn't, we got Wayne playing much more aggressively now. I got on him at halftime about rebounding the ball and he did a good job. There's six players I have great confidence in right now. I thought Anton was OK on defense, I thought he was okay. That gives us seven. If Q (Quentin Snider) comes around defensively, that gives us eight; we're perfect, we're fine. Just have to get Q playing some defense and we're fine."
(On Shaqquan Aaron sitting out this game)
"I can't play everybody. I really can't. I got to work on getting ready for Minnesota. It's a different schedule this year, so I know you want him to play, but I can't put him in because you want him to play."Researchers have turned to the video website YouTube to better understand the phenomenon of “robo-tripping” — ingesting large amounts of Robitussin or other cough medicine to become intoxicated.
“This paper demonstrates information about commonly ingested doses of DXM and their side effects can be retrieved from YouTube comments using techniques from information retrieval and natural language processing,” Michael Chary of the Ichan School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and his colleagues wrote in their study, which was published by PLoS One.
“Analyzing social media could provide data to answer questions about the recreational use of substances that would be difficult to obtain through other means.”
Dextromethorphan is a cough suppressant found in numerous medications, including Robitussin and Coricidin Cough and Cold. At high doses, the drug produces dissociative hallucinatory effects similar to ketamine and PCP. The recreational use of DXM has sharply increased over the past few years, according to the researchers
By using computational linguistics to analyze comments on YouTube, the researchers found the most commonly ingested amounts of DXM ranged from 0 to 1500mg. Death was associated with dosages above 1800mg.
The comments also showed that distinct symptoms occurred at four specific ranges of dosages. These different recreational dose ranges are referred to by users as “plateaus.” The first plateau produces mild stimulant effects, the second produces a drunk- or stoned-liked experience, the third produces dissociative out-of-body experiences, and the fourth produces a full-blown dissociative condition, the researchers wrote.
Data from the YouTube comments strongly resembled documented case reports of DXM intoxication, suggesting accurate information about recreational drug use can be gleaned from the popular video website.
“This study investigated whether YouTube is a useful source of information on the recreational use of an over the counter substance whose usage is, otherwise, challenging to track,” Chary and his colleagues wrote. “If data from social media about recreational drug use concord with clinically documented symptoms and doses, then those data could be used to explore aspects of recreational drug use, such as short-term trends, that are mostly inaccessible with current means: case reports from emergency rooms and poison center calls.”Minority students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison feel less welcome on campus than their white peers, according to results from the university’s first campus climate survey.
The survey was conducted last fall and 8,652 students responded. At the time of the study, UW-Madison had about 43,000 students enrolled. All answers were broken down into respondent demographics including, students of color, LGBQ, transgender/non-binary and women.
Overall about 80 percent of respondents reported feeling "very or extremely often" safe, welcome and respected. However, only 68 percent of students of color reported feeling frequently safe, compared to 80 percent of white students.
Chancellor Rebecca Blank said these survey results verify anecdotal evidence that the university already had.
"We are working very hard to address these disparities, but this is an effort that’s going to require everyone’s involvement," Blank said. "It can’t be done just from the top-down."
Blank said the idea for this campus climate survey came up in the spring of 2014.
Participants also reported if they had witnessed or been the target of harassment or intimidating behavior. Of the responses, about one-in-ten students said they had been the target of this behavior at least once. Thirty-three percent of transgender/non-binary students reported being harrassed at least once.
Disabled, transgender/non-binary, LGBQ and students of color were more likely to report being expected to represent the "point of view" of their identities in classes.
The Campus Climate Survey Task Force analyzed the results and made recommendations, like increasing the number of students, faculty and staff from "underrepresented groups."
UW-Madison already has Our Wisconsin, a diversity education program, which students can participate in. Vice Provost Patrick Sims said this program is one way to help students create an environment of understanding among students.
Only 50 percent of transgender/non-binary reported feeling welcomed "very or extremely often." This kind of disparity compared to other students was echoed across the report.
Sims said this is an evolving discussion to find more ways to make transgender students feel more accepted on campus.“When a man rides a long time through wild regions he feels the desire for a city.”
—Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
H.P. Lovecraft’s stories are filled with descriptions of cities, both fictional and real. From the Nameless City of the Arabian desert built by lizard men, to the marginally more realistic Arkham and Dunwich, to his longest single work, A Description of the Town of Quebec, he loved towns and felt — like everyone at some level — that they had an innate existence as more than a cluster of buildings in space. One of his hobbies was antiquarian architecture, examining a town from its streetlamps, its cobblestones, its roofs (gambrel or non-gambrel), its number of fanlights. Cities were his home and hearth, and a way of pinning down the past: a form more visible and intentional than fossils in a riverbed, or the gradual accumulation of topsoil that allows the land to grow grass and trees. As Ken Hite points out in his excellent book “Tour De Lovecraft,” as much as Lovecraft hated urban decay, he was a city boy. The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath is Randolph Carter’s love letter to his ideal city, filtered through the many other not-quite-ideal cities he encounters on his way (“He swore that Ulthar would be very likely place to dwell in always, were not the memory of a greater sunset city ever goading one on toward unknown perils”). In the same way, Lovecraft wrote a thousand love letters to Providence, from his adolescent poetry to the words I AM PROVIDENCE, from a late letter, now inscribed on his tombstone erected by fans after his death.
Like footprints in the sand of nature, cities stick in the human mind. Julian Jaynes, in his book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, defines civilization by cities: a civilized person, he says, is someone who lives in a city (or community) too big to personally know everyone else who lives there. Pausanias’ Description of Greece, possibly the first surviving tourist guide, describes cities and shrines but rarely bothers to note natural features; in that age before ecological consciousness the pastoral, with its risk of wolves, weather and highwaymen, was not yet a reason to travel (or maybe in that preindustrial time, there was just so much of it, no one cared?). The earliest travelogues were just lists of cities, names one after the other, like the exotic cities that pass along the river in Lord Dunsany’s “Idle Days on the Yann.” At one time, all roads led to Rome; later, in Medieval maps the city of Jerusalem was usually drawn at the center of the world, with the continents radiating out from it.
Made-up cities followed real cities; Alberto Manguel and Gianni Guadalupi’s A Dictionary of Imaginary Places is full of descriptions of them and their romance, their utopias and dystopias, heavens and hells. Places have souls, as Lovecraft expressed subtly in his best stories, like “Dream-Quest,” and bluntly in his worst, like “The Street.” And people have places where they belong. Even Batman has Gotham City and Superman has Metropolis, which, while they make you wonder where there’s room for the real New York City in the DC Universe, give it a special appeal beyond the idea that Spider-Man might be living on your block.
It was important to Lovecraft not only to describe cities, but to create them. Lovecraft admired the fantasies of Lord Dunsany — they were the #1 inspiration for his dreamlands stories– but one of the many differences between their work is that Dunsany never tried to create a consistent mythology, except in his early standalone “The Gods of Pegana”. Except for a rare few linked stories (sequels like “Idle Days on the Yann”, “The Avenger of Perdondaris” and “The Shop on Go-By Street”, “Bethmoora” and “The Hashish Man”, “The Distressing Tale of Thangobrind the Jeweler” and “The Bird of the Difficult Eye,” etc.) Dunsany never reused place-names or created a consistent world that could be mapped (or at least not without making most of it up yourself). Most likely, imaginary names came easier to Dunsany, and he just didn’t feel the need to repeat himself. On the other hand, Lovecraft reused everything, like a bird building its nest. As early as “The Quest of Iranon” he’s making references to “The Doom That Came to Sarnath” and “The Green Meadow.” Abdul Alhazred, his childhood Arabian Nights persona, is still appearing as the author of the Necronomicon 40 years later. Lovecraft didn’t have the thoroughness of Tolkien, but he had the same urge to create a single fictional universe that includes everything he wrote — a Grand Unifying Theory, call it the Cthulhu Mythos or Yog-Sothothery or whatever. Dunsany’s cities and creations are like bits of delicate crystal; Lovecraft’s are like stones rounded by frequent handling.
Lovecraft was a homebody — except for his brief stay in New York, all his life he clung to his childhood city, his childhood furniture (what a shame that there are no photographs of it, his ratty old furniture he loved so much he told Helen Sully he’d go insane if he had to part with it!), his childhood home (or as near a simulacrum as possible, since the original house had been sold). But he was also a traveler, spending days on buses and trains, seeing the world as much as his finances allowed (as a California boy, I have to say, it sucks that he never managed to visit Clark Ashton Smith in California), absorbing new sights and memories. Writing about them. And returning home. Home was the axis of the world around which he spun, his reference point that gave his travels meaning and context.
Dream-Quest is the story of a pilgrimage (one of his rejected titles was “A Pilgrim in Dreamland”), a journey to exotic ports from which the hero returns with newfound appreciation of home. It’s inherent in Dream-Quest that Carter and Kuranes are outsiders, tourists, travelers just passing through but not really meant to settle in these fabulous lands. (As Kuranes sadly discovers.) We see the dreamlands through the eyes of foreign adventurers, not so much through the eyes of Atal the Little Farm Boy from Ulthar. J. Vernon Shea (also quoted by Ken Hite) says that he thinks one of Lovecraft’s inspirations was 19th century Orientalist travel literature such as the works of Richard F. Burton and Charles Doughty. Late 20th century academics would criticize this narrative of the privileged (white) outsider visiting the East to cherry-pick Enlightenment from the local traditions and return home to write condescending portraits of the natives, but on a scale of racism in Lovecraft’s works, it’s downright sweet of him to write a story in which both the heroes AND villains wear turbans. Marco Polo and Herodotus also returned home after long voyages to write about the Mysterious East, after all, and so did Manjiro, long before imperialism and Elizabeth Gilbert. Every traveler thinks they’re someone special, every traveler is a pilgrim and a hero in their own minds. In Orientalism, Edward Said repeatedly criticizes Western tourist-adventurers in the Middle East for never wanting to settle down and actually participate in the lives of the people (to marry a local, for instance), for always keeping their distance; but like Lovecraft returning to Providence (not to spawn, but to die), these travelers could never sever their ties to Home, to their original mindset and place.
The description of Places Far Away is an exercise for the dreamer as much as for the surveyor, as Italo Calvino proved with his amazing book Invisible Cities, a pastiche of ancient travel literature whose frame story is Marco Polo describing the lands of Asia to Kublai Khan, but whose cities are all allegories, exploring different aspects of the meaning of City, how they are designed, how they are lived in, how they are described. The cities in Dream-Quest and Lovecraft’s other dream-stories are not as aerily conceptual as Calvino’s; even the lands the White Ship passes feel like fantasy RPG settings first (Thalarion is described as a “demon city”! So it must be full of demons!! DEMONS!!!!) and allegories second. Lovecraft, like Calvino or Dunsany, builds his world of cities word by word, but Lovecraft’s vocabulary is almost entirely visual and material. He describes the material that cities are built of; their contents, temples, gardens and houses (sometimes ad infinitum); their color; the experience of walking through the parks and up the hills. He occasionally lapses into E.R. Eddison‘s tedious habit of describing the fabulous jewels and gems that cover everything, as if writing them down added to his book’s value.
To be blunt, although he enjoys having them in the background, Carter/Lovecraft cares little about the people who built and inhabit these seashell-like cities. (Or who don’t inhabit them; it’s unclear whether the Sunset City is inhabited, and Lovecraft’s ideal of a beautiful East Asian-style landscape, the haunting Gardens of Yin described in Celephais and Fungi from Yuggoth, is a place where there are no people, “but only birds and bees and butterflies.”) Occasionally we hear about the picturesque onxy-miners and sheep-traders, but Carter doesn’t interact with them much beyond asking directions (nearly every single conversation in Dream-Quest) or finding a room at the inn. There’s certainly no aspect of the sexual tourism so often associated with travel, whether Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Martian princesses, or the shivery anticipation (“adventurous expectancy”?) that new places means new people to sleep with, which is such a big part of Samuel Delany’s city-novel Dhalgren and Schuiten and Peeters’ fanservicey Cities of the Fantastic graphic novels and Italo Calvino’s descriptions of innkeepers’ daughters and beautiful odalisques. Carter/Lovecraft has no time for that nonsense (although Lovecraft apparently liked Burroughs when he was younger, and he just felt embarrassed about it when he grew up); he’s in search of a purer beauty. Dream-Quest is a travelogue written by a shy, or simply introverted tourist; Carter interacts more with monsters and cats (a cat to pet in every port) than with people.
Lovecraft’s dreamworld is one of sights and occasionally sounds, but he rarely describes touches or smells, except in a negative context in the dark and gloomy spots. He’s so unconcerned with physical pleasures that he doesn’t even describe the taste of the food; in “The Doom That Came to Sarnath,” written in his earlier, more decadent phase, Lovecraft goes all-out describing an exotic feast of delicacies, but in “Dream-Quest” Carter hardly eats so much as a bite. Perhaps Lovecraft (who by all accounts had an unadventurous palate on top of not having any money) had, by this time, grown tired of trying foreign food in New York City and resigned himself to a future of eating canned chili and cheese and crackers. Jack Vance and Clark Ashton Smith, those sensualists whose stories of traveling rogues were so much more picaresque than Lovecraft’s “picaresque novel” Dream-Quest ever was, would weep at the missed opportunity.
Given Lovecraft and Dunsany’s love of strange-sounding names (those pins on the map), it’s interesting that the Sunset City in Dream-Quest, the goal of all Randolph Carter’s dreams, has no name. Perhaps this is because it’s Boston and thus to name it would be to spoil the secret, or perhaps, as the Perfect City around which the world revolves, it needs no name. Personally, I’ve suspected that its true name is “Hesperia” (from the Greek word for ‘evening’). There’s no actual evidence for this, but “Hesperia” is the title of stanza XIII of Lovecraft’s Fungi from Yuggoth, which describes a tantalizingly unvisited city beautiful in the light of “winter sunsets,” and it was also the name of a zine Lovecraft once planned to make. Fungi from Yuggoth has other reworkings of imagery which originally appeared in the unpublished Dream-Quest, such as Azathoth, Nyarlathotep and the Plateau of Leng, so perhaps Hesperia is another holdover.
In any case, its name is its meaning: the Sunset City. Why sunsets? Peter Cannon wrote a whole essay about it, Sunset Terrace Imagery in Lovecraft, which I haven’t read. Colin Wilson, in his book A Criminal History of Mankind (the kind of sociological-psychological pop stuff he wrote when he wasn’t writing stories about the Lloigor), proposed that the emotional reaction to seeing a beautiful place from a high vista is derived from primitive hunter-gatherers’ pleasure at seeing new pastures where tasty grazing animals might roam. “We think we feel it in the heart, but it may be in the stomach,” Wilson writes. Is the pleasure in seeing the world, in seeing the landscape from high vistas, simply a kind of biophilia? Lovecraft’s most lovely, most human cities always contain some natural element: Kadath is an icy palace, Teloth is a bleak modern city of gray stone blocks, but the sunset city has its gardens and “grassy cobbles.” Lovecraft’s English-garden vision (or Chinese-garden vision) of an orderly nature, or at least pleasantly arrested decay, is very different from Lord Dunsany’s proto-environmental hate of cities and his love of fields and forests for their own sake. (Tolkien, too, had more love of nature; when I think of Middle-Earth I think of the whole place, of rolling fields and mountains, not of its admittedly nicely described cities.) But then, Dunsany was a rich man with an estate, and Lovecraft, like most people, only had his native streets to wander through.
Perhaps it’s also natural that sunsets make people think of the past, of the remains of the day, of what could have been. It’s probably pointless to overanalyze this: I’m reminded of a Peanuts strip where Charlie Brown tells Psychiatrist Lucy that he prefers sunsets to sunrises and Lucy throws up her hands in exasperation: “What a disappointment! People who prefer sunsets are dreamers! They always give up! They always look back instead of forward! I just might have known you weren’t a sunrise person! Sunrisers are go-getters! They have ambition and drive! Give me a person who likes a sunrise every time!” When I lived in San Francisco I used to love the late afternoons, the way the light carved out the shapes of the buildings and the colors changed to pinks and blues. On his many bus rides to places along the East Coast, Lovecraft must have seen thousands of sunsets, looking out the window of the rattling bus after the light became too dim to write or read. He saw New York City for the first time in the light of a sunset. There is that moment sometimes when the orange light seems to inflame the whole world, when Sunset’s Gate seems about to open and you could step through to whatever waits beyond. There’s an old anime and manga cliché dating way back to the ’60s or ’70s, in which characters — usually young, hopeful characters like aspiring soccer champions or something — race across a grassy field towards the sunset, to see who can get there first. In the end, as the sun goes below the horizon still un-caught, they stop and rest, lying in the grass, happy and exhausted, ready to go home and get some dinner and sleep. Or maybe the scene fades out with them still chasing their dream. To continue Wilson’s evolutionary hypothesis, perhaps sunset triggers an instinctive urge in diurnal creatures to return home, to seek shelter and sleep. On the most crass level, heartwarming images of houses seen by sunset are just part of the human emotional spectrum, packed and sold in motivational calendars and Thomas Kinkade paintings and other pop culture trash.
“How often we have seen that City of Never!” wrote Lord Dunsany. “Not when it is night in the World, and we can see no further than the stars; not when the sun is shining where we dwell, dazzling our eyes; but when the sun has set on some stormy days, all at once repentant at evening, and those glittering cliffs reveal themselves which we almost take to be clouds, and it is twilight with us as it is for ever with them, then on their gleaming summits we see those golden domes that overpeer the edges of the World and seem to dance with dignity and calm in that gentle light of evening that is Wonder’s native haunt. Then does the City of Never, unvisited and afar, look long at her sister the World.”
In Dream-Quest, the ultimate unattainable city turns out to be the glorified image of the narrator’s hometown, “moulded, crystallized and polished by years of memory and of dreaming.” When I first read Dream-Quest at the age of 13 or so, I found the ending kind of a letdown, because I didn’t want the Sunset City to be Boston. I wanted less realism; I wanted MORE alienage, MORE wonder, MORE exotic fantasy. But eventually, I grew to appreciate the poignancy of this message, and its appreciation that memories and observed realities are important, that past experiences are the building material of great things. Still, it leaves me wanting more: surely, when we seek the Unknown, we’re not always just wanting to be home again, with a candle at the window, a warm supper, a familiar face? I don’t think that all travels return to the same place; I do think it’s possible to end up somewhere (or someone) different, not just to go back to Square One saying “There’s no place like home” or “It was just a dream.”
But that would be a different story. Maybe Lovecraft could have carried
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is chillingly brought to life by the impressionist Alistair McGowan.
The play chooses to highlight the connections between Savile and Charles, and the way the Prince was deluded by the TV presenter’s phoney man-of-the-people bonhomie.
But Savile did not confine himself to one royal. Prince Andrew was called on to help in an episode of Jim’ll Fix It when an eight-year-old girl asked to visit a warship.
The Naval officer Prince was her host on his minehunter, HMS Cottesmore. Princess Anne was similarly obliging on another episode of the Saturday night programme, while Prince Philip was leant on to help a fundraising drive for the National Spinal Injuries Centre at Stoke Mandeville hospital in Buckinghamshire.
Savile was so close to Charles, both pictured with Frank Bruno in 1998, that not only did he also sacked a senior figure in one of the Royal households because the Prince didn’t have the stomach to do it himself
Savile persuaded the Duke of Edinburgh’s office to send a letter signed by Philip, thanking a millionaire businessman for offering his services to the unit, even though the help had not yet been secured. The letter sealed the deal.
No royal was safe from his sinister embrace.
Even the Queen couldn’t resist his charm — or so he liked to claim — telling one interviewer: ‘She thinks I’m odd.’ Savile, of course, meant odd in an amusing way, but perhaps the Queen was simply being perceptive.
Quite how much she knew of his traipsing around with her domestic staff is not clear. But on one occasion in the late 1980s, he turned up at a drunken Christmas party where apparently punches were thrown.
It didn’t involve Savile, but he later went to bizarre lengths to deny he had been there, threatening a journalist with violence if he dared report it. However, it was the patronage of Prince Charles which was to provide him with his passport to the royal household, and to weasel his way into the circle of one royal after another.
Prince Philip, pictured with Jimmy Savile The royal was leant on to help a fundraising drive for the National Spinal Injuries Centre at Stoke Mandeville hospital - where Savile had abused young children on the wards
Savile was so close to Charles that not only did he advise on the appointment of a senior aide, but also sacked another figure because, I was told, the Prince didn’t have the stomach to do it himself.
Astriking indication of Savile’s reach — and the Prince’s questionable judgment — came in 1990 when Charles asked him for advice before choosing Major-General Sir Christopher Airy to be his private secretary. Savile and Charles then met Airy before he was offered the post.
Around that time, Savile took it upon himself to deliver the coup de grace to another prominent aide who had fallen under royal disapproval. Princess Diana insisted to me that Savile did the firing because ‘my husband couldn’t bear to’.
Unlike Charles, Diana was suspicious of Savile, the only man the Prince permitted to smoke in his home. ‘She was wary because she worked out that he was using the royals for his own publicity,’ the Princess’s former bodyguard Ken Wharfe tells me.
He was tolerated, however.
‘He would turn up unannounced at Kensington Palace,’ recalls Wharfe. ‘He would bamboozle the police on the gate and just breeze in. He would tell Diana he was on a mission “from the boss”, in other words her husband, but he just wanted to check up on her.’
He even arrived out of the blue during a walkabout the Princess was doing in Leeds. ‘He wasn’t meant to be there and we didn’t want him there, but there he was,’ says the ex-policeman. ‘He turned it into a Jimmy Savile visit. She was right to keep him at arm’s length.’ Later, Diana herself told me she had always found Savile ‘creepy’. She said that she had once recoiled from him when he went to greet her with a kiss to her hand, but had instead licked it.
No royal was safe from Savile's sinister embrace, with Prince Andrew called into help in an episode of JIm'll Fix It when an eight-year-old girl asked to visit a warship, and Princess Anne also appearing on the show
When the infamous ‘Squidgygate’ tape was published in 1992, Savile’s name came up. In the conversation between the Princess and Lotus cars executive James Gilbey, Diana was recorded saying: ‘Jimmy Savile rang me up yesterday, and he said: “I’m just ringing up, my girl, to tell you His Nibs [Charles] has asked me to come to help out the redhead [Fergie], and I’m just letting you know so that you don’t find out through her or him. And I hope it’s all right by you.” And I said: “Jimmy, you do what you like.” ’
Diana explains to Gilbey that this was to do with the Duchess of York’s poor public image. Diana went on: ‘He said: “You can’t change a lame duck — or something — but I’ve got to talk to her ’cos that’s the boss’s orders and I’ve got to carry them out. But I want you to know that you’re my number one girl.’ The Princess then describes Savile as a ‘sort of mentor’ to Charles.
This week, the Mail’s Ephraim Hardcastle column suggested that in 1984 Charles had included Savile’s name on a list of potential godparents for Prince Harry.
The eccentric suggestion was said to have reduced Charles’s private secretary, Sir Edward Adeane, a stiff courtier of the tweed-and-tradition set, to a state of bemusement. He was found wandering in a dazed state at St James’s by a friend from the Lord Chamberlain’s office, who sat him down with a stiff drink.
Subsequently Adeane sought advice from Sir Alastair Aird, the Queen Mother’s comptroller. Aird assured him the matter would be ‘dealt with’.
Whether Diana would have countenanced Savile’s proximity to her son seems highly unlikely.
And, sure enough, when Harry’s godparents were announced, there was no mention of Savile. Instead the Prince and Princess had opted for reliability, choosing Prince Andrew, the painter Bryan Organ and the Berkshire landowner Gerald Ward. At that point, however, Savile was not the omnipresent figure he had become by the end of the decade.
Savile was a guest at Charles’s 40th birthday party at Buckingham Palace in 1988, and at his 50th. When Prince Charles received a gift of a box of Cohiba cigars from Fidel Castro, he passed them on to Savile
‘Like the Fool in King Lear, he was allowed to say things to Prince Charles that other courtiers were not,’ Diana’s former private secretary Patrick Jephson told me.
On one occasion, Charles was getting tetchy because the royal train was running late. Savile, who was with him, asked: ‘What do you want me to do? Shoot the station master?’
He used the same easy familiarity to persuade staff to let him come and go as he pleased at St James’s Palace. Dickie Arbiter, who handled media relations for the Prince and Princess of Wales, said Savile’s presence was deeply uncomfortable.
‘He would walk into the office and do the rounds of the young ladies, taking their hands and rubbing his lips all the way up their arms if they were in short sleeves,’ he recalled. ‘His bottom lip would curl out and he would run it up their arms.’
And because Savile had the run of Stoke Mandeville, Broadmoor and other hospitals, Charles believed him to be an obvious person to tap for advice on Britain’s health authorities.
But health chiefs were said to have been ‘gobsmacked’ to arrive for a meeting at Highgrove to find Savile at the table. He apparently threatened the officials after the Prince left, saying making them unhappy could cost the officials a knighthood.
Savile was a guest at Charles’s 40th birthday party at Buckingham Palace in 1988, and at his 50th. When Charles received a gift of a box of Cohiba cigars from Fidel Castro, he passed them on to Savile.
Later still, on Savile’s 80th birthday, Charles despatched another box of cigars, together with a pair of gold cufflinks and a note that bizarrely read: ‘Nobody will ever know what you have done for this country Jimmy. This is to go some way in thanking you for that.’
Reading that again today in the light of Savile’s appalling sexual aggression, Charles must surely cringe with embarrassment.
You might argue that Savile took in the Establishment and the BBC with equal cunning. But there is something about the heir to the throne being so utterly gulled — and, in turn, giving Savile carte blanche to grease up to the rest of the Royal Family — that is truly disturbing.ALTONA and Williamstown traders plan to fight any moves to allow food trucks to operate in Hobsons Bay.
Hobsons Bay Council is reconsidering plans to allow food trucks after a strong response from mobile food vendors and opposition from traders to the council’s invitation to tender for four sites.
The sites are Point Gellibrand in Williamstown, the Newport and Altona boat ramps, and Cherry Lake carpark, Altona.
The call to tender closely followed a stoush over food trucks at Yarraville Gardens, which ended with Maribyrnong Council halving the number of food trucks at the site to 10 due to concerns about the dumping of rubbish and cooking oils.
TELL US: Would you like to see food trucks in Hobsons Bay? Have your say below.
Yarraville food truck owners said at the time they were interested in applying for sites in Hobsons Bay.
RELATED:Hobsons Bay welcomes food trucks moved on from Yarraville
But Mayor Colleen Gates said the strong interest and feedback during the tender process had resulted in the council deciding to conduct a more detailed review of street trading.
“The main reason for the review is that the nature of street trading has changed and we felt we needed to revisit our current offering to determine if it is still the best approach to street trading here in Hobsons Bay,’’ she said.
“We want to strike the right balance and we think it’s worth taking the extra time to consider this,’’ she said.
Altona Traders Association spokesman Kim Walsh said traders were strongly opposed to food trucks being allowed in Altona.
“People sitting at cafes in Pier St will go to Cherry Lake,’’ he said.
“I believe there is a place for food vans at concerts and festivals but not to the detriment of bricks and mortar businesses.
“Food vans don’t employ local people and they do nothing for the local community, unlike bricks and mortar businesses.’’
Proposed sites:
■ Point Gellibrand, Williamstown
■ Newport boat ramp
■ Altona boat ramp
■ Cherry Lake carparkBoyle Street Community Services announced Thursday it plans to put up a new building on its downtown site that will include housing, a pharmacy and an aboriginal boutique hotel.
The six-storey structure would replace the current facility at 10116 105th Ave. with a curved, multi-coloured structure intended to make Edmonton’s indigenous history more visible, executive director Julian Daly said.
“We want to create a building that is reconciliation in action … It’s a building at the centre of our city that will celebrate aboriginal Edmonton.”
The $60-million project is intended to have about 80 units of housing on four floors for approximately 100 working poor and formerly homeless people, topped by market-priced homes that will help cover the bills.
There will also be a bistro, bank, palliative care, rooftop garden and an approximately 18-room hotel with aboriginal designs that will give jobs and training to its clients, about 80 per cent of whom have an aboriginal background, Daly told a news conference.
A major chain has already expressed interest in operating the hotel, he said.
A similar business in Vancouver has been a big success, with rooms going for $200 to $250 a night. Boyle Street’s location across the street from Rogers Place should make it appealing for hockey fans and people attending concerts, Daly said.
He also expects the group will make a profit from the 200-stall underground parking garage.
While it might be possible to sell the property and set up in another part of Edmonton, they’ve been based in the former banana-ripening warehouse for 20 years and the site is convenient for clients, he said.
He said it would also be hard to find somewhere else in the city that would welcome such a social agency after the backlash against a 2013 proposal to create housing for formerly homeless people in Terwillegar Towne.
“Imagine trying to build 100,000 square feet of Boyle Street in another part of the city. I think that’s a challenge we might not be up to.”
While no funding has been received toward construction of the centre, Daley is confident commitments will come over the next year from governments and a fundraising campaign.
“We believe the federal, provincial and municipal governments and their political platforms are very much in line with what we want to do with this building.”
Architect Vivian Manasc said the flowing lines and colours, developed after months of community consultation, evoke treaty mentions of green grass and running water, as well as Métis sashes and the four directions of the compass.
“Many buildings that have been designed that reflect and celebrate indigenous cultures across our country have been tucked away … where they’re not visible to the public,” she said.
“This building will … make visible that which has been hidden for so long.”
The organization hopes to start construction in 2017 and open the facility in 2019-20.
Canada’s 150th birthday is in 2017. “I think this would be a remarkable project to help us celebrate,” Manasc said.
Coun. Scott McKeen, whose ward covers downtown, called the design fabulous, but said he’d like to do more consultation to determine the best way of helping a homeless population that often has addiction and mental-health problems.
Other inner city agencies are also looking at expanding, he said.
“There are only so many dollars. What is the best answer for Edmonton and the province of Alberta? Does the Boyle Street Community Services proposal fit in that plan? I don’t know yet,” he said.
“The Boyle Street Community Services proposal is really interesting and could be part of the answer … but we have to look at Edmonton holistically.”
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twitter.com/GKentEJArsenal legend Thierry Henry has regarded Steven Gerrard to be a better player and much more pleasure giving player than Frank Lampard and Paul Scholes despite of the former not winning any Premier League trophies with Liverpool.
Thierry Henry said that it did not matter if Gerrard has not won the Premier League as there are many legends who have not won one trophy or the other in their careers.
“I played so many times against so many players. Frank Lampard was and is special, Paul Scholes was also feared by us, but for me Stevie G is up there. I know he has not won the league, I am sure he would have wanted to win the league with Liverpool.” Henry said to Sky Sports.
“But for me it does not really matter. He is a type of player who gives you so much pleasure and you respect that so much that at the end of the day it does not really matter if he won the league or not.” He added.
Henry also accepted that Gerrard gave Arsenal a lot of trouble when his club faced Liverpool. Steven Gerrard was also appreciated by Henry on staying in the same club for many years, but the attitude was the subject of respect for Thierry Henry.
“Just the way he was behaving on and off the field, just the goals and the mannerism, the way he was driving his team, making them believe they can win the league when they were down.” He said.
Henry said that it would be a sad day when Steven Gerrad leaves Liverpool as the Englishmen has decided bid adieu to Liverpool and the league at the end of the season.Boss330 Brigadier General Rep 961 Posts 4,824
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Drives: BMW
Quote: RPiM5 Originally Posted by Sounds promising. I have no doubt that ///M will not disappoint. I am a bit worried about the next generation M5 engine though. I'm just not seeing where ///M can go next with engines. They are definitely not going to go with a bespoke engine as it would be too costly and go against the current business model of efficiency of shared parts with non-M engines. We'll start seeing more stuff in about 2 to 3 years about the next M5. The next generation 5-Series should be out in 2016 as a 2017 model year. So only a couple of more years away.
BMW M division has a 172g/km average fleet CO2 target they need to reach here in Europe. The S55 has it's lowest CO2 in the DCT version with 199g/km.
So, either M has to come up with more low emission vehicles (like the upcoming M2) to lower their fleet average down to 172 (to make up for the big polluters like the M5/6 etc). Or they have to start using hybrid powertrains in the same way we see in the McLaren P1 etc.
Time will show What they can do, is to use hybrid power in connection with the S63 (or any other S engine).BMW M division has a 172g/km average fleet CO2 target they need to reach here in Europe. The S55 has it's lowest CO2 in the DCT version with 199g/km.So, either M has to come up with more low emission vehicles (like the upcoming M2) to lower their fleet average down to 172 (to make up for the big polluters like the M5/6 etc). Or they have to start using hybrid powertrains in the same way we see in the McLaren P1 etc.Time will showA battery small enough to be injected, energetic enough to track salmon
Device stores twice the energy of microbatteries currently used in transmitters
News Release
February 17, 2014
RICHLAND, Wash. — Scientists have created a microbattery that packs twice the energy compared to current microbatteries used to monitor the movements of salmon through rivers in the Pacific Northwest and around the world.
The battery, a cylinder just slightly larger than a long grain of rice, is certainly not the world's smallest battery, as engineers have created batteries far tinier than the width of a human hair. But those smaller batteries don't hold enough energy to power acoustic fish tags. The new battery is small enough to be injected into an organism and holds much more energy than similar-sized batteries.
Details of the battery, created by scientists at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, were published online recently in Scientific Reports, a member of the Nature collection of journals. Research about the battery's materials was also featured last year in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A.
For scientists tracking the movements of salmon, the lighter battery translates to a smaller transmitter which can be inserted into younger, smaller fish. That would allow scientists to track their welfare earlier in the life cycle, oftentimes in the small streams that are crucial to their beginnings. The new battery also can power signals over longer distances, allowing researchers to track fish further from shore or from dams, or deeper in the water.
"The invention of this battery essentially revolutionizes the biotelemetry world and opens up the study of earlier life stages of salmon in ways that have not been possible before," said M. Brad Eppard, a fisheries biologist with the Portland District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
"For years the chief limiting factor to creating a smaller transmitter has been the battery size. That hurdle has now been overcome," added Eppard, who manages the Portland District's fisheries research program.
The Corps and other agencies use the information from tags to chart the welfare of endangered fish and to help determine the optimal manner to operate dams. Three years ago the Corps turned to Zhiqun (Daniel) Deng, a PNNL engineer, to create a smaller transmitter, one small enough to be injected, instead of surgically implanted, into fish. Injection is much less invasive and stressful for the fish, and it's a faster and less costly process.
"This was a major challenge which really consumed us these last three years," said Deng. "There's nothing like this available commercially, that can be injected. Either the batteries are too big, or they don't last long enough to be useful. That's why we had to design our own."
Deng turned to materials science expert Jie Xiao to create the new battery design.
To pack more energy into a small area, Xiao's team improved upon the "jellyroll" technique commonly used to make larger household cylindrical batteries. Xiao's team laid down layers of the battery materials one on top of the other in a process known as lamination, then rolled them up together, similar to how a jellyroll is created. The layers include a separating material sandwiched by a cathode made of carbon fluoride and an anode made of lithium.
The technique allowed her team to increase the area of the electrodes without increasing their thickness or the overall size of the battery. The increased area addresses one of the chief problems when making such a small battery — keeping the impedance, which is a lot like resistance, from getting too high. High impedance occurs when so many electrons are packed into a small place that they don't flow easily or quickly along the routes required in a battery, instead getting in each other's way. The smaller the battery, the bigger the problem.
Using the jellyroll technique allowed Xiao's team to create a larger area for the electrons to interact, reducing impedance so much that the capacity of the material is about double that of traditional microbatteries used in acoustic fish tags.
"It's a bit like flattening wads of Play-Doh, one layer at a time, and then rolling them up together, like a jelly roll," says Xiao. "This allows you to pack more of your active materials into a small space without increasing the resistance."
The new battery is a little more than half the weight of batteries currently used in acoustic fish tags — just 70 milligrams, compared to about 135 milligrams — and measures six millimeters long by three millimeters wide. The battery has an energy density of about 240 watt hours per kilogram, compared to around 100 for commercially available silver oxide button microbatteries.
The battery holds enough energy to send out an acoustic signal strong enough to be useful for fish-tracking studies even in noisy environments such as near large dams. The battery can power a 744-microsecond signal sent every three seconds for about three weeks, or about every five seconds for a month. It's the smallest battery the researchers know of with enough energy capacity to maintain that level of signaling.
The batteries also work better in cold water where salmon often live, sending clearer signals at low temperatures compared to current batteries. That's because their active ingredients are lithium and carbon fluoride, a chemistry that is promising for other applications but has not been common for microbatteries.
Last summer in Xiao's laboratory, scientists Samuel Cartmell and Terence Lozano made by hand more than 1,000 of the rice-sized batteries. It's a painstaking process, cutting and forming tiny snippets of sophisticated materials, putting them through a flattening device that resembles a pasta maker, binding them together, and rolling them by hand into tiny capsules. Their skilled hands rival those of surgeons, working not with tissue but with sensitive electronic materials.
A PNNL team led by Deng surgically implanted 700 of the tags into salmon in a field trial in the Snake River last summer. Preliminary results show that the tags performed extremely well. The results of that study and more details about the smaller, enhanced fish tags equipped with the new microbattery will come out in a forthcoming publication. Battelle, which operates PNNL, has applied for a patent on the technology.
In addition to Xiao, Deng, Cartmell and Lozano, other authors of the paper include Honghao Chen, Qiang Wang, Huidong Li, Xilin Chen, Yong Yuan, Mark Gross, and Thomas Carlson.
Reference: Honghao Chen, Samuel Cartmell, Qiang Wang, Terence Lozano, Z. Daniel Deng, Huidong Li, Xilin Chen, Yong Yuan, Mark E. Gross, Thomas J. Carlson and Jie Xiao, Micro-battery development for juvenile salmon acoustic telemetry system applications, Scientific Reports, Jan. 21, 2014, DOI: 10.1038/SREP03790.
Tags: Energy, Environment, Fundamental Science, Batteries, Hydropower, Chemistry, Fish, MaterialsDespite limited materials or professional instruction, Indonesia has an active and highly-creative DIY synth-building community. Apart from being given a ‘solder-your-own light-sensor noise machine’ as a souvenir at an experimental gig in Surabaya last year, I first discovered this community of DIY synth creators through the documentation efforts of Lintang Radittya on his blog Synthesia-id. Lintang Radittya has been making and documenting synths and synth-building culture in Indonesia for several years, and his blog is an amazing collection of the many extraordinary and bizarre synth creations he has found throughout Indonesia. He also makes and sells his own creations under the name Kenalirangkai Pakai. Zacharias Szumer sat down with Lintang to talk about his work and passion.
Zacharias Szumer: How and when did you start building your own synths?
Lintang Radittya: I started making synths about five years ago. In the beginning it was because, while synths were available in shops here, I wasn’t satisfied with what I could buy there. Not only were they too expensive, but there were sounds that I couldn’t make using those synths. But the main factor was the expensive price. Thats why I started making them myself.
Zacharias Szumer: Are you self taught?
Lintang Radittya: I learned to make synths by myself, but I started by searching on the internet, for schema’s or systems that could be made by people who were just beginning. Then, I started making the most simple ones, oscillators, 555 ic’s. That was my start of learning how to make synthesisers. From that beginning, I started making synthesisers that were more complex.
Zacharias Szumer: Do you have any major influences or people/Bands/ Projects that you love/ Inpsire you to make DIY synths?
Lintang Radittya: There are a few people that have had quite an influence on me, Robert Moog’s synthesisers are a major one. Other synth makers today that I like are Peter Edwards from casper Electronics, Eric archer, Gijs, meng qi,, and there’s a few more, but I don’t know their names, because they don’t give them on their websites, but I love the designs they’ve uploaded.
Red Rad Rambutans Synth by Uncle Twist (Surabaya)
Zacharias Szumer: When and why did you start cataloguing DIY synth building culture in Indonesia?
Lintang Radittya: Two or three years ago I started my blog Synthesia-id that documents the development of synth-building in Indonesia. It started when this other website mentioned with suprise that there was a synth-maker called Störn in Bandung, until that point people weren’t aware that Indonesia had a few synth makers that were quite good. So, I wanted to document a few friends that were making synths. So far, I’ve discovered around 40 or 50 synths. I am usually a bit late with my documentation. I also document workshops, shows that feature synths. The website shows anything to do with synth-culture in Indonesia.
Zacharias Szumer: You had a show recently in Yogakarta. What was the concept and how did it turn out?
Lintang Radittya: Actually I made that project as a kind of presentation. A have an analogue synth project, a modular synthesiser that I began about four years ago. The synth is called “the Javanese Modular”, and the concept of the presentation was to get some public opinion, because D.I.Y. synths in Indonesia are generally only considered a noise instrument, but they can be used to make music that is palatable to most people’s ears. So, in that presentation I gathered an ensemble of four people: Andreas Siagian, Leilani Hermiasih, Indra Menus, Krisna Widiathama, and we also had a guest collaborator from Australia, Dale Gorfinkel. And they all played my synths.
Lintang playing one of his creations
Zacharias Szumer: You went to Australia last year as part of an artists exchange program? How was your experience and impressions of Australia and the things you were involved in there?
Lintang Radittya: Yeah, in 2014 at the end of October I went to Australia to participate in the Instrument builders project, the show was held at the National Gallery of Victoria. There were three people from Indonesia, Wukir Suryadi, Andreas Siagian from lifepatch, and myself. I worked as part of a group there making a project called “Spinning Fields.” It was an idea that I have had since I was a child. In Java there is a toy called a “Gangsing”, its like a spinning top, but the ones in Jogja also make a sound, it’s like an oscillation sound. So when I was in Australia I worked with Andreas Siagian and an Australian artist called Michael Candy to make an interactive spinning top, it had a few sensors, a few synths on top of it, and the spinning top responded with the sounds around it.
Another one of my most interesting experiences in Australia was going to Robin Fox’s studio. There I had the opportunity to play a synth from moog studios that is quite legendary, so that was quite great. And I also had the opportunity to meet with some people that also play and make modular synths. I think it’s more common in Australia than it is here, cause its easier to get modular synths in Australia, it was really interesting.
Andreas Siagian 2014
Zacharias Szumer: So do you have an online place that people can buy some of your creations?
Lintang Radittya: At the moment, it is just via my facebook page, Kenalirangkai Pakai. I have a plan to make my own website, but I’m still saving money.
Zacharias Szumer: Anything else you would like to tell Cyclic Defrost readers?
Lintang Radittya: I just want to share with people outside Indonesia that we have a synth-building culture here that’s quite good, but we are quite limited. In terms of the materials we can get, and the people that understand synthesisers. But we are very welcoming to anyone you wants to come to Indonesia to come here to make a workshop and share skills and information, we can help organise that for you.
Yellove by METH (surabaya)
Lintang Radittya’s blog can be found here.
Featured Image Yellow Rambutans synth by Uncle Twist (Surabaya)SPIELBERG, Austria (Reuters) - Force India believe Formula One is moving in the direction of a franchise future under new owners Liberty Media and the Silverstone-based team want to be ready for it.
“Liberty are making very clear indications of where they want to take the sport and that could well lead to either long-term licences or franchises,” deputy principal Bob Fernley told Reuters at the Austrian Grand Prix.
“That to me is where it should be going because that then locks in the teams,” he added.
Formula One’s current commercial agreements with teams run to 2020 and Liberty, who took over the sport in January, are drawing up a road map for the future without divulging much detail.
A spokesman was not immediately available for comment.
Management have already said they want a fairer distribution of revenues to help smaller teams become more competitive and prevent them from folding for financial reasons, as many have in the past.
McLaren’s executive director Zak Brown spoke of the “franchise value” of teams when he discussed a range of issues at the weekend and pointed out that he could not recall the last time an NFL team went bust.
Fernley said such a U.S.-style system would also lock in the value of “tradeable assets”, with 10 teams the ideal number and any would-be new entrants having to buy into the existing franchises.
With that in mind, Force India were mulling removing “India” from the team name to make it less geographically specific and appeal to global sponsors.
A range of companies using the name “Force One” were recently registered in Britain using the London address of co-owner Vijay Mallya.
Mallya is currently fighting an extradition battle with India over unpaid loans tied to his defunct Kingfisher Airlines. The businessman, who has not left Britain since March last year, has repeatedly dismissed the charges against him.
He has said his current legal situation has nothing to do with any team name change.
“What we are looking at is positioning the team...in order to be able to make sure they (the shareholders) are in line with where the future of Formula One is going,” said Fernley.
“Obviously India limits where we go.
“The value is in the name, like LA Lakers or New York Yankees. They become tradeable programmes.
“All we’re trying to do as a team is anticipate. And part of Formula One is about being ahead of the game.”Boil the American Dream down to a single maxim and it’s this: “If you work hard and play by the rules, you ought to get what’s yours.” Our mutual commitment to meritocracy is, we’re told, about as central to our national character as baseball. Divvying up gains based on ability and hard work (as oppposed to, say, your family’s social status, race or religion) is not only a workable way to organize an economically productive society—it also seems fundamentally fair.
But according to a recent study out of the University of Miami, it would seem that some people—namely, white Americans—only subscribe to this Horatio Alger version of the American Dream as long as it works in their favor.
UM sociology professor Frank L. Samson asked 599 California adults how they believed the University of California system should determine the eligibility of prospective students. The white respondents specifically were divided into two groups. In the first, the adults were simply asked to rank the importance of various criteria. By and large, they preferred hard metrics that were the most obvious and easy to quantify, such as high school grade point average.
But respondents of the second group were “primed” with a statistic about how Asian-Americans made up a disproportionately large share of the student body: they represented just 12 percent of the state population but 40 percent of students in the UC system. Suddenly, in the estimation of these white Californians, GPA fell out of favor. Instead, they placed a much greater emphasis on other, somewhat squishier standards, such as “community service” and particularly “leadership.”
Not coincidentally, Asian American high schoolers earn an average GPA of 3.09, compared to 2.88 for white students. The same pattern is repeated in SAT scores, where Asian Americans have outpaced those of white students. They perform better on the writing section and significantly better on math. For all three sections combined, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s 2012 report, Asian American students scored an average of 1640; white students averaged 1579.
According to Samson, the results of his study may indicate that faith in meritocracy, supposedly widespread among white Americans, in fact masks something much more cynically self-serving and tribalistic. Indeed, the term “merit” itself is stripped of any supposed objectivity, he notes, and is instead revealed as a moving target that those on the inside place before the marginalized.
A century ago, Ivy League administrators became concerned when Jewish enrollment at Columbia University approached 40 percent. “Believing that Jewish students were primarily more successful in academic endeavors than their Anglo-Saxon counterparts,” he notes, “administrators redefined merit to de-emphasize academic proficiency as the sole economic criteria, and highlighted nonacademic factors such as athletic prowess, leadership and personal character…”
That led him to wonder whether “the large presence of Asian Americans at the University of California, and not just perceived competition, could prompt white Californians to more forcefully reconsider the importance of academic merit in a repeat of history.” His findings, Samson writes, “weakens the argument that white commitment to meritocracy is purely based on principle.” Instead the results suggest that such as commitment is fickle and variable, depending on certain circumstances.
Circumstances, namely, like whether or not white applicants are being deemed most meritorious.
–Ben ChristopherTaming the IoT terminology zoo: what does it all mean?
The emerging Internet of Things is awash with confusing terminology
Last month I attended the IEEE Pervasive Computing 2015 and one of the interesting panel discussions revolved around the difference between Pervasive Computing and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). Clearly, there is overlap but there was no agreement on the extent of it.
When someone in the audience asked about where Ubiquitous Computing stood – given that there is another annual conference called UbiComp, this is perhaps not an unreasonable question – some people started making annoyed noises and rolling their eyes.
The discussion got me thinking that there is actually a long list of terms and associated disciplines related to IoT with varying degrees of overlap. This list is a non-exhaustive but you may have heard of some of these: Internet of Things (IoT), Internet of Everything (IoE), Industrial Internet, Pervasive Computing, Pervasive Sensing, Ubiquitous Computing, Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN), Smart Objects, Cooperating Objects, Machine-to-Machine (M2M), Ambient Intelligence (AmI), and Operational Technology (OT) / Information Technology (IT) convergence.
> See also: Three steps for the IoT to grow up, get out of the house and into industry
Even for the specialist, this terminology zoo is daunting and any definition you put out there is bound to be challenged and argued about, so I will refrain from offering any definition of the above items – Wikipedia is always a good starting point. What I will try to do is to point out some of the key attributes/dimensions where these terms differ and do my best to avoid landmines.
Let me start with what most people agree on. All of the above involve smart and connected devices, which implies sensing and actuating
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prenatal exposure to DES in males, leading many researchers to claim that testicular and other cancers will become more prevalent as DES sons age. The fertility of DES sons is normal.
Research about DES in animals showed that DES can cross the placenta and enter the fetal blood stream, where it accumulates in the reproductive tract of fetuses. DES can then affect the chromosomes of the cells that it comes into contact with, causing aberrations, which later cause the medical conditions seen in DES daughters and sons.
The medical conditions caused by DES spurred many lawsuits, including 1980's Sindell v. Abbott Laboratories, a California Supreme Court case. In Sindell, two DES daughters, Judith Sindell and Maureen Rogers, sued a group of DES manufacturers and alleged that their mothers' ingestion of DES caused injuries to Sindell and Rogers. They could not specify a manufacturer due to the amount of time that had passed between when their mothers ingested DES and the appearance of symptoms in Sindell and Rogers. Furthermore, their mothers had used of a generic brand. The women won their case against the drug manufacturers when the court established the precedent of market share liability, for which an entire market is responsible for a share of a settlement when the individual manufacturer cannot be identified.: In just ten seconds, one kiss can transfer up to 80 million bacteria, according to a new study published in the journal Microbiome.Partners who kiss up to nine times per day share the same communities of oral bacteria, according to the study."Interestingly, the current explanations for the function of intimate kissing in humans include an important role for the microbiota present in the oral cavity, although to our knowledge, the exact effects of intimate kissing on the oral microbiota have never been studied," says lead author Remco Kort, from the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO)'s Microbiology and Systems Biology department and adviser to the Micropia museum of microbes.Kort and his colleagues worked with 21 couples who filled out questionnaires on their kissing behavior including their average frequency of intimate kissing.Participants' mouths were then swabbed, giving researchers the chance to investigate the composition of the microbiota living on the tongue and in the saliva.In a kissing experiment to quantify the transfer of microbiota, one member from each couple consumed a probiotic drink containing species such as Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria.Participants were then asked to kiss, after which the receiver's saliva contained three times the probiotic bacteria that it had before the kiss, and researchers calculated that 80 million bacteria would have been transferred in 10 seconds of kissing.Calculations were performed based on average transfer values and several assumptions related to bacterial transfer, kiss contact surface and the value for average saliva volume.A surprising separate finding revealed that 74 percent of the men in the couples reported kissing more than their female partners.On average, the males reported 10 kisses per day whereas the women reported only five.The study was published in open-access format in the journal Microbiome.Liverpool are getting closer to landing the signature of one of Spain’s most talked about young players – full-back Martin Montoya, according to reports.
Managing Director, Ian Ayre, has flown to Barcelona in hope of tying up a deal early for the 22-year-old, before January’s transfer window.
Ian Ayre has been spotted with Carra in Barcelona, following reports Montoya can't agree a new contract. pic.twitter.com/YjJJHnijEc — PL Football Tips (@PL_FootballTips) November 28, 2013
https://twitter.com/barcastuff/status/406065159820439552
Montoya looks set to fail to agree a new contract with Barcelona, for whom he’s made 30 appearances.That would leave the Spain Under-21 international as a free agent next summer, but Liverpool are said to be set to part with cash in order to sign him earlier.
The Mirror’s David Maddock reports on Friday morning:
The Reds are at the head of a queue that also includes Arsenal and Inter Milan, after forging strong links with the Barca board during ongoing talks over the future of goalkeeper Pepe Reina, who could still move back to his former club at the end of this season following a year on loan at Napoli.
Similarly, Andy Hunter writes in the Guardian:
The Spain Under-21 international, who can operate in both full-back positions, is out of contract at the end of this season and his availability has alerted leading clubs throughout Europe. The 22-year-old and his agent have both claimed recently that he hopes to sign a contract extension with the Spanish champions but Liverpool are exploring the prospect of a permanent deal in January.
Chris Bascombe and Luke Edwards also report the story for the Telegraph.
Whilst Montoya is yet to break into the Spanish senior squad, he has made 22 appearances for the Under-21s.
Montoya’s arrival at Liverpool could help provide better options on Liverpool’s right flank, and competition for 29-year-old Glen Johnson.
Montoya has also previously played left-back. With Jose Enrique out injured until February and Aly Cissokho having a slow start to his Liverpool career, the potential arrival of Montoya in January could prove essential.Today East and West contemplate the possibility of war over the fate of Ukraine, but the popular narrative was tailored for just such a standoff well in advance. Any attentive reader of Western press sources over recent months will have noticed that a dramatic upswing of negative Russia coverage began after Vladimir Putin thwarted Washington’s planned assault on Syria last summer. For just one example of the establishment’s dissemination of absurd Russophobia, look no further than the recent spy film Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, which features Kremlin-directed Orthodox Christian suicide bombers attacking Mammonism’s Holy of Holies, the New York Stock Exchange. As the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics got underway, executives at the six US media giants plus their counterparts at the BBC and elsewhere had a green light to inflict maximum damage. Journalists were looking to fan the flames of any possible scandal at the games, but the stories didn’t add up to their hype.
Mark HackardWhat do postmodern exhibitionists, Islamic holy warriors and marauding ultra-nationalists share in common? Seemingly little, aside from the fact that these bizarre bedfellows are the star assets of US policy in Eurasia. And despite their use of very different tactics, they all are tasked with the same mission: to undermine Russia, the only great power consistently opposed to American hegemony.
A number of issues were used to paint Russia in an unflattering light, one at times approaching caricature. Was there some amount of corruption, mismanagement and inefficiency in constructing the new Olympic village in Sochi? Few Russians would doubt it, yet were American reporters really so insular as to expect nothing less than Switzerland? Exposure of bribery and fraud, lest we forget, featured as the epilogue to squeaky-clean Salt Lake City’s 2002 Winter Games. Meanwhile, threats by Islamic terrorists – the same Mujahedin operatives serving as proxies of US policy from Libya and Syria to Kosovo and Chechnya – against the Black Sea resort were amplified considerably with helpful leaks from “concerned” officials in Washington, to the point of convincing American Olympians’ families to stay home in fear [i]. But where were such warnings before two Chechens with connections to US intelligence allegedly bombed the Boston Marathon in April of 2013?
The media’s favorite manufactured controversy at the Olympics, moreover, had nothing at all to do with winter sports. Western audiences were led to believe that Russia’s laws banning the promotion of sodomy to children had cast a sinister pall over the games; in an expression of unfeigned displeasure, President Barack Obama skipped attendance (Killing Pashtun and Yemeni villagers with drone-launched Hellfire missiles is praiseworthy – upholding any measure of traditional morality is not[ii]). Try as they might, the press corps could find no evidence of “oppression” of homosexuals at Sochi, with the gay American skater Johnny Weir stating that he was treated “fantastically” by the Russian people during his stay. Even State Department-sponsored provocateurs from the cultural Marxist outfit Pussy Riot, famous for previous acts of obscenity and sacrilege, made a sorry attempt at spectacle before beating a hasty retreat. Unfazed, the Russian national team would go on to win first place for both gold medals and the overall count.
Flashpoint: Ukraine
Western vitriol over the Sochi Olympics represents one component of an information campaign, itself part of a wider US-led geopolitical offensive against Moscow. A variety of policy instruments are used for the objective of “containment,” from NATO expansion and power projection to sanctions against Russian companies. Yet by far the most economical means in the quest to weaken and demoralize Russia has been covert action, operations run under plausible deniability and comprising a broad range of activities. From the years of the Cold War, the Trans-Atlantic establishment has built an entire covert-action apparatus that encompasses not only intelligence services and special units of the military, but also nationalist paramilitaries, crime syndicates, transnational terror networks and a host of well-funded NGOs deeply intertwined with academia, major corporations and the media. In other words, an arsenal for full-spectrum subversion[iii].
Secret wars are waged just as intensively as the overt ones, and on multiple fronts. All the commotion over the Olympics amounted to a distraction from the central theater of action – Ukraine. As the curtain closed on Sochi, political unrest in Kiev climaxed with the overthrow of the undoubtedly corrupt but still legitimate President Viktor Yanukovych by pro-Western forces on February 22nd. The liberal-nationalist coalition that took power through mass protests and street fighting enjoyed extensive support – both public and clandestine – from the United States government. Timed for precisely the moment when Russia’s leadership was absorbed with showcasing its Olympics to the world, the coup’s main objective was to finally incorporate Ukraine as an EU/NATO satrapy. The Washington-Wall Street agenda envisions stripping the country of its agricultural and industrial wealth and the deployment of US missile defense architecture just a day’s drive from Red Square.
What the events of early 2014 show is how quickly “soft power” can transition to the hard variant; subversion makes inroads for aggression. Washington spent two decades and $5 billion to make Ukraine safe for Chevron and Exxon-Mobil, but now it is reaping far more than it anticipated. Moscow has moved decisively to secure its vital interests in the region, leading to Crimea and the key naval base of Sevastopol being reunited with Russia after 60 years of estrangement. And the Russian-oriented south and east of Ukraine are also rising against an illegitimate regime resolved on virtually giving away strategic assets to multinationals – while sending ultra-nationalist militias to enforce the sales[iv]. From the port of Odessa to the Don River Basin, both Russians and Ukrainians share one thousand years of a unified Eastern Slavic civilization, an ideal that endures in blood and spirit; this reality will long outlive predatory IMF “structural adjustments” and the deformed chauvinism on offer from the current junta in Kiev.
After twenty years of eastward encroachment, the US push into Ukraine is the logical application of a policy to cripple Russia’s recovery and attain unchallenged dominance over the Eurasian heartland and its natural resources. Several consecutive rounds of NATO enlargement, the criminal bombardment of Serbia and subsequent overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic, a string of CIA-orchestrated color revolutions in the former Soviet space and the 2008 Georgia War – far from isolated occurrences, these events show an ever-tightening ring of encirclement. For Kremlin strategists, the Maidan takeover in Kiev proved the point of no return; they’ve seen that the Pax Americana plays for keeps. With their very future on the line, the Russians are fighting back.
Targeted for destabilization, Russia has demonstrated the will to use force in order to protect its people and interests. Short of outright military action, it possesses formidable covert capabilities. The ruthless Cheka-KGB pioneered the practice of human intelligence, and we should remember that most of Ukrainian territory was once the arena of unrelenting partisan campaigns during the Second World War. Given Ukraine’s importance to Russia’s overall geopolitical position, it’s a safe assumption that the contemporary FSB and GRU have developed robust agent networks and operational infrastructure for just the sort of contingency that Moscow confronts today. At the same time, the West’s feverish search for spetsnaz troops in the country is wholly beside the point; resistance in the pro-Russian southeast is organic and growing.
Russia is perhaps the one nation preventing the United States from becoming the last empire, the progenitor of a tyrannical world-state; it is therefore positioned squarely on the front line of a sustained twilight struggle. Globalist oligarchs, the actual controllers of the liberal order, employ multiple vectors of subversion in their ferocious attack on faith, sovereignty and identity. Whether our telescreens depict jihadists wreaking destruction from the Levant to the Caucasus, cells of NGO “activists” waging psychological warfare through the propagation of deviance, or deranged Ukrainian nationalists bent on fratricide, we are assured that all are heroes marching in the grand cause of democracy.
Though retaining effective deterrence is essential for any independent state, the ultimate strength of a Third Rome resurgent lies in its eternal tradition, that ancient Christianity once adopted by a rough-hewn Viking ruler from Kiev. When the Russian lands were threatened by ideological aggression from the West some eight centuries ago, soldier-prince Aleksandr Nevsky defended his people with spirit and sword:
From Adam to the flood, from the flood to the division of tongues, from the mixing of tongues to the beginning of Abraham, from Abraham until Israel’s passing through the Red Sea, from Israel’s Exodus to the death of Tsar David, from the beginning of Solomon’s reign to Tsar Augustus, from the beginning of Augustus to Christ’s Birth, from Christ’s birth unto the Passion and Resurrection of Our Lord, from His Resurrection to His Ascension into heaven, from His Ascension into heaven until the reign of Constantine, from the beginning of Constantine’s reign to the First Council, from the First Council until the Seventh – all of this we know well, and from you we accept no doctrine.
In our age Russia is accused by American officialdom of “betraying the New World Order” when the New World Order is betrayal itself, the very crowning of modern apostasy. Let the words of Aleksandr Nevsky be the answer of every free and noble people to the masters of subversion: From you we accept no doctrine.
[i] Dmitro Yarosh, the leader of Ukraine’s fascist Right Sector, called upon the Chechen militant Doku Umarov to carry out terror attacks in Russia just weeks before the latter was killed in March by an FSB special unit. Ukrainian nationalists are known to have fought on the side of Chechen rebels during the 1990s and 2000s. One such figure, the now-deceased Oleksandr Muzychko, “Sashko Biliy,” tortured and murdered at least 20 captured Russian soldiers.
[ii] Coincidentally or otherwise, the top financial donors for the Human Rights Campaign, America’s premiere homosexual lobbying organization, aredrone manufacturers from the military-industrial complex.
[iii] Many are unaware that the CIA is far from a simple intelligence service; like Britain’s MI5 and MI6, its business has been social engineering both at home and abroad. Under the guidance of tax-exempt foundations, its programs have included funding and promoting not just jihadists and nationalist paramilitaries, but control of the media, feminism, the arts, the psychedelic revolution and narcotics trade. This is only a short rendering of cases of dialectics in action, giving one nonetheless a more definite sense of the aims of the “New World Order.”
[iv] Another odd partnership forged on the Maidan against Moscow has been that of Right Sector and Ukrainian oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, the head of the European Jewish Congress and a prominent patron of Zionist causes.
Watch Mark’s recent analysis of the Russia situation on RT here:The "Soul Surfer" star opens up about his former addiction in an essay he penned for Newsweek.
Dennis Quaid revealed that his "greatest mistake" was his former addiction to cocaine in an essay he wrote for Newsweek.
The actor, who is in theaters in the Bethany Hamilton biopic Soul Surfer, wrote that he became addicted after moving to Los Angeles in 1974 to pursue an acting career.
"It was very casual at first," he wrote. "That’s what people were doing when they were at parties. Cocaine was even in the budgets of movies, thinly disguised. It was petty cash, you know? It was supplied, basically, on movie sets because everyone was doing it. People would make deals. Instead of having a cocktail, you’d have a line."
Quaid wrote that it was hard for him -- coming from lower-middle-class family in Houston -- to handle his sudden fame, which he didn't feel like he deserved, and cocaine helped.
"By the time I was doingThe Big Easy,in the late 1980s, I was a mess," he wrote. "I was getting an hour of sleep a night. I had a reputation for being a 'bad boy,' which seemed like a good thing, but basically I just had my head stuck up my ass."
He said he realized he needed to seek help one night after his band, the Electrics, played a show and then broke up, "just like in the movie The Commitments, because it all got too crazy."
He said he suddenly came to the realization that he would be dead in five years if he didn't clean himself up.
After going through rehab, his career faltered with bombs like 1993's Wilder Napalm.
"But that time in my life -- those years in the ’90s recovering -- actually chiseled me into a person," he wrote. "It gave me the resolve and a resilience to persevere in life. If I hadn’t gone through that period, I don’t know if I’d still be acting. In the end, it taught me humility. I really learned to appreciate what I have in this life."
Soul Surfer opened in theaters Friday, grossing a better-than-expected $11.1 million to land at No. 4 at the weekend's domestic box office.The movie also stars AnnaSophia Robb and Helen Hunt and features Carrie Underwood in her film debut.America’s most effective extortion racket, the Department of Justice, just bullied another big bank into surrendering billions of dollars in fines. Citigroup has agreed to pay an astounding $7 billion settlement to the DOJ for apparent wrongdoing leading up to the financial crisis. Why am I suddenly reminded of Al Capone’s observation about government coercion?
"A crook is a crook, and there's something healthy about his frankness in the matter. But any guy who pretends he is enforcing the law and steals on his authority is a swell snake. The worst type of these punks is the big politician.” – Al Capone.
Citi will be paying $4.5 billion as a cash settlement, and another $2.5 billion in the form of financing for affordable housing and mortgage modifications. Holder even ran to the microphones to brag about the fact that the cash portion is the largest settlement ever reached from an American bank for actions that supposedly led to the “great recession”. (Wow… Too bad we can’t get a settlement from politicians for leading us into this so-called “recovery”.)
But, here’s where the extortion racket really comes into view: no criminal charges have been filed against any individuals. In fact, no handcuffs have been slapped on anyone tied to the “egregious” corporate actions. And while Holder has threatened criminal charges against various banks (because JP Morgan can clearly spend “hard time” in a Federal pen, right?), there likely will be no charges filed against any individuals moving forward. Heck, even if Holder decided he wanted to throw a banker in jail, the statute of limitations would likely make it impossible in the next year or two.
Even a junior prosecutor could probably scrape together a criminal case against individuals who were responsible for the bank’s “egregious” actions if they were so inclined – especially given the fact that the banks have shelled out multi-billion dollar settlements and admissions of wrong-doing. But, the dirty little secret is that Holder-Obama & Co don’t actually want to file any charges against any wealthy executives.
And why not? Well, it’s easier to get a hefty settlement from a corporation facing a PR nightmare than a couple of executives who are facing jail time. While a criminal trial for some executives might make for good press among the Occupy Wall Street demographic of the Democrat Party, it would be unlikely that billions of dollars would be handed over for the DOJ to redistribute in a “progressive” liberal fashion. Putting some obscure loan officer in jail for falsifying loan documents (so they meet the regulator’s quota of subprime loans) certainly wouldn’t get $2.5 billion redirected at helping poor people buy homes they can’t afford.
No, no, no… It’s much easier for the greatest prosecutorial body in America to simply threaten a bank with some obscure, and often non-existent, political argument civil case than actually put together a criminal complaint against people who made the decisions and supposedly skirted the rules.
Of course, this isn’t exactly Holder’s only venture into the realm of extortion. Aside from strong arming billions of dollars from banks for their (often government mandated) roll in the financial crises, he has also managed to extract millions from other institutions for “race based” lending practices. Ally Bank, to name just one, paid roughly $100 million to the DOJ’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in an effort to avoid a public trial.
Even the DOJ admitted that they had no actual evidence of wrong-doing in the Ally case. (Heck, they didn’t even have access to the bank’s credit reports, loan decisions, borrower information, or racial quotas.) They based their whole premise of “racial discrimination” off of Ally’s geographical lending area. But why let little things like evidence get in the way of skimming the profits from financial institutions? And, much like Citi’s settlement, no one is going to jail over Ally’s alleged misbehavior. Heck, no one has even been named as the focus of a criminal complaint. Apparently, dollars speak more to the DOJ than Lady Justice
Eric Holder has already proven that he is willing to wield the power of the DOJ to force his political will on opponents. Between tapping the phones of reporters, running guns to Mexico, and investigating an anti-Obama parade float, Holder’s DOJ has managed to intimidate, regulate, and prosecute many of the administration’s ideological opponents into some state of submission. With that unrelenting willingness to use his department as a tool of ideological enforcement, it’s pretty obvious that bankers would be sharing a cell with Rod Blagojevich by now; if Holder had any inclination to pursue individual charges. But, let’s face it, this isn’t really about “justice”.
To this administration, raising some revenue for Federal coffers and forcing those rich banks to redistribute their profits to the “needy”, is apparently far more important than holding people accountable. (Besides, it would be awkward if they started targeting the community organizers and Democrat politicians who forced banks to start dabbling in sub-prime lending in the first place.) Actually holding people accountable isn’t nearly as high of a priority to Holder as getting a little bit of good PR… And some “redistributive justice” is apparently an added bonus.
For not being elected, he pretty much has this “politician” thing down pat.Conservative commentator Glenn Beck was ordered by a federal judge Tuesday to disclose at least two sources in connection to a defamation lawsuit against the media host originating from his reporting on the Boston Marathon bombings, according to Politico.
The lawsuit was filed in 2014 against Beck by Saudi Arabian student Abdulrahman Alharbi, who was injured in the bombings. Beck continued to link Alharbi to the attacks in his reports even after the student was publicly cleared by law enforcement, according to Politico.
U.S. District Court Judge Patti Saris ruled Beck must reveal the names of the Department of Homeland Security employees who allegedly gave the media host information supporting the claim that Alharbi was connected to the bombings.
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According to Politico, Saris acknowledged that her ruling raised First Amendment concerns, but wrote that government documents she ordered produced did not support claims that Alharbi was the “money man” behind the bombings.
Read the full report at Politico.Michael Rusch/YouTube screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET
You're seated in 4A.
You're landing at Chicago's O'Hare airport and you get the distinct impression that the pilot isn't flying the plane in a straight line.
In fact, it looks to you that you're going sideways. In fact, you are going sideways.
Footage first released by ABC 7 in Chicago shows a plane landing on Thursday, with its pilot appearing to maneuver the plane against the reported 40 mph winds.
Like a human being bracing himself against the wind while walking down a street, this plane descends at a sideways angle until the very last moments.
Indeed, it lands at what appears to be 45-degree angle, before straightening up.
I am confident that those who pilot planes will sniff that this is merely normal procedure.
But the millions who fly around the world every day as passengers will perhaps look at this footage and marvel just a little at the control exerted over a large machine in order to achieve a safe landing.
Indeed, Wendy Prindle, a commenter on the YouTube footage, offered: "I think that i was the flight attendant on that flight! Ive had some pretty windy landings lately at all airports! Thanks for the fantastic Pilots we are all sAAfe."SF’s landmark tower for rich and famous is sinking and tilting
The Millennium Tower in San Francisco has sunk 16 inches and tilted 2 inches since it opened in 2008. The Millennium Tower in San Francisco has sunk 16 inches and tilted 2 inches since it opened in 2008. Photo: Michael Noble Jr., The Chronicle Photo: Michael Noble Jr., The Chronicle Image 1 of / 63 Caption Close SF’s landmark tower for rich and famous is sinking and tilting 1 / 63 Back to Gallery
The Millennium Tower, a leading symbol of San Francisco’s new high-rise and high-end living, is sinking — setting the stage for what could be one of the most contentious and costly real estate legal battles the city has ever seen.
Rated by Worth magazine as one of the top 10 residential buildings in the world, the Millennium at 301 Mission St. is home to such A-listers as Joe Montana and Hunter Pence. Until his recent death, it’s where venture capitalist Tom Perkins owned a penthouse. Condos sell for anywhere from $1.6 million to north of $10 million.
However, since its completion in 2008, the 58-story building has sunk 16 inches, according to an independent consultant hired to monitor the problem. It has also tilted 2 inches to the northwest.
“That’s significant... and of concern,” said Professor Greg Deierlein, director of the John A. Blume Earthquake Engineering Center at Stanford University, who has been called in to evaluate the designs of a couple of San Francisco’s newer downtown high-rises.
Deierlein noted that the 88-story Petronas Twin Towers in Malaysia — which were the world’s tallest buildings when they opened in 1998 — have sunk less than 3 inches. Their tilt, or “differential settlement,” is less than half an inch.
This isn’t just an issue for the Millennium’s owners and wealthy inhabitants: It could be a headache for taxpayers as well. There are potentially big public dollars at stake, with the owners alleging that the massive hole dug next door for the new Transbay Transit Center is to blame for the building’s issues.
The problem first came to light in 2010 when the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, the public agency constructing the transit center, hired the consulting firm Arup to gauge how the excavation could affect the tower.
According to the consultant’s initial report, by the time excavation began — two years after the $350 million Millennium was completed — the tower had already settled 10 inches. That was 4 inches more than its builders had predicted for the life of the high-rise.
Since then, “the building has continued to settle vertically, now 16 inches,” representatives of the Transbay Joint Powers Authority said in a statement in response to questions from The Chronicle.
At the same time, geotechnical reports show that since 2009, the settling has been uneven — resulting in the 2-inch tilt.
And while Stanford’s Deierlein doesn’t consider the sink or tilt a safety issue, he did say, “I would be concerned for my investment.” That’s because a shifting building can cause walls to crack, elevators to malfunction and all manner of other annoyances.
P.J. Johnston, spokesman for tower builder Millennium Partners and its principal owner, Sean Jeffries, said a nine-month, independent structural safety review in 2014 “determined the settlement has not significantly affected the seismic performance of the building, and does not represent a safety risk.”
An attorney for the Millennium homeowners association’s board, John Gill, recently sent a confidential letter to some of the more than 400 residents saying the board was “actively engaged in negotiations with Millennium Partners to resolve building settlement issues.” The letter also said the association was “sensitive to the concerns of everyone about any issue which could impact the value of their units.”
In a statement Friday, homeowner representatives said they had “retained a number of engineering consultants to investigate the causes and long-term impact of these settlement conditions” and were evaluating their legal options. They cited any number of parties that could be held “legally accountable” — including the developer, the high-rise’s designers, the contractors and the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, which is run by San Francisco, AC Transit, Caltrans and the agency that operates Caltrain.
For his part, Millennium spokesman Johnston wasted no time blaming the transit center authority. He insisted that the tower’s settling had been within normal range until excavation began on the bus and rail center next door.
“They built a half-mile tunnel 60 feet underground and next to our building, and they were supposed to (protect the Millennium) — and they didn’t,” Johnston said.
The authority also signed an agreement with the Millennium developer in 2008 “to repair, at its own cost and expense... any damage to the development substantially caused by TJPA’s construction activities,” according a copy of the agreement on file at San Francisco City Hall.
Records show the Transbay Joint Powers Authority pumped more than $58 million into an underground buttressing system to shore up the Millennium before beginning excavation in 2010. That’s one of the many reasons for the new transit center’s spiraling costs, which are now at $2.4 billion and counting.
In its statement, the transit center authority said it “bears no responsibility for the tilt and excessive settlement.”
Unlike some downtown high-rises, the Millennium isn’t steel-framed. Instead, the developer chose a concrete design more common to residential buildings. It relies on huge columns, shear walls and beams, and it’s much heavier than steel. What’s more, the building is located on unstable mud-fill, just off the bay’s original shoreline.
The Millennium’s engineers anchored the building over a thick concrete slab with piles driven roughly 80 feet into dense sand. “To cut costs, Millennium did not drill piles to bedrock,” or 200 feet down, the transit center authority said in its statement. Had it done so, the agency said, “the tower would not be tilting today.”
Johnston countered that “virtually all other buildings in that part of the city have their foundations at the same subterranean level,” citing skyscrapers that include the St. Regis and Intercontinental hotels.
He added that the Millennium’s design was state of the art for residential buildings and that concrete can be preferable to steel for several reasons, including sound insulation.
“In any case, this was not a cost-saving decision, but the preferred design,” Johnston said.
While there have been reports of cracks appearing in the Millennium’s underground garage, there’s no word of residents complaining about damage to their condos. Instead, the shifting and sinking of the concrete platform beneath the building has necessitated what Johnston called “minor repairs to sidewalks and connections at the ground level.”
Experts tell us it’s uncertain exactly what, if anything, can be done to fix the problem or straighten the tower. There has been talk of pumping cement underneath the base and drilling new piles — complicated and expensive undertakings.
An assessment, no doubt, that offers little comfort to those living in the building.
San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call (415) 777-8815, or email [email protected]. Twitter: @matierandrossSAN DIEGO – Over $9 million worth of drugs were seized with 24 hours at ports of entry along the California border with Mexico, authorities announced Thursday.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers seized 12,215 pounds of narcotics worth $9.1 million from midnight Wednesday to midnight Thursday.
CBP officers intercepted 227 pounds of methamphetamine, 11,895 pounds of marijuana, 11 pounds of fentanyl and 83 pounds of cocaine hidden inside vehicles within various vehicle compartments including seats, a speaker box, a spare tire and quarter panels.
About 2:30 a.m., CBP officers at the San Ysidro port of entry stopped a 30-year-old man in a 1998 Honda Civic. An inspection of the U.S. citizen’s vehicle uncovered wrapped packages concealed in the quarter panel.
CBP dogs alerted officers to a discovery of 37 wrapped packages of methamphetamine concealed in the spare tire, quarter panels and seats. The weight of the narcotics was 144 pounds with an estimated street value of approximately $504,000.
A 45-year-old man from Mexico with a valid visa driving a 2006 Strickland tractor pulling a trailer with shipments of macaroni pasta entered Otay Mesa Cargo facility. An examination of the cargo uncovered large amounts of marijuana. The total of 472 packages with an estimated street value of more than $6.7 million was confiscated by officers.
A border detector dog at Otay Mesa port of entry alerted border officers of a 1998 Saturn driven by an 18-year-old U.S. citizen around 3 p.m. An inspection of the vehicle discovered 10 packages of methamphetamine and four packages of fentanyl hidden in the heater core. The weight of the narcotics was 20 pounds with an estimated street value of $469,000.
All of the drivers were arrested and turned over to Homeland Security Investigations for further investigation.
CBP officers seized the vehicles and narcotics.9:32 a.m., Sept. 13, 2013--Newark Police have arrested one of two suspects shown in surveillance photos of the disorderly crowd in Newark on the evening of Monday, Sept. 9.
After Newark Police released the photos of two suspects who damaged the roof of a Ford Mustang during the incident, John Marine turned himself in to Newark Police to face charges.
Marine, 18, of Newark, was charged with riot, criminal mischief under $1,000 and disorderly conduct by obstructing vehicular or pedestrian traffic, and he was released on $1,700 unsecured bond. Marine is a UD student.
Detectives are identifying leads to determine the identity of the second suspect in the photos.
Anyone with information is asked to contact Detective Greg. E. Micolucci at 302-366-7110, ext. 132, or at [email protected].
Visit this website to receive a UD Crime Alert email whenever an article about a police investigation is posted on UDaily.Whether you love or hate the music of Garth Brooks, everyone must bow down and give the Prince of Garthness incredible credit as the most cunning music marketer to ever suck air on planet Earth, and it isn’t even close.
As some of the biggest acts in all of music think they’re making a killing by playing one or two sold-out arena shows per market, Garth shows up to a certain city and scales the amount of shows he’ll play to the demand for tickets. Luke Bryan will play one show in one arena and make X. Garth Brooks will play six shows in that same arena and make X times 6. Oh, and Garth’s fans all pay a quarter of the price because there is no secondary market issue, and everyone gets a ticket who wants one.
Garth doesn’t even announce the cities he’s playing in until it’s time to presale, encouraging some fans to drive from two or three states over to see Garth, even though he may play in their home market six weeks later, when they’ll pay to see him again. As everyone else in the industry is trying to figure out how to keep music money out of the hands of StubHub and scalpers, Garth is running circles around them.
– – – – – – –
But that’s nothing compared to Garth Brooks the marketing and packaging maven. This guy has figured out how to sell the same damn songs to many of the same damn people so many times it’s astounding. Now before we go any farther, just appreciate that Garth Brooks has only recorded a total of 10 truly original studio albums from which original songs can be culled from for compilations and Greatest Hits packages. Yet Garth has also released an equal number of Greatest Hits and compilation albums, not to mention four Christmas records.
So let’s say that you’re a die hard Garth Brooks fan, of which there are many of, including many that are willing to purchase whatever he releases, corroborated by the incredible sales numbers Garth continues to accrue. Then let’s see how many times you’ve purchased Garth’s very first single, “Much Too Young (Too Feel This Damn Old)” written by Garth and Randy Taylor.
How Many Times Has “Much Too Young (Too Feel This Damn Old)” Been Rebundeled and Sold?
1st Appearance – Garth Brooks (1989) = 10 million sales
This is where the world first heard “Much Too Young (Too Feel This Damn Old)” and fell in love with it. It was Garth’s first radio hit, and made it into the Top 10 of the country charts. As Garth’s popularity rose with subsequent releases, eventually the self-titled debut album was certified diamond for sales over 10 million, meaning 10 million copies of “Much Too Young (Too Feel This Damn Old)” made it into the hands of consumers.
2nd Appearance – The Garth Brooks Collection (1994) = 5 million sales
The Garth Brooks Collection was a limited-time, limited run release that included a lot of Garth’s early hits
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, and now I'm hooked.
Today was the hardest session I've had by far, but there's a big difference as far as cardio goes. I had to take minimal breaks today, and they were short ones at that. I'm pretty happy with it. It's weird, I find myself in bed falling asleep, thinking about kimuras. I certainly didn't see that coming.
Ottavia: He used to complain about me watching the instructionals for hours on end, and now he's right there with me, mesmerized.
Anthony: Nobody has been more surprised than me. I've really been enjoying it. I try not to be annoying about it at home, because everybody else is obsessed with it, but the fact is, I'm thinking about it a lot more than I ever could have anticipated.
How often are you in the gym now? Anthony: I train at every opportunity, every time I'm back in NY and not traveling. Sometimes, even when I'm on location. In fact, I was out in LA shooting this network show, and we had a guy come out and teach us some stuff at the studio. I got it bad. What do you do when you're traveling to get your workouts and rolling in? Anthony: I'm at the point now where I will start thinking about training regularly even when I'm on the road. I've been training three to four times a month now, and worst case scenario, once a month. I'm not like Ottavia, who's doing this three or four hours a day, or my daughter who goes five to six hours a week. Basically, I'm trying to keep up with my six-year-old [laughs]. I have reasonable ambitions as far as my jiu-jitsu career. Are there any gyms you're interested in training at while you're on the road? Anthony: When I'm home, I train exclusively at Renzo Gracie's gym. I'm pretty comfortable there. I haven't really thought about other places. When Ottavia travels with me, she scouts out the local gyms, though. I'm going to be doing a Brazil show in a couple of weeks in Bahia, and I'm thinking of doing a session there. Who do you want having your back in a dark alley fight, Ottavia or hired security? Anthony: Gee, I don't know. In a bar fight, I'd definitely like my wife around, because no one would see it coming, and all she would have to do is get within arm's reach, and it's pretty much over. A woman in seven inch heels slipping up behind you...yeah, definitely in a bar fight, if someone takes a swing at me, I'd like to have Ottavia around [laughs]. In a back alley, I'm a big believer in bringing a bazooka to a gun fight. What are your thoughts on the WMMA boom? Ottavia: It's fantastic. I was so thrilled when they added the 135-pound division to the UFC, I didn't even see it coming when they added the 115-pound division. I never thought this would happen so fast. I remember giving an interview two years ago, and I thought this was maybe going to happen five or six years out. We'll be going to UFC 168, and we planned on going just to see Rousey v. Tate, then they added Weidman vs Silva. We just love the women's division and seeing them fight. Anthony: This last season of The Ultimate Fighter was the best one yet. The women always bring it and it's super exciting to see them getting the spotlight. Ronda took a lot of heat for her attitude. Did you get a different feeling about her after watching the show? Ottavia: A lot of people talked shit about her, but for me, I kind of always knew there was something a little crazy about her, and that's why I like her. I don't think it's necessary to be crazy to become a champion, but I definitely think it helps. There's just something about her that has allowed her to reach the incredible level she's at. "I don't expect anybody to be like a U.N. Ambassador. I expect them to fight well." Anthony: Yeah, I don't expect anybody to be like a U.N. Ambassador. I expect them to fight well [laughs]. I don't know why people expect that. Are we going to ask Nick Diaz to be lovable? Of course not. I don't have any problem with Ronda being unpleasant or difficult on the show. The question is, does she deliver in the ring, which she does. Ottavia: I like Miesha. She came to the academy and trained, and she's a lovely girl. Nothing against her, and it might be fun to see an upset... Anthony: Not this time [laughs]. Who do you think is the next big female star? Ottavia: I just saw Tecia Torres in Invicta, and she was amazing at 115. I was really, really impressed. I think she's going to be the one to lead the pack of 115-pounders, for sure. Has training changed what you eat or drink? Anthony: Uh, I'm thinking about it more now; I'm certainly not going to sit down and have a big bowl of spaghetti and white clam sauce or carbonara on Saturday if I know I'm training on Sunday, that's for sure. I do sort of eat strategically and I am thinking about what I'm going to be doing in training. I hate to admit it, but I have changed my diet a little bit, and I definitely plan for training. I don't want to be crawling around on my hands and knees, gasping for air and struggling to not cough up my lungs. It feels good to make it through an hour of hard training in good order. It's satisfying, and I like that feeling. I'm taking it far more seriously than I could have ever been expected to.
Now that you've got the bug, has it opened the door for any other martial arts that might interest you?
Anthony: No, I like this. It's reasonable, and it's working out. We've been talking about amateur competitions, and I think my daughter might do the Pan-Ams. Can I compete in my age class?
Ottavia: Yeah, yeah. They have age-appropriate categories. I mean, nobody calls it ‘senior's category' or anything. I think they have different categories of masters, and the men have it easy because they have many age classes. You can definitely compete with people your same age.
"Maybe I could compete under my porn name, Vic Chenko or Mick Chenko." (Courtesy of Ottavia Bourdain)
Anthony: You know, I'm tall, so I will confess to harboring the secret, momentary fantasy of breaking some old dude's hip [laughs]. I mean, it's got to be the right old dude; he's got to be in really pathetic shape. Under the right circumstances, I would do competition. I'm certainly thinking about it, which is something that before, I would never have done. Maybe I could compete under my porn name, Vic Chenko or Mick Chenko.
Ottavia: He does like boxing, though.
Anthony: I do like boxing, but it's just something I wouldn't compete at. Look, I've got to be realistic. I'm 57 and not in great shape. If I hit somebody, it has to be a decisive blow, and in the first 20 seconds. I'm certainly not going to be duking it out for 60 seconds, much less three minutes, in an alley or a ring. That's just not going to happen.
Are you feeling and seeing the results of your training physically, aside from not coughing up a lung?
Anthony: Absolutely. It feels good, and I'm having fun. It's a family affair, a togetherness thing. I'm liking it, but I'm trying to be reasonable about it. My wife is serious about it. She's a competitor. I'm not. I'm a dilettante. I want to bring honor to my clan, but I have reasonable expectations. Let's put it that way.
Have you ever considered doing a Anthony and "friends" doing a jiu-jitsu video with Ottavia?
Anthony: Oh good lord, no. I'm sure others would find it hilarious, watching me get triangled by my wife, but I'm not so sure I'd like to have that video out there. I've already got to live it, I don't know if I want anyone else seeing it [laughs].
My daughter taps out our friends all the time. She likes to sneak up on them and slap on a rear naked choke, putting them into a shocked submission. I don't think I'd want that video shown around either.
[To Ottavia] Were you surprised when he finally picked up jiu-jitsu, or was this a process of you wearing away at his resolve?
Ottavia: I knew that he was going to like it once he tried it. For me, the hardest part was getting him to do the first thing, actually getting him to step on the mat. Because of the mental aspect of jiu-jitsu, I knew he would see it as a puzzle to solve, especially with all the things that go into a particular move. I just knew he was going to like it. Once I bribed him into doing it, and he actually liked it and decided to stick with it, I was not surprised at all.
Other than Urijah Faber, who are the fighters you are usually pulling for?
Ottavia: Carlos Condit, Lyoto Machida
Anthony: I love the Korean Zombie. Ever since I saw him against Dustin Poirier, I've liked him. It was the most mechanical, precise dismantling I've seen in a long time. It was really exciting to watch.
Anderson Silva and Jon Jones are also favorites. Jones had kind of a close call with Vitor, and Silva finally got beat and is now in question if he'll be able to pull off the win over Weidman. Things are so exciting now. These guys are so skilled and talented. They both have really exciting stand-up games and can beat you in so many ways. That's really fun, though obviously, I'm liking the ground game a lot.
Silva is pushing 40 and still talented. Jones is pretty much the most exciting guy out there, as far as I'm concerned. You pretty much never know which part of his body he's going to end up beating his opponent with.
I just saw the rerun of the fight Silva had with the American Psycho, Stephan Bonnar. My God, what a total destruction that was.
Who are you guys picking to win in the Silva/Weidman rematch?
Anthony: This is a house divided now.
Ottavia: Chris has been training a lot at Renzo's, so I'm rooting for him. He's part of the family, so I'm not going to go against him. Same way I never went against Georges St. Pierre or Frankie Edgar.
Anthony: Ottavia will bet and pick with her heart, whereas I don't think like that. In this case, I'm going to root for the old dude [laughs]. I also think the old dude is going to win in this case.
There was an article last year on Fightland where you invited a bunch of restaurant owners to try a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class. Did any of those people continue training after their first taste of it?
Ottavia: Other than my husband, Doug from Big Gay Ice Cream came for a second time, and is willing to come for a third time, but of those people, none have done anything regularly since. We have other friends that have tried it out and are still doing it.
Would you like to continue writing more on jiu-jitsu or other topics?
Ottavia: If something interesting in my life happens, I'll write about it. I'm not going to be an MMA reporter or anything like that, though. I like to talk about myself too much [laughs]. My favorite subject is myself.
Maybe you could write about how to do X amount of laundry loads a day?
Anthony: Actually, the gi always gets priority in this house. We have this big pile of gis that go right to the front of the line. No waiting on those.
My wife is also a germophobe, so whenever I come back from somewhere, Mexico or the Amazon...wherever, she's convinced that my clothes are teeming with some bacteriological time bomb, so those also get priority, and go right in.
(Courtesy of Ottavia Bourdain)
When you travel with Anthony, is it hard to stay on your strict all-meat diet in the sketchier parts of the world? Ottavia: In the past year I've kind of been relaxing my diet a little bit. I eat a lot, but it's mostly proteins and vegetables, but I haven't been as strict lately. Like this month, I don't have any competitions and he's home, so I've been eating a little bit of everything. I pay a price when I eat carbs, especially when I eat wheat [laughs], it's inevitable flatulence around the house. I enjoy myself a little more now, and I've been cutting myself some slack; a little more sweets and a little more pasta. With all the scientific findings about the dangers of red meat, cured meats, and basically ingesting too much meat, does that factor in to your consumption, or do you not consider it, because these days, just about everything is unhealthy? Anthony: Consider your answer very carefully. "I don't care if it's like radioactive monkey colons in my hamburgers. Does it taste good? If so, I eat it." Ottavia: [Laughs] I'm very picky about my meat. I don't want to be a pain in the ass, but I try to stick with humanely raised, organic, antibiotic free meat from ranches I know personally. Since I did my two-week vegan experiment a few months back, I was really surprised, because I thought I was going to die without meat, but I actually survived fine. I don't know, I kind of feel that I do eat less meat these days than I did previously. Anthony: You scare me [laughs]. Ottavia: Oh you know this stuff. Sometimes I order from the vegan restaurant, and my husband picks up the order, utterly horrified. Anthony: I don't care if it's like radioactive monkey colons in my hamburgers. Does it taste good? If so, I eat it. Out of morbid curiosity, when is the last time you guys went to a McDonald's drive thru? Ottavia: We've never done that. Anthony: Never, especially since my daughter was born. In-N-Out Burger is a whole other story. Ottavia: I don't think we've ever been to a McDonald's at all, inside or drive thru. Anthony: In-N-Out Burger actually pays their workers and treats them decently. They source their meat through their own supply chain. It's decent meat and they cook everything to order. It's not some piece of pre-cooked frozen cardboard, sprayed with beef flavor to make it taste like a burger. In-N-Out is real, fresh ground beef that's cooked to order. I think that makes a big difference. It's not only better for you, it's just a much more delicious eating experience. Being in New York, do you eat Five Guys Burgers? Anthony: No, I'm a Shake Shack guy. I have nothing against Five Guys, but I love Shake Shack. Ottavia: It's right across the street from us. Anthony: Yeah, that helps. What are your best and worst habits? Ottavia: My best habit...I do laundry a lot [laughs]. I'm struggling to come up with something here. Anthony: Your best habit is abusing taxi drivers with threats of violence in a thick, Italian accent. Your worst habit is— Ottavia: No! No! [Laughs] I have so many bad habits. I'm a mess. I leave a mess everywhere. Anthony: Except laundry. She keeps current with the laundry. The rest, it's pretty much like somebody blew up a landfill. She likes cats and puppies. So did Hitler [Both laugh heartily]. Ottavia: I was doing a routine yesterday when he came home from Mexico. The cat and I rehearsed a welcome home routine, but he totally didn't appreciate it, and I'm really sad about that. Anthony: I was a little frightened. My best habit is that I'm always on time. I'm punctual to a fault. Ottavia: That's true. I have the same habit. We are both always on time or early. Anthony: Worst habit, I don't know, I'm a little over-organized. Christmas dinner, I've written a list a month in advance. I'm a little Type A when it comes to planning meals and recreational activities. If you would imagine Ina Garten, but sort of psychotic, that would be me. Ottavia: That's not really a bad habit except for the people close to you, because it annoys the shit out of us. Anthony: I'm a pretty tidy guy, too. Ottavia: You're super tidy. Really, annoyingly tidy [laughs]. Anthony: Yeah, I keep lists, and if I see a wrapper on the ground, it really eats at me until it gets picked up. Some people would find those good habits, others would find them really annoying. Ottavia: I actually love those habits because he is after me, cleaning up my mess left and right. Anthony: Well, if not, it would be a quick descent into Hell. What was the one thing you saw Tony doing on No Reservations that really stood out to you as a moment you wished you could've shared? Ottavia: Hmmm...I think when he was in Bali. It was just so beautiful. Anthony: Saudi Arabia. You know you wanted to rock a burka. Ottavia: Not a burka, a bahia. I've been to Rio with him and to Japan, so I don't know. I think I'd like to go to the Middle East with him, for sure. I would like to see Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, but because of the political situation, I wouldn't feel comfortable taking my daughter with me, or leaving her behind, but eventually, it's a place I would like to go. Does your daughter have an interest in cooking? Ottavia: Oh yeah, she and Anthony cook together all the time. It's the cutest thing. I leave the house to go train and they stay behind to cook. When I come back, there is a nice meal waiting for me. In your comic Get Jiro! you present a food war between internationals and hyper-locals. If there were no middle ground available, which side would you be a part of? Anthony: That's a tough one. Probably the locals. I guess my sympathies are toward the local model. I like to think that I would be more local minded, but in real life, practical terms, I'd probably be one of the international dudes. I can tell you here that we're actually going to do a second Get Jiro!, a prequel. If you were a ronin like Jiro, what would your food medium be? Anthony: In much the same way that I can only hope to ever get my blue belt, I can only hope to make sushi the way one should. That's seven years just learning how to do the rice. Obviously, that's something that appeals to me. I'm in real awe of the masters, the artists, the craftsmen that really know how to make sushi. I think it is a beautiful and admirable thing. What was it like doing voice-over work for Archer? It was so much fun. I mean I love Archer, it's one of my favorite shows. I'm friends with Aisha Tyler, so I basically hounded them to do the part. I half-jokingly told them I would write for the show for free. Anything to do with the show, I was happy to do. I just think it's brilliant. They called me up and said that they'd written a part for me and would I do the voice-over. It was a whole Hell of a lot of fun. Everybody on that show is funny. I'm in a position where I can collaborate with people I really respect and have a good time while doing it.
Tell me about the time you took Alton Brown to the strip club.
Anthony: That was one of my prouder moments. I managed to convince Alton to come out to the Clermont Lounge in Atlanta. It's not just a strip club, it's the lost luggage department of strip clubs. It is truly an amazing place, so I'm really proud of that moment [laughs]. I think the average stripper's age was like 55 or something. His discomfort was exquisite.
I saw your comments on the current trends for TV chefs and it seems kind of bleak. What would be your ideal vision for the way TV chefs are put across for public consumption?
Anthony: I don't even know at this point. I'm sure that whatever my vision is for that would not sell and people would hate it. I think my version would look like Taxi Driver [laughs]. That would be perfect, a cooking show based on Taxi Driver. Bleak, dark monotone psychotic hero with mass murder at the end. I'd watch that show.
What one dish do you think everyone needs to try before they die?
Anthony: For me, a really good, high quality bowl of Vietnamese pho. I think that's an essential experience. Everyone should try that, and everyone should know how to cook an omelet. Then the world would be a better place.
Ottavia: I think seared Otoro sushi. It's one of my favorite things to eat, so I think everyone should try it.
Anthony: The big piece of the fatty underbelly of an endangered fish?
Ottavia: Absolutely.
"Any time you're talking about bro-food, you're lurching into the Fieri zone, and that doesn't reflect well on the male species." (Getty Images)
What is the most overrated food trend in America?
Ottavia: Are they still on about that truffle oil, because I hated that.
Anthony: That's not a trend, that's an airborne toxic event.
I think ‘bro-food' is something I'd definitely like to see the end of. I don't even know what it is, but I'd like to stop it. I hate that whole idea that there's male food and female food. Any time you're talking about bro-food, you're lurching into the Fieri zone, and that doesn't reflect well on the male species.
What is the most underrated?
Anthony: Well, Korean is awesome. People know of Korean food, but soon it will be just as popular as Italian or Mexican or French food, as it richly deserves. It's been an obsession lately, and not just for me, but for a lot of chefs. It's sort of a date night or family night for us, as well. Korean BBQ is a regular event.
With many dishes or food, the first bite is the best. Which food or dish is the best example of an incredible "first bite"?
Anthony: Uni. Sea urchin roe sitting on top of some perfect, crumbly, fresh-made sushi rice with some perfect tokido lightly toasted seaweed. That's about the best single mouthful you could ever imagine.
Ottavia: You read my mind. When I was a kid, we would find them on the beach in Sardinia. We would open it and eat it with a spoon, fresh. Just delicious.
Which food or dish gets better as you eat it?
Anthony: I don't know, that's more of an alcohol-related thing [laughs]. When you've got a really good wine, it just gets better and better.
What would be your last meal request if you were on death row?
Anthony: I would like for Jiro Ono from Sukiyabashi Jiro in Tokyo to come over and do a full omakase menu of sushi for me. After that, you could pretty much shoot me in the back of the head, hang me, give me a lethal injection, I wouldn't care. You could pretty much bludgeon me to death after that and I'd be pretty pleased.
Ottavia: For me, it's my dad's spaghetti with lobster. It was my favorite thing to eat when I was a kid and it would be the last thing I'd want to eat before I die.
What 'delicacy' actually tastes disgusting?
Anthony: The rotten shark, Hákarl in Iceland is one. You know, I've eaten a lot of rotten food to be polite, but really, if you examine what goes into a chicken McNugget, what actually goes into it, I think you'd have a really hard time finding anything more disgusting.
There have been times when I'm in places where the food is so bad, for so long...you know, badly cooked, stanky goat, every day. I'm cold and lonely and miserable. Then I end up on a transfer at an airport in Germany or someplace, and there's a KFC. Oh man, I am all over that. Are you kidding me? I'm like weeping with joy.
If there was no stigma attached to it, would you ever try human flesh?
Anthony: Not knowingly. I mean, I'd really like to avoid that, but look, if we're in a lifeboat, and you're not pulling your weight out there, and we're three weeks at sea, I've got no problem [laughs].
What's the best way to cook a steak and which countries have the best beef?
Anthony: The United States of America has the best beef, without a doubt. You want a mix of organic, grass fed, up to a point, but then finished with grain to make it nice and fatty. You want it hung for about 30 days.
To cook it, you want a perfect, smoldering coal barbeque, or in a searingly hot pan, just rubbed with salt and pepper. You want to cook it medium rare or rare, remove from flame and allow it to rest, so that the internal temperature carries over cumulatively, bringing it to a point where it's medium rare. Resting a steak is the most important thing to do.
There's no improving on that. Bleu cheese, truffle oil, sauces will almost never ever improve on a good steak. Salt and pepper is the only way to go. I would go with a rib cut, like a ribeye is the perfect piece of meat, in my opinion.
What do you think of the trend to cook steaks sous-vide style?
Anthony: I'm old school. I like the texture and the flavor of the pan. I like that sear, whether it's obtained from a pan or over wood or coal or just over gas. I like the taste you get from flame or searing from hot metal. I think those are actual components of the flavor.
In traditional Chinese cooking, the chefs talk about wok hei, which is the residual taste from the wok itself. It carries over into the food. I think it's the same with a steak. Sous-vide cooking give a nice texture, but that style is not what represents a pleasurable steak eating experience for me.
Ottavia: I like it raw [laughs].
(Courtesy of Ottavia Bourdain)
What was it like when you were filming in Beirut with a war going on literally right outside your door? Anthony: It was more heartbreaking than it was frightening. It was so surreal. I think I was most worried about communications completely failing, that I would be completely out of touch with family and with Ottavia. It was not so much terrifying as it was discouraging and heartbreaking. To see a wonderful place like Beirut, pounded back 20 years for what I thought was not a particularly good reason. I've been in far scarier places. Would you mind elaborating on those? Anthony: Libya is a place, when I was there, where everything is going fine until it's not. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is another place where everything is fine and then all of the sudden, it's really, really bad. Both of those are places where multiple times a day, you find yourself in positions of real uncertainty. Have you ever genuinely feared for your life while you've been filming? "That's the closest I've actually come to death." Anthony: Yeah, sure. Generally though, those are driving experiences. That's the closest I've actually come to death, being driven around Vietnam, or mountain roads in Punjab. Some of the flying machines we've been in have been pretty dicey, as well. There have been roadblocks and drug militias and things like that. If I'm honest with myself, it was probably a lot more dangerous to drive Highway 1 in Vietnam. When are we going to see an Action Bronson collaboration with you, a cook-off or something? Anthony: He was on my show, The Layover. That's been on my mind actually, and I'm definitely looking for an opportunity to do something like that with him. He was on the show much too briefly. I like him very much; he's a very funny guy. We should do something together, for sure. Last year when I interviewed you, you gave your opinion on Paula Deen's dishonesty to her fan base regarding her diabetes. What are your thoughts on her about face with her honesty about some racist terms she used in her past? Anthony: Well, testifying under oath tends to do that, make you tell the truth [laughs]. It was a legal deposition, you know. Honestly, I thought the whole thing was pretty horrendous. The same people who were enabling her two minutes earlier, suddenly dropped her like a rock. I may not like her act, I may not think much of her, but I thought the way that everybody was so happy to be doing business with her one minute, and then to see the mob fall upon her and kick her in the street, so to speak, it's not pretty. I thought it was pretty ugly, and it gave me no satisfaction at all. I'd really like to hear your thoughts on the seal hunting situation in Canada. Anthony: If you find the seal hunt repellent, don't buy seal products. Demonstrate against them, or whatever. People of conscience can have different opinions. What I do object to here, is a bunch of cynical activists convinced a bunch of well-meaning chefs to boycott the entire Canadian seafood industry. A seal isn't even seafood. By putting pressure on the many, they extorted from the few. I just thought it was in extraordinarily poor taste. Look, these are people who live far from the situation. I just think there was a lot of dishonesty and misrepresentation in the process. I saw good-hearted chefs being used to ill purpose. I think there's plenty of room for honest people to disagree on this issue, I just really didn't like the way it was done. I'm not an advocate for seal hunting, but I'm definitely against the cynical use of my former colleagues to extort honest fishermen who have absolutely nothing to do with the issue, especially when it's done by people that are far away from the situation. If these numbnuts want to stop some animal cruelty, let them go after the Colonel.
What's your favorite vacation destination not named Brazil?
Ottavia: [Laughs] Japan. It's one of those places, especially when I was in Tokyo, where I just didn't want to leave. I was ready to abandon everything and just move there permanently. I've always been a fan of everything Japanese. I think there is even a name for that, Wopanese. I've been obsessed with Japan since I was a little girl.
I'm a big fan of Manga, Anime... I have toys, dolls, magical wands. I just found myself surrounded by people who didn't think my obsession was weird. I love it, and I could live there, for sure.
I love the food, and the people, and their culture. I would live in Tokyo, I think. I found a great jiu-jitsu school that's affiliated with Rickson Gracie, so that's it. I don't need much else.
Since both of you are writing now, do you find it difficult to put time aside to just write, or is it something you have to do on the fly when the moment presents itself?
Anthony: I'm not a man of regular habits, so if I have to write, it's mostly writing voice-overs and writing for the shows. I wake up in the morning and I do it first thing. I just do it until it's done.
Ottavia: I enjoy writing if I have something interesting to write about. I don't like to have an assignment and I don't like to do things on a regular basis. If it's not fun for me, it's just a struggle. If I have a fun, interesting story, then it just flows.
You told me last year that you like oddball foods and will try almost anything. Have you taken to any new strange delicacies?
Ottavia: Um, not really, that I can think of.
Anthony: These big bags of frozen, microwaveable cauliflower that stink out the entire apartment.
Ottavia: I also eat a lot of squash. I order it from the vegan restaurant around the corner. I eat pounds and pound of it while I watch TV.
I know you guys issued a challenge to chefs to roll, but have you also considered getting Renzo, Igor and any of the other jiu-jitsu guys to cook for an episode on Anthony's show?
Ottavia: Oh yes!
Anthony: We've been talking about that for a while. I definitely think I'd like to collaborate on that. Renzo and I have talked about it over Twitter, about us doing a feijoada.
Ottavia: The school just had our annual Christmas dinner at the Brazilian steakhouse, and those guys just love to eat.
Anthony: More and more chefs are doing [Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu], too. Dave Chang is doing it and Mark Vetri rolls now. I think I might have gotten Ludo Lefebvre interested, so I suspect we'll be seeing more chefs involved.
You compared your holiday meal planning to the taking of the beach at Normandy. Describe that in a little more detail.
Anthony: We're totally squared away. I have a plan and plenty of prior preparation. I take that beach and I take it well. Everything will go perfectly.
"I make a stunt turkey, okay? I'll roast a whole turkey just for presentation, so when I pull it out of the oven, everyone will go, ‘Ooooh, look at the nice turkey.'"
I make a stunt turkey, okay? I'll roast a whole turkey just for presentation, so when I pull it out of the oven, everyone will go, ‘Ooooh, look at the nice turkey.' In fact, I've already prepared another turkey, taken it off the bone, and it's sitting there in breast and thigh and drumstick sections, waiting for me to slice into perfect, paper thin domino slices, shingled across a mountain of stuffing, which has also been cooked separately and pre-positioned. I basically attack my home holiday dinners like I did when I worked in restaurants on Thanksgiving or Christmas. Old habits die hard.
Ottavia: And I'll be cleaning. He cooks like he was in a restaurant kitchen.
Anthony: I'm used to underlings.
Ottavia: But there is a dishwasher there. He's throwing stuff around, and at the end of the day we have to clean the ceiling and everything. He cooks with the abandon of someone who knows there is a dishwasher ready.
Anthony: I need somebody mopping my brow like a surgeon, periodically.
With the holidays right around the corner, do you both make the menus, or is "taking the beach of Normandy" strictly an Anthony project?
Ottavia: Oh no. That's his thing. I wake up Christmas morning, go to the academy and train. I come back, shower, set the table and eat. I don't even want to see what he's doing there.
Anthony: My daughter and I will be taking charge of this operation.
How did you come to be involved with the Live To Fight charity?
Ottavia: I was doing a seminar for the late Frank Edge at Renzo's. Kristen Brown, who is the CEO of Live To Fight came by, and when she heard what we were doing, she was very enthusiastic and wanted to help. We kind of bonded, and she had this idea and wanted to know if I would like to get involved. Her enthusiasm was contagious, so of course I said yes. We got together with a bunch of other people; Chris Weidman is on the board of directors. She created Live To Fight with our help. Right now we have an IndieGoGo campaign going now with some great perks.
People have been very reactive, UFC fighters and people in the MMA community in general. We are here to help people in the MMA community that are suffering from life-threatening illness. Fighters, training partners, families, children...it's great. More and more people are asking for our help, so we really hope more people will be willing to help us to help those in need.
What's something we can look forward to in 2014 from the two of you?
Anthony: [Laughs] I hope I can get my second stripe on my white belt before 2014 is up.
Ottavia: I'll keep competing. I just started going back to Muay Thai again, and I'm doing both now. I might take a Muay Thai fight just for fun.
I started watching a lot of kickboxing with Glory. I missed a little bit of the show the other night because my husband came home from Mexico. I watched both live shows in New York. It's a fantastic production and it's such an entertaining, fast paced, knockout filled event. It kind of made me want to go back and do a little bit of kickboxing, and maybe, maybe, maybe I will take like an ammy match just for fun.
Obviously, my main focus will always be on jiu-jitsu, and I'll be competing at the Pan-Ams in March. Then I'll just see what happens and take it from there.
Anthony: I'd also like to mention that Mark ‘Fightshark' Miller's first book, his memoir titled Pain Don't Hurt, will be coming out from my imprint, Bourdain Ecco Books, sometime early in 2014.
You can follow Anthony via his Twitter account, @Bourdain and Ottavia via her Twitter account, @OttaviaBourdainIn recent months, the area of the so-called Syrian-Jordanian-Iraqi triangle has seen fighting, negotiations, armistice, the breakup of old coalitions and the propping up of new ones. Over the past few weeks, the Russian media have
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ONG PICS TO COME SOON!
WHERE YOU COME IN
While I long to become the Monmouth Coffee of the tea world, I have to start somewhere and that somewhere in my case is in a van! Yes, I want to convert my beautiful 1974 Citroen H van into an all singing, all dancing (well, functional at least) mobile tea bar, which will be parked up in different spots around London depending where the thirsty tea-drinkers need me most...But here’s where you come in. To launch the Good & Proper van onto the streets of London and find out for myself if you love tea as much as I think you do, I need your help. Although I am proud to say I have raised a lot of the funds myself, I don't have enough to cover fitting out the van, the very place from which I want to serve my teas.
My funds have gone towards buying all the teas, and some of the farms I am sourcing them from are small, family-run businesses so I have to order a certain volume of tea and pay fair prices in order to make it worthwhile for them. I have also ordered all my supplies, from wood stirrers and napkins to the tea packaging itself, and the environmentally-friendly kind costs that little bit more. Finally, I have found and bought the van itself.
What I need your help with is turning this:
into this:
It's not an overly complicated fit out, but in order to brew and serve the teas properly, I need the basics - that means flooring, worktops, a shelf to store the teas, a shelf where customers can add milk and sugar, two health & safety-stipulated sinks, a small fridge, a griddle (for crumpets!), gas supply, lights, water and waste tanks and of course fitting the all-important water boiler. It might not sound like much, but it adds up to a scary amount - £10, 000 to be exact. So I am asking for your support to get the Good & Proper van up and running on the streets of London, the starting point for what will hopefully be a long and exciting journey!
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I will also be offering backers our super-convenient Good & Proper in-cup brewer, which makes brewing loose leaf teas a bit less scary...
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ILLUSTRATED POSTCARD
So there it is, thanks for listening #chuffedyoureadthisfar
Emilie xPublic Pays for Fukushima While Nuclear Industry Profits
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Mar 12 2013 (IPS) - Two years after Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, the country faces 100 to 250 billion dollars in cleanup and compensation costs, tens of thousands of displaced people and widespread impacts of radiation.
The nuclear industry and its suppliers made billions from building and operating Fukushima’s six reactors, but it is the Japanese government and its citizens who are stuck with all the costly “fallout” of the disaster.
The laws in Canada and Japan are designed to protect the nuclear companies, not the people living near their reactors.
“People’s lives were destroyed and we will be paying trillions of yen in tax money because of the Fukushima disaster,” said Hisayo Takada, an energy campaigner with Greenpeace Japan.
“The nuclear industry, other than Tepco (Tokyo Electric Power Co), has paid nothing as they are specially protected by the law,” Takada told IPS.
On Mar. 11, 2011, Japan experienced a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and resulting tsunami that badly damaged Tepco’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Three of six reactors suffered a meltdown, and reactor unit four was damaged. The Fukushima accident has been rated at the highest level (7) of the International Atomic Energy Agency scale, the same as the Chernobyl accident.
A year after the disaster, Tepco was taken over by the Japanese government because it couldn’t afford the costs to get the damaged reactors under control. By June of 2012, Tepco had received nearly 50 billion dollars from the government.
The six reactors were designed by the U.S. company General Electric (GE). GE supplied the actual reactors for units one, two and six, while two Japanese companies Toshiba provided units three and five, and Hitachi unit four. These companies as well as other suppliers are exempted from liability or costs under Japanese law.
Many of them, including GE, Toshiba and Hitachi, are actually making money on the disaster by being involved in the decontamination and decommissioning, according to a report by Greenpeace International.
“The nuclear industry and governments have designed a nuclear liability system that protects the industry, and forces people to pick up the bill for its mistakes and disasters,” says the report, “Fukushima Fallout“.
“If nuclear power is as safe as the industry always claims, then why do they insist on liability limits and exemptions?” asked Shawn-Patrick Stensil, a nuclear analyst with Greenpeace Canada.
Nuclear plant owner/operators in many countries have liability caps on how much they would be forced to pay in case of an accident. In Canada, this liability cap is only 75 million dollars. In the United Kingdom, it is 220 million dollars. In the U.S., each reactor owner puts around 100 million dollars into a no-fault insurance pool. This pool is worth about 10 billion dollars.
“Suppliers are indemnified even if they are negligent,” Stensil told IPS.
Japanese nuclear operators are required to carry 1.5 billion dollars in insurance – not nearly enough for the estimated 100 to 250 billion dollars in decommissioning and liability costs for Fukushima. Suppliers like GE are explicitly exempt from any liability, even if defects in their equipment contributed to the disaster.
“The laws in Canada and Japan are designed to protect the nuclear companies, not the people living near their reactors,” Stensil said.
Radiation levels around Fukushima reactors are still high, too high for humans to work near in some places. The World Health Organisation has warned that one-third of workers face increased risks of cancer. Robots have failed and remote cameras cannot reveal the state of the damaged nuclear fuel. The fuel is still hot and requires massive amounts of water to cool, but the plant is running out of storage space for the radioactive water.
Tepco management acknowledges removal of the 11,000 radioactive fuel assemblies won’t begin until 2021. Decommissioning of the entire plant will take at least 40 years.
“We warned that Japan’s nuclear power plants could be subjected to much stronger earthquakes and much bigger tsunamis than they were designed to withstand,” said Philip White of the Citizens’ Nuclear Information Centre, an NGO based in Tokyo.
“Shockingly, this danger of tsunami-caused meltdowns had been publicised since 2008 in documents issued by the Japan Nuclear Energy Safety Organization, but plant owners effectively ignored this contingency,” said Alexander Likhotal, president of Green Cross International.
“It was the failure of human action to take the proper safety precautions against known, highly possible, natural threats that resulted in such a disaster,” Likhotal said in a statement.
Earthquakes are common in Japan, with nearly 2,500 quakes in the past two years. After Fukushima, all 50 of Japan’s nuclear reactors, supplying 30 percent of all electricity, were shut down. Only two have been restarted.
In the months that followed the disaster, the Japanese government launched an ambitious renewable energy programme and phased out nuclear power. About 3.6 gigawatts of solar, wind and geothermal have been approved so far. The goal is 35 percent renewable energy by 2030.
But with the recent election of conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government, nuclear power is back in favour. Nuclear plant operators who promise to make safety improvements such as airplane crash-resistant, waterproof containment and second control rooms will be allowed to resume operation.
“I don’t think this is logical to do it this way,” said Greenpeace Japan’s Takada.For the 2014 MLB All Star Game in Minnesota, official MLB hat supplier New Era arguably started one of the coolest modern sports design traditions when they designed special All Star Game caps that were inspired by the Twins unique paneled batting helmets worn in 1979.
By designing special All Star caps that honored the host team, the potential was set up for new caps every year on All Star night to tell a different story about that city's uniform history or local culture, while also allowing the game a rare chance to have some fun and get creative with their usually sacrosanct brands -- and increase merchandise sales in the process.
So I set out to show what I think the caps could look like if that tradition is continued for this year's All Star Game to be held in Cincinnatti.Here it is, the seventh of January. I had just gotten home from the gym and sat down to enjoy my morning after work out ritual of O.J. and Reddit when there was a knock at the door. I hadn't been checking the site anymore in regards to the Secret Santa since my first one had flaked and I had given up hope to the internet secret santa games of the future, so I was really surprised that it was my rematch Secret Santa's gift! There were three packages and I was ecstatic! The first was a pair of Corgi socks. I squealed with laughter at how adorable they were! The joke on reddit that we, as adults, love socks more and more as we get older is very true. The next gift was a large sand timer. This is coincidentally one of the most commonly used inside jokes I have with my fellow King of the Hill fans, but I had never mentioned it on Reddit. There is an episode where Peggy goes to see a con on death row and gets tricked into bringing in cocaine in boggle sand timers. So whenever I'm not ready or need a minute, I say "Wes needs more time......" and motion a sand timer. Long story, I know. But I was instantly in love with the timer! Last, but not least, AsInOptimus did a great job at reddit stalking and found a post I did when I first made an account about how funny the three foot long gummie worms were (and how perverse). A large bag of gummie teeth greeted me in the third package, and they are delicious!
All in all, thank you so much AsInOptimus! You really went above and beyond, and restored my wavering faith in these events. It really meant a lot to me. ^ Happy New Years to you as well! And that timer will definitely be used to monitor my Reddit time haha.Get our daily newsletter Upgrade your inbox and get our Daily Dispatch and Editor's Picks.
WITH his bellicose bombast, theatrical gestures and dodgy jokes, Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's president for the past 11 years, has turned himself into one of the world's most recognisable and controversial rulers. His fans salute him as a saviour for the downtrodden of the planet, a man who is leading a grass roots revolution against American imperialism and its local sepoys. But to many others, including this newspaper, he has come to embody a new, post-cold-war model of authoritarian rule which combines a democratic mandate, populist socialism and anti-Americanism, as well as resource nationalism and carefully calibrated repression.
This model has proved surprisingly successful across the world. Versions are to be found in countries as disparate and distinct as Iran, Russia, Zimbabwe and Sudan. In one way or another, these regimes claim to have created a viable alternative to liberal democracy.
In Mr Chávez's case, that claim has been backed up above all by oil. On the one hand, he has deployed oil revenues abroad to gain allies, and to sustain the Castro brothers in power in Cuba. On the other, having kicked out Western multinationals, he has signed investment deals with state-owned oil companies. Last month China agreed to lend Venezuela $20 billion, mainly for oil development. Mr Chávez has armed his revolution with Russian jets, tanks and rifles (albeit bought on tick). Meanwhile, a Spanish judge accuses his government of sheltering members of ETA, the Basque terrorist group. Intercepted e-mails from leaders of Colombia's FARC guerrillas suggest that they have received help, and possibly arms, through Venezuela. Of course Venezuela's government denies such claims. So just how much of a menace is Mr Chávez, and what, if anything, can be done about him?
Certainly his threats against Colombia—which include a total trade embargo if Juan Manuel Santos, a former defence minister, wins this month's presidential election—and the evidence of his veiled support for the FARC are troubling. They are a constant, if so far manageable, source of regional tension. And his efforts to build a block based on self-proclaimed “revolutions”, anti-Americanism and managed trade in the heart of democratic Latin America have served to undermine the very cause of regional integration that he claims to champion. But rhetoric aside, his influence in the region peaked a couple of years ago. He lost one ally, albeit in regrettable circumstances, when Honduras's president, Manuel Zelaya, was overthrown last year. Several others are on the defensive.
Much more important is the damage Mr Chávez is doing to his own country. His “21st-century socialism” is a precarious construction. The brief fall in the oil price of 2008-09 was enough to sink Venezuela's economy into stagflation—even as the rest of Latin America is enjoying vigorous economic recovery. Venezuelans are suffering declining real wages, persistent shortages of staple goods (meat is the latest to become scarce) and daily power cuts.
The blackouts are in part the result of drought. But they are also the most dramatic sign that the bill for a decade of mismanagement of the economy and of public services is now falling due (see article). There are plenty of other ugly portents. In one of the world's biggest oil exporters hard currency is running short: to buy a dollar in the tolerated parallel market now requires almost twice as much local currency as the official exchange rate (and three times more than the privileged rate for “essential imports”). Investors rate the country's debt as the riskiest of anywhere. Crime and corruption are flourishing.
Awkwardly for Mr Chávez, all this is happening when he faces a legislative election in September, the prelude to a vital presidential ballot in December 2012. That points to the contradiction at the heart of his project. He sees his revolution as permanent and irreversible. But he derives his legitimacy from the ballot box. He has been elected three times, and won four referendums. He has hollowed out Venezuela's democracy, subjugating the courts, bullying the media and intimidating opponents. But he has been unable, or unwilling, to disregard or repress opposition to the same degree as Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or even Russia's Vladimir Putin, let alone the Castro brothers in Cuba.
Public opinion still matters in Venezuela. Remarkably, opinion polls show that two Venezuelans out of five still support Mr Chávez (higher than the proportion of the British electors who voted for the Conservative Party, the senior partner in the country's new coalition government). That is tribute to his skill in convincing the poor that he is their champion, to the opposition's mistakes, to years of record oil prices and to the ruthlessness with which he ransacks the economy for the short-term benefit of his supporters. It means he is unlikely to fade away. But provided that the opposition comes up with a plausible alternative, it is not fanciful to imagine that in 2012 Venezuela will face a stark choice: Mr Chávez or democracy.
All the evidence is that Venezuelans, including many chavistas, are democrats and want to remain so. But Mr Chávez is pushing on regardless with his revolution, nationalising ever more businesses, expropriating private properties and selectively locking up or harassing his opponents. So the question increasingly being asked in Caracas is whether Mr Chávez's rule will end peacefully or not.
The answer will lie largely with Venezuelans themselves. But outsiders, especially in Latin America, can play their part, by urging that the opposition receive guarantees that it can take part both this year and in 2012 on equal terms. That goes particularly for democratic Brazil, whose president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has embraced Mr Chávez far more than is desirable for his own country's long-term interest. Mr da Silva has helped entrench prosperity, freedom and democracy in Brazil. He should hope the same happens for Venezuela. Mr Chávez, unfortunately, is not the man to bring that about.Here’s a thing we didn’t know about a favorite term, often deployed with derision, for the annual college football title: The term “mythical national championship” actually dates back to 1921, a linguistic remedy for an itch that wouldn’t hold a nation in thrall for decades to come. It’s a perfect descriptor for a title bestowed on the winner of a game that selects its combatants basically by magic, alongside a $30,000 football made of crystal. Anyway, enter Auburn, and a committee tasked with deciding whether the Tigers should claim an additional seven national titles on top of their currently recognized two. This is not a new practice — certainly not in the SEC — and is something of a pastime among Auburn’s chief rivals.
Most of 21st-century American society has been erected on foundations of hurt feelings, and Auburn, like any program with that long a history, armors itself to a certain extent in persecution complexes, with roots both real and understandable and less real but immensely entertaining. The Tigers are considering assuaging the ghosts of 2004 (and maybe some literal ghosts of 1910) with some words and stadium accessorizing, and here is where we venture out on what looks like a sturdy limb but is unsupported by anything resembling a stat line: Let them.
Remember how the BCS used to select the best teams? Did you ever really manage to attain anything other than a vague understanding that someday, your team would somehow be wronged by a cabal of wizards after reading through this? Have you seen the convolution that’s about to ensue? Is it not entirely understandable that in the face of such grim forebodings of future feeling-hurtiness, a natural desire follows to just let folks award titles to themselves and save on time and rented conference room snacks?
Let Auburn, specifically, do this, because there is the matter of Yellowhammer State supremacy to consider, and however fleetly they might have outpaced the Tide on the field in November, the big cats of the Plains lag in the murky distance when it comes to numbers of glory years embroidered on things.
But let any school, generally, do this, and in doing so maybe rein in the degree to which we allow a bunch of nylon pennants stuck on an enemy stadium wall to affect our emotional well-being. You, personally you, cannot stop Auburn from claiming any national title it wishes, and you shouldn’t try, not when the results are so obviously beneficial to both the claimants and the slighted, who either get desired revisions to school history pamphlets or get to vent spleens thereon. Show some … not gratitude, but maybe simple recognition, that this, like every mythical national championship, serves at least in part to pass the time between now and Labor Day weekend. There’s a separate Jesus for football, whom we made up, and the opportunity to blow off some steam with the guy two desks down who wears the wrong color branded polo on your bimonthly Team Spirit Thursdays is just one of his many, many gifts to you. The phantom claimed title is, like the mythical national championship itself, a deliverer to sports fans staring down an offseason that can stretch as long as eight months: It gives us something to fight over in the long months when there’s no actual football over which to fight.
Back to Auburn again: Let them call the 2004 title their own. Let them claim 1910, and any years in between. Let them grow overfond of banners with years on them and claim years they had no business winning six games. Let them take some of Alabama’s. We’re reminded, watching the World Cup, that besides math and science education, America also lags behind the rest of the developed world in another arena where we’re actually programmed to excel: institutionalized athletic spite. Snatching titles from the Tide would provide a catalytic spark to a rivalry that hasn’t actually needed it since the advent of Gus Malzahn, but we’re working with baking soda and vinegar here, and don’t you want to see what happens? Hell, we didn’t see Kermit Whitfield’s 100-yard kick return in the BCS National Championship, and most of the rest of the media were in the elevators heading down to field level; let them say that never happened and take 2013. Everyone who could try to stop them is, at best, a lawyer. We could just take matters into our own hands and start bestowing titles ourselves. It doesn’t sound hard. We could do math. We know a guy.
History is written not necessarily by the victors, but by the tenacious. Let Alabama claim victory in the 2013 Iron Bowl with straight faces. Let this touch off a rhetorical arms race the likes of which the sporting world has never seen, played on a Risk board that spans states where all the pieces are chicken wing bones. Let Bryant-Denny and Jordan-Hare be festooned with banners dating back to the dawn of recorded time. Let postapocalyptic nomads of the future, sifting through the rubble of both, find remnants and build competing religions around them. (Let our inbox now run over with angry retorts that neither football program could ever be laid low by an event as piddly as the sixth extinction.) And let talk radio ring, from whatever’s left of the coast-to-coast, with competing excoriations of those whose ragtag bands of survivors did not endure The Invasion/The Great Floods/The Ice Age/The Clown Flu with nearly the grit, heart, and guts of your own.Have you ever enjoyed wings from Shiftys in Syracuse? Thrillist put together a list of 10 of the best wing joints outside of New York City and they put Syracuse on the list.
Shiftys is one of those wing places you and your buddies go to and make bets with one another. Shifty's claims they have Syracuse's hottest Buffalo sauce " The F Bomb ". Thrillist explained how they make one of the hottest sauces of the state:
Made completely from scratch using cider vinegar, an array of hot peppers, horseradish, and a few secret ingredients, it's not for the faint of heart. It's not even for the moderately strong of heart. It packs the punch of a gimmicky, sign-a-contract-before-eating sauce (which are almost always made with artificial ingredients), but delivers much more flavor. For wimps, Shifty's makes terrific Buffalo wings in the milder rangers as well as a multitude of interesting novelty sauces."
Shiftys wasn't one of the only wing places in our region to get recognized. Abigails in Seneca Falls made the list, Parkers in Auburn, and Bombers Burrito Bar in Albany. I've been to Bombers a number of occasions, and I do agree that they have some of the best wings in the state.
What wing join in CNY do you call your favorite?The USA coach, Bruce Arena, has hinted he may soon leave his post with the national team in an interview with the Washington Post.
The US missed out on qualification for the World Cup for the first time since 1986 when they lost to Trinidad & Tobago on Tuesday night, and Arena said he is unlikely to lead the team in their attempt to reach the 2022 tournament.
“Obviously, I have no interest in going on a four-year cycle right now,” Arena told the Post. “I’ll do whatever is right. That is the approach I am going to take.”
Will missing out on the World Cup kill US soccer... or save it? Read more
Arena took over the team last year after Jürgen Klinsmann was fired following a run of poor results. But Arena failed to improve US fortunes and they suffered dismal losses to Costa Rica and Trinidad & Tobago as they missed out on qualification.
Arena said his team had been unlucky against Trinidad & Tobago but conceded the fault ultimately lay with the team he leads. “Look at the two goals we conceded: how bizarre,” he said. “Does it get any more bizarre than that? So you are down two goals, you get a goal early in the second half and there’s plenty of time to get a second goal. We had our chances. But what can you say? Even despite conceding those two bizarre goals, we still positioned ourselves to get out of there with a point. I can’t look anywhere else except inside our team.”
US Soccer have called a press conference for Friday morning, leading to speculation that Arena or the organization’s president, Sunil Gulati, may stand down. There have also been calls for the federation to address the way it develops young players after the national team were outclassed by teams with inferior resources and revenue.
But Arena, who had a long and distinguished career as a domestic coach in the US, said clubs need to do a better job of nurturing players. “Why do people think US Soccer is in charge of player development? Players play in clubs,” said Arena, who won five MLS Cups during spells in charge of DC United and LA Galaxy. “Why is that US Soccer’s responsibility? They support the clubs in this country, they support player development, but that’s not their responsibility.
“They are a governing body that runs our national team programs. They have coaching education. All of that has to get better, but the infrastructure now for player development in the United States is set. There will be more players developed over the years. Every MLS club has an academy program. Everyone has done a lot of leg work and invested a lot of money to get it going.”There may not be a player in the entire NFL that the term ‘quiet achiever’ applies to more than Redskins Fullback Darrel Young. Not only does Young dedicate a considerable amount of his own time to working with charities and visiting US troops overseas, he does it all without promoting himself on social media; he does not have a Twitter, Instagram or Facebook account.
A rare specimen in 2015, indeed.
Although Darrel Young may spend his off-seasons visiting troops in places like Honduras, and El Salvador, during football season for the past few years he has been providing the Redskins with an unusual combination of blocking prowess, athleticism, and versatility from the Fullback position.
NFL 2014 – Fullback Touchdowns
Player Snaps Rush TD Rec TD Darrel Young (WAS) 215 3 2 Bruce Miller (SEA) 473 0 2 John Kuhn (GB) 195 1 0 Marcel Reese (OAK) 398 0 1 Anthony Sherman (KC) 254 0 1
In 2014 Young led the NFL in touchdowns by a Fullback, and was an integral part of all of the Redskins 4 wins last season.
Young’s 2014 Touchdowns
Young scored the Redskins only touchdown in their season opener in Houston, with a Fullback lead dive that required Young to extend the ball over the plane. (JJ Watt blocked the Extra Point kick).
In the Week 2 game versus Jacksonville, only minutes after Quarterback Robert Griffin III went down with a broken ankle, Young hooked up with Kirk Cousins for a 20 yard receiving touchdown that put the Redskins into the lead and kept them there.
The first NFC East division matchup in 2014 saw Young again making it to the endzone, this time catching a 5 yard pass from Cousins on an outside slant route.
Young again scored against the Eagles, this time in Week 16, and this time making it into the endzone not once but twice. Both times with 1 yard carries from the goal line, and both times with identical results; six points on the board.
Under-utilized?
Given the ability to both run and catch the ball, it’s fair to wonder why Darrel Young wasn’t given more opportunities last season. After starting the season so well with touchdowns in each of the first 3 games, Young was a victim of a wildly inconsistent 2014 offense that famously included multiple Quarterback changes. With this instability came an impact on his snaps; in week two vs Jacksonville Young had 26 snaps, yet in week five vs Seattle he had 11, and in week six vs Arizona he had just 5 snaps. And that was not even his lowest total for the season.
Following the shut-out loss at home vs St Louis, where Young was only on the field for a grand total of 3 snaps, I spoke to him in the locker-room and asked him about the lack of apparent consistency in the gameplan when it came to the utilization of the fullback. This was his response:
“I don’t know man. Every week is different… It’s frustrating, but we’ll see what happens from here”.
What to expect in 2015?
Given that Young demonstrated to rookie Head Coach Jay Gruden in 2014 that he can be trusted with the ball, it will be interesting to see just how much that changes things moving forward into 2015. Especially given that new Redskins Offensive Line coach and Running Game coach Bill Callahan will be in charge of the ground game.
Last year in Dallas, Coach Callahan did not have anywhere near the level of talent and versatility at the Fullback position that Young brings to the table (Dallas Fullback Tyler Clutts had 163 snaps in 2014, and did not get any carries at all). This year, Young represents a secret weapon that Callahan can add to his repertoire, both on the ground and in the air.
Amazingly, Darrel Young has never fumbled the ball, nor has he ever dropped a pass in his entire career.
For his part in all of this, Young told reporters earlier this year that he wants to continue working with his team mates to try and get better, and to try and get more wins on the board. He also specifically mentioned that he wants to continue working with Alfred Morris, as his lead blocker;
“You know what you’re going to get from your O-linemen at the first level. Good things happen, bad things happen, but the big runs are what happens on the next level – the linebackers, secondary – so for me, personally, I want to get the hell out of Alfred’s way and be better for him, open holes for him, give him clearer reads.”
With an improved offensive line and the addition of an elite-caliber coach in Bill Callahan working with both the line and the backs, Young is a Redskins player who could see huge results in 2015.
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Powered by Facebook CommentsI’m using SFML for pretty much everything in my game engine. I started using it to help me learn C++ and never left. It’s pretty amazing; cross-platform, hardware accelerated 2d and one of the best APIs I’ve ever used. It’s a genuine pleasure to work with when it comes to expressiveness and simplicity.
I’ve recently been working on adding rich-text support to my engine, and while SFML does come with text rendering built in, it’s very simplistic. A text instance can only have one color and combination of styles in total, so if want to italicize a single word in a sentence you’re out of luck; you’ll have to split the text up into multiple chunks and position them independently. I’ve written a class that handles this all automatically, along with a simple markup parser to manage formatting. You can get the source here, and discuss it over at the SFML forums on the topic I made for it.
I’ve done some parser work before (notably for Slang), so the markup interpreter was fairly straightforward. All formatting is done with single-character delimiters (*bold*, ~italic~, and _underlined_), and the color tags can contain a hex value or color name. I’m sure it can use some optimizing, but so far it’s quite fast and works exactly as well as the vanilla Text class.
If you haven’t used SFML before, I highly recommend checking it out! The fact that I was able to put all of this together in just one day is a testament to the power and ease of use that it provides.As I hinted at in my CNN.com column of yesterday, those self-identified free-speech champions who are crying in their Cheerios today over Citizens United v. the FEC are able to get to what many of us think is a contradictory position by pretending that the free-speech objection to campaign finance reform is a smokescreen for enabling the Corporatey Corporates (and their puppets, the Republican Party). For instance, The New York Times editorial board:
Disingenuously waving the flag of the First Amendment, the court's conservative majority has paved the way for corporations to use their vast treasuries to overwhelm elections and intimidate elected officials into doing their bidding. [...] [A] conservative majority has distorted the political system to ensure that Republican candidates will be at an enormous advantage in future elections.
Or The American Prospect's Scott Lemieux:
The central line of argument in Justice Kennedy's majority opinion -- that the First Amendment does not permit distinctions based on the identity of the speaker -- is superficially attractive. The problem is, there's no reason to believe that any of the justices believe it.
Lemieux at least points to other Supreme Court cases to build a case for hypocrisy, but what's striking here is the inability to even pretend to take debate opponents at face value. When arguments are disingenuous, that apparently obviates the need to engage them. Thus, petulant hand-waving like: "Libertarians agree that letting corporations have more influence over the political process than ordinary citizens is excellent for the cause of freedom."
Ordinary citizens like...Russ Howard and Steve Cicero, who launched an unsuccessful grassroots recall campaign against a politician they considered corrupt, then were given a fine for campaign finance violations eight times the amount of money they had raised for it? Or how about (of all things!) the Supreme Court case in question, where documentary filmmakers faced jail if they broadcast a movie that made a politician look bad during election season? Or how about this description in yesterday's decision of what regulated political speech looks like in practice?
Campaign finance regulations now impose "unique and complex rules" on "71 distinct entities." These entities are subject to separate rules for 33 different types of political speech. The FEC has adopted 568 pages of regulations, 1,278 pages of explanations and justifications for those regulations, and 1,771 advisory opinions since 1975. In fact, after this Court in WRTL [the 2007 Wisconsin Right to Life case] adopted an objective "appeal to vote" test for determining whether a communication was the functional equivalent of express advocacy, the FEC adopted a two-part, 11-factor balancing test to implement WRTL's ruling. This regulatory scheme may not be a prior restraint on speech in the strict sense of that term, for prospective speakers are not compelled by law to seek an advisory opinion from the FEC before the speech takes place. As a practical matter, however, given the complexity of the regulations and the deference courts show to administrative determinations, a speaker who wants to avoid threats of criminal liability and the heavy costs of defending against FEC enforcement must ask a governmental agency for prior permission to speak.
The plight of "ordinary citizens" is precisely the reason why non-Republicans like me (let alone many conservatives who refused to support John McCain) opposed the campaign finance laws struck down yesterday. When a law requires any group of two or more people who raise $5,000 for the purposes of making a political statement to adhere to a blizzard of federal regulations subject to fines, that law by definition chokes off the "voices of everyday Americans" that President Barack Obama, in his ridiculous reaction to the decision yesterday, expressed outrage on behalf of. Free-speech campaign-finance enthusiasts are willing to censor or chill those small voices for the greater purpose of attempting (and largely failing) to blunt the political activity of hated Corporations (or "Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests," in the words of a president who has been bailing out Wall Street banks and crafting legislative deals with health insurance companies and other powerful interests for a year now). What campaign-finance supporters are not willing to do, at least most of the time, is admit that they're making any tradeoff on political expression at all.
Watch former FEC chairman Brad Smith break it down, on Reason TV.Image caption Crick wrote to his son in 1953 including a sketch of the DNA structure
A letter written by scientist Francis Crick describing his discovery of the double helix shape of DNA has been sold for $5.3m (£3.45m).
An anonymous buyer purchased it at a New York auction on Wednesday.
Crick wrote to his 12-year-old son Michael in March 1953 describing the discovery and including a sketch.
The Nobel Prize medal given to Crick for the breakthrough is expected to fetch between $500,000 (£325,000) and "several million" at auction later.
Professor Crick, who died aged 88 in 2004, helped discover the "secret of life" at Cambridge University in 1953.
'Stained lab coat'
Image caption The letter described Crick and Watson's "beautiful" discovery
In the seven-page letter Crick told how he and James Watson found the copying mechanism "by which life comes from life".
It was written more than a month before the pair officially published their work.
The letter began: "My dear Michael, Jim Watson and I have probably made a most important discovery.
"We have built a model for des-oxy-ribose-nucleic-acid (read carefully) called DNA for short."
He described it as a "beautiful" structure and included a sketch of it, underneath which he wrote: "The model looks much nicer than this."
The letter concluded: "Read this carefully so that you will understand it. When you come home we will show you the model.
"Lots of love, Daddy.''
The letter was expected to fetch about $1m (£652,000), a spokesman for Christie's said.
It was a record for a letter sold at auction, he added.
Crick, along with James Watson and Maurice Wilkins, was given the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for "discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material".
The medal will be sold later at Heritage Auctions in New York together with the cheque and diploma Crick received as part of the prize and one of his lab coats, which has "various stains on it".
His family will donate
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STEVE DOOCY (CO-HOST): Had he [Trump] known at the time -- keep in mind, he has not been a politician very long -- had he known that when you're in the Department of Justice, if you're involved in any way with some sort of an investigation, you've got to recuse yourself. Had Jeff Sessions told him, anybody from the Department of Justice told him that, probably would have said, you know what, I love Jeff Sessions, he was the first guy from the U.S. Senate who helped me out, but you know what, Jeff? The AG job is not for you.... EARHARDT: The president's just saying what's on his mind. This is the biggest investigation, this is the biggest thing on Jeff Sessions's table or on his desk, and he's recusing himself from it, and that's what the president is saying. He's saying, you know, it's like you getting a job and getting hired and you don't do the big project at work. DOOCY: Sure. Keep in mind, Donald Trump is a fighter, and he wants people who are on his team who are fighters as well. He doesn't want somebody who's got to fold before they can fight.
Other Fox News personalities on-board the "fire everybody" train include Trump sycophant Sean Hannity and daytime anchor Gregg Jarrett. (To no one's surprise, Trump cheerleader and professional right-wing troll Ann Coulter has also been baying for Sessions' dismissal.)
The one thing all of these people have in common is that they have essentially no government or political experience. Following their advice to get rid of Sessions and crack down on Mueller would alienate many of his most devoted allies and cause high-level Democrats to start calling for impeachment.
The move would very clearly be stupid and short-sighted. But since when has that stopped Trump from doing anything? After all, the people on TV told him to do it, so it must be OK.Jester King to release it’s second barrel-aged sour beer refermented with fruit — Omniscience & Proselytism.
Omniscience & Proselytism is brewed with fresh strawberries from Fredericksburg, TX. The fruit was refermented to dryness in oak barrels over the course of a few months.
via Jester King:
“Omniscience & Proselytism is 5.0% alcohol by volume, with a finishing gravity of 1.006 and a pH of 3.4. It is unfiltered, unpasteurized and 100% bottle conditioned. Because we were only able to source a few hundred pounds of strawberries this year, less than five hundred 500ml bottles of Omniscience & Proselytism exist. It will be released at Jester King at our 3rd Annual Funk & Sour Fest on Sunday, October 27th, during Austin Beer Week. We’ll be posting ticket information and more details in the coming weeks. Next year we’ll try to find more Texas strawberries so that we can make a larger batch.”EspañolRepublican Senator Marco Rubio is pushing officials in Congress and the Trump administration to expand a temporary program that would allow Venezuelans fleeing Nicolás Maduro’s dictatorship to remain in the United States.
“In light of the current political, economic, social and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, it is not in the best interests of the United States to deport non-violent Venezuelans back to the country at this time,” he said a letter from March.
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Rubio asks Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Department of National Security Secretary John Kelly to “review conditions in Venezuela and consider granting temporary protection status (TPS) to eligible Venezuelans residing in the United States.”
The TPS program is designed to help people affected by “ongoing armed conflicts, natural disasters, epidemics or other extraordinary conditions” that are temporary, which would apply to Venezuelans currently facing the worst economic and political crisis in their country’s history.
Inflation, corruption and a shortage of medicine and food in Venezuela are some of the major problems that currently plaguing the country. The constant anti-government protests that often end in brutal confrontation are also one of the “extraordinary situations” that the United States government must evaluate in order to expand the TPS program.
Senator Marco Rubio is not the only one who has singled out the TPS as an option. Democratic Governor Gwen Graham has also made public requests to expand the program for Venezuelans.
“Temporary protection status will allow Venezuelans to flee violence, live and work here legally and contribute to the various communities in our state until it is safe for them to return to their homes,” he said in an official statement.
Last week, Democrats Bill Nelson and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, along with Republicans Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Carlos Curbelo, gave their endorsement of program expansion as well.
Source: McClatchy.Fruit and Dispersal
What is dispersal?
After pollination and fertilization have occurred, the next events in a flowering plant’s life cycle involve the development of the offspring, which starts out as an embryo within a seed, which develops in the ovary. If this stage is successful, the next crucial event is dispersal of the seed to a suitable environment for it to germinate, grow, and develop into a reproductive adult. Seeds have a few different ways of being dispersed: expulsion, wind, water, and animals. In flowering plants, the mature ovary — or fruit — has evolved adaptations that increase the success of dispersal.
What do fruit reveal about the way they are dispersed?
Fruits can be classified into one of two broad groups: dry or fleshy. Dry fruits include grains (rice, corn, wheat, etc.) dandelions, sunflower seeds, nuts (acorns, peanuts, hickory nuts, etc.), and legumes (peas, beans, etc.). Fleshy fruits include berries, citrus fruits (oranges, lemons, etc.), drupes (peaches, cherries, etc.), pomes (apples, pears, etc.) and many more. Many produce items we call vegetables — like tomatoes and squash — are actually fleshy fruits.
In general, dry fruits are adapted for dispersal by expulsion, wind, and by attaching to the fur or feathers of animals. A mature pea pod, for example, dries to the point where it pops open, releasing the seeds. The “wings” of maple seeds or the “parachutes” of dandelions carry them in the wind away from the parent plant. People and pets may even have carried seeds away from plants that bear fruit as burrs.
Fleshy fruits tend to be adapted for dispersal by animals, who are attracted to them as food. Perhaps one of the most common means of dispersal is via fruit, which is ingested by animals and distributed in their wastes. There is a large range in size of seeds, which corresponds to the size of the animal that eats them. For example, berries have relatively small seeds and small fruit. Squirrels and birds often disperse these seeds. Conversely, avocados and peaches are quite large and have very large seeds. These large fruits are eaten by larger mammals. Finally, some fleshy fruits, such as coconuts, are adapted to float in water.
The next time you’re at a supermarket, take a look in the produce section and identify all of the fruits. What can they tell you about the way they are dispersed?Sarah Palin
Are there any Republican grown-ups out there, and, if there are, will they ever start coming to the aid of their party?
That sentence could segue into any number of topics, but the one at hand is Sarah Palin, her Saturday-night speech at the Tea Party “convention,” and her morning-after declaration on Fox News that, yes, a White House run is on her mind.
Do responsible Republicans (if the phrase hasn’t lapsed from disuse) really want this pumped-up incarnation of Larry “Lonesome” Rhodes as their standard bearer?
Again, the question could be split up into many parts, but this is the “War Stories” column, so let’s focus on Palin’s take on war and peace.
Here’s the key applause-getting line from that section of her talk:
Treating [terrorists] like a mere law-enforcement matter places our country at great risk because that’s not how radical Islamist extremists are looking at this. They know we’re at war. And to win that war we need a commander-in-chief, not a professor of law.
Obviously, she means to be attacking President Barack Obama, but the real question on the table here is does she believe what she’s saying? Or, to put it another way: Is she a rank opportunist, or does she live on another planet? And of the two possibilities, which is worse?
President Obama was at one time a professor of constitutional law at the University of Chicago, but to suggest that he regards counterterrorism as a “mere” legal matter, or that he’s gun-shy as commander-in-chief, is preposterous.
Obama, after all, has nearly tripled the number of U.S. troops sent to Afghanistan. He has approved nearly twice as many CIA airstrikes against Taliban targets in Pakistan during his first year of office as President Bush did in his final year (65 vs. 36), killing more than twice as many militants in the process (571 vs. 268).
He has sent military trainers to help the Yemeni government fight al-Qaida insurgents. He has continued to boost the military budget. He has maintained the Bush administration’s secret surveillance programs (despite protests from many Democrats). And Palin seems to have forgotten the time, last April, when Obama authorized SEAL sharpshooters to kill the three armed pirates who’d hijacked the merchant ship Maersk Alabama off the coast of Somalia. (The amnesia seems to have afflicted many Republicans, including some who lauded the president at the time.)
As for the underwear bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who nearly blew up a passenger plane on Christmas Day, yes, Obama took three days to comment on the incident—though, as many have since noted, Bush took six days to say anything about the shoe bomber, Richard Reid (and no Democrat made an issue of his reticence).
Reading Abdulmutallab his Miranda rights may have seemed a stretch (Obama the law professor!), but it turns out Reid was read his rights, too. More to the point, in neither case did the suspect use the occasion to clam up. As Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism chief under Presidents Clinton and Bush, has noted, Abdulmutallab briefly went quiet because the FBI agents read him his rights while he was under sedation, but after he woke up, he resumed talking quite freely.
Palin’s words (which she read with a venom unbecoming to one who, by her own admission, hadn’t thought a whit about foreign affairs until 18 months ago) are not merely false. They’re dangerous.
If there is a terrorist attack on the United States in the next few years, we could deal with it more confidently, and respond more effectively, if the president were able to rally a spirit of national unity. George W. Bush was given a chance to do this after Sept. 11 and, despite some initial fumbling, rose well to the occasion, at least for a few months.
But if the Republican Party’s most popular aspirant declares that the sitting president doesn’t know we’re at war, isn’t even a commander-in-chief (and crowds roar at this charge with approval), then Obama would have a much harder time repairing a wounded nation.
Palin, of course, is not alone in this irresponsible fraudulence. Just last week, Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, the House minority leader, casually said that Obama is taking a “pre-Sept. 11” approach to fighting terrorism.
Nobody is suggesting that Boehner run for higher office. But the tea-partiers are screaming, “Run, Sarah, run!” At the Nashville party on Saturday, someone in the audience asked her about the prospects for what he called the “two words that scare liberals—President Palin.”
Let’s be clear on why those words should terrify anyone with a thinking brain. Palin is someone who has clearly never seriously thought through any issue of national importance on her own. She’s excellent at reciting a raucous speech, but she can’t improvise a coherent sentence, which usually reflects an inability to form a coherent idea. (At Nashville, she even had to scribble her five-word legislative agenda on her palm, and glanced down at it during the Q&A.) She is deluded enough to believe (or at least to say Sunday morning on Fox News) that her brief, aborted stint as Alaska’s governor gave her more executive experience than President Obama has even now. She believes that the country should elect leaders, including presumably herself, who seek solutions in “divine intervention.”
Is this how Republicans who aspire to true leadership want to shape their party’s ideas and their country’s discourse? If not, they should hop off the circus wagon now.Two men who kidnapped and raped a woman they met at a Dubai nightclub have their ten-year jail sentences upheld by the Cassation Court.
DUBAI // Two men who kidnapped and raped a British woman after spiking her drink at a Dubai nightclub have had their 10-year jail sentences upheld by the Cassation Court.
The verdict means Younis Jan Ali and Ameen Kaos Najati, who can now be identified, have exhausted the appeals process and must serve the terms. A third attacker remains at large.
The woman was gang raped by the three Iranian men after a night out at the Rock Bottom Cafe in Regent Palace Hotel in Bur Dubai on July 6 last year.
Not knowing her drink had been spiked, she began to feel drunk and left the hotel, hailing a cab to return home. But shortly after she was picked up by a cab she fell asleep on the back seat.
She awoke after a while and asked to stop at an ATM, but still groggy found herself unable to withdraw money and returned to the car and collapsed.
The three Iranian men then pulled up in a red Hyundai and told the taxi driver they knew the woman and would take care of her.
They took her to a flat in Naif where they took turns raping her.
The woman made repeated attempts to escape, but kept getting dragged back by one of the men.
“He told me: ‘You can’t run away’,” the woman recalled. “I noticed one of them filming me and I begged them to let me go but they ignored my pleas and laughed at me, speaking to each other in broken English.”
When the attack was over she was left alone and returned home. The next day she and her flatmate reported the attack to police.
At the Criminal Court last November Ali and Najati, both 20, denied a rape charge. Their defence lawyer claimed the woman fabricated the story. The court did not agree and sentenced them to 10 years in jail to be followed by deportation.
The sentences were upheld by the Appeals and Cassation courts.
[email protected] spray crusader Chuck Bartlebaugh putting on a demonstration to show approximate distances for when to start pulling on the trigger of a can.
As the oldest major bear spray brand (it has been the brand of choice for many bear researchers) and considering Jonkel’s long-standing role in advancing bear conservation, Counter Assault set, in a de-facto way, the high bar for what other bear sprays ought to do.
Before Counter Assault could go to market, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency performed testing on the ingredients to insure they did not permanently harm people and bruins. The agency handed down requirements that all cans hold at least 7.9 ounces of chemicals. A few years after Counter Assault was developed, Matheny got mauled. (He was not carrying the big can of Counter Assault). The product he subsequently developed, UDAP, emerged and it was forced to meet the same standards established by EPA.
A can of Counter Assault casts a spray that lasts between 7.2 and 9.2 seconds. UDAP offers three different sizes of bear spray. Two of those UDAP products, comparable in size to Counter Assault, emit a spray with a duration of around four seconds for one and 5.4 seconds for the other.
While such data might seem wonky and inconsequential, those involved with bear spray say otherwise. They claim that every second matters and so does the intensity of the disorienting agents coming out of a can.
, in layperson’s terms, is that no longer do they suggest cans of spray hold enough repellent that, when the trigger is squeezed, guarantees a continuous blast of ingredients lasting at least six seconds.
The two different can sizes of Counter Assault:; 8.1 fluid ounces with a spray that last seven seconds, and 10.2 ounces with a spray that lasts 9.2 seconds. The spray has a range of between 12 and 30 feet.
Bartlebaugh points in particular to the investigations of Smith, Herrero and colleagues. In one paper,
“Most of the public out there, especially people travelling from urban areas to Yellowstone or Glacier, aren’t that familiar with bear spray and how it works,” Bartlebaugh, who started the non-profit
Bartlebaugh added: “Being well armed with knowledge is the greatest asset for safe travel in grizzly country. Being ignorant is dangerous.”
In general, bear spray has been spectacularly effective and while he stops short of suggesting Counter Assault is superior to UDAP, Bartlebaugh says this: “Every split second you can buy yourself when faced with a charging grizzly matters. You can cram 7.9 ounces of chemical ingredients into a can and meet EPA requirements but what makes the difference is how it is dispensed.”
Bartlebaugh said that decades ago when Bill Pounds went before the bear committee, he asked how many seconds a can of bear spray should last. The reply that came from Chris Servheen [the now retired national grizzly bear recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service] and others was “at least seven seconds” and “the longer the better.”
Here's the link to the
Read the comments to a discussion by retired Idaho State University professor and conservationist Dr. Ralph Maughan at The Wildlife News a decade ago under the heading "
Matheny, whom I've known for decades and interviewed him when UDAP first came on the market, comes across as a sincere man. He and UDAP have been involved in a fierce competition for market share with Counter Assault, with some outdoor gear retailers only carrying one brand or the other. The photo of Matheny’s bloody face, snapped after his fateful encounter with a grizzly down Montana’s Gallatin Canyon, became his attention-grabbing calling card in stores. As the oldest major bear spray brand (it has been the brand of choice for many bear researchers) and considering Jonkel’s long-standing role in advancing bear conservation, Counter Assault set, in a de-facto way, the high bar for what other bear sprays ought to do.Before Counter Assault could go to market, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency performed testing on the ingredients to insure they did not permanently harm people and bruins. The agency handed down requirements that all cans hold at least 7.9 ounces of chemicals. A few years after Counter Assault was developed, Matheny got mauled. (He was not carrying the big can of Counter Assault). The product he subsequently developed, UDAP, emerged and it was forced to meet the same standards established by EPA.A can of Counter Assault casts a spray that lasts between 7.2 and 9.2 seconds. UDAP offers three different sizes of bear spray. Two of those UDAP products, comparable in size to Counter Assault, emit a spray with a duration of around four seconds for one and 5.4 seconds for the other.While such data might seem wonky and inconsequential, those involved with bear spray say otherwise. They claim that every second matters and so does the intensity of the disorienting agents coming out of a can. What the bear committee change means, in layperson’s terms, is that no longer do they suggest cans of spray hold enough repellent that, when the trigger is squeezed, guarantees a continuous blast of ingredients lasting at least six seconds.This unexpected move was shocking to Chuck Bartlebaugh, who, more than any other person in the U.S., has been a bear spray evangelist, a tenacious crusader trying to educate the masses about why bear spray has worked in reducing the number of maulings.Bartlebaugh points in particular to the investigations of Smith, Herrero and colleagues. In one paper, Efficacy of Bear Deterrent Spray in Alaska published in The Journal of Wildlife Management, they wrote: "Some people have been reluctant to rely on bear spray for protection. We believe several reasons contribute to their reluctance. Chief among these is the notion that bear sprays are too weak to dissuade curious or aggressive bears from approaching people. Additionally, some people believe that wind can easily render sprays ineffective and that wind-driven spray may incapacitate the user."“Most of the public out there, especially people travelling from urban areas to Yellowstone or Glacier, aren’t that familiar with bear spray and how it works,” Bartlebaugh, who started the non-profit Be Bear Aware, told me. “They don’t know there are different brands and they certainly don’t know there is a big difference between Mace, pepper spray, and bear spray. And they don’t know that even if you have bear spray, unless you’re able to extract it in seconds, it’s of little use.”Bartlebaugh added: “Being well armed with knowledge is the greatest asset for safe travel in grizzly country. Being ignorant is dangerous.”In general, bear spray has been spectacularly effective and while he stops short of suggesting Counter Assault is superior to UDAP, Bartlebaugh says this: “Every split second you can buy yourself when faced with a charging grizzly matters. You can cram 7.9 ounces of chemical ingredients into a can and meet EPA requirements but what makes the difference is how it is dispensed.”Bartlebaugh said that decades ago when Bill Pounds went before the bear committee, he asked how many seconds a can of bear spray should last. The reply that came from Chris Servheen [the now retired national grizzly bear recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service] and others was “at least seven seconds” and “the longer the better.”Here's the link to the Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee Guidelines for bear sprays back in 1999. The controversy has actually been raging for years, involving a number of arguments, including one that EPA should mandate requirements for the distance bear spray can fire. Some sympathize with Matheny.Read the comments to a discussion by retired Idaho State University professor and conservationist Dr. Ralph Maughan at The Wildlife News a decade ago under the heading " Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee to look at claim it unintentionally endorses Counter Assault. Matheny, whom I've known for decades and interviewed him when UDAP first came on the market, comes across as a sincere man. He and UDAP have been involved in a fierce competition for market share with Counter Assault, with some outdoor gear retailers only carrying one brand or the other. The photo of Matheny’s bloody face, snapped after his fateful encounter with a grizzly down Montana’s Gallatin Canyon, became his attention-grabbing calling card in stores.
When Bartlebaugh—whom I’ve also known for 20 years—called me in the wake of the bear committee decision in late 2016, he was incredulous mostly because he believes the move sends a confusing message to a mostly uninformed public. That message is that people, when navigating bear country, can now let down their guard a bit.
The EPA’s permit approval process for bear spray addresses toxicity of ingredients and amount of ingredients in a can; it does not deal with the intricacies of how it is deployed, for example, in proscribing how far the fog of spray is projected. Nor have EPA regulators dispatched personnel into the field to stand in the face of charging bears and assess which product works best.
UDAP offers its own version of "magnum-strength" bear spray. One has 7.9 ounces and another 13.4 ounces.
The EPA’s permit approval process for bear spray addresses toxicity of ingredients and amount of ingredients in a can; it does not deal with the intricacies of how it is deployed, for example, in proscribing how far the fog of spray is projected. Nor have EPA regulators dispatched personnel into the field to stand in the face of charging bears and assess which product works best.Frank van Manen, who oversees the Yellowstone Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team today, a research unit with the U.S. Geological Survey based in Bozeman and whose staff has had thousands upon thousands of contact hours with wild grizzlies, told me the bear committee did not want to be in a position where it was perceived to be endorsing one bear spray brand over another. “There’s something to be said for manufacturers themselves specifying best use of their own product rather than an organization like the IGBC being overly prescriptive on what the criteria should be,” Van Manen said, noting that the IGBC doesn’t have the resources to function in a regulatory capacity like EPA.
Bartlebaugh says federal and state agencies and hunting and conservation groups have done a poor job of educating the public about bear spray, particularly how to deploy it. He cites a number of recent incidents in which bear attacks occurred and human victims couldn't get cans out of their holsters or backpacks or didn't have time to flick off the plastic safety. If he had his druthers, effective use of bear spray would be a mandatory part of hunters' safety courses that kids must complete before being allowed to go afield in griz country with guns. And he would require all hikers to carry it. BYU's Smith says that if not a legal requirement then it ought to be considered an ethical one.
Bartlebaugh cites a number of recent incidents in which bear attacks occurred and human victims couldn't get cans out of their holsters or backpacks or didn't have time to flick off the plastic safety. If he had his druthers, effective use of bear spray would be a mandatory part of hunters' safety courses in states that kids must complete before being allowed to go afield in griz country with guns. And he would require all hikers to carry it.
Matheny believed the IGBC’s six-second rule gave Counter Assault an unfair advantage. Bartlebaugh, however, says the suggested IGBC recommendation was based on observed bear behavior, not as a marketing ploy to benefit Counter Assault. "I've interviewed many hunters and it's amazing they don't even know the brand they are carrying," Bartlebaugh said in an earlier Mountain Journal story on the findings of a mauling involving hunter Todd Orr. "And some think the spray in their cans lasts for 60 seconds or 30 seconds. Some don't realize that given the size of the can it will only actually spray for four seconds."Matheny believed the IGBC’s six-second rule gave Counter Assault an unfair advantage. Bartlebaugh, however, says the suggested IGBC recommendation was based on observed bear behavior, not as a marketing ploy to benefit Counter Assault.
In an interview after the bear committee rescinded the 6-second rule, Matheny told me, "As a grizzly bear attack survivor, I believe that in a bear attack you want to have a high-volume spray. Studies show that in most cases you have less than 2 seconds to react before the bear reaches you. It’s not a matter of how long the can sprays in a constant duration. Bear spray is designed to be deployed in repeated bursts of spray. It’s more about being prepared and knowing how to operate your spray and following the manufacturer’s instructions on the label. To get more spray in seconds does not make a can have more spray. High volume bear spray works."
UDAP offers three sizes of bear spray: a can with 7.9 ounces of repellent that sprays for approximately 4 seconds; a 9.2-ounce can that lasts for 5.4 seconds; and a hefty 13.4-ounce can with a continuous spray of 7 seconds. Based upon his research of bear attacks, Bartlebaugh says four seconds is way too short. He asserts that bigger cans, which can forcefully project a spray with greater carry, provide a better cushion.
“My recommendation is that when a charging bear gets within 60 feet, the user should start spraying for 2 to 3 seconds so a cloud is 30 feet out when the bear gets there and enters the cloud. You don’t worry about aiming at the face, the eyes or nose. You just get that cloud out there. In many incidents previously reported in newspapers, bears that encountered the fog would break off their charge," Bartlebaugh says.
He is an absolute stickler on this point: "People going into the backcountry or any area where grizzlies live need to be taught to use bear spray faster when it approaches and not wait for the bear to get close. I'm not talking about spraying when it's 200 yards away. We also have instructors telling people to wait until the bear is 10 feet way, 20 feet away and 30 feet away before spraying. But with the speed of a charging grizzly that's too close. If you can begin spraying when the bear is within 60 feet and coming toward you, do it. Just spray downward and get the cloud of spray between you and the bear. Don't wait to spray the bear in the eyes and nose like you would when using pepper spray on a parking lot mugger."
When deploying bear spray in the direction of a charging grizzly, aim lower rather than higher, experts like Chuck Bartlebaugh say. Tilt the can downward in the direction of the bear so that the ingredients atomize in the air and rise, creating a wall (rather than spraying over the top of the bear). Do it sooner rather than wait until a bear is mere feet away. And make sure you have a good grip on the can. Hold with two hands if necessary.
Sometimes, there can be more than one bear in an area as in the case of hikers moving through berry patches and stumbling upon a carcass where multiple bears are feeding. “Other variables are that if you have rain or a headwind or side-wind, the spray can get blown out of the bear’s path, so you better have enough reserve,” Bartlebaugh says. “And, if you’re only carrying one can, you should have a little left for the hike out should the bear happen to return as it did with the 2016 attack on Todd Orr in the Madison Mountains.”
It's also important that everyone hiking into bear country have a can of spray. There have been instances in which a bear attacked two people and one of the hikers, who was carrying a can, couldn't remove the safety before the bear was on them.
I spoke with Gary Moses, who spent nearly 30 years as a ranger in both Yellowstone and Glacier national parks, each known for their grizzly populations. He was involved with teams that reviewed the causes of several bear attacks.
for Counter Assault to help with its public education initiatives. He notes that the duration of bear spray is important because people, when forced to take quick action when confronted by a grizzly, will sometimes deploy bear spray too soon and press down on the trigger until the can is empty.
But he worries that people might empty the can too soon if a bear is at a distance. “Their initial deployment is for a lot longer than they think and they spray the entire contents is one burst,” he says. “It is really important that, for bear spray to be most effective, you get a concentrated dose into the space of the animal. If you use up your can at 25 to 30 feet and have nothing left, that’s when there can be problems. Bear spray works when properly deployed. But ask anyone who’s been attacked by a bear and they’ll invariably say, ‘They wish their can of product had been able to spray longer.”
In 2016, one of Moses' close friends, a mountain biker, was killed when peddling at high speed down a trail, ran into a grizzly.
Moses notes there’s a question he receives more than any other. “It might be a trail runner, jogger, mountain biker, or walker who lives near bear habitat. They want to know what I suggest for carrying the smallest and least-expensive can of bear spray possible and, as a result, they confuse personal defense pepper spray, which comes in small cans, with bear spray.”
His reply: bigger cans filled with more content that spray for longer, are always better. UDAP offers three sizes of bear spray: a can with 7.9 ounces of repellent that sprays for approximately 4 seconds; a 9.2-ounce can that lasts for 5.4 seconds; and a hefty 13.4-ounce can with a continuous spray of 7 seconds. Based upon his research of bear attacks, Bartlebaugh says four seconds is way too short. He asserts that bigger cans, which can forcefully project a spray with greater carry, provide a better cushion.“My recommendation is that when a charging bear gets within 60 feet, the user should start spraying for 2 to 3 seconds so a cloud is 30 feet out when the bear gets there and enters the cloud. You don’t worry about aiming at the face, the eyes or nose. You just get that cloud out there. In many incidents previously reported in newspapers, bears that encountered the fog would break off their charge," Bartlebaugh says.He is an absolute stickler on this point: "People going into the backcountry or any area where grizzlies live need to be taught to use bear spray faster when it approaches and not wait for the bear to get close. I'm not talking about spraying when it's 200 yards away.Just spray downward and get the cloud of spray between you and the bear. Don't wait to spray the bear in the eyes and nose like you would when using pepper spray on a parking lot mugger."He also harps on this point: Don't carry bear spray in a backpack; keep it at a place where it is at the ready and easily accessible; make sure you can dislodge the safety and in some settings have it in your hands. Know that bears in bear country can be anywhere. "It's not uncommon for bears to not be seen because they’re in thick brush or laying in day beds or suddenly appear from closer distances," he says. "In those cases you spontaneously spray toward the bear, the stream of the spray tilted slightly downward, and keep spraying until it breaks off its charge or you decide to go to the ground and lay flat.”Sometimes, there can be more than one bear in an area as in the case of hikers moving through berry patches and stumbling upon a carcass where multiple bears are feeding. “Other variables are that if you have rain or a headwind or side-wind, the spray can get blown out of the bear’s path, so you better have enough reserve,” Bartlebaugh says. “And, if you’re only carrying one can, you should have a little left for the hike out should the bear happen to return as it did with the 2016 attack on Todd Orr in the Madison Mountains.”It's also important that everyone hiking into bear country have a can of spray. There have been instances in which a bear attacked two people and one of the hikers, who was carrying a can, couldn't remove the safety before the bear was on them.I spoke with Gary Moses, who spent nearly 30 years as a ranger in both Yellowstone and Glacier national parks, each known for their grizzly populations. He was involved with teams that reviewed the causes of several bear attacks. Moses has served as product ambassador for Counter Assault to help with its public education initiatives. He notes that the duration of bear spray is important because people, when forced to take quick action when confronted by a grizzly, will sometimes deploy bear spray too soon and press down on the trigger until the can is empty.But he worries that people might empty the can too soon if a bear is at a distance. “Their initial deployment is for a lot longer than they think and they spray the entire contents is one burst,” he says. “It is really important that, for bear spray to be most effective, you get a concentrated dose into the space of the animal. If you use up your can at 25 to 30 feet and have nothing left, that’s when there can be problems. Bear spray works when properly deployed. But ask anyone who’s been attacked by a bear and they’ll invariably say, ‘They wish their can of product had been able to spray longer.”In 2016, one of Moses' close friends, a mountain biker, was killed when peddling at high speed down a trail, ran into a grizzly.Moses notes there’s a question he receives more than any other. “It might be a trail runner, jogger, mountain biker, or walker who lives near bear habitat. They want to know what I suggest for carrying the smallest and least-expensive can of bear spray possible and, as a result, they confuse personal defense pepper spray, which comes in small cans, with bear spray.”His reply: bigger cans filled with more content that spray for longer, are always better.
Van Manen says the advantages of bear spray, as a class of non-lethal weapon, are clear and unequivocal.
“There are reasons why bear spray should be the first choice for anybody recreating in bear country,” he says, pointing to Smith’s research in Alaska that showed bear spray to be 92 percent effective in deterring attacks by grizzly, black and polar bears.
In contrast, there was 84 percent success with people who used handguns and a 76 percent success rate with long-guns. Firearms also had a high risk of injury in dealing with a wounded bear. An analysis by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service titled "
Horse people drag a dead grizzly that was killed by elk hunters claiming self defense inside Grand Teton National Park. It's annual "elk reduction program" is the only big game hunt that occurs inside a national park and is very controversial. That grizzlies might be shot and killed by elk hunters inside Grand Teton at all has prompted some conservationists to sue to stop the hunt. Grand Teton officials today require all hunters to carry bear spray. Photo by Thomas D. Mangelsen (mangelsen.com)
"When it comes to self defense against grizzly bears, the answer is not as obvious as it may seem. In fact, experienced hunters are surprised to find that despite the use of firearms against a charging bear, they were attacked and badly hurt. Evidence of human-bear encounters even suggests that shooting a bear can escalate the seriousness of an attack, while encounters where firearms are not used are less likely to result in injury or death of the human or the bear," the overview noted. "The question is not one of marksmanship or clear thinking in the face of a growling bear, for even a skilled marks
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feel … a hundred pairs of male eyes gazing at you.'' Chungking Mansions has a seedy history, quickly becoming a rendezvous for American soldiers on leave from Vietnam with local sex workers, then turning into a flophouse for Western and Japanese hippies in the 1970s, when drug- and gold-smuggling networks were part of the scene. More recently it's been relatively crime free, thanks to the plentiful private security guards and cameras sprinkled around the building (often helping the many illegal workers escape immigration raids). What has become more noticeable is the large fixed and transient population from South Asia and Africa. The building has become ''an alien island of the developing world lying in Hong Kong's heart'', thus raising these fears of ''the other''.
But it is these new inhabitants and their business that give Mathews's new book on Chungking Mansions its importance and its title, Ghetto at the Centre of the World. The building is the centre of a trading network of global importance, one we should appreciate for the far-reaching changes being worked in the formerly ''dark'' areas of international capitalism. Mathews estimates, from adding up the sales volume of individual mobile phone shops (totalling 1.6 million handsets a month when he did his research three years ago), that at least 20 per cent of the mobiles in use in sub-Saharan Africa have passed through Chungking Mansions. ''Low-end globalisation,'' Mathews calls it. ''It is not the activities of Coca-Cola, Nokia, Sony, McDonald's and other huge corporations with their high-rise offices, batteries of lawyers and vast advertising budgets. Instead it is traders carrying their goods by suitcase, container or truck across continents and borders with minimal interference from legalities and copyrights.'' Traders come from South Asia and increasingly from Africa to Chungking Mansions, because everything is there. Hong Kong gives visa-free entry to people from most countries, with varying lengths of stay. They can stay for little money in a guest-house upstairs, eat African food in one of the unlicensed diners and sip ''tears of the lion'' (Indian-made whisky in Styrofoam cups) with their friends at a grocery downstairs. National enmities are set aside in the pursuit of wealth. Occasionally one gets lucky and finds a local girl who will agree to marry him, ensuring Hong Kong residency. From Chungking Mansions the traders fan out into centres in China such as Guangzhou's Tianxiu Building or Sanyuanli area, home to the city's 20,000 African residents, to the vast wholesale market of Yiwu, inland from Shanghai, or the Kam Tin district in Hong Kong itself, where the territory's deregistered cars are junked for spares. The goods bring a 60 per cent profit back in Nigeria, though half must go in bribes.
Decrepit as it is, Chungking Mansions is too big to redevelop profitably. Chinese centres lure away traders, but once deposits are paid, contracts in China are as worthless as ''toilet paper'' - delivered shoes are too small for African feet, mobile phones quickly fail. Far better to fall back on the enforceable contracts of Hong Kong. So it continues to help put Africa ''on the map again'', connecting the output of China's factories to African consumers at affordable prices. ''Chungking Mansions represents a Grand Central Station in the passage of globalised goods from China to the developing world at large,'' Mathews said. Hong Kong is perhaps the only part of the rich world that pursues neo-liberalism to the extent of free movement of people. Most of the traders coming to Chungking Mansions would be turned back if they arrived without visas at the borders of countries like Australia. It's a building of the global periphery within a city of the rich core, an isolated experiment. As Malinowski wrote: ''There are no peoples however primitive without religion and magic. Nor are there, it must be added at once, any savage races lacking in either the scientific attitude, or in science, though this lack has been frequently attributed to them.'' Today he would credit his ''savage'' subjects of study with the commercial impulse too. Ghetto at the Centre of the World is published by University of Chicago Press.
Follow the National Times on Twitter: @NationalTimesAUMbappe came very close to joining Arsenal (Picture: AFP/Getty)
Arsene Wenger has revealed he went to the house of Kylian Mbappe last summer as he came extremely close to securing a deal to bring the Monaco star to Arsenal.
Solskjaer ripped Liverpool apart to Man Utd players and ridiculed their title hopes
The 18-year-old striker has taken Europe by storm with his performances in 2016/17, scoring an incredible 24 goals in 38 matches for the Ligue 1 side.
But he could have been turning out for Arsenal at the Emirates had Wenger had his way.
With Mbappe’s contract close to expiry, Wenger saw an opportunity to lure him to north London but the France international opted to stay at Monaco.
Mbappe is a top target for Arsenal (Picture: AFP/Getty)
And with a huge £118million price tag on his head, the failure to land him is set to be a costly.
‘The player would tell you that I was at his home last year to try to get him here,’ Wenger told beIN Sports.
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‘Because he was at the end of [his] contract but Monaco managed to keep him and the decision was very, very tight.
‘But I could understand it as well because he was educated there and at the end decided to stay there.’
Wenger has made no secret of his desire to sign Mbappe even this summer, although he faces competition from Europe’s biggest clubs.
Premier League rivals Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea are believed to be ready to spend big on the talented teenager, with Real Madrid and Paris Saint-Germain also in the hunt.Shadow / Purple Freddy from Five nights at Freddy's 2. Practice for my future FNAF 3 comics (which will be basically a continuation of my fanfiction). This is also a redraw of the outlines of a screenshot - I enlarged it extremely and because it was really lack of contrast, I tried to figure out what is whereAwww, if you'd have any idea what kind of role I found out for Shadow Freddy! I won't tell - but it will be in my fanfic. ~~It's based on a theory I've read months earlier and despite I don't believe it, it would add a nice dramatic touch to my story ~I wish I were at that part... but I only released the first part with the kids and I have written in my sketchbook the same amount I've released so far and I've just got close to the murder part - I think I need to release two parts per week or releasing it will take yearsSeattle Reign Is First Pro Female Team to Join You Can Play Project
The new women's professional soccer team — including out Olympian Megan Rapinoe — is the first women's team to join the campaign.
Out olympic gold medalist Megan Rapinoe's new team is making waves as the first U.S. professional women's team to join the You Can Play Project, dedicated to fighting homophobia in sports.
The Seattle Reign — part of the newly formed eight-team National Women's Soccer League — will work with You Can Play to reach out to fans, players, and staff in providing education and media support to make professional sports more welcoming to LGBT athletes.
"I am excited that we are partnering with You Can Play and helping them take the steps that are needed to eradicate homophobia in professional sports,” said midfielder Jess Fishlock in a statement announcing the partnership. "It's something I support 100% and I am honored to play for the first professional women's team aligned with this cause."
While the Seattle Reign are the first professional women's team to join the You Can Play project, the campaign has already partnered with teams in the National Football League, National Hockey League, and Major League Soccer.Who might RCB use their right-to-match card on?
Royal Challengers Bangalore have retained Virat Kohli, Chris Gayle and AB de Villiers ahead of the 2014 IPL auction. The franchise has also announced the appointment of Daniel Vettori, who played for Royal Challengers in previous seasons, as head coach and Allan Donald as bowling coach.
Trent Woodhill, who is currently David Warner's personal batting coach, was named the franchise's batting and fielding coach for the season.
January 10 is the deadline for the IPL franchises to announce their list of retained players, ahead of the auction on February 12. Each franchise is allowed to retain up to five players and can buy back additional members of their squads at the auction via right-to-match cards. The number of right-to-match cards available to each franchise will depend on the number of players already retained. Since Royal Challengers retained three players, they will have one right-to-match card at the auction.
A fixed amount will be deducted from Royal Challengers' auction purse of Rs 600 million (approx. US$ 9.6 million, at the current exchange rate) for each of three players retained: Rs 125 million for player one, Rs 95 million for player two and Rs 75 million for player three. That will leave the franchise with Rs 305 million to spend at the auction. This season, each squad must include no less than 16 and no more than 27 players, with a maximum of nine overseas players.
Virat Kohli and Chris Gayle have often won Royal Challengers games with their explosive top-order batting © AFP
The amount deducted from the auction purse is not necessarily the IPL fee agreed to between the franchise and the retained player.
India's Kohli, who captained Royal Challengers in 2013, is one of the leading limited-overs batsmen in world cricket at the moment, while West Indies' Gayle is unarguably the most destructive Twenty20 batsman on his day. Last season Gayle slammed a world-record 175 not out off 66 balls against Pune Warriors, on his way to an aggregate of 708 at 59.00 - he was No. 2 on the tournament's run charts. Kohli slotted in at No. 3, with 634 runs at 45.28. South Africa's de Villiers, who bats lower down the order for Royal Challengers, scored 360 runs at 36.00. The trio forms an intimidating batting core for Royal Challengers.
Former New Zealand captain Vettori, who has been plagued by injury of late, had led the team before Kohli. He replaced Ray Jennings, who had coached Royal Challengers over several seasons. Vettori's appointment is unique, given he is still an active player - he is currently playing for the Brisbane Heat Australia's Big Bash League. Donald, who is South Africa's bowling coach, had worked with the now-defunct Pune Warriors in IPL 2013. Woodhill, an Australian, is a batting and fielding specialist, having worked with Pakistan and New Zealand and several domestic sides. He is credited with moulding Warner at New South Wales, and also coached the Melbourne Stars and Delhi Daredevils.
"I am happy to be retained by RCB and it's great to be back in Bangalore," Kohli said. "I look forward to working closely with Dan Vettori. Allan Donald's experience will add a lot of value."
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.While Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump has declared war on Obamatrade, Sen. Marco Rubio says he’s “very positive” about the President’s success in finalizing the deal.
“Rubio voted in favor of fast-track and has struck a favorable tone toward the overall deal,” writes The Hill.
Obamatrade collectively refers to Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), which is the controversial fast-track mechanism for ramming trade treaties through Congress with minimum scrutiny, and the three major trade deals that would be guaranteed these “fast-track” protections before a page of them had been made public: the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP) and Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA).
Trade negotiators announced on Monday that they had reached an agreement on TPP.
In June of this year, Marco Rubio voted with GOP Leaders to pass fast track authority (TPA) and give Obama the power to ink globalist trade pacts before a single word of TPP, TiSA, or T-TIP were publicly available. Fast track authority lowers the 67 votes required to pass a treaty to a mere simply majority, it surrenders the 60 vote filibuster, and it forfeits individual senators’ ability to add amendments or changes to the trade deals negotiated by the president. It also allows the President to sign the agreement before Congress even votes.
In a CNBC interview with John Hardwood, Rubio expressed his “very positive” view about Obamatrade. Neither Hardwood nor Rubio, however, mentioned Rubio’s pivotal role in helping to pass the agreement. Nor did Hardwood or Rubio mention that the Florida Senator even enshrined the passage of the President’s global economic integration plan as one of the three “pillars” of his foreign policy platform in both an April op-ed in The Wall Street Journal and a foreign policy address in May of this year.
While Rubio failed to show up in the Senate to vote against Majority Leader McConnell’s bill fully funding Planned Parenthood, Rubio was on hand to provide the all-important 60th vote for Obamatrade’s fast-track.
“I’m generally very much in favor of free trade,” Rubio told CNBC. “I explain to people all the time the United States cannot get locked out of 95 percent of the world’s consumers.”
Critics, however, contend that these trade deals leave barriers in place to U.S. goods while flooding America’s markets with cheap foreign imports. As former Nucor Steel Chairman Daniel DiMicco has argued, “The Wall Street Republican and Democrat ‘free traders’ are not pursuing free trade at all.” Rather, by “convinc[ing] themselves that foreign mercantilism is irrelevant and the basic trade principle of reciprocity can be ignored… They are practicing ‘mercantilism enabling’ trade,” and are, “promot[ing] unilateral American trade disarmament.”
Polls show that the American public— particularly Republican voters— aggressively disagree with Rubio’s stance on the issue. Many Americans living in states ranging from the South to the Midwest to the Northeast have seen entire industries disappear as a result of what Washington calls “free trade.” The term “free trade,” like “immigration reform” is a catchphrase typically deployed by politicians to describe policies, which reduce national protections against the movement of foreign goods and labor into U.S. markets.
According to a May 2015 Pew poll, by greater than a 3-to-1 margin, Republicans think that “free trade” leads to job destruction rather than job creation (Democrats agree with that sentiment by a 2-to-1 margin). By more than a four-to-one margin, Republicans think free trade agreements lower wages rather than raise them (Democrats agree with this sentiment by a 3-to-1 margin).
The Wall Street Journal writes that TPP would harm the U.S. automobile industry. According to a study by Peter Petri, a professor of international finance at Brandeis University, “the TPP could boost imports by an extra $30.8 billion by 2025, compared with an exports gain of $7.8 billion.” While the Japanese auto industry has “hailed” the TPP agreement, American automakers including Ford—recognizing the unfair advantage it will give their foreign competitors— have come out against it.
Four years ago, when President Obama announced his trade deal with South Korea, the American people were told the nation would see substantial economic gains. As AP reported at the time, “Exports of U.S. goods to South Korea could soar to $10 billion under the deal, which won rare praise for Obama from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as well as some Republicans”– many of whom are now similarly urging the passage of Obamatrade.
Those promises, however, did not to come to fruition. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) has highlighted that the trade deal wound up increasing exports by only $0.8 billion and “boosted South Korea imports to our country by more than $12 billion, nearly doubling our trade gap with them.”
As former-AT&T CEO Leo Hindery, Jr. wrote in a recent op-ed for Reuters:
Obama’s 2011 trade deal with South Korea, which serves as the template for the new Trans-Pacific Partnership, has resulted in a 50 percent jump in the U.S. trade deficit with South Korea in its first two years. This equates to 50,000 U.S. jobs lost… In just one month, October 2014, the United States had a $3-billion trade deficit in goods with South Korea, the highest on record.
Sessions argues the eagerness with which so-called “free trade” proponents back any trade deal regardless of its impact on the nation or the protestations from their constitutions has reached a level of fanaticism.
I fear we have almost an obsession with trade agreements… This refusal by many to acknowledge the mercantilist policies of our trading competitors has gone, it seems to me, from promoting healthy trading relationships to an ideology, even to the nature of a religion… Capital is mobile. But workers, many times, are not. So when a company closes its plant in the United States, and shifts production to a lower-wage country, the company may make more money but the workers, and their communities—who cannot move overseas—suddenly don’t have jobs. They are hurt. The United States is a country—not an economy. And a country’s job is to protect its citizens—whether from military attacks, or from unfair trade policies that threaten the economic well-being of its own people.
Even though Rubio has already publicly endorsed TPP, made it part of his foreign policy strategy, and voted to speed its passage, Rubio played coy with Hardwood when asked about the pact. Rubio said that before he can offer “a firm commitment” to vote for it, “we want to see what the final agreement are. But generally, I’m disposed to being in favor of trade agreements.” What Rubio did not mention is that lawmakers are able to review a confidential draft of the text.
Despite his playful word games with Hardwood, Rubio has made adopting Obamatrade a signature platform of his campaign for presidency.
As early as April of this year, Rubio penned an op-ed in favor of the agreement– insisting that we “must” pass TPP, the final version of which he told CNBC yesterday he has not yet read.
Rubio wrote:
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), discussed between President Obama and Prime Minister Abe this week, will further our strategic goals in Asia and increase prosperity at home. It will advance economic liberty and unleash free-market forces in the world’s most dynamic region… We must rebuild our own military capabilities, conclude and pass TPP, and renew our support for freedom and the rule of law in Asia. Too often over the past six years, U.S. leaders have spoken of their attention to Asia but failed to back up the rhetoric with action.
Similarly in an address to the Council on Foreign Relations in May of this year, Rubio described TPP as the “second pillar” of his three-pillar foreign policy strategy.
“My second pillar,” Rubio declared, “is the protection of the American economy in a globalized world… It is more important than ever that Congress give the president [Barack Obama] trade promotion authority so that he can finalize the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership.”
Even once Rubio does eventually read the latest version of the bill, it can still be subject to significant alterations. Because TPP is a “living agreement,” it can be changed subsequent to its adoption. This means that a group of twelve nations– and any new nation member that gets added to the partnership– would be empowered with, what Sen. Sessions has described as, “a sweeping new form of global governance. TPP calls this new global authority the ‘Trans-Pacific Partnership Commission.'”
Critics explain that “free traders” eagerly pushing to tie the nation down in the Trans-Pacific Partnership should expect no better results for American workers than the outcomes of global trade pacts of the past.
As counselor to the Secretary of Commerce in the Reagan Administration, Clyde Prestowitz sums up: “If exports are such good business, why has the U.S. manufacturing trade deficit soared over the last decade?”
Prestowitz writes:GM may have just given us the details on the new Gen-V V8, but that doesn’t mean that the speculation about the new GM powerplants is over. After we posted the new Gen V videos from GM, a keen-eyed Facebook fan named Michael Booth pointed out that the tech in the “Tilt Stand” test is actually working on the compressor side of a turbo.
After painstakingly analyzing the video frame by frame, we have to agree with Booth’s conclusion. The first engine shown on the dyno looks essentially just like the naturally aspirated LT1 we got a look at earlier today. However, when the video shifts to the “Tilt Stand Tec Setup” it seems that we are looking at a different engine all-together. The technician is clearly working on an aluminum housing with a bead-rolled outlet, which is used on most turbos to keep charge piping secured under boost. Also note the vacuum canister for the wastgate actuator, the water and oil lines running to the center section, the heat shield, and the exhaust downpipe running out the opposite side of the center section. It’s either a turbo, or the world’s most invasive EGR system/smog pump.
Best of all there doesn’t appear to be just one turbo. Pay attention to the black air box on top of the engine, you can see that there are two inlets, with one coming from each bank of the engine. It would be a safe assumption that there is another turbo hanging off the other side feeding atmosphere into the air box.
But what does this mean? Could this be a leak of one of the other performance engines that GM has coming down the pipe (twin-turbo V6, perhaps)? Let us know what you think!The question of how Uber would spend its billion-dollar investment was never really much of a riddle. More rides in more places has always been the plan.
But with its ten-figure cushion, the San Francisco-based ride-hailing startup can be more cunning about how it tries to get huge. Uber wants to grow as quickly it can, and right now, it's chasing that goal by undercutting the competition on price—even if it loses money in the process. This isn't a novel approach among tech startups, for which profits aren't valued nearly as much as popularity. But for Uber, playing in the new realm of the so-called sharing economy, the stakes are higher, since so many entrenched interests are trying to regulate it out of existence. With not just success but survival on the line, Uber has even more incentive to expand as rapidly as possible. If it gets big enough quickly enough, the political price could become too high for any elected official who tries to pull Uber to the curb.
Yesterday, Uber announced it was lowering UberX fares by 20 percent in New York City, claiming the cuts would make its cheapest service cheaper than a regular yellow taxi. That follows a 25 percent decrease in the San Francisco Bay Area announced last week, and a similar drop in Los Angeles UberX prices revealed earlier last month. The company says UberX drivers in California (though apparently not in New York) will still get paid their standard 80 percent portion of what the fare would have been before the discount. As Forbes' Ellen Huet points out, the arrangement means a San Francisco ride that once cost $15 will now cost passengers $11.25, but the driver still gets paid $12.
Uber says its new, lower UberX fares are cheaper than New York yellow cabs. Image: Uber
In that scenario, Uber loses money twice-over. First, it loses the 75 cents extra it pays to make up the difference to the driver. Second, its taking exactly zero commission. In effect, the company is paying for passengers to ride. Loss leaders may be nothing new, but it's a little different when you're losing money on the main thing you sell. To be fair, Uber's original black car business could make up some of the difference. But the company isn't likely too worried either way. Its strategy here is much less traditional taxi and much more typical dotcom: grow the user base as quickly as possible and worry about making money later.
Like Uber, Like Amazon
Consider Uber's kinship with Amazon. The comparison isn't obvious at first, since Uber doesn't sell goods, just a service. But their stories are similar. A startup led by a brash, charismatic CEO catches a creaky old industry unaware. It grows quickly, and its popularity explodes as its brand becomes nearly synonymous with the disruptive service it's offering. Amazon grew—and is still growing— because it's not afraid to lose money. Low prices and free shipping deals eat away at profitability, but they also keep customers coming back. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has expressed admiration for Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who is also an investor in the transportation company. And now Kalanick appears to be taking cues from the Amazon template.
Whether this strategy is really sustainable for Amazon after twenty years of existence is a question endlessly debated among shareholders. But for its current stage of development, the approach holds little but upside for Uber. Rapid expansion helps Uber both locally and globally. In cities, underselling traditional taxis gets more riders in UberX cars, striking a blow against yellow-cab competition. Popularity in one city creates covetousness in others. Demand spreads, and Uber follows (it now operates in about 140 cities in 40 countries around the world).
To keep spreading quickly, Uber needs to aggressively recruit new drivers, which could be difficult if price cuts also meant cuts to driver pay. Fiddling with prices has led to driver unrest, and the company's assurances that drivers can make more than $90,000 per year in New York have been met with skepticism. On Twitter, Kalanick argued that lower prices meant drivers could make more, because increased demand would lead to more rides booked per hour. That claim is a lot easier to make if Uber is in fact subsidizing driver pay at a loss.
Don't Take My Uber Away
But keeping drivers behind the wheel is ultimately an operational issue that Uber so far has handled adeptly. Much more dangerous to its future prospects are ongoing threats from regulators and lawmakers to shut Uber down, or at least severely curtail its freedom to operate. Ever since receiving (and ignoring) a cease-and-desist demand from transit regulators in San Francisco, Uber's first city, in 2010, the company has followed the same playbook when faced with attempts to shut it down: keep the wheels on the road. The strategy has worked so far in San Francisco, though various state-level attempts to rein in Uber are still in play. Uber has survived many other efforts to restrict its service, though these victories are often incremental, and seldom come without extensive time and effort.
The uncertainty that comes with attempting to regulate Uber out of existence can't be too comforting to investors, though it also didn't deter more than $1.2 billion in funding so far. Some of that money is going toward hiring high-powered lobbyists to push back. But more powerful political leverage comes in the form of popularity. “The more they sort of popularize themselves, the stronger their argument becomes" against crackdowns, New York University Stern School of Business professor Arun Sundararajan told Businessweek.
That strength, however, doesn't have as much to do with the quality of the argument as it does with the quantity of people who support it. The more riders Uber can get in its cars and accustomed to having its push-button convenience as an option, the less incentive politicians have to stay on Uber's case. By drastically lowering its prices, Uber is doing more than increasing its customer base. It's cultivating constituents – the people who will complain when someone in power tries to take away their Uber. If Uber can survive its many political battles, it stands to become a huge, and hugely valuable, global enterprise. For investors, that's a billion dollars well spent.Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is coming to Comic-Con 2015!
After the wild season 2 finale, we're all dying to see what's next for the S.H.I.E.L.D. team. For one, we cannot get the picture of Simmons getting consumed by the alien force out of our heads. And let's not forget about what happened to Coulson's arm. We're looking forward to discovering how he assesses and rebuilds his team.
Can't wait any longer? Have no fear! Fans will get a sneak peek at the upcoming seasons of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Marvel's Agent Carter at an exclusive panel session on Friday, July 10! Then on Saturday, July 11, fans will get the incredible chance to meet the casts of both shows!
WHERE: Comic-Con 2015 - San Diego, CA - Ballroom 20
WHEN: Friday, July 10, 2014, 3:00-4:15 p.m.
WHAT: The world-famous Marvel Television Presents panel returns as Jeph Loeb (Marvel's Head of Television) brings you exclusive news and surprises about your favorite action-packed Marvel series on ABC. Join Jeph, showrunners, and the casts of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Marvel's Agent Carter for this must-see panel that’ll have everyone talking!
On Saturday, July 11, you'll also have a chance to meet the Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. cast and executive producers for an autograph session at 2:30 p.m. at the Marvel Booth (#2329) on the Convention Center Floor!
Autograph session attendees include actors Clark Gregg (Director Phil Coulson), Ming-Na Wen (Melinda May), Chloe Bennet (Skye), Brett Dalton (Grant Ward), Iain De Caestecker (Fitz), Elizabeth Henstridge (Simmons), Nick Blood (Lance Hunter), Adrianne Palicki, Henry Simmons and Luke Mitchell as well as executive producers Maurissa Tancharoen, Jed Whedon and Jeph Loeb.
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The Wall Street Journal reported:
Cheers went up among many protesters when the announcement came, but a chaotic scene soon emerged with protesters and Trump supporters scuffling on the arena floor. Police rushed into the fray to try to restore order. One person raised a Mexican flag amid chants of “We stopped Trump!” “This is exactly what I was hoping for,” said Celso Ramos, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “Everyone says our generation doesn’t do anything.”
Conservative columnist Ann Coulter also noted the flag at the time:
Anyone else notice the Mexican flags being waved by the anti-Trump Chicago mob? — Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) March 12, 2016
Trump has criticized illegal immigration from Mexico, as well as the Mexican government and Mexico itself. One of his core policies is to build a “wall” along the border — and have Mexico pay for it.
In addition, some radical activists on behalf of amnesty for illegal immigrants believe that the southwestern U.S. should revert to Mexico. The Mexican flag is also waved in pride at some other, less radical pro-amnesty rallies.
Photo: fileThis is a guest post by Jesse Coleman of Greenpeace US, originally published on Huffington Post
The Governors of three states involved in the Dakota Access pipeline are marching to the orders of a PR company hired by the Dakota Access pipeline’s builders.
On October 25th of last year, the Governors of North Dakota, South Dakota and Iowa sent a letter to the Army Corp of Engineers demanding approval of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
A Greenpeace investigation has revealed that the first draft of this letter was written by LS2Group, a PR firm contracted by Energy Transfer Partners, the Dakota Access Pipeline’s (DAPL) main builder.
Emails between Iowa Governor Terry Branstad’s staff and Craig Schoenfeld, a senior account executive for LS2Group, contain a first draft of the three governors’ letter, written by LS2. An email from Schoenfeld obtained through an open records request makes plain that LS2 wrote the letter. He also questions why the letter was not sent to President Obama and other agency heads, as LS2 initially requested.
“The draft letter we sent the four governors for consideration last month was addressed to the President, DOJ, DOI and Army, but the one approved by ND, SD, and IA was addressed to the three USACE commanders. I was curious if this was a request by one of the governors for the change i.e.to steer clear of political pushback.”
The draft sent by LS2Group in September and the letter eventually sent by the Governors contain only minor differences in content.
LS2Group has multiple employees registered to lobby for Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), and has been lobbying for DAPL since at least 2014.
The PR firm has particularly strong ties to Governor Branstad of Iowa. It was Governor Branstad’s office that pushed the Governors of South and North Dakota to sign on to the LS2 letter.
As DeSmogBlog points out, Branstad’s chief of staff from 2010 to 2013, Jeff Boeyink, is now a Senior Vice President of LS2Group, and lobbies for ETP in Iowa. Susan Severino Fenton, LS2Group´s Director of Government Affairs, is also a registered lobbyist for Energy Transfer Partners.
LS2Group contributed $1,000 to Branstad in June of 2016. The PR firm has also contributed many thousands of dollars to the Republican party of Iowa since 2014.
The ease with which oil lobbyists were able to slap the official seals of three governors onto their clients’ missive underscores the cozy relationship between the oil industry and State Governments in the region.
The governors of Iowa, North Dakota and South Dakota have fully supported the pipeline builders, providing militarized police to intimidate indigenous water protectors and their allies. As opposition to the pipeline escalated over the last few months, the Iowan government has brought severe criminal charges against those speaking against the pipeline.
Currently ETP is drilling under the Standing Rock Sioux’s water source, the Oahe Reservoir, despite a promise by the Army Corp of Engineers to conduct a thorough environmental review. A Presidential Memorandum by Donald Trump effectively cancelled any ongoing environmental assessment of the pipeline and gave the company permission to begin drilling. Donald Trump has investments in ETP and Phillips 66, which are partnered in building the pipeline. Trump also has close ties to ETP CEO Kelcy Warren, who contributed large sums to Trump’s presidential campaign.
Main image: Someone protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline holds a sign reading, “We can't drink oil! #NoDAPL.” Credit: Pax Ahimsa Gethen, CC BY-SA 4.0Buy Photo Mark Hackel, L. Brooks Patterson, Mike Duggan and Warren Evans. (Photo: David Guralnick / The Detroit News)Buy Photo
Detroit — Top officials in southeastern Michigan are optimistic about the region’s future as the automotive industry continues to add jobs in the United States, and Metro Detroit continues to diversify its economy.
“I can’t remember a time when the leadership of the region was as unified in vision and direction (as it is right now),” said Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan at the Detroit Economic Club’s annual “Big Four” luncheon Tuesday.
Duggan, Wayne County Executive Warren Evans, Oakland County Executive L. Books Patterson and Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel spoke for about a half hour at the luncheon, which took place during the 2017 North American International Auto Show.
The officials said recent announcements from Ford Motor Co., General Motors Co. and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV that the companies would be investing and adding jobs in Michigan, among other states, add to a positive outlook for southeast Michigan.
“To bring Detroit back, we’re going to need a whole range of strategies,” Duggan said. “The auto industry is a big part of that.”
Duggan said in addition to the auto companies, suppliers and smaller technology companies are beginning to settle in Metro Detroit as the companies race toward creating driverless vehicles.
“They’re not trailing on this, they’re leading,” Duggan said.
Hackel added southeast Michigan is poised to see more investment from the automotive companies working on autonomy. The region has the infrastructure in place to accommodate that investment, he said.
Meanwhile, Patterson and Evans said they’re looking to attract other businesses to their counties.
“It’s a big part of our economy... doesn’t mean we shouldn’t diversify,” Evans said.
GM was once the largest employer in Oakland County, Patterson said. That badge is now owned by Beaumont Health, and GM isn’t in the top 10 employers.
The whole health care sector is booming in Oakland County, according to Patterson.
“I think my future is going to be in the high-tech side of health care,” he said. And since the auto industry in Michigan is already leading on the technology front, people are going to start moving to the region to work.
The panelists also touched on the failed Regional Transit Authority millage.
Voters in Oakland and Macomb counties rejected the proposal in November. Washtenaw County voters approved the tax with 56 percent support while the proposal was favored in Wayne County at almost 53 percent. But the area as a whole voted it down.
Hackel said Macomb County isn’t against a regional transit plan, but the one presented on November wasn’t right.
“It’s not that the voters are against the concept.... I just think there needs to be a plan that’s very specific,” he said.
Duggan said after the millage was shot down, he and other officials realized they were not “deeply engaged” in developing the plan.
But Patterson said he hasn’t seen proof a regional system is necessary.
“The transit advocates have to make their case,” he said. “People didn’t believe them.... Where is the demand these people keep talking about?”
The four politicians were cautiously optimistic about the pending Donald Trump presidency, and the new president’s potential effect on southeast Michigan.
“What we have here is four people who are trying to make something happen in a region,” Evans said. “I don’t think that happens often.... I think the administration will see the importance of this area.”
[email protected]
Twitter: @Ian_Thibodeau
Read or Share this story: http://detne.ws/2jVH6swA British woman dubbed an “attention
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. In fact, one of the most popular coroutine use patterns in modern programming languages is the generator pattern, which we will discuss in next section. As the name suggests, generators provide the perfect mechanism for implementing combinatorial generation algorithms, recursive or iterative.
These two types of algorithms can be further considered as ways of approaching a combinatorial generation problem. That is, there are a few problem-solving strategies that work naturally with each type of algorithm. For example, with recursion, the main strategy involves reducing the problem to a subproblem. Similarly, with iterative algorithms the strategy of finding the next object in lexicographic order is quite commonly used and is rather powerful. Approaches that use the algebraic or arithmetic properties of the objects generated are also often used in iterative algorithms. We will see some examples of all of these in this article.
Algorithms for combinatorial generation are often divided into iterative and recursive categories. Iterative algorithms have traditionally been considered superior in performance due to the overhead of repetitive function calls in recursive algorithms. Arguably, this advantage is less noticeable when recursion is used properly (no redundant subtrees in the recursion tree) and modern compilers are used. Recursive algorithms, on the other hand, often have the advantage of being easier to read and understand.
The goal of combinatorial generation (or searching as Knuth calls it) is to exhaustively produce a set of combinatorial objects, one at a time, often subject to some constraints, and often in a certain required order. Both [KNUTH-4A] and [RUSKEY] provide excellent introductions to the subject of combinatorial generation. Combinatorial generation problems encompass a wide range of problems, from relatively simple (e.g. generating all subsets or all permutations) to rather complex (e.g. generating all ideals of a poset in Gray order).
So unlike the way Knuth defines and uses coroutines, Python's generators are not completely symmetric; an executing generator object is still coupled to the caller, which creates asymmetry. However, this limitation will not be an issue for our purposes here.
Before we move on, it is important to note that even with [PEP-342], Python's generators do not implement coroutines in full generality. To quote [PY-1] :
I will refer the readers interested in the enhanced yield keyword and its use to [BEAZLEY].
In this article, I use the word "coroutine" in its generality, as defined in the first paragraph of this section, in accordance with how Knuth defines the word in [KNUTH-1]. I also will more or less use it interchangeably with the word "generator", since we will only use coroutines that are generators in this article.
It is important to mention that in some Python literature the word "coroutine" has come to mean specifically coroutines that use yield as an expression and hence require the use of send to operate. See [BEAZLEY] for example (which, by the way, is an excellent introduction to coroutines and their uses in IO operations, parsing, and more). I believe this is somewhat inaccurate, since coroutines are a general concept, and functions, generators with next or send or both, all fall under coroutines. (That is, on an abstract level, the set of coroutines contains the set of generators and functions, and more.)
Python generators were further generalized to allow for more flexible coroutines in [PEP-342]. Prior to the enhancements in [PEP-342], Python's generators were coroutines that could not accept new parameters after the initial parameters were passed to the coroutine. With [PEP-342]'s send method, a coroutine's execution can resume with further data passed to it as well. This is implemented by allowing the yield keyword to be used not just as a statement but also as an expression, the evaluation of which results in the coroutine pausing until a value is passed to it via send, which will be the value that the yield expression evaluates to. In this article, we will only need to use the generator pattern, and will only use yield as a statement meaning the send method will not be used.
However, the shorter and nicer Python 3 syntax will not be used for the rest of the article to keep the code Python 2 compatible.
In Python 3, with [PEP-380], the above can be made even simpler by using the yield from statement:
Before continuing, let us look at a simple example of a recursive algorithm implemented using coroutines as well. In this example, we create a very minimalistic binary tree and then print its post-order traversal. Notice how generators can be recursive, and how they implement the iterator interface which allows them to be used inside for loops and generator expressions.
Here we have a generator that yields the numbers in the Fibonacci sequence ad infinitum. Each call to the generator slides the a and b variables ahead in the sequence, and then execution is paused and b is yielded.
Of course, the above example is meant to contrast the syntactic differences of generators and functions. The particular use of a coroutine demonstrated above is of course completely unnecessary. Let us look at a somewhat more interesting example, taken, with minor modification, from [PEP-255] :
# Further calls such as the following to adder will result in a StopIteration
In Python, generators, which are basic coroutines with a few restrictions, were introduced in [PEP-255]. The syntax for defining coroutines in Python is very similar to that of functions, with the main different being that instead of return the keyword yield is used to pause the execution and return the execution to the caller. The syntax for using generators is rather different from functions though, and is in fact closer to how classes are treated in Python: calling a generator function returns a newly created "generator object", which is is an instance of the coroutine independent of other instances. To call the generator, the next built-in function is used, and the generator object is passed to next as the parameter. Here is a very simple example demonstrating how a very simple function as be implemented as a coroutine using a generator in Python:
In other words, coroutines are functions that allow for multiple entry points, that can yield multiple times, and resume their execution when called again. On top of that, coroutines can transfer execution to any other coroutine instead of just the coroutine that called them. Functions, being special cases of coroutines, have a single entry point, can only yield once, and can only transfer execution back to the caller coroutine.
As mentioned in the introduction, coroutines are a generalization of functions. Assume A is a function that calls B. In terms of the flow of execution, this involves A pausing its execution and passing the flow to B. As such, A can then be seen to be in a "paused" state until B finishes and returns execution back to the caller, A in this case. Coroutines generalize functions by allowing for any coroutine to pause its execution and yield a result at any point, and for any other coroutine to pass the execution to any other paused coroutine to continue. To achieve this, coroutines need to remember their state so they can continue exactly where they left off when resumed. The coroutine's "state" here refers to the values of local variables, as well as where in the coroutine's code the execution was paused.
3 Motivating Example: Multi-Radix Numbers
We start our exploration of coroutine-based combinatorial generation with a simple example: multi-radix numbers. The goal here is to provide a short and simple example of the common approaches to solving combinatorial generation problems, and then introduce the coroutine-based approach so as to emphasize the differences and advantages of each approach. The first approach will be based on arithmetical properties of the objects we are generating, the second will be a recursive solution based on a reduction to a subproblem, third will be an iterative approach based on explicitly finding the next lexicographic item, and finally, the fourth approach will be the coroutine-based one
3.1 Problem Definition Our goal in this section will be to produce the set of multi-radix numbers in lexicographic (dictionary) order given a multi-radix base M M M. More specifically, given a list M M M of positive numbers, produce all lists a a a of the same length as M M M such that 0 ≤ a [ i ] < M [ i ] 0 \le a[i] < M[i] 0≤a[i]<M[i], in lexicographic order. Here is an example: >>> M = [ 3, 2, 4 ] >>> for a in multiradix_recursive ( M ):... print ( a )... [0, 0, 0] [0, 0, 1] [0, 0, 2] [0, 0, 3] [0, 1, 0] [0, 1, 1] [0, 1, 2] [0, 1, 3] [1, 0, 0] [1, 0, 1] [1, 0, 2] [1, 0, 3] [1, 1, 0] [1, 1, 1] [1, 1, 2] [1, 1, 3] [2, 0, 0] [2, 0, 1] [2, 0, 2] [2, 0, 3] [2, 1, 0] [2, 1, 1] [2, 1, 2] [2, 1, 3] In other words, the combinatorial set of objects being generated is the Cartesian product ∏ i = 0 n − 1 { 0, 1, …, m i − 1 } \prod_{i=0}^{n-1} \{0, 1, \ldots, m_i - 1\} i = 0 ∏ n − 1 { 0, 1, …, m i − 1 } where M = [ m 0, …, m n − 1 ] M = [m_0, \ldots, m_{n-1}] M=[m0,…,mn−1]. So those of you familiar with Python's itertools module might already have thought of a quick solution to the problem: from itertools import product def multiradix_product ( M ): return product ( * ( range ( x ) for x in M )) This, of course, is not an algorithm as much as it is delegating the task! Nonetheless, it is a good start and we will use it as a base-line for performance comparisons of the rest of the algorithms. We will also briefly look at how Python's itertools.product function is implemented internally after we discuss our algorithms.
3.2 An Algorithm Based on Arithmetic To start with our first solution, let's observe that with M = [ 2 ] ∗ n M = [2] * n M=[2]∗n, the problem is reduced to counting in binary: >>> M = [ 2, 2, 2 ] >>> for a in multiradix_recursive ( M ):... print ( a )... [0, 0, 0] [0, 0, 1] [0, 1, 0] [0, 1, 1] [1, 0, 0] [1, 0, 1] [1, 1, 0] [1, 1, 1] This observation leads to the following iterative solution: simply start from zero and count to ( ∏ m i ) − 1 (\prod m_i) - 1 (∏mi)−1, and covert the numbers to the multi-radix base given by M M M, similar to how we convert numbers to binary. This results in the following code. from operator import mul from functools import reduce def number_to_multiradix ( M, x, a ): n = len ( M ) for i in range ( 1, n + 1 ): x, a [ - i ] = divmod ( x, M [ - i ]) return a def multiradix_counting ( M ): n = len ( M ) a = [ 0 ] * n last = reduce ( mul, M, 1 ) for x in range ( last ): yield number_to_multiradix ( M, x, a ) We can classify this algorithm as an iterative algorithm that relies on the arithmetical properties of the objects we are generating. Because of this, it it does not have a very combinatorial feel to it. It also happens to be quite slow, especially in Python, since every number in a a a is recalculated each time, and multiple divisions have to happen per generated object.
3.3 A Recursive Algorithm Based on Reduction to Subproblems Next approach is the recursive one. To use recursion, we need to reduce the problem to a subproblem. Say M M M has n n n items in it, so we are producing multi-radix numbers with n n n digits. Let M ′ = [ M [ 0 ], M [ 1 ], …, M [ n − 2 ] ] M' = [M[0], M[1], \ldots, M[n-2]] M′=[M[0],M[1],…,M[n−2]]. That is, M ′ M' M′ is the first n − 1 n-1 n−1 elements of M M M. Then if we have a list of multi-radix numbers for M ′ M' M′ in lexicographic order, we can extend that list to a list of lexicographic numbers for M M M by appending 0 0 0 to M [ n − 1 ] − 1 M[n-1] - 1 M[n−1]−1 to each element of the list. This approach leads to the following recursive code: def multiradix ( M, n, a, i ): if i < 0 : yield a else : for __ in multiradix ( M, n, a, i - 1 ): # Extend each multi-radix number of length i with all possible # 0 <= x < M[i] to get a multi-radix number of length i + 1. for x in range ( M [ i ]): a [ i ] = x yield a def multiradix_recursive ( M ): n = len ( M ) a = [ 0 ] * n return multiradix ( M, n, a, n - 1 ) Quite simple and elegant, and as we will see, quite fast as well.
3.4 An Iterative Algorithm Now, let's look at the iterative approach. Since our goal is to go from one given multi-radix number to the next in lexicographic order, we can start scanning from right to left until we find an index in a a a that we can increment, do the incrementation, and then set everything to the right of that index to 0 0 0. For example, if our multi-radix number system is simply given by M = [ 10 ] ∗ 4 M = [10] * 4 M=[10]∗4, so we simply have decimal numbers of 4 4 4 digits, and our current a a a is 0399 0399 0399 then scanning from right to left tells us that 3 3 3 is the first number that can be incremented, so we increment 3 3 3 getting 0499 0499 0499 and then set everything to the right of 4 4 4 to 0 0 0 getting 0400 0400 0400 which is the next number in lexicographic order. We can also just set numbers that can not be incremented to zero as we do the scanning for the first number to increment, which will save us from having two loops. This approach results in the following code: def multiradix_iterative ( M ): n = len ( M ) a = [ 0 ] * n while True : yield a # Find right-most index k such that a[k] < M[k] - 1 by scanning from # right to left, and setting everything to zero on the way. k = n - 1 while a [ k ] == M [ k ] - 1 : a [ k ] = 0 k -= 1 if k < 0 : # Last lexicographic item return a [ k ] += 1
3.5 A Coroutine-Based Algorithm Finally, let's look at the coroutine-based algorithm. The basic idea here is very similar to the previous iterative algorithm, but the execution is very different. To explain this algorithm, I will borrow Knuth's style of explaining his coroutine-based algorithms in [KR]. Picture a line of n + 1 n + 1 n+1 friendly trolls. Each troll, with the exception of the first troll holds, a number in his hand. The trolls will behave in the following manner. When a troll is poked, if the number in his hand is strictly less than m i − 1 m_i - 1 mi−1 (meaning the number can be increased) he simply increments the number and yells out "done". If the number in his hand is equal to m i − 1 m_i - 1 mi−1 then he changes the number to 0 0 0 and then pokes the previous troll without yelling anything. The first troll in line is special; whenever poked, he simply yells out "last" without doing anything else. We will call the last troll in line (corresponding to index n − 1 n - 1 n−1 ) the lead troll. The algorithm will start with all trolls holding the number 0 0 0 in their hands. Each time we need the next item generated, we poke the lead troll. If we hear "done" then we know we have a new item. If we hear "last" then we know that we are at the end of the generation task. In the implementation of the above idea, each troll becomes a coroutine. Yelling out "done" will be yielding True and yelling out "last" will yielding False. Troll number − 1 -1 −1 is a special nobody coroutine that simply yields False repeatedly: def nobody (): while True : yield False The rest of the trolls are instances of the troll coroutine in the code given below. Each troll creates the troll previous to it in line, until we get to troll number 0 0 0, which creates a nobody coroutine as its previous troll. from nobody import nobody def troll ( M, a, i ): previous = troll ( M, a, i - 1 ) if i > 0 else nobody () while True : if a [ i ] == M [ i ] - 1 : a [ i ] = 0 yield next ( previous ) # Poke the previous troll else : a [ i ] += 1 yield True def multiradix_coroutine ( M ): n = len ( M ) a = [ 0 ] * n lead = troll ( M, a, n - 1 ) yield a while next ( lead ): yield aEfene: an Erlang VM language that embraces the Zen of Python
unbalancedparentheses Blocked Unblock Follow Following Nov 26, 2015
In this ocasion we interviewed Mariano Guerra, creator of Efene. Efene is “an alternative syntax for the Erlang Programming Language focusing on simplicity, consistency, ease of use and programmer UX”. After reading the interview with Mariano Guerra, check Efene Quick Introduction for the Busy/Lazy Programmer for learning more about Efene.
Reach me via twitter at @unbalancedparen if you have any comment or interview request for This is not a Monad tutorial. Stay tuned!
Why did you create efene?
I learn by doing, and a while ago I wanted to learn Erlang, it was the first functional programming language I wanted to learn coming from C, C++, ASM, Java and Python so I was looking for some toy project to learn it.
For a while I couldn’t find a project that was interesting to me and also matched the strengths of Erlang at some point I decided that I would do a small calculator in Erlang, you can see the first commit here and the full project here.
At first I was doing all the eval stuff myself but pretty quickly I added support to compile the expression to an Erlang module with a function. The next commit added function support and then I realized there was a programming language there, you can read the rest of the commits to see how it morphed into one.
At that point the only other beam language other than Erlang was Reia. I wasn’t planning anything in particular with my powerful calculator/language hybrid, but at some point people from Erlang Factory asked me if I wanted to give a talk about my language and of course I said yes, then I got a dose of impostor syndrome, so I started the project from scratch to do a proper programming language and I decided to support every feature that Erlang supports and not much more. At that point the project changed from a toy to an actual programming language.
After my talk and some initial excitement things got quiet. I just had got my Engineers degree and had a new job so development stopped for a while, then Elixir appeared and got much more attention, so I thought “OK, someone got it right, I will just stop pushing efene” and some years passed. But then looking into Elixir I saw that the Elixir ideas weren’t exactly the ideas of efene and I decided to rewrite it to try to fill the niche of “just a different syntax for Erlang, reuse as much as possible from the Erlang ecosystem, unified tooling and documentation as the core of the project”. The language has been complete for a while now. I’m just working on documentation, rebar3 plugins andwaiting for some of the surrounding tools to mature to avoid having to redo the documentation (mainly rebar3 and cowboy 2).
Why do you embrace the Zen of Python?
Zen of Python
Python was the first language I enjoyed coding in before I coded in C, C++, ASM and Java, but just because it was what I knew or they provided something I needed. With Python it was the first time I said “I’m a Python programmer” and not “I’m a programmer”, also the Python Argentina community helped a lot witht hat.
Python has this attitude of simplicity and community that I like and instead of coming up with an “ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of the python zen” I decided just to copy it.
David Nolen summarized it well the other day:
That’s why efene is a mixture of what I like about the languages, communities and philosophies of Python, Javascript and Erlang, don’t expect a lot of novelty in efene, just a remix of what’s there :).
Could you show to us a short and good example of an efene program?
I can’t think of a particularly short snippet of code that will show you all the interesting bits of efene, mainly because there are no clever parts to efene, the idea is to be regular, simple, explicit and readable.
This means it doesn’t try to win a codegolf competition, or some clever language trick.
But I think you can take a look at this project which is a client for an API that supports REST, Web Sockets, Server Sent Events and COMET and then starts some clients that send some pseudo-random stuff to test the server:
If your reaction is “I understand this and this is boring”, then I would be happy :), of course knowing some Erlang will help the understanding since efene semantics and patterns are the same as Erlang’s.
Which are the biggest advantages of coding in a language that runs on top of the Erlang VM (BEAM)?
The semantics of the VM are really thought out and really simple to learn.
The stability and scalability of the platform is great and there’s a lot of people that have worked on really hard problems for a long time on top of the Erlang VM, this means you can get really good advice and help from them.
One thing I really like and I don’t think is mentioned that much is the level of runtime introspection and visibility the VM has, and the tooling that is build and can be built around it is great.
What difficulties did you find in implementing efene?
Learning the limits of the parser and what syntax is valid an unambiguous, learning to avoid introducing crazy ideas into the language because syntax and semantics are always tricky and you don’t want to have a “WAT” language.
Also learning about Erlang and its VM while doing it.
But to sum it up, it ended up not being as difficult as I thought it will be, it just requires persistence and some hammock-driven development ;)
Do you have any recommendation for those of us that did not implemented any language yet?
Learn about lexing and parsing, then build a calculator using S-Expressions (Lisp-like) or reverse-polish syntax (Forth-like).
Start it as an interpreter, copy the semantics from a simple language you already know, coming up with good semantics is hard, don’t try to invent them the first time.
Then ride on top of a language you know, either transpile to that language or compile to bytecode or some intermediate representation.
Try to reuse as much of the tooling from the other language as possible (AST from Erlang, AST from Python or similar), this will allow you to reuse all the tooling and code built around those representations.
Read about Lisps and Forth. Implement a simple Lisp (Scheme) or Forth.
Once you learn to lex and parse you can think syntax for languages and try to parse them.
What is the match expression and why did you introduce it?
At the core of efene rewrite was the concept of “Everything revolves around 4 main things, pattern matching, functions, guards and data”, pattern matching is done when using the equal sign (=), on the argument list of a function definition and on other Erlang expressions. I wanted to unify the pattern matching under a single syntax and reuse it everywhere, that’s where the “case clauses” came to be.
If you haven’t look at efene yet, the shape of efene expressions is something like:
<keyword> [<expr-args>]
<case-clauses>
[else: <body>]
end
A case-clause has this shape:
case <case-args> [when <guards>]: <body>
For example try/catch:
try
<body>
catch
<case-clauses>
[else: <body>]
[after <body>]
end
Receive:
receive
<case-clauses>
[else: <body>]
[after <after-expr>: <body>]
end
Functions:
fn [<name>]
<case-clauses>
[else: <body>]
end
You should see a pattern there, since the case keyword was already taken and it’s what Erlang use for what “match” does in efene I had to look for a new keyword.
One thing I like about python is this concept of “executable pseudocode”, I like the fact that if you read Python code aloud it sounds like what it does, so I thought “what am I doing here”, “I’m matching and expression against cases”, in imperative it would be “match A [against] case B, case C, else … end” and that’s how I ended up with match.
Why did you introduce a for expression?
The initial idea for efene was to be familiar for people coming from “algol-like” or “mainstream” languages, so they can focus on learning what’s interesting about Erlang which are the semantics and the abstractions and avoid learning a new syntax on the way to epiphany.
Since list comprehensions aren’t available in many of those languages but “for” is, I decided to implement list comprehensions as a more familiar construct but in fact it does the same.
What is the arrow operator and why did you add it?
First a quick introduction for people unfamiliar with efene or the arrow operator.
There’s this thing in Erlang where if you want to apply a sequence of operations to a list you have to create a new binding for each intermediate result:
MyList = create_list(),
MyList1 = op1(MyList),
MyList2 = op2(MyList1),
MyList3 = op3(MyList2),
MyList4 = op4(MyList3).
Then if you want to reorder or remove some of the operations you have to rearrange the names to fit.
The idea of the arrow operator is to help with that, it’s a compile operation, this means that if you write:
MyList = create_list() -> op1() -> op2() -> op3() -> op4()
It will compile to:
MyList = op4(op3(op2(op1(create_list))))
The thing is that the Erlang libraries don’t have a standard position for the thing you are operating on like in other languages where it tends to be the first argument, inspired by Clojure (http://clojuredocs.org/clojure.core/-%3E and http://clojuredocs.org/clojure.core/-%3E%3E)
I created two variants:
“->” adds the result of evaluating the expression on the left as first argument on the function call on the right
“->>” adds the result of evaluating the expression on the left as last argument on the function call on the right
But thinking about symmetry and other common idiom in Erlang and other functional languages which is higher order functions (passing functions as arguments to other functions) I decided to create the reverse of those but with a more restricted use.
“<-” adds the case clauses on the right as an anonymous function as last argument on the function call on the left.
“<<-” adds the case clauses on the right as an anonymous function as first argument on the function call on the left.
You can see it says “case clauses” and not “anonymous function”, this is because you don’t have to write the *fn* keyword, it gives this expression a DSL taste that I like, for example:
lists.map(Things) <<-
case 0: zero
case A when A % 2 is 0: even
else odd
end
Going back to the restricted uses of the right-to-left arrows it’s because since code reads from left to right, putting something on the right that is just a value doesn’t help readability hence I decided not to support it.
I just saw that you are creating a new language for the BEAM called interfix. What is it?
As I said above, efene is a language that doesn’t try to come up with anythingnew. This led me to avoid doing experiments on efene itself, but I still wanted to do those experiments somewhere else.
With time the number of ideas for crazy languages I had grew and condensed to a point I thought I had a nice little language. Then coming back from a conference I had a lot of dead time on airports and no internet so I decided to give it a try.
After I landed, the language was growing and all the ideas I had didn’t seem to have any problems so I kept growing it quite fast and for the last days it’s almost a complete language (in the sense that it can do everything Erlang can do).
At this point I’m finishing adding the remaining features and when everything is there and I know everything fits I will move to cleaning the code and adding some tooling and docs around it for people that want to play with a more “experimental” language.
I say experimental in the sense that it has some crazy ideas in it but not experimental in that it will crash, break backward compatibility or compile the code to wrong bytecode.
You wrote the Little Riak Core Book and you gave a talk called From 0 to a working distributed system with riak_core. Could you explain what riak core is and why it can be useful for those of us who implement distributed systems?
Riak Core is the foundation of Riak KV and other Basho projects, it’s the generic and reusable part of a “dynamo style” distributed system, it provides some abstractions and utilities to build multi-node, master-less distributed systems.
In a Riak Core based application you build your system by implemented interfaces to handle the work your application does inside virtual nodes (vnodes) that live inside a ring of vnodes, the work is done by routing commands consistently to those vnodes by hashing a key that you specify.
It also provides ways to run a command in more than one vnode and compare the results, grow or shrink the cluster without downtime, migrate vnodes between physical nodes, authentication/authorization and a metadata system to hold information about the cluster and your application in a distributed manner.
This frees you from having to implement all this building blocks so you can focus on what actually makes your application different and building upon a tested and production ready foundation.
While reading your blog I could see that you have used Scala and Clojure apart from Erlang. What has been your experience with Scala and Clojure? What advantages and disadvantages did you find when comparing Scala, Clojure and Erlang?
The experience with the 3 programming languages has been really good, I’ve built similar systems with those programming languages (a kind of pub/sub system with persistence), the reason I moved this backend initially from Scala (lift+akka) to Clojure (immutant) was because the system handled lot of semi-structured data both from the frontend and the backend and I was using a lot of time putting that data into “rigid” types to serialize it to json again
after some operations, and each time the shape of the data evolved on the frontend or the storage I had to go and change those types in a backward compatible manner and it was getting really tiring since the backend was really simple in what it actually did.
So I decided to move to Clojure and it resulted in a huge reduction on code but after the code evolved I saw myself implementing this pub/sub like system by hand with low level tools like agents, atoms and promises copying the Erlang “patterns”, at this point some customers were asking about scalability and clustering, so I decided to do a prototype using riak_core and after some coding we tried at a new project and since we could improve it fast and it was working quite nice we decided to adopt it as our default backend.
I’m still using scala for Spark jobs, I use clojure for internal tools and internal frontends with clojurescript but the backend now is Erlang.
I just want to clarify that our backend is quite simple in what it does so moving between languages in the backend is not a big deal, the bulk of what we do is in our frontend code.The longer and more convoluted the so-called debate over debates gets in advance of this fall’s federal election, the clearer it becomes that the Conservative party’s goal is simply to manipulate the rules in its favour. In some senses there’s nothing surprising about this: it’s what political parties always try to do, the Harper Conservatives more than most.
From left, NDP Leader Jack Layton, Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff square off in 2011 debate. ( Chris Wattie / THE CANADIAN PRESS )
But surprising or not, if the Tories succeed it will be a profound disservice to our electoral process and a setback for anyone who believes in encouraging more Canadians to engage with the national political discussion. To recap an increasingly tangled story: last week the Conservatives unilaterally announced they would no longer take part in leaders’ debates organized by the four national broadcast organizations (known as the consortium). Instead, they said, they want to encourage “diversity and innovation” by having different sponsors and formats for campaign debates. They even wanted some of the events to be scheduled before the campaign is underway.
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Now, after a week and a half of manoeuvring among the parties, it looks like the Tories have agreed to have Prime Minister Stephen Harper take part in four debates – three in English and one in French – organized by various organizations with a variety of rules and formats. None of them involve the biggest English networks – CBC/Radio-Canada and CTV. To add to the confusion, the broadcasters’ consortium plans to stage two national debates. But Harper won’t take part, raising the possibility that Justin Trudeau and Thomas Mulcair may end up debating each other – and an empty chair. Some might ask: who cares? Why not have all kinds of debates? Wasn’t the dominance of the old-line broadcasters just a relic of traditional thinking? In fact, no. Having at least a handful of nationally broadcast, independently organized debates is still key to exposing the largest possible number of voters to the leaders and the campaign issues. In 2011, the English and French debates drew an impressive 14 million viewers. For the very reason that they were broadcast simultaneously on CBC, Radio-Canada, CTV, Global and TVA they practically forced anyone with a passing interest in politics to at least take note. They were the centre-pieces of the campaign and crucial tests for the leaders. They also put the head of the governing party and his challengers on an equal footing for at least the duration of the debate.
Now, entirely because of the Conservatives’ determination to have things their way, we are heading toward a situation where there are more debates – but none is likely to have the mass audience, and therefore the political weight, of past face-offs. And it’s far from certain that we will be able to see all three major party leaders actually confront one another in the same forum. Obviously, political junkies will find the debates – whether they are on broadcast TV or live-streamed by the Globe and Mail (which is sponsoring one encounter on the economy) or the Munk Debates (which are organizing a session on foreign policy). But these may well turn out to be niche events with rules crafted to the liking of the governing party. They are much less likely to be the central events of the campaign.
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The old consortium system wasn’t perfect. As the Star recommended in the run-up to the 2011 campaign, it would be preferable for debates to be organized by a “non-partisan, independent and accountable commission committed to clear standards on participation.” But debates organized and broadcast simultaneously by the national networks were far more useful than the patchwork that is emerging thanks to the Conservatives’ insistence on cherry-picking events. They obviously think it will work for them. Voters should pass their own judgment on this cynical manoeuvre.
Read more about:Astrophile is our weekly column on curious cosmic objects, from the solar system to the far reaches of the multiverse
Object: stellar superwinds
Location: red giant stars; our future
Characteristics: dusty, dense and doom-laden
The sun’s dying breath will be no feeble wheeze. Instead, our star will go
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type of compassion and concern we are beginning to give female spouses.
Almost all American parents endorse the use of corporal punishment and use it routinely on infants, older children and teens alike, though usage tends to decrease the older the child gets. However, Read Read More...rporal punishment appears to be directed at boys than girls. Read Read More...les report being hit by parents and Read Read More...rents report hitting sons than daughters (Straus, 1994). In this same study, sons recall being equally likely to be hit by both parents, whereas adolescent daughters are a third Read Read More...kely to be hit by their mothers. The most chronic pattern of hitting, in terms of frequency, is mothers hitting adolescent sons, the lowest is for fathers hitting daughters. Two thirds of mothers with toddlers hit them three or Read Read More...mes per week. Other studies have also found higher rates of mothers hitting adolescent children (Wauchope and Straus, 1990).
When an adolescent is hit, both parents usually do it, especially if the child is a boy. When a son is hit, fathers do it 23% of the time, mothers 23%, and both parents 53%. When a daughter is hit, fathers do it 20% of the time, mothers 39%, and both parents 41%. The highest rate of hitting teens occurs in middle-class families (Straus, 1994).
Several theories summarized by Straus (1994) offer some explanation of why boys are hit and punished Read Read More...ten than girls: they misbehave Read More..boys are encouraged to be Read Read More...tive which may subtly encourage misbehaviour; it is part of training boys for anticipated adult male roles of provider/protector; and it is used to toughen boys up. The gender of the parent administering corporal punishment is also likely to influence our perceptions. Because of our stereotypes of women as nurturers or "natural" caregivers, we are less likely to attribute malicious intent to mothers or other females. Instead, we tend to view women's use of physical abuse or corporal punishment as a sign of stress. We are also likely to overlook, or give only passing concern to, cases where a female caregiver uses physical force or corporal punishment toward an older male child or teen. However, theories that explain mothers' use of violence toward children and teens solely in terms of stress, fail to acknowledge and factor in these gender-specific issues of particular consequence to male victims.
It is generally believed that parental stress owing to conditions of poverty or low socioeconomic status (SES) contributes to children being "at risk." However, the research is inconclusive. Erlanger's review of the literature on corporal punishment reported no remarkable relationship between use of corporal punishment and socioeconomic status. Others have found higher rates for lower-income families (Bryan and Freed, 1982; Stark and McEvoy, 1970). One study found that corporal punishment rates are highest for middle-class families (Straus, 1994). This same study also found that while fewer lower-SES adolescent parents may hit their children, those that do hit do it Read Read More...ten.
Personal beliefs, life experience, attribution and social learning all appear to play a role in predicting the use of corporal punishment. Parents who believe hitting a child is not abuse and that it works to correct misbehaviour, attribute the child's misbehaviour to premeditation or provocation, attribute the behaviour to internal characteristics of the child that are within their control, observe their partner administer force, or who feel powerless in the face of the misbehaviour are most likely to use corporal punishment or physically abuse their children (Bugental, et al., 1989; Dibble and Straus, 1990; Dietrich et al., 1990; Dix and Grusec, 1985; Fry, 1993; Institute for the Prevention of Child Abuse, 1990; Walters, 1991). The Read Read More...rents believe in the use of corporal punishment, the Read Read More...kely they are to use it, and the Read Read More...kely they are to apply it harshly (Moore and Straus, 1987).
Chapter 3
Effects of Victimization on Males
Most of the literature on the impact of abuse has been written about female victims and thus tends to reflect a female-centred perspective. There has become, in Fran Sepler's words, a "feminization of victimization" (1990). That is not to say that this literature cannot be applied to male victims. There are likely Read Read More...milarities than differences between male and female victims.
Questions typically surface in discussions about victimization concerning which gender suffers the greatest impact from abuse. Watkins and Bentovim (1992) in a review of the literature were unable to find clear evidence that either males or female victims are harmed Read Read More... their victimization experiences. However, the question itself is self-defeating given the wide range of peoples' resilience and ability to cope, personal resources, the availability of social supports and individual differences, to name only a few.
One problem that asses when trying to assess the impact of abuse of either gender is separating out which consequences are immediate or short-term reactions from those that are likely to be enduring. Another problem is the difficulty of assessing impact for children and youth who have experienced two or Read Read More...pes of maltreatment. Individuals, family environments, developmental and cultural contexts also differ widely, as do things such as previous levels of mental and physical health or intellectual or cognitive functioning. Further complicating the matter is that most of the recent research on impact has been conducted on sexual abuse victims and survivors. Consequently, it is difficult to make generalized statements about impact that apply to all victims, even of similar types of abuse.
Sexual Abuse
Numerous factors have been cited as contributing to an enduring or harmful outcome: duration and frequency of abuse, penetration, use of force, abuse by family members or other closely related person, lack of support following disclosure, pressure to recant, multiple other problems in the family, and younger age (Browne and Finkelhor, 1986; Conte and Schuerman, 1987; Finkelhor, 1979; Friedrich et al., 1986; Russell and Finkelhor, 1984; Tsai et al., 1979). For males, the added dimension of not being able to disclose their abuse for fear of being labelled "gay," a weakling or a liar may amplify the effects of these other factors. Even when males do disclose, few supports and services are available and few professionals possess the skills and knowledge necessary to work effectively with male victims.
It is widely assumed that males are Read Read More...kely than females to "act out" in response to their abuse. They develop social problem behaviours such as sex offending, assault, conduct disorder or delinquency, and appear to be Read Read More...clined to engage in health-damaging behaviours such as smoking, drug abuse, running away or school problems leading to suspension (Bolton, 1989; Friedrich et al., 1988; Kohan et al., 1987; Rogers and Terry, 1984).
Females are thought, generally, to internalize their response and "act in" or develop Read Read More...otional problems, mood and somatic disorders, resort to self-harming behaviours and become vulnerable to further victimization. Although there is some meat to this perspective, it does apply gender role stereotypes, and is not consistent with current research on the impact of abuse on males. Males, generally, may be just as likely to experience depression as females, they just are not given much permission to express it. Males are expected to be stoic and to just "snap out of it."
Males generally do not discuss their feelings or go to therapists for help so they are not likely to show up in the statistics on depression. Because boys have little permission to discuss their feelings, depression in males may be masked as bravado, aggression or a need to "act out" in order to overcompensate for feelings of powerlessness. Depressed male victims are also likely to be hiding in the statistics on suicide, addictions and unexplained motor vehicle fatalities. If males are indeed Read Read More...kely to engage in acting out behaviours, it may simply be the result of us not allowing them to be vulnerable or to be victims.
However, the literature does provide overwhelming evidence of emotional disturbance in male victims. Anxiety, low self-esteem, guilt and shame, strong fear reactions, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, withdrawal and isolation, flashbacks, multiple personality disorder, emotional numbing, anger and aggressiveness, hyper-vigilance, passivity and an anxious need to please others have all been documented (Adams-Tucker, 1981; Blanchard, 1986; Briere, 1989; Briere et al., 1988; Burgess et al., 1981; Conte and Schuerman, 1987; RogersandTerry,1984; Sebold,1987;Summit,1983; VanderMey, 1988). Compared to non-abused men, adult male survivors of sexual abuse experience a greater degree of psychiatric problems, such as depression, anxiety, dissociation, suicidality and sleep disturbance (Briere et al., 1988).
Childhood sexual abuse has been found in the backgrounds of large numbers of men incarcerated in federal prisons (Diamond and Phelps, 1990; Spatz-Widom, 1989; Condy et al., 1987). Because males are Read Read More...kely to be physically and sexually abused concurrently, they may be Read Read More...nditioned to see sex, violence and aggression as inseparable. This may provide us with clues to explain why male victims appear to sexually abuse or assault others Read Read More...ten than females, why their anger and frustration may be Read Read More...her-directed than girls, why boys appear to develop a stronger external locus of control, and why they appear to possess a diminished sensitivity to the impact of the abuse on their victims.
However, sexual offending is just one possible consequence for male victims. Most do not become sex offenders (Becker, 1988; Condy et al., 1987; Preeman-Longo, 1986; Friedrich et al., 1987; Friedrich and Luecke, 1988; Groth, 1977; Kohan et al., 1987; Petrovich and Templer, 1984). Some males become "sexualized" resulting in increased masturbation or preoccupation with sexual thoughts or use of sexual language. Others develop fetishes (Friedrich et al., 1987; Kohan et al., 1987).
Male victims experience a number of physical symptoms similar to females. Common problems are sleep disturbances, eating disorders, self-mutilation, engaging in unsafe sexual practices, nightmares, agoraphobia, enuresis and encopresis, elevated anxiety and phobias (Adams-Tucker, 1981; Burgess et al., 1981; Dixon et al., 1978; Hunter, 1990; Langsley et al., 1968; Spencer and Dunklee, 1986). Male victims also experience psychosomatic health problems normally associated with experiencing high levels of chronic long-term stress, receive sexually transmitted diseases, and become injured through rough touching, penetration or object insertion or, in extreme cases, are killed. In preschool boys and male infants, failure to thrive, early and compulsive masturbation, hyperactivity, sexual behaviour with pets, sexual touching of other children that re-enacts the abuse and regression in speech or language skills have been found (Hewitt, 1990).
Being sexually abused can leave a young male with an inability to set personal boundaries, a sense of hopelessness and a proclivity to engage in many types of careless or self-destructive behaviours, such as unprotected sex with high-risk partners. It is thus no surprise to find that sexual abuse was also found in 42% of persons with HIV infection (Allers and Benjack, 1991; Allers et al., 1993).
Johnson and Shrier ( 1987) found that males molested by males were Read Read More...kely than those molested by females to view themselves as being "gay," a devalued status in North American society. In this same study, female-victimized males reported the impact of the abuse to be Read Read More...vere, possibly as a consequence of experiencing a reversal of stereotyped gender roles which placed the female in the Read Read More...werful role.
One of the reasons why a male might be Read Read More...fected by sexual abuse is that it calls into question his whole sexual and personal identity "as a man." When a male is victimized, he is Read Read More...kely to experience confusion about sexual identity (Johnson and Shrier, 1987; Rogers and Terry, 1984; Sebold, 1487). Male anatomy may play a key role in forming this perception. Because male genitalia is external, arousal to direct stimulation is Read Read More...vious. Obtaining an erection, experiencing pleasurable sensations or having an orgasm is, to the male victim, physical "evidence" that he is homosexual. It also reinforces the male victim's mistaken belief that he was responsible in some way because he "obviously" enjoyed it. Contrary to popular belief, a male can have an erection and achieve orgasm even when fearful.
Many male victims experience difficulties in intimate relationships as a result of being abused. They have few, if any, close friends, are promiscuous, have difficulty maintaining fidelity with partners, form few secure attachments and often become involved in short-term, abusive and dysfunctional relationships. Many experience few emotionally or physically satisfying sexual relationships and sometimes avoid sex altogether. Others become sexual compulsives, develop sexual dysfunctions or engage in prostitution (Coombs, 1974; Dimock, 1988; Promuth and Burkhart, 1989; Johnson and Shrier, 1987; Krug, 1989; Lew, 1986; Sarrel and Masters, 1982; Steele and Alexander, 1981; Urquiza, 1993).
Physical Abuse, Corporal Punishment and Neglect
There appears to be some truth to the notion that violence begets violence. Children with a history of physical abuse and corporal punishment are Read Read More...gressive, possess fewer internal controls for their behaviour, have higher rates of involvement in came and violence as adults, and are Read More.. likely to abuse siblings or attack parents (Bandura and Walters, 1959; Bryan and Freed, 1982; Eron, 1982; Hirschi, 1969; Sears et al., 1957; Straus et al., 1980; Welsh, 1978; Widom, 1989). Men and women who were physically punished are also Read Read More...kely to abuse their partners or spouses (Straus, 1991). The highest predictors of involvement in came and delinquency are: being hit once per week or Read More.. at 11 years of age and having a mother, at that age, with strong beliefs in, and a commitment to, corporal punishment (Newson and Newson, 1990).
There is some evidence to suggest that adults hit as adolescents are Read Read More...kely to develop depression or engage in suicidal ideation than those who are not hit, regardless of sex, socioeconomic status, drinking problems, marital violence or whether children witnessed violence between their parents. In fact, the Read Read More...e is hit the greater the likelihood that depression will be a consequence ( Straus, 1994).
Straus suggests four consequences of corporal punishment. At the immediate level, it leads to escalation, where a resistant child forces the parent to use increasing amounts of force which could cause serious injury. At the developmental level, the Read Read More...rporal punishment is used, the Read More.. it will have to be used because the child will be less likely to develop internalized controls for behaviour. At the macro-cultural level, corporal punishment creates a society that approves of violence to correct wrongdoing. At the inter-generational level, it increases the chance that when the child is an adult he or she will approve of interpersonal violence, be in a violent marriage and be depressed.
Assessing the impact of neglect is difficult, since its effects are likely to be inseparable from problems related to living in a dangerous or high-stress home environment, living in an unsafe neighbourhood or community, living in poverty, poor parental skills, parental mental health problems, parental criminality or substance abuse or addiction, and inter-parental violence. Here, the effects are likely similar for male and female victims. Health problems related to non-organic failure to thrive, dental cases, malnutrition, anemia and low levels of immunity protection could also be expected.
The Consequences of "Male Sexual Licence"
Males, generally, have Read Read More...rmission to be sexual persons in our society. A double standard of morality has been applied to males and female for centuries. The fact that there are no "positive" or flattering terms such as "sowing his wild oats," "boys will be boys" or "ladies man" for females gives vivid illustration to this point. It is generally assumed that having "licence" to be a sexual person is an advantage. Males are seen to get power from obtaining or taking sex, women from withholding sex.
However, sexual licence has serious consequences for male victims. It increases a boy's susceptibility to sexual abuse by promoting or encouraging participation in sexual activities. It promotes secrecy because boys are afraid to report sexual experiences that go wrong for fear they are responsible and blameworthy. It affects our perceptions as professional caregivers, encourages victim blaming and supports minimization of the impact on victims of male-on-male sexual assault or female-perpetrated sexual assault. It causes males to expect female sexual contact. It promotes risk-taking sexual behaviour and creates expectations for males that they must be the initiators of sex and have sexual knowledge and experience.
Chapter 4
Implications
Implications for Research
As one might expect from any new field, the literature regarding male victimization lacks cohesion, particularly in the area of sexual abuse. Samples are wide ranging. Some studies provide no definition of sexual abuse. Some include only hands-on offences. Some apply a definition of abuse only when the age difference between the victim and the perpetrator is five or Read Read More...ars. Some count perpetrators only if they are adults or at least 16 years of age. This would exclude, for example, the sexual abuse of a 10 or 11-year-old boy by a 15-year-old male or female teen. Some subjects were excluded if the male victim admitted to "wanting" or agreed to the sexual activity.
There are still many definitional/conceptual problems in the discourse with respect to what constitutes sexual abuse toward boys and young men. Although definitions of abuse may be spelled out clearly in the law, many of us struggle to see sexual abuse when there is pressured sex between teen male peers; teen girls or adult females expose themselves to boys; adult females use the services of teen males working in prostitution; when women engage in sexualized talk with boys or teen males; or when an adult male or female shows pornography to a boy or teen male. Even if there is agreement about some of these categories when young boys are involved, once a male reaches his teen years, our perceptions readily begin to reflect a double standard.
Imprecision and bias in the selection of research questions greatly affects the findings of studies. For example, terms such as sexual "contact" and sexual "abuse" mean very different things to males who are socialized to expect and enjoy all sexual interactions with females. That is why studies that broaden their definition of sexual abuse and ask males about "sexual experiences" with older teen and adult females yield higher prevalence rates for female offenders. Lower-prevalence-yielding case-report types of studies have shaped most of the professional discourse on child abuse and created an impression of male victimization in the public mind that is largely false and misleading.
Applying a double standard when interpreting findings has also affected our perceptions about impact on male victims. It is not uncommon in studies of males abused by females to find claims that they did not see the sexual contact as "abuse" and viewed it as a neutral or positive experience. Anyone reading these studies who accepted these accounts at face value could be led to the erroneous assumption that there was, in reality, no actual negative or harmful impact. When making this assumption, we forget that males are socialized to minimize the impact of being victimized, especially if the abuser was a female, and often hide their fear or discomfort behind "macho posturing."
Accepting these self-assessments at face value reinforces stereotypes about males that have unintended consequences for males and females. They maintain a harmful double standard prevalent in the child abuse field. They give a message that male victims can "take it." They suggest females are not sex offenders but instead "gentle seducers." They encourage some female sex abusers to deny by supporting a view of themselves as teachers/initiators of sex for their male victims. They support the stereotype that boys are "seduced," while girls are "raped" or sexually assaulted. They can affect the attitudes, beliefs and behaviours of police officers, physicians, hospital staff, child welfare authorities or anyone else who examines victims for impact or conducts investigations of incidents involving female abusers and male victims. They can cause these same persons to look only at physical injuries to male victims and overlook or minimize their emotional responses. They suggest that, but for our socialization of males and females, girls would be giving the same kinds of "positive" or "neutral" responses. This is most definitely a message we do not want to be sending to anyone about children or youth.
We owe it to ourselves and to male victims to ask Read More.. probing research questions. For example, if we reframed the experience for these male victims and invited them to consider the differences in power between themselves as children and their adult or teen abusers, to search for feelings of confusion or anxiety before, during or after the sexual contact, and to examine in their adult life the quality or quantity of their intimate and sexual relationships, would they be Read Read More...kely to respond differently? Would we accept without question from a female victim her assessment that her "sexual contact" with a teen or adult male was not sexual abuse or was just part of her learning about sex? Unlikely. We have to ask ourselves why we simply accept this response from males.
The double standard prevalent in the field of child abuse has created a most unfortunate situation for boys and young men. Female abusers must do something severe and obvious before they will be held accountable as perpetrators. Males must be abused in Read Read More...vere and obvious ways before we will take them seriously as victims.
Serious gaps also exist in the literature. There has been an extraordinary focus on sexual abuse that, relative to the prevalence of other forms of abuse, is out of proportion. It is time for us to focus Read Read More...me, attention and resources on the study of physical abuse, including corporal punishment, neglect and emotional maltreatment of children. Male victims represent a majority of the victims in these other types of abuse cases.
We also need to investigate the particular needs of visible, cultural and sexual minority male victims. The impact of victimization on a boy or young man, along with our response to his needs and issues, can be greatly affected by his membership in one or Read Read More... these categories.
Finally, we have to restore some equity in the allocation of resources spent on research and public education in the area of child abuse and interpersonal violence. Single-gender studies focusing on women's concerns predominate. While this has been an important and worthwhile investment of our resources, a single-gender focus on public education and advocacy is impeding the development of a Read Read More...clusive and comprehensive picture of interpersonal violence in Canada. Until we possess a better understanding of male victims' issues, we will continue to fall far behind other Western democracies and compromise the vision of achieving real gender equality.
Implications For Assessment, Treatment, and Program Development
It is generally assumed that approaches to working with female victims will also work with males. Although there is merit in this belief, our current and predominantly female-centred models of victimization fall short in several important areas and may actually be harmful if carelessly applied to male victims.
The silence, denial and resistance that surrounds the issue of child abuse is particularly problematic for males. Because knowledge about male victimization is very limited in the public mind, featured rarely in media stories and under-researched, victims need to know from the outset that they are not the first or only male who has been abused or harmed. Making sure a male victim understands the prevalence of male victimization can be of significant help in ending the sense of isolation and self-loathing that accompanies a common perception that "I am the only one" or "I do not measure up."
Learning to trust a therapist and even one's own thoughts, feelings and perceptions after having been victimized is a major issue for all survivors. Opening up to a therapist can be an extraordinary challenge for male victims who must also cross a barrier with respect to gender-role socialization that instructs males to be stoic and silent, prevents them from wanting to appear vulnerable and encourages them to be self-reliant. The skill and knowledge of the therapist, and experience working with male victims, is of paramount importance in facilitating the development of trust in male victims and getting them past these obstacles. Being able to identify for male victims our gender "blindspots" that end up causing or exacerbating many of their problems will help them build confidence and ultimately greater trust in us.
Therapists working with male victims need to have a thorough knowledge of human development across the lifespan. For example, many of the effects of being abused as a boy do not surface until later years. Understanding how abuse can affect childhood development and what the potential sequelae might be, therapists can be Read Read More...fective guides for a male victim and an important resource for his caregivers, intimate partners or other persons who are supporting him in his healing work.
Conducting a thorough and comprehensive assessment is imperative when working with male victims. Older boys, and teen and young adult males, often find recollections of sexual abuse experiences fragmented or dream-like. Some of this may be related to the age at which the abuse occurred, the fact that the abuse was well "disguised" in otherwise typical child/adult interactions, or seamlessly blended into everyday interactions in a home "environment" that was sexualized. The permission given to males in their socialization to be sexual persons can also confuse memories and distort interpretations of the experience. Sexual abuse often leaves male victims with a traumatized sexuality that can be internalized or interpreted as being a normal "male" sexual response pattern.
Because males are socialized to take charge, be responsible and take care of themselves, physical abuse and corporal punishment can be interpreted as "deserved" and internalized in a negative self-concept that supports self-blame. It can also support the internalization of anger in the form of drug and alcohol abuse, excessive risk taking, suicide and reckless attempts to reassert a distorted sense of one's own masculinity. All these gender-role-related issues need to be unpacked for male victims.
Another area of special significance to males is in the use of language-intensive and insight-based types of interventions. Boys tend to lag girls in the acquisition and use of language skills (Maccoby and Jacklin, 1974). Some of this may be related to different patterns of brain development or maturation in males and females. The literature on high-risk violent and aggressive male youth, many of whom are victims, is rich with documentation concerning the predominance of language deficits and other learning difficulties. This lag in language development may be one Read Read More...ason why boys are less likely than girls to disclose their abuse.
However, rarely discussed is the fact that a lag in language development, or even language deficits, may also be based on differential socialization, family and environmental factors, or abuse and neglect issues. Males, generally, are not encouraged to talk about their feelings or personal thoughts. Consequently, few boys and teen males have much experience exploring or expressing inner states of mind and emotion. They are generally Read Read More...uot;action" oriented and thus inclined to dismiss a long process of searching for insight in the interest of just "getting on with life." Using exclusively language-intensive and insight-based types of interventions can push a male victim into a process of therapeutic or healing work that will make him uncomfortable because he is neither able nor prepared to deal with it.
The language of therapy is typically a language about feelings which creates problems for some male victims. Male victims typically struggle with expressions of feeling. This should not be interpreted as a confirmation of biased stereotypes about males as having no feelings or lower levels of "emotional literacy" than females. Males experience the same emotions as females, they are just less likely to be differentiated and articulated. For example, feelings of shame, guilt, humiliation, anxiety, sadness and rage can become bundled together in the form of anger. Since anger is the only "legitimate" feeling they can express, they, and we, often mistake what we are seeing when a male victim expresses anger. Some males are afraid to express any anger at all because of the potential tempest of uncontrollable and jumbled feelings they fear will be unleashed. Some are afraid to express anger because they associate it with violence. Therapists, unaware of these complexities, may invite a male victim to express his anger and end up scaring him off counselling. Conversely, suggestions to a male that he needs to learn techniques to "control" or "manage" his anger can convey a message that it is a "pathology" in need of correction and that his underlying pain and confusion are not legitimate.
That is why it is so important to identify toxic versus righteous anger for male victims. Toxic anger is a maladaptive, unacknowledged, repressed or misdirected rage reaction that can harm male victims and their relationships with others. Righteous anger has the potential to be empowering once it is understood as a normal and healthy response to the harmful restrictions of male gender roles, to being abused and to a biased, unwelcoming and silencing social environment males face when they attempt to disclose their victimization.
Some male victims become intensely "homophobic," their anger emerging from self-perceptions and doubts about their "masculinity" or about possibly being "gay." It is important to help male victims understand that being abused does not "cause" someone to become gay or bisexual. Helping males to understand that this anger stems from a perceived threat to personal beliefs about their "masculinity" and a cultural context that supports anti-gay prejudice is also important. If we were a gay-positive society, it would be less likely for these homophobic feelings and perceptions to arise. We need to counsel boys and young men that "masculinity" is a social construction that is malleable. Many male victims suffer under the tyranny of a narrowly defined sense of what it means to be a "man." They need help, support, and encouragement to learn to be themselves, outside of rigid gender-role proscriptions.
Some male victims express no emotions like anger at all but become withdrawn, isolated and depressed. Many males hide their emotions in work-a-holism, perfectionism and over-achieving. All these behaviours can be highly resistant to change, considering that they have the effect of deflecting painful feelings and bring monetary rewA range of medical specialties are not available in the hospital which was strongly criticised over the death of Savita Halappanavar.
A simple pharmaceutical product like Bonjela is not available at University Hospital Galway at weekends because the pharmacy is not open, it emerged yesterday.
A grieving widower told his wife’s inquest of having to leave the hospital and buy Bonjela to treat his wife’s severely painful mouth.
The inquest into the death of a nurse, Kathleen Kilgallen, heard that she died at UHG in June of last year from septic shock following an extremely rare disease which caused almost all of her skin to shed.
Ms Kilgallen (64) of Newpark, Swinford, Co Mayo, was mother of actor Tom Kilgallen who stars in the popular RTÉ television series, Hardy Bucks. She had been transferred from Mayo General Hospital to UHG in February of last year for treatment of cervical cancer and underwent radiotherapy treatment. She was making a good recovery and expected to be released home in April after 28 bouts of radiation.
Not present
Consultant Michael O’Leary, who operated on Ms Kilgallen, was asked by west Galway coroner Dr Ciarán MacLoughlin if it was possible that there would be no pharmacist available at such a major hospital at weekends. Dr O’Leary said: “Unfortunately I believe so. There are multiple specialties not present in the hospital at weekends.”
Intestinal and general surgeon Dr Mark Regan explained that Ms Kilgallen had developed a very rare condition known as toxic epidermal necrolysis (Tens), the most severe end of Stevens-Johnson syndrome. “It is body-wide and causes the skin to shed. It is a very distressing condition. She had shed almost all her skin and she had to be managed in special beds.
“She had lost her entire protection and the skin had nothing to stick to,” Dr Regan said.
He said he wanted to point out to the inquest that while the pharmacy may have been closed at weekends, there was always access to drugs that were required and the keys were available to nurses on duty.
Witnesses
Medical witnesses agreed that Ms Kilgallen did not die as a result of her cancer, but had suffered a reaction to drugs and had developed Tens. The inquest heard that the cause of Ms Kilgallen’s death was septic shock following on from Tens in the aftermath of treatment for cancer. Dr MacLoughlin returned a verdict of medical misadventure.
Ms Kilgallen developed a hospital bug, VRE (vancomycin-resistant enterococci) and her condition began to deteriorate. She developed a rash and was put on heavy doses of antibiotics. Her doctors decided that she required surgery to drain an infection and put her on an emergency surgery list on May 3rd, but she was not operated on until May 9th. During the operation, her bowel was perforated, the inquest heard.
Her husband, Tom Kilgallen snr, told the inquest he had visited his wife on June 9th. Her condition was getting worse and she had not been drinking for several days. “She said her mouth felt like there were 1,000 pieces of broken glass in it,” said Mr Kilgallen. When he asked for treatment for his wife’s mouth, a nurse told him that the hospital pharmacy was not open at weekends. All that was available was water and a sponge, so he went to a pharmacist in Galway and bought Bonjela. She died on June 19th.Last week, two of my fellow Lions of Liberty contributors weighed in on the term “Conservative” and it’s utility in regards to advancing the ideas of liberty. Over at Economic Policy Journal, Chris Rossini argued that libertarians should “ditch” conservatives, citing how “conservative” pundits such as the American Enterprise Institute’s Arthur Brooks will claim to stand for liberty while advocating such policies as government “education reform” under the guise of “social justice.” He quotes Lew Rockwell’s take on conservatism from 2008:
What does conservatism today stand for? It stands for war. It stands for power. It stands for spying, jailing without trial, torture, counterfeiting without limit, and lying from morning to night. There comes a time in the life of every believer in freedom when he must declare, without any hesitation, to have no attachment to the idea of conservatism.
It’s certainly true that the “conservatism” advanced by the Republican Party of today does indeed stand for the war, the spying, the torture, and all of the other terrible things perpetrated by an increasingly totalitarian government. The Republican Party and “conservatism” are largely one and the same in the eyes of the American public, and for that reason associating them with the ideas of liberty can indeed prove dangerous as Rossini points out.
James E. Miller has another take, and argued here at Lions of Liberty that conservatism shouldn’t be ditched all together. He attempts to make the distinction between what the idea of “conservative” has come to mean in the political realm as opposed to what it means as a cultural viewpoint. He sees conservatism as a value system that stretches far beyond the political philosophy of libertarianism. Miller writes:
Given its history, having a reluctant or even cynical view of the political process is perfectly healthy. Libertarians don’t trust political actors to adhere to strictures. Neither should conservatives who cast a wary eye on anyone crying for progress. Conservatism, at its best, is the wisdom to be suspicious of grand proclamations of the state’s efficacy. But it also extends further: it’s a disposition that recognizes man’s flawed abilities and doesn’t heartily celebrate progress, whether it be material, scientific, or knowledgeable. It holds onto tradition because of the guiding light it has provided for centuries before. That doesn’t mean a conservative is correct to oppose all new declarations of liberty. But it acts as a strong bulwark against the insidious longings of thought leaders who want tyrannical lordship over freedom.
He concludes:
Rossini is wrong to say conservatives should be ditched. In fact, many libertarians have a conservative streak to them without even knowing it. They understand full well the unintended consequences of government power. And nothing is more conservative than taking a step back from proposed reform and querying who benefits and why. Certainly that’s a wise disposition for anyone suspicious of man-made authority, including the most principled of libertarians.
As someone who has come to understand the political viewpoints of both Chris Rossini and James Miller in my time as editor-in-chief of Lions of Liberty, I can say with fair confidence that the political philosophy – that based on the libertarian non-aggression axiom – held by both is nearly indistinguishable from one another. So this is largely a question of strategy – of how best to convince others to adopt the libertarian philosophy.
I have my thoughts on this, but this is Mondays with Murray, not Mondays with Marc (don’t give me any ideas!), so first I will check in with Murray Rothbard. In the first chapter of his libertarian manifesto For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Murray discusses the origin of the word “conservative” in American politics.
…we must first remember that classical liberalism constituted a profound threat to the political and economic interests — the ruling classes — who benefited from the Old Order: the kings, the nobles and landed aristocrats, the privileged merchants, the military machines, the State bureaucracies. Despite three major violent revolutions precipitated by the liberals — the English of the seventeenth century and the American and French of the eighteenth — victories in Europe were only
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four days before the start of the UK's general election campaign period, which began on Monday.
Jeremy Zeid, UKIP's candidate for Hendon, northwest London, stood down after suggesting that the Israelis "do an Eichmann" on the US President — a reference to notorious Holocaust organizer Adolf Eichmann, who was kidnapped by Israeli intelligence in 1960, and later hanged.
These are not the words of an angry Republican, but those of a former British parliamentary candidate for right-wing party UKIP — who was forced to resign on the cusp of the UK's general election campaigns.
"Once Obama is out of office, the Israelis should move to extradite the bastard or 'do an Eichmann' on him, and lock him up for leaking state secrets. After all, what's sauce for the Pollard goose [referring to Jonathan Pollard, the American convicted of spying for Israel] is sauce for the Obama gander, don't you think?"
Read more
"Once Obama is out of office, the Israelis should move to extradite the bastard or 'do an Eichmann' on him, and lock him up for leaking state secrets. After all, what's sauce for the Pollard goose [referring to Jonathan Pollard, the American convicted of spying for Israel] is sauce for the Obama gander, don't you think?"
These are not the words of an angry Republican, but those of a former British parliamentary candidate for right-wing party UKIP — who was forced to resign on the cusp of the UK's general election campaigns.
Jeremy Zeid, UKIP's candidate for Hendon, northwest London, stood down after suggesting that the Israelis "do an Eichmann" on the US President — a reference to notorious Holocaust organizer Adolf Eichmann, who was kidnapped by Israeli intelligence in 1960, and later hanged.
Zeid made his comments in a Facebook post on March 25 after the US declassified documents about Israel's secret nuclear program. He resigned a day later — just four days before the start of the UK's general election campaign period, which began on Monday.
A commenter below the post — which was first noticed by Hope Not Hate's Purple Rain blog — suggested that Zeid may need to obtain an international arrest warrant in order to have Obama extradited.
"Nah, just kidnap the bugger, like they did to Eichmann," Zeid responded. "The problem is that Israeli jails are far more humane and adherent to human rights than American ones," he added. The post has since been deleted.
Today UKIP confirmed that Zeid had resigned and issued a statement reading: "Jeremy Zeid resigned as a candidate last week citing his health. UKIP accepted his resignation."
On Monday, however, Zeid railed against the "INFORMERS and the HATERS" that had "leaked" his post to the media in another excoriating post.
"As for the sneak, the squealer, the 'informer,' the parasitic tapeworm infesting the bowel of society, segments breaking off to infect another gullible fool, having first passed through the rectal sphincter of your worldview," he wrote, "you know who you are, the one who'd eagerly shop his grandmother for a tin of jam, just like the Poles did to the Jews, I'd like to think that what goes around comes around, kharma if you like."
Zeid, who is also the former chairman of Harrow's UKIP branch and a one-time Conservative councilor, has sparked controversy before. Last year he was featured on the front page of Britain's Jewish News newspaper after claiming that Ilford in London had faced "ethnic cleansing."
On Monday, Zeid told the Jewish Chronicle that he was "done with politics because people focus on the minutiae," and added that he had no regrets about expressing a "private opinion" on Obama.
"This is a dirty, disgusting, revolting, horrible election campaign with slurs and accusations and I am glad to be out of it," he continued.
Zeid is the latest in a string of resignations, expulsions, and suspensions of UKIP general election candidates. In March alone, one other candidate has resigned and another has been expelled from the party.
Janice Atkinson was kicked out over false expenses claims. She had already made headlines after describing a Thai constituent and UKIP supporter as a "ting tong."
Jonathan Stanley, also a candidate, quit after claiming there was "open racism and sanctimonious bullying" within the party.
In February, candidate Donald Grewar also resigned after praising a British National Party message calling gay people "perverts" and "pedophiles," and giving his backing to a statement by the far-right English Defence League.
UKIP is closely politically aligned with sections of Britain's Conservative party but crucially calls for tighter controls on immigration and Britain's exit from the European Union. It claims it would also boost defense spending, cut foreign aid, and scrap inheritance tax. The party's popularity has risen rapidly since the last election, and it is currently polling at around 13 percent.
Follow Ben Bryant on Twitter: @benbryantA dummy of US President Donald Trump is burnt in the ‘Burning of Judas’, during an Easter celebration, at 23 de Enero shantytown in Caracas on April 16, 2017. AFP/Getty Images
Here’s a telling omen: Under orders from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the State Department is reportedly drafting a new mission statement for itself. According to Josh Rogin of the Washington Post, the drafts are nearly identical to the current mission statement, except that they remove any mention of building a “democratic world” as a U.S. foreign policy goal.
This isn’t exactly surprising. Tillerson has previously told his staff that “pressuring countries on democracy and human rights creates obstacles to our ability to advance our national security interests, our economic interests,” and he’s not the only one in the administration that feels that way. President Trump said in his inaugural address that “we do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone” and told an audience in Saudi Arabia in May, “We are not here to lecture.” These are understatements: Trump hasn’t just avoided lecturing autocratic governments; more often than not, he’s celebrated them.
Most famously, of course, there’s the president’s controversial relationship with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Trump has congratulated Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, whose government has sanctioned the extrajudicial killing of thousands of drug dealers, for doing an “unbelievable job on the drug problem.” He says Egyptian strongman Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has “done a tremendous job.” He called to personally congratulate Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after a controversial constitutional referendum that most other Western governments denounced as an authoritarian power grab. Notwithstanding their differences on issues like trade and North Korea, Trump called Chinese President Xi Jinping a “good man” who “loves China” just hours after the death of imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo.
And yet, the past week has seen the Trump administration take a surprisingly strong stance in condemning Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s government, following the disputed election of a new assembly to rewrite the Constitution and cement his control over the increasingly volatile and economically distressed South American country.
The U.S. had already sanctioned several Venezuelan officials in the lead-up to last weekend’s vote and afterward targeted Maduro himself with sanctions—an unusual step for a head of state that puts the Venezuelan president in the same category as leaders like Kim Jong-un, Bashar al-Assad, and Robert Mugabe.
The White House has put out statements from Trump—which make almost comically little effort to match his rhetorical style—affirming that the United States “stands with the people of Venezuela in their quest to restore their country to a full and prosperous democracy.” When opposition leaders Leopoldo Lopez and Antonio Ledezma were jailed after the election, Trump said he held Maduro “personally responsible for [their] health and safety.” The U.S. is reportedly considering further sanctions, including on Venezuela’s vital oil industry.
For anyone who’s been following the Trump administration’s foreign policy, the sudden concern for democracy and the rule of law is a little jarring, and the inconsistency has been widely noted. On Monday, National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster struggled to respond to a reporter’s question about what made Maduro’s power grab notably worse than the referendum that Trump had praised Erdogan for.
So what are we to make of Trump’s abrupt passion for protecting the rights and dignity of the people of Venezuela? For one thing, there seems to be an exception to Trump’s overall fondness for dictators when it comes to leftists in the Western Hemisphere. In June, the president told an audience in Miami’s Little Havana, “We will not be silent in the face of communist oppression any longer,” as he signed an order rolling back parts of Barack Obama’s diplomatic opening to Cuba. “To the Cuban government, I say: Put an end to the abuse of dissidents,” Trump said. “Release the political prisoners. Stop jailing innocent people. Open yourselves to political and economic freedoms.”
This, too, felt like an odd fit. Whatever else Trump is, he’s never seemed like much of a Cold Warrior. During his campaign he had said that while he felt he could have gotten a better Cuba deal than Obama, 50 years of embargo was enough and “the concept of opening with Cuba is fine.” But by the end of his campaign, Trump had morphed into a Cuba hardliner as he sought—successfully as it turned out—to win Cuban-American votes in Florida. Florida also has a rapidly growing community of Venezuelans, many of them middle class exiles. The community certainly doesn’t yet have the same political clout as Cuban-Americans, but many of the staunchest Cuba hardliners in Congress, Florida politicians like Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, are also highly engaged on Venezuela.
Miami Herald columnist Andres Oppenheimer, a veteran observer of U.S. Latin America policy, wrote last week that the Trump administration has effectively outsourced its Latin America policy to Rubio. (Notably, Tillerson and the State Department have said almost nothing about Venezuela.) Rubio, who had also been a leading advocate of rolling back Obama’s moves on Cuba, also pushed for the sanctions against Venezuelan officials in July and arranged a White House meeting between Trump and the wife of Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez in February. Why would Trump take cues from the former rival he used to mock as “Little Marco”? Oppenheimer suspects it’s because Rubio is a “member of the Senate Intelligence Committee that is investigating Russia’s interference in last year’s elections. And judging from Trump’s tweets, the Russia investigation is the one issue that worries the president the most.”
This seems just a little too neat. It’s also possible Trump’s team just figures it has little to lose from keeping the Congressional Cuba Caucus happy by punishing a Venezuelan government that, in addition to democracy issues, has suspected links to drug trafficking and is allied with Cuba and Iran. Given the importance of Maduro’s anti-Yankee bona fides to his appeal, he’s probably never going to be a U.S. ally, and there’s little to gain from trying to win his favor. For a president who views foreign policy in purely zero-sum transactional terms, a friendship with Venezuela has little to offer.
This may also be one of the few occasions where the Trump administration is on the same page as most Latin American governments, which are mostly united in condemning Maduro’s power grab.
There are risks, if the situation continues to escalate, though. One of the steps under consideration—and as Oppenheimer notes, being pushed by Rubio—is sanctions on the Venezuelan oil industry, the country’s main source of hard currency. This would be a substantial escalation beyond targeted sanctions on Venezuelan officials and would likely have a devastating impact on the country’s already teetering economy. The Maduro government will continue to blame Yankee imperialism for Venezuela’s unrest no matter what happens, but its case will be strengthened—and the opposition’s weakened—if U.S. policies are hurting ordinary Venezuelans. Support from other governments like Brazil and Mexico, always wary of U.S. interference in the hemisphere, could evaporate quickly.
Another factor, of perhaps greater importance to Trump, is that despite all the tensions, Venezuela accounts for 10 percent of U.S. oil imports. A trade embargo could raise gas prices for Americans, a risk that Trump must be very loath to accept. So far, the strong U.S. response to Venezuela’s crisis, while out of step with his foreign policy, has been a low-risk way for the Trump administration to please some key constituencies and punish an anti-American government. But there are probably limits to how far Trump is willing to take that gamble.Legofreak
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RekcirBrickeR 591
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Here is my full size Mastermind minigame!
Features automatic score keeping for 2 players, Random(default) or manual code generation, and automatic hint calculation.
"/warp mastermind" for a good time!
Fireworks for a correct answer... So satisfying!
Its had many stages of completion but its completely functional.
(before counters)
It's big but not that crazy... right?
EDIT:
I never really looked up the game until just now and I'm not entirely sure what version I had as a kid because i though it had 7 colors. I cant find a version with 7 colors.... this might call for a redesign. >_>
looking at more pictures the one i had was 8 colors >_< im so bummed i didnt see the last color. Apparently it had orange too. BAH! So this has been getting a lot of attention the past week. I guess it deserves a thread for itself.Here is my full size Mastermind minigame!Features automatic score keeping for 2 players, Random(default) or manual code generation, and automatic hint calculation."/warp mastermind" for a good time!Fireworks for a correct answer... So satisfying!Its had many stages of completion but its completely functional.(before counters)It's big but not that crazy... right?EDIT:I never really looked up the game until just now and I'm not entirely sure what version I had as a kid because i though it had 7 colors. I cant find a version with 7 colors.... this might call for a redesign. >_>looking at more pictures the one i had was 8 colors >_< im so bummed i didnt see the last color. Apparently it had orange too. BAH!
Too many comparators? Maybe... Too many comparators? Maybe... Spidermy9
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Shaka is Life
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Posts:Threads:Joined: Reputation: 1 #2 Hahahahahaha rip, but nice work, 7 or 8 who cares Shaka Bra Legofreak
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RekcirBrickeR 591
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Posts:Threads:Joined: Reputation: 23 #3 It's one more color than regular mastermind but one less color than super mastermind. this setup works well as an 8 block wide stack. i think it looks rather nice.
Adding another color wouldn't effect how the logic works. I could easily add more colors. Just would have to do some dirty worldedit work.
The funny thing is that I could have had an unbiased randomizer with 8 colors.
Too many comparators? Maybe... Too many comparators? Maybe... Legofreak
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RekcirBrickeR 591
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Experimenting with a compact 8 color display... i will have to rethink how i wire it if i want to use this. also i dont really like how difficult to read it is. and it doesnt show black because of the no light background around the colors.
Too many comparators? Maybe... Too many comparators? Maybe... newomaster
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The diagonal one 892
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Posts:Threads:Joined: Reputation: 23 #5 That's sweet and it looks so sexy! (both the redstone and the game itself) Youtube-MC forums-PMC Legofreak
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RekcirBrickeR 591
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Here's the map version of mastermind.
aerial view
UI... I want to make it fancy...
I just wanted to post this here even though it's not completed.Here's the map version of mastermind.aerial viewUI... I want to make it fancy...
Too many comparators? Maybe... Too many comparators? Maybe... Legofreak
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RekcirBrickeR 591
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now it has win,lose,reset,hit, and miss sound effects. i just copied them from the old one.
btw fireworks
i put aux ports on both sides for an external scorekeeping device.
Another update:
side by side dueling boards
more complete...now it has win,lose,reset,hit, and miss sound effects. i just copied them from the old one.btw fireworksi put aux ports on both sides for an external scorekeeping device.Another update:side by side dueling boards
Too many comparators? Maybe... Too many comparators? Maybe...Welcome to Wonkbook, Ezra Klein and Evan Soltas's morning policy news primer. To subscribe by e-mail, click here. Send comments, criticism, or ideas to Wonkbook at Gmail dot com. To read more by Ezra and his team, go to Wonkblog.
Wonkbook's Number of the Day: -0.4%. That's the annualized rate of growth in real per capita disposable income, averaged over the last five years. Despite the economic recovery, that's the worst reading since the measure began in 1964. For comparison, the normal annual growth in incomes is +2.2%. More on the economy below.
Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg
Wonkblog's Graph of the Day: Disability insurance trust fund to run out around 2018, the earliest projection among such programs.
Wonkbook's Top 5 Stories: 1) Dems, GOP plan next act for budget debate; 2) Obama tries to renew gun control push in speech; 3) growth in economy, but pain in incomes; 4) your health, and what the government has to do with it; and 5) feds go green as states go back.
1) Top story: Entitlement cuts may be coming in Obama's April budget
Mark your calendars, wonks: Obama will release his budget on April 10. "President Obama will release his fiscal 2014 budget on April 10, more than two months after it was due, White House principal deputy press secretary Josh Earnest said Thursday. The budget will give a detailed overview of the president’s priorities and his sense of the economy and nation’s fiscal challenges in his second term. It will propose tax hikes and spending cuts to help tame borrowing – though it will also propose fresh spending on programs like early education for children from poor and moderate income families." Zachary A. Goldfarb in The Washington Post.
@robertcostaNRO: Obama told GOP that his budget will reflect what he campaigned on, and, in the words of a source, "what he campaigned on." GOPers groan
Will it hit entitlements? "The White House is strongly considering including limits on entitlement benefits in its fiscal 2014 budget—a proposal it first offered Republicans in December. The move would be aimed in part at keeping alive bipartisan talks on a major budget deal. Such a proposal could include steps that make many Democrats queasy, such as reductions in future Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security payments, but also items resisted by Republicans, such as higher taxes through limits on tax breaks, people close to the White House said." Damian Paletta in The Wall Street Journal.
@mattyglesias: Fussy point, but if we’re going to reindex Social Security shouldn’t we use the PCE deflator instead of chained CPI?
Meanwhile, the Senate pushes the CBO to use "dynamic scoring" -- and why that matters a lot. "Here’s one Republican victory that went virtually unnoticed in the slew of budget votes last week: The Senate told the Congressional Budget Office it should...[use] a model called “dynamic scoring,” which assumes that tax cuts will pay for at least part of their cost by generating more economic activity...The amendment originally failed in committee on a party-line vote, but Portman eked out a narrow 51-48 victory in the final series of budget votes that started around 3 a.m. on Saturday." Kelsey Snell and David Nather in Politico.
@ezraklein: The WH doesn't trust the GOP on tax reform: They think R's promise revenue but come back with tricks like dynamic scoring.
Boehner releases major budget memo. "In a message sent Thursday to rank-and-file House Republicans, Boehner (R-Ohio) recaps how he believes his conference has reframed the national debate on taxes and spending in the first few months of 2013...“We made the decision to center the spending debate on sequestration rather than on the debt ceiling or legislation to keep the government running, denying the president the ability to hide behind straw men in his reluctance to control spending,” the message reads." Ed O'Keefe in The Washington Post.
Music recommendations interlude: Laura Marling, "My Manic and I," 2011.
Top op-eds
DELONG: Don't let the economy keep bleeding. "In the 12 years of the Great Depression – between the stock-market crash of 1929 and America’s mobilization for World War II – production in the United States averaged roughly 15% below the pre-depression trend, implying a total output shortfall equal to 1.8 years of GDP. Today, even if US production returns to its stable-inflation output potential by 2017 – a huge “if” – the US will have incurred an output shortfall equivalent to 60% of a year’s GDP...[M]y conclusion is that I should stop calling the current episode the Lesser Depression. Yes, its shape is different from that of the Great Depression; but, so far at least, there is no reason to rank it any lower in the hierarchy of macroeconomic disasters." J. Bradford DeLong in Project Syndicate.
FELDMAN: Why judicial moderation won't work for gay marriage. "[T]he problem with this gradual strategy envisioned by court observers and attributed to Kennedy is that it would create anomalies leading to a nightmarish barrage of new litigation...To understand the mess that would result if the court struck down DOMA without finding a general right to same-sex marriage, consider what would happen if the federal government recognized marriages performed in states that allow gay couples to marry while continuing to deny marital status to couples in other states." Noah Feldman in Bloomberg.
SOLTAS: The health care market needs price transparency. "How could government help the health-care market work better?...[R]equire large hospitals and medical providers who receive dollars from Medicare, Medicaid or federal research grants to collect and publish basic price data...California, Florida, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Wisconsin have all done versions of this on a smaller scale...The federal government is uniquely placed to push this forward." Evan Soltas in Bloomberg.
KRUGMAN: Cheating our children. "Yes, we are cheating our children, but the deficit has nothing to do with it...[T]he [deficit scolds] have a new line: We must bring down the deficit right away because it’s “generational warfare,” imposing a crippling burden on the next generation. What’s wrong with this argument? For one thing, it involves a fundamental misunderstanding of what debt does to the economy...Yet there is, as I said, a lot of truth to the charge that we’re cheating our children. How? By neglecting public investment and failing to provide jobs." Paul Krugman in The New York Times.
ROBINSON: Maximum mayhem and gun law. "Is this supposed to be the price of the Second Amendment? Is this the kind of America we want?..[I]t’s hard for me to accept that the right to “keep and bear arms” extends to the kind of arsenal that Adam Lanza — and his mother, Nancy, whom he also killed — assembled and kept in their home...Given that guns are enshrined in the Constitution, there may have been no way to keep firearms out of the Lanza home. But if the federal ban on military-style assault weapons had not been allowed to expire, we might have seen less carnage in Newtown. Lanza probably wouldn’t have been able to get off so many shots in so little time. He wouldn’t have been able to fire so many rounds without pausing to reload." Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post.
BROOKS: The empirical kids. "I’m teaching at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs at Yale, and one terrifically observant senior, Victoria Buhler, wrote a paper trying to capture how it feels to be in at least a segment of her age cohort...Buhler argues that the group she calls Cynic Kids 'don’t like the system — however, they are wary of other alternatives as well as dismissive of their ability to actually achieve the desired modifications. As such, the generation is very conservative in its appetite for change...Rather, the Cynic Kids have embraced the policy revolution; they require hypothesis to be tested, substantiated, and then results replicated before they commit to any course of action.'" David Brooks in The New York Times.
Woody Allen interlude: 44 minutes of his trademark stutter.
2) Obama speaks on gun control
In speech, Obama renews push for gun control. "President Obama delivered a forceful and emotional plea to lawmakers Thursday to pass his gun-control agenda, saying “shame on us if we’ve forgotten” the elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn. Frustrated by the slow pace of progress on Capitol Hill, Obama urged passage of universal background checks and other gun-control measures while flanked by mothers of shooting victims in the East Room of the White House. He also repeatedly invoked the Dec. 14 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School as a cause for action." Philip Rucker in The Washington Post.
Read: A full written transcript of Obama's speech. Politico.
Watch: A tape of Obama's speech. The New York Times.
The President's appeal on guns was moral. "President Obama made an emotional appeal today for members of Congress to put aside political concerns when it comes to gun control and instead vote their consciences...While Obama did touch on the political end of the gun debate — he noted that expanded background checks are wildly popular with the public — the core of his case was an emotional one. That focus seems to be a tacit acknowledgment that Newtown changed the political dynamics surrounding guns less than many people thought it might in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy." Chris Cillizza in The Washington Post.
New ads feature families of Newtown victims. "A new ad from the pro-gun control group Mayors Against Illegal Guns features family members of the people killed at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn. The 60-second and 90-second ads will run in Connecticut in the Hartford media market as that state’s legislature considers new gun laws." Aaron Blake in The Washington Post.
Watch: The short version of the ad "Newtown."
Sen. Grassley is working on a rivaling gun-control bill. "[A spokesperson] said the new legislation is still in the works and wouldn’t comment on what it might entail. Grassley, in the past, has supported a bipartisan measure cracking down on straw purchasing and illegal trafficking of firearms and legislation meant to increase safety in schools. A Republican-sponsored bill would also likely focus on measures aimed at keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill...Grassley and a majority of Republicans also oppose any ban on assault weapons and limits on high-capacity magazines. They argue the record keeping needed to implement universal background checks is a deal breaker because it amounts to a federal registry." Jonathan Easley in The Hill.
Sen. Rubio joins group threatening to filibuster gun control. "Earlier this week, GOP Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.), Mike Lee (Utah), and Ted Cruz (Texas) wrote a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) pledging to “oppose the motion to proceed to any legislation that will serve as a vehicle for any additional gun restrictions.”" Jonathan Easley in The Hill.
The Internet is for artists interlude: onesurrealistaday.com.
3) Growth in economy, pain in incomes
The economy grew 0.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012. "Although the increase marks a relatively weak performance, it was better than the most recent estimate of 0.1% growth. Business spending, particularly on construction, was the primary reason behind the higher estimate of fourth-quarter gross domestic product, the broadest measure of all goods and services produced in the economy. Fixed business investments rose 13.2% during the fourth quarter and much of that was concentrated in building power and communication infrastructure." Sarah Portlock and Eric Morath in The Wall Street Journal.
Median income is down 7.3 percent since the start of the recession. "For the first time in over a year, median annual income fell by a statistically significant amount from the previous month, according to a report from Sentier Research. Median annual household income in February 2013 was $51,404, about 1.1 percent (or $590) lower than the January 2013 level of $51,994. The numbers are all pretax, and are adjusted for both inflation and seasonal changes." Catherine Rampell in The New York Times.
...And is that income drop a threat to consumer spending and the recovery? "On Friday, investors will finally get a clearer snapshot with the Commerce Department's monthly report for February...Economists polled by Dow Jones Newswires see personal-consumption expenditures having increased by 0.6% in February. That would be a big improvement over January's 0.2%...Over the past five years, real per capita disposable income has shrunk by 0.4% at an annualized pace—the worst such reading since this data series began in 1964. The average during this period has been a 2.2% annualized increase." Spencer Jakab in The Wall Street Journal.
S&P 500 closes at record nominal high. "The S&P 500, a bellwether for the US economy and professional investors, closed at a record high on Thursday, completing a strong recovery from the depths of the financial crisis...Since hitting an intraday low of 666.79 in March 2009, the S&P has rallied 135 per cent, boosted by aggressive monetary easing by the Federal Reserve and record US profits from the index’s 500 constituents." Michael Mackenzie in The Financial Times.
...So, what do strong stock markets say about monetary policy? "Investors nudged the broad, widely followed Standard & Poor's 500-stock index into record territory Thursday for the first time since 2007. The index is closely tracked by professional investors and its four-year recovery since 2009 reflects a growing belief that the Federal Reserve's continuing support for markets and the economy will overcome modest U.S. growth and lingering economic and political weakness in Europe." E.S. Browning in The Wall Street Journal.
It's a bad time to be an inflexible worker. But does that explain the weak labor market? "Various economists have gone to extensive efforts to ask whether this weak labor market is driven by not by an overall shortage of demand, but rather by something peculiar to the job market at this point in time...Economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York have a new piece up at their Liberty Street Economics blog that takes another whack at the idea that structural problems are behind the nation’s labor market woes. Rather than specific skills, could the unemployment problem be traced to some American workers ability to adapt to a workplace that requires creativity and flexibility?" Neil Irwin in The Washington Post.
Meet Jeb Hensarling, the head of the House financial services committee. "The new chairman of the House financial services committee wants to limit taxpayers' exposure to banking, insurance and mortgage lending by unwinding government control of institutions and programs the private sector depends on, from mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to flood insurance. Banks and other large financial institutions are particularly concerned because Mr. Hensarling plans to push legislation that could require them to hold significantly more capital and establish new barriers between their federally insured deposits and other activities, including trading and investment banking." Patrick O'Connor in The Wall Street Journal.
The Jobs Act has fallen short. "Now, nearly a year after its enactment, major portions of the act are in limbo, and other parts have failed to measure up to the grandiose job-creation promises.The act underscores how difficult it can be for Washington to spur job creation, even when there’s strong bipartisan consensus on a plan...The measure is a grab bag of ideas cobbled together for greater impact. It allows private firms to raise money by advertising to the general public for the first time in decades, raise up to $1 million in capital from investors via the Internet, and temporarily skirt some of the federal disclosure and accounting rules as they go public." Dina ElBoghdady in The Washington Post.
70s interlude: The decade, from EPA photography.
4) Your health, and what the government has to do with it
Here comes a major Supreme Court case on drugs. "On Monday, the court took up a really important health policy case, one with billions of dollars riding on the verdict. The lawsuit centers on a practice known as “pay for delay,” where pharmaceutical companies essentially pay a settlement to a competitor to hold off on bringing a generic version of their drug onto the market...The FTC has argued in court that this pay for delay agreement, and others like it, violate anti-trust laws and increase consumers’ medical costs." Sarah Kliff in The Washington Post.
Interview: Harold Pollack on what 'This American Life' missed on disability insurance. Brad Plumer in The Washington Post.
Wonktalk: Does disability insurance need reform? Brad Plumer and Dylan Matthews in The Washington Post.
California to see big rises in premiums as a result of health law. "Premiums for California consumers who buy their own insurance could on average be sharply higher next year because of the new federal health law, but government subsidies will offset the impact for lower-income people, according to a new report. The report, written by actuarial consulting firm Milliman for Covered California, the agency created by the state government to set up its new health-insurance marketplace, is likely to draw close attention amid a broader debate over the law's effect on insurance rates. The report estimates that for currently insured people whose income is too high to qualify for subsidies, premiums could go up on average 30% next year." Anna Wilde Matthews in The Wall Street Journal.
Want to buy private coverage with Medicaid dollars? Good luck. "Tennessee wanted to pursue a plan like that of Arkansas, one where it would use the Medicaid expansion dollars to buy private insurance coverage. And while Arkansas received a preliminary go-ahead from HHS, Gov. Bill Haslam had a quite different experience: He says that Health and Human Services would not support his plan to expand Medicaid and, as a result, he will not move forward...But some of the other points in the Tennessee proposal might have raised eyebrows in the Hubert Humphrey Building...[T]he governor wanted Medicaid beneficiaries to pay the same cost-sharing as other exchange enrollees. Medicaid experts I’ve spoken with have made it clear that such an approach wouldn’t fly: Even if they receive private coverage, the Medicaid agency would need to ensure they aren’t spending more out of pocket than they would in the public plan." Sarah Kliff in The Washington Post.
Interview: Mark Kleiman on why we need to solve our alcohol problem to solve our crime problem. Dylan Matthews in The Washington Post.
Maps: The landscape of abortion restrictions. Sarah Kliff in The Washington Post.
Congress lines up in opposition to Medicare Advantage cuts. "The federal Medicare agency on Thursday met more bipartisan resistance to its proposed cuts in Medicare Advantage payments. Lawmakers have written to the agency in droves to protest the cuts — a 2.2 percent reduction in next year's payments, on top of cuts included in President Obama's healthcare law that have not yet taken effect...The agency's current interpretation is well within its legal authority, the CRS said, but the agency could probably also justify changing its mind." Sam Baker in The Hill.
The link you're going to send to everyone right now interlude: The Twitter tongues of New York City.
5) Feds moving towards green, as states walk away
Meanwhile, the Obama administration is moving forward with policies to clean gasoline. "The Environmental Protection Agency will move ahead Friday with a rule requiring cleaner gasoline and lower-pollution vehicles nationwide, amounting to one of President Obama’s most significant air pollution initiatives, according to people briefed on the decision. The proposed standards would add less than a penny a gallon to the cost of gasoline while delivering an environmental benefit akin to taking 33 million cars off the road...[They] would reduce the amount of sulfur in U.S. gasoline by two-thirds and impose fleet-wide pollution limits on new vehicles by 2017." Juliet Eilperin in The Washington Post.
States look to end their renewable-energy mandates. "Legislatures in half the states that require electric utilities to buy renewable energy are considering proposals to roll back those mandates. The policies have helped fuel a huge expansion of U.S. solar and wind capacity in recent years. Now debates are arising, especially in Republican-held statehouses, about whether they increase costs for customers. There is no federal rule requiring utilities to purchase renewable energy, but mandates require it in 29 states. This year, legislators in at least 14 of those states have introduced bills that would water down or repeal renewable-energy mandates" Ryan Tracy in The Wall Street Journal.
Sen. Whitehouse is heartened by show of support for carbon tax. "Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) sees a glass half-full in last week’s symbolic Senate referendum on taxing industrial carbon emissions to fight climate change. The liberal Democrat’s pro-carbon tax amendment to a nonbinding budget plan failed with 41 votes, showing that proposals to impose a price on greenhouse gas emissions lack political traction." Ben German in The Hill.
House GOP energy plan: Drill more, mine more. "Scalise and the subcommittee’s chairman, Rep. Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.), said their top priorities included immediate approval of the Keystone XL pipeline extension; increasing oil and gas drilling on federal lands; reforming federal rules to make it easier to export oil and gas; and forcing federal
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ocean beaches, Barnard said.
The new leases allow the two companies to extract a total of 2 million tons of sand from the bay floor annually, a 43 percent increase over the 2002-07 average of 1.4 million tons.
Volumes for 2008 through 2011 were even smaller because of lower demand for construction materials, said Hanson spokesman Jeff Sieg. The new leases will allow the company to intensify sand-mining activity in the bay as demand picks up, he said.
Many of the lease areas have been mined for nearly a century, and for much of that time it was assumed that sediment was being replenished at the same rate that it was being extracted.
Not replenished
However, a 2010 study by Barnard found that from 1997 to 2008, only 15 percent of the volume extracted from five lease areas was naturally replenished. In recent decades, the addition of dams, wetland development and flood-control projects upstream has significantly restricted the flow of sediment to the bay.
Before the new leases are considered final, a handful of local, state and federal agencies will review them, including the state Department of Fish and Game and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Locally, the Bay Conservation and Development Commission will have to issue its own permits.
In written comments on the project's environmental impact report, Brenda Goeden, the bay commission's sediment program manager, expressed concern that coastal erosion had not been adequately evaluated.
State Lands Commission executive officer Curtis Fossum defended the report in light of the lawsuit. "There's a lot of moving parts to any operation like this, and we think that the analysis conducted was thorough," he said. The agency is preparing a response to the suit, Fossum said, to be issued in late December or early January.YAY I'm so happy I finally had time to edit my Rea photos <3! I'm really happy about the result. Big thanks to * black---butterfly <3!!!I really love this character <3. I enjoyed to watch the series so much. It's really a wonderful anime/manga...give it a try ;D!The costume itself was super easy to make and very comfortable. I used a white blouse from H&M and changed the collar and the stripes. Then I sewed the skirt. The broach and hair pin were a present from a fan (thank you!). I also really like my wig and the quality of it (it's from "Prettyland.eu" on ebay)....super silky and thick.the leaf in my hand is a real Hydrangea leaf ^^. I hope you like the costume :3.Character: Rea SankaSeries: Sankareaphoto by: * black---butterfly edit by me*****************NOTE*****************THIS PHOTO IS UNDER COPYRIGHT!DO NOT USE WITHOUT PERMISSION!Sharing just with FULL credit of cosplayer's and photographer's name and website link!!!!McCain spams. Poorly
It must be hard for the McCain campaign given that they pretty much got flanked to the left (Obama) and to the right (Ron Paul) in terms of the nerd audience.
The Obama campaign has a super-slick website. It's awesome. It provides a great way for supporters to do a lot of work for the campaign. Instead of having real phone banks or using automated dialers, the Obama campaign has people call a call-distributor. You can do five or ten calls from the comfort of your own home.
Instead of spamming, the Obama campaign has Facebook groups. And, in general, the biggest asset is people like my friend Scott (who is not normally very political) who changed his Yahoo! Messenger logo to have the Obama logo and urged me to sign up on the site.
This is not an inherent democrat advantage. Clinton's website wasn't nearly this cool. And Ron Paul, after he piqued the interest of a LOT of nominally leftist folk, was able to very effectively use the Internet.
The McCain campaign isn't nearly as smart. I suspect they didn't get the right nerd to show them ways to really campaign on the Internet. But, because of the number of people online, they couldn't just abandon it. So they are spamming. And they aren't doing a very good job at it. So I'm getting spam from the McCain campaign talking about veteran's issues (I'm not a veteran) and inviting me to the Ohio "Road to the convention" rally (I haven't lived in Ohio full time in over a decade) and it's very clear that they have probably purchased some pretty crappy databases of email addresses.
Now, I'd expect this sort of activity from a spammer. Heck, I still get spam with the old address in Ohio trying to sell me on mortgages and stuff that I see whenever I delete my spam filter. But is it too much to ask that a potential president not be of the same moral character as people who sell herbal penis enlargement pills over the Internet?
Update: I got some more spam. Looks like they think they are mailing my pa, who also doesn't live in Ohio anymore, either.
I get spam that puts our old address in Ohio in the subject line to look legitimate and convince me to open it. I see it every time I clear out my spam filter.Microsoft is continuing to push its support of hybrid-computing environments as one of its main cloud differentiators.
On April 12, Microsoft officials blogged about three hybrid migration tools the company is making available to customers.
Azure Site Recovery -- a tool for migrating virtual machines to Azure from AWS, VMware, Hyper-V or on physical servers -- is getting a new option. "In the coming weeks," Microsoft will allow users to tag virtual machines within the Azure portal itself, something officials said will simplify Windows Server virtual machine migrations.
Microsoft also is enabling users to activate the Azure Hybrid Use Benefit directly in the Azure Management Portal. And the company is providing a Cloud Migration Assessment tool to help users estimate the costs of moving to Azure.
Microsoft also is making its Azure Active Directory (AD) B2B authentication service generally available as of today, April 12.
Microsoft made public previews of Azure AD B2B and its complement, Azure B2C, available in September 2015. Azure B2B and B2C are aimed at providing secure authentication across on-premises, cloud and hybrid configuration,
Microsoft officials have said.Microsoft designed B2C for developers who want to build apps and services that can authenticate with consumer identity services like Facebook and Google. Microsoft touted B2B as suited for authenticating between business-to-business partners.
Microsoft made Azure AD B2C generally available in the U.S. last Summer. Today, Microsoft is broadening availability of B2C to include Europe, including in European datacenters that operate and store data locally only.Azure AD B2B is generally available today as part of Microsoft's Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS) suite.
I've seen some speculating that Microsoft might use Azure AD B2B to provide guest access for Microsoft Teams, which is Microsoft's Slack competitor. I've asked if this will be the case and a spokesperson said the company has "nothing to share." (So take that as a maybe.)poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201602/501/1155968404_4760619101001_4760583121001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404" true “He’s one of the dumbest human beings I’ve ever seen,” Donald Trump said. Trump: Lindsey Graham a 'disgrace,' 'nut job,' 'one of the dumbest human beings'
Donald Trump on Wednesday blasted former presidential candidate Lindsey Graham for criticizing his electability and temperament to be president.
“I think Lindsey Graham is a disgrace, and I think you have one of the worst representatives of any representative in the United States, and I don’t think he should run,” Trump said about the South Carolina senator at a campaign event in front of the lawmaker's home-state crowd. “I don’t think he could run for dog catcher in this state and win again. I really don’t. Other than that, I think he’s wonderful.”
Story Continued Below
Earlier Wednesday, in an interview on Fox News, Graham said the Republican front-runner would make a “terrible commander in chief” and said the Republican Party would get “slaughtered” with him as the nominee.
“He’s one of the dumbest human beings I’ve ever seen,” Trump said.
Graham suspended his campaign in December but struggled to gain any traction in the crowded GOP field in early-state and national polls.
“He ends up at zero [percent]. Zero,” Trump said. “Here’s a guy running for the presidency — he’s at zero. He leaves in disgrace, in my opinion.”
Trump said he watched Graham speak on “America’s Newsroom” and ridiculed him for going “crazy” when the billionaire’s name was mentioned.
“I saw him on television this morning, and I think he lost it. He said 'Donald Trump, he’s' — he couldn’t even talk,” Trump said. “He was shaking. The hatred. They say, 'What do you think of Donald Trump? Well, waahhh.' He went crazy. The guy is a nut job.”
Graham endorsed former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in January, calling him the best potential commander in chief in the field. Trump, however, maintained that he didn’t want Graham’s endorsement or anything to do with him, for that matter.
“His thinking,” Trump began. “He says, ‘I know so much.’ He knows about the military? I could push him over with a little thimble.”
Trump added that Graham would lead the U.S. into World War III and continued to deride Graham for his struggling campaign. “I think I’d crawl in a corner and I’d hide. I would just sort of put out a release: I’ve left the race,” Trump said, again referring to Graham's low poll numbers. “I wouldn’t even give a news conference. I’d be too embarrassed.”Donald Trump is the projected winner in Tuesday’s five Republican primary contests, as his GOP rivals scramble to stop him from securing the party’s presidential nomination.
The businessman will win the Pennsylvania, Maryland and Connecticut primaries by “significant” margins, according to NBC. He will also walk away with Delaware and Rhode Island.
The results will make it tougher for Trump’s competitors to limit his delegates and prevent him from winning the nomination outright, though Trump still may not reach the needed 1,237 before the party’s convention in July. Pennsylvania is the night’s biggest prize, with 71 delegates in total. However, only 17 of those are awarded by statewide vote, while 54 uncommitted delegates are elected.
Trump entered the contests with a 286 delegate lead over Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, according to NBC News. Coming into Tuesday, both Ted Cruz and John Kasich were mathematically eliminated from reaching a majority of pledged delegates.
Trump is making a victory speech and press conference from Trump Tower in New York. You can watch it below:
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ov2F4Z0G0BUIncredible photography captures the most brutal challenges you can put yourself through on a bike.
Incredible photography captures the most brutal challenges you can put yourself through on a bike.
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They may not be as fast moving as some of nature’s other predators, but mountains can be wounding adversaries for anything foolhardy enough to stray into their path. As cycling’s Grand Tours wind their way through the most gruelling European climbs each year, they inflict pain and suffering on all who ascend and descend – viscously punishing any signs of weakness.
Mountains – Epic Cycling Climbs is a photographic study of, and love letter to, the continent’s most arduous and historic mountain roads – which challenge amateurs and professionals alike.
Covering cycling icons like Mont Ventoux, Stelvio Pass and Alpe d’Huez, it’s a celebration of the mountains’ storied history as racing stages – the scenes of death, disaster, agony and ecstasy; and their majesty as wonders of the natural world – evoking awe and wonder at their scale, permanence and power.
Photographer Michael Blann is also a former professional cyclist and therefore appreciates both the aesthetic beauty of each peak and its place within cycling’s imagination.
From the Ardennes to the Pyrenees, over the last century these towering peaks have set the stage for some of the greatest cycling contests and Blann enlists professionals past and contemporary, including Lizzie Armitstead, Romain Bardet, Greg LeMond, Stephen Roche, and Geraint Thomas, for their insights on taking on man and mountain at the same time.
Michael Blann’s Mountains – Epic Cycling Climbs is available now, published by Thames & Hudson.Image caption New protests flared after the death of the village representative in custody
A stand-off between villagers and the authorities is continuing in southern China's Guangdong province.
Police have blocked roads leading to the village of Wukan. Local people are trying to keep them out.
The row - over village land taken by the local government - has been simmering for some time.
A new wave of protests broke out several days ago after the death of a villager while in police custody.
It is not easy to get information about what is going on in the area. One local official denied there was a problem.
But it appears that villagers have held a series of protest rallies over recent days involving hundreds of people.
A video of one demonstration, posted online, shows angry protesters shouting slogans such as "Down with corrupt officials".
"We will continue our fight until the end," one man told the BBC.
'Guarding the village'
China's village unrest 14 Dec 11: Stand-off in Wukan after a villager dies in police custody
21-23 Sept 11: Three days of rioting in Wukan
Nov 08: Protesters attack government buildings over plans to demolish homes in Gansu province
Apr 08: One person killed as police fire on protesters in Sanxi village, Yunnan province
March 07: Up to 20,000 rural workers clash with police in Hunan province.
Jan 06: Police break up protest in Sanjiao, Guangdong province, over land grabs
Dec 05: Police shoot dead a number of protesters in Dongzhou, Guangdong
July 05: Villagers in Taishi, Guangdong try to oust mayor
June 05: Six farmers die in a fight with armed men in Shengyou, Hebei province
April 05: Some 20,000 peasants drive off more than 1,000 riot police in Huaxi, Zhejiang province
Nov 04: Paramilitary troops put down uprising of about 100,000 farmers in Sichuan province China village protest escalates
The row with the authorities has deep roots. Villagers say local officials have over a long period taken their land and not given them proper compensation.
In a show of anger, they staged protests - and went on a rampage - in September.
In that protest they tore down a wall that had been built around land earmarked for development and ransacked government offices.
This latest unrest was sparked by the detention and death of villager Xue Jinbo, who was acting as a village representative.
The government detained him, with a group of others, last week, saying he was a criminal suspect being held in relation to the September protests.
But on Monday the authorities announced that he had died of a "sudden illness" on the third day of his detention.
The Lufeng city government, which oversees Wukan, said he had been rushed to hospital but doctors could not save him.
In a statement it said he had died after developing heart problems and "other causes had already been provisionally ruled out".
An official report into the death dismissed suggestions that Mr Xue had been "beaten to death by police", according to China's state-run Xinhua news agency.
Examiners apparently found "no serious wounds" on the body apart from a few bruises on his wrists and knees.
"We assume handcuffs left the marks on his wrists and his knees were bruised slightly when he knelt," said an expert involved in preparing the report.
Image caption Conflict over land is not unusual in the Chinese countryside
But villagers still are questioning the cause of death - and want the body returned, which they say the local government is refusing to do.
"There is no written law to say he cannot be returned home," said a villager surnamed Gao, the dead man's son in law.
He said the protesters would not back down
"The villagers have been guarding the village and stopping the police from coming inside," he said.
Zheng Yanxiong, a local communist party chief, made an appeal for the protests to end in a Xinhua article.
"The government will strive to settle all related problems and hopes that the village will not be instigated into staging further riots," he said.
Conflict like this over land is not unusual in the Chinese countryside.
There are thought to be tens of thousands of what the government refers to as mass incidents every year.
But this row seems larger and more intense than many others. Local people have shown they are willing to take on the authorities.Cloud9 considering European move
Cloud9's Jordan "n0thing" Gilbert claimed in a podcast today that the North American based team are considering a move to Europe.
Making an appearance on the All Work All Play podcast yesterday afternoon, n0thing claimed in the opening minutes that "we have some pretty cool news coming up" and that the team may be moving to Europe for the foreseeable future.
When asked when the decision would be made final by Adam Spunt, a former hockey teammate of Gilbert during their time in San Diego, Gilbert responded with "in the next couple of months." He would go on to say that Berlin was the city that the team was considering as a destination.
While this has potential implications for a roster shake up, with Sean "sgares" Gares into his studies at university while the team is not plying their trade across the world, this is a developing story and more information will be posted when it becomes available from the team.
More content on GosuGamers:The new cases are fallout from last year’s Supreme Court case, District of Columbia v. Heller, which struck down parts of Washington’s gun control ordinance, the strictest in the country, and stated for the first time that the Second Amendment gives individuals a right to keep and bear arms for personal use. But the court declined to say whether the Second Amendment in general applies to state and local governments.
In January, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, in a ruling joined by Judge Sonia Sotomayor, declined to apply the Second Amendment to a New York law that banned the martial arts device known as chuka sticks, or nunchaku. The ban was allowed to stay in place.
Then in April, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled that the Second Amendment did apply to the states, even though it allowed a California county to ban guns on government property like state fairgrounds. That case, Nordyke v. King, is being considered for a rehearing by the full Ninth Circuit.
Those two conflicting cases set the stage for two other cases that were heard as one in the Seventh Circuit in Chicago, testing that city’s handgun ban. On June 2, a three-judge panel of the court, led by Chief Judge Frank H. Easterbrook, a well-known conservative, ruled that there was no basis for the court to apply the Second Amendment to the states. Such a decision, Judge Easterbrook wrote, should be made only by the Supreme Court, not at the appellate level.
The right of states to make their own decisions on such matters, Judge Easterbrook wrote, “is an older and more deeply rooted tradition than is a right to carry any particular kind of weapon.”
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The lawyers for the plaintiffs, including the National Rifle Association, have asked the Supreme Court to take up the Chicago cases.
A split among the federal appeals circuits, especially on constitutional issues, invites Supreme Court action, said Adam Winkler, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Advertisement Continue reading the main story
“Californians, Hawaiians and Oregonians have a Second Amendment right to bear arms, but New Yorkers, Illinoisans, and Wisconsinites don’t,” Professor Winkler said. “The Supreme Court will want to correct this sooner rather than later.”
Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content, updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.
The process of applying amendments of the Bill of Rights to the states, known as incorporation, began after the Civil War but had its heyday in the activist Supreme Court of the Earl Warren era. Much of the Bill of Rights, including the First Amendment’s freedom of speech and some rights of criminal defendants, have been applied to the states, but other elements have not, including the Seventh Amendment right to a civil jury trial and the Second Amendment.
Incorporation fell out of favor after the 1960s, but a new generation of largely liberal scholars of law and history have brought it back into the intellectual mainstream, said Akhil Reed Amar, a law professor at Yale University, who supports the process.
“The precedents are now supportive of incorporation of nearly every provision of the Bill of Rights,” Professor Amar said. “Now what’s odd is that the Second Amendment doesn’t apply to the states.”
Sanford Levinson, a law professor at the University of Texas, said he would be surprised if the Supreme Court accepted these gun cases, because some of the conservative justices on the court had scoffed at incorporation arguments in the past and might not want to set a precedent.
Professor Amar, however, argued that the justices would not only take up the case but would also ultimately vote for incorporation of the Second Amendment.
Even if the Second Amendment becomes the controlling law of every state and town, constitutional scholars say it is still unlikely that gun laws would be overturned wholesale. The Supreme Court’s Heller decision last year, notes Nelson Lund, a law professor at George Mason University, “clearly indicates that governments will still have wide latitude to regulate firearms.”
Even the Ninth Circuit in California, while applying the Second Amendment to the states, still upheld the gun ordinance that gave rise to the lawsuit.
Eugene Volokh, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the view of the Ninth Circuit reflected what polls have said was, by and large, the view of the American people.
“There is a right to bear arms,” Professor Volokh said, “but it’s not absolute.”What do you expect from your cat to come back with?? Perhaps with a mouse or a bird – none of your use. But what if she come back with your neighbours’ wifi details? Really Interesting!
A creative security researcher has found a way to use his pet cat mapping dozens of vulnerable Wi-Fi networks in his neighborhood.
Gene Bransfield, a security researcher with Tenacity, managed to turn his wife’s grandmother’s pet cat Coco into a roaming detector for free Wifi networks by just using a custom-built collar, which was made from a Wi-Fi card, GPS module, Spark Core chip, battery and some fetching leopard print fabric.
Bransfield dubbed his experiment “Warkitteh” – on the concept of “Wardriving”, where hackers used unsecured Wi-Fi connections from a parked car. He decided to turn his cat into a hacker because he found the idea amusing, and also because cats are the one that consumes as much as 15 per cent of internet traffic, with the popularity among the internet users.
Bransfield explained his experiment “Warkitteh” at DefCon, a hacker conference that is taking place this weekend in Las Vegas, in his talk titled “How to Weaponize your Pets”.
The WarKitteh collar isn't meant to be a serious hacking tool, more of a joke to see what's possible.
“My intent was not to show people where to get free Wi-Fi. I put some technology on a cat and let it roam around because the idea amused me,” Bransfield, who works for the security consultancy Tenacity told Wired. “But the result of this cat research was that there were a lot more open and WEP-encrypted hot spots out there than there should be in 2014.”
During a three hour trip through the neighbourhood, his pet cat Coco mapped 23 unique wifi networks, including four routers that used an old, easily-broken encryption and four routers that were left unprotected entirely and could be easily broken.Eight years after taking over for a legend, Florida State coach Jimbo Fisher is leaving Florida State following his worst season as head coach. The University is expected to issue a press release Friday afternoon stating that the 52-year old coach has stepped down from his position.
He will not coach FSU's regular season finale this Saturday versus Louisiana-Monroe. Longtime assistant coach and former Seminole All-American Odell Haggins will be the interim head coach.
Fisher, who led the Seminoles to the 2013 national championship and produced 10-win campaigns in six of his first seven seasons, is leaving FSU to become the next head coach at Texas A&M.
** FSU Head Coaching Hot Board (top candidates to replace Fisher) **
During his eight years as Florida State's head coach, Fisher amassed a 83–23 record that included three conference championships (2012-14) and one national championship (2013). His most remarkable accomplishment is probably his impressive 14-2 record versus in-state rivals Miami and Florida.
This year's team, however, has been his biggest disappointment. After starting the season ranked in the top five, the Seminoles started the year off at 2-5 and head into this weekend with a 5-6 record.
For nearly a month, there had been chatter that Fisher would be the prime candidate for the Texas A&M job, should that position open up. Last Sunday, following the Aggies' 45-21 loss to LSU, Kevin Sumlin was dismissed after six seasons. That opened the door for A&M to make a run at FSU's 52-year old head coach.
Warchant.com has confirmed that Fisher will accept an offer from Texas A&M worth approximately $7.5 million annually for a term of up to 10 years.
Anticipating Fisher's departure, Florida State has already begun the search for its next head coach. Warchant.com has complied a list of leading candidates for the position.
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Talk about this story with other Florida State football fans in the Tribal CouncilUp first is my beloved first (although one of many) Memeboxes. If you couldn’t tell by now, I’m impatient and indecisive as hell, so getting two products and fast = my dream. I jumped on the chance to get this, so glad I finally received it!
1. Clio Virgin Kiss Tinted Lip #22 Electic (10$)
I really like the color, I put it on briefly and it looked nice. I’ve been meaning to get into lipstick more, and admittedly, don’t know much about how ti should feel (I’m a bad excuse for a girl) so I can’t say if the texture is shitty or not. This is a color I’d pick out on my own though, so that’s good. Fun fact: This glows in the dark under blacklights! Where was this when I was in college?? Must go to a blacklight party solely so I can see what it looks like.
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2. Jaminkyung Gokmul Care Ultra Ampoule Toner (110ml, 46$)
Oooo, I needed a new toner. This is, ‘whole grain-infused and deeply nourishing camellia oil in a 6:4 golden ratio’ whatever that means. But sounds cool! I used it in place of my PC toner, and I already like it better…Whats patch testing? I actually got an Etude House toner (one of those giant ones) so I don’t know which one to use 😦 Can I double tone?
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3. 803 Cream Sam N Cream (50g, 34$)
This was randomly selected from three options: a smile line cream, all over, and a neck cream. I received the neck cream. I wish Igot the smile line, but hey, this is cool too. Being 25, I don’t have a sagging neck (yet) but I do not want an old lady neck ever!! So guess I’ll start the fight early. It has shea butter, and niacinamide so that’s a plus. I tested it out, and smells amazingggg, definitely the shea butter, and some floral hints. My neck still feels a little sticky, but I can just use less, or layer it with something else.
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4. Sally Box 4Set –Love Recipe Apple Mask, Delight Panthenol Hydrogel Mask, Delight Ceramide Hydrogel Mask, Delight Collagen Hydrogel Mask (13$)
First of all, these are the cutest masks ever based on picture, second of all I am SO excited to try these. Will give sheet masks reviews, of course–so look out for those!
5. Tonymoly Hello Bunny Perfume Bar (9g, 11$)
This is the cutest thing ever, combined with it’s amazing smell–I’m in love. I’m super picky with smells (I strictly buy Juicy Couture or Ralph Lauren–nothing else) so for me to actually think this smells good is saying a lot. I also have a My Lovely Boutique coming soon (supposed to be filled with cute things like this) so if these are things I’ll be getting, I’m beyond excited.
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6. Ariul Stress Relieving Purefull Cleansing Foam (75ml, 8$)
This looks nice! But I already have more face wash than I need and that I know for sure if the correct pH. I will be giving this to my mom for Christmas. Plus, shes usually stressed so maybe it will help her. Also, So the picture would not show up, nor would it be right side up and I gave up. I promise you it wasn’t exciting though.
7. Pisteo Bright and Pure C Serum (7ml x 4 100$)
Dayummmm, that price tag. We only got one sample, so this little baby 7ml sample is 25 dollars. Nuts. Its got a crazy top that I pretty much waited 5 minutes for a drop of serum to come out. I just put it in the cap and then put it on my palm from there. It’s got a handy little chart on the side saying how much to use for the 7 days. Hopefully I can report back with some good results.
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TA-DA, theres the first Thanksgiving Memebox. I am definitely a fan of this one more, as opposed to the next one–but the other has some cool products too.
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During an interview on ABC’s This Week, Bernie Sanders went to town on Donald Trump after the billionaire lied and claimed that Sanders would raise taxes to 90%.
Video:
https://youtu.be/D8q3X8-nINM
Transcript via ABC’s This Week:
SANDERS: Well, if I had to respond to every absurd thing that Donald Trump said, I would spend my whole life doing it. But I do want to — you raised the issue of taxes. Trump raised that issue.
Let’s talk about it. What we have seen, George, in the last 30 years, as most of Americans know, is a massive redistribution of wealth. Unfortunately, it’s gone in the wrong direction, it’s gone from the middle class and working families to Donald Trump and his friends, the top one tenth of 1 percent.
And, yes, let me be very clear, if we are going to make public colleges and universities to tuition-free, as I believe we have to do in the 21st century, yes, we are going to have a tax on Wall Street speculation.
Yes, we are going to ask Trump and his billionaire friends to pay more in taxes…
STEPHANOPOULOS: What rate?
SANDERS: — yes, we are going to end these — we’ll come up with that rate. But it will be a damned lot higher than it is right now.
When you see the rich getting much, much richer, and in their effective tax rates, as Warren Buffet often reminds us, is lower than the effective tax rates of truck drivers and nurses, yes, the wealthy have got to pay more and corporations…
STEPHANOPOULOS: You said that…
SANDERS: — who, in some cases, make billions of dollars, billions of dollars a year in taxes, billions of dollars in profits, don’t pay a nickel in taxes.
STEPHANOPOULOS: You said…
SANDERS: That has to change.
STEPHANOPOULOS: You said a damned bit more. Previously, you’d been asked if a 90 percent marginal rate is certainly too high and you said no.
Sanders went on to say that the tax rate on the wealthy would be higher than it is now, but he would focus on loopholes that allow the wealthy and corporations to hide their money overseas. Sanders is going to go after the ways that the super rich make more money without paying taxes.He said that taxes would not have to be raised beyond the 1%.
From calling him a communist to completely distorting his tax plan, Donald Trump is flat out lying about Bernie Sanders on the campaign trail. Trump isn’t lying because he is afraid of Sanders as much as his lies are designed to help him sell his own massive tax cut for the rich as a tax cut for all.
As with everything Trump does, his motives are selfish. Donald Trump doesn’t want to pay higher taxes, and he is looking to sell himself as the ultimate benevolent capitalist by lying about Bernie Sanders.
Sen. Sanders’ messages about income inequality and unfairness are resonating, so Trump is trying to shoot the messenger, but Bernie Sanders is fighting back.
Donald Trump picked the wrong Democratic presidential candidate to lie about.
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:Image from an 'Anonymous' video (YouTube)
Members of the hacker group Anonymous released what they called a list of Ku Klux Klan members and sympathizers on Thursday.
The document, uploaded on Pastebin, contains hundreds of names and aliases. Among them is Frazier Glenn Miller, the white supremacist who killed three people at a Jewish community center in Kansas City.
The release came three days after the group was mistakenly credited with posting a separate list containing the names of several current lawmakers, like Sens. Dan Coats (R-IN), John Cornyn (R-TX), John Hardy Isakson (R-GA), and Thom Tillis (R-NC). None of them were named in the document posted on Thursday.
Similarly, none of the mayors identified in the prior release from a non-Anonymous Twitter account — Paul Fraim of Norfolk, Virginia; Jim Gray of Lexington, Kentucky; Kent Guinn of Ocala, Florida; Tom Henry of Fort Wayne, Indiana; and Madeline Rogero of Knoxville, Tennessee — appeared in Thursday’s document, which can be seen below.
Update, 5:15 p.m. EST: The #OpKKK Twitter feed connected to Thursday’s document stated that several names were taken off the list “for further investigation.”
“We would rather have a smaller, accurate list that we are comfortable with,” the group stated.A Muslim migrant who was convicted of raping a child at an Austrian pool has had his sentence cut: he didn’t know the boy didn’t want to be raped. Do you mean in Muslim countries little boys want to be raped?
What kind of vicious islamophiliac pedophiles serve on Austria’s Supreme Court, to free a rapist who violently assaulted and anally raped a 10-year-old boy? The Supreme Court overturned this monster’s conviction, saying the court had not done enough to ascertain whether or not the rapist realized the child was saying no. What? The child suffered severe anal injuries which had to be treated at a local children’s hospital, and is still plagued by serious post-traumatic stress disorder.
These judges need their own children anally and brutally raped.
“Migrant who admitted raping a 10-year-old boy at an Austrian swimming pool because of a ‘sexual emergency’ has his sentence cut and will soon be free,” by Jay Akbar, Mailonline, May 24, 2017:
The migrant who raped a young boy in a swimming pool because he ‘had not had sex for four months’ has had his sentence reduced and will soon be free. The Senate of the Supreme Court of Austria has ruled that the sentence of 20-year-old Iraqi asylum seeker, known only as Amir A, will be reduced from seven to four years after he raped a ten-year-old boy who suffered horrific injuries as a result. The perpetrator has already served a significant part of his sentence. Senate president Thomas Philipp said: ‘Four years are appropriate here.’ Amir A’s lawyers had sought a retrial after successfully arguing that the original trial had not done enough to discover if he knew for certain that his victim was saying no. The appeal had shocked legal experts because as a 10-year-old minor, the victim could never have given his consent to sex. Now judges at Austria’s Supreme Court have found the asylum seeker guilty for a second time – and jailed him for seven years. The rapist had been taken to the Austrian capital’s Theresienbad pool in December last year as part of his integration programme. But he dragged his victim into a changing room where he locked the door and subjected him to a sickening sexual assault. The court heard that the schoolboy needed urgent medical treatment for agonising injuries sustained in the attack…. After the rape, the accused calmly returned to the pool and was using the diving board when officers arrived to arrest him. He first confessed to the rape, saying he knew it was wrong but did it anyway because it was a ‘sexual emergency’ because he had not had sex for four months. His lawyers later changed his story claiming there were doubts over whether he knew the victim had denied consent. He was found guilty of serious sexual assault and rape of a minor….
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’s election taught, media elites relentlessly obstruct change to preserve the status quo.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
“YOU caused chaos... but it was hilarious!” That’s the forgiving declaration from Nightowls host Alan Robson, who fell foul of a snappy prank by comedian Ross Noble.
On Friday, the comic confessed on TV to encouraging 500 fans at a gig to call Alan’s late night show on Metro Radio many years ago and claim an alligator was on the loose in a Newcastle park.
The funnyman, born in Cramlington, Northumberland, revealed he was behind the tall tale when he appeared on BBC’s Graham Norton Show alongside Katy Perry and Cheryl Cole on Friday, telling viewers: “Do you know the Flashing Blade? There was a phone-in show and I got the audience, about 500 people, to say they had seen an alligator loose in Heaton Park.
“They all phoned in saying ‘Alan, me dog went into some bushes, there was some rustling and when it came back there was just a lead, me dog’s gone!’, and ‘Aye, wor cat got snapped!’.
“The trouble was it got out of control and it made all the papers and my mum rang me and said ‘you’ve gone too far this time’.
“Then it turned into this legend that there was this alligator loose in the park. I completely started it.”
At the time, local and national newspapers treated the alligator alert very seriously, telling how a team of specialist wildlife hunters had been placed on red alert after warnings that a six-foot alligator or “crocodile-type creature” was on the loose in the Tyneside park.
Police were also involved in the hunt, in which wildlife experts were put on 24-hour standby, and frightened pet owners refused to walk their animals.
However, the following week your Sunday Sun got to the bottom of the so-called sightings... when an anonymous call was made admitting the whole thing was a crock!
The Reptile Trust were fuming to find they’d been duped and laid down a threatening punishment – which is clearly now meant for naughty Ross – a bath with a real-life alligator called Bernardat their sanctuary!
Good-natured Alan, who has been on the air waves with Metro for 34 years, says he got a blast from the past when Ross talked about the jape on TV, and remembers getting the comedy calls well, even though it happened 12 years ago.
He also thoroughly enjoyed getting a mention on TV. He said: “I remember Ross Noble’s calls – he is a very talented comedian and his call, despite causing chaos, was hilarious.
“The only thing worse than being talked about it not being talked about. I am very honoured and proud of the Northern presence in the media at the minute.”I had been looking into the McCain Institute and had came accross something I hadn't heard before. The Sedona Forum. According to their website "THE SEDONA FORUM is The McCain Institute’s annual, high-level, private gathering of national and international leaders held each spring at The Enchantment Resort in the red rock country of Sedona, Arizona." http://www.thesedonaforum.org/
They aren't kidding when they say high level. 2015 participant list http://archive.is/Wr9oQ - 2014 Participant List http://archive.is/yBpWw - Just to name some that are pretty striking: Lynn Foreseter De Rothschild, Evelyn De Rothschild, Tony Blair, HRC, Saudi/qatar/indonesia ambassadors, Gen Petreus, Demi Moore, Pres of NCMEC, former prime minister of Russia and lots of CFR members and even came across a trilateral commision member with ties to Podesta. I basically just started doing some digging on a few of the attendees and this is what I found. I suggest you guys look into these folks as well.
David Miliband - President/CEO of International Rescue Committee. https://www.rescue.org/board-and-overseers - I'm not sure if any research has been done in this organization, but looks like they work with refugees and victims of disaster. Look at the previous link I included of their board. The board and overseers include Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Allbright, Colin Powell, Tim Geithner, James Wolfensohn from World Bank. David Miliband is also Trilateral Commission. Also interesting is that he works for Center for American Progress, along with John Podesta. Here is an article from Breitbart on David Miliband and he's pictured with none other than George Soros. http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/02/01/david-miliband-create-one-million-work-permits-for-migrants/
Here are two emails referring to David Miliband from the Podesta wikileaks emails:
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/58539
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/17215
The first link was a dinner reminder with host David Miliband. And the second link was regarding someone reminding podesta about a conversation with a couple people, including Milibrand. Here is another article from the Center for American Progress that puts Podesta and Miliband at the same place/time. http://archive.is/j46Ef I came accross, this following post http://archive.is/wA2Mz - The person who wrote the post was able to discover that David Miliband, friend of Podesta...was in Portugal on Sept.08, 2007, the very morning the McCanns were being made arguidos, and questions were raised as to why he was there at all.
Speaking of McCann...her father Gerry McCann is pictured here with Ernie Allen http://www.gerrymccannsblogs.co.uk/Nigel/sitebuilderpictures/GerryMcCannwithErnieAllen.jpg - Ernie Allen is one of the attendees at the Sedona Forum. The participant list shows he is part of the McCain Institute's Human Trafficking Advisory Council and also the president of NCMEC. I saw a few voat posts on Ernie Allen, so he could be another person looking into. https://voat.co/v/pizzagate/1688257 - https://voat.co/v/pizzagate/1458188 - https://voat.co/v/pizzagate/1665583 - https://voat.co/v/pizzagate/1458188
Another person I looked into was Mark P Lagon. He was appointed by GW Bush as the Ambassador At-Large to monitor Human Trafficking. http://www.un.org/ga/president/62/ThematicDebates/humantrafficking/lagon.pdf - If what we know about Bush is true, then Mark Lagon, must be involved some way, if Bush appointed him to overseer human trafficking for him. Mark Lagon is also listed on the CFR Roster, which can be no good either. http://www.cfr.org/about/membership/roster.html?letter=L - Interestingly enough, he is actually on the Board of Advisors for an organization called ECPAT, which has been "at the forefront of the fight to end the commercial sexual exploitation of children." http://ecpatusa.org/team/
I came accross this article going through the Sedona Forum info. https://www.mccaininstitute.org/events/road-forward-fighting-human-trafficking-115th-congress-2/ the moderator of the human trafficking event was Martina Vandenberg. Martina Vandenberg may be important. While searching her name, I came accross an organization called Open Society in which she was part of a fellowship program in D.C. More interesting than the possibility that their logo could be mistaken for a pedo swirl http://www.osf.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Open-Society-Foundations.jpg - is the fact that its ran by George Soros. https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/ - Here is an article from Center from American Progress which links Podesta to Open Society Foundations and Soros. Since its a non profit organization, I thought I'd look up some info on it. Not sure exactly what the income means on a non-profit, but looking at the numbers listed here...income is reaching almost 1 billion. https://www.melissadata.com/lookups/np.asp?zip=open+society Thats pretty massive for a non-profit.
I know McCain has been freaking out about possible Trump ties to the Russians...but I find it odd that McCain is inviting russians to his private meetings. One of the attendees was Mikhail Kasyanov. He is the former Russian Prime Minister who got busted in a sex sting with his assistant. http://observer.com/2016/04/former-russian-prime-minister-caught-on-camera-having-sex-with-opposition-leader/ Another Russian invited was an opponent of Putin and is working for a movement called Open Russia, started by ex-oligarch Vladimir Kara Murzam. https://www.rt.com/politics/376834-opposition-figure-kara-murza-out/ Why is McCain meeting in private meetings discusing foreign policy with Putin Opponents? Why is he meeting with any Russian, when he is calling out Trump administration for just speaking with any Russian. Is McCain on their payroll? Is that why he is so eager to go to war with Putin?
Why is there hardly any info on Sedona Forum, aside from the stuff they put out? I mean don't you think having Ambassadors from Saudi Arabia/Qatar/Iraq/ukraine/indonesia/belarus and many others...on top of countless cfr members, people working with soros, CEO's of major companies, associates from the Rothschilds, Jp Morgan, Lehman, and Rockefeller...would be worthy of some media coverage? But I don't see much.
This could bring up some leads if we can keep looking up some of the rest of the attendees and what organizations/NGO they may be associated with. That miliband portugal podesta connection might be interesting to look into also. Please share your findings!Share Pin 1 5 Shares
By Guest Columnist W. STELL HUIE, a retired Atlanta attorney who served as MARTA’s first general counsel
Background information for readers: MARTA was formed by an act of the Georgia General Assembly in 1965 and was originally proposed as a rapid transit agency for the Atlanta metropolitan area – DeKalb, Fulton, Clayton, Gwinnett, and Cobb counties. That year, Clayton, DeKalb, Fulton, Gwinnett and the City of Atlanta passed a referendum authorizing participation in the system. The referendum failed in Cobb.
It was November, 1970. Huie and Harland was serving as general counsel to the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA), and I was the responsible partner. We had just reached a very delicate local compromise on how to finance the MARTA transit system.
After a 1968 referendum based on property tax financing failed, planners had identified three other potential tax sources that would produce sufficient revenues to meet the system’s needs: an income tax, a payroll tax or a sales tax.
Accompanied by either one or two members of the MARTA staff, I had met with virtually all of our local elected officials with the hope that we could find a consensus on one of these sources of revenue.
We quickly found that we could never get a payroll tax through the Georgia General Assembly. Members of the legislature from outlying counties would block a payroll tax on their constituents who worked in Atlanta.
We also found strongly held differences on whether the sales tax or the income tax was the right choice. Sam Massell, then mayor of Atlanta, led those who supported the income tax. They felt the sales tax, even though proposed to be only ½ of 1 percent, was regressive and would harm the neediest of our citizens. Officials from the suburbs generally supported the sales tax.
We convened a meeting with a good turnout of elected officials to discuss the impasse. But after several hours of debate, we were no closer to a resolution. Then Mayor Massell took the floor and said he had to leave, but he added he would support the sales tax if the fare were free.
On that note the meeting adjourned. As counsel for MARTA, we realized that the constitutional amendment enabling MARTA provided that “the public transportation of passengers… for hire is a public purpose….” and we did not think a transportation system with a free fare would fit within that definition.
A few days later the MARTA board met to determine the next step. During that meeting Mitchell Bishop, a Fulton County appointee to the board, calculated that we could drop the existing 45-cent fare on the Atlanta Transit System [which would be acquired by MARTA following a successful referendum] to 15 cents if we increased the ½ cent sales tax to a ¾ cent sales tax and used the additional ¼ cent to subsidize the fare.
Bishop’s insight proved prophetic. Mayor Massell agreed to this proposal and we quickly gained a consensus. MARTA supporters drafted legislation that provided for a ¾ cent sales tax, contingent on approval by referendum in Fulton and DeKalb counties.
We in the MARTA family were in good spirits as we readied our legislation for the General Assembly session in January. I took a weekend off when Mitchell Bishop invited Hank Stewart, then MARTA general manager, and me to go quail hunting with him.
When we arrived at the lodge in middle Georgia, I was informed that Gov.-elect Jimmy Carter was trying to reach me. I returned his call, and after apologizing for disturbing me on a weekend, he told me he was working on the state budget and had some problems with our MARTA plan.
Gov. Carter proceeded to tell me that it was his understanding that MARTA was expecting the state to participate in the funding at $25 million a year, and it was his position that the state could not afford it. While I was trying to process this development and ruing our apparent failure to keep the gubernatorial candidates apprised of our plan, Carter proceeded to say that collection of a ¾ cent sales tax would present problems to the Georgia Department of Revenue, which was to collect the tax.
He asked how we would be if the tax went to 1 percent, and we gave up state appropriations. I knew the numbers, and I told him we would be better off – the additional sales tax would produce more than $25 million a year, and we could sell more bonds based the added revenue.
I also told the governor that we had worked out a very delicate political compromise in the Atlanta region, and I did not know how we could change it. The governor then said one more thing to me, words I will never forget. “Well, Stell, I want you to know that I will support you if these changes are made, but this is not to be my idea. Do you understand what I am saying to you?”
Of course I knew what he meant – his participation was to be kept confidential. I also knew that his proposals would be better for MARTA and that his help in the legislature would be critical – particularly in dealing with then Lt. Gov. Lester Maddox who had preceded Carter as governor. During his tenure as governor, Maddox had vetoed three MARTA bills; now he would be the presiding officer in the Senate.
I did not tell Mitchell Bishop or Hank Stewart the full extent of the governor’s position. I told them he just wanted to ask some questions about our plans. Over the next few days I wrestled with the conflict between my ethical obligation to my client and the governor’s admonition not to reveal his participation. Realizing that if I conveyed this information to the MARTA board, it would become public.
I decided to take only two people into my confidence; otherwise I would tell no one. That is, until now. [I have recently received permission from former President Carter to tell this part of the story.]
State Representatives Mike Egan and John Greer had agreed to co-sponsor the MARTA legislation in the General Assembly. In confidence, I told them what had happened. They agreed that Gov. Carter’s assistance in the Senate would be essential, and they shared my concern about how we could meet his conditions.
We finally agreed that the Bill should be introduced as drawn, reflecting the local compromise. Once introduced it was referred to the House Ways and Means Committee. My recollection is that both of our sponsors served on that committee. When the Bill was reported out of the committee with a “do pass” recommendation, the tax rate had been increased to 1 percent with a stipulation added that no state appropriations would be made to MARTA.
The Bill passed the House and was sent to the Senate where Maddox referred it to a committee with instructions not to report it out. True to his word, Gov. Carter had his Senate Floor Leader, Al Holloway from Albany, take over the handling of the Bill. Somehow they got the Bill out of committee and it passed the Senate.
The governor signed it into law, which set the stage for a November 1971 referendum to approve the plan. The MARTA referendum was defeated in Clayton and Gwinnett, but it passed narrowly in Fulton County and handily in DeKalb.
MARTA acquired the Atlanta Transit System and reduced the fare to 15 cents, and that fare lasted for seven years. Now a single fare costs $2.50. More than 40 years after the original MARTA referendum passed, there are still only two counties that support the transit system financially – Fulton and DeKalb.
And to this day, the State of Georgia has yet to make any contribution to MARTA – the only major mass transit system in the country that does not receive state support.Please enable Javascript to watch this video
MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- A neighborhood flooded with fear after a thief broke into a home and stole a pair of assault rifles.
Police told WREG it happened at a home on Brookmeade Wednesday night.
The homeowner's neighbor told law enforcement she called 911 when she heard someone prying open the door.
Officers said the crook took two assault rifles -- an AK47 and NPAP. Both had been stored under the bed.
"If it gets into the wrong hands, it could be a very dangerous situation."
Neighbors like Pierre Davis said they are afraid criminals, or even worse children, could wind up with the guns.
"Elderly people in this neighborhood and a lot of kids. You know, it's a real stressful situation."
Stressful indeed.
Authorities in the Mid-South already have their hands full finding stolen weapons.
Just this week, a semi truck parked at Academy Sports in Olive Branch was hit.
Investigators said the truck driver was asleep in the cab when a thief took nearly 70 guns, including rifles, handguns and AR-15s.
Then add even more reports of guns taken from homes and cars in Shelby County.
Law enforcement told WREG too many guns aren't locked up, and they're begging people to store their guns in safes.
As for this neighborhood, they're unnerved and afraid of what will happen next.
"It's dangerous. It's dangerous. We've got to do better and hopefully and we can get this situation resolved."
The homeowner gave police the gun's serial numbers to put in the databank.
If you have any information, call Crime Stoppers at (901) 528-CASH.As recovery and cleanup efforts continue after Hurricane Irma, water in several areas might still be unsafe for drinking, cooking, brushing teeth, making ice or washing dishes without boiling it first.
Residents are fine showering and doing laundry with tap water if they are under a boil-water order, but they should keep water out of their eyes and mouth.
Here’s an updated look at affected areas as of Wednesday:
Still under boil-water advisory: Dania Beach west of Interstate 95, Pembroke Pines, parts of Lauderdale Lakes and part of North Lauderdale
Additionally, early Friday, Broward County issued a precautionary boil water notice for the north side of Griffin Road in southwest Dania Beach. The advisory affects about 174 customers, officials said.
Boil-water advisory lifted: Davie, Hollywood, West Park, Pembroke Park, Miramar, Pahokee, Canal Park, Lauderhill, Pompano Beach and Hallandale Beach
What to do: Boil water for at least one minute before using. If boiling is not possible, water can be disinfected by adding eight drops of plain, unscented bleach per gallon of water and letting it stand for 30 minutes before drinking. If the water remains cloudy after 30 minutes, repeat the procedure.
Broward County Area covered by boil water advisory in southwest Dania Beach Area covered by boil water advisory in southwest Dania Beach (Broward County)
See photos of Hurricane Irma's impact across South Florida.UPDATED: The Department of Commerce is walking back today’s release of an equal employment opportunity statement that excluded LGBT people and says it will reissue a new one that includes sexual orientation and gender identity at Secretary Ross’ direction.
“To be clear, the Department’s EEO policy statement was never intended to change the policy or exclude any protected categories,” a spokesperson told Buzzfeed. “The Department of Commerce policy remains that we do not discriminate on the basis of transgender status and sexual orientation. Department employees will continue to enjoy the fullest extent of the protections of all the non-discrimination laws.”
“You can’t un-ring a bell. By trying to erase LGBTQ people from the Commerce Department’s nondiscrimination policy, the Trump administration sent a crystal clear message to LGBTQ Americans: ‘You’re not welcome here.’,” DNC spokesperson Joel Kasnetz said in a statement emailed to LGBTQNation. “We demand the Trump administration make a commitment to strengthen instead of roll back protections for LGBT Americans.”
—
Sexual orientation and gender identity protections have been removed from the Department of Commerce’s equal employment opportunity statement. In a statement signed by Secretary Wilber Ross, the department pledges that:
The Department of Commerce does not tolerate behavior, harassment, discrimination or prejudice based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, or disability. We will also provide reasonable accommodations for applicants and employees with disabilities.”
As Buzzfeed points out, sexual orientation and gender identity protections have been included since 2010. Other tweaks were made to the language as well.
While Donald Trump promised to leave Obama-era protections for LGBT government employees in place, he also promised to be BFFs with the queer community. Meanwhile, he keeps promoting “religious freedom” laws that would allow Christians to discriminate against LGBT people, refuses to recognize Pride month, wants to slash funding for HIV/AIDS programs, has appointed one of the most vociferously anti-LGBT cabinets in history, and picked a religious right darling as his vice president.
Some protections remain, however. Finding out what those are and if they apply isn’t always easy though and employees and managers are left confused.
“It is careless bad government,” Mara Keisling, Executive Director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, told BuzzFeed. “Trans employees are still absolutely covered by sex discrimination laws and sex is listed there. So even if the Trump administration doesn’t want to enforce federal civil rights laws we’re not going to let them get away with that. If I were a manager I’d be really afraid that other managers are going to look at this and think that these are not protected people.”
The Trump administration continues. Lawless edicts, chaos, and confusion abound.
This Story Filed UnderLikely familiar to you by now, the 2014 South African Immigration Act Amendments have been the source of widespread controversy. Arguably one of the most vociferously contested points surrounding the Act has concerned the potentially detrimental effects on both foreign investment and the influx of highly qualified professionals. The most recent public figure to lend his voice to the argument is former Minister of Home Affairs, Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi, who has published an open letter online expressing his concern with the “dysfunctional work permit system”. The letter reads as follows:
A letter from Mangosuthu Buthelezi
Dear friends and fellow South Africans,
Having served as Minister of Home Affairs for the first ten years of democracy, I retain a keen interest in migration issues, particularly as they affect the economic growth and development of our country. I was therefore concerned when last year’s legislative amendments to the Immigration Act included a requirement that could only obstruct the entry of skilled workers and ultimately deter investment.
It seems that legislative amendments by the Department of Home Affairs, and delays in administrative justice by the Department of Labour, have ensured that skilled foreigners applying to work in South Africa face a long and uphill battle.
When the Immigration Amendment Act came into effect in May 2014, several immediate problems caught the spotlight. Some were ‘resolved’ by delaying implementation, such as the need to obtain full unabridged birth certificates when travelling with one’s children. Other problems, however, are escalating.
One such problem is the need for work visa applicants to obtain a certificate from the Department of Labour that effectively confirms that no South African could do what they are being hired to do, and that they are not going to do it for less money or under worse conditions than a South African would.
When I entered Home Affairs in 1994, immigration legislation required a complete transformation, for it was predicated on the apartheid mind-set of keeping everyone out unless they fit a narrow and racist description of “desirable”. The laws we inherited were woefully incapable of bringing skills and investment into a democratic South Africa at the speed and to the extent that we both needed and sought.
Among the many challenges and obstacles we were confronted with as we engaged immigration reform was the fact that the Department of Labour was ill-equipped to certify that each and every foreigner applying for a work permit had the required skills and would not be taking a job away from a South African. This had to be determined another way, which was more efficient and shifted the administrative burden onto the employer themselves.
Thus we inserted the requirement for an employer to prove that no suitable South African could be found to fill the position they intended to fill with an appropriately skilled foreigner. This was achieved by advertising the position. The mere fact that an employer would accept a greater administrative burden to employ a foreigner than they would to employ a citizen suggested that a need did in fact exist for the skills that foreigner provided.
Thus, under the legislation I piloted, the Labour certification was removed and work permits were expeditiously issued. Unfortunately, the Department of Home Affairs has seen fit to bring back the requirement for a certificate from the Department of Labour, while retaining the burden on the employer to advertise and prove the need to employ a foreigner.
Unfortunately, again, the Department of Labour is still ill-equipped to provide certifications and is struggling to cope with a backlog of applications for certificates. Without the certificate, a work visa application cannot be submitted. Thus months are being added onto what is already a drawn out process. Not surprisingly, skilled workers move on, taking their skills where they are both needed and wanted.
But there is an added dimension to the problem at the Department of Labour. On 12 December 2014, the Johannesburg Regional Office of the Department suddenly stopped accepting applications. That section “closed”. A printed notice was simply placed flat on a counter-top saying, “Please note that submission of applications is closed and will re-open on the 12th January 2015. Thank you.”
Nevertheless, on 12 January 2015, applicants were turned away by security who explained that the relevant section was “still closed”.
In terms of administrative justice and the responsibilities of Government, one wonders how an office of a government department can summarily close, without any notice, for a full month, presumably for the holiday season. Is South Africa only interested in economic growth and development for 11 months of the year?
Work visa applicants have had to wait a full month just to be able to request a certificate, and will still need to wait while the backlog of certificates is processed before theirs can be issued. Only then can they apply for the actual visa at Home Affairs.
This, really, is the tail end of a lengthy process, considering that the position must first be advertised and applicants vetted, a police clearance certificate must be obtained, proof of qualifications must be evaluated by SAQA and translated by a sworn translator, and the employer must provide several written undertakings as well as a contract that is conditional on the work visa being granted.
It would be fair for skilled foreigners to question whether Government is intentionally obstructing their entry into South Africa. But it seems more likely that Government has simply fallen into the trap, yet again, of adding more bureaucracy in the misguided belief that it will close all the loopholes. In truth, the greater the administrative burden on Government, the less efficient the process becomes.
If we want greater economic growth and development in South Africa, we need to empower individuals and civil society, rather than deferring all power and responsibilities to the State.
Yours in the service of our nation,
Prince Mangosuthu Buthelezi MP
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Source.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column]Fifty years ago this month, on the Whitsun weekend of the 16-18 May 1964, the youth of Britain went mad. If you believed the newspapers, that is, who went with screaming headlines like ‘Battle of Brighton’, and ‘Wild Ones 'Beat Up' Margate’. Editorials fulminated with predictions of national collapse, referring to the youths as 'those vermin' and'mutated locusts wreaking untold havoc on the land'.
Whitsun 1964 has become famous as the peak of the Mods and Rockers riots, as large groups of teenagers committed mayhem on the rain-swept streets of southern resorts like Margate, Brighton, Clacton and Bournemouth. Extensively photographed and publicised at the time, these disturbances have entered pop folklore: proudly emblazoned on sites about Mod culture and expensively recreated in the 1979 film Quadrophenia.
Yet, as ever when you're dealing with tabloid newspapers, things are not quite what they seemed. What was trumpeted as a vicious exercise in national degeneration was to some extent, pre-hyped by the press. It was also not as all-encompassing as the headlines suggested: although an estimated 1,000 youths were involved in the Brighton disturbances, there were only 76 arrests. In Margate, there were an estimated 400 youths involved, with 64 arrests. While unpleasant and oppressive, this was hardly a teen take-over.
The cycle had begun six weeks or so earlier, during a dull and unseasonably cold Easter weekend. Up to 1,000 or so young Londoners had descended on Clacton, a smallish resort on England’s eastern coast. Bored with the bad weather and limited facilities, groups had separated according to their tribe: there were scuffles and stone-throwing, and the generally threatening appearance of teenagers en masse, barely restrained by an underwhelming police presence.
On Easter Monday, the press went big with the story: 'Day of Terror by Scooter Groups' (Daily Telegraph), 'Youngsters Beat Up Town - 97 Leather Jacket Arrests' (Daily Express), and 'Wild Ones Invade Seaside - 97 Arrests' (Daily Mirror). Citing “fighting, drinking, roaring, rampaging teenagers on scooters and motorcycles”, the Mirror referenced the notorious 1953 Marlon Brando film, The Wild One, which in mid-sixties Britain was still banned by the British Board of Film Censors, as likely to incite juvenile delinquency.
After that sensational write-up, the pattern was prepared for the next public holiday, andsouthern seaside resorts became the theatre. Contrasted with the anomie of Clacton, it became split along stylistic and tribal lines: between smart, scooter-riding, of-the-minute Mods, and leather-jacketed, scruffy Rockers − the younger siblings of the early 60s Ton Up Boys. 'Grease' they were called, and, although they had long hair − longer than many Mods − they were seen as throwbacks to Marlon Brando and 1950s Teddy Boys.
Generation X
The relationship between the rioters and the press was examined in Generation X, an influential piece of youth sociology by Charles Hamblett and Jane Deverson − published in 1964 to capitalise on the apparent turmoil of contemporary youth. The cover simulated a variety of lurid headlines or phrases ̶ "RIGHT OLD MESS', 'PUNCH UP', 'QUEER ̶ but the book gave room to the voices of real teens, allowing them to speak freely. It remains a valuable document.
It began with a quote from “John Braden, 18, a London mechanic”: “yes, I am a Mod and I was at Margate. I'm not ashamed of it − I wasn't the only one. I joined in a few of the fights. It was a laugh, I haven't enjoyed myself so much for a long time. It was great − the beach was like a battlefield. It was like we were taking over the country. You want to hit back at all the old geezers who try to tell us what to do. We just want to show them we're not going to take it.”
The Whitsun 1964 disturbances announced the fact that a new generation was claiming its space and its time. As evidenced by the interviews in Generation X, the early baby-boomers were more confident, better educated, and even more restless than their 1950s counterparts: the Edwardians, later Teddy Boys, who had become notorious for their combination of strange, exaggerated clothes and tendency towards extreme violence.
Generation X captured, for the first time from within, a separate youth world that took its cues from music and fashion. As one interviewee observed: “a lot of today's teenagers have ambitions to be the top dresser in his district. Another ambition is to play in a beat group that's going to have some sort of fame”. Films were still important as fantasy vehicles but the public life of 1960s teenagers was acted out in terms of Mod clothes, Bluebeat music and Soho clubs.
‘Moral panic’
The Mod/Rocker disturbances soon faded as other styles came into youth culture prominence, but they set a pattern of tribal violence that would continue on and off throughout the rest of the 1960s (Skinheads v Hippies), the 1970s (Punks v Teds), and the 1980s − when the front cover of Time's European edition for 24 October 1983 showed a scary-looking Mohawk punk with the cover strap The Tribes of Britain. Inside, the lurid copy presented a country riven by inter-youth culture battles.
The events of 1964 were also a textbook example of what the sociologist Jock Young termed “a moral panic”. This idea was explored by Stanley Cohen in his ground-breaking study of the Mod/Rocker riots, Folk Devils and Moral Panics: “a condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylised and stereotypical fashion by the mass media”. Moral barricades are manned, solutions are devised by 'experts', and the episode fades or is successfully 'dealt with'.
Cohen observed how “one of the most recurrent types of moral panic in Britain since the war has been associated with the emergence of various forms of youth culture”'. What to the young seemed quite natural − the announcement of their generation's arrival, a claiming of public space within a country that catered little for their needs − to adults seemed threatening and a symptom of national decay. There was violence, to be sure, but some of this was simply adult projection: a dark vision of a nightmare future symbolised by alien youth.
Folk Devils and Moral Panics was published in 1973, and coincided with the pioneering work undertaken at Birmingham's Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies: during the next few years, books like Resistance Through Rituals by Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson, and Dick Hebdige's Subculture: the Meaning of Style developed subcultural theory − in short, the mapping of youth tribes as both a commercial creation and a way of resistance − as a method of analysing mass youth culture.
Retromania
It also fed back into popular culture. The early to mid 1970s saw all manner of nostalgic elements enter the pop mainstream, as the modernism of the ’60s was replaced with an awareness of the past: the early 1960s retro of the vastly influential George Lucas film, American Graffiti, the Pop Art references in Roxy Music's Virginia Plain, the Mod pop retro of David Bowie's 1973 covers album, Pin Ups, the harking back to the 1964 heyday of the Mods and Rockers in the Who's 1973 album, Quadrophenia.
At the same time, the various incarnations of the shop run by Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood at 430 Kings Road passed through historical subcultures: in Let It Rock (1972-3), the Edwardian clothes of the Teddy Boys, in Too Fast To Live, Too Young To Die (1974) ‘40s zoot suits and ‘50s rocker leathers. In Sex (1974-6) they sourced fetish clothing along with their own original designs, usually festooned in slogans and extreme imagery.
In May 1976, McLaren told the magazine Street Life, “I think now kids have a hankering to be part of a movement… They want to associate with a movement that's hard and tough and in the open like the clothes we're selling here.” Early punk audiences mixed handmade designs with clothes sourced from the 1940s and 1950s − in a dizzying, living collage.
Punk in turn kick-started an explosion of subcultural research, as all the strands that had been packed into the original movement unravelled into individual styles. The punks v Teds battles of 1977 − a self-conscious reprise of the Mods v Rockers disturbances − were followed by the reappearance of Skinheads, the Mod Revival of 1979, the Ska revival, and the onset of the New Romantics, who freely and gleefully plundered styles going right back to the 19th Century. Clothes became more than individual adornment: a matter of deep, tribal identification.
In the early ‘90s, just as Britain's style wars were abating − thanks to rave culture and the onset of sportswear as a youth cult staple − the phrase Generation X was given a new lease of life. Douglas Coupland's 1991 novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture examined the early adulthood of another generation: coinciding with the success of Nirvana's Nevermind and the consequent obsession with Grunge, it caught the emergence of the cohort born in the mid to late 1960s, just after the baby boomer bulge.
Since then, the phrase has been adapted for successive waves of young adults: Generation Y, Generation Z, Generation Rent etc − so much so that it has become almost meaningless
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was a good thing.”
Chris Lynch, in uniform, at DDS headquarters in the Pentagon. Credit: Steven LevyThe USDS picked Lynch to lead the sprint. His team was given 45 days to make a difference. And it was enough. “So how do you untangle that cluster fuck?” he says. “We worked with the teams to get thousands of documents to go through, wrote converters for the documents that were stalled already and had failed silently, and worked on changes so that basically people would know what was going to happen when they did these things. And we got them shipping to production every two weeks.” More important, he says, is how the outsiders got the message across to the regulars that incremental improvements can icebreak a seemingly hopeless jam. Now the DoD-VA records team routinely ships improvements every two weeks.
After that success, Carter officially authorized the Defense Digital Service in November 2015, appointing Lynch as leader. Early this year, the Secretary specified its mission: “to drive game-changing evolution in the way DoD builds and deploys technology and digital services.” In the digital era, Carter says, the DoD needs to change its mindset, away from heavy weapon systems that last for decades and towards nimble software systems that update as frequently as smart phones. “That kind of speed and agility is not a habit of [an agency] whose technological system grew up in the cold war, against an inexorable but lumbering Soviet Union,” he says. “It’s our primary deficiency, but we are trying to correct that.” (Does that mean the DDS is involved in actual warfare? No. “We don’t work on weapons but we like to work on things that are ultimately going to support the war fighters,” says Lynch.)
The DDS team at the Pentagon. Credit: Maciek JasikOne of the first things out of the DDS was a bug bounty program, a contest where well-meaning hackers are invited to pound on a system to locate flaws, with cash prizes for those who uncover zero-day vulnerabilities. Lisa Wiswell, who joined Lynch’s team as a “bureaucracy hacker” after several years working on cyber-warfare at DARPA, says, “It was a way to extend olive branches to the hacker community,” but the main reason Carter approved it — along with the provocative “Hack the Pentagon” slogan — was that it was a cost-effective way to improve security, well-tested in the private sector, though never tried by the federal government. In this case, the Pentagon did background checks on interested hackers and gave them access to certain assets to probe. (The program did not extend to “critical mission-facing systems.”)
Hack the Pentagon was a huge success; 1400 hackers participated, uncovering 138 serious bugs. The DoD paid out $75,000 in bounty for crowd-sourced security work (half the cost of the program) that the DoD says would have cost over a million dollars to buy from professionals.
Secretary of Defense Ash Carter congratulates Hack the Pentagon winners. He’s shaking hands in an 18-year old high school student who caught a lot of bugs. DoD photo by Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Tim D. Godbee.The DDS’s biggest current project came at the suggestion of the agency’s CIO (a good example of how chief information officers can work well with USDS teams): revamping the Defense Travel System. The DTS is the bane of a Defense employee’s existence — it’s commonly referred to as the Don’t Travel System. Responsible for $3.5 billion of the Pentagon’s annual $9 billion of air, rail and auto travel, DTS is full of glitches. Lynch himself has been stranded several times in distant cities. At 1400 pages, the list of regulations is much longer and more impenetrable than Finnegan’s Wake. Figuring out how to book a trip that adheres to all the rules can often take as long as the travel itself.
“It’s a patchwork, a clumsy and expensive system” says Carter. “We needed someone to teach us how to do it in a state-of-the-art way. So the best way to do this was to ask the digital service to give us this library of best commercial practices.”
Lynch’s team approached the problem as a startup looking for its own travel software would. From that point of view the obvious solution was to adopt a successful product that already existed and modify it to satisfy the Pentagon’s needs. They now have a contract with a system called Concur and are testing it for DoD travel. And, with some support from the top brass, they are greatly simplifying all those arcane rules. Lynch hopes to cut the 1400 pages of regs to a document 20 pages long.
Besides the travel software, the DDS has targeted a few other projects, keeping track on a whiteboard that covers an entire wall of the Rebel Alliance office. Lynch recently went to Afghanistan for a week to meet with service members on the ground, exploring ways to help their missions with software. Another project involves working on the Global Positioning System. Lynch still can’t believe that he can work on something that cool while serving his country. “I didn’t even know that we ran GPS, right?” he says. “That’s crazy shit.”
Secretary Carter expects the government’s digital surge, at least as far as the Pentagon goes, to last a long time. “I’m confident enough in the logic of what we’re doing in innovation that my successor and my successor’s successor will come to the same conclusion — this is only way to do this,” he says. “It has to be this way if we’re going to stay good.”
Dickerson and Van Dyck at basement conference room at USDS HQ. Credit: Steven Levy #### SERVING DOMINIC — AND THE REST
This is definitely easier to read…this is super straightforward. This is super easy. I have not had this level of ease with a website for the government before. I’d use this over anything the VA offers… this is awesome.
Those were Dominic’s remarks as the Vets.gov team showed him a prototype of its rewritten, Adobe-free version of the Veterans Online Application on Vets.gov. While the previous version, in his words, “takes you around the corner, over the meadow, and tried to lead you into a back door with spikes and IEDs,” this one seemed as easy as filling in a quiz from a Facebook post — just punch in the information, and you are signed up.
And as of June 30, vets do not have to dream about using this instead of anything the VA offers, because it became officially part of Vets.gov, courtesy of the USDS working with the agency’s Health Eligibility Center. “We have in three months [created something] that would have taken a contractor, being generous, at least twice the time, and God knows how much more money,” says Tavoulareas.
The release came a week after a blog post by industry lobbyist A. R. Hodgkins, following up on the hearing where he had earlier testified. Again he questioned USDS’s alleged lack of focus, its practice of hiring people outside the usual channel, its competition with the private sector, and even its need to exist past the current administrations. He didn’t mention any of its accomplishments, its promise of more victories, or its potential to influence the wider activities of government by introducing the methods that made American tech companies wildly successful. It’s all a matter of control, of making sure nothing goes awry, he was saying.
These criticisms aren’t going away. A new report from the GAO is coming in August, submitted to a Congress asking the same questions. And the legislators at the hearing, though expressing a desire for everyone to work together nicely, seemed determined to make sure that USDS and 18F meticulously played by the rules, even if tough oversight meant spending a lot of time documenting compliance.
No one claims a desire to be standing in the way of progress, and it makes sense for even a small agency to justify its taxpayer funded activities. But the calls for “accountability” from this nascent effort seem out of proportion to the tiny investment that the USDS represents. In fact, these demands seem very much a part of the risk-averse culture that led us to the current mess in government IT.
If hundreds of thousands of people like Dominic are easily able to sign up for health benefits when they previously could not, how much does it matter if the people rewriting the system dress casually, demand changes in the rulebook, and prioritize results rather than respecting the sorts of authority that let people down for so many years? What I saw in VA and the Pentagon was that with strong “air cover” from top officials, small teams empowered to stretch boundaries and try new approaches could break through logjams.
It won’t be easy — can’t be easy — to replace kludgy systems and moribund practices that have mired government IT in misery for years. And certainly a few hundred, or even a few thousand, USDS short-termers can’t do it themselves. Undoubtedly, there will be confusion, as career staffers make accommodations to new methods. And some stuff just won’t work out. (For instance, at DDS one volunteer told me about an exciting project she was working on — but during the fact-checking process for this story, I learned it was scrubbed.) But in its two years of existence, United States Digital Service has shown that control and authority may not be the solution to effective government IT projects. Sometimes it takes a rebel alliance.
Now all the USDS needs is to make sure the lobbyists and those allied with them can’t “right-size” it out of existence.
“We at least have one thing going for us,” says Dickerson with a sly smile. “The government being the way it is, it takes ten times more effort to get rid of something than it does to create it in the first place. And it took a tremendous effort to create this in the first place.”We’re sure Nintendo is busy creating something new and exciting to release into the world, but we kind of wish this is what they were working on…
Munich-based designer Florian Renner has reimagined Nintendo’s iconic portable console, the Game Boy, as a machine fit for the 21st century, and we desperately wish it were real.
Renner’s “GAME BOY 1up” concept takes the iconic design of Nintendo’s 1989 portable and twists it into a device that any gamer would be proud to pull out of their backpack on a train.
▼ Game Boy becomes GAME BOY 1up
The most notable addition is of course the bigger, wider screen, allowing games to be experienced in—we’re assuming—beautiful 1080p. Renner’s concept also adds a couple of additional face buttons as well as the ‘L’ and ‘R’ shoulder buttons console gamers have come to expect.
It’s not all change, though; as well as mimicking its colour scheme, Renner’s design retains the original Game Boy’s speaker slats and single curved bottom-right corner, which is a really nice touch, although having nursed my left palm back into shape following many an extended session with the original Game Boy, I have a feeling today’s gamers might find themselves wishing the left corner were equally well contoured were this a real piece of gaming hardware.
▼ Same but different: Renner’s concept mixes things up with its buttons
▼ Sleek, stylish, and it uses physical media!
▼ This version appears to be something of a homage to the Famicom with its gold and burgundy colour scheme
While I very much doubt a portable console of its size, least not one from Nintendo—a company with a reputation for putting originality before processing power—could be capable of running such titles as Fallout 4, I can’t deny that I’d love to see Nintendo’s name on a piece of hardware this capable in the future. As much as I enjoy the novelty factor of Nintendo’s more recent consoles, I do occasionally find myself missing the days when Nintendo’s machines were not considered the quirky underdog in the console race. Still, who knows? Maybe Nintendo will surprise us all when it lifts the lid on its mysterious ‘NX’ console next year? I can dream, right?
Be sure to check out the rest of Renner’s work, which spans everything from 80s-style visions of the future to art for video games, over on his website. Fantastic work, sir. Be sure to hassle Nintendo about making this a reality!
Source & images: Florian Renner h/t The Next WebFox News chief Roger Ailes said any political candidate who blacklists a news organization is making a "terrible mistake."
His remarks followed Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards' decison to skip a Nevada debate co-hosted by Fox News.
Liberal activitsts say the news channel has a conservative bias and are urging Democratic presidential candidates to boycott the debate, which is also sponsored by the Nevada Democratic Party.
"Any candidate for high office from either party who believes he can blacklist any news organization is making a terrible mistake about journalists," Ailes said.
Ailes, who did not mention Edwards by name, spoke at a Radio and Television News Directors Foundation dinner in Washington on Thursday night.
"Recently, pressure groups are forcing candidates to conclude that the best strategy for journalists is divide and conquer, to only appear on those networks and venues that give them favorable coverage," Ailes said.
Ailes said that candidates "who cannot answer direct, simple, even tough questions from any journalist runs a real risk of losing the voters."
Earlier this week, Edwards' campaign said the involvement of Fox News was part of the reason the candidate was passing on the Aug. 14 debate in Reno.
Online activists and bloggers quickly hailed Edwards' decision as a victory in their campaign to urge Nevada Democrats to drop Fox News as a partner.
MoveOn.org Civic Action says it has collected more than 260,000 signatures on a petition that calls the cable network a "mouthpiece for the Republican Party, not a legitimate news channel."
The two Democratic presidential frontrunners, Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama, have not indicated whether they will attend the Nevada debate. Fox boss Rupert Murdoch threw a Senate fundraiser for Clinton, and is said to have a good relationship with the former first lady.
Democratic Party officials and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid initially touted the partnership with Fox News as an opportunity to reach out to a different bloc of voters.
But in a letter posted Wednesday on the party's Web site, Democratic Party Chairman Tom Collins said Reid now shares activists' concerns and "has asked us to take another look."
Collins said the party would invite a "local progressive voice" to participate on the debate panel, which also would include a reporter from a local Fox affiliate, a national Fox News reporter and the moderator.
The party also invited the local Air America affiliate, a liberal radio network, to air the event live. C-SPAN will carry the debate after the Fox News broadcast and PoliticsTV.com to carry the live Fox News webcast feed on its site for one-time viewing, he said.
MoveOn Civic Action spokesman Adam Green dismissed the offer as "a lame proposal that would have multiple Fox personalities joined by one lone Air America panelist. That's a rigged, unfair and unbalanced debate."
"The Fox debate should just be canceled and a more legitimate news source should be found," Green said.
Nevada Democratic Party spokeswoman Kirsten Searer said Edwards is the first candidate to formally respond to the invitation. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has said publicly he plans to attend.
Searer said the decision to partner with Fox, which will pay for some production and promotion costs, is part of Nevada Democrats' overall plan to bring new voters into the presidential process and its new early caucus, scheduled for Jan. 19.When I began my career as a police officer in 1975, the turmoil and civil strife of the Vietnam war era, where police often clashed with protesters, had subsided. The anti-police violence of militant, radical revolutionary groups such as the Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Army and the Weather Underground had greatly diminished, as their leaders were killed in police shootouts or imprisoned.
Relations between the police and minority communities was improving, as more progressive city and police administrators openly recruited for officers within those communities, and agencies became more diverse.
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Police work back then was refreshingly simple. There were good people and the bad guys. The basic job of policing was to be the “Thin Blue Line” that formed a protective barrier between the two groups. Civil rights lawsuits, criminal prosecutions and protests resulting from allegations of excessive force were few and far between.
The police could generally depend upon the support of their communities, who mostly understood the symbiotic relationship between the cops, communities and public safety. This was before the advent of the 24/7 news cycle, #journalism and the Black Lives Matter movement.
Now, as a direct result of those three entities, expedient politicians and race-baiting so-called “community activists” like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, a War on Police has surfaced; and America is now tragically caught in the middle of it. Despite what the uninformed media pundits express, American law enforcement officers have suffered more officers killed and injured in the line of duty than in the past thirty years.
Without a doubt, we have had more police killed in armed ambush attacks than we had during the Prohibition and Bonnie and Clyde rolling bank robbers era. The paradigm of police work will now change from community policing to self-protection. What will this mean for police and our communities in the future and how did we get here?
The false narratives – As I have written and predicted in my new book, “The Truth Behind the Black Lives Matter Movement and the War on Police,” the Fourth Estate continues to do a horrible job at informing the American public about the forensic facts of deadly officer encounters with suspects — especially those in the minority community. The media misunderstood and falsely portrayed the actual, factual circumstances of high-profile police death cases such as Michael Brown (Ferguson, MO), Freddie Gray (Baltimore, MD) and most recently Anton Sterling (Baton Rouge, LO).
The fires of anger against, and distrust of law enforcement have been further fueled by the militant, Marxist Black Lives Matter movement that seeks to disenfranchise, diminish, defend and dissolve police who protect the public and our Democratic form of government by enforcing the Rule of Law.
Expedient politicians – at the Federal, state and local level, who are either too lazy, racially biased, and/or under-informed, do our nation and its citizens no favors by having an emotional reaction instead of a patient, informed and studied response to police enforcement actions where minorities are killed during police encounters. They focus on the race instead of behaviors of the subjects that precipitated each unique encounter and use of force.
A failure to “de-escalate” creates the environment of violence – Rather than police needing more de-escalation training; it is the public who needs to calm down and control their behaviors. In every instance I can think of where police were provoked to resort to a use of force, it was the behavior(s) of the subject encountered that singularly brought about a forceful response by police; often with deadly consequences.
It should be remembered that police don’t create society’s problems; they respond to them. It has become far too easy to deflect and redirect blame to police and the media. Our President and Black Lives Matter surrogates are prime offenders in this scheme.
So what are police to do now? American society has created its own conundrum. You have finally managed to put a target on the backs of all law enforcement officers. Now you are going to have to live with the unintended consequences of this unfortunate circumstance. Police officers are not stupid. They are not out there to become targets for cowardly snipers, active shooters and agitated-chaotic “ticking time bomb” lone wolf assassins. They will protect themselves at all costs.
Despite what police administrators might idealistically envision, America is looking at a new shift in policing that will include military-style “force protection” tactics; enhanced protection vehicles; sniper over-watch; more heavily-armed officers responding to high-risk calls; call perimeter security and less time if any negotiating with barricaded armed shooting suspects intent upon making a political statement by killing officers; rather than demands.
You are, in effect, potentially looking at a Second World policing model. Let me know how that works for you.
Martinelli is a nationally renowned forensic criminologist and police expert who directs the nation’s only multidisciplinary Forensic Death Investigations and Independent Review Team. He is a retired San Jose (CA) police detective. His book is available on Amazon.com and his forensic site is found at www.DrRonMartinelli.com.
The views expressed by Contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.speaking at CPAC in Washington D.C. on February 10, 2011, after receiving the "Defender of the Constitution Award". (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Those of us living in the United States have known for some time that our country tortured people following 9/11. We may prefer to call it "enhanced interrogation techniques" or "EITs," but we were content to call it torture when it was being done to our military personnel by other countries. We were recently given the opportunity to take a closer look when the Senate torture report was released earlier this month. Although much of the report is still classified and does not contain the full scope of what we were doing, it is still plenty bad and even appears to have involved human experimentation. Amidst these revelations, we also had the opportunity to witness the disturbing scene of former Vice President and war criminal on, expressing the level of remorse we'd expect from a psychopath.The torture report and subsequent Cheney appearance raise many important questions about the sort of nation we are, but I'll only be considering one of them here. I vividly remember the first time I heard about the Holocaust in school. The question swirling around in my head was how the German people could have possibly allowed it to happen. At the time, I could not wrap my head around any acceptable answer. I tried to reassure myself with the notion that there is no waywould ever be party to such atrocities.To be clear, it is not my intention to compare what the U.S. did to those it classified as "enemy combatants," some of whom were innocent, with the Holocaust. They are not equivalent. I mention the Holocaust here because I wanted to introduce my first experience with this question and was not sure how to do so without providing the context. It, more than anything else I can recall, raised the question about the sort of evils of which humans are capable, a question that has come up once again. So here's the version of the question swirling around in my head today: now that we know not only that our country tortured but that, what do we plan to do about it? Our elected officials and corporate owned news media have made it apparent that their answer is a resounding "nothing." There will be no accountability. Dick Cheney will never see the inside of a prison cell, and the many on both sides of the aisle in Congress who went along with it will face no consequences either. And what of us? We've now become distracted with the holiday season and with the prospect of North Korea interfering with our entertainment industry. I suspect that we will join our politicians and media in doing nothing and that the matter will largely be forgotten until the next time it happens (i.e., additional acts of torture committed by us or against us).In 20-30 years time, will children learning about this sad chapter in U.S. history wonder how we allowed this to happen and why we seemed almost eager to do nothing about it? Will they be able to understand why none of those who ordered it were brought to justice? Will they be taught that it is not torture when we do it? Or will they even learn about it in school at all?The crux of my fear was eloquently captured by, professor of sociology at the University of California at Santa Barbara when she said, "An American majority, it seems, has come to accept the legacy of torture." Is she right? Are we really content to accept this as our legacy? What does this say about us as a people?"The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc [the English Socialist Party], but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought — that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc — should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words."
-- George Orwell, ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ appendix, "The Principles of Newspeak"
There is something very 1984 in the words that are fluttering around over the strange case of a self-proclaimed doctor being ripped from his seat aboard an airplane, pummeled into submission by three burly men and dragged -- quite literally -- bloody and screaming down the aisle and off the plane.
One word that has emerged is "re-accommodate." The passenger wasn't dragged off the plane, he was "re-accommodated." Another is "overbooked." We've heard that word before (but really only from airlines, and we the sheeple just accept it as part of life). Yet another is "voluntary." And we have the Chicago police to thank for a brand new definition of "fell."
Let's use them all in a couple sentences. The airplane was "overbooked." The plane needed passengers to “volunteer” to get off. When one refused to leave to leave "voluntarily,” he was “re-accommodated.” Then, when three husky men assaulted him, he "fell," smashed his face and poured blood as he was dragged down the aisle.
Or, as United said shortly after the incident: "Flight 3411 from Chicago to Louisville was overbooked. After our team looked for volunteers, one customer refused to leave the aircraft voluntarily and law enforcement was asked to come to the gate. We apologize for the overbook situation." Then United chief executive Oscar Munoz later added that's when they had "to re-accommodate these customers.”
Let's take them one at a time. Airlines "overbook" planes. That means they sell more seats than they have. The thought behind the practice is that some passengers will cancel, others will rebook another flight, and they'll end up with a full plane to maximize revenue.
But in this case, the plane wasn't overbooked in the classic sense. Instead, United Airlines decided to kick four paying passengers off to make room for flight personnel trying to get to the destination so they could staff a flight the next day. That explains why the passengers were let on -- and then ordered off.
Wait, they weren't ordered off, not according to United. The airline asked for "volunteers" to "voluntarily" get off the plane. They sweetened the deal, first with an offer of $400, then with an deal of $800 plus a free hotel overnight and a first-in-the-morning flight the next day. But since it was already late in the day, no one took the offer. So, some passengers had to be involuntarily "re-accommodated."
In this airline Newspeak, to be "re-accommodated" means to be kicked off the flight -- without the offer of the cash and hotel. United claims it used a random system to decide which four passengers were to be "re-accommodated," but the airline is known for being petty and vindictive, so few believe the process was really random.
As of yesterday, after the incident occurred, "re-accommodate" is defined by Urban Dictionary to mean "to beat up and violently drag paying passengers off an airplane in order to make room for airline crew on stand-by." Ouch.
During the debacle at Chicago's O'Hare airport, one passenger did not "volunteer" and did not want to be "re-accommodated." So, of course, three massive thugs were dispatched to make him "volunteer." As they physically ripped him from his chair, they smashed his face so hard he poured blood. Wait, strike that. The Chicago police officers called in by the airline said Monday that the man “fell” as he was being "re-accommodated." "His head subsequently struck and armrest causing injuries to his face."
CEO Munoz doubled down later, throwing some new words into the mix. He said airline personnel "followed established procedures" when removing a passenger from a plane because it was "overbooked," and he then called the passenger "disruptive and belligerent." Um, he was being ripped from his chair and smashed in the face.
Wait, we mean he "volunteered" to be "re-accommodated" after the plane was "overbooked" and he "fell."
Please don't take us to Room 101! We'll be good, Big Brother!Dan Pearson European Editor Thursday 2nd April 2015 Share this article Share
Companies in this article Codemasters Jagex Games Studio
Codemasters' CEO Rod Cousens has left the company with immediate effect, moving to join Jagex as the Cambridge developer's new chief executive. Frank Sagnier, previously COO at Codemasters, will take over from Cousens.
Cousens had lead the Dirt developer for 10 years, overseeing a period which has included both record revenues, a 50 per cent buyout by Reliance Games and, more recently, a raft of redundancies. Cousens was also responsible for securing the exclusive rights to the Formula One racing franchise for the company. Times at Codemasters have been tough of late. The studio has yet to release a game for either of the newest generation of consoles, with the newest iteration of its Dirt rally franchise getting pushed back earlier this year thanks to difficulties in obtaining licences for certain cars.
The executive joins Jagex during a similarly difficult period for the company, which recently was forced to make major layoffs when it cancelled the development of the unrelease Transformers Universe. Previous Jagex CEO Mark Gerhard announced his departure from the company last September. You can watch his Game Horizon presentation on the difficulties of emulating the success of Jagex's key product, Runescape, here.
"Throughout an illustrious career within the UK video games industry, Rod has presided over the likes of Activison, Acclaim and, most recently, Codemasters," reads a Jagex statement released exclusively to GamesIndustry.biz. "Now, in this latest role, he brings his experience, insight and acumen to Jagex as it enters a new chapter of business.
"Rod will oversee the company during a period of expansion in which the studio's flagship title branches out into the collectable card game genre via the recently announced Chronicle: RuneScape Legends. Meanwhile the tactical online shooter, Block N Load, will bring its strategic combination of construction and marksmanship to the world on 30th April 2015. Away from the public domain, an additional number of games are currently moving through development towards announcement."
Frank Sagnier's appointment is being described by the company as one to see it "through the executive transition", but is expected to be permanent once formalities are completed.
"I am honoured, humbled and excited to lead Codemasters through its next stage and we sincerely thank Rod for his many achievements and wish him every success in his new venture," said Sagnier.
"Over the years, Codemasters has built award-winning games and franchises with an amazing pool of talent and the support of its principal shareholder, Reliance ADA. To this day, Codemasters remains an iconic brand and I am committed to making it shine brighter than ever. The industry's continued growth, driven by the explosion of new platforms and new business models, represents a significant opportunity for Codemasters to expand existing IP and continue to innovate."Updated December 15:
We’ll be pressing pause on the World of Warcraft: Legion alpha test beginning Monday, December 21, and will bring the alpha back up again for testers early in the new year.
We’d like to thank everyone for the great feedback and ongoing support, and we look forward to seeing you after the holidays.
The World of Warcraft: Legion alpha test is now underway! A small group of testers have already been trying their hand at the Demon Hunter, and today we’ve added some new areas for players to check out. Alpha testers can now explore the Stormheim and Highmountain zones, as well as the Halls of Valor dungeon. All classes except for Shaman are now available; character copy is currently disabled, but testers can create high-level characters using templates we’ve provided.
There’s no NDA (non-disclosure agreement) for the Legion alpha, so those invited to play are free to stream the game and take screenshots or movies. Please keep in mind that Legion is still in development—we’ll be making changes to the game as we continue to prepare for the upcoming beta test, and what you’ll see during the alpha test is not necessarily representative of the final game.
Getting Started
If you’ve been selected to participate in the Legion alpha, your Battle.net account will already be flagged for access. Make sure your graphics drivers are up to date. Run the Battle.net desktop app—it may need to update itself if you haven’t run it recently. If you don’t have it installed, get started here. Once Battle.net is installed and updated, select World of Warcraft from the list of games on the left. In the Region/Account drop-down menu above the Play button, choose Alpha: Legion (listed under In Development), then click Install. Allow installation to complete, and click Play.
Once you’ve launched the game, use the Legion alpha template to create a character. This is located near the Enter World button.
Legion concept art
click to enlarge
Providing Feedback
We’d love to hear about your experiences on the Broken Isles, so once you’ve had a chance to play, please send us your feedback.
For general feedback, use the in-game Feedback interface.
use the in-game Feedback interface. For crashes, please use the Crash Reporter feature that appears when the client crashes.
, please use the Crash Reporter feature that appears when the client crashes. For general game bugs, use the in-game Bug Report interface.
, use the in-game Bug Report interface. If you’re getting a wrong version error, please uninstall and reinstall the client.
please uninstall and reinstall the client. Discuss the alpha with your fellow testers in our Legion alpha General Discussion and Bug Report forums.
How do I opt in?
Once you’ve set up a Battle.net account and have attached at least one Blizzard game, you can choose to opt in to future beta tests from the Beta Profile page—just check the box next to which games you’re interested in testing. Once that’s complete, it’s simply a matter of waiting for an invitation.No solution to Syria while Assad remains: Turkish PM
Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim has warned there can be no solution to the Syrian conflict or the threat from jihadists while President Bashar al-Assad remains in charge.
In recent days, Yildirim has repeatedly said Turkey would seek good relations with Syria after diplomatic successes with Israel and Russia, raising speculation of a possible change in Turkish policy.
However in an interview with the BBC broadcast late on Wednesday, Yildirim said Assad had to go because with him in charge, the conflict would not be solved.
Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim addresses delegates during the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) in Ankara, on July 13, 2016 ©Adem Altan (AFP/File)
"On one hand, there's Assad and on the other, Daesh. If you ask, should we prefer Assad or Daesh, we cannot choose one over the other. They both have to go -- they're both trouble for Syrians," he said, using the Arabic acronym for the so-called Islamic State group.
"Let's imagine we got rid of Daesh, the problem still won't be solved. As long as Assad is there, the problem won't be solved. Another terrorist organisation would emerge."
He accused the Assad regime of creating IS through its policy of killing its own citizens deliberately.
There has been confusion this week over whether Turkish policy towards Syria and Assad was changing after several terror attacks by IS in Istanbul and in the capital Ankara in October.
Despite previously having good relations before the start of Syria's five-year civil war, Turkey has been one of the Syrian regime's fiercest opponents, supporting opposition groups fighting against Assad.
On Wednesday, Yildirim told his party's provincial leaders in Ankara that he was sure Turkey would "normalise" relations with Syria and in the BBC interview, Yildirim said Assad had to change without specifying what kind of change.
"Things must change in Syria but first Assad must change. Unless Assad changes, nothing changes."
The Syrian conflict has left more than 280,000 people dead, although Yildirim said half a million had been killed.MomentIt is fleeting. It is now. It is so many nows flashing by in quick succession on and on and on building on each other in an infinite stack piling up on each other until they groan with the weight and press into longer constructs that mean nothing except the incomprehensible multitude of grains of now. Each one is precious, unique, unable to be retrieved and yet too short to ever appreciate fully. As soon as the now is brought into focus it is gone and all the scrambling in the world cannot bring it back, indeed press it farther into the past so that the digging is obscured by the cascades of new nows that have never even been looked at because all the looking is for the one lost now that can never be found. And the new nows are missed, ignored so that the searcher, having given up the vain search in despair, is struck by the great number of nows that were also lost, are still being lost, and so he scrambles to bring those back too, a losing race as more and more nows pile up on him onFarks Junior Member
Join Date: Feb 2016 Posts: 68
The Viggen and its important anti-ship role - a case study A bit of a disclaimer first; I'm yet to actually get DCS and the Viggen (I'm holding off until I can get a new computer, so please don't hit me!), but in the meantime I've researched some stuff just out of personal curiosity. I'm by no means an expert on matters of aircraft or aerial combat (or military stuff in general), my knowledge is pretty much limited to what I'm presenting here, nor do I have first hand experience with the sim, its engine, mission editing, multiplayer and so on for the reason I mentioned. So take this for what it's worth and forgive me if I'm missing anything that should be common knowledge or obvious among real flight nerds and DCS users. Also, "case study" might not be the proper term for this but it sounds cool and important so I'll go with it because I feel like it and you can't stop me! Anyway, let's move on.
As many of you know, the speciality of the attack version of the Viggen was anti-ship operations. Both
|
my spaces, as in: (defpackage "FLOWER")
(in-package "FLOWER")
(setf (get 'rose 'color)'red)
(setf (get 'daisy 'color) 'white)
(defpackage "PEOPLE")
(in-package "PEOPLE")
(setf (get 'rose 'color) 'white)
(setf (get 'daisy 'color) 'black)
(defpackage "OTHER")
(in-package "OTHER")
(defun colors-among (things indicator)
(loop for thing in things
when (get thing indicator)
collect it))
(colors-among '(flower::rose people::rose flower::daisy)
'flower::color)
=> (FLOWER::RED FLOWER::WHITE)
(colors-among '(flower::rose people::daisy people::rose)
'flower::color)
=> (FLOWER:RED)
(colors-among '(flower::rose people::rose flower::daisy)
'people::color)
=> (PEOPLE:WHITE)
(colors-among '(flower::rose people::daisy people::rose)
'people::color)
=> (PEOPLE:BLACK PEOPLE:WHITE)
So Common Lisp's package system deals with bundling of symbols and, hence, allows for bundling definitions as a "side effect", but does not deal with searching and loading of system parts at all. In Common Lisp terminology, the latter task is called "system construction".
So please don't get confused in this regard. Java's packages and Common Lisp's packages just happen to have the same name but are used for different purposes (with some overlaps).
Common Lisp only defines rudimentary support for system construction (the functions "load" and "require" - see CLtL2 and the ANSI specs). Please see the next section for some more information on this issue.
17. What is missing?
The ANSI Common Lisp standard was finalized in 1994 and published in 1995. That was at a time when Java was just around the corner but hadn't yet been made publicly available. That was also before the commercial rise of the Internet. It's clear that in the last seven years programming support has progressed in several directions. Unfortunately, the "official" standardization of Common Lisp has not continued in the meantime. Many things are not included in ANSI Common Lisp that are by now taken for granted in other, more fashionable programming languages. Among these features are: a proper module ("system construction") facility, Unicode support, a platform-independent GUI library, sockets and TCP/IP, XML, WebServices, and so on (add your favorite feature here).
However, the Lisp world hasn't stood still in the meantime - just because something is not specified in the ANSI Common Lisp standard this doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
The two widely used system construction facilities are ASDF (http://www.cliki.net/asdf) and MK-DEFSYSTEM (http://www.cliki.net/mk-defsystem). Additionally, some Common Lisp implementations come with their own system construction support. Allegro Common Lisp, LispWorks and CLISP offer Unicode support. CLIM is a platform-independent GUI library that is supported by some vendors, including Franz, LispWorks and Digitool. Most serious Common Lisp implementations offer support for sockets and more advanced networking facilities. CLISP offers support for fastgci. CL-XML is a library for dealing with XML stuff.
More recently (as of 2013), Quicklisp has started to provide an excellent collection of well-maintained libraries for almost all Common Lisp implementations, which should cover most of what you need in its more than 700 entries. Moreover, Quicklisp is incredibly easy to set up and use. Just give it a try!
So the basic message is: if you need some library, do a little search in Quicklisp or with DuckDuckGo and you might find something that you can use. Also check out some of the links provided below.
Part III: Links
The television screen is the retina of the mind's eye.
Therefore, the television screen is part of the physical structure of the brain.
Therefore, whatever appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it.
Therefore, television is reality, and reality is less than television.
- Professor O'Blivion in Videodrome, by David Cronenberg
Here is a list of useful and/or interesting links. Some, but not all of them have already been mentioned in the text above.
18. Personal websites
Bill Clementson's homepage, http://bc.tech.coop/
Richard Gabriel's homepage, http://www.dreamsongs.com - one of the fathers of Common Lisp, various interesting essays can be found at his homepage
Ron Garret's homepage (the Lisp hacker formerly known as Erann Gat), http://www.flownet.com/ron/ - he conducted the study that compared performance characteristics of Lisp, Java and C++
Paul Graham's homepage, http://www.paulgraham.com - author of the books "ANSI Common Lisp" and "On Lisp", also offers various interesting articles
Rainer Joswig's homepage, http://lispm.dyndns.org/
David B. Lamkins' homepage, http://psg.com/~dlamkins/ - author of the freely available online tutorial "Successful Lisp"
Nick Levine's homepage, http://www.nicklevine.org/
John McCarthy's homepage, http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/ - he invented Lisp in the 1950's
Peter Norvig's homepage, http://www.norvig.com
Andreas Paepcke's homepage, http://www-db.stanford.edu/~paepcke/
Kent Pitman's homepage, http://www.nhplace.com/kent/ - he was the project lead for the Lisp condition system
Kevin Rosenberg's homepage, http://b9.com/
Mark Watson's homepage, http://www.markwatson.com/ - author of the freely available book "Loving Lisp - the Savy Programmer's Secret Weapon"
Edi Weitz's hompage, http://weitz.de/
19. Common Lisp References
ANSI Common Lisp (a hyperlinked version of the standard), http://www.franz.com/support/documentation/9.0/ansicl/ansicl.htm
The Common Lisp HyperSpec, http://www.lispworks.com/reference/HyperSpec/
Common Lisp the Language, second edition, http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs.cmu.edu/project/ai-repository/ai/html/cltl/cltl2.html. See also http://oopweb.com/LISP/Documents/cltl/VolumeFrames.html for a framed version.
Converting CLtL2 to ANSI CL, http://bc.tech.coop/cltl2-ansi.htm
The Common Lisp Object System MetaObject Protocol, http://www.alu.org/mop/ (not part of ANSI Common Lisp, but considered a de-facto standard)
20. Background information
Common Lisp - Myths and Legends, http://www.lispworks.com/products/myths_and_legends.html
Continuations, http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?CallWithCurrentContinuation - an explanation on the WikiWikiWeb (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki)
FAQ for comp.lang.lisp, http://www-jcsu.jesus.cam.ac.uk/~csr21/lispfaq.html
The Feyerabend project, http://www.dreamsongs.com/Feyerabend/Feyerabend.html
History of LISP, http://community.computerhistory.org/scc/projects/LISP/ - a comprehensive collection of extremely interesting links.
The original 'lambda papers' by Guy Steele and Gerald Jay Sussman, http://library.readscheme.org/page1.html - these papers date back to the 1970's and discuss various aspects of and around Scheme; some of them are also of interest to Common Lispers
Lexical scope, dynamic scope, (lexical) closures, http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ScopeAndClosures - an explanation on the WikiWikiWeb (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki)
Lisp Scheme Differences, http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?LispSchemeDifferences - a discussion that compares Common Lisp to Scheme on the WikiWikiWeb (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki)
Common Lisp/Scheme Comparison, https://groups.google.com/d/msg/comp.lang.lisp/HlieoyH0u5Y/z_9lJt-3f8oJ, an excellent comparison by Ray Dillinger
Lisperati - a comic (!) about Lisp programming ;), http://www.lisperati.com/
Meta Object Protocol, http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?MetaObjectProtocol - a discussion about Common Lisp's MOP on the WikiWikiWeb (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki)
Publications of the Human-Document Interaction Area (Xerox PARC), http://www2.parc.com/istl/groups/gir/hdipublications.shtml - contains several papers about LOOPS, one of the precursors of CLOS.
A page about LOOPS, with some nice photographs, http://www2.parc.com/istl/members/stefik/loops.html
Even more information about LOOPS, at Mark Stefik's blog at http://www.markstefik.com/?page_id=334
Tail calls, tail recursion, http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TailCallOptimization - an explanation on the WikiWikiWeb (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki)
Wikipedia's entry for Common Lisp, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Lisp
21. Repositories, link collections, software
Quicklisp, http://www.quicklisp.org, most important portal for Common Lisp libraries.
ALU wiki, http://wiki.alu.org/, one of the important portals to the Common Lisp world, includes a list of Common Lisp implementations and much more
CLiki, http://www.cliki.net/, a collection of links to and resources for free software implemented in Common Lisp
Common-Lisp.net, http://common-lisp.net/, is to Common Lisp what SourceForge is to the rest of the world
The Common Lisp Cookbook, http://cl-cookbook.sourceforge.net/
Common Lisp Hypermedia Server, http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/iiip/doc/cl-http/home-page.html, is a full-featured, open source web server implemented in Common Lisp
Common Lisp Open Code Collection, http://clocc.sourceforge.net
The Common Lisp Open Source Center, http://opensource.franz.com/
setf.de Lisp Tools, http://www.setf.de/, includes CL-XML, a bnf-based parser, java2lisp and several other tools
JACOL, http://jacol.sourceforge.net, a framework for interaction between Java and Common Lisp via sockets
UFFI, http://uffi.b9.com/, a package to interface Common Lisp programs with C-language compatible libraries
BioLisp.org, http://www.biolisp.org/, intelligent applications in BioComputing
ACL2, http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/moore/acl2/, a semi-automatic theorem prover for an applicative subset of Common Lisp
Dynamic Learning Center, http://www.dynamiclearningcenter.com/, a teachers' and students' on-line learning resources
22. Scheme links
DrScheme, http://www.drscheme.org, is an implementation of Scheme I have checked out and liked a lot. If I hadn't opted for Common Lisp, I would probably have stuck with this system.
Community Scheme Wiki, http://community.schemewiki.org/
Dorai Sitaram, Teach Yourself Scheme in Fixnum Days, http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/dorai/t-y-scheme/t-y-scheme.html
23. Copyright issues
Copyright Quick-Start for Online Authors, by Gene Michael Stover, http://web.archive.org/web/20060217021129/http://www.lisp-p.org/copyright/
Acknowledgements
Many thanks (in alphabetical order) to Tom Arbuckle (http://www.csis.ul.ie/staff/TomArbuckle/), Joe Bergin (http://csis.pace.edu/~bergin/) and Richard Gabriel (http://www.dreamsongs.com/) for providing lots of useful feedback on the draft version. Thanks to Seung Mo Cho for the Korean translation.
Further thanks for even more feedback go to Paolo Amoroso, Marco Antoniotti, Tim Bradshaw, Christopher Browne, Thomas F. Burdick, Wolfhard Buß, Jeff Caldwell, Bill Clementson, Matthew Danish, Biep Durieux, Knut Aril Erstad, Bob Felts, Frode Vatvedt Fjeld, John Foderaro, Paul Foley, Ron Garrett / Erann Gatt, Martti Halminen, Bruce Hoult, Iwan van der Kleyn, Arthur Lemmens, Barry Margolin, Nicolas Neuss, Duane Rettig, Dorai Sitaram, Aleksandr Skobelev, Thomas Stegen, Gene Michael Stover, Rafal Strzalinski, Raymond Toy, Sashank Varma and Espen Vestre. (Many of them are active participators in comp.lang.lisp.)Update at 11:25 a.m. — Charges have been filed against the suspect, identified by police as 29-year-old Leon A. Traille.
Update at 6:40 p.m. — See video of the suspect being arrested, courtesy of Fox 5, below.
Update at 5:55 p.m. — A “person of interest” was detained at Courthouse Plaza, near the Arlington County government building on the 2100 block of Clarendon Blvd, around 3:00 p.m. The county’s bomb squad was called to inspect the suspect’s belongings — a gray and red backpack containing electronics and other items — but no hazards were found.
Police were first tipped off about the suspect when someone inside the Cheesecake Factory in Clarendon saw a man, who matched the suspect description from news reports, walking down Clarendon Boulevard, according to Arlington County Police spokesman Dustin Sternbeck. The suspect is in custody and is being questioned at police headquarters.
Update at 5:15 p.m. — Wilson Boulevard has reopened to traffic and the mall has reopened to shoppers, according to Arlington County.
Earlier: Arlington County (Va.) Police and federal agents are searching for a man who threw a Molotov cocktail-like incendiary device inside the Ballston Common Mall.
The man threw what was described as a “flaming bottle” from an upper level of the mall down to the food court. The device, said to be 40 ounce beer bottle, possibly containing gasoline or a similar substance, shattered on impact but did not explode, according to Arlington County Police spokesman Dustin Sternbeck. No one was injured.
Two to three additional bottles, which “smelled like gasoline,” were found in a bag by mall security after the man fled.
Employees and shoppers are being allowed to stay in the mall, but all mall and parking lot entrances are being blocked by police and no one is being allowed in. Police are currently reviewing security camera footage and police K-9 units are searching the inside and outside of the mall. The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force is taking over the investigation, according to ACPD spokesman Lt. Michael Watson. The ATF, Department of Homeland Security and Pentagon Police are assisting with the investigation.
Asked whether this was an incident of terrorism, Sternbeck said it’s “too early to tell.”
Police are looking for a slender 5’11” black male, in his late 30s, with medium-length curly hair and a beard. He was seen wearing a gray jacket, a white dress shirt, a necktie and a white or gray backpack with a red inverted ‘V’ on it.
Eastbound Wilson Boulevard has been shut down outside the mall due to the emergency response.
Arrest photos (below) courtesy Meet Kadiwar
Update at 1:50 p.m. — Police have issued the following press release about the incident.College Soccer (Photo: Getty Images)
The Marquette University women’s soccer team reached deep into its bag of tricks Friday.
Carrie Madden’s bicycle kick goal in the 96th minute pushed the Golden Eagles into the Big East title game with a 2-1 overtime victory against St. John’s in Washington.
Top-seeded Marquette (12-6-2), will face 10th-ranked Georgetown in the championship match at noon on Sunday. The Hoyas, seeded third, advanced by beating second-seeded DePaul on penalty kicks.
Madden went down with a leg injury with just minutes remaining in regulation, but returned to the pitch for the start of overtime.
On the winning play, the ball was served into the box by defender Madison Dunker. Madden moved inside to shield her defender and lifted her right leg in front of her before flicking the ball backwards to beat Big East Goalkeeper of the Year Diana Poulin inside the far post.
“It was a good ball in and I thought just go for it and I hit it right I guess,” Madden said following the win. “I don’t know, honestly it just happened so fast.”
UW-Milwaukee men 1, Cleveland State 0: Evan Dujardin scored with 25 seconds left to give the host Panthers a victory over the Vikings.
The win gave the Panthers (8-7-1, 5-3-1) a spot in the Horizon League tournament.
VOLLEYBALL
Bridget Wallenberger had 17 kills as UWM (13-11, 7-6 Horizon League) beat host Wright State, 25-15, 22-25, 25-22, 25-16.Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Fox News claim a leaked EPA draft budget proposal document promises deep cuts to the EPA budget, particularly climate related activities. But the Heartland Institute think the reported cuts don’t go far enough.
Environmental programs face deep cuts under budget proposal
Published March 03, 2017
WASHINGTON – The Trump administration would slash programs aimed at slowing climate change and improving water safety and air quality, while eliminating thousands of jobs, according to a draft of the Environmental Protection Agency budget proposal obtained by The Associated Press.
Under the tentative plan from the Office of Management and Budget, the agency’s funding would be reduced by roughly 25 percent and about 3,000 jobs would be cut, about 19 percent of the agency’s staff.
…
The draft proposal would cut the EPA’s annual budget from about $8.2 billion to $6.1 billion. Proposed cuts include reducing the climate protection budget by nearly 70 percent to $29 million, the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative by 97 percent to $10 million and environmental justice programs by 79 percent to $1.5 million.
Also targeted for steep spending rollbacks are the agency’s monitoring and enforcement of compliance with environmental laws, as well as regional projects intended to benefit degraded areas such as the Chesapeake Bay, Puget Sound and the Gulf of Mexico. A program dealing with San Francisco Bay that received $4.8 million last year would be eliminated, as would initiatives for reducing diesel emissions and beach water quality testing.
…
But the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank, said the proposal didn’t go far enough.
“If Donald Trump and Scott Pruitt are serious about ending the national scandal that is EPA, they will accept nothing less than a 20 percent cut this year and make this year’s cut the first step in a five-year plan to replace the organization,” said Joseph Bast, the group’s president.
…Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, center, raises an Iraqi flag in the city of Ramadi after it was retaken by the security forces on Dec. 29, 2015, in Iraq. AP Photo
Modern violence in the Middle East is often attributed to tensions between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, an assumption bolstered by renewed fury between Saudi Arabia and Iran in recent days and fueled by rhetoric from political leaders and prominent analysts. But new data indicates bloodshed in Iraq, a central battleground for the Western war against Islamic terrorism, is caused by something altogether different.
The main driver of the violence in Iraq that contributed to the rise of the Islamic State group is the continued grievances -- perceived or otherwise -- toward the central government, according to a new study from Oregon-based aid agency Mercy Corps International. Anger and distrust toward opposing ethnic groups in Iraq could indeed contribute to future instability, but is in fact a relatively new development.
“Sectarian tension is undoubtedly worrying, and can be exploited by political actors,” Beza Tesfaye, Mercy Corps’ conflict and governance research manager, said in a statement. “But our research suggests that support for violent groups can be countered if we improve the quality of governance in Iraq, in particular its responsiveness to the needs of groups who feel marginalized.”
More than half of all Shiites and more than 80 percent of Sunnis believe the government at least sometimes treats people from their own religious group unfairly, the study finds. Most Sunnis do not support the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS, ISIL or Daesh, but many also declined to fight it in support of the central government.
All respondents believed government function worsened between 2014 and 2015 in its ability to provide general services, health care, education and electricity. Sixty percent in 2014 believed corruption worsened, which rose to more than 7o percent in 2015. Citizens’ belief that they could influence government also dropped from 2014 to 2015.
Iraq, and particularly Baghdad was not divided along strict ethnic lines before the U.S. invasion in 2003. Divisiveness increased under the Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority which, for example, mandated citizens must declare their sect on all state documents to ensure a proportionate quota of the Iraqi governing council.
Western leaders and analysts now blame government dysfunction in Iraq following the U.S. withdrawal in 2011 for the rise of the sectarian tensions that allowed the Islamic State group to sweep across the border with Syria in the summer of 2014 in its initial march on Baghdad. Former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had largely ousted Sunni Muslims and Kurds from his government, favoring his fellow Shiites and prompting complicity among other Iraqis toward the terrorist organization, which still controls massive swaths of Sunni territory.
The U.S. supported Maliki’s ouster in September 2014 and the election of current Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, also a Shiite, who has made some attempts at greater inclusiveness toward Kurds and Sunnis. American officials continue to worry, however, that he’s not doing enough to unify the country against the extremist threat.
“Now is the time where the proof is in the pudding,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said in late December, when asked why Iraq’s Sunnis should trust their government. “The Iraqi government [and] the Iraqi armed forces need to show that they’re actually committed to that process.”
The Iraqi government should spend more time formalizing relationships with major players in civil society, Mercy Corps recommends. The government’s input would help these leaders feel they are more directly involved in the future of Iraq, and perhaps most critically engage Iraq’s young people who are often marginalized and have been a central target of the Islamic State group’s recruitment efforts.
These kinds of stronger relationships could also encourage donors to commit greater multi-year investments in the civil society sector -- a critical source of stability currently on the decline. In 2011, the U.S. government spent roughly $80 billion per year for its troop presence of roughly 10,000 soldiers, according to the study. Now it plans to invest less than $73 million.
The government should also strengthen its post-conflict reconciliation efforts among internal groups, the study suggests, and focus on using local feedback to inform decisions and policies nationwide.
“This does not mean replicating the failures of past ‘hearts and minds’ campaigns meant to win legitimacy for the state through top-down, costly stabilization and reconstruction projects,” according to the study. “Rather, effective development can happen even as the conflict continues in Iraq, if approaches are coupled with efforts to enable Iraqi citizens to make their government deliver for them through programs that promote citizen engagement, enhance government-citizen dialogues, and mobilize civic-minded youth to be leaders.”
The study is based on public opinion surveys of 5,000 people across Iraq, including throughout the Kurdish regions, in Baghdad and in Basra, a predominantly Shiite region. It was repeated annually over three years from 2013 to 2015, and includes interviews with activists, civic leaders, government officials and young people.Going into Game of Thrones Season 6, there’s a lot of scrutiny surrounding Sansa Stark. The character became a lightning rod last season after Ramsay Bolton raped her on their wedding night. Sophie Turner, who plays Sansa, touched on that controversy, as well as several other topics, in a wide-ranging interview with the Wall Street Journal. Check out the video below, and then we break down the highlights.
After the past five seasons have seen characters spread out, “Season 6 feels like everything is kind of coming together and storylines intertwining and people are forming alliances…and everyone’s kind of coming towards the same goal.”
“This season is about her taking charge and being a leader rather than just a pawn in someone else’s game…she’s really gonna thrive this season.”
Turner discusses the confusion over whether Sansa survived her jump off Winterfell’s ramparts. As in the books, she lived because she landed in a big pile of snow. If the producers wanted to avoid confusion, maybe they should have shown us…you know, a big pile of snow. Instead we got this:
But anyway. The producers keep the cast pretty much in the dark about their characters’ fate, and when they do drop hints, they can be misleading. For example, ahead of Season 5, producers told Turner that Sansa would have a “love interest.” It ended up being Ramsay Bolton, not exactly a love interest any young woman would have in mind.
Turner weighed in on the scene where Ramsay rapes Sansa, saying that it was part and parcel of the show to go to that place. “It would almost feel like an injustice if we saw it though rose-tinted glasses and made it a fairy-tale version of what it would have been.” She also gently chided people who were criticizing the scene but not paying attention to real-world “big issues,” by which I assume rape and domestic violence. “Guys, let’s focus on something that really matters here. This is a TV show.”
Turner calls Game of Thrones “a feminist show,” pointing out that it depicts various female characters breaking out of social restrictions placed on them.
Wall Street Journal: “Are we going to have Red Wedding-style shocks…when we watch this new season?” Turner: “Yes…there are huge shocks this season.” Okay, then. Speaking more generally, she calls Season 6 the best one yet, and says that “it’s really going to blow people’s minds and fans are going to be very happy.”
And then, Turner discussed what she wants for Sansa in the future. “I don’t want to survive. I want Littlefinger to end up on the throne…If you’re on Game of Thrones and you don’t have a cool death scene, then what’s the point? I think it would be really disappointing if I got to the end I was just okay.”
I think she was talking in jest a bit here, but on Game of Thrones, anything is possible.44-year-old Michael Dale May was caught digging up his father's grave [WLEX-TV]
A 44-year-old Kentucky man was arrested on Monday night after his local constable caught him digging up his late father’s body, WLEX-TV reported.
“I went back and hollered for him to step back in the light and he told me to step back to the dark,” Lincoln County Constable Keith Mitchell of his encounter with Michael Dale May (pictured above). “That’s when I went and got my flashlight. He started hollering out [Bible] verses at me. He told me he was trying to dig his dad up, so his dad could go to Heaven.”
May was charged with public intoxication, marijuana possession, and violating a grave.
The suspect told WLEX that a Bible verse led him into the cemetery outside Pilot Baptist Church to dig up the body of his father, who has reportedly been dead for nearly 40 years. May also said he believed that he had done nothing wrong.
“I see the truth,” he said. “He needs to be on the ground. Not under it.”
Investigators noted that May appeared to be “under the influence” at the time of his arrest. He is due in court on Monday. However, he did not rule out trying to dig the body up again.
“It’s a possibility,” he said. “If the truth doesn’t come out and nobody sees the truth, yeah I’ll do it again.”A 43-year-old woman has been arrested in connection with a "racially abusive" posting on a beauty salon's Facebook page.
Thames Valley Police detained the woman after the posting - made following the Paris terrorist attacks - said that people from the "Islamic faith" were no longer welcome at the Blinks of Bicester spa and beauty salon.
The Facebook postings read: "Blinks of Bicester are no longer taking bookings from anyone from the Islamic faith whether you are UK granted with passport or not" and "Sorry but time to put my country first".
Police arrested the woman from Bicester, Oxfordshire, after people took to social media to complain about the comments.
• Student diversity officer 'posted racist comment on Twitter' saying 'kill all white men'
Laura Burt wrote: "Thank God you have been arrested! Foul woman you deserve all you get!"
@russellhoward you Gotta search out Blinks of Bicester on Facebook. Would make a great section on the show. — simon west (@simonridesdh) November 15, 2015
Victoria Alice Brady posted: "Fantastic news TVP! In the light of the attacks on Paris."
Scott Woods said: "Can put fake lashes on ignorance but you can't educate it. You've a LOT to learn...racist and ignorant."
A Thames Valley Police spokeswoman said: "We have arrested a 43-year-old woman in Bicester today after a number of complaints about a racially abusive post on social media.
"The woman was arrested under section 19 of the Public Order Act which relates to the display of written material which is threatening, abusive or insulting with the intention of stirring up racial hatred, and for producing malicious communications.
• Paris attacks: What we know so far
"We take all such complaints seriously and will investigate.
"If you suspect that racially aggravated crimes are being committed please report them to Thames Valley Police on 101."Depeche Mode: Perfomance.
( The Swingin' Pig :: TSP-CD-090-2 )
Excellent Soundboard Recording :: Silver CDs :: Lossless FLAC.
Disc 1
Disc 2
Files: 13. :: Size: 407 MB (flac).
Total Time: 01:01:09 hour/s.
*** Some Great Reward Tour * Europe, Leg #1 ***
Personnel: Dave Gahan - lead vocals :: Martin Gore - keyboards, backing vocals, occasional lead vocals (*) :: Alan Wilder - keyboards, backing vocals :: Andrew Fletcher - keyboards, backing vocals.
Notes: Incomplete FM broadcast * Lineage: "Performance" bootleg (The Swingin' Pig / TSP CD 090 2) -> EAC FLAC (supposedly secure mode; not my rip) -> sped up 1.5% and normalized to -1.0db and centered on DC offset using Audacity 1.3.13 beta -> FLAC level 8.
An excellent, nearly complete FM broadcast. Somewhat loud. Intro is missing. It sounds like there may be watermarks throughout the show (example: "Leave In Silence", 1:44; "Ice Machine", 0:13). The artwork is incorrect: it claims that this is a recording of 1984-11-29, but there was no concert played that night according to depechemode.com. The Basel concert was played on 1984-11-30.
COMMERCIAL TRACKS: Tracks marked with (#) have been commercially released and have been omitted from this torrent. I am sorry for the inconvenience. NOTE ABOUT Track 1.09 "Somebody": one page on depmod (depmod.com/ albums/some_great_reward/ a04387.htm) claims that a remaster of Some Great Reward includes a recording of "Somebody" from 1984-11-30, but I strongly believe it is the 1984-09-29 Liverpool "Somebody" found on previous releases and on other remaster releases, and that the listing on depmod is a mistake. I have posted this on depmod forums, and hopefully someone will resolve it soon. However, since I am unable to verify the track's authenticity on the said edition of SGR, I have not included "Somebody" from this recording to prevent this torrent from being banned at this time.
OTHER VERSIONS:
At least two other recordings exist of this concert that I know of, both FM broadcasts: 1) One is titled "Badlands" and sounds inferior to this recording, is missing songs, and I have not yet found a lossless copy. It is also the only truly complete version of this concert. 2) The other is a Westwood One radio broadcast (or pre-FM? my copy sounds like it's sourced from tape, has an annoying ringing, and advertisements included) I believe from 1985, which has fake crowd noise and even fewer songs than "Badlands," and I have also been unable to find a lossless copy.
discotraxxx has said that this concert is available on several other LP/CDs, but with worse sound than "Performance" and "Badlands", and that some other non-bootleg sourced FM versions of this concert exist (including the master used for "Performance"), but are not currently circulating. He also believes that at least two broadcasts took place after this concert, not just the Westwood One broadcast I mentioned above. Thanks for providing that info, discotraxxx!. (Info taken from original info file).
download lossless FLAC from
FiLEFACTORY | UPLOADED.to | DEPOSiTFiLES
Recorded Live at St. Jacobs Sporthalle, Basel, Switzerland - November 30, 1984.01. Something To Do02. Two Minute Warning03. Puppets04. If You Want (#)05. People Are People (#)06. Leave In Silence07. New Life08. Shame (#)09. Somebody (*) (#)10. Ice Machine01. Lie To Me02. Blasphemous Rumours (#)03. Told You So04. Master And Servant (#)05. Photographic06. Everything Counts07. See You08. Shout09. Just Can't Get EnoughOne of the more interesting things to emerge from the digital revolution is hacking competitions and prizes, wherein benevolent "white hat" hackers are invited to try and defeat hardware and software in a closed environment. The latest mobile-only edition of the Pwn2Own competition was sponsored by software security company Trend Micro, offering cash prizes to anyone who could get user info, install rogue apps, or completely unlock some of the biggest mainstream phones out there: the Nexus 6P, the Galaxy S6, and the iPhone 6s.
The Tencent Keen Security Lab Team was up to the challenge. Using multiple Android bugs that were present even in a Nexus 6P that was equipped with the latest monthly security patches, the team managed to get a rogue app installed on the phone, accessing user data but not fully unlocking the device. With three successful attacks in various "sniper," "strength," and "stealth" categories, the team earned $102,500 in total prize money. Another team, using an attack that relied on a subsequently-patched mobile Chrome vulnerability, couldn't achieve the same results.
Tencent Keen also managed to get a rogue app to persist on an iPhone 6S after a reboot, counting as a partial success. There's no mention of a successful attack on the Galaxy S7 in Trend Micro's after-event report. All in all, the Tencent Keen team scored enough hacking and "style" points to earn $215,000 in prize money. According to the Mobile Pwn2Own rules, the vulnerabilities in the Nexus 6P and/or Android that allowed the attack will be disclosed to Google for patching.Uber launched its Upfront pricing model on Jun 24, 2016, on all it’s car services. Uber advertise the move as being honest with the riders. They do the math up front, and riders know what they’ll be charged exactly. Uber proclaimed in the blog post:
Upfront fares are calculated using the expected time and distance of the trip, and local traffic, as well as how many riders and nearby drivers are using Uber at that moment. And when fares go up due to increased demand, instead of surge lightning bolts and pop-up screens, riders are given the actual fare before they request their ride. There’s no complicated math and no surprises: passengers can just sit back and enjoy the ride.
But what Uber didn’t tell the riders was that the Uber drivers would not be paid according to what riders are being charged. Uber drivers used to get 80% of the fare, surge pricing or not. Uber drivers are still paid by the mile and minute calculation after the new pricing model roll out. It was a way for Uber to end its surge pricing model not only for the riders but also for the drivers. What I have found since the launch of ‘Upfront’ pricing model is that there’s rarely any surge during rush hours or weekends for the drivers, while riders are still getting charged 3-4 times the price, and sometimes even more.
A few days back I got a message from a friend on Facebook. He was furious about an Uber trip. He drives in Dallas, Texas area. Check out the screenshots I got from him:
The price Uber charges the rider and what Uber pays the driver is way off! He only got 31% of the fare. Yes, Uber took 69% of the fare. How is this fair to the driver? Uber is charging surge pricing to the rider, although the rider doesn’t know because of the ‘Upfront’ pricing. The app does not show if the rider is being charged more or less than the average price. If this is not a way to screw the driver, then I don’t know what is.
Also, the long pick-up fee that Uber added recently doesn’t hold water either. My friend told me that he drove more than 20 minutes to get to the rider. As you can see from the trip screenshot above, he only made $1.30. Uber still wants to charge surge pricing to the rider, but only wants to pay pennies on the dollar to the driver.
He emailed Uber to get an explanation on the price differential. Here’s Uber’s response:
Thanks for reaching out, [Redacted].
I understand your concern regarding Uber service fees.
I would like to inform you that service fees are not a set percentage. The service fee is the difference between the rider’s fare and the partner’s earnings.
Uber estimate will calculate the length of each trip and generate
|
SWTOR.
CleanMem has been mentioned before as a great tool for keeping your RAM clear of unused data, and I've been using it since March with no problems with my SMAA injector. The free version is... free, and can be upgraded to PRO. Free version has all of the features you'll be needing.
http://www.pcwintech.com/cleanmem
Just install it and go through the setup wizard on first run to set it up. It has a mini monitor gadget that you can enable that will show your used RAM and your commit charge (optional). You can set it to only scrub for SWTOR.exe or you can allow it to work its magic on any running process.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Downsampling Guide
I've stumbled upon a different method on Guru3D.com forums. It involves using downsampling to achieve a less jaggy aliased game without the huge FPS impact.
I do not claim to be the author of this, it is someone else's project, I am merely sharing it with you all. I guarantee the files listed in the original thread are safe
(I'm using them and they've been scanned with Sophos AV Tool, ESET NOD32, Spybot S&D, Malwarebytes, and SUPERAntiSpyware Free Edition)
Link to original post by BlackZero - http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=366244
Basically by following the above guide you can set your displays resolution to higher than its normal maximum resolution. For example I set my 16:9 1920x1080 monitor to 2560x1440 (16:10 users would use 2560x1600) in SWTOR and it removes almost all of the aliasing present via down sampling.
The following is copied from the original thread on Guru3D.com
All credit goes to the original author.
Mr. Lolman
http://www.forum-3dcenter.org/vbulle...postcount=5099
A regularly updated list of maximum resolutions possible according to display model. Thanks to WhiteLightning for spotting these.
http://www.forum-3dcenter.org/vbulle...d.php?t=529285
English language sources and originators of some material used in this guide.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=472941
http://www.overclock.net/t/1261203/a...sampling-guide
Kupo Quote: Originally Posted by It should be noted that running.jar files requires Java to be installed. The standard version can be had at http://java.com. However, you'll probably want to disable the Java web browser plugins unless you really need them (they're a potential security risk.) Thanks to Kupo for this info, I totally forgot to include it. You'll need Java to run this and it can be a security risk if you enable the web browser plugins.
I had Java installed already because it's required to run Minecraft, so I completely forgot this step.
Make sure you get the appropriate Java version for your Operating System.
Downsampling with AMD: Guide and Demonstration
This guide will demonstrate how to use downsampling with AMD graphics cards to attain a higher quality image in games and other applications without the need for high levels of antialiasing. This will be accomplished by using a java based utility called AMDDownsamplingGui.
Links to current version:
AMDDownsamplingGui_0.2
Rapidshare:
https://rapidshare.com/files/4860634...ingGui_0.2.zip
Netload:
http://netload.in/datei5reDkdFySE.htm
Usage of this utility is at your own risk.
(1.)
Download the AMDDownsamplingGui utility from any of the links above.
(2.)
Extract the downloaded archive to any location and find the contained file called AMDDownsamplingGui.jar, run this file and click 'Erstellen' from the bottom right to bring up the following:
http://u.cubeupload.com/blackzero1891/1.jpg
Change the width and height to your liking and hit enter. I have a 16:10 display and so will be using 2560x1600. For 16:9 displays use 2560x1440.
http://u.cubeupload.com/blackzero1891/f0c2.jpg
Open display properties from Catalyst Control Centre or screen resolution settings for your operating system to confirm the new display resolutions are now available.
http://u.cubeupload.com/blackzero1891/4.jpg
(3.)
Ensure GPU Scaling is not enabled.
http://u.cubeupload.com/blackzero1891/3.jpg
You may also need to ensure 'hide modes that this monitor can not display' is unticked from your monitor's advanced settings.
http://u.cubeupload.com/blackzero1891/5.jpg
Otherwise you may get the following error message.
http://u.cubeupload.com/blackzero1891/6.jpg
If the tick box 'hide modes that this monitor can not display' is greyed out you could try one of the custom monitor drivers posted at the original thread. Thanks to teleguy for spotting these.
http://www.forum-3dcenter.org/vbulle...8&d=1336212261
http://www.forum-3dcenter.org/vbulle...2&d=1336501568
http://www.forum-3dcenter.org/vbulle...0&d=1336078034
All custom monitor drivers from above packed as a single download.
Alternatively you could try a custom monitor inf creator utility also posted at the original thread.
http://www.forum-3dcenter.org/vbulle...9&d=1336299023
Second link for the monitor inf creator utility.
https://rapidshare.com/files/2539043...Creator0.1.zip
(4.)
To remove a custom resolution, choose the resolution from the top drop-down menu and hit 'Löschen'.
http://u.cubeupload.com/blackzero1891/9.jpg
(5.)
Watch the following video demonstration that includes in-game footage of battlefield 3 with downsampling enabled.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m52Z053qdpU
Rapidshare:Netload:Download the AMDDownsamplingGui utility from any of the links above.Extract the downloaded archive to any location and find the contained file called AMDDownsamplingGui.jar, run this file and click 'Erstellen' from the bottom right to bring up the following:Change the width and height to your liking and hit enter. I have a 16:10 display and so will be using 2560x1600. For 16:9 displays use 2560x1440.Open display properties from Catalyst Control Centre or screen resolution settings for your operating system to confirm the new display resolutions are now available.Ensure GPU Scaling is not enabled.You may also need to ensure 'hide modes that this monitor can not display' is unticked from your monitor's advanced settings.Otherwise you may get the following error message.If the tick box 'hide modes that this monitor can not display' is greyed out you could try one of the custom monitor drivers posted at the original thread. Thanks to teleguy for spotting these.All custom monitor drivers from above packed as a single download. https://rapidshare.com/files/4278425...%20Drivers.zip Drivers.zipAlternatively you could try a custom monitor inf creator utility also posted at the original thread.Second link for the monitor inf creator utility.To remove a custom resolution, choose the resolution from the top drop-down menu and hit 'Löschen'.Watch the following video demonstration that includes in-game footage of battlefield 3 with downsampling enabled.
Comparison Screenshots
Another Screenshot
As you can see, there are FAR less jaggies. All of this with an almost non existent performance hit.
The difference is even more self evident when viewed in game. With AA set to OFF and resolution normal, the jaggies are so bad that they make it hard to focus on the game. When downsampling from a higher resolution however, they are hardly noticeable and cause WAY less eyestrain!
If you are using a lower res monitor such as a 1360x768 or 1600x900 then you shouldn't need to go as high as 2560x1440, just choose the next logical resolution that matches your aspect ratio.
If I were using a 1360x768 monitor which is 16:9 then I would set my resolution to something like 1920x1080 with the utility, this should provide the level of downsampling desired.
Side Note: With some games you will have to change your desktop resolution PRIOR to launching the game and setting the resolution in game. Arma II is an example.
With SWTOR you do not need to. All you need to do is set it to the high resolution ingame and it will automatically adjust your desktop resolution.
It's also worth noting that this method with some games will not result in a zero performance loss. League of Legends is an example, it literally cuts the FPS in half with that game.
I do not recommend using a higher than your monitor can support resolution for everyday use and web browsing or movie watching. It can cause crazy screen tearing in movies and causes some text to be read strangely. (It works a wonder while in games though! LOL)
I hope this helps everyone achieve a better looking game without having to pay for it with FPS lag. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Make sure you get the appropriate Java version for your Operating System. http://img716.imageshack.us/img716/9...2072523352.jpg 1920x1080 BEFORE http://img822.imageshack.us/img822/7...2072523363.jpg 2560x1440 AFTER • Chrondo [50] Jedi Sage • Coolie [27] Republic Commando - The Bastion - «RETIRED»
• Pretendo [32] Operative • Bomboclat [25] Mercenary - The Bastion - «ACTIVE»
• Ajunta Pall Refugee •A few days ago, news broke that MBIA was allowed to use statistical sampling in its ongoing Bank of America fraud lawsuit. This happened despite the Countrywide acquiror's loud protests. And now, courtesy of today's brand new lawsuit against BofA (and Agent Orange himself) filed by Allstate, in which the insurer "seeks unspecified damages, alleges fraud, negligent misrepresentation and violation of U.S. securities laws" we know just why Bank of America was so very against allowing sampling to be used by plaintiffs. According to the full report (pdf attached below), Allstate has determined that Bank of America misrepresented virtually everything in its prospectuses: from the percentage of owner-occupied properties reped in prospectuses (about a 10% differential), to the LTV thresholds on represented loans (both at the 90% and 100% threshold), while inbetween finding willful and malicious intent to defraud and deceive. We are confident that none of this, however, will result in a prison sentence for Mozillo, as laws in America are meant to be broken by anyone who can demonstrate an LTV more than 100,000% or have more than $100MM in annual income (including that derived from golden parachutes).
From the just released prospectus, which opens a green light for everyone who believes that the banks or its predecessor was dishonest in representing any and all deal components, and wishes to do so using statistical sampling, which is now permitted:
Allstate's sample sizes of Mortgage Loans are more than sufficient to provide statistically-significant data to demonstrate the degree of misrepresentation of the Mortgage Loan characteristics. Analyzing data for each Mortgage Loan in each Offering would have been cost-prohibitive and unnecessary. Statistical sampling is an accepted method of establishing reliable conclusions about broader data sets, and is routinely used by courts, government agencies, and private business. As the sample size increases, the reliability of its estimations of the total population increase as well. Experts in RMBS cases have found that a sample size of just 400 loans can provide statistically significant data, regardless the size of the actual loan pool, because it is unlikely that so large a sample would yield results vastly different from results fro the entire population.
So having used this sapling method, here is what Allstate found:
...statistics show that despite Countrywide's representations, a much higher percentage of borrowers did not occupy the mortgaged properties:...Overall, 18.3% of the loans sampled had recalculated LTV ratios of more than 10% higher than was claimed in the offering materials, and 6% of the loans sampled had recalculated LTV ratios of more than 25% higher than what was claimed in the offering circular. This overvaluation affected numerous statistics in the Offering Materials...For instance, the Offerings each made representations about the percent of loans that had LTVs higher than 90% provide the lender little value cushion to protect against borrower default and loss upon foreclosure. However, the AVM indicates that a much higher percentage of the loans had LTVs higher than 90%. The Offerings uniformly represented that none of the Mortgage Loans that collateralized the Certificates had LTV ratios greater than 100 percent, meaning that the size of the loan is greater than the value of the property. (aka: being "underwater") Loans with over 100% LTV afford the lender no equity cushion and leave the lender with inadequate collateral from the outset of a loan. Allstate's analysis has found that, despite Countrywide's representations, a substantial number of Mortgage Loans had LTVs greater than 100%, as follows: Allstate has also analyzed the weighted average LTV of the Mortgage Loans in each pool and has found that the weighted average LTV was also overstated, because of the overstatement of individual Mortgage Loans within the pools.
All these lies, and much, much more, can be found detailed in the filing below. At the risk of cheeiness, this is just a sampling of the sampling. And it demonstrates as all those who purchased loans from CFC/BofA that were repped to be in order, will find, following sampling or loan by loan analysis, that Brian Moynihan's bank committed acts of fraud after fraud, putting not only itself, but its underwriter counsel at risk time again. In fact, if there was anything remotely close to a working legal system in the US, what happened to Lehman's Repo 105 auditor, E&Y, should promptly befall every single underwriter's counsel which is jointly liable in representing that the data set forth by the underwriter is correct. But just as importantly, it means that of the hundreds of hundreds billions in loans sold by BofA to hapless dimwits, arguably the bulk of it is now subject to putbacks, and is of far worse quality than previously expected. It also means that the GSEs: those infinite receptacles of mortgage biohazard, are lying consistently when representing the state of their own books, which are likely orders of magnitude worse than the monthly status reports will indicate.
This is just starting to get interesting.
The full Allstate filing which is a must read for everyone is presented below.Director David F. Sandberg is underway on the Shazam movie and has been taking to Instagram to tease the film's pre-production.
For the first day, David F. Sandberg posted an image featuring a can of Coca Cola.
Now for the fifth day of Shazam, David F. Sandberg posted an image with 16 cans of Coke which also features Shazam action figures, comics and posters.
It's unknown if the images have any meaning for the movie, but the pic does feature a toy for Mister Tawky Tawny, Shazam's magical talking tiger and member of the Captain Marvel family, as well as what looks to be a tiny figure for Mr. Mind, a villain in the Shazam comics and the the only survivor of a race of mind-controlling worms from Venus, who had plans to invade and take over the Earth. Also featured is a small figure for Captain Marvel/Shazam, which may be for Captain Marvel Junior.
Updated: with video below from the WB offices of David F. Sandberg playing around with Shazam comics and figures.The Iowa legislature is back in session and they recently sat down to consider a number of new bills concerning gun rights. Unlike what we typically see in most blue states however, these proposals deal with expanding the rights of law abiding gun owners. That alone is enough to send the SJW into a tail spin, but what really seems to have caused heads to explode is a proposal to allow children under the age of 14 to be trained in the safe use of firearms. (KCII Iowa)
House lawmakers debated a series of gun bills Tuesday including one that would allow supervised children to use handguns. The bill would allow children of any age to use handguns with adult supervision. Current law prevents anyone under the age of 14 from using handguns. Iowans for Gun Safety delivered a petition to House members Monday, urging them to vote against it. The group expects the Republican-controlled House to pass the bill, but not the Senate.
The local freak out began with Democrats sounding the alarm, saying:
“What this bill does, the bill before us, allows for 1-year-olds, 2-year-olds, 3-year-olds, 4-year-olds to operate handguns. We do not need a militia of toddlers. We do not have handguns that I am aware of that fit the hands of a 1- or 2-year-old,” said said Democratic Rep. Kirstin Running-Marquardt.
They really need to take the advice of Charles C.W. Cooke and just relax. Rather than the imminent end of civilization, this type of common sense legislation would simply grant some official approval to what already goes on with families around the nation. After roughly half a century it’s hard for me to recall exactly, but I think I was around 8 years old the first time I fired a rifle. (It was a single shot.22 caliber.) My dad taught all of us to properly handle weapons at an early age and we were small game hunting by the age of ten. I didn’t get my hands on a handgun (also a.22 target pistol) until around the age of 14, and I had my own shotgun and larger rifle (a 30-30) by the time I was sixteen. This is not in any way unusual or dangerous.
It’s also not all that dissimilar to the European practice of allowing teenagers to have a glass of wine with dinner. That may sound like an odd comparison, but dealing with adult situations in the raising of children at an early age tends to demystify them for kids, removing that whole “taboo” aspect of both alcohol and firearms. The main point is that it must be supervised with the proper safety training provided. And that’s exactly what the bill in Iowa is proposing.
But I will give the Democrats out there credit on one point. The visual image of an “army of toddlers” with Glocks is pretty hilarious.Submitted by Constantin Gurdgiev via True Economics blog,
In a recent op-ed in FT, Wolfgang Mu?nchau raised a very valid point that globalisation, free trade and markets liberalisation do produce both winners and losers. Nothing new here. But the key point is that this realisation must be timed / juxtaposed against political and social realities on the ground...
Quoting from Mu?nchau (emphasis is mine):
“In the past two years, there has been a dramatic reversal of public opinion in Germany about the benefits of free global trade in general, and TTIP in particular. In 2014, almost 90 per cent of Germans were in favour of free trade, according to a YouGov poll. That has fallen to 56 per cent. The number of people who reject TTIP outright has risen from 25 per cent to 33 per cent over the same period of time. These numbers do not suggest that the EU should become protectionist. But… [EU leaders] should be more open-minded about the political costs of this agreement. …A no to TTIP would at least remove one factor behind the surge in anti-EU or anti-globalisation attitudes. The marginal economic benefits of the agreement are outweighed by the political consequences of its adoption. What advocates of global market liberalisation should recognise is that both globalisation and European integration have produced losers. Both were supposed to produce a situation in which nobody should be worse off, while some might be better off.”
See the full text here
Perhaps it is this dynamic - of the excess supply of losers and the over-concentration of winners - that is behind the dire state of global trade growth:
Wolfgang Mu?nchau's article came in days ahead of the leaks that revealed the duplicit nature of EU and U.S. negotiating positions on TTIP (see Leaked TTIP documents cast doubt on EU-US trade deal), well before we knew that (again, emphasis is mine)
"These leaked documents give us an unparalleled look at the scope of US demands to lower or circumvent EU protections for environment and public health as part of TTIP. The EU position is very bad, and the US position is terrible....The way is being cleared for a race to the bottom in environmental, consumer protection and public health standards."
In simple terms, TTIP is risking to further magnify the chasm between the winners in the Agreement (larger corporates on both sides of the Atlantic, plus Governments) and the losers (consumers, small firms and entrepreneurs).
The documents reveal that under the TTIP, " American firms could influence the content of EU laws at several points along the regulatory line, including through a plethora of proposed technical working groups and committees." If so, the TTIP will only increase bureaucratic costs and amplify impact of large corporates lobbying power at the expense of smaller firms and start ups.
As bad as the U.S. position, is, EU's position is even worse. Despite making lots of political noise about protecting European consumers, environmental and health standards etc, the EU negotiators have clearly adopted a two-faced-Janus position vis-a-vis different stakeholders. For example, on many points of more controversial U.S. proposals, "the EU has not yet accepted the US demands, but they are uncontested in the negotiators’ note, and no counter-proposals have been made in these areas." In other words, the EU leadership is saying one thing to the European audiences (advancing a virtuous position of a defender of consumer rights and environment) while positing no explicit objection to the U.S. proposals. In simple terms, the EU leadership appears to be outright lying and manipulating public opinion.
How do we know this?
"In January, the EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmström said the precautionary principle, obliging regulatory caution where there is scientific doubt, was a core and non-negotiable EU principle. She said: “We will defend the precautionary approach to regulation in Europe, in TTIP and in all our other agreements.” But the principle is not mentioned in the 248 pages of TTIP negotiating texts." In plain English, Malmström is lying. Another example: "The public document offers a robust defence of the EU’s right to regulate and create a court-like system for disputes, unlike the internal note, which does not mention them." Again, what is said for public consumption is at odds to what the EU is saying at the negotiating table. Wolfgang Mu?nchau pointed that "The marginal economic benefits of the agreement are outweighed by the political consequences of its adoption".
But you can also add to his equation negative social consequences of the TTIP and adverse consequences to SMEs and entrepreneurs. By the time you do the sums, it is clear that TTIP is not an agreement about free trade, but an agreement about corporatist system takeover of transcontinental trade and investment flows. As such, its marginal benefits are negative to begin with.This article is over 4 years old
Singer says allegation, which dates back to 1980s and involves boy aged under 16, is 'completely false'
Detectives investigating a claim of a "sexual nature" have searched a property belonging to Sir Cliff Richard.
The home in Sunningdale in Berkshire was searched after police gained a warrant.
The allegation dates back to the 1980s and involves a boy who was aged under 16 at the time. Richard said the claim was "completely false".
The claim is that the alleged abuse took place on the child in the South Yorkshire area in the 1980s, a police spokesperson said. Because of where the alleged incident took place, the investigation is being carried out by South Yorkshire police.
In a statement South Yorkshire police said: "South Yorkshire police has gained entry to a property in the Sunningdale area of Berkshire. Officers are currently searching the property.
"A search warrant was granted after police received an allegation of a sexual nature dating back to the 1980s involving a boy who was under the age of 16 at the time.
"No one has been arrested and the owner of the property was not present."
Richard said in a statement: "For many months I have been aware of allegations against me of historic impropriety which have been circulating online. The allegations are completely false.
The Charters Estate in Sunningdale, Berkshire, where Sir Cliff Richard has an apartment, as South Yorkshire Police said it was searching the property. Photograph: Aisling Ennis/PA
"Up until now I have chosen not to dignify the false allegations with a response, as it would just give them more oxygen.
"However, the police attended my apartment in Berkshire today without notice, except it would appear to the press.
"I am not presently in the UK but it goes without saying that I will co-operate fully should the police wish to speak to me.
"Beyond stating that today's allegation is completely false it would not be appropriate to say anything further until the police investigation has concluded."
The execution of the search warrant was assisted by officers from the Thames Valley force, within whose area Sunningdale falls.
South Yorkshire's inquiry is being led by Det Supt Matt Fenwick.
Police were unable to say immediately why a property belonging to Richard was being searched, whether he would be interviewed, or whether he was a witness or a suspect or uninvolved.
Richard, 73, is one of the most successful British recording artists and has enjoyed a career that has spanned several decades.
Police say the search is not connected to Operation Yewtree, established after revelations over the Jimmy Savile scandal, which is being run by the Metropolitan police.
No representative for Richard was available to comment immediately. The star is reported to be at a holiday home in Portugal.
His routine for many years has been to spend the whole of August in the Algarve before heading to New York for the US Open. As recently as 4 August he attended a charity event at his winery in Albufeira. He has a villa nearby.the people of treatland would like to welcome you to our online superstore, look around, explore, adventure, and have fun. any questions, ask away and we'll do out best to give ya the scoop. most importantly don't be timid, you've just found the largest, most bizarre and disturbing collection of aftermarket moped parts in these fair lands.
we work closely with a huge array of vendors to carry the widest variety of parts possible, scouring the far reaches of the earth (north pole no probs, south pole no probs) to find the last dead NOS stocks of many rare items. If it doesn't happen to exist there is a good chance our family of wizards is currently working on producing it. This store is a maze in perpetual motion of photos and tales, times to come, times long gone, even we don't know, get lost n enjoy yourself.
in short, as incurable mopeders ourselves, we take your orders very seriously and will do our utmost to make sure you are happy and pleased with all your visits to treatland. We hate waiting and love discounts too. yeahhh!!!!
we ship out most everyday through a variety of methods, most of our customers in the US receive their goods within just a few days depending on how far they are from the independent kingdom of treatland.
treatland is located at 1424 Kearney St El Cerrito CA 94530
got a question? ask one here or email [email protected] question from Quora:
Do programmers have some coding secrets that are only learnt by experience?
My Answer:
There are absolutely 100% for sure coding secrets that are only learned by experience. In fact, and perhaps I shouldn’t tell you this, even if I tell you the secrets you won’t believe them until you experience them.
So, reader beware, unless you’ve experienced this, you won’t believe me.
Let’s see…
First, the best way to maximize your career and job situation is to change jobs every 2-5 years. The reason for this is that in the current employment climate, employers don’t value employee long term development. Specifically, once they are paying you say $50,000, they really don’t want to pay you $60,000 or $80,000 or $100,000 anytime soon or at all, because they used to be able to pay you $50,000 to do what is their mind mostly the same thing.
So, if you find yourself at the same job for more than 3-5 years, expect that you are probably making as much as you ever will there. And if you don’t like that fact, you need to move on.
Second, and this is sort of tangentally about code too, but the way that people code and organize themselves to write software is not an accident. Specifically, if you find yourself thinking that your company, group, department, squad, whatever is “doing it wrong” and that you can “fix it” with pair programming, agile, scrum, kanban, or the latest cool new langauge or platform like node, elixir, clojure, scala, etc. you are in for a rude awakening.
In any group situation, most of what happens is a routine that is built up over time and is no accident. Many programmers have grown weary and given up on what they love in the hopes that they can change things and make a difference in a group that has no interest in changing.
Third, the best way to get better at writing code is to write code. This is the most obvious thing in the world, but truthfully many/most programmers don’t really practice their craft outside of work. They don’t improve their own skillset.
Frankly, in many cases programmers can get to a point where they can coast and do a good enough job to not get fired, but they are never going to get around to going much further than they currently are. That might also be on purpose too.
Last, nothing really changes in the technology world. I mean this in a structural sense. Every few years we use new languages and so on, but most of the ideas and patterns and technologies and approaches were invented and reinvented decades ago. Some of it gets rediscovered and reapplied in new ways, but often it is just an endless loop of doing slightly prettier versions of spreadsheets, form apps, and user specific interfaces for data entry and reporting.
Oh, I’ll give you a bonus, at some point you get far enough in technology that it’s not about code or technology at all. It’s about people and that is an entirely different skillset altogether.
-Brian
P.S. Have you subscribed to Code Career Genius yet?This striking image of Jupiter was captured by NASA’s Juno spacecraft as it performed its eighth flyby of the giant planet.
Juno launched on August 5, 2011, from Cape Canaveral, Florida, and arrived in orbit around Jupiter on July 4, 2016.
The spacecraft is in a polar orbit around the gas giant, and the majority of each orbit is spent well away from the planet.
But, once every 53 days, its trajectory approaches Jupiter from above its north pole, where it begins a 2-hr transit — from pole to pole — flying north to south.
During these flybys, Juno is probing beneath the obscuring cloud cover of the planet and studying its auroras to learn more about its origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere.
On September 1, 2017, at 5:49 p.m. EDT (2:49 p.m. PDT), the probe successfully made its eighth flyby of Jupiter.
At the time of the closest approach, or perijove (defined as the point in Juno’s orbit when it is closest to the gas giant’s center), the spacecraft was about 2,200 miles (3,500 km) above the giant planet’s cloud tops.
All of Juno’s science instruments and its JunoCam, a visible-light camera designed to capture remarkable pictures of Jupiter’s poles and cloud tops, were operating during the flyby to collect data.
The newly released image was taken just 9 min after Juno’s closest approach to Jupiter.
It shows two ‘points of interest’ (POI’s): ‘Whale’s Tail’ and ‘Dan’s Spot.’Two years into the economic downturn, the question many are asking has changed.
It's no longer, "When is the economy going to turn around?" It's now, "what's the road ahead?"
The historical model of impatiently waiting for the good times to roll again is no longer a realistic way forward. Our current unsettled circumstances require bold new thinking and action that must drive a Calgary renaissance.
Calgary renaissance?
Over the years, I have been critical of government-led economic diversification schemes.
Attempts to make us less hydrocarbon-dependent and attract completely new sectors to Alberta have allowed governments to try to hand-pick corporate winners and losers, and unfairly subsidize certain sectors.
Rarely, if ever, have these efforts (under any political party) produced the hoped-for results.
Simply put, we have spent far too much time and money trying to artificially diversify our economy, rather than recognizing and embracing excellence — and growing our skills, knowledge and competitiveness in our many existing "resource" industries. Our western provinces are rich in resources — think energy, farming, timber, uranium, ranching, hydro-electricity, fishing, agri-feeds, potash, coal, base and precious metals, diamonds and indeed, our people.
Wilson says we need to focus on what we have and embrace, celebrate, understand, optimize and grow our vast resources. (davebloggs007/Creative Commons)
We need not look over the fence at what others have. We need to embrace, celebrate, understand, optimize and grow the vast resources we are already blessed with.
Rather than trying to engineer a diversification process for Calgary, why not create clarity and certainty around our municipal and provincial business policies such that we are able to simply attract businesses from a variety of sectors, and help existing businesses prosper?
Clarity and certainty is, unfortunately, not something we have seen from any level of government in Alberta over the last long while.
Downtown cash cows
Twice in the last decade, we've undergone royalty reviews, which have created massive levels of uncertainty. We've recently imposed a new carbon tax which, rather than being revenue-neutral, has the net effect of increasing the overall tax burden on businesses and individuals.
New minimum wages are a setback to our critical hospitality industry. And we now have the prospect of a looming City of Calgary property tax hike that will negatively affect existing businesses, and sharply discourage entrepreneurship in our city.
For decades, the city treated downtown corporate tenants as cash cows.
Now, with vast vacancies in our office towers, the city has looked for ways to increase taxes on businesses outside the core. For the next year, the city has said it will cap its increase on property taxes at five per cent instead of 30 per cent.
A more favourable tax structure needed to attract new businesses to this city and support struggling existing businesses, says Wilson. (Monty Kruger/CBC)
My question is this: why cap the increase for only one year? Why not five years? And why a cap on tax increases? Rather, why not consider a business tax abatement — reducing taxes on businesses, or exempting businesses from certain taxes all together?
A more favourable tax structure is exactly what is needed to attract much-needed new businesses to this city and support those existing businesses that are already struggling. The city must learn to do more with less — not shift the burden of its inability to manage costs onto the backs of small and medium businesses — the true backbone of our economy.
The case for tax abatement
At the moment, all levels of government are clawing at operating margins — making it harder to do business, not easier.
The best appeal we can make to business is to offer a five-year tax abatement to seed an entrepreneurial renaissance in Calgary. Tax abatements are regularly offered to special civic projects in order to attract investment and innovation (I believe there are such abatements for businesses in the East Village, for instance).
Thirty years ago, in an effort to attract new investment, Austin, Texas dramatically overhauled how it taxed businesses. Today, Austin is a growing centre of entrepreneurship and economic diversity.
Why can't Calgary follow a similar path?
The entrepreneurial environment
The more an entrepreneurial environment is nurtured, the more business can do what they do best — find new solutions to old problems, attract investment, create employment and sustainably grow.
Rather than being confident, small businesses are rightly concerned about looming tax hikes and increasing business costs, whether in the form of property tax hikes, utility rates or the ill-conceived jump in minimum wages.
Clearly these measures are dampening our city's entrepreneurial spirit at exactly the wrong time.
Property tax hikes, utility rates or the ill-conceived jump in minimum wages is dampening Calgary's entrepreneurial spirit, says Wilson. (Evelyne Asselin/CBC)
In the US, Trump (whom I do NOT respect) is touting significant tax reductions, including significantly cutting corporate tax rates. To now compete and attract investment north of the border, we must offer a policy-environment that is equally pro-business.
A five-year tax abatement is a good place to start.
Of course, a tax abatement would require a commensurate reduction in spending by city council — which would likewise be a good thing. Reigning in spending, contracting out or deferring certain projects is a responsible thing to do in volatile economic times, and it would ensure tax abatements are a realistic option to bridge us to another day.
Calgary 2.0
Bold approaches like a five-year tax abatement are exactly what's needed to enable individual entrepreneurs and small businesses to do what they do best — create value, innovate and help build Calgary 2.0.
With one of the youngest, most educated, and most skilled workforces in the world, a tax abatement would help turn the Calgary of 2022 into an entrepreneurial mecca and help Calgary reclaim its place as a primary economic engine of Canada. If Calgary is indeed at a crossroads, the opportunity is before us to take the road less traveled — the road of lower taxes and reduced spending — one that leads to renewed prosperity through entrepreneurial growth.
I love my Calgary. It's one of the most attractive cities in the world
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’ll save that for another day. At the same time I stumbled across an amazing deal on a mk3 Toyota Supra. If you’re familiar with the 7MG(T)E powerplants normally in these cars you can assume why it was so cheap, but it was another step in the learning process for me. A month and a replaced headgasket later, the Supra was sold and I had a wad of money to throw at a motor to put in the wagon.
Following my idea of having a “different” drift car, rather than opting for the obvious choice of a 1 or 2JZ, I opted for the powerplant of an SR20DET out of a late model S14. Not only was this going to annoy a handful of Toyota purists, which I thoroughly enjoyed, but the man behind the swap itself, Shawn Browne was familiar with the motor, having just finished the same swap into an AE86 Corolla. Calle at Four Function Autosport took care of importing the motor for me, also fighting for me to get an uncut harness. The motor was in great shape upon arrival and ready to be beat on.
I came home from work one day to find the hood up on the wagon in the carport, engine bay empty and a dirty 5MGE sitting in the dirt. A testament to the amazing friends I have. Ryan, Ian, Tyson, and Greg (forgive me if I have forgotten who was there, I’m still not quite sure who did it) took it upon themselves to pull it for me so I could begin the swap sooner. A deep clean and a trip to the metal recycling later, the shell was towed to Limit Factory for a makeover.
First on Shawn’s list, remove tint and stickers. Ask Shawn’s stance on stickers, his answer will be something along the lines of: “I f***ing HATE stickers.” For anyone who knows Shawn well, the huge DTA POSSE sticker that now graces the side of the Drift Union FC is a big deal. I took care of the weight reductions, stripping out everything but the dash and drivers seat. My thought being: “I only have a 4 banger running this beast.” Another hindsight, I wish I had kept the interior, whats the point of having a car with four doors if you only have one seat?
(Photo: Shawn Browne)
After many late nights, flats of beer, distractions by flamethrower, the car was moving under its own power with a custom driveshaft, AE86 clutch pedal, s13 throttle cable, stock Cressida fuel pump, no springs up front, 2 coils and short stroke shocks in the back, and a set of 15×10-25 Diamond Racing steel wheels (another mistake I might add) hammered under the stock fenders. Success! For the next week the car was doing donuts in the snow almost every night, usually not by me haha.
Limit Factory SRX7 snow nuts from Shawn Browne on Vimeo.
At that point, all I needed was suspension and a welded differential to be set, but life had other plans. Plagued by bad decisions and bad luck, the car sat for months awaiting it’s needed finishing touches. A falling out with the girl I was living with at the time, prompted a sudden change in scenery and I moved to Victoria, BC… leaving the wagon to sit in storage in Kelowna for 6 months more. Until the universe worked its magic, another project car fell into the laps my roommate Warren and I. Upon fixing and posting for sale, a buyer popped up in Kelowna prompting a roadtrip to retrieve my beloved wagon.
At this point, the swap had seen no more than 100 kilometers of driving, most of that being up and down the cul de sac where Limit Factory resided. I had no idea how or if the car drove properly enough to make the 300km trip from Kelowna to Victoria. On top of that, no heat to defrost the windows if it rained or was cold, no wipers, the car was loaded with all my car parts and tires from living in Kelowna, and the car itself was incredibly heat-score.
If I ran into the strong arm of the law, I knew they would use that strong arm to beat me silly for driving such a ragged piece of metal on public roads. Not only was it basically touching frame on the ground, the three inch straight pipe exhaust (to four inch tip that stuck out half a foot from the bumper I might add) was not quiet, no interior, no suspension… you get the point I’m sure…
Surprisingly enough, the car made it the entire trip with no hiccups. Getting on and off the ferry to Vancouver Island was hairy, but the swagger wagon soldiered on to it’s new home in Victoria. At this time I now owned two Cressida wagons, one for daily and one for drift. I decided to hit the weigh scales to see how much weight I had actually shaved by comparing the two. By ditching the 5MGE for the SR20 and gutting the interior I had lost over 600 pounds. The drift wagon weighed just under 2700lbs, pretty much on par with the S14 Silvia the motor would have come out of.
With the car back in my hands, I pulled the differential and Warren locked it up with the welder. Then came the moment of truth, the local Halloween drift event had arrived and it was to be the wagon’s maiden voyage. I dressed as the dashing Han Solo, the wagon becoming my Millenium Falcon. “She may not look like much, but she’s got it where it counts, kid. I’ve made some special modifications myself.”
It became very quickly apparent to me the mistake I had made. I spent almost 2 years building this car and in the meantime I have gained no seat time. That, coupled with the lack of suspension, a stock seat, and no e-brake made the incredibly difficult and almost disappointing to drift. I knew now though that it had the power, the project could work, it just needed those finishing touches.
With a new determination, I set out to try and make the car work. I knew it was possible, I just had to put in the time and money. I ditched the heavy steel 15×10’s and picked up a set of 15×8 -9 AJPS Challengers. The stock seat was removed in favour of a Recaro bucket seat. Warren used his experience with building Corolla’s to help me make front coilovers.
After making a few cosmetic changes (and lighting the car on fire) I started cutting out even more weight, when I realized “Wow, that is a lot of wires that aren’t being used that add up to weight.” Enter bad decision #239. I started tracing wires and cutting…and cutting… and cutting… and soon I was overwhelmed by the ratsnest I had created. Then I left to work on a fishing boat for a month, coming back to not remembering anything at all about the rainbow of wires littered about the floor.
It eventually reached the point where the stock harness couldn’t even be used anymore. So, I took this as an opportunity to learn wiring. I bought a few hundred feet of different coloured wiring and dove into it. With the help of Warren and my friend Sean Nesbitt, I managed to re-wire the necessary bits to drive the car. Headlights (high and low beam), signals, running lights, brake lights, power windows. I was extremely proud of how much cleaner the car now looked, in terms of wiring, and I had removed over 20lbs of wires from the car.
Another drift day arrived and this time, with the upgrades that were made, I was confident the car would perform better. Unbeknownst to me, Cressida wagons come stock with a 7.1 rear end built by Borg Warner, and apparently an SR5 corolla rear end would be considered an upgrade. On my first run out, I popped the clutch to light the tires, it was followed by a loud bang and only a single wheel broke loose. I had snapped an axle. I limped home, already thinking about how I was going to fix the problem that had been raised.
I could replace the axle easy enough, but that would just end the same result. After some research (which was difficult I might add, how many Cressida wagon drift cars did you know of in 2011? And how many have detailed info on the build?) I knew I needed a first generation supra rear-end. It would keep things Toyota and it had been done and documented by one other wagon owner in the states.
It took a month of searching but I happened upon the rear-end I was looking for, around the same time I bought a pair of s13 coilovers I planned on modifying to replace what I had going on already. The rear end was modified to fit and I began planning out the suspension… that’s when the story begins it’s sad decline…I won’t go into too many details, but long story short I owed a lot of money and my only way out was to sell some things, and unfortunately the only thing I owned of value… were what I had invested in that old Toyota.
A lot of people were confused about what I did next. This car was far too important to me to watch someone else drive away in it and finish it the way they saw fit, so selling it as a whole was out of the question. On top of that, the only parts worth anything was the motor and my recently purchased mk1 supra rear end, and no one would ever pay whatever dollar amount I would come up with as to what the wagon was worth to me. And beyond all things money, too many friends put too much of their own blood, sweat, time, and hardwork on this car for me to feel ok about selling the car as a whole. I felt like that would be disrespectful to the friendships we had to make money off something that, while it was my car, was in reality a huge group project.
The supra rear-end sold fast, and was replaced with the broken stock unit and stock stuff was thrown up front to keep the chassis roll-able. I wasn’t ready to let the car go just yet though, I never even got any rolling photos of it yet! One final cruise was planned, a drive off into the sunset, almost quite literally.
(Photo: Warren Foster)
No exhaust from the downpipe back, once again rolling on no suspension. I figured for sure that the car was going to get pulled over and I could feel good about never being able to drive it again. I was proven wrong though and as I scraped my way into the driveway, for what I thought was supposed to be the last time, a new plan formed. She was going out with a bang.
I like to think I had the first Cressida wagon convertible in history, but I’m sure it’s been done. First SR20 powered Cressida wagon convertible will have to do, I suppose.
I had a lot of people get incredibly mad when they saw this photo. I realize wagon’s are hard to come by, this was the main reason that made cressida enthusiasts mad. “How could you do this?! You idiot! I have been looking for years for one! Why couldn’t you give it to me? Why did you have to ruin it?” Well let me start off by saying this car was ruined from the day I got it.
The rust and interior condition was far from ideal. Once I stripped the interior out, the car was no longer able to be a daily driver again, and good luck finding a wagon interior. Then the wiring harness replacement, you could never put another 5MGE or SR20 in after everything came out.
(Photo: Nick Oldford)
Even if someone had everything to make it a car again, I wouldn’t have given it to them. This car was my Old Yeller “There’s no hope for him now. He’s sufferin’. You know we gotta do it.” – “I know Mama… But he was my dog… I’ll do it.”
(Photo: Nick Oldford)
A few days later was one of the most painful things I’ve had to, watch my pride an joy leave on a flat deck trailer to be turned into scrap metal.
(Photo: Acacia Spencer-Hills)
In the Time I owned the wagon I owned a Nissan 240sx hatch, 240sx Convertible, a VW Jetta, a second cressida wagon, and two cressida sedans. Before the SR wagon, too many to list. I’m sure I’ll own quite a few in the future. Everyone has that one car that stands out. The one that will always mean the most to that individual. This was mine, and I don’t think that will ever change.
I have a new car now, I’ve never really been big on s-chassis but the car is starting to grow on me. I’m looking to get seat time, build more skills rather than build a car. One day though, I’ll get behind the wheel of another cressida wagon. I think this time though, I’ll use it for what it was intended. Nobody is interested in a drift car that doesn’t get drifted. To end it off, here is a video of all the dumb footage I have of this dumb drift car that never really got drifted.
First photo credit: Warren Foster
-ColeGet the biggest business 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
Fourteen business leaders from across Wales have been recognised at IoD Wales’ Director of the Year Awards 2017.
Celtic Manor Resort chairman and telecommunications billionaire Sir Terry Matthews was named director of the year, while IoD Wales director Robert Lloyd Griffiths’ accolade was given to Debra Barber, managing director at Cardiff Airport.
Miriam Warner, managing director at Miracle Workers Agency was given the Judges’ awards, which wasn’t included in the shortlist but was announced at the event.
Talent and Innovation was also a surprise category, announced on the day and awarded to Bradley Cummings and Gareth Williams of Tiny Rebel Brewery in Newport.
There were four additional categories at this year’s awards, which are now in their seventh year.
Highlight of business calendar
The awards have become an established highlight on the Welsh business calendar and celebrate business achievements and inspirational leaders across Wales while bringing all sectors of the business community together, irrespective of size, geography and longevity.
Patrick Nash, CEO at Nantgarw-based Connect Assist, was named director of the year in the corporate responsibility category and Chris Macnamara, owner of The Brogue Trader was named director of a family business.
Mark Burn, chief financial officer at Newport-based Henry Howard Finance, was named director of the year in the finance sector, while Steven Ades, financial controller at Aerfin Ltd, was highly commended.
(Image: (C) RHS)
Maxine Wiseman, director of organisational development at Trivallis Ltd in Pontypridd, was given the accolade of HR director of the year and Scott Liddle, operations director at Acorn, was named director of the year in the medium/large business category.
Gareth Chapman, chief executive at Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council, was named director of the year in the public sector, and James Smith, CEO and co-founder of DevOpsGuys, won the Small Business category.
Matthew Cole, managing director of Gofal Enterprises in Bridgend, was named director of the year within social enterprise, and Glyn Jenkins from Bastleford Engineering and Consultancy in Pembrokeshire was named winner in the start-up category.
Rob Dance, founder and CEO at RockIT in Pencoed, was named young director of the year with Emma Hill, co-founder of Pembrokeshire Falconry being highly commended in the same category.
Exemplars of leadership
Robert Lloyd Griffiths, director of IoD Wales, said: “Today exemplifies what is at the very heart of what the IoD is all about - good governance and leadership.
"Good leaders and good directors enable businesses to meet their full potential. In simple terms, better directors mean better business means a better economy.
"Today we have honoured directors and senior managers who are exemplars in the business community from across Wales, who have this year lead their organisations with distinctions. Many congratulations to all finalists today.”
Winners from the Welsh regional awards, which are once again sponsored by Cardiff Business School, are forwarded for the IoD National awards which culminate in an Awards Lunch in London in the autumn.
IoD WALES DIRECTOR OF THE YEAR WINNERS
Corporate Responsibility
Patrick Nash, Connect Assist (Nantgarw, Cardiff)
Director in a Family Business - sponsored by Retail Merchandising Services Ltd
Chris Macnamara, The Brogue Trader, (Cardiff)
Finance Director of the Year
Mark Burn, Henry Howard Finance (Langstone, Newport)
Director of the Year - Human Resources – sponsored by Acorn Executive Search
Maxine Wiseman, Trivallis (Pontypridd)
Director of the Year - Medium/Large Business
Scott Liddle, Acorn Group (Newport)
Director of the Year - Public Sector - sponsored by Academi Wales
Gareth Chapman, Merthyr Tydfil County Borough (Merthyr)
Director of the Year - Small Business - sponsored by Darwin Gray
James Smith, DevOpsGuys, (Cardiff)
Director of the Year - Social Enterprise - sponsored by Legal & General
Matthew Cole, Gofal Enterprises Limited (Bridgend)
Director of the Year - Start-Up - sponsored by Airvent
Glyn Jenkins, Bastleford Engineering and Consultancy (Pembrokeshire)
Young Director of the Year - sponsored by Tidal Lagoon
Rob Dance, RockIT Ltd (Pencoed, Bridgend)
Talent and Innovation Award - sponsored by ACCA
Bradley Cummings and Gareth Williams, Tiny Rebel (Newport)
The Judges’ Award
Miriam Warner, Miracle Workers Agency (Abergavenny)
Director’s Award
Debra Barber, Cardiff Airport
Chairman’s Award
Sir Terry Matthews, Celtic Manor Resort.NEW YORK (The Street) -- Japanese stocks have been a source of grief for investors in 2014 after stellar performance last year, seeming to confirm pessimistic forecasts that structural reform would fail.
Now market sentiment faces another hurdle: a hike in Japanese consumption tax from 5% to 8% on Tuesday, aimed at helping reduce national debt that stands at almost 245% of GDP.
Last time Japan lifted its sales tax in 1997 the economy fell into recession shortly afterwards, albeit against the backdrop of the Asian financial crisis.
Fast-forward nearly two decades and Japan's economy is still struggling, growing at less than half the expected pace in the fourth quarter.
While Abenomics - a package of monetary easing, structural reform and fiscal stimulus - fuelled a 52.6% jump in the Nikkei last year, lasting structural change appears elusive.
Concerns around the sustainability of reform and Japan's debt pile, along with a strengthening yen have seen the Nikkei slump 7.6% so far this year.
But Wilmington Trust investment strategist Clem Miller voices the sentiment of many fund managers. "The tax has been anticipated and built into the market price so it's likely to have a marginal impact when it comes into place," he said.
Contrast this to the unexpected Ukraine situation, which has shaken markets in large part due its unknown ramifications.
Other fund managers note the consumption tax may be easily offset by further stimulus from the Bank of Japan, which is keen to ensure the economic recovery is not derailed.
In addition many Japanese companies have robust balance sheets with net cash - a contrast to the late 1990s - making another recession unlikely.
If market sentiment is shaken by this tax, more stimulus would be a positive for Japanese stocks, despite failing to address underlying structural issues.
For example, Miller and others note that a depreciating yen - which fell 17% last year - has done little to boost the fortunes of Japanese exporters, many of which already have operations outside Japan.
Like many developed nations, Japan also has an ageing population. But a far lower level of workforce participation by women compared to Western nations is adding to its national debt woes, with required cultural change expected to take at least a generation despite any economic incentives Abe may introduce.
The takeaway: Japan's consumption tax is unlikely to trigger a further nosedive in shares. But don't bet on a fast recovery for the Nikkei unless the Bank of Japan re-juices its stimulus pump.
-- By Jane Searle in New YorkBioware Hiring Star Wars: The Old Republic Players To Test The Endgame
Giuseppe Nelva March 1, 2012 11:30:55 AM EST
Testing changes to the endgame of a MMORPG before they go live is always a challenge and public test servers can help only to a point, due to their opt-in nature and to the fact that the efforts of those playing on them can be rather unfocused.
BioWare decided to solve the problem by hiring more local testers that live near their Austin, TX studio, and may have chosen to ask the right people: their own player base.
Applicants must be experienced with endgame Operations, Warzones and Flashpoints and must fill this survey in order to be considered.
It’s a temporary paid position and will entail testing for at least one weekend a month, so if you’re looking for a small additional job to round up your income while testing a MMORPG, or just for a chance to put the foot in the door of the gaming industry (even if internal tester positions aren’t exactly an immense career advancement, they are a start), this may be a good one to look into.
BioWare is also seeking for endgame-worthy guilds to apply in order to test the upcoming patch 1.2. For this no salary is mentioned, but there’s also no location requirement.
Guilds can apply following the instructions here and those that are selected will get their characters manually copied to the public test server, in order to be able to test the sizable batch of endgame content coming with version 1.2.Thomas Esang "Tommy" Remengesau Jr. (born 29 February 1956) is a Palauan politician who has been the ninth President of Palau since 2013. He originally served as the seventh president from 2001 to 2009. He also served as a Senator in the Palau National Congress between his two administrations.[1] He was elected as Vice-President of Palau in 1992 and 1996, then as President in 2000, 2004, 2012, and 2016.
Wishing to make Palau less dependent upon United States aid, he promoted the expansion and growth of the tourist industry through his policy and slogan of Preserve the Best and Improve the Rest. The "best" refers to Palau's especially gifted and diverse underwater resource in the Micronesian region, and its reputation of being considered among the top in underwater attractions of the world. In Palau's foreign affairs, Remengesau had been active in maintaining Palau's presence in the United Nations. During his administration Palau elevated to become known as an unheralded leader amongst the international community through environmental initiatives, such as the Micronesian Challenge and its cooperation with South Pacific Nations in advocating awareness of global warming and its effects in the South Pacific Region.
Early life [ edit ]
Remengesau was born in Koror, Palau. His father is Thomas Remengesau, Sr., who was District Administrator of Palau during the Trust Territory era, as well as Minister of Justice, Vice President, and briefly Acting President of Palau. His mother, Ferista Esang Remengesau, also served as First Lady of Palau.[1] Remengesau was educated at Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan, in the United States, graduating from there in 1979.[2]
Political career [ edit ]
First service as senator, vice presidency, and first presidency [ edit ]
Remengesau in 2008.
At 28 years old, Remengesau targeted the youth voting bloc of Palau and successfully lobbied for their support, in the process becoming known as one of the forefront advocates for the youth of Palau. Remengesau was then elected in 1984 to the Palau National Congress (Olbiil Era Kelulau), carried by the youth and a grassroots campaign to become the youngest senator in the nation's history at the age of 28. In 1992, he was elected Vice-President and served two terms. In 2000, with the support of outgoing President Kuniwo Nakamura, he won the presidential election, defeating ex-senator Peter Sugiyama by a margin of 52% to 46%.[3] He easily won re-election in 2004, defeating Polycarp Basilius by a margin of 66.5% to 33.5%, in a race dogged with rumors of improper financial influence from Taipei and Beijing.[citation needed]
As Senator again [ edit ]
Remengesau announced in 2008 that he would seek a senatorial seat in the Senate of Palau in the 2008 general election.[4] He came in 11th in the election.
Remengesau was succeeded by President Johnson Toribiong on January 15, 2009.[5]
In April 2009, Special Prosecutor Michael Copeland, who served as Attorney General of Palau,[6] launched an investigation along with a Special Task Force, stating that "office received information that gave probable cause to believe evidence of criminal activity is contained on the hard drives of seized computers." Senator Remengesau decried the whole process as an act of "selective prosecution".[citation needed] After much speculation and media tabloid surrounding the investigation, Remengesau was found only to have been guilty of not filing properties of land and their values and accrued interest. Remengesau was charged with 19 counts of violating Palau's code of ethics for failing to disclose his interests in real properties and other assets in 2002 and 2003. The charges bear on the lack of filing of the transfers and the values of said properties.[citation needed] Remengesau has said that, "I am being charged for basically technical information related to the filing of personal assets under the Code of Ethics law." “It was incomplete but it’s not like that we did not file anything. When we filed in years 2000-2002, we believed that what we were filing was in compliance with the law,” Remengesau said.
When asked about the verdict, he replied: “It is interesting because in our inquiries, roughly 90 percent filed the same way I did. And it is also an eye opener. I learned a lot from this trial and I hope other officials will also learn something from this because they will now change the way they disclose their assets.”[citation needed] He added, “From now on, everyone who acquired land through tradition will also disclose it in their financial disclosure.” In April 2010, Associate Justice Kathleen Salii imposed a fine of US$156,400 on Remengesau. Although prosecutor Michael Copeland recommended a fine of US$1,357,500, Copeland would go on to express his satisfaction with the sentence in media interviews.[7]
Second presidency [ edit ]
He took office as President again in 2013, after defeating his successor Johnson Toribiong in the November 2012 Palauan election. Due to his work regarding Palau's environment, Remengesau received the Pacific Champion Award in 2013, as well as the United Nations' Champion of the Earth title, the Inspiring Conservation Award, and the IGFA Conservation Award, all in 2014. In 2016, he received the Peter Benchley Ocean Award for Excellence in National Stewardship.[8] He appeared in the 2016 documentary film Before the Flood to discuss the vulnerability of Palau to sea level rise.[9]
He was challenged in his bid for a fourth term in the November 2016 election by his brother-in-law, Senator Surangel Whipps, Jr.[10] He received 5109 votes compared to Whipps' 4854.[11]Jason Heyward and Freddie Freeman struck up a friendship on the high school showcase circuit in 2006 and cemented it after the Atlanta Braves chose them with the 14th and 78th picks in the 2007 draft. As minor league roommates, they shared visions of the long road ahead over box lunches on bus rides to the next town on the schedule. The African-American outfield prodigy from suburban Atlanta and the rangy white first baseman from California were so inseparable that teammates referred to them as "Salt and Pepper."
Over a span of nine months in 2014, Salt and Pepper received an education in how economics can trump sentiment in the big picture.
In February of that year, the Braves signed Freeman to an eight-year, $135 million contract that marked the biggest financial commitment in club history. The spending spree didn't quite extend to Heyward, who opted for a two-year deal before being traded to the St. Louis Cardinals in November.
Freeman has since dug his spikes deeper into the Georgia clay, while Heyward moved on to Chicago. Fresh off a sixth-place finish in the National League MVP voting, Freeman is trying to lead the Braves back to relevance in the National League East. Heyward, now in the second year of an eight-year, $184 million contract, delivered the inspirational rain-delay speech that helped spur the Cubs to victory in the Game 7 World Series clincher in November.
But they're forever bound by those formative years in Atlanta, before the dollar signs intervened and changed their perspectives on the game.
"Three years ago I finally got to see the business side of baseball," Freeman said. "It was tough. Probably the hardest day for me personally was seeing Jason get traded. Selfishly, me and him would always say we wanted to play our whole careers together. It was definitely weird seeing him leave."
Comb through the rosters for all 30 MLB teams, and you'll find a crossroads when management had to make a tough call on a franchise cornerstone. In 2011, the Cardinals held the line with Albert Pujols and watched him leave for Anaheim through free agency. On the South Side of Chicago, the White Sox signaled they were ready to take a longer-term view when they traded Chris Sale to Boston for four minor leaguers in December.
The Braves made their pivotal decision when they committed to Freeman over his best friend in the game. Looking back at the decision through the numbers, they made the right call.
Atlanta Braves first baseman Freddie Freeman, top, celebrates a walk-off hit with close friend and former teammate Jason Heyward during a game in Atlanta in 2013. Heyward parted with the Braves after the 2014 season. The departure was tough on Freeman. Pouya Dianat/Atlanta Braves/Getty Images
According to Baseball-Reference.com, Heyward has accumulated 15.1 wins above replacement to Freeman's 14.7 since the start of the 2014 season. But about half of Heyward's value is attributed to his defensive contributions in right field. Offensively, it's no contest.
Since the start of 2014, Freeman boasts a.911 OPS, seventh among big leaguers with 1,000 or more plate appearances. The six players ahead of him: Mike Trout, Joey Votto, Paul Goldschmidt, Bryce Harper, David Ortiz and Miguel Cabrera.
Over that same span, Heyward ranks 170th among MLB hitters with a.721 OPS. He's right behind Norichika Aoki and Kevin Kiermaier and tied with Gregory Polanco.
If the decision seems relatively simple now, it was a lot more complicated then.
In the winter of 2013-14, the Braves were busy locking up a budding nucleus of young players. They spent a total of $267 million on long-term extensions for Freeman, shortstop Andrelton Simmons, closer Craig Kimbrel and starter Julio Teheran. The team considered a longer commitment to pitcher Mike Minor but couldn't quite get it done.
"Probably the hardest day for me personally was seeing Jason [Heyward] get traded. Selfishly, me and him would always say we wanted to play our whole careers together." Freddie Freeman, Atlanta first baseman
Heyward and Freeman shared a prominent agent, Casey Close, but were at slightly different phases of their careers. Heyward was 24 years old with four years of service time (one more than Freeman), and the lure of a big free-agent deal was strong enough to dissuade him from a longer commitment. So general manager Frank Wren and Close settled on a more modest accommodation; the Braves bought out the final two years of Heyward's salary arbitration years at a cost of $13.3 million.
Internally, the Braves' deliberations reflected some wariness. They loved Heyward's defense, speed, maturity and team-oriented mindset. But his swing mechanics were complicated, and he was prone to lengthy slumps at the plate. Some evaluators in the Atlanta front office wondered if he would be able to replicate the success he showed in his rookie season in 2010, when he logged an.849 OPS and finished second to Buster Posey in NL Rookie of the Year balloting.
"The performance had been so inconsistent, we didn't feel like going long term was the right thing to do," said Wren, now senior vice president of baseball operations for the Red Sox. "We felt like over the course of their early careers in the major leagues, they had separated themselves. We felt like Freddie had become one of the best young hitters in the National League, and Jason was still trying to find himself."
Opposite Directions Freddie Freeman's and Jason Heyward's numbers since the start of the 2014 season show why the Atlanta Braves are pleased that they bet on the first baseman. Player Runs Hits Doubles HR RBI BB SO BA OBP SLG WAR Freddie Freeman 283 505 121 81 254 257 436.294.392.519 14.7 Jason Heyward 225 462 86 34 184 188 300.264.339.382 15.5 -- Source: Baseball-Reference.com
Heyward didn't even play out his two years in Atlanta. In November 2014, the Cardinals were desperate for outfield help after Oscar Taveras died in a car crash in the Dominican Republic, and they acquired Heyward from Atlanta for pitcher Shelby Miller in a four-player trade. Heyward thrived under Cardinals hitting coach John Mabry and used a productive 2015 season as a springboard to a monster contract with the Cubs. But his performance lagged in 2016, and he spent the offseason revamping his swing. Through 28 games this season, Heyward is hitting.253 with a.697 OPS. On Monday, the Cubs placed him on the 10-day disabled list with a sprained finger.
Freeman, meanwhile, has developed into a monster player in Atlanta. He has found his "man strength," as manager Brian Snitker refers to it, and set career highs with 34 homers and a.569 slugging percentage in 2016. This season, he's off to an even more impressive start at the plate.
"When you're committing the kind of dollars we committed to Freddie Freeman, the best predictor of the future was the past," Wren said. "In every park we played in, we saw Freddie take batting practice and hit balls as far as anyone. If you add power to what we had already seen, then you've got a star. That's what we're seeing today."
Atlanta Braves first baseman Freddie Freeman, left, celebrates with Chipper Jones following a game in 2012. Freeman's contract with the Braves extends through 2021, and the team sees him as the next iconic face of the franchise. AP Photo/David Goldman
After signing his club-record deal, Freeman attacked the 2014 season with every tool in his arsenal. He hit.320 with six home runs and a.570 slugging percentage in April and went on to appear in all 162 games. Instead of taking comfort in his financial windfall, if anything, he was driven by a constant fear of failure.
"There's a lot of pressure when you sign the biggest contract in Braves history," Freeman said. "There's a responsibility that comes with it on and off the field. The Braves are such a class organization; you don't want to do anything to tarnish that. I'm very hard on myself already. Add the contract, and you want to prove to everybody in baseball that you deserve it.
"I played all 162 games because I didn't want people to say, 'He's a bust,' or, 'He's stealing money.' It makes you want to go out there and play hard every day so people can't say that stuff about you. Believe me, I felt it. You try and put that away, but you're going to feel it. Everybody feels it."
When Freeman recounts his education in the business side of baseball, Heyward's departure was one of several life lessons along the way. The Braves fired Wren in September 2014 and hired John Hart as interim GM, and they proceeded to part ways with several players on multiyear deals. After sending Heyward to St. Louis, they traded Simmons to the Los Angeles Angels and dealt Kimbrel to the San Diego Padres.
"We felt like Freddie [Freeman] had become one of the best young hitters in the National League, and Jason [Heyward] was still trying to find himself." Former Braves GM Frank Wren
Amid the turnover, the Atlanta front office hung on to Freeman and Teheran as central figures in a rebuild. John Coppolella, who was named general manager in October 2015, made his feelings known when he said publicly that he would "give my right arm" before trading Freeman.
"We felt because of their contracts, their ages, their upside and most importantly, who they were as people, these were two individuals around whom we wanted to build," Coppolella said. "We had to at least listen, but there were never any intention on our part to trade either player."
Freeman, who projects a bit of a Clark Kent vibe with his glasses and serene off-field demeanor, has embraced a more prominent role at age 27. He has become the de facto leader in the clubhouse even though the Braves' roster includes the likes of Matt Kemp, Brandon Phillips and Nick Markakis -- established players on the other side of 30.
Freeman wears No. 5, and rookie shortstop Dansby Swanson wears No. 7, so their lockers are located side by side in a lot of parks. Each day, Freeman passes along collected bits of wisdom in the same way Chipper Jones, Dan Uggla and other veterans helped a young Freeman upon his arrival in Atlanta.
"I see him growing into being that leader -- a guy that people look up to and can talk to," Snitker said. "I think the world of him because
|
. In just two and a half years, the government has cut the rate of corporation tax three times – from 28% in 2010 to 21% next year. George Osborne, the chancellor, boasted last month that this "is the lowest rate of any major western economy": he is consciously setting up a destructive competition with other nations, creating new excuses further to reduce the British rate.
Labour's near-silence on this issue is easily explained. Under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, who were often as keen as the Conservatives to appease corporate power, the rate was reduced from 33% to 28%. Prefiguring Osborne's boast, in 1999 Brown bragged that the rate he had set was "the lowest rate of any major industrialised country anywhere, including Japan and the United States". What a legacy for a Labour government.
As for a Robin Hood tax on financial transactions, after an initial flutter of interest you are now more likely to hear the call of the jubjub bird in the House of Commons. According to the Institute for Public Policy Research, a tax rate of just 0.01% would raise £25bn a year, rendering void many of the chamber's earnest debates about the devastating cuts. Silence also surrounds the notion of a windfall tax on extreme wealth. And to say that Professor Greg Philo's arresting idea of transferring the national debt to those who possess assets worth £1m or more has failed to ignite the flame of passion in parliament would not overstate the case.
But the loudest silence surrounds the issue of property taxes. The most expensive flat in that favourite central London haunt of the international super-rich, One Hyde Park, cost £135m. The owner pays £1,369 in council tax, or 0.001% of its value. Last year the Independent revealed that the Sultan of Brunei pays only £32 a month more for his pleasure dome in Kensington Palace Gardens than some of the poorest people in the same London borough. A mansion tax – slapped down by David Cameron in October – is only the beginning of what the owners of such places should pay. For the simplest, fairest and least avoidable levy is one that the major parties simply will not contemplate. It's called land value tax.
The term is a misnomer. It's not really a tax. It's a return to the public of the benefits we have donated to the landlords. When land rises in value, the government and the people deliver a great unearned gift to those who happen to own it.
In 1909 a dangerous subversive explained the issue thus. "Roads are made, streets are made, services are improved, electric light turns night into day, water is brought from reservoirs a hundred miles off in the mountains – and all the while the landlord sits still. Every one of those improvements is effected by the labour and cost of other people and the taxpayers. To not one of those improvements does the land monopolist, as a land monopolist, contribute, and yet by every one of them the value of his land is enhanced. He renders no service to the community, he contributes nothing to the general welfare, he contributes nothing to the process from which his own enrichment is derived... the unearned increment on the land is reaped by the land monopolist in exact proportion, not to the service, but to the disservice done."
Who was this firebrand? Winston Churchill. As Churchill, Adam Smith and many others have pointed out, those who own the land skim wealth from everyone else, without exertion or enterprise. They "levy a toll upon all other forms of wealth and every form of industry". A land value tax would recoup this toll.
It would have a number of other benefits. It stops the speculative land hoarding that prevents homes from being built. It ensures that the most valuable real estate – in city centres – is developed first, discouraging urban sprawl. It prevents speculative property bubbles, of the kind that have recently trashed the economies of Ireland, Spain and other nations, and that make rents and first homes so hard to afford. Because it does not affect the supply of land (they stopped making it some time ago), it cannot cause the rents that people must pay to the landlords to be raised. It is easy to calculate and hard to avoid: you can't hide your land in London in a secret account in the Cayman Islands. And it could probably discharge the entire deficit.
It is altogether remarkable, in these straitened and inequitable times, that land value tax is not at the heart of the current political debate. Perhaps it is a sign of how powerful the rent-seeking class in Britain has become. While the silence surrounding this obvious solution exposes Labour's limitations, it also exposes the contradiction at the heart of the Conservative party. The Conservatives claim, in David Cameron's words, to be "the party of enterprise". But those who benefit most from its policies are those who are rich already. It is, in reality, the party of rent.
This is where the debate about workers and shirkers, strivers and skivers should have led. The skivers and shirkers sucking the money out of your pockets are not the recipients of social security demonised by the Daily Mail and the Conservative party, the overwhelming majority of whom are honest claimants. We are being parasitised from above, not below, and the tax system should reflect this.
Twitter: @georgemonbiot
A fully referenced version of this article can be found at Monbiot.comIn a detailed Facebook post, actress Kristina Cohen accused Ed Westwick, best known for playing Chuck Bass on Gossip Girl, of raping her three years ago. A man she was dating at the time allegedly brought her to Westwick’s house, where he allegedly raped her.
Cohen only refers to the man she was dating as “the producer.” According to her account, Westwick at one point suggested “we should all fuck.” Cohen wanted to leave, but the producer didn’t want to make Westwick uncomfortable and pressured her to stay at Westwick’s house. Westwick convinced Cohen to take a nap, but she woke up with “his fingers entering my body.” Her post reads:
So I went and laid down in the guest room where I eventually fell asleep, I was woken up abruptly by Ed on top of me, his fingers entering my body. I told him to stop, but he was strong. I fought him off as hard as I could but he grabbed my face in his hands, shaking me, telling me he wanted to fuck me. I was paralyzed, terrified. I couldn’t speak, I could no longer move. He held me down and raped me.
It was a nightmare, and the days following weren’t any better.
The producer put the blame on me, telling me I was an active participant. Telling me that I can’t say anything because Ed will have people come after me, destroy me, and that I could forget about an acting career. Saying there’s no way I can go around saying Ed “raped” me and that I don’t want to be “that girl.”
Update: Late Tuesday morning, Westwick published the following statement to Instagram, saying he does not know Cohen and has never committed rape:
A post shared by Ed Westwick (@edwestwick) on Nov 7, 2017 at 8:46am PST
Update — 6:41 pm EST: According to The Hollywood Reporter, Cohen has filed a report with the Los Angels Police Department’s Hollywood precinct and the LAPD is now investigating to determine if “suspect forced victim to have sexual intercourse inside his residence … three years ago.” A close friend of Cohen’s and her sister have both corroborated her account of the alleged assault, and say they were told about it three years ago after it supposedly took place.CLOSE Donald Trump lashed out at Hillary Clinton on two email controversies that have hindered her campaign, while also denying any financial ties to Russia following reports of possible Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential race. (July 27) AP
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump scans a crowd of supporters Wednesday in Scranton, Pa. (Photo11: John Moore, Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump's entreaty to Russian hackers to find rival Hillary Clinton's deleted e-mails has renewed the debate over a decades-long tradition of providing major presidential candidates with classified intelligence briefings.
Trump told Fox News Thursday that his comment — which drew a firestorm of protests from the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia — was simply a sarcastic reference to Clinton's e-mail scandal. But the mere suggestion that a foreign adversary be enlisted in espionage against a political rival led Democrats in Congress to call on President Obama to cancel the briefings.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid even suggested that intelligence officials give Trump a fake briefing. "I would suggest to the intelligence agencies, if you’re forced to brief this guy, don’t tell him anything. Just fake it, because this man is dangerous,” Reid said in an interview with the Huffington Post. “Fake it. Pretend you’re doing a briefing, but you can’t give the guy any information."
Those briefings are expected to start soon. Under a tradition started by President Harry Truman in 1952, the nominees of both major political parties receive classified briefings to prepare them for the presidency.
Trump accepted the Republican nomination a week ago, but has not yet been given a briefing, said an intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the briefings. In order to be even-handed and non-partisan, the process doesn't begin until both major parties have concluded their nominating conventions. Even then it may take days or weeks to schedule and arrange them.
Questions, too, have been raised about Clinton's capacity to receive classified information, given an FBI investigation that found she mishandled classified e-mails that she sent to and from a home-based e-mail server off the State Department network. That investigation absolved her of criminal activity, but the State Department is conducting a review of whether she should maintain the security clearance that most former officials of her stature keep after leaving office.
But revocation of her security clearance would have no impact on her intelligence briefings, because they're provided to her as a candidate at Obama's direction.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Thursday that the briefings are an important part of the presidential transition process, which is a top priority for Obama.
"The administration is confident that they can both provide relevant and sufficient briefings to the two major party presidential candidates while still protecting sensitive national security information," he said. He underscored that the same information will be provided to both candidates.
That evenhandedness could mean that both candidates get only a basic briefing.
“You can’t brief just one candidate," Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told Politico Thursday. "They will give largely the same briefing to both. They will not be disclosing to Donald Trump, I am confident, anything revealing sources and methods. I think he will get a very, very top-line brief. And what’s more, that’s probably the only digestible form for him anyway."
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2aeiPd1(Photo: Shutterstock)
A weekend celebrating America turned tragic for one family when a father shot his son at the High Noon Gun Range in Sarasota, Florida.
William Brumby was using the last shooting lane with a solid wall on his right-hand side when a spent shell ricocheted off of the wall and bounced into the back of his shirt. According to a WFLA report, that was when the man used his right hand, which was holding his loaded weapon, to remove the shell. He recklessly pointed his firearm behind him and it accidently fired.
The shot hit his 14-year-old-son, Stephen. He was rushed to Sarasota Memorial Hospital but died as a result of the injury.
There are no charges pending for Brumby but an investigation is ongoing.
The High Noon Gun Range has been described as one of the safest indoor shooting ranges ever designed, according to The Herald-Tribune.So here we are, sitting in the hotel lobby and having our last late-night-hack-fest (unfortunately without any beer as the hotel does not have a licence allowing you to drink a beer, whatever that means). It was pretty amazing time here in Cambridge, full of fruitful discussions, code, sword fighting and fun. Oh and code. Lot's of code was produced. Currently we have 22 cool features planned for the 0.2 release of KDE Telepathy, some of them are already in their place, some of them half-way through and some of them are just bugzilla entries. We're having a soft freeze on Monday, then hard freeze sometime around first week of October and a release is aimed at the end of October.
I was working on various stuff around contact list and our new blimey kded daemon which will bring to your KDE awesomeness like a possibility to become automatically marked as away after a timeout (and extended away after another timeout) or the long awaited "Now listening to.." plugin with MPRIS interface support. Oh and we have a working drag&drop between your groups (though a bit flaky) and from your contact list directly to your desktop, where it turns itself into Contact plasmoid done by Francesco during his GSoC. We also managed to rewrite part of our call routines and we were able to successfully place a talk from KDE Telepathy straight to GTalk's web interface. Contact list was gifted with possibility to set global presence (well kind of) as opposed to setting your accounts individually (but it will be possible to switch to indiv. setting like now), then is pretty close to have a way to share your desktop through Krfb and the internals were greatly refactored. David has done some awesome work with Daniele on file transfers and sending files between XMPP-based accounts now works pretty reliably.
I also got into a discussion with George G. about the Nepomuk interface (won't ship in 0.2 unfortunately) for PIMO:Persons. We've come up with pretty nifty solution for unifying our efforts on handling PIMO:Persons. I'm pretty excited about it actually and we should have it by 0.3 (released around March perhaps (no plans yet)).
England itself is pretty nice (although driving on the left side is driving me nuts..and almost got me killed. Twice.), food is great and people are really _really_ nice. It kinda grown on me. Too bad our time here was so short. Or at least it felt that short. Well..time to move on. And by that I mean to bed. Possibly more blogging will happen later...stay tuned. And follow #KDETpSprint on social sites (and also #Woshibon, our new trademarked sprint name/keyword/curseword/whateveryouwanttouseitfor).RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia needs to enact a penal code to prevent abuse in its justice system, U.S.-based Human Rights Watch said in a report issued on Tuesday.
Saudi officials say a written penal code is being prepared as part of an overhaul of the judicial system ordered by King Abdullah last year, including expanding the number of courts and judges.
But the legal system, which mainly applies Islamic sharia law, does not recognize precedent.
“Saudi Arabia should urgently enact a penal code to protect all criminal suspects against arbitrary arrest,” the New York-based group said in a statement announcing the publication of two reports based on a year of research and field trips.
“Criminal defendants, especially children, need greater protection against gross abuses during interrogation and unfair trials.”
The reports say defendants often face prolonged solitary confinement, ill-treatment, forced confessions, and are denied a lawyer at crucial stages of interrogation and trial.
Judges often use evidence of reaching puberty as a standard for dealing with teenagers, and in 2007 Saudi Arabia executed three juvenile offenders, including a 15-year-old boy who was only 13 at the time of the crime.
A spokesman for the government-run Human Rights Commission was not available for comment.
Saudi Arabia regularly executes murderers, rapists and drug traffickers, usually by public beheading but judges sometimes given the death sentence to armed robbers and people accused of vague crimes such as “sorcery”.
HRW, which has been given exclusive access to Saudi Arabia over the past year, said the authorities should outlaw the death penalty and all forms of corporal punishment against persons under 18 at the time of the offence.The book received acclaim from critics at the time. Accumulation of her reportage and the release of her content brought her fame and led to a grand jury investigation and financial increase in the Department of Public Charities and Corrections.
The book was based on articles written while Bly was on an undercover assignment for the New York World, feigning insanity at a women's boarding house, so as to be involuntarily committed to an insane asylum. She then investigated the reports of brutality and neglect at the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island. [2]
Ten Days in a Mad-House is a book by American journalist Nellie Bly. It was initially published as a series of articles for the New York World ; Bly later compiled the articles into a book, being published by Ian L. Munro in New York City in 1887. [1] [2]
Bly left the Pittsburgh Dispatch in 1887 for New York City. Penniless after four months, she talked her way into the offices of Joseph Pulitzer's newspaper the New York World, and took an undercover assignment for which she agreed to feign insanity to investigate reports of brutality and neglect at the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island.[3]
After a night spent practicing expressions in front of a mirror, she checked into a boardinghouse. She refused to go to bed, telling the boarders that she was afraid of them and that they looked "crazy." They soon decided that she was "crazy," and the next morning summoned the police. Taken to a courtroom, she claimed to have amnesia. The judge concluded she had been drugged.
Several doctors then examined her; all declared her insane. "Positively demented," said one, "I consider it a hopeless case. She needs to be put where someone will take care of her."[4] The head of the insane pavilion at Bellevue Hospital pronounced her "undoubtedly insane". The case of the "pretty crazy girl" attracted media attention: "Who Is This Insane Girl?" asked the New York Sun. The New York Times wrote of the "mysterious waif" with the "wild, haunted look in her eyes" and her desperate cry: "I can't remember I can't remember."[5][6][7]
Committed to the asylum, Bly experienced the deplorable conditions firsthand. The food consisted of gruel broth, spoiled beef, bread that was little more than dried dough, and dirty undrinkable water. The dangerous patients were tied together with ropes. The patients were made to sit for much of each day on hard benches with scant protection from the cold. Waste was all around the eating places. Rats crawled all around the hospital. The bathwater was frigid and buckets of it were poured over their heads. The nurses behaved obnoxiously and abusively, telling the patients to shut up, and beating them if they did not. Speaking with her fellow patients, Bly was convinced that some were as "sane" as she was. On the effect of her experiences, she wrote:
What, excepting torture, would produce insanity quicker than this treatment? Here is a class of women sent to be cured. I would like the expert physicians who are condemning me for my action, which has proven their ability, to take a perfectly sane and healthy woman, shut her up and make her sit from 6 a.m. until 8 p.m. on straight-back benches, do not allow her to talk or move during these hours, give her no reading and let her know nothing of the world or its doings, give her bad food and harsh treatment, and see how long it will take to make her insane. Two months would make her a mental and physical wreck.[4]
A particularly memorable experience for Nellie were the baths that the patients received. The patients were washed and roughly scrubbed with the same bath water as many of the other women. The bath water was rarely changed, and even when it was filthy and eventually changed, the asylum staff did not scrub or clean out the bath. The water was merely replaced and the next patient thrown in. The patients also shared bath towels, some healthy patients even drying off with a towel just used by another patient with a skin inflammation or boils and cuts.[8] Nellie recalled the bathing ritual with trepidation, stating:
"My teeth chattered and my limbs were goose-fleshed and blue with cold. Suddenly I got, one after the other, three buckets of water over my head—ice-cold water, too—into my eyes, my ears, my nose and my mouth."
After ten days, the asylum released Bly at The World's behest. Her report, published in The World and later released as a book, caused a sensation and brought her lasting fame.Panel 1
Text: OCD Isn’t Cute – Christine Deneweth
Panel 2
Genna talking and smiling. She has one side of her head shaved, the other side is long hair.
Genna: Hi my name is Genna. I have OCD, and believe me, it isn’t cute.
Panel 3
Genna talking and smiling.
Genna: This story is about a hard conversation I had with a friend after she jokingly referred to her food preferences as OCD.
Panel 4
Genna sitting with her friend Marina. Marina is in a tank top with long curls over her shoulder.
Text: I had already told her about how hard it is to have OCD at times, so it really set me off when she used the term so carelessly.
Panel 5
Waitress appears with food.
Waitress: Here we are ladies! Enjoy!
Panel 6
Close up of steak and mashed potatoes.
Panel 7
Marina looking at her food.
Marina: Oh man, my food is touching. I’m really OCD about my food touching.
Panel 8
Genna looking up angrily.
Genna:!
Panel 9
Marina looking at Genna.
Marina: What?
Panel 10
Genna looking out at the audience and pointing at Marina.
Text: You heard that, right? You heard her use a serious mental disorder to describe how she prefers her food.
Panel 11
Genna talking with her eyes narrowed.
Genna: I’m so tired of people not being intentional about the language they use and misappropriating other folks’ lived experiences as mere adjectives. It just ends up hurting people like me. My disorder isn’t a fad or an enhanced sentence. It’s something I’ve truly suffered from.
Panel 12
Genna talking.
Genna: Let’s break things down. I want you to understand why her comment hurt me, and what OCD is and isn’t.
Panel 13
Text First of all, what is OCD?
Text: OCD: Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Text Having unreasonable thoughts and fears (obsessions) that lead to repetitive behaviors (compulsions).
Panel 14
Man washing his hands.
Text: So does it show up?
Text: We all know the hand washing stereotype. And even though it can be a form of OCD, it isn’t as common. And it is harmful if this is the only example of OCD that is known.
Panel 15
Women looking into a kitchen at knife.
Text: A common fear is the fear of harming yourself or harming others. The compulsions for this fear can manifest in a variety of ways.
Panel 16
Woman thinking about knife.
Text: For example, someone could have the fear that they are going to accidentally harm themselves.
Panel 17
Woman opening drawer.
Text: To get relief from the thoughts, the person might need to check every drawer in the kitchen a few times to be sure of where the dangerous things are.
Panel 18
Woman thinking about knife and checking drawer
Text: And the cycle continues.
Panel 19
Genna thinking about a knife.
Text: I, personally, have the fear of harming others.
Panel 20
Genna as a doctor with a patient.
Text: I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up. But my OCD started to take over when I was ten, and it took that dream away.
Panel 21
Young Genna holding a book. She has short hair that curves up at the ends.
Text: In middle school, I was too scared to make friends. I thought I was bad for having these bad thoughts and that I didn’t deserve friends.
Panel 22
Young Genna crying at her computer.
Text: I would compulsively look up injuries and cry because I would feel like I caused them.
Panel 23
Young Genna crying and looking down.
Text: The worst part was I knew that these thoughts were irrational, but I couldn’t stop.
Panel 24
Young Genna talking to a therapist.
Text: But then I started going to therapy. I also joined an online support group, and I always look up new ways to manage my symptoms.
Panel 25
Text: So now that we know that OCD is, here’s what it isn’t:
Text: I’m so OCD! I’m OCD about that! That non-symmetry is freaking out my OCD!
Panel 26
Girl with a book.
Text: OCD is not an adjective! It is thrown around to describe someone that is tidy and organized.
Girl: I’m so OCD about how I organize my books.
Panel 27
Woman with knife thoughts and Man with hand washing OCD frowning.
Text: This trivializes and undermines people that have the disorder. It makes something that people are truly suffering from a fad or an enhanced sentence.
Panel 28
The words “So OCD” breaking a road in half
Text: When OCD is just used as a fun adjective, it makes it hard for people to take it seriously and even harder for people who have it to navigate through ableist society.
Panel 29
Girl with long black hair scared of computer.
Text: An example of this is a friend of mine. She was so scared of finding child pornography on the Internet that she barely used her computer. She almost lost her job!
Panel 30
Girl with long black hair crying.
Text: No one knew that her OCD was to blame. No one could step in and understand that it was her disorder preventing her from working. This shows that society is not accessible to everyone. And using OCD as an adjective will make it less recognizable as a serious disorder.
Panel 31
Marina looking at her food.
Text: Which reminds me…
Marina: Oh man, my food is touching. I’m really OCD about my food touching.
Panel 32
Genna talking.
Genna: I should talk to her. It’s not like she’ll know she did something wrong without me saying something.
Panel 33
Genna talking to Marina.
Genna: Hey, Marina?
Marina: What?
Panel 34
Genna talking.
Genna: Don’t say you’re OCD about something. It’s serious mental disorder that I have. When you say you’re OCD about something, that minimizes all the pain and everything I’ve triumphed over to an adjective. I’ve worked hard to be where I am.
Panel 35
Marina talking.
Marina: I didn’t mean to offend you. I’ve watched you struggle and grow as a person living with OCD. I’m proud of you, and I promise I’ll watch my language.
Panel 36
Genna talking and stuffing her face with a sandwich.The 2012 unveiling of Cal Anderson’s portrait A rendering of the future development set to border Cal Anderson surrounding the future Capitol Hill Station plaza Capitol Hill Station awaits development
The Capitol Hill Station plaza is set to be a new center of activity on the north end of Cal Anderson Park. Its center will include a memorial to those lost to the AIDS crisis — including park namesake Cal Anderson, Washington’s first openly gay legislator who died of “acquired immune deficiency syndrome” in 1995 at the age of 47.
The Seattle AIDS Legacy Memorial group is working to fund and create the monument.
“We’re thrilled to be able to connect the history of the neighborhood to be centrally located where all Seattleites tend to come,” said Paul Feldman of SALM. “We’re hopeful, through careful planning and careful engagement, that we’ll hear stories we’ve never heard before and we’ll make clear to visitors that there’s still much work to do.”
Most of the details will be decided in the months ahead as the plaza and the surrounding developments move forward toward a possible late 2019 opening, but the SALM group will call for artists in the coming months. Finalists will be asked to offer specific design proposals fitting the following requirements: create a place of reflection and remembrance, provide a call to action, tell the history of King County’s AIDS crisis in the 1980s and 90s, the lessons that came with it, and the diverse community responses.
Artists must also make the installation prominent, visible to passersby, mostly outside, accessible to convenient public transportation, easily maintained, accessible to the disabled, wifi-abled and powered. One important consideration when choosing the artist is that, although the plan spans three spots joining the plaza, the Nagle and Denny festival streets and the northern edge of Cal Anderson, it’s clearly one project. During the design review process, some community members suggested plaques honoring those who died including Anderson.
While Cal Anderson Park honors the late politician by name, there is no permanent marker in the area acknowledging his history. In 2012, a temporary portrait of Anderson was unveiled on the giant wall that surrounded the Capitol Hill Station construction site.
The plaza — by necessity due to legal requirements and the physics of construction over an underground light rail facility — is somewhat of a blank slate planned for community activity. The four buildings that make up the surrounding developments will create more than 400 affordable and market-rate apartment units and 59,000 square feet of commercial and community space, and more than 200 new parking spaces below ground for residents and shoppers.
The plaza design — including the giant, permanent vent for the underground station that cries out for decoration — creates “a more distinct central gathering space and provides a more direct relationship to Cal Anderson Park,” architects from the project write of their design. “The variety of spatial experiences has been maintained in the various overlooks and seating opportunities that surround the central area.” Here is how the architects on the project describe some of the plaza’s planned features:
Plaza edge seating has been increased and an accessible ramp has been incorporated into the plaza edge shape allowing additional space for bicycle cage parking (which is to be provided by Sound Transit between Site A and the existing transit vent shaft). Vehicular access to the plaza has been constricted on the north by the addition of trees and moving the eastern seat wall further east toward Site B South.
Additional trees and lighting elements have been added to the east edge of the public plaza.
Plaza edge seating has been increased and an accessible ramp has been incorporated into the plaza edge shape allowing additional space for bicycle cage parking (which is to be provided by Sound Transit between Site A and the existing transit vent shaft). Additional seating opportunities have also been added amongst the trees on the northeast edge of the plaza.
Additional, pedestrian scaled lighting elements have been added to the plaza, which includes fixtures that are integrated with plaza elements and the surrounding architecture.
Schemata Workshop is the architect for the two buildings on 10th while Hewitt is designing the two buildings on Broadway. Berger Partnership is landscape architect for the entire site and part of the design super team working on the Capitol Hill Station development project.
Surrounded by new housing and new street-level retail, the plaza will also likely become the permanent weekly — or more — home for the Broadway Farmers Market. In 2010, Sound Transit issued a letter of intent recognizing the nonprofit’s desire to move its market into the plaza once construction is completed. Inclusion of the farmers market in the space has been a long-held community goal for the project. The market has also been considering increasing its presence on the Hill with possible night markets.
A community advisory group will meet monthly as the project is implemented into the design with city representatives and Gerding Edlen, the lead firm on the transit oriented development set to rise around the station. SALM received $75,000 from the city to begin the process.
Feldman said that while the “battle days” of the 90s, up until 1996, are over, discrimination and stigma continues. Feldman lives with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). HIV disproportionately impacts people of color (despite multiple studies showing they tend to have safer sex than Caucasians) and the LGBTQIA+ community.
36.7 million people around the world live with HIV or AIDS. The number is so large, in part, because medical treatment has greatly improved since the epidemic so people who have HIV are able to live longer and comparatively healthier lives. Testing has also expanded.
UPDATE: Our original post contained errors about transmission. Brian Minalga, project Manager of The Legacy Project in the Office of HIV/AIDS Network Coordination at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, has provided CHS with an update to include here. Thanks to him and to the Seattle AIDS Legacy Memorial group for helping us get the story right:
Capitol Hill-based organizations like Gay City Health Project and Lifelong provide rapid HIV testing services with results in just 20 minutes. HIV is contained in blood, semen, pre-semen, rectal fluids, vaginal fluids, and breast milk. The virus is mainly transmitted through sex, needles and syringes, breastfeeding, and perinatally (during pregnancy). Advancements in HIV prevention, however, have vastly changed the HIV landscape. We now know that people living with HIV cannot pass HIV onto their sex partners under conditions of viral suppression, known as being “HIV undetectable,” or when their medications are working to reduce the amount of HIV in the body. Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis, or PrEP, is an option for HIV-negative people to take a pill once daily to reduce their likelihood of contracting HIV by over 90%; Gay City has a PrEP Clinic for those interested in the pill (find more clinics here). Needle exchange programs are working wonders to reduce HIV transmission among people who inject drugs. And when people actually use them, male and female condoms still provide excellent protection against HIV and other STIs. While the science of HIV pathology is now well documented, stigma and misinformation persist. HIV is not transmitted by saliva, sweat, tears, hugging, kissing, sharing utensils, or sharing toilets. Humans cannot contract HIV from the air, water, or insects like mosquitoes.
Of every 100,000 people in Washington, seven have HIV. 6,968 people in King County live with HIV.[UPDATED 2016-10-08 @ 1430 UTC] Amateur Radio Emergency Service (ARES) volunteers in Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas continue to support communication during the response to Hurricane Matthew, which has been downgraded to a Category 1 storm. Governors have declared states of emergency for some or all counties, and multiple shelters have opened in all four states. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) reports that as of mid-morning on Saturday, October 8, strong winds and dangerous storm surge were affecting the coast of South Carolina, with heavy rains and gusty winds spreading inland. A hurricane warning extends from north of Altamaha Sound in Georgia to Surf City, North Carolina.
Some 1.2 million residents of Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina were reported to be without power, and thousands have evacuated to shelters, where ham radio volunteers have been supporting communication.
As of 1200 UTC on October 8, Hurricane Matthew about 20 miles south-southeast of Charleston, South Carolina. Maximum sustained winds were 85 MPH, and the storm was moving northeast at 12 MPH. Hurricane Matthew has yet to make landfall.
The storm’s current projected path shows it looping around toward the east, opening up the possibility of a second strike on the Bahamas and Florida sometime next week, likely in a much-weakened state.
For more information on hurricane preparedness, visit the Ready.gov website or read the American Red Cross “Hurricane Safety Checklist.”
Hurricane Matthew had a devastating impact on Haiti earlier this week, with hundreds of fatalities reported so far. Many villages and towns were seriously damaged or destroyed. Four storm-related deaths have been reported in the US.
The Hurricane Watch Net (HWN) on 14.325 MHz and 7.268 MHz has been active continuously for the past 6 days gathering real-time ground-truth weather data and passing it along to the National Hurricane Center via the Center’s WX4NHC.
The first major hurricane of the 2016 Atlantic hurricane season, Matthew at one point was a Category 5 storm, with maximum sustained winds of 160 MPH, the first Category 5 Hurricane to form in the Atlantic Basin since Felix in 2007.
HWN Manager Bobby Graves, KB5HAV, reported on Friday that net members have relayed many real-time, ground-truth observations from Haiti, Jamaica, Cuba, the Bahamas, and the US. He said the HWN handled many post-storm reports from Haiti and continues to do so.
All radio amateurs are asked to avoid transmitting on or near any emergency net frequencies. In addition, stations should not check into any emergency or weather information net unless they have something to contribute.
The Salvation Army Team Emergency Network (SATERN) remains active at a DELTA II (extended monitoring) status, which will include continuous monitoring of the net frequency of 14.265 MHz while propagation lasts. The SATERN Net is looking for any emergency, priority, or health-and-welfare traffic from hurricane-affected areas. SATERN is only handling outbound messages from the affected area. It will not accept inbound traffic.
The VoIP Hurricane Net is supporting the NHC on the WX-Talk Conference, Node #7203 on EchoLink and IRLP Reflector 9219. IRLP Reflector 9553 is the backup. (Due to the limited number of routes to the Echolink node for mobile devices, monitor WX-Talk on a desktop computer if possible.)
The Voice over Internet Protocol Weather Net had a peak number of check-ins on October 7, with 82 stations connected to the Weather Talk Server onEchoLink and IRLP systems. Rob Macedo, KD1CY, reported that the net recorded between 50 and 100 reports ranging from flooding from heavy rainfall, storm surge, wind damage, wind speed, and rainfall amounts.
“This is one way the American Radio Relay League encouraged hams to serve during National Preparedness Month,” said Lloyd Colston, KC5FM, Public Affairs Officer for the VoIPWx Net.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has announced it may use several 60 meter frequencies for interoperability with other authorized stations, federal government stations, and Amateur Radio stations during the Hurricane Matthew response. It
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for others.”
That may have to do with genetics or other factors that doctors aren’t yet able to test for before they prescribe vitamin D, Heaney added.
But because vitamin D may have other small health benefits - and virtually no side effects at these doses - he said it’s still worth a try for people with osteoarthritis.
McAlindon disagreed, however.
“It doesn’t look like knee osteoarthritis is in itself an indication to take vitamin D,” he told Reuters Health.
Vitamin D can be bought over-the-counter for $25 to $50 for a year’s supply.
The researchers said it’s possible that higher doses of vitamin D supplements, leading to higher levels in the blood, would have a beneficial effect on knee pain - but so far the results don’t support that idea.
“Vitamin D broadly is the vitamin of the moment,” McAlindon said. “There are hopes that it will have wide health benefits.”
But, he added, this study shows that each of those claims needs to be checked out carefully - and they may always not hold up with rigorous trials.
SOURCE: bit.ly/JjFzqx Journal of the American Medical Association, online January 8, 2013.Import your Waves Lite wallet into the new Wagerr wallet. Internal testnet in active development.
Try out the new Wagerr wallet for Wagerr-over-Waves tokens. Wagerr is the featured token, making it easy to track your balance and transactions from the front page. Trading Wagerr on the decentralized exchange is also featured. When you import your Waves Lite wallet, your balances and complete transaction history carry over automatically since it's the same blockchain.
Due to changes in Google’s policy, we are unable to publish new web apps in the same manner as the Waves Lite App. Please follow these steps to add the Wagerr Lite Wallet to Google Chrome:
Download WagerrLiteWallet5.1.zip from the Wagerr Github releases page. Unpack the contents into a familiar location (Note: Remember file location for future updates if you want to keep your account registered with the app). Open a new Chrome tab and enter the extension page by browsing to chrome://extensions/ Locate the extracted folder. Click and drag the folder into the Chrome extensions page. (If you hover, you’ll see the text, “Drop to install.”) The following should appear : Click on Details and then Create Shortcuts as needed Launch
When updates are launched in future you will need to extract the new files in the same location as the previous files as mentioned in Step 2. Then click the “Reload” button in the extensions page. By doing this you will retain all your login information.
Once you install the extension, import your Waves Lite wallet seed. You will be prompted to supply a new wallet name and password. Be sure to record your credentials securely because anyone who has your credentials can own your wallet.
If you haven’t withdrawn your Wagerr tokens from wagerr.com yet, please follow the instructions posted in the Waves Guide. The process to withdraw using the Wagerr branded wallet is the same!
Note: Transaction and trade fees must still be paid in Waves denominations. Paying transaction fees in Wagerr is not yet available, because the Waves network intermittently rejects transactions with any token denominated fees other than Waves. In the meantime, you can obtain Waves dust for free from wavesplatformfaucet.com and wavesdrop.com.
Source code for the Wagerr Lite wallet will be published on github for transparency, security, and to contribute to the open source community.
Internal testnet: active development
The internal testnet is under active development. The Wagerr QA testing team surfaced a security vulnerability in the code for how betting transactions are processed. Due to this threat the team is hiring additional blockchain specialists to re-engineer the attack vector before we open the testnet to the public.
Eliminating this vulnerability will allow the team to build on top of a secure system so all future betting types will be possible. Starting with a solid foundation is crucial to support all projected developments.
We have hired a new developmental project manager to oversee all new hires and coordinate efforts across our entire dev team.
We will be releasing an updated timeline for our first open testnet that will be using centralized oracles at the end of this month.
Upcoming: Betting events
Wagerr will be announcing a series of high profile betting opportunities for a variety of sports betting markets. While the blockchain tech is still in development, the team intends to make betting with Wagerr fun for the community. At the same time, these promotional events reach new users and expand the user base. Wagerr is also negotiating sponsorships that will give Wagerr greater visibility. Stay tuned for more chances to win.President Trump's social media director violated federal law restricting government officials' political activity when he called for the defeat of a GOP congressman in a tweet, the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) has concluded.
White House Director of Social Media Dan Scavino, Jr., "violated the Hatch Act" when he called for Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) to be defeated in a primary in an April 1 tweet, OSC said in a June 5 letter to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). The nonprofit organization had asked OSC -- an independent investigative and prosecutorial government office -- to look into whether Scavino's tweet constituted a violation of the Hatch Act.
"OSC has concluded that this activity violated the Hatch Act," OSC's Ana Galindo-Marrone, chief of the office's Hatch Act Unit, said in the letter to CREW's chief counsel, Adam Rappaport. "Accordingly, we issued Mr. Scavino a warning letter. In addition, we note that Mr. Scavino was recently counseled about the Hatch Act by the Office of the White House Counsel. A review of Mr. Scavino's personal Twitter account since that time did not reveal any new violations."
The letter also said OSC advised Scavino further punishment could be headed his way, "if in the future he engages in prohibited political activity while employed in a position covered by the Hatch Act."
Scavino lashed out against Amash after the outspoken founding member of the House Freedom Caucus criticized Mr. Trump's foundering health care plan. The vote for the administration's initial health care plan was canceled after it failed to receive enough GOP support.
.@realDonaldTrump is bringing auto plants & jobs back to Michigan. @justinamash is a big liability.#TrumpTrain, defeat him in primary. — Dan Scavino Jr. (@DanScavino) April 1, 2017
Mr. Trump also lashed out against the House Freedom Caucus in general after his initial health care defeat, saying, "we must fight" them in the 2018 midterms.
The Freedom Caucus will hurt the entire Republican agenda if they don't get on the team, & fast. We must fight them, & Dems, in 2018! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 30, 2017
The Hatch Act prohibits most government employees from engaging in some forms of political activity, like promoting specific candidates or campaigning against them. Obama-era officials also violated the Hatch Act, according to OSC. One such example was former HUD Secretary Julian Castro, who promoted former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in an April 4, 2016, interview with Yahoo News. OSC also found him responsible for violating the Hatch Act.
There is a range of penalties for those who violate the Hatch Act, according to the Office of Government Ethics, which says that an employee in violation of the Act "shall be subject to removal, reduction in grade, debarment from Federal employment for a period not to exceed 5 years, suspension, reprimand, or an assessment of a civil penalty not to exceed $1,000."UFC bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey joined SI Now on Thursday to discuss the prospects of a fight with Cristiane 'Cyborg' Justino and criticized Justino's steroid use.
Asked where the status of the heavily anticipated fight between herself and Justino lies, Rousey said:
"Well, I’m the champ, and she was with the UFC, but 24 hours after they announced out-of-competition drug testing, she asked to be released. And I can’t really do anything about that. There’s only one division that we have, it’s 135 [pounds], and you know she’s been popped for steroids before and the only reason that you do steroids is because you lack belief and you seek advantages that you don’t deserve. And because she wouldn’t be able to have that kind of advantage with me, now the advantage she is seeking is the weight advantage. I’m not going to make exceptions for anyone, especially a fraud and a cheater."
Following a December 2011 Strikeforce fight, Justino tested positive for stanozolol, an anabolic steroid. Justino also fights at 145 pounds, and as Rousey said, an MMA fight would have to be at 135 pounds.Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
December 1, 2010
In response to the national outcry surrounding invasive pat down measures, the TSA has been forced to refine its airport security procedures, but has simultaneously entrenched its policy that requires government permission for all Americans who wish to fly, creating what critics have labeled a Communist-style system of internal checkpoints.
After a public revolt against naked body scanners and TSA groping that was primarily spearheaded by the Drudge Report website, TSA chief John Pistole announced yesterday was looking at refining pat down procedures to make them “less intrusive.”
“Pistole said that the TSA will work “quickly” to determine whether there is a viable alternative but that he has no timetable,” reports the Washington Post today.
However, until such a time that the policy is changed, cases of rampant TSA abuse continue to occur, including a recent example where a young mother who was subjected to enhanced groping was subsequently locked inside a screening box for almost an hour by agents after she refused to allow them to put her breast milk through an x-ray device, a legitimate request that is even written into the TSA’s own guidelines.
Despite appearing to back down on hugely unpopular pat down measures, Pistole confirmed that every single passenger who flies in American skies is now checked against a government watch list before they are allowed to board a plane, meaning that every US citizen now requires de facto government permission to travel.
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
{openx:49}
“The TSA began matching passengers against a watch list maintained by the FBI last year. By June, all passengers on domestic flights were being prescreened, and with Tuesday’s announcement, all international passengers headed to or from the United States are as well,” reports the Post.
Under the Secure Flight program, the TSA demands that passengers submit personal information 72 hours before being cleared to fly. While on the surface, this is justified by invoking the threat of terror, as we have seen from the MIAC report and others, the federal government now considers politically active Americans as potential terrorists, meaning that innocent travelers could find themselves on a watch list and barred from flying.
“By combining the requirement for government photo IDs in order to fly with checking government watchlists including potentially every passenger, “Secure Flight” puts the federal government into the business of licensing travel,” warns Michael Ostrolenk. “What the government can allow one day, it can forbid the next. All things considered, isn’t this a higher-tech and later-day version of South African domestic passports or eastern European checkpoints? In fact, because of the high technological capacity of the U.S. version, aren’t its implications for travel control of plane, train, bus and subway travel much more far reaching? It’s incredible that something like this is happening relatively unrecognized in America.”
Indeed, the 9/11 Commission demanded that the dubious “no fly list” be extended to trains, boats and basically every form of travel, handing the feds the power to control the mobility of millions of Americans. Rahm Emanuel and Mayor Michael Bloomberg have also demanded that people on the no fly list be prevented from purchasing firearms.
The no fly list is merely one component of a 500,000-750,000 strong government “watch list” that has ensnared people like the late former Senator Ted Kennedy, former presidential candidate John Anderson, and many others including a Vermont college student, a retired Presbyterian minister and an ACLU employee. People with similar names to aliases used by alleged terrorists are automatically put on no fly lists and federal watch lists.
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Unfortunately, government watchlists seem to have been more successful at causing problems for innocent people than they are at catching terrorists. Despite the fact that underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was on a watch list, the US State Department refused to revoke his visa and allowed him to board Delta Flight 253, with the aid of a well-dressed Indian man who convinced airline officials to let Abdulmutallab on the Christmas Day flight.
—
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. Watson has been interviewed by many publications and radio shows, including Vanity Fair and Coast to Coast AM, America’s most listened to late night talk show.A boy and his frog
Blaster Master is one of my favorite games to watch during AGDQ's speedrunning festivities.
I love the Metroid feel of it, and seeing some of the near-misses and pixel-perfect jumps make for exciting runs -- they always make me want to go back and play the original all over again, which stumped me time and time again as a kid. But that's just it -- I had to play the original, as the Wii's Blaster Master: Overdrive didn't hit the same notes, despite having the same producer. The world has also long forgotten Blasting Again and Blaster Master 2, which wasn't released outside of North America.
After all these years of uncertainty, I'm glad Inti Creates was the team that got their hands on the series, as Blaster Master Zero will hold up much better as a pseudo-sequel that mirrors the original's visual style.
Blaster Master Zero (3DS, Nintendo Switch [reviewed])
Developer: Inti Creates
Publisher: Inti Creates
Released: March 3, 2017 (Japan) / March 9, 2017 (US, EU)
MSRP: $9.99
In this iteration, a young man (he's shonen now) named Jason finds a frog named Fred, and chases it into a world full of evil beings. It's a hodgepodge of both the western release that came to be known as Blaster Master and the more serious Chou-Wakusei Senki Metafight from Japan. The protagonist is older and more experienced as a genius in his field (which makes it a little more generic, but less '80s than having a child save the galaxy), but the silly frog subplot still exists. It's a good compromise as people have been debating the absurdity of this setup for years.
But this is Inti Creates here, and you can you can really see the Azure Striker Gunvolt influence with all of the neon and high-tech gear -- in a good way! I like that Zero has embraced its eastern roots, at least from the perspective of the artwork and the cutscenes. Because it is a give and take of both new and old sensibilities. Zero's soundtrack reminds me of the glory days of Sunsoft, and not just Blaster Master, but classics like Batman: The Video Game.
Once again you'll be getting in and out of a tank with a Metroid-like overworld setup, cycling through multiple rates of fire by way of temporary and permanent upgrades acquired throughout the journey. The on-foot weapons (like auto-fire or weapons that go through walls) cycle in and out if you get hit like Contra, so you're likely dealing with all of them fluctuating about rather than sticking with one you know.
What is Zero exactly? Well, to compare it with the original I even brought out the OG cart on the Analogue Nt mini. Some of it is a 1:1 recreation, like the starting area, but other zones are retooled (the second castle bit is now a residential area, and doesn't have ceiling spikes). They're mostly positive changes, but a few areas were less memorable, and decidedly less difficult (and the NES classic had some of those shortcomings too, mind).
It's all a lot more manageable with save points though, and a few other modern assists. The map screen now gives you a general sense of where to go, but it isn't in your face or on the main HUD while playing (there's a tiny "hot or cold" dot that you can toggle on or off). But it's tough enough. There's very little (if any) iFrames, so getting into a bad situation could mean instant death. There are checkpoints, but you don't automatically regain your health (unless you die), and long falls while outside of the tank will still kill you.
You'll be swapping between side-scrolling and top-down sections, and the latter is vastly improved when compared to Overdrive on the Wii. Remember when developers used to force people to use just the Wiimote on its side, even if it didn't work for a lot of games? Well that's not a problem here. The great design of the Joy-Con (whether it's a single or double with the Joy-Con grip) is bolstered by full button mapping.
While some of the areas in the side-scrolling bits are the same, the top-down portions are widely redone and massively upgraded from a visual standpoint. The aforementioned remixed locations look better in some cases, and the bosses as a whole are just straight-up better. Take Crabullus (formerly known as "Mutant Crab") -- in the original you were basically just firing off shots while avoiding his arm and the occasional slime pool, but now his arms have a much wider reach, and he fills the entire room with toxic waste. Several encounters are fully reworked to fit the game better too.
I did not have access to the 3DS version for this review, but I think it's clear that the Switch version is coming out on top with co-op (and the over-hyped HD rumble support, if that's a thing you care about). Don't get too excited about co-op as it's in the form of a "helper" reticle (kind of like Mario Galaxy) that can assist player one -- it's not a full-on two-player mode. A bummer, I know, but I'll take it.
The only major controller related problem I had is that the Pro Controller doesn't work...at all. So if you want to play co-op you'll have to split your Joy-Con or pop in a third one while one person uses the Joy-Con grip. I reached out to Inti Creates for clarification -- they plan on implementing a day-one patch that adds it, so at least it's on their radar, and we'll update you when/if that update goes live (it's now slated for March 16).
Blaster Master Zero is a loving recreation that serves as both a companion and in some ways a replacement for the original. While I'll always see myself going back to the NES classic for the rest of my days, Zero is a good way to introduce the series to a newcomer without scaring them off.
[This review is based on a retail build of the game provided by the publisher.]
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Blaster Master Zero reviewed by Chris CarterSoldier Field will be packed Tuesday afternoon, serving as the site for the next World Cup watch party.Team USA takes on Belgium at 3 p.m. The game will be shown on the stadium's Jumbotron. Gates open at 1:30 p.m. Fans can gather on the field - or in the stands - and beer, soda and Team USA merchandise will be sold at the event.The Grant Park watch parties drew an average of 20,000 people. At least that many are expected for the party at Soldier Field, which has a capacity of more than 60,000. U.S. Soccer says it wanted a safe, spacious location for the fans."We've been blown away by the support. The team in Brazil notices what's going on and it helps them succeed," said Mike Gressle, U.S. Soccer."The last time I was in The States was eight years ago, when it was also the World Cup. And you couldn't watch it anywhere," said Portugal fan Andreas Schwiertz.Also watching the World Cup is Team France supporter Marc Brice. He's supporting the U.S. Tuesday but says Belgium is a tough team to beat."I'm going to watch the American game here as well, but don't tell my boss 'cause I'm working," Brice said Monday while watching another game at Fado Irish Pub in River North.For those who are going to Soldier Field, many normal security measures will apply. Tailgating is permitted outside, but no food nor drinks are allowed inside where concessions are sold.Admission to Soldier Field is free. Regular Soldier Field parking rates apply. The viewing party will feature ESPN's live feed of the match displayed on the north end zone video board. Fans will have access to watch the game on the field and in the stands.Team USA is in Salvador, Brazil, getting ready for the match against Belgium. From here on - it's win or go home. The Round of 16 match against Belgium will take place at Arena Fonte Nova in Salvador. Belgium finished first in Group H with nine points from three wins. The USA is 1-4-0 all-time vs. Belgium, but the teams are not total strangers in World Cup play. The first meeting between the countries came at the 1930 FIFA World Cup in Montevideo, Uruguay, a 3-0 victory for the Americans in the first-ever World Cup match for the United States.The most recent meeting between the U.S. and Belgium was a 4-2 loss on May 29, 2013, in Cleveland, Ohio. Geoff Cameron and Clint Dempsey scored the U.S. goals in that game. Belgium is ranked 11th in the last FIFA World Rankings and the USA is 13th.On July 2, 1994 - almost 20 years ago this Tuesday - Germany defeated Belgium 3-2 at Soldier Field to advance to the quarterfinals of the 1994 FIFA World Cup. The match featured a goal by U.S. Men's National Team head coach Jurgen Klinsmann.The left in its own theory refers to the racial issues as a subset of class issues, and treats them as it treated class warfare: a means of arguing that the powers above are unjust, and therefore must relinquish more control.
from amerika
This makes many things clear to me. The Left is so critical of America, when obviously America is pretty near the best the world has to offer in everything, because they want to dispose the elite in America and replace it with themselves.
Why would Obama denigrate America when he rules it? He dosn’t really rule it, yet. There are many power centers. Wall Street is dominated by different people. Academia and media are on board, but the military, some religious groups, some local governments, some private businesses in more competitive fields, small businessmen, parts of the Internet, the traditional family, the federal reserve, some federal courts, some local courts, and countless others wield significant power.
I studied world history, philosophy, religion and art. One thing absolutely clear to we students was there were three amazing civilizations in about five thousand years of known human history: Ancient Greece, the Roman Republic, and the United Kingdom. I have no doubt that if in some time in the distant future similar students study world history the same three cultures will be lauded but with the addition of the United States. Against all odds, where the norm is and has always been one man lording over another, America cut out a small area of self determination for any person. As a reward it became the richest, most powerful and most attractive country in the world.
AdvertisementsWhy is it that when The Wife goes on vacation, she always ends up on a tropical beach, whereas my travel seems more likely to result in a funny story to tell? A few weeks ago, I had to plan a trip to Beijing and a meeting near the airport before the flight to Beijing. Easy-peasy, right? One after the other. I even had time to check-in my bag before heading to the meeting.
Problem was, I wasn’t sure how long the meeting would last and I didn’t want to end it early or accidentally miss my flight. I scheduled 4 hours between the begininng of the meeting & takeoff, which, of course, meant that everything went smoothly
and I was back in the airport 3 hours before takeoff (in Hong Kong, you can get away with hopping off the subway 30 minutes before takeoff). I couldn’t be placed on an earlier flight, but no worries– I’ll just sit & relax for a bit.
6:30 PM – It’s about time to board, so I wander over to the gate. I enjoy my seat a few minutes more and watch the rest of the passengers stand in a line that stretches around the corner and out of sight. Why do people insist on queuing before they’ve even announced the start of boarding? Thank god The Wife isn’t here or I would be forced to stand in that queue. It feels good to just sit for a while.
7:00 PM – We’re pulling away from the gate and I’m settling into a new book. 30 feet later, the jet stops. The captain tentatively speaks up. Apparently, we’ve lost our steering. Not a problem, it’s “just a short delay.”
8:00 PM – The flight attendants are passing out salty snacks and the televisions on the ceiling are playing an episode of “The Office.” Man, that show has gone downhill.
8:30 PM – Now it’s a Cantonese program that seems to take dog shows very seriously. I wonder how Christopher Guest plays in China.
9:00 PM – Now I’m wishing that I’d spent more time studying Mandarin. I’d be able to better appreciate the exasperated complaints that a nearby passenger is yelling at the flight attendant. I sit back and wait for the riots to begin.
9:30 PM – A round of Haagen-Daaz cups seems to have quelled our little uprising. I have to wonder if the mechanics are taking an ice cream break as well.
10:00 PM – All is lost. We shuffle out of the plane and ride a crowded bus back to the far side of the airport terminal. More snacks await. Note to self: food extinguishes Asian Anger, or at least temporarily. Always works on The Wife.
10:30 PM – At least we didn’t spend long in the terminal. On our new plane I finally hear from the Wife. She’s just gotten out of a production of “Dirty Dancing” that was apparently steered off course even faster than my plane. Still, her true disappointment of the night seems to be that I didn’t take the opportunity to join the passenger riot.
11:00 PM – Finished my book. Time to start another.
11:15 PM – Take off. Now if only I could sleep in this tiny seat.
2:30 AM – If there’s one good thing to say about Chinese immigration, it’s that it goes more quickly when yours is the only flight at the airport.
2:45 AM – Alas, immigration was too good to be true. The train to the main terminal (only 2 minutes away) takes ten minutes to show up– enough time for most of my flight to get lined up and all force into the tiny cars. The doors close. The train rolls forward 30 feet. And it stops.
3:00 AM – After sitting in place for about five minutes, the man who had been napping in one of the seats when the train arrived stirs awake and stumbles toward an access panel on the wall. I realize he’s wearing the coverall-uniform of airport maintenance. Flicking switches and jamming buttons doesn’t seem to be able to get the automatic control working
again, but he eventually is able to get us moving in manual mode by carefully sliding a throttle switch to the right. We’re moving again. At about 2 miles per hour.
3:05 AM – Mr. Maintenance’s hand slips and the train slams to a stop. A half asleep woman nearly collapses on my shins.
3:10 AM – After crawling forward another 50 feet, the automatic control seems to take mercy on us and suddenly start working again. The normal speed seems so fast compared to the manual control that I’m briefly worried that it may have forgotten the brakes. Luckily, the train stops calmly in the station and releases us toward the baggage claim.
3:30 AM – With no other transportation options, I’ve joined the long line of people hoping that a few more taxis will show up eventually.
4:00 AM – The Beijing freeways are actually quite quick with no traffic. I’m able to read a little more while cruising towards Wudaokou.
4:30 AM – I’m in the right neighborhood and we’re looking for the hotel (it’s a new one, since my usual hotel is full). I use my Google Maps printout to maneuver us to the right area, but we end up circling an area with no place for cars to enter. Finally, I spot the hotel’s neon sign at the top of a building. It’s only 100 meters away so I pay the cabbie and
walk towards the pedestrian gate.
4:45 AM – I was still upbeat after finding the first gate locked. The second one, a few hundred meters back the way I came, was more depressing. Still I found my way into the walled enclave eventually (it turned out to be a small college campus) and made my way back to the hotel. It was then that I realized the hotel had a separate entrance from the opposite side of campus. There was still a fence between me and sleep, even though I was just 10 paces from the lobby. Nothing to do but toss over my rollerbag and hop over after it. Being a giant sometimes has its perks. At least this fence had no razor wire.
4:50 AM – These are times when I wished I had been more diligent in my language studies. My brain doesn’t process Mandarin very well in the early morning and the receptionist didn’t know a word of English. My reservation number was enough to
establish who I was, but it took a while before I sussed out the rest. Apparently 5AM is a pretty late time to arrive– late enough that the hotel had assumed I was a no-show. This, of course, meant that they went ahead and gave away my room a few hours earlier. Brilliant…
5:15 AM – I walked dejectedly to the next-nearest hotel, only to get the same news: all the rooms are full.
5:30 AM – Two more hotels, same thing.
6:00 AM – By this time the sun is coming up and I’d visited my tenth hotel of the evening. It seemed like the right time to try a different option– an option like breakfast. I made my way back to a shopping mall next to the subway station. It had several restaurants, including a French-themed cafe and a KFC, but nothing opened up until around 8AM.
This brings me to my lucky break of the day. If you’ve never lived in Asia, there’s an interesting rule you’ll encounter: “If you’re at a KFC that has closed for the day, try looking behind you.” Sure enough, across the street was an even larger KFC that stayed open 24 hours a day.
6:10 AM – I collapse into the first chair I’ve seen in hours and slowly slurp the Colonel’s congee (seriously). Surprisingly enough, I was far from alone. In addition to the handful of people who seem to be starting an early morning, there are a couple dozen 20 somethings who’ve only just left the local nightclubs and are carefully discussing the merits
and detriments to showing up for class today.
7:30 AM – After resting my head on the slightly-greasy table for about an hour, I pull a new shirt out of my roller bag and haul all my possessions into the cramped bathroom to change. Looking halfway presentable, I make my way to the subway and ride the two stops to our contractor’s office building.
8:00 AM – I’ve arrived. But, none of my colleagues have. A quick phone call assures that they are on their way. I must have sounded bad, because the guy I called skipped his usual subway ride and took a cab to ensure that I was alright.
8:30 AM to 5PM – Work? Maybe? It’s a bit of a blur, to be honest. I did succeed in booking a new reservation at a different hotel though.
5:30 PM – After mumbling with the front desk and shuffling to a room, I briefly see a large object that looks vaguely like a bed before promptly passing out on top of it.
Damn it. Give me that beach!
AdvertisementsReverend Billy, aka Billy Talen, ran for Mayor of New York City in 2009, on the Green Party line.Press Release from the Reverend Billy Bulletin:
Occupy Wall Street Support, Reverend Billy Not Guilty
Reverend Billy and The Choir at Kayford Mountain, WV the site of extensive Moutain Top Removal photo Brennan Cavanaugh
Today (October 20, 2011) in Manhattan Criminal Court Honorable Judge James Burke found longtime NYC activist Reverend Billy Talen not guilty of Criminal Trespass in the Third Degree. Talen was represented by attorneys Wylie Stecklow and Samuel Cohen.On Black Friday 2010 Reverend Billy and The Stop Shopping Choir entered the public lobby of the UBS Bank building on 7th avenue in midtown Manhattan dressed as angels. They sang songs highlighting the banks financial interests in Mountaintop Removal (MTR) a highly toxic coal extraction process used in Appalachia and mountainous regions throughout the world. Reverend Billy urged UBS to divest from MTR, which poses a grave threat to the environment, releasing toxic levels of heavy metals into the air and the water table. Cancer rates in Appalachia are nearly twice the national average.Attorney Wylie Stecklow commented that “Reverend Billy enjoyed support from Occupy Wall Street as the message remains the same, corporate domination of our political elections and legislative branches, millions of dollars spent in lobbying to influence deregulation, must end. Living, breathing people must be given a voice in our participatory democracy.” Reverend Billy was arrested shortly after the action and charged with Criminal Trespass in the Third Degree and faced up to three months in jail. Criminal Trespass in the Third Degree requires that the space in question be gated and enclosed to keep the public out. The prosecution was unable to prove that the building was either closed to the public or gated and were also unable to provide police witnesses to the alleged crime. Talen was found not guilty. According to Talen’s attorney Sam Cohen “This ruling sends a message to corporations that inducing police to overcharge for acts of protest and dissent is not a winning strategy, the law applies equally to everyone and we are pleased that the court agrees.”
Legal Inquiries: Wylie LAW email: wylie AT wylielaw DOT com Reverend Billy and The Church of Stop Shopping, a community of 100 activists and artists, many of whom are actively involved with the Occupy Wall Street movement, demand that corporations honor their publicly stated environmental policies and vow to continue to pressure corporations to include communities in their decision making process. “Mountain Top Removal is killing people in Appalachia and destroying one of the most glorious and biodiverse regions in the world. Today I witnessed a judge do the right thing, he heard the arguments and honored his conscience. The spirit of the 99% is rising.”Reverend Billy Media Contact: Savitri D email: savitri AT revbilly DOT comLegal Inquiries: Wylie LAW email: wylie AT wylielaw DOT com -end press release excerptRadio host Rush Limbaugh excoriated CNN’s Jake Tapper and BuzzFeed on Wednesday for a “coordinated” attack on President-elect Donald Trump.
Reporting Tuesday night on “State of the Union” that Russia may possess compromising information on Mr. Trump — followed shortly thereafter by the release of an unverified intelligence dossier by BuzzFeed — was no coincidence to the man behind the “golden EIB microphone.” Mr. Limbaugh told listeners on Wednesday that CNN’s Jake Tapper knew what would happen, but acted anyway because “the normal techniques” for destroying Republicans “bounce off of Trump.”
“There’s a coordinated effort,” Mr. Limbaugh said. “CNN reports on the existence of the report but they don’t detail it. Jake Tapper, who wants to be known as one of the most highly respected journalists in the world, decides to start vomiting this stuff — but he doesn’t get into details. That’s a signal for BuzzFeed to go ahead and release and publish all 35 pages. And BuzzFeed does so while telling everybody that none of it has been verified.”
The conservative said that media outlets have been trying since before Election Day to verify the reports, but held off because “not a single shred” of evidence warranted coverage.
Mr. Tapper tried to distance CNN from any connection with BuzzFeed on Wednesday by saying BuzzFeed’s reporting was “irresponsible.”
“I can understand why President-elect Trump would be upset about that,” the CNN host said. “I would be upset, too. It is why we did not publish it and why we did not detail anything specific from it. That’s not what we do. We’re in the business of sussing out what is true and what is false.”
Mr. Limbaugh went on to say that CNN’s coverage was in line with a kind of reporting that seeks to cast a pall over a man’s character through outlandish but unverified charges.
“What we have here, folks, is a variation on, ‘Yeah, we have no evidence, but the seriousness of the charge demands an investigation,’” Mr. Limbaugh said. “We first heard that or I first became familiar with it during the Clarence Thomas, Anita Hill hearings. Actually, no. I first heard about it when they alleged that George H. W. Bush flew on an SR-71 in the summer of 1980 to meet with the Iranians in Paris to arrange for the hostages to remain captive until after the election to facilitate the election of Reagan.”
“Gary Sick, a University of Columbia professor, wrote an entire book on this,” the host continued. “It was a total lie. It was total fake. It was total made up. And Tom Foley, the Speaker of the House — Democrat — at time, said, ‘Well, the seriousness of this charge, even though there’s no evidence, mandates that we conduct an investigation.’ And it’s the same thing here. This is a variation of that.”
Mr. Trump did not mince words with CNN’s Jim Ac
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to use the NBC Sports brand to create a rival to the market leader, ESPN.
This still-relevant Richard Sandomir story from the New York Times in December 2009 explains how NBC and Comcast plan to use their collective power to turn Versus into a legitimate challenger to Bristol, Connecticut's best-known residents.
Long story short: NBC Sports and Dick Ebersol will take control of Versus (as well as Comcast's Golf Channel). They'll change the name to a more recognizable NBC brand, use more NBC talent and most importantly, they'll pump money into the network that will allow it to challenge ESPN for television rights deals.
The NHL, of course, is in on the ground floor.
After the lockout in 2004, ESPN wanted nothing to do with the NHL, so without much bargaining room of their own, the League signed on to a national TV deal with Outdoor Life Network, which was, needless to say, slightly embarrassing. Now, a little more than six years later, the NHL is growing and they've helped turn OLN into Versus, a not-well-known but now at least respectable sports destination.
ESPN knows all of this. They know that the NHL is growing and that it's beginning to turn into a product that sports fans want to watch. They know that this NBC-Comcast merger will be complete eventually, and they know that with this, Versus will be able to draw rights deals away from them.
The first salvo in this soon-to-come war between the two parties? It's hockey. The NHL's rights deals with NBC and Versus are up at the end of this year, and ESPN has made no secret of the fact that they want in. Easy to understand why.
But if the NHL sticks with Versus, or whatever the hell it will be called next year, they'll be ensured something that ESPN cannot give them. While the Worldwide Leader's lineup is crowded with the NFL, NBA, MLB, NASCAR and more, Versus will still be without many of those properties. They'll have the NHL, though, where it will still be the premiere product on the network.
The NHL will become the foundation for whatever Ebersol, NBC and Comcast hope to build at Versus, and with that, the League will be in a very enviable position.'Britain's Atlantis' found at bottom of North sea - a huge undersea world swallowed by the sea in 6500BC
Divers have found traces of ancient land swallowed by waves 8500 years ago
Doggerland once stretched from Scotland to Denmark
Rivers seen underwater by seismic scans
Britain was not an island - and area under North Sea was roamed by mammoths and other giant animals
Described as the'real heartland' of Europe
Had population of tens of thousands - but devastated by sea level rises
'Britain's Atlantis' - a hidden underwater world swallowed by the North Sea - has been discovered by divers working with science teams from the University of St Andrews.
Doggerland, a huge area of dry land that stretched from Scotland to Denmark was slowly submerged by water between 18,000 BC and 5,500 BC.
Divers from oil companies have found remains of a 'drowned world' with a population of tens of thousands - which might once have been the'real heartland' of Europe.
A team of climatologists, archaeologists and geophysicists has now mapped the area using new data from oil companies - and revealed the full extent of a 'lost land' once roamed by mammoths.
Divers from St Andrews University, find remains of Doggerland, the underwater country dubbed 'Britain's Atlantis'
Dr Richard Bates of the earth sciences department at St Andrews University, searching for Doggerland, the underwater country dubbed 'Britain's Atlantis' A Greater Britain: How the North Sea grew and the land-mass shrunk Drowned world: Scans show a mound discovered under the water near Orkney, which has been explored by divers
St Andrews University's artists' impression of life in Doggerland
The research suggests that the populations of these drowned lands could have been tens of thousands, living in an area that stretched from Northern Scotland across to Denmark and down the English Channel as far as the Channel Islands.
The area was once the ‘real heartland’ of Europe and was hit by ‘a devastating tsunami', the researchers claim.
The wave was part of a larger process that submerged the low-lying area over the course of thousands of years.
'The name was coined for Dogger Bank, but it applies to any of several periods when the North Sea was land,' says Richard Bates of the University of St Andrews. 'Around 20,000 years ago, there was a'maximum' - although part of this area would have been covered with ice. When the ice melted, more land was revealed - but the sea level also rose.
'Through a lot of new data from oil and gas companies, we’re able to give form to the landscape - and make sense of the mammoths found out there, and the reindeer. We’re able to understand the types of people who were there.
'People seem to think rising sea levels are a new thing - but it’s a cycle of Earht history that has happened many many times.'
Organised by Dr Richard Bates of the Department of Earth Sciences at St Andrews, the Drowned Landscapes exhibit reveals the human story behind Doggerland, a now submerged area of the North Sea that was once larger than many modern European countries.
Dr Bates, a geophysicist, said: ‘Doggerland was the real heartland of Europe until sea levels rose to give us the UK coastline of today.
World beneath the waves: Scientists examine a sediment core recovered from a mound near Orkney
Seismic scans reveal a submerged river at Dogger Bank
A visualisation of how life in the now-submerged areas of Dogger Bank might have looked
The research suggests that the populations of these drowned lands could have been tens of thousands, living in an area that stretched from Northern Scotland across to Denmark and down the English Channel as far as the Channel Islands
Life in 'Doggerland' - the ancient kingdom once stretched from Scotland to Denmark and has been described as the'real heart of Europe'
‘We have speculated for years on the lost land's existence from bones dredged by fishermen all over the North Sea, but it's only since working with oil companies in the last few years that we have been able to re-create what this lost land looked like.
‘When the data was first being processed, I thought it unlikely to give us any useful information, however as more area was covered it revealed a vast and complex landscape.
‘We have now been able to model its flora and fauna, build up a picture of the ancient people that lived there and begin to understand some of the dramatic events that subsequently changed the land, including the sea rising and a devastating tsunami.’
The research project is a collaboration between St Andrews and the Universities of Aberdeen, Birmingham, Dundee and Wales Trinity St David.
Rediscovering the land through pioneering scientific research, the research reveals a story of a dramatic past that featured massive climate change. The public exhibit brings back to life the Mesolithic populations of Doggerland through artefacts discovered deep within the sea bed.
The research, a result of a painstaking 15 years of fieldwork around the murky waters of the UK, is one of the highlights of the London event.
The interactive display examines the lost landscape of Doggerland and includes artefacts from various times represented by the exhibit - from pieces of flint used by humans as tools to the animals that also inhabited these lands.
Using a combination of geophysical modelling of data obtained from oil and gas companies and direct evidence from material recovered from the seafloor, the research team was able to build up a reconstruction of the lost land.
The excavation of Trench 2, unveiling more finds about this lost land-mass
Fossilised bones from a mammoth also show how this landscape was once one of hills and valleys, rather than sea
The findings suggest a picture of a land with hills and valleys, large swamps and lakes with major rivers dissecting a convoluted coastline.
As the sea rose the hills would have become an isolated archipelago of low islands. By examining the fossil record - such as pollen grains, microfauna and macrofauna - the researchers can tell what kind of vegetation grew in Doggerland and what animals roamed there.
Using this information, they were able to build up a model of the 'carrying capacity' of the land and work out roughly how many humans could have lived there.
The research team is currently investigating more evidence of human behaviour, including possible human burial sites, intriguing standing stones and a mass mammoth grave.
Dr Bates added: ‘We haven't found an 'x marks the spot' or 'Joe created this', but we have found many artefacts and submerged features that are very difficult to explain by natural causes, such as mounds surrounded by ditches and fossilised tree stumps on the seafloor.
‘There is actually very little evidence left because much of it has eroded underwater; it's like trying to find just part of a needle within a haystack. What we have found though is a remarkable amount of evidence and we are now able to pinpoint the best places to find preserved signs of life.’
For further information on the exhibit, visit: http://sse.royalsociety.org/2012/exhibits/drowned-landscapes/Bush seeks armed guards on all flights from Europe RAW STORY
Published: Monday February 11, 2008
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Print This Email This Proposal also asks for information on family members of flyers President George W. Bush wants armed guards on all planes flying into the United States from Europe, according to a draft document circulating among the European Union's 27 member states. According the document leaked to the Guardian, the administration also wants EU states to supply personal data on all air passengers flying over the United States even if they are not landing in America. Further, the Administration is also demanding that European airlines provide personal data on non-travelers, such as family members who are allowed beyond departure barriers to help the elderly or infirm board jets embarking for America. Some diplomats have called the proposal blackmail. The US has threatened to require west Europeans and Britons to have US visas to enter if their governments won't sign on. But not everyone is biting. "The Association of European Airlines, representing 31 airlines, including all the big west European national carriers, has told the US authorities that there is "no international legal foundation" for supplying them with data about passengers on flights overflying US territory," the Guardian says. The US counters that some passengers "overflying" the US might get access to places beyond security checkpoints during stopover flights. Already, the Administration has a vast database that they mine for "suspected terrorists," which has unwitting delayed innocent passengers with the same names as suspects. The US Department of Homeland Security has already created a system to deploy within months that will "impose a new permit system for Europeans flying to the US, compelling all travelers to apply online for permission to enter the country before booking or buying a ticket, a procedure that will take several days," the paper notes. Bush could enlist smaller country to sign onto his new requirements and then use that state as a wedge to pressure other governments. It appears that Prague will accept the new US requirements. A senior EU official told the paper the Americans could get "a gung-ho frontrunner" to sign up to the new regime and then use that agreement "as a rod to beat the other member states with." Washington is also asking European airlines to provide personal data on non-travellers - for example family members - who are allowed beyond departure barriers to help elderly, young or ill passengers to board aircraft flying to America, a demand the airlines reject as "absurd".CHICAGO (AP) -- There were no bold proclamations or promises for sweeping changes from Chicago Bulls management on Wednesday for a team that barely made the playoffs.
They gave no clarity on Jimmy Butler's future with the team and had no real answers when it came to Dwyane Wade's. Rajon Rondo looks like he will be welcomed back. The front office won't be getting a major makeover, and coach Fred Hoiberg will return for a third season.
"We've got a lot of guys under contract," said John Paxson, the executive vice president of basketball operations who was joined by general manager Gar Forman. "The landscape is such that to make significant change right now will be difficult."
The Bulls tried to operate on two fronts last year, trying to get younger while bringing in veterans, and it added up to more mediocrity for a franchise that missed the postseason in 2016. Chicago won 41 games and got back to the playoffs this year as an eighth seed. After bowing out against Boston in the first round, there are some big issues facing the organization.
The list starts with Butler. The question is whether the Bulls try to build around the three-time All-Star or trade one of the league's best two-way players.
Paxson didn't commit either way
"You always have to keep things open," he said.
Butler's name has circulated in trade rumors for a year, with Boston mentioned prominently as a landing spot. The lottery could help bring the picture into focus, with the Celtics owning the right to swap first-round picks with Brooklyn in this year's draft.
Keeping Butler could go a long way toward Wade exercising his $23.8 million option to return for a second season with his hometown team.
Paxson said the Bulls plan to meet with Butler again to discuss the organization's direction, and the same goes for Wade. Rondo, meanwhile, looks like he has a place in Chicago with Paxson saying there's "a really good chance" he returns. The team holds an option for next season on the contract he signed to join the Bulls last summer.
Rondo was at the center of a dispute during the season, defending some of the younger players while firing back at Wade and Butler after those two criticized the team's effort following a loss. The incident resulted in fines for all three veterans.
"I can't underscore the positives for Rondo being with our young guys," Paxson said. "Inside the building, we understand how important that was. It started last summer when he started hanging with our guys in summer league. To be candid with you, when we had that incident where Dwyane and Jimmy spoke up in January, when he stood up for our young guys, that empowered them a little bit."
Rondo was in an out of the rotation, but he played well down the stretch. He helped Chicago take the first two playoff games at Boston, only to watch the Bulls drop the final four while he nursed a broken right thumb. The offense wasn't the same without him, and his injury exposed a lack of depth at the position.
That combined with a shortage of shooters and a star in Butler who needs the ball in his hands adds up to a roster that doesn't quite fit the fast-paced style Hoiberg wants to play. There have also been growing pains for a coach who was presented as a final piece when the Bulls hired him to replace Tom Thibodeau.
Wade, however, voiced his support for Hoiberg. And Paxson insisted he sees growth, though he didn't mention any specifics.
"I view young coaches in this league as like young players," he said. "They have to develop and grow, too."
As for management, any changes will be subtle.
Paxson might continue to take a more public role as he did in the past year, but Forman will continue to report to him.
"This is very much like in the business world, CEO, COO relationship," Paxson said. "My responsibilities lie mostly in defining the culture of what we do every day; Gar's responsibility as GM is in the day-to-day grind of this business.... That's the way we've always handled it; we feel we have a good staff, we have a very small staff; we use all our resources. So we will continue to do so."AP photo The stakes are enormous: President Obama campaigns with Martha Coakley in Boston.
It’s almost impossible to overstate the political significance of
tomorrow’s Massachusetts Senate election. Here are ten reasons why the
election is so important nationally:
1. Massachusetts is one of the most Democratic states in the nation.
It’s the only state that voted for George McGovern over Richard Nixon
in 1972 and it hasn’t elected a Republican senator since 1972. Its
entire congressional delegation is Democratic. A GOP win would shock the
liberal Democratic establishment that dismissed the 2009 gubernatorial
setbacks in Virginia and New Jersey as mere flukes.
2. Health-care reform is at stake. A victory for
Scott Brown would deprive the Democrats of the 60 votes they need to
push their brand of health-care reform through the Senate without any
Republican support. That would be a huge defeat for President Obama and
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. No way to spin that one.
3. Democrat-only legislative power would come to an end.
If Senate Democrats were to lose in Massachusetts, they’d lose their
tenuous 60-seat majority needed to push forward legislation without
bipartisan support. That means that moderate Republican Sens. Olympia
Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine would instantly become two of the most
powerful people on Capitol Hill. One way or another, the Obama agenda
would have to be retooled or scaled back.
4. This is the “Kennedy” seat. For six decades,
this particular Massachusetts Senate seat has been represented by Jack
Kennedy, Ted Kennedy or a family designee (on a temporary basis). The
symbolism of Republicans seizing the “Kennedy seat” is huge.
AP photo Massachusetts State Sen. Scott Brown campaigns at the Wachusett Mountain Ski Area in Princeton, Mass., yesterday.
5. This is where the Boston Tea Party took place.
New England “patriots” rebelled against high taxes by dumping tea into
Boston Harbor some 235 years ago. Now, the new generation of “Tea Party
patriots” is hoping to dump candidates (Democrat and Republican) who
raise taxes and increase federal spending. Again, a big symbolic thing.
6. This is a test of the power of political independents.
Fewer than one in eight Massachusetts voters admits to being a
Republican. So GOP nominee Brown couldn’t come close to victory without
carrying independent voters by a wide margin and chipping away at the
Democratic base. That’s terrible news for Democrats looking ahead. If
independents continue to flee the Democratic Party — as they did in New
Jersey and Virginia last year — the midterm elections could be an
absolute disaster for the ruling party.
7. It’s a good indicator of voters’ desire for divided government.
Even in Massachusetts, many voters want to send a message to Democrats
in DC: One-party government is not a good idea. A Brown win — or even a
photo finish — would tell us that even some Democrats want a limit on
the power of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader
Harry Reid.
8. It could give a jump start to GOP recruiting efforts in other states.
One of the keys to the Republican takeover of Congress is 1994 was a
superb recruiting effort that enlisted big-name challengers to
Democratic incumbents. If Brown wins in Massachusetts, the Texans atop
the GOP congressional campaign efforts — John Cornyn in the Senate and
Pete Sessions in the House — probably would have recruits lining up
outside their offices to take on Democratic incumbents.
9. It’s proof that Republicans don’t have to be moderates to win on Democratic turf.
Conventional wisdom holds that Republicans need to recruit moderate
candidates to win elections in the North and Midwest. But Scott Brown
is an unapologetic conservative. If he can win (or come close) in
Massachusetts, it sends a message that conservative Republicans can
play ball in “blue” America.
10. It would be a personal and political repudiation of President Obama.
The president upped the political ante yesterday by flying to Boston
for a rally with Democrat Martha Coakley. He told voters just how
important her election was to him. By inserting himself into the race,
Obama raised the stakes: If Massachusetts voters reject his personal
appeal, it’s a sign that the president’s (remaining) personal
popularity is not necessarily transferable to endangered Democrats.British scientists have named the fossil of a fierce giant crocodile from the Jurassic era after the former lead singer of Motorhead, Lemmy.
Like the hell-raising rock star, the 19ft (5.8m) long beast now called Lemmysuchus was no shrinking violet.
The fossil needed to be renamed after University of Edinburgh scientists realised it had been wrongly classified.
The Motorhead frontman died at the end of 2015.
His band had a run of top 40 hits between 1978 and 1982, were best known for the rock anthem Ace of Spades and toured the world for 40 years
The crocodile terrorised coastal waters around Britain more than 145 million years ago.
It had a skull measuring just over a metre and large, blunt teeth perfect for crushing bones and turtle shells.
The name was suggested by Natural History Museum curator and Motorhead fan Lorna Steel.
She said: "Although Lemmy passed away at the end of 2015, we'd like to think that he would have raised a glass to Lemmysuchus, one of the nastiest sea creatures to have ever inhabited the Earth.
"As a long-standing Motorhead fan I am thrilled to have had the opportunity to immortalise the rock star in this way."
The incorrect classification was spotted by University of Edinburgh palaeontologist Michela Johnson after conducting a recent study of the fossil.
She said "Following careful anatomical comparison, and by referring to the main specimen held at the Natural History Museum, we could see that most of the previous finds were actually from relatives of Lemmysuchus rather than the species itself, and we were able to assign a new name."
The fossil was originally dug up in a clay pit near Peterborough in 1909 then housed at London's Natural History Museum.
Lemmy himself was born Ian Kilmister and it was widely reported that he acquired his nickname as a youngster who often asked: "Lemme (lend me) a quid". But the man himself said in an interview that he had long forgotten its origin.Most romantic marriage proposal ever? Lovestruck groom leads bride on treasure hunt through family members
Shay Crawford popped the question to Stephanie Silvers with a scavenger hunt
It began with a single rose and involved the couple's family members
Crawford plays minor league baseball for the Tampa Bay Rays
It was an elaborate marriage proposal which began with a single rose.
Baseball player Shay Crawford led his girlfriend Stephanie Silvers on a secret scavenger hunt through Chattanooga, Tennessee, which ended with what many women dream about: a wedding ring.
A heartmelting video shows just how Crawford managed to woo his sweetheart with the help of family members.
Lovestruck: Baseball player Shay Crawford led Stephanie Silvers on a treasure hunt through family members before popping the question
In love: Shay Crawford got down on bended knee to propose to Stephanie Silvers in front of their elated family members
'Family is incredibly important to both of us,' Crawford shared with Inside Edition.
'They were very, very excited when they heard I was going to propose. I just wanted to include everybody, I thought it would be really special that way.'
The well-planned proposal began when Silvers met her mother near a church. She handed her daughter a single rose and read a letter Crawford had written, before sending Silvers to the next destination.
With family members filming the journey, Silvers went to Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse - Crawford's 'personal favorite' - where his mother was waiting.
The emotional woman cried and read Silvers a moving letter before directing her future daughter-in-law to a gym facility.
Silvers met her brother at the Rush gym, followed by her father and Crawford's sister, and then on to AT&T Field, where Crawford's dad was waiting.
Crawford plays minor league baseball for the Tampa Bay Rays, so the stadium was a special place for the couple.
But it wasn't until Silvers walked across Walnut Street Bridge in Chattanooga, towards the end of the journey, that she sensed a proposal was coming.
'It all caught me so unaware. It wasn't until I was walking across the bridge and I thought, 'Shay is about to be here. This is about to happen!',' Silvers told Inside Edition.
Then, surrounded by family, Crawford dropped to one knee and proposed to the love of his life. She said yes.
The beginning: The treasure hunt began when Stephanie Silvers (right) met her mother (left) at a local church. Her mom handed her a single rose and read her a note Crawford had written
Step two: Stephanie Silvers right) then went to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse, one of Crawford's favorite restaurants, where his emotional mother (left) read Silvers a note
Another rose: Stephanie Silvers (right) was then led to Rush, a gym facility, where she met her brother (left)
Fun times: Surrounded by family members, Silvers (right) was then taken to meet her proud father (left)
Close bond: Silvers' dad then sent his daughter (right) to meet Crawford's sister (left), where the two young women embraced
Special: Silvers (right) was directed to meet her beau's father (left) at the local baseball stadium. Crawford plays minor league baseball for the Tampa Bay Rays, so this was a special place for the couple Moving: Crawford proposed to his girlfriend on a bridge surrounded by family members who filmed and photographed the scavenger huntTunbridge Wells Borough Council in Kent was accused of taking political correctness to extremes after instructing staff to make the change.
The move came as council chiefs feared the word brainstorming might offend mentally ill people and those with epilepsy.
The buzz term is often used by executives to generate ideas among their staff.
But memos have been sent to staff asking them not to use it and some have been given training which encouraged them to use the alternative of thought showers.
Even charities representing epileptics said the ban was taking political correctness too far.
Margaret Thomas, of the National Society for Epilepsy, said: "Brainstorming is a clear and descriptive phrase.
"Alternatives such as thought shower or blue-sky thinking are ambiguous to say the least.
"Any implication that the word brainstorming is offensive to epileptics takes political correctness too far."
Richard Colwill, of mental health charity SANE, said: "This ban goes too far. Few would be genuinely offended by the word brainstorming in the context of council meetings."
A spokesman for Tunbridge Wells Borough Council in Kent said: "We take diversity awareness very seriously.
"The majority of staff have taken part in training and been asked to use the term thought showers."Dr. Galen unearthed that unlike past researches, the very spiritual plus the completely nonreligious were virtually identical inside their psychological state and basic wellbeing.
They're not thinking about opting from their existing medical insurance or failing woefully to look for hospital treatment.
I've never informed an atheist these were ridiculous or ignorant or spewing filth simply because they don't really believe similar.
Pin By Robyn Sheppard On Atheism Vs. Religion
A brand new report shows that people whom rely on Jesus not just stay a more healthful life but additionally include 14 many years for their life. Our health and wellness insurance coverage for expats ( missionaries in Mexico) twice during the statement of Obamacare, doubled once more in 2010 along side notice we had been terminated at the conclusion of the entire year. Important thing: It really is false that there's any such thing about faith, by itself, that produces someone or a society this is certainly happier or maybe more moral or even more effective than a reasonably knowledgeable and well-rounded atheist individual or secular community.
In reality it informs you the alternative (to its destruction). Whenever we tend to be to precisely manage the bible Christians must go on it since it is. When they never, in line with the bible, problematic guy can misinterpret bible. But, whenever we go actually, issues happen, which Christians additionally see. I really hope my adversary understands that this discussion will stay debating the main topic of Atheism vs. Christianity.
One of many minimum positive things of contrast for atheist and agnostic grownups - may be the paltry amount of cash they contribute to altruistic factors. Paul, Gregory S. (2005), Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Preferred Religiosity and Secularism within the successful Democracies,” Journal of Religion and community, vol. Thus a health attention system which manages the rich as opposed to the sick.
The Reason Why We Switched To Heath Care Posting (Bye
As my article below emphasizes, whenever all appropriate facets tend to be taken into account, atheists aren't after all exceptional inside their power to stay effectively as partners; contrariwise, whenever both their particular wedding and cohabitation failure prices tend to be combined, their particular so named success in interactions becomes absolutely nothing but wishful reasoning and a gigantic impression. It isn't the grade of medical care or even the not enough medical insurance which makes our nation position therefore reduced in life-expectancy…it may be the not enough individual obligation and, in essence, our developing not enough a work principles, this is certainly killing People in the us. Under my program, atheists would obtain medical care at federal government cost the same as exactly what everyone else gets within the counties aided by the best quality medical care methods. I have inspected into certainly one of these…you're pretty screwed when you yourself have any health conditions starting it. screwed like in they will not enable people. Samaritan Ministries does not switch any person down for health factors, nonetheless, preexisting problems aren't provided.
Though the atheist debater is extremely probably be confronted by any one of the most significant feasible philosophical arguments predicated on reasoning alone, and so I can have these very first. Therefore, in conclusion, Walsh's assertion that atheist perish very first in (medical) survival situations is certainly not supported also because of the researches she alludes to by herself, never head by most studies” as she advertised inside her CNN meeting. The notion of the punishment would be to discourage folks from maybe not spending in but using free” protection whether they have an important wellness occasion. However in truth, spiritual teachings and techniques sometimes may cause severe emotional wellness harm.
Into the 1990's, the thought of a shared help culture formed the foundation when it comes to improvement an innovative new model for satisfying a person or family members' medical care requirements: wellness Care posting. I'm I find yourself subsidizing those that consume industrial, depleted, and toxic fully processed foods and don't just take private duty because of their health insurance and end up getting severe, persistent and pricey health problems because of this. Medical care sharing will not decline you as a result of a pre-existing problem like insurers will. Many respected reports reveal that atheists are in minimum as ethical, as well as perhaps much more ethical, than Christians.
So it's not just an exaggeration, it's statistically wrong to say that Christian marriages are more inclined to result in separation and divorce, because atheist marriages tend to be more than two times as very likely to fail despite the fact that atheists tend to be not even half as expected to get hitched to begin with. Considering that atheists are extensively criticized, and therefore spiritual belief can be so typical and inspired uncritically, the probabilities are great that any offered atheist features shown much more carefully concerning the proof.
More to the point though, they have been genuine folks and I also take pleasure in the serenity of realizing that our month-to-month share will probably another family members, perhaps not to the acquisition of some fantastic bath curtain in a high-rise manager workplace package for an organization which lobbies resistant to the real wellness of the country. It simply does not add up for me that Christians understand so small concerning the Bible, since we're basing our whole everyday lives on a faith custom that arose from folks thinking and exercising its teachings.
Having constantly had insurance coverage used to do 2 months of hard-core analysis into medical care revealing ministries then thought we would join samaritan. We a spot when it comes to chapel inside our constitution, fees fund it and.... also among the greatest atheist portion worldwide. This area additionally helps make the blunder of focusing totally from the views of David Hume, even though it also acknowledges that it's debatable whether Hume ended up being also an atheist. The apparently inevitable solution is the fact that most Christians don't think whatever they frequently claim to trust. Spiritual folks might think about they wouldn't normally like prayers to Zeus with their wellness and even though they don't really think Zeus is present.
In inclusion, my better half who's from Australian Continent was extremely interested in the concept as shared help communities comparable, yet not identical, to your idea of healthcare sharing are preferred in the residence nation in which he had made use of one for a long time for health protection ahead of going into the usa. Some individuals state that terms like data recovery from faith” and religious upheaval syndrome” are simply atheist attempts to pathologize spiritual belief. Hence showing yet again that an atheist is certainly not mainly defined by any lack of any certain belief but by that nice and pleasant nature which makes him therefore universally well-known. This emphasises that becoming an atheist doesn't seem sensible also virtually talking.
They both have a similar things but various responses to responses (this appears the other way around when debating against Christians) and I also most likely could have a dreadful time debating against these things without doubting myself. Hello Sarah, i desired to indicate that the usa's endurance is lower correctly BECAUSE we possess the most readily useful medical care system in the field.
The declaration that has been made earlier in the day was especially that Christians are healthier then some body attempted to justify it by stating that believers are healthy but there are a great number of various other believers various other faiths available to you who possess powerful help communities etc. The atheist world view, unlike the fundamentalist Christian world view, is made on realities.
Therefore, enjoy your insurance coverage that i'll be obligated to subsidize through taxation while I look for different ways of guaranteeing my family and I have actually an approach to pay for medical care. Andrea Cypress Straw, they might need you to definitely be a Christian because Christians typically have a wholesome way of life and since it is a ministry that features praying when it comes to health problems of these you may be revealing business expenditures on Reno pumps and products like Dewalt d55146.
Very first, the sobering understanding that the quickly increasing expenditure for health protection is born in huge component towards the GMO-ridden American diet plan and large stress/low task way of life of a consenting bulk struggling with an array of severe wellness problems being managed”, never dealt with, by overpriced pharmaceutical medications. It seems in my experience just as if it is the Democrats looking becoming associated with my healthcare choices between my medical practitioner and myself.
I've never informed an atheist they certainly were absurd or ignorant or spewing filth simply because they do not believe similar.
In my own final round We offered the best, in my experience, debate for an atheist: the absurdity of faith, in this instance Christianity.
Dr. Luke Galen of Grand Valley State University performed a bit of research to better explore the essential difference between believers and atheists on actions of psychological state and wellbeing and fights against using products like arbonne RE9 and Nerium anti aging cream.
Put aside and Developing aches celebrity Kirk Cameron, along side residing Waters Ministry president Ray Comfort response this concern with a resounding indeed. Handzo, a chaplain, and Koenig, a doctor claim that health related conditions's part (as a generalist in spirituality) would be to briefly display patient's religious requirements while they connect with medical care also to relate to the chaplain (a professional in pastoral treatment), as proper (Handzo & Koenig, 2004). Catholic hospitals (and perhaps various other spiritual hospitals too, but we have a tendency to read about if from Catholic hospitals) actually just do not offer also one rat buttock concerning the wellness of the customers if there is the slightest little bit of dispute between maintaining some body live and going against some old man in a pink kippah.Report reveals diabetes 'lottery' BelfastTelegraph.co.uk Treatment for diabetic patients is a postcode lottery with a massive variation in quality of care from one region to another, a report has revealed. https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/uk/report-reveals-diabetes-lottery-28752376.html https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/migration_catalog/article25851719.ece/2e5e5/AUTOCROP/h342/UK%20News%2010-1.jpg
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Treatment for diabetic patients is a postcode lottery with a massive variation in quality of care from one region to another, a report has revealed.
In some regions, only 6% of sufferers received the recommended levels of care compared to 69% in the highest-achieving primary care trusts (PCTs), a National Audit Office (NAO) report found. But not a single PCT delivered the nine basic care processes which reduce the risk of diabetes-related complications such as blindness, amputation or kidney disease.
The worst offenders were Mid Essex and Swindon PCTs where less than 9% of patients were given the nine basic tests which are recommended by the Department of Health (DH). The report said that the DH is not holding poorly performing PCTs to account.
The authors say: "The department holds information to assess performance but there is a lack of accountability for PCTs who fail to ensure that the recommended standards of care are met."
It also claims that the NHS does not "clearly understand" the costs of diabetes at a local level and is therefore finding it difficult to deliver diabetes services in the most effective way. Across England only half of people with diabetes received the recommended standards of care in 2009 to 2010.
The report says: "People with diabetes require regular review of clinical indicators of disease progression. Despite the DH setting clear standards for good diabetes care, analysis from general practice records in the 2009-10 National Diabetes Audit found that under half (49%) of people with diabetes received all the care processes recommended for the monitoring of risk factors for tissue damage.
"Without regular monitoring and treatment, this damage can lead to complications such as blindness, amputation and kidney disease."
The review into the management of adult diabetes services in the NHS in England states that up to 24,000 people die each year from avoidable causes relating to diabetes. It said that there is poor performance in expected levels of care, low achievement of treatment standards and high numbers of avoidable deaths.
Care Services Minister Paul Burstow said: "There is no excuse for delivering anything but the best diabetes care. Nice (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) guidance and Quality Standards set out what good care looks like. By exposing poor
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Kaufman cared less about making his audience laugh than keeping them confused.He blew my mind. When I heard I had the part, I was looking at the ocean. That's the moment when Andy came back to make his movie.Hello.What happened after was out of my control.Andy, that's enough! Perfect!I don't like it. I want to do one more.Andy felt it was necessary to stay in the character.He's exactly the way Andy was.It's totally surreal.I got it! I got it!Then this crazy melodrama started happening all over the place.Jimmy said they came down hard.Who's they?Universal didn't want the footage we took behind the scenes to surface so that people wouldn't think I was an asshole.Andy! You have to give me a chance to make a movie.I don't need to make a movie. I don't need to make a movie.I was thinking, how far should I take this?Quiet please. Sound check.Sound check? It's working!How far would Andy take it?You're gonna have people who are going to sue this production for mental stress.When the movie was over, I couldn't remember who I was anymore. So you step through the door not knowing what's on the other side. And what's on the other side is everything.I know him as well as I can know him. But, who do you know? Even when they're right in front of you.(Lyrics) I've watched the stars fall silent from your eyesAll the sights that I have seen(Lyrics) If you believe they put a man on the moon(Man on the moon)NetflixOfficial Selection Venice Film Festival 2017Out of CompetitionOfficial Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2017In 1999, Jim Carrey Portrated His Idol Andy KaufmanIn The Film Man On The MoonA NetflixOriginal DocumentaryFrom DirectorChris SmithAnd ProducerSpike JonzeDanny DeVitoPortraying George Shapiro, Andy's AgentPaul GiamattiPortraying Bob ZmuddaFor Nearly 20 Years, The Behind-The-Scenes Footage Has Been WithheldBob ZmudaAndy's Writing PartnerMilos FormanDirector"Hilarious, Provocative And Inspiritng" - Variety"A Fascinating Meta-Performance Study" - The Hollywood Reporter"A Revelatory Treasure Trove Of Comedic Brilliance" - FilmJim & AndyThe Great BeyondFeaturing A Very Special, Contractually Obligated Mention Of Tony CliftonOnly OnNetflixNovember 17On Nov. 22, 1963 - 50 years ago today, the world in which Americans lived would change in a heartbeat with the horrifying news that their beloved President John. F. Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas, Texas.
Kennedy resonated with many Americans, especially with Mexican-American voters, and also won the affection of many Latinos living in Latin America.
It was a combination of attributes that made Kennedy resonate with Latinos, including his obvious charm, the fact that he was Catholic and the effort his wife, Jacqueline, made to address audiences in Spanish in both speeches and television ads.
It was also a time when American politicians would raise their brows in astonishment over the power of the Latino vote, which had been greatly overlooked and underestimated.
The Massachusetts-bred President connected to Mexican-American voters, and his campaign helped create the Latino Democratic political coalitions that continue to thrive today.
On the evening of Nov. 21, 1963, the night before was killed, the President and wife, Jacqueline, Vice President Lyndon Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird made a brief stop at a formal dinner held by League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) to show their appreciation for the Mexican-American votes that had helped the young president carry Texas in the 1960 election, according to NPR.
The President told the eager audience that "Latin America was not just a friend, but a partner in the peace and prosperity he hoped the entire hemisphere would come to enjoy. And to make sure they understood him completely, he grinned at the crowd: 'I'm going to ask my wife to say a few words.
"Smiling, she told the audience how happy she was to be in Texas that evening - and how especially happy she was to be with them. "Estoy muy contenta..." she began, in her trademark whispery voice."
Supporters shouted, "Viva Kennedy! And viva Jackie!" Thus, making the phrase "Viva Kennedy" a salute and a reminder to JFK of how the Latino vote turned out for him in droves in his 1960 presidential election, according to Texas Public Radio. "Viva Kennedy" clubs sprung up all across the Southwest in Mexican-American neighborhoods and mounted an unprecedented voter registration effort and get-out-the-vote campaign for Latino voters."
On Election Day in 1960, Kennedy won 85 percent of the Mexican-American vote. In Texas, where he lost the white vote, Kennedy won 91 percent of the Latino vote delivering the state's electoral votes and the White House, according to Texas Public Radio.
"Mexican-American voters in New Mexico also made the difference for JFK. The 'Viva Kennedy' clubs delivered -- and in return they wanted civil rights reforms, and appointments for Latinos to high-ranking civil service jobs and federal judgeships."
There were other obstacles to contender with, however, there was an expensive poll tax also affected many poor Mexican-Americans.
But did Kennedy really deliver for Latinos? Historian Ignacio M. Garcia said Kennedy says, no.
"He never quite got to the nitty gritty," Garcia said. "He never developed like Robert Kennedy did, who would become a good friend of César Chavez, or Edward Kennedy, who probably was the best Kennedy friend Latinos ever had."
"The candidate who the "Viva Kennedy" clubs supported never really existed," Garcia added. "That Kennedy was a useful invention for the fledgling national Latino vote."The Kennedy mystique allows them to create an agenda for their community, a national agenda, and Mexican-Americans now see themselves as a national community," Garcia said. "So Kennedy is very useful as that kind of tool."
But we will never really know what could have been after that fateful night, or if the Latino movement would have truly changed its course, but the fact is, at the end Kennedy was drawing attention to Latinos, which in turn, inspired them to reignite their spirits.The union representing Detroit's bus drivers has reportedly asked local lawmakers to put pressure on the transit agency to help stop the spread of bedbugs on buses.
The Detroit News reports that roughly 50 Detroit Department of Transportation (DDOT) drivers have said they've seen bedbugs on buses, and some have been bitten within the past year, according to Henry Gaffney, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 26.
After receiving a letter from Gaffney in May, DDOT chief executive Ron Freeland said Thursday he asked a maintenance crew to investigate and sent a letter to the union later that month saying any infested bus would be cleaned.
The amount of bedbugs the crew has found so far in the cleaning process isn't unusual for a service with an average of 100,000 riders each day, Freeland told the newspaper.
"I, personally, am not aware of any widespread problem," he said. "Where we do have problems, we are in fact dealing with it."
Any buses reported to have bedbugs will be cleaned and fumigated, Freeland said. If that doesn't kill them, the maintenance crew can put the vehicle in a paint booth and kill the bugs with heat.
Gaffney, however, said DDOT officials should be taking preventive measures by treating all of the agency's terminals and coaches.
"If this continues to get bad, you can't force anybody to work in those types of conditions," Gaffney told the newspaper. "It's not fair to the citizens either. Somebody's got to care somewhere in this city."
Click for more from the Detroit News.The hostility between the CPM and the BJP have been a part and parcel of Kerala’s political landscape but the present stand-off seems to be more than just the usual political one-upmanship.
In what looks like more of an irreversible do or die battle for supremacy in a state, which is the last recognised bastion of the Communist forces in the country, the RSS, which otherwise keeps away from getting caught in a political squabble, has certainly turned on the heat on its old adversary.
On Friday, when the Sah-Sarakaryvah or in simpler termed the joint general secretary of the RSS Dattatreya Hosabale, little known to the people of the Kerala, called a press meet at Delhi almost asking for the ouster of the Pinarayi Vijayan government on what he termed as a ‘complete breakdown of law and order in the state’, the message was clear: if the CPM does not rein its warring cadre in Kerala then the consequences would be bitter.
“The BJP and the RSS have lost 14 of its workers to the CPM brutality in Kerala and the government is not doing enough to stop this cycle of violence. The RSS never advocates president’s rule but if the state government is not able to discharge its Constitutional duties, then is there any other option?’’ Hosabale posed the question to mediapersons.
This is not the first time the RSS had raised the question of imposing the president’s rule in Kerala. It did that in January too when the violence in Kannur had reached suffocating levels with the BJP taking out a protest march in Delhi.
However, the present bout of political temperature is seen by many in Kerala as an attempt to not let the CPM and its chief minister wash their hands of their accountability. The RSS seems to have made up its mind to take control of the situation in Kerala and there are specific reasons for it. Towing the line of its ideological partner, the BJP has brought in Union minister Arun Jaitley whose visit to the state on Sunday would surely take this boiling issue to the brim.
Jaitley is set to visit the house of Rajesh, the RSS Karyavah from Thiruvananthapuram who was hacked to death by local goons owing allegiance to the CPM.
The defence minister who is expected to take part in a commemoration event for Rajesh would also meet other victims of alleged CPM brutality in the capital city.
If sources are to be believed, more such visits are likely in the coming few weeks.
RSS takes control
Political analysts in the state say that a strong intervention by the state RSS was inevitable considering the pitiable state of affairs that the BJP finds itself in.
That the BJP in the state had been on the back foot since the news of corruption stumbled out from within the party itself a few weeks ago, is a well-documented fact. If senior sources in the state unit are to be believed, Amit Shah has been terribly upset over the loss of face the party had suffered in Kerala.
“We should realise that in Kerala the RSS had always been more powerful than the BJP at the grassroots. In fact, there are more RSS shakhas in Kerala than in Gujarat. Now with the BJP state leadership proving to be an utter failure, it was only a matter of time until the RSS intervened. But then the situation becomes more precarious for the CPM as dealing with the RSS is not like dealing with the BJP which is a political party,’’ veteran journalist BRP Bhaskar told Firstpost.
The CPM leadership in Kerala which has gone into a huddle over these developments says that the RSS-BJP combine’s game plan is to break fragile peace process that has been set into motion by the Chief Minister at the behest of the State Governor this week.
The party claims that by stepping up tensions, the RSS is only helping the BJP to get away from the taint of corruption that has hit the state following revelations of taking kick back in the medical colleges' admission scam.
“Understandably, the RSS wants to keep up the tensions in Kerala because they want to divert the focus from the rampant corruption charge that has shamed the BJP in the state. So they will try all sorts of provocations. But we have given strict orders to our cadre to be restrained during this time,’’ Thomas Isaac, CPM leader and finance minister told Firstpost.
Political analysts also agree that keeping the focus on the present political tensions is a ploy to divert public attention from the corruption charges.
“For the BJP perhaps the biggest tool that the party now has against the state government is to inflate the issue of law and order. Dattatreya’s statement and Jaitley’s visit should be seen in that light. I am not saying that the CPM has not played its part in the political killings. Certainly, they have blood on their hands. But the BJP has now got a big political tool to wriggle out of the corruption taint,’’ noted political analyst NM Pearson told Firstpost.
CPM has itself to blame
Meanwhile, the central leadership of the CPM, which is equally upset over the turn of events, also agrees that if the BJP has been given a political tool on a platter then it is the state unit of the party that has to take the blame for it.
Sitaram Yechury is said to have spoken out on the issue at the polit bureau in Delhi which was then forced to issue a statement that portrayed the party as the victim of the alleged RSS attack in Kerala in reply to Dattatreya’s allegations.
This was followed by CPM state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan throwing an open challenge to Modi and team to dare dismiss the Pinarayi Vijayan government in Kerala.
But Kodiyeri’s statements seemed more like posturing as leaders such as Thomas Isaac went on to concede that the party had indeed fallen into BJP’s game plan and to answer their provocations with ‘an eye for an eye’ was nothing but political suicide.
“Our cadre should have been more responsible because we are the party in power. Take the case of that CPM councillor who was caught on camera attacking the BJP state office in Thiruvananthapuram. He was certainly angry when his house was attacked by the RSS. But you cannot let such emotions get the better of you. It compromises the party politically and you ultimately play into the hands of the Opposition,’’ Isaac added.
That the top brass of the CPM is shaken by this sustained political onslaught of the RSS is evident from Yechury's statement when he said that he was ready for a peace talk with the RSS supremo Mohan Bhagwat on the Kerala killings.
“It is actually baffling that Yechury expressed his desire to talk with a non-political entity like the RSS on such an issue. This clearly shows that the CPM is actually worried and is playing into the hands of the RSS and BJP,’’ added Bhaskar.
If the attack on the BJP state committee office at Thiruvananthapuram embarrassed the CPM, the killing of the RSS Karyavah put them totally on the back foot especially when the FIR claimed that the perpetrators had CPM connections.
It gave the BJP enough fodder to fire its cannons on the chief minister alleging that Vijayan has failed to prevent the deteriorating law and order situation especially when there was an intelligence input on the possibility of an attack on the BJP office.
A CCTV footage had clearly shown that those policemen standing guard at the BJP office were unable to prevent the attack and one police who tried to stop the attackers suffered injuries while other police personnel looked on as mute spectators.
That all this was happening in the heart of the city, in the dead of the night when the BJP state president was sleeping inside, helped the BJP inflame it as a total break down of law and order.
“The government makes promises that it will do everything possible to stop the violence but does nothing. We have held such peace talks before also but the CPM has never ever stood by any of the promises they have made in the past. Whenever there is a political murder, CPM will justify it and go into denial mode. All this only shows that the CPM has no commitment to end this violence,’’ BJP general secretary MT Ramesh told Firstpost.
Political activists point out that it is the lack of will on the part of the CPM leadership to restrain its cadre that is not giving a chance to end the cycle of violence.
“The CPM is in power in Kerala and it needs to ensure that law and order is intact. But how will you do it when the party itself thrives on political violence to keep its cadre in high spirits. CPM can never survive without advocating violent politics especially at a time when the party is losing relevance everywhere,’’ noted political activists CR Neelakandan told Firstpost.
The terror bogey
On Thursday and Friday, every English news channel in the country except the one facing the ire of the Income Tax department these days had gone to town with the political violence in Kerala. ‘Kerala’s Killing Fields’ were among the top trending topics over social media on these days.
The CPM has alleged that the BJP government at the Centre is using a section of the national media to keep the topic alive in the public perception and has unleashed an anti-Kerala campaign across north India featuring only the murders of RSS and BJP workers while concealing the murders committed on CPM cadre over the last three decades in the state.
But perhaps, what exceeded all limits was a claim by the RSS that the state government in Kerala was hand-in-glove with Islamic State recruiters and the recent episode of youngsters from the state travelling to Syria to fight for Islamic State was a result of this appeasement and soft approach.
“See the BJP is frustrated because in Kerala inspite of putting all efforts, they have so far not been able to polarise the voters or to get inroads the way they wanted. So now they are bringing in baseless allegations against the government so as to divide the people,’’ CPM polit bureau member from Kerala MA Baby told Firstpost.
On Sunday, the BJP has made elaborate plans for Jaitley to meet families of RSS and BJP workers who have been killed or maimed in alleged CPM attacks. The CPM, on the other hand, has demanded that the Union minister should meet the CPM families also who have lost their near and dear ones. This battle is certainly not likely to end anytime soon.
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.A US Senate committee hears that climate science is so intolerant and close-minded, the integrity and reputation of science itself is threatened.
The UN’s COP21 climate negotiations have now gone into overtime, but the agony will soon be over. Even at this late stage, the BBC website continues to uncritically parrot French government and UN officials. These negotiations are central to humanity’s well-being. They represent a “big step forward.”
The BBC tells us, also, that Jennifer Morgan feels “optimistic.” She’s described as global director of the Climate Program at the World Resources Institute. We aren’t alerted to the fact that Morgan used to be the WWF’s chief spokesperson on climate. Or that she led the WWF’s delegation to the 1997 Kyoto climate negotiations. In other words, in lieu of substantive commentary, the BBC serves up the remarks of a professional activist long invested in the UN negotiation process. As if there was any possibility she’d say something off-message.
So goes the climate game. Mindless media scribbling. Stale political theatre. Round and round. Over and over. Ben Pile, who authors the Climate-Resistance blog, has drawn my attention to video footage reporting on a 1972 UN environment conference (see Part 1 and Part 2). Set aside the vintage cars and hair styles, and this could be a dispatch from Paris. We were in the midst of an “environmental crisis” back then, too. Humanity was selfish and reckless. Capitalism was bad. The evidence was “overwhelming.” Oh, and poor countries were demanding that rich ones pay reparations.
Fast forward 43 years, and the same wheel continues to spin in the same hamster cage. Meanwhile, the BBC misses the real news. Its website contains dozens of stories about COP21 and not a single report on the most electrifying development in the climate world this week. It didn’t take place in Paris, but in Washington, D.C.
A committee of the US Senate held a hearing on Tuesday titled: Data or Dogma? Promoting Open Inquiry in the Debate Over the Magnitude of the Human Impact on Earth’s Climate. Climatologist Judith Curry, of Georgia Tech University, provided verbal and written testimony. She described the “enormous pressure” those who work in climate science are under to conform to a single point-of-view. This state of affairs, she says, “risks destroying science’s reputation for honesty and objectivity.”
Anyone who truly cares about the good name of science should be alarmed by Curry’s testimony. Any parent genuinely worried about how climate change might affect their children deserves to hear that this highly qualified scientist thinks her profession has gone astray. That important avenues of research have been systematically ignored. That the data on which momentous conclusions have been based “is sparse and inadequate.” That, in its eagerness to pin the blame on humanity, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has paid insufficient attention “to natural causes of climate change, in particular from the sun and from the long-term oscillations in ocean circulations.”
Journalist Mark Steyn also testified at that hearing. As a vigorous advocate of free speech, he looks at the climate world and sees what I see: intolerance, disgraceful leadership, dishonourable conduct, and an appalling absence of maturity and fair play. To quote from Steyn’s written testimony:
too many people within the climate cartel are demanding that dissent from the alleged “consensus” should be not merely a civil offense but a criminal one – and far too many legislators and bureaucrats are willing to entertain it. Your colleague, Senator Whitehouse, is among those who favor criminal penalties for those who disagree with him on climate policy.
Humans are fallible. We make mistakes all the time – individually and collectively. But mistakes can only be identified and a more sensible course of action can only be pursued when people are free to speak their minds. Any milieu in which dissent is associated with the destruction of one’s career is, by definition, unscientific.
Both Curry and Steyn argue persuasively that climate science is broken. This simple idea calls everything happening in Paris into question. It raises the serious possibility that the global warming diagnosis is flat-out wrong.
The public has a right to know this. Shame on the BBC for keeping its audience in the dark.
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Economic Calendar 5/11/2015
Morning Notes
US Futures are lower this morning after Friday’s surge higher.European Markets are trading lower ahead of a meeting with Greek and Eurozone officials attempt to work out details for a debt deal. Asian Markets closed higher and China announced they were increasing stimulus and slashing interest rates.
Technicals
The $SPY broke through descending resistance and closed higher on Friday at $211.62. New upper support will be $211 and resistance at $212.25
In Play
ICLD: InterCloud Systems – The Company announced it will release Q1 earnings results early and scheduled a conference call for Wednesday May 13. Gapping up 7% with a 14.4M share float.
ZU: Zulily – The Company announced that Alibaba (BABA) has boosted their stake in the company to 9.3%. Gapping up 20% with a 56M share float.
CANF: Can-Fite Biopharma – The Company announced that its Liver Cancer Trial drug has been approved for use in Europe. Gapping up 15% with a 9.3M share float.
CDTI: Clean Diesel Technology – The Company announced that it will be supplying its proprietary diesel filters to the New York Department of Sanitation Fleet. Gapping up 25% with a 13M share float.
Economic Calendar
NONE
Earnings Before Open
ACT: Actavis – EPS Est. $3.94. Rev Est. $4.04B
DF: Dean Foods – EPS Est. $0.17. Rev Est. $2.11B
DISH: Dish Network – EPS Est. $0.40. Rev Est. $3.47B
SSYS: Stratasys – EPS Est. $0.03. Rev Est. $172.57M
PLUG: Plug Power – EPS Est. $(0.06). Rev Est. $17.20M
Earnings After Close
JOBS: 51job – EPS Est. $0.37. Rev Est. $76.62M
RAX: Rackspace – EPS Est. $0.20. Rev Est. $481.71M
SF: Stifel Financial – EPS Est. $0.73. Rev Est. $590.73M
ORIG: Ocean Rig UDW – EPS Est. $0.08. Rev Est. $369.44M
MDR: McDermott Int’l – EPS Est. $(0.08). Rev Est. $750.43M
Happy Trading!This letter was written by an experienced academic at ANU to her PhD student, who had just presented his research to a review panel and was still licking her wounds.
The student sent it to me and I thought it was a great response I asked the academic in question, and the student who received it, if I could publish it. I wish all of us could have such nuanced and thoughtfu feedback during the PhD. I hope you enjoy it.
A letter to…My PhD student after her upgradeWell you did it. You got your upgrade. But from the look on your face I could tell you thought it was a hollow victory. The professors did their job and put the boot in. I remember seeing that look in the mirror after my own viva. Why does a win in academia always have the sting of defeat?
Yeah, it’s a funny business, I know.
We all have a deep, interior need for approval. But in this game, no-one will ever smile and give you a gold star. Instead you get “feedback”. We’re supposed receive feedback like a gift, but it feels like a rebuke.Few things are more agonising than a thorough dressing down of your work. Bear in mind that academics are never taught properly how to give feedback, which is why it’s such a slippery, contradictory, prickly process. As a PhD student, you’re not taught to receive feedback either, just to nod in acquiescence. Part of becoming a scholar is learning to receive feedback in a way that is constructive for you, not simply to please others. To make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. That kind of thing. Idioms have never been my forte.
So how to do that? Don’t ever import feedback wholesale, or promise to either. Think about it and see what works for you. Some of it will be really useful but a lot won’t or won’t make much sense immediately. I often find that feedback misses the mark somehow. Don’t ignore it because the comment seems misguided. Think about the processes your reviewer went through to misunderstand something. What can you do to make sure your readers don’t stray from the path? Point is some feedback might be relevant, some completely irrelevant, and some feedback might be slightly off-course. The key to feedback is that you need to work to put it to service to your work. It’s usually not a natural fit.
Personally, I try to remember that when people engage with me and my work, it’s a great compliment as they are giving me their free time and intellectual energy. Critical feedback is actually the best kind of feedback because it helps you grow. It’s exciting when someone has shifted their intellectual gears to understand what you’re trying to do and point out where you’re missing the mark. When a supervisor waves her hand and says great great great, you know they’re just shuffling you along. Sometimes an empirical or comparative or ‘what about…?’ question, is just filling in the time.
On the feedback spectrum, the very worst thing is silence. It means you didn’t provoke any thoughts at all.
Whenever I receive written feedback, I cast my eyes quickly over it. Inevitably there’s something that causes pain or anger but I try not to read the comments too intently. I immediately thank the person/editor via email and tell them how I much I appreciate their time and that of the reviewers and that I’ll think about it for a little while and get back to them.
This is a lie.
Instead, I brood, and gnash my teeth. I get angry and upset. I call it the grief cycle. I focus on the grieving and I don’t talk about the feedback or allow myself to form solid opinions about it. It might take days, weeks or months, but when I’ve finally emerged out of the other side, I open up the feedback and give it a proper read. When I’m really really ready, I open up a blank document and I number each piece of feedback and formulate a response to it. Point is, you need some time off from it before you can set your mind to stringing together that mish-mash of advice and suggestions to something that works for you.
It took me years to work out that doing a PhD is not just writing clever thoughts into chapters. It’s a personal endeavour that demands you rewrite your personhood too. You have to fortify yourself and manage that voice inside that tells you you’re no good. You have to build resilience. Resilience will help you go sober, and detox from the Pavlovian need for approval. Everyone has to work out what works for them in this regard but working on the emotional dimensions of your work, the emotions you generate about your work that determine how your work, is integral to actually finishing your PhD.
Here is a short summary of what my friends and I have done at various stages of the PhD and post-doc process to cope:
Bury yourself in self-help books, particularly those with a cognitive behavioural therapy element. Do the exercises in the book. Yes. Really.
Start seeking out post grad activities/workshops/writing groups etc. Make doing the PhD a social process, not you in a room.
That said, surround yourself with strong, supportive people who will rejoice in your success. Actively eliminate the vipers. They’ll slow you down.
Find a good mentor who is separate from your panel/supervision, and that might include someone with a PhD in the workforce. They will remind you that life is swings and roundabouts and lots of successful people spend years in the roundabouts.
Learn to prioritise your well-being. Working until 2am because you did nothing until 5pm is not prioritising your well-being.
Take up meditation.
Always exercise. Yes. Really. Everyday. Just do it.
Develop a routine. Writing 10-12. Lunch 1-2. Seminar 2-3. Writing 3-5. Stick to it.
One thing that has been particularly helpful for me has been to draw parallels with others in the creative process. Every time you consume something – a song, a radio program, an editorial – remember that like your thesis it has been loved and laboured into being. That there’s so much work out there is something of a miracle. It speaks to the legions of people out there, who without spiffy titles, salaries, awards or clapping hands, give their all to a creative pursuit; a painting, a piece of writing that they labour from nothing into being. Feel wonder at their courage and determination and how they have given themselves up to the simple, grinding need to create. You are one of them now.
Finally, resilience comes when you realise that you have self worth. You have worth regardless of how that last piece of writing went. You have worth whether you get this PhD or not. You have worth simply because you are here and you exist.
Doing a PhD is hard. It’s supposed to be otherwise everyone would have one. It’s nothing like the study you’ve done before, not even a Masters. It’s supposed to break you and turn you into something else. In that way, we might think of it as a four year hazing. You’ll get through it and you’ll be a stronger and richer person for it but understand that scholarly work taxes your personhood. So as part of being a scholar, you have to devote some energy on working on yourself too.Nanoparticles can damage the DNA of cells some distance away, even when the cells seem safe behind an impassable barrier of tissue, new research has found.
But what does this curious finding, revealed yesterday by researchers at the University of Bristol, UK, mean about the safety of nanoparticles and medical treatments based on them? New Scientist puts the news in context.
Did the experiment represent something that could happen in my body?
The experimental set-up was entirely artificial, and nothing like it occurs naturally in humans or animals. Nor are the nanoparticles in question used in any current treatments, experimental or otherwise.
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The tissue barrier, about four cells deep, was made from “BeWo” human cancer cells. They are a standard cell line that has become well adapted to lab work, making them very different to any cells found in the body.
The nanoparticles were 30-nanometre-wide beads of surgical cobalt-chromium alloy, a material used in much larger pieces to make surgical implants such as hip prostheses.
The “target” cells on the other side of the BeWo barrier to the nanoparticles were human fibroblast cells, found in skin and connective tissue.
What exactly were the results?
After a day in a lab dish, DNA damage was discovered in the fibroblasts. It wasn’t extensive, but included single and double-strand breaks in DNA, and abnormal chromosome doubling in some cells. Careful checking found no leaks in the barrier, and no cobalt-chromium beads on the wrong side of it.
How could that happen?
The nanoparticles directly influenced the nearest layer of barrier cells and disrupted their mitochondria – chambers where energy is generated and stored.
That released signalling molecules – mainly the energy-transport molecule adenosine triphosphate (ATP) – which in turn triggered a cascade of biochemical messages inside the cell. That signalling storm eventually reached the other side of the barrier cell, opening channels that spread the message to the next layer of barrier cells.
This Chinese-whispers process continued until signalling molecules reached the fibroblasts, somehow damaging their DNA – the researchers don’t yet know how this happened.
How do we know that’s what happened?
When compounds that block the “message” channels in cell membranes were added to the dish, there was no damage to fibroblasts.
What is special about these nanoparticles that lets them do this?
Nothing, really. Further experiments showed that there are ways to transmit the ghostly messages without using nanoparticles.
Solutions containing cobalt or chromium ions caused the same damage to fibroblasts. So did using much larger particles of cobalt-chromium in place of the nanoparticles.
Might other kinds of chemicals, drugs and nanoparticles perform this trick too?
Possibly, but the only way of finding out is to test a wider range of substances using the same experimental set-up.
Hundreds of thousands of people receive cobalt-chromium implants every year, and there has been no evidence of ill effects reported.
Could the same effect occur naturally?
Possibly, but we don’t know yet. “Maybe small particles like viruses or prions act through these processes too,” says Patrick Case, who led the research.
Does this suggest that all nanoparticles may be unsafe?
No. There are hundreds of nanostructures under development and being tested as possible medical treatments and for other uses. It would be ridiculous to suppose that they would or could all cause this phenomenon.
What about skin creams like sunblocks that contain nanoparticles? Might they cause unknown effects below the skin?
Possibly. But again, this is such a newly discovered phenomenon that it’s too soon to say. The researchers are adamant that their set-up can’t and shouldn’t be extrapolated to any structures in the human body.
Is more research into the new phenomenon planned?
Yes. Experiments are planned to see if other nanoparticles or chemicals can perform the same trick.
It will also be fascinating to see if signalling is possible across the body’s natural barriers, such as the skin, placenta or blood brain barrier.
Much research is trying to design drug molecules able to cross such barriers, which can act as very specific filters. But it may be possible to exploit this newly discovered effect to avoid having to cross them altogether.
Journal reference: Nature Nanotechnology, DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2009.313The Orlando Magic trotted out a fairly simple contest via Twitter. Using just three words, they asked fans to sum up the franchise's offseason. It must be their social media manager's first day because the trolls had a field day with this misguided tweet.
Describe our offseason in three words... #2016In3Words pic.twitter.com/NGm1rb2syk — Orlando Magic (@OrlandoMagic) July 16, 2016
Let's have a look at how the masses responded....
The Magic did send Victor Oladipo, Ersan Ilyasova, and Domantas Sabonis to Oklahoma City for the declining Serge Ibaka.
@OrlandoMagic a tad confusing — Benoît Lelièvre (@BenoitLelievre) July 16, 2016
I agree, most of their moves didn't make much sense.
@orlandomagic Why the trade — Kevin Kvasnok (@KevinKvasnok12) July 16, 2016
Plenty of trade hate out in the Twitterverse.
@OrlandoMagic maybe next year — Randy Oreens (@ItBegins2012) July 16, 2016
Doesn't seem quite as hopeful as when Chicago Cubs fans say it.
@OrlandoMagic horrible life decisions — Preston Scott McGraw (@preston_mcgraw) July 16, 2016
Now the knives are coming out.
I'm surprised he didn't opt for the 100 emoji.
I'm sensing a theme here.
If that one doesn't make you laugh, you're probably working in the Magic front office.
That's actually the nicest one I could find.
For our best sports content and jokes, follow @12up on Twitter.
And for everything you missed, swing by our Facebook page!SEATTLE - People diagnosed with cancer are more than two-and-a-half times more likely to declare bankruptcy than those without cancer, according to a new study from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Researchers also found that younger cancer patients had two- to five-fold higher bankruptcy rates compared to older patients, and that overall bankruptcy filings increased as time passed following diagnosis.
The study, led by corresponding author Scott Ramsey, M.D., Ph.D., an internist and health economist at Fred Hutch, was published online on May 15 as a Web First in the journal Health Affairs. The article will also appear in the journal's June edition.
Ramsey and colleagues, including a chief judge for a U.S. Bankruptcy Court, undertook the research because the relationship between receiving a cancer diagnosis and bankruptcy is less well understood than the
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66 seconds with the football before throwing it this year, the 10th-longest average in the NFL. In the second half against the Lions, though, the ball came out quick. He averaged just 2.17 seconds before his throws, which would have been the fourth-quickest average pass rate in Week 17. And in general, Rodgers doesn’t slip too much when he gets the ball out quick. On throws that came after he held on to the ball for two seconds or less this season, Rodgers was second in the league in QBR.
Really, as you might suspect, Rodgers was great no matter how you split things on offense. He posted the third-best QBR on throws outside the pocket and the third-best QBR on throws inside the pocket. He had the league’s third-best QBR on throws traveling 15 yards or more in the air and the second-best QBR on throws that traveled 14 yards or less in the air. Rodgers had the league’s second-best QBR on throws outside the numbers, the league’s ninth-best QBR on throws between the numbers and hashes, and the best QBR on throws between the hashes, a staggering 99.8 figure. That should matter even more on Sunday, with the Packers likely trying to give Rodgers routes that break into the middle of the field to make for easier completions.
And likewise, the Cowboys pass defense isn’t significantly better or worse in most notable splits. The difference is that Rodgers ranks in the top three in just about every style of quarterback play you can imagine, while the Cowboys pass defense often ranks between 21st and 26th in opposing QBR. They’re 22nd against throws out of the pistol or shotgun and 25th on throws from under center. The Dallas defense is 21st on throws coming from inside the pocket and 25th on throws from outside the pocket. It’s 26th on passes that come out after just two seconds or less. You get the idea. This is a dominant passing attack against a pretty middling pass defense.
It’s also not an especially healthy pass defense. The Cowboys could be without as many as four defensive contributors on Sunday, although it also wouldn’t be a surprise to see all four of them go. McClain suffered a concussion and may miss the game, while Jeremy Mincey was added to the injury report with concussion symptoms on Wednesday. Neither defender has practiced this week. Anthony Spencer and DeMarcus Lawrence chipped in against the Lions with some fourth-quarter pass rushing and would play bigger roles with Mincey out. The now-infamous Anthony Hitchens is working through a high ankle sprain that might be a bigger problem than Dallas was previously letting on, and defensive tackle Terrell McClain is dealing with a low ankle sprain. None of this is good for the Cowboys, who lacked depth even before dealing with a string of injuries.
Dare to Dream
What is good for the Cowboys is how they match up with the Packers when Dallas has the football. Forget the Lions, who were a brutal matchup for Dallas given their dominant run defense. Green Bay’s weaknesses play into what Dallas does best on offense.
That starts, naturally, with running the football. Green Bay is far better defending the pass (against which it’s 11th in DVOA) than it is against the run, where it’s just 24th. Things didn’t get much better after the Packers turned Clay Matthews into an occasional inside linebacker in November, either, as Green Bay was 24th in DVOA against the run during the first half of the season and improved only to 20th during the second half of the campaign.
The Packers even struggle in the exact spot where the Cowboys run the ball best. Dallas loathes running the ball directly up the gut and instead chooses to run far more frequently behind its tackles. Thirty-six percent of Dallas’s carries this year went to left end or behind left tackle, which was the highest rate in football. The Cowboys’ vaunted offensive line was also wildly successful on those runs, producing the league’s sixth-most Adjusted Line Yards on runs behind left end and the third-best rate on runs at the left tackle.
Green Bay? It had problems. Teams ran toward its right side (the left side of the offense) at a league-average frequency, but fared well in the process. The Packers’ defensive front was 28th in Adjusted Line Yards allowed to left end and 30th on runs at left tackle. It got beaten up. Otherwise, the Packers ranked between 16th and 19th in runs to the rest of the field, so it wasn’t just a product of a bad defense; there’s something legitimate to worry about when Dallas runs DeMarco Murray to the left on Sunday. Given the likelihood that right tackle Doug Free will miss another game, the Packers can expect Jason Garrett & Co. to run behind the left side of the line even more frequently.
And when teams threw the ball against the Packers, their most relevant weak point came against no. 1 receivers, for whom they posted the league’s 14th-best defensive DVOA. Green Bay is in the top 10 in covering all other wideouts, and while it keeps no. 2 and no. 3 wideouts below league-average yardage totals, the Packers are allowing opposing no. 1s 71.5 yards per game, just above the league-average of 68.9. That plays into Dallas’s passing attack, built around the many talents of one Dez Bryant.
Interestingly enough, the Packers also have an enormous split in terms of DVOA by side. They’ve posted the league’s best DVOA (minus-37.6 percent) on throws to the right side of the offense, meaning they’re going up against the left cornerback, which is Tramon Williams’s side of the field. Elsewhere, Green Bay is 22nd in DVOA on throws to the left side of the field (where Sam Shields lies in wait) and a brutal 29th on throws up the middle. The Cowboys don’t keep their receivers on one side; Bryant has 39 receptions on throws toward the left side of the field and 43 on throws to the right side.
The one way the Packers do match up well against the Cowboys is the way in which they like to get off the field: takeaways. The Packers have often been a team that relies heavily on turnovers under Dom Capers, and this is no exception in 2014. The Packers are 26th in three-and-outs on defense and force punts on only 36.5 percent of opposing possessions, the sixth-worst rate in the league. They make up for all of that by forcing turnovers on 15.3 percent of opposing possessions, the fourth-best rate in football.
The Cowboys, for all their offensive strengths, still have a problem with turnovers. They give the ball away on 13.5 percent of their own possessions, the ninth-worst rate in the league. To be fair, most of that is on fumbles, where the Cowboys have been a little unlucky, recovering just seven of 21 on offense.
They’re also even more dependent upon the turnover on defense than Green Bay, and that’s where I’d be worried if I were a Dallas fan. No defense in the league needed takeaways more than the Cowboys, as they led the NFL by ending 17.2 percent of their defensive drives this year with turnovers. The problem is that the Packers simply don’t turn the ball over, coughing the ball up on 7.4 percent of their own possessions. Only the Seahawks narrowly managed to give the ball away less frequently than the Packers did. If the Cowboys can’t harass an injured Rodgers into making dangerous throws or get a fumble out of Lacy, they might not be able to stop the Green Bay offense. And while it’s not necessarily a problem for the Cowboys if things do devolve into a shootout because of how good their offense can be, shootouts with Aaron Rodgers in Lambeau can be a dangerous proposition.
Indianapolis Colts at Denver Broncos
There’s no other way to talk about this matchup than by starting with the question of whether Peyton Manning is going to be Peyton Manning in these playoffs. While I don’t doubt that there’s something to be worried about with the listed thigh injury that slowed him during and after Week 15, I also don’t think that’s going to be something that dramatically affects Manning’s game, given that he’s basically a statue on a good day. The guy played through a high ankle sprain last season and put up one of the greatest offensive seasons in NFL history. I’m not especially concerned about his thigh.
The bigger concern is — as I mentioned in the intro — the dramatic shift in the Denver game plan over the final six weeks of the season. Let’s run that back and see if the style change seems to hint at a serious injury to Peyton Manning.
Peyton of Bricks
In Week 11, the Broncos went to St. Louis and left with their tail between their legs. The Rams showed Denver up in a comfortable 22-7 victory, with those lone seven points representing the worst offensive performance from the Broncos since Manning joined the team in 2012. It wasn’t a particularly physical game for Manning, who was sacked twice and knocked down four times, but he did stay at the helm of an offense that went particularly pass-happy.
Despite losing Julius Thomas to the ankle injury that would basically cost him the rest of the season and Emmanuel Sanders to a concussion, the Broncos almost totally abandoned the run and went with short pass after short pass. With Montee Ball also leaving the game with a groin injury, the Broncos ran the ball just nine times, with all nine carries going to C.J. Anderson, who had seen his first significant action of the season the previous week in a blowout win over the Raiders.
Manning threw the ball 54 times in that game, and while those throws produced 389 yards, it wasn’t an effective performance. He threw two picks, one of which was basically a desperation throw late in the fourth quarter. The Broncos were repeatedly behind the down-and-distance schedule and went just 4-of-15 on third and fourth downs, while their defense was forced to spend almost 36 minutes on the field.
The change in Denver’s offensive scheme since then is clear, tangible, and undeniable. The Broncos followed that run-free Rams game by having Manning hand the ball off on 10 of their first 13 plays from scrimmage against the Dolphins in Week 12 and haven’t looked back. Denver has become a run-first team to a shocking extent.
Through that St. Louis game in Week 11, the Broncos ran the ball on just 36.4 percent of their offensive snaps, the sixth-lowest rate in football. Since then, the Anderson-led attack has run the ball 50.0 percent of the time. That’s the seventh-highest run/pass split in football over that time frame. The second-year back has picked up a league-leading 648 rushing yards and eight rushing touchdowns since his cameo in the Rams game, and his 140 carries are second only to DeMarco Murray, who is being exploited for sport by the Cowboys. And while it seems weird, it’s also fair to note that the Broncos have actually scored slightly more since making the change; they averaged 29.3 points per game through the Rams loss and have averaged 31.5 points per game during their 5-1 finish to the regular season.
The running attack has had the impact of insulating Manning from pass pressure, but that wasn’t a problem for the Broncos to begin with. Through the Rams game, Manning was being pressured on just 15.1 percent of his dropbacks, which was the lowest rate in football. Since then, he’s been getting pressured an unreal-low 10.5 percent of the time, which is eons away from anybody else. Over that same period, the second-least pressured quarterback has been Ben Roethlisberger, who’s been bothered by the opposing pass rush 16.6 percent of the time. He’s closer to ninth place than he is to Manning in first. It’s unreal.
You would figure that Manning is getting the ball out quickly to avoid any hint of a rush, and that’s true, but it’s another thing he was already focusing on before the move to an Anderson-based attack occurred. He got the ball out after an average of just 2.26 seconds through that Rams game, the second-fastest rate in football. Since then, he’s down to 2.13 seconds before passing, which is no. 1 over the past six weeks.
And then there’s the critical mistake, the one I made myself before looking at what Manning’s actually done. You would figure that Manning would be making shorter throws, and if you have an offense that’s getting the ball out quicker, running it way more frequently, and keeping Manning from making deep throws, that’s probably enough anecdotal evidence to suggest that there’s something to the injury theory. Except he’s not making shorter throws. Manning’s average pass over the past six weeks has traveled a full yard farther in the air than it did through that Rams game. He was right around league average — 16th, at 8.1 air yards per pass — in terms of his typical pass distance through Week 11. He’s at sixth since then, throwing passes that have averaged 9.1 yards in the air.
An impressive 25.3 percent of Manning’s post-Rams passes have gone 15 yards or more in the air, up from 20.4 percent through the Rams outing. And while you might easily hop onto the idea that those passes haven’t been very successful, Manning’s decline isn’t all that significant. He was sixth in QBR on throws traveling 15 yards or more in the air before the offensive switchover. Over the last six weeks, he’s fallen to just 10th. And remember that QBR attempts to judge a quarterback’s contributions to the play as opposed to the work of his receivers, so this isn’t Demaryius Thomas bailing Manning out, either.
Truthfully, Manning hasn’t slipped all that much. His QBR has fallen over these two periods, but only from third (at 80.0) through the Rams game to eighth (at 70.9) over the six games since. That’s a decline, but is it really such an obvious decline that it couldn’t have happened by chance? Consider that, over the same time splits, Andrew Luck posted the league’s seventh-best QBR through Week 11 and fell all way to 21st afterward, posting a QBR worse than Geno Smith, Kyle Orton, and Drew Stanton. Was that inherently a sign that Luck was injured or wouldn’t be able to push things forward once the playoffs began? If you saw Luck dismantle the Bengals last week, you know the answer to those questions is no.
Instead, I think there’s probably a combination of factors that led the Broncos to move toward a run-happy approach. One was the absence of Julius Thomas, which left Manning without a critical intermediate option and actually had a far more tangible impact on Manning’s performance than any other number I can find. Through that Rams game, Manning posted a 97.1 QBR in the red zone, the best figure in football. Julius Thomas was obviously the primary weapon on those throws, as he led all players in red zone receptions (13), yards (94, tied with Demaryius Thomas), and touchdowns (nine) through the Rams game.
Afterward, with Julius Thomas inactive or ineffective because of his ankle injury, Manning’s red zone QBR fell all the way to 56.8, which was 15th in the league. The Broncos went away from throwing the ball in the red zone, after having passed more frequently than any team besides the Bears inside the opposition 20 through that Rams game. Since then, they’ve run the ball 42.5 percent of the time in the red zone, which is right around league average (45 percent). Julius Thomas wasn’t anywhere near 100 percent when he returned late in the season, so if he’s made it back closer to his so-easy self, it could be all the impetus Manning needs.
My suspicion is that the Broncos made the changes in their offense not to mask or overcome a Manning injury, but instead to prevent one. It would have been easy to see the strain on Manning after that Rams game, when the Broncos had basically abandoned the run and left the entire game on his shoulders. At 38, even given how great Manning can be on a per-play basis, that’s probably not the prudent thing to do.
Maybe the Broncos were worried that Manning’s arm would wear down if they kept using him as frequently as they were heading out of the Rams game. Last year, including the playoffs, Manning averaged exactly 41 passes per game and had thrown a whopping 738 passes heading into the Super Bowl. The only quarterbacks in the history of football to throw that many passes before the Super Bowl were Drew Brees in 2011 and Drew Bledsoe in 1994. While I would hardly blame Manning alone for the Super Bowl loss, it’s fair to wonder whether he might have been able to do more with a sprier arm.
This year? Through that Rams game, Manning was averaging … 40.7 passes per game. That’s not acceptable. I think the Broncos deliberately cut down his workload to keep his arm fresh for the playoffs, and Manning will enter having thrown just 31.7 passes per contest over those final six games, in addition to the first-round bye his team just received.
Furthermore, even within the games in which Manning was supposed to be injured, he played stretches of good football. Take the one loss the Broncos have suffered over the past six weeks, the 37-28 loss to Cincinnati in which Manning threw four picks and finished with an ugly pick-six to Dre Kirkpatrick. If Manning were hurt, that would have been a consistently poor performance from start to finish. Instead, it was an inconsistent showing. He pieced together a few successful drives on the strength of his arm, notably the nine-play, 79-yard possession in the third quarter that saw Manning account for 68 of the 79 yards.
I’ll buy the idea that Manning had a bit of a dead arm, that he needed to be saved from a ridiculous workload, that he isn’t going to be the same player he was at his peak. Sure. But the evidence that he’s got some sort of neck, arm, shoulder, or elbow injury just really isn’t there in spades the way that the stories make it out to be. If Manning’s injured, we’ll know more about it this time next week. And if he’s not — and keep in mind that we were all sure Cam Newton was injured and needed to go on IR at the beginning of December — the Colts are in trouble.
It’s not hard to imagine a Colts win if Manning is 60 percent of his normal self. Indianapolis shuts down the running game, Luck throws against a Denver secondary that can be beaten in the middle and finds T.Y. Hilton for a few big plays, and the Colts get an enormous day out of their specialists in the thin air of Denver, with Adam Vinatieri hitting from 50-plus while Pat McAfee flips field position over and over again for Indianapolis. But if Manning is his usual self, the Colts probably don’t have the talent or athleticism to keep up with the Broncos.One in three Americans has put off seeking medical treatment in 2014 due to high costs, according to Gallup — the highest percentage since Gallup began asking the question in 2001.
Thirty-three percent of Americans have delayed medical treatment for themselves or their families because of the costs they’d have to pay, according to the survey. Obamacare, of course, had promised that it would help make health care more affordable for everyone, but the number of people who can’t afford a trip to the doctor has actually risen three points since 2013, before most Obamacare provisions took effect.
The hardest-hit: the middle-class. Americans with an annual household income of between $30,000 and $75,000 began delaying medical care over costs more in 2014, up to 38 percent in 2014 from 33 percent last year; among households that earn above $75,000, 28 percent delayed care this year, compared to just 17 percent last year.
The lowest-income section, some of whom can take part in Medicaid and who are more likely to qualify for significant premium and cost-sharing subsidies on an Obamacare exchange, are less likely to delay care this year. Now, 35 percent of those who earn under $30,000 a year are putting off seeking medical care, down from 43 percent last year.
It’s a remarkable shift: after Obamacare’s redistribution of wealth, the middle class is actually delaying medical care due to high costs at a higher rate than the poorest section of the country, which is highly subsidized by taxpayers.
The growing problem could have serious consequences for the middle-class. Twice as many people (22 percent) have delayed treatment for serious illnesses than than for smaller problems (11 percent).
Part of the problem is an ongoing shift towards higher deductibles and out-of-pocket costs, while health insurance premiums continue to rise all the same. The trend, which existed to some extent before Obamacare, increased in intensity with the onset of the health-care law. (RELATED: 4 Of 5 Companies May Hike Deductibles Due To Obamacare)
Some health policy experts argue that the trend helps cut down on wasteful health care spending. But those who already had health coverage, in many cases, are seeing their deductibles go up along with their premiums, making it more difficult than ever to afford medical care itself, on top of now-mandatory medical insurance.
Gallup’s results corroborate what many Obamacare supporters have confirmed about the health-care law: while it’s named the Affordable Care Act, its purpose was to increase the number of Americans with health insurance, not to make it more affordable for everyone.
New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate, admitted this week that congressional Democrats should not have passed Obamacare in 2010 because it didn’t benefit most of the middle class. (RELATED: Chuck Schumer: We Shouldn’t Have Passed Obamacare In 2010)
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Legendary sportscaster, and former NFL player, Pat Summerall is the only football player in NFL history to have been coached by both Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry at the same time.
Landry’s and Lombardi’s names are synonymous with the NFL, both, while dead, became legends of the game within their own lifetimes. If there were a Mt. Rushmore for NFL head coaches, they both would be on it.
And they both cut their teeth together, coaching at the same time for the New York Football Giants in the 1950's.
In 1958, Summerall, a kicker, offensive starter and defensive reserve, came to the New York Giants from the Chicago Cardinals, and his new offensive coordinator was Lombardi, and his new defensive coordinator was Tom Landry.
In an exclusive interview with Bleacher Report, Summerall and I spent 10 minutes discussing his new book Giants, What I Learned About Life From Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry that Summerall co-wrote with Michael Levin.
First Summerall endured a bit of culture shock coming from the Giants to the Cardinals. “The Cardinals physical talent was the same as the Giants, but the Giants had smarter players, and smarter coaches,” said Summerall.
I asked Summerall to elaborate on that point, and to what degree of responsibility to the legendary Giants owner Wellington Mara bore for the stability of the Giants organization. “The way it was presented, the way it was taught, and the equipment and surroundings, such class with the Giants. I know there wasn’t any comparison, the way they ran the operation. The way the Maras ran things, the class with which they conducted themselves from the front office on down, I think that class transpired onto the field,” he said.
In many ways Lombardi and Landry were the fathers of modern style NFL coaching. Summerall summarized, “If you made a physical mistake, it's because you didn’t do it enough. If you made a mistake mentally, than they just figured it was just beyond your command to understand what they were doing."
But the values Lombardi and Landry instilled in Summerall went beyond the football field, as the title of his book would suggest.
“The value of preparation (that they instilled in me) helped me greatly in the broadcasting business: To present what you are saying like you believe in what you are saying. The way Landry and Lombardi always had confidence in what they were doing. The confidence with which they taught and their belief in preparation taught me how to broadcast football and how to live life.”
But a surprising topic emerged when talking about the 2010 NFL season. When I asked Summerall what current NFL head coach reminded him of either Lombardi or Landry I was half expecting him to say Bill Belichick, Tom Coughlin or some other veteran coach but I was wrong.
“I think that the new coach of the Dallas Cowboys, Jason Garrett, is all business. He has that Lombardi way of presenting what he wants done, that business-like approach, no stone unturned, the confidence in what he is saying, it makes him sound like Lombardi, and sound like he has the same approach. I am not sure the success is going to be the same, but he sounds like a very effective teacher."
At first, I was surprised by the answer, even though Garrett’s Cowboys just defeated a very talented and heavily favored New York Giants team. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense.
Garrett has a reputation for being viciously honest with his players in film sessions; embarrassing many players in front of their peers. He is also incredibly detailed and meticulous; offensive plays are detailed down to the number of steps a receiver should use on his route or offensive tackle should use in his pass protection.
But Garrett is also known, like Lombardi, for having a very fiery personality and having very strong leadership traits. Perhaps like Lombardi’s players, the current Cowboys may not like Garrett, but they fear him.
While Landry and Lombardi were both assistants with the Giants at the same time, and went on to have Hall of Fame careers as head coaches with other teams, they had very different personalities.
But Summerall explained that despite their differences in personality their similarities were just as striking, “Lombardi and Landry were almost opposites in how they presented things,” he explained. "Both were very confident in what they said, both prided themselves on the fact that if you asked either of them what they would have done if they hadn’t coached, it was teach. And both were just such effective teachers. They both believed their way was the best way to win, and in most cases they turned out to be right.”
Landry left the Giants to coach the Dallas Cowboys in 1959 and quickly established a legendary tradition. Landry guided the Cowboys to 20 consecutive winning seasons, two Super Bowls and 20 playoff victories.
“With Landry you never knew where you stood, and his Landry’s engineering degree was obvious in the ways he taught us,” said Summerall.
Landry was a pioneer of NFL defenses, as he invented the 4-3 defense while a defensive coordinator with the New York Giants. He created and schemed like he was building a complicated machine, which makes sense considering the fact that he studied to be an engineer.
Vince Lombardi left the Giants to be head coach of the Green Bay Packers at the end of the 1958 season. While with the Packers as head coach from 1959-1967, Lombardi won five NFL championships, two Super Bowls and had only one loss in his career in the playoffs.
Lombardi was a very meticulous offensive coordinator who introduced the concept of precision to offenses in a way that had never before been seen. “Lombardi was incredibly meticulous, this step has to be that way, this much length,” he explained.
But Lombardi wasn’t the quiet engineer Landry was; he was a bombastic and emotional, considered one of the most natural and inspirational leaders the NFL has ever seen. Public regard for his leadership was so intense during Lombardi’s lifetime that when Richard Nixon was running for President for a second time, he strongly considered asking Lombardi to be his Vice-President, even though he was a Democrat.
But again Lombardi and Landry had as much in common as they didn’t. “They both believed in what they were saying and what they were trying to teach, that is what they had in common. The other was thing they had in common was success. If you got their message the way they taught it, you would probably be successful too."
The book is an excellent read. The stories Summerall tells are like first hand accounts of the founding fathers of football. Landry and Lombardi might be long gone, but their influence will be felt in the NFL for as long as there is an NFL.
And to read Pat Summerall’s first hand account of being able to learn at the feet of these two titans at the same time in the same year, is as fascinating as it is educational.
In other words Summerall’s book isn’t just for Giants, Packers or Cowboy fans, or fans of NFL history, it’s for all football fans.As a connoisseur of cultural detritus, you've probably seen this ad in which purported actor "Stephen Dorff," looking weary from days of dogged stubble-trimming, juts his chin repeatedly in your direction while explaining why he chooses to smoke Blu™ brand e-cigarettes, besides the fact that he is their paid spokesman. "Negative! One! I'm tired of being a walking ashtray," says "Stephen Dorff," no doubt bathed in Tom Ford cologne at that very moment.
I'm afraid that actor "Stephen Dorff" and all of his glamorous compatriots are lying to you, friends. No matter how many attractive models pose for pictures exhaling clouds of electronically vaporized nicotine solution, and no matter how many sixteenths of an inch "Stephen Dorff" allows his stubble to grow while striding down a beach with the alien-looking neon blue tip of his Blu™ brand e-cigarette glowing betwixt his fingertips, electronic cigarettes will never be cool.
"With Blu, you can smoke at a basketball game if you want to," says actor "Stephen Dorff." Exactly, person writing Stephen's lines. Exactly. You can smoke at a basketball game, if you wanted to, for some reason. And do you know what that tells us? That tells us that electronic cigarettes are not cool. Because they are inoffensive. They are safer. They are not as dangerous. Exactly. Cigarettes were never cool just because of their phallic connotations, and the fact that they gave you something to do with your hands. They were cool because they are dangerous. They surround you in a protective cloud of deadly poison. By smoking a real cigarette, you symbolically tell the world: "I am too badass or, more likely, dumb to care that I am killing myself and others right for no particular reason. I am, in other words, the type of person that you want to fuck."
E-cigarettes just don't say that. And they never will. Electronic cigarettes say, "I can't decide whether to stop or not." Nobody wants to fuck a wishy-washy school crossing guard.
Plus, the glowing neon thing on the end. Come on.The South and North Taurid meteor showers aren’t known for their large numbers of meteors, but they do offer a high percentage of fireballs, or exceptionally bright meteors. This shower made a huge splash three years ago, in 2015, when there were many, many reports and photos featuring Taurid fireball sightings. Higher rates of Taurid fireballs appear to happen in seven-year cycles. Grand fireball displays did indeed take place in 2008 and 2015. No elevated levels of fireballs are expected in 2019. Even so, watch out for Taurid meteors – and possible fireballs – throughout November.
The nominal peak night for the South Taurids is November 6 while that of the North taurids is about a week later, on November 12 (the same date as the November 2019 full moon). So this year, in 2019, the first several days of November may be best for watching the Taurids, as there will be no moon to disrupt the show. But you might even see a Taurid or two on the night of the full moon, given the high percentage of fireballs accompanying the Taurids.
The prime time viewing hours are from late night until dawn, with the peak viewing coming just after the midnight hour. In general, the South Taurids offer about five meteors per hour at their peak, but the North Taurid shower may add a few more meteors to the mix. How many you’ll see will depend on how far from city lights you are … and how bright the meteors are. If they’re bright enough, they’ll overcome skies beset by light pollution.
The Taurid meteor stream consists of an extremely wide roadway of far-flung debris left behind by Comet 2P/Encke. When Earth travels through this belt of comet debris, bits and pieces of Comet 2P/Encke smash into the Earth’s upper atmosphere to vaporize as rather slow-moving Taurid meteors (28 km/17 miles per second).
Apparently, the original Taurid stream has been perturbed by Jupiter into two branches: South and North Taurids.
Bottom line: South and North Taurid meteors – some of them bright fireballs – can be seen through late October and November, each year.Last night I used my telescope to eye-hike the volcanic plains of the Sea of Rains (Mare Imbrium) where the Yutu rover and lander sit beneath a blistering sun. With no atmosphere to speak of and days that last two weeks, noontime temperatures can hit 250 degrees Fahrenheit (122 C). That’s hot enough that mission control at the Beijing Aerospace Command and Control Center has decided to draw the shades and give the rover a nap from science duties until December 23 when things cool down a bit.
While studying the subtle gray hues of the Imbrium lava flows I got to wondering what the sky might look like if I could don a spacesuit and visit the landing site “where the skies are not cloudy all day” (to quote a famous song). With no atmosphere to speak of, stargazing can be done both day and night on the moon though I suspect it’s better at night when there’s less glare from your surroundings. Night, defined as the time from sunset to sunrise (no twilights here), lasts about 14.5 Earth days. Days are equally long.
From Yutu’s point of view, it’s very nearly lunar noon today (Dec. 19) with the sun halfway up in the southern sky. Looking at the map of the sky from the lander’s location, you’ll see a few familiar constellations and one very familiar planet – Earth!
Today Earth appears as a very thin crescent a short distance to the left or east of the sun. Because the moon takes just as long to rotate on its axis as it does to revolve around the Earth, the same face of the moon always faces our planet. Because the two are in synchrony, astronomers call it synchronous rotation.
From the perspective of someone standing on the moon, Earth stands still in one spot of sky throughout the 29.5 day lunar day-night cycle. Well, not perfectly still. Because the moon’s orbit is inclined about 5 degrees to Earth’s orbit and its speed varies along its non-circular orbit, Earth describes a little circle in the lunar sky about 10 degrees in diameter every four weeks.
As the sun slowly moves off to the west, our blue planet remains nearly stationary from Yutu’s perspective and undergoes all the familiar phases we see the moon experience back here on Earth: an evening crescent to start followed by a first quarter Earth, Full Earth last quarter and finally, New Earth. I like the ring of that last one.
Yutu and the lander will see the sun drift to the west while Earth moves east, rises higher in the lunar sky and putting on the pounds phase-wise. Today Earth’s glides across the border of Sagittarius into Capricornus. The next Full Earth happens on New Year’s Eve when the sun is directly opposite the Earth in the lunar sky.
Full Earth always happens around local midnight or about one week before sunrise during the long lunar day. On the moon the sun is up for about two weeks and then disappears below the horizon for another two weeks before rising again. At Full Earth time, the sun remains hidden around the lunar backside. When the nights are blackest, the bright ball of Earth spreads a welcome blue glow over the desolate landscape.
Things really get interesting during lunar eclipses when the moon moves behind the Earth into the planet’s shadow. The next one’s on April 15, 2014. Here on the ground we’ll see the moon gradually munched into by Earth’s shadow until totality, when sunlight from all the sunrises and sunsets around the rim of the planet are refracted by the atmosphere into the shadow, coloring the moon a coppery red.
Yutu will see just the opposite. Looking back toward the Earth from inside its shadow, the rover will witness a total eclipse of the sun by the Earth. If by some wonder the Chinese are able to photograph the event, we’ll see photos of the black ball of Earth rimmed in red fire from sunset and sunrise light refracted by our atmosphere. My interpretation using sky mapping software only hints at the wonder of the scene. Beijing Aerospace, if you’re reading this, please make it happen.
Earth eclipses the sun filmed by Japan’s Kaguya lunar orbiter. There are really two eclipses here – the Earth eclipsed by the limb of the moon at the video’s start followed by the solar eclipse.
On two other occasions, our robotic emissaries have photographed solar eclipses from Luna. NASA’s Surveyor 3 snapped a couple crude pictures of the April 24, 1967 eclipse from inside a crater in Mare Cognitium, the Sea that has Become Known. Japan’s orbiting Kaguya probe did the job much more eloquently on video during the February 9, 2009 penumbral lunar eclipse. In a penumbral eclipse (seen from Earth) the moon misses Earth’s dark inner shadow called the umbra, passing only through the outer penumbra, but because the Earth is three times larger than the sun (seen from the moon), it easily covered the sun completely in the complementary total solar eclipse.
And the best thing about watching eclipses from the moon? Guaranteed clear skies!Romney raises $111.8 million in October
Mitt Romney's campaign announced this morning that the GOP ticket and the Republican National Committee raised $111.8 million between Oct. 1 and Oct. 17.
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TTO baseball and lag time between pitches — are correlated, and how the style of baseball being played in 2017 directly affects the pace at which baseball is being played in 2017.
Let’s back up. Baseball, as evolved from various stick-and-ball games in the 19th century, was originally a contest in which the pitcher’s role was similar to that of a slow-pitch softball hurler. His job was to kick things off by offering up a ball that the batter could whack into the field of play, where the real business of playing baseball happened: running and throwing and fielding and even throwing the ball at a baserunner to record an out. The pitcher was the least important player on the field in the game’s early days. There were, in fact, no mechanisms to force the pitcher to give the batter hittable pitches; it was just considered his job to do so. Batters were even able to request high or low pitches, the better to fit their swing.
As the game became professionalized and more competitive at the highest levels, pitchers started trying to exercise more control over their deliveries so as to keep the batter from making solid, or even any, contact. This led to the creation of the strike zone and, subsequently, walks. Pitchers pushed the rules that mandated underhand deliveries, so as to generate more speed on the ball, and pushed them some more, until the game gave up and let pitchers throw overhand in 1884. This was a key moment in the evolution of baseball, the moment the game stopped being a battle between the batter and the defense, and became a battle between the pitcher and the batter. It also gave us this graph:
It’s not a perfectly clean line, as the deadball era saw a jump in whiffs that disappeared during World War I, but the long-term trend is clear: strikeout rates have risen throughout baseball history, and you can trace it all back to 1884, when baseball turned pitchers into the most important players in the game. So now, 133 years later, in a 7-1 game in the ninth, you have to watch some 27-year-old failed starter huff and puff for 23 seconds, catching his breath while deciding between his fastball and his fastball, all because Pud Galvin and his ilk cheated so effectively that the game gave up trying to stop them.
Five generations later, hitters discovered that being big and strong was better than otherwise. How far that idea went is a topic for another day, but from the 1970s to the 2010s, the weakest players were culled from the herd. This shows up in the statistics, but just to give you one example, here are the numbers for two starters at the same position for the same team 40 years apart.
Mystery Players, 40 Years Apart Year PA AVG OBP SLG HR ISO SO Ht Wt 1976 672.248.283.301 0.053 31 5’10” 150 2016 624.241.274.399 20.158 136 5’10” 185
Go ahead and guess, I’ll wait.
These two seasons were worth basically the same, with offensive WAR figures of 0.6 and 0.8, respectively. The player who came along 40 years later couldn’t hit for average or get on base, but being 30 pounds heavier, 30 pounds stronger, he was able to extract more value from those times when he squared the ball up. Freddy Galvis hit more homers last year than Larry Bowa hit in his 16-year career, and therein is the evolution for hitters. The league was lousy with Bowa types in the 1960s and 1970s, shortstops and second basemen and center fielders who had no power at all. There were 102 players who had 300 PAs and fewer than five homers in 1976. Last year, there were 31. There were 86 players listed at 175 pounds or less who had 300 PA in ’76. Last year, there were 12.
The average time of game in 1976 was 2:29. The average time of game in 2016 was 3:04. You think it’s all because of batting gloves?
The 1976 season was also the last one in which baseball games averaged fewer than 2:30 — a figure which, for a lot of people, is the optimal length of a game. Now, I can get on board with that idea, but here’s what you’ll need to do to get back there: cap player height, cap player weight, cap pitch velocities. The game of 1976 wasn’t faster because Baby Boomers were highly motivated; it was faster because pitchers didn’t have to worry about any given pitch getting hit over the fence. Their job was, put simply, easier. If you took Jerry Reuss and had him pitch 1970s-style to the let’s-all-point-and-laugh 2017 Padres, the top of the first might never end.
What we’ve had since 1976 is an arms race. Batters have kept getting stronger, and players with strength have crowded out players who lack it — not only at traditional hitting positions, but at all of them. At the same time, pitchers have, with the aid of team management around the league, traded endurance for velocity. In 1976, 24 pitchers threw 250 innings and 61 threw 200 innings. The average relief appearance lasted 1.7 innings. Last year, they’d have arrested any manager who let a pitcher throw 250 innings, and just 15 — one on every other team — threw 200. The average relief appearance lasted 1.04 innings — 60% less work. If you sent Noah Syndergaard back to 1976, they would burn him as a witch, but not before getting 280 innings out of him.
Baseball in 1976 was a bunch of guys throwing 86 and dialing it up to 91 now and again, pitching to a league where half the hitters couldn’t reach the warning track with two helpings at breakfast and an aluminum bat. Baseball in 2016 is beasts averaging 93 and then leaving after a couple of hours so beasts throwing 97 can go to work, taking on a league where everyone can turn around a fastball. Why, I mean, in the world, would we expect these two things to take anywhere close to the same amount of time? They are barely, just barely, the same sport. If you want baseball players in 2016 to play 2:30 games, then stop after seven innings.
You’ve probably seen the Grant Brisbee bit about why games are so long. He concludes, “Time between pitches is the primary villain.” He’s right, but it’s not because of sloth; it’s because baseball is a lot harder now. Baseball is harder now because the batters are bigger and stronger and the pitchers throw a lot harder, and they have things like cut fastballs. No one in that 1984 game had ever seen a 94-mph cut fastball. The presence of Dwight Gooden notwithstanding, no one had seen a 93-mph slider or a 90-mph changeup, praise Thor. Edinson Volquez was in that Brisbee piece, and no one thinks he’s any good, and he throws 93. It takes an extra tick or two to gear up to throw that kind of stuff, and it takes an extra tick or two to gear up to hit that kind of stuff.
Velocity and strength, over time, have stretched the natural length of a baseball game. These factors, more than anything else, are why baseball games now take about three hours.
This brings us back to game play. The velocity and strength slowing down the game are the same ones taking action out of the game. From 1871 through today, baseball has steadily moved from a ball-in-play game to a pitcher/batter game. Those trends have accelerated of late.
Back in Larry Bowa’s day, 78% of PAs ended with a ball put in play. That figure was 68% last year, the lowest in baseball history. (It was 91% in 1883, the last year before they let pitchers throw overhand.) Velocity and strength are pushing the ball out of play more and more, slowing down the game more and more, until it looks almost nothing like its origins.
You can’t fix the pace-of-play problem apart from the game-play problem. They’re the same problem, and they require not just solutions that go beyond anything that’s been discussed, they require thinking beyond what we’ve ever seen from baseball. Any major change in baseball across its history has been reactive: move back the mound, mix in more clean baseballs, lower the mound, add a designated hitter, expand the playoffs, drug test everyone. At no point has anyone ever convened, or had to convene, a conversation about what baseball should actually look like. The pace-of-play/length-of-game discussions are people arguing 2:30 is the right number, even though 2:30 for a baseball game would have sounded crazy to their fathers, who grew up with two-hour games in the 1940s. Maybe 2:30 is the right number. Maybe it’s 2:45. Maybe it’s 3:30 with an intermission, and only on Sundays in the fall.
Rob Manfred — and, in fact, all of us — have largely been talking about the downstream effects of strength and velocity on baseball games. That’s not where the solutions are. The solutions are in figuring out how to either limit strength and velocity, or in changing the game to accommodate them while sustaining an entertaining product. They’re not in intentional walks, or shifts, or commercial breaks, or pitching changes. They’re in strength and velocity. The first step is identifying the problem.
I don’t have an answer. I’m just trying to change the question to this: how do we put more baseball back in the baseball game, when all of the baseball players are being selected for the things that take baseball out of the baseball game?Dead Island developer Techland has apologised for a line of code that referred to a skill called "Feminist Whore".
The controversially named ability - "FeministWhorePurna" - was found within the Data0.pak\Data\default_player_setup.scr file by Steam forum goers.
Feminist Whore is thought to have become Gender Wars, a skill that allows Purna - in the final game - an extra 15 per cent damage against men.
"It obviously violates professional and ethical standards at Techland and should never have happened," Blazej Krakowiak, international brand manager, told Eurogamer. "We're investigating this right now and we'll issue a statement later.
"For now, I can only express my sincerest apologies for this incident and assure you that whoever acted so irresponsibly did not represent the views and opinions of Techland.
"I'm equally sure that aside from the author of that unfortunate line of code, everyone at the office is as disturbed by this as you are."
The other skills mentioned in the Dead Island.scr file also had their names changed for the final game.
An incorrect version of Dead Island made its way on to Steam this week. That has now been replaced and Deep Silver has promised a hefty patch for Europe's Friday launch.
However, some saved games created while playing the incorrect version of Dead Island may be in danger, due to the incompatibility between the two builds. The danger, in this case, being a wiped Dead Island saved game.
Eurogamer's Dead Island review dug up a 6/10.The summer of violence in Gaza and Israel on Tuesday entered its fifth week after rockets, fired from inside Gaza, broke the latest ceasefire. After the attack, Israel recalled its negotiators from peace talks in Cairo, and Israeli forces launched new airstrikes.
Since the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) launched Operation Protective Edge on July 8, the IDF has completed 1,300 air strikes, and ground troops have destroyed more than 30 cross-border tunnels. Since January, combatants inside Gaza have fired about 3,000 rockets into Israel. It is the deadliest conflict between Palestinians and Israelis since the Second Intifada, which ended in 2005. As of mid-August, more than 2,000 have died in the current conflict, including 1,975 Gazans (combatants included), 64 Israeli soldiers, and two Israeli civilians.
The Christian minority inside Gaza has not been spared fatalities. But it has also offered shelter, food, education, and medical care to hundreds of Gazans. Hanna Massad, former pastor of the Gaza Baptist Church, has been coordinating Christian aid efforts from his current pastorate in Amman, Jordan. Massad is a graduate of Bethlehem Bible College and earned a doctorate in theology at Fuller Theological Seminary. There have been Christians in Gaza since the third century.
Timothy C. Morgan, senior editor, global journalism, and journalist Deann Alford interviewed Massad recently by phone and email as the conflict continued. CT is pursuing a similar interview from the perspective of Christians inside Israel on the latest conflict.
What are Christians inside Gaza telling you?
I was happy to hear about the ceasefire. This morning the news was that, unfortunately, the fighting has continued. Several times daily I communicate...
1In Response To Mounting Criticism, President Trump Comes Out As Gay
WASHINGTON, D.C.—In what is being perceived as a possible attempt to deflect months of declining poll results and mounting criticism over his policies, inappropriate behavior, and investigations into possible corruption in his presidential campaign, President Trump came out as gay Thursday morning.
“I owe you all the sincerest apology for my deeply inappropriate, deranged behavior, and I am sorry for the sense of dread you have all been forced to live with these past 10 months,” Trump said during a solemn video address as he choked back tears.
“I choose now to live as a gay man,” he announced, causing the camera crew to break out in applause.
Immediately after the announcement, Trump’s poll numbers skyrocketed, with unprecedented support for his policies erupting throughout the nation and media as the news broke. Trump’s all-time low approval rating of 38% almost instantaneously exploded to 97%, while the vast majority of his outspoken critics on the left voiced their support for his courage and bravery.
Furthermore, the shrewd political move of coming out as gay ended federal investigations into Russian influence on the 2016 election, with FBI special investigator Robert Mueller apologizing for ever looking into the matter.With the first publication of the children's book Winnie-the-Pooh on October 14, 1926, the world was introduced to some of the most popular fictional characters of the twentieth century - Winnie-the-Pooh, Piglet, and Eeyore.
The second collection of Winnie-the-Pooh stories, The House at Pooh Corner, appeared on bookshelves just two years later and introduced the character Tigger. Since then, the books have been published worldwide in over 20 languages.
The Inspiration for Winnie the Pooh
The author of the wonderful Winnie-the-Pooh stories, A. A. Milne (Alan Alexander Milne), found his inspiration for these stories in his son and his son's stuffed animals.
The little boy who talks to the animals in the Winnie-the-Pooh stories is called Christopher Robin, which is the name of A. A. Milne's real-life son, who was born in 1920. On August 21, 1921, the real-life Christopher Robin Milne received a stuffed bear from Harrods for his first birthday, which he named Edward Bear.
The Name "Winnie"
Although the real-life Christopher Robin loved his stuffed bear, he also fell in love with an American black bear that he often visited the London Zoo (he sometimes even went into the cage with the bear!). This bear was named "Winnie" which was short for "Winnipeg," the hometown of the man who raised the bear as a cub and later brought the bear to the zoo.
How the real-life bear's name also became the name of Christopher Robin's stuffed bear is an interesting story. As A. A. Milne states in the introduction to Winnie-the-Pooh, "Well, when Edward Bear said that he would like an exciting name all to himself, Christopher Robin said at once, without stopping to think, that he was Winnie-the-Pooh. And so he was."
The "Pooh" part of the name came from a swan of that name. Thus, the name of the famous, lazy bear in the stories became Winnie-the-Pooh even though traditionally "Winnie" is a girl's name and Winnie-the-Pooh is definitely a boy bear.
Other Characters
Many of the other characters in the Winnie-the-Pooh stories were also based on Christopher Robin's stuffed animals, including Piglet, Tigger, Eeyore, Kanga, and Roo. However, Owl and Rabbit were added without stuffed counterparts in order to round out the characters.
If so inclined, you can actually visit the stuffed animals that Winnie-the-Pooh, Piglet, Tigger, Eeyore, and Kanga were based on by visiting the Central Children's Room at the Donnell Library Center in New York. (Stuffed Roo was lost during the 1930s in an apple orchard.)
The Illustrations
While A. A. Milne hand-wrote the entire original manuscript for both books, the man who shaped the famous look and feel of these characters was Ernest H. Shepard, who drew all the illustrations for both Winnie-the-Pooh books.
To inspire him, Shepard traveled to the Hundred Acre Wood or at least its real-life counterpart, which is located in the Ashdown Forest near Hartfield in East Sussex (England).
The Disney PoohKuwait is ready to host parties to the Yemen civil war to sign a final peace agreement, Kuwait’s news agency KUNA reported.
In a speech before the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, representatives of the Prime Minister Sheikh Jaber Mubarak Al Hamad Al Sabah and Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Jaber Al Sabah said: “We express out readiness again to receive our Yemeni brothers to sign a final agreement once they conclude it.”
Kuwait has previously hosted a United Nations initiated negotiation for the Yemen civil war in 2016 to finalise a peace agreement, but failed to succeed.
Today marks three years since the Ansar Allah armed group – otherwise known as the Houthis – took control of Yemen’s capital, Sana’a. Led by Abdul Malik Al-Houthi the group surrounded the home of President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and forced him to resign. The Houthis continue to control Sana’a today.
Yemen’s civil war intensified in March 2015, when a Saudi-led coalition executed air raids in the country in an apparent effort to return power to President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.
Read: The UN is playing down Saudi-UAE human rights abuses in YemenAt least while Rome was burning Nero merely played with his stupid fiddle.
He didn't join the barbarians in the streets sacking the city, putting its residents to the sword and its buildings to the torch. After the last week in Australian climate politics, I doubt whether anybody from the government would be able to show the same forbearance. Scott Morrison would probably have a high old time of it, running around whacking people upside the head with his giant lump of coal.
We'll all be burnt to a crisp. Except for the coal-carrying ScoMo. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
It can be hard in the witless hysteria of the moment to take the longer view, but here it is.
This year was hotter than last year. Next year will probably be hotter than this one. It will go this way now, with occasional quirks in the statistics, a marginally cooler year, a massively hotter and stormier one, until there is a discontinuity; that is, until human civilisation comprehensively breaks its dependency on fossil fuel technologies, or climate change breaks human civilisation.Their quality dressmaking has in fact attracted me excessively! Thank you to their group, who did such an astonishing job!! I recently purchased the brown Rick Grimes jacket from this online place. At this price $159, it is utterly not possible to get it anywhere else. The quality is marvelous if concerned. I bought it for my boyfriend as his birthday surprise gift and it was a made to order because he is a huge guy, around 6’3” in tallness. So this jacket for him truly turned out to be the most up-to-the-minute wear for him. The furred collar and remarkable suede leather gave it an audacious look.
I will definitely be back for further jackets as their quality dressmaking has in fact attracted me excessively! Thank you to their group, who did such an astonishing job!!
I was very much glad to see. I will order another for his Christmas present. Good Work. Great job!! After waiting for two weeks for this Rick Grimes jacket that he wore in the well-liked American drama series, I got my placed order two weeks before from jackets wear for my husband via FedEx. Actually the jacket arrived here on the perfect time. I was very much glad to see. The best quality, shearling collar, inner relaxed lining and YKK front zipper are its great elements used in this brown suede leather jacket. Since he feels so relaxed, I will order another for his Christmas present. Good Work. Great job!!
This outfit is incredible! Thank you once again jacketswear.com for such a great looking coat. This Rick Grimes: Walking Dead drama series jacket is custom made for me, and I love Jackets wear online store attires since last three years. This outfit is incredible! I received my order for my vacation to England, and I wore it almost every day I left my hotel since it was fairly cold there. I also get appreciation from people who saw this jacket, and they asked where I bought it from. So, I posted some of my vacation wearing this on social media and I get queries, asking much it is worth and the place I bought from. Especially, the furred collar and outstanding suede leather is unbelievable. So, Thank you once again jacketswear.com for such a great looking coat.In something of a surprise move, the Blue Jays summoned top prospect Anthony Alford to the big leagues on Friday. The move is a surprise not because Alford lacks talent, but because he’s played a mere 33 games above A-ball, all of which came this season with the Jays’ Double-A affiliate. Alford has performed exceptionally well this season, slashing.325/.411/.455. But he was overmatched by low-minors pitching as recently as last season, when he struck out 29% of the time and could only muster a.236/.344/.378 batting line at High-A.
Alford cut his strikeout rate by over 12 percentage points (from 29% to 17%) this year while maintaining his robust walk totals and modest power. The result has been substantially better offensive numbers. This is an encouraging development, especially since Alford’s so much more than his offense. He’s a 70 runner per Eric Longenhagen, which makes him a no-doubt center fielder and a threat on the bases.
KATOH+, which incorporates his ranking on prospect lists, pegs him for 4.2 WAR over his first six major-league seasons, good for 106th among prospect-eligible players. The stats-only version forecasts 3.5. That’s not a great prospect, but a solidly good one. Then again, KATOH doesn’t know that Alford was a football player who didn’t fully commit to baseball until his age-20 season in 2015. He played just 25 combined baseball games from 2012 to -14, so he’s almost certainly behind on the development curve compared to the typical 22-year-old former high school draftee. So KATOH’s almost certainly too conservative on the toolsy center fielder.
To put some faces to Alford’s statistical profile, I calculated a weighted Mahalanobis distance between Alford’s High-A and Double-A numbers and every season by an outfielder since 1991. In the table below, you’ll find the 10 most similar seasons, ranked from most to least similar. The WAR totals refer to each player’s first six seasons in the major leagues. A lower “Mah Dist” reading indicates a closer comp.
Please note that the Mahalanobis analysis is separate from KATOH. KATOH relies on macro-level trends, rather than comps. The fates of a few statistically similar players shouldn’t be used to draw sweeping conclusions about a prospect’s future. For this reason, I recommend using a player’s KATOH forecast to assess his future potential. The comps give us some interesting names that sometimes feel spot-on, but they’re mostly just there for fun.
Alford’s call-up may only be temporary one necessitated by Kevin Pillar‘s suspension and Darrell Ceciliani’s injury. Furthermore, his track record prior to this year suggests he could benefit from more seasoning in the upper levels of the minor leagues. Nonetheless, it’s clear he’s come a long way in recent months. Toronto executive Gil Kim revealed as much in an interview with David Laurila on Friday. KATOH agrees: it recently pegged him as one of this year’s most improved hitting prospects. Eight months ago, Alford was just another toolsy, ex-multi-sport athlete with iffy numbers in A-ball. Now, he’s a promising 22-year-old whom the Blue Jays have started in the outfield two of the last three games.Welcome to the PBE Roundup for the Patch 4.13 cycle! This is going to be a massive patch, so hold onto your hats. As mentioned in the patch forecast for this cycle, Riot is making preparations to for Worlds by implementing small changes to champions that they feel are either too strong or a little too weak. They’re not making any broad, sweeping changes to anyone (except possibly Sona), but a good amount of tweaks are being made to multiple champions.
So, without further ado, let’s take a look! Keep in mind, as always, that this is PBE content, and is therefore changeable and tentative prior to launch.
Balance Changes
Champion Balances
Braum
Concussive Blows (Passive): Passive trigger damage lowered to 32 (+8 per level) from 38 (+12 per level)
(Passive): Passive trigger from 38 (+12 per level)
Stand Behind Me (W): Mana cost increased to 50/55/60/65/70 from 30/40/50/60/70
(W): Mana from 30/40/50/60/70
Glacial Fissure (R): Slow field duration reduced to.25 seconds from 1.5 seconds
(R): Slow field from 1.5 seconds
Glacial Fissure (R): Knock-up time reduced to 1/1.3/1.5 from 1.5 at all ranks
(R): Knock-up from 1.5 at all ranks
Glacial Fissure (R): Slow field amount reduced to 40/50/60% from 60% at all ranks
Stand behind Braum, Lucian, he will take nerfs for you! The mustachioed bodybuilder is getting smacked with the nerf bat once again. This time around, he’s taking a slight nerf to his passive’s damage and his W’s mana cost, and a sizeable nerf to his ultimate.
The knock-up time and slow percentage now scale with level and the slow has been drastically reduced in duration. This should have a strong impact on Braum’s early all-in potential, as well as reduce his teamfight utility a little bit later in-game. The nerf seems fair to me, as the knock-up slow is at a quite long range. Hopefully Braum will finally be pickable, because he’s still getting banned out every game, which is a real shame, as he’s so much fun to play!
Elise
Cocoon (Human E): Missile width decreased to 55 from 70
(Human E): from 70
Rappel (Spider E): Range decreased to 700 from 925
(Spider E): from 925
Rappel (Spider E): Now targets from hitbox to hitbox rather than center to center
Elise is getting nerfed a bit this patch, though not quite as much as it appears at first. The ranges on her E in both human and spider form are getting nerfed, but as Pwyff explains here, the changes on Rappel are about 75 units over what they appear to be. The move now calculates its range from the edge of Rappel’s hitbox to the edge of her target’s hitbox, rather than the center of their champion.
This should make it a little bit easier to predict when your E is going to be able to jump to someone, as the targeting is more intuitive. However, it is a nerf still, which is good, as Elise (among Lee Sin and Evelynn) is bullying out most other junglers from being picked, at least at competitive levels. Earlier in the cycle, there was a similar change to her human-form Q, Neurotoxin, but that was reverted, so the balance team must have decided it wasn’t necessary.
Evelynn
Hate Spike (Q): Base damage lowered to 30/45/60/75/90 from 40/60/80/100/120
(Q): Base from 40/60/80/100/120
Hate Spike (Q): AP coefficient now scales per rank:.35/.40/.45/.50/.55 from.45 at all ranks
(Q): AP coefficient now from.45 at all ranks
Hate Spike (Q): Bonus AD coefficient now scales per rank:. 50/.55/.60/.65/.70 from.50 at all ranks.
(Q): Bonus AD coefficient. from.50 at all ranks.
Hate Spike (Q): Mana cost lowered to 12/18/24/30/36 from 16/22/28/34/40
Evelynn is up there with Lee Sin and Elise in terms of super-strong aggro jungler picks. The nerfs to the Widowmaker are coming in the form of damage nerfs to her Q. The base damage is going down across the board, and the AP and AD scaling are being shifted to improving with every level in the ability. The scaling is actually better than it used to be overall, and the mana cost is being lowered as well.
My first thought looking at these changes is that the balance team wants to take away some of Eve’s free damage. Currently, players build Elder Lizard and then go mostly tanky items for the rest of the game. These changes both make Eve less punishing on aggro early ganks and reduce the amount of damage that she gets for free. Hopefully, this will still keep her in the game, but force players to decide between being tanky and being an assassin/bruiser without getting the best of both worlds.
Gragas
Barrel Roll (Q): Now deals 70% damage to minions
(Q): Now deals
Drunken Rage (W): Mana cost increased to 30 from 0
(W): Mana from 0
Drunken Rage (W): Damage reduction now lasts for 2.5 seconds, do wn from 3 seconds
(W): Damage reduction now lasts for wn from 3 seconds
Drunken Rage (W): Cooldown changed to 8/7/6/5/4 from 8/7.5/7/6.5/6
Gragas is in a state right now where he’s doing a lot of damage and being pretty tanky, but he’s still being played much the same way as he used to be. These changes seem to want to highlight the tankiness built in on his W and shy away from maxing Q first. The Q is seeing a nerf to its wave-clearing ability, which gives him a lot of strength in top lane, and the W is getting a much lower cooldown if leveled up. The damage reduction buff’s duration is going down, but the cooldown reduction is making it so that with CDR, Gragas will be able to have that buff up almost 100% of the time.
Graves
Buckshot (Q): Enemies hit with multiple bullets now take 40% damage from each additional bullet, up from 35%
(Q): Enemies hit with multiple bullets now take, up from 35%
Collateral Damage (R):Initial damage increased to 250/400/550 from 250/350/450
(R):Initial damage from 250/350/450
Collateral Damage (R): Explosion damage increased to 200/320/440 from 200/280/360
I can’t count how many times I’ve posted roundups like these and seen comments on reddit to the tune of “Graves buffs where?” Graves was an absolute terror on release and enjoyed a pretty scary heyday, but got nerfed a while back and hasn’t been the same since, especially since being outshined by his faster, harder-hitting competitor, Lucian. Well put your ponchos on and hop aboard the Gravey train, because the Outlaw’s finally getting some kick put back in his rounds.
Buckshot, Graves’ Q, is best used when you’re up in your opponent’s face, as hitting with multiple bullets increases the damage done by each shot. This amount is being buffed up by 5%, which may seem small, but percentage increases are powerful, especially as there are two additional bullets. His ultimate is also seeing a pretty heavy late-game damage buff, 100 for the initial round and 80 for the following explosion at max rank. Now if only he could blow up terrain to kill enemy Nautiluses. Maybe that’d be a little too strong.
Hecarim
Rampage (Q): Mana cost reduced to 24/26/28/30/32 from 24/28/32/36/40
There’s not a lot going on with the Shadow of War. He hasn’t been played in quite some time after being nerfed down from his spot on the top of the early-aggro jungler charts (and URF Mode) and Riot wants to try to get him back in the game. However, he’s still honestly pretty powerful, and we don’t want him restored to his former glory, so the buffs are starting small with a reduction in the punishing mana costs that were put on his Q. This might make him perfectly playable again, but if he needs a bit more help, the balance team seems to have their eye on him.
Janna
Tailwind (Passive): Range increased to 1000 from 800
(Passive): Range from 800
Howling Gale (Q): Has been reworded and now specifically mentions how powerful the spell gets as it charges
(Q): Has been reworded and now specifically mentions how powerful the spell gets as it charges
Howling Gale (Q): Maximum knock up time is now 1.25 seconds for full charge, up from 1
(Q): Maximum knock up time is now for full charge, up from 1
Howling Gale (Q): Cooldown now starts as soon as it is cast
When I’m not jungling, I’m usually supporting, and I’ve been having a lot of fun with Janna lately. She’s fast, she’s furiou, and her shield works so well with Ardent Censer it’s unreal. I think these changes are going to shove her back into the limelight, especially against all-in foes like Thresh. Her passive, Tailwind, has had its affected range increased to provide free movement speed to more of your team. Her Q’s charge time has been increased a little bit, so it’s a bit harder to land a full-strength gale, but the cooldown on the move starts when you cast it, which means 1 second less across the board. Keep an eye out for this one, she’s coming back.
Kayle
Righteous Fury (E): AP ratio on both parts increased to.25 from.2
(E): AP ratio on both parts from.2
Intervention (R): Cooldown lowered to 100/90/80 from 110/95/80
What’s this? Buffs to Kayle? The buff-nerf yoyo is strong with this one. The AP ratio on her E has been buffed a little, as well as the cooldown on her ult. They’re both now somewhere between the levels before and after patch 4.10. Kayle is wicked hard to balance, so I’m not surprised that they’re still tweaking her. Good luck to them, they’re going to need it.
Base HP lowered to 400 from 440
from 440
HP Per level increased to 87 from 84
from 84
Caustic Spittle (Q): MR/Armor shred changed to 12/16/20/24/28 from 20/22/24/26/28
Kog’Maw the cannon puppy has seen a lot of play lately, both in solo queue and competitively. This patch aims to nerf his early-game by giving him less health and less MR/Armour shred on his Q. His HP should balance out midgame, overtaking his pre-patch values at level 14 and above. This should hopefully make him a bit harder to win lane with but still keep his late-game where it was, making it tougher but still possible to breed that perfect late-game shredding machine.
LeBlanc
Distortion (W): Mana cost lowered to 80/85/90/95/100 from 80/90/100/110/120
LeBlanc is suffering from post-OP blues. Her winrate is down about 3 points, but she’s still pretty powerful. She just needs a little nudge to get her back into a good spot but not to her old no-counterplay self. She’s getting a bit of a late-game mana cost buff on her W, which will hopefully be enough to sort her out.
Lee Sin
Safeguard (W1): Shield duration lowered to 2 seconds from 4 seconds
(W1): Shield duration from 4 seconds
Cripple (E2): No longer lists that it reduces attack speed (which was 20/30/40/50/60%)
(E2): (which was 20/30/40/50/60%)
Base HP Regen Per Second increased to 1.65 from 1.25
And now, we complete the aggro jungler trifecta. Lee Sin has always been pretty tough to balance. Riot proposed some changes to him a few months ago but people freak
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and engineers. What about this experiment in corporate design innovation, and others like it, excites you? How do they inform what you are doing at Google Design? (Watch John Harwood’s SPAN talk.)
RG/AB: This year saw an explosion of new projects around the Eameses in particular, with a retrospective organized by Catherine Ince that included a replica of the multi-screen IBM film at the Barbican in London, and an exhibition organized by Stephen Edidin at the New York Historical Society about the “Silicon City” that opened with a different replica of IBM World’s Fair Pavilion, and also included sections on “9 Evenings: Theater and Engineering” and other significant cultural moments around technology. In all of this, perhaps there are three lessons that we want to remember and develop in our own work. First, the IBM effort was generous in spirit and attempted to make what could have been a remote or monolithic effort more accessible to all. Second, it was a critical conversation at a critical moment that happened successfully at scale. And third, despite being aimed at hundreds of thousands of people, the end product was not watered-down or middling—if anything, it was challenging and even avant-garde. Many of the designers who contributed to the projects at IBM considered it to be the best work they ever did. This is exactly what all of us at Google aspire to as well.
Page 66
Davide Fornari, on Arte programmata. Arte cinetica. Opere moltiplicate. Opera aparta.
“The idea that an artwork may include algorithmic behaviors and is completed by the action and interaction of the audience became a reality thanks to the early experimentation of these artistic groups and their collaboration with forward-thinking patrons.” (Visit the Reprogrammed Art website.)
RG/AB: Davide and Rob had met last year in Italy while both were doing research on Olivetti, and we reconnected with him when our team sponsored the AGI Open Conference in Bern, Switzerland. John Harwood observes in The Interface that IBM’s insight to build a culture around “business machines,” starting with the redesign of their showroom on 5th Avenue, really came through Olivetti’s groundbreaking work. With SPAN’s presence in Europe and the U.S., we thought it was interesting to offer both sides of this corporate history, and Davide’s scholarship was an essential way to do it. In terms of contemporary connections with the art world, our team works with the Google Cultural Institute on a number of projects; their 89Plus initiative (curated by Simon Castets and Hans Ulrich Obrist), Paris Lab residency, and numerous museum partnerships, are a few examples of Google supporting the art world in an official way.
Page 88
Nick Benson, on evidence of the human hand in contemporary forms of stonecutting
“But that particular memorial, in all of its linear and postmodern purity, has a flavor of humanity that’s difficult to define. In the carving and the design of that inscription, there’s a reflection of that. My effort in designing a character is to have just a little bit of human spark. It’s a very contemporary form, but there’s just a teeny bit of humanity in there. It’s very subtle—almost subconscious—but you see it.” (Read the full interview.)
RG/AB: Nick’s interview has a lot to offer contemporary designers—particularly UX designers who are accustomed to being able to update and iterate ad infinitum. There’s a moment in his interview, where he describes how when he looks at an ancient Roman carving he acutely understands how it was made and can deeply empathize with a stonecarver who lived two millennia prior. That haptic knowledge is something that’s accrued and refined over time. It requires the body and a honed sensitivity. It is something that is incredibly important to keep in mind with an industry as young as ours, but as intimately connected to our daily lives and habits as the written (or chiselled) word. At Google we say, “focus on the user and the rest will follow.” In terms of design, this requires an acute awareness or consideration for how a user is experiencing the entire flow. When we design something as seemingly trivial as a button or switch, how that component sits within the larger ecosystem of the product language you’re building actually becomes integral to the entire experience. It’s not just a single message or action we’re designing. Nick’s assessment that it’s the hand of the designer that humanizes what could otherwise be considered a cold, or rational formal exercise, gets at that importance of honing conscientiousness and nuance in your craft and connecting with the human at the other end of the exchange.
Page 100
Taeyoon Choi, on reclaiming our digital autonomy through DIY computer production
“When our lives are affected by the algorithms and programs, what is the act of resistance and dissent that can preserve our independence from becoming agents of machines?” (Visit Taeyoon Choi’s website.)
RG/AB: Taeyoon’s work inspired us immediately. We knew about his School for Poetic Computation in New York, a place of great curiosity and experimentation. The name itself brings C.P. Snow’s “two cultures” into dialogue—art and science, or, in the case of SPAN, design and technology. While we were working on SPAN, Taeyoon led a workshop at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn called the Handmade Computer, and we had to marvel at the simplicity of sharing the messy work of computer-making with a group of semi-technical students and artists who genuinely wanted to examine and find new connection with the technology they use everyday. We invited Taeyoon to reprise the workshop at SPAN New York, where it was one of our most popular sessions, and for the reader he contributed one of his marvellous hand-illustrated stories. For Taeyoon, the lesson—and perhaps the resistance he speaks of in his quote—comes from placing the computer back into human hands and in the decidedly unpredictable spark that comes from that unstructured programming. Taeyoon’s work is a lesson to us all to leave space in our systems for discovery and delight.
Page 115
Keller Easterling, on systems design and “know how”
“While architects and urbanists typically design object forms with shape and outline or master plans, sometimes more powerful than designing a thing is developing an interplay between things—active forms that serve as a platform for shaping a stream of objects or a population effect.” (Read the full article.)
RG/AB: Much of the core team working on SPAN was familiar with Keller’s deep, probing work with the effects of technological infrastructure on the urban environment, and these moments where technology enters and changes the scene was something we thought SPAN should address with Keller as our guide. As we got deeper into several of her essays, it was a pleasure to find prose that was evocative and suggestive of the ways that technology has reshaped how we assess our present-day existence. That it becomes harder to know how to shape a building without an awareness of the software that runs it, or the data that shapes it, or the flows of activity that surround it, or the hardware it houses. This tangle of issues, she suggests, dissolves a firm sense of knowing that something should be shaped in a specific way into a different kind of accrued knowledge, knowing how. At SPAN New York she explained that “You can know how to kiss.” In her essay, she credits her interest in know how to Gilbert Ryle, a British philosopher who coined the now-widespread phrase “the ghost in the machine,” though the machine in his meaning was our own bodies, not our devices. On a more practical level, as designers working hand in hand with engineers, we could not agree more with Keller’s assessment. So much of our formal expression is borne on platforms where products are interacting and influencing a stream of interdependent experiences. In including this essay in the reader, we wanted to celebrate her work and point to these fundamental concepts as well.
Page 134
Justin McGuirk, on the smart home
“As the primary interface of the “internet of things,” the smart home is effectively the tendrils of the network rising out of the ground and into every one of our household appliances to allow mass data collection and digital surveillance.” (Read the full article.)
RG/AB: Justin’s essay, and his subsequent talk at SPAN London, captured beautifully the complex web of issues at play in questions of privacy and security. We both want our devices to do more and must constantly adjust and check that desire other political and social aspects of our humanity. His talk at SPAN highlighted how different cultures have answered questions of urban privacy in different ways—some requiring more, some less—and like SPAN more broadly we find this complex and nuanced result to be the most truthful. We included the essay to remind designers, especially digital and product designers working in this space, of their responsibility to both delight and guide users. We also included it because Justin’s essay, along with other scholarship on this issue, helps to make what can be an invisible shift of having sensors and data in our domestic spaces more visible. At SPAN, Rob invoked a lesson from Stewart Brand’s How Buildings Learn as an earlier parallel. Brand says one of the problems with using vinyl siding on houses instead of wooden siding is that vinyl hides rot and other structural flaws beneath the surface. Wood, in Brand’s eyes, is the better material because it doesn’t shield this process. Instead, wood is easy to patch and it alerts a homeowner when repairs needed. In so doing, it makes the home’s real-time structural integrity more visible.
Page 156
Geoff Manaugh, on illegal uses of space revealing new dimensions
“The FBI’s unsettling discovery of a hidden topological dimension tucked away somehow inside the surface of the city is a stunning moment—the relation that, on a different plane, point A might illicitly be connected to point B, and that, in a sense, it is the burglar’s role to make this link real, to operationalize urban topology. The burglar, in this context, is a kind of three-dimensional actor amid the two-dimensional surfaces and objects of the city, finding ways out, through, between and around what you and I would otherwise take at face value as walls, floors, ceilings, or even simply doors.” (Read the full article.)
RG/AB: We’ve known Geoff and been fans of his writing on BLDG BLOG for years, and his new book A Burglar’s Guide to the City draws some really wonderful ideas out about urbanism, privacy, security, technology, and experience by looking how how the city is used by those who disobey its laws. He describes burglars as “actors” in the quote you’ve selected, but they’re “users” of the city just the same, and, perhaps more accurately, they’re “analogue hackers!” For SPAN, we saw such a natural affinity between Keller and Geoff’s work—their tendency to celebrate the margins of the built environment as having the most compelling narratives, or the greatest potential for innovation (“use and misuse”). Disruption is such an overused phrase these days in tech, but Geoff’s plea for designers to find the “design briefs hidden in everyday life” is really empowering designers (and thinkers, artists alike) to be agents of change, not just interpreters. ■
Most of the content in the SPAN Reader (text and video) can be accessed via Google Design’s website or their Medium page.ABC News has an interview up with Alvin Greene, the mystery Senate candidate from South Carolina. And well, it’s just weird. I can’t say that it really gives me any clearer sense of what the hell is going on here than I had before I watched it.
But there is one point I thought I’d mention. In the video the interviewer is walking around the house with Greene. And Greene is showing him different memorabilia and pictures of himself as a kid. And the interviewer presses Greene, who says he’s a veteran, about whether he can show him any pictures of himself in uniform.
Greene sort of dodges the question and hems and haws. And it’s pretty clear that the implication of the editing is that maybe the whole military service part of Greene’s bio is made up. At this point, there’s not much I won’t believe with this story. But here’s the thing, as long as you’re keeping score at home: our Justin Elliott spent the afternoon trying to figure out what the hell was going on with this guy. And one thing Justin was able to confirm is that Greene did serve in the Air Force for three years.
See the interview after the jump.Route 7
Oh, there you are! I didn’t think you two were coming back, we’ve been waiting this whole time!
Sorry, it took a long time getting the Pokéflute. We figured everyone had gone to bed so we stayed the night at the palace.
+ Of course they charged us for the rooms…
And the Furfrou ran off again in the night.
You know, Cally we could’ve shared a room…
+ It’s fine, Shauna, don’t worry about it.
So do you have my Pokéflute or not?
+ Oh, sure. Here.
I hand over the flute.
Hurry up and wake that damn Snorlax already!
Stand back, and be ready to battle it, trainers. Snorlax can get very grumpy if you wake them.
The guy puts the flute to his lips, puffs up his cheeks, and blasts a horribly loud screech from the flute.
Hmm! Why you wake Puddin’? Puddin’ hungry, want pudding!
Oh crap, she’s not mad. She’s hungry!
+ Sorry to wake you. Puddin’, is it? But you’re blocking the way.
Hm? Oh, Puddin’ sorry. Puddin’ move. Got any pudding?
+ I don’t have any pudding, sorry.
Puddin’ go find some. Bye!
Puddin’ waddles off towards a field of lavender flowers.
Oh, it understood you?
+ She was just hungry.
Ah, wait don’t a bunch of Swirlix live in that lavender patch?
Sucks to be them, I guess.
Thank you for clearing the road, I’ll inform the town.
Yay! Mission complete!
We cross the bridge and start walking the long road by the river. As we near some tall grass I notice a faint glowing light buzzing around, an Illumise emerges from the grass.
I found you! You’re the trainer Cally, right?
+ Uh, yes.
I met your Vivillon friend, Claire?
+ Oh?
I asked Claire to spread the word about our mission.
I want to help the search!
Why?
It’s important! Can I please go with you? My name is Lucia, by the way.
+ Okay, sure.
Hey, Cally!
You’re just charming the Pokémon to go with you?
Could you maybe put in a good word for me?
Guys! I finally caught up. Thanks for telling me the road was open again…
Oh… sorry Serena!
I’ll teach you all lesson with a battle!
What?
I don’t want to battle right now! And three against one isn’t fair. Cally, why don’t you team up with Serena to make it fair?
+ Uh…
I’m okay with that, I’m sure leaving me behind was the boys’ idea anyway.
But we just-
Go Fletchling!
Go Corphish!
+ Joule, you’re up!
Why’re you dragging me into this?
Go Pikachu!
Hi!
Oh it’s on!
+ Thundershock the Corphish!
Peck the Corphish!
Thundershock the Fletchling!
Vice Grip the Fletchling!
Fletchling pecks at Corphish and Joule zaps it while it’s distracted. The other Pikachu shocks Fletchling to the floor allowing Corphish to pinch at it with it’s claws.
+ Thundershock the Corphish!
Peck the Corphish!
Thundershock the Fletchling!
Vice Grip the Fletchling!
Fletchling pecks at Corphish again and Joule finishes it off with a jolt, the other Pikachu zaps Fletchling into submission.
Go Braixen!
+ Quick Attack!
Ember!
Quick Attack the Pikachu!
Joule and the other Pikachu dart at eachother and bump heads at high speed, the other Pikachu recoils back and rolls to the floor where Braixen roasts it a bit.
Oh yeah, still got it! I’m in the top percentile of Pikachu! … Whatever that means.
Go Flabébé!
+ Electro Ball!
Ember!
Fairy Wind the Pikachu!
Always fun to try new techniques!
Joule places her paws on her cheeks, sparks start to arc around her paws and as she raises them above her head a bright yellow ball of lightning forms between them. Joule sprints at Flabébé and slam dunks the ball on its head. Braixen waves a stick it produced from its tail and showers Flabébé with embers. Flabébé wafts its flower at Joule, causing a small gust of pink… stuff to somehow harm her as it blows by.
Hey that weird pink stuff hurts! Sort of.
+ Quick Attack!
Ember!
Fairy Wind the Pikachu!
Joule darts at Flabébé and knocks it into an easel some nearby artist was using while she tried to furiously paint the battle this whole time. The canvas clatters to the floor revealing a picture consisting of splatters and streaks of yellow, orange and pink.
+ Oops, sorry!
Are you kidding? This is probably my best work so far thanks to you!
Oh, it certainly looks… abstract.
I like how yellow it is. So, Braixen now? How’s evolution working out for you?
Fine, just fine. Can you get your trainer to ask Serena to get me a brush? My ear tufts are starting to get out of hand…
Heh.
So anyway, our next destination is Ambrette Town. We’ll have to go through the Connecting cave first.
The Zubat Roost?
Aww man, not Zubats again…
Connecting Cave
Let’s just run through here.
+ Agreed.
We sprint through the cave. Zubats whip past us, screeching incoherently. I reach the other end and check on my bag because I think I can feel something moving inside. A Zubat is flapping around inside.
I fight for justice!
The Zubat bites one of the Pokéballs in my bag and before I can react it’s in the ball and being teleported away.
+ Uh…
Route 8
Ambrette Town is just at the end of this path, be careful of the cliff edge.
I’m not going anywhere near the edge, I hate heights!
+ You and me both.
We have so much in common, Cally!
It sure looks a long way down, and those rocks at the bottom sure look jagged.
+ Not helping, Joule!
We begin walking down the path, Shauna and I make extra sure to be as far from the cliff edge as possible.
If people use this path so much they really should add a fence or something.
What good is a fence going to do if you’re just going to shimmy along the wall like that?
A Spoink leaps out from behind a rock in front of Shauna.
Wha!
Found you!
What does it want? Is is going to push me off the cliff?
You’re the human with the Pikachu!
Why’s it staring at me?
+ Oh, that’d be me.
Oh! Hi there. They call me Babe, Claire sends her regards.
Oh?
I’m coming with you! You’re going to need all the help you can get to find the Lifegiver.
+ Oh… okay.
So you just talk to them and they decide to go with you?
+ Uh, sort of. It’s a little more complicated than that. Sometimes they battle me… sometimes.
Ambrette Town
We eventually make it to town and after a stop at the Pokémon Center, Serena takes us to some research lab.
They research fossils here, maybe they found something linked to Mega Evolution on one of their digs.
+ Seems like a bit of a stretch.
Oh! Excuse me, Mister Doctor Scientist guy?
Myeees?
Have you ever dug up anything linked to Mega Evolution?
I’m afraid not, it’s possible my colleague in the Glittering Cave may have discovered something recently. He’s been gone for quite some time.
Oh, I see.
If you can give him a gentle reminder to get back here before we finish for the day I’ll let you use this fossil reviving machine if you ever find a fossil for yourselves.
Cool! Let’s go!
Route 9
The path here is much too treacherous than Route 8, a nearby guide loans us a Rhyhorn to ride on. It seems Shauna is much more afraid of heights than I am so she elected to stay in town. Having learned to ride on Rhyhorn since I was little I feel right at home.
So your mom taught you to ride?
+ Yeah, it helps to be able to talk with them too.
I’ll say! It’s so much easier when we have two-way communication.
Oh, I suppose so. You’ve always been able to talk with Pokémon?
+ For as long as I can remember, yes.
Oh! I think I stepped on something!
Ow! My foot! I’ll make you pay, human!
Uh-oh!
I’ve got this one, mom! Bubble-bweeeem!
Oh no!
Baker blasts the Hippopotas with a bright bubbly blue beam, knocking it off the cliff.
Haha! I feel funny.
Yeah!
Baker no!
Woah, everything else got smaller again.
They grow up so fast…
Glittering Cave
More humans? You’re not red, you aren’t with the humans in red?
Naw, they’re with me. Also this one has the gift.
+ Hi.
Oh, then maybe you can help? Some bad humans came and they’re harassing the Pokémon in here.
Bad humans? In red?
Yes, you know them?
They kidnapped the Lifegiver while he slumbered! We must know where they took him!
Then how about we help eachother. Together we’ll punish the humans in red, also could you introduce me to that handsome fellow you rode here with?
Excellent, another one for the cause!
My name is Beryl, by the way.
+ The more the merrier, I guess.
What just happened?
+ Don’t worry about it, but it looks like there’s trouble further ahead.
We travel deeper into the cave and soon we reach a tunnel that looks to have been excavated recently, we round a corner to find an odd looking guy standing around.
What do we have here?
It’s one of them!
+ You’re wearing a lot of red. You look ridiculous.
You dare insult the uniform of Team Flare? Brats like you should be taught a lesson.
+ You’re not alone in here?
I have cohorts nearby, what does that have to do wi-
I knee him in the gut, as he doubles over winded I grab him by his stupid hair and slam his face into a nearby minecart.
+ Good, I only need one of you awake.
I’m not sure why you did that but there’s more coming now.
What’s going on here?
Looks like someone beat up Bob again.
Those two brats beat him up?
Ask questions later, get them!
+ That’s my line! Joule! Give that one a Thunder Wave!
This’ll be fun!
Wait I didn’t call out my Pokémon yet!
While Joule tasers the flair woman I dash at the flair guy and sweep his leg with a kick, causing him to trip face first into the tunnel wall, knocking him out.
I approach the flair woman as she twitches on the ground.
Gah, I didn’t expect a pretty little brat to fight dirty.
Cally, why’re you hurting these people?
+ They torture Pokémon. And their organisation has kidnapped a Pokémon deity.
Deity? Which one?
+ The Pokémon here call it the Lifegiver?
Can’t say I’ve heard of that one, we probably know it by a different name.
What are you two talking about?
+ Don’t play dumb, tell me where you took it!
I have no idea what you want!
+ You want Joule to shock you again?
Zappy zap zap! Hehe.
Please! No! We were sent here to look for Mega Stones! I don’t know anything about this, what did you call it, Lifegiver?
So they’re just foot soldiers.
+ Take your comrades and get out of my sight.
The flair woman grabs each of the flair guys by the foot and slowly drags them away.
Hm? Hey, what’s that?
Joule points to the wall where the second flair guy smacked his head. A tiny shiny yellow ball had been uncovered. With little effort I pry it from the wall.
It’s so sparkly, is this ball made of light?
+ I’m not sure what it is. It’s like it’s made of glass or something.
I want it, let me have it!
+ Fine.
We should check on the scientist, those Team Flare people might’ve done something to him.
It doesn’t take us long to find the scientist at the end of the tunnel.
What a haul, there’s a whole mess o’ fossils here!
Hello, are you perhaps from the research lab in Ambrette?
Hello, why yes I am. Did they send you to find me again? I guess I got carried away. I just found a lot of fossils, it’ll take a while to carry them all back. There’s much more than we’d possibly need, why don’t you each pick one as a souvenir?
Oh my, thank you. Let’s see, oh this one looks pretty.
I just grab one from the top of the pile.
+ I’ll take this one I guess.
Ambrette Town
On the trip back to town Serena seemed fairly quiet, I would have thought she’d have more questions. Though she did ask about Mega Stones at the research lab. It would seem the gym leader in Cyllage City might know more.
I found some twine and a fitting so Joule can wear the light ball. Apparently the fossil I picked up was a rare jaw fossil, the scientist with the revival machine was all too happy to use it and it revived a rather surprised looking Tyrunt.Green Party MLA Sonia Furstenau is being sued for defamation for comments she allegedly made during a rally against a contaminated soil dump.
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Michael Kelly and Martin Block, the president and vice-president of Cobble Hill Holdings, filed the suit in B.C. Supreme Court on Thursday. Cobble Hill Holdings is the owner of a Shawnigan Lake quarry used as a landfill for contaminated soil.
The allegations have not been proven in court.
The suit alleges that Furstenau “falsely and maliciously spoke” about Kelly and Block during a rally on the legislature lawns in front of hundreds, on or around March 15, 2015.
The rally took place before Furstenau was elected to the B.C. legislative assembly, while she was a director of the Cowichan Valley Regional District.
The suit claims the speech seriously injured the businessmen’s character, credit and reputation, and caused them damages.
It alleges that Furstenau did not request a meeting with the men before making the speech and that she made the speech for political gain.
Kelly and Block are seeking general damages, special damages, punitive damages, aggravated damages, removal of the speech from Furstenau’s website, a public apology and special costs.
Furstenau has 21 days to respond to the civil claim. Her office said Friday afternoon that she had not received notice of the claim. She declined to comment, saying the matter is before the courts.
In a text message Friday, Kelly said he and Block have experienced damages as a result of Furstenau’s comments.
Furstenau, “over the past several years, has made statements regarding myself, my partner and our companies, that we feel are damaging to us as businessmen, and we look forward to correcting the records in the courts,” Kelly said.
Cobble Hill Holdings filed a separate suit in August against the province and former environment minister Mary Polak, the Liberal MLA for Langley.
In February, while environment minister, Polak cancelled the permit that allowed Cobble Hill Holdings to receive and store soil at its former rock quarry, upstream of Shawnigan Lake. Polak said the company failed to meet a government deadline for an irrevocable letter of credit that would serve as a financial security.
In that suit, Cobble Hill Holdings said the government had not specified any form or amount for that credit and had not approved the plans that would have been the basis of the financial guarantee.
As of Friday afternoon, no statement of defence had been filed.
[email protected] comes the pivotal portion of Kentucky's schedule.
Yes, I said pivotal. Kentucky (9-1) is No. 6 in the AP poll after a convincing 96-73 win over Hofstra in Brooklyn on Sunday afternoon. The Cats did what they're supposed to do, overwhelm an inferior opponent. John Calipari got double-figure scoring from four of his five starters (Malik Monk's 20 points led the way), and the team shot 51 percent.
Good returns. Kentucky's offense has showed up more often than not, and it's been fun to watch the Wildcats' versatility with the ball. It has not been perfect, but Kentucky fans know how some recent teams really struggled with freshmen to get points on the board.
Kentucky's 3-point shooting is still a valid concern. UK was 8 of 23 from beyond the arc, which isn't bad but isn't great. Elsewhere, Kentucky did what it wanted.
Kentucky shot 51.4 percent from the field, marking the sixth time in 10 games the Cats made more than half their shots. pic.twitter.com/7t3f63fHQT — Kentucky Basketball (@KentuckyMBB) December 11, 2016
That's great and all, but now North Carolina awaits. And the Tar Heels -- who aren't a bad 3-point shooting team; they just don't take many -- will provide an intriguing test.
UNC is the first of three humongous non-con games left for UK, and there are no cupcakes or halfway-decent teams from one-bid leagues remaining. All of them will fight for a No. 1 seed. The UNC game is on Saturday in the CBS Sports Classic at Las Vegas. Then, on Dec. 21, Kentucky visits hated Louisville. On Jan. 28, Kansas goes to Lexington, which will be a fantastic matchup.
UNC-Kentucky promises a very nice frontcourt matchup. Bam Adebayo, Isaac Humphries and Derek Willis face the Heels' Kennedy Meeks, Isaiah Hicks and standout freshman Tony Bradley.
Wonder if we'll get any of Adebayo on the break in Vegas. I think it could happen, because both teams like to run. Here's some of his ability in the open floor vs. Hofstra.
Bam Adebayo with the slam off the sweet lob from Malik Monk. #BBNpic.twitter.com/QyCwY2o97a — Scott Charlton (@Scott_Charlton) December 11, 2016
The UNC game sets up a month's worth of legitimate tests. Not every game on Kentucky's schedule is against a probable NCAA team, but games against bubble- or NIT-type teams are on the road.
The next time Kentucky plays a road game against a team ranked outside the current KenPom 50? Jan. 14. A home tilt vs. Auburn.
There will be plenty of challenges and big moments. The UNC game is the first really important game, and after the next four weeks, we'll know if Kentucky is a bona fide top-five team. If it is, it's likely going to be in command for a No. 1 seed in March. We can't say for sure this group will be among the best of the best. They have to prove, though I think they will.WWE
Back in May, former Intercontinental Champion and 5-time Slammy Award winner Ryback was sent home and removed from WWE TV, we he occasionally explained in the most confusing ways possible. He wasn’t taken in the WWE Draft, had his merchandise moved to the “sale” section of WWE Shop, and a few days ago finally, mercifully announced that he was officially cutting ties with the company.
What that means now is a debut on the independent circuit, and a new name. Sort of. “Sort of” to both things.
Per the artist formerly known as Ryback’s Twitter, his new name is just The Big Guy, and while he’s making appearances at Maryland Championship Wrestling’s November 5 show, he’s also available for man vs. food challenges. Wait, what?
There has never been a meal I haven't been able 2 finish. Bookings 4 TheBigGuy VS Food challenges can be arranged at [email protected] — The Big Guy (@Ryback22) August 9, 2016
This will be The Big Guy’s first true independent wrestling appearance, as he got into the business via a video audition for the $1,000,000 Tough Enough back in 2004 — the same Tough Enough that gave us The Miz — and reported straight to WWE developmental.
It’s going to take some getting used to the name. We wish more people went the Justin Gabriel route and gave themselves entirely new names. “The Darewolf” PJ Black at least sounds like you’re trying, and is way better than “Former WWE star GABRIEL.” Maybe split the difference and call yourself GUYBACK?
For more on the subject of Large Guys, here are highlights from TBG’s Periscope Q&A. He answers questions about CM Punk, drops a wonderful amount of F-bombs and explains why there’s “more to life than fake punches and kicks.”
Highlights from Ryback's periscope livestream. Answers wrestling questions, responds to CM Punk fans, and more.https://t.co/CL81mjXs5h — MVPlaya (@TheMVPlaya) August 10, 2016Share This Article:
State Sen. Toni Atkins this week introduced a bill that would require hotels and motels to train employees on how to recognize the signs of human trafficking and how to report those signs to law enforcement.
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“Hotels are ground zero for sex trafficking in this state,” Atkins said. “Sex traffickers are exploiting some of the most vulnerable people in our society, including children.”
Human trafficking is rampant in California, which is home to three cities on the FBI’s list of the top 13 cities for sex trafficking – San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Researchers at the University of San Diego and Point Loma Nazarene University have estimated that as many as 11,000 people in the San Diego region alone could be victimized each year. Often, these crimes go unreported, according to Atkins’s office.
The bill, SB 270, follows SB 230, which is another human-trafficking bill introduced this session by Atkins. SB 230 allows prosecutors – with permission from a judge – to present evidence of a criminal defendant’s past crimes of sex trafficking at trial.
Atkins Bill Would Enlist Hotel Employees in Reporting Human Trafficking was last modified: by
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Follow Us:In the latest blow, and a new low, for the US spying agency, earlier today Italian magazine Panorama blasted a preview of an article due for publication tomorrow, with the simple premise: "NSA had tapped the pope." According to a Reuters report, the "spy agency had eavesdropped on Vatican phone calls, possibly including when former Pope Benedict's successor was under discussion, but the Holy See said it had no knowledge of any such activity. Panorama magazine said that among 46 million phone calls followed by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) in Italy from December 10, 2012, to January 8, 2013, were conversations in and out of the Vatican." But while it is unclear just what divine information the NSA had hoped to uncover by spying on the Vatican, what is an absolute headbanger, is that according to Panorama one of the reasons for the illegal wiretaps was to be abreast of "threats to the financial system." We can only assume this means keeping on top of Goldman's activities around the globe: after all, when one intercepts god's phone calls, one is mostly interested what the bank that does god's will is doing.
From Reuters:
Asked to comment on the report, Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said: "We are not aware of anything on this issue and in any case we have no concerns about it." Media reports based on revelations from Edward Snowden, the fugitive former U.S. intelligence operative granted asylum in Russia, have said the NSA had spied on French citizens over the same period in December in January. Panorama said the recorded Vatican phone calls were catalogued by the NSA in four categories - leadership intentions, threats to the financial system, foreign policy objectives and human rights. Benedict resigned on February 28 this year and his successor, Pope Francis, was elected on March 13. "It is feared" that calls were listened to up until the start of the conclave that elected Francis, the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina, Panorama said. The magazine said there was also a suspicion that the Rome residence where some cardinals lived before the conclave, including the future pope, was monitored.
Cue another US ambassador being summoned by an "ally" country, more questions about just what US taxpayer funds are being spent on, more public indignation, and even more bad will (if that is even possible) toward the great, globalist US superstate that is no longer accountable to anyone but itself and a few select oligarchs.ETNA, Maine — Angie Godin never expected to see the top of her sister’s grave again.
Sometime between Thursday night and Friday morning, vandals came to Pleasant Hill Cemetery in Etna and dug up her family plot, exposing one of the cement vault boxes containing the casket and leaving pry marks on the top.
The town sexton found the grave dug up early Friday morning and called Godin. When she came to the cemetery, it was a shock.
“I told my husband, I never thought I’d see the top of that again,” Godin said. “You think once you put them there, it’s good.”
Penobscot County Chief Deputy Sheriff William Sheehan said Sunday that in 20 years of police work, he’s never seen a grave desecration.
“Obviously this is very upsetting for the family
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Memphis from a unionized facility in Canada, drawn in part by incentives and the prospect of lower labor costs.
Announced in late 2010, the project subsequently won more than $150 million in public incentives, mostly from the state, in addition to a 15-year partial freeze of city and county property taxes.
The union vote came about 16 months after another effort failed in May 2015.
Shaffer said about 650 employees cast ballots this time, and the union plans to begin negotiations on a labor contract once election results are certified.
“We look forward to working with them to come to an agreement that’s mutually beneficial to both sides,” Shaffer said. “They’re a good company and we want to keep them here.”
Electrolux spokeswoman Eloise Hale released this statement: “In accordance with our Code of Conduct, we believe every employee has the right to vote yes or no to a union. We will continue being focused on achieving operational efficiency and competitiveness.”
Shaffer said the effort to win another vote began almost as soon as the union was defeated in 2015.
After that vote, European union activists contended Swedish-owned Electrolux failed to follow a policy of neutrality on employee efforts to unionize. Electrolux denied the claim and cited different traditions in the U.S. and Europe regarding union organization in the workplace.
Electrolux, located in Frank C. Pidgeon Industrial Park, was responsible for nearly 1,400 jobs as of Dec. 31, 2015, according to the Economic Development Growth Engine (EDGE) of Memphis and Shelby County. The company committed to create 1,240 jobs as part of the tax freeze agreement.
The EDGE's 2015 compliance report said Electrolux Memphis had 833 hourly employees, 77 salaried employees and 483 vendor employees from providers including Randstad, Aerotek and Robert Half.U.K. tabloid Sunday Sport recently introduced the world to Percy Foster, a 35-year-old dwarf porn star whose career was just beginning to catch fire. It was all because an observant production assistant on the set of Hi-Ho Hi-Ho, It's Up Your Arse We Go had noticed how much Foster looked like celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay. But just as Foster was set to join the rarefied ranks of celebrity lookalike dwarf porn stars, tragedy struck: The body of the 3' 6" performer has been discovered in a badger's den, partially eaten.
According to Sunday Sport's follow-up account, Foster was found "deep in an underground chamber by Ministry of Agriculture experts ahead of a planned badger-gassing programme near Tregaron, west Wales." They write that "expert CSI teams had to use fingertip technology to remove his body from the six-foot-deep burrow." (I have no idea what fingertip technology is, but I imagine it's akin to one of those claw cranes you find in arcades and drugstores.)
Officials have not yet ruled out suicide, and adult film producer Dexter Yamunkeh's comments — in which he intimates that Foster may have cracked under the pressures of being the world's leading Gordon Ramsay-lookalike-sex-dwarf — certainly don't invalidate the possibility:
"Percy was a little guy with big problems. He was doing well but he was under pressure, 24/7, like everyone in this goddamned business."
It's more than a little curious that the internet, aka God's porn dumping grounds, contains not a single reference to either Percy or Dexter prior to these two news items. But that's just the cynic in me talking. So tonight, we pour out a little (and I do mean little) gin in memory of poor Percy. We may never get to see his work in Midget MasterChef: Assbasters 7, but his memory will live on all the same. [Sunday Sport via Anorak]Insider Trading by Congress Home Page > Congressional Representatives' Stock Performance > How do Congressional representatives' stocks perform in relation to the general market? > How do Congressional representatives' stocks perform in relation to the general market?
General Reference (not clearly pro or con)
Sources and Notes:
1. Brad M. Barber, MBA, PhD, and Terrance Odean, PhD, "Trading Is Hazardous to Your Wealth: The Common Stock Investment Performance of Individual Investors, " The Journal of Finance, Apr. 2000. The study shows that the average household's stock portfolio earns an annual return of 16.4% on the stock market while the market's average return is 17.9%. ProCon.org used the difference between 16.4% and 17.9%, which is 1.5%, to indicate the average household's stock performance in relation to the market. We confirmed this calculation with Dr. Barber on Feb. 12, 2009.
2. Leslie A. Jeng, PhD, Andrew Metrick, PhD, and Richard Zeckhauser, PhD, " Estimating the Returns to Insider Trading: A Performance-Evaluation Perspective, " The Review of Economics and Statistics, May 2003. The study showed that the stock purchases of corporate insiders perform higher than the market average by 52-68 basis points per month. The study did not find significant abnormal returns for corporate insiders' stock sales. The average of 52 and 68 basis points is 60 basis points, which equals an approximate 7.4% annual return.
3. Alan J. Ziobrowski, PhD, Ping Cheng, PhD, James W. Boyd, PhD, and Briggitte J. Ziobrowski, PhD, " Abnormal Returns from the Common Stock Investments of the U.S. Senate, " Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Dec. 2004. The study shows that Senators' stock sales and purchases combined outperform the market by 97 basis points per month, or 12.3% per year.
4. Alan J. Ziobrowski, PhD, James W. Boyd, PhD, Ping Cheng, PhD, and Briggitte J. Ziobrowski, PhD, "Abnormal Returns From the Common Stock Investments of Members of the US House of Representatives," Business and Politics, May 2011. The study shows that members of the US House of Representatives' stock sales and purchases combined outperform the market by 55 basis points per month, or about 6% per year.
Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, wrote: Alan J. Ziobrowski, PhD, Associate Professor in the Department of Real Estate at Georgia State University, et al., in their Dec. 2004 article "Abnormal Returns from the Common Stock Investments of the U.S. Senate," published in the, wrote:
"[W]e find that members of the U.S. Senate outperformed the market by almost 100 basis points [One basis point is equivalent to 1/100th of a one percent. 100 basis points are equivalent to one percent.] per month...
When we equally weight the returns of each Senator, the buy portfolio earns a compound annual rate of 28.6% on an equal-weighted basis and 31.1% on a trade-weighted basis compared to 21.3% for the market...
Cumulative abnormal returns for the portfolio of stocks bought by Senators are near zero for the calendar year prior to the date of purchase. After acquisition, the cumulative abnormal return rises over 25% within one calendar year after the purchase date. The cumulative abnormal returns for the portfolio of stocks sold by the Senators are near zero for the calendar year after the date of sale. However, these same stocks saw a cumulative abnormal positive return of 25% during the year immediately preceding the event date. These results suggest that Senators knew the appropriate times to both buy and sell their common stocks...
After being sold by Senators, stocks underperform the market by 12 basis points per month on a trade-weighted basis....Combining the buy transactions with the sell transactions in a hedged portfolio we find that Senators outperform the market by 97 basis points (nearly 1%) per month on a trade-weighted basis...
We find no reliable differences between the returns earned by Democrats and Republicans but seniority appears to be important. Senators with the least seniority (in their first Senatorial term) earn statistically higher returns than those Senators with the longest seniority (over 16 years in the Senate)."
Dec. 2004 - Alan J. Ziobrowski, PhD Washington Spectator article "An Ethics Quagmire: Senators Beat the Stock Market--and Get Rich--with Insider Information" by Max Holland, as having stated: Thomas Ferguson, PhD, Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, was quoted in the Jan. 1, 2006article "An Ethics Quagmire: Senators Beat the Stock Market--and Get Rich--with Insider Information" by Max Holland, as having stated:
"Nobody gets results like [those of US Senators] in the financial world consistently and over the long term, any manager of a mutual fund...who regularly beats the market by as little as two percent annually is considered an investment genius."
Jan. 1, 2006 - Thomas Ferguson, PhD2017 Was the Year I Learned About My White Privilege
In college — this was in the late 1980s and early 1990s at the University of California, Berkeley — I used to be one of those smart-alecky young conservatives who would scoff at the notion of “white male privilege” and claim that anyone propagating such concepts was guilty of “political correctness.” As a Jewish refugee from the Soviet Union, I felt it was ridiculous to expect me to atone for the sins of slavery and segregation, to say nothing of the household drudgery and workplace discrimination suffered by women. I wasn’t racist or sexist. (Or so I thought.) I hadn’t discriminated against anyone. (Or so I thought.) My ancestors were not slave owners or lynchers; they were more likely victims of the pogroms.
I saw America as a land of opportunity, not a bastion of racism or sexism. I didn’t even think that I was a “white” person — the catchall category that has been extended to include everyone from a Mayflower descendant to a recently arrived illegal immigrant from Ireland. I was a newcomer to America who was eager to assimilate into this wondrous new society, and I saw its many merits while blinding myself to its dark side.
Well, live and learn. A quarter century is enough time to examine deeply held shibboleths and to see if they comport with reality. In my case, I have concluded that my beliefs were based more on faith than on a critical examination of the evidence. In the last few years, in particular, it has become impossible for me to deny the reality of discrimination, harassment, even violence that people of color and women continue to experience in modern-day America from a power structure that remains for the most part in the hands of straight, white males. People like me, in other words. Whether I realize it or not, I have benefitted from my skin color and my gender — and those of a different gender or sexuality or skin color have suffered because of it.
This sounds obvious, but it wasn’t clear to me until recently. I have had my consciousness raised. Seriously.
This doesn’t mean that I agree with America’s harshest critics — successors to the New Left of the 1960s who saw this country as an irredeemably fascist state that they called “AmeriKKKa.” Judging by historical standards or those of the rest of the world, America remains admirably free and enlightened. Minorities are not being subject to ethnic cleansing like the Rohingya in Burma. Women are not forced to wear all-enveloping garments as in Saudi Arabia. No one is jailed for criticizing our supreme leader as in Russia.
The country is becoming more aware of oppression and injustice, which have long permeated our society, precisely because of growing agitation to do something about it. Those are painful but necessary steps toward creating a more equal and just society. But we are not there yet, and it is wrong to pretend otherwise. It is even more pernicious to cling to the conceit, so popular among Donald Trump’s supporters, that straight white men are the “true” victims because their unquestioned position of privilege is now being challenged by uppity women, gay people, and people of color.
I used to take a reflexively pro-police view of arguments over alleged police misconduct, thinking that cops were getting a bum rap for doing a tough, dangerous job. I still have admiration for the vast majority of police officers, but there is no denying that some are guilty of mistreating the people they are supposed to serve. Not all the victims of police misconduct are minorities — witness a blonde Australian woman shot to death by a Minneapolis police officer after she called 911, or an unarmed white man shot to death by a Mesa, Arizona, officer while crawling down a hotel hallway — but a disproportionate share are.
The videos do not lie. One after another, we have seen the horrifying evidence on film of cops arresting, beating, even shooting black people who were doing absolutely nothing wrong or were stopped for trivial misconduct. For African-Americans, and in particular African-American men, infractions like jaywalking or speeding or selling cigarettes without tax stamps can incite corporal, or even capital, punishment without benefit of judge or jury. African-Americans have long talked about being stopped for “driving while black.” I am ashamed to admit I did not realize what a serious and common problem this was until the videotaped evidence emerged. The iPhone may well have done more to expose racism in modern-day America than the NAACP.
Of course, the problem is not limited to the police; they merely reflect the racism of our society, which is not as severe as it used to be but remains real enough. I realized how entrenched this problem remains when an African-American friend — a well-educated, well-paid, well-dressed woman — confessed that she did not want to walk into a department store carrying in her purse a pair of jeans that she planned to give to a friend later in the day. Why not? Because she was afraid that she would be accused of shoplifting! This is not something that would occur to me, simply because the same suspicion would not attach to a middle-aged, middle-class white man.
The larger problem of racism in our society was made evident in Donald Trump’s election, despite — or because of — his willingness to dog-whistle toward white nationalists with his pervasive bashing of Mexicans, Muslims, and other minorities. Trump even tried to delegitimize the first African-American president by claiming he wasn’t born in this country, and now he goes after African-American football players who kneel during the playing of the anthem to protest police brutality. (Far from being concerned about police misconduct, which disproportionately targets people of color, Trump actively encourages it.)
Adam Serwer argues persuasively in the Atlantic that Trump’s election could not be explained by “economic anxiety,” because the poorest voters — those making less than $50,000 a year — voted predominantly for Hillary Clinton. On the other hand, “Trump defeated Clinton among white voters in every income category,” from those making less than $30,000 to those making more than $250,000. In other words, Serwer writes, Trump does not lead a “working-class coalition; it is a nationalist one.” That doesn’t mean that every Trump supporter is a racist; it does mean that Trump’s victory has revealed that racism and xenophobia are more widespread than I had previously realized.
As for sexism, its scope has been made plain by the horrifying revelations of widespread harassment, assault, and even rape perpetrated by powerful men from Hollywood to Washington. The Harvey Weinstein scandal has opened the floodgates, leading to the naming and shaming of a growing list of rich and powerful men — including Kevin Spacey, Louis C.K., Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer, Roy Moore, and John Conyers — who are alleged to have abused their positions of authority to force themselves upon women or, in some cases, men.
As with the revelations of police brutality, so too with sexual harassment: I am embarrassed and ashamed that I did not understand how bad the problem is. I had certainly gotten some hints from my female friends of the kind of harassment they have endured, but I never had any idea it was this bad or this common — or this tolerated. Even now, while other men are being fired for their misconduct, Trump continues to sit in the Oval Office despite credible allegations of sexual assault from nearly 20 different women.
I now realize something I should have learned long ago: that feminist activists had a fair point when they denounced the “patriarchy” for oppressing women. Sadly, this oppression, while less severe than it used to be, remains a major problem in spite of the impressive strides the U.S. has taken toward greater gender equality.
This doesn’t mean that I am about to join the academic political correctness brigade in protesting “microaggressions” and agitating against free speech. I remain a classical liberal, and I am disturbed by attempts to infringe on freedom of speech in the name in fighting racism, sexism, or other ills. But I no longer think, as I once did, that “political correctness” is a bigger threat than the underlying racism and sexism that continue to disfigure our society decades after the civil rights and women’s rights movements. If the Trump era teaches us anything, it is how far we still have to go to realize the “unalienable Rights” of all Americans to enjoy “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” regardless of gender, sexuality, religion, or skin color.Sex.com/Twitter
On its face, sex.com looks like a no-frills Pinterest for porn, but behind the site lies an ongoing grudge match between the man who invented online dating and a con artist who stole the crown jewel of the internet out from under him.
The history of the domain is well documented, with two books and dozens of articles written on the subject. It was first registered in 1994 by Gary Kremen, the entrepreneur who founded Match.com and was savvy enough to buy up several generic domains, including jobs.com and housing.com, in the early days of the internet.
Kremen just sat on the domain sex.com while he built his online dating business, until one day, somebody notified him the email behind the site had changed. He thought this was a glitch, not unlikely with the state of software at the time, but soon noticed all of the ownership information for the domain had been changed. When he called the phone number associated it, Stephen Cohen, a brilliant con man who was soon to become his lifelong rival, answered.
"Kremen asked him, 'What are you doing with my domain name?' And Cohen said, 'No, it's my domain now,' and basically told Kremen to fuck off," Kieren McCarthy, a journalist whose book Sex.com retells the saga surrounding the legal battle for the site, said.
To this day, it is unclear how, exactly, Cohen gained ownership of the domain. He was a high school dropout and adept swindler who had been pulling heists like this his whole life. McCarthy said he believes Cohen found a technical loophole to put in an amend request—and Kremen's lawyers alleged he may have gotten a little extra help from someone at the company that hosted the domain.
"He was suspected to have had a sexual relationship with someone at Network Solutions, and conned someone into changing the email address to his email address, and used that to get the rest of the information changed," McCarthy said.
Unsurprisingly, sex.com was a popular random word to punch in
Kremen lawyered up and began his quest to get Sex.com back. Meanwhile, Cohen started running the site, selling ads to make around half a million dollars a day. This was in the days before Google, when people just typed in various domains to surf the web. Unsurprisingly, sex.com was a popular random word to punch in, and it got millions of visitors a day.
"It was the best domain on the internet because you had millions of people turning up just to see what was there," McCarthy said. "He made millions just by existing. It was the Holy Grail of the internet at the time, and people went a bit mad over it."
A legal battle over the domain ensued for the next five years, with both men equally tenacious in their quest to get hold of the site.
"These were two very smart and very determined people, neither of whom like losing on any level," McCarthy said. "So Cohen stole it and was making millions, so he fought tooth and nail to keep it, and Kremen was overwhelmed with this sense of injustice. He was absolutely driven to beat this guy."
Kremen ultimately won the case, setting an important legal precedent that domain names constitute intangible property and can be stolen. Cohen appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, which declined to hear it. He was ordered to pay Kremen $64 million in lost earnings in 2001, which launched the next part of the saga surrounding sex.com.
Kremen responded by posting "wanted" signs all over the Mexican town
After losing the case, Cohen fled across the border to Tijuana to avoid paying the settlement. Kremen responded by posting "wanted" signs all over the Mexican town with Cohen's photo and information. McCarthy said Cohen claimed this resulted in bounty hunters showing up at his door and instigating a firefight with the Mexican police.
Eventually Cohen was extradited from Mexico and sent back to the US, where he sat in jail for six months until a judge gave up on trying to make him pay up. To this day, Cohen has refused to pay a penny of the $64 million he owes Kremen, according to McCarthy. The only thing Kremen was able to wrest from Cohen in the end was one of his properties, which he paid people to destroy before Kremen took ownership of it. And the petty fight continues.
"Kremen pays a set of lawyers just to follow anything Cohen does," McCarthy said. "So they've been playing this cat and mouse game for 10 years. He chases Cohen around the world trying to get the money off of him, and Cohen flees around the world refusing to pay him."
So what is sex.com up to these days? Kremen auctioned it off for an estimated $13 million in 2006. It has changed hands a couple times since then, and is now a major porn website, functioning as a sort of Pinterest service allowing users to upload and share adult content. It's still profiting off the wealth of traffic it gets just from sitting on the domain, although it is nowhere near as successful as it was in the days before Google.
Martin Kelly, a project manager at Sex.com, said the site is now run by a staff of approximately 20 people based out of Montreal. The site sees about 1.8 million visits a day between desktop and mobile, and they are planning a redesign in the near future.
"A lot of historic big-name sites have had challenges with getting the right content to the right users," Kelly said. "What we wanted to do is go back and analyze the data of what our most preferred content is and design areas that will really pinpoint the desires of our users. We want users to be able to follow their favorites stars and share content in a beautifully presented package."
While its days as the Holy Grail of the internet may be behind it, the value of sex.com is still undeniable.
Masters of their Domain is a column that investigates who owns popular or interesting domain names, and what they're doing with them.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misreported the amount of money Sex.com was making at first as "millions of dollars a day;" in fact it was closer to half a million dollars a day.Days Gone Is 'Incredibly Story Focused', Will Explore Deacon's Emotional Trauma Written Tuesday, June 13, 2017 By Dom Peppiatt View author's profile
In a behind-closed-doors presentation with Sony, Bend Studio revealed to us that Days Gone will be an 'incredibly story focused' game that will revolve heavily around exploring main character Deacon St. John's broken personality and delve into his trauma.
A representative from Bend explained that Deacon has 'lost an awful lot' between our meeting him and the pandemic that swept across the world two years prior to the game's setting. According to the developer, he is 'heartbroken and angry' and 'he lost everything' and Bend really wants to explore how that affects his actions.
Despite being an open-world game, Bend has outlined that there will be a lot of story missions 'all of which will have the same outcome' no matter how you choose to tackle them (sending hordes of the undead after a camp or taking them out with a sniper will always offer the same dialogue at the end of a mission, for example).
The game still has no release date. Take a look at the newest gameplay trailer below:The federal government spent millions of taxpayer dollars studying if women can pick Barbie out of a lineup, creating robot flowers, and building a computer that binge watches "Desperate Housewives," according to a new report on wasteful spending.
Sen. Jeff Flake, R.-Ariz., on Tuesday released Wastebook: PORKémon Go, the latest chronicle of waste in a series started by former Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, a Republican. The report covers 50 items and more than $5 billion in spending on outrageous government programs and frivolous projects.
“Within mere days, the national debt will top $20 trillion, the largest amount ever owed by any nation in history, and the federal government’s authority to borrow expires in March,” Flake wrote in the introduction to the report. “But rather than making a long overdue resolution to be fiscally responsible, the promises from Washington are to spend even more.”
The report revealed countless examples of questionable science spending, including $300,000 from the National Eye Institute and National Science Foundation studying whether women or men spent more time playing with Barbie dolls when they were children.
“The researchers’ intuition was that men may have played more with Transformers then [sic] Barbies when they were younger, and vice versa for women,” according to the report.
Researchers at Vanderbilt University also studied whether women were able to identify the real Barbie in a lineup of other dolls, challenging the “popular misconception that all Barbie dolls have the same face,” a researcher said.
Click for more from The Washington Free Beacon.General Motors has announced that they will be suspending the third shift at its Lansing Delta Township assembly plant in May of 2017.
Earlier in 2016, the automotive manufacturer announced that the latest generation of the GMC Acadia would be built at the Spring Hill Tennessee plant. As a result of the move to Tennessee, production of the previous generation of Acadias at the Delta Township plant will stop in May of 2017, ending the need for a third shift.
Suspension of the third shift will affect around 1,100 workers. Layoff notices were distributed to workers at the plant beginning Monday March 6, 2017.
Erin Davis of General Motors says the Buick Enclave and Chevrolet Traverse will continue to be built at Lansing Delta Township. All-new versions of both models will be built at LDT this year.The Steelers are sort of a wreck—"total panic mode," as one player says. In response, a reported players-only meeting that produced a new rule: no one with less than four years of NFL experience is allowed to play table tennis and billiards at the team's training facility. This will solve everything.
Via City of Champions, the veterans held a meeting yesterday in an attempt to right this listing ship. The thinking apparently goes that an 0-2 team shouldn't be wasting valuable hours doing fun things. Or at least, not the new guys.
Jory Rand of KDKA was at the training facility and tried to track down details on the new rule, but was largely unsuccessful.
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The signs didn't last long. Either the rules weren't approved by management, or someone doesn't want attention drawn to them.
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Yesterday the Post-Gazette reported that receiver Antonio Brown angrily confronted offensive coordinator Todd Haley on the sidelines during Monday night's loss. I don't know what he's so upset about. He's in his fourth year—he gets to play pool.KARACHI, PakistanKARACHI, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan's largest bank, facing a possible $630 million fine over compliance failures by its New York branch, admitted mistakes on Tuesday but denied any wrongdoing and said the penalty sought by U.S. regulators was disproportionate.
New York State's Department of Financial Services (DFS) said on Monday it was seeking to fine Habib Bank Ltd (HBL) (HBL.KA) up to $630 million for "grave" compliance failures with anti-money laundering rules, in what would be the largest penalty ever faced by a Pakistani financial institution.
"There is no specific wrongdoing," HBL Chief Executive Noman Karamat Dar told a press briefing in Islamabad. "Yes there are mistakes, but we are saying that the fine for these mistakes is disproportionate."
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HBL, which has announced it plans to surrender its U.S. banking licence, has been embroiled in accusations over money-laundering compliance failures by its New York operation for more than a decade.
But the case has gained added weight amid growing political tensions between Washington and Islamabad following U.S. President Donald Trump's demand last week that Pakistan do more to cut off sanctuaries for Afghan Taliban insurgents.
The DFS, which has pursued several aggressive enforcement actions against foreign banks, has said HBL's compliance systems were "dangerously weak" and "serious and persistent failings" at its New York unit appeared to affect the entire enterprise.
It singled out HBL's connections with Saudi Arabia's largest private bank Al Rahji, which has been linked by the U.S. Senate and in the media to Al Qaeda and the financing of extremism.
It has also identified instances of so-called "wire-stripping", whereby a bank deliberately strips out information related to a payment, such as the originator or beneficiary, that may raise suspicions.
Dar admitted that the bank had made a mistake in not identifying some transactions but attributed it to human error.
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The bank has said operations outside the United States would not be affected and it would contest any fine. Dar said whatever happened, there would be no long-term effect.
"Our liquidity, profitability and strength is enough to take the bank forward," he said.
Until April 2015, Pakistan's government held a 42.5 percent stake in HBL, the country's oldest bank. But it sold its shares as part of a privatization drive, bringing in more than $1 billion. The DFS, however, still lists HBL as majority owned by the government.Today I will present how to implement in Python a simple yet effective algorithm for proceduraly generating 2D landscapes. It is called Midpoint Displacement (or Diamond-square algorithm, which seems less intuitive to me) and, with some tweaking it can also be used for creating rivers, lighting strikes or (fake) graphs. The final output may look like the following image.
Algorithm overview
The main idea of the algorithm is as follows: Begin with a straight line segment, compute its midpoint and displace it by a bounded random value. This displacement can be done either by:
Displacing the midpoint in the direction perpendicular to the line segment. Displacing only the y coordinate value of the midpoint.
This first iteration will result in two straight line segments obtained from the displacement of the midpoint of the original segment. The same process of computing and displacing the midpoint can be then applied to each of this new two segments and it will result in four straight line segments. Then we can repeat the process for each of this four segments to obtain eight and so on. The process can be repeated iteratively or recursively as many times as desired or until the segments cannot be reduced more (for graphical applications this limit would be two pixel’s width segments). The following image may help to clarify what I just said.
And that’s it! This is the core idea of the midpoint displacement algorithm. In pseudocode it looks like:
Initialize segment While iterations < num_of_iterations and segments_length > min_length: For each segment: Compute midpoint Displace midpoint Update segments Reduce displacement bounds iterations+1
However, before implementing the algorithm we should dig deeper in some of the concepts that have arisen so far. These are mainly:
How much should we displace the midpoint?
How much should the displacement bounds be reduced after each iteration?
How much should we displace the midpoint?
Sadly, there is no general answer for this question because it greatly depends on two aspects:
The application the algorithm is being used for The desired effect
Since in this post our scope is terrain generation I will limit the explanation to the effects that this parameter has in this area. However, the ideas that I will explain now can be extrapolated to any other application where the Midpoint Displacement algorithm may be used. As I see it, there are two key considerations that should be taken into account when deciding the initial displacement value.
First of all, we should consider which is the desired type of terrain. Hopefully it makes sense to say that the bigger the mountains we want to generate the bigger the initial displacement value should be and viceversa. With a bit of trial and error it is easy to get an idea of the average profiles generated by different values and how do they look. The point here is that bigger mountains need bigger initial displacement values.
Secondly, the overall dimensions (width and height) of the generated terrain. The initial displacement should be regarded as a value which depends on the generated terrain dimensions. What I want to say is that an initial displacement of 5 may be huge when dealing with a 5×5 image but will hardly be noticed in a 1500×1500 image.
How much should the bounds be reduced after each iteration?
Well, the answer again depends on which is the desired output. It should be intuitive that the smaller the displacement reduction the more jagged the obtained profile will be and viceversa. The two extremes are no displacement reduction at all and setting the displacement to 0 after the first iteration. This two cases can be observed in the figure below.
Somewhere in between is the displacement reduction that will yield the desired output. There are plenty of ways to reduce the displacement bounds each iteration (linearly, exponentially, logarithmically, etc.) and I encourage you to try different ones and see how the results vary.
What I did was define a standard displacement reduction of 1/2, which means that the displacement is reduced by half each new iteration, and a displacement decay power i such that the displacement reduction is
displacement_reduction = 1/(2^i)
and
displacement_bounds(k+1) = displacement_bounds(k)*displacement_reduction
were k is the current iteration and k+1 the next iteration. We can then talk about the obtained terrain profiles in terms of this decay power i. Below you can see how the algorithm performs for different decay powers.
Bear in mind that the two factors we just saw, the bounds reduction and initial displacement are related one to the other and that they do not affect the output independently. Smaller initial displacements may look good with smaller decay powers and viceversa. Here we have talked about some guidelines that may help when deciding which values to use but there will be some trial and error until the right parametres for the desired output are found. Finally, the number of iterations is another factor that also affects the output in relation with the initial displacement and the bounds reduction.
Python implementation
Finally it is time to, with all the ideas explained above, code our 2D terrain generator. For this particular implementation I have decided to:
Displace only the y coordinate of the midpoints (Second of the two displacement methods explained at the begining).
Use symmetric bounds with respect to zero for the displacement (if b is the upper bound then –b will be the lower bound.)
Choose the displacement value to be either the upper bound or the lower bound, but never allow values in between.
Reduce the bounds after each iteration by multiplying the current bounds by 1/(2^i)
We will have three functions: one that will generate the terrain, one that will draw the generated terrain and one that will handle the above processes.
Before implementing the functions we should first import the modules that we will use:
import os # path resolving and image saving import random # midpoint displacement from PIL import Image, ImageDraw # image creation and drawing import bisect # working with the sorted list of points
Terrain generation
For the terrain generation we need a function that, given a straight line segment returns the profile of the terrain. I have decided to provide as inputs the initial segment and displacement, the rate of decay or roughness of the displacement and the number of iterations:
# Iterative midpoint vertical displacement def midpoint_displacement (start, end, roughness, vertical_displacement = None, num_of_iterations = 16 ): """ Given a straight line segment specified by a starting point and an endpoint in the form of [starting_point_x, starting_point_y] and [endpoint_x, endpoint_y], a roughness value > 0, an initial vertical displacement and a number of iterations > 0 applies the midpoint algorithm to the specified segment and returns the obtained list of points in the form points = [[x_0, y_0],[x_1, y_1],...,[x_n, y_n]] """ # Final number of points = (2^iterations)+1 if vertical_displacement is None: # if no initial displacement is specified set displacement to: # (y_start+y_end)/2 vertical_displacement = (start[ 1 ] + end[ 1 ]) / 2 # Data structure that stores the points is a list of lists where # each sublist represents a point and holds its x and y coordinates: # points=[[x_0, y_0],[x_1, y_1],...,[x_n, y_n]] # | | | # point 0 point 1 point n # The points list is always kept sorted from smallest to biggest x-value points = [start, end] iteration = 1 while iteration <= num_of_iterations: # Since the list of points will be dynamically updated with the new computed # points after each midpoint displacement it is necessary to create a copy # of the state at the beginning of the iteration so we can iterate over # the original sequence. # Tuple type is used for security reasons since they are immutable in Python. points_tup = tuple(points) for i in range(len(points_tup) - 1 ): # Calculate x and y midpoint coordinates: # [(x_i+x_(i+1))/2, (y_i+y_(i+1))/2] midpoint = list(map( lambda x: (points_tup[i][x] + points_tup[i + 1 ][x]) / 2, [ 0, 1 ])) # Displace midpoint y-coordinate midpoint[ 1 ] += random. choice([ - vertical_displacement, vertical_displacement]) # Insert the displaced midpoint in the current list of points bisect. insort(points, midpoint) # bisect allows to insert an element in a list so that its order # is preserved. # By
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earned a spot on this list, not just for his breakout 2017 campaign, but also for the latest news from Jon Morosi of MLB.com that Madison Bumgarner, Buster Posey and Brandon Crawford are the only untouchables on the market. That leaves several potential openings for Shaw as a trade of Brandon Belt or Hunter Pence could free up a spot in the regular lineup for Shaw to start in the big leagues. And with his power and ability to make consistent contact, Shaw could be a solid add in mixed leagues if he gets a chance to play in the majors.
17. Carson Kelly (C, STL, AAA)
Stats: 237 PA,.284/.371/.457, 8 HR, 0 SB, 11.4% BB rate, 15.2% K rate
ETA: Mid-August
Kelly is one of the more interesting names on this list in that there is no super clear path to playing time for him unless a) Yadier Molina is injured or b) Kelly is traded. If someone forced me to put money on one or the other, I’d probably put it on option b as the Cardinals have been rumored as potential buyers at the deadline. And with Molina signed for a couple more years, Kelly does not have a clear path to starting time for a number of years. But he has clearly demonstrated he is ready for the majors, and could have a real impact if something does happen and he gets to start in the big leagues. And for that reason, he needs to be watched in most formats, especially with catcher proving to have few impact bats right now.
18. Tyler Mahle (SP, CIN, AAA)
Stats: 98.0 IP, 1.65 ERA, 2.56 FIP, 27.1% K rate, 5.1% BB rate, 6.5% HR/FB,.194 AVG
ETA: Early August
If the Reds aren’t happy with Romano and decide to give another youngster a try, there’s a decent chance Mahle will be their guy. Mahle has flown up prospect lists this season after truly dominating Double-A to the tune of a 1.59 ERA and 2.57 FIP (including a perfect game). He has not only maintained his stellar command which has followed him to every level, but he has now increased his strikeout rate to well above 25 percent for the first time in his career. His stuff does not suggest a future ace, but scouts have always praised him for his pitchability and compared him to former Reds pitcher Mike Leake. He could be a rotation option for the team later this season and could be a decent add in deeper leagues if he proves he can stick on the MLB roster.
19. Jake Bauers (1B/OF, TB, AAA)
Stats: 328 PA,.271/.369/.418, 7 HR, 11 SB, 13.1% BB rate, 19.5% K rate
ETA: Early August
The Tampa Bay Rays have a crowded outfield this season, with standout players like Corey Dickerson, Steven Souza, Colby Rasmus and Kevin Kiermaier all enjoying great seasons. But another outfielder performing well for the Rays has come from Triple-A with Bauers showing off an advanced approach to the plate and a budding power/speed combination. Though he has a long row to hoe in order to find playing time in the majors, he could be a trade chip if Tampa decides to be buyers at the deadline or could benefit from the Rays selling if someone like Souza, Dickerson or Rasmus gets dealt to another contender. Though he is not the most exciting prospect out there, Bauers comes with little risk thanks to that approach and could be valuable in deep leagues if he finds himself starting in the big leagues.
20. Magneuris Sierra (OF, STL, AA)
Stats: 237 PA,.300/.339/.436, 1 HR, 12 SB, 5.1% BB rate, 16.0% K rate
ETA: Early August
Already having seen eight games in the majors, Sierra has emerged as a clear candidate for playing time in the Cardinals’ outfield should anyone go down with an injury. Though they are loaded with depth including four active MLBers (Dexter Fowler, Tommy Pham, Stephen Piscotty and Randal Grichuk) and prospects (Harrison Bader and Randy Aarozarena), the team has shown a liking towards Sierra who has impressed in his short time in the majors. And with his near-elite speed and ability to make consistent contact, Sierra would make for an exciting addition to many fantasy teams should he receive an extended look in the majors.
21. Chance Adams (SP, NYY, AAA)
Stats: 87.2 IP, 1.85 ERA, 3.27 FIP, 26.0% K rate, 9.8% BB rate, 5.8% HR/FB,.172 AVG
ETA: September
22. A.J. Reed (1B, HOU, AAA)
Stats: 326 PA,.240/.334/.435, 13 HR, 0 SB, 12.0% BB rate, 27.3% K rate
ETA: September
23. Ozzie Albies (2B, ATL, AAA)
Stats: 336 PA,.285/.330/.447, 7 HR, 20 SB, 6.0% BB rate, 20.2% K rate
ETA: September
24. Zack Burdi (RP, CWS, AAA)
Stats: 31.0 IP, 4.35 ERA, 2.77 FIP 34.8% K rate, 10.6% BB rate, 9.5% HR/FB,.236 AVG
ETA: Late July
25. Yandy Diaz (3B, CLE, AAA)
Stats: 180 PA,.329/.436/.436, 3 HR, 0 SB, 15.6% BB rate, 13.9% K rate
ETA: September
26. Tom Eshelman (SP, PHI, AAA)
Stats: 100.0 IP, 2.43 ERA, 3.77 FIP, 18.1% K rate, 3.4% BB rate, 9.5% HR/FB,.229 AVG
ETA: Early August
27. Lucas Sims (SP, ATL, AAA)
Stats: 90.0 IP, 4.00 ERA, 4.77 FIP, 26.0% K rate, 8.1% BB rate, 17.2% HR/FB,.229 AVG
ETA: Mid-August
28. Nick Gordon (SS, MIN, AA)
Stats: 339 PA,.308/.378/.477, 6 HR, 8 SB, 10.0% BB rate, 21.8% K rate
ETA: September
29. Nicky Delmonico (1B/OF, CWS, AAA)
Stats: 337 PA,.276/.362/.455, 11 HR, 3 SB, 11.0% BB rate, 15.7% K rate
ETA: September
30. Jesse Winker (OF, CIN, AAA)
Stats: 285 PA,.305/.382/.394, 2 HR, 1 SB, 11.2% BB rate, 13.0% K rate
ETA: September
MLB Rookie Rankings
1. Aaron Judge (OF, NYY)
2. Cody Bellinger (1B/OF, LAD)
3. Andrew Benintendi (OF, BOS)
4. Bradley Zimmer (OF, CLE)
5. Mitch Haniger (OF, SEA)
6. Trey Mancini (1B, BAL)
7. Jordan Montgomery (SP, NYY)
8. Ian Happ (2B/OF, CHC)
9. Matt Davidson (3B, CWS)
10. Ben Gamel (OF, SEA)
11. Raimel Tapia (OF, COL)
12. Jacob Faria (SP, TB)
13. German Marquez (SP, COL)
14. Jeff Hoffman (SP, COL)
15. Manuel Margot (OF, SD)
16. Jorge Bonifacio (OF, KC)
17. Koda Glover (RP, WAS)
18. Brian Goodwin (OF, WAS)
19. Paul DeJong (2B/SS, STL)
20. Clint Frazier (OF, NYY)A model of a crewed version of SpaceX’s Dragon spacecraft on display at the Pasadena Convention Center on the evening of August 5. SpaceX is one of three companies that received earlier that day funded commercial crew agreements to support projects like a crewed Dragon. (credit: J. Foust) Commercial crew’s winners and losers
Throughout the summer, those following NASA’s commercial crew program had been playing a guessing game: when would the agency announce the winners of the next round of funded Space Act Agreements, called Commercial Crew Integrated Capability, or CCiCap? NASA had given only a vague schedule—some time in July or August—leading to speculation regarding not only who would win the awards, but when. Many thought, though, that NASA would block out the period around the landing of its Curiosity rover, late in the evening of August 5, lest the publicity for the two events conflict with each other. Well, so much for that strategy. In fact, NASA announced Wednesday, August 1, that it would reveal the CCiCap winners on the morning of Friday the 3rd, or less than 72 hours before Curiosity’s landing. That rollout, featuring speeches at the Kennedy Space Center and a flurry of telecons, still attracted plenty of attention before the rover’s landing overtook the news cycle. The announcement settled some, but not all, of the uncertainty about the companies that will be involved in the commercial crew effort going forward, although bigger issues about the overall commercial crew effort remain. NASA unveils the winners The official announcement of the CCiCap winners came in a press release issued at 9 am Eastern time on Friday, followed an hour later by statements by NASA officials, including administrator Charles Bolden, at the Kennedy Space Center. “Our commercial crew and cargo efforts are based on a simple but powerful principle: by investing in American companies and American ingenuity, we’re spurring free market competition to give taxpayers more bang for the buck,” Bolden said. “The ultimate goal of our commercial crew space program is to bring human spaceflight launches right back here to American soil and end the outsourcing of these important jobs.” “If you looked at the proposals we received, the stronger proposals were the three that we talked about,” said Gerstenmaier. And what American companies was NASA investing in? Speculation leading up to last week’s announcement had focused on four companies: ATK, Boeing, Sierra Nevada Corporation, and SpaceX. The latter three had funded Space Act Agreements under the second round of the Commercial Crew Development program, or CCDev-2, while ATK had an unfunded CCDev-2 agreement. However, not all could win: under an agreement between Bolden and key House appropriator Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), who chairs the appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA, the space agency agreed to make only “two and a half” awards: two full-sized awards and a third “partial” award that would keep that company in the program, but at a lower pace. NASA decided to reward the funded CCDev-2 companies. Boeing won the largest award, at $460 million, while SpaceX for the other “full” award, with a $440-million agreement. Sierra Nevada got a smaller award, at $212.5 million. All three are milestone-based agreements like the previous two commercial crew rounds, as well as the earlier Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) cargo program, with companies earning money only when they achieve specified milestones in the agreements. ATK, which has submitted a proposal, did not receive a funded award. (Blue Origin, the fourth CCDev-2 company, did not submit a CCiCap proposal; three other obscure companies—American Aerospace, Space Design, and Space Operations—submitted proposals that were rejected for not being technically acceptable.) NASA officials in a media teleconference Friday morning were reticent to go into details about its CCiCap selections. “If you looked at the proposals we received, the stronger proposals were the three that we talked about,” Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations, said, referring to the winning three companies. Those companies’ proposals, he explained, met the goals outlined in the original CCiCap solictation in a “much stronger fashion than ATK’s did.” He promised to release a source selection statement in a week to a week and a half, after debriefing the companies. NASA officials also cautioned not to read too much into the specific dollar amounts in the agreements. “Nobody should infer that the amount of the awards translates into a rank order of these companies. That’s not how it was done,” Phil McAlister, director of commercial spaceflight development at NASA. Instead, he and Brent Jett, the deputy director of the Commercial Crew Program, explained that the milestones and amounts were negotiated individually with the companies. “The funding profile is related to the overall development plan the company has in place,” Jett said. However, officials did acknowledge that Sierra Nevada did get a smaller award to satisfy the “two-and-a-half-award” requirement of the deal between NASA and Rep. Wolf. “Two of them are funded essentially all the way to critical design level of maturity,” Gerstenmaier said, referring to Boeing and SpaceX, “and the third company [Sierra Nevada] will not get quite to the critical design review level but will essentially retire all of the significant risk associated with their unique design.” The amount of money for the various milestones was also tied to the funding NASA anticipates for the program in the next fiscal year. Another element of the NASA-Wolf agreement was that Wolf would support the Senate’s proposed funding level of $525 million for commercial crew in its version of the fiscal year 2013 appropriations bill, compared to $500 million in the House version. “That’s conceptually what we looked at when we put this profile together,” he said, so that the funding would be available for all the milestones in fiscal year 2013 if the companies achieve them on schedule. (Additional funding will be required in fiscal year 2014 to cover the milestones that extend into the first part of that year.) “One thing that we have really been aggressive at is looking across Boeing,” sand Mulholland. “From across Boeing we have been getting help on being able to incorporate innovative approaches to make our team and our product more efficient.” There are wild cards in the appropriations process, though, including both the threat of across-the-board cuts due to budget sequestration and the likelihood for an extended continuing resolution (CR) that would fund government agencies at 2012 levels for up to six months after the 2013 fiscal year begins on October 1. “That’s factored into this overall plan so we can tolerate a continuing resolution for a period of time,” Gerstenmaier said. “We’ll be prepared to react to what we need to if we get some different levels, and we have the ability to negotiate and move some things if we need to.” The companies respond The three winning companies each had a slightly different angle on their plans for vehicle development and how that sets them apart from the competition. Boeing’s $460-million award includes 19 milestones that takes the company through critical design review (CDR), covering both development of its CST-100 crew vehicle as well as upgrades to the Atlas V rocket from United Launch Alliance that will launch it. One thing that sets Boeing’s bid apart, company officials said, was the breadth of capabilities at Boeing overall, including in its much larger aircraft business units. “One thing that we have really been aggressive at is looking across Boeing,” said John Mulholland, vice president and program manager of commercial programs within Boeing Space Exploration, in a telecon with reporters Friday morning. “We have been able to bring in innovative approaches to the workflow, to our design. So from across Boeing we have been getting help on being able to incorporate innovative approaches to make our team and our product more efficient.” Most of the work that Boeing will do under the CCiCap award will be to mature the design from the preliminary design review phase, which it completed under its previous commercial crew award, to the CDR. “We’re taking all the subsystems through design maturation, which includes across-the-board development tests,” said Mulholland. “Along the way we’ll be doing a number of risk-reduction tests.” Boeing’s award was only slightly modified from what the company proposed in order to bring the total value down from $500 million, Mulholland said. “We were able to minimize any schedule slip” from reworking the milestones, he said. Boeing moved the completion of its structural test article out by about four months—the only milestone it changed—while keeping the CDR, the major goal of the overall CCiCap program, on schedule. SpaceX, the other company that won a “full” CCiCap award, had been widely expected to win a award regardless of the competition given its recent success with the cargo version of the Dragon (see “A test of technology and a validation of vision”, The Space Review, May 29, 2012). One might be excused for thinking that SpaceX thought they had the CCiCap award in the bag given the low-key manner of company CEO Elon Musk in a conference call with reporters Friday morning. “If someone were to stow away on the cargo version of Dragon, they would have actually been fine on the last mission,” said Musk. That wasn’t the case, though. Instead, he was simply a little tired. “I’ve actually just gotten very little sleep because I was quite keen to hear the announcement this morning,” he explained. (The announcement of the CCiCap awards was made at 6 am Pacific time.) “I’m actually super excited about it.” The SpaceX CCiCap award includes 14 milestones, through CDR, with a total value of $440 million. Those milestones include a pad abort test of the Dragon’s escape thrusters, as well as an in-flight abort test, where the Dragon uses its thrusters to escape from its Falcon 9 launcher during ascent. Both of those tests are slated to take place from the SpaceX launch site at Cape Canaveral, although Musk suggested in the telecon that at least the pad abort test could take place elsewhere as a safety issue. Musk said he believed that SpaceX has an advantage over Boeing and Sierra Nevada because of the company’s long-term vision of putting people into space. “Human spaceflight has been the goal of SpaceX since the beginning, so the way we’ve designed the Falcon 9 and Dragon is to comply as best we can with the NASA human rating requirements,” he said. “If someone were to stow away on the cargo version of Dragon, they would have actually been fine on the last mission.” He also played up the economic benefits the company could provide to Florida, envisioning 1,000 jobs at its Cape Canaveral launch site within four to five years, plus several times that in indirect jobs linked to those activities. He said SpaceX would put “hundreds of millions of dollars” of its own money into the crew development project, which he estimates will have an overall cost of about $1 billion. Sierra Nevada, which got the smaller award that leaves the company short of achieving CDR, argued that it didn’t feel like it was losing ground to its competitors despite the smaller award. Mark Sirangelo, vice president of Sierra Nevada and head of its Space Systems division told reporters on a media telecon Friday morning that he feels the company is not behind Boeing and SpaceX for two reasons. “We’re riding the Atlas V rocket, which has now flown 31 times,” he said. “We have a significant amount of rocket risk behind us.” Boeing, of course, is also using the Atlas V, but SpaceX is using its own Falcon 9, which has flown only three times—all successfully—to date. “We believe that we’re going to be able to maintain the same pace,” said Sirangelo. “We’re on schedule and on budget for what we want to do with the program.” The other reason, he said, is that Dream Chaser is based on NASA’s HL-20 lifting body design, which the agency developed over the course of a decade. “When you take that history plus the eight years that we’ve been working on it, we actually have a significant amount of work that has been done.” The combination of that spacecraft design heritage and launch vehicle record helps level the playing the field, Sirangelo concluded. “It may appear as though we’re behind, but in our view we think that in many ways we’re more mature.” While the size of SNC’s Space Act Agreement, which includes nine milestones, is smaller than the other two, Sirangelo said it may be possible to get more money through the exercise of additional, optional milestones. On the company’s CCDev-2 award, he said, the company won $25 million in such additional milestones. “We were not the largest award in the base period of the last round, but we wound up actually getting and earning the largest amount of money from that program,” he said. “We believe that we’re going to be able to maintain the same pace. We’re on schedule and on budget for what we want to do with the program.” Left out of the awards was ATK, which proposed its Liberty launch system, featuring a two-stage rocket with an ATK five-segment solid rocket booster for the lower stage and an upper stage derived from the Ariane 5 core stage and provided by EADS Astrium, as well as a capsule whose contractors included Lockheed Martin. The company provided only a brief official comment on its loss in the CCiCap competition. “ATK and the Liberty Team are disappointed that we were not selected by NASA” for a CCiCap award, it read. “We continue to believe Liberty provides the safest, most cost-effective crew and cargo transportation systems, as well as the fastest path to recover America’s human launch capability and engage the workforce and facilities at Kennedy Space Center, Johnson Space Center, and others. We look forward to a debriefing from NASA.” Work on Liberty has been based at ATK’s Utah facilities, where it also builds the solid rocket motors it would use. Members of the state’s Congressional delegation came to the company’s defense on Friday. “I am disappointed and disheartened by the news that NASA has excluded ATK from the companies” that won CCiCap awards, said Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT) in a statement. “It was my understanding that ATK’s Liberty proposal ranked very high in technical merit, and was the lowest-risk option,” he added, although NASA has yet to disclose the details of its selection process. In comments Bishop and his office provided to a local newspaper, the Ogden Standard-Examiner, he suggested political factors may have played a role. “I have been concerned that favoritism may be playing far too prominent a role in NASA’s decision-making process, especially with regard to companies closely tied to key NASA officials,” he said, citing among other factors various visits by NASA leadership to some of the companies that won awards but not to ATK. Bolden, though, said at Friday’s announcement that he was not involved in the selection process. “I was not privy to know how many companies submitted, who submitted, and I did not want to know,” he said. “When you talk about the integrity of the process, I was briefed by Bill Gerstenmaier the day before yesterday on what was going to happen.” Those comments from Bishop, though, hint that it may not yet be smooth sailing ahead for NASA’s commercial crew program. While the CCiCap awards were a major milestone, the companies that received those awards will have to work to achieve the milestones the contain over the next 21 months, while NASA and the program’s supporters will have to work to keep the program sold, and funded, on Capitol Hill. HomePodcast #61: Dignity, Homelessness and AHCA Hysteria
Today on the Young Voices podcast, managing editor Liz Wolfe joins Stephen Kent to discuss ordinances criminalizing the homeless – what it means for the city of Houston and why it doesn’t actually solve the root problems. Liz also sounds off on AHCA hysteria, where the media let slide critics claims that the bill would allow for rape to be a pre-existing condition despite fact checkers debunking the line. Lastly Liz and Stephen share their admiration for Arthur Brooks of AEI, and talk about their takeaways from his book, The Conservative Heart.
Follow Liz Wolfe @LizzyWol and Young Voices on Twitter @yvadv and Stephen Kent @stephen_kent89
Leave us a review on iTunes, Stitcher or GooglePlay where this podcast can be found and email [email protected] with your thoughts on the show.If Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti had been in charge of NFL relocation, it doesn't sound like the Chargers would have ended up in his city.
During a recent interview on "The Dan Patrick Show," Garcetti was asked if L.A. might have been better off with just one team (the Rams) after going 22 years with no team at all.
"Absolutely, and I said that at the time," Garcetti said. "Both the Raiders and the Chargers, it would have been nice if they could have stayed put where they are, because Oakland and San Diego have huge fan bases, there's a big tradition."
One fan who attended the Chargers' home opener definitely heard Garcetti's interview because he made a sign celebrating the mayor's comments.
.@jmt619 got these into StubHub. As we spoke, fan came up and asked for picture with him. Sorta a hero to many. pic.twitter.com/v8iSsKajbU — Kevin Acee (@sdutKevinAcee) September 17, 2017
Garcetti, who watched the Raiders and Rams leave L.A. as a kid, seemed to truly empathize with Chargers fans who watched their team leave San Diego after the 2016 season.
"My heart goes out to folks in San Diego. I remember as a kid what it was like to lose not just one, but two teams," Garcetti said.
Although Garcetti would've been happy with just the Rams in Los Angeles, the mayor did add that this doesn't mean he wants the Chargers to fail.
"We embrace any team that comes," Garcetti said. "We're certainly happy to have the Chargers in L.A., but I think we could have been happy with just the (Rams)."
If Week 2 of the NFL season was any indication, fans in Los Angeles seem to have the same ho-hum attitude toward the Chargers that Garcetti has. Despite playing at a stadium that only holds 27,000 people, the Chargers weren't able to sell out their home opener on Sunday.
@tomleykis LA continuing to be pumped about football back here. #Chargers can't even fans to show up to a 27,000 seat high school stadium! pic.twitter.com/gPiqsQ3frp — Ray Lismon (@Raybeno11) September 17, 2017
When it comes to attendance, the Chargers (25,381) and Rams (56,612) actually finished behind USC over the weekend. The Trojans' Saturday night game against Texas drew more fans (84,714) than the Chargers and Rams drew combined on Sunday (81,993).
The Chargers' opener was a rocky beginning in L.A. for the team. Not only did they lose, but the stadium was half full of fans who were cheering for the other team.
Melvin Gordon said the StubHub Center in Carson, Calif., was 50 percent Miami Dolphins fans — Joe Schad (@schadjoe) September 18, 2017
The Chargers also need to work out a few kinks. For instance, take the team's game-day program. For the first game in L.A., the biography in the program for Chargers vice chairman Michael Spanos noted that he was still trying to get a stadium built in San Diego.
Today's #Chargers GameDay magazine. Nice to see Michael and Dean are still working tirelessly toward a San Diego solution! pic.twitter.com/2LKWNkgkgA — Annie Heilbrunn (@annieheilbrunn) September 17, 2017
The good news for the Chargers is that they do have the support of Garcetti, even if he didn't want them at first. The mayor just wants to teams to stop alienating fans and to stay put in one place.
"I'm glad that the Chargers will build up a fan base, and it really is southern California," Garcetti said. "I believe in players playing for a long time on teams, and teams staying in a city for their lives. That's really what makes it great growing up. You can root for the people and the teams without wondering if it's just going to be all about business, and where somebody could make a few hundred million dollars more."
If the Chargers want to grow a fan base, the fastest way to do that will be to win an actual game. The team is 0-2 following Sunday's 19-17 loss to the Dolphins. The Chargers have done a good job of breaking everyone's hearts so far: Both losses have happened due to a missed field goal in the final nine seconds of the game.Spaceflight Now +
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Old Titan pad gantry at Cape knocked down
Posted: April 27, 2008
The Complex 40 mobile service tower at Cape Canaveral's former Titan rocket launch pad was toppled using a couple hundred pounds of explosives at 9 a.m. this morning. The giant gantry is being demolished as the pad is transformed into a facility for SpaceX's Falcon 9 rockets.
Photo credit: Chris Miller/Spaceflight Now
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Click here for larger image. Credit: Chris Miller/Spaceflight NowDogecoin’s market capitalization continued to surge late Wednesday, nipping at the heels of peercoin, the third most valued cryptocurrency, as measured by two closely-followed charting services.
And by most accounts, it’s only a matter of hours or days before the meme-based altcoin, inspired by a Shiba Inu dog, becomes the third most valuable virtual currency. Not bad for a two-month-old creation.
BitInfoCharts.com had dogecoin at $78.4 million, compared to peercoin’s $79.6 million as of this writing. (By the way, bitcoin is No. 1 with a $7.1 billion market cap and litecoin No. 2 with $426 million.)
Coinmarketcap.com has peercoin at $88.8 million, nearly tied with dogecoin which is at $88.3 million.
Various media reports attribute the rise of dogecoin this week to its acceptance by major crytocurrency exchanges, including Chinese exchange Bter.com, which has added dogecoin to its list of currencies. It can now be traded directly for Chinese yuan.
Last month, Canadian-based exchange Vault of Satoshi said it would begin trading dogecoin for US and Canadian dollars.
Meanwhile, South Florida-based Cryptsy.com has become a popular destination for trading dogecoins for bitcoins.
Dogecoin’s rise this week, with its value against the bitcoin more than doubling, defies the turmoil in the bitcoin community, which has seen many exchanges hit by massive “distributed denial of services” (DDoS) malicious attacks over the last two days.
The attacks came after Tokyo-based Mt. Gox, formerly the busiest exchange, shut off withdrawals, claiming that a bug in the bitcoin network leaves bitcoin wallets vulnerable. Most bitcoin advocates and developers have debunked Mt. Gox’s claim.We already know that women of colour are seriously under-served by the beauty industry.
Mothercare encourages mums to be proud of their post-baby body with new campaign
Major brands fail to provide shades for a range of skintones. ‘Nude’ lipsticks only work on white skin. Women of colour have to go to specialist brands, which often cost more, just to get products that match.
And there’s another way women of colour are being screwed over by the beauty industry, according to a new report.
According to a report published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, women of colour are coming into contact with more toxic chemicals than white women.
This is because, on average, women of colour tend to use cosmetic products that aim to comply with European beauty standards – meaning bleaching creams, hair relaxers, and other extreme methods to alter their appearance.
Researchers noted that black, Asian, and Latina women in the US spend more money on beauty products than the national average.
They believe that this is down to racist standards of beauty, which put pressure on women of colour to use more products to meet certain ‘ideals’.
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As a result of using more beauty products, women of colour are being exposed to more toxic chemicals.
That’s an issue, because the authors suggest that even exposure to a small amount of these toxins can lead to health problems.
‘Pressure to meet Western standards of beauty means black, Latina and Asian American women are using more beauty products and thus are exposed to higher levels of chemicals known to be harmful to health,’ said researcher Ami Zota.
‘Beauty product use is a critical but underappreciated source of reproductive harm and environmental injustice.’
But it’s not just that women of colour are using more products. It’s also that many of the products they use are dangerous.
Beauty products aimed to lighten skin tend to contain ingredients such as topical steroids or mercury, both of which can cause serious damage. Hair straightening chemicals, meanwhile, often contain estrogen, which can trigger early reproductive development in young girls, and issues relating to the reproductive system.
The research also notes that marketing efforts have encouraged black women to use douching products through ideas of cleanliness and odour reduction. Douching isn’t necessary, and can seriously damage the vagina – so this is a concern.
The research comes after a previous study noted that while 40% of products marketed to the general public pose a ‘minimal threat’ to women because of their ingredients, that number drops to 25% when it comes to products marketed specifically for black women.
That suggests that women of colour not only have a limited range of products to choose from, but that they have an even more limited range of products on offer that are actually safe.
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While in the US, cosmetics are mostly unregulated by the FDA, all cosmetic products supplied in the UK must comply with the European Cosmetics Regulation, which requires safety assessments, the listing of ingredients, and availability of further information about what chemicals in products actually do.
But considering how easy it is to order US beauty products from Amazon and other international websites, it’s worth being concerned.
The researchers hope that their report will encourage health professionals to counsel their patients about the risks of hidden chemicals in beauty products, and to increase the level of testing products have to go through before they’re on our shelves.
MORE: Metallic painted photoshoot celebrates the beauty of plus-size bodies
MORE: No, blackface isn’t a tribute or a joke – it’s always offensive
MORE: Makeup lovers are putting highlighter on their ears
Advertisement AdvertisementAuthor: SKYMTL
Date: January 27, 2015
Join the Discussion Share | The GTX 970's Memory Explained & Tested
On forums near and far, there have been reports users have been experiencing memory allocation issues on NVIDIAs GTX 970. Much of this centered around the fact that certain applications showed the GTX 970 to be utilizing just 3.5GB of its supposed 4GB of memory even though the GTX 980 and other cards showed their full memory layout as being accessible. There were further reports that once the 3.5GB threshold was surpassed, the GTX 970 suddenly exhibited a drastic loss of performance. It looked suspiciously like NVIDIAs price / performance darling wasnt able to physically communicate with its advertised memory allotment and if communication was taking place, that bandwidth was somehow truncated.
Naturally, this sparked a large number of theories regarding the Maxwell architecture, its abilities and how NVIDIA has allocated resources on their $350 graphics card. NVIDIA themselves have now stepped in, trying to set the record straight. What follows is a simplified version of our technical briefing with them alongside some basic benchmarks.
Lets start with the thousand pound gorilla in the room: the GM204 core as its utilized in the GTX 970. In the first image above you will see the basic core layout as NVIDIA originally described it in their documentation and during their briefings to reviewers. There is a trio of SMMs disabled (these can be located within any one of the GPCs) which effectively reduces the number of CUDA cores, texture units,
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ner (US), dr. Edouard Broussalian (Switzerland), dr. Medha Durge (India) and dr. Ortrud Lindemann (Germany), are part of this team. It might look like a big bluff when you read it at first. Who can imagine that these people might actually get access to ebola patients and will be allowed to ‘treat’ them with sugar pills and drops?
Broussalian was a familiar name to me, he had been conducting some ‘research’ during a cholera epidemic on Haiti. This story is documented in ‘Spectrum of Homeopathy‘ (Nr 2. 2011) a magazine by publisher Narayana Verlag from Germany. His methods are extremely dubious. Broussalian and his team were apparently allowed to help treat the cholera patients. Those patients were treated with regular methods, mainly a drip. But Broussalian also gave them the homeopatic remedy Phosphorus 200C from a spray flacon. In their strange working minds the homeopaths addressed all success of the recovery of the patients to this remedy in stead of to the regular treatment. At the end of the article is this ominous sentence:
At the end of our stay, we were no longer providing new patients with an infusion, but immediately gave them the phosphorus spray.
There is nothing in the article on the recovery of these patients, most likely Broussalian had already left. Let’s hope that they got a drip anyway after he left, and in time. On YouTube Broussalian presents his ‘research’ in a video. I will not embed that video in this post, because I suspect the patients never gave permission to use the footage for this purpose. We can see from the video that Broussalian never informs the patients about what a homeopathic treatment is. He just sprays them in casual matter.
This sort of unethical behaviour doesn’t predict anything good for his stay in Liberia. On his website there is a post from October 12th: ‘Mission Ebola‘. You can’t read it straightaway, it’s password protected. After a few guesses I found that it is simply ‘ebola’. So read this now before they remove it or change the password [1/11/2014: post is removed, see update below]. He writes that they will first take the two-day course learning how to deal with those protective suits. Also that he thinks that it is not certain that they will be able to access ebola patients in an early fase of their illness, that might take a bit longer as was his experience on Haiti. Their goal is to find out which homeopathic remedy works best and they strive for a zero procent mortality. And probably they will get opportunities to treat the numerous other illnesses that are now a little less ‘in fashion’. He ends his post with the following words:
Enfin, c’est une occasion unique de démontrer la valeur de l’homéopathie. On nous dénigrera bien sûr, on contestera que les malades guéris fussent malades, mais nous espérons en soigner un si grand nombre qu’il n’y aura pas de contestation possible. Les marchands de vaccins expérimentaux pourront alors aller se rhabiller.
[rough translation: ‘Enfin, this is a unique opportunity to demonstrate the value of homeopathy. Of course they will discredit us, they will contest that the cured patients had been sick in the first place, but we hope to treat such a big number that there can be no doubt. The companies working on the experimental vaccins can start packing their bags.’]
Dangerous boasting. In their magazines and on YouTube they will probably succeed in framing their experiences as a big succes for homeopathy. If things go on as planned, that is. Ganta Hospital, the Methodist hospital where the four allegedly will start working in the new ebola clinic, has been informed about their true intentions.
Update: just found this post on Facebook. It seems that for the moment things go as planned for the homeopaths, they were received by a representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Asriel C. Davis) and a certain Victor Doolakeh Taryor, hospital administrator of Ganta Hospital. [28/10/2014 this post is now changed, the letters from the homeopaths have been deleted]
Update 27-10-2014: for those who have doubts that the Liga Medicorum Homoeopathica Internationalis has something to do with this mission, read this letter (pdf) by their president Renzo Galassi from last August. Many national organisations of homeopaths are member of this Liga, so they share responsibility.
Update 28-10-2014: The team of homeopaths is most likely part of a bigger group of twenty doctors which are sent to Ganta Hospital by German foundation. See this post on their website: Freunde Liberias e.V. ebnet Weg für internationales Ärzteteam. I’ve send them an e-mail for confirmation, but no reply yet. They might not know what the secret agenda of the homeopaths is.
Update 1-11-2014: the blog post ‘Mission Ebola’ by Broussalian has been removed, as I expected. Here is a screenshot of the contents after entering the password, a plaintext version is also available.
This story is followed up in a new post:(CNN) -- Enterovirus D68 has swept through 30 states since mid-August. What sets the virus apart from many others in the same family is its vicious symptoms: Instead of just causing a summer cold, it sends children to the hospital -- where they often end up in the intensive care unit, struggling to breathe.
David Nash from Tucker, Georgia, is one of those children.
At first his parents, Rachel and Rodney Nash, weren't too alarmed when David came down with a cough, runny nose and low-grade fever. But then the 3-year-old got sick very quickly.
David was in the first wave of children hit with Enterovirus D68. The virus struck early in states such as Georgia, where children headed back to school last month, but it then spread to states such as New York and Connecticut, where school began after Labor Day.
"There's no doubt the opening of schools has facilitated the transmission of Enterovirus D68," says Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
What parents should know
The Nashes shared with CNN the day-to-day story of their son's illness, hoping it might help families whose children have been recently diagnosed with what one pediatrician calls a "frightening" virus.
August 11
A healthy David and his big brother, Benjamin, start school.
August 24
David develops a cough, runny nose and low-grade fever. His parents aren't too worried as it seems like a regular cold.
August 25
The Nashes become more concerned. Their little ball of energy who loves flying around the house as Batman doesn't want to play. That night, he wheezes as he sleeps. His parents wake him to give him puffs from an inhaler prescribed for his seasonal allergies.
August 26
David's breathing gets worse.
"You could see him trying to pull the air in," Rachel Nash recalls. "His nostrils flared as he inhaled, and you could see the muscles in his neck and collarbone working extra hard."
Rodney Nash adds, "I remember as a kid my goldfish jumped out of the bowl. That's how he looked to me -- like a goldfish gasping for breath."
The Nashes take David to the emergency room at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta. His oxygen saturation rate is 86%. Healthy children's oxygen saturation is around 97%.
The doctors give David oxygen through his nose. Every two hours he gets nebulizer treatments, which are commonly used to treat asthma, to try to unclog his airways. David hates the mask and isn't cooperative.
David's saturation rate goes up to 88%, but that's not enough. He's admitted to the hospital.
August 27
In addition to the oxygen and breathing treatments, David gets an oral steroid to help shrink the swelling in his airways.
Even then, David is still wheezing.
"It sounded like air going through a balloon -- where you pinch the balloon and hear the squeaking sounds," his father says.
Doctors try a "shaker vest." Blasts of air shake the vest, which loosens up mucus caught in the lungs.
David does the shaker vest treatment every three hours, but he's still not better.
August 28
At 4 a.m., a nurse says David is finally responding to the treatments. His breathing, which had been quick and shallow, is slowing down.
The nebulizer treatments go from every two hours to every four. He still doesn't like them, but he doesn't protest as much as he did before.
At 8 a.m., David is taken off the oxygen and allowed to play. Nurses watch to see if he can breathe OK while riding a bike. If he can't, it means more time in the hospital.
David does fine on the bike, and his oxygen saturation level reaches 94% around lunchtime.
He's discharged from the hospital.
August 29-31
For the first two days back at home, David does inhaler treatments every four hours. He wheezes a bit, but he's pretty much back to his old self -- energetic and playful.
September 16
David has an appointment with his pediatrician, Dr. Betsy John. She gives him a clean bill of health.
David's journey with Enterovirus D68 is fairly typical, says Dr. Mary Anne Jackson, division director of infectious diseases at Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri.
Many children, however, get sick even faster. David was ill for about two days before he had to be hospitalized, but many of Jackson's patients have gone from healthy to severely ill in just a day, and they arrive at the hospital barely able to breathe.
"These kids were really struggling. Many can't even speak a sentence," she says. "It's frightening."
Her advice: If D68 has made its way to your community, and your child has asthma, or even, like David, just a history of allergies or occasional breathing difficulties, call your pediatrician and ask if there's anything you can do to protect your child.Let’s face it: Allen Edmonds Park Avenues are cliche. Everywhere I go, the black cap toe oxford is a style that is oppressively pervasive. So you can imagine my distaste for the Park Avenues when I decided to buy my first black dress shoe. I always found the cap toe, while serviceable, too stylistically constricting for my purposes. Instead, I opted for the sleeker, more modern, plain toe Carlyles, that I could dress down with chinos or polish to a mirror shine and dress up to black tie. I picked them up last winter during the AE Factory Seconds sale, and they have been on my feet a handful of times since then.
Having a skinnier and more elongated last, the Carlyles fit a bit tight on my wide feet. I went for a size 7.5E, but now I suspect I may need an 8E. More on that later. The shape of the Carlyles is very attractive, with smooth lines and gentle, sloping curves. European shoes are still much neater, but there is something distinctly less “American” about the shape of the Carlyles, at least to my eyes.
Out of the box, I thought the texture and surface of the calf felt kind of strange; the calfskin leather was a bit stiff and felt finished, and was not nearly as supple as that of my Chester wingtips. I chalked this up to the fact that they were new, and had not been broken in yet, and they were likely holding on to some sort of factory finish.
The construction is Allen Edmonds. You know what to expect. They’re solidly made goodyear welted shoes, nothing overly luxurious but decent quality nonetheless. They feel like they can take a beating and still be polished right back up to scratch. One thing that does bother me is the finishing on the edges of the leather pieces; not only are they not dyed and contrast against the black leather, but it also looks like they’re fraying slightly, and whether that’s how they are or it’s a blemish it is still very much a problem.
The laces are flat waxed laces, which I feel are easier to dress up than the typical waxed round laces you see on most dress shoes.
Due to being seconds, the Carlyles have a myriad of hairline flaws and blemishes, including a few nicks and scratches and an odd crease mark near the right heel. As I wear these and polish them, however, I do not doubt that they will begin to blend right in.
Formal oxfords are unique in that as far as the unadorned, dressy end of the spectrum, the wholecut, the cap toe, and the plain toe all suffer from subjective formality. Some people will consider the cap toe the most formal shoe one can own, while others may consider the wholecut to be yet more formal. However what is important to consider is context: wholecuts may be appropriate on a dinner suit, but are completely out of place in an office room. With the Carlyle you have much more versatility, but there are always nuances, pros, and cons to each.
Without the rigid line of the toe cap, plain toe and wholecut oxfords both suffer from the same problem: garishly noticeable creasing. Now that’s not to say that creasing should not happen. Creasing absolutely happens. It’s a foolish idea to want to prevent any creasing whatsoever as a shoe will naturally crease with wear. However, some shoes will inevitably look better with creasing than others. A toe cap serves not only as a bit of construction for the crease to form around, but also frames the creasing between the line where the cap ends and the vamp begins. Without this bit of framing, the creases break the otherwise uninterrupted curve of a plain toe. To me this looks unattractive and crude.
Perhaps I need to break in the Carlyles more. Perhaps the creasing will soften up as more creases develop and the leather molds more to my feet. After all, I’ve worn them a little over ten times. Regardless, upon examining the creasing, I noticed the distinct line, right about where a cap toe would begin. I’ve always heard that the hardest of creasing should be on the widest part of the shoe, yet this is far from the widest part. Perhaps I sized incorrectly. 7.5E felt snug with a slight bit of heel slip; maybe 8E would be more appropriate width-wise, but it would only exacerbate the length issue. Sizing with differences in lasts is tricky. If you intend to buy the Carlyles, keep this in mind if you’ve only owned one other pair of shoes.
Ultimately, Allen Edmonds on sale are still some of the best bang-for-your-buck dress shoes money can buy. At this level, I can only nitpick, and for $200, the grievances I may have with the shoes are negligible.
AdvertisementsThe United States military's ban on transgender service members faces a challenge, and her name is Kristin Beck.
Beck is an author and activist who served 20 years as a Navy SEAL on 13 deployments and was once a member of the elite SEAL Team 6. She is also transgender.
Beck comes out publicly as transgender in her new memoir, Warrior Princess: A U.S. Navy SEAL's Journey to Coming out Transgender, which hit stores June 1. The book describes Beck's life as Chris, a Christian boy who grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere and became a Navy SEAL. It describes someone who everyone viewed as "a hero, a warrior, a man" but who knew deep down she was transgender.
"Chris really wanted to be a girl and felt that she was a girl and consolidated that identity very early on in childhood," Anne Speckhard, a research psychologist who co-authored the biography with Beck, told ABC News. Beck suppressed her transgender identity for decades while training as a SEAL and fighting in Afghanistan, "turning off" her sexuality and consuming herself with battle.
Beck chose to stay silent in respect of the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" guidelines. Speckhard describes the inner turmoil she faced throughout her years of active duty.
"Chris describes his despair throughout this book and his desire to die honorably by serving our country and fighting terrorism -- to keep us safe and so that he wouldn't have to wrestle anymore with the emotional pain that stemmed from the lack of congruency between his gender identity and body," she writes in the book. "After multiple combat deployments -- more than many SEALs ever encounter, Chris returned back alive to fight this deeper battle in his soul and grappled with the moral and social decisions of living in secret or to transition into her true self."
After her retirement in 2011 a weight was lifted. Beck's book is dedicated to those who identify as transgender but who might have difficulty revealing their true selves. Her hope is to bring about change.
"I do not believe a soul has a gender, but my new path is making my soul complete and happy," Beck writes. "I hope my journey sheds some light on the human experience and most importantly helps heal the'socio-religious dogma' of a purely binary gender."
The Atlantic Wire's J.K. Trotter notes Beck's impact could reach beyond the trans community and into public policy change.
"[P]erhaps this memoir, which documents the secret torment of one of the U.S. military's most effective and loyal agents, will lay the groundwork for even greater inclusion in the armed forces," Trotter writes.
"Don't Ask, Dont Tell" -- which was the policy banning out gays, lesbians and bisexuals from serving in the military -- was repealed in 2011, but the ban on transgender service members remains intact.
"The gay community has thrown the transgender community under the bus," Aron Belkin, the author of How We Won: Progressive Lessons From the Repeal of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,' previously told The Huffington Post. He called for the rights of transgender servicemen and women to become "next big struggle."
After the book's publication, Beck took to Twitter to thank fans.
Thank you all for the kind words and encouragement. — Kristin Beck (@valor4us) June 4, 2013(CNN) -- Two monorail trains at Walt Disney World collided early Sunday, killing a 21-year-old driver.
A 2 a.m. ET monorail crash at Disney World killed one person, a park spokesman said.
A witness said one of the trains rammed into the back of a stationary train about 2 a.m. at the resort's Ticket and Transport Center.
There were eight people on board at the time, the Orange County Sheriff's Office said.
A second employee was taken to a hospital to be checked; the six guests -- members of a single family -- were evaluated by paramedics at the scene and released. Disney World officials said none of the seven was injured.
Authorities identified the driver as Austin Wuennenberg, a senior at Stetson University studying computer science.
"It's a terrible day for us," said Mike Griffin, Disney's vice president for public affairs. "Our hearts go out to Austin and his family."
A statement from Wuennenberg's family said, "He always enjoyed his work at Disney, and especially enoyed his work as a monorail pilot. He has many great friends who he has positively influenced; everyone will truly miss this dynamic young man."
The theme park is working with county authorities and the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration in the investigation.
"The safety of our cast and our guests is legendary and it's our top priority," Griffin said. Disney World calls its employees "cast members."
The monorail was shut after the accident, Griffin said.
Images from the scene showed the front car of a train badly damaged where it hit the other train at a station.
All About Walt Disney World Resort[/caption]
A month after asteroid 2008 TC3 hit the Earth’s atmosphere, the first ground-based image of the event has surfaced on the Internet. Admittedly, it’s not the fireball everyone has been waiting to see, but it is visual evidence that something hit us above Sudan on October 7th. The image above was taken from a frame of video that was being recorded by Mr. Mohamed Elhassan Abdelatif Mahir in the dawn following the asteroid impact with the atmosphere. The smoky feature is the remnant of the fireball as the 3 meter-wide asteroid blasted through the upper atmosphere, eventually exploding. The long-lasting persistent train is seen hanging in the air, high altitude winds causing it to twist in the morning sunlight.
We may not have a dazzling fireball re-entry video of 2008 TC3, but this striking image provides the first ground-based evidence of the direct hit, and may help refine the search for any meteorites from the disintegrated asteroid…
Although details are sketchy, it would appear that a person on the ground observed the skies of Sudan shortly after 2008 TC3 exploded in the upper atmosphere. It is unclear whether the observer was part of a meteorite-hunting team, or a Sudanese resident videoing the scene, but it is very fortunate he captured this footage. Dr. Muawia H. Shaddad of the University of Karthoum communicated this single frame, and the picture is being showcased as the November 8th NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day.
It is currently the only ground-based evidence that something hit the Earth at the right time and right location as predicted by scientists using the Mount Lemmon telescope in Arizona as part of the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey for near-Earth objects. However, as Nancy reported on October 13th, indirect support for an atmospheric fireball came from a webcam on a beach in Egypt. Also, at 02:43 UTC on that Tuesday morning, an infrasound array in Kenya detected an explosion in the atmosphere (with an energy equivalent of 1.1–2.1 kT of TNT). These observations were backed up by the European weather satellite METEOSAT-8, capturing the fireball from orbit. The pilot of a KLM airliner also witnessed a bright flash, 750 miles from the impact location.
This was the first time that an asteroid has been discovered before it hit the Earth, thereby proving an early-warning system for future asteroid impacts is possible. Although there are 5-10 space rock collision events per year, this is the first time we knew something about it before it happened. This is an amazing achievement as 2008 TC3 was only 3 meters in diameter.
To aid the search for any 2008 TC3 debris, SpaceWeather.com is hoping this image of the aftermath of the October 7th impact will jog any potential witness memories of the African skies a month ago:
Readers, were you in Sudan on Oct. 7th? Send your fireball reports and photos to meteor expert Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute. Your data could improve the chances of recovering meteorites.
Sources: SpaceWeather.com, Astroengine.com, NASA APODOkay let’s get the 1st statement out of the way, when Steve Jobs was quoted to say in his autobiography he had solved all that is wrong with the Apple TV the answer is not Siri based.
Quite simply it’s all down to response and execute times. In its present incarnation Siri is still a little unwieldy and makes you work for a response in placed no matter how human engineers have tried to make Siri. Based on the present beta incarnation it’s simply not as quick or flexible as using your digits to change the channel. An example. Let’s assume I have Apple TV / Media Centre up and running and I want to change channel.
User : “Show me what’s on TV”
Siri goes off to the cloud to check what was said.
Siri : ” Here is what’s on TV now..” TV Guide comes up on screen.
User : “Watch BBC2”
Siri : off to the cloud once again to process your request.
Siri : “Changing channel to BBC2”
Channel changes on the Apple TV.
User : “Record program”
Siri : Once again off to do it’s processing
Siri : “Okay I’m recording your program”
And so on and so on. In the meantime with the conventional and accepted control method, the remote control, I could have performed the same task in a matter of moments. Of course we all know that Siri is still in the beta phase when a distinct possibility that when Siri responds it may drop repition of some areas of speech in favor of audio cues.
So if Siri isn’t the answer them what it’s. Quite simply content. I’ll get onto the controlling mechanisms later.
I don’t see the world, especially with this economic climate, being completely ready for pay only television on all levels. There is still a huge market for being able to watch live TV and record programs at your leisure without incurring any costs. In another article I’m going to do a week with no live TV, simply relying on streaming tv sites here in the uk, USA (thanks unotelly) and work out the comparative costs. Can you really do without a tv licence or cable tv fees and live in a streaming and rental world.
Sites like HULU rely on the past and your memory to recall the fact you’ve missed a program and you want to catchup and record. Reminders can be set on some sites but that involves a whole new level of interaction, signing up, email address and the rest of it all.
One app for the iPad that comes close to getting me invested in new content alongside that of stuff I’d be intersted in is Ustream. It’s not without it’s faults but it has a look and feel of an interactive TV. Once you use it;s not a stretch to see how this could easily be used with the existing Apple TV remote.
Microsoft’s media center is a big step in the right direction and is the exclusive reason that I own a windows based HTPC right now, but this clearly shows the content issue, speaking from the UK side of the pond. It took 2 years for red button functionality to make it fully into media center and then another big period of time for internet TV to start showing up. In the last year nothing has changed on the internet section of the media guide. The science fiction category comes across as pathetic with one old series of doctor who available, leaving the rest of the guide blank in it’s area.
This is Apple’s area to infiltrate whilst still integrating iTunes utilization.
Imagine watching a program live as you normally would on your TV (as the broadcasters would like you with adverts etc..) Apple TV would interact with you in the form of some discreet gui asking if you would like to catch up on previous episodes, allowing a download in the background whilst you continue watching. Perhaps the DOG (the channel branding in the right) could become interactive to a level. Think the rotating discovery channel globe with steroids.
With iCloud all these episodes become available on all your iOS devices along with Apple TV. Broadcasters should love this as you effectively double or triple your output, providing you have an iPhone / iPad and then you start reaching out to Windows systems with the aid of iTunes.
[pullquote_right]What if you could pre book episodes before they are shown on TV?[/pullquote_right]Immediately you’ve taken care of the past and remembering problem but why stop there? What if you could pre book episodes before they are shown on TV? DRM is already taken care off with iTunes coupled with the right pricing policy, piracy may seem a decline with this method.
Programs might include some basic advertising, though that’s not the Apple way, or some cross product promotion would be the safer bet. Move forward one more step and offer simultaneous release of exclusive shows in the USA and UK on the same day via Apple TV and iCloud.
If Apple implement any features like this then the PVR market will take a bashing and you can bet there are some pretty big contract negotiations going on behind the scene to stop Apple encroaching on this area. Apple has the advantage of the back catalog of all things in the iTunes store to reference and content will be king. Speaking of content.
Apple To Purchase English Premier League TV Rights.
This one has been going about a few weeks now from several well known uk tabloids (daily mail and the guardian). According to yahoo Apple has already bid for the rights for Football (soccer for you US lot).
The football league has been the express content of Sky television and the Murdoch empire. More recently sky released the Sky Go application letting you watch live sports on any iOS or laptop device whilst on the go using 3g or Wifi, so what’s so interesting about this. Well there is no Android application, it’s all iOS and Laptop exclusive bringing us on to this thought.
Sky control their territories just as fiercely as Apple. You can’t get an American app on the UK app store for example and like wise with sky. [pullquote_right]No Sky Go app for Android. Is this by design or something more??[/pullquote_right]UK football is the express copyright of sky. You can’t show sky sports or anything with the sky branding without agreement. It’s not beyond the realms that Apple might sound poised for a pounce on football but for one small detail. Microsoft Xbox 360. Sky are streaming content direct to the 360 console and you can bet your bottom dollar football ranks up their highly next to darts of course.
Where does this leave Apple?
Movie studios have accepted to move with the times accepting the online fashion of renting and watching programs and as Amazon look for bigger market penetration with the kindly fire, a new war looks on the horizon, the war for complete exclusivity. Hook people in with unique content, move onto “see the next episode now on iTunes” and build dependance on the Apple TV for those who don’t want to wait.
Onto the iPad 3.
[pullquote_left]I just purchased an iPad 2 which means that the iPad 3 will be out soon.[/pullquote_left]I’m going to claim sole responsibility for the iPad 3 coming out soon as, like with all tech that I buy, I just purchased an iPad 2 which means that the iPad 3 will be out soon. If it has the grunt to power siri and sit in place of it;s predecessor then I’m sold. Telula, my iPad 2, sits there as a faithful assistant to do my beckoning at my will. Yet like an assistant it’s a touch embarrassing and comes with a stigma of being seen out in public. Am I just being “down with my employee” on a night out or showing a bit of respect when I’m out with her? Sure in work we enjoy a fantastic relationship and her adoption of Siri would only add to that, yet outside the confines of the office world things can get a little tense.
Time for a handbag sized iPad?
As usual the moment a competitor comes along with something different that encroaches on Apple market share, arms a flailing all around citing Apple MUST realease something to compete, else that will be the demise of the company. The 7″ form factor is a hotly contended market as it’ the 10″ heavyweight tablet division is held up with all things iPad. The Kindle fire is completely responsible for this and adopted the Apple, blue sea approach. Enter a market with no competition and carve your own niche. Will Apple enter into this area directly head on with arguably a hefty rival? No! Look at the product line up and things come down to capacity and competency, not just entering a market because it;s there like the follies of so many manufacturers lacking ideas.
Technical issues arise with a smaller form factor and differing resolutions. iPhone and iPad stand clearly different on their resolutions allowing developers to have an easier life. A third form factor causes issues like the interface, graphics and resolutions. However if all iOS devices suddenly have retina displays of the same resolution then suddenly the game changes.Native Hawaiians Now Have A Pathway To Form A Government
Enlarge this image toggle caption Saul Loeb /AFP/Getty Images Saul Loeb /AFP/Getty Images
The U.S. Department of the Interior has announced that Native Hawaiians can now choose whether to form a unified government, which could eventually enter into formal government-to-government relations with the U.S.
It would be the first time the Native Hawaiian community had their own government since their Kingdom was overthrown in 1893 by merchants and sugar planters.
This is a result of a reconciliation process that has lasted more than 20 years, as Hawaii Public Radio reported, and "the new relationship would be similar to the tribal status of Native American Indian groups."
Any change would come following a referendum, the Interior Department said. Native Hawaiians are under no obligation to form a unified government as a result of the new rule – rather, it's meant to decide on its future "as an exercise of its self-determination."
"If a formal government-to-government is reestablished, it could provide the community with greater flexibility to preserve its distinct culture and traditions," the department added. "It could also enhance their ability to affect its special status under Federal law by exercising powers of self-government over many issues directly impacting community members." Additionally, a Native Hawaiian unified government "could establish courts or other institutions to interpret and enforce its laws."
Many Native Hawaiians welcomed the new rule, like Annelle Amaral, the president of the Association of Hawaiian Civic Clubs. "What it allows us to do is to finally have control over our sacred sites, over health care for our people, over the education of our children," Amaral told the member station. "Instead of waiting for someone else to do something about our problems, with our own government we can begin to initiate change."
Additionally, "Native Hawaiians have been the only major indigenous group in the 50 states without a process for establishing a government-to-government relationship with the federal government. This rule finally remedies this injustice," the Office of Hawaiian Affairs Chairperson Robert K. Lindsey said, according to Hawaii Public Radio.
The new rule does not "authorize or in any way contemplate compensation for any past wrongs," the department said. Hawaii Public Radio spoke to an activist named Bumpy Kanahele who opposed the announcement: he said "the involvement of the federal government is not welcome. And stands in the way of a return to an independent, sovereign Hawaiian nation."
The new pathway to federal recognition comes after another major federal decision regarding Hawaii earlier this month. As we reported, President Obama quadrupled the size of the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument, off the coast of his home state. In the announcement, the White House said that "Native Hawaiian culture considers the Monument and the adjacent area a sacred place."On Thursday, Aug. 25, the day after provincial income-assistance recipients received their support payments, the sirens started: Ambulance, police and fire engines throughout Vancouver were responding to a spike in accidental drug overdoses. Although media reports on overdoses have rightfully focused on the toll caused by fentanyl, a new and more powerful opioid, that particular Thursday is not unique.
Sirens are heard throughout Vancouver every month on the days after "cheque day," and are part of a long-standing monthly ritual that locals also refer to as "Welfare Wednesday" or "Mardi Gras." Drug dealers collect outstanding debts. The hashtag #WelfareWednesday is used to advertise drink specials. Community workers hand out fruit to people standing in line at the bank. Thanks to quick action by first responders, family members and health providers, almost all overdoses do not result in death. Some, devastatingly, do.
Amidst what has now been declared an overdose epidemic and public-health emergency, recent research conducted at the B.C. Centre for Disease Control documented a 40-per-cent increase in fatal overdoses on the days following assistance payments. Insite's subsequent decision to open its doors 24 hours a day around cheque day – and its exceptional capacity to prevent accidental overdoses from becoming lethal – will hopefully do something to stem the tide of completely preventable deaths that occur at this time every month. No one has ever died of an overdose at Insite.
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However, overdose increases around cheque day do not just occur in Vancouver. They have been documented across the province, across the country and around the world. Insite's commendable efforts will do little to help someone in Surrey, Prince George or Thunder Bay.
While fatal overdose is the worst of the drug-related harms that spike around cheque day, it is not the only one. A growing list of studies document increases in everything from people leaving hospital against the advice of their doctors and clients being unable to access services that are either closed or have lineups out the door, to police being called in to assist in the ER and street-level violence. These are things Insite cannot fix.
The rise in drug use and drug-related harm around cheque day is an example of a logical administrative decision that has unintended yet severe health, social and economic consequences. Yet most jurisdictions in Canada and the United States deliver social-assistance payments in the same way: once a month, on the same day for everyone.
Academics, health-care practitioners and others have been calling for the system to be changed. It seems like an intuitive next step. But is it really that simple? The existing system already demonstrates how what might seem like a straightforward approach might not be upon closer examination.
Our researchers at the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS are trying to find out whether there may be a better way. In October, 2015, we initiated an experimental study in the Downtown Eastside testing whether not paying study volunteers at the same time each month can do anything to reduce drug use and drug-related harms. We are examining what happens when people get paid at a different time than everybody else. We are also looking at what happens when they are paid – like most people in regular jobs – twice a month instead of monthly.
And while there are already ways to vary payment frequency in the province (for example, "mid-month" split payments administered by the Ministry of Social Development and Social Innovation), such setups are often mandatory conditions resulting from some previous transgression. Further, their impacts have not been evaluated. There is a serious need for research evidence that examines potential health and social policy solutions, not just health and social problems.
It is clear there are alternatives to the "once a month, all at the same time" approach to income-assistance payments. When the study is over, we hope we will have some sense of whether a change at the policy level – and finding a way to give people some choice in the matter – can help quiet the monthly chorus of sirens and keep people alive.
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Lindsey Richardson is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of British Columbia and a research scientist at the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS. She is also the
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really dramatically in Los Angeles. Manufacturing is a shell of what it once was. So, in some ways, we have the first chance since the 1880s to really catch our breath and think about how to consolidate our gains—and about what kind of place we want to be. So that’s the basic framework. Another way to talk about what’s happening in LA is that all of the LA clichés—all the things somebody from outside of LA might think of as being the prototypical building blocks of Los Angeles urbanism and civic identity—they all have a prehistory as well as a future. They have a before and they have an after. So, if you take the long view of LA history, a lot of those things are not permanent, as we’ve been led to believe, but transitory. Think about the lawn. People think of the lawn as being so intrinsically connected with an idea of Los Angeles. But if you look at pictures of residential architecture in the late nineteenth century, those landscapes look a lot like what people are tearing out their lawns to plant now, what we would call a drought-tolerant landscape. You can say something similar about the single-family house and you can say that about the car. You can say that about the freeway and you can say that about mobility. In the First LA, we had this incredibly far-reaching streetcar system that was the envy of most cities in the country, if not the world. The river is another classic example. We had a first river, a seasonal river that sometimes flooded dramatically. Then we had a channelized river. Now we’re trying to imagine what a third river looks like. So it’s too easy and simplistic just to say, “We have lawns, and we’re taking them out,” or “We’re imagining the city after the car.” We also had a city before the lawn, before the car.
Dana Cuff: Do you think that there is always a return? A number of the things that you’ve mentioned have basically been about coming back to something that was there before.
Hawthorne: It’s important to say that in certain ways, it’s very much not a return. There are certain ways in which it’s really different. We’re facing climate change, and our attitude about the natural world, natural resources has changed. What’s really come to an end is this kind of frontier mentality about the city—this idea of infinite growth and infinite expansion, and that the way to study the city is to look at the edges, where it’s gobbling up new territory. This is a city that is very aware of its limits now.
Mike Davis starts City of Quartz out on the edges, and he talks about a city that dreamt of becoming infinite. He talks about Los Angeles as the city that ate the desert. As I think about how to structure a new book, the last thing I want to do is start at the edges. I want to start in the middle of things. That’s where the city is being reinvented. It’s a city that’s folding back on itself. That’s one thing that’s really changed. This idea that we can grow our way out of any problem and that we’re always a city that’s expanding and finding or even colonizing new territory—that has ended. And water, too. This idea that we could always just find new sources of water versus thinking, as we’re starting to do now, about how we treat the water that falls here and the water we have—that strikes me as a big change in mindset.
Cuff: Well, that’s an interesting segue to talk about the LA River, because I believe there’s a kind of nostalgia for a metropolitan nature. You can understand why, because parts of the river are surprisingly beautiful as natural spaces. But the people who see it as a flyaway or as a place to kayak, or only in those ways, forget that there are all these neighborhoods of every different economic and ethnic background that front onto the river. It’s also this incredible seam through the center of the city that actually could be something unifying and maybe not just as a piece of wilderness in the city, but as something that is designed to stitch together our urban fabric.
Hawthorne: I agree. And I’ve been surprised, in the discussion about what should happen with the river, by how much power that nostalgia holds. First, restoration is not practical or feasible in terms of taking out all or even most of the concrete. But even if it were, I think we should be asking the question: What vision of the river are we trying to get back to? And did the river ever operate that way?
Frank Gehry told me that not only does he not think it is possible, maybe it isn’t desirable to take out the concrete in certain parts of the river. The reaction that I got when I included that comment in one of my pieces was surprising. People still have this idea that the river can be “restored” to some past that never really existed, a green landscape full of water, with tree-lined banks. I think that particularly when the river gets really wide as it goes south, you have this almost sublime scale of concrete. The idea that that is not an LA landscape or that we should be in a hurry to tear that out to plant some representation of a natural world that maybe didn’t ever exist, that strikes me as a misreading of our own history. What history are we talking about? It’s like Ed Ruscha and Bob Irwin never existed. If you say it’s an insult to LA to keep that concrete, that whole idea of reading the landscape here and understanding a particular kind of beauty here is out the window. Fifty years of new ways of reading the city by architects and artists alike—that’s just out the window. Or, the idea that the postwar infrastructure of the city is both beautiful and in certain political, social, or ecological ways was deeply misguided. It’s not one or the other. It’s both.
Cuff: One of the things that’s cool to me is that Gehry—and I take him at his word—says he’s starting with hydrology, which everyone agrees about. We have to reclaim the water and not let it go back out to the ocean without capturing it. But just what that would mean, and the possibility of designing around the water in a variety of ways, rather than only as a restoration project, is hard for most people in the city to imagine. We have only seen the river as a movie set for drag racing or as a myth of what it might have been as a beautiful natural setting, which I don’t think it ever was.
Hawthorne: I am really ambivalent about Gehry’s involvement. I do think there’s reason for cynicism. But I think some of the cynicism forgets the history of the river. Take this idea that what Gehry’s involvement will mean is to allow the river to become a vehicle for gentrification. I mean, we channelized the river in the first place to allow real estate development, to protect real estate interests. The whole project of the channelization was basically a real estate project driven by people who had a lot of interest in developing the city more densely, or protecting what they already owned.
Cuff: People may not trust Frank Gehry to have that broad-minded nature. But to me, it seems like he’s a perfect character.
Hawthorne: And we need somebody to do it. Absolutely.
Christensen: On the other hand, it seems to me, that we haven’t seen such a starkly framed battle royale over two different visions of the city since Jane Jacobs took on Robert Moses in New York.
Hawthorne: The problem is that we lack the vocabulary to talk about it. Jane Jacobs versus Robert Moses? That’s a New York sort of dichotomy, and a dated one at that. I think the challenge in any city, particularly in LA right now, is to think about the local and the regional scale together, simultaneously. We do need to have a vision for the whole river because it’s a huge piece of infrastructure. It has been since the Army Corps wrapped the whole thing in concrete. So the Jane Jacobs approach isn’t enough to solve this problem. We have to be thinking about it at a regional level.
That’s one of the reasons I did a series for the Times a few years ago on the boulevards, because the boulevard is really the only part of the built environment that operates at both scales. Sunset Boulevard, Wilshire Boulevard are huge regional pieces, but also have connections at an intensely local scale. You can talk about the meanings of a half block of the boulevard.
Cuff: Besides the river, the only two pieces of LA landscape with which the whole of the city identifies are the boulevards, especially Wilshire Boulevard, and the beach.
Hawthorne: Exactly. The problem with the boulevards is we tried to make them like freeways. And we sort of made our river like a freeway, too. We made it operate only at the regional scale. We made it a monoculture, a piece of infrastructure that achieved flood control and nothing else. The difference between the boulevard and the freeway is that the freeway does not operate at a local level, except in a destructive way, right? It doesn’t have any connection to the neighborhood. It looms over the neighborhood or under the neighborhood or destroys the neighborhood to make room for itself. And the way the river was channelized made it operate that way, too. That channelization was accompanied by cutting it off from the public, fencing it, again, like the freeway, essentially turning it into private property. It was inaccessible on a neighborhood scale.
I think the reason that there is some frustration about Gehry’s involvement among the advocates who have been working on the river for so long, Lewis MacAdams and others, is that they were attempting to make some connections at a neighborhood scale and say, “This thing is in your backyard, and it belongs to you.” And that was an incredibly difficult and important political battle. So I think seeing somebody coming in, as if from above, Robert Moses style, saying, “I’m going to produce this solution for the whole fifty-one miles”—it seems to suggest their work is being undone. And I can understand that.
At the same time, the most effective way to think about the river is as a platform for building new kinds of urbanism in the city—not getting back to something that we had and lost, but producing something we need. What are we missing in the city? We’re missing public space, green space, collective space—space where we can come together. We’re missing connections in terms of mobility across the region. And we don’t have enough housing. So rather than a rendering that shows a green riverbank—and I’m sure this is not going to please some river advocates to hear me say this—we should be thinking about using the airspace over the river. We should be thinking about building housing on the river—as long as it’s high enough not to flood—and over the river.
Maybe the best thing you can say about the river politically, as complicated as it is, is that it’s not on the West Side, which seems entirely closed off to big ideas at the moment. It runs through places that are desperate for development, that want investment. It also runs through places that are wary of development, and for good reason. So it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. But we need to think about LA as a city that’s run out of open space to build. We have this landscape, fifty-one miles, that should be a platform to address the most basic problems that we’re facing—inequality and lack of open space and mobility. If you think about it as a spine that could produce housing, that could connect us in terms of getting around, that could be open space, the kind of shared collective space of the city, that’s an incredible opportunity.
Cuff: We have not had good large-scale infrastructure interventions in LA. Think of the freeways displacing neighborhoods—or Chavez Ravine and Dodger Stadium. People are right to be wary. But the river’s fifty-one miles are on a scale that is beyond imagination. You could talk about it being a place where you could have housing and park benches and cycling and bird sanctuaries and concrete. We don’t have any way of picturing a locally based, large-scale piece of infrastructure. We just don’t have that. That’s what the reimagined river could demonstrate: the next generation of our city, with neighborhoods linked along the way that are all part of something bigger. This would change our mindset about Los Angeles, from the “fragmented metropolis” and “suburbs in search of a city” to considering the city as a whole. This is not the way we have thought about Los Angeles.
Hawthorne: That’s a really good point because it’s also running counter to other forces in the city which are promoting a kind of balkanization, with a new focus on the neighborhood. One of the characteristics of the Third LA, as I see it, is the idea, the concept, of the greater city has broken down, largely because of freeway immobility, and because we haven’t built out a comprehensive transit system yet. People who live on one side of town once thought about the other side of town as being part of the same city in a very intimate way. That idea has been broken for a number of years, and there’s been a more of a focus on the neighborhood as a result. And there are good things and bad things about that. The good thing is that there is new attention to the neighborhoods. There’s a constituency for how neighborhoods are designed, what our sidewalks look like, whether there’s a park on the corner, what the public and collective space in the neighborhood looks like. There’s a renewed interest and focus on that, which is a very good thing.
But what makes the river tricky is that, at this moment where things are turning inward and more local, there’s this breakdown of regional connection. The river is this piece that requires a huge, wide regional vision to think about successfully. And so it’s even more challenging at the moment because our attention is fixed on a different level. We’re not thinking at the William Mulholland, Robert Moses, freeway-building scale, for better and worse. But now we have to think about that, at least in part, to make the river work.
There is a diversity of communities on the river. Some are desperate for investment and change. They can’t wait for things to happen. Others feel that their neighborhood already has a strong sense of community, and they want to protect it, and they’re worried about that for good reason.
Cuff: How do you think about the housing affordability problem?
Hawthorne: In general, I try to be careful not to say that things are generational. It’s too easy sometimes. But I think in the case of housing production, it’s very much the case. It goes back to state policies like Proposition 13, like CEQA, and a generation of homeowners that, in my opinion, has been extraordinarily fortunate and…
Cuff: …basically pulled up the ladder after itself.
Hawthorne: Yes. And is very active in doing whatever it can to protect what is at stake in whatever city they’re in, whether that’s Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles. If you bought your house in the 1970s, it’s not just that its value has doubled or tripled. I would be thrilled if the house that I bought a couple of years ago were to someday triple in value. But the houses people bought in the 1970s? They might be worth 30 or 40 times what those homeowners paid. And these are the same people, thanks to Prop 13, who are paying a tiny fraction of the property taxes of their neighbors. So there are larger questions about what kind of reform we can talk about with Prop 13 and CEQA.
There has also been an attitude among the political left that sees development—even smart growth—as suspect, always, that sees the larger environmental project as including opposition to development, even in cities, even near transit. And this is perhaps most extreme in places like San Francisco and Santa Monica, where people see opposing development—and even mass transit—as consistent with the left, progressive environmental and political agenda. I think that is, in many ways, directly responsible for the housing situation that we’re in now. People in very good conscience who live in Santa Monica or San Francisco think of a moratorium on development as a progressive thing to support rather than reactionary or conservative or just in their own political self-interest. I don’t have a problem with somebody who bought a house at a certain point saying, “I bought into a certain place, you know, I want it to stay this way, and I’m going to use whatever resources I can to keep it that way.” They have every right to say that, even if I disagree. I have a problem with people saying that’s consistent with a progressive agenda about cities or a forward-looking attitude about the environment or about resources. It’s not.
Christensen: Do you think the discourse around climate and urbanism is going to change that?
Hawthorne: Yes. I think the conversation is changing. The conversation around climate change sees densification, urbanization as part of the solution. And think about water. The New York Times did a piece about whether the water crisis and climate change and all of these shifts meant the end of the California dream, the end of growth, when in fact, as that piece itself acknowledged, growth is the only thing that has saved us in terms of our water. Our water use in Los Angeles has gone down since the 1980s—and not just per capita. Our total water use has gone down. Now, that has to do with efficient appliances, in part, but in the city, it’s also gone down because we’re living closer together and we’re not building subdivisions in the same way.
So it doesn’t make sense to say that the water crisis is a challenge to the idea of growth. Growth and densification is the one thing that is going to help us solve the water problem. But there’s this idea that those things are at odds. That to me is a direct product of exactly what we were just talking about, this idea that opposing growth or being wary of it, being wary of densification, is consistent with a progressive or environmental agenda. I think climate change is going to expose the contradiction in that. It already has in many ways.
Cuff: We seem to be arguing that the LA River could give Los Angeles an identity, but the key is also how you recognize the differences along the river and still make that a single thing. I wonder if there’s a way to do that with the high-speed rail, so that it stitches the state together, but every time it stops, there’s a station identity that’s related to Fresno versus LA versus San Francisco.
Hawthorne: I have some doubts about that approach because I’ve seen it play out locally, in LA, with the design of the Metro stations in a way that I don’t think was successful. When transit was controversial and Metro needed to get community buy-in to get different lines approved, one of the ways that they did that was to have stations whose architecture reflected the neighborhood. From an architectural and a practical point of view, it was a disaster. Just think about maintenance. You can’t clean the stations in the same way. You can’t replace the lightbulbs in the same way, because each one had a different design.
On top of that, I think it was important to say that the city as a whole—and the region as a whole—was putting in a new generation of transit and that those stations would relate to each other as a system rather than to each different neighborhood. And Metro has finally, I think, seen the light on that issue.
That colors how I think about high-speed rail. It’s a little different because those cities do have really distinct identities in the way that parts of LA might not. I would be interested to think about it. But I’m still baffled that high-speed rail is even controversial. I mean, it’s been horribly mismanaged. Putting aside the question of how it’s been rolled out, which has been a disaster, this is proven technology, in use for decades all over the world. As someone who drives and flies this corridor all the time, I guarantee you the high-speed train will be wildly popular from day one.
Cuff: What’s your explanation of the opposition, then?
Hawthorne: I think there is an incredible amount of distrust of public projects. I think the opposition is different in Northern and Southern California.
I think here, it was such a privatized landscape that there is a lot of doubt about what the public bodies can accomplish in terms of infrastructure. They see both the transit system and the freeways as failures for different reasons. That breeds a lot of anxiety—and a lot of cynicism.
In Northern California, unfortunately, I think a lot of the opposition comes from Silicon Valley. It’s connected to the libertarian distrust of government that is really rampant in Silicon Valley. And that is connected to this idea of Silicon Valley wanting to secede and form its own state, and to its enthusiasm for projects like Hyperloop, for example.
Christensen: Well, let me ask you a visionary question to conclude. What do you think the city of Los Angeles is going to look like in a generation or so? Say, around 2050? It’s a time far off, but close enough that anyone under forty is very likely to still be alive. Is LA going to be more like the movie Her or Elysium?
Hawthorne: I don’t think it’s going to be either of those things. I think we’re going to do what we always do, which is muddle through. Despite these big changes, I don’t think that’s suddenly going to either allow us to magically solve the political obstacles or produce a dystopia. I think we will continue to build transit. I think the obstacles to new housing, though they are substantial now, will begin to fall away over time. So we’ll be smarter, hopefully, about how much housing we can produce and where it goes.
We’re going to have a new transit measure on the ballot in the fall, the new Measure R. And if it passes, it will probably raise at least $100 billion. Now, not all of that will go to mass transit. There’s always some road money in those things, but the lion’s share of it will. And that’s enough money to reshape the landscape of the city around transit, in much the same way that we reshaped it around freeways. That’s enough money to put a train tunnel under the Sepulveda Pass. That’s enough money to think in a really ambitious way.
That said, I’m still pretty pessimistic about the leadership of the various agencies and how much they see themselves as being in a position even to think in this visionary way, let alone their ability to execute visionary plans. So I don’t think we’re magically going to get good at doing that. But we are in the midst of reshaping the whole landscape of the city. That’s just going to accelerate. We’ll do some things well. We’ll do some things not so well. But we’re already further into this transition than people realize.MMOExaminer is hosting a giveaway event until June 8 and by participating you can win a World of Warcraft – Legion Standard Edition digital copy.
As Legion’s release is nearing and is set to arrive on August 30 we decided to reward one lucky reader with a free expansion. You can participate through one of the methods below. Get your Legion expansion now! All you have to do is choose one of the options below, follow us and wait for the event to conclude.
Win a World of Warcraft – Legion Expansion with MMOExaminer
Game will be released on August 30, 2016. Pre-purchasing Legion grants early access to the new Demon Hunter class prior to the expansion’s release.
The winner will be randomly drawn by Gleam on June 9 and will receive the Digital Code for the World of Warcraft Legion Expansion. This is just one of many giveaway events that we will be hosting this summer so don’t forget to check back often!Never forget that Roger Goodell created the bounty scandal. We will probably reference this scandal for years in one way or another, and so let's be clear: none of this went public until an NFL press release on a Friday afternoon in March.
It ended Tuesday, when Paul Tagliabue gave us a disturbingly levelheaded ruling in the player appeals -- a ruling that loyally protects the NFL against possible defamation lawsuits from the players and pays respectful lipservice to Goodell's "findings" while dismissing every single one of his suspensions and their rationale. The insanity is finally over.
But while everyone points to the scoreboard and celebrates Goodell losing in his crusade against the Saints players, they're missing the best part. Roger Goodell didn't just lose, he lost a game he'd rigged from the beginning. With evidence he never had to share, a judiciary process he controlled, and a melodramtic PR campaign that was supposed to make this case easy.
In fairness, the Saints got caught breaking rules, then breaking them again, and not punishing them would've been just as reckless as what happened. Goodell had to do something to address it, lest a Real Sports segment or a grainy YouTube video explode onto the scene and make pro football look awful. But that's the thing: Somehow a scandal that was supposed to make the NFL look bad became an opportunity for Goodell to show the world how great his NFL is.
Instead of quietly hammering the Saints as an organization and Gregg Williams as a the bounty ringleader, Goodell went into scorched-earth grandstanding mode, emphasizing how disgusted and dismayed he was by the whole affair, then handing down historic punishments across the board. Goodell took this scandal and made it ten times bigger. What should've been Spygate Part Two became something closer to the Black Sox scandal, mostly because Goodell treated it that way.
This backfired SO HARD.
As Tagliabue explained in his ruling, "When an effort to change a culture rests heavily on prohibitions, and discipline and sanctions that are seen as selective, ad hoc or inconsistent, then people in all industries are prone to react negatively - - whether they be construction workers, police officers or football players." Goodell's attitude was so ridiculous that eventually everyone started asking more questions about the Commissioner than they did about bounties. The longer this wore on, the worse Goodell looked.
He deserves it, too. He used the Saints as a prop. With the NFL facing a thousand different lawsuits and concerns about player safety, Goodell decided to release the evidence in March, emphasizing his disgust in the initial league statement.
"The payments here are particularly troubling because they involved not just payments for 'performance,' but also for injuring opposing players. The bounty rule promotes two key elements of NFL football: player safety and competitive integrity. "It is our responsibility to protect player safety and the integrity of our game, and this type of conduct will not be tolerated. We have made significant progress in changing the culture with respect to player safety and we are not going to relent. We have more work to do and we will do it."
If Goodell had stopped after somehow turning a press release about an organized head-hunting program into a player safety PSA, that would have been fine.
But then, suspending Sean Payton for an entire season AND publicly singling out four Saints players as villains who betrayed the integrity of the game... that's where the "selective, inconsistent, ad hoc" punishments made the whole world do a double take.
When you look closer, the most scandalous aspect of this whole scandal was the idea that bounties are rare, or really any different than a defensive player's salary. For instance, the Giants defense planned to targeted Kyle Williams, a player with a history of concussions in the NFC Championship Game last year. Does it matter whether any of them made an extra $5,000 that day? The strategy worked. Williams fumbled twice in crucial moments, and each Giant made an extra $62,000 for making the Super Bowl--a much bigger payout that's alleged in any of the Saints evidence.
Once you start thinking hard about the morality "bounties", it's only a matter of time before you realize that football itself is a sport where breaking down the other team's best player is the goal on every play. The entire sport is a bounty system at its core, and once you get that far, the Commissioner asking you to blame the Saints players seems like the most dishonest man in football.
Look at the difference between Goodell and Tagliabue:
"I am profoundly troubled by the fact that players - including leaders among the defensive players - embraced this program so enthusiastically and participated with what appears to have been a deliberate lack of concern for the well-being of their fellow players.... [T]hey must not let the quest for victory so cloud their judgment that they willingly and willfully target their opponents and engage in unsafe and prohibited conduct intended to injure players."
— Roger Goodell, NFL statement, March 21, 2012
"The undeniable fact is that over many years a pattern and practice of abuse of the rules seems to have developed - - a culture has evolved - - that has led to acceptance of pay-for-performance reward programs.... Most important, no matter what the League rules and policies are or have been, if many teams in the League allow pay-for-performance programs to operate in the locker room, as seems to be the case, and, in the main, the League has tolerated this behavior without punishment of players, then many players may not have a clear understanding that such behavior is prohibited or where the lines are between permissible and impermissible conduct."
— Paul Tagliabue, Final Decision on players appeals, December 11, 2012
Goodell wanted to blame his players for what happened here, and in one paragraph Tagliabue perfectly explains why that is historically absurd.
There's a reason things happened the way they did, though. The Saints were framed as some grave villains because that allowed the NFL to play the hero. The bounty suspensions were always just an excuse to go on record saying that (1) The NFL has zero tolerance for rule breakers when it comes to player safety, and (2) Roger Goodell is personally disgusted by any player who would try to injure another football player.
Instead, this scandal gave football fans the loudest reminder yet that (1) even the most basic NFL rules about player safety are blurry and unenforceable in any logical or fair way, and (2) aside from PR pontificating, the NFL Commissioner doesn't actually care about the rights, reputation, or welfare of individual players.
So yes, if we remember anything about the bounty scandal, let's remember that Roger Goodell was the mastermind behind the entire disaster. And next time Roger Goodell tells Time Magazine, "I don't do things for public relations, I do things because they're the right thing to do," remember that he's not just a liar, but also a complete failure.The Early Church and Military Service
*The following post is adapted from Preston Sprinkle’s forthcoming book: Fight: A Christian Case for Non-Violence (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2013). Preston’s book is due to release on August 1.
In a previous post, I stated that “there was not a single Christian writer in the first three hundred years of Christianity who said that Christians should serve in Rome’s military.” My statement, however, deserves closer inspection since there were many Christians who served in Rome’s military; yes, even before Constantine.
Apart from the New Testament, which records several military leaders coming to Christ (Matt 8; Acts 10), we have evidence of a growing number of Christians in Rome’s military from A.D. 173 right up until A.D. 313 (Constantine’s edict to end persecution of Christians). Some of these were converted while serving in the military. Others may have joined as Christians. In any case, one thing is clear: early Christian writers condemned military service among believers.
Tertullian, for instance, wrote an entire treatise forbidding military service among Christians (The Crown) and such sentiment is found throughout his other writings (On Idolatry). Origen too condemned military service whenever he addressed the subject. And Lactantius agreed: “A just man may not be a soldier” (Divine Institutes, 6.20).
Now again, there were Christians in the military before Constantine. But as far as the opinion of early Christian writers goes, historian Alan Kreider was correct that “no Christian theologian before Constantine justified Christian participation in warfare” (“Military Service,” 431).
But this actually doesn’t tell us too much. The main question is not whether the theologians permit military service. This much is clear. They condemn it. The question, though, is why? On what grounds are Christians forbidden to join the military?
One reason is idolatry. The Roman military was inseparable from Roman religion; to serve one meant serving the other. It would have been virtually impossible to be a Christian soldier and not participate in idolatry. For instance, before embarking on a military campaign, soldiers would take part in various pagan rituals, including sacrificing sheep, bulls, and pigs to purify the army. Similar rituals dominated the postwar celebration. Throughout the legions, soldiers regularly burned incense and offered grain to local deities, and idolatrous symbols everywhere pervaded the camps.
It’s not that Christian soldiers couldn’t worship Jesus alongside other Roman gods. Well and good. But no soldier could worship a single deity (such as Jesus) without honoring the others. “[T]he totality of Roman army religion was an impressive system,” wrote one historian. “[It] would be impossible for any Christian in the army to avoid dealing with it in one way or another” (Helgeland et al., Christians and the Military, 54). Christians were clearly forbidden to join the military on account of idolatry.
But idolatry wasn’t the only reason military service was forbidden. Christians weren’t allowed to join because killing is wrong in principle. And several writers made this plain.
Lactantius, in the quote we read, said that “a just man may not be a soldier” and not because of idolatry. His reason was that “killing itself is banned” and “killing a human being is always wrong” (Divine Institutes, 6.20). Tertullian spoke out most frequently against Christians joining the military and often appealed to idolatry as the main reason. But killing was another reason. In arguing whether “a believer can become a soldier,” he unambiguously said no: “The Lord, by taking away Peter’s sword”—referring to the incident in Gethsemane—“disarmed every soldier thereafter.” Then, in the very next statement, Tertullian said: “We are not allowed to wear any uniform that symbolizes a sinful act.” That “act” refers back to wielding a sword that Jesus took away. Military service is wrong because killing is wrong. Origen also, in a lengthy treatise, said that Christians are not to participate in war, even if they are just wars (Against Celsum 8.73). His entire argument was governed by a rigorous defense of the nonviolent character of the Christian faith. Again, as Origen said earlier, Christians are prohibited from killing even the guilty.
The issue of killing was prohibited in every mention by early church writers. Whenever the issue of military service and warfare was discussed, Christians were prohibited from participating. Nowhere in the written record in the first three hundred years of Christianity is killing ever justified. Not even for soldiers.Mark Cavendish (Omega Pharma QuickStep) won the final stage of the Tour of Britain on the streets of London - his 10th stage in total - with Sam Bennett (An Post-Chainreaction) in second and Elia Viviani (Cannondale Pro Cycling) in third. Related Articles Relief for Wiggins as he clinches 2013 Tour of Britain title
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The 2010 road world champion came through in the final few hundred meters after another expertly timed leadout from his teammate Alessandro Petacchi. The Italian came off Iljo Keisse's wheel to lead Cavendish through the final corners before the British champion unleashed another precise sprint finale.
While his rivals tussled for his back wheel, expending vital energy in the process, Omega Pharma gifted Cavendish with a near perfect leadout.
Bradley Wiggins (Team Sky) finished safely in the peloton and retained is overall lead to claim the race. There was a change in the final overall positions though with Jack Bauer (Garmin-Sharp) leapfrogging Sergio Pardilla into fifth, courtesy of vital sprint bonus seconds.
"At the most, it's just about relief," Wiggins said at the finish. "It was only a 26-second lead so a crash outside of the final 3km... and all those little things. It was just a relief. From the moment I won the time trial though, I thought I could win the GC, but it wasn't ever really over."
The final stage was marked by a six-man move that escaped early in the 88km circuit race through the streets of London.
Angel Madrazo Ruiz (Movistar Team), Shane Archbold (An Post-Chainreaction), Peter Williams (Team IG-Sigma Sport), Jack Bauer (Garmin-Sharp), Andreas Schillinger (Team NetApp-Endura) and Sergio Pardilla (MTN-Qhubeka). The stage win was only one layer of the break's motivation to escape.
Bauer had a chance of moving up to fifth overall after starting the final stage just three seconds down on Pardilla. Another couplet: Madrazo and Williams were locked in a tense battle for the sprints competition.
Bauer was successful in his bid, gaining enough time to move into fifth but Williams was unable to take the lead in the sprints competition after commissars had adjudged the IG-Sigma Sport rider to have moved Madrazo with his hand during one of the intermediate sprints. It meant that the Movistar rider carried home the jerseys in both the sprint and KOM competitions.
The break were reeled in inside the final 30 kilometres despite a latch ditch move from Schillinger and Archbold. The Kiwi was the last man to be caught and when Alex Dowsett (Movistar) saw his own attack shut down, the peloton prepared itself for the sprint finish.
Full Results
# Rider Name (Country) Team Result 1 Mark Cavendish (GBr) Omega Pharma-Quick Step 1:47:23 2 Sam Bennett (Irl) An Post-Chainreaction 3 Elia Viviani (Ita) Cannondale Pro Cycling 4 Matteo Pelucchi (It
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Billie Jean King, Renee Richards, Greg Louganis, and the many others who courageously paved the way for athletes like Michael Sam to come out,” said Griffin.
Sam joins a growing list of notable athletes who have come out recently, including Jason Collins,Robbie Rogers, Brittney Griner, Orlando Cruz, Megan Rapinoe, Lori Lindsey, and Tom Daley.
Coming out -- whether it is as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or allied -- is a deeply personal and arduous journey for each individual. Show your support for Michael Sam and his courageous decions by sharing the image below or sending him a virtual high-five now.
And for resources to guide you along your path to coming out as LGBT or an ally, visit HRC's Coming Out Center.I realize I’ll get in trouble for writing this. I hope you can love me even when God puts it on my heart to advocate for people whose existence has been delegitimized with the label of “terrorism.” And I hope you understand that my advocacy does not connote moral approval of very evil things that have been done and are being done. I used to be a youth pastor to kids who society had written off on account of their being “gang-bangers” and “illegal aliens,” and I discovered they were beautiful children of God who needed someone to tell them that. Jesus’ ministry was defined by associating with people whose existence had been delegitimized with a label, whether it was “sinner” or “tax collector” or “prostitute.” Thus it seems like not an inappropriate emulation of Christ to try to understand and even defend the human dignity of “terrorists” in Gaza whether they’re labeled that way because of their own sinful deeds or because they share the same ethnicity, neighborhood, or even household with people who have engaged in acts of violence that create terror.
There are two ways of defining terrorism that I can think of: 1) to intentionally kill civilians, 2) to terrorize a population of people through violence as a means of accomplishing political objectives. Suicide bombers do both. They not only kill civilians but they also create a culture of terror for the surrounding population. But what about fighter pilots? Can they be called terrorists if their bombs kill civilians and terrorize a population? Could it be that the primary difference between suicide bombers and fighter pilots is the technological capability to pinpoint a precise military target?
I realize that these questions are taboo and offensive. But here’s what needs to be named. We often don’t define terrorism according to the two ways I described above, but according to whether a group of people has the technological resources, nation-state affiliation, and organization to be considered an “official” military. If a paramilitary group plants a roadside bomb that blows up a military vehicle filled with people who are on a mission to kill members of that paramilitary group, is that terrorism or self-defense?
We tend to say it’s terrorism, because we know soldiers who have been killed and wounded by IED’s whereas we don’t have any first-hand exposure to those who are killed by the bombs that we drop from our planes, which makes the bombs seem “clean” in a way that the IED’s are “dirty.” But if our definition of terrorism is strictly killing civilians and terrorizing a population as a political strategy, then we can’t say that IED’s which target military are terrorism, as nasty as they are.
When the British fought in the revolutionary war, they marched in straight lines across the battlefield while the colonists hid in trees and picked them off. If the word terrorism had existed in the 1770’s, the British would certainly label guerrilla warfare tactics as terrorism, saying why don’t you come out in the field and face us like gentlemen? When you have an armed conflict between two radically mismatched sides, the side that has the technological disadvantage cannot engage in conventional warfare tactics or they would get decimated very quickly. If Hamas lined up in a field with all their weapons across from Israel’s military with all their weapons, Israel would win in six seconds rather than six days. Hamas doesn’t have the intel or the technology to engage in surgical strikes against Israeli airfields even if they wanted to. All they can do to retaliate if Israel assassinates their leaders is launch rockets which cannot be aimed with any precision.
This is not to say anything about Hamas’ moral culpability in either suicide bombings or rocket attacks, but merely to point out that we often conflate technological superiority with moral superiority. If you have the capability to engage in “surgical” strikes, then you don’t have to worry about killing civilians because you can say it was an “accident.” This is precisely what Israeli prime minister Netanyahu does rhetorically in the following quote: “The moment we draw symmetry between the victims of terror and the unintended casualties that result from legitimate military action against the terrorists, the minute that false symmetry is drawn, the terrorists win.”
Netanyahu’s quote makes Palestinian civilian life less valuable than Israeli civilian life because Israel can show that their technology makes their bombings “legitimate military action.” No matter how many civilians die, they can always be labeled “unintended casualties” or “human shields,” not because any assessment of “intent” has occurred but because the Israeli military spokesperson can point to the technological precision of their weapons. But the question of whether the Israeli military has engaged in terrorism needs to be answered according to our two definitions. Have they intentionally targeted civilians or used violence deliberately as a means of terrorizing Palestinian civilians to put pressure on Hamas?
One of the greatest sources of Palestinian casualties has been the deliberate Israeli targeting of households in which a member of Hamas allegedly lives. In Arab culture, many households include large extended families. The Israeli military says that it calls the house or drops leaflets ahead of time to warn people that it’s about to bombed. Whether this lets them off the hook for deliberately targeting residences where civilians live can be determined by answering the following question: if Hamas had the technological and intelligence capability to only launch rockets at the houses of Israeli military engaged in operations against Hamas in Gaza, then would it be “legitimate military action” and not “terrorism” as long as they robocalled the homes in advance? If you can’t answer yes to that question, then you have to concede that killing the families of Hamas members is indeed terrorism.
The question of whether Israel is deliberately creating an environment of terror in Gaza for the sake of political pressure can be answered by looking at what buildings are targeted and how Israeli officials describe their objectives. Israeli ministers have referred to their operation into Gaza as “cutting the grass,” meaning that Hamas cannot be eliminated without the genocide of 1.5 million people (which would be “uprooting the grass”), but their power can be suppressed and cut back periodically. Judging by Israel’s choice of targets which have included government buildings, media facilities, hospitals, and schools, it seems that “cutting the grass” means causing enough general infrastructural damage to Gaza that Hamas will change their cost-benefit analysis.
The other thing that Israel has been doing to Gaza is to enforce a blockade of goods entering and leaving Gaza that was established in 2007 in response to Hamas winning the democratic elections in Palestine. Supposedly, this blockade exists to prevent weapons from entering Gaza, but the banned items include food items like pasta, lentils, and tomato paste, musical instruments, and notebooks. According to an Israeli official, the objective of the blockade has been to put Gazan residents “on a diet.” An Israeli human rights organization discovered that government officials were calculating the minimal calorie intake needed to keep Gaza’s people just above mass starvation in deciding upon the food restrictions for the blockade. The other aspect of the blockade is that Gazan companies are not allowed to export their goods, which has nothing to do with whether weapons enter the country or not, but attempts to pressure Hamas through destroying the Gazan economy and creating massively high unemployment. This is an extraordinarily imbecilic strategy by the way: who do you think unemployed 20 year olds in Gaza are going to ask for work?
Is it terrorism to deliberately impoverish a group of people to punish them for their electoral choices? What if kids in Gaza die as a result of malnourishment even if they’re not literally starving to death but are more vulnerable to diseases like dysentery? Is that different than killing them with rockets or suicide bombs? Based on how Israeli officials describe the objectives of the blockade and military action as putting Gaza on a diet and cutting the grass, I think it’s fair to say that their goal is to create an environment of desperation and terror among Gazan civilians in order to put pressure on Hamas.
If we strictly follow the two definitions of terrorism that I started out with, instead of allowing ourselves to moralize technological, then Israel is committing terrorism against Gaza in both senses. If the US government were not wrapped around Benjamin Netanyahu’s pinky finger, then Israel would be a pariah state. The only reason our allies defend Israel’s actions is because of the US’s ferocious advocacy. Does this justify Hamas’s rockets? By no means! But it’s clear that the blockade of Gaza has done nothing to stop Hamas from acquiring weapons, so it’s ludicrous to argue that the blockade serves any purpose other than to terrorize the local population which is not only evil but terrible strategy since it pushes people into terrorism who would otherwise be invested in having a peaceful, stable society. So it’s time for Israel to drop the blockade and stop targeting Hamas’ members’ families and destroying Gazan buildings for the purpose of doing infrastructural damage. Otherwise, they need to go on the same list with Iran.Busted Examining Chemical Field Tests
A prominent organization of defense lawyers in Las Vegas this week formed a committee to explore ways of challenging local law enforcement’s methods for gaining drug convictions.
The committee, set up by the Nevada Attorneys for Criminal Justice, will specifically look at the use of what are known as chemical field tests, inexpensive kits used by police and prosecutors to make drugs arrests and gain guilty pleas. Officers typically drop suspicious materials into a chemical pouch and look for telltale shifts in color ostensibly meant to indicate the possible presence illegal drugs. The tests are often the only evidence used to win convictions.
A ProPublica investigation co-published with the Las Vegas Review-Journal last week reported how such convictions were still being achieved — all of them endorsed by judges — years after police and prosecutors had determined the tests to be less than fully reliable. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department crime lab had actually submitted a formal report detailing the shortcomings of the tests to federal authorities in 2014, and yet to this day the lab still endorses the use of the tests in criminal prosecutions.
Laurie Diefenbach, a veteran defense lawyer and member of the committee, said the group is studying several options for taking on the routine use of the tests. She said one option would be to file a broad motion asking the Las Vegas Justice Court to reconsider the admissibility of the tests at preliminary hearings. The vast majority of drug convictions come by guilty plea shortly after cases are filed.
The tests are not admissible as evidence at trial in Las Vegas. Filing the broad motion in some ways would be symbolic, for individual judges would still have to make their own judgments on whether to permit field tests to be used in the plea process.
And so Diefenbach said defense lawyers were also weighing whether to routinely challenge the use of the tests at individual hearings, in the hopes of compelling prosecutors to have the preliminary tests confirmed by the crime lab. At minimum, defense attorneys might request that drug evidence be preserved so that it can be analyzed even after conviction.
The manufacturer of the kits used in Las Vegas, the Safariland Group, told ProPublica last month that its kits ought never be used alone as evidence to convict defendants. Diefenbach said the committee, as a result, was considering asking the judges of the Justice Court to convene a presentation during which the manufacturer could explain the limitations of the kits.
The Clark County District Attorney’s office has so far refused to have its officials be interviewed about the use of field tests.
Judge Joe Bonaventure, chief of the justice courts, told ProPublica last month that neither he nor the other judges had been informed by police or prosecutors about the unreliability of the tests. Indeed, the judges over the years had allowed prosecutors and police officials to make special presentations at which they attested to the accuracy and usefulness of the tests.
In an interview this week, Bonaventure repeated his assurance that defense lawyers were free to challenge the tests in court. He said it will be up to individual judges to decide whether to hold evidentiary hearings, though. Bonaventure warned that slowing down the criminal proceedings could have consequences for defendants.
“If the defense now does want to challenge the reliability in a specific case,” he said, “it really might extend people’s time in custody.”
Unreliable and Unchallenged Years after the Las Vegas crime lab wanted to replace faulty police drug kits, they are still used in thousands of convictions. Read the story. See the Series Tens of thousands of people every year are sent to jail based on the results of a $2 roadside drug test. Widespread evidence shows that these tests routinely produce false positives. Why are police departments and prosecutors still using them? See our reporting.
Diefenbach also said defense lawyers might question police officers at preliminary hearings about the possibility of contamination in the conducting and handling of the tests. In its report to the U.S. Department of Justice in 2014, the police lab noted that problems with officers conducting the tests could leave prosecutors vulnerable to claims of contamination.
The tests are cheap — $2 apiece or less — and they are enormously convenient for police.
Over the years, numerous studies have concluded that they are legitimate tools to establish probable cause to make an arrest. But those studies have always emphasized the limits of the tests. For instance, they ought never be seen as definitive evidence of illegal drugs. Federal guidelines say all drugs in criminal cases must be identified by a qualified lab.
The Las Vegas police made some 13,000 arrests involving cocaine, methamphetamine or marijuana offenses from 2013 through 2015. More than 10,000 convictions resulted from these drug arrests and 99 percent of them were achieved through guilty pleas, court data show. The records establish that some 70 percent of the pleas came at the earliest possible moment, during preliminary hearings and before any lab retesting.In the “Killers in Eden” documentary Danielle refers to other orca skulls, specifically the monaco skull, as having the same pattern of tooth wear as Tom’s skull but on close inspection that proves not to be the case. The Monaco skull shows plenty of wear but has no feature at all resembling the deeply worn “rope” groove of Tom’s lower left tooth. If anyone can find an image of an orca skull with a smoothly worn groove similar to Tom’s then please contact the author at [email protected]
Eden Fisherman Jackie Warren described in a video interview how Tom would grab the anchor line of Jack’s fishing boat from the sea bottom and tow him around for fun.
J.R. Logan’s daughter Margaret Brooks describes being on her father’s motor yacht towing a dead whale and Tom trying to stop the boat by holding the tow rope in his mouth. The teeth missing from the right hand side of his upper jaw were possibly lost as a result of this struggle.
Perhaps most extraordinary, a journal from the turn of the century describes: “Davidson threw a painter(anchor rope) over the bow of his boat. It was immediately grasped by two killers. They took the rope tandem fashion with a half hitch around the shoulder and started for the quarry, overtaking the opposition. They had in their mouths 60 fathoms of 2 inch coir rope.”
The stories of the killers actually towing the whaleboats out to a chase have been discouraged by the Davidsons in the fear that they might seem so fanciful to outsiders that they would throw doubt on other stories. Knowedge gained from captive cetaceans show that towing boats around is well within their capabilities and intellect. Aquarium performances regularly display small boats being towed around by dolphins.
On a number of occasions, Tom had swum around members of the boat crews who had been tipped overboard in accidents. The crews believed the orcas were protecting them from the large numbers of sharks that would follow the chases. The Davidsons were very fond of Tom and described him as “part of the family”.
For decades almost all aspects of the Eden story were treated with derision by uninformed skeptics.
The idea that the killers would not attack the humans was believed nonsensical as even 1970s US Navy diving manuals stated that orcas are ferocious and will attack and eat humans at every opportunity. In fact no human has ever been attacked and killed by a wild orca. Some historians claimed that Old Tom was a female, despite conclusive photographs to the contrary of his dorsal fin and genitalia, and the idea that Orcas could be recognised by sight and given names was ridiculed, even though it is now standard scientific practice for identifying individual wild orcas.We’ve all lived the nightmare. A new developer shows up at work, and you try to be welcoming, but he1 can’t seem to get up to speed; the questions he asks reveal basic ignorance; and his work, when it finally emerges, is so kludgey that it ultimately must be rewritten from scratch by more competent people. And yet his interviewers—and/or the HR department, if your company has been infested by that bureaucratic parasite—swear that they only hire above-average/A-level/top-1% people.
It’s a big problem, especially now. There’s a boom on. I get harassing emails from recruiters every day. Everyone’s desperate to hire developers…but developers are not fungible. A great coder can easily be 50 times more productive than a mediocre one, while bad ones ultimately have negative productivity. Hiring one is a terrible mistake for any organization; for a startup, it can be a catastrophic company-killer. So how can it happen so often?
Like many of the hangovers that haunt modern software engineering, this is ultimately mostly Microsoft’s fault.2 Back when they were the evil empire where everyone secretly wanted to work, they were famous for their “brain-teaser” interview questions – Why are manhole covers round? – and, of course, they asked new university graduates about computer science theory; “Write me a binary search.”
Everyone wanted to be like Microsoft, even Google, until everyone wanted to be like Google (until recently); and so that interview meme persisted. Check out these two recent posts on the subject of interviewing, courtsey of Hacker News: one from a would-be employee, one from a Google interviewer. A couple of illuminating quotes from the latter: “I’m not even necessarily saying that this is a good metric” and “If it’s any consolation, at least we don’t ask gotcha riddle questions anymore. Those were especially offensive.”
It’s nice to see that Google have almost sort of realized that their recruiting algorithm is problematic. Too bad they haven’t fixed it. See also Jean Hsu’s “How Effective Are Technical Interviews?” The fundamental problem is that the skills required to pass today’s industry-standard software interview are not the skills required to be a good software developer. Oh, there’s some correlation, but it’s like the Oakland Raiders always drafting the fastest runners available, only to discover to their endless dismay that the NFL is not a foot race.
Actually it’s worse than that. At least wide receivers have to run, whereas I can guarantee you, without fear of contradiction, that no software engineer will ever have to write a binary search after they are hired. It’s like choosing a contractor because they know how to forge and cast steel using coal, iron, an oven and a bellows, when they actually need to know a) the address of the nearest Home Depot b) what to do with the steel once they buy it.
Joel Spolsky once correctly explained that you’re generally looking for two things in an employee: Smart and Gets Things Done. (Academia is teeming with people who are the former but not the latter.) First, though, you have to establish something else: Not Completely Inept. You’d be amazed how many totally incompetent people show up for technical interviews. Google’s binary search is presumably intended as their “FizzBuzz” – a low bar you have to hurdle just to get in the door. But a FizzBuzz should take all of five minutes, before the real interview begins.
So what should a real interview consist of? Let me offer a humble proposal: don’t interview anyone who hasn’t accomplished anything. Ever. Certificates and degrees are not accomplishments; I mean real-world projects with real-world users. There is no excuse for software developers who don’t have a site, app, or service they can point to and say, “I did this, all by myself!” in a world where Google App Engine and Amazon Web Services have free service tiers, and it costs all of $25 to register as an Android developer and publish an app on the Android Market.
The old system was based on limited information—all you knew about someone was their resume. But if you only interview people with accomplishments, then you have a much broader base to work from. Get the FizzBuzz out of the way, and then have the interviewee show and tell their code, and explain their design decisions and what they would do differently now. Have them implement a feature or two while you watch, so you can see how they actually work, and how they think while working. That’s what you want from a technical interview, not a measure of its subject’s grasp of some antiquated algorithm or data structure. The world has moved on.
1Yes, I am being deliberately sexist here, because in my experience those women who write code are consistently good at it.
2I don’t mind that Bill Gates is a megazillionaire; he’s done a lot of really interesting and innovative stuff. I do mind that a lot of unworthy people rode his coattails to minizillionaire status, eg the inventor of Hungarian notation, probably the dumbest widely-promulgated idea in the history of the field.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New Pentagon rules allowing gays to serve openly in the U.S. military prohibit separate bathroom facilities based on sexual orientation and say not all benefits will be extended to same-sex dependents.
The Pentagon issued new guidelines on Friday as a first step to ending the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy that forces gays to keep their preferences secret in order to serve in the military.
Congress repealed the policy last month but gave the military an unspecified amount of time to prepare the sweeping change. President Barack Obama said in his State of the Union address this week the change would be enforced this year.
The new guidelines ask the military top brass for precise plans within a week to implement the policy.
It says that while some benefits such as choosing the beneficiaries of life insurance and death gratuities are a matter of individual preference of service personnel, federal laws such as the Defense of Marriage Act mean certain benefits that go to married couples will not apply to same-sex partnerships.
“Strong, engaged and informed leadership will be required at every level to implement the repeal of (Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell) properly, effectively, and in a deliberate and careful manner,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in the guidelines.
“This is not, however, a change that should be done incrementally,” he said.
The memo sets out principles to mold the new policy, focusing on respect and eliminating any discrimination that might be based directly on sexual orientation.
Despite the congressional repeal, there has been push-back from leadership in the military and Gates himself has stressed that change will take a while.
“It is therefore important that our men and women in uniform understand that while today’s historic vote means that this policy will change, the implementation and certification process will take an additional period of time,” Gates said after the policy was repealed last month.
Marine Corps Commandant James Amos had said that implementing the change could cost lives because of the impact on discipline and unit cohesiveness.
More than 13,500 people have been discharged from the military under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy since 1993.
Even after the repeal of the policy by Congress, gay rights groups have kept pressing legal challenges because they fear the Pentagon will be slow to implement the new policy.LAS VEGAS -- Mystic Mac has spoken.
Conor McGregor has called his shot in almost every UFC fight thus far, predicting how he'll beat his opponent and sometimes even the exact round. On Wednesday, the brash Irishman looked into his crystal ball and came up with a prophecy for his lightweight title fight with Rafael dos Anjos at UFC 197 on March here.
"I believe I will dust Rafael inside one minute," McGregor said at the on-sale press conference. "He is a slower, sloppier version of [Jose] Aldo. He's like a bum version of Aldo. I believe in absolutely everything, I believe that inside one minute I will dust him. I will exit the contest fresh, I will cash the check, I will sign the next contract for UFC 200 -- the brand new MGM [arena] -- and we'll go again."
McGregor beat Aldo by knockout in just 13 seconds at UFC 194 last month to win the UFC featherweight title. Now, three months later, he'll be challenging dos Anjos for the lightweight belt. "The Notorious" is trying to become the first person to ever win two UFC titles in two weight classes at the same time.
And he's very confident that will happen despite dos Anjos' dominant performance against elite fighters like Benson Henderson, Anthony Pettis and Donald Cerrone.
"You can talk about your wins and losses, but at the end of the day you've tasted that darkness of being KO'd stiff and you will taste it again on March 5," McGregor said.
At the press conference, dos Anjos was asked about McGregor's move up to 155 pounds. The Brazilian champion said it was a "bad idea."
"Lightweight is a different story," dos Anjos said. "We're bigger."
McGregor shot back that dos Anjos is 5-foot-8 with a 70-inch reach, while McGregor is 5-foot-9 with a 74-inch reach.
"I'm the bigger man here," McGregor said. "I'm gonna bully this man in his own division."
Dos Anjos replied: "You're nothing."
McGregor said there is a certain "tenseness" when dos Anjos loads up for punches. He said he's slow, stiff and wild with his strikes. McGregor believes he'll "guide" dos Anjos onto some strikes and it will be a short night.
"It will be another KO," McGregor said. "I'd love to beat the ugly out of him and drag him into the second and third rounds. I would love to do that. But I feel like I'm gonna dust him in under one minute."Blue: Good situation
Aqua: Satisfactory situation
Yellow-green: Noticeable problems
Orange: Difficult situation
Red: Very serious situation
Grey: Unclassified / no data World map indicating world happiness (2006)
The Satisfaction with Life Index was created by Adrian G. White, an analytic social psychologist at the University of Leicester, using data from a metastudy.[1] It is an attempt to show life satisfaction in different nations.
In this calculation, subjective well being correlates most strongly with health (.7), wealth (.6), and access to basic education (.6).[2][3]
This is an example of directly measuring happiness—asking people how happy they are—as an alternative to traditional measures of policy success such as GDP or GNP. Some studies suggest that happiness can be measured effectively.[4][5]
This Index, however, is not solely based on directly asking "how people feel", but also on its social and economic development.
The Happy Planet Index was used along with data from UNESCO on access to schooling, from the WHO on life expectancy, and from the CIA on GDP per capita to perform a new analysis with this data to come to a unique and novel set of results.[6] Specifically, the extent of correlation between measures of poverty, health and education, and the variable of happiness.
Satisfaction Index [ edit ]
The subjective well-being index represents the overall satisfaction level as one number.
Analysed data to create the index comes from UNESCO, the CIA, the New Economics Foundation, the WHO, the Veenhoven Database, the Latinbarometer, the Afrobarometer, and the UNHDR. These sources are analysed to create a global projection of subjective well-being: the first world map of happiness. Whilst collecting data on subjective well-being is not an exact science, the measures used are very reliable in predicting health and welfare outcomes.[6]
International rankings 2006 [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]TWENTY years ago, when New Yorkers asked me where I was from, all I’d say is that I grew up in Britain. Mentioning that I was born in Bangladesh drew only more questions, and New Yorkers simply wanted confirmation of what was to them the distinctive cultural marker: my British accent.
That accent was learned from imitating BBC News announcers on a cassette recorder. As a boy, I read about the destruction of millions of Jews and was gripped by fear: If white Europeans could do that to people who looked like them, imagine what they could do to me.
So I adapted, hoping to make myself less alien to these people so ill at ease with difference. I grew up not so long ago in a Britain that spat at nonwhites, beat us and daubed swastikas on walls.
Britain frightens its natives with the specter of a fifth column, and exhorts immigrants to integrate better and adopt British values. Do it and you’ll earn your stripes. But the promise is hollow, for Britain has no intention of keeping its side of the bargain.The University of California has decided to suspend use of its redesigned logo, the university announced Friday.
The move follows public outcry over the logo, which erupted last week after The Oakland Tribune published a story about the redesigned logo, which university administrators said had been in use for nearly a year.
“While I believe the design element in question would win wide acceptance over time, it also is important that we listen to and respect what has been a significant negative response by students, alumni and other members of our community,” UC Senior Vice President for External Relations Daniel Dooley said in a statement.
More than 50,000 individuals had signed an online petition calling for the logo’s removal.
“I’m glad they changed their minds” said UC Berkeley junior Kyra Baldwin. “The old logo was a very unclever look, designwise. And I study design. It looked like something that was a corporate logo without reflecting the university’s image.”
Jason Simon, director of marketing communications at the UC Office of the President, said he was surprised by the sheer volume of complaints as well as the delayed reaction of the responses, as the controversial logo had been in use for more than a year before the onslaught of criticism.
According to Simon, the university has no immediate plans to introduce any new logos but will focus instead on gradually phasing out the current redesign, which has already been removed from social media websites.
Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, a vocal critic of the redesign, applauded the university’s decision as a step forward in positive public engagement with critics of administrative policy.
“It was nice, for a change, to hear the administration respond appropriately to the chorus of voices,” Newsom said. “You get to a point where you think your voice doesn’t necessarily matter. This is not tuition, access or quality, but it is symbolic of the frustration people have.”
Despite general support for the decision, some, like UC Berkeley senior Andrew Ludwig, remain skeptical.
“It’s nice to know that our activism counts for something,” he said. “Unfortunately, it seems to be only for something trivial.”
Contact Shirin Ghaffary at [email protected]If you fear a nuclear war (or even just the future), then you probably think of a few backup plans for emergencies to protect yourself and your loved ones. You may not have the money to build an all-out zombie fortress, but if you have less than $40k on hand, you're in luck.
If you fear what may happen in the future...
You don't have to worry.
You can buy yourself a small slice of safety for $36,000.00.
The personal bunker would be equipped with an air filtration system, blast door, and under floor storage.
If you want to dedicate a little more money to your fallout shelter, the company offers a deluxe version equipped with sleeping quarters, kitchen, restroom, storage area and a trademark undetectable escape hatch.
The shelter you're seeing being installed is used for customer demonstrations.
It's known as the Texas Training Shelter.
These shelters are built by Atlas Survival Shelters.
Once they are in the ground, you'd never guess they are there.
Inside, these survival tubes are actually quite roomy.
They contain a living area...
A bedroom complete with ventilation and generator.
A bathroom.
A shower.
And extra bunk beds.
The shelter has solar panels feeding into it to help power the inside.
And all of the external pieces are disguised.
The bunkers from Atlas Survival Shelters aren't exactly cheap, but if you're worried about the human race imploding, they will put your mind at ease. A little. If you care about your loved ones, share these fallout shelters with them. You'll never know when they can come in handy.Greg Gutfeld said on "The Five" today that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is a good politician because "all he does is sell himself."
"He's been running for office since 1972, affording him the luxury of selling a failed ideology that never requires purchase," Gutfeld explained. "Socialism, a harmless thing until it finds real power. Then it's deadly."
Gutfeld asserted that Sanders would "gladly" turn America into Greece or Venezuela.
"This dope once adored the Sandinistas, a toxic bunch of commies," Gutfeld added. "Sanders is so nutty, most kids should be allergic to him."
Gutfeld said the press loves Sanders, "because they assume his bad ideas may never see the light of day."
He further asserted the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate's goal "is not to get America back on its feet, but to put it under for good."
Watch "The Five" video clip above to hear Greg Gutfeld's full monologue.
You might also like...
Gutfeld: 'Hillary Doesn't Care for Borders, Unless They're Around Reporters'
Gutfeld: 'Does WH Think ISIS Is Bad? Depends on Group's Carbon Footprint'
Study: Watching Internet Cat Videos Gives People More Energy, Positive Attitude
Gutfeld: Bristol Palin 'Chose Humiliation Over Convenience'It's no secret that as Buffalo's manufacturing behemoths shuttered their doors in the 1970s and 1980s, our population, economy and communities were decimated, too -- but after decades of struggling to rebound, would you believe that more than $5.5 billion's been invested in just the last handful of years?
As someone steeped in marketing and business development in the region, I can tell you it's true. But the real question is, why? Why is it that people around the country and world are packing up their brownstones and heading to Western New York?
In a word: teamwork.
The local economy's current turnaround is happening because people of all ages, backgrounds, experiences, and areas of influence -- sole proprietors and CEOs, state and local officials, artists and academics, economists and environmentalists -- have come together to make it work. What began with Governor Andrew Cuomo's Buffalo Billion has exploded into additional private funding pumped into the local economy.
It's spectacular -- certainly, the greatest melding of vision, strategy, creativity, and cooperation that this city's ever known -- and everyone's got a position to play.
And it's about more than growing our economy.
It's about valuing everything in this region that makes it unique. It's about having great choices for where and how to live -- and being able to afford and enjoy your life. It's about the phenomenal options we have for our free time from kayaking on the Buffalo River to ice skating at Canalside, from playing pond hockey at Riverworks to taking in outdoor concerts and hanging out at local brewpubs -- and, of course, cheering for our beloved Buffalo Bills and Buffalo Sabres.
If, as the saying goes, it takes a village to raise a child, then Buffalo is thriving proof that it takes a team for a city to rise.
This 'new' zeitgeist is really the fruition of more than a decade of investment and it's created a tremendous environment for entrepreneurship. That's why it's not just about us anymore. Nearly every week, national media like The New York Times, Forbes and CNBC take notice. And when Steve Case and Revolution.com's national Rise of the Rest Tour rolls into town on September 30 to spotlight entrepreneurs here, we're ready to show what we've got.
And here's where they'll find us:
Looking for answers to critical questions about climate change and how to feed a growing world through forward-thinking innovations in green-energy technologies, advanced manufacturing, education, and agriculture
Collaborating at our region's 22 colleges and universities and at the booming Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus for life-giving and life-saving breakthroughs in medicine, biotech and more
Building new facilities including Solar City -- the largest solar-panel manufacturer in the Western Hemisphere -- and building stronger communities with projects like Buffalo Manufacturing Works to ensure that new jobs and the new economy offer opportunities for all
Developing an active entrepreneurial ecosystem led by innovators, techies, and thought leaders that care deeply for our city and volunteer their time to lead efforts such as Buffalo Startup Weekend, Startup Grind, and Pitch-In events
Challenging the ways people do business in the city's burgeoning business incubators, accelerators and co-working spaces -- Z80Labs, 'dig', VCAMP and more
Entering business competitions like 43North -- the world's largest business idea competition with five-million dollars in funding and support -- andStudent Sandbox and Bright Buffalo Niagara to fuel the next generation of college students' and startups' ideas
When AOL Co-founder and Revolution CEO Steve Case and his Rise of the Rest tour is here on September 30, they'll meet with players like Bak USA, City Dining Cards and Empire Genomics -- showcasing our ability to grow local businesses and attract international companies here. And they'll find them at destinations like Larkinville, Canalside and Riverworks -- which weren't even on the map just a handful of years ago and now attract millions of visitors each year.
This unprecedented -- and, just a decade ago, essentially unimaginable -- boom means that we have incredible opportunities to show the world the great things we always knew about Buffalo Niagara. And we're eager to hear what Case and the Rise of the Rest team has to say, too, so we can learn from their experiences to make ours even better.A day after Congress party offered to extend unconditional outside support to Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), several newly-elected BJP MLAs in Delhi assembly have advocated supporting AAP to form government
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-to-be-foreclosed-upon homes feeling broke, alone, and knowing they are indebted for life.
After we learned all these dreary facts, Ross suggested that we actually do something about this. He said, “millions of people are indentured, but they experience the suffering and shame in isolation.” He proposed that OWS work to make student loan indentured servitude a collective experience with a mass remedy: refusal to repay.
Isn’t that scary and exciting to think about?
Ross brought a draft of a Pledge of Refusal. The idea is that the pledge would go online in the coming months. It would say something like this:
“We, the undersigned, agree that after one million (this number is still under discussion) people sign this pledge, we will all stop paying our student loans on [insert date].”
Some folks at the meeting were a little uncomfortable with an outright refusal to pay back loans (even though the people who distribute student loans are the same people who crashed the economy, which is why there are fewer and fewer jobs for indebted borrowers). There were various amendments to Ross’s proposal from the OWS crowd. Some suggested we should not refuse to pay but declare a moratorium on loan repayment. There were others who thought we ought to use the rent strike as a model, in which case the loans would still be paid, but the money would go into an escrow account until a fair repayment process could be worked out.
I don’t know what the proposal will ultimately look like. The idea is that there is strength in numbers. And there are millions of us out there. This is not about trying to get out of paying something that we owe; it’s about the threat of millions of people not paying back their loans all at once as part of a nationwide protest of nefarious financial practices, out-of-control college tuition costs, and mass unemployment.
What would happen? How would the authorities respond to that kind of collective action?
I am going to another Student Debt As Indentured Servitude event tomorrow, so I’ll have more to report about how all of this is coming together. I will say, though, that I got the distinct impression that Stuff Is Happening at OWS. This proposal is going to go live, in some form, in the coming months. What happens next is anyone’s guess.
(Some people at the working group discussed how to counter the “personal responsibility” narrative that will definitely emerge in response to any Pledge of Refusal to pay back student loans. I can hear it now: “people shouldn’t take out a loan they can’t afford to repay!” We did discuss this inevitability at OWS. In my next post, I will have some thoughts about it.)Vista Animations has released their bento head Lia! Vista Facebook fans have been excited for this for the past week, though many people on grid are just now hearing about Lia. Can’t make it to the store to pick up your demo? Not a problem! Learn everything you need to know right here then snag that demo (and maybe the full version) once the crowds die down.
First Impressions
Right upon opening the box I was excited to see how many shapes Lia comes with. You don’t have to be an experienced shape maker to have a nice variety of looks. I also loved that Vista included a notecard explaining that this is their first head and feedback is welcome.
Originally I planned on making one post about Lia, however she’s so in depth that I had to split it into two. Today I’ll cover the main appearance of Lia and my next post will dig more into her animations and poses.
What Lia Comes With
While many of these are pretty self explanatory sometimes a cheat sheet can be helpful. Here is everything that comes with your Lia purchase and what it does. Note: the head itself can be copied, but not modified or transferred. All modification options happen with the included HUD. The shapes allow for copying and modifying so you can alter them with appearance sliders.
YS&YS eyebrows shape for VISTA The brows to go with the YS&YS shape.
[Avenge] eyebrows shape for Vista mesh head The brows to go with the Avenge shape.
[Avenge] shape for Vista mesh head The shape designed by Avenge.
READ ME – BETA HEAD An informative notecard from Vista.
VISTA BENTO HEAD LIA – SLIM SHAPE by VISTA One of three shapes designed by VISTA for Lia.
VISTA BENTO HEAD ALPHA This alpha hides the system head so it doesn’t poke through your mesh head.
VISTA BENTO HEAD LIA by 7 Deadly s[K]ins The shape designed 7 Deadly s{K}ins.
VISTA BENTO HEAD LIA by VISTA One of three shapes designed by VISTA for Lia.
VISTA BENTO HEAD LIA by VISTA 2 One of three shapes designed by VISTA for Lia. VISTA BENTO HEAD LIA by YS&YS The shape designed by YS&YS. VISTA BENTO HEAD LIA EYES RIGGED V.1b The rigged version of the Lia eyes. VISTA BENTO HEAD LIA EYES UNRIGGED LEFT V.1b One half of the unrigged version of the Lia eyes. VISTA BENTO HEAD LIA EYES UNRIGGED RIGHT V.1b One half of the unrigged version of the Lia eyes. VISTA BENTO HEAD LIA HUD V.1b The HUD where you’ll play with all the fun settings. VISTA BENTO HEAD LIA PERSONALIZE HUD V.1 The HUD where you can upload your own layers. VISTA BENTO HEAD LIA TEETH V.1b Here are your teeth! VISTA BENTO HEAD LIA V.1 And finally the head itself.
Designer Skins & Shapes Included
The shapes are found in your inventory and the skins can be accessed via the Vista Lia HUD. Please note that the skins only apply to the head. If you want the exact skin for your body you’ll have to visit the appropriate store to purchase the matching body skins. Each section below shows off the skins included. You can see all the shapes at the bottom of this section.
7 Deadly s{K}ins
Known for their quality skins, 7 Deadly s{K}ins has a ton of skins and shapes at their store. The November VIP group gift for the ladies actually includes a skin and shape for Lia! You’ll want to hop in the group before the end of the month so you don’t miss out. At the time of this posting the group is free to join. This is temporary, so if you want in for no cost do it quick!
Lia’s HUD includes the skin Saga in the tones Dew, Cotton Candy, Marshmellow, Sand, Cashew, Pineapple, Taupe, Oak, and Walnut.
Shape – 7 Deadly s{K}ins: VISTA BENTO HEAD LIA
YS&YS
Short for YourSkin&YourShape, YS&YS has a large selection at their store as well as events. The HUD includes their tones 00, 01, 02, 03, and 04 with brows on or brows off. The brows off options are handy if you’d like to play with Vista’s included brows.
Shape – YS&YS: VISTA BENTO HEAD LIA
AVENGE
Avenge is another well known creator. You’ll find their selection at their store and in events. The HUD includes five skin tones with two brow options each: Ivory with blond and red brows, Pale with blond and red brows, Peach with blond and brown brows, Bronze with blond and brown brows, and Tan with blond and brown brows.
Shape – Avenge: shape for Vista mesh head
Shapes
Each designer created a shape to go along with their skin. In addition Vista has also included three shapes. The shapes can be used interchangeably with the skins. Mix & Match to find what works for you!
Pose – Vista: Lia HUD (Pose Button)
Lia’s HUD
As with most mesh heads the HUD is split into sections. Each section controls various parts of Lia.
The first section shown above allows you to save your preferences for returning to them quickly. It also allows you to tint almost every layer. This is really handy for matching skin, tattoos, make up, hair, or any layer to the rest of your avatar.
The second section is actually the first that you’ll see upon equipping the HUD. This section controls the appearance of Lia. The third section controls Lia’s animations. These sections are discussed in depth later on in this post.
The final section of the HUD seen here is actually the Personalize HUD (equipped separately). This allows you to use and save your own creations for easy access!
Appearance
This section covers the main look of your head. It’s where you’ll handle skins, makeups, eye color, and more. The HUD we’re referring to in this section is the second one in the HUD image seen earlier in this post.
Skin
You’ve already seen the included skins, so there isn’t too much to go over here. In addition to the included skins, Lia is Omega compatible. This means you can use any Omega applier with this head. The “shimmer” slider lets you decide the level of shine on your skin. This can give you a wet look if desired.
Make up
The Make up section has eight eye shadows and eight lipsticks built right in. Each has shimmer and blend sliders. The shimmer slider works just like it does in the Skin section. The blend slider controls the opacity of the layer.
Eye Shadow
Arte created the beautiful eye shadows for Lia. The shadows themselves are wonderful, however I have noticed that there is some clipping of the eyelids during animations (more on that in the next post!) The slideshow below shows Lia winking so you can see how it looks both normally and at a high point of clipping. Please note that this clipping is only noticeable for a moment during the animation, though static poses with clipping will show as long as you use the pose. I’d be surprised if Vista doesn’t have this fixed in the next update.
Lipstick
Arte did the lipsticks too! This is a solid set of makeup to come with a head.
Hair & Beauty
Hair & beauty is where you’ll find your options for lashes, brows, hairbases, and tattoos. Lia has three lashes, five hair bases, five brows, and four tattoos included in the HUD. The lashes and hair bases can toggle on and off while the brows and tattoos have the blend options similar to the Make up section.
Lashes
The lashes come in the standard short, medium, and long. I prefer the long, full look personally.
Brows
The brow options come in five standard colors. Can’t find the perfect one? Throw on the white set and use your tint section of the HUD!
Hairbases
The hairbases match the brows. Just like the brows you can tint to get the perfect match for your avatar.
Tattoos
The included tattoos include freckles, a tattoo, and blush. You can tint all the layers, but this is especially desirable with the tattoo to make it stand out a bit (depending on your skin tone).
Teeth & Tongue
Lia has four teeth options built in along with four tongue colors. Changing the tongue also changes the inner color of the mouth.
Alpha
The alpha section lets you hide certain parts of the head. This is especially helpful if you use third party ears or if your head is sticking through your hair. You can toggle the ears, scalp, and teeth on and off just by clicking the proper button on the HUD. I haven’t included pictures here since it’s very self explanatory.
Eyes & Lacrimal
Lia comes with eight eye colors. The eyes can be further detailed by using the options for Bumpiness, Shininess, Glossiness, and Intensity.
There are two lacrimal options to change the color of the inner eye. In the slideshow below the first lacrimal option is used in the first four eye colors and the second in the last four.
Neck Size
Different bodies have different size necks. This isn’t a problem for Lia! There are five neck sizes to choose from so you can make her fit most bodies. Not sure if she’ll work for your body? Make sure to demo the head before buying!
Conclusion
Based on the appearance HUD it looks like Lia is already a solid addition to the bento head market. I’ll be surprised if she doesn’t become one of the more popular bento heads. My next post will cover her animations. Can’t wait? Grab the demo today at the Vista mainstore! There are tons of goodies in the bento head room (including makeup, full facial and body dance animations, more skins from 7DS, and a free shape!) so make sure to take the time to browse, too.
Lia can be purchased for L$2500, however she’s currently on Black Friday sale for L$2000.
Credits
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Like this: Like Loading...#bringGobihome. Read the amazing story of "Gobi" the dog that won the hearts of all the #GobiMarch 2016 competitors when she completed the race with them. Competitor Dion Leonard formed a particularly special bond and is adopting Gobi and taking her back to his home town of Scotland where she can continue to run free. If you would like to help Dion with this have a look at his crowd funding page: http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/bring-gobi-home http://bit.ly/2aGGRhx #4Deserts #AtacamaCrossing #GobiMarch A photo posted by 4 Deserts Race Series (@4deserts) on Jul 26, 2016 at 12:06am PDT
Australian Dion Leonard had an unlikely pacer at the Gobi March 2016, an ultramarathon in China, in mid-June. A stray dog named “Gobi,” named after the race and the Gobi desert where the run is held, ran alongside Leonard for much of the 250K, multi-stage race.
RELATED: Adorable surprise racer finishes at the Elkmont Half-Marathon in Alabama.
It must have been love….& it's not over. Working on #BringGobiHome from @4deserts for Dion❤️❤️ A photo posted by Lucja Leonard (@runningdutchie) on Jun 28, 2016 at 8:58am PDT
Leonard is now trying to adopt the canine after the two formed a strong bond during the event. Gobi joined Leonard midway through stage two of the six-stage race where temperatures can reach upwards of 50 C. Another competitor noticed Gobi during the first stage but the furry canine only got to know Leonard a day later.
The terrier proceeded to run alongside Leonard kilometre after kilometre and stayed with the ultrarunner at night. Leonard ensured that Gobi was well fed and hydrated and even carried the canine over water crossings on the race course. Gobi ended up running four stages including the final 10K of the race.
“I didn’t [adopt her], Gobi seemed to adopt me,” Leonard said. “The dog was more famous than anyone in the race. She was in everyone’s blogs and emails and was all over the race photos making her the star of the race.”
RELATED: Pacer, the “hero” dog, saves B.C. trail runner from bear attack.
The Gobi March is part of the 4 Deserts ultramarathon series and takes place in western China each June. The race’s six stages are run over a span of seven days. The race crosses the Tian Shan Mountains, one of the largest mountain ranges in Asia.
RELATED: Giant dude from Game of Thrones goes for a run with his tiny adorable dog.
Race organizers prevented Gobi from continuing if they saw the dog struggling, especially in the heat. It’s unclear how Gobi managed to find the race site as it was located several kilometres from the nearest town.
Some fantastic images from @4Deserts #gobimarch as we enjoy a rest day before the final push tomorrow! A photo posted by Lucja Leonard (@runningdutchie) on Jun 24, 2016 at 7:46am PDT
Gobi is currently staying with a friend of the race while Leonard goes through the adoption process of bringing Gobi to Edinburgh, Scotland where he is based.It's only fair to share...
Yehudah Glick has spent the better part of the last 20 years championing the right of Jews to pray on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem – Judaism’s holiest site. On Wednesday night, the Palestinians sent a hit man to Jerusalem to kill him.
And today Glick lays in a coma at Shaare Zedek Medical Center.
Two people bear direct responsibility for this terrorist attack: the gunman, and Palestinian Authority President and PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas. The gunman shot Glick, and Abbas told him to shoot Glick.
Abbas routinely glorifies terrorist murder of Jews, and funds terrorism with the PA’s US- and European-funded budget.
But it isn’t often that he directly incites the murder of Jews.
Two weeks ago, Abbas did just that. Speaking to Fatah members, he referred to Jews who wish to pray at Judaism’s holiest site as “settlers.” He then told his audience that they must remain on the Temple Mount at all times to block Jews from entering.
“We must prevent them from entering [the Temple Mount] in any way…. They have no right to enter and desecrate [it]. We must confront them and defend our holy sites,” he said.
As Palestinian Media Watch reported Thursday, in the three days leading up to the assassination attempt on Glick, the PA’s television station broadcast Abbas’s call for attacks on Jews who seek to enter the Temple Mount 19 times.
While Abbas himself is responsible for the hit on Glick, he has had one major enabler – the Obama administration. Since Abbas first issued the order for Palestinians to attack Jews, there have been two terrorist attacks in Jerusalem. Both have claimed American citizens among their victims. Yet the Obama administration has refused to condemn Abbas’s call to murder Jews either before it led to the first terrorist attack or since Glick was shot Wednesday night.
Not only have the White House and the State Department refused to condemn Abbas for soliciting the murder of Jews. They have praised him and attacked Israel and its elected leader. In other words, they are not merely doing nothing, they are actively rewarding Abbas’s aggression, and so abetting it.
Since Abbas called for Palestinians to kill Jews, the White House and State Department have accused Israel of diminishing the prospect of peace by refusing to make massive concessions to Abbas. The concessions the Americans are demanding include accepting the ethnic cleansing of all Jews from land they foresee becoming part of a future Palestinian state; denying Jews the rights to their lawfully held properties in predominantly Arab neighborhoods; and abrogating urban planning procedures in Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem built within the areas of the city that Israel took control over from Jordan in 1967.
The US claims that it has great influence over the Palestinians. If this is true, then as Fatah’s official celebrations of Glick’s attempted murder make clear, that influence is being intentionally exercised in a negative way. The Americans are encouraging the Palestinians to be more violent, more radical and more extreme in their demands of Israel and propagation of Jew-hatred.
The Obama administration is abetting Palestinian terrorism today. And it is doing so after it spent last summer siding with Hamas and its state sponsors Qatar and Turkey in its illegal war against Israel.
Moreover, it is important to note that the most outrageous statements the administration has made to date against Israel came after the first terrorist attack in Jerusalem directly inspired by Abbas’s call to murder Jews.
The most outrageous statements the administration has made about Israel came of course this week with The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg’s report that senior unnamed Obama administration officials called Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a chickenshit” and a “coward.” They also described an administration in a state of “red hot anger” against Netanyahu and his government. Those statements were made after three-month old Chaya Zissel Braun, an American baby, was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist in Jerusalem in an Abbas-incited attack.
The most distressing aspect of Goldberg’s quotes is that in and of themselves, these profane, schoolyard bully personal attacks against Israel’s elected leader were the mildest part of the story.
The most disturbing thing about the gutter talk is what they tell us about Israel’s role in Obama’s assessments of his political cards as they relate to his nuclear negotiations with Iran.
The senior administration officials called Netanyahu a coward because, among other reasons, he has not bombed Iran’s nuclear installations.
And now, they crowed, it’s too late for Israel to do anything to stop Iran.
They are happy about this claimed state of affairs, because now Obama is free to make a deal with the Iranians that will allow them to develop nuclear weapons at will.
The obscene rhetoric they adopted in their characterization of Netanyahu didn’t come from “red hot anger.” It was a calculated move. Obama knows that he has caved in on every significant redline that he claimed he would defend in the nuclear talks with Iran.
Obama has chosen to demonize Netanyahu and castigate Israel now as a means to transform the debate about Iran into a debate about Israel. The fact that the trash talk about Netanyahu was a premeditated bid to capture the discourse on Iran is further exposed by the fact that Obama has refused to take any action against the officials who made the statements.
He isn’t going to punish them for carrying out his policies.
Obama knows that after next week’s midterm elections, he will likely be facing a Republican-controlled House and Senate. He has no substantive defense against attacks on his policy of enabling the world’s most active state sponsor of terrorism to acquire nuclear weapons. The threat a nuclear- armed Iran poses to the US is self-evident to most people who pay attention to foreign affairs.
Since he can’t win the substantive debate, he wants to change the subject by pretending that the only country that opposes Iran’s nuclear weapons program is Israel, which, his senior advisers insinuated to Goldberg, was apparently bluffing about its danger. After all, if it was a reason for concern, Netanyahu would have bombed Iran three years ago rather than try to accommodate Obama.
As a consequence, any congressional opposition to his deal makes no sense and therefore must be the result of the nefarious Israel’s lobby’s control of Congress. Loyal Americans, like Obama, must stand up to the cowardly, power grabbing, warmongering Jews, led by the coward in chief Netanyahu.
In other words, in castigating Netanyahu and Israel, the Obama administration has decided to use Jew-hatred as a political weapon to defend its policies of abetting Palestinian terrorism and enabling Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
There are critical messages to the Israeli people and our leaders embedded in the Goldberg article.
First, the unbridled attacks against Israel’s democratically elected – and popular – prime minister show us that when we are faced with an inherently hostile administration, the wages of appeasement are contempt.
No Israel leader has done more to appease a US administration than Netanyahu has done to appease Obama. Against the opposition of his party and the general public, Netanyahu in 2009 bowed to Obama’s demand to embrace the goal of establishing a Palestinian state.
Against the opposition of his party and the general public, in 2010 Netanyahu bowed to Obama’s demand and enacted an official 10-month moratorium on Jewish property rights in lands beyond the 1949 armistice lines, and later enacted an unofficial moratorium on those rights.
And Netanyahu bowed to Obama’s pressure, released murderers from prison and conducted negotiations with Abbas that only empowered Abbas and his political war to delegitimize and isolate Israel.
And for all his efforts to appease Obama, today the administration abets Palestinian terrorism and political warfare.
As to Iran, Netanyahu agreed to play along with Obama’s phony sanctions policy, and bowed to Obama’s demand not to attack Iran’s nuclear installations. All of this caused suffering to the Iranian people while giving the regime four-and-a-half years of more or less unfettered work on its nuclear program.
Netanyahu only cut bait after Obama signed the interim nuclear deal with Iran last November where he effectively gave up the store.
And for Netanyahu’s Herculean efforts to appease Obama, Netanyahu found himself mocked publicly as a coward by senior administration officials who snorted that now it is too late for him to stop Obama from paving Iran’s open road to nuclear power.
One of the assets that Netanyahu’s continuous attempts to please Obama was geared toward securing was US support for Israel at the UN Security Council. And now, according to the senior administration officials, Obama has decided to spend his last two years in office refusing to veto anti-Israel Security Council resolutions.
Before formulating a strategy for dealing with Obama over the next two years, Israelis need to first take a deep breath and recognize that as bad as things are going to get, nothing that Obama will do to us over the next two years is as dangerous as what he has already done. No anti-Israel Security Council resolution, no Obama map of Israel’s borders will endanger Israel as much as his facilitation of Iran’s nuclear program.
As unpleasant as anti-Israel Security Council resolutions will be, and as unpleasant as an Obama framework for Israel’s final borders will be, given the brevity of his remaining time in power, it is highly unlikely that any of the measures will have lasting impact.
At any rate, no matter how upsetting such resolutions may be, Goldberg’s article made clear that Israel should make no concessions to Obama in exchange for a reversal of his plans. Concessions to Obama merely escalate his contempt for us.
Bearing this in mind, Israel’s required actions in the wake of Goldberg’s sources’ warnings are fairly straightforward.
First, to the extent that Israel does have the capacity to damage Iran’s nuclear installations, Israel should act right away. Its capacity should not be saved for a more propitious political moment.
The only clock Israel should care about is Iran’s nuclear clock.
As for the Palestinians, whether Netanyahu’s willingness to stand up to Obama stems from the growing prospect of national elections or from his own determination that there is no point in trying to appease Obama anymore, the fact is that this is the only pragmatic policy for him to follow.
The proper response to the assassination attempt on Yehudah Glick is to allow Jews freedom of worship on the Temple Mount. The proper response to Obama’s nuclear negotiations is a bomb in Natanz. Obama will be angry with Israel for taking such steps. But he is angry with Israel for standing down. At least if we defend ourselves, we will be safe while isolated, rather than unsafe while isolated.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post.Nazareth — The rights of Palestinian children are routinely violated by Israel’s security forces, according to a new report that says beatings and torture are common. In addition, hundreds of Palestinian minors are prosecuted by Israel each year without a proper trial and are denied family visits.
The findings by Defense for Children International (DCI) come in the wake of revelations from Israeli soldiers and senior commanders that it is “normal procedure” in the West Bank to terrorise Palestinian civilians, including children.
Col Itai Virob, commander of the Kfir Brigade, disclosed last month that to accomplish a mission, “aggressiveness towards every one of the residents in the village is common.” Questioning included slaps, beatings and kickings, he said.
As a result, Gabi Ashkenazi, the head of the armed services, was forced to appear before the Israeli parliament to disavow the behavior of his soldiers. Beatings were “absolutely prohibited”, he told legislators.
Col Virob made his remarks during court testimony in defense of two soldiers, including his deputy commander, who are accused of beating Palestinians in the village of Qaddum, close to Nablus. One told the court that, “soldiers are educated towards aggression in the IDF [army].”
Col Virob appeared to confirm his observation, saying it was policy to “disturb the balance” of village life during missions and that the vast majority of assaults were “against uninvolved people.”
Last week, further disclosures of ill-treatment of Palestinians, some as young as 14, were aired on Israeli TV, using material collected by dissident soldiers as part of the Breaking the Silence project, which highlights army brutality.
Two soldiers serving in the Harub battalion said they had witnessed beatings at a school in the West Bank village of Hares, south-west of Nablus, in an operation in March to stop stone-throwing. Many of those held were not involved, the soldiers said.
During a 12-hour operation that began at 3am, 150 detainees were blindfolded and handcuffed from behind, with the nylon restraints so tight their hands turned blue. The worst beatings, the soldiers said, occurred in the school toilets.
According to one soldier’s testimony, a boy of about 15 was given “a slap that brought him to the ground.” He added that many of his comrades “just knee [Palestinians] because it’s boring, because you stand there 10 hours, you’re not doing anything, so they beat people up”.
The picture from serving soldiers confirms the findings of DCI, which noted that many children were picked up in general sweeps after disturbances or during late-night raids of their homes.
Its report includes a selection of testimonies from children it represented in 2008 in which they describe Israeli soldiers beating them or being tortured by interrogators.
One 10-year-old boy, identified as Ezzat H, described an army search of his family home for a gun. He said a soldier slapped and punched him repeatedly during two hours of questioning, before another soldier pointed a rifle at him: “The rifle barrel was a few centimeters away from my face. I was so terrified that I started to shiver. He made fun of me.”
Another boy, Shadi H, aged 15, said he and his friend were forced to undress by soldiers in an orange grove near Tulkarm while the soldiers threw stones at them. They were then beaten with rifle butts.
Jameel K, aged 14, described being taken to a military camp where he was assaulted and then had a rope tightened around his neck in a mock execution.
Yehuda Shaul, of Breaking the Silence, said soldiers treated any Palestinian older than 12 or 13 as an adult.
“For the first time a high-ranking soldier [Col Virob] has joined us in raising the issue — even if not intentionally — that the use of physical violence against Palestinians is not exceptional but policy. A few years ago no senior officer would have had the guts to say this,” he said.
The DCI report also highlights the systematic use of torture by interrogators from the army and the secret police, the Shin Bet, in an attempt to extract confessions from children, often in cases involving stone throwing.
Islam M, aged 12, said he was threatened with having boiling water poured on his face if he did not admit throwing stones and was then pushed into a thorn bush. Another boy, Abed S, aged 16, said his hands and feet were tied to the wall of an interrogation room in the shape of a cross for a day and then put in solitary confinement for 15 days.
Last month, the United Nations Committee Against Torture, a panel of independent experts, expressed “deep concern” at Israel’s treatment of Palestinian minors.
According to the DCI report, some 700 children are convicted in Israel’s military courts each year, with children older than 12 denied access to lawyers in interrogation.
It adds that interrogators routinely blindfold and handcuff child detainees during questioning and use techniques including slaps and kicks, sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, threats to the child and his family, and tying the child up for long periods.
Such practices were banned by Israel’s Supreme Court in 1999 but are still widely documented by Israeli human rights groups.
DCI says it has been disturbed by reports from several children of a special tiny cell, referred to as No 36, at a detention centre near Haifa. The cell has no windows or ventilation, its walls are dark and a dim light is kept on 24 hours a day.
In 95 per cent of cases, children are convicted on the basis of signed confessions written in Hebrew, a language few of them understand.
Once sentenced, the children are held in violation of international law in prisons in Israel where most are denied visits from family and receive little or no education.
DCI also criticizes “a culture of impunity” among the Shin Bet, noting that not one of 600 complaints of torture filed against its interrogators during the second intifada has led to a criminal investigation.
Yesh Din, an Israeli human rights group, reported in November that soldiers too rarely face disciplinary action over illegal behavior.
Army data from 2000 to the end of 2007 revealed that the military police had indicted soldiers in only 78 of 1,268 investigations. Most soldiers received minor sentences.
Academic studies suggest that Israeli soldiers have been routinely using violence against Palestinian civilians, including children, for many years.
In late 2007 Israelis were shocked by the testimonies collected by clinical psychologist Nufar Yishai-Karin from 21 soldiers with whom she shared her military service during the early 1990s.
The soldiers told her of incidents in which bystanders were shot or assaulted. In one of the most disturbing testimonies, a soldier said he had witnessed his commander attacking a four-year-old boy playing in the sand in Gaza.
“He broke his hand here at the wrist. Broke his hand at the wrist, broke his leg here. And started to stomp on his stomach, three times, and left... The next day I go out with him on another patrol, and the soldiers are already starting to do the same thing.”
Such revelations have grown in number since the Breaking the Silence began drawing attention to the army’s mistreatment of Palestinians in 2004.
* A version of this article originally appeared in The National, published in Abu Dhabi.You’ve designed a shiny new website; carefully selecting the colors, typography and photographs to perfectly reflect the company's branding. Then your client asks you to add a map. Sure, you could use a map building ‘wizard’, such as the one that comes with every google account. But, let’s face it, their functionality is limited and they look pretty generic!
The Google maps API, on the other hand, gives you the freedom to create completely customized maps, which can do all sorts of cool things. The Portsmouth History map is a site I built recently using this API.
Portsmouth history map I created using the Google maps API.
This series of tutorials will show you how to create customized maps using the Google maps API. It will involve getting your hands dirty with a bit of JavaScript, but it’ll be worth it.
The tutorials will cover all sorts of things. To name a few: custom map colors, menus and markers; bringing your own map design (e.g. a handrawn map) to life by overlaying it onto a zoomable google map; linking up to the Flickr API; image optimization; responsive design; code optimization and validation. Or, in other words, by the time you're done, not only will you be able to create lovely maps, you’ll also have looked at many things relevant to building any website.
Scenario
These tutorials use the scenario of a UK company promoting music festivals. The "Final Product" picture above shows the kind of thing we’re aiming for. Take a look at the demo.
Note: Only the Glastonbury marker is 'active' in this example.
Before starting, you may like to download the files associated with this tutorial. I've included a separate html file for each activity.
What is an API Anyway?
An API, or Application Programming Interface, is a fancy way of saying a set of commands (e.g. functions) a company (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, Google) publish. The idea is that you can use these commands to create a highly customized version of their content. For example, in the case of the Google Maps API the 'content' is the maps, whereas in the case of the Flickr API the 'content' is the photos.
When people talk about ‘mash-ups’ they mean they've used the API of two or more companies to combine content, for example making pictures from Flickr appear on a Google map. There are literally thousands of these APIs around; take a look at Programmable Web for more info.
We’ll look at the Flickr API in a later tutorial, but to start with we’ll stay focused on the Google Maps API. This will let you do all sorts of things, including customizing the colors, map markers, pop-up box style, level of detail and zoom level. Not to mention actually making the map do some cool things, such as displaying live data, grouping markers, planning routes, drawing custom overlays, dynamically revealing data.... the list is endless!
Getting Started With Google Maps
At the risk of pointing out the obvious, to get started you need a Google account. If you don't currently have one, head over to Google and signup.
Armed with your Google account, you can now venture into Google maps API pages. Bookmark this page; you’ll become very familiar with it. The main areas are:-
Developer's Guide: Code snippets that show you how to use the API functions to do certain things.
Code snippets that show you how to use the API functions to do certain things. API reference: The full reference list of all the functions in the API. Use this as a kind of'shopping list' of what you can do using the API. (But bear in mind there are additional libraries that let you do even more. We’ll get to these later).
Before you go any further, you also need an API key (a long sequence of letters and numbers, unique to you). Get your API key here.
Creating Your First Map
OK, you're ready to start building.
To make the provided map work, replace where it says ‘YOUR_API_KEY_GOES_HERE’ with your own API key. Your map should resemble the map shown above.
The basic principal of the code is that it creates a div (called festival-map ) into which the JavaScript loads the map. I’ve added comments in the code to explain how it works, but it’s worth highlighting the main bits.
The code first declares your application as HTML5 using the Doctype declaration <!DOCTYPE html>.
It then sets up the styling for the map; the bits between the <style type="text/css"> and </style> tags. You can adapt the styling on the #festival-map id depending on where you want to put your map. If you want a 'full screen' map, then set the width and height to 100 per cent and remove the margins.
Then, skipping over the JavaScript for a moment, the code between the body tags sets up an empty html object, i.e. a div ( festival-map ) to hold the map. This acts as a kind of 'place holder', into which the JavaScript loads the map.
OK -
|
But the South Korean military said it will not reprimand the two soldiers because they acted in accordance with procedure.
The incident comes at a time of heightened tensions between the two Koreas. Pyongyang said it would cut off all ties with Seoul last month, accusing the South of waging psychological warfare by sending propaganda into North Korea undermining the regime.
CNN's Jiyeon Lee contributed to this reportPollster Frank Luntz said Donald Trump’s performance last night “was so significant that he’s back in this race.”
“This is the first time of the three debates that there’s been any genuine movement,” Luntz told Megyn Kelly after the debate, referencing the way undecided voters were impacted by Donald Trump’s performance.
“I have to acknowledge something here, I thought it was all over for Donald Trump, and when these people walked in here, I was pretty sure of it,” he said.
“Based on their response… I have to change my mind. I actually think that tonight was so significant that he’s back in this race.”
Luntz also sent out a series of tweets showing Trump dominated the debate:
Focus Group: Who are you willing to vote for? BEFORE #DEBATE
• Hillary: 8
• Trump: 9 AFTER DEBATE
• Hillary: 4
• Trump: 18 — Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) October 10, 2016
Donald Trump's highest moment when he held Hillary liable for her emails and called for a special prosecutor. #debate pic.twitter.com/V4eEIjnMlG — Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) October 10, 2016
https://twitter.com/FrankLuntz/status/785337205732499456
That was the greatest moment I’ve ever witnessed in politics.
Hillary is struggling to defend herself. The group simply doesn't believe her. #debate pic.twitter.com/7xqE6c2Nfn — Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) October 10, 2016Please enable Javascript to watch this video
MILWAUKEE (WITI) -- A decorated soldier, home from the war-zone more than 40 years is fighting a new battle at home, after a chance meeting led to an unlikely friendship.
Just like his hero John Wayne, Gary Wetzel is a man of few words. But if you catch him in the kitchen with a cup of coffee, the burly Vietnam vet opens up about a little girl.
"Little girl -- four years old, and her name is Bella," Wetzel said.
It's a story that is remarkable -- but first -- you have to know Gary Wetzel.
"I grew up in a little town called Caryville, little town south of here. It's a city within a city," Wetzel said.
Wetzel was one of nine children raised in a working class family.
"The big thing was just to get through school. Didn't have no college plans," Wetzel said.
After school, Wetzel signed up for the service. He enlisted on February 15th, 1966, and was in the Army at age 18. Wetzel was in Vietnam soon after.
"I always liked flying. I'd see all these choppers flying all over the place and a friend of mine says 'if you're in the service for a year and one day, you can re-enlist and get your choice of duty station.' I'm like, 'I can go in the helicopter?' He said, 'yeah.' So..." Wetzel said.
Cut to January 8th, 1968.
"A lot of lives lost that day. We were, that particular day, flying what they call Eagle Flights. You've got two sets of helicopters, five each, loaded with grunts, infantry and we fly around like an eagle and you look for something. If you see something out of whack, you shoot down in and drop the troops off. They go sneaking and peeking. You take off and go land some place or you're flying in the area looking to see if something's there. If not, you come back in, you pick 'em up, you fly around and you look for some more mischief to get into," Wetzel said.
It was strangely quiet. As the crew returned to the landing zone, there wasn't a stir.
"I'm waiting for all this and nothing's happening, and you just know -- from experience -- I look out my chopper and look in the back, and the gunships are behind us -- and it's like, aw, hell," Wetzel said.
They were trapped by enemy fire.
"The crossfire was so bad. We got two guys that didn't even leave the cabin. How come I got nailed? I don't even know," Wetzel said.
Then, a homemade grenade went off behind Wetzel, and took his arm. As blood drained from his body, Wetzel staggered back to his post and got behind his M-60 machine gun.
"I didn't want to die in a sloppy rice paddy, and I had a little bit more spunk left in me, and I knew that 60 was back over at the ship, so I did my best to get back over there," Wetzel said.
Wetzel was shot, stabbed with a bayonet, and yet, he fought on. With one arm. For 11 hours. As he was going in and out of consciousness -- until the threat was eliminated.
"Are people afraid? Yeah, people are afraid, and there's nothing wrong with fear. I just chose to take a different route. Other people needed help, and I was still able to do it. I had the idea that this was my last go around, so try and make the best of it," Wetzel said.
In November of 1968, Wetzel received the highest military distinction at the White House -- the Medal of Honor.
"When I have the honor to wear that blue ribbon, I wear it for everybody. I'm just a soldier doing a job. Medically, I should have been dead. Should have been dead. But for some reason, here I am," Wetzel said.
Now, we go back to Wetzel's involvement with four-year-old Bella.
"So, Bella's four. She's a little girl, obviously very girly. Gary's a big tough biker guy, with a prosthetic limb, and she's never really been around or exposed to one," Bella's mother, Sarah Zizzo said.
Little Bella was born without a hand.
"She's amazing. She's spunky, she's sassy, she's stubborn. She's full of energy and full of life and she makes everybody near her happy. Laughter that's contagious. People look at her and so many people don't even know she's born with a limb difference," Zizzo said.
Bella has always been without a hand -- and Wetzel, of course, lost his at war.
"So we had that bond," Wetzel said.
When Wetzel learned that kids had been teasing Bella, he felt he had to fight for her.
"To have somebody reach out because they're touched by your four-year-old, it's incredible. It just goes to show you that there are good people out there," Zizzo said.
When Wetzel learned of a camp in Florida that unites kids without limbs, he lent his hand again.
"It's huge to have him look at our family and say 'we want to do anything we can,'" Zizzo said.
Wetzel raised some $5,000 to send Bella to "Camp No Limits."
Bella's mother says she has learned heroes don't only fight in wars -- though this one happened to.
"It makes me emotional what he did in the war. He's definitely a hero for doing that. This is a hero to us because he's reaching out. He's helping," Zizzo said.
"I was just a guy trying to do a job. Somebody need help. I had a little bit more spunk left in me and I gave it my best shot," Wetzel said.
"Courage is being scared to death and saddling up anyway" -- said Wetzel's hero, John Wayne -- and Wetzel has saddled up again.
"I shouldn't be here, but I am. If I'm here for a purpose, fine. If I'm here to help other people out, I'm happy for that," Wetzel said.
Wetzel's "Ride for Bella" will take place on Saturday, October 26th at the Oak Creek American Legion Post on South Shepard Avenue. It is $10 per person for the motorcycle ride, and there will be an after party at 6:00, with Bella stopping by at 7:00.Hamilton Leather SlipStand ~ Executive-level protection for your favorite firearm!
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Check it out:Gibbon called the art and literature of the latter days of the Roman Empire “the second childhood of human reason”.
Back in the days when European art was the greatest the world has ever seen, the wealthy and powerful Cornaro family patronized the artist Bernini because he was a great artist. Because high status people like the Cornaro family patronized great artists, great art was high status, and, circularly, the Cornaro family gained status by patronizing great art, such as The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, which features the Cornaro family as much as a Coca Cola advertisement features coca cola.
Similarly, in Restoration England, high status people patronized science because it was high status, and it was high status because high status people patronized it, starting with King Charles the Second.
Then the government gets into funding art. But the large bureaucratic government funding organization inevitably gets captured by recipients, as Cornaro family could never be captured, as King Charles the Second could never be captured. Funds are distributed for grantsmanship, not art quality. The greatest experts in grantsmanship could draw no better than a small child.
So drawing like a small child comes to be deemed high status.
Neo reactionaries are fond of authority, but need to remember that there is lot that centralized authority cannot do, starting with operate a modern economy. Large organizations suffer from diseconomies of scale, and a severe agent/principal problem. Without aristocrats, kings are not much good.The New York Times has a big piece today that features a lot of Democrats wringing their hands about the big question of the moment: How can the party improve its appeal to working class whites?
The piece is marred by some phony posturing, for instance, when Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack suggests that some Democrats want to cut loose working class whites entirely (“you don’t need those people?” Vilsack asks rhetorically). In reality, most Democrats see this debate as one over how to balance the need to improve the party’s appeal to working class whites with the need to simultaneously retain their focus on issues that are important to key groups in the Democratic coalition, like immigration, criminal justice reform, gender equality, and gay rights.
As the Times piece details, Democrats are wrestling with how to speak to those issues while also improving the party’s appeal to white voters who might feel left behind by the sort of cultural and demographic change that the party is indeed embracing. Many Democrats believe one key to this will be improving the party’s economic message and agenda so it cuts across cultural and racial lines — but without losing the party’s focus on the other issues that matter to core Democratic constituencies.
Figuring out how to do this is an important project, and one that will be argued over for years. But it seems to me that there’s something very important missing from this whole debate.
It’s this: No matter what, the Democratic Party isn’t going to back down from aggressively defending minority rights. It just can’t. That’s because in the near future, the Democratic Party is going to be in the opposition, which means it will inevitably be striking a posture of resistance to much of what President Trump and congressional Republicans do. That agenda is likely to feature a major assault on various constituencies that will simply require Democrats to mount an aggressive, sustained defense of them.
Trump campaigned on a platform that contained explicit vows of naked persecution of minorities. The Democratic Party has to organize itself to no small degree around resisting the implementation of those promises, should Trump make good on them — something that’s particularly urgent in an environment of resurgent reactionary sentiment and white backlash, which appear to be underway in the Era of Trump.
Just consider some of the specifics. If Donald Trump goes through with his immigration agenda — to rescind protections for the DREAMers and to vastly expand deportations of undocumented immigrants — this could precipitate a genuine humanitarian crisis. The Democratic Party is going to have to do all it can to resist this. That means mounting a major defense of the idea that undocumented immigrants are more than mere lawbreakers, and — by dint of many years of contributing to American life — have earned a chance to get right with the law, to assimilate, and to belong.
Or consider voting rights. Trump’s lie that “millions” voted illegally in the presidential election may signal that a major wave of voter suppression measures is coming — and such measures often restrict the voting rights of African Americans. Democrats are going to have to do all they can to resist these, too.
Or consider what Trump might do towards Muslims. We don’t know what this will look like. But during the campaign, Trump relentlessly demonized Muslim living in America with the lie that “thousands” of them celebrated 9/11, and openly proposed various measures (banning Muslims from entry into the U.S.; a Muslim registry; closing mosques; etc.) that raise at least the possibility of real persecution under a Trump presidency. This seems particularly plausible if — God forbid — there is a major terror attack at home. If this happens, the Democratic Party will have to step up and defend them. (Right?)
What this all means is that Democrats may find themselves in a position where they have to aggressively defend minority rights against an intensified threat to them. And that may require Dems to proceed from there to solving the problem of how to defend those rights while simultaneously broadening the party’s economic appeal to working class and middle class whites. None of this even gets into the additional point that many of the challenges facing minorities are also economic ones, which makes the whole debate over whether to embrace an economic message or a micro-targeted cultural one a bit of a false choice to begin with.
Now, obviously, individual candidates in the coming 2018 gubernatorial, Senate, and House contests will do their own thing, finding their own answers to these political challenges that they deem appropriate to the electorates they’re appealing to. But for the Democratic Party as a whole, if Trump does what he said he would do, adopting an uncompromising defense of minority rights will be a given.The first signs of serious unease are emerging in Conservative ranks about the government’s stance on the conflict in Gaza.
The new foreign secretary has been treading a careful line in recent days. Too careful, think some of his colleagues.
Channel 4 News can reveal that the Conservative MP Margot James has written to Philip Hammond to ask him to rethink government policy towards the war.
Her letter leaves him in no doubt about the strength of feeling not only on the Tory benches, but also in the country at large.
“My constituents, not all of them Muslim, regard the Israeli action as wholly disproportionate to the threat posed by Hamas,” she writes.
She continues: “I ask that the government rethinks policy towards the conflict in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
“The scale of suffering in Gaza is far too great, the loss of life, and particularly the lives of children and other vulnerable individuals, cannot be justified on the grounds of defence in proportion to the level of threat faced by Israel from Hamas.
“I also think that we should make it clear that it is unacceptable for Israel to just dismiss US proposals for peace without any debate whatsoever.”
This is directly contrary to Hammond’s repeated refusal just a day ago to say whether Israel’s shelling of Gaza was “proportionate”.
In a radio interview he said: “What Israel does in Gaza must be proportionate – that’s a requirement of international law. It would not be legal if it was not proportionate.”
Bear in mind James has just been appointed parliamentary private secretary to William Hague, who left the Foreign Office only a few weeks ago, and you get a sense of the pressure building on the government.
James goes on to describe herself as “a firm supporter of Israel” for many years. But the shelling of a UN run school (pictured, above) marked, in her view, “a new low” in the conflict.
Other MPs and even ministers agree with her assessment.
One minister told me they were “really disheartened” by Hammond’s apparent unwillingness to upset Israel.
It’s thought that the Foreign Office is making its concerns felt behind the scenes about the horrendous civilian death toll. But that may not wash with MPs for much longer.
They want public condemnation from Her Majesty’s Government, without further delay.
Below: full text of letter
Dear Philip
I am writing to you on behalf of many constituents who have contacted me to register their despair at the loss of life in Gaza. My constituents, not all of them Muslim, regard the Israeli action as wholly disproportionate to the threat posed by Hamas.
I have for many years been a firm supporter of Israel. I remain a supporter of Israel’s right to security, and to a state in which their citizens can live without fear of bombardment. However I do not think that the swift, and terrible, elimination of so many Palestinian lives, homes, hospitals and schools can be deemed a proportionate response to the crude rocket fire to which Israel is undoubtedly subject.
I have visited the town of Sderot and understand, and sympathise with, the concerns, frustrations and fears, of an Isreali community living close to the border with Gaza. But the rockets fired by Hamas, that I saw there, are of an antiquated nature by comparison with the modern weaponry used by Israel to defend their civilians against such attacks. Attacks which are in any case rendered virtually victimless by the air missile defence system that Israel has in place.
I accept, perhaps more so than the constituents on whose behalf I am writing to you, that Hamas bears substantial responsibility for the lives lost on both sides. It seems that the original killings of the three young Israeli men was their doing. Neutral observers confirm that Hamas, and related factions, fire their rockets from, and maintain their weapons within civilian areas, and worse still, from hospitals and schools. Likewise the network of tunnels under the border have been built in areas of dense population. This deliberate use of the lives of innocent Palestinian civilians as, in effect, human shields has undoubtedly made it difficult for Israel to avoid the loss of civilian life.
However, given the sophisticated surveillance systems accessible to the Israeli army surely we could have expected far fewer civilian casualties from these operations? The shelling of a UN run school, being used as a shelter in Gaza, two days ago, in which fifteen people died, marked a new low in a conflict which has seen a truly terrible level of death and destruction in a very short space of time.
Israel makes the point that Hamas has refused several Israeli offers of a ceasefire; even when tabled by neutral players like Egypt. However, it should be acknowledged that Israel has also rejected, out of hand, proposals made by the United States that would not only have enabled a ceasefire, but would also have re-started the peace process. The US proposals would have brought all players in this tragic confrontation to the table. I think that these US proposals are worthy of consideration. We have seen with Isis in Iraq and Syria that there may well be forces within the Middle East, more extreme and violent than Hamas.
To conclude I ask that the government rethinks policy towards the conflict in Israel and the Palestinian territories. The scale of suffering in Gaza is far too great, the loss of life, and particularly the lives of children and other vulnerable individuals, cannot be justified on the grounds of defence in proportion to the level of threat faced by Israel from Hamas. I also think that we should make it clear that it is unacceptable for Israel to just dismiss US proposals for peace without any debate whatsoever.
I will end by wishing you and your diplomatic staff well in your endeavours to help bring about a swift and peaceful resolution to this tragic conflict.
Kind regards,
Margot
Margot James MP
Member of Parliament for Stourbridge
PPS to the Rt Hon William Hague MP, Leader of the House
Follow @cathynewman on Twitter.White supremacy runs rampant in the Trump White House, cries the left.
Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon is a white supremacist, charges Nancy Pelosi and many others. Bannon and Stephen Miller, senior White House adviser for policy, are closely associated with white nationalists, they claim.
And Trump supporters are “Nazis” who deserve to get beaten up.
The left has become fond of hurling labels such as “Nazi,” “neo-Nazi,” “white nationalist” and “white supremacist” at Donald Trump, his staff and his supporters. Scott Greer, a deputy editor at the Daily Caller and keen observer of identity politics, said the left uses these terms to dehumanize their ideological opponents.
“If you say that they’re Nazis, you don’t just say, ‘I disagree with their point of view,’ you turn them into these menacing dangers, these total monsters that don’t deserve free speech; they don’t deserve the rights to protection from the law,” Greer told Tom Woods during a recent interview on “The Tom Woods Show.” “You can punch them, you need to assault them, you need to riot when they speak.”
Conservative provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos felt the sting of left-wing hysteria last week when students at the University of California-Berkeley rioted, apparently with the blessing of left-wing faculty members, and forced the cancellation of a speaking engagement. Greer pointed out it becomes easier for the left to justify the suppression of speech when they vilify and dehumanize those with whom they disagree.
“If you just say, ‘I don’t like this person because he’s a conservative,’ well, that’s not that good of an argument,” Greer said. “That’s boring. They don’t want to say it. [Using dehumanizing labels] spices it up; it’s like, ‘This person is a Nazi.’ It’s almost kind of a marketing tactic to say this person has a horrific ideology rather than just saying, ‘Oh well, he’s a conservative who just believes in immigration restriction.’ Yawn. They’re not going to pay attention to that. They just have to put it in these more hysterical terms.”
Not only do leftist protesters pin menacing labels on conservatives, according to Greer, but some of them claim their physical security is threatened by having a speaker like Yiannopoulos on campus. That, too, makes for a better argument than saying they disagree with the speaker’s ideas. Greer thinks it would be best if university administrators laughed off such manic pronouncements, but too many administrators take those fears seriously and use them as justification to shut down conservative speakers on campus.
And fears of physical violence give the leftists an excuse to threaten the physical safety of speakers like Yiannopoulos.
“They use this argument, and there’s a lot of moral legitimacy – they get moral legitimacy by just claiming he’s threatening their physical security, and, unfortunately, this is how they’re going to justify riots and further violence,” Greer said.
Greer explores the increasingly toxic racial climate on many American college campuses in his new book, “No Campus For White Men: The Transformation of Higher Education Into Hateful Indoctrination.” On Woods’ show, he noted there is a double standard when it comes to racial identity on college campuses.
“When you get onto a college campus, if you’re part of a protected class or a minority group, you’re allowed to have this strong identity that’s the core part of your being, whether you’re transsexual, African-American, Hispanic, that becomes the core part of your identity on a college campus,” Greer pointed out.
Political correctness is just the beginning. The situation on college campuses is worse than you could ever imagine – and America’s future is at stake. Don’t miss the political blockbuster of 2017 – “No Campus For White Men” by Scott Greer.
He said that mentality arises from the admissions process, which is often filled with affirmative action for non-whites.
“If you get into college on the basis of your race or sexual orientation, that shows you that there’s a benefit to playing up your identity, to [using] that as your core being. And if you’re getting benefits from that at the start of college, why not carry it on for the rest of your four years?”
So that’s what many students do, according to Greer, and they are taking it to ridiculous lengths.
As Greer discusses in his book, black students at many campuses are now demanding segregated housing, which would bring back shades of Jim Crow. Plenty of schools are also replacing Western civilization courses with identity-based “studies” classes, such as African-American studies or Hispanic studies.
“[Colleges] have all these different studies that encourage these minority groups to have incredible pride in their being a minority and see their whole world this way, and it pits them … in opposition to ‘whiteness’ and Western civilization,” Greer explained. “That’s why they’re getting rid of the Western civilization and Western culture introductory courses, because they don’t want to teach so-called white supremacy to students, and it’s becoming a very troubling form of tribalism.”
Woods, the host, said he can’t stand the “emotional hypochondria” in which minority students believe American society is full of “systemic oppression.”
“I just find this laughable that you could think in this society there’s systemic oppression of you if you are any type of minority,” said Woods, author of “The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History.” “Think of it this way: When you go to apply to college, which group would you want to belong to? Would you want to be white? You want to check off that ‘white’ box on the application? Who in his right mind wants to check off the ‘white’ box? So where’s the so-called privilege?
“To the contrary, especially if you are in the LGBTQ community, you’re welcomed with open arms on every single campus. There’s no campus where you genuinely fear for your safety, whereas everywhere Milo goes, he could get shot and killed.”
Greer said the first way to reverse the tide of insanity on college campuses is for administrators to grow a backbone.
“Administrators need to realize, you need to stop coddling these kids and stop giving in to their dumb hysteria,” the author implored. “A lot of them, from my interactions with college administrators, is that they have no backbone. They’re just lazy. They don’t do anything. They’ll just give anything to the student who screams the most.”
That’s where the state could come in handy, in Greer’s view. He suggested it may become necessary for state legislative bodies to threaten to cut off funding from universities that continue to suppress free speech. Or, alternatively, parents can vote with their pocketbooks and refuse to send their kids to radical colleges in the first place.
“They can go to schools where they push back against campus activists, where they celebrate free speech, where they protect it, where Milo is not having to be shut down because people set fires on campus.”
Political correctness is just the beginning. The situation on college campuses is worse than you could ever imagine – and America’s future is at stake. Don’t miss the political blockbuster of 2017 – “No Campus For White Men” by Scott Greer.A federal lawsuit against Chicago police alleges officers employed cell site simulators or Stingray spying devices in violation of the First Amendment rights of innocent citizens during a “Reclaim Martin Luther King Jr. Day” action on January 15, 2015.
Chicago-based organizations, activists, and residents came together for a protest and march on the west side of Chicago. The intent was to use the holiday to remember parts of King’s legacy often ignored by politicians and the media. Activists also sought to link the holiday to issues of police brutality.
Jerry Boyle, a National Lawyers Guild legal observer frequently at demonstrations in Chicago, claims police used a “cell site simulator to search” his private cell phone and the cell phone of nearby “protesters, bystanders, and Chicago residents” at about 8 pm.
According to the filed lawsuit [PDF], police “deployed the cell site simulator in the immediate vicinity of private homes, private offices, juvenile courts, medical facilities, and at least one church, as well as protesters engaging in protected political speech.” Police lacked a “warrant or probable cause to search and seize the private cell phones” of Boyle or any other person. The surveillance was not by mistake but rather the result of a clear policy.
“The people of Chicago should be able to exercise their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, association, and assembly without being spied upon by police,” Boyle declared. “Government spying on its citizens without appropriate judicial oversight is inconsistent with the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution.”
Boyle seeks to have the lawsuit certified as a class action lawsuit. One class of individuals is anyone the Chicago police unconstitutionally spied upon between January 12, 2015, and the present day. A “subclass” is anyone who was targeted by police because they were at a political demonstration.
Matt Topic, an attorney with Loevy & Loevy Attorneys At Law, who is representing Boyle, insisted, “Any surveillance of political groups is particularly troubling.” He added, “But there is no dispute that even when CPD has a valid basis to track a legitimate suspect, the technology results in a search of every other phone in the area to find the suspect.
“This is a violation of the Fourth Amendment rights of hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent bystanders every time it is used,” Topic argued.
Chicago police closely monitored the actions of protest groups after Michael Brown was shot and killed by Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. Police officials also outlined plans to deploy undercover cops to spy on protests organized by Black Youth Project 100 and other church groups in 2015, one month before video of police killing Laquan McDonald was released.
Journalist Mick Dumke, who reported on the spying plans, wrote, “Over the past seven years, the police have spied on anti-Olympics protesters, the Service Employees International Union, critics of the visiting Chinese premier, the Occupy movement, and NATO Summit demonstrators.”
“In each case, members of the groups being investigated had spoken out against City Hall or its allies,” Dumke added.
The filed complaint suggests the city of Chicago maintains a policy of employing Stingray devices to “trespass upon, search, and seize personal information” of cell phones without a warrant or probable cause.
It asserts the city fails to hold police accountable for violating the rights of citizens. The city is responsible for any misconduct because it does not “adequately train and supervise” officers, who operate the surveillance equipment.
Craig Futterman, another attorney who represents Boyle, stated, “The Chicago Police Department can’t give its officers weapons that have the power to search and seize our most personal information without any instructions about how to use them,” said Craig Futterman, a Clinical Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School and one of the lawyers representing Mr. Boyle. “That’s like giving officers guns and telling them to go get the bad guys, without even teaching them how to shoot.
“We’ve recently seen how this lack of surveillance oversight has played out at the NSA, where employees abused surveillance tools to spy on their spouses,” Futterman added.
The lawsuit is one of the first civil lawsuits to be filed in a federal court against police for their use of Stingray technology.Last month, the Supreme Court agreed to changes to Rule 41 that will allow a judge in any jurisdiction to issue a search warrant for a suspect's computer, whether or not that machine is believed to be within the judge's jurisdiction. Opponents argued the changes would give the FBI nearly unlimited power to access any computer remotely. And the bill's authors in the Senate -- Democrat Ron Wyden and Republican Rand Paul -- also believe the Justice Department is dangerously close to overstepping its constitutional bounds.
"This is a dramatic expansion of the government's hacking and surveillance authority," Wyden said in a statement. "Such a substantive change with an enormous impact on Americans' constitutional rights should be debated by Congress, not maneuvered through an obscure bureaucratic process."
According to Reuters, there's a similar bill in the works in the House of Representatives as well, but if Congress fails to act on the DOJ's proposed changes by December 1st, they will take effect either way. In the meantime, everyone from civil liberties groups to Google have promised to fight the changes.
The controversy over the FBI's "network investigative techniques, began, it should be noted, after the agency hacked a dark web child pornography site in February 2015. One defendant in that case successfully argued that the search warrant issued for his computer was invalid because it was issued "without jurisdiction."Analyzing & Visualizing Terrorist Attacks in Pakistan & India (2002–2015)
Umer Mahasin Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jul 18, 2017
I am currently studying Data Science so the best approach to learn is by doing it real time and being a Pakistani I would look at the data from my own country to analyze and visualize and unfortunately the first thing flashed in my mind was terrorist attacks in Pakistan.
So, I start looking for databases of terrorist attacks in Pakistan and I found one at Global Terrorism Database by University of Maryland.
Before proceeding with data, I would like to highlight an important element in data that I think is missing. GTD used coordinates of the cities instead of actual place of incident that makes it less effective when analyzing the data. If we had actual coordinates of the place of incident, at least we would be able to analyze which part of the cities are more vulnerable and what could be the possible reasons, also we may can learn about upcoming attacks by running predictive analytic model or with the help of machine learning.
One last thing before we move forward, I’m not an expert (at a moment) in Data analysis or visualization. So, pardon me if it could be better or my analysis is weak.
I have analyzed both Pakistan & India. Why India? Because we are love birds and we do it all the time. I did it for the same reason this Indian guy tried to find “Terror in Kashmir and Pakistan’s Involvement” at Kaggle.
I have few words for Mr. Anshul: You could better serve your country and this community by bringing up real problems in India instead of wasting your time on something of least importance.
The following visualizations were made using data with at least 1 causality as a result of terrorist attacks.
Overview of Terrorist Attacks in Pakistan
Years analyzed in this data are 2002 to 2015: According to GTD, there are more than 10,000 terrorist attacks in Pakistan with little over 18,000 people were killed and more than 30,000 wounded.
Overview of terrorist attacks in Pakistan
It looks like entire Pakistan is effected which is quite true but most of the attacks carried out in Baluchistan, FATA & KPK.
These three regions lie on the border with Afghanistan!
Overview of Terrorist Attacks in India
That’s how the terrorist attacks in India looks like on a map.
It starts from Kashmir and goes deeper in East, South, North and South-East India.
If Pakistan is exporting terrorism in India, why don’t we see any activity across the 2900+ KM border? Why only Kashmir has trouble? Because it’s a disputed territory between India & Pakistan and people of Kashmir fighting their war of freedom which has also been included as terrorism in GTD database.
According to GTD, 6488 terrorist attacks were recorded in India during 2002–2015. Little more than 7600 people killed and over 14400 wounded. 329 attacks were carried out by “Islamic” groups inflicted 1119 causalities in last 15 years while the rest goes to the “non-Islamic” groups. As we can see below, more than 95% of attacks by “Islamic Groups” were in Kashmir, again, disputed area with active freedom movement.
Here are all the attacks by “Islamic” groups in India looks like on a map…
Attacks by “Islamic” groups in India
Dear India! Your problem is neither Pakistan nor Muslims.
Most Effected Regions in Pakistan
FATA happened to be the home ground of terrorist outfits like TTP but for the number of attacks it’s third in the list which is obvious for a reason that there are not much “valuable” targets. First region came in their way after rising from FATA is KPK thus inflicted most of the damage.
There is nothing in between Baluchistan and Afghanistan so making it to the second is very obvious even though the total population of Baluchistan is no more than 5% of Pakistan.
Punjab is most populous region in Pakistan with more than 50% of total population. We should have seen maximum number of attacks in Punjab, Sindh and Islamabad if we assume that cause of terrorism lies internally in Pakistan but we see positive correlation between number of attacks and geographical location (Border with Afghanistan) of most effected regions. There is one more reason that caused more terrorism in these regions. These are neglected and under developed areas as compared to the rest of the country.
Sindh is not bordered with Afghanistan but the reason for large number of attacks in there is political and ethnic wars with each other and security forces.
Here is a closeup of attacks in FATA/KPK & Punjab.
Number of Attacks & Causalities by City
Karachi is Pakistan’s largest city with more than 20 million population. So, made it
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minister.
In October 16, 2012 altogether 11 hard disks were stolen from the office of the welfare department located on the secretariat premises.
First Published: Jun 09, 2016 06:50 ISTHaving a stroke may shave years off a person’s life, Medical News Today reported.
In a new study published in the journal Neurology, researchers followed 748 stroke patients and 440 patients who had suffered a transient ischemic attack over the course of five years.
For their research, the study’s authors utilized a measure called utility, which assigns a numerical value to a person’s quality of life depending on their various health outcomes. Utility is represented by a single number along a sliding scale – anywhere from 0.0 (death) to 1.0 (perfect health).
During the five-year study period, the patients who had suffered a stroke lost 1.71 years due to earlier death and an additional 1.08 years due to lower quality of life. This meant that stroke patients lost nearly three good “quality of life” years out of the five years studied.
The study authors argue that these findings highlight the need for more funding for stroke research.
"Our study should serve as a wake-up call that we need more funding and research for stroke treatments and secondary stroke prevention measures to improve quality of life in stroke survivors,” said study author Peter Rothwell, a professor with the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford.
Click for more from Medical News Today.Look, Ma, no home button! If we believe the unbridled fantasies of case makers like Olixar, this below is close to what the Galaxy S8 edge should look like. The British accessory shop MobileFun often tips on upcoming phone designs based on the renders they receive from case makers on actual products to put in their database, and a lot of the time the images have turned out pretty similar to what actually gets announced later on.
Case makers like Olixar are often combining rumors, leaked schematics, and general guesswork to design their wares before the phone hits the shelves, but they sometimes also do have real scoops on the exact dimensions, so that might be how the Galaxy S8 ends up looking like. What we see is a very narrow bottom bezel, thanks to the disappearance of the physical home key, and LED flash/pulse meter combo placed way above the camera on the back. In addition, the render depicts a curved Dual Edge display (duh).
The wallpaper is also pretty intriguing, as it shows a stylized number 8, similar to the blue 7 that is shown in official renders of the S7 and S7 edge phones, so that's not improbable, too. Take these case maker tips with a grain of salt, as sometimes they are simply ways to attract attention to the brand, but in other instances their renders have been based on some legit research, so the Galaxy S8 edge may very well end up looking similar to this graphical work.Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders addressed a large crowd at the Indiana Statehouse on Friday, quickly launching into an attack on a manufacturer's decision to relocate 1,400 jobs to Mexico.
"I intend to do everything I can to prevent United Technologies from shutting down their plants in Indianapolis and Huntington from throwing 2,100 American workers out on the street and moving to Monterey, Mexico where they're gonna pay people there three dollars an hour," Sanders told a cheering crowd.
"This is not acceptable. This is the kind of corporate behavior that is destroying the middle class of this country," he said. "This is the kind of corporate behavior that together we will end."
On the decision to move Indiana jobs to Mexico, Sanders said, "They have no shame. They have no sense of embarrassment."
"Today we are sending a very loud and clear message to the CEO of United Technologies:stop the greed. Stop destroying the middle class in America. Respect your workers. Respect the American people," Sanders said to more cheers.
He talked about the effect of NAFTA on Indiana jobs, saying the state has lost over 110,000 manufacturing jobs due to the trade agreement enacted in the 1990s.
"We need a new set of trade policies designed to protect working families and the middle class, not just the CEOs of large corporations," Sanders said.
"It is not acceptable to me that today the top one tenth of one percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent," he said, linking the loss of manufacturing jobs to rising poverty rates.
"We are going to create an economy that works for all of us, not just CEOs of large corporations," Sanders said.
In addition to reforming what he called the disastrous policy of NAFTA and other agreements, he said, "If you work 40 or 50 hours a week in America, you should not be living in poverty. We're gonna raise the minimum wage to a living wage. Fifteen bucks an hour."
He also addressed the gender pay gap, as well as rebuilding the American infrastructure, vowing to use American, not Chinese, steel.
"The American middle class will grow and not decline when the trade union movement in this country grows. That is why we must expand collective bargaining rights for public sector and private sector workers. We need to make it easier for workers to join unions, not harder," said Sanders.
The USW, which endorsed Sanders, also invited Democratic front runner Hillary Clinton, who declined because of a scheduling conflict.
While no GOP candidates were invited, USW local 1999 president Chuck Jones said GOP front runner Donald Trump asked to come but was told no.
Jones said while Trump has spoken out on behalf of Carrier, he's also said American workers make too much money and he backs right to work laws.
Sanders spoke to supporters at Purdue University and Indiana University on Wednesday. He's vowed to stay in the race until the summer convention, although his campaign laid off over 200 staffers this week.
Meantime, Bernie Sanders' wife and adviser Jane Sanders says his campaign will do well in the remaining contests because they are open primaries, which she describes as "more democratic."
In an interview with MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Thursday, Jane Sanders noted that Bernie Sanders won Rhode Island on Tuesday, which was an open primary, allowing independents as well as Democrats to vote for her husband.
"If you close the primary and you only have people who have been in the Democratic Party for years, what you are doing is effectively shutting the door on the millions of people that Bernie has brought in to the political process during this election," she said.
She also said that his campaign intends to continue through the final contest in California, despite a revelation Wednesday that the campaign plans to lay off hundreds of field staffers and other aides.
Sanders will hold a rally in South Bend on Sunday, then head to Fort Wayne on Monday, the day before Indiana's primary.As with all of these kinds of moves, there are some huge pros and cons involved. Here's the run down of what the NHL wants to do:
The big change for the Montreal Canadiens from the last proposal is that instead of being in one of the 7 team conferences, they're now in an 8 team conference.
Like the previous realignment proposal, the NHL wants to switch from a 3 divisions per conference format to a 4 conference format. Then they want each conference to have a divisional playoff. I'm not sure why the NHL insists on changing divisions to conferences then calls them divisions when the playoffs come around, but I'm not in those meetings.
The four conferences will be made up of two sets of 8 teams, and two sets of 7 teams, broken up mostly by time zone. This means that there are some big changes for teams like the Winnipeg Jets. Here's how the conferences look:
The big change for the Montreal Canadiens from the last proposal is that instead of being in one of the 7 team conferences, they're now in an 8 team conference, with the new addition being the Detroit Red Wings. The Red Wings are an original six team and a big draw around the league after two decades of dominance, but they're on the downslide after Nicklas Lidstrom retired this summer, and Pavel Datsyuk is great, but he's also 35 years old. This specific change has to be seen as all positive in my opinion, as the Habs get the added revenue and excitement of the Red Wings, but not the dominant team they used to be in their division.
Each conference will have 4 playoff seeds available, with the first seed playing the 4th seed. This creates a very obvious problem, which was discussed at length after the last proposal, if you're in a conference that has 7 teams instead of 8, by sheer probability you have a better chance of making the playoffs. There's also the issue that a weak conference could put weak teams into the playoffs that don't deserve to be there. The central conference in the map for example, has two teams of seven that I would consider playoff caliber. Two!
New NHL proposal a dream for TV? Steve Lepore writes that the NHL's new proposal could have drastic positive effects for the American television market, Canada's too.
To alleviate this problem slightly, the NHL is considering a wildcard scenario, where if one conference's 5th placeteam has more points than another conference's 4th place team, they can cross over. But the NHL wants to avoid this at all costs due to increased travel.
It's assumed at this point that each team would play each conference opponent 5 or 6 times a season, with the rest of the games evenly split among the other conferences.
What about Expansion?
Another question that has to be raised is how this new proposal could be affected by expansion? There are constant rumours that both Toronto and Quebec city will be getting teams very soon, and both of those areas would be in the same division as the Canadiens. They could cut the Florida teams out, but then where do they go?
The league has deftly set itself up for expansion to the 3rd city so often mentioned in rumours though, as Seattle could easily slide into that Pacific conference.
Eventually you've got to think that the NHL wants four conferences of 8 teams each, but it's a difficult thing getting there. You're never going to fit 8 teams into that central conference unless you put Columbus or Detroit back in there after finally putting them in the Eastern time zone games after years and years of complaining. I can't see how that would go over well.
Personally I think there are just two many big hockey markets in the east for this 4 conferences idea to be practical.
What do you think?
UPDATE: According to CBC, the 4 conferences thing is now dropped... Kind of.Saddam Hussein in 1987.
The United States appears to be moving closer to taking military action in Syria over President Bashar al-Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons, but a new report in Foreign Policy shows that the U.S. government wasn’t always so vehemently opposed to the use of such tactics. According to recently declassified CIA documents and interviews with former intelligence officials, the U.S. government had evidence that Iraq was using chemical weapons in 1983, but concealed those facts as Iran tried to prove that to the United Nations. Even worse, toward the end of the war, the U.S. shared information with Iraq about Iran’s military position that it knew was likely to lead to a chemical attack. As Foreign Policy puts it, the new revelations are “tantamount to an official American admission of complicity in some of the most gruesome chemical weapons attacks ever launched.”
Long before the U.S. decided that both nations were were part of an “Axis of Evil,” it was determined to see Iraq defeat Iran, even if it meant looking the other way as Saddam Hussein gassed his enemies and his own people. When Iraq began using mustard gas in 1983, the U.S. government wasn’t sharing intelligence with Hussein, but CIA reports show that top Reagan administration officials were regularly updated on the attacks. Nothing was done to prevent them either, though U.S. officials knew about Iraq’s efforts to produce the weapons and the locations of its chemical plants. One CIA document stated, “If the Iraqis produce or acquire large new supplies of mustard agent, they almost certainly would use it against Iranian troops and towns near the border.”
The U.S. changed its policy on sharing intelligence with Hussein in 1987, when CIA satellite images revealed that the Iranians had uncovered a hole in Iraq’s defenses near Basrah, and were building up troops and equipment nearby. A Defense Intelligence Agency report warned that if Iran captured the city, Iraq would lose the war. President Reagan reportedly read the document and scribbled in the margin, “An Iranian victory is unacceptable.”
Top officials decided to share information on Iran’s strategy with Iraq, providing satellite imagery and reports on the Iranian military’s abilities. Soon after, Iraq launched sarin attacks that killed thousands.
For years, U.S. officials have defended themselves by saying that throughout the war, Iraq never announced it would use chemical weapons. Retired Air Force Col. Rick Francona, who was military attaché in Baghdad during the 1988 attacks, told Foreign Policy, “The Iraqis never told us that they intended to use nerve gas. They didn’t have to. We already knew.”Besides the blockbuster signings of several players such as Max Scherzer, Yasmany Tomas, and Yoan Moncada, this past off-season was most notable for the transition from Bud Selig to Rob Manfred as commissioner of Major League Baseball. As with all new commissioners, Manfred wanted to separate himself from his predecessor and start his legacy early. So, in conjunction with the MLB Players’ Association, Commissioner Manfred revealed new pace of play changes at the beginning of spring training to take place immediately. Among those changes included requiring the manager to stay in the dugout during replay challenges, keeping batters in the box when they take a pitch, and keeping a strict time limit on between inning breaks and pitching changes.
Baseball has always been regarded as the least progressive sport of the major four in the United States, and while these rule changes were welcome they continued to reflect that tradition. These changes generally amounted to enforcement of rules already on the books such as the batter’s box rule and the inning breaks rule. But, these changes were hailed as a step in the right direction and the maximum that could be accomplished in Manfred’s short term as Commissioner thus far.
After a week it has been pretty clear the changes have had their desired effects by reducing the average game from 3 hours, 2 minutes in 2014 to 2 hours, 54 minutes the first week of the season. The effect is especially more pronounced on the viewing experience of local broadcasts. Gone are the days of coming back from a two and half minute commercial break and then another minute of the homer announcers reading some local oil change ad after the viewer has already endured 5 other local ads on the commercial break. Now the break is 2 minutes and 25 seconds for local broadcasts (2:45 for national broadcasts) and at the 40 seconds remaining mark the batter is announced and withing 20-40 seconds the inning starts.
This change has been the most delightful and has clearly had the most impact on overall time. In fact, Sunday’s 14-4 game between the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees took 3 hours and 24 minutes. These teams were notorious for playing almost 4 hour games. Despite the use of 8 pitchers, 18 runs scored, and 24 hits, they finished in under three and half hours. In 2014, that game would have been four hours. The final proof that the change is working and is also being well received: no complaints from the players.
For the first week of the season at least, Commissioner Manfred’s rule changes have been a smashing success, and for those of us who watch our local broadcasts, we salute you. The television product is vastly improved with implementation of a few simple rules. Whether more is coming, or even needed, is up for debate. But for the time being, sit back, relax, and enjoy the new product.Lawmakers unveiled bipartisan legislation in both the House and Senate on Tuesday aimed at bolstering the development of artificial intelligence (AI).
The Fundamentally Understanding the Usability and Realistic Evolution of Artificial Intelligence Act of 2017 — or FUTURE of AI Act — aims to both ensure the U.S.’s global competitiveness in AI, as well as protect the public’s civil liberties and ease potential unemployment that the technology produces.
“While artificial intelligence holds the promise of providing goods and services more efficiently and effectively, increased automation has potentially broad negative impacts on our workforce and our privacy,” explained Sen. Ed Markey Edward (Ed) John MarkeySenate Dems seek to turn tables on GOP in climate change fight Ocasio-Cortez responds to Ivanka Trump: 'I actually worked for tips and hourly wages' Overnight Energy: McConnell plans Green New Deal vote before August recess | EPA official grilled over enforcement numbers | Green group challenges Trump over Utah pipelines MORE (D-Mass.). ADVERTISEMENT
“This bill serves as an important step in bringing together all stakeholders to better understand how this new technology will impact our lives,” he continued.
Markey co-sponsored the Senate legislation along with fellow Senate Commerce Committee member Sen. Maria Cantwell Maria Elaine CantwellSenate confirms Trump court pick despite missing two 'blue slips' This week: Congress, Trump set for showdown on emergency declaration Senate reignites blue slip war over Trump court picks MORE (D-Wash.), who spearheaded the legislation, and Sen. Todd Young Todd Christopher YoungSixteen years later, let's finally heed the call of the 9/11 Commission Indiana gets first national park Ivanka Trump to meet with GOP senators to discuss paid family leave legislation MORE (R-Ind.)
AI Caucus co-chairmen Reps. John Delaney John Kevin DelaneyWarren vows to forgo 'fancy receptions or big money fundraisers' Gabbard cites ‘concerns’ about ‘vagueness’ of Green New Deal Delaney: ‘We should not put up a candidate who embraces socialism’ MORE (D-Md.) and Pete Olson Peter (Pete) Graham OlsonThe Hill's 12:30 Report: Sanders set to shake up 2020 race House Dems release 2020 GOP'retirements to watch' for House Dems unveil initial GOP targets in 2020 MORE (R-Texas) sponsored the House version of the legislation.
Senate Commerce member Sen. Brian Schatz Brian Emanuel SchatzOn The Money: House votes to block Trump emergency declaration | McConnell unsure if Trump move is legal | Fed chief sees 'conflicting signals' from economy | Governors bullish on infrastructure after Trump talks | Big win for AT&T-Time Warner deal Fed chief sees 'conflicting signals' from economy Dems mock Trump's pitch for Fourth of July celebration MORE (D-Hawaii) also announced on Tuesday that he would be introducing his own legislation on the matter. While largely similar to Cantwell and company’s bill, Schatz’s differs in that it would create an independent commission to focus on helping agencies that currently address AI, as opposed to the federal advisory committee appointed by Senate Commerce as Cantwell proposes.
The new bills come the same day as the Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing regarding the advancement of AI.
During the testimony, experts and lawmakers expressed concern over other countries developing government initiatives to bolster AI technology, something the U.S. currently lacks.
“When it comes to AI, successfully integrating this technology into U.S. industries should be the primary goal of policymakers, and given the rapid pace at which other countries are pursuing this goal, the United States cannot afford to rest on its laurels,” said Daniel Castro, vice president at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank that focuses on tech issues.
“To date, the U.S. government has not declared its intent to remain globally dominant in this field, nor has it begun the even harder task of developing a strategy to achieve that vision,” he added.
“Federal funding for AI research and development has been relatively flat, even as the importance of the field has dramatically increased,” added Edward Felten, a professor of computer science and public affairs at Princeton University, who also testified before Senate Commerce on Tuesday.Update: The official Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar press release has arrived. It will be a PC and iPad game, and be released later this year.
Ultima Forever will have "fully integrated" cross-platform play, and "rich and deep" RPG elements.
BioWare Mythic is developing the game. This must be the project Warhammer Online orator Paul Barnett is leading.
"There's a fundamental shift underway in how gamers play and pay for games..." commented BioWare co-founder, and BioWare label general manager, Ray Muzyka.
"With Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar, we're excited to give gamers the opportunity to play a high quality game with their friends anytime, anywhere, on both iPad and PC."
Ultima Forever: Quest for the Avatar will be free-to-play.
Original story: Ultima has returned - EA has revived "the first great Western RPG" and turned it into cartoony, cross-platform action RPG called Ultima Forever.
"The first great Western RPG has been lovingly restored in Ultima Forever," the website spouted.
"Return to the Ultima series in BioWare's new cross-platform action RPG.
"Accept the challenge from Lady British and save the land of Britannia. Play as the Fighter or the Mage and travel alone or with friends, restore virtue and become the Avatar!"
Ultima Forever exists under the more casual Play 4 Free label at EA, like Battlefield Heroes does. You can sign up for the beta test on the Ultima Forever website.
There are character renders of the Fighter and Mage on the official Ultima Forever website. They're a bit Torchlight-y; the Fighter bulky and generously shouldered, the Mage skinnier with a mystical goatee.
"Fighters are one-man armies, trained to engage multiple opponents with a wide variety of attacks," apparently. "Protect your allies and rain down a barrage of deadly attacks on enemies."
The Mage: "With a staff in hand and a spell on their lips, Mages are ready to engage in battle from afar. Use your magical know how to vanquish enemies and assist your allies."
The only other scrap of information available is a world map, which looks similar enough, geographically, to the Ultima Online world. There's a piece of gypsy concept art, too.
Ultima Online figurehead Richard Garriott won't be a part of this project. He's busy at his new company Portalarium making his own spiritual successor to Ultima Online, tentatively called Ultimate RPG / New Britannia.Truck of the Month Brought to You by Brothers
Few jobs consist of a personal work vehicle, and even fewer have such a cool car as the one Frank Rosas was able to drive around while working at Mt. San Antonio College. So in 1985 when this ’54 Chevrolet 3100 pickup came up for sale, Frank was the first in line. Frank knew the admiration his son, Chris, had for this Chevy and would eventually decide to give it to him as wedding gift. “I always dreamt about turning it into a lowrider,” Chris says. Chris and his new wife soon embarked on a restoration journey that converted this once-neglected daily driver into a car show contender.
After many a trip to the Pomona Swap Meet, the pieces were finally in place to begin this build. The heart and soul of this project was in the hands of P&G Engines in Rialto, California, who would install a new 350 small-block crate motor complete with chrome and painted accessories, as well as a 700-R4 transmission bolting up to a posi rearend along with upgraded front disc brakes. The airbag suspension was left to J&J Classic in San Bernardino, California, where Joe and crew would mount a brand-new custom Universal Air Suspension setup, laying this Chevy all the way down to the floor. Joe would also connect the audio components that included a Sony head unit and Kicker amplifiers powering Kicker mids, highs, and subwoofers. From there they would cover the entire truck with a unique blend of Forest Green two-stage PPG paint that included the undercarriage as well as engine compartment. With Memos Upholstery cutting and sewing together two tan leather combinations, mimicking original Chevrolet bench seat patterns, Dakota Digital dash in place, and hubcaps gleaming, it was finally time to hit the boulevard.
Nowadays, this once-diminished work truck finds itself as a family heirloom with Chris recently handing it down to his son, Nicholas. Chris and family would like to say thank you to all who were involved, especially Joe of J&J Classic, Goodtimes Car Club members, and most importantly to his dad, Frank.
1954 Chevy 3100
Nickname
El Don
Owner
Nicholas Quintero
City
Ontario, CA
Engine
’87 Chevy 350 installed by P&G Engines
Upholstery
Memos Classic Upholstery cut and sewed together two tan leather combinations, mimicking original Chevy bench seat patterns.
Body/Paint
J&J Classic covered this classic in a custom PPG blend of Forest Green with Mike Tipit adding accenting pinstripe lines throughout the body.
Suspension
J&J Classic installed the custom airbag suspension.
Wheels/Tires 14-inch radial whitewalls accessorized with chrome hubcaps.Written byCourier Reporter
Raigmore Hospital in Inverness.
BLOOD samples from a woman who is being tested for Ebola will be flown out of Inverness this afternoon, NHS Highland has confirmed.
The woman, who has recently returned from Sierra Leone and is said to be a "low risk" of having the virus, is currently being ferried via ambulance from Torridon to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary.
However the convoy of ambulance and police vehicles is expected to stop at Raigmore Hospital en route so that doctors can collect blood samples that will be taken to Edinburgh for tests.
An NHS Highland spokesman stressed that the woman had not been in direct contact with people infected with Ebola, but that the tests were being taken as a precaution given the seriousness of the virus. It is understood that the reason for the lay over at Inverness is so the blood samples can be flown to Edinburgh sooner rather than wait a further two hours to get to Aberdeen.
"NHS Highland can confirm there is a woman in Torridon Youth Hostel who became ill yesterday and has recently returned from Sierra Leone," they said.
"While the woman is being described as ‘low probability of Ebola infection’, the patient will be transferred to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, the region’s infectious diseases unit via a specially equipped ambulance.
"It is important to stress that this patient is not confirmed as having Ebola but meets the criteria for testing having returned from a high risk country within the last 21 days. The actions taken are precautionary.
"NHS Highland Public Health specialists have been in contact with the Youth Hostel, local GP Practice and the patient throughout the night and this morning and all precautions have been taken to minimise the potential for further infection.
"The patient’s immediate travelling party are being regularly updated by the Public Health Team about interim arrangements including having an on-site presence."Rotten Gods is one of the most sophisticated geopolitical thrillers published in 2013. It's written by an Australian, Greg Barron who travelled across the Middle East, parts of Africa and even took a course in the study of terrorism in order to make the research airtight. Most books in the genre sometimes become "ordinance catalogues". Rotten Gods distinguishes itself from the pack by hiding a cautionary tale and social critique behind the gunfire and by making an effort to explore certain uncom
Rotten Gods is one of the most sophisticated geopolitical thrillers published in 2013. It's written by an Australian, Greg Barron who travelled across the Middle East, parts of Africa and even took a course in the study of terrorism in order to make the research airtight. Most books in the genre sometimes become "ordinance catalogues". Rotten Gods distinguishes itself from the pack by hiding a cautionary tale and social critique behind the gunfire and by making an effort to explore certain uncomfortable issues thoroughly.
It begins a year or two into the future. Climate change has finally gotten serious,multiple economies are down the toilet and so the UN decides to host a conference in Dubai where every single world leader of significance attends. The conference is not expected to achieve anything concrete and is dismissed as a "talkfest". As the conference begins, the keynote speaker makes a compelling attack on the people in the room, calling them out on how their greed and complacency has caused environmental damage to the third world in Africa and Asia. Before security can get him off the stage, he makes them back down with an exploding briefcase and after forcing them to let 9 bloodthirsty islamisist extremists into the room, locks it down. With its top of the line security and the terrorists wiring the room with explosives, the group has a captive audience of leaders such as the President of the United States at their mercy. After making their demands, which, if met, would create a islamist state spanning much of Africa, they sign off by threatening to kill everyone in the room in seven days time. As the days progress, they also put on trial select world leaders for "war crimes" which they believe deserve to be punished with death. This hostage taking and the efforts to end it led by the Dubai law enforcement, UK SBS and a Australian intelligence officer are the basis of this compelling book.
Plot-wise, Rotten Gods is jaw dropping. From the first "day" of the crisis, to the final shot being fired, you'll never know who is going to come out alive or how much the terrorist will accomplish. The settings are also fantastic. From gun battles in Somalia to an assault on a terrorist base in Yemen, the author utilises under-used yet geopolitically relevant setting to great effect. The research is excellent. Clancy fans will marvel at a sophisticated Royal Navy vessel,accurate weapons and tactics use by the factions involved in the book and the psychological factors which make an islamist extremist violent. As for characters, the author has created a fantastic cast. Here are three stand-outs. First, there's Marika, the protagonist. She's one of the rare female protagonists in the genre and even though she starts off as the naive ignorant westerner who believes Somali warlords would follow the Geneva convention, she wises up to her situation and gets a lot stronger and ruthless as the week goes by. She's also got a strong moral compass and wants to do the right thing even if she gets hurt in the process. Many people who've read thrillers in this genre would cringe at how she angsts occasionally but in a world as screwed up as the one the author created, you'll be hoping there would be more people like her. Next, there's Simon, a Airline pilot who's diplomat wife is blackmailed into helping the terrorists. Despite being an ordinary man with no resources or military experience, he goes to EXTREME lengths to rescue his kidnapped children, triumphing over adverse situations and hostile environments. Thirdly, there's Dr Ali Khalid Abukar who steals the show. He's a tragic figure, a man who's been forced to side with evil men in order to make the world wake up to growing problems it has ducked and not confronted. His moral dilemmas and a final act of redemption make his character the most compelling and a terrorist who's not a 2-D caricature but a realistic person.
But its not the characters, plot or even the technology which make Rotten Gods fantastic, its the topics the book explores. There are many so here's three. The author puts his studies on terrorism to good use, attempting to show the war on terror from the Jihadists perspective. From charismatic men warping the Koran to perceived injustices and collateral damage committed by the west, the author successfully demonstrates a complex side of terrorism that is more sophisticated than other books in the genre written by established authors. Make no mistake however, Greg Barron does not romanticise the terrorists. On the contrary, he creates some of the most extremely despicable Jihadists ever to grace the genre and by day 7, you'll be screaming for them to get what they deserve-a bullet to the face. Next, the author explores the costs of consumerism, trying to show that its a serious issue that needs to be solved. He doesn't try beat you over the head with an environmental group's manifesto though, instead the author simply portrays a possible scenario where no action has been taken, blends several concerning statistics along with a major natural disaster in the background of the action and forces you to stop, think and consider if he has a point. Finally, the author examines the peril's of political posturing. Barron uses the sorry state of the UN as a case in point, attempting to demonstrate how the selfish attitude of its members led to infighting instead of creating solutions to make the world a better, peaceful place like it was originally intended to do.
Overall, Rotten Gods stakes Australia's claim to the genre which has been dominated by America for decades. It's epic but not confusing, sophisticated but action packed, has a highly imaginative plot and explores complex and relevant issues with brutal honesty. In short,it will actually make you think about the world we live in and it's the best geopolitical thriller I've read in 2013.
DAMN NEAR PERFECT AND COMPLETELY RECOMMENDED.CLOSE The U.S. Department of Transportation gave Samsung's latest flagship phone a harsher sentence than firearms. Video provided by Newsy Newslook
A United Airlines warning at Chicago's O'Hare airport on Sept. 25, 2016, about not turning on or charging Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phones during a flight. (Photo11: Bart Jansen, USA TODAY)
Samsung Galaxy Note 7 phones will be banned from all airline flights after nearly 100 incidents of the devices overheating and sometimes injuring owners, the Transportation Department announced Friday.
The Federal Aviation Administration previously urged travelers not to turn on the phones, pack them in checked luggage or charge them during a flight. The new ban is effective at noon Saturday, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said.
“We recognize that banning these phones from airlines will inconvenience some passengers, but the safety of all those aboard an aircraft must take priority,” Foxx said. “We are taking this additional step because even one fire incident inflight poses a high risk of severe personal injury and puts many lives at risk.”
The South Korea-based Samsung said it is working to communicate the ban to travelers. The company announced Monday it was halting production of the device after some updated versions of the phones continued to overheat, following a recall of the first version.
“We have encouraged airlines to issue similar communications directly to their passengers," the company said in a statement Friday. "We realize this is an inconvenience but your safety has to remain our top priority.”
The company estimates the recalls will cost it $5.3 billion.
Elliot Kaye, chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which is investigating the phone, said consumers should take advantage of opportunities for a refund on the recalled devices.
Samsung has received 96 U.S. reports of batteries in the devices overheating, including 23 new reports since the Sept. 15 recall, according to the commission. Samsung also has received 13 reports of burns and 47 reports of property damage associated with the phones.
“The fire hazard with the original Note 7 and with the replacement Note 7 is simply too great for anyone to risk it and not respond to this official recall,” Kaye said.
The flight ban means the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is now considered a forbidden hazardous material under the Federal Hazardous Material Regulations, which block airline passengers or crew from traveling with lithium cells or batteries or portable electronic devices that are likely to generate a dangerous amount of heat.
If an airline representative observes a traveler with the device before boarding a flight, the airline must deny boarding to the passenger until the phone is discarded, the department said. Anyone caught trying to sneak a Note 7 on board could face fines and criminal prosecution.
If a flight crew member identifies that a passenger is in possession of the device in flight, the crew member must instruct the passenger to power off the device, not use or charge the device while aboard the aircraft and disable any features that may turn on the device, such as alarm clocks, the department said.
Some airlines had already begun bolstering training and equipment for dealing with electronics fires during flights. A Samsung phone smoked and popped during boarding of a Southwest Airlines flight Oct. 5, forcing the evacuation of passengers without any injuries.
CLOSE This video animation explains why the batteries in the popular Samsung phones is catching on fire. USA TODAY
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2eBkD5sI was going to write a post today about how to get started contributing to the piglit project, but since it's Friday I though I'd have some fun instead and what's more fun than a good old fashion web poll.
For those that don't know I have run two crowd funding campaigns recently to help improve OpenGL support in Linux. One of my original goals has always been to encourage other developers who wouldn't normally have the time to contribute to get involved in open source by funding their work in a similar way.
So today's poll question is: What Open Source projects would you be interested in backing?
To get things started I have suggested four projects that I think are of high interest to Linux users and have even provided a little bit of information on where a developer could start in looking into the project further. I also encourage you to use the 'Other' functionality of the poll to let us know of other projects you would be interested in backing, also feel free to use the comments section at the bottom of the page to leave further information.
1. LibreOffice Printing Comments
This is *Number 1* of the TopTen for Enhancement Requests on the DocumentFoundation Wiki.
The importance of LibreOffice to Linux was highlighted recently with the City of Munich describing the switching of Windows users from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice as an important step in its transition of its desktops from Windows to Linux.
This feature is of particular concern due to comments like this “May I reiterate here that this enhancement is really an important one. Colleagues of mine just recently were deterred from this missing feature. As a workaround, they first created screen shots of every single page of the document and printed them including comments. And then, they reverted back to Office 2010. Sad.”
There is a mock up design referenced in the bug: https://bugassistant.libreoffice.org/show_bug.cgi?id=36815 and even an existing bounty on freedomsponsors.org
I took a bit of a look at this bug a while back. The implementation of comments looks to be in: http://opengrok.libreoffice.org/xref/core/sw/source/ui/docvw/PostItMgr.cxx
Comments are called PostIt internally, so if you want to look into this issue I would search for that:
http://opengrok.libreoffice.org/search?q=postit&project=core
A file called printdata.cxx also has some PostIt-Variables:
http://opengrok.libreoffice.org/xref/core/sw/source/core/view/printdata.cxx
2. Gimp OpenCL Support
In order to be a real alternative to Photoshop G
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longest yet at eight weeks, although of course this could also change as the series progresses.
Both shows kick off on Monday, June 5. Big Brother begins at 8:30PM on Channel 5 and Love Island starts at 9PM on ITV2.
More on: Big BrotherYear
Pharamond is lifted on the shield by the Franks
Year 420 (CDXX) was a leap year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Theodosius and Constantius (or, less frequently, year 1173 Ab urbe condita). The denomination 420 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.
Events [ edit ]
By place [ edit ]
Europe [ edit ]
The legendary Pharamond leads the Franks across the Rhine. He re-colonises the old town of Duisburg (Germany).
The Huns, under leadership of the brothers Octar and Rugila, expand their rule through neighbouring tribal groups.
Persia [ edit ]
Asia [ edit ]
Births [ edit ]
Deaths [ edit ]
References [ edit ]WASHINGTON -- If you were hoping Republicans had fresh new solutions for health care reform up their sleeves, you might find the recent hints from House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) a bit disappointing.
After six years of the GOP failing to come up with a comprehensive alternative to the Affordable Care Act, what Ryan outlined during an appearance at Georgetown University on Wednesday was essentially another stab at a decades-old idea that's never really worked -- an idea that would involve allowing health insurance companies to resume charging sick people higher rates than healthy people.
The cornerstone of Ryan's approach is so-called high-risk pools, a form of health insurance designed for people with the most serious health conditions and highest costs, who were mostly locked out of the regular private market before the Affordable Care Act required insurers to accept all applicants.
If the concept sounds familiar, it's because high-risk pools have existed since 1976, and are a go-to policy proposal for Republicans who don't want to be accused of not caring about people with pre-existing conditions.
High-risk pools have been part of countless conservative reform platforms, including a recent plan from the House Republican Study Committee and a not-so-recent one from the 2008 presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
They were even included in a 2009 House Republican bill that was supposed to be the GOP alternative to the ACA, but that the Congressional Budget Office said would only reduce the ranks of the uninsured by 3 million people over a decade (in contrast to Obamacare, which has reduced the uninsured by 20 million since 2013).
"We can and should and must fix that," Ryan said in response to a question from a student who said his family had benefited from Obamacare's protections for people with pre-existing conditions.
"The smarter way, in my opinion, is that we as a society make a decision at the government level that we will buck up and subsidize those people with pre-existing conditions." Ryan said. Reuters first reported Ryan's remarks.
The problem is, high-risk pools -- which existed in 35 states before the Affordable Care Act made them virtually obsolete -- always failed to achieve their goal of providing a true insurer of last resort to those who needed it.
The biggest reason is money: Covering the medical costs of the sickest people in the country is very expensive, and the government has never devoted the funds necessary to make this work.
"High-risk pools are never successful in providing affordable coverage for people who otherwise had no alternative," said Edwin Park, vice president for health policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. "Conceptually, it doesn't work. You can keep throwing money at it, but it's a losing proposition over time."
Ryan said the federal government would subsidize these high-risk pools at the state level. But promises of additional government spending on health seem dubious from the leader of a House Republican Conference heavily influenced by tea party lawmakers trying to shrink the government as much as possible.
And these are the same promises that led to the creation of the pre-Obamacare high-risk pools in the first place. They didn't pan out.
"For 35 years, states tried to meet this challenge, but never could," Karen Pollitz, a senior fellow at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, told The Huffington Post in an email.
In any given year, about one-fifth of Americans account for around four-fifths of health care spending, and high-risk pools are designed to attract the very sickest and most expensive customers, Pollitz said.
Faced with this reality, the government cut back on the old high-risk pools rather than spend what it would have taken to make them functional.
"They looked for other ways to limit costs of their state high risk pool programs -- surcharging premiums, imposing high deductibles and low lifetime limits, and most of all, excluding people based on their pre-existing conditions," Pollitz said. "That meant the vast majority of people who were eligible for and needed [high-risk pool] coverage couldn’t enroll."
In other words, states found out that covering all these sick people cost a ton of money they weren't willing to spend, so they scaled back the programs and cut off new enrollment.
These pools wound up covering only a small share of so-called uninsurable people and a tiny share of the total uninsured population, and low-income people typically couldn't afford the premiums, according to a study published in 2005.
The Government Accountability Office found that as of 2008, fewer than 200,000 people were covered by high-risk pools, out of nearly 4 million who should have been eligible.
High-risk pools are never successful. Edwin Park, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Ryan also indicated he wants to "open up underwriting," which in insurance jargon means allowing insurers to charge higher rates to people based on their medical histories. Under Obamacare, insurers can't do that. They also can't make women pay more than men, and they can only charge middle-aged people up to three times the premiums paid by young adults.
Ryan's proposal to "open up underwriting" would affect people not deemed sick enough to join a high-risk pool -- which could mean everyone with common ailments like diabetes and asthma, or a healthy person with a history of cancer or other diseases. That's how the insurance market worked when underwriting was permitted before the Affordable Care Act.
This was part of Ryan's argument to the college-aged audience that letting insurance companies once again discriminate against the sick, and moving the most ailing into a separate program, would be good for them. Young people would pay lower health insurance premiums if older, sicker people were in a separate program, he said.
But that doesn't account for the cost to taxpayers of whatever government subsidies would be provided to people in the high-risk pools. And it ignores the reality that everyone, if they live long enough, goes from being the healthy person to being the sick person, Pollitz said.
Earlier in his appearance at Georgetown, Ryan repeated his promise that Republicans would finally tell Americans how they would do health care reform differently.
"What does patient-centered health care look like? We don't think the Affordable Care Act is working," he said. "News flash: Republicans are against Obamacare. But we owe it to people to show what we would replace it with. We have to show what we would do differently."An oil slick that appeared off the Southern California coast. (CBS) An oil slick that appeared off the Southern California coast. (CBS)
GOLETA (CBS/AP) — The Coast Guard says a 2-mile-wide oil slick that mysteriously materialized off the Southern California coast is expected to dissipate on its own in the days ahead.
Petty Officer 1st Class Sondra-Kay Kneen (NEEN) says authorities still don’t know where the slick that surfaced in the Santa Barbara Channel came from.
The oil-rich area is known for frequent natural seepage.
Two months ago, however, the area was flooded with 100,000 gallons of crude when a pipeline ruptured.
Kneen says Wednesday’s slick isn’t thick enough to be scooped up and doesn’t appear to have reached shore anywhere
It was first observed about 12 miles from the area where the pipeline ruptured.
© Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Donald Trump talks with Gov. Mike Pence during a campaign event to announce Pence as the vice presidential running mate on, Saturday, July 16, 2016, in New York. | AP Photo Trump and Pence, in first interview, at odds over negative campaigning
In their first toe-to-toe interview since their vice-presidential rollout, Donald Trump and Mike Pence didn't exactly see eye to eye.
In an excerpt from the interview, which was conducted at Trump Tower and which will air Sunday during CBS' "60 Minutes" broadcast, the two were visibly at odds when Lesley Stahl asked Pence for his views on the tone and tenor of Trump's campaign based on his past comments that negative campaigning is wrong.
Story Continued Below
"I think this is a good man who's been talking about the issues the American people care about," Pence started, staying on message while Stahl interjected with questions.
Stahl asked about the "Lyin' Ted" nickname Trump bestowed upon his primary opponent Ted Cruz, and Pence pushed forward, not stopping to acknowledge the interjection.
"... In the essay that I wrote a long time ago, I said campaigns oughta be about something more important than just one candidate's election. And... and this campaign and Donald Trump's candidacy has been about the issues the American people care about."
Then Trump jumped in.
"We're different people," Trump said. "I understand that. I'll give you an example. Hillary Clinton is a liar. Hillary Clinton... that was just proven last week."
He continues: "Hillary Clinton — you better believe it. Hillary Clinton is a crook."
Stahl attempts to interject, saying "that's negative," before Trump makes his point: Pence isn't expected to be negative in the way he has been.
"I call her 'Crooked Hillary.' She's 'Crooked Hillary,'" he said. "He won't. I don't... I didn't ask him to do it, but I don't think he should do it because it's different for him."Sign up and Help us
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Our Overgrow Canada volunteers will be working hard to to get seeds out as quickly as possible. Sign up today and you can expect to receive your free cannabis seeds in early March.
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Plant your cannabis seedlings and plants in public spaces such as City Hall, the local police station, in storefront planters, traffic circles, public parks, and other highly visible public places. Make sure to send us a photo as soon as you plant the cannabis!
You can see photos and follow the campaign on Facebook and Instagram. If you have questions, please send an email to [email protected] pickup truck filled with African migrants heading for Europe returns to the city of Agadez, Niger, after it was turned back by military checkpoints in the Sahara in June 2015. (Javier Manzano/For The Washington Post)
The European Union on Wednesday announced the start of a $2 billion initiative to curb illegal migration from Africa, an ambitious program that aims to tackle the root causes of a historic flight of Africans to Europe.
The first $325 million in projects introduced Wednesday include efforts to increase employment in the migrants’ home countries and to tackle human trafficking in places such as Ethiopia and Somalia.
Much of Europe’s attention has been focused on the nearly 800,000 Syrian, Iraqi and other asylum-seekers who have entered Europe this year via Greece. But the number of people from sub-Saharan Africa crossing the Mediterranean has jumped, too: About 130,000 made the journey in 2015, compared with about 70,000 last year, according to the International Organization for Migration. They were driven from their homes by poverty and conflict, and attracted by the opportunities to reach Italy from nearby Libya, whose Mediterranean coast has been virtually unpatrolled since the 2011 overthrow of Moammar Gaddafi’s government.
[European Union predicts 3 million more migrants by end of next year]
The $2 billion E.U. Emergency Trust Fund for Africa was created last month to “address migration, mobility and forced displacement through concrete action,” said the E.U.’s commissioner for international cooperation and development, Neven Mimica.
Analysts were skeptical about whether the plan would have a major effect, given the range of reasons that so many Africans embark on the risky journey north. In Eritrea, one of the continent’s top sources of refugees, residents flee a repressive government and forced military service that can last for decades. In Somalia, they are escaping the terrorist group Al-Shabab and brutal fighting between clans. In much of the continent, they are leaving countries with limited job opportunities and seemingly endless poverty.
“If you’re looking at changing the way Africa’s economies work, [$2 billion] isn’t going to go very far,” said Tuesday Reitano, head of the secretariat of the Geneva-based Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime.
Few details of the new projects were available Wednesday. But according to an E.U. statement, they include a plan to develop employment opportunities in regions of Ethiopia from which migrants come; an effort to help Somali refugees return to parts of their country that are stable; and an initiative to combat migrant smuggling in the Horn of Africa.
Many African governments have done little to curb migration to Europe, in part because migrant remittances can comprise a significant portion of their countries’ GDP. Last year, workers from sub-Saharan Africa sent home more than $11.2 billion from Europe, according to the World Bank.
In recent months, the E.U. has debated attacking smugglers’ ships and conducting intelligence-led operations in places such as Niger, on the migrant trail to Libya, but such plans have rarely been enacted. Efforts to improve law enforcement in key cities along that trail have also had limited success. In Agadez, Niger, for example, a Post reporter found this summer that a military vehicle was leading a convoy of smugglers and migrants into the Sahara once a week.
[A smuggler’s haven in the Sahara]
Many analysts say that the surge in migrants from Africa reflects the continent’s most entrenched problems — including civil wars and economies that have not created enough jobs for a rapidly growing population.
“Internal African policies tend to push people out,” said Mohamed Yahya, the Africa regional program coordinator for the United Nations Development Program. “Will the trust fund end this? I don’t think so.”
Under the E.U. plan, 23 African countries deemed the “most fragile and those most affected by migration” will be eligible for the funds, which would be disbursed through 2020. Eritrea was included on the list, despite calls from activists to withhold funding because of its poor human-rights record.
“The fast-tracked approval of today’s new projects proves that this is not business as usual,” Mimica said.
There was no sign that the E.U. is willing to dramatically expand the number of work visas it offers to sub-Saharan Africans — something sought by many officials on the continent who see their compatriots taking risky, expensive journeys because the legal route is nearly inaccessible. Nearly 3,000 people have died crossing from Libya to Europe this year, and most of them are thought to be sub-Saharan Africans.
“The legal channels right now are extremely restrictive,” Yahya said. “For an African to get a visa to go to Europe is the most humiliating process.”
The E.U. has said it will expand the number of university scholarships it offers to sub-Saharan Africans, but that there would likely be a limited increase in the total number of visas.
Other officials in Africa called the trust fund a welcome start, but highlighted just how massive the need is in places where asylum seekers are making the choice to leave for Europe or elsewhere.
“To meet only the most basic needs of displaced persons in North Nigeria would require $1 per person per day — a staggering $2 million in total per day,” wrote Bukola Saraki, president of the Nigerian Senate, in the Financial Times this month. He added that the cost of rebuilding northwestern Borno state, which has been ravaged by radical Islamist group Boko Haram, has been put at $1 billion.
Read more:
A Libyan militia confronts the world’s migrant crisis
Tiny Gambia has a big export: Migrants desperate to reach Europe
At first stop on Europe’s refugee trail, a 21st-century Ellis Island is bornThe Miami Dolphins added another player to their offseason roster Thursday, signing nose tackle Charles Tuaau to a Reserve/Future contract, according to the NFL's transaction list.
Players who weren't on active rosters at the end of the regular season are eligible to be signed to futures contracts, which are basically early invitations to OTAs and training camp. Teams can sign as many players as they want to such deals, as long as they remain under the 90-man offseason roster limit.
RELATED: Jelani Jenkins excited to graduate college, bounce back in 2016
Before Thursday, Tuaau wasn't with an NFL team at all. He originally signed with the Chiefs last May but was cut towards the end of training camp as Kansas City trimmed its roster down to 53 players. With the Chiefs, the 6-foot-5, 310-pound Tuaau worked on both the defensive and offensive lines before his release.
Tuaau did not sign on with a team's active roster or practice squad all season but will give his NFL career another chance this offseason with the Dolphins.
Before going undrafted, Tuaau played his college ball at Texas A&M Commerce, where he recorded 34.5 tackles for loss and 17 sacks in two seasons.Theresa May walking to church in Maidenhead with her husband Philip yesterday. The prime minister is still committed to a complete break from Europe PETER MACDIARMID/LNP
Pro-European Tory MPs are demanding that Theresa May compromise on her plan to pull Britain out of the European Court of Justice.
This week David Davis, the Brexit secretary, will outline plans to repeal the 1972 European communities act and transpose EU legislation into UK law at the point of Brexit in 2019.
The repeal bill would end the jurisdiction of the European court over British law and create new legal and regulatory structures to oversee the repatriated powers. In a sign of how the bill is likely to be used to influence the outcome of Brexit, however, three former Tory ministers told the prime minister to water down her pledge that the ECJ would have no role in a future relationship with the EU.The Orioles are currently attempting to move right-hander Bud Norris, reports Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports (on Twitter).
Norris, a free agent at season’s end, has struggled quite a bit this year, working to a 6.82 ERA entering tonight’s contest. His sub-par work in the rotation caused him to lose his starting spot, and the move to the bullpen hasn’t yielded better results (four runs in six relief innings, though he did work a scoreless inning with one strikeout in tonight’s game).
The good news for Norris is that he’s still averaging 93.4 mph on his fastball, and his 41.8 percent ground-ball rate is above his career mark. That’s not much of a silver lining when considering that his 6.7 K/9 is a career-low, his control has taken a step back, and he’s allowing homers at a higher rate than ever before. His 2015 struggles aside, though, Norris has a solid track record. From 2011-14, he averaged 174 innings per season with a 4.06 ERA, 8.1 K/9 and 3.3 BB/9 between Houston and Baltimore.
Moving Norris figures to be a difficult feat for Orioles general manager Dan Duquette; in addition to his struggles, Norris is still owed approximately $3.6MM of his $8.8MM salary. Duquette said earlier today that his team was a deadline buyer regardless of its record over the next week and a half, with his primary focus being to add an outfield bat and pitching depth.A federal judge Friday ordered the IRS to turn over the records of any requests from the White House seeking taxpayers’ private information from the tax agency, delivering a victory to a group that for two years has been trying to pry the data loose.
It’s not clear that there were any such requests — but Judge Amy Berman Jackson said the IRS cannot just refuse to say so by citing taxpayer confidentiality laws, known as section 6103 of the tax code.
“This court questions whether section 6103 should or would shield records that indicate confidential taxpayer information was misused, or that government officials made an improper attempt to access that information,” the judge wrote in denying the IRS’s request to close out the case.
The ruling marks yet another federal judge who has ordered the Obama administration to be more transparent when responding to open-records records. The State Department is facing a barrage of orders from federal judges demanding more cooperation in releasing former Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton’s emails.
White House officials and federal agencies are allowed, under very select circumstances, to ask the IRS for protected information. But the requests must be carefully cleared.
Questions about potential White House meddling in taxpayers’ private information stretch back to the beginning of the Obama administration, when the then-White House chief economist seemed to describe the tax structure of Koch Industries during a briefing with reporters.
His description was apparently incorrect, but it left some watchdog groups wondering if the White House had quietly sought information on conservatives, such as the billionaire Koch brothers.
Cause of Action sued in 2013 to get a look at whatever requests the White House, or other federal agencies, had made.
The IRS refused, saying even the existence of those requests would be protected by confidentiality laws and couldn’t be released, so there was no reason to make the search.
The judge said Friday, however, that the agency couldn’t use the privacy protection “to shield the very misconduct it was enacted to prohibit.”
“As we have said all along, this administration cannot misinterpret the law in order to potentially hide evidence of wrongdoing,” said Dan Epstein, executive director at Cause of Action. “No administration is above the law, and we are pleased that the court has sided with us on this important point.”
The IRS declined to comment since the matter is still pending in court.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.Jason Dalton, Uber driver who killed six people in Michigan, says smartphone app takes over ‘your whole body’ and is undergoing psychiatric evaluation
An Uber driver charged with fatally shooting six people in western Michigan told police that the ride-sharing company’s app takes over “your whole body” and forced him to go on a killing spree that also left two wounded.
In a series of reports released on Monday, Jason Dalton, 45, admitted his involvement in three shootings that took place over several hours on 20 February in the Kalamazoo area, but said Uber’s smartphone app was to blame.
Dalton told police that when he opened the ride-sharing app, he “recognized the Uber symbol as being that of the Eastern Star” and that a “devil head” would pop up on his screen. He said that was “when all the problems started”.
After the first shooting at an apartment complex, Dalton stopped at his parents’ house to switch vehicles with his wife, after getting into an accident with his Chevy Equinox, the report stated. Dalton explained that he was “nearly run off the road” by an “angry taxi driver upset” that he was driving for Uber.
Kalamazoo shooting spree puts Uber in spotlight over safety concerns Read more
Dalton’s wife “did not really believe Jason’s story about the crash because he would not look her in the eye, even when she purposely stepped directly in front of him”.
In an interview with the Kalamazoo department of public safety, Dalton said “he is not a killer” but “knows that he has killed”.
“Dalton said that the iPhone can take you over,” a report stated, adding: “Dalton said he wishes he would never have spoken what that symbol was when he saw it on his phone. Dalton described the devil figure as a horned cow head … and then it would give you an assignment and it would literally take over your whole body.”
Initially, he opted to plead the fifth amendment, but relented when police disclosed that he fatally shot a 17-year-old boy. Asked if he had a comment for the child’s parents, Dalton replied: “I’m sorry.”
He was charged last month with six counts of murder and two counts of assault with intent to murder in connection with the shootings at an apartment complex, car lot and Cracker Barrel restaurant. A judge earlier this month ordered a psychological examination at the request of Dalton’s court-appointed attorney, and the evaluation is expected to take upward of 60 days.
The report stated that Dalton was apprehensive about discussing the Uber app, saying he didn’t “want to come across as being a crazy person”, and that was “why he was pleading the fifth earlier”.
Dalton also told police that he did not drink or smoke, and was not on “psychotic or psychosis drugs”, adding that that he was not in bad financial straits and did not consider himself a “anti-government or militia-type person”.
When police arrested him during a traffic stop, Dalton was wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying a loaded 9mm handgun.
Dalton said that he could not recall the shootings, but that he remembered the “pop, pop, pop of the gun”.
A detective noted, “I asked Dalton if he remembered pulling the trigger and Dalton said that he did not … and he just remembers feeling the percussion of the gunshots.”
“Dalton said that … the really weird thing is that he never even aimed,” the report stated. “Dalton then extended his right arm straight out and moved it from side to side and said that he remembered that it just sort of had him, and it was directing him as he was shooting.”
Asked later if he was targeting specific individuals, Dalton said the shooting spree was “just a random thing”.
In an interview with the Kalamazoo county sheriff’s office, a former colleague of Dalton’s said he was “quirky” but added “there seemed to be a ‘side’ to Jason that many people may not have seen unless they worked with him”.
The pair worked for an insurance company and, on one occasion witnessed “Jason yell at a customer over the phone, eventually slamming the phone down, hanging up on the customer.”
“Jason was very upset and stood up and paced around his desk after the conversation,” the report stated. “[The former colleague] said that Jason had been counseled about his professionalism with customers prior to this.”
At one point, a detective asked Dalton why he never uninstalled the app, but Dalton said it “sort of had you at a certain point”.
“Dalton said that if he would’ve never ever mentioned the Uber symbol resembling the Eastern Star,” the report said, “he never would’ve had any problems.”Blog Archive Sep 2018 (42) Aug 2018 (67) Jul 2018 (72) Jun 2018 (48) May 2018 (64) Apr 2018 (54) Mar 2018 (52) Feb 2018 (64) Jan 2018 (80) Dec 2017 (51) Nov 2017 (53) Oct 2017 (60) Sep 2017 (55) Aug 2017 (69) Jul 2017 (73) Jun 2017 (72) May 2017 (74) Apr 2017 (85) Mar 2017 (78) Feb 2017 (91) Jan 2017 (94) Dec 2016 (91) Nov 2016 (82) Oct 2016 (105) Sep 2016 (70) Aug 2016 (76) Jul 2016 (111) Jun 2016 (119) May 2016 (111) Apr 2016 (114) Mar 2016 (106) Feb 2016 (104) Jan 2016 (122) Dec 2015 (113) Nov 2015 (111) Oct 2015 (92) Sep 2015 (100) Aug 2015 (96) Jul 2015 (85) Jun 2015 (108) May 2015 (104) Apr 2015 (95) Mar 2015 (107) Feb 2015 (78) Jan 2015 (81) Dec 2014 (87) Nov 2014 (87) Oct 2014 (100) Sep 2014 (84) Aug 2014 (86) Jul 2014 (53) Jun 2014 (99) May 2014 (96) Apr 2014 (96) Mar 2014 (102) Feb 2014 (70) Jan 2014 (78) Dec 2013 (72) Nov 2013 (86) Oct 2013 (104) Sep 2013 (83) Aug 2013 (95) Jul 2013 (44) Jun 2013 (104) May 2013 (107) Apr 2013 (78) Mar 2013 (93) Feb 2013 (81) Jan 2013 (80) Dec 2012 (88) Nov 2012 (81) Oct 2012 (101) Sep 2012 (125) Aug 2012 (116) Jul 2012 (112) Jun 2012 (92) May 2012 (161) Apr 2012 (141) Mar 2012 (156) Feb 2012 (126) Jan 2012 (95) Dec 2011 (81) Nov 2011 (98) Oct 2011 (106) Sep 2011 (103) Aug 2011 (117) Jul 2011 (74) Jun 2011 (88) May 2011 (73) Apr 2011 (53) Mar 2011 (46) Feb 2011 (46) Jan 2011 (41) Dec 2010 (62) Nov 2010 (45) Oct 2010 (39) Sep 2010 (41) Aug 2010 (27) Jul 2010 (23) Jun 2010 (12) May 2010 (15) Apr 2010 (16) Mar 2010 (11) Feb 2010 (7) Jan 2010 (5) Dec 2009 (6) Nov 2009 (3) Oct 2009 (3) Sep 2009 (5) Aug 2009 (5) Jul 2009 (6) Jun 2009 (5) May 2009 (6) Apr 2009 (5) Mar 2009 (5) Feb 2009 (4) Jan 2009 (7) Dec 2008 (5) Nov 2008 (4) Oct 2008 (6) Sep 2008 (10) Aug 2008 (5) Jul 2008 (4) Jun 2008 (7) May 2008 (1) Apr 2008 (1) Mar 2008 (4) Feb 2008 (5)Barack Obama is expected on Wednesday to visit Everglades national park in southern Florida, where administration officials say concerns about changing temperatures and rising sea levels offer the perfect backdrop for the administration to raise an alarm about climate change on Earth Day 2015.
Even before the president embarked on the trip, however, the White House found itself answering questions about how it looks politically for Obama to stage a major presidential appearance on environmental issues in the backyard of two potentially strong Republican presidential candidates who have expressed skepticism about climate change.
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The sense of a building political skirmish was stoked by a pre-emptive attack against the president’s visit by Florida’s Republican governor, Rick Scott, himself a climate change skeptic. Scott released a statement on Tuesday criticizing Obama for failing to “live up to his commitment on the Everglades and find a way to fund the $58m in backlog funding Everglades national park hasn’t received from the federal government”.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest sharply objected to Scott’s attack in a conference call with reporters late Tuesday, noting repeatedly that Scott’s office had reportedly banned state employees from using the phrase “climate change” in educational material and other official documents.
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“The president’s commitment to the Everglades, and fighting climate change, is one that stacks up very well against Governor Scott, particularly when you consider that Governor Scott has outlawed employees of the state of Florida from even uttering the words climate change,” Earnest said. “So it’s a little rich for somebody who’s made that declaration, to suggest that somehow the president has not been sufficiently committed [to fighting climate change].”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Barack Obama’s Everglades visit highlights the equivocal views on climate change of Florida politicians Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, who are expected to contest the Republican nomination. Photograph: Susan Walsh/AP
The skirmish between the president and Scott played out against the broader political backdrop of the 2016 presidential race, in which the former Florida governor Jeb Bush and current Florida senator Marco Rubio are expected to vie for the Republican nomination. Bush said he thought climate change may be real but then claimed wrongly that there is a disagreement in the scientific community about the issue. Rubio has sought to punt on the issue by saying he is not a scientist.
Rubio has announced a 2016 presidential bid, while Bush, the brother of George Bush and son of George HW Bush, has built a robust network of donors and advisers, and is expected to announce a bid later this spring.
The Everglades, a 1.5m-acre estuary of delicate and shifting ecological equilibrium, has been uniquely affected by climate change. The loss of inland fresh water to rising temperatures has allowed more salt water to move in, while rising sea levels have further injected seawater into breeding grounds and other areas that produce the national park’s unique flora and fauna. The encroaching saltwater has also threatened the state’s drinking water supply.
Obama was expected to visit areas of the Everglades where increasing concentrations of salt water had killed the park’s iconic grass and changing temperatures had altered the growth patterns of the park’s mangroves trees, the White House said. It will be Obama’s first visit as president to the national park.
The president’s trip was meant to “highlight the value of special and vulnerable places like the Everglades”, said Christy Goldfuss, managing director of the White House council on environmental equality. She said the Obama administration had invested more than $2.2bn to protect the Everglades, and on the occasion of Earth Day would release a new report showing that every $1 of federal money invested in the national park system returned $10 to the US economy in the form of tourism and other benefits.
“The Everglades is one of the country’s most unique landscapes and climate change is putting this treasured ecosystem at risk,” Goldfuss said. “This is really ground zero. Rising sea levels lead to shoreline erosion and increased flooding, and as the seas rise, salty ocean water travels inland and threatens the primary source of drinking water for more than a third of Floridians.”
“My expectations are not great – actually [I have] no expectations for funding America’s Everglades projects as part of Everglades Restoration,” said Doug Young, president of the south Florida Audubon Society and a member of the Broward County climate change task force. “But I think it is fantastic that on the 45th anniversary of Earth Day, President Obama is visiting the Everglades and talking about climate change and sea level rise. I would like to think that this is partly due to the Rick Scott and Marco Rubio climate change denial.”
In addition to hosting one of the country’s most fragile and celebrated conservation areas, Florida hosts one of the most unpredictable electorates. Victory in the state by a Republican or by a Democratic candidate such as Hillary Clinton, whose campaign is making climate change a central issue, could mean the difference in the race for the White House.
But in the call with reporters Tuesday, the White House pushed back against the notion that the president’s descent on Florida had a political edge.
“This is not an effort necessarily to go to anybody’s home state,” Earnest said. “This is an effort to raise this debate. And the truth is that those Republicans that choose to deny the reality of climate change, they do that to the detriment of people they’re elected to represent.”For other uses, see Mynock (disambiguation). For other uses, see
The Mynock was a starship commanded by Cade Skywalker, named after the parasitic mynock. Aside from Cade, his crew included co-pilot Jariah Syn, mechanic Deliah Blue and later astromech droid R2-D2.
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Characteristics Edit
The Mynock began life as a Helot-class medium space transport, built by Cade's uncle "Bantha" Rawk (aka Nat Skywalker) and extensively modified by Deliah Blue. Much like the legendary Millennium Falcon, she was heavily customized from the original configuration; in fact, it was rumored in many spaceports that virtually nothing of the Mynock's original design existed on the current incarnation of the ship. Modifications included enhanced armor, sub-light engines, weapons and hyperdrive, and shield generators for additional protection, the latter not normally equipped on a Helot-class transport. For weapons, the ship was armed with at least two medium laser cannons on either side of its bridge module, additional heavy laser cannons on a turret assembly on its ventral side, which could retract into the ship when not in use, and one quad laser cannon on its tail module. As well, it could carry at least three starfighters within its hold. All of these modifications would produce a ship that could fly nearly as fast as dedicated starfighters in both sub-light and hyperspace, while possessing Corvette level defenses and firepower.
History Edit
Skywalker and his crew used the Mynock to ferry themselves around the galaxy while hunting down bounties. Like many other ships of questionable legality, the Mynock had its transponder
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